I was out of town for the past few days. Yes, I had my laptop with me, but work and family were higher priority than updating this fucking thing. If you’re one of those smug, pedantic assholes that enjoys xkcd unironically (or ironically, for that matter), and you feel the temptation to point out the inaccuracy of the caption at the top of this blog, I have exactly two words for you: fuck off.

I went for a run for the first time in a while tonight, which is an incredibly uninteresting thing to share, save for the fact that it serves as background for a brief revelation I had: it amazes me how closely tied the productivity of my mind is to the well-being of my body. The healthier I eat, and the more I work out, the better I think. The more I sit around and do nothing, the less I find myself actually thinking anything productive. I’ll own up to the fact that my blog posts these past few weeks have been less-than-inspired, and I attribute that not to intellectual laziness, but to laziness in general. I can only assume this relationship extends to other people, in which case my internal notion of most unintelligent people being fat, lazy slobs gains some shred of academic merit.

The weather isn’t cold enough these days for me to use “I can’t go outside” as an excuse any more, so I’m going to make a habit of running and working out every day, which should translate to my having more interesting things to say in this little shit-hole of a blog.

I really fucking hate heartfelt tangents, so now I’m going to change the topic to something more inflammatory and unreasonable (and therefore probably more accurate): there are exactly three types of people. There are (1) the people that come up with new ideas, (2) the people that copy new ideas and add their own twist, and (3) the people that have no interest in producing anything of value. We’re going to ignore group (3) for the purposes of this post, because I think we (by which I mean members of all three groups) can all agree that they should fuck the fucking fuck off.

Group (2) is the one I’m referencing in the post title, and the members of this group entail the vast majority of producers of content for various media. These are your sitcom screenwriters, your video game studios, your cell phone manufacturers. They see a good idea, and try to make it their own. They attend business luncheons, and pitch their “concepts” as “Like X, but better!” Words cannot describe my hatred for them. Everything they make is tainted with the indelible stench of “me-too-ness.” There’s a nagging feeling that the creator was only pretending to be a master at their craft — the end product is marred by a handful of visible nubs where the plastic overflowed the mold that somebody more creative prepared for them.

Honestly, war-time first-person shooters stopped being novel or interesting sometime back in the 90s. Changing the weapons and setting does not make it a new game. Fucking stop pushing these things out; you’re ruining an entire fucking industry. That goes double for the makers of licensed sports games. Who is buying these incremental updates to ancient games with ever-so-slightly modified content packs? I would like to meet them so I can punch them in the face. The reason so many of these jokers strive for mediocrity is that you aren’t demanding quality or creativity. You accept mediocrity — hell, you even pay for it — so why should they bother making anything more?

Of course, the answer to that question brings us to group (1). What reason does anybody have to make new, exciting things, when they could make buku bucks polishing old turds and selling them for the price of diamonds? Standards. Motherfucking standards. Some of us (did you think I was going to pretend I don’t consider myself a member of group (1)?) have a nigh-obsessive concern with putting out shit that meets a certain level of quality. Some of us have a difficult time looking at somebody else’s solutions and seeing anything worth parroting — but a single glance at something completely unrelated gives us insight into how we might approach the problem from a completely different angle.

I imagine many group (1) members were deemed exceptionally bright as children, moved through school without any struggles at all, and never had to try to be good at anything — they simply were. Of course, this broad categorization could be completely inaccurate, and most likely is. After all, the only real qualification to be considered a member of this group? Think different. I don’t know if it’s a skill that can be cultivated, but if my earlier assertion is correct (and now I’ll make a half-assed attempt to tie this rant back to the post’s introduction), there is at least some correlation between the physical condition of your body and the frequency and originality of your thoughts.