I really need to get used to the internet. This morning, someone in the internet stratosphere who speaks a language I don’t, “liked” one of my posts. This language doesn’t even have letters I recognize. It is actually probably some kind of Arabic, but my overactive imagination brain interprets this as alien hieroglyphics. Isn’t this the coolest thing ever? I wish I spoke All The Languages so I could go to her blog page and say, “Hey, it’s amazing that you can communicate in 2 languages, that must make it twice as easy for people to understand you!”
This got me to thinking, wouldn’t the ability to talk to anyone in the universe be the best superpower ever? Seriously, if I had a superpower it would not be invisibility (what’s the use of being so weird if no one can judge you) or mind-reading (people’s secret thoughts are legit scary) or flight (I get dizzy in tall places). Instead, I could speak Klingon and Mandarin and Drunk Party Chick! I would use my powers of communication to broker treaties between warring nations and organize peace everywhere!
I assume the power to communicate is directly correspondent to level of intelligence. If I were to have a chat with the King of Sweden we could have a conversation about how vodka and IKEA don’t mix but are equally fun, where as if I were to talk to my mom’s dog we would probably be reduced to one-word observations of feeling or nouns. Eg., Ball! Outside! Cuddles! In my mind, I would put Drunk Party Chick’s level of communication skills somewhere slightly above my mom’s dog’s and slightly below Brick Tamland’s.
If I were to try to talk to a slug, however, I think the lack of a brain would limit my communication abilities. I would be reduced to sharing unspecific levels of pain and/or hunger. I seriously doubt these creatures have the ability to feel happiness. But who knows, maybe that’s my anti-slug prejudice showing and slugs really do have the ability to feel sorry or horny or comfortable. Just because I’m ignorant of their sluggish brain doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just that it probably isn’t. I’m sorry slugs, maybe someday in an enlightened society I will understand your purpose.
So to answer your question, any time something small happens in my life (such as a person “liking” my blog post) it becomes such a huge deal to me that I have to write an entirely new post about it. I shudder to think what will happen if anyone ever leaves a comment!
Update: I just found out that there is an X-man with the power of omnilinguistics called Cypher. He was mostly used for his ability to “understand” computers. Good thing everyone in the X-man world speaks English, then.
Unicorns are Forever 