“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:”
Hello and Welcome to Teeth of Cheese.
As the Walrus said, we will talk of many things. I shall now do my best to explicate my motivations for getting this beach-front property in the Blogger community, so that any oysters that decide to follow along are not shucked of their time. We’re lookin’ to kick up some sand and create pearls of wisdom to be adorned at fancy tea parties.
Where to begin...1
1 "Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." The King, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XII
2 "The walrus, with his girth and his good nature, he obviously represents either Buddha, or, with his tusks, the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha. That takes care of your Eastern religions. Now the carpenter, which is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, who was raised a carpenter's son, he represents the Western religions." Loki, Dogma
3 "First they champ / Then they stamp / Then they stand still." Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit
“Only with teeth of cheese can one truly enjoy a cracker.”
This was a quotation of nonsense that I came up with in high school that, for one reason or another, has stuck with me for over a decade. Much like mathematical summations that fluctuate infinitely between equaling zero and one, I think this quote fluctuates from nonsense to philosophical truth and back again the further you delve down the rabbit-hole; perhaps that is why it has barnacled itself to me for all these years. Maybe the quote unifies world-thought: ‘teeth of cheese’ are really ‘tusks of cheese’, representing the paunchy Walrus of the East; and the ‘cracker’ is the Caucasian Carpenter of the West.2 Most likely, it is as Lewis Carroll would have it, and it is, in fact, nonsense, and I am a mere mome rath, whose thoughts have wandered outgrabe.
For our purposes, the cracker will represent our stimuli, things in the world that try to reach out to us and appeal to our senses. We are surrounded by dull, vague, and formless objects that crumble rather easily. Everything is made of crumbs; some people call them atoms, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that everything is made of essentially the same crumb-stuff. The world-at-large doesn't discern (really) between crackers. The world is a formless mass of crackers. What even is a cracker, exactly? Take a file to a cracker and begin moving the instrument back and forth, watching the crumbs slowly pile below. Now, stop the instant that the cracker ceases to be a cracker. How many crumbs can you take from a cracker before it is no longer a cracker? Crackers are vague things with no exacting definition. The world is a formless mass of vague crackers made of crumbs.
These things, these crackers, need to be investigated and experienced. They need to be masticated through the grinder, and broken down to their elemental crumbs. We could do it the boring way: Thirty white horses on a red hill.3 But why bother? These cardboard wafers need a little flavor, and a little sophistication. They need cheese. Not just a slab of cheese slapped on there to be champed and stamped by a mouthful of bone. Don't let's be silly. Our information grinder, our experiential sieve, will also be our flavor and culture enhancer.
"Only with teeth of cheese can one truly enjoy a cracker."
Results may vary, as the experiences delivered through this maw of cheese are still subject to your personal palate. I'm hosting this party and am using my own cheese, from the pantry I've stocked over the course of my lifetime. Not everyone is going to like the hors d'oeuvres, and I'm undecided on serving entrees. And for those who have the metaphorical lactose intolerance, and suffer indigestion and discomfort from this place, I thank you for at least stopping by.
What are we then to expect from this blog? I hope to have posts of the following:
- Life Adventures
- Philosophical Thoughts
- Film/Game/Book/Music Reviews
- Game Design Thoughts
- Short Stories
- Interesting Things I Have Found
- Ramblings
- ...and more
A smörgåsbord of digestibles. Depending on how I feel about this and how it is received by you, the digesters, I may create a separate blog (or blogs) that is more focused in content. But for now:
Hello and Welcome to Teeth of Cheese.
1 "Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." The King, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XII
2 "The walrus, with his girth and his good nature, he obviously represents either Buddha, or, with his tusks, the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha. That takes care of your Eastern religions. Now the carpenter, which is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, who was raised a carpenter's son, he represents the Western religions." Loki, Dogma
3 "First they champ / Then they stamp / Then they stand still." Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit
