. . .

Corner of my Eye Of The Soul Of The Pyramid Of Pain

Goot eevneeng.

Eefneeng.

EeEeeEeefvneeEeeeEeeng.

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

Miiiiinnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeehaaaaaahaaaaaaa.

The Buddha spirit mugged a vole. The vole looked up, and said, Why did you do that? The Buddha spirit replied, Because I needed the money to support my crack habit. The vole was Enlightened.

Zen parables for the uncommon man.

Well, person, I suppose, but the phrase is "for the common man", and it's difficult to change without eradicating the subtle ironies inherent in the statement. English needs to be debugged. Badly.

Further parables:

Once, Lord Siddhartha was walking through the forest. He found a stream and, looking in, saw his reflection, shimmering and wavering in the ripples. Immediately, he jumped back and shouted, A Monster!

Actually, I could see that one as an actual parable.

Let me get more bizarre.

A young man was in the habit of sitting by the side of the road whacking himself in the head with a hammer until he drew blood, and then collecting money from passers-by. One day, a disciple of a Zen priest walked through town. Upon seeing this, he shouted, Master! and immediately left his priest to serve at the feet of the head-whacker. When the priest came to find his disciple, he found the two of them, happily sitting by the road, whacking themselves in the head with hammers. The priest spit in their begging bowl, and walked away, Enlightened.

Too many of the wierd thoughts traveling through my head in search of Zenness are actually Zen parables. That's the problem with Zen. It's hard to mock a religion that absolutely refuses to take itself seriously. The closest you can come is using Zen to mock other things. Let's see.

A certain student walked a long way to Iwo from Sajo to learn at the feet of the noted master, Bushi. He arrived, only to find that master Bushi had traveled to Sajo to get new disciples. But they were all going to burn in hell because they didn't take Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior.

That works!

I can shamelessly mock Christianity with Zen parables, adding "But they're all going to burn in hell etc. etc." to the end of each of them!

Life is good!

How beautiful How wonderful I carry water I gather fuel I'm going to burn burn burn

I feel all warm and happy now.

Picture me with a wide grin on my face.

Go on. I'll wait.

Picture it in excruciating detail.

You! You in the back! You think you can get away with just a stick figure! Come up to the front, and picture me ALL BY YOURSELF.

Now all of you together.

I didn't pick your pockets while your eyes were closed. That wasn't me. It was... little Zen gnomes.

You can't see the little Zen gnomes because they don't exist.

The Zen gnomes picked your pockets, of course. I already told you that.

Must think up a way to incorporate little Zen gnomes into more aspects of my life. Mmmmmmmm. Little Zen gnomes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Fallout. MmmmmmmmMmmMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

For those of you not aware, Fallout is a PC computer rpg. It comes closer to an actual rpg than anything else I've seen. You can solve missions in multiple ways, there are HUGE numbers of missions that you can totally ignore, and it even does things like people have different reactions to you depending on your charisma and your previous actions, and your intelligence determines what kind of conversational choices you have (if you have a really low int. you can only speak in grunts. An affirmative grunt, a negative grunt, and a noncommital grunt). Your actions have ACTUAL CONSEQUENCES. VERY close to being an actual rpg.

MMMMMMMMmmmmMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm. Fallout.

Of course, it also has plasma rifles. If you shoot someone with a plasma rifle, they collapse into a puddle of goo.

Must... move... on... Must... be... entertaining! Must... speak... in... complete... sentences!

Gorp.

I'm stretching this email out. Not for any real reason, just becuase whenever I start to end the sucker, either a) I get a new idea, b) little blue albatrosses (albatri?) orbit my head, or c) something distracts me.

But I will stop now.