A Response to the "Ramble On" Reprisal
I'm resigned to ridicule, but realistically, this was a rigorous repertoire of rebellious rhetoric.
Upon reflection, I’m just in it for the revelry.
Upon reflection, I’m just in it for the revelry.
(And I mean nothing by it.)
1. What kind of recourse can a mortal have against their incompetent guardian angel? Can they file a lawsuit against a guardian if they mismanage their soul? For example—Isaiah, whose lips were seared by an angel that held a burning coal to his mouth. If that was angelic malpractice, and Isaiah has incurred unnecessary hardship and medical costs associated with the instance, could he get celestial compensation?
2. In ancient times, some believed that courage came from the gall—so if eating the heart doesn't work, eat the gall. If nothing else, it should be relatively easy to break down for digestion.
3. I heard that in the Middle Ages, virtues like loyalty and truthfulness were sacred pillars of one's personal reputation. Lying, or worse, accusing someone of deceit or betrayal, was among the gravest of insults that commonly had to be redressed through violence. It's amazing how low our modern standards for honesty and fidelity have become, to the point that they could be regarded as 'kinks'.
4. "What's in a number? That which we call 007, by any other number would be as clandestine."
5. "He who laughs first didn't get the joke."
6. "You wish."
7. Sometimes it works in your favor. If someone attributes greater meaning or significance to something you've written than you might have intended—do you take the win, or clarify your less impressive original intention?
8. Our noses go unseen in front of our faces all day long. It's nice to think that they should be delegated some elegant assignment like polishing pearls.
10. I want to like No Man's Sky, but I know deep down it's just Infinite Tedium.
11. Statistics, like tarot cards, should be carefully considered when presented but promptly forgotten afterward.
12. Does the bee even realize that it's capable of stinging before being threatened to the point of death?
13. At least with an infomercial, you have to purchase the product to use it. A mandatory opt-in is required. In the case of AI Overview, opinions are foisted upon you, unbidden.
14. Works every time.
15. Hello, moth who dive-bombed recklessly into my living room's 1,000-watt standing lamp when I was a child. Yes, the baking of your furry exoskeleton has a distinct odor unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Your erroneous instinct to use our lamp's overwhelming light as your navigation system, mistaking it for the full moon outside, has led you to kamikaze into the lamp's bowl, thus cooking yourself in your confusion. Who knew that your body would burst into such a delicate green flame as you melt onto the surface of the bulb? Even all these years later, I will never forget you, little moth—or the stifling smell of your burning wings, like dust, drifting up into the air in a thread of smoke, filling my senses like insect incense. "Insectense."
16. Eat hot grapes. Drink wine. Render your enemies into melted carcasses and earn eternal glory on the battlefield like some ill-begotten fusion of Dionysus and Ares into a single, plasma-wielding demigod. Just don't forget to laugh.
17. I've done this.
18. Toast: forever an afterthought (unless it's French).
19. Las Vegas is a perverse American attitudinal answer to Mecca. As an American, you are obliged to make at least one pilgrimage to Las Vegas as an adult and participate in the revelry. Its grotesqueries are the point.
20. Is the character of Hannibal Lecter just a heavy-handed allegory of the psychiatric field at large? I'm probably reaching.
21. "I would've written a shorter letter, but didn't have the time,"
22. Does anyone ever go to ol' Sweeny to get their tooth pulled? Or is it all barbery?
23. This has been litigated.
24. "Bite me."
25. The intensity of the sale is directly proportional to the desperation of the seller.
26. I've read Titus Andronicus. If one does fuck with the cook, a cautionary glance under the pie crust can spare you at least a modicum of horror and shame before certain death.
27. I can say it no more simply than that, left to their own devices, people can justify any atrocity. There has to be a common standard of what's considered socially acceptable, and those standards need to be enforced.
28. What do you think all the celebration is for? Dicks are reaching higher and higher into the sky than they ever have in all of history. That's also why the fireworks are becoming increasingly more elaborate. When dicks are this big, you've got to let people know about it.
29. Bedlam.
30. Innovation has to occur on the fringe of society. But that's why it remains on the fringe—the mainstream can't live in the requisite conditions of near-perpetual chaos that act as creativity's fertilizer.
31. He excels at that.
32.
33. This one I don't quite get. I don't know how avoidance can break a generational curse. In my experience, avoidance kicks the curse down the road to spring up again later, sometimes at a less convenient time. Confrontation, while unpleasant, is usually best practice.
34. Depending on how you hold it, the phone screen can occupy as large or as small of a place in your vision as you wish. In fact, as opposed to a theater where you're confined to a single seat, watching a movie on your phone can allow you to move anywhere in the theater you want.
35. -pain = -gain
36. What's the first dream you remember having?
37. Where does the time go?
38. I've now realized it's been approx. 17 years since I've seen Erin Brockovich.
39. Someone in marketing likes marmalade.
40. Frankly, I'm finding it kind of troubling that I'm unsure when the last time I enjoyed something for enjoyment's sake was. This is a blind spot.
41. Those who know do not talk.
42. Being the most valuable piece on the board, cloaked with tremendous power, the queen is not without vulnerabilities—ironically because of her value. As long as they're properly supported, even lowly pawns can threaten the mighty queen, despite all her influence, to the point of even forcing her into retreat. It's a bold sacrifice to trade a queen for a pawn, though it has been done to dramatic effect. And that's not to mention the reward a humble pawn receives for completing its mission to reach the back rank of the board, ascending beyond all possible promotions to become a queen, itself.
43. Serenity, well-timed and properly applied, can accomplish anything.
44. "You just need to pull up your big boy pants and take it."
45 & 46. Haven't seen it. I'm starting to think I'm in the minority on this one.
47. Some days.
48. "I just thought that was Willard Scott. I was confused."
49. I read all my texts in the voice of Fran Drescher, and that seems to keep everyone in my inbox on equal footing. I execute my own texts accordingly.
50. You keep forgetting. They'll keep reminding you.
51. In time, you won't even miss them, either.
52. This is shocking.
53. Fun character. Would be entertaining. But I suspect Edna Mode is too eccentric a character to work as the main protagonist.
54. In terms of supply and demand, inspiration has a built-in value that influence can't match. Simply by being so much more difficult to achieve, "inspiration" must be superior to "influence".
55. Yosemite, at night, in late winter. It's worth the cold.
56. The loudest person in the room with a Harvard business mentality spouting bullshit would never believe you.
57. George Lucas issued multiple declarations that he'd one day return to small, intimate, independent filmmaking again. I think it would be good for him to do something new and personal after departing Star Wars, but, alas. He must have ideas. I'd be curious to know what they are. I don't even care if it was 'good,' I just think it would be a great comeback story.
58. Symbiote.
59. It's good when it works out—but sometimes, people who are abused and escape an endless cycle of manipulation to at last earn their freedom, can crumble to pieces.
60. Render unto Caesar.
61. Lifehack unlocked.
62. This has some real haiku potential.
63. One way or the other, they learn how to "use their legs" by the third act. That's why they take such pains to show you that they don't know how to use 'em in the second act. Unless it's a tragedy. In which case, they lose their legs entirely in the final confrontation as a cautionary tale to the rest of us on how to use the legs you have.
64. Are we talking, "Scent of a Woman" Al Pacino, or "Dunkaccino" Al Pacino?
65. I agree, but I can't resist the cynical urge: This assumes our culture is willing to collectively acknowledge that one vocation is more valuable than another. Prioritizing forgiveness of loans to medical students would be an admission that some degrees are inherently more beneficial for society than the Ph.D. in pigeon grooming Carl Clankerton earned four years ago, through a tremendous outpouring of his blood, sweat and, yes, even tears. Pigeon groomers across the nation would be outraged by this priority alignment and, feeling that their industry is under attack, would co-opt the public's sympathy to serve their own interests, unionize, and invest in propaganda to fuel the next generation's interest in pigeon grooming. Besides, the cost of health care is one of this country's favorite divisive topics, and we shouldn't do anything that would threaten to take that off the table.
66. Do you bowl?
67. People usually employ a 'one step forward, two steps back' approach to self-improvement, I've found, and only after every possible alternative has been ruled out.
68. "But you're not a worker bee. You're a renegade killer bee. And no matter how much beer you drank or barbecue you ate or how fat your ass got, nothing in the world would ever change that." Bill, Kill Bill vol. 2
69. I remember struggling to fall asleep at night. Then I became an adult.
70. "The truth, as always, will be far stranger." —Arthur C. Clarke
71. Can we permanently alter human evolution to such a degree that each subsequent generation after us will be born with an innate and/or instinctive dependence on drugs? My apologies, I didn't intend to make the pharmaceutical lobbyists in the audience salivate, but, I'm sure there's a pill for that.
72. It has its place, but, like anything, can be misapplied.
73. Another one: "Make the same mistake twice," assumes three mistakes. First, you make the mistake. Then, you make the same mistake. Then, you make the same mistake a second time.
