I’m at work right now and, while I would obviously rather be at home sleeping, it’s made better by three things: a) I’m drinking a good strong hot cup of tea, b) I’m eating delicious cookies made by my girlfriend, and c) it’s raining outside.
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THINGS THAT ARE NO LONGER RANDOM:
- Pants
- Monkeys
- Cheese
- Squirrels
- Gnomes
- Anything that happens at night
- Any combination of the above
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Things that might still be random:
- Toothpaste
- Gnus
- Monotremes
- Rock salt
- Certain combinations of the above.
For example, the following phrase is not random: “I’m pretty sure the gnus are hiding rock salt in my toothpaste at night!” It is not random because it looks you’re trying too hard to be random (which never works). Also, one cannot simply spout off words MONOTREME while dancing and expect other people to laugh at how random one is, it looks a lot more like insanity because nobody knows what’s going on, there’s no context to the “randomness”. Good randomness, or as I like to call it, “randomosity”, creates its own context, as in the following example:
I am a good employee; honest, hardworking, and not a terrorist. But sometimes, something seems a little off about me, like my mind is wandering, dreaming of hills once traversed and streams once forded as the mighty ox fords a raging river — for in my youth I was an ox among men. Strong, but supple, and caring, and always alert for danger in any form, whether it be flora or bees. But I never abandoned my post, as an ox on that small stream; always watching for danger, fording streams, and posing for ox magazines. I stood astride that little plot of land like a colossus, lost in the mists of time, searching for my escape, my break into the world of mainstream ox-magazine modeling. And someday, that break will come.
Can we, then, define randomosity? Can we put terms and bounds and definitions on it, and say to ourselves, “this is random” and “this is not random”? I propose that we cannot, for by its nature, chaos is not defined! Chaos and randomosity are exactly those things which are not laid out with rules and lines, which brings me back to my first point: You can’t be random by running down a list of things and using them out of context. You can’t even choose to be random… you can only choose to be insane.
P.S. – sorry about the poor styling on this post. The website is still a work in progress.
July 26th, 2005 at 11:31 am
I don’t think you can choose to be insane, some people just are. However, entering upon a state of entropy is fair game for conscious volition.
I do query whether or not this post was brought about by the subculture phrase “I poke badgers at night with spoons.” Which is claimed to be funny because it so random. However, I posit that indeed it is unfunny because there is a lack of causation for it and while it may make sense in that there is nouns and verbs and such, it’s too nonsensical to have any valid meaning.
However, your example of ox-like randomness does prove to be scintillating in that it presents some logic and presents elements of randomicity, rather than being random in its entirety.
Ergo, vis-a-vis the causation proves that ….and I’m just making things up now.
July 26th, 2005 at 11:58 am
Hey baby! Randomness…interesting post, did you get the idea from my random thoughts on my “not worthy to be called a website” site? I’m glad you are eating the cookies, hopefully they are completely wonderful and amazing. Have a good day at work!!
August 19th, 2005 at 5:31 am
yeah…randomness…everyone needs a little randomness in their life. What’s interesting is when things look random at first glance, but it’s really not. Does chaos theory talk about this?