Now with a new ending by superjer...
When I was a younger, no larger than a crate full of Chinese spiders, I lived my life by a sort of miniature Bushido code. This code involved asking myself a simple question: “What would SuperJer do in a situation like this?” That's when I would find the moral and mental certainty to complete any task looming before me. “Yes,” I would say to myself, “SuperJer wants me to give it my all, no matter what kind of pitfalls or exploding barrels block the path to success.”
Things were a lot easier back then. My faith was solid. Then one day heard the terrible news: SuperJer had been captured. This rocked my soul to its very foundations, as did the charge from Confed High Command, ordering me to find and rescue him.
Back then I had only one thing to fear: failing SuperJer. What would the repercussions be if SuperJer died because of my shortcomings, or broke under interrogation and surrendered his sweet succulent wisdom to the enemy, all because I didn’t get to him in time? Surely he was valuable to the cause, since they would not mount a rescue mission of this magnitude were he just some expendable grunt. No, SuperJer had to be… well, SUPER! He had to be a hero of true grit, a living monument to the awesome potential that exists within all of us to overcome adversity. There was no reason to doubt SuperJer, just as there was no reason to doubt the decision to send me to rescue him.
As the days went by, and as I worked my way through the dangerous obstacles life through at me, I began to question the superiority of SuperJer. It was childish frustration at first, mind you, but the questions remained regardless of their infantile origin. In fact, these questions grew up themselves, becoming sharper and more cunning as the hours passed. Why was I risking my life for SuperJer, a man I knew so little about? Aside from the fact he was captured, and that he was wicked fast with mathematical calculations, what more could I say about him? I could say he was a kind man, that he was a wise man,
That he was a SUPER man. But beyond that, what? Who was he? I could not say, for I did not know the real him as anything more than a goal. Was he worth saving? And if so, why? Would he make the sacrifices and struggles worth it in the end, or would he simply prove to be an anticlimax? Together, like a patchwork, these questions formed a larger question that gnawed at my soul with ravenous red teeth. Quite simply, I wanted to know why I was the one going after SuperJer. Splinters of doubt dug into my confidence's skin, and faith was no longer strong enough to pull them out.
Of course the problem was that SuperJer represented a paradox, at least within conventional thought. How could a man so super fail his mission and get captured? And if he existed to me as the monument to overcoming adversity, why couldn't he overcome his? Not to sound cold, but in the greater scheme of things, especially war, lives are lost and sometimes people simply cannot be saved. For me, it was simply impossible to quantify his value, since his one known heroic act was to get captured by the enemy. Surely this invalidated him as a hero, I reasoned, and thusly invalidated any mission to save him. In a weird way I also wondered if this made me superior to him. If it were my duty to do what he failed to do, then wouldn't that make me more super than him?
Questions like these are not easy to answer. I could swing from a metal balcony floating over a pit of fire but the seemingly simple task of defining the nature of one man proved too difficult. It was a pitfall greater than the reach of any philosopher’s mind, let alone mine. Perhaps this was why believing in SuperJer was so important. Perhaps he transcended certainty, ascending to a plateau that could only be appreciated by surmounting the myriad jigsaw puzzles of an arduous life and finally looking down at them as a whole from on high. Maybe SuperJer was super because he was beyond the struggles of man. He was captured only in our minds and by our standards, yet free in his personal world. In that sense, I was the prisoner to the routine of a cruel world. In finding him, I would actually be freeing myself. And who says it would end there? Freeing a man of powerful transcending ideas from the shackles of this oppressive world could open up his teachings to untold numbers. SuperJer could be the key to that final revolution that takes us to where we all need to be.
In the classic documentary “Apocalypse Now,” we see that Willard clearly understands the nature of Kurtz’s madness. Had he not endured the trials of the journey to find Kurtz, he would not have been able to fully grasp the entirety of Kurtz’s torment or its very real justifications. Not to suggest that SuperJer is or was insane, but perhaps it is the torment of the journey to find him that makes rescuing him a meaningful experience. If he were not so elusive, would there be anything to gain? Perhaps in the end we will both look down at the world from on high and he will tell me, “This is why you did what you did. Your socking pole can reach far, but even it must take small steps to climb the mountain.” But even then the idea of SuperJer as savior is another fantasy. There is no way to prove he is anything more than a captured soldier in a greater war. As a fellow soldier, it was merely my job to save him. A job like any other, and nothing more. A job I have since retired from.
Truth be told, I rarely think about SuperJer anymore. Like any good riddle, he occasionally enters my mind and beckons me to untangle the twisting knots of perplexity. In these instances I am propelled to revive the struggle, to seek him out and find the answers once and for all. But it’s never anything more than a spark these days, failing to ever ignite into the glorious crusade it once was. Maybe I was once the perfect candidate to find and rescue SuperJer. I can see the logic, most definitely. Who better suited to reach for the unreachable than a man with a socking pole? But SuperJer isn’t what I’m looking for anymore. The way I see it, there are six billion SuperJers out there. Let's start looking for them instead. They’re all around us and easier to find…
It sounded like a good idea, and I tried to justify it to myself, but I realized that truly there is only 1 SuperJer and the other 6 billion are in fact nonSuperJers. That is why I continued my journey, killing as many cute, fuzzy animals and PeTA members along the way as there were grains of sand. Until I reached the fount of the knowledge of the location of the SuperJer. I drank of its cool refreshing water and then peed in it. I don't know why I did that. Then I saw a message carved unceremoniously into the side of the fount:
SuperJer is watching America's Funnyest Home Vidoes on your TV
I was mystified about the two spelling errors, making me wonder if I could trust the author. Could it be that SuperJer was watching AFHV at my house all along? I had to know! In a mad dash I dashed all the way home, 2 blocks away.
I kicked open the door and burst into the room. There was SuperJer on the couch, there was the TV, and there was VH1's Top 50 Sexiest Music Videos Countdown, currently showing Love Shack by the B52s at rank 23.
I reached up to pull open my face to yell "THIS IS NOT AMERICA'S FUNNYEST HOME VIDOES!" but before I could emit the first syllable in "THIS", SuperJer violently exploded sending shower curtain rings and My Little Ponies all over the room.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
WHHHHHHHHHYYYYY!!!!!!!
WHHHHHHHHHYYYYY!!!!!!!
<superjer> What? It is? Where? Huh? Hey -- scones!
