My Shoes (First Person Fiction)

Dear Owner, my wonderful Owner,

            I represent the epitome of form, and function. A presumptuous statement, to be sure, but not one that is entirely unwarranted. A collector’s item, but the general apathy associated with those bums the Baseball Cards does not apply to me. You'll take me out to the longest of jogs, but I don't need the constant washing of those sweaty Shirts. Everywhere you go, I follow. I'm definitely more loyal than your average cat, and even a dog would be hard pressed to be more loyal than I, unless this dog happens to be a combination of Ol' Yeller, Lassy, and your dog Tutu.

            What would you do without me, your shoes? Sure, I may be more than a bit smelly at times, but I never leave your side, or more accurately, your feet. The padding, cradling your feet in what seems to be the softest of sensations, brings to you a bliss rarely found on this Earth. Every movement is a yet another perfect moment of absolute ecstasy upon your feet, my offering to you, and I ask nothing in return. I am always there for you. I will never walk away from you, as long as you never walk away from me. I happily wait for you when you need a rest, never being impatient. If you run, I shall run with you. If you creep, I shall creep with you, even if you are one yourself.

            Without me, what would come to your feet? The numerous foot afflictions, such as flat foot, frostbite, or even god forbid, a stubbed toe, make me nervous just to think about them, much less to have you experience them! Every scuff mark I suffer, every stitch that is torn, every square inch of soiled fabric is a badge of honor. I gladly endure the winter chill, the endless rains, the blazing heat; the elements are all endured for you. Even on the occasion when you left me outside overnight, where I must play host to spiders and night crawlers, I forgive you for your forgetfulness, and continue to perform at my best. It is a dangerous world out there for a pair of bare feet, and I shall be your ever vigilant protector.

             I must admit, though, I often feel nervous as time goes on. I often see you throw out other of my comrades in a painful selection, yet you often skip past me in this process. Whether for nostalgic or cosmetic reasons, I have yet to be submitted to the Trash Can, a place of mystery to us who reside in the shoe rack. I fear that perhaps one day, this state of affair will cease, and you shall discard me as you have so many others before, resigning me to the mystery of the Trash Can and whatever heaven lies beyond.

            With Love,

            Your Shoes

             

            PS: Excuse me for the recent stink. I blame your socks. Please change them more often.

            Because you and I both know you wouldn’t change me.

            Or would you?

Hm. Experimentations with size, font, and color.

Leave a comment, tell me what you think.

Thoughts. Much like everything else.

Perception. What do we hold of it? Is everything really as we see it? Is this shade of green the same for everyone? People will all see it as "Green" because they were taught to see it as green, but perhaps my green looks like my blue, from their perspective.

Fear. A survival trait, or a deeper human emotion? Some fear spiders, while others do not. Once again, a matter of perspective, it is often difficult to rationalize a fear. 

Comfort. Why become comfortable when it all ends the same? We, as humans, live for the moment. We fear the future, the past, and anything else that isn't now. How do we know that what we know to be the "past" is really the past? We know that something happened, but the only reason we know is because we tell ourselves these things. Lying to ourselves is tremendously easy, as anyone who has suffered through a traumatic experience may (or may not) be able to tell you. We percieve what has happened to ourselves, and with no one to check it, it can quite often lead to imperfections.

Art. A reflection of our culture, and how we percieve it. We show changing views about what is accepted, how we percieve the rest of the world around us. It can show us the greatest of joys, or the harshest of fears. 

Don't get comfortable friends.

Conundrum

I am no mood to write, yet, I feel as if I should be recording something.

Save. Me.

Terrible, is it not? I am lost, yet I know where I am. I am confused, yet I know what troubles me.

Save. Me.

Forever gone from my life, a complete fault of mine, yet I can do nothing to change it.

Save. Me.

I've got to get out, but it's not what I need. I'm stuck here, with no where to go.

Save. Me.

Dancing

What a wonderful game this is!

Ah, morning time once again. As the night recedes back against the horizon, a tremendous yawn is emitted from what looks like a strange, hunchbacked creature on two legs shuffling down a flight of stairs. Eyes barley open, the creature proceeds to use it's sense of touch to navigate it's habitat, occasionally colliding into the corner or outlying handle. Undettered, the creature continues its search.

After much shuffling of feet, seemingly random arm waving, and cursing of stubbed toes, she finds what she was looking for. A bag of coffee, obtained from no other than the business juggernaut that is Starbucks.

As the bleary fingers work through the familiar process that has long ago etched a groove into thousands of drinker's mental process, literally enabling the user to perform the motions nearly half asleep.

