Selections From the Philosophical Works of Theodore Hesperus, Gentleman

From This Electric World (1987)
Everyone should spend one day a year being contrary; simply disagreeing with every statement heard, every proposition put forth, every idea posited. Without disagreement there is no dialogue, without dialogue there is no education. It would also be fun if everyone was armed to the teeth on that day.

The crossword puzzle is perhaps the most pointless human endeavor. It is a waste of time unparalleled. The second biggest waste of time is sleeping.

Impotence is troubling, except when you’re talking about poison. No one wants to swallow poison and then be told that it is a highly potent poison.

The sheer number of all potato chips on Earth far exceeds the number of actual potatoes. That’s an interesting fact that often passes the thinking person by.

Scientists tell us that monkeys do not possess the powers of speech, nor of hypnosis. Unless the monkeys have just hypnotized us into thinking that they can’t talk. Conjecture is frightening.

There are true answers and false answers, but perhaps there could be a third. Maybe we could call it “maybe.”

What is hate? Perhaps hate is the absence of love or perhaps hate has a more intrisic existence. All I know is that I hate tuna fish sandwhiches.

From Meditations on the Honeybee (1981)
Writing a jazz composition is a lot like building a house; there are notes instead of bricks, musicians instead of laborers, saxophones instead of band-saws. Of course, if anyone ever tells you that music is more interesting than hammers it just means they’ve never truly studied all that hammers have to offer.

Puns are innate. Even children find mirth in the play on words. Did you hear about the rabbit who went to the barber to get a hare cut? We can alter that statement: did you hear about the rabbit who went to the Barbar to get a hare cut? Still further: Dead ewe here a boot the robot hoo wet two the bar bear too Ghent a heir cot? No, that was too far.

From Throwing Out Objectivism with the Bathwater (1990)
If you’re going to hate yourself do it for the right reasons, not just for petty things. Remember that you are your worst enemy. You’re the one who spends every day failing in all your endeavors and ruining your life. It’s your fault that you’ve wrecked everything. Isn’t that so much more important than that bad skin or those fat thighs?

Science often finds it difficult to explain certain things. People have pointed out that many of these things (the supernatural, God, curling) are not what science was made to explain. These selfsame personages are often themselves at a loss to explain their own existence. Do not take their opinions lightly.

Mind is an amalgamation of thought. We exist through the processes of memory. Thus, you are what you eat, but only if you remember eating it.

We fear because we cannot control or predict the future. No one fears the past and for good reason; the past cannot kill you. Except for ghosts, who are of the past, but may kill us in the future. The real reason that ghosts are scary is not because they are creepy, it is that the remind us of our own mortality, our own future death. Zombies, too.

From Waiting for Half an Eternity (1972)
Forgiveness is a trait that is not found in frogs. No one has ever been forgiven by a frog. These fellows hold an all-consuming grudge. Of course, maybe that’s simply because no person ever forgave a frog.

Is truth a relative or an absolute? It is a question worth considering. For society to function, we must act as if truth is an absolute, yet truth is based in flawed human perception, so perhaps truth is a relative. Just something to think about while they’re arraigning you for perjury.

The human form inanimate (be it dummy, puppet or corpse) allows us to contemplate the human form made animate; i.e. alive people. There is no in-between, no grey area, only life or death. This is why animatronic puppets violate the laws of Nature.

The discovery of a dichotomy is at once reassuring and frightening.

Forests are often damaged, even destroyed, but you never hear anyone speak of a forest being broken.

What do you believe in? Do you believe in that which you perceive? To do so you must believe in yourself. Do you believe in that which you cannot perceive? To do so you must doubt yourself.

From Contraception is the Death Mask of Finnish (1996)
If we lived in a world of peace we would not have armies or navies, arms manufacturers or police. A beautiful thought until you realize that all these people would lose their jobs, be unable to pay their bills or feed their children. Perhaps they could become so frustrated by their hopelessness that they would riot and then you’d have to call in the Park Rangers to restore order.

