"And so eventually it wound up all of the people playing croquet had no idea what the rules were!"
Both men bursted out laughing.
"You should have seen them, going every which way—not a clue!"
"A wonderful story, thank you for that," the larger man said, still chuckling.
"Yeah," the smaller man said, looking around at the other people at the party.  "So what about basketball?"
"What about basketball?" the larger man replied, frowning.
"I asked you first," the smaller man said, a wide grin across his face.
The larger man snapped into action, shoving the smaller man against the wall, looking around to make sure no one was looking.
"YOU LISTEN TO ME," he said intensely, his face very close to the smaller man, "I will not have this witless small talk be a part of my life, you hear me?"
"Uh . . ." the smaller man said, his eyes wide and glancing around.
"I said you hear me??"
"I'm sorry?"
"YOU'D BETTER BE!" the larger man snarled, spit flying out of his mouth, "I have plans, you know!  Plans to live an amazing life, one filled with incredible people, people who seem too incredible to even exist.  My life is going to be one of the most thrilling lives ever, one filled with stories other people could only dream of happening!  You got that??"
The larger man's eyes glowed with a rageful intensity. 
"I SAID YOU GOT THAT??"
"Ye-ye, uh, yeah . . . w-why exactly?"
"Because, you fool," the larger man began slowly, "how ELSE will I make it into history?!? How ESLE will people remember me?!"
"Umm . . . there is no other way?" the smaller man guessed.
"Assassinate someone, that's how," the larger man responded condescendingly, "But guess what?  I don't have the hand-eye coordination for that!"
"Oh," the smaller man said stupidly.
"Yeah, Oh!" mocked the larger man, "So now we're going to return to our conversation, and you had better have something more intelligent and memorable to say than some vague, open-ended comment about basketball . . . okay?"
"Ye-yeah," the smaller man stuttered, sliding down back onto the floor.   
"So then," the larger man began, brushing himself off, "where were we?"
The smaller man then gulped noticeably, hoping his brain would take this as a signal to think of something good. 

There is only one person who knows what it is like to have wound up being you in the story of the universe. 

It is possible for a thought to be a recurring motif in a person's life for many many years, and then one day they write one sentence about it in a journal, and that is all anyone would ever know of it.

We must strive at all costs to make sure that the titles of our biographies do not read: "A Life Somewhat Lived."

Say strange things to see how people would react if that thing were said by you in that moment.  For if you always say things much in line with how things normally go, you will never experience the thrill of an improbable conversation.

Understanding is what happens when you answer a question through a combination of experiences.  The problem is that we often want direct answers to our questions, because we are impatient.

The most devastating comment that can be made about a view—even if it is the correct one—is that people 'don't take it seriously.'

I am having trouble sleeping, friends.  My body feels about ready to go on an African safarii.  *sigh*  Perhaps I'll go look for something boring to read . . .

It is a good thing we have eyebrows, or else it would be very hard to tell when someone was confused.  And that would probably lead to a lot of confusion . . . but no one would know about it. . .

I recently started wondering why humans wear clothes but animals do not.  Then I found out that it is against the law for humans to not wear clothes, and now it makes it all makes sense.

And given the wonderful pants I'm wearing right now, and for all the time I spend in public, I must say those laws make things quite a bit more comfortable.

If people who live in Hawaii do any traveling it is not a vacation, it is a not-vacation.  Then they go home and it is a vacation again.

Breakfast is by far the best part of the day, which is why cereal killers are such a menace to society.

One time I picked up the signal of an alien who was flying around the solar system in his spacecraft looking for the sun.  So I guided him saying, "Nope, colder, colder . . . yep there ya go, warmer, getting warmer . . . colder again . . . warmer again . . . REALLY WARM . . ." 

I would probably respond very casually if an animal started talking to me. I'm ready for it because I've seen it in the movies where it happens. Rule #2341 about life: never be the person that wasn't ready for the talking animal.

Hope you guys all have a swell day. 

Perhaps the most disturbing trend currently in America is the widespread disagreement over the rules of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

This is actually the most important affair currently unfolding in the U.S.—which is why you see so little news about it.  The biggest stories, such as the newest intelligence findings of the CIA and the specific details for our military's strategy in Afghanistan, don't make headlines.  And you don't see anything on the Rock-Paper-Scissors controversy either.  That's how big this is.

