Don Rickles, Don Rickles, and oh, Don Rickles!

You ever have one of those days where something in particular surfaces over and over again? The other night, I was watching an old episode of Andy Griffith and a relatively young Don Rickles portrayed a ‘misguided’ con-man. Nothin’ much to that, but upon flipping channels, not 10 minutes later, I happened upon the tail-end of the Bernie Mac show and guess who else was there. Yep, ol’ Don. Strange, but that occurs fairly often. Well, about 20 minutes later, I surfed out Jay Leno’s way and I’ll be damned if Don Rickles wasn’t sitting in that guest chair! Now, how does that happen?! for a second I thought maybe ol’ Don had passed away or something and all the networks were paying tribute, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, Don was promoting his new book which looked about as thick as the cliff’s notes to a Dr. Suess story.

Anyway, I find it very odd when things like this happen. It makes me think of the Matrix in a way, where the world as you know it is ’simply’ a programmed environment, and it’s our imprinted consciousness acting out the daily events while our natural bodies are stored away in cybernetic prisons and used as ‘food’ for the machines. Or something like that. The movies make a reference to deja vu which, in the matrix, means a glitch in the program and that the program is being rewritten for some purpose. Now, I’ll not dare try to explain the complex structure of the matrix any further because, frankly, I don’t think I can. But I will say that seeing Don’s ugly mug on 3 different channels in the span of 45 minutes led me to a few metaphysical thoughts and the remembrance of another such occasion, this time dealing with good ol’ Merlin.

As you should all be aware by now, I’ve been reading Robert Holdstock’s Merlin Codex which gives a well-thought out account of the ‘wizard’ generations before his time as King Arthur’s aide. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the books as they are a very mature, although fantastic, look into our ancient past. And being rooted in Celtic lore only makes it better! Anyway, it’s no secret either that I’m a huge Stargate-SG1 fan, and have recently picked up season 9 on dvd. Here, we have reference to Merlin and learn that instead of being your typical eternal walker, he was actually part of an ancient race that has long ascended (shedding the mortal flesh). You’d really have to catch up on the series to fully understand that, but my point is that I had yet another direction to view this mythical figure. Well, I think 2 days before my Stargate-Merlin fit, I was watching something on APT which gave a blurb about the guy. This was simply the ordinary retelling of everything that we learned from modern media. yet I still find it strange that occurrences such as this usually happen days apart, if not in the same day. I’ve even had days where certain ‘college’ words would surface a few times in a day; ya know, those words that aren’t used everyday, and you probably don’t know what they mean anyway? Coincidence? I think not…… well, maybe…… I dunno.

more as it comes.