Deep Thoughts

By Brandon Berrett

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three

Deep Thoughts About Life

Deep Thought #1

The way I see it, there are three reasons never to be unhappy.

First:You were born. This in itself is a remarkable achievement. First of all, you (and I am talking physically and genetically, not spiritually) you had to win a race between you and 24,999,999,999 or so other wriggling contenders all rushing, metaphorically, to swim the English Channel and be the first ashore in France, as it were. And just think, you could have just been a flat worm and end up belonging to another family.

Second: You are alive. For the tiniest moment in the span of eternity, you have a body and exist in this marvelous time, as for endless eons you did not.

Even doing nothing is just grand in itself. You are sitting here in this never-to-be-repeated moment, reading this, not paying attention to whatever you are really supposed to be doing, sleeping, speculatively sniffing at your armpits, doing whatever it is you are doing, just existing is really beyond belief.

Third: You have plenty to eat; you live in a time of peace. You never have to worry about another country invading us.

If you just bear these things in mind, you will never be truly unhappy. Though, in fairness, I must point out that, if you find yourself alone in Genola, Utah on a rainy Monday evening, you may come close.

Deep Thought #2

Have you ever thought about your life? It is my opinion that humans lead the busiest life of any creature. We are the only creatures that think that frantically searching for your matching, lost sock is completely vital to our survival, or being late to your "underwater basket- weaving lesson" is important to his/her existence. But it is true, humans live the most worthwhile, meaningful lives. Now if you want to know about a creature with the most pointless life, look up the Pigeons.

They are the most amazingly panicky and dopey creatures alive. I couldn't imagine a more empty, less satisfying life. Here are the instructions for being a pigeon: 1. Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropiate items. 2. Get scared by a person walking along the sidewalk, and fly off to a statue to sit on it's head. 3. Take a dump. 4. Repeat.

I would rather stick to my busy life of "underwater basket weaving", thanks.

Deep Thought #3

Maybe it is my nature, but I just don't get Video Arcade Games. Generally, I can't even figure out where to insert the money, or, once inserted, how to make the game start. If, by some miracle, I manage to do both of these, I fail to recognize that the game has started, and waste valuable seconds searching for the button that says "start." Then, I have thirty confused seconds of total chaos without the slightest clue as to what is going on, while my friends shout, "You've just blown up Princess Leia, you goit!" and then the screen says, "Game Over."

One day, for no reason whatsoever, I put 50 cents in a machine called "Killer Kickboxer" or something like that, and spent a minute punching a red button and waggling a joystick, while my character, a muscular blonde guy, kicked the drapes and threw magic disks into thin air while being attacked by equally muscular Orientals, who kicked me with kidney chops and beat me into the rug.

I tried out the other games, and for an hour, spent my time driving race cars into bales of hay and obliterated friendly troops with lasers and unwittingly helped zombies mutilate a boy and a girl. I even tried one of those claw games that give three nanoseconds to pick up a cheap stuffed animal. Eventually, I ran out of money and left.

This has no outlook on life whatsoever, but I like it when a writer makes me say, "Yeah, it's just like that."

Deep Thought #4

I've never understood why people from New York have this terrible reputation for being mean-spirited and uncharitable. I've always found them to be decent and open, and if you want to find out what you are not good at, you won't find more helpful people anywhere. It's true that they don't exactly smother you with affection, which takes a little getting used to when you've lived in Utah, where when you move into a new nieghborhood everybody comes to your house to welcome you like this is the happiest day in the history of the community, and everybody brings you a pie. Cherry pies, apple pies, chocolate cream pies, banana cream pies, and any other pie you can think of. In West Jordan, people move just to get 50 varieties of free pies.

Deepest of Deep Thoughts

We're talking Albert Einstein level

As one of the most modern and well educated countries of the world, you would think we could take pretty good care of ourselves, but it's not always like this. Everywhere you look, we are warned of things that we generally need not be warned about. It begins at the store, the minute you get there, "Pull." But it's useless; we always "Push" then "Pull," except on the way out, when it's "Pull" then "Push." We don't need these kind of signs, because we don't read them.

Once inside, you wander through the aisles and come to some stairs, "Step Up," it says. Oh! So that's houw you work those things. You would think someone who can dress themselves, get to the store, and shop by themselves wouldn't need to know how to operate stairs.

Now food is the death trap for dumb instructions. "Store in a dry place, do not freeze, do not boil, open can, place pan on open flame or heat source, eat." I thought you put a can of Pork & Beans in the microwave!