And yet, after a few sips, an amazing transformation occurs. The wonderously and famous bitter taste of coffee seems to have no effect, instead energizing the person, causing an interesting transformation to occur. No longer are the feet attached the the floor, where they swing evenly, rather than shuffle awkwardly; eyes are open, and somewhat bloodshot, yet still open!

It is, all in all, a wonderful invention. Until someone overdoses on that and goes batshit crazy, but hey.

There's always a downside.

Chinky

I swore to myself I wouldn't make racist remarks in this post.

A delightful crescendo of noises, escalating from a single source. It seems impossible that a single instrument, despite how massive, could create a sound as varied and beautiful as it is now. The notes flow seamlessly from the piano, spiraling forever into the air, every note transferred from the fingertips to the keyboard, a tribute to those who played on this grand instrument before her, every note sounding out in perfect unision.

The pianist, lost in the moment of creation, sits at the the bench, a silent figure among the noises around her. The mute figure is a testament to the works in process, fingers working at the keyboard, slender fingers jumping from notes with a speed that would confound even the most astute of observers.

This is creation, pure and simple. They say God created the universe from nothing, but even that incredible feat is rivaled by the beautiful sounds of the piano. It is in that moment, at the climax of the piece, when the rich, dulcent tones surround the single member that consisted of the audience, if only for a second, when all noises but the rich tones of the music are blocked out, and everything in the world seems to be at a perfect harmony.

The music, so beautiful it was, seemed to make everything perfect for just a single moment, the final note sending out a wave of innocence and beauty throughout the world, making the world seem like a better place, if only for a second.

And then, it is lost. The reality returns with a crash, a crash of silence signaling the end of the piece. A roaring, deafining silence, one that fills such a void after the music is over.

Music is the epitome of human creation. Few scientists have created things as wonderfully satisfying as a wonderful, perfect piece of music.


Hey, I made through that entire post without referring to asian people.
Awesome.

Undead

The afterlife is certainly one of the more interesting, and ultimately uninspired creation of the human imagination.

The purpose of life? To die. Humanity invented the afterlife, religion, and most things spiritual to cover up our lack of importance in the universe. Look at any ancient civilization, and nearly every one of them had, at one time or another, the belief that they were the center of the universe. This is a very common belief even today, with people acting, living, and believing as though they are indeed the center of the universe. On a grand, cosmos-esque scheme of things point of view, we are insignificant.

Ironic how everything we've created is a direct result from the fear of losing everything we have. We fear that all the hard work we perform on this earth will go to waste, so we imagine an afterlife that rewards us for all the sweat and effort put into doing things that we don't want to. T'is heaven, and since it didn't make sense to send those people who defy to do good deeds there as well, we send them to hell.

To describe death without any concept of an afterlife, however, is literally impossible. If there is no afterlife, than dying would be loss of every perception. Every adjective we have is linked to how we perceive the world around us, such as sights, feel, and sound, among others. You cannot even compare it to someone who has lost every sense in their body, as there is no mind, there is no thought. There isn't even a "nothing," as there is no conception of nothing.

Sometimes, I really scare myself.

Electricty!

As far as we know, the human body is made of nothing more than flesh and bone. Both of these are controlled by, or so the scientists say, electrical impulses in the brain.


Now, as far as I'm concerned, lightning bolts and such have never developed a complex personality. Thoughts must come from somewhere, and thoughts are more than mere whispers in the air. Thoughts have significance, the right thought in the right person potentially changing the world. They may not be tangible, but they can hold a person mesmerized.

Thus, leading me to do something I rarely do. In support of religion, god, and the supernatural, there must be something other than mere electricity inside of ourselves. It is impossible to express myself in such a way as to properly describe this, but anything that has self awareness, anything that has the ability to create such monumental testaments to our own humanity, there must be something else at play. Divine intervention is always something humanity as a whole turns to when there is no other explanation, the "get out of jail free" card if you will, and I find myself playing this card once again.

A Voting Process

For the sake of ease of reading, any time I refer to "man" or "he," this also applies to females as well.


A leader is any man who is willing to take authority of a group of people. We fear leaders, and most of us fear to be a leader.
Failing by yourself is hard enough, yet to be the cause of a downfall among a body of people is perhaps the most frightening of any scenario. Guilt, a terrible emotion to be held to, is among the first of many emotions to assault the mind, causing doubt in future leadership opportunities, and to lose faith in oneself is to lose one's ability to act.

Yet, every so often, we come across an amazing person, one who stands against the rest. This is a man, that when standing in a crowded room, everyone else fades to the foreground. Shy people generally tend to blend in well with the background, but a man like this, no, shall stand out among the rest, giving cause to even the most courageous of men to pause.


