Overthinking it much? - Introduction

So, it's been a while since I updated the blog. Real life intervened, stepped on my neck and told me to call it daddy. After getting it put in the hole for a while and buying myself a few days before it comes back to make me regret ever dropping the soap, I've decided that it's time to update the blog again.

It took some thinking, I needed to come back with an idea of what to talk about after all. But after a few weeks of being exposed to different forms of cultural and literary commentary from across the board I've come to an understanding: We writers are the makers of time capsules. Think about it for a moment and you'll understand what I mean. In this day and age, with so many forms of expression and so many aspects of our culture, it's hard to believe that in the future we'll be judged almost purely from what we've written. And yet that's exactly what is going to happen.

Someday, when your hard drives burn up, your DVDs melt and you realize it was probably a bad idea to light that firework so close to your entertainment center, everything you've amassed will be gone. But somewhere out there, someone's got a printed copy of something that may eventually survive whatever drunken cataclysm befalls the rest of information from our society. It's happened since the beginning of civilization. We only uncover the things that survive whatever fires we've set, from cave paintings to rare copies of books that hardly anyone has heard of. And, let's face it, the human race has a great love for fire ever since the first man to rub two sticks together until there was a flame figured it out. More than likely he was very frustrated and was picturing great violence at that moment, possibly he (or she) was in a long term relationship.

Nothing causes fire starting rage like your spouse or partner.

Anyhow, point being, I've realized that what we write eventually becomes a piece to study for future generations. This is a good thing...to a point. After listening to enough discussions about why some literature professors are insane, I've realized that interpretation is greatly skewed by time. Sure, today a story may be about a simple set of cute fuzzy animals saving their forests. Tomorrow that same story will be interpreted as a public cry for help from someone molested by a logger. Yeah, it sounds extreme, but it's pretty much what happens all the time. How else do you figure some university professors come to the conclusion that Red Riding Hood is a story about prostitution?

There's a lot of studies into things such as bible codes and so on that has shown us that people are capable and willing to find anything that they want to find within a work. You think that there's a code in the book that tells you what to do with your life for a happier future? Regardless of whether it's true or not, you'll do it. This was also quite colorfully demonstrated in a recent episode of South Park where the boys wrote the most offensive book of all time and people began to analyze it as if it were the greatest piece of art ever. It's going to happen, they're going to search for meaning in our works...but what meaning will they find?

So that's the goal I've set out for myself for at least the next week or two. I'm going to take what I've gathered from the many interpretations I've seen over the years and apply it to today's literature, especially the stuff most likely to survive. Considering some of the crazed interpretations I've heard, it's going to get colorful. First up: Harry Potter. Stay tuned!

And, keep in mind, for those reading this who figure that our modern literature isn't the best representation of who we are...remember this:



It could be much worse.

The Bunny

So, having had a bit to calm down, I've been able to clear my head enough to start writing the post I wanted to write a few days ago. Something's bugging me and it's time to set the record straight. Time and time again I've heard the same joke: "What does a rabbit have to do with Easter?"



You see, the problem with Easter is that it's not really a Christian holiday so much as a Christian holiday overlapped it (like Halloween). In fact, when you look up the origins of Easter you start to realize just how much the holiday has stayed exactly the same but was given a different story.

Originally, the holiday was in honor of Eostre, which, as far as I've been made aware, is actually pronounced "Easter". Eostre was the goddess of the dawn, spring, reproduction and pretty much anything that says "new life and fun times." Considering she was a Norse Goddess, she was one of their best friends since they had winters that could make you go crazy. Really, just look at the Norse and you know they hated the cold: Hell was frozen over, the end times would be foretold by a three year long winter with no end and their favorite god, Thor, was in charge of making crops fertile through rain storms. Winter was not their friend. In fact, if the stories of the spring celebration are true, they believed the spring was the world resurrecting from the dead. (ZOMBIE EARTH!)

So when spring came, they thanked the goddess for it through a festival. And during this festival they would decorate eggs the colors of the dawn (sound familiar?) because those were a symbol. Now, there's some wonder if Eostre was actually a fabrication to make it seem like the Christians ripped the idea for the holiday from the pagans. But given Halloween, Christmas and all these other holidays that "conveniently" line up with pagan holidays... it's not hard to notice a pattern.

So, you're wondering by now: just what does this have to do with the bunny? Well, that's simple really. Eostre was represented by many objects and elements. The sunrise, the spring, the spring hare. And for the celebration of Eostre, after coloring these eggs the colors of the dawn, they'd celebrate in about the same way we do today. And since the spring hare was a representative of Eostre, it was tied directly into the celebrations.

In fact:



There's the bunny!

So when you find a person who doesn't understand the bunny. Just remember, there's a pretty good reason why the bunny and Jesus have nothing to do with each other. And what about the Easter Bunny? What's he think about all this?



Now that's more like it.

Ouch

Woo, it's taken a while to even figure out how to start with this post. In fact, even right now I'm thinking of blanking the screen again and starting from scratch. I don't know what it is about me but I can't seem to write (or think) when in a truly distressed position. I've heard of all of these people who've been able to create these truly great works while depressed, angry or just out there. But I can't seem to do that. Later on, maybe, I can dump what I felt in a more stressful time into my work. But for the most part, the more stressed I am, the harder it is to organize even thoughts like this.

I don't know why it happens. Maybe I'm afraid I'll end up saying or doing something that I really don't want to do to my work. I know that on more than one occasion I've pictured a character going on this violent rampage and taking people out. But this feeling of repression and deep seated aggression lingering somewhere in my normally gentle soul is disturbing. Why the hell is it there?

Truthfully, I think I know why. But I hate to admit what it is. And, in a moment of great irony, I have no idea how to effectively put it into words. Every time I start to write it out or think it through I find myself going down these darker roads I don't like. Try as I might, I just come back to this point and go "where the hell do I go from here?"

In the past few months, I've reached such levels of stress that I've suffered physical responses to them. A lot of these physical responses are actually humiliating to share in a public forum. So guess what? I'm not going to. But, truthfully, if I didn't know they were caused by stress, some of them would scare me so bad I'd stress myself into new symptoms.

I'm not a complainer, despite all appearances my blog may project. But sometimes I feel like I'm being run over by a steam roller and the driver is blaming me for getting in the way as he crushes my legs. And, ironically, there's a good chance that while the driver blames me for it, they don't hear me screaming under the sound of their steamroller. In fact, I know that the person who's caused me the most stress in the last week isn't reading this or even aware that it exists. So I sit here screaming silently as I get crushed under the weight of other people's crap.

Suddenly, I understand why they said things were "heavy" in the 80s.

Normally, by this point, I post a cute youtube video I've discovered over the last few days that I felt would fit this. However, today, I've got nothing. Try as I might, I couldn't find the clip of Back to the Future where Marty says "this is heavy" and the Doctor asks "is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?"

So I end this post without a video. Truly, a sign of a bad week.