The rule with which this terrible disagreement is concerned is, of course, the rule of count.  What should the count be when playing rock-paper-scissors?  You will probably be surprised to know that the opinions actually range from as low as two to as high as seven.

And why is this so important?  Why, because RPS is the de facto decision making tool which has underlied the entire history of Western civilization except before the middle ages.  From the last PopTart to who gets to hold the remote, from whose last name to use in marriage to whether or not to adopt, from whose face gets to go on what currency to who got to step on the moon first—RPS is the essential means of dispute-resolution for humans. 

However, I must add, by far the single most important thing Rock-Paper-Scissors decides is who is best at Rock-Paper-Scissors.

As a recent example, the reason it took U.S. snipers so long to target the pirates holding the U.S. captain hostage last month is because the advisor in the Defense Department who represented that viewpoint had a rather predictable penchant for paper.  He eventually learned to vary his throws enough that he won a best-of-seven and the snipers were given the go-ahead.

And clearly this problem needs to be cleared up before any other problems we face.  For this is the only dilemma which cannot be solved with a round of RPS, since that would be like voting on whether or not to have a democracy.  We need to know the rules first. 

Thus, let us take a look at the options.

The Seven-Count

What of the seven-count?  For those who don't know, this count goes Rock-Paper-Scissors-1-2-3-shoot.

When confronted with such a count, one wonders why the participating players would not also spin around three times, do the chicken dance, macarena, and the YMCA, and then throw their play.  Why so many steps?  The person who invented this count could surely make an afternoon of preparing a simple packet of ramen noodle soup.  Like a sword collecter forced to slowly examine a sword starting at the hilt, I would feel while playing this count that we really ought to just get to the point.

The same reasoning can be applied to both the six and five-count.  But what of the four-count?  The four-count is certainly in vogue in our day and age—but is it the one we should prefer?  I think not, for several reasons.

The Hollywood Count

The four-count, also known as the "Hollywood count," goes Rock-Paper-Scissors-shoot.  But whence comes the 'shoot'?  The name and essence of the game is Rock-Paper-Scissors, so any additional steps require additional justification.  For if we add one new specimen to the game, who knows what people will begin dreaming up next: bear claws, pitchforks, or maybe even bunny rabits, like people do for shadows.  The point here is simply that this fourth step is a deviation from the base of RPS; thus, we need to know what this foreign creature is doing as an added step in our game.

But what reason can be given for adding the 'shoot'?  Certainly to all first impressions, all the word signifies is a pre-emptive displeasure with one's choice of throw.   So is there a hidden purpose to this enigmatic caboose? 

Perhaps people think of it like a launch pad for their throws.  They are shooting their throws into the field of battle.  However, this doesn't make any sense.  For the concept of RPS is not of people loading concealed bazookas with their object of choice until finally shooting it at their opponent.  Shooting has nothing to do with it.  Rather when someone throws paper, a person who throws scissors can cut the person's hand to indicate the victory. 

If, on the other hand, the scissors had to cut the paper while flying through the air, barely anyone would ever win a game of RPS.  How likely is it for a pair of scissors to cut a piece of paper in half while flying through the air?  And furthermore, since there's no shooting actually involved in playing the game, we'd never know if the scissors actually succeeded in cutting the paper while flying through the air, and thus we'd never know who won, thus defeating the entire point.  And if people then went and actually got the paper and scissors to try . . . well I think you can see the problem with that.

Other than that, does the 'shoot' really do anything?  It appears not.  I'm reminded of Paolo in The Princess Diaries pithily remarking during the princess's facial about the concept of the cucumbers on her eyes, "Want to know a big secret? The cucumbers do nothing." 

Thus, the Hollywood count seems to fall prey to the same problem of superfluity all the higher counts encountered.  Just like the thirteen original Colonies began to realize about the rule of England in the 1770s, players who give it any thought will realize that the 'shoot' is completely unneeded. 

The Triple Count

Thus we come to the three-count, i.e. the Triple count.  The Triple count is simply rock-paper-scissors, in which each person throws their play on the scissors. The Triple count not only suffers from no arguments against it, but it has many positive reasons to support it. 

To start, it is the most epic; you can throw on Queen's 'We Will Rock You' and do the count according to the legendary three-count beat.  We could argue the Triple count is the most poetic for having the same amount of syllables as the first line of a haiku or as half a line of iambic pentameter.  The Triple count also represents the triangle, the strongest of all shapes.  And it parallels many other three-step processes in our culture: "On your mark, get set, go!"  "Ready, aim, fire!"  "One more song!"  etc.

