In Defense of Patriarchy

That title's misleading. I don't actually have anything good to say about patriarchy; I just have the word "patriarchy" on my mind at the moment. It's one of those words that has a pleasing sound to me and a combination of letters that are aesthetically tasteful. None of this has anything to do with the actual meaning of the word. I'm equally as fond of matriarchy. In fact, words with "arch" in them are just awesome. Archetype is another good one!

If you're wondering, some of the other words I appreciate aesthetically are elite, philosophical, cadence, millennium, and most especially abyssal. Abyssal is just awesome, in fact. It's got that sweet, sinister hard consonant "s" sound, along with a classy execution of the "y" in place of a vowel. Delicious. Oh, that's another word I like. Delicious. And sometimes deciduous. Both are great.

Why am I talking about words? Well, that's a good question! That I just asked myself. Because really, even though I know this is written for the public space, I'm writing to myself, in a monologue. Unless it's a dialogue. With myself?

I have a lot on my mind at the moment and sadly, very little of it is conducive towards reflection on "the craft." At the moment, for no particular reason, I'm thinking about zombies, whether or not tonight should be pizza night, if "witchcraft" sounds like it could be a type of cheese, and whether or not the teleological argument in favor of God's existence is compelling or retarded. I started out hating it, but now I'm not so certain. The teleological argument, I mean. I mean, it makes a lot more sense than other arguments I've been learning about, but, I don't know; there was just something about the modal ontological argument that was just so evil and sexy, after I figured out what it actually meant.

I will be totally honest. This collection of random, nonsensical thought matter is something that I'd usually write in a word document, or a private blog post. You aren't normally supposed to see this part of the mental process; it'd be like seeing your dad putting on the fake beard to go play Santa Claus. You're seeing the strings that hold up the whole show, the seams in the great facade. This is the intractable and moist truth that it's not always art and angelic choirs when we sit down to do this writing thing.

Sometimes, you're thinking about Kraft Brand Witch Cheese. Or whatever. And that's not even a thing, not really, it's just one of the random little thoughts that you have in between the usual stuff, the "where am I going to go to lunch" stuff and the "hmm, should I go to the bathroom now or can I hold it?" Which is, incidentally, why I think it would totally suck to be a mind reader. I mean, aside from the fact that you'd know exactly what every single person thought of you (that can't be good for the ego!), you'd be subject to all the little "Director's Cuts" of our mental processes. Which would be horrible, because, I don't know about you, but my brain is very much a maelstrom of oddities and half-remembered song lyrics.

Oh! Maelstrom. One of my very favorite words. I can't believe I didn't think of that one sooner. Seriously, say it out loud, right now. "Mail-strum."

It's sort of like a whirlpool, if you're wondering what it actually means. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a cool short story about it once, too.