A Desent into Madness (driving home for thanksgiving)

If you have ever travel long distances by yourself in a car you know that there's a bit of insanity involved in the whole process. The road tries to sway you to sleep while you're traveling 70 miles an hour vs people who are doing the same opposite to you.

I thought I'd let you in on a bit of my trip.

Stage One: Exiting Las Vegas.

At this stage of my trip extreme paranoia sets in. I went down a major 3 lane road, that had been reduced to one lane only and hit every red light. People in giant moving boxes tried to squeeze in front of me defying all laws of physics and Every radio station played only ads. I was conserving the batteries on my laptop for the rest of the trip but Vegas was looking to punish me for daring to leave its' bright lights behind.

Stage Two: The Desert Madness.

When the radio finally runs out of country stations I decide to switch to my laptop for music. It seems that country music is aptly named as I don't hear much of it in the cities but outside of the cities the stations persist much more than any other. But even country music stations must give way to the wasteland that lies between me and my destination.

At some point I realize that my computer is set up so that I hear songs that move my emotions in all directions. I sing along to songs about happiness, sadness, anger, love, loss and Even a few nonsense songs. I've become the greatest lead singer in all the world complete with backup singers. Never mind if I miss a lyric here or there, the car is the number one place to be if you gotta sing.

Stage Three: Madness

The sky darkens as night start to fall arround me and I've used all my emotions up for now. The tendrils of darkness that start to creep around make for a crazy visual and I imagine myself being chased by the shadows. There is only one hope my headlights must drive back that which is trying to get me. Unfortunately the lights of the traffic in the opposite direction make it so I can't in good conscious use my brights. Apparently Vegas is the place to be for giving thanks this year.

I start to feel in a trance and I get some great ideas for stories, like what if the falling stars in the sky are the evidence of earth protecting us from invasion from beings from outer space. Not meteorites at all but the remains of those who would do us harm. I guess that's what comes after watch a movie like "Skyline" and then seeing things fall from the sky.

Stage four: Near Death Experiences

By now the landscape is changing and snow is in evidence all around me. Creatures come out to get away from the snow on the cleared road and 3 rabbits one hawk and a deer all come close to death as my car careens towards them in the night. The snow is patch and at one juncture all the elements of driving come together to give me the most exciting and scary moment of my driving career.

It must be noted that I am a horrible driver. I don't have any major accidents or driving offenses but unlike the rest of the population who figure themselves studs I know that I scare the Bejesus out of any of my passengers and that I'm generally safer on my bicycle than in my car.

Back to my story however there came a patch in the road where the traction changed from good to slick precisely at a turn. A patch of snow the right angle made even going 20 below the posted limit tricky. I managed to do what most teenagers try to pull off in snowy parking lots on the highway I made a doughnut.

When I first felt my car go it turned the opposite direction of the way I tried to steer it. Next to me was a guardrail and my only chance of making it without major damage meant I had to go with the car and not fight it. So within one lane I abruptly turned to the right and watched as my car drifted to a point where the front bumper scraped the guard rail and I