An old favorite of mine, "Do not litter," has now been replaced by "Dispose of Thoughtfully." It sure sounds okay, but it doesn't make sense. I could meet the requirements of "Dispose of Thoughtfully" by heaving a bottle into the river, then pausing to reflect on what a rotten thing that was to do. They should have stuck to "Do Not Litter," it's less confusing.

Now some commands are down-right insulting. There are signs in taxi cabs that say "No Spitting." Now anyone who would spit in a taxi cab probably couldn't read the sign in the first place, or would try very hard to ignore it. "No Smoking" at gas stations are daft and the ultimate insult. Although some individuals who don't know the properties of gasoline and light up in a cloud of gas fumes deserve everything that comes to them, the companies put them there in order to avoid a costly law suit. Sooner or later, some twit will blow himself up at a gas pump and the family will sue Texaco for $60,000,000 for emotional pain and suffering. I can just see it. "Your Honor, Ted was a kind but simple man. He should have been warned that gasoline explodes."

I find that if we all take some responsibility for ourselves, and put up signs like one of my 7th grade teachers, Mrs. Cox, said, "Hey you! Shut up and pay attention!" we would all benefit from it.

Deepest of Deep Thoughts #2

I've read that we spend a full third of our lives waiting. I found this very hard to believe, but I've done some serious analysis of what we spend our time waiting for, and came up with some pretty convincing evidence.

The very purest form of waiting is what we'll call the "Watched Pot" wait. This kind of waiting is, in fact, the most annoying of all. Take filling up the sink, for example. There is absolutely nothing you can do while this is going on but keep both eyes glued to the sink until it's full. If you try to cram in some extra-curricular activites, you're asking for it. So, you stand there, with your hands on the faucet, and wait. A temporary suspension of duties. During these types of waits, it's not uncommon for your eyes to lapse out of focus. The brain disengages from the body and wanders around the imagination in search for distraction. It finds none, and springs back into action only when the water runs over the edge and onto your socks.

The phrase "a watched pot never boils" probably comes from this experience. Pots don't care whether they are watched or not, the problem is that no one has ever seen a pot come to a boil. While they are waiting, their brains turn off.

Another form of this wait is boiling instant soup. The instructions are: bring 3 cups water to boil, add mix, simmer for three minutes, let stand for five minutes. I doubt that anyone has ever done this. I am pretty spineless myself, when it comes to instant soup, and usually boil the living heck out of them and wait for the noodles to sink. Some things are not worth the wait.

Another leader in the Long-Term Anticipation Field is the "Friday wait," which is a big one. The problem with waits that last more than a few minutes is you have to do other things in the meantime, like go to school. One of the most aggravating things about this is that, even though you must keep functioning during these intervals, is that there is less and less you are able to do as the big day arrives.

In the end, it is certainly obvious that we spend a good deal of our lives waiting. The person who said we do it a third of our lives may have been going easy on us. Well, the next time you're standing at the sink, waiting for it to fill up, or cooking soup mix that you have to eat until Friday, don't despair; you are probably just as busy as the next person.

Random Thoughts About Anything

Deep Thought #1

Among the many thousands of things I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first who stood by a pile of sand and said, "You know, I bet if we were to take some of this and mix it with potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid, yet transparent. We could call it glass." Call me dumb, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to make it into windows. As much as I admire sand's miraculous ability to be transformed into useful objects like glass and concrete, I am not a great fan of it in its natural state. To me, it is a primarily hostile, dangerous barrier that stands between where you are and the ocean. It blows in your face, gets in your food, and swallows vital objects like money and watches. In California, it burns your feet and makes you go "Ooh! Ah!" and hop to the water in a fashion the people with better bodies find amusing. When you are wet, it adheres to you like stucco, and cannot be shifted even with a fire hose. But, and here's the strange thing, the moment you step on a beach towel, climb into a car, or walk across a recently vacuumed carpet, it all falls off.

For days afterward, you tip astounding, mysteriously undiminishing piles of it onto the floor every time you take off your shoes, and spray the area with quantities more when you peel off your socks. Sand stays with you for longer than many contagious diseases. And dogs and small children use it as a potty. No, you can keep sand as far as I am concerned.

Deep Thought #2

I would like to take this moment to write about men and women, more about women.

