Modern Heroism / What We Know

Chuck Yeager. There’s a hero for you. The man worked his tail off to become the maestro of all sorts of whiz-bang flying experiments. But in the end, he became a demigod simply for his near-suicidal willingness to strap into a machine that crossed the sky with a distant concussion.

When Yeager returned heroic, what battle had he won? What boon did he bring to the people? The knowledge that the sound barrier could be broken?

It was enough for them – a nation of onlookers who revered any man who could survive when he trespassed the boundaries of their knowledge.

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Fresh Sardines

“Are they fresh? Were they caught today?”

“He said they were fresh.”

“Hm.”

“I think they’re fresh.”

“Well did you look at the eye?”

“The eye?”

“If they’re fresh the eye will be clear, but if they’re thawed out it’s kind of… And if the flesh feels firm, then it’s fresh.”

I couldn’t remember what the eyes looked like, so I led him to the fridge and took out the sardines. The eyes looked clear to me.

He felt them and looked through the plastic.

I began to think I’d made a mistake.

“Wish I’d’ve gotten some,” he finally said.

Impending

I can feel the storms pressing on my back as I pedal down the road.  Even the asphalt perspires water from its daily absorbance.

The sky turns dark but before it turns black there’s a moment of deep blue…the deep blue that only exists in the depths of oceans before fish need lights.  It’s not even blueberry colored – before the berries are washed and lose their filmy jackets.  Or blue jean blue – a thousand pigments couldn’t create this resounding blue, this kind of blue that’s draining the last light from the sky while still glowing back at me.

Reductionist and Emergent Narratives

There seem to be two types of narrative when stories are told of the human condition.

First, reductionist narratives oversimplify humans into formulas that, though they may be variable, move a sequence of events through a logical and inevitable progression towards an end.

Second, emergent narratives rise untraceably out of seemingly over-complex ecosystems of individuals and events. Direct cause and effect are denied their traditional role as the underpinnings of narrative. Instead, the narrative floats just beyond the conscious of those who hear it, a poem-like prism as useful and inscrutable as the grains of sand in a glass shard.

The Next Big Thing

Okay so you know how Netflix asks you what kinds of movies you like, and they keep track of what you’ve watched, and then based on that it provides recommendations for the next movie you should see?

The problem with that is that they are limited by having to give you a movie that actually exists.

That’s where we come in. We look at the same info as Netflix, what you like and what you’ve seen, and we actually go out and produce a video that perfectly matches your tastes, and then we mail it to you within a week.

Chameleons

Sarah stood leaned up against the railing of her middle school’s library and stared into nothing like a sloth who has to pee but is too tired to climb down out of its tree and thus tries to distract itself by thinking of absolutely nothing; which, even though thinking of nothing is easier for a sloth than it is for a human, is still a difficult task, especially when there are chameleons in the trees or hot vulgar boys skulking past with smirks on their pimpled faces like they know all about what you did with Shawn two nights ago.