Highlights from @300words
I recently joined http://300words.posterous.com/# All contributors to the blog are required to submit 300 words everyday. Fun! I’d like to add a daily sketch to that as well; we’ll see though, because my scanner is still broken. For #MIM Mimetic Monday today I’m posting a highlight from last week: “Impressive”
I just ate a five egg omlet in five minutes. No, that’s not supposed to impress you. I once read an college-application essay in which the author claimed that his greatest talent was that he could cook a “minute” omlet in thirty-seconds. That is impressive—and he was accepted into the university to which he was applying—at least, I think it’s impresive.
big. huge. freaking huge. Muscles. Yes, that’s the goal here. That IS what is supposed to impress you. NO, I don’t have them yet. In fact, I’ve been lifting weights for two years and I STILL don’t have them, but that’s not the issue at hand. HUGE muscles. Impress. Yes. That is the goal.
Ok, I lied, it’s not really the goal. I mean, yes, it is, but come on, doesn’t that just result in fancy looking meat hanging off our bones? Aren’t we all going to just die anyway, and so what’s the point of getting big muscles if all that time we spend perfecting our body just ends up as dirt six feet under? I don’t think it’s impressive. Yes, I do want them anyway, but in fact, I don’t think it’s worth the time at all.
War and Peace. I read it. Front to back. Impress you yet? It should. Seriously, I read the whole thing; it took me several days, but BOY OH BOY wasn’t it intellectually uplifting? The symbolism, the quotable lines like… uhmmm, and the vernacular. It was scintillating.
Ok, so the main idea of War and Peace was not intellectualism. In fact, it was abandoning all notions of glory in self and cleaving to truth and virtue. Does the fact that I understood THAT out of War and Peace impress you? Please?
And I need another ten words so I’m writing this—
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