Re: Immortality - Robert

When we think of immortality, we commit the fallacy of immediately limiting ourselves to positive things, as if we need to be remembered favorably.

I have no such intention. I will be dead when I am remembered, and so my aspiration to immortality is entirely a vanity project, as well as a competition with Conor. The petty details are insignificant to me. Think about it: It's so damn hard to be remembered in a positive light. Generally, you have to be good at something, to have some remarkable set of skills, which generally requires two things: good will, and decades of hard work and determination. Most people graced with these attributes are remembered momentarily as head of the volunteer fire department. I consider that pathetic finishing goal and not a worthwhile use of my time. Clearly, legend is not achieved reasonably through socially-acceptable means.

(Elephants... Those are not socially acceptable things.)

On the other hand, it's almost too easy to achieve legend in a negative light. It requires two things: sheer evil or stupidity, and anything from a trigger finger to a camera and a nipple. As you can see, reader, the possibilities open up into the infinites. I, for one, choose evil over stupidity, because Hitler is more famous than the guy that decided to speed the Titanic through a field of icebergs. Hitler was smart — he knew how to not be forgotten. I consider him today to be an ally and an idol.

Genocide and world war, unfortunately, are out of my range of ability. I need something effortless, because when Conor sends the golf ball spiraling through the loop-dee-loop on Hole 10-ish and cups yet another hole-in-one, he does not do it with effort. And neither may I.

I imagine it likely that, at some point during my lifetime, I will run across an elephant. With 25,000 days of life, that seems like a reasonable assumption to me, right? And this elephant, Ralph, Ralph will be his name, I might mount him and perhaps ride gallantly through suburban streets, crying for a militaristic revolution and shooting roman candles at children playing on the street side. This, hopefully, will continue long enough that Ralph and I reach the downtown region, where I might begin violently destroying public property and police cars. At various points along the way, I will remove articles of clothing before I am entirely naked and, as bullets from the national guard or local militia rip into my howling frame, I will use the last inkling of strength within me to light myself afire and burn slowly, brightly, in the middle of the town square.