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Guest columnist Owen Wislon joins the Ill & Odd crew to share new insights on unknown and wondrous creatures, strange locations, myths, legends and all manners of things that make you say, "Oh wow!"
Hello Readers,
Apologies I've been absent from my court ordered community service here. You probably are asking, isn't regurgitating half-baked thoughts from the comfort of my Malibu pad not exactly difficult? Well I've said it before, how dare you, and you're welcome.
Recently one of your esteemed 'editors' called my probation officer and said I wasn't hitting my minimum requirements. I won't go into which of these two class acts snitched on me, I'm above that low and callous behavior and certainly don't want to get into it any further with skinny Jeff Tweedy. It's boring.
And Jeff sorry to bring you into this but the resemblance is uncanny, I need other people to understand this. I'll buy you another premium charcuterie board next time I have the pleasure of being in Chicago for some momentous Marvel junket.
Where was I supposed to start again? Sorry I'm a bit out of it as I'm not even typing this out I'm just recording this on my iPhone and having some free app transcribe it. I don't feel my hands were made for clacking away on a keyboard. They are for acting.
Anyway I'm supposed to talk about some weird shit that I've stumbled upon and I've certainly got that for you today. Well maybe not so weird per se but oddly intrusive into my head space. It definitely had me staring into my bathroom mirror filled with doubt and a creeping dread of the prison in which we find ourselves.
I'm here today to talk about Sea Monkeys.
Like me they are actors. They're not monkeys at all. They're actually brine shrimp (Artemia).
I remember back when we were kids Luke loved these little guys. Never mind the fact they don't resemble monkeys at all. That didn't matter to him, he was just happy to have some friends as I was otherwise occupied in our youth.
I was taking a stroll through Santa Monica recently on Pico boulevard off of 3rd street and I found myself in front of a pet store window. As I gazed into the interior at all the illuminated aquatic tanks and so forth, my memory snapped me back to those early days and I found myself smiling at the thought of these silly little guys floating back and forth aimlessly in our shared bedroom.
The more I thought about them, the more my smile started to fall off my face.
What are brine shrimp? What is their purpose?
Well looking into them you'd see they were created by a guy named Harold von Braunhut out of Tennessee back in 1962. They were created for a sole purpose. To sell them as a novelty to kids. He created them alongside his other invention, X-Ray Specs. Much like those, which didn't truly work and dashed my hopes of having my own Fast times at Ridgemont High moment (shoutout Phoebe Cates you glorious wonder and star), these little fellows were only a dream of something genuine.
Kids all over the country bought, and probably still buy, these little critters with the hope of capturing some magic in their own room as we did back when we were kids.
The problem is that if you take the time to think about it, you are creating an emotional prison. A prison in which the Sea Monkeys are born, age, and die all while hoping as they look through the glass that you, their God, will carry them with purpose on to their next destination. Except as you age you realize you are not God, you have not filled their life with purpose, you are a monster in a system you can't begin to comprehend.
Holy smokes stop and think about it! What is life without purpose?
An animal can be hunted for food, their life gives life to us and my gosh we should be grateful for that fact. Maybe that's where Buddhists sprung their religion from, that each living organism passes through this world with a purpose, and for it to be fulfilled before it moves on.
As humans, I feel our purpose is to love. You can't take anything with you when you go, but I think the people you love and who loved you, some sort of bond remains through this endless universe. For my sanity I feel it must.
Without that love, it's a pretty scary prospect man.
Hence the sweat pouring down my scalp as I pondered these brine shrimp. They aren't made for anything, they're whole existence is a joke. A joke made by a man who played God. How many thousands, millions, billions of brine shrimp have been born into this universe only to die forgotten by time? Can you have a soul without purpose?
Were we created as a joke?
It's a question I try to shunt out of my mind as I fear the answer more than the decline of my residual checks.
All I can do when I feel that fear, with hair standing up at the back of my neck, is to breathe, swallow it up, keep walking, and to be sure I walk with purpose.
Happy New Year.
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