Would You Rather

That all too familiar conversation go to that can shed some light on the people you're talking to. Would you rather eat 10 crickets or 1 large spider? It goes well with the "would you do this for a million dollars?" The "this" being something outrageous of course. These are time fillers and they are delving questions that can put the game of Scruples to shame. One can learn a lot about people by watching them with animals and with those that serve...the quality of your character becomes apparent rather quickly when you got a dog licking your face or your waitress has screwed up your order. And just as true you can get a sense of someone when they answer questions like would you rather be able to fly for a day or be invisible for a day? Psycho-semantics aside it can be illuminating on may levels when a question is asked and answered.

In the category of what would you do for a million dollars, I was asked once if I would suck a dick for a million dollars. My answer was no. Nobody believed me but I stick by my half jokey response which was as follows: I was married at the time so one could assume that my then wife would wonder where I got the extra money lying around and once the reason was explained...bam!! Half the money gone in the divorce. Not to mention legal fees. So now I performed fellatio on a guy for $400,00. One can assume that I would have had to have gone "all the way" with said fellow, correct? Well, while I have no issue with anyone's sexual leanings, I am a man smitten with women. I have no interest in parts that I already posses. Therapy is expensive I hear. God only knows how much money that would eat up. Lastly, I provided a service in return for payment...Revenue Tax Guidelines stipulate I'm going to owe income tax and HST on that income. Seriously, at the end of the day I might have faced Mr Smiley for $20,000...no sirree bub!! Told you my brain works funny.

Right now you're questioning two things. A) Why are we even friends and B) Where did that come from. Well, you'll need to decide for yourself on why we are friends but the second thing I can try to answer. Aside from my slightly bent way of looking at the world my tangential brain brought me here. Often someone will be talking about a subject, say spiderwebs and language, and the images that become part of my interpretation take over and bam!!!...I'm recalling the dick sucking story.

Now I realize I need to explain the spiderwebs. In what I assume was an English Lit course a new friend was talking about a question that was posed to the class. If language was a spiderweb, would you rather be the fly or the spider? That's the starting point and one of my tangents brought you the above story. I set out to write one thing and something else entirely comes out.

That question is very interesting to me. My gut reaction was to say the spider of course, probably I'm equating myself with the dominant species in this epic battle. But delve a little deeper and I'm not so sure. The spider weaves the web and controls its purpose. the fly gets caught in the web and has to deal with being stuck there. In literary terms, that fly is now "caught" in the web of words. Open for exploration and discovery. The intricacies of the story suck you in and keep you long after you have escaped.  There are so many ways that words can be interpreted, so in essence the fly gets a richer experience because while the spider wove the words, the arachnid already knows what the words mean. Nothing to see here for the spider. Yes, they had the talent to weave that web, a skill for which I have nothing but respect for, but it seems to me the victor is the fly, because they can experience the story in a multitude of ways. Eyes wide open. All of them.

And how's that for proof of weird brain activity. Seriously. Why are you still here? Whatever the reason I'm happy you are.

Ciao
D