So much to say, so little time

Well, I have a ton of stuff that has been rolling around in my noggin over the last week or so, from mundane inanities like the Rubik's cube as a metaphor for both positive and negative views of life, to topics about which I have a great deal of passion - say the existence of god(s), end of life issues, rational construction of a moral system, and on and on and on...

But I don't really feel like writing much of the heavy s**t right know, so I will content myself with my Rubik's cube metaphor... this has occured to me on more than one occasion over the last two weeks, and I feel like writing it down (BTW, hit my best time yesterday - 55.4 seconds, and I haven't been close since, still averaging around 1 minute 30 seconds, dropping down to 1:15 every once in a shile and going up to 1:50 every once in a while, but consistently howvering around the minute -thirty mark)

Anyway...

It seems to me that the cube could be a metaphor for the pessimist's view of life (though some cynics might argue that this is the realist's view, and on my worst days I tend to agree, but then again, I am clinically depressed, so what the hell does that tell you?). You see the cube is really about perfecting an ultimately mindless and useless task, then repeating that task over and over and over, even if you can't get any better. It is much like Sysiphus (sp?) constantly rolling the boulder up the hill, but with an added cynical twist - you screw up the cube yourself then try to solve it, only to screw it up again. How like many jobs, where we rush to complete one mindless task, and in the process create other mindless tasks for ourselves, all of which are ultimately pointless... Or relationships that we hasten to fix and then break apart and remend in an endless cycle of misery... Or life in general where we hurry to get noplace so that we can save time to spend it on nothing, hurrying and scurrying until we meet our end having accomplished nothing except for endlessly repeating the same pattern... Which could go for the human race - endlessly repeating the same mistakes, not because of institutions, governments, or religions, but simply because we are people and that is our nature (incidentally, blaming religion or society or republicans or democrats or whatever group for being the root of evil is purest sophistry -all those groups have done great good and great evil, like virtually every group every, and they all have one common denominator - human beings - who ultimately choose good or evil).

Or on the lighter side, one could point to the zen-like state that you enter in the solution of the cube, performing a mindless task with a religious devotion like a mantra taking one to a state of non-existence of self, of other, of anything, just perfecting the task - like a swordsman trying to perfect the art of the draw, or a potter losing himself in his craft, etc., etc. Obviously this one is not as well thought out as the other - I am in a bit of a bitter mood, and have been for a couple of weeks - no good reason, just where I am, so this positive crap feels phony to me, but I think there might be a kernel of truth in it somewhere - it just doesn't seem like it right now.

But on to other things; I am going to be out of town for most of the next two weeks, and when I am in town, I don't know if I can game or not, but I am going to be adding a blog to this - an L5R blog. I am going to indicate whether a post is for the High or Low power group, and anyone can respond to the post (in character of course) and tell me how they interact with the situation. I figure that this way I can keep up my ideas for the games, have a place to post summaries, and be able to give experience for players who are out of the area... Oh yeah and I can post all the house rules in detail and see if anyone wants to volunteer ideas for other rules or getting rid of rules.

I think it should work out pretty well - look for it in the next few hours. Here is the link, it is in my list of blogs to the side as well: http://tosavethesteelthrone.blogspot.com/