Making Jello

Making jello is pretty difficult.

No, stop laughing, it's not nice. If you're rude you won't get any at the end of this.

Ok, now that you've quieted down, I'll explain. I read the box and was following the instructions, so I got this small pot and filled it with about a cup of water, and then started heating it up. As it started to get bubbly I added in the jello mix, and it occurred to me right after I did it that this might be a bad idea because the mix might burn or something since it's exposed to an open fire under the pot.

So anyways, a big cloud of smoke starts pouring out of the jello, and I'm worrying that maybe I really did make a mistake. But then it started forming a shape, and I started to recognize it.

"Hey Odin, what's up?" I said to the Norse god who decided to haunt my kitchen, "What are you doing here in Texas?"

"Fool! You know not what thou hath done!" Odin's voice poured thunderously from the smoky visage.

"Man, Odin, why you gotta be this way."

But I started to see his point when I checked on my jello, as a maniacal, cackling face appeared in my jello, and out of it rose a maniacal man who I also quite quickly recognized.

"Woah, Loki, I thought you were banned from Earth after tipping over some cows or something." but he wasn't really listening to me as he jumped up and broke through my ceiling, apparently flying through the air. Odin's face was now grimacing at me.

"Sorry. I'll try not to add the jello mix in before you take off the heat." I said to Odin.

"Ack. Well, thou did not know. I'll hath him rounded up eventuallye. Just remember next time. Oh, and enjoy the jello."

"Really, it's not ruined? That's pretty sweet."

So, you know, Odin and I were cool, so things weren't too bad. And the jello did turn out ok, but I learned my lesson about following instructions. For reals.

Chicken-Back Pete

Chicken-Back Pete's thoughts were troubling him. "It's going to end badly any time now. I can just feel it. My affliction is too much to bear."

His date, Nicole, was sitting on the chair across the small booth. She was pretty, and seemed likeable enough. Her eyes sparkled when she smiled. "I'll have the Kung Pao Chicken." Chicken-Back Pete flinched at the word chicken. Who could blame him? Born with the down of a newborn's chick on his back, the word "chicken" had always haunted him, making him the subject of mockery since kindergarten.

"What? Is there something wrong with chicken?" Pete tried to supress his reaction as he replied, "Uh, no, there's nothing wrong with...chicken" he muttered. "I'll have the, uh, cheeseburger." The waiter left them alone.

"I'm just curious, is all. You've been jumpy this entire date. You should relax a little." she smiled. It failed to calm him, as vexing thoughts entered his head. "Why is she smiling? Does she already know? I bet she already knows. She's just leading me on, and she's setting me up for one big joke. They always are. No one could ever love me. Who could love a man with chick down on his back?"

"Really, it's-"

"NO! NO, IT'S NOT ALRIGHT! YOU'RE HERE TO MESS WITH ME, AREN'T YOU? TRYING TO PLAY NICE, ACT LIKE YOU CAN STAND A FREAK. YOU'RE EVEN WORSE THAN THE REST. WHY CAN'T ANYONE TREAT ME LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING? GO TO HELL! GO TO HELL!" Pete immediately regretted his words. Nicole ran out, crying, not knowing what could have caused such an outburst.

Pete laid his head down on the table, and wept.

-Credit to Minesotta President for the idea.

Inquisition

*Two men are sitting. One of them is very calm, collected, and looks the other person firmly in the eye. The other looks a bit confused and bewildered, though not excited, occasionally looking from side to side. For simplicity's sake, let's call the first James and the second Greg.*

James: Do you know why you're here?

Greg: Why?

James: Why.

Greg: No. No I don't.

James: You, sir, are accused of being a terrorist.

Greg: What? What do you mean?

James: Someone contacted us, and told us that you are a terrorist.

Greg: Us? Who's us?

James: I'm asking the questions here, sir.

Greg: What, so you won't tell me who you are, who accused me, what evidence do you have-do you even have any evidence?

James: The accusation is enough evidence.

Greg: That's ridiculous! That's not nearly enough evidence!

James: I knew you'd say that.

Greg: That's because it's ridiculous!

