Cliches, Writer-Bashing, Paedophilia – Where to Next?

That’s a very good question.  I’m glad you asked it.  What was that?  You didn’t ask it?  Well, I heard you ask it.  How could I hear you when you were only reading this post?  ‘Cause I’m psychic.

What’s that?  You’re still arguing?  Very well, I’ll wait for you to realise your mistake.

You don’t believe in psychics?  Since when does your belief or lack thereof matter?  I have a friend (who may or may not be imaginary).  Let’s call him Pal.  Pal doesn’t believe in Osama Bin Laden.  Does that mean Osama Bin Laden doesn’t exist?  (A bad example, given the fact that the might of America still hasn’t found him.)  Scrub that.  Pal doesn’t believe President Obama exists – everything he sees on TV is just a computer-generated image.  Does this mean that President Obama doesn’t exist?  Of course not.

The Crystal Ball: An essential tool of all psychics. To receive accreditation, a psychic must travel to the North Pole and castrate one of the mythical "Crystal Elephants". These expeditions are usually done in pairs, so as to reduce waste.

So now that we have established that your beliefs have absolutely no effect on whether Obama, psychics, gods, or sentient teapots exist, we can move on with the post.  Finally.  The freedom I find I have upon discovering your irrelevancy is quite wonderful.  Anyways, try not to be so disagreeable next time – you’re ruining the fun for everyone else.  Of course, at the moment there is no “everyone else”, this blog being a tad new.  But I swear by Zeus’ Pubic Hair that there will be more readers at a later date!  Readers who will look back at the archives and think to themselves “who was that idiot who was arguing?”  I tell you this out of compassion – so you can avoid embarassment in the future.  I strive to be a compassionate human being.

(Unfortunately, due to unforseen complications, a picture of Zeus’ Pubic Hair cannot be found.  So instead try to imagine a combination of Harry Potter’s head and Zeus’ groin.  And I don’t mean to suggest that Harry Potter was giving Zeus oral sex or anything, just that the shape of his scar bears a remarkable resemblence to the shape of Zeus’ pubic hair.  Any conclusion you draw from that is entirely your own fault, you dirty, disgusting creature.  Just because Harry Potter is a fictional wizard and Zeus is a (possibly fictional) God doesn’t mean they don’t want to get to know each other before they take it to the next level.  Shame on you!)

So – where to next?  Tangents.  What is a tangent?

An example of a "tanned-gent". Tanned-Gent, tangent. Get it?

Tangents are what make life interesting.  If you spend your life driving down the freeway, but never take a detour, you’ll save alot of money on petrol.  You will also have achieved very little.  On your deathbed (which would be located in the back of a truck if you had spent your entire life traveling), the only thing you will be able to say is “I drove past interesting things.”  Whereas others will have stopped, got out and looked around, you instead drove past it.  Do you want to stop and smell the roses, or do you want to be a victim of a drive-by?  Taking both sets of connotations into account, I’d much prefer the former.  A thorn in the flesh is better than a bullet in the brain.

This topic has been dealt with by another man, namely Robert Frost:

Robert Frost, circa 1910. He must've sat very still for a camera with such a long exposure as "circa 1910".

He wrote a poem called The Road Not Taken.  Here’s the last stanza:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Powerful words, Bob, powerful words.  It is clear that he is railing against freeway bypasses in this poem.  (It is no matter that freeway bypasses did not exist when this poem was written.  Frost had impeccable foresight.)  His message is clear – take the scenic route.  And pack a camera (as well as plenty of memory cards and the battery charger).  This was explored in the next stanza – a stanza that was lost until I happened to stumble upon it.  This is a rare privilege that you have, to see for the first time the true end of the famous poem:

And as I went down that lonely road
Realising I had forgotten my camera,
I knew that well this did not bode,
For my memories they would soon erode,
And so would life’s paraphernalia.

Isn’t it lucky I managed to find it?  Now the world can fully know the thoughts of Robert “Snowman Bob” Frost.

Medieval Y-Intersection

My advice?  Take the scenic route once in a while.

Introductions

Hi there.  My name is Adam.  Would you like some candy?  I’ve got some waiting in the van with the tinted windows.  Just follow me.  What’s that?  Your parents told you not to follow strangers into vans with tinted windows?  Sigh.  Society is so hard on paedophilia nowadays.

The Paedo-Mobile

And no, I’m not a paedophile…only because I haven’t had the chance…  *ominous music*  Joking!  I would think that most males are paedophiles if you count the years of pre-age-of-consent masturbation.  If you count that, around 50% of the population have engaged in paedophiliac activities!  Of course, let us not be sexist – many that fall on the female side of the gender coin may have done similar things as well, although I’m not very au fait with female masturbation habits.  This sounds like a study in the making.

