Pearls of wisdom from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Vol. 1

There is an idea out there that the Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a show for stoners. While very funny, the show is ultimately understood as lowbrow. I wholeheartedly disagree with this understanding of the show. In all honesty, I have found some serious pearls of wisdom in the aqua teens.

In one episode Carl and Mastershake had gone in havsises together to purchase themselves a mail order bride from Chechnya . Naturally hilarity ensued but there is this moment of clarity that Carl has. During the wedding ceremony, between a man a woman and a milkshake, the priest has dificulty pronouncing the bride’s name. At which point Carl tells him “It don’t matter, none of this matters.” Of course a wedding is supposed to matter, and while splitting your mail order bride wedding with your antagonistic Milkshake of a neighbor clearly would devalue the ceremony one would think that at least something about the incident mattered to Carl…

But therein lies the point. In that moment of Zen like calm and brevity Carl offered us all a timeless piece of wisdom. The absurdity of his situation reminds us of the absurdity of our own situation. What are you upset about, what is really getting to you, as my good friend Dan would often quip, “sometimes its hard… living in America.” Consider that I play a video game where people get into massive arguments and get all fired up about virtual shiny swords. Or that people sometimes die when people celebrate the victory of some sports team , or that people strap bombs to themselves and go blow up other people because they have different views on the nature of the flying spaghetti monster. All the while other people die of starvation while we throw away half of our food it goes on. These are things that matter, but they don’t occupy our minds, and I am not saying we should aspire to be saints here, but we should at least aspire to perspective on the state of things.

The way he said it is not to dismiss all meaning, but instead to question the value of that meaning. Clearly he was caught up in a particularly absurd series of events but it only reinforces the need to reexamine your own situation to consider what does hold meaning for you and whether or not it actually should matter. When I watched this episode for the tenth time, after I had laughed Carl’s words still stuck with me. When it all seems so bogus, when I wonder what the point is. I just remember “It don’t matter… none of this matters”