Kristen Schaal is a Horse gag. I originally included the one from the RadioLab episode, but the user privated it. The one I saw in her special was wayyyy longer.

Ever get so high you get caught in a loop? You just keep reliving the same moment, over and over. At some point you realize that’s happening and you start trying to escape it.

If you can just do or say one thing different this time, it’ll stop and time will move forward again. But still you get to hear, “You already said that” a million times. Feels like forever, but eventually you sober up and break out of the loop.

I am fascinated by the fact that the human minds can do that. I remember listening to a Radio Lab episode about that years ago. The one where they talk about the Kristen Schaal is a horse gag.

Radio Lab referred to these as fugue states. Sometimes it’s a permanent condition, one I hope I hever have. It’s such a strange concept, because short term amnesia, that I get. Your brain doesn’t encode the new experience, so you can’t remember it. That makes sense.

But… so you just live that moment forward again. Why do it the same way? Why say the same things? That part’s crazy to me. Like you were destined to do those things. That idea is unnerving. To what extent are we a computer running software?

My current theory of what happens is your brain probably tried to divide by zero. Or the language equivalent.

We’re already living out loops anyway, they just happen to be longer than 15 minutes. Don’t you get in ruts? Don’t you find yourself telling your wife the same stories you’ve told her a hundred times?

I don’t know about you, but it kinda bothers me to feel like I’m just a set of code. That was destined to do things a certain way because of that code and I have no say in it. I think that’s why I’ve always been a contrarian and tried to experience things that will force me to change.

I think that says something about time travel stories that have loops. As common as the fantasy is of going back to fix the past, you know it doesn’t make sense. So you’re not surprised when efforts to change things don’t work in the plot and the same mess comes around again. You’re technically still breaking physical laws, but nature corrects itself.

Still, we really want to believe. That’s why time travel stories that do break out of that loop and change things are more uplifting than ones where there’s nothing they can do.

The idea of getting stuck in an intricate loop for eternity is a pretty horrifying concept. It’s not a spoiler to say Predestination is a good example of that. The name gives it away. I still get chills thinking about that “ending.”

Mark Twain said “History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme” and I agree. But rhyme is at least a slight improvement over repeat.