The heart of reality is a Trinity, in fact.  (Though one should not think of the Incarnation as the 'shoot.'  That Incarnation is the second nature of the second person of the Trinity, and is thus still intrinsic to the Trinity.  Thus, the four-count fails on theological grounds as well.) 

The Two-Count

In dispatching with the two-count, we need only summon the quote, 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.'  While this count is to be commended for its revolt against the higher counts, it goes too far.  Our guiding quote could be ammended to read, 'Birds should fly south for the winter, but no more south.'  In the case of the two-count, our birds seem to have wound up somewhere in Antarctica, thus completely defeating the point of their journey.

Conclusion

In conclusion we see that the Triple count is efficient, simple, elegant, and traditional, while it cuts out all the unecessary baggage associated with the other counts, but doesn't leave us standing nearly naked in the cold as does the two-count.  Certainly in the three-count Goldilocks has found the count which is just right. 

Whatever the outcome of this tumultuous conflict, the result is sure to rock our world.  Or, perhaps I should say, as the the third rock from the sun, will paper our world . . .

It seems as though we live in a different world than people did in the ancient past.  We have cities with huge skyscrapers, cars on paved roads, and the internet.  But really it is the same world.  And it is still the case that it is full of unreasonable people who are not very bright, are cranky and ungenerous, and it is still the case that we are those people.

Why do humans need clues?  We need clues because we can only be in one place at a time.  Thus, we might not have been there when someone spilled the orange juice, or the dinosaurs went extinct, or someone created the universe.  That is why we need clues.

The world is a grand setting of comedic situations waiting to happen.  The characters are in motion, each with different desires, goals, opinions, and personalities.  Then they collide, and the situations happen; be ready to play your part.

Every person has a certain mind which includes the specific content of their life and what they feel.  Perhaps a person could be imagined to be suddenly given the ability of good writing, and would then be able to write at length everything they thought about life so that when other people read it, they would then understand that person entirely.  But we are not good writers, and so our lives remain mostly unknown to others.

A pessimist is a person who is convinced they will die one second before thinking of the perfect epitaph.

That's all for now—the night approaches as does the need for a good novel.  Farewell to you, friend.

A million things dance before our faces, distracting us from the ultimate.  Could it be that they all are empty?  Yes, it could be, until we face the ultimate and find what each thing is here for.

I want to live in a place where you can see the stars.  We tell ourselves our hearts will remember, but it is easier than we think to drown out the voice of truth.  Clear sight of the goal is always helpful.

The truth takes precedence over everything.  What else could you want?

People don't look for truth because they don't think you can get it.  But the question is not what we can get, it's what we should strive for while on earth.  And after striving for it, you have to end up someplace.  And if you strive for the truth, you will like the place where you end up better than the place you would have ended up otherwise.

But if we strive for mere pleasure and masked society, we shall be disgusted with ourselves.  Really so worth it?

And what is the truth anyway?  Philosophers think it is statements which properly describe reality.  That is, if the statement is how we would describe reality if we could see behind it, then it is true.  But is that truth?  Is that what humans are meant for?  Is that the relation humans must bear to reality—just true beliefs about the facts?

The man who thinks such shouldn't be able to think, for his heart is dead.

The truth is built in the human heart, in a quiet place where only the individual can see.  Reality goes deep, though humans don't have to see anything they don't want to.  We can build dams in our thoughts that no pleading, sermon, or argument can remove.

I often grow scared of all the reality I don't know, the stories of others' lives I haven't seen, what has happened while I haven't been there.  What have I missed?  Was it important?

But as I gaze at the stars alone on the mountain top, I realize that I am in a place and time in reality that no one else is.  They all miss my story too.  I am one part of reality they haven't mapped.

We often miss the flux of the story, the events which happen as moments continue, by staring at frozen thoughts of the world.  It is as though it were a picture in our minds.  But in fact on, on, on it goes, the plot always rushing onward without the paused thinkers.

Thus we see this tension—we must go after the truth in our lives as well as our minds.  It is the whole human who looks for the truth.  Those who limit in the search for truth do so to keep out the part of reality that would be let in if they admitted that other parts of the human condition could show the way. 

