Absence makes the heart grow fonder—this is why we print this column every week, lest your longing turn into following me around on the weekend with goggles.
After last week’s Wiseauian catastrophe, this edition of ‘Engaging etc’ is dedicated to answering some of your questions (and there may even be the return of an ‘Engaging’ favourite).
This week… Engaging with the Innards of Philosophy answers your questions. That is all.
Over the past month I have received a series of written questions, which I hope to answer below so you’ll never bother me again.
PlayboyDan69 ponders:Whoz Candy Badger?
I believe you mean ‘Who iz Candy Badger?’ Your English is contemptible. In spite of this I will answer your question—Candy Badger is a badger. But not just any badger, a glorious badger, who I have had the pleasure of sharing a laugh with over shots at Shooters—or was it stabbings at Estab? No matter. That badger parties harder than Georg Cantor in his offshore cock fighting days.
Hax Mardy asks: When are you going to write a column on Foucault?
Eventually. Personally I don’t see why people love to hate him/hate to love him/think he’s got a silly name. His ideas, and name, aren’t that controversial or crazy. Crazy would have been if he had renamed his book Discipline and Punishment something like The Prison is in Your Head (and the Prison Guard is Wearing a Diaper… That’s Normal, Right?).
HLKTCS asks: What do you think of Waking Life?
I think you should should read a book. All the great philosophers are dead, and most of them couldn’t speak English anyway, so why would you bother with a watered-down misappropriation starring someone who believes that 9/11 was an inside job? It’s not all bad, the section with Robert Solomon was fun, but it doesn’t stand in for an understanding of the classics, and you only get that from reading them and judging for yourself what kind of squiggly lines would suit them (and you) best.
ROFLCOPTER crashing in a preschool and crushing the children asks: What was your favourite book as a child?
On the Suffering of the World by Arthur Schopenhaur. I liked LEGO too, but then both were taken away after I built a nihilist world with houses that spontaneously combusted because their existence was, at best, meaningless—which probably would have been fine if not for the fact that I was using gunpowder to ‘combust’ them, and I was doing this during kindergarten. Still not allowed LEGO.
The Cast of Entourage ponders: I want to break up with my girlfriend in the most spiteful way possible, what would that be?
I’m not going to tell you. I know what it is but I’m not going to tell you because it’s far too spiteful and always leads to murder. If you really want to break up with her, why don’t you just tell her while she’s at work—this way she can’t physically attack you (unless she works at an army surplus store) and you can pick up something nice for your next partner.
The sexy undead spirit of your great uncle Robert writes: My brother is 16 and a nihilist, what can I do to stop him sucking so much?
As this column has proven, you can’t act like nihilist all the time, it’s too much. There’s nothing wrong with being a nihilist, as long as you’re not ‘on’ all the time. The world may be a void nothingness, but that’s no excuse for ruining the end of the second season of Mad Men, Tristan (and don’t get me started on Lost—just because I didn’t like the show at first, doesn’t mean I wanted to hear the spoiler about the whole show being the coma dream of that kid from Baseketball). It’s a phase, he’ll probably grow out of it.
Why? [This is all the note said, and I’m not sure it was written in ink]
Why? WHY?… Kittens, or nothingness. One of those two. Though Love is also a possibility.
Probably Kittens.