Tub of Acid.com - Legend of Hong Kong

Developing my theory of an “unbalanced universe,” will be a very difficult process, and will require both thorough data collection, and careful logic. A being could spend his entire life contemplating the many ways in which our world is uneven, but the mere act of thinking about these problems does little to remedy it. By carefully writing out my experiments, comparing my data in tables and sorting it in different ways in order to discover relevant relationships between it, I believe that I may be able to prove conclusively that our universe makes no sense at all…like braille on drive-thru bank tellers. It’s not just mistaken. It’s stupid as hell.

Theories abound about the manner in which our universe came to be. Neither scientific nor religious explanations can explain everything. Perhaps a big bang. Perhaps the hand of God. Perhaps the big finger of God igniting the interstellar dynamite which has now settled into the universe as we know it.

And for the most part, the universe seems to operate quite well…but if this is really the case, we must ask ourselves this: “Why do we do so many preposterous things?”

Scientists leave this question alone. Fair enough, such a question cannot be answered in any real measurable way—or at least, it hasn’t been thus far. Thus, my intention is to find a way in which to research this question, and attempt to find trends present in all of the collected data, and attempt to make sense out of the senseless.

One aspect of human society which will be addressed in this proposal is the idea of the governing body. Why is it that, as humans, we have come up with conventions and customs which have limited our own agency, and thus have in some ways, made it more difficult for ourselves to “be happy?”

Perhaps we have created governing bodies based upon our belief that the world works subject to various rules and order. Where did this lead us? Ultimately, we have become victims of our own creation. Our governing bodies continue to need more and more employees to meet the needs of those in which it serves. More money is then required to compensate these employees, and this money has to come from somewhere.

Enter taxation. In America, we have the Internal Revenue Service, a highly despised organization, operated by people we might only characterize as despicable, and while a paycheck affects us all very personally, many of us look around and wonder where our money is going. We have detached ourselves from ourselves, so to speak. True, our government gives back to its citizens. It deals with countless people and all kinds of issues that most of us would never care to. Of course, the bulk of these issues seem to be self-perpetuating, in that, some of the issues dealt with by our government have spawned directly from government operations.

So, in order to find sense among the senseless, and prove finally that there is method to the madness of our universe—I will have to examine the truly ignorant, the truly idiotic and senseless, and downright confusing elements of our universe.

To help explain my findings, and to bring my theory to life, I will create a number of scenarios which will deal with various aspects of our universe and society which will help prove the truly unbalanced nature of it all.

This first example is a preview of such a scenario. This one deals with the beginnings of what we now know as “business,” or “marketing,” in a sense, ways in which we as people can work to earn what we now know as “money,” and didn’t need until we created it…

DO NOT READ THIS

BOB

Imagine prehistoric “Caveman Bob” has gathered a few bananas, but upon his return to his cave, Caveman Bob discovers that he will be unable to prepare pina coladas without obtaining a few coconuts. The coconut tree was empty earlier in Caveman Bob’s scavenging quest. However, Caveman Bob notices that he has far more bananas than he needs for sundaes, and determines that while the bananas are only mildly attractive to him, to someone banana-less, but coconut-rich like “Cavegirl Jane,” these bananas might be just the ticket to obtaining the highly desirable brown flaky fruit. However, as the needs of both Caveman Bob and Cavegirl Jane became more diverse, it became very difficult to trade directly between the two of them.

So Caveman Bob came up with a great idea. Caveman Bob came up with the concept of “money.” Since Caveman Bob wanted a new car-stereo, but Caveman Ed didn’t want any of Caveman Bob’s bananas, Caveman Bob came up with a way to assign a banana a value, and then take this value and apply it onto something completely value-less. In our case, “the dollar.” Caveman Ed could use the dollar to buy whatever he wanted from anyone who would accept the dollar, and then that person could use the dollar and buy something from someone else.

And as more and more people began acquiring dollars, things began getting more expensive, and Caveman Bob had to work harder to make more dollars to buy the things he used to be able to collect for himself quite easily. The dollar, in many ways, has driven out the resourcefulness of many of us—we no longer rely on ourselves to find food, create shelter, or install car stereos, we rely on the dollar, and while it seems to work well enough, it is another institution in which we have both created, and now are ruled by.

And not only are we ruled by this institution, we are in another way, at war against some of its inherent unfairness. In today’s terms, I may be hungry for a pizza at Cici’s Pizza and it turns out that the price is almost $5.00 for the lunch buffet. It may only cost 50 cents for Cici’s to create the pizza itself (with toppings, give or take 20 cents each). I may only eat 5 slices (out of 10), which means I paid 1000% more than what it really cost. Economies of scale are certainly the reason that Cici’s is able to make such a cheap pizza, and I am not, but these economies of scale are largely invisible and apparent only on paper. Pepperoni Company A could give me the same price on a sack of pepperoni slices if it wanted to, in the same way that the US mint can create all the cash it needs, if it wants to. The problem lies within the fact that someone, somewhere is going to find out about how I got a better deal than they did, and havoc will ensue. It’s all just a very big mess. So it works, but then again, it doesn’t work at all. Unless nobody finds out.

For another real world example, and data-collection in order to further substantiate my theory of the lopsided cosmos, I will first examine a very commonplace product which in itself seems to be full of contradiction and impossibility.

The Twinkie.

Again, people for the most part, just seem to be without much sense at all. Perhaps a few individuals have slipped through now and then, but let’s be honest, there are lots of us running around everyday who simply don’t think things through all the way, and there are plenty of people who take advantage of this too.

With Twinkies, there are both the regular and low-fat recipes. Hostess has done a good job in one respect in catering to the needs of a diverse people. But on the other hand, Hostess also knows that thanks to the safety in the mind of the consumer with regards to the idea of a “fat-free,” snack, said consumer may consume many more of these fat-free treats than he or she would of the traditional variety. So is this Hostess indeed attempting at meeting the needs of the people, or exploiting them? Is it even their problem?

An overweight individual will glance at the boxes looking for something to size down their figure a bit, but which will also act as a delivery mechanism for a blissful treat. The same problem has occurred with “light,” cigarettes, in which smokers of these lower-tar cigarettes tend to smoke more deeply in order to get the same sort of fix, negating the “intention,” of the product.

But not the intention of the producer of the seductive treat.

This last example captures much of which is unbalanced within our universe. That is, there are intentions buried beneath intentions, and subplots and extra characters and deleted scenes and directors cuts, things which are intentionally unintentional, and the steps I will take in developing my unbalanced universe theory will hopefully begin to shed light on all the inner-workings behind inner-workings which we have created in order to become more sophisticated and smarter beings.