yesterday i went to watch science comedian Brian Malow perform his stint “Rational Comedy For an Irrational Planet” at the Varsity. other than being pleasantly surprised at how many of his a-neutrino-walked-into-a-bar jokes i understood thanks to the astronomy class i took in winter, i liked it for the surprising wisdom it contained for a cleverly disguised stand-up comedy show. Did you know that humans are (pretty much) the only animals that know the inevitability of death? contestable, i guess (girl in the audience raised the example of elephants and bones and things but anyhow). He made a point about how that’s why we make jokes and things, things meaning drink and do drugs and stuff, stuff meaning weed. i think? well this is america. anyway, so yeah we do all these things to suppress the constant thought of impending death. i mean, if we were to constantly have the thought of death at the back of our heads how depressing that would be! how would we live if we kept thinking about death! and how would we die if we didn’t first live?! (that last part was me, doesn’t make sense i know.)
death is a funny thing. it scares people (when they’re not joking, or drinking or smoking weed) for the most part because its the ONLY thing people have no hope of knowing about. i mean, you can know WHY someone dies, i guess. but where they go, how they go (walk? fly? crawl? beam?), and if they go anywhere at all, who knows? and that, is what’s scary if you think about it. i mean, hell’s alright, it probably means there’s a heaven and there’s still hope to go to heaven. but what if there’s nothing? what if its heaven or nothing? what if its hell or nothing? what if (and this i like to think about all the time because it creeps me out to no end), all the people who die just float up into this special invisible hemisphere and just tread clouds looking down at whoever they so please to spy on, and can see whatever they’re doing (i mean, this is assuming when you die you inherit the ability to see through walls, its the most they can do really to give you that). ISN’T THAT CREEPY?! i think about that when im brushing my teeth, or when i’m poo-ing, maybe my grandma can see me poo-ing. maybe my grandpa (who i’ve never met) knows when i don’t wash my hands after going to the bathroom (JUST KIDDING, making a point only). but you know what i mean.
getting news about elisha was a very very creepy experience. i wasn’t a close friend of his, but it’s enough to just know someone, have interacted with him/her before, to have looked him/her in the eye and said hello, to have wondered what he/she was thinking, and shook his/her warm hand, and now know that he/she is no longer. i honestly hope he’s happier, if after death one can still feel, can still be, albeit in a different state. it’s a real mystery, this one, death. in all candidness, don’t you think that if someone could prove that there was indeed relief from the horridness of this world after death, and that one could still “keep in touch” with loved ones back here, or at least wait for them patiently to come over to your side, that there would be a mass exodus of even people who were mildly disatisfied with life? bye guys i’m heading over first i can’t stand the heat here, but i’ll be waiting for you so don’t dilly dally. that kinda thing.
very troubling.
i still have a troubled feeling in my gut about this, and i can only imagine how his family and close friends feel. also, i have alot to say about facebook and how it creeps me out that people leave goodbye messages for him on his facebook wall. i’m not insulting it at all, its just that, other than it being a way for people in this world to express their condolences and grief, it makes me wonder if he can actually read these words previously unspoken. if, in addition to levitational abilities and x-ray vision, you are entitled to Wi-Fi.
one more thing i am wondering: what it would be like to announce that you were going to take your life and that you wanted to have a funeral while you were alive because you honestly don’t know if you would be able to hear all the nice things people have to say about you after you’re gone. would that even work or would they strap you into a chair so you wouldn’t be able to take your life? the only thing that’s really yours, you can’t destroy. but take someone else’s and they can take yours. funny..
i have rambled. sorry.
