Sage advice

"Never regret things you did, only things you didn't do".

[Nods wisely; resolves to take more risks, to stop worrying, to feel and live and love more]

I don't want to be an empirical stick in the mud here...but that only really works if you're talking about running through the deserted Paris streets at sun-rise. It loses a certain "jenny say pah" when you've got so angry because your towel fell off the hanger thing three times even though you tried to hang it on properly that you threw it out of the window and shouted and kicked the bath with bare feet and the bath panel sidey bit fell off. And you broke your toe.

Also people that do gang-rapes. It doesn't work there either.

"Everything happens for a reason".

Yeah, the reason being that you chose to be involved in a serious sexual assault/bath rage incident.

Is there a bin for these sayings?

Punchline

I would like to finish all conversations the same way that most articles/blogs are finished. I would like to end them all with a single line which sums up and self-references the whole conversation.

Me:           "Excuse me do you have the time?"
Him:         "Sorry mate, I don't have a watch"
Me:           "No problem thanks"

Me:           "Next time we meet, perhaps we'll have.......More Time!?!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Him:         "What?"

Me:          "Oh nothing, I was self-referencing for structural closure".

Him:       "You're a queer".

Me:         "How are you still doing this? I was writing a hypothetical example of an unusual conversation and you're still here".

Him:        "You don't know how to even use tabs. Look, that last line doesn't line up with the rest of it".

Me:         "What The Hell man?"


I think it's because conversations never go exactly how you want them to. So many deeply planned arguments go astray because the bastard on the other side won't say exactly the lines I've rehearsed. It's almost as if the world isn't a deep, well-structured figment of my importance. I have literally never, ever won an argument where the other side has nodded sagely with a sort of "well-played sir" bonhomie. It's almost as if all arguments are unwinnable. I think I'll stick to blogging and arguing points on my own.

Those are arguments I can definitely win.





Him:            "Prick".

Evolution Schmevolution.

I am very uncomfortable and really a bit embarrassed admitting that any of my clothes are new.
"Is that a new shirt?" I'm asked, from nowhere.
"....er.....no, no I just don't. Wear. It. Much." I counter.

I feel slightly angry that my day has been attacked, unprovoked.

That's a weird survival trait evolved from years of success over weaker Hobbesian losers isn't it? Pretending my clothes were new once but not in the relatively very recent past, rather, a bit less recently purchased? How can that possibly benefit the species?

I had a college professor once expound the theory that evolution had stopped for the human race. He went on to explain that everyone now broadly has a partner and procreates (my brain translating effortlessly into "even fatties are getting some"). I went away and read and realised that no, we have not stopped evolving. Evolution just doesn't work on the timescales of a few generations and the process is not a movement "toward" something. I spent a lot of time learning from the world's best that evolution happens simply "BECAUSE IT HAPPENS". That's it, done and dusted. Inna nutshell. And the fact that we have evolved to feel nervously embarrassed about new clothes is more likely part of a more complex system of social norms which allow us to exist as a very successful gregarious predator.

I took this to the college professor. Well I tried to but by then it was 13 years later, I couldn't remember his name and I realised that he didn't really understand the most basic concepts of evolution. I didn't even try to.

I did see someone who looked just like him though and I shouted his name really loudly across the street "HEY DR FINKELMADEUPSTORYSON" but it wasn't him. I was so embarrassed.

Clear, evolutionary advantage.