April 21, 2004

Visions of Life

By far, one of my favorite expressions in the English language is shit hitting the fan. It is just so descriptive. I believe in this expression so much, in fact, that I would go as far as to say that it can describe Life as a whole. (Who really needs philosophers when you have idiots like me making all these preposterous claims?) First, let me warn you: if you take offense to the word shit, you are not going to like the rest of my post. Second, if you are grossed out by shit, you probably will not like the rest of my post either. Having dispensed with the disclaimers, ready, set, let's go!

Welcome to my vision of life. This vision is composed of primarily three parts. First of all, the individual. Imagine yourself in a cubic glass box in a perfectly white room; it is fairly large so you don't feel claustrophobic, but at the same time, it definitely has a limited volume. I know what you're thinking: lame commercial for some high tech product, right? Well, enter component two: all the goals, tasks, and commitments in your life. This can range from menial tasks such as doing a problem set, to major commitments such as a friendship or a romantic entanglement. And now here's the core part of my vision: all these commitments are sitting on top of your box, metaphorically shitting into it! And there you are, in your cubic glass box against a perfectly white background, with a shovel trying to clear out the shit from your box before the smell overpowers you and you die.

Of course, different commitments require different amounts of effort on your part in real life, and so it is in my vision of life. So you have easily-shoveled shit-balls for stuff like problem sets and papers, dog shit for stuff like status reports for work, and of course, bullshit for stuff like relationships. If there is an especially large problem, you might even get a diarrhea situation, which a shovel doesn't work too well on (not that I know or anything). And that's all you do, from the day you're born till the day you die—shovel shit, trying desperately to keep some breathing room in your box. Well, that's not exactly correct. When you're young, your parents do the shoveling for you, until they deem your ready to deal with your own shit (ha!). So there's more justification for the awful truth that kids just suck. They make you shovel more shit!

Now, here's the best part. So suppose you're shoveling along, living your life or whatever, and suddenly you become over committed. The shit is just coming in faster than you can shovel it out. Well, what I neglected to mention earlier, was that there's also a fan in your box (probably mounted on the roof, but the details are unclear). This is a good thing—when the shit starts piling up, the smell might become overwhelming. The fan automatically detects a rise in level of shit and turns on. But wait! Here comes the third part of my vision: the Supreme Being element. You can view this as God, the devil, a deity, or if you don't believe in any of that stuff, well...just some omnipotent force that's cooler than you. In any case, whenever this omnipotent force notices that your fan turns on to clear out the smell, it figures it needs to teach you a lesson for over committing yourself. To instruct you, it sends out a primate (chimpanzee, or some other feces-throwing species), which jumps into your box and immediately begins to wreak havoc. Pretty soon, you've got shit hitting the fan, spraying all over the place, and one hell of a disgusting mess.

And so there you have it: your life, and most definitely mine, in a nutshell. Don't believe me? Don't agree? Think there's more to life than shoveling shit in a glass box and worrying about monkeys running around throwing feces at fans? Well, there's not. Believe me. I know. My box isn't clear. It's brown.