Columns

Tonight, after finishing my politics reading (yes, I study politics – just thought I’d drip-feed a small teaser of the wildly popular “Who Is Creepy Uncle Sam?” meme that I’m sure will exist one of these days), I found my brain utterly wearied – the result, no doubt, of trying to infer the existence and features of a particular theoretical bush by observing the manner in which Dr Arturo Escobar limply beat around it. No matter – Dr Escobar, with his poignant impersonation of an extremely disoriented moth, has well and truly earned his membership to the Hegelian Society of People Who Write Pretentious Bollocks to Confuse Undergraduates; and you, dedicated reader, have well and truly earned a respite from the cutting intellectualism that usually graces this page. So let’s talk about reincarnation.

Most people think they’ve got reincarnation sussed. They figure that coming back as a fly or some other sort of lowly insect would be the ultimate punishment. But being a fly is a cinch. After all, the average lifespan of a fly is only around 20 days and contains a bare minimum of morally questionable behaviour, the odd typhoid epidemic notwithstanding. Basically it’s cheap karmic credit, an easy path to a middling mammal.

Believe it or not, the ultimate karmic retribution would be life as a great white shark. Yes, you’d be a totally badass killing machine. But it’s not like you get to watch Jaws with your dogfish pals and bask in their adulation. Instead, you have to swim for your entire life, all 100 years of it, with no company, constantly hungry, getting laid once every five years or so, and all you get to eat is rubbery seals and slippery Australians. Or dolphins, which definitely wouldn’t help your karma.

So why this sudden interest in metaphysically suspect Dharmic doctrines? Well, I’ve been worrying about Clint Eastwood. I’d always supposed he’d done some amazing good deed in his past life, like curing polio or inventing Indian food. And for his extensive services to awesomeness, I figured he’d get another great gig in the next life – the lovechild of Tina Fey and Hugh Laurie, say. Now I’m not so sure about either of these assumptions. When Clint turned up at the Republican National Convention, most people probably expected him to just go on stage, glare silently at the audience, and shoot a hole in the wall. After all, he built a career on it. But what we got instead was so much worse.

It’s always a little sad and disappointing when you find out one of your idols is nuts. I guess now we know why Clint’s characters always say as little as possible.