How Challenges Relate to Lemmings, and other theories.
Ok, here's the story. Someone asks me to write their essay on Imperialism in China during the 19th Century at the same time someone else goes on about an essay on the Beatles. For some reason this clicks in my head as to how I could relate the two topics together, which then leads to the idea of writing an essay like a game of Word Association, whereby every paragraph topic is very loosely linked to the previous one, travels off in different tangents and eventually leads back to the beginning topic. So, this is what I ended up with.
Word Association Essay Challenge.
I like challenges. They present themselves at random opportunities - in an interview, DIY building and in writing tasks like this one. You can either attack them, flailing around with a large sword and screaming blue murder like Miss Muffet when she saw the spider eyeing up her lunch, or run away like Brave Sir Robin. There is, as always, a third option. The analytical approach, like when faced with a Rubiks cube that someone has switched all the stickers around on. The type of challenge you know you're never going to win but you have a go anyway, because you're a stubborn little git.
Much like TV show contestants really. The people that should know better but go on things like Total Wipeout just to say they've made a royal prat of themselves on national television. Bruises and mud filled shoes aside, game shows are all about the bright lights and cheesy smiles, the busty assistants in skimpy leotards mocking gormless contestants with fake sympathy for not walking away with the thousand pound cash prize which they had to go through so much effort to get. Because answering a few questions is really rocket science. At least some contestants go through the physical pain of being laughed at by viewers at home for the opportunity.
But it wouldn't work without the colour. Black and white is just a bit monotonous and sepia is just different shades of the same tea stain on a page. Without colour we wouldn't have the misconceived rainbow song, which decided that pink was the best colour to be inserted just to make it fit the rhythm, whilst indigo and violet were cruelly smashed together and stuck under the shady category of purple. Nor would we have such a vague way of depicting part of British history. Why did Richard of York give battle in vain? I dunno, but it makes a good mnemonic.
Song writers seem to like rainbows as well. The songs about them tend to come out a bit soppy and sentimental, attempting to inspire us to appreciate everything around us, embrace thy neighbour and put behind the knowledge that she just ran off with your scales. It's the type of sunny outlook on life that either makes you want to make like a lemming and jump off a bridge from the horrible realisation that no matter how many times you 'always look on the bright side of life' that it is still definitely a piece of rubbish and you can't be bothered with the smell any longer. Either that or it sends you into such a happy stupor that you feel the need to massacre a few dozen teddy bears just to regain the balance.
They are just dreams. Dreams I tell you. They belong in your head while you're asleep. Not out in the open terrorizing everyone they come across. That's when dreams turn into nightmares - other people's nightmares. An apocalypse of flesh eating zombies might seem like fun and games to you, but it's a different story for the poor bugger being gummed to death by his grandma across the street.
Aspirations on the other hand are all fine and dandy. You can have them. Wanting to be a chef, ro a hairdresser, or 'that bloke down the street that sells the big issue' are all perfectly tangible aspirations, although some of them require a great deal less time spent religiously attending an educational facility than others. For example, being a doctor takes a lot more reading of books than say being a car park warden. To be good at ones job, whether it be putting people back together, or pulling them apart to figure out in which suspicious way they dropped dead, you need the desire to put up with the mind numbing lectures, the endless pages of a dissertation on why some tiny little blob on a diagram is so vital to the function of the human body and not just a printer blot.
In other words, you have to rise to the challenge of it all. Life is one big challenge, and if you fall down the big stone steps of defeatism, prepare to live in a state of relative boredom and drudgery. Sometimes boredom leads to its own little challenges. Creating things just because you can, blowing a raspberry at failure for the sheer hell of it. This essay is one such challenge, but is nothing but an hour or so's entertainment on a sunny afternoon. Not like climbing Everest in nothing but shorts, t-shirt and a pair of flip flops. That's just daft.
~ This is property of Kirstine Heald, anyone who attempts to steal it and use it as their own shall find their attempts met with pain, frustration and a black eye caused by my cat wielding a frying pan.
Word Association Essay Challenge.
I like challenges. They present themselves at random opportunities - in an interview, DIY building and in writing tasks like this one. You can either attack them, flailing around with a large sword and screaming blue murder like Miss Muffet when she saw the spider eyeing up her lunch, or run away like Brave Sir Robin. There is, as always, a third option. The analytical approach, like when faced with a Rubiks cube that someone has switched all the stickers around on. The type of challenge you know you're never going to win but you have a go anyway, because you're a stubborn little git.
Much like TV show contestants really. The people that should know better but go on things like Total Wipeout just to say they've made a royal prat of themselves on national television. Bruises and mud filled shoes aside, game shows are all about the bright lights and cheesy smiles, the busty assistants in skimpy leotards mocking gormless contestants with fake sympathy for not walking away with the thousand pound cash prize which they had to go through so much effort to get. Because answering a few questions is really rocket science. At least some contestants go through the physical pain of being laughed at by viewers at home for the opportunity.
But it wouldn't work without the colour. Black and white is just a bit monotonous and sepia is just different shades of the same tea stain on a page. Without colour we wouldn't have the misconceived rainbow song, which decided that pink was the best colour to be inserted just to make it fit the rhythm, whilst indigo and violet were cruelly smashed together and stuck under the shady category of purple. Nor would we have such a vague way of depicting part of British history. Why did Richard of York give battle in vain? I dunno, but it makes a good mnemonic.
Song writers seem to like rainbows as well. The songs about them tend to come out a bit soppy and sentimental, attempting to inspire us to appreciate everything around us, embrace thy neighbour and put behind the knowledge that she just ran off with your scales. It's the type of sunny outlook on life that either makes you want to make like a lemming and jump off a bridge from the horrible realisation that no matter how many times you 'always look on the bright side of life' that it is still definitely a piece of rubbish and you can't be bothered with the smell any longer. Either that or it sends you into such a happy stupor that you feel the need to massacre a few dozen teddy bears just to regain the balance.
They are just dreams. Dreams I tell you. They belong in your head while you're asleep. Not out in the open terrorizing everyone they come across. That's when dreams turn into nightmares - other people's nightmares. An apocalypse of flesh eating zombies might seem like fun and games to you, but it's a different story for the poor bugger being gummed to death by his grandma across the street.
Aspirations on the other hand are all fine and dandy. You can have them. Wanting to be a chef, ro a hairdresser, or 'that bloke down the street that sells the big issue' are all perfectly tangible aspirations, although some of them require a great deal less time spent religiously attending an educational facility than others. For example, being a doctor takes a lot more reading of books than say being a car park warden. To be good at ones job, whether it be putting people back together, or pulling them apart to figure out in which suspicious way they dropped dead, you need the desire to put up with the mind numbing lectures, the endless pages of a dissertation on why some tiny little blob on a diagram is so vital to the function of the human body and not just a printer blot.
In other words, you have to rise to the challenge of it all. Life is one big challenge, and if you fall down the big stone steps of defeatism, prepare to live in a state of relative boredom and drudgery. Sometimes boredom leads to its own little challenges. Creating things just because you can, blowing a raspberry at failure for the sheer hell of it. This essay is one such challenge, but is nothing but an hour or so's entertainment on a sunny afternoon. Not like climbing Everest in nothing but shorts, t-shirt and a pair of flip flops. That's just daft.
~ This is property of Kirstine Heald, anyone who attempts to steal it and use it as their own shall find their attempts met with pain, frustration and a black eye caused by my cat wielding a frying pan.