Sunday, November 14, 2021

Memento Mori

It's been 84 years, or at least feels like it.





These are powerful memories to the initiated, but for the uninitiated time for backstory. On this day of our lord, November 14th 2019 a channel was created hosted by super popular YouTube stars Mark and Ethan where for an entire year a video would be released, with the catch that once a full 365 days have passed the channel would be deleted and the videos would no longer exist. It was an unparalleled experiment that had nothing short of a cult following, and I couldn't possibly give a one year in memoriam eulogy to this wild and amazing thing because well, Mark and Ethan already did and spoke for all of us. So instead I do what I do best, recount my personal experiences to show that I was there, and I was watching. Set the wayback machine to 2019 a much simpler time when I first heard about the channel and having precisely no idea what it was, I subscribed. Now I won't lie to you and say, oh yeah man I was there from day one, every single day I watched the newest video, blah blah blah. No. I forgot about Unus Annus for at least a month or two, so I had a backlog of considerable amount when I got fully into it. Then....f***. We are still reeling from the events of 2020, and Unus Annus was such a strong thing that kept me going and as it got more turbulent, eventually I had to seek refuge with other family. By that point it was September of 2020, and my cousin was an enormous fan of Mark and Ethan and he watched Unus Annus but he was fully caught up, and I was playing catch up so we spent night after night watching this show I guess you could call it. There were three staples of entertainment in that household, wrestling, anime, Unus Annus. And you better believe we were the biggest dorks, quoting it constantly, out of nowhere dueting the Disclaimer Song, making morbid jokes followed by "Memento Mori. Unus Annus....", it was our shit man. We loved it. And I'll tell you right now, I barely caught up to everything before the final day. Binge watching to stay up to date, and it really can never be properly explained what the videos were. The only thing I can offer is a perspective, it was all about trying new things they never did before, often very stupid things, but they did some fascinating and cool stuff too, almost like a bucket list recorded for this brief blip in human existence. In a strange way, despite it having undertones of death, and loss of time, and (comical) murder, it really was a celebration of life in so many facets. Whether you're in your room laughing at stupid shit on your computer with your friend, enjoying the great outdoors and several sports, or just doing random stuff, my God it really summed life all up for me. Just the spirit of it was, go out and enjoy life, you only have so much time and you never knew when you're gonna die, treat your life for what it's worth and live for every breath, I know it's easy to get bogged down with normal everyday things but to live is to die so enjoy it. In fact, Unus Annus played a huge part in accepting, me as an individual, my death one day. Not that I dreaded it, but it made me appreciate life and not be afraid to go when the time comes. I mean really, if you had a countdown, you had a clock that could never stop, ticking away the seconds of your life until it hit zero, would you sit and mope and fear or would you actually do something with that time. Everything ends and it's always sad, but everything begins again and it's always happy. Be happy, laugh hard, run fast, be kind. And when that final day came, he wasn't ready to let go but I was happy that I was there. I was there at the beginning and now I got to see how it ends. The clock kept ticking, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 1 minute, and when it was about to hit zero I had exactly one thing to say, "See you on the other side.". And then it was gone, and all we have left are the memories. There's a great many things I miss in my life, some I'll never properly have the words to express, but this is a day of fond remembrance. And after it was over, they had a store full of different items for Unus Annus and in the final hour of it existing I bought an hourglass pin for my black coat. And you better believe I'll be buried with that. The clock still ticks for me, and there's always more to talk about with movies and shows. So I'll see you soon, come what may. Always loved, never forgotten. Memento Mori.

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