74. If the people who decide such things get their way, eventually our language can consist entirely of contranyms so that meaning and intention can be permanently obfuscated. My favorite is "sanction." "We have issued sanctions against the chickens, and have sanctioned the fox's use of their coop."
1. What kind of recourse can a mortal have against their incompetent guardian angel? Can they file a lawsuit against a guardian if they mismanage their soul? For example—Isaiah, whose lips were seared by an angel that held a burning coal to his mouth. If that was angelic malpractice, and Isaiah has incurred unnecessary hardship and medical costs associated with the instance, could he get celestial compensation?
2. In ancient times, some believed that courage came from the gall—so if eating the heart doesn't work, eat the gall. If nothing else, it should be relatively easy to break down for digestion.
3. I heard that in the Middle Ages, virtues like loyalty and truthfulness were sacred pillars of one's personal reputation. Lying, or worse, accusing someone of deceit or betrayal, was among the gravest of insults that commonly had to be redressed through violence. It's amazing how low our modern standards for honesty and fidelity have become, to the point that they could be regarded as 'kinks'.
4. "What's in a number? That which we call 007, by any other number would be as clandestine."
5. "He who laughs first didn't get the joke."
6. "You wish."
7. Sometimes it works in your favor. If someone attributes greater meaning or significance to something you've written than you might have intended—do you take the win, or clarify your less impressive original intention?
8. Our noses go unseen in front of our faces all day long. It's nice to think that they should be delegated some elegant assignment like polishing pearls.
10. I want to like No Man's Sky, but I know deep down it's just Infinite Tedium.
11. Statistics, like tarot cards, should be carefully considered when presented but promptly forgotten afterward.
12. Does the bee even realize that it's capable of stinging before being threatened to the point of death?
13. At least with an infomercial, you have to purchase the product to use it. A mandatory opt-in is required. In the case of AI Overview, opinions are foisted upon you, unbidden.
14. Works every time.
15. Hello, moth who dive-bombed recklessly into my living room's 1,000-watt standing lamp when I was a child. Yes, the baking of your furry exoskeleton has a distinct odor unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Your erroneous instinct to use our lamp's overwhelming light as your navigation system, mistaking it for the full moon outside, has led you to kamikaze into the lamp's bowl, thus cooking yourself in your confusion. Who knew that your body would burst into such a delicate green flame as you melt onto the surface of the bulb? Even all these years later, I will never forget you, little moth—or the stifling smell of your burning wings, like dust, drifting up into the air in a thread of smoke, filling my senses like insect incense. "Insectense."
16. Eat hot grapes. Drink wine. Render your enemies into melted carcasses and earn eternal glory on the battlefield like some ill-begotten fusion of Dionysus and Ares into a single, plasma-wielding demigod. Just don't forget to laugh.
17. I've done this.
18. Toast: forever an afterthought (unless it's French).
19. Las Vegas is a perverse American attitudinal answer to Mecca. As an American, you are obliged to make at least one pilgrimage to Las Vegas as an adult and participate in the revelry. Its grotesqueries are the point.
20. Is the character of Hannibal Lecter just a heavy-handed allegory of the psychiatric field at large? I'm probably reaching.
21. "I would've written a shorter letter, but didn't have the time,"
22. Does anyone ever go to ol' Sweeny to get their tooth pulled? Or is it all barbery?
23. This has been litigated.
24. "Bite me."
25. The intensity of the sale is directly proportional to the desperation of the seller.
26. I've read Titus Andronicus. If one does fuck with the cook, a cautionary glance under the pie crust can spare you at least a modicum of horror and shame before certain death.
27. I can say it no more simply than that, left to their own devices, people can justify any atrocity. There has to be a common standard of what's considered socially acceptable, and those standards need to be enforced.
28. What do you think all the celebration is for? Dicks are reaching higher and higher into the sky than they ever have in all of history. That's also why the fireworks are becoming increasingly more elaborate. When dicks are this big, you've got to let people know about it.
29. Bedlam.
30. Innovation has to occur on the fringe of society. But that's why it remains on the fringe—the mainstream can't live in the requisite conditions of near-perpetual chaos that act as creativity's fertilizer.
31. He excels at that.
32.
33. This one I don't quite get. I don't know how avoidance can break a generational curse. In my experience, avoidance kicks the curse down the road to spring up again later, sometimes at a less convenient time. Confrontation, while unpleasant, is usually best practice.
34. Depending on how you hold it, the phone screen can occupy as large or as small of a place in your vision as you wish. In fact, as opposed to a theater where you're confined to a single seat, watching a movie on your phone can allow you to move anywhere in the theater you want.
