So I had this idea...

So I had this idea... right?  It's a million dollar idea and when someone makes a million dollars off this one day I hope that I at least get like 15% of the profit.  This idea is coming in the form of a movie and since I'm doing you all a favor right now and not copyrighting this I would expect to get some kind of recognition.. I don't need a lot.

So this movie...

I started working with this guy (we'll call him Trainer Doug).  Now Trainer Doug is one of those people that when they start talking you just want to hear everything they say.  And Trainer Doug studied philosophy in college (he also reads like a ton of things), making him a very smart guy.  Trainer Doug liked to bring up weird philosophy things when he first started working with me.  One of the first conversations I had with him was about the Ship of Theseus.  Which is basically a set of super deep questions about ships and the planks that make them up and new ships and ownership of the ships and blahty blahty blahhhh about the ships that I could definitely write an entire new blog post about in it of itself.

So we're talking philosophy and he's blowing my mind and decides to bring up the human brain and how we process memory.  Now he claims that our memories only work in reverse and in a linear sense, which is why we feel like 3 dimensional characters moving through a 4th dimension (time), but in actuality (and this is where he loses me) time is already laid out for us and time is just happening to us.

 Yep.  Let that soak in.  Now the thing that always gets brought up when I've since talked about this with others is that TD is suggesting that our futures are already pre-planned for us and we are just waiting for them to happen to us.  Most people are very uncomfortable with this and I think it is because they don't like to think about the fact that they dont have any control over their lives to that extent.  But what if we weren't... What if there was a world where we knew what was going to happen to us for the entire day from the moment we wake up in the morning.  What if we knew what career we would be holding down and exactly the day and time we have the interview for said career defining job.  What if we knew exactly how many children we were going to have, whether they were boys or girls and the exact moment they are going to be born.  And! not to mention we are OK with all of it.  People would be very accepting of this kind of human brain function, just like at the beginning of the Hunger Games the people of Panem are totally OK with sending children off once a year in a battle royal to the death.  What kind of characters would we build, though, if everyone just went through life being satisfied with not being able to control their own destiny.  People would just drone on, like cows in a pasture waiting for their life to play it's course, achieve those things they are supposed to achieve and crumble to the ground when life sees fit.  What if, even when some one was dissatisfied with their future and tried to change it, it was impossible to do.  No matter how hard they try the right things would fall into place to have their preplanned future happen to them.  Here's the kicker though.. they are pumped about it!  They realize the mighty-ness of the powers at be and just never question why they are working a job that doesn't allow for the lifestyle that they crave, or NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY TRY, they will never be able to catch the eye of the one they desire, or why they can't stop their pet hedgehog from pooping all over the house.  And they are totally fine with it.

Now of course for the movie to be a best seller and at the top of all the charts there would have to be some kind of conflict.  By the way all I can think about right now if how similar this is to Paycheck with Ben Affleck, where he can see into his future and he changes it to stay in love with his girlfriend, Uma Thurman.  It's a great one, you should check it out.  I hadn't really thought about the conflict all that much but it would have to have something like to so that the movie could target all audiences.  I havent thought of any kind of movie title either, but that can be a job for someone else once the idea gets picked up.

Thatsssss all for now folks. Thanks for reading and if any of you have friends in the movie biz pass me along!

and dont forget:

Before I trust anyone...

Before I trust anyone that I meet I put them through a serious assessment. I go through my mental check list: height, weight, ability to survive a potential zombie apocalypse... the important things.  Then when the timing is right (and I make sure it is since this can sometimes come off the wrong way.  I highly suggest you try this as well) I ask one simple question, a question developed by my friends and I while watching shark week one summer in college... who would win in a fight to the death:

BEAR VS. SHARK

Now I know what you are thinking.  Blah blah blah whats the environment? Blah blah blah they have different attack mechanisms. Yeah, I don't care what you think. Have an imagination and make this fun which you clearly cannot do if you can answer a simple question that requires like the smallest amount of creativity ever.  Which is why I can't trust you if you can't answer this question and why it's the most important to consider while judging the potential friendship being laid out in front of you. I'm a good friend to have too; I'm really fun and enjoy doing things like making smores in the toaster over, playing the lava game while drunk at 2:30 in the morning, and making blanket forts in preparation for big weather like Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy.  But if for some reason you can't figure out a way to come up with some sort of answer for this question, all of that fun is off the table! It doesn't even need to be the right answer (which we'll discuss later), it just needs to be your opinion of whether or not a bear would tear a shark apart at the gills.

