On Love, and Eating Bugs

     Have you ever had the desire to eat a bug? Mimic Timone and Pumbaa by sucking down a squiggly slimy thing like it was so much angel hair pasta? I’m sure the thought has crossed the mind of many a young child, but I’m talking about doing this as an adult. Alright, how then would you feel if you didn’t have to eat the bugs, but you still had them inside of you? Imagine if they wouldn’t burn up in your stomach acid, but rather lived off your insides. At this point they would be a parasite, not a dangerous one, but rather one whose presence for the most part went unnoticed until it migrated into a different part of your gut, and then you could feel it worming its way around. Could you live with the idea of an insect thriving, growing, eating, dispelling its waste, and sleeping peacefully all curled up just beneath the skin of your abdomen? Worse yet, is there any conceivable way you would wish for this?

-The short answer is yes, everyone does-

     Close your eyes for just a minute… Okay, now open them again because you can’t read this with them closed. Duh. Close them when you’re done reading, and try to picture your favorite place, with your favorite song floating in on the breeze from somewhere off in the distance, and imagine it’s the perfect season to be there. Every nerve in your body relaxes. When you get to heaven this is how you hope it will be, because you can’t imagine anything more perfect. Wait, sure you could. It would be far more perfect if you had someone there to share it with. Of course I don’t mean just any-someone but rather a special someone. Like how Ringo Star answered the question, “Could it be anybody?” with “I want somebody to love.” So no matter if you’ve met this Earth-shakingly flawless individual before or not, imagine that at this perfect place at this perfect time is the first time you’ve laid eyes on this perfect individual, and you just know exactly what Shakespeare meant when he was writing all those sappy sonnets. Think about the abundance of overwhelming feelings which are erupting in this unspoiled moment. Think about the flutter of butterflies that burns with such pure desire as they beat their wings and create a hurricane of passion inside of you. Now stop, and really think about it. Sure butterflies are ever so prettier than most bugs, but they are bugs none the less. They are bugs that devour their habitats, bugs that excrete fluids and such that their bodies no longer need, and bugs that can flap their wings here and cause a “natural” disaster over there. Imagine then, how 20 or so of those things would ravage your insides as they all decide to flap their wings at the same instant. And yet, for some unknown reason, this is a feeling that comes on rare occasions to us, and when it does, we cling to it as tight as we can. We may never know why, but we enjoy this feeling, and crave it. Everyone at some point in time wishes for these “bugs” to live in their gut, and sometimes, they are a good thing and they thrive and live on for years, and help us do the same. Other times they leave us ravaged, and they die off shortly after destroying their home, and all we can do is sit, and wait, and wish for a new flutter to spontaneously spring up in our gut and allow us to dive into love again.

Instant Instant Gratification

We are a generation of people who need things not done now, but five minutes ago. This is an age of cell phones that can play a song in a matter of seconds, bring up a video despite where we’re at, and download an application to do practically anything imaginable on a whim. We have passed the greedy need for instant gratification of our forefathers, and moved onto the much more practical need for instant instant gratification. Life is too short, and not getting any longer. Why then should we have to waste a single breath on waiting for the thing that we want now? On demand TV gets it. This is the new millennium. Why is it that I still have to wait for water to boil to cook? Where is my food in pill form? Why is it that I have to waste an hour of my day driving to and from work and school? Where is my teleporter? That time driving could be spent on things far more favorable things. This here is a call to arms. I say, I’m sick of waiting, and more so, I’m sick of waiting for the waiting to stop. I can get movies and books downloaded right at home. There is no longer need for wasting time driving to the store for such things. I say it is time for everything else to follow. I want to download soda and food at the push of a button. Why don’t we have clothes that instantly wash themselves? Then we could wear the same clothes every day to complement our personalities like Scooby and the gang did. Why do I have to shower and brush my teeth? Why is there no laser wall that I can walk through that would instantly burn all dirt, bacteria, and germs off of me, and comb my hair? I don’t want my street cleared of snow when the plow drivers get here. There should be heated streets for my convenience that guarantee snow won’t accumulate on them. And whose idea was it that we should have to waste our precious time studying to gain knowledge? I want to be able to plug myself into the computer and download everything I want to know when I want to know it. Rooms that clean themselves, grass that mows itself, videogames that beat themselves; it is all in our reach, why is it not here yet? Why is it that I still have to allow a third of my life to deteriorate away with sleep? There should be a way for people to achieve the necessary effects of REM sleep without ever having to stop enjoying life. Also, there should be no need at this point in human evolution for a man to have to waste time to “date” and “woo” a woman. People should just get together and procreate. That is what we were made to do, and that is where it is going to go anyway. Who decided that the whole song and dance was necessary? The point that I am trying to get across is that this world could be a much better, much quicker place than it is. Imagine how much more anyone could get out of life if there was no waiting at all. Like I said, I’m sick of waiting for my instant gratification. I want it now, but I suppose I’ll just have to continue dragging my feet through this tiresome existence until someone comes up with a way to deliver on my needs, until the inevitable instant instant gratification arrives. That is after all where we are headed, so I cannot imagine it taking too much longer.