Split Laundry Personalities

Because of my own limited experiences and my exposure to fictional characters such as Two-Face and Jekly and Hyde, I always thought of split personality disorder as a largely fictional disease. Even then, I imagined that if were real, it would have dramatic symptoms. Alter egos were evil beings who love destruction, who revel in chaos and who fiddle while Rome burns.

I've begun to suspect that split personalities are not so rare, nor so dramatic; I even worry that I might have one. I realized this just this evening after returning from the laundromat. I placed my clean clothes on the floor and grabbed my towel off of the door hook only to find a used undershirt hiding there. "I have no idea how that got there" was the first thing I thought, but, deep down, I knew that I myself placed it there.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. In my experience as a (pretend) grown up who does his own laundry, it's a rare occassion that I return to my room not to find an extra sock or pair of boxers hiding in a dusty nook, waiting desperately to be found and reunited with their generation of dirty clothes.

And that bugs the crap out of me. Laundry is already a sysiphean task; it's as if Sysiphus realized reached the crest he had been aiming for only to find it was was actually only a plateau, and the hill continued! So I find it strange that my natural aversion to doing laundry hasn't trained me to clean every possible under(shirt/wear) and sock so that I can get every last day out of that laundry load.

With that in mind, what if I do have an alter-ego who loves destruction, who hates order and efficiency, and whose ultimate goal is to hasten the entropy of the universe? And what if the way that he manifests that is to hide my laundry from me? That would explain the socks tucked inside pillowcases, the shirts hidden in instruments and the underwear disguised in a stack of magazines. This would also explain why my split personality is so well hidden from everyone else, and even myself.  His mission is so discrete and precise that he can afford to snooze most of the time, only awakening at key moments. But then, in an instant, he can appear to tug open the doors under the sink and flick an undershirt in before he disappears without me noticing.

I tell you, it's a scary thing once you realize what your alter ego might be up to. I fear I may be trapped in a battle of wits with him till the end of my days.

Great Balls of Fire

I was blessed enough to get to spend a few days in Hood River, Oregon. More precisely, I suppose I should say around Hood River - there was a good deal of camping in the woods, far away from anything resembling a town. I spent the night of August 11 around Bulo Point, i.e. some really dark woods on a hill, following the recommendation of someone I met in a bar (classic Brendan move, by the way. Taking the advice of strangers in bars is probably what will kill me).

If you want to feel really small without taking hallucinogens, go out to someplace with zero light pollution when there's a meteor shower, go to sleep, wake up at 2 in the morning, crawl out of your tent, think about how far you are from other people, then stare at the sky for a while until you get cold. It worked for me.
Anyway, I started thinking about that argument against the existence of God that says humans can't be that important because we are so tiny in comparison to the rest of the universe that to think we play any special role in the plans of an omnipotent being is foolish. From there, I pondered on how those tiny flecks of glitter in the sky are actually flaming balls of gas undergoing constant nuclear fusion, and hey, that's pretty cool.

Flashback to all those times my mother shouted at me for sticking magnifying glasses between (mostly) flammable objects and the sun. I'm an admitted and unrepentant pyromaniac. Do not ask me for a light if you like your eyebrows. 

There I was, watching the twinkling of violent explosions light years away, thinking "Cool. Fire!" And then I had another thought. "I really like the idea of a God who makes gigantic glowing orbs of destruction and energy and flame for fun." Because if I were an omnipotent being, I'm pretty sure I would make those, too, and I'd never get bored of the things, so I'd make sure they lasted a long time, and I'd also keep churning'em out in giant fire factories so I'd never run out. Unlike humans. I'd probably get bored of those after a few thousand years and stop making the things. 

I initially meant this to be a comforting post, but now I realize that the conclusion to draw is that either there is no God, or if there is, he and I think alike, and I'm not entirely sure which one is more terrifying.

The most terrifying Venn Diagram I have made yet

Too much workday excitement

I was greeted at work this morning with more scowls than I am used to. Not more than I can handle, mind you. I used to work with children, so scowls, tears, and tiny fists have no affect on me (my impervious armor is useful for dealing with both children and women*), but one likes to know the reason behind scowls directed in one's general direction. Fortunately, I was not left to ponder this mystery for long. Sitting down at my desk was like turning to the last page of a whodunnit - everything was perfectly clear to me without straining the eyes or running the risk of paper cuts from turning pages. Unlike most good murder mysteries, however, the culprit was not the butler. If anything, it was actually a lack of a butler that had rendered me about as popular as Jimmy Carter. "Yesterday's soccer socks!" I gasped.

Too late to save Mr. Boddy, I realized it was the socks in the Study with the Candlestick

Still, I like a lack of workplace hostility, so I gathered up my socks and left them in the sun to dry out (That'll teach you to club your host over the head while he's trying to relax!), and then wandered over the the cafeteria to quench my thirst with the best drink known to man, Snapple (surprisingly, Snapple did not pay me to say any of this).

I love the smell of Snapple in the morning. Smells like victory.

"Made from the best stuff on earth!," I tell myself out loud (I got more scowls for this). "No wonder this is so good." With my next sip, I remember that drinking Snapple is not only delicious, but informative, too!

Holy sh*t! No frickin' way!

"No. It can't possibly be true. No way do cats have that many muscles in their ears. This must be some cruel joke by Snapple," I think to myself. Alas, it was a cruel, cruel joke. It was as if they knew me. I snapped out of my incredulous, glassy eyed state only to find that the shock had caused a tragedy easily on par with Mel Gibson's meltdown:

Look, it's like the dead snapple is flipping me off

So I found a quiet corner of my office where I could hide until my tears dried up. Some mornings, it's best to stay home.

*Haha! Just kidding. Women's fists affect me.