Philosphy on Craig's List

The passage of time brings change; birth, death, the ironic popularization of mustaches.

An external change can sometimes bring about internal questioning; who am I? Why am I here? What's up with all those hipsters with mustache tattoos on their finger?

Lately, I've been experiencing a lot of external events and it's causing a hunger for philosophical self-reflection. That, or a chicken salad sandwich on Rye.

Being cut from the "stay up late googling myself and crying" cloth, I thought I would see if my self-reflection was part of a particular American Zeitgeist tied into the changing decade, or if it was just good ole "morbid Matty Mansene" thinkin' bout downer-type stuff!

So I placed a fun ad on Craig's List to see where our communal minds were at. To get responses, I placed a picture of a smexy sorta chick and posed the following question;


It's just after midnight on a Monday morning and I'm wondering what sort of people are on craigslist right now.  


Yup, I'm a sweet, good natured inquisitive person and I'd like to get to know more about you.  So, shoot me an email with the answer to one simple question: What's the meaning of life? 


Tell me in one sentence and if you want, I'll write back and tell you what I think it is. 


Of course, pretty much no one answered in one sentence, and most people included the words "thick" "boner" or "clam juice" in their response, but such is life.

I am going to go over them tonight and give you the best responses. It'll be great, the Nazism or the Hindenburg disaster!

The World Is Wrong and You're Right

I awoke with a giant chicken salad sandwich in my mouth. Next to me; a yellow sticky note, which simply read: "I am a yellow sticky note". Needless to say, it was a confusing morning.

When I looked at my clock, it said that the time was 10:45 in the afternoon. Never trust a talking clock.

Something was fishy and it wasn't the salmon juice that I rubbed all over my thighs last night to "frighten the demons away". No, something was not right.

That's when I grabbed my phone and called my ex fiancé. After she said that we were never engaged and we only went out on one date 7 years ago, she asked "shouldn't you be following the stipulations of that restraining order?". That's when I figured out what the problem was:

Everything else in the world was wrong except me!

Yes, I am right and you are wrong. Did we just go out on a date and did you think that "it was the worst date you've ever been on, and Matt's breath smelled like fetid milk mixed with rabbit turd?" Well, date: you're wrong! It was a great time, we'll probably be married next week and my breath is as sweet as seven Lifesavers mixed with rose-flavored tulips.

Did you just look at me and sneeze, but I thought you said "ahh-Jew"? Did I call you anti-Semitic? Did you just call me a "stereotypical paranoid Jew with an inflated sense of ego?" Well, you're wrong because you hate Jews! Everything you say is wrong because you hate Jews and everything I say is right because I'm Matt.

If I walked into my couch last night and stubbed my toe, it isn't my incessant clumsiness...it's because that fucking couch doesn't know when to get out of the way. Fucking couch.

Once you look at life and realize everyone and everything is totally and completely wrong except you, the world opens up. Failure is no longer an option, because you aren't the one failing...everyone else is simply failing you! I win and you lose because I LOST!

When you look at things this way, it really helps that you realize the world revolves around you. Yes, you are the sun and the world is but a man-servant, following you around, asking "hey, what can I do for you today?". And you can't really do all that much because the world is so fucking huge that you're like "oh shit, world, I can't even get around because you're always up in my grill".

In fact, I wasn't able to exercise today because the world kept me from leaving the house. The only thing within arm's reach was that giant bottle of Whiskey and a box of Oreos. Don't blame me, it's the fucking world revolving around me.

Thank goodness that's all cleared up. Now nothing is my fault, because it's your fault. I don't know who you are, but sometime, some place, you could have done something to prevent me from failing, so it's all your fault.

Just ask the world.

So-shall Not-work

Social Networking has brought us an inch closer to everyone in our periphery, but has flung us miles apart from the people closest to us.

The concept of "being close" has inexorably changed. No longer does it mean hours gabbing on the phone about your innermost thoughts and insights, no long, humorous emails belabored over, no quiet lunches spent recounting what happened to you during the week.

