Warlach’s World

It is indeed a mad world. Today, in a tribute to Ira Glass and the amazing brilliant This American Life podcast, I present three acts on the theme of madness:

Act 1 – Known Unknown

Since long before The Matrix I have questioned the reality that we see presented to us every day. While I accept the cooler, science fiction possibilities – that we are merely programs in a simulation or that, taking into account neoteny, that death is merely our next step as part of evolution – I find it more interesting that I am not of sound mind.

The other day a friend laughed at a particularly bad joke, showing a meek, small smile, and immediately I thought that perhaps weeks (months?) earlier I had been in a horrible accident, left childlike and brain damaged to the world around me, while reality, as I see it, is my brain trying to compensate and make sense of broken stimuli. Has my girlfriend, sitting opposite in the restaurant at the time, become my carer? Instead of a bad joke had I merely mumbled “cheese!” and drooled on myself?

Perhaps this blog is me writing in faeces on the carpet, who can know, although I find it hard to believe I’d imagine myself using a Dell. Does everyone who is nice to, or talks to, me merely pity the shell of who I was?

This is what keeps me up at night.

 

Act 2 – Unknown Known

My second thought is of a less life altering nature.

Being a man I am compelled, if not required, to use urinals in order to relieve understandable body functions. However, it is towards the end of the process that I find myself in a bind.

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer realises he doesn’t know how to shower quickly and eventually goes to a public shower to get hints? This is along the same lines.

At what point do you get taught how to ’shake the snake’? Toilet training was decades ago and while I’m sure some basics may have been imparted, just like with driving, bad habits are bound to creep in. It’s an act men do every day without any guidance: there is no way for men to discuss and improve the technique, no ability, for example, to say that using the ol’ Konami code has been helpful:

 

 

Don’t ask about the B and A buttons…

Just to be clear, I have no problems in this area, I don’t think I’m lacking, just that it bothers me that I could, perhaps, be better at something I do so often. What do other men know that I don’t?

This is what occupies my mind while I try to work.

 

Act 3 – Beyond Knowing

The final act today concerns issues beyond my own private psyche: have you head about the Moose toys, called Bindeez, that contain Fantasy (GHB)?

In an age where the world is up in arms over lead paint in Mattel’s toys, this seems like an ever so slightly larger oversight, especially now that it’s put children in hospital.

Either this was an oversight, in which case it’s gross negligence, or it was, as some are reporting is a possibility, a deliberate act, in which case it’s horrific.

Something that Keith from Keith and the Girl is often heard to say is that people – doctors, lawyers, toy makers, whoever – are just people. Every profession or group will contain the inherent quota of incompetence and bad people. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see which type of person caused this.

I still don’t know what to think of this last piece, so, when talking about recalled toys, I leave you with this: