Normal type people are building Rat Mazes!

They do it for a hobby. Everybody needs a hobby. I have hobbies. Like this Blog, for instance. Hobbies make you feel better about life. Sometimes though, my hobbies don’t work. I don’t feel better. I feel worse. I can’t concentrate. I get depressed. Things become weird.

The older I get, the weirder everything seems….

It was supposed to be the other way around. I was supposed to get wiser and more serene the older I got. Like the Buddha. But it aint working out that way. I’m no Buddha type dude.

The world just keeps getting crazier and there’s days I feel like I’m stuck in a maze.

Not really stopped working

Used to be I could tell myself, not really. But that trick doesn’t seem to be working anymore. All these crazy thoughts I’m always thinking. Could be I’m not just imagining things. Could be the Universe really is out to get me. Worse, I see clearly now that what I don’t know is way more than what I do know. Not just way more. Way more like I’m a stray dog and an evil professor is explaining particle physics while he points a gun to my head.

He’s screaming, “do you get it? Tell me you get it, Motherfucker!”

I don’t know how to answer him cuz I can’t talk.

I could bite him…but he has a gun.

The only thing I’m sure of is nobody else knows the answers either. Nobody knows shit. Everybody’s sitting around thinking they know the score but there’s no score. There’s no game. There’s a pretend game. A phony game, with the players and managers and umpires and the announcer and especially all the fans keeping score while somebody down there laughs…

Any day now he’s gonna stop laughing.

He won’t get mad, he’ll get bored.

And then you better run.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

Joseph Heller, Catch 22

I used to think Heller’s quote was funny.

Just part of the Novel.

Turns out the novel was for real.

We are like rats in a study.

Trying to figure out where we are. Where we’re going. Why we’re headed that way. All we know is we smell the cheese. The cheese is good.

What do they do with the rats when the experiment ends?

Looking over the walls doesn’t help.

Soon as you duck down into it you’re stuck again!

What Happens to Lab Rats After Testing?

Most lab rats are killed after they are used for testing. The vast majority are reportedly frozen and incinerated, though, on rare occasions, rescuers may spare their lives so that the rats can live as companion animals.

Sentientmedia.org

That’s about 118 million Rats and Mice a year they kill, just so you know.

Researchers look down on those who feel sorry for the doomed rats.

Laboratory technicians cut off rodents’ heads, suffocate them with carbon dioxide, or, less often but more humanely, inject them with euthanizing chemicals. To euthanize the rats in the aforementioned study, the researchers wrote that they would first give each one anesthesia, then they would replace the rat’s blood with Ringer’s lactate solution and paraformaldehyde while their heart was still beating, in a procedure called cardiac perfusion. Technicians can develop emotional bonds with the animals they must destroy. According to the Animal Welfare Institute, it is not uncommon for researchers to dismiss or look down upon technicians’ emotions when animals are killed, as the animals are not seen as pets to get attached to but as “research animals.”

Sentientmedia.org

Franz Kafka could’ve imagined this…except he didn’t need to. It’s all real. It doesn’t take any imagination. In fact, normal type people like ah…like some people I know…normal everyday people…are building rat mazes and doing research. Training Rats to find stuff. I’m not kidding you…

People do this for a hobby.

You could be a Researcher in your spare time. You don’t need a college degree. You can do it for fun. Here’s how it works. You build your own rat maze out of cardboard, visit the pet store, buy a little buddy white rat, train it to find the cheese. When you get bored you just kill the Rat. I mean “euthanize” it.

Researchers do it all day long. They’re good people.

Of course Researchers are often involved in more sophisticated experiments, bio-medical stuff, way more complicated than you as a layman could conduct, like, for instance, growing a human ear on the back of a mouse.

The Vacanti Mouse with a human-ear-shaped piece of cartilage growing out of its back.

I suppose this was a successful experiment and human lives have been saved and improved as a result.

Why? Because researchers are good people.

I like Mice. I like Rats. I especially like Cockroaches (brothers)…

I’d like to round up the researchers.

Experiment on them.

But that would make me a Psychopath.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter

Researchers are as clueless as the lab rats.

More even.

The Rats are just trying to get by. They’re not trying to figure shit out. Trying to improve people’s lives. Giving of themselves like they think they’re special. Like they’ve been mandated by God. Shit. The Rats are just looking for some cheese.

I’m with the Rats.

Meanwhile, I’ve determined that, after all, nobody is out to get me.

Better if some malevolent force did exist. It would mean this life has some kind of purpose.

Eh, maybe not….I could do without a malevolent force.

I just want to be left alone.

I want the rat maze universe to leave my ass alone.

I think I’ll hang here on my dock for a while and try to relax…

Hang on Scruffy…

Fill my Yeti. Eat a banana.

Wander the corridors of my own personal rat maze.

Check out the scene.

Stroll the paths.

I’m stuck here but it aint so bad. There’s worse personal rat mazes to be stuck in I guess…

View from my starboard window…

Later I’ll head over to the office and have the ghoul whip me up a fresh cup of joe. What the hell. Best to just try and relax.

The Ghoul is my pal.

But not these guys. These guys are always here. They give me the creeps. Maybe I give them the creeps. Do I feel like introducing myself? Not today.

I’m in a personal rat maze kind of mood.