JAN’S DAILY FRESH NEWS

                      © 2001: Jan Cox
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September 7, 2001.
 
 
 
 
 

                       On one world is a creature constructed such that
                        if it ever completely stops all activity  --  it dies;
ergo, while much of what it does may appear meaningless,
it is done simply to stay alive.
These useless appearing activities are highlighted by
it being totally surrounded by creatures whose every movement is significant,
and further intensifying the comparison is that
while his neighbors go about their enterprises in silence,
this creature, via its constant commentary on its actions,
draws attention to its vacuous acts.
His fellow creatures never criticize his futile activities  –  he does that himself,
for though he is aware of his situation, and understands that to stay alive
he must stay active at any cost  --  no matter how frivolous be the activity,
he nonetheless suffers a lingering, low intensity irritation with the arrangement.
His routine solution to this dissatisfaction is to
simply engage in additional meaningless messing about
to distract his attention from the necessary annoyance.
Most of his breed in fact have created enough such diverse distractions
to constructively confine their dissatisfaction
to a level well below that which registers on their ordinary attention screen;
thus a situation that while radical, and yet annoying,
has been more or less turned into a tolerable, if not sometimes,
enjoyable one  ……………………….....................…for most of these creatures.
As within any species, there are variations,
and among these particular creatures there are a few born
lacking the ability to distract themselves adequately from
the awareness that much of their life is spent in meaningless activity;
they attempt to remedy their situation through a variety of procedures,
but in truth:  what to do? --  where to turn?
If they cease all unnecessary activity  --   they perish,
and there is not enough that is requisite to fill all of their time, so: what to do?!
There is but one approach open:
find additional meaningless activity that does interest them.
But from experience they know that what is out there will not fill the bill  --
                     --  what to do?    --     they invented their own   --   but,
(here is where it gets really interesting to
intergalactic biologists & anthropologists):
soon after they began creating their own specialized,
useless-diversion-to-keep-me-from-going-crazy  --
they forgot where they came from.
(Without going into laborious detail,
the end result of this for most of the anomalous few is that):
they then became doubly frustrated:
first from being forced into spurious activities just to say alive,
then from having invented new useless activity specifically intended to counteract the original frustration,
and now taking it as seriously as a loan from a guy named Guido --
                                 --  forgetting its true nature.

                                      Some creature  --  huh?!

                                                        J