How to: Be a person.

Step one: Be born. It is likely that if you are reading this, you were at one point, born. You may have been forcibly squeezed from your mother's womb, or you may have been the result of a Caesarian Section. Both are applicable types of birth, and fine choices. You may have even (potentially) been grown in a scientific vat if some kind, and been decanted rather than 'born'. This, however unlikely, still counts in my opinion.

Some people think that people are people before they are born, which is fair enough I suppose. I lack any significant evidence to agree or disagree with them.

Others think that being assembled rather than grown could be a legitimate form of person-making, however technology is yet to compete with human ambition in this area.

Step two: Develop an identity. This is a crucial step, and more difficult than one might think. Use whatever genetic advantage you have been given, and piece together ideas from parts of the universe in your brain around this centre. Your identity may require adjusting as you age: Don't worry, this is normal.

That done, congratulations, you hopefully now possess a consciousness.

Step three: Experience reality. This is also a befuddling action to take, and it has been rated by some as, "the greatest thing ever" and others as, "A completely awful nightmare" depending on objective viewpoint.

It is generally agreed that people must experience at least some reality, even if it is largely fabricated. If you do not experience any reality, you may not qualify as a person, but perhaps only a body with no mind. If you wish to alter your reality, there are many courses to take including but not limited to:

Losing all possessions.
Use of recreational chemicals.
Changing or gaining some kind of religion.
Space travel.
Total isolation.
Meeting strange or interesting people.
Etc.

Step five: Die. Once you have experienced as much reality as you can, it is generally agreed that the best course of action to take is death. Some people believe there is a part of your personhood that will continue to exist after you die, others disagree.

Every person who had ever lived has or will die, though there are people who believe that certain exceptional individuals never died or never will, such as Elvis Presley, Jesus, and Charlie Sheen.

However, it is fine and natural for you to try to avoid death for as long as possible, by eating good foodstuffs, avoiding certain chemicals, freezing your body in cryogenics to be revived later, keeping physical trauma to a minimum, and regular exercise.

Follow all these steps, and it is doubtful anyone will argue with you being a person. If they do, then argue back that you are, or better yet, act surprised that they would even suggest such a thing, as this is what people do.

Good luck.

Feminism: It's Good

There isn't much to this post. Just an acknowledgment by me that feminism is good. And while I'm not incredibly familiar with the feminist theory, I'd like to describe myself as a feminist, among a great many other things.

Mirage

If men became monsters,
And preyed on those they loved,
Would you still care for them,
And their soft hands, however gloved?

Their caress, would it still dwell within?
Is this flesh, nothing more than red flesh?
Are our bodies but fine, and paper thin?
Mere bonds against for our souls to thresh?

And if a monster grew so tame,
That it loved you as a son,
Would you still laugh to see its pain,
And broil it with your gun?

If a man becomes a monster,
Or a monster to a man,
Do their true selves seek to conquer?
To escape this, if it can?

What are we then, but cogs?
In a spinning whirling plan?
Are we wandering through fog?
Ending as ignorant as we began?

Mirages flicker before us,
As we wander through the desert.

We call them time.
And life.
And death.
And hope.
And despair.
And beginnings.
And ends.
And monsters.
And lovers.
And mothers and fathers.
The greatest of these illusions,
The strange idea,
That we are all seeing the same things.
And that any of them are different, to the sand of the desert.

Apologies:

Sometimes the gaps between my posts on here are greater than others.

I'm not going to say sorry for that. Many folk do. This is MY damn blog. I'm not being paid to write on it. I try to make it entertaining if I can. If you don't like my late night ramblings, then go elsewhere.

Oh no, I didn't mean it. Please stay.

Look, if you're a reader who is annoyed by the infrequent nature of my posts, I'm sorry. I like you. You're sweet for reading. And if you genuinely enjoy the content, then thankyou even more. But I'm not apologising to myself for not writing. I only write when I get the jigglies for it. And that is more than enough.

Love and Kisses, Zaphod.

Kobo

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that my faithful ereader of many years screen smashed. I'm buying a new one and it's fine.

Many people complain about ebooks, and how they aren't, 'The same,' or they don't, 'Smell nice,' or that they don't, 'feel right'.

What I think they are really talking about is the emotional connection that a person has to a book they cherish. And the emotional connection that I had with my tired old Kobo ereader (that mum bought me from the now defunct borders, because buying books all the time was too expensive) was there. It was real.

I maintain that we should not love the paper of books, but the content of them, and to a person who cares about what a book says, the format it is in is irrelevant . But still, I do feel a twinge when looking at the ruined screen.

T'was too cruel and ironic a fate that your screen smashed when I accidentally dropped the single volume collected works of H.P Lovecraft on you, which is a very real and very heavy book.

Rest easily in silicone Heaven, with all the iPhones from 'will it blend?', exploded 1980's Blackberrys and Casio calculators that got left in jeans pockets when they went through the wash.

Goodnight sweet Kobo. You were as cool a lump of plastic as ever there was.

Psychic Football

I've an idea for a new fictional sport. But first I need to do some clarifications of definitions.

When I say 'Football' my idea is with what we Australians know as the game of soccer. It's played with your feet, head and chest - no hands. It's quite tactic based, and very much to do with feint and bluff, as well as aerodynamics of spheres (or whatever shape a football is). The specific physical abilities of the players on the team often varies a fair bit, unlike some types of football Australian's play that just involve big beef steaks that know how to plow other guys over.

Having said all that, I'm sure this would work with basketball, or some other competitive group sports. Certain types of hockey maybe. Water-polo would be nifty. I dunno.

Now, to clarify what I mean by 'psychic'.

There is a character in x-men called 'Charles Xavier' who is called a psychic. He rolls around in his wheel-chair reading people's thoughts, projecting visions, making people forget things they used to know, and most importantly, fighting intense mental battles of wills with other psychically powered individuals. If he has complete control over someone's mind, he can control their every action. He can't see into the future or anything. Just mind powers. That's the kind of psychic power I'm taking about.

So. You produce two teams of eleven football players, all of whom have psychic powers. They play football as they normally would. But they are joined together as teams in unions of interconnected minds. They all know exactly what each other is doing at the time, and they act almost as one organism.

Or they would. If the other team wasn't spending a considerable amount of their concentrated mental energy trying to thwart that interconnectedness.

And vice versa. It is as much a battle of the mind as it is a contest of tactics and athleticism.

Why am I thinking about this at three in the morning? Who knows. But I like the idea of this sport where not thinking about the way you are going to score a goal, and thus not give it away to the goal keeper of the opposite team, is a legitimate tool in winning a game.

Perhaps I haven't explained how it would work in enough detail. But it seemed like something worth sharing before I forgot it.