35. -pain = -gain
36. What's the first dream you remember having?
37. Where does the time go?
38. I've now realized it's been approx. 17 years since I've seen Erin Brockovich.
39. Someone in marketing likes marmalade.
40. Frankly, I'm finding it kind of troubling that I'm unsure when the last time I enjoyed something for enjoyment's sake was. This is a blind spot.
41. Those who know do not talk.
42. Being the most valuable piece on the board, cloaked with tremendous power, the queen is not without vulnerabilities—ironically because of her value. As long as they're properly supported, even lowly pawns can threaten the mighty queen, despite all her influence, to the point of even forcing her into retreat. It's a bold sacrifice to trade a queen for a pawn, though it has been done to dramatic effect. And that's not to mention the reward a humble pawn receives for completing its mission to reach the back rank of the board, ascending beyond all possible promotions to become a queen, itself.
43. Serenity, well-timed and properly applied, can accomplish anything.
44. "You just need to pull up your big boy pants and take it."
45 & 46. Haven't seen it. I'm starting to think I'm in the minority on this one.
47. Some days.
48. "I just thought that was Willard Scott. I was confused."
49. I read all my texts in the voice of Fran Drescher, and that seems to keep everyone in my inbox on equal footing. I execute my own texts accordingly.
50. You keep forgetting. They'll keep reminding you.
51. In time, you won't even miss them, either.
52. This is shocking.
53. Fun character. Would be entertaining. But I suspect Edna Mode is too eccentric a character to work as the main protagonist.
54. In terms of supply and demand, inspiration has a built-in value that influence can't match. Simply by being so much more difficult to achieve, "inspiration" must be superior to "influence".
55. Yosemite, at night, in late winter. It's worth the cold.
56. The loudest person in the room with a Harvard business mentality spouting bullshit would never believe you.
57. George Lucas issued multiple declarations that he'd one day return to small, intimate, independent filmmaking again. I think it would be good for him to do something new and personal after departing Star Wars, but, alas. He must have ideas. I'd be curious to know what they are. I don't even care if it was 'good,' I just think it would be a great comeback story.
58. Symbiote.
59. It's good when it works out—but sometimes, people who are abused and escape an endless cycle of manipulation to at last earn their freedom, can crumble to pieces.
60. Render unto Caesar.
61. Lifehack unlocked.
62. This has some real haiku potential.
63. One way or the other, they learn how to "use their legs" by the third act. That's why they take such pains to show you that they don't know how to use 'em in the second act. Unless it's a tragedy. In which case, they lose their legs entirely in the final confrontation as a cautionary tale to the rest of us on how to use the legs you have.
64. Are we talking, "Scent of a Woman" Al Pacino, or "Dunkaccino" Al Pacino?
65. I agree, but I can't resist the cynical urge: This assumes our culture is willing to collectively acknowledge that one vocation is more valuable than another. Prioritizing forgiveness of loans to medical students would be an admission that some degrees are inherently more beneficial for society than the Ph.D. in pigeon grooming Carl Clankerton earned four years ago, through a tremendous outpouring of his blood, sweat and, yes, even tears. Pigeon groomers across the nation would be outraged by this priority alignment and, feeling that their industry is under attack, would co-opt the public's sympathy to serve their own interests, unionize, and invest in propaganda to fuel the next generation's interest in pigeon grooming. Besides, the cost of health care is one of this country's favorite divisive topics, and we shouldn't do anything that would threaten to take that off the table.
66. Do you bowl?
67. People usually employ a 'one step forward, two steps back' approach to self-improvement, I've found, and only after every possible alternative has been ruled out.
68. "But you're not a worker bee. You're a renegade killer bee. And no matter how much beer you drank or barbecue you ate or how fat your ass got, nothing in the world would ever change that." Bill, Kill Bill vol. 2
69. I remember struggling to fall asleep at night. Then I became an adult.
70. "The truth, as always, will be far stranger." —Arthur C. Clarke
71. Can we permanently alter human evolution to such a degree that each subsequent generation after us will be born with an innate and/or instinctive dependence on drugs? My apologies, I didn't intend to make the pharmaceutical lobbyists in the audience salivate, but, I'm sure there's a pill for that.
72. It has its place, but, like anything, can be misapplied.
73. Another one: "Make the same mistake twice," assumes three mistakes. First, you make the mistake. Then, you make the same mistake. Then, you make the same mistake a second time.
74. If the people who decide such things get their way, eventually our language can consist entirely of contranyms so that meaning and intention can be permanently obfuscated. My favorite is "sanction." "We have issued sanctions against the chickens, and have sanctioned the fox's use of their coop."
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