Men, for all their shortcomings like washing large pieces of oily machinery in the kitchen sink or forgetting that a painted door stays wet for more than thirty seconds, and generally good when it comes to paying bills. They spend their time in line, waiting for tickets to a game or a movie, doing a wallet inventory, sorting through their coins. When the person who sells the tickets announces the cost, they immediately hand over an approximately correct amount of money, keep their hand extended for the change, however long it takes ir foolish they begin to look if there is, say, a problem with the amount of change given. And then, they, and take note, put the change away as they walk away instead of deciding that now is the time to search for the car keys and reorganize six months' worth of receipts.

And while we're on this rather sexist interlude, why is it that women never push the toothpaste tubes from the middle, like we men do? And always try to get somebody else to change a lightbulb? How are they able to smell and hear things that are so clearly beyond the range of a normal human, and how do they know from another room that you are about to dip a finger into the icing of a freshly baked cake? Why, above all, do they find it so insettling if you spend more than four minutes a day on the toilet? This is another longlasting mystery to me.

Still, it must be said that women are great with children, vomit, and painted doors. Three months after a painted door has dried, they will still be touching it as if suspecting it might turn on them. Thank you for reading this little passage, I thought it was important and needed to be said, but from now on, I will write with a brain capacity larger than a grape.

Deep Thought #3

Have you ever thought about the way we talk? English is the most ridiculous language ever invented. There is the normal slang, "Wuz up, howz it goin' bud? Look, I need to rustle up some dough so I get some grandage, wada ya say?" I try to avoid this kind of talk and press on to the big, long words just to annoy people. Whenever I go to eat with my friends, I talk like this just to annoy the person serving us; I enjoy talking like this. I asked him for a lustre of water freshly drawn from the house tap and presented au nature if a cylinder of glass, and, when he came around with bread rolls, I entreated him to present me with a tonged rondel of blanched wheat, oven-baked, and masked in a poppy-seed coating. I was just getting warmed up with this and about to ask for a fanned lap coverlet, freshly laundered and scented with a delicate hint of Lysol, to replace one that had slipped from my lap and now lay recumbent on the horizontal walking surface anterior to my feet when he spake, saying "Knock it off, you @*#!?%." and I realized that we were back in the no-nonsense world of Slang English. But, I continued silently. As I finished, the waiter invited me to withdraw from my meal and have a fresh caisson of fresh-ground drinking chocolate, complimented by the chef's own selection of mint wafers, awaited. I dressed the tabletop with a small circlet of copper and nickel specie, crafted at the United States Presidential Mints, and, suppressing a small eruption of gastro-intestinal air, effected my egress.

Ramblings of a Confused Mind

Deep Thought #1

A while back, me dad bought a new/used car. I, for one, am always confused when it comes to technical things like cars. One of the only things that I can understand about them is that they use gasoline to run and they take you places fast.

Now my dad took me over to one of my friend's house to spend the day. His family are the car gurus of the world. They know all the junk that you never need to know about cars. So, when I graced their doorstep, the first thing that they asked me was about my dad's new/used car.

"So, your dad got a new car, huh? How's it drive?"

You see, I'm lost already. "Well, it drives like a car. Why? Have you never been in one?"

And they they started peppering me with questions. "What sort of mileage do you get? How many gallons? What's the torque? Got twin overhead cams, or double-barrelled-alternator-carburetor with a full pike and a double twist dismount?"

I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want to know all this smeg about smegging cars!!! You don't take that kind of interest in anything else. I wanted to say, "Hey, I hear that you got a new refrigerator. How many gallons of freon does that baby hold? What's its BTU rating? How does it cool?"

This car had the usual array of switches and toggles, each designed to confound. Really now, what is one to make of a switch labelled |0|? How can anyone be expected to work out that a rectangle that looks like a television set with poor reception indicates the rear window heater? In the middle of this dashboard were two circular dials of equal size. One clearly indicated speed, but the other one totally mystified me. It had two pointers on it, one of which advanced very slowly and the other of which didn't seem to move at all. I looked at it for ages before it finally dawned upon me - this is true - that it was a clock.

I simply cannot wait until I am old enough to drive. Yippee!

Deep Thought #2

The human body is indeed a wonderful thing. Its infinitely complex way of doing things would take one of Bill Gates' top computers, working flat out, day and night, excluding Christmas, 3971 years to work out. The slightest flicker of the eyelids, the smallest movement of the big toe, involves such extraordinarily complex processes that the average man working flat out, day and night, including Christmas, would take a total of 84,643 years to work it out.

To put it simply, if it would take that long to figure all that out, you can imagine how long it would take to figure out how a boy leaves his normal hobbies, becomes an advisor to the all-high PDM of Kylevania and writing Deep Thoughts once every 96 days, you will get why I am so baffled. Good night.

The End.