Experiances & STD Phone Call

Gaining experience is a strange thing, not enough and you're scared, too much and you become world weary. It is strangely exactly like a role playing game: Once you've leveled out, what's left to do? And was those last 10 levels you blazed through any fun? From this I think we can conclude the idea of being cool: Sticking around just long enough to enjoy it and leaving before it gets boring. You show up late and leave early, just like the Fonz.

If the Fonz is the gold standard for this achievement then the two extremes is The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and the hooker (sticking with the accidental 70's theme). The Boy in the Plastic Bubble screams when he's ejected from his polymer prison. Why? Because like the caveman throwing spears at a helicopter he doesn't understand. One should also be careful not to fall into the hooker's role: starting out doing it for fun or money and then eventually doing because that's all you know to do. Nothing's sadder than a hooker with no other skills.

"I need to do my laundry.... maybe I suck that guy off at the laundry mat..."

Getting whiter whites shouldn't involve swallowing.

Experiences are also another one of those things that make us human. A deer, walking by the road. Sees his friend blown to bits by a passing coal truck simply relates to story to others, "Did you see what happened to Frank?! He was eaten by that big metal worm with stars on it!" Humans, with the ability to dream (I told you it would come back) have an experience, say a bear eats grandma. A human then thinks, "If a bear ate grandma, can a bear eat me?" Then man is scared shitless because of an existential nightmare. Humans, what fatalistic creatures. However, to keep this from happening to him he keeps a stick nearby, he builds fires at the front of the cave and sleeps in the back, with grandpa in front of him. Even the cavemen knew he just had to outrun the other food.

Lastly, at the very core of art is the experience. I saw a portrait Van Gogh painted once. It was just some dude. I almost cried. Now you'd like to experiance that right? People come walking out of a theater:

"Hey pal, that movie any good?"
"While this chick is blowing a wolverine a guy feeds it a grenade!"

That's the kinda movie you wanna see. That's an experience you want to have. It's the artist's job not only to express something, but to give the experience of that expression. That's where the ring of truth comes from and that's what makes it powerful.

Experiences help us plan for the future and they let us know we're alive now. They're the stories we tell each other and they're the glue of relationships. Experiences are the spice of life, so go out and have one! Tell me what happens!

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Because it became a pain to tag two posts, I'll be making single posts with both the essay and the art for the rest of the week.

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One of my favorite experiences is making prank phone calls in my dorm. Below is a video with some terrible animation of one such phone call. I also think I heard this guy on the radio recently. This phone call was made to the CDC STD 24 hour hotline and I didn't hear the whole radio story, but a guy sounding much like this guy was talking on behalf of the CDC. Whoops.



(if it doesn't show up go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8TuCV2O4bs )