I need to get some things out of my head so I figure here is the best place to do them. Screaming mutely into the abyss of the internet is one of my favorite pastimes, and scream I shall. Let’s number these suckers.
1) I went to a museum exhibit on Pompeii today. When you walked in, the first glass case of bricabrac and household whatsits were coins. Laid out in concentric circles, growing larger as your eye followed them around; they were a veritable fetishization of currency. I suppose it was to allow the moden Aussie to compare them to their own platypus-festooned coinage, but it just depressed me a bit. See, coins, for me, they kind of represent where humanity went wrong. I know that sounds drastic, and don’t get me wrong, I like something shiny as much as the next guy. My point is more that coinage, metallic currency stamped with someone’s head, represents the point at which humans decided to take worth away from things with worth. No longer were you trading with the cows that could feed you, or the sheep that would clothe you, or the pumpkin that would magically transform into a carriage for you. Now you took the symbolism of those things, the “value” and transcribed it to small discs of cold, shiny rock. It was the first puff of air into the economic bubble, really.
1.5) To continue on Pompeii, the exhibit also boasted a 3-D computer generated simulation of the eruption, with 1 minute or so snippets taken at 4 hours intervals throughout the day-or-two that Vesuvius did its nasty business to surrounding villages. That was pretty darn neat. The other main event was the famed body-casts. When a person dies in a slurry of not-that-hot-but-heavy ash and rocks, their body makes a hole. As the body disappears, the hole does not, and then some crafty scientists come along a millenium or two later and pour some cement in. You crack open the rock and voila, the general cast of a person, taken from the pose they were in at the… moment… of their… death. Wow, that’s actually pretty screwed up, when you think about it. I mean, yeah, there’s a statue that looks like a guy covering his face to avoid choking, and another of two young girls huddled together on the floor, legs caught in the midst of writhing in abject agony, but… No, still screwed up. Maybe more so. The only thought I had was sort of a note-to-self. Note to self: If you have to die in an excruciatingly painful way, make it historically significant enough that people will come see a construct of your death-pose in a museum 2000 years later.
2) The museum continued the bum-me-out-a-thon with it’s natural history section. Of course, children go nuts over dinosaur skeletons and pickled fish in jars. Bugs pinned to cotton backdrops with small, carefully typed name tags. I just don’t like it. The dinosaurs are cool, and give you a sense of the scale of the things that lived in a time of different atmosphere; but otherwise the fish in jars and bugs just make me wish I was, I dunno, outside. Or at an aquarium. Or something something alive and vibrant, and not half-bleached with new car smelling formalin. I’m not a giant fan of watching beetles push around balls of shit, but it’s better than seeing their hollow crusts jabbed through with a pushpin. This is another problem I have with humans, and particularly modernity: the cataloguing impulse. Another weak in the knees caveat: I like having a full set of things I like as much as the next guy. But, when it comes to the animal kingdom, part of the joy of seeing is experiencing the sights, sounds and smells that go with it. A butterfly landing on a large, tropical flower will have an entirely different set of associations from a scorpion seen scuttling in the Arizona desert. But in a museum, they can all be seen in an air-conditioned preservative stench. Good work, entomologists. Bunch of dicks.
3) Alright that last one was a bit harsh, but… You know. It’s a bummer. The chief other thing running through my head is how infuriatingly irritating people who use words incorrectly can be. I don’t mean the usual culprits such as “irony” or “good music” (Ooh, watch the snark!), but a specific example that I’ve run across with one person here. The word “redundant” has basically one meaning. It means superfluous, unnecessary and excessive. Or in the case of words, it means when two words are used when one would do. It’s not a hard concept. It’s redundancy, in all its redundant redundancy. This particular culprit uses it to mean anything that doesn’t work for her. Things like “They gave me the wrong one. This seems a bit redundant.” or “Doing that (thing I would never want to do) would be redundant.” I can’t help but wonder if she thinks redundant is the same as retarded. If so, she is a redund. That is a conclusion I came to earlier and had to share. Because I am so clever it hurts sometimes.
4) Other than all that, today was actually a good day. Not enough sleep, looked at the wrong things in museums, had breakfast food for lunch. All fine and dandy. The afternoon was spent watching the grand final of Aussie rules football. It’s sort of like the Superbowl, but more about competition than new commercials that cost 1.8 million shiny-bits-of-rock to air. In fact, there were only commercials between quarters, which span 20 minutes. Can you imagine if the NFL did that? Television networks in the US would have kittens. Kittens with hooves. Hooves. Perhaps that’s a bit hyperbolic, but the advertising revenue, in many cases, seems to almost be the justification for the playing of sports in America. When you think about the overall picture of it, it’s certainly the only justification for the salaries.
5) Christ, I’m economical tonight. I never really think much about money, although I’m told I have an economic view of relationships. Kind of an exaggerated give-and-take that leads to me resenting tons of people and writing off others as not worth the trouble. I suppose that’s okay though, because, when I do think about it economically, I only have so much to give. And aside from the odd mass-dispersion system (like this one), I am generally giving what I’ve got one-on-one. And there are only so many hours in a day. So, in short, due to the limitations of my reserves and my efforts, some people will be left by the wayside. And this lamentable fate will befall those who disappoint me in their own efforts first. So there you have it. An overly worded version of my personal philosophy on people. When I actually want people around. That last bit distinguishes it from the rest of the semi-nihilistic stuff that flies out of mouth (fingers).
6) Perhaps I’m too negative. I’d like to think of myself as “crabby” but maybe I’m just an asshole, screeching polemics at passersby and dumping anyone who gets close enough to the real me. That’s kind of a depressing thought, but truth be told, doesn’t bum me out as much as Pompeii, the shells of dead insects turned into dioramas, or the misuse of words. So I suppose there’s hope for me yet. Seems like a good place to sign off. G’night, Whoever.
RJC