I recall seeing on A Current Affair or Today Tonight (two Australian “news” shows – you know the type, 3 or 4 news stories in half an hour, half of them about petrol prices, half of them about celebrity interviews, half of them about bad neighbours, half of them about scams, half of them about grocery prices, etc) (and yes I know those halves don’t add up) a story about a paedophile who had been released.  It wasn’t about the story of release, more that he had been placed near a school, if I recall correctly.  Or placed somewhere in society.  You could give a paedophile shelter in a uranium mine and people would still complain that they were “too near the power source for our nation” (not that we use nuclear power yet).  And so the media chased this poor man down the street, herding him into some random building and following him inside.  He had nothing much to say.  Eventually a prisoner-rights lawyer had to come along and tell the media to stick their cameras where the sun doesn’t shine (and I’m not talking about the dark side of the moon).  I thought this was a disgrace.

Not that I condone what this man did – I could never condone such a thing – but he had served his time in prison, paid his debt to society and all that.  And yet here he is being chased down the street by the media.  What is it about paedophilia that the media loves so much?  You don’t often see manslaughter-commiters being chased, or murderers even.

Today's Lingerie Model, Tomorrow's Rape Victim (and the Present's Gratituitous Pornography)

In fact, it would seem, at least from the impression that I get from the media, that activities such as paedophilia and rape are the most heinous crimes possible.  Why is this?  Last time I checked, rape and paedophilia victims usually lived to tell the tale.  Although this would seem fatuously true, now that I think about it.  The ones who didn’t live to tell the tale weren’t just rape victims, but murder victims one would assume.  But the media seems to insinuate that rape is worse than murder.  But is it?  A rape victim can go on to lead a relatively normal life (and I’m not trying to diminish their pain or suffering in any way).  A murder victim doesn’t have much chance of that.  Is torturing someone for a month worse than murdering them?  Torturing them for a year?

I have to admit that I’m completely ignorant of the sentences that Australian courts hand down in relation to such crimes, and whether a rapist is given more years in prison than a murderer.  I should probably get off my soapbox and check that out some day.  But at least where the media is concerned, rape and paedophilia seem more heinous than murder.  My suspicion is that this is the case for mainly one reason: dead people can’t talk.  Dead people can’t give emotional interviews that bring in the ratings.  Victims of rape can.  So can victims of paedophilia – Catholic church, anyone?  They do say that any publicity is good publicity, yes?

And this post has virtually done nothing to introduce me at all – so here’s a tidbit of personal info.  I’m currently writing a play – how about that?  Pretty nifty, right?  The guy’s an artist.  In fact, the guy’s not just an artist, he’s also a young man.  Here’s a portrait:

This is what is known in the business as a "punchline"

And that’s it for the moment.  Come back soon to read more posts whose titles have nothing to do with their content!

My 100th Post

In keeping with the general tradition of things (and keeping with tradition is what most of us do, whether we realise it or not), I have decided to add the first cliche blog post.  Even the phrase, “first cliche blog post” is cliche, although I doubt that the phrase ” “first cliche blog post” is cliche” is cliche.  Not yet anyways.  That must be the difference between modernism and postmodernism.

Of course the title cannot be “My First Post”.  Instead, “My 100th Post” will suffice.  The choice remains as to whether I should increment or decrement the count on the next post.  If I decrement then it sets a time limit on the blog, unless I go into the negative, of course.  Which I would be able to do with ease, one thinks, considering what most western countries are doing in this time of economic recession.  Keep up with the trends and all that, keep up with the zeitgeist, or the time ghost, as it is translated into English.  Makes you wonder how a time ghost is created, doesn’t it?  Perhaps when the battery in a watch runs out of charge?  One would assume that there may even be a team of Swiss Ghostbusters, running around the world collecting these chronological ectoplasms.  Heaven help us when Big Ben stops – we could have a giant, ticking, Pillsbury Doughboy on our hands.  Although pushing it into the Thames may help.

The username: thephilologist.  Philology is the love of literature.  And not that hushed-up love that you’re not supposed to tell everyone about.  Besides, the mechanics of fornicating with a book are fraught with danger.  No, it is the type of love which one can shout from the rooftops, provided that one doesn’t expect that anyone will hear you from the rooftop.  Unless you were to jump off the rooftop while shouting it.  Then there is a good chance that someone may hear you on the way down (doppler effect included).  A Love Of Literature must mean that I’m reading something, right?  The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.  Echo, echo, echo…  (I’m sure that’s the first time he’s heard that joke.)  But if we didn’t ridicule great writers then where would the world be?  At least great writers have a place in society, a pedestal if you will on which they stand, at which we the uneducated masses can aim rotten tomatoes and unusually hard meringues at.  The general populace doesn’t have a pedestal to stand on, and hence throwing food at them is a bit underwhelming – if they aren’t standing on a pedestal, then they have nowhere to fall, right?  And in the worst case scenario they may even be homeless and end up happy that food was thrown at them.  So yes, best to stick to ridiculing the great writers.  (If I become a Great Writer one of these days I promise I’ll be the first to ridicule myself.)

The title: Epistemysics.  Epistemology + Metaphysics.  That is the name of a course I am currently doing at university, and so this therefore gives me the right to comment on any philosophy that has ever been, is being, or ever will be discussed in human history with complete impunity.  So there.  Shall I start?  Existentialism is wrong.  There.  That should ruffle a few feathers.

The name’s Adam.  We’ll see how inflammatory this blog becomes before I decide whether I want to add my last name into the mix – there’s no need to add fuel to the fire.