In which the second theme week is mentioned.

Zach, James, and I were brainstorming* about week's theme, and we decided to make it Mutually Assured Destruction.

*Zach: ...mutually assured destruction would be a fun theme, I think.
James: I can roll with this.
Thomas: Certainly a lot to say about it. Plus, a lot of syllables!
Zach: Not, like, super-assured of it, but... Yeah. Unless anyone has a better idea.
Thomas: And it applies to politics, music, and all that.
James: well, we've been brainstorming for like 2 minutes?
Thomas: I've been thinking about how much the transformers look like giant robot bats.
Thomas: And fat-bottomed egyptian queens.
James: they do make the rocking world go around.
Thomas: They made their rocking world go OH DAMN YOU JAMES

At a groupblog like this (I just make that up!), it's something that I often consider. As in, "How soon could my own niggling opinions about what makes a properly insane piece of writing tear our friendship apart?" I realize, of course, that this particular street flow both ways. I'm far from anything special (so humble!) or talented (so modest!), so I am naturally hesitant to begin dissecting other people, since I'm pretty aware that I can be vivisectioned just as easily.

I am covering my face with my hands as I type this (which is no mean feat), but the thought of destroying myself to destroy someone else always reminds me of my first Big Deal Relationship. She and I got on well enough, and then began the long-distance thing. We drifted apart for about a year, and then I found out that while I'd gained ten pounds and stopped shaving, she already moved on. When I showed back up in her life, and was promptly escorted back out, I did what anyone would do, and stalked her crazily. For, like, six months. I don't know what I was thinking. Then I moved to a distant city, nearly did something I'd regret with a young lady who didn't tell me her exact age, and moved on too. But thinking back, it's one of those moments in life where I'd like to toss my old self into a furnace and pee on the ashes.

The real fear, though, is of falling back into those old habits. In my "Everybody dies alooooone!" moments, when I'm hugging my knees and listening to Sufjan Stevens by myself, my biggest fear is that I'll become something I'll regret later. We may be an endless progression of people, but at the moment, the democratic Mes of space and time are pretty happy with who they are, and would not like it revealed that their self-multitudinousness was in err.

And that, I suppose, is the real trick of mutually assured destruction. The reason why our parent's generation didn't see civilization as we know it dissolved into a fine mist is the fact that it would have not only killed us (because let us face facts - some people are happy to die for stupid causes), but it would have made us look bad to anyone who survived.