This post made no sense.

Obligations to Fill

Vegetarian, n. Native American word for bad hunter


Religion could also be said to have stemmed from our overactive imaginations. Certainly when humans began living together and creating tools and using advanced methods to hunt and gather food imaginations were very useful. But as we advanced and found time and room to exercise our abstract thinking abilities beyond just sustenance, I believe we found a problem. We quickly found the truth that we are no more significant than the animals we hunted. This would cause a massive amount of cognitive dissonance in any individual.

Most individuals believe that they are significant and important. However, the truth of our reality is that we are insignificant. So in order to resolve these two conflicting ideas we have social structures like religion. Religion gives the life we lead in this reality a purpose and an ultimate goal. We delude ourselves into believing we are important and descended from an important being.

When faced with certain death it is hard to tell what people will think or do resolve the dissonance regarding death. Death is ultimately a bad state of being. It's an unknown place where you cannot return to the life you live here. Almost universally we do not want to die.

Good time for a reminder

Browsing through an old blog of mine.

Rules to Funny:

1) Repetition. This one is stupid, but it works. Say something over and over, and then repeat it, and then say it some more. Two or three times. Example: "In his spare time, young Luke Skywalker enjoyed driving his land speeder, whining, shooting womp-rats, cruising for chicks in Mos Eisley, whining, nerf-herding, and whining." Sometimes, driving a joke into the ground makes it funnier. Other times, it just makes the joke dead, so please be careful, cautious, and vigilant if you decide to use this technique. And also be careful.
2) Misdirection. A little more sophisticated and "witty" than repetition. Appear to go one direction with your writing, but end up in a completely different place. Like Australia. For instance: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
3) Escalation: The key to the absurd style, but all around a good technique. Start out reasonable and sensible, then become increasingly extreme, irrational, and absurd. Example: "Among the monastic sins listed by Saint Anselm are sodomy, bestiality, wearing clean underwear, touching oneself anywhere below the neck, heavy breathing, and approaching closer than 40 furlongs to a female of any mammalian species." Starting out absurd and staying that way is rarely funny. Absurdity can be funny, but it helps to work up to it from a serious- or at least, less-absurd- starting point. This is true whether you're dealing with a single sentence, a whole article, or putting live moray eels down your pants.
4) Repetition.
5) Being Self-referential. Again, sort of an obvious technique but it can be funny. "Repetition" repeats, "Misdirection" veers off into Australia, "Escalation" escalates. See this article's section on Being Self Referential.
6) Understatement. For instance, "many people would say that the Holocaust was not a good thing". Writing "OMG this kid in my class Joe Shmoe is so stupid!" is not as funny as taking a more understated approach such as "Joe Shmoe is not quite as intelligent as a mildly retarded woodchuck suffering from late-stage syphilus." Not that you're allowed to write about your classmates, though.
7) Repetition.
8) Circularity. For an example, see Being Circular.
9) Being Circular. For an example, see Circularity. (again, this is a dumb but effective technique, if it isn't overused).
10) The Straight Man. A common beginner's mistake is to be ridiculous the whole way through. However, being serious is a vital part of being frivolous. They're yin and yang, opposites that need each other. In a comic routine, this role is served by the 'straight man'. Marge Simpson's seriousness throws Homer's idiocy into sharp relief; Graham Chapman plays his King Arthur completely deadpan, making the rest of Monty Python and the Holy Grail that much more absurd by comparison. Generally speaking, you'll need some sections of your writing to serve as the "straight man". These are all the non-joke things: the background information, facts or factual sounding statements, the stuff that builds up to and supports the jokes, the punchlines, the non-sequitirs and the bizarre twists, making them sound that much more brain damaged by comparison. If your goal is to sound like a lunatic, it helps to have a sane man in the room.
11) Write in a Consistent Style. Some articles read as if they're been written by a college professor, many sound like they're written by a mentally challenged thirteen-year-old, and most of the... well, it's not entirely clear that these were written by something with opposable thumbs. However it usually works best to write a single article in a single style. That is, you would read it and assume a single person wrote it. It should not read like paragraph 1 is the work of a five year old girl, paragraph 2 is the work of a crotchety old man, and paragraph 3 resulted from a collaboration by a epileptic goat, a squid with Alzheimer's, and an emo kid. There are exceptions (say, writing on multiple personality disorder) but quality articles usually follow this rule.
12) Pick your targets. Some people are just asking to be taken down a notch. The rich, the powerful and the famous. People who are liars, hypocrites, arrogant or jerks are also perfect targets for satire. Generally speaking, people who are helpless aren't. Making fun of cancer patients is hard. Let me tell you, I've tried and the cancer ward was not amused. Nice people are also poor targets; Mother Teresa doesn't lend herself to parody.

