Thursday, November 27, 2008

I, me, myself. An Enigma.


Many many years ago there was nothing. Then there was me. I fiddled with a few stray molecules and compressed them to infinite density. It went bang. Then, for some unfathomable reason, I couldn't suppress an irresistible urge to fart. "BANG!", it violently echoed down the crisp new corridors of Time. This one was Big. Many years later scientists proposed a theory about it...

I am all powerful. When the Gods feel helpless they pray to me. I can collapse parallel multidimensional probabilities to singularities, and tear through the fabric of space-time. I can outrun a photon, and travel at the speed of thought. The arrow of time means nothing to me, I can twist, and turn, and reverse and transform it into a toothpick.

When I am in a particularly good mood I like to resurrect the dead. When my medications wear off, I usually liquidate them again. My unpredictability makes my followers exclaim, "Mysterious are His ways!"

I love food. I consume pesticide for mega-vitamin supplements. I created Monsanto to compete with Centrum. My brain, consequently, has a hyper-intelligence drive. Once I took an IQ test. The test failed, saying it couldn't handle four digit IQs. I can solve hyperbolic partial differential equations with mixed Dirichlet and Neuman boundary conditions, orally. I can recite the value of "pi" backwards. With a pencil and paper I can do 36 billion floating point operations per second. In double precision. Armed with a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, I can double that performance.

I am adventurous. I have been through eight hijacks. I supervised half of them. I got the license to kill before I got my driver's license. I've been hunted by the Mossad since more than a quarter of a century. They don't know why and my friends neither do I. I foiled seven assassination attempts on me before I had the right to vote. I haven't voted even once.

I am unpredictable. If someone draws three aces from a pack of cards, I go ahead and calmly draw three more. I have rejected three Nobel Prizes, and one Miss Universe crown on principle.

I am ruthless. When someone makes a wise-crack at me, I put it up on his epitaph an average of 1 minute 22 seconds thence. Treachery and betrayal by the closest of friends has rendered me a rock. And an island. And I love Paul Simon. And the Beatles.




I have been there. I have done that. I have commanded a troop of men in a famous covert operation for the FBI, danced around in careless glee as a shepherd in the mountain valleys of Kashmir, worked in the rain clogged sewers of Bombay, served as President for consecutive terms, written astrology columns for several newspapers, struck Olympic Golds in sumo-wrestling and figure skating in Seoul '88, built my own house on the banks of the Amazon, recovered from an ugly bout of drug-addiction, launched a geo-synchronous satellite and developed several constitutive equations for entangled polymer melts. I built my first grenade when I was five. By the time I was in high school I had an entire arsenal of nuclear tipped, laser-guided, heat-seeking, precision missiles in my backyard with the Middle East eagerly coveting them. I was knighted for life-time achievement as a teenager.

I am a defender of liberty and champion of free-will. I wish I could be as free as a majestic eagle in flight ... Or a nocturnal cold-blooded slimy amphibian with two heads and bloodshot, probe-like eyes which feasts on human blood and reproduces asexually. I am electrically positive, chemically alkaline and physically volatile.

When I'm bored I make accurate meterological predictions for the upcoming week. I play with the dangerous. Chance, fire, evil spirits .... I use asbestos underwear and strongly recommend them. My resume' is more impressive than God's, and if the Universe were a meritocracy, I would be running it. I am a part of the collective conciousness, thought and matter-energy continuum. I love Linux, Pink Floyd and my family. I really do!

I wish the day had one extra hour - so I could sleep some more.

PS: I found this writeup from my grad-school webpage archived on some hard-disk somewhere. It was heavily inspired(!) at that time by a statement-of-purpose by a college applicant to NYU. I thought I'll regurgitate some of my older material, since parts of it still tickle my fancy.