Stick with me, I'm going somewhere with it...
You grow up and you learn. Everything is a learning experience, whether you know it or not. And you grow up with certain finite knowledges. For example, you KNOW fire is hot and you KNOW ice is cold. In the same way, you know certain things about more obscure circumstances, such as television. You KNOW that every time you watch Sesame Street, the same song is at the beginning of every show and you KNOW Big Bird is a big yellow bird with a big hairy elephant-friend. But, there are also things that you don't usually think about because the average person doesn't question things that they KNOW. There are plenty of things that have bothered me about things that we supposedly KNOW all about, but in the end have no knowledge of whatsoever. For example, what kind of bird IS Big Bird? And where do Snuffalufagus' come from? And is Snuffy the only Snuffalufagus? Because, the guy's name IS Snuffalufagus, implying that he is in fact the ONLY Snuffalufagus. If he weren't the only one, then he'd need some sort of surname...in this way he's sort of like Tigger. He IS a Tigger, but there's no confusion as to WHICH Tigger you're reffering to when you SAY Tigger because, as the song says, he is, in fact, the only one.
Of course, I realize that these questions can never be answered because obviously the creator of Big Bird didn't have a particular bird in mind when designing the puppet, and Snuffy's creators didn't have an elaborate backstory on the evolution of the modern Snuffalufagus. But, there are questiong that obviously must have some answer within the world that's created onscreen. One legit question might be concerning the sexual preference of fictional characters. For example, I always thought Rabbit from The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was a lesbian. Now, later in life I found out that Rabbit is a guy, but as I said before, many of these cartoons make no references to gender, they simply ARE. So, I always assumed Rabbit was a girl, but that she was a frigid bitch...and eventually that conclusion matured into the assumption that she must be a lesbian. Now, the writer of the original stories did NOT have sex in mind when he wrote them. However, we DO know that there IS sex in the Hundred Acre Wood because of Roo. Roo is a child kangaroo who has a (single) mother named Kanga. Now, for Roo to exist, Kanga had to be able to find and mate with a male kangaroo...further implying sexual inercourse, finally revealing that there must be some concept of sexual preference within the Pooh universe. Ergo, when I thought Rabbit was a woman, I assigned the title of homosexual to her. The point is that while the easy way out of these types of questions is to just say "They have no sexual preferences because the creators didn't give them any." But, to some extent, the world in which the fictional characters exist escapes the perameters created by the original author. For example, if the writer of the original Pooh stories said that the Hundred Acre Wood was an island, there's nothing from keeping someone else's imagination to expand upon the already created fictional universe and create a mainland across the sea in which the island is located. This is possible because, unless specified by the author, every question that CAN be asked HAS an answer within the universe somewhere. So, yes, Kanga DID have sex with a male kangaroo. Why? Because I said so and I was the first one to say so because the original author said nothing about it.
Now, I know what you're saying, WHY is Kyle thinking about sex inthe Pooh universe. Well, that's not what I'm thinking about, I'm merely using it to illustrate a point. The failure of the author of the Pooh books to mention sexual preference is not a problem because the only consequece of such an action is that I'm sitting here thinking about who boinked who. But, the same concept applies to other things that DO matter, and that's what I'm concerned with. Take the bible. We don't know who wrote all the books in the bible, but we KNOW who wrote the gospels. We know that IN the gospels, it's written that Jesus went to the garden at Gathsemene the night before he died and prayed and that when he came back from praying, he found all the apostles asleep and then spoke to them as they were asleep. Now, if we didn't think outside of the box, here, all this would make sense. However, take a moment: if the apostles were asleep...and the apostles wrote the gospels, then how did they know what Jesus said to them while they were asleep? And how did they know what Jesus was saying when he went away on his OWN to pray BY HIMSELF? The truth is that there is no way they could have known...they were asleep. This means that at least THIS portion of the bible is a fabrication. Now, if we know that ONE portion of the gospel is fake, then how do we know what OTHER parts are fake? The problem here is that the content of the bible is no small matter. Wars have been fought, religions and ways of life have been formed and crushed based on the words that ended up in that book and for some of it to be nothing more than the whim of some fiction writer and for us to not know which parts are real and which parts are fake is a BIG fucking deal. Now, it's easy for one to speculate on what might have happened...but unlike my theory of "what I say about the Pooh universe goes," thoughts like these shake the very foundations of lives and nations.
THOUGHT is the most powerful weapon mankind has ever known. All the power in the world began with one man's THOUGHT...before the drive, before the means, there was the idea. Where Snuffy came from is not a powerful concept, but ideas for weapons of mass destruction and ethnic cleansing...those are thoughts that the world hinges on. And all thought stems from man's struggle to make sense of the world and how to work and live with it, within it or without it. And knowledge...knowledge is NOT finite...not because there's an infinite number of THINGS to know about, but because the imagination has the ability to perpetually create an infinite amount of new facets for existing concepts.
Hmm...good thought, Kyle.
Of course, I realize that these questions can never be answered because obviously the creator of Big Bird didn't have a particular bird in mind when designing the puppet, and Snuffy's creators didn't have an elaborate backstory on the evolution of the modern Snuffalufagus. But, there are questiong that obviously must have some answer within the world that's created onscreen. One legit question might be concerning the sexual preference of fictional characters. For example, I always thought Rabbit from The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was a lesbian. Now, later in life I found out that Rabbit is a guy, but as I said before, many of these cartoons make no references to gender, they simply ARE. So, I always assumed Rabbit was a girl, but that she was a frigid bitch...and eventually that conclusion matured into the assumption that she must be a lesbian. Now, the writer of the original stories did NOT have sex in mind when he wrote them. However, we DO know that there IS sex in the Hundred Acre Wood because of Roo. Roo is a child kangaroo who has a (single) mother named Kanga. Now, for Roo to exist, Kanga had to be able to find and mate with a male kangaroo...further implying sexual inercourse, finally revealing that there must be some concept of sexual preference within the Pooh universe. Ergo, when I thought Rabbit was a woman, I assigned the title of homosexual to her. The point is that while the easy way out of these types of questions is to just say "They have no sexual preferences because the creators didn't give them any." But, to some extent, the world in which the fictional characters exist escapes the perameters created by the original author. For example, if the writer of the original Pooh stories said that the Hundred Acre Wood was an island, there's nothing from keeping someone else's imagination to expand upon the already created fictional universe and create a mainland across the sea in which the island is located. This is possible because, unless specified by the author, every question that CAN be asked HAS an answer within the universe somewhere. So, yes, Kanga DID have sex with a male kangaroo. Why? Because I said so and I was the first one to say so because the original author said nothing about it.
Now, I know what you're saying, WHY is Kyle thinking about sex inthe Pooh universe. Well, that's not what I'm thinking about, I'm merely using it to illustrate a point. The failure of the author of the Pooh books to mention sexual preference is not a problem because the only consequece of such an action is that I'm sitting here thinking about who boinked who. But, the same concept applies to other things that DO matter, and that's what I'm concerned with. Take the bible. We don't know who wrote all the books in the bible, but we KNOW who wrote the gospels. We know that IN the gospels, it's written that Jesus went to the garden at Gathsemene the night before he died and prayed and that when he came back from praying, he found all the apostles asleep and then spoke to them as they were asleep. Now, if we didn't think outside of the box, here, all this would make sense. However, take a moment: if the apostles were asleep...and the apostles wrote the gospels, then how did they know what Jesus said to them while they were asleep? And how did they know what Jesus was saying when he went away on his OWN to pray BY HIMSELF? The truth is that there is no way they could have known...they were asleep. This means that at least THIS portion of the bible is a fabrication. Now, if we know that ONE portion of the gospel is fake, then how do we know what OTHER parts are fake? The problem here is that the content of the bible is no small matter. Wars have been fought, religions and ways of life have been formed and crushed based on the words that ended up in that book and for some of it to be nothing more than the whim of some fiction writer and for us to not know which parts are real and which parts are fake is a BIG fucking deal. Now, it's easy for one to speculate on what might have happened...but unlike my theory of "what I say about the Pooh universe goes," thoughts like these shake the very foundations of lives and nations.
THOUGHT is the most powerful weapon mankind has ever known. All the power in the world began with one man's THOUGHT...before the drive, before the means, there was the idea. Where Snuffy came from is not a powerful concept, but ideas for weapons of mass destruction and ethnic cleansing...those are thoughts that the world hinges on. And all thought stems from man's struggle to make sense of the world and how to work and live with it, within it or without it. And knowledge...knowledge is NOT finite...not because there's an infinite number of THINGS to know about, but because the imagination has the ability to perpetually create an infinite amount of new facets for existing concepts.
Hmm...good thought, Kyle.