Post Twelve: Long Time, No See Protocol

Sometimes I think about protocol. A series of steps goes through my mind.

For instance, here's a protocol I know about: what you do when you see someone you haven't seen in a long time.

I'm not sure how to define "long time". One quarter, i.e. 3 months? Is that long enough? A semester? 12 months? One year or more? These are parameters that must be defined and agreed upon between the parties. Gosh, human relations are fun.

First of all, you must act surprised to see the person. I think the reason you are supposed to act surprised, aside from it being a behaviour expected, is that you were not expecting to see them. Statistically, because you hadn't seen them for so long, it seemed very unlikely that you would see them again. (Psychologists probably have a word for this. They probably came up with the word while applying electric shocks to animals, so I won't bother looking it up.)

Second, you have to act interested in what they have been doing with themselves. Mainly, you are interested in what they have done between a) the last time you saw them, and b) the present. You are interested in an abstract summary, particularly from a financial or human resources perspective, e.g. what have they been working on and have they created any new humans for the labour pool. You want to avoid minutae, e.g. the person may have shit in a toilet at least once daily since you last saw them but that is not a good topic. (Unless perhaps you were an oncologist who helped them beat colorectal cancer.)

Third, you have to reminisce about "old times". "Old times" may be defined as shared events that occured in the timespan between a) the time your first saw them ever and b) the last time you saw them. These "old times" occured when you were younger and less bitter about everything. At the time, you did not know that after life had revealed its hyped-up, superficial mysteries to you, you would discover what it really is: an absurd and unimaginable prison; a simulacrum smothering your senses to keep you from God; a place where you pay incessant monthly bills keeping your body comfortable with adequate food and shelter while you wait for its collapse. At amusement parks, you pay to go on rides that make you vomit; on the ride called life, you merely pay for the feeling of nausea and disorientation.

And that's what you do when you see someone you haven't seen for a long time. Now I am going to go take a shit and go to sleep. If I haven't seen you for a long time, here's what I've been up to: sleeping 6-8 hours/day; shitting daily; generally self-preserving while waiting for my end; and only getting the briefest glimpses of Divinity - sometimes I think they serve merely to remind me that I am in bland hell.

This has been the most depressing post ever written on World's Most Blog to date. It is also the twelth (12lth) in a series of updates made in July 2008. Just as there is no point to most things in life, there was no point enumerating these posted updates. Here now is another You Tube embedded video object. Because I think in a boring linear way, the videos content reflects a sentiment opposite that of this blog post.