Are you happy right now?

There was this show on Animal Planet about the moose, they were talking about how the antlers are a symbol of the moose's manhood: they use them to fight other bulls for the right to have sex with the women.

The moose symbolically rub their metaphorical cocks together.

But apparently, should a moose become castrated, he immediately sheds his current antlers and grows a new set of hideously deformed, permanently soft poop-antlers.

These are the elephant man version of antlers.

Wow.  Not only can they not defend themselves, or get laid, they also have to walk around with a gigantic, symbolically flaccid crown of shame, letting everyone know that they're the king of impotent pariahs.  And for them to hang their heads would only put their inadequacy more up front.

If these moose don't commit suicide, is it only because they can't see their own antlers?  But then again, isn't that true of humans too?  Isn't life, in many ways a game of Indian Poker?

We go through life taking the objective measure of those around us, but don't we all have a blindspot right behind our eyes?  (I originally wrote this up as what I thought was a very solid spec script for Sex In The City.)

Me in my apartment!

"Am I a seven or an eight?  I'm definately hotter than him, theres no way I'm a six, right?  I wish there was someone I could just ask but I don't trust anyone to actually tell me the truth....Maybe the reason women don't respond to me is because of my low self esteem....I just need to accept that I'm at least an eight and a half."

We can take an indirect measure by pairing up with someone, but even then the questions may arise.

"Did I marry too young?  I think I may have sold myself short.  Do the numbers change over time or are we now who we were in High School?  Shit I forgot what number she was and now I can't see it because she's been next to me for the last few years."

Obviously the moose is too stupid to even be sentient, let alone self-aware enough to commit suicide; this is the species where, if a hunter hides behind a tree, it will immediately forget the hunter exists.  But isn't that the way humans are about their own insecurities?  Every time you're actually happy, isn't it only because you've temporarily forgotten about all the things that are wrong with you?

 

"He reminds me of me a lot." - Michael Jackson discussing The Elephant Man on Oprah in 1993; he still had a lot of work to do on himself.