In an ideal society personal freedom would be high, there would be no disease, poverty or inequality. We would have no crime and we would support learning and education while suppressing injustice. As for miniature golf we could go either way.

Some people believe that humans are inherently good or inherently evil. This requires the presence of good and evil within our genetic code, otherwise our moral characteristics would have no way of being transmitted to the next generation. I happen to believe there is no code for morality, rather good and evil atoms which make up the DNA molecules. Most cobalt atoms are evil.

From The Games We Play (With our Brains) (1988)
Perhaps the spoken word influences our perception of everyday objects, like when you say “Look at that thing go!” and the listener looks that way, toward the going thing.

It is easy to hate and hardest to love. The easiest emotion is being hungry.

Cake is delicious and there is nothing quite as nice as the smell of a wonderfully tasty item baking. The smell can evoke memories of home, scenes from childhood, it can bring the past alive. You never get that from the smell of ice-cream freezing.

From Humanism is Second-Best (1997)
Opinions are like fish. There are many different types; some right, some wrong, some confused and all underwater.

It’s said that silence is golden. If curency is backed by gold then that would mean that silence would devalue the dollar.Sometimes for sake of a strong economy, I just yell my head off.

To look at a rainbow, cast from a post-precipitation prism, is to peer into the nature of light itself. While light illuminates , it also has its own form; a multitude of colors from red to blue to green. It even has colors we can’t percieve in the ultra-violet or the infrared. Light is its own animal, mysterious, vibrant and even angry at times. Light was often worshiped as a god by the primatives. Of course, I’m most thankful for light when I have to get up late at night ot take a piss.

Beauty is worth contemplating. When you see a beautiful object, take the time to stop and study it. Take a few minutes, get in close and examine each part individually. Where, you might ask, does beauty come from? Is it in the eye of the beholder, so to speak, or is it intrinsic to the nature of the objects themselves? Ask yourself this and any other questions which may arise as you stare in perplexity at the beauty. Don’t look too long, or it’ll probably make the chick uncomfortable.

What is violence? Must we define violence as a matter of collision? Certainly all violence involves collision yet not all collisions are violent. How fast must one or both objects be traveling for their collision to be violent? Plus, if violence is, by its very nature destructive, why is it so fun to watch?

From Revelations on the Pull-Out Couch (1990)
At some point in history there was the first human. As all humans are, he was capable of conjecture and it is worth wondering if he ever thought about the legacy of his species. I bet he never looked up at the Moon and thought his descendants would one day walk on it. He probably also never thought that we would one day invent fake vomit made of rubber. One day he was eaten by a wolf.

Take three hours out of your day and use them to stare at the wall. Really stare at it and pretend that you can see through it. What’s going on behind that wall? Maybe there are kids playing or a scientist working on a cure for some hideous disease, maybe it’s firemen getting ready to answer a call. Or for added fun, imagine that you’re watching a couple of hot lesbians get it on.

From The Space-Age Ludite (1965)
One day you’re walking along a beach and you find a watch. You examine the watch and notice its intricate cogs and gears and springs. Something so complex could not have arisen by chance, it must have been created. Unless of course watches were able to reproduce themselves under pressure by an environment with limited resources meaning only the best watches would survive to reproduce and pass their cogs on to the new watches. Then, I guess watches could have developed without an inventor, they just evolved from lower time pieces like sundials.

Pancakes are only a human phenomenon. No cheetah ever ate a pancake.

From Suitcase of Ideas (2005)
Imagine a blockade. What does it look like to you? Do you see a mighty armada of battleships, cruisers or carriers, stealthy submarines coursing through the deep? Personally, I like to think of blockaide, a sort of tasty beverage made from sugar, water and ground up wooden alphabet blocks.

Time is like a river and from time to time bubbles rise to the surface, bob about for a small bit and then sink back down again. We are like those bubbles. The most deadly bubbles were the Mongols.

Right now there are telephone conversations, wireless web, radio waves, television transmissions, radar and neutrinos passing through your head. No wonder you can’t remember where you put your keys.

We are often at a loss for words, but never at a loss for all-consuming anger.