By Gareth Edwards

Monday 4 October 2010

Why the world deserves this blog.

I’m often told by colleagues and loved ones that they feel they deserve “some kind of explanation”.

This blog sets out to provide just that - an explanation. Not just for the soup in the photocopier that one time, or the failure to see the label that said “Dry Clean Only” which is apparently unforgiveable even if someone was only trying to help. Rather, I aim to take a look at all the bigger picture – existence in general -  and see if I can’t provide you all with the explanation you deserve.

It can’t be explained all in one go, obviously. I think that’s where philosophers and physicists have gone wrong – trying to sort it all out at once. It clearly makes more sense to divide existence up into really a lot of quite small manageable bits such as “Which is the best cheese?” “Shouldn’t you be wearing a cardigan?” and “Which is heavier, a ton of feathers or our guilt at failing future generations?” Sooner or later that way we’ll end up with an answer to every possible question, and we’ll have some kind of explanation.

I’ll start with the question that I’m imagining I would have been most commonly asked, if I hadn’t tackled it in this first post. Here goes.

Why do people fall in love?
I think the most important point to make here is that love ought to be covered at all times. If the cover is left off and the love is poorly signposted then it becomes what lawyers call “an attractive nuisance” and unfortunately people can and do fall in.

What happens next depends very much on the relative density of the faller-in and the love. If the person is less dense than love they will float along on the surface. In extreme cases, such as a person of low gravitas falling into unusually heavy love they may even be able bounce around on the surface tension in blissful ignorance of the risks, like a wet dog on a paper trampoline. Conversely, a dense person falling into a frothy kind of love will sink like a granite otter unless they use some kind of a flirtation device, or the love turns out to be shallow enough to stand up in.

If you do manage to climb back out of love then it can usually be rinsed off with a mixture of alcohol and tears over a period of nineteen months.

For next week, why not pose your own question that you feel deserves some kind of explanation? Obviously you could have perfectly legitimate reasons for not doing that, in which case I shall be asking myself… “How we can ever truly prove the existence of cats.”



9 comments:

  1. Why do people feel guilty? where does inspiration come from? Are people inherently good? What would the world be like if tortoises were quick at moving?

    There's a few to get you started :)

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  2. What is a question within a question?
    And was that one?
    :0P

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  3. Why don't eggs taste like chicken? Related question: why are rain chances always given in increments of 10? Is there never a 42% chance of rain? Finally, would the world be different if Schrödinger had owned a dog?

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  4. Do fish bump into each other and how often? It's dark down there and I don't believe that they can see in the dark. That's like saying they can breath water. Oh sure dolphins have sonar but fish? I need to know. Is it all random down there?

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  5. On a related note, why do cats (if they exist) have faces?

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  6. I would like you to tackle all the cat-related questions first.

    The existence of cats
    Cats's faces
    Cats's tails
    Cats's trails
    Cats's snakes

    and such...

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  7. Cat's eyes! Which are best: cats or dogs?

    Perhaps you should just make your blog about cats, Gareth. Hmmm.

    One more. Where would we be without opossable thumbs?

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  8. Oh dear god! THAT'S love! I see it all now! Am carefully and wetly edging towards the rim of my paper trampoline even as I thumb this message in... Thankyou!

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