On A Card Game

I like card games. In fact, I liked card games so much that my siblings and I made one. (Actually, I forced them to help me make it).

Cleverly titled "A Card Game", the card game shamelessly stole ideas from every place imaginable. (Read: I stole ideas from every place imaginable). The very concept of the gameplay was lifted almost directly from an online game. What's more, the first cards off the press were based on the blandest, most mundane fantasy characters, with names such as "Regular Healer" and "Normal Knight". Those were their actual names.

Then, I gradually stole names from other genres, making "sets": There was a set based off of Winnie the Pooh characters (Piglet allowed you to take permanent control of the other player's cards and was way too strong), a set based off of A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Vogon Poetry instantly killed anything), a set based off of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (they crawled out of Portable Toilets), and so on. The best set was the Harry-Potter-But-Also-Animal-Puns set, which started off either (a) when I accidentally drew Harry Potter looking too much like a cow, or (b) when I accidentally drew a cow with a lighting-bolt-shaped scar. I forget which. Regardless, the error inspired such brilliances as "Albus Dumbleboar", "Professor McDonaldgal" (as in Old McDonald), "Ginny Ferrety", and "Severus Snake".

I'm proud of A Card Game. Despite the fact that it suffers from crippling balance issues, insane deck sizes, and way too many awful cards, it was still a lot of fun. I don't really play it anymore, although I still possess almost every card I made. Every one of them has awful, hand-drawn pencil art that could be easily outdone by a third grader. It's hilarious.

-Me

P.S. I wish I could post pictures, but my current phone is bad at doing that.

Parallel Universes, An Infinity Machine, And Permanently Great Hair

There's a theory in quantum mechanics called the parallel universe theory. It basically says that for every possibility, there exists a universe for that possibility. What are the implications of such a theory?

Assume the theory is true. I flip a coin. The result could be either heads or tails, right? According to the parallel universe theory, at the very instant I flip the coin, the result is actually both heads and tails. This is a phenomenon called "superposition", which says that something exists in all possible states of its existence until it is observed. (Sidenote: Superposition is made awesome in the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, in which a cat is both dead and alive.) I'm not making this up -- it's weird, but so is all of quantum mechanics.

Now I take a look at the coin. The instant I look at the coin, the universe splits into two different universes: One where I got heads, and another where I got tails.

In fact, the universe splits like this every time something happens, constantly. Barack Obama wins the 2008 election: Universe splits (into a universe where Obama won, and a universe where McCain won). Sam Walton founds Walmart: Universe splits (into one where he does, one where he doesn't). I take a sip of water: Universe splits. Again, I'm not making this up.

Let's go back to the coin example. You may be asking yourself: So what? Even if this is true, the "me" that got tails can't see or interact with the "me" that got heads. We are in different universes, we have separate consciousnesses, and we can't influence each other in any way. For all intents and purposes, we are different people. Well, you're mostly right. But let's take this idea a little further.

Say you make a machine -- here dubbed the Infinity Machine, or iM* -- that can detect whether the coin is heads or tails. If the coin is heads, it does nothing; if the coin is tails, it sets off every nuclear bomb in the world simultaneously. (Stay with me, here.). In effect, what the iM does is destroy the world in every parallel universe in which the coin was tails. (I will address the moral quandary of this in a little bit; please continue staying with me.) Notice the power of such a machine. With the iM, you can control the outcome of any event.

For example, what if you reconfigure the iM so it goes off whenever you don't win the lottery? Then the world in every parallel universe in which you don't win the lottery is destroyed, and the only universes that matter are ones where you win the lottery. All consciousness will cease when you don't win the lottery; basically, you've guaranteed that you will always win the lottery.

If this constant lottery winning seems dubious to you, remember: The parallel universe theory says that for every possibility, there exists a universe. No matter how unlikely a thing is, there is a universe with that thing happening. There is a universe where I've won Sexist Man Alive twenty years in a row and am still going strong.** There is a universe where I am exactly the same, but can somehow breathe fire. There is a universe where the events of "A Bug's Life" happened exactly as they appeared onscreen, and then Flik the Inventor made the movie "Antz", except called "Personz" and with people. There is a universe where I made an actual, functioning Iron Man suit, but I only use it as a Halloween costume. I can't emphasize how not-making-this-up I am right now.

As you can see, the possibilities with the iM are endless (infinite, even). Set it to go off when you don't win the lottery, but don't let your imagination stop you there. Set it to go off whenever you don't have great hair. Set it to go off whenever a kind, trustworthy man doesn't give you free ice cream every day. Set it to go off whenever any of these things don't happen -- then you would always win the lottery, always have great hair, and always get free ice cream. You control the outcome of any event, always.

Okay, let's talk about morality. You have a machine that can do anything; the only problem is that it ends countless lives by destroying entire worlds. My question is: If everyone's consciousness ends at the same time, is that such a tragedy? There will be no more human emotion in the worlds you've destroyed, no one to feel sad about their destruction. Moreover, countless worlds will live on. If you make an iM that gives you great hair, only universes where you have great hair will matter.

Perhaps it seems arrogant to say that the quality of your hair dictates whether human consciousness will cease or persist. But again, consciousness will only cease for those universes you have bad hair in; all others will continue to blossom and spiral out into their endless possibilities. The infinite bad hair universes you've destroyed will become inconsequential compared to the infinite good hair universes that would have existed anyway. They'll be a drop in an ocean of possibilities.

What about all the animals, environments, and natural beauty you've obliterated? Well, remember: Every fish, tree, and rock will continue to exist in the worlds the iM hasn't destroyed; the only difference is, in the worlds where they do exist, you will have great hair. Again, consciousness ends when you get bad hair. You don't get to see those bad hair universes getting destroyed. You don't feel the emotional impact of their loss, you can't contact them in any way whatsoever. You just get to know that you will always have good hair, no matter what. You will only know about universes where you have good hair, and never have to worry about it.

-Me

*Because lowercase "i"s seem to be in style these days.
**That's this universe.

TEWWG, Framing Devices, And Storytelling

We've started reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, a book by Zora Neale Hurston, in English class. It's really good, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I like to think about the ways we tell stories, both to ourselves and other people. Oftentimes, the craft (or the method by which we tell a story) is just as important as the content -- if not moreso. Our gestures, our tone of voice, our excitement, and our expression are all of significance in the storytelling experience. That's why I so enjoy the literary trope of the framing device.

A framing device is a technique in which a secondary story "frames" a primary story, or a sort of justification for a story's existence. For example, in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, the episodic events (the "primary story") are all framed within the context of Ted telling an absurdly long and increasingly unbelievable story to his kids (the "secondary story"). Within the primary story, other people tell shorter, tertiary stories. The show leverages its framing device in clever ways, allowing for unexpected plot twists and clever revelations.

Another example which I like is the tale of One Thousand And One Nights. There existed a cruel Arabian king who would marry a woman each day, spend the night with her, and have her executed in the morning. Lather, rinse, repeat. Seeing people slaughtered around her each day, a woman named Scheherazade came up with a plan to stop the insane ruler. She married the king and, on their wedding night, began to tell him an intriguing story, which she ended on a cliffhanger. Come next morning, the king decided to spare her for an additional night so he could hear the end of the story. The next night, Scheherazade concluded the story in the middle of the night, then immediately began to tell a different story, which she again ended on a cliffhanger. Lather, rinse, repeat, and before you know it Scheherazade had survived 1001 nights. At the end of it all, she told the king that she had no stories left and was ready to die -- but the king had fallen in love with her and kept her as his wife. Mission accomplished.

The stories told over the thousand and one nights include adventures like The Seven Voyages of Sinbad, Aladdin, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The story of the story of these stories is inspiring and exciting. In addition, there are other narratives characters in Scheherazade's stories tell (these would be "tertiary"). A story within a story within a story, and I love each level of it. (If you go down another story level, though, that's Limbo, which isn't a good place to be. Especially with your ex-wife.)

Similarly, the plot of Their Eyes Were Watching God is framed as a woman, Janie, telling a story to her friend Phoeby. The story weaves from first person to third person seamlessly; the former allows immersion in the 1900s America setting of the novel, while the latter delivers beautiful, poignant prose. (The question "Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?" resides in a top spot in my personal Best Sentences Ever hall of fame.)

TEWWG is a powerful look into race identity, black American culture, and the coming of age of a young woman. I recommend reading it.

-Me