It turns out existential quandaries are more difficult to solve than I thought.
So I've decided to start approaching the issue from new perspectives. One such tactic debuts here, as I try to find the meaning of life by process of elimination. I will scientifically (depending on your definition of "science") break down the items, theories, and aspects of life I am one hundred percent certain have no relevance to ultimate truth.
Before a subject can be featured in a "Process of Elimination" blog, I must be as resolute in its irrelevance as Kirk Cameron is in the fallacy of evolution. (By the way, if you've never been to wayofthemaster.com, I highly recommend it. By simply clicking on the first link after the intro, you can listen to the kid from "Growing Pains" give you ten reasons you're going to burn in Hell for eternity! You know...unless you buy his stuff.)
I thought long and hard about the first item I could eliminate in my search. It had to be foolproof in its existential irrelevance, something so unimportant and ridiculous that not even Alan Thicke could defend it (take that, Kirk!), and I I've found the perfect candidate.
I am wholly, unequivocally, irrevocably convinced that when I look onto the horizon and the clouds form into the image of Mufasa from The Lion King, his sharp insights and otherworldly lion wisdom will in no way, under any circumstances, involve...
Pogs.
Pogs are not the meaning of life.
There was a short time in my life when I could be convinced otherwise. For a brief period of months in the mid-nineties, I thought pogs were the epitome of cool. Wikipedia calls this era the "Pog Wash." Seriously, this is what it says:
"Pogs is a children's game that was popular from the early to late 1990s in what was known as the Pog Wash."
I do not recall it once being referred to as that, though a particularly nerdy friend once referenced it as "The Great Pog Invasion of 1995." Still, I am not willing to rule out Wikipedia as the meaning of life just yet, so I'll roll with "Pog Wash."
In my pre-teens, pogs replaced basketball cards as my overpriced cardboard-related hobby of choice. While basketball cards encouraged physical activity and kept me running in my pursuit of NBA superstardom, pogs encouraged more video gameplay so that I could keep my thumbs strong and "slammer-ready."
I still remember the first time I was introduced to pogs. It was right before the "Pog Wash," and I was hanging out with a few of my middle school friends. An older kid from high school came by and, sharing it discreetly as if it were some kind of dangerous narcotic, pulled out his green tube of circular fun and regaled us naive youngsters with his stories from the magical world of pogs.
The high school kid, who I
was immediately convinced was the coolest guy to grace the planet since The Fonze, was so excited by the new trend that my friends and I couldn't help but be excited too. We were anxiously anticipating this moment as our transition into adulthood, as if the mysterious high school kid's coolness might rub off on us in some sort of cool osmosis.Not only did this guy have wisdom of the dangerously mature world of pogs, but he also introduced us to another cool game that none of us had ever heard of before. It didn't seem like fun, but this guy was in high school; if he said this game had street cred, who was I to argue?
It remains to this day my only experience playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Come to think of it, that guy probably wasn't very cool at all.
He definitely had more pogs than anyone else I've ever met combined, and he was stuck playing dungeons and dragons with a bunch of middle schoolers, which mathematically proves (depending on your definition of the word "math") that pogs have absolutely no correlation to the meaning of life.
So I'm that much closer to nirvana, and you are as well for having read this entry. The meaning of life is not pogs.
You're welcome.
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