James: No, it's because we took the time to transcribe this conversation beforehand.

Greg: ...What?

James: Yeah.

*James pulls out a piece of paper*

James: So far it's followed the script perfectly.

*Greg pulls the piece of paper out of the other man's hand, and examines*

Greg: What-my name isn't Greg!

James: Those names were merely put for simplicity, and to make the script easier to read.

Greg: But then why didn't you put-

James: The script was made before we knew your name.

Greg: That's ridiculous! This whole concept is ridiculous! Why would you even make a script like this! Why would you give it to me?

James: Because the script told me to.

*Greg reads the script, trying to find what he is suppose to say next, and then directly avoids trying to say it*

Greg: I can prove this script is defiable! I'm saying something different from what the script is saying right now.

*James reaches over, takes the script, and pulls apart a couple of stuck pages*

James: Oh, the pages were stuck.

*Greg stares in disbelief*

James: Anyways, we need to get back to the topic at hand. That is, you being a terrorist.

Greg: But I'm not a terrorist.

James: Oh, I read the script. You definitely are.

Greg: How does the script say that I'm a terrorist?

James: I'm sorry, but I can't tell you. The script doesn't tell me to.

Greg: So this conversation will continue to follow it's drug addled course as it has gone so far, until somehow I end up admitting a terrorist.

James: I would rather wish you do not refer to the script as "drug addled", but basically, yes.

Greg: And what happens after that?

James: I forget. You go quietly or something? It doesn't matter.

Greg: This is insane. How would you even produce something like this?

James: I don't question the rules, I just follow them.

Greg: *sarcastically* Ah yes, this makes perfect sense. Of course a piece of paper knows the future, and can predict my every action. It must mean I am a terrorist. Look at me, I'm only trying to get a job, placing calls every few days, after I was laid off. Why wouldn't I be a terrorist. Clearly I must be a terrorist. It's the only logical explanation.

James: Aha! So you admit to being a terrorist!

Greg: What? That was sarcasm.

*Greg grabs at the script*

Greg: Hell, this script even calls it sarcasm!

James: Oh, the script is a fake.

Greg: ...What?

James: Yeah. I just manipulated you to say all those things, to perfectly follow the script, and control your actions so that you eventually admit that you are a terrorist.

Greg: ...No.

James: Sure! Of course, I guess you can't understand it, given your puny intellect compared to my keen analytical mind.

Greg: You're still following the script right now.

James: That just shows how much of a genius I am, that I can plan gloating in the very same step that I used to manipulate you!

Greg: You've yet to prove any real authority, or evidence, or anything! The entire case is against you.

James: You clearly underestimate my brilliance.

*Greg looks through the script, trying to figure out what the hell is happening. As he finishes reading it, a moment of comprehension hits him*

James: Ah, finally willing to go quietly, huh?

Greg: Right, sure. But could you look at this line, first?

James: Why?

Greg: It's of special interest, and I think it might make your case a bit weaker.

*James leans over to look. Greg suddenly decks James across the face, gets up, and starts walking out*

James: What? That wasn't...on the script.

Greg: Oh, there was a page stuck together.

Glimpse

The man's eyes quivered, his face dull with realization. "You'll never stop, will you? If I ignore you, you'll continue. If I kill you, others will come. There's no escape."

I started started to smirk. It was rare when I had such a self-aware quarry. Usually they fought back pointlessly, refusing to accept their fate. Today would be easy, simple. Unexpected, but not unwelcome. "As long as you are who you are, as long as you know what you know, it will never stop. You can either can continue suffering, or end it all here."

But what I didn't expect was his reaction. His face, contorted with fear, slowly started to change. And he laughed. The most disturbing laugh of my life, as if he had realized his entire life was one giant joke, and this was the punchline. Not knowing how to react, having no training to react to madness such as this, I simply stared at him, this insane, maladjusted person.

As the laughter finished, he finally spoke these words. "I've run away all my life. Everything I've done, I've tried to hide. You killed everyone I knew; you killed my teacher, the one who taught me magic, and left me with nothing. So I took that nothing, and lived with it. I carved out a normal life, a boring, meaningless life, but a life. But you wouldn't stand for that. You wanted to oppress me. Crush my spirit. Make me your slave. Breaking me is merely the expected endpoint."

He looked up, and his eyes glistened, the spirit of life strong within him. "As long as I live, as long as there is breath within me, I shall make you and all your kinds very existence hell. I will fight you no matter the odds, the risks, or the danger. You try to break me because I know too much, a liability to your precious kingdom of dust. But that's all it is. A kingdom that shall go back to dust. And I...I shall be the executioner."

Future Interpretation

The blog post I wrote about Ozymandias highlights something that bothers me about contemporary literary analysis. That is, the fact that people, often professors or article writers, take something, analyze the fuck out of it, and come up with some absurd theories, and then claim it was the author's intent. Even if the author disagrees with them, they can still just claim he inserted it subconsciously. Now, I won't claim that I don't insert things subconsciously, like the idea that I secretly want someone to misanalyze me so I can become all indignant and bitchy; however, an outside observer who's never met me and only read my works is not the ideal person to judge just what I subconsciously project into my writing, and should not speak authoritatively on just what I mean by my writings.

The problem is, I can't decry all of them either, because occasionally people do come up with insightful analysis that reflect what the author meant to write. I'd hate to go, "Everyone who critiques my work sucks," because by sheer chance, there almost certainly will be someone who doesn't.

Thus, my statement as such, is this: if you take my work, and say that it was my intent for what I write to mean whatever you claim, then I think you are being an arrogant bastard who assumes too much about why I write, and I question whether you should be doing it. Your own opinion is fine. Taking your ideas and asserting they're mine, isn't.

This may anger some people. That's pretty cool; I should do that more often.

Pseudo-proof

Current theory about the universe assumes that it will eventually degrade into a matterless background with even protons having decayed into a native state, at the most basic state possible as defined by entropy, and thus remain that way for the rest of eternity. Current theory also state that time had a beginning, via the Big Bang. If the time the universe has matter is finite, and the time it does not is infinite, then it is infinitely more likely for it to be a matterless universe at any given time than one with matter. Yet I perceive a universe with matter.

Therefore, either the universe is an illusion, or current theory is wrong.

Ducks should be quiet.

Ok, so I'm in my room, right? I'm trying to go to bed, and then there's this duck and he's like, "I'm a duck." And I try to be polite, and say to the duck, "Be quiet, I'm trying to sleep." But ducks are nature's jerks. It immediately started quacking like a madman, preventing me from sleeping. And the thing is, if you kick a duck, that just makes more ducks. It's how they breed. And then you get two noisy ducks, and it just gets worse from there.

The only real solution is to tell the duck, clearly and resolutely, to shut up. And if it doesn't shut up, you will hire a french chef to cook it into a lightly browned delicious dish served with asparagus and alfredo.

You will tell the duck he will be delectable, a delicacy fit for kings, though perhaps not really good kings like Charlemagne, but a decent king, one that is somewhat respected by his people by being fair, even if he's not the best possible leader. I mean, he was born into the role, he didn't pick his life, and you can't really judge him on the fact that he wasn't the best choice. Monarchy doesn't make for those kind of decisions.

So, long story short, the duck still didn't shut up, and so I ate him.

A bit tough, though. Maybe if he hadn't have quacked so much he would have tasted better.

Riddles

I have a riddle for you. Don't worry, it's not meant to be particularly hard or anything. It's merely an exploration of the definition of the word riddle, and how one can apply it to reasoning. Ok, ready? Here it is:

How many ducks?

The answer: As many as there are.

So, did you think of the answer? Did you consider it? Maybe you don't think it's really a riddle at all.
Actually, that's a fairly serious problem I'm having with this. A friend argued that it wasn't. I disagreed, and he thought I was merely being argumentative for the sake of which. I don't blame him, given that I enjoy being argumentative, but, in this case, I was being entirely serious. However, I can't just drop his case right then and there. I considered it a very serious problem to consider, especially since it questions the very definition of a riddle itself.

What his basic case against my riddle was this: to any other riddle, the answer I give would be completely unacceptable. If you told a sphinx, "Something that walks on 4 legs at dawn, 2 at noon, and 3 at evening", you would get summarily eaten. If you said, "whatever that is in you pocket" to Bilbo, he probably would have scoffed, and for good reason.

But, then, what makes the "proper" answer to a riddle better than the rest? Part of the structure of the average riddle is being intrinsically vague, so that you have to use conjecture in order to solve it. You could frame many answers to the sphinx's riddle that would be technically correct; in fact, the real answer doesn't even fit the definition of technically correct anyways, since the entire presupposing relies on the ability to realize the question in terms of time is making a metaphor. After all, human beings don't really start out every day on 4 legs, noon on 2, and evening on 3.

Therefore, what makes the Sphinx's answer better? It's certainly not the most clear explanation, and if you actually found some person or some creature that fit the definition more perfectly, the sphinx still wouldn't find your answer correct, even though if you weighted the quality of the answers, yours would be considered superior. The problem, really, is that a riddle is, in part, only correct when you guess the thing the person thought of when framing the riddle.

But my friend believes there is apparently some fundamental rule behind the structure of riddles that makes it so you have to have that level of obfuscation, and cannot simply restate what the question said. He equated it to an XKCD comic: http://xkcd.com/169/

He equated as such because he believed the fundamental nature of the question betrayed some sort of definition of riddle by being misleading in that its not answered in the same way in a conventional riddle.

That's not what I believe. What I believe is this: Restating the question of a riddle as it is stated as an answer is, by all definitions, correct. It is, however, not what the asker wants in most cases, even if, when pressed, the asker would admit is technically true. The real problem is that, for the average riddle, there is an expectation of not what is correct, but the answer that the asker wants. By relieving that standard on my own riddle, I break expectations of what a riddle can be, but not breaking what a riddle is in and of itself.

And yes, if you're wondering, people have looked at my riddle and guessed the right answer in one or two tries. So it's definitely not impossible.

Disagreeing with Gods

Disagreeing with a god is a difficult task. For one, most gods are fickle and proud, and do not take well to a lesser being questioning their abilities. Thus, the first step in arguing with a god is to not have anything to lose. If you are not sure that you don't have anything to lose, check the following list to see if you qualify:

1. Everyone you love is dead or suffering.
2. Your life has no foreseeable pleasant future.
3. You are in constant agony every day of your life.
4. You just don't give a fuck.

If you are only bored, it is suggested you don't try to argue with a god, unless you like having your liver eaten out every day while your body regrows it from a tiny piece.

The second step is to question a god's omnipotence. Logical fallacies are a common trick, but be wary; gods are likely to have heard them all. You could try "Can you make a (noun) so (adjective) that even you can't (verb)?". Oddly enough, the actual words you insert don't matter. In fact, making it nonsensical will make it even harder for the god to accomplish, as it is hard to do something that isn't even properly defined.

The third step is to question the god's ability to judge mortals and make actions. A common belief that a god has is that he is perfect; this is a wonderful thing to attack because it is fundamentally unprovable. A simple logical argument can attack it:

A: Beings can be perfect or imperfect.
B: It is possible for imperfect beings to believe they are perfect.
C: Therefore, belief in one's perfection does not make it so.

The fourth step is to call the god some kind of derogatory term. This won't help your case, but it'd be funny.

The fifth step doesn't exist, because by now the god has almost certainly murdered you.

Good luck!

Where to go from here?

Well, it's been a long time since I posted in this blog. And it was mayhap a silly experiment created by an insane mind.

Ok, it definitely was.

But, after ignoring the link that I so quickly put into my toolbar for so long, I read it again somewhat recently. And I was surprised.

I actually liked what I wrote. I found it somewhat amusing, a bit clever, with excellent grammar and punctuation. The kind of like that you can only get when you revisit a piece you wrote and you realize, "Huh. I actually did something right." I'd like to get that feeling again. And if I keep it up, maybe I'll get to. It seems unlikely I'll ever be consistent in updating, but I can certainly try.