These things don't really matter anymore. If someone attempts to catch up with me, let me know what they thought about during the week, the places they go/people they see...I'll say "oh, right, you mentioned that on Facebook". "Catching Up" is an outdated social convention that has gone the way of Print Media and Betamax.

"Here are pictures of my kids! Aren't they cute?" yeah, I've already seen your kids on Flickr and they look like every other kid I've seen on Flickr. And that video you uploaded of them on youtube doing that thing that 1,000,000,000 other kids do on youtube...saw that too.

Do I get to see the kid in person? Not a chance. I'm busy and I feel like I'm keeping up with him because you just Twittered "my baby is brilliant! he can clap his hands!!!" Is he brilliant? Is he just doing something that every other baby in history has done? I'll never know.

We find out that people are pregnant the second they find out they're pregnant, we find out people are getting married as they're being proposed to: "OMG! Bill just proposed! What should I say?"...cue impromptu comments-section Facebook poll.

So while it's great I know what all my high school friends look like now....it's also a pretty big drawback that I know what all my high school friends look like now. Sure, they "pop up in my feed" and it's great that I can keep up with their thoughts and what's going on...but because of this, I will never feel the need to call them, email them or...*gasp*...attend my high school reunion.

I am not the only one who feels this way; 2 people showed up to my 10 year class reunion this past year. I remember at my 5 year reunion, the 10 year was packed (well, as packed as it could get for an 80 kid graduating class)! Time has changed; no longer is seeing someone in person revelatory, no longer a prerequisite for keeping in touch.

"Who got fat?" "Who got married?" "Who stands outside a middle school, clad in jodhpurs, stroking a giant sack of potatoes while screaming 'Jesus is Lord!'?" We already know the answers.

So while social networking makes it "pretty awesome" (sarcastic quotes intended) that I can keep in touch with pretty much every single jackass I tangentially meet at a party; it's pretty un-awesome that it's also the only way I seem to be able to keep in touch with people I care about.

It also makes it seemingly impossible to put myself in a situation to get close to jackasses that I tangentially meet at a party: perhaps what's written in their profile turns me off, perhaps it's because their status goes in my feed and I am able to keep up with them, so I have no need to try and find out more about the person, perhaps it's because they belong to a Facebook group called "Require Drug Tests For Welfare"...either way, bringing us close in this way is distancing.

So maybe it's worth not status-updating for a week, no @replying today...just sit down and think to yourself: who do I actually want to talk to?

Pick up a phone and find out something more about a person than can be summarized in a 140 character witticism. Pretend like you care about their stupid ugly baby, because you were once a stupid ugly baby and your parents had friends that pretended like they cared.

?

Have you ever wondered how many eggs you can feed a chicken before she realizes that she's eating her children? Are chickens capable of realizing such a thing? Do you find yourself spending a lot of time asking yourself questions instead of figuring out answers?

What is an answer? Given that there can be questions without answers, can there be answers without questions? Can you think of an answer without a question?

Have you ever given thought to the idea that life might be a bit easier if we just asked ourselves answers instead? Would life actually be easier or would it just be one long game of Jeopardy where all the categories are things like "14th Century Architects", "Obscure Molecules" or various other things you wished you knew about but go above your head?

Is an answer a solution to a question, or is it actually just another, potentially larger question? If I said, "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" would both possible answers be wrong? Would they both be right? In religion, are there answers that aren't subjective?

Do subjective answers require subjective questions, or is it possible to ask an objective question and receive a perfectly reasonable subjective answer? Do you believe in God?

If God exists, does he/she/it mind that we eat boiled chicken ovulations? If he/she/it came to our house for dinner, would he look at a chicken salad sandwich and cry for the grains that were slaughtered to make the bread? What if God came to your house and said "the only thing that exists in this room is the bread"? Given that God is obviously God and cannot be questioned, would he/she/it be right?

Can you think of the right question that has a wrong answer? When you asked yourself that, did you think "right" meant morally right? Did you think it meant "correct"?  Is there a difference? Does that difference matter in the grand scheme of things?

If I was to tell you that it takes 6 eggs for a chicken to realize that she's eating her children would I be wrong? If God told you, would you be wrong?