As I mentioned earlier this week, I’ve been reading The Children of Hurin. The book is about a man named Hurin who is captured by the Dark Lord and cursed to sit upon a high throne and observe from afar with omniscient vision the lives of his children, whom the Dark Lord has also cursed.

The situations in the book gave me reason to contemplate the 10 or so years that I’ve been online. The last 5 in particular I’ve been most active reading blogs, journals, forums, and so on. It never ceases to amaze me how many peoples’ lives are an unbroken string of seemingly undeserved calamities. Is there a such thing as a “curse” and, if so, are such people afflicted by them? Or, on the other hand, is it likely that their string of misfortunes is the result of their own ineptness?

Now, I’m usually pretty clear on the fact that I think metaphysics is a bunch of garbage. On the other hand, there’s a passage in The Silmarillion (or maybe it’s in Unfinished Tales, I don’t remember) that reveals to the reader what happens after Sauron is defeated in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien basically says that the age of Men begins and things like Hobbits, Elves, Dragons, and Wizards gradually fade and disappear. Despite the steaming heap of bullshit that is metaphysics I still like to believe in superstitions such as curses and luck simply because they make life a little more interesting.

I play a lot of old fashioned tabletop and board games and it follows that I own a lot of dice. In all my years I was never lucky with dice. In monopoly if I needed a seven I would roll a five. Last year I bought a new set of dice that were being sold to support a not-for-profit gaming club and I’ve found that they’re exceptionally lucky. When I use other dice my ability to roll good numbers turns to shit all over again.

So I’ll continue to support science and reason in all things but sometimes I’ll still drive by a corner store and wonder “do I have enough magic points to win the lottery today?”