Intentionally narrow down the sources of truth to just reason and all other ways will seem inferior.  But if this is known through reason, one hasn't really gotten us anywhere.

If you want to do something in particular in life, you might not achieve it, and thus will be unhappy.  But in that case, why not fashion ourselves so that we want to do anything and everything?  That way no matter how life turns out, we will be happy. 

But we like when what we want falls within a narrow range of possibilities, and then it happens.  Human enjoy the improbable.

(But if that's the case, we should just be happy we got to be alive at all—for who expected that to happen? ) 

And that's what makes us like stories, lovers, adventures, climbing mountains, surprise parties, and so much else.  Thus, it is good to have friends who are always up for a round of the improbable. 

We often don't remember where our thoughts occurred—but we are thinking them all the time.  Thoughts come to us subconsciously throughout the day which we might report to others later, without a clue as to where they came from. We plan our futures walking by McDonald's, consider our worldviews while stopped at a red light, break up with our girlfriends while we're in church. 

And there is always some first cause which leads us to a thought which leads to the conclusion.   And to just think: if we hadn't run into that cause, we wouldn't have come to that conclusion.  Seeing a mailman scurry by with a panicked look on his face could end in the decision to become a vegetarian.  But otherwise, who knows, maybe the idea would have never struck us just right.

The first domino of a million thought patterns exist all around us throughout the day—I wonder what conclusions we will come to.

And all this I thought in logic class because I was watching the lecture, but really in my head I was planning out what I was going to do all week.  Then I imagined telling someone later my plans for the week—but realized I normally wouldn't remember when I had made such plans.  But here I was, mapping it all out in class.  But most of the time we don't remember in which context and for what reason our thoughts came to us. 

If you are barefoot then you have taken your shoes off the exact amount of times that you have put them on.  I like that because I like even numbers.  But I don't like that because I don't like being barefoot.  This means I can never tell whether or not I am happy based solely on the condition of my feet.  No matter what, further investigation is required. 

The statement 'There is someone out there for you' is false for someone out there everytime the population of the world is an odd number. 

For guys, a t-shirt is just a big napkin you can wear.

Going to the bathroom costs money in Africa, so I think it would be better to just go back to wearing diapers instead.  And then you would have a really good pickup line around a group of girls since you could slyly ask, "So . . . who wants to change me?"  It would probably work really well because girls are always saying, "I can change him!" 

I wonder if polygamists believe in love at first sight.  "I saw them, and instantly I knew they were the five women I was going to spend the rest of my life with."

My friend was reading a book and said, "I wonder if the main character is going to die."  But that's a very silly thing to wonder about because everyone dies; the only question is whether they'll die before the book is over.  But if they don't, that just means the author got tired of writing. 

If you die in real life, do you die in your dreams?

Everytime a firetruck goes by with its sirens blaring and the horn being blasted as loudly and frequently as possible, it occurs to me that obnoxious people should grow up to be firetruck drivers.

If Jesus would have come in the present day maybe one of Satan's temptations would have been for Jesus to go on Jeopardy and get everything right. 

Grammar was invented to give people who like to be right one more thing to always be angry about.

What do you guys think?  Playing Settlers of Catan is basically the same thing as studying economics, right?

Everyone have a geat weekend!

Last night I dreamt I smoked drugs and shot a man without caring about it.  But then the police were walking up to the building—I panicked.  I knew I'd be caught.  I gave my friend my backpack which had four handguns in it and told him to keep it.  Then I turned myself in.

The rest of the dream was just miserable.  I knew that from this one act, which I did carelessly, I would now be punished for the rest of my life; I had effectively trapped myself in a universe where I had a killed a person.  There was no way out.  I felt so helpless and alone.

The other day I was washing my hands in the bathroom, but there was no towel in the bathroom, so I went into the kitchen and used the one on the counter.  While I was drying my hands I thought to myself, 'I'm pretty hungry, I think I'll get something to eat.'  But I always wash my hands before I eat, so I went to the bathroom and started washing my hands.  Then I thought, 'Wait, wasn't I just doing this?'  It then occurred to me just how forgetful I am. 

I was in the car of a person with a handicapped parking pass the other day—what an experience.  On a campus cramped for good parking, it was amazing being able to park in the most convenient places.  I think 'The last shall be first' was a prediction about handicapped parking spaces.

Finals are coming up—must sleep, then study.  Goodnight to all.