Discovering this weird world

The other day I saw something strange and wonderful. I was walking along the street, happily minding my own business, and happened to stop at a junction. All normal so far. Then, a lorry stopped beside me – a FedEx lorry with the FedEx logo emblazoned all over. And that was when I saw it; inside the FedEx logo, there was an arrow!

I am not ashamed to admit that I fell to my knees and wept with awe at the sight. There may be some of you wondering how some trickery of design could evoke such a reaction. To these people, I suggest to go away, find the FedEx logo and when you see it, I’ll be here with tea and biscuits and we can all share our experiences.

The odd thing is that I’ve seen the FedEx logo hundreds of times before and I’ve never seen that arrow before. Maybe it was the lighting, or the angle of the lorry or...whatever! For some reason, it suddenly decided to click. This is indicative of something wider, something greater. I get the feeling we are simply drifting aimlessly across the millpond surface of a much stranger reality.

I get the feeling we are simply drifting aimlessly across the millpond surface of a much stranger reality

For example, we like to think that the Oracle of Delphi, who famously messed with people’s minds, was just another tale confined to antiquity. We were wrong. She just relocated, to Reading of all places! My favourite sign along the M4 corridor reads “For the Oracle, turn off at Junction 11.” I would go and visit her but I’m afraid I might end up doing something I didn’t mean to, like killing my father or poking a badger in the eye or something equally tragic.

Sometimes, we are accustomed to the strangeness only when it’s presented as fiction. If I were to describe a magical blue box from a faraway land that is bigger on the inside than the out, most of you would instantly jump to TARDIS. Not many of you, I reckon, would immediately think of Ikea, but that is exactly what it is! I’m sure at its heart is a flat–pack forest, from which they make all the furniture – not that I’ll ever find out of course.

I’ve always been confused that, of all the great panoply of creation, most things taste like chicken, especially since chicken doesn’t taste like much at all. My bamboozlement was ended by the application of Occam’s Razor, or rather, Occam’s carving knife. The reason why everything tastes like chicken is because all these animals are chickens in disguise. For larger animals like crocodiles, imagine a pantomime horse but with more players. For a bird that cannot fly or run for any meaningful distance, this is a wise survival strategy. It’s just unfortunate that people will eat anything. In a similar vein, human beings taste like pork (or so I’ve heard) because some of us might actually be pigs in disguise. This theory might not be kosher but I’ve never seen a Jewish cannibal.

The Pythia in a power suit. Swedish spooning of the Laws of Physics. Fancy–dress parties for poultry. I won’t blame you if you don’t believe these discoveries – they are incredible, literally. But the more we learn about our world and our universe, the more amazing it becomes, to me at least. When explorers first stumbled across the duck-billed platypus, scientists dismissed it as a taxidermic joke. Nowadays, we barely raise an eyebrow at this egg–laying, poison–barbed, duck¬billed and beaver–tailed monotreme, although they are still kind of neat.

I think with each new discovery, we risk becoming complacent to just how amazing reality is. When did we become so jaded? Is it cool, or mature, to be unimpressed with everything we see around us? If so, call me an immature loser! I don’t think there is a worse crime than ignoring how awesome this life is.

Except perhaps poking badgers in the eye.