Truth Seeker and Soul Eater

A person has once asked me, why does God send such trials toward us?

The bible states that he has the power to be all beneficial, to rid of us of all sufferings, and if he did not, then what god would he be?

Yet he does not. He chooses to force us to suffer through these tribulations, and it is a quite common question to ask "Why?!"


A child, taken from the most sheltered of homes, when thrusted into the cold, cruel, and largely uncaring world, will likely be unprepared. Despite the fact that his upbringing was happy, and carefree, his childhood was far from perfect. We learn more from our mistakes, and we learn the most from these trials and tribulations. It can be taken, then, that God is merely giving us a proper "upbringing," spiritually and secularly.

Yet, this in itself raises a question that isn't heard as often as the other one. Wisdom seekers often find themselves satisfied with the above answer, never questioning the answer given.

When a child is forced to be put through discipline and tribulations, it is to teach him and prepare him for the adulthood that is to follow.

What is god preparing us for? If heaven is the wonderful land that it reputably is, then why must we prepare for entrance? Sheltered children have a more innocent and romantic view of the world, while the cynical children are those that have experienced troublesome times.

I am quick to doubt cynicism is a quality that is sought after in God's Kingdom of Heaven.

An Empty Quiver and Twitching Fingers

Once again finding myself with an empty reserve of thoughts, yet a strange urge to write, I am at my blog once more. So with no ideas, I proceed to write, yet, why write with no ideas?

I end up sitting in front of the computer, desperately casting my eyes around the room and set my mind to roaming, with many potential subjects of literature, yet with no motivation to write upon. There, a bowl sits upon the table, empty except for where my mind attempts to fill it with something that is a revelation, and something that would awe my audiences.

Sometimes, however, a bowl is merely a bowl. No advanced metaphor for its existence other than to contain things. Empty like my mind, yet as I continue to stare upon this bowl, my mind continues to fill.

Filling this empty rice bowl of my mind, not with rice, but with the most delicious of soup's, nourishing the body, stimulating the mind to reach the apex of its mental activity, not the normal dreariness of normal thinking, but the perfect reactions of creative thinking. Certainly felt by great artists, writers, and song writers when they reach the climax of their production, this mental clarity is brought upon the reflection of the ordinary, taking from seemingly the ordinary and turning it, unbelievably, even more ordinary.

Inspiration, much like it's distant cousin knowledge, is everywhere.

Writing about a lack of writing. Interesting concept, yet one that needs working.

We Be Jammin' Now!

Alot of people think that randomness equates to hilarity, that making no sense is a surefire way to be funny.

These people tend to think that because they create a sentient piece of toast slathered in strawberry jelly, holding a purple umbrella, and naming him Highway Man's Friend, they are comedians.

They are sadly mistaken.

There is no specific formula into creating funny, as there is to much that goes into creating it.

Is it a gift from the heavens? A perfect series of synapses in the brain that causes hilarity?

Strawberry Jam. T'is the lifeblood of comedy.

Certain death.

Recently, I spotted something ridiculous on the internet (Hah, thats new)...

"If you are an Atheist, believe that religion is ignorance, and are 100% proud of it, put this in your blog."

When faced with certain death, will you stare back into the eyes of your conquerer, tall and proud, and to the very last second, die without the thought of God in your mind? Will you not seek the religious comfort of an afterlife, but instead face the cold and calculating secularism that is Atheism?

Your last thoughts will not be on of your networks, your money, your sciences, but on what happens after. When you're faced with losing everything secular, you're forced to think about what you have spiritually.

Humans are, by nature, greedy. We always seek to posses something, despite our best efforts to remain generous. There is hardly a man on the earth that will dispense of all his earthly possessions so readily, and those would do so are almost always highly religious.
Religion in itself is a possession. Because of the amazing growth of a middle class in America and many "developed" nations, many individuals posses enough objects to feel that they have no need for a religion.

When alone, with no worldly possessions, they will desperately cast around for something to own. When on your deathbed, everything worldly is gone and meaningless. Spiritualism gives us something to hold onto after we lose our last possession; our lives.

In the past, this has pushed us towards religion. Peasants and wanderers, who owned little more than what they could carry on their backs, wanted something to call their own, and created religion, a god they could turn to in the event of tragedy, and a set of rights and wrongs through which they attempted to control their own human nature.