A Question of Futility

In the past 24 hours I've uploaded three different videos to youtube, and sent a fourth to philly.tv for a contest. And all without a new microphone. What am I doing?

It's not like anyone is urgently waiting for me. I have seven subscribers.

I guess it's just a matter of my needing to do it.

For example, I just spent the last hour outside cleaning up the yard. A lot of that time was spent breaking branches up by hand into sticks for the fireplace. First of all, the fireplace doesn't have a chimney, so I can't use it, so why am I doing it? Second, breaking branches into sticks is basically taking something with a fractal dimension of about 2.4 and trying to make it one-dimensional. Futile. Also, when I burn them I'll probably try to arrange them for maximum fire potential, which means a fractal dimension of about 2.4 -- so what am I doing?

Basically, breaking down branches is a task I was given as a child to keep me busy while we were camping. Oh, we used the sticks, but it really wasn't necessary when dad had a can of gasoline in the trunk. And yet, it's therapuetic somehow. I'd say cathartic, but I'm not sure what that means.

It's genius of HBO to grab some of the most popular youtube people (sxephil, buck hollywood, that lonely girl) and put them in a webshow together. It's called hooking up, and so far I like it.

Then there's that mortgage bailout thing. Is that going to work? Does it even help me at all? Won't it just raise my taxes? Are gas prices down this week because AIG survived or because it's October and they always go down in October?

Not to mention the election. We had that vice-presidential debate, but did anyone care? The choice for running mate hasn't mattered since JFK. "In Dallas County, the home LBJ." Even Ford was appointed, not elected.

So, is pretty much everything we do futile? Or what? I'd like to think it isn't, but so far no one has proven me wrong.