Trip Report Section 11. In which this one goes to eleven.
First off, I have re-read this segment, and I pre-apologize to both of my remaining readers. H. read this segment and simply said that there was no way to comment on it, so don't look for her comments. I will add this consoling note: Segment 12 holds the content's of Sophie's notebook, which are quite delightful to read.
Second, dear friends, it pains me to say this, but I am afraid that a beloved joke is finally passing away. The joke is Smurfiness. In the ICU, the Joke was monitoring as "milked" on the EHG, the Electroenhumorgram. It won't be long. It is at times like this that the Kubler Ross five stages of Joke Grief appear.
As an example let us look at a deceased joke, "Whassup." At one point among its fans this joke had great power. Simply uttering this simple phrase could cause others to spontaneously break out into a similar outbursts, magnifying the effect. But like any other SuperBowl Commercial superstar joke, the VH1 special on the nightmare descent into madness and self destruction was not far behind. Especially among a certain demographic of SuperBowl watchers, this joke was pure power. Then as with all life, it had to end, and as with so many brilliant shining jokes, it died young. One day, one utters the joke, and there is no echoing whatever, just blank stares. The joke is dead.
First one passes through denial. Maybe they didn't hear? Maybe they just haven't heard the joke before? People in this phase are difficult to be around, bandying about their unfunny joke as though it were still alive. Occasionally you will see someone trapped in this phase still throwing out the utterly dead "All Your Base" joke in a crowded bar to uncomprehending stares, or pulling out a MasterCard "priceless" parody.
Then one passes to anger. Why don't they find the joke funny? Why did so many have to overuse the joke so that finally its life was sapped from it? Aren't they in some way responsible for its death? Should they be punished somehow?
Then the bargaining begins. Maybe the joke would be funny again if I changed the timing. Maybe if I say it louder. Maybe something, anything, can change things, bring back the funny. But alas, nothing will return the joke to life. Nothing.
Thus the next phase, depression, sets in. Things just aren't as good as they were back when the joke was alive, perhaps there is some reason to blame oneself for the death of the joke? Is it all my fault? There's so much I could have done differently, couldn't I have saved the joke?
But finally one reaches the final phase, acceptance, and one knows that the joke is gone, although once one has seen it a few times, one also knows that if one keeps it in one's memories, that in ten years the joke will have a new life when it is referred to ironically.
And thus, we will be gently retiring Smurfiness before we look like a sad hanger on. But I am still in phase one at this point, so don't expect it to go away too soon.
I like to write about philosophical matters in trip reports, generally preferring the ancient and classical to the modern and critical/skeptical, but I do think that the modern world is a wonderful thing, and that there are many worth knowing in it, even if thinking about the incredible genius found classical Athens makes me want to lie on a sofa and cry sometimes at what we have lost. So I want to mention a great American philosopher who is not so well know as a philosopher, Irving Berlin. The day after Irving Berlin died, Isaac Stern went on the Today Show to talk about him. The host asked about the secret of Berlin's success. As a musician Berlin was very mediocre. He could only play in one key:C, so to transpose to other keys a special piano was built for him that could change keys by pulling levers. Yet somehow he became one of the most successful songwriters of the 20th century. Although he never learned to read music beyond a rudimentary level, he composed over 3,000 songs, many of which, including "God Bless America", "White Christmas", "Alexander's Ragtime Band", and "There's No Business Like Show Business," left an indelible mark on American music and culture. He produced 17 film scores and 21 Broadway scores, in addition to his individual songs. How did Stern account for the discrepancy between his musical talent and his achievements?
Stern's answer was that Berlin's philosophy of life was simple. He saw life as composed of a few basic elements: life and death, loneliness and love, hope and defeat - not many more. In making our way through these givens, affection is better than complaint, hope more viable than despair, kindness nobler than its opposite. That was about it. Because Berlin lived those platitudes implicitly, he helped people cut through the ambiguities and complexities of a confusing century.
Still neither the death of a beloved joke, nor the death of a beloved American songwriter/philosopher should leave us in sadness. Life is something wonderful, it's oddness leads to an endless birth of new jokes, and so long as we do embrace life, love, hope, and kindness, we will find that the spirit of Mr. Berlin lives on, just as a dead joke hangs with us, still bringing a wondrous irony to us when used sparingly.
Dear reader, in the last trip report segment, I briefly discussed Hegel, Deconstructing Chinese menus, and other things that verge on the sort of items one really doesn't see typically in trip reports. But I think that that last bit that I wrote about the spirit of dead jokes and Irving Berlin strikes me as the likely candidate for the strangest thing I have spent time writing to defer dealing with finding my notebook, which was briefly misplaced. Happily the return of the notebook has allowed me to actually get to the point. In general my little digressions were typically related to the trip description, even if in a peculiarly forced way. With this one will things probably be peculiarly forced again, FYI.
On a separate but not unrelated note, I needed to account for my distinctly unscientific beginning to this report segment. You might have noted that I was gone for a while. I was waging a long and distracting argument elsewhere between idealism and materialism, a battle over the question of whether empirical science can allow for an account of the whole of human existence and experience. I think that the various segments of this report show which side of that debate I was on. For at the root of that question is whether one really should hold the beautiful and wonderful values that Mr. Berlin held, or whether one would decide that reality is quite a different ultimately more barren and sterile place than that. And those are principle by which one guide's one's life whether one knows it or not, so it's really an important thing to occasionally think about and blather on about in trip reports.
I think that I won the argument, and one can simply look at the reports prior to our attempt at approaching the report purely scientifically to see that there are elements of the world that are both purely qualitative, but which are not purely subjective, but can be communicated, shared, and understood by all. If those elements do not admit of a quantitative description, but are qualities that are central to life, then science as science simply cannot comment on them. The amazingness of Pirates of the Caribbean is seen by all, and in general the nature of DisneyWorld is such that it really draws one in to the degree that it does try to communicate amazing things. Since I like these qualities, I am afraid that I am hanging up the mantle as a tripreportologist/intinerariologist, and proceeding in my more traditional approach.
And so picking up where we left off last time, we were towards the end of our day at Epcot. Before H. left to meet up with her colleagues, she had repeatedly instructed Mr. Silly to be at the Coral Reef at one specific time (though now I can't recall the time for sure, I think it was around 6. The first time that we went to Disney World, one of the things that I was deeply impressed by was the Coral Reef. I enjoyed the Living Seas a great deal since I like to watch fish. Then when we left there and we went to that oh so very cool restaurant that had a full wall of excellent aquarium viewing, including sharks, rays, and sea turtles occasionally swimming by. And the food was excellent too.
So Max and Sophie and I picked up from our last ride and happily marched forth to the Coral Reef to meet H. and her colleagues. Max and Sophie like the restaurant too. They were deeply impressed by drinks with light-up cubes in them.
We arrived, but somehow H. was not there while some of H.'s colleagues were. Thus Max, Sophie, and I hung out with (Sher., Grammy, and Horsie (and one other wonderful person who I think was YAK, but my memory is fried and I didn't take notes and I forgot to ask H. and now it's too late since I am about to hit submit)). Horsie kindly lent me her cell, and I called H. who was on her way more or less, and would be there in about 20 minutes. So I hung out and talked a bit to the Maelstromers. Eventually H. arrived. We had booked separately from the Maelstromers, so we looked down longingly at their unltra-cool seat as we sat down one of the higher tiers. Our table was not ideal for ogling fish, but still it was pretty good. I got the vegetarian entree, which was really amazingly good, as was the Crème brûlée.
I need a tylenol now.
but don't change your writing style too much. I enjoy it just the way it is. 
