Like Tarzan, but the gorillas are in people-suits.

The grocery store was flooded with young married couples this Monday, many of them younger than myself. It was terrifying. I can't expect a mundane chore like grocery shopping to reflect the deep beauty of their marital union or anything, but their expressions and posture just seemed to epitomize banality: a long, slow death. How could you possibly need two minds at a time dedicated to the choice between Skippy and Jif?

The problem with a woman who claims to enjoy domesticity is that all that nonsense is actually important to a person like that. I can't imagine the boredom of shambling through a department store behind such a woman, being consulted about which shower curtain "we" want.

Likewise a woman who really knows how to paint her face and tousle her hair just right, and does it absolutely every day; that can be admirable, until she opens her mouth and you find out everything she isn't thinking about in the time it takes her to get that done.

Or those kids who kill themselves to get into business school or law school or medical school even though they couldn't give a crap about business or law or medicine; who somehow manage a 3.95 GPA while learning absolutely nothing interesting (I'm looking at you, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.)

I have some admiration for tight schedules and early mornings, the stuff we are told temporal success is made of--but in conversations with that sort of person, I have to wonder just what occupies their thinking in quiet moments. We have sixteen hours of consciousness in a day, and it can't all be aimed at accomplishing your five-year plan.

These are not unintelligent people; are they really just endlessly running over their to-do list and mentally checking their pockets, all day long? Even on the john, or at the bus stop? Certainly they aren't thinking about anything else, or they'd be more interesting to talk to.

And if that's the case, can such a creature really be classified as sentient? No matter how sophisticated the solution may be, amoebas and crustaceans and roundworms have for millions of years managed the same problems effectively enough. Ants know how to get things done. I need to get out of BYU.