Which brings me to the real part of this blog.. 

OF COURSE THE BEAR WOULD WIN!!! I know he looks all nice and innocent in the picture obtained from Google as pasted above but come on! A bear would fuck you up..

 

Usually when I bring this up and people decide to get snooty and bring up the fact that bears and sharks don't share the same environment (like I didn't know that) I like to give them something to hang on to for a second chance at the fact that maybe they aren't a huge douchebag, but chances aren't good. So I tell them to imagine the bear and shark in some sort of vacuum or in space or something.  This usually brings them down to a level that we can share a friendly debate over the topic which usually ends poorly since there is clearly only one way this could go down and here it is: the bell would ring and the shark would immediately dive down and dip back up quickly to get a fast attack on the bear, but the bear, completely aware of whats going on takes a single step back.  The shark, on his way up to tear the bear's intestines out gets stopped by the bears razor sharp claws.  The bear digs his claws deeper into the sharks gills cutting off the only sharks hopes of breathing the water/air hybrid that apparently exists in space.  While the shark is getting his gills ripped out the bear is also goings after the shark right under his massive jaw since there is a major artery.  The bleeding kills him before the lack of oxygen...... but that's only my opinion.

Now this technique on prejudging potential friends in the scary world out there is almost proven to be 100% effective. Almost everyone that has answered this question turned out to be really chill and fun and those that couldn't have been eliminated from my life.  I highly recommend it as a topic for your net dinner party.

PS. we came up with if first.

So a little advice...

So a little advice about going to the grocery store:

1) Make yourself a list. The amount of time I've spent in the chips and salsa aisle debating over peach salsa versus mango is ridiculous.  And don't even get me started on ice cream flavors...

and 2) Keep your head down. I'm not saying you should avert eyes due to your appearance, I'm saying to avert them due to others.  When I'm doing mundane activities such going to the grocery store or taking the city bus in a city with a very interesting homeless culture (which I was forced to do this past weekend due to a little breakdown in the battery of my car), I can't help myself but you come up with stories for the people around me to occupy my mind with something.  For example, the guy in front of me in the bakery section of the store that looks like a skinny santa clause is definitely the heir to some fortune off shore and he's just waiting for his brother to die in a russian prison so that he can cash it in and ditch his job doing mortgage taxes to take off on his newly purchased private helicopter to Hawaii to live out the rest of his life spending his mornings clamming down at the beach and returning for afternoon snack of oreos and his daily cribbage game. But that's just a guess.

Unfortunately for the guy with the big beats by dre headphones and ray bans hanging off of his tank top at the gym (even though that's a completely ridiculous place for them because, you know, you could drop your super heavy weights onto them while you are bench pressing. Not that it would matter cause, bro? you got the weight up) that I see while I'm just trying to enjoy a casual ride on the stationary bike; he is home on break from school across the country in Long Beach and while he's home he's blacked out with his friends like 5 times and the past time he slipped and fell on the ice and twisted his ankle.  So now when he goes back to school in a few weeks he won't be able to take the ball to the hoop during the 3on3 basketball tournament he and his friends are signed up for. But who am I to judge.

Now don't even get me started on the dude in the car in front of me on the highway on the way home from work.  He's got to get home faster than usual today since his bid war on eBay for the last piece of equipment he needs for the machine he invented and is building that actually turns lemonade into ice tea, is almost over. And if he loses the bid war it will set him back at least 6 months.  The only problem is that he's had chicken in the crock pot for the past 10 hours while he was out ice climbing and he's got to remember to check on it to make sure it's not over done, but when he gets in the zone about the Lemon2Teaerator there is no pulling him out of it.  He's gone on 3 day benders before, forgetting to eat and sleep all while trying to figure out the calculations for this silly machine that his wife can barely believe she puts up with.

2b) If your going to look up at the people around you I don't suggest looking at women first. Whenever I come up with a story for them it always ends up bitchy and materialistic and, I just, can't.


That's all for now, in the mean time here's me at age 2 with pudding all over my face: