You Call It Brain Damage, I Call It Free Entertainment

I spend a lot of time staring into space while people talk to me. This is not because I'm not interested in them, or what they're saying. Rather, it's because I picked up on a word or a phrase that they've said, and my brain grabbed it and took off running, headed on a strange tangent. It happens every morning on the way to work. Eric will say something, and I stare into the cool, green forest, looking for shafts of sunlight while my brain extrapolates on the subject. Sometimes, these strange tangents materialize in my blog, but all too often, I am left with only the most tenuous grasp of the entire thought process, and a conclusion that I KNOW is the truth, and no way to explain myself when Eric inevitably asks, "Whatcha thinkin' about?"

EXAMPLE 1: THE INTERNET IS HEAVEN

The thought started because Eric was telling me about a website. I wondered how many bits of information it takes to compose the world wide web. I thought about a Grant Morrison lecture I like that explains the afterlife as becoming an omnipotent being, made of data. I get iffy on the thought process at this point, but five minutes later, I emerged, certain that when I die, I will not go to heaven, but to the internet.

EXAMPLE 2: HUMANS CAUSE CANCER

I was staring out the kitchen window, watching Eric trim my gardenia bush. I decided that I liked it better bushy and wild, and given my druthers, I'd have left it alone. Then I thought about a story I watched about the scientific tweaking of pigs, and how the quality of life for a pig is horrible now. After a series of daring mental leaps, I decided that cancer must be a direct result of humans and their constant desire to twist and mold nature into something it shouldn't be.

EXAMPLE 3: SAVE THE FUTURE, ABOLISH WORK AND TELEPORT!

I'm not even sure what got me started, but I recently decided that the only way to cure all of the world's problems was teleportation, AND the eradication of manual labor (robots can do all that shit now) in favor of selling ideas and thoughts. Shortly after I came to this conclusion, I also decided that taking these steps would just speed the robot apocalypse, in which machines will rip many of us to shreds, and force the rest of us into slavery.

All of this had a point, but I've forgotten what it was. I got distracted when O Fortuna from Carmina Burana came on my ipod. As soon as I heard the opening strains, I got excited about the drama of typing to such powerful music. By the time it got to the whispery part of the song, I decided that when the zombie uprising happens, I will only listen to O Fortuna during battles, ensuring that I properly grasp the gravity of the situation.