Ode on a Texan Burn

I know - in the grand scheme of things, it's kind of goofy to get upset over a big old animatronic cowboy. He didn't do too much but wave, rattle off a catch-phrase or two, and frighten generations of small children with his Night of the Living Dummies face. (I can't imagine how many fragile psyches he mutilated when he burned up this morning.)

Seriously - Chucky wishes he was half as scary.

And I know that they're going to fix him up and put him back out there for next year. Good as new.

Except they'll have to replace his electrical systems, of course, and will probably take the liberty of giving him newer, more articulated movements when they do. They'll need to replace his burnt-up face too, and if you're going to do that, you might as well "update his look" for the 21st century - shoot, maybe redesign him right out of the uncanny valley altogether!

And this is where Keats screwed up on the Grecian Urn. Yeah, forever wilt thou love and she be fair... until somebody gets drunk at the company Christmas party and accidentally topples your Grecian asses into a million shattered pieces on the floor. Not so immortal now, are you?

So what I'm saying is this: we spend our lives coming to grips with the reality that all the people and creatures we love will change and eventually die, and it is damned annoying when the stuff you reasonably expect to stay the same, doesn't.

But then, I guess that's how we make room in the world for new things.

Anyway, going to the fair with the fam tomorrow, and I think I'll lay a corn dog down for Big Tex when we do. Thanks for all the nightmares, buddy.


The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.