Mersyndol man burning out his fuse up here alone

“We are what we repeatedly do.” – Aristotle.

Do you ever feel that there are times when life plays itself on repeat? Like every single day is defined by the exact same actions, routines and people you surround yourself with?

Let’s surmise what it’s like in the day in the life of Peter Chi, or at least the first three hours:

You wake up at the same time every morning, trip over the same stack of books you left yourself the night before, rush to work, passing the exact same landmarks on a dark street, only to find yourself three minutes late, like every other morning.

The only thing you look forward to is seeing Mersyndol Man©. Long story short, he’s a regular at CC’s who is and has been repeatedly coming in every morning for a box of Mersyndol – a sedative drug used for cold/allergy relief etc.

It’s funny because you get so caught up in your routine, that somebody else’s routine becomes part of your own.

At 7:35AM from the loading dock you see him walking to the front of the store via the rear exit.

At 8:10AM at the front of the store, you see him waiting anxiously behind the shutter doors waiting for you to open.

At 8:13AM after opening the front shutters, he enters the store, somewhat wild-eyed at sweaty, bids you morning salutations and tells you he’s walked the block three times – a new record.

By 8:14AM He’s already at the dispensary desk, waiting for his prized medication:

Blue Magic. that's a brand name. Like Pepsi.

It’s banal. It’s predictable. It’s passé.

Except yesterday he’s somehow convinced the pharmacist to up the dosage to a packet of Zanax as well as his regular. Movin’ up like the Jeffersons.

And for some reason beyond my reasoning, I found it very humorous. Which brings me to the moral of my story today:

Even the smallest change along the line of predictability can bring entertainment.

THIS. IS. PETER. OUUUUUUT!

It was the blurst of times.

I just found something the other day called the ‘Infinite Monkey Theory’. This is mind boggling stuff. I’m not going into the boring pseudo-science-math-stistics; instead I’ll do us all a favour and jump straight to the Cliff-Notes version. Bear in mind this has monkeys. And our closest primates are always endlessly fun.

Apparently back in the day, a group of statisticians concluded that almost surely, the whole works of Shakespeare could be written by a bunch of monkeys tapping randomly away with their typewriters. Catch is, they had to do it forever….

Think about it for a moment. If you had an infinite amount of time to do ANYTHING, logic would denote that the odds are, you’d end up accomplishing something more awesome than any thing  James Cameron’s ever done (True Lies excluded).

The problem is, we don’t have until infinity to accomplish a work of art. Matter of fact, I don’t think Shakespeare did either. To put into context, the ‘Infinite Monkey theory’ is under the assumption that the ageless typist monkey, who is probably on crack cocaine, hitting keys randomly in no particular order.

Now imagine what things will be if we gave our little typist monkeys a GOAL instead of merely pressing buttons by the whim of its ruthless oppressor.  Also, if we gave the fella on the left one of those jaunty Sherlock Holmes helmets, he’d be so digging the Victorian vibe right now.

Alas! That isn’t the point. Well that is, it’s sort of like the follow up to the big punchline, which I totally forgot where I put it. Oh wait, found it:

Stop pressing random buttons, and write your masterpiece already. You don’t have forever.

So until then, folks…Exelsior! (Note to self. Find/steal awesome sign-off)