Birthdays are simply a cheery yearly reminder of this fact. Every single second of every single minute of every single hour of every single day is a second spent - gone, never to return. Like the sands in the hourglass, these are the days of the bad metaphor. All these moments will be lost like tears in rain, etc.
There's a lot of ways to look at birthdays in culture, anyway. But with the annual arrival of the celebration of the day one first blipped into existence in the past - your time travel with the end goal of destroying the world having been successful - it's time to take stock, reflect, and think about the experiences you've had in your life so far, the dreams still unfulfilled ahead.
In short, you need to ask yourself, WHY HAVEN'T I CONQUERED THE EARTH AND ANNIHILATED HUMANITY YET? A curious, valid question. WHY HAVEN'T YOU DONE THAT YET? Surely it couldn't be your fault. It must be one of those humans. Y'know, those stinking filthy ones that're always getting in the way of your scheming. Those ones. How irritating they are.
Today being one such of these days, rather than list the short list of accomplishments I've managed so far in life (First-time publishing, erasing Cyborg Lincoln from the annals of history, making that one really good waffle - that last one's actually a lie), it's time to look at my numerous failures/not-yet-successes. After all, there is much that I have yet to accomplish - and those things are far more interesting than my actual accomplishments.
Granted, the potential of this subject is limitless, and I've given myself a limited timeframe in which to write this post, so let's just look at 12 things I haven't accomplished yet.
1) I have yet to discover the secret of immortality. I'm willing to bet it has something to do with growing a beard like Aubrey de Grey's, though.
2) I have yet to arm the Alaskan wolf population with rocket launchers. Mostly due to a lack of getting-around-to-it-tiveness. Once they're armed, it'll be on to the endangered whales up there. If Sarah Palin's going to attack wildlife and attempt to revoke endangered species' protections, it's time nature fought back. (Plus, who doesn't love the idea of wolves with rocket launchers?)
3) I have yet to prevent the creation of Android Lincoln. Android Lincoln is the bastard responsible for sending Cyborg Lincoln to the past. Preventing his creation is simply a matter of waiting a couple hundred of years until his human creator is born - there'll be a big of a "baby mishap," and if all goes according to plan, under his new parents, he'll either end up a male ballerina or orbiting Jupiter without a space helmet, if you catch my drift.
4) I have yet to successfully crack a hole in the walls of reality. Some might suggest that the concept is ludicrous - that it can't be done. These people are simply in on the conspiracy to hide the truth. Someday, I will shatter the walls of reality, and in will flood candy. Not just any candy, either - brain candy. Can you dig it?
5) Technically speaking, I still have yet to make that one really good waffle. Technically speaking, I also prefer pancakes to waffles, so this will probably never be accomplished.
6) I still have yet to stop the internet. If you think things are terrible now, think again!
7) I have yet to desecrate Grant's tomb. It's time someone answered that stupid question once and for all.
8) I have yet to build a better mousetrap. According to Monopoly, great financial gain is in my future if I manage to do so. I always take my life advice from board games. (CHECK OUT MY STYLISH HANDLEBAR MUSTACHE)
9) I have yet to go on a space walk and return to the Earth's surface with an illegally smuggled JAR OF SPACE. The entire planet will be at my mercy when I wave that jar around.
10) I have yet to uninvent mathematics. You'll all thank me someday, possibly.
11) I have yet to create an army of superhuman monsters. I've been putting this one off. It still feels like it's kinda conceptually "done" after all those B-movies.
12) I have yet to get this first novel published. Granted, this is something I might be able to remedy either within the year or next year - if I'm incredibly lucky, anyway. Technically speaking, I'm still working on revising the final draft before I'll have a manuscript I'm willing to risk agents looking at, anyway.
Clearly, I have much to do. Too much.
And now, I need to get some of that birthday sleep. OLD.
5 comments:
Iwas thinking how you can never get time back yesterday!
That is sooo like last season..lol
@E_M_Y: And now after half-quoting from the opening to a bad soap opera here and Batty's final speech in Blade Runner, I realize that I probably should've worked Malcolm McDowell's spiel about how time is a predator from Star Trek: Generations in there somewhere too.
@AlpHa Buttonpusher: I try!
great fun!
But the answer to immortality is simple: get that book published, make it be a litterary masterpiece... and you shall be immortal! easy! ;o)
Hope you took full advantage of a weekend birthday... they usually result in great partying! :o)
Happy Birthday!!!
Of course, of course! I just have to keep revising it so that it's worthy of reading and publishing, and see how well it ends up holding up from then on. Once this last draft's finished, it's on to a second book while juggling that with agent hunting until I can find someone keen on representing me.
Haha, living at home and with my friends scattered around, my birthdays are usually pretty quiet. Nonetheless, I got some sleep, had a great dinner and some cake, and got some nice gifts, so it was certainly a nice day. I managed to get out of the neighborhood for a little while on Saturday too, which certainly did me some good.
We had a little mini-partyish thing for one of my birthdays once back early in college when my friends surprised me with a cake in my dorm room, but beyond that we usually never really did anything special for any of our birthdays. I went out and played laser tag with a couple of friends one year, though those plans just happened to fall on my birthday and I still had to pay my own way and such - but that was a fun afternoon anyway.
Then back in 2007, I ended up attending a theater department production of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus - an interesting sort of postmodern theater take on Faust - which was really entertaining. Though that was just something that happened to fall on my birthday then too, since I'd bought a ticket to see that so I could do a write-up for extra credit for my theater class then.
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