is nature a gigantic cat?
September 11, 2001, 06:04 pmJerkface recently loaned me a biography of Nikola Tesla (Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney, 1981). I don't know what to say. Wow. He seems so charming and brilliant and meglomanical. He seemed to never be discouraged by what some would consider impossible. He wished to solve all the world's problems and even proposed wirelessly distributing power to all of the world from Niagra Falls.
In 1893, Tesla made many demonstrations at the Chicago World Fair. People wept because it was so beautiful. Fucking wept. I can't imagine how exciting times must have been then... to see miracles like light and radio and Tesla's demonstrations of wireless power.
He once mentioned that when he was three years old, he was playing with static electricity that he was experiencing while petting his cat. Trying to explain the electrical forces in nature, he thought, Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded.
I even find it interesting that Tesla always wanted to know the volume of the food he ate and that he was obsessive and haunted by the number three and even his weird caring-for-pidgeons behavior. But it is unfortunate that he was so mean to fat people and made anti-semitic comments. :(
Well, all hopes of ever being productive at home are now gone. Last night, after joking around about our non-existant DSL service, I hooked up the coaxial cable that was hanging out of the wall and: BAM! Oh shit! We've got cable! So we watched the end of What Lies Beneath and Street Fighter: The Movie and eXistenZ (whose name and capitalization really annoy me). We have the showtime and the hbo and the cartoon network and the learning channel. Mmm... The Learning Channel. If only I'd had it last friday, as I'm a little dissappointed that I missed a program on Ball Lightning.