Square Evidence

Human beings are a fascinating freak of nature.

We are the only carbon bound beings (to our knowledge) that are self aware. For example, pigs don't sweat too much about the methane they are producing causing global warming. I'd be surprised if the average hog even realized it passed gas.

By the way, to satisfy my pedantic sense of snobbery I would like to point out that pigs don't sweat. I know there is the maxim "to sweat like a pig". That idiom is idiocy. That is why they wallow, so they don't die of heat exhaustion. That and to set themselves apart from the average political lobbyist.

I'm afraid to admit how fun that was to point out to you.

Nevertheless I digress. It is a special capability for us meatbags to understand that we are. And we are blindingly confronted by this when we are alone. This is healthy because at a impressionable age we are taught that self-discovery is not a communal activity or spectator sport.

It must be that the distractions of our boring everyday lives keep us from peering too deep into the proverbial umbilical stump.

I was away on a business trip this week. I was in a community with a population being little more than 2^8.

I returned to my accommodations where someone asked if I wanted to watch TV. I honestly didn't. Not at all. Presented with dozens of channels to choose from I found one show that I wanted to see and it was over. (It was "Good Eats" on the food network).

And that was when I discovered again how I am so lucky to be married, and to have so many understanding friends. I tuned in Baroque music on the satellite receiver then downloaded and started to read "Pride and Prejudice".

As thrilling as the NHL or Desperate Housewives or Heroes is, I couldn't be bothered. I was happier chilling 1770's style. When I wasn't doing that I was reading programming documentation and whimsically desiring to recompile a kernel for the fun of it. It's like missing your last surgery recovery time.

Thus ends my short report on what I learned on my last business trip. It was that I need to keep those I love very happy because I have more chance of a pig sweating than finding others to accept, nay appreciate my eccentricities.