TrickyBuddha Studios

Aliya shared a Raymond Carver link on Facebook (check it out), which reminded me of a report I had written on him at UT (our class were each assigned authors to write about; it was, apparently, for the library’s records or something).

I tried to dig through my old files for the report but I guess I no longer have it.

While digging, however, I did find a bunch of old e-mails – mostly from Steve, and also Devin & Dom and Sean, but also a few from Mike, Julian, Keltie, Pam & Dan, and Sarah & Aliya. There were also a couple I wrote while I was in Europe.

Neat.

Of course, it just makes me realize how much I miss my friends.

I’d write more but I’m struggling with a headache and a bit of a stomach ache. Until tomorrow.

(today’s post: 270 words)

If there’s a chance something *could* happen, given enough time it *will* happen. Right?

One night at Tim Hortons, Julian, Mike, and I (and, I think, Keltie, Sophie, and Andrew… and maybe even Pam and Dan were there, too) were talking about the possibilities.

Curiously, and I like to think “out of character”, I was making the contrary argument against Julian and Mike. But then again, maybe it has to do with them both being programmer-types who deal with charts and plotted-points-that-approach-infinity.

Anyway, the discussion revolved around the not-entirely-original mixing of monkeys and type-writers and Shakespeare. If you have enough monkeys and enough type-writers, they said, it’s not just likely that the monkeys (not to be confused with the Monkees) will re-create, say, Hamlet – it’s guaranteed. Guaranteed!

And when you think about infinity, the reasonable response is “why wouldn’t it be guaranteed?”

But this night I got to thinking about actual monkeys in actual rooms in front of actual type-writers. And when I imagined them actually pressing single buttons, one-after-another (and not flinging poop at walls), I couldn’t even grasp the concept of any monkeys ever managing anything better than a page of gibberish with an occasional string of recognizable words that may fit together (with some imagination, and ignoring the need for proper punctuation and spacing).

Put yourself in that room with a monkey and a type-writer and an infinite amount of time and paper; can you ever imagine a page of coherent thought – let alone Hamlet? Put yourself in an infinite number of the aforementioned rooms and does anything change? No, really. Does it? Let me know. :p

Candice and I went over to Lisa and Jared’s house for turkey-day dinner, with Candice-and-Lisa’s mom – who brought home-made pumpkin pie. Even the crust was from scratch. And Lisa did a great job making a ton of food. Corn, potatoes, stuffing, turkey, etc. All the fixings. It was delicious. And now I’m feeling thankful. That’s all I wanted to say. Well, that and Happy Thanksgiving to all.