Ricky asked me to post this.
I sometimes have thoughts. Some of them, I think of independently, but this particular one was prompted by the plumbing buddy.
We were doing what we often do when we're in the store, not working. He's a bad influence on me, see, he makes me not work. He makes me talk.
The point is rapidly escaping. Let's get back to it.
I just realised, writing that last sentence, that this is pretty much a stream of consciousness writing.
Point.
He was doing that thing he does often, talk about something using big words to signify that he's saying something deep, when it is, in fact, not deep at all. I guess it impresses the girls or something, but I like to call him on his bullshit.
He used the word (s?) "self-actualisation" in an actual conversation once. That's pretty much what I mean.
So, in this particular case, he was going on about things having meaning and his seeing how everything that had happened in his life for the past year had been leading up to something. I rolled my eyes and said that only happened in movies. He disagreed, and started talking about how he viewed his life as a book, with chapters and whatnot. I tried real hard for about 25 seconds, and I wasn't able to make that work for me. I pretty much went "meh".
Funny how mowing the lawn is useful to think. You have a few hours all to yourself with nothing to distract you, so you think. By "you"? I mean "I". Because I thinked. Thunked? My spellchecker says that thinked isn't a word. It offers "thunked" as an alternative.
In any case, I realised that the reason that life as a book isn't an attractive metaphor to me is because life as a TV series is much better.
I wasn't able to articulate why I liked a TV series better until just now, when I had an insight on the bowl. Books usually have a single overarching plot that gets resolved at the end of the book. That's the problem, I think. TV series don't have that. TV plots get resolved at the end of the season, and the next season picks up new plot threads and creates new conflicts, sometimes hinted at in previous seasons, sometimes not. I think that's a lot more appropriate metaphor for life, because most people don't have a single conflict-goal-thing that they're striving toward. It's more compartmentalised. "Goal achieved. Good work on all the character development in the last season. Here's your next mission."
I also really like the idea of having different main characters in my life from season to season, with different names and faces being flashed during the theme tune.
Haven't come up with the theme tune yet. It might change from season to season. I next next season might have a Dexter Freebish tune for the first few episodes, but I may be getting ahead of myself here.
There are, of course, not only main characters, but secondary characters, who might appears in a couple of scene every other episode, and also the background characters that are there somewhere but don't affect your life most of the time. They might be in three or four episodes in the whole season.
It's pretty easy to delimitate seasons by which characters are in it, actually. I think I'm probably in season six of my life right now. It's a different season from those that came before. It's the one that nobody loves except the critics, because it's different.
But season five first.
It was, obviously, grade 12. You have people like Marianne and Jess moving from secondary to main character (with a spot in the main credits), a whole lot of people moving from tertiary to secondary character (Karine and Mel, mostly) and whole new big bads. Like my french teacher and Isabelle. Obviously, the season finale was grad and all that came with it, since that's a very appropriate place to end a season.
Season six is odder. It's like the producers destroyed most of the sets from last season, and weren't able to sign on most of the characters, so most of them have been dropped. Most of them main cast are secondary characters from previous seasons, with a few exceptions, like the plumbing buddy, who is a new character. The odd thing is, there's no real plot involving me in this season. There are plenty of plots, but they mostly involve other people, and me only peripherally. It's certainly a new situation to be in, and not at all unpleasant, because I know that whatever I do won't really matter down the line, because, hey, these people won't be in the credits by the time next season rolls around. They will, at best, be special guest stars two or three times. I also don't have any character arc for the season. It's weird, but I'm just there, and I'm not feeling any self-growth (self-actualisation?) because there's nothing I can strive for that'll matter in a month.
Next season finale is on August 20th. New season starts the day after, I can't wait. It'll be the gimmick "Joffré moves away to the big city and doesn't know what the fuck. Watch him make friends and deal with his roommate, who may be technically insane" season. There's plenty of plot there. And if ratings ever stop to drop, the producers can pull out gimmickier gimmicks that have already been set up in the story, like "Germany!", or "Africapalooza!".
This is a good metaphor. I'm keeping it.
I hope there's a musical episode some time. Those are always nifty.
We were doing what we often do when we're in the store, not working. He's a bad influence on me, see, he makes me not work. He makes me talk.
The point is rapidly escaping. Let's get back to it.
I just realised, writing that last sentence, that this is pretty much a stream of consciousness writing.
Point.
He was doing that thing he does often, talk about something using big words to signify that he's saying something deep, when it is, in fact, not deep at all. I guess it impresses the girls or something, but I like to call him on his bullshit.
He used the word (s?) "self-actualisation" in an actual conversation once. That's pretty much what I mean.
So, in this particular case, he was going on about things having meaning and his seeing how everything that had happened in his life for the past year had been leading up to something. I rolled my eyes and said that only happened in movies. He disagreed, and started talking about how he viewed his life as a book, with chapters and whatnot. I tried real hard for about 25 seconds, and I wasn't able to make that work for me. I pretty much went "meh".
Funny how mowing the lawn is useful to think. You have a few hours all to yourself with nothing to distract you, so you think. By "you"? I mean "I". Because I thinked. Thunked? My spellchecker says that thinked isn't a word. It offers "thunked" as an alternative.
In any case, I realised that the reason that life as a book isn't an attractive metaphor to me is because life as a TV series is much better.
I wasn't able to articulate why I liked a TV series better until just now, when I had an insight on the bowl. Books usually have a single overarching plot that gets resolved at the end of the book. That's the problem, I think. TV series don't have that. TV plots get resolved at the end of the season, and the next season picks up new plot threads and creates new conflicts, sometimes hinted at in previous seasons, sometimes not. I think that's a lot more appropriate metaphor for life, because most people don't have a single conflict-goal-thing that they're striving toward. It's more compartmentalised. "Goal achieved. Good work on all the character development in the last season. Here's your next mission."
I also really like the idea of having different main characters in my life from season to season, with different names and faces being flashed during the theme tune.
Haven't come up with the theme tune yet. It might change from season to season. I next next season might have a Dexter Freebish tune for the first few episodes, but I may be getting ahead of myself here.
There are, of course, not only main characters, but secondary characters, who might appears in a couple of scene every other episode, and also the background characters that are there somewhere but don't affect your life most of the time. They might be in three or four episodes in the whole season.
It's pretty easy to delimitate seasons by which characters are in it, actually. I think I'm probably in season six of my life right now. It's a different season from those that came before. It's the one that nobody loves except the critics, because it's different.
But season five first.
It was, obviously, grade 12. You have people like Marianne and Jess moving from secondary to main character (with a spot in the main credits), a whole lot of people moving from tertiary to secondary character (Karine and Mel, mostly) and whole new big bads. Like my french teacher and Isabelle. Obviously, the season finale was grad and all that came with it, since that's a very appropriate place to end a season.
Season six is odder. It's like the producers destroyed most of the sets from last season, and weren't able to sign on most of the characters, so most of them have been dropped. Most of them main cast are secondary characters from previous seasons, with a few exceptions, like the plumbing buddy, who is a new character. The odd thing is, there's no real plot involving me in this season. There are plenty of plots, but they mostly involve other people, and me only peripherally. It's certainly a new situation to be in, and not at all unpleasant, because I know that whatever I do won't really matter down the line, because, hey, these people won't be in the credits by the time next season rolls around. They will, at best, be special guest stars two or three times. I also don't have any character arc for the season. It's weird, but I'm just there, and I'm not feeling any self-growth (self-actualisation?) because there's nothing I can strive for that'll matter in a month.
Next season finale is on August 20th. New season starts the day after, I can't wait. It'll be the gimmick "Joffré moves away to the big city and doesn't know what the fuck. Watch him make friends and deal with his roommate, who may be technically insane" season. There's plenty of plot there. And if ratings ever stop to drop, the producers can pull out gimmickier gimmicks that have already been set up in the story, like "Germany!", or "Africapalooza!".
This is a good metaphor. I'm keeping it.
I hope there's a musical episode some time. Those are always nifty.