THE UM...MU

WARNING: THIS IS ANOTHER POINTLESS POST

i'm sure that the tao of pooh and the te of piglet are lovely books. but since i never had an a. a. milne-winnie the pooh phase, i have no great compulsion to read them. i've seen winnie the pooh cartoons but the characters were so sweet and cuddly and the storylines so light that they did not make a lasting impression on me.

the character who caught my attention and made an impression on me is wile e. coyote. i'm sure everyone is familiar with him. he dwells in a desert, and his overwhelming desire, his obsession, the very reason for his existence is to catch the road runner. i found wile e coyote to be a highly intelligent creature with amazing powers of invention. he is the leonardo da vinci and thomas alva edison of the looney tune world. a master engineer, he constantly rigs up the complex equipment using materials ordered from the acme company.

little is known of road runner's (the long legged bird wile e chases) private life, it's formative years or motivations. why does road runner zoom around the desert? what compels it to run so fast--is it to tempt and torment the hapless coyote?

the relationship between wile e coyote and road runner is intrguing. to regard it as a classic predator-prey relationship would be too simplistic. some schools would probably view their inclination as sadomasochistic. others may see it as co-dependency : they need each other to give meaning and purpose to their lives.

boy..do i sound serious now..hehehe

what valuable lessons can be leaned from this cartoon, and how can we apply this to our daily lives? here :

1. aim high. the desert is crawling with edible creatures that are slower and easier to catch than road runner, a skinny bird which does not seem very appetizing. and yet wile persists in the hunt. he will not be content with some clumsy creature hiding behind a rock or slithering in the sand. nothing is good enough for him but the fastest creature in the area.

arguably this may be the case of wanting something you cannot have, but consider how dull and dreary wile e's life would be if he settled for a diet of slow moving worms and scorpions. in fact, given the ease with which he could obtain sophisticated equipment why doesn't he just order out for a pizza or a five course gourmet meal? the answer is summed up in two words : too easy.

the same is true of our lives. if we decide to be too practical and set only goals that can be achieved, we would certainly bore ourselves into a coma. aiming for the impossible adds pizzazz to our earthly existence, and since we know in the back of our minds that we can never achieve it, we'll never be disappointed.

omg..what am i yakking about???!!! but... i can't stop so i'll proceed to number 2...hahaha!!!

2. what you don't know can't hurt you. in his dogged pursuit of road runner, wile e often runs off the edges of cliffs and such. the laws of neutonian physics declare the gravitational pull would cause wile e to plummet to the ground. however, wile e continues running in a straight line through the air--until he realizes that there is no ground beneath his feet, and plummets forthwith.

note how the state of unawareness shields wile e from physical pain, viz the broken bones, bruises and other injuries that result from falling off a cliff. the same principle operates in our lives : the truth only hurts when you know it. for instance, if you remain oblivious to the fact that your boyfriend is going out with other girls, you can continue to harbor fantasies of living happily ever after.

truth can be a bummer..

3. what does not kill you makes you stronger. in every episode, wile e dances to death..he falls off cliffs, crashes into rock faces, is streamrolled, blown up into itty bitty particles, or diced and shredded by his own inventions. and yet he persists in the chase. the concept of discouragement is not in his vocabulary; each setback encourages him to strive harder in his pursuit of the elusive road runner.

wile e is a true nietzschean. lol

4. just because there's no snow doesnt mean you can't ski. there are times wile e could outrace road runner and catch the dang bird -- if he were to ski down the mountain. however, the skiing is made difficult by the fact that there is no snow. yes!!! hahahah!!

but wile e is not the sort of character who gets bogged down by physical limitations. he fires off an order to the acme company, which promptly delivers several crates of gadgetry. wile e rigs up a back pack consisting of a refrigerator which spews crushed ice ahead of him, creating a path for his skis.

he still doesn't capture the road runner, but that is beside the point. the point is that he made his own ski slope.

what, you ask does this have to do with my own life? everything. thirty minutes ago, i was facing a blank monitor which reflected the blankness in my own head. i had absolutely no idea what to post about. did i let that stop me? no! and look, this is probably one of the longests post you'll find here. and now i'm going to strap a refrigerator on my back and go skiing down our stairs for dinner.

am i looney???? mhhmm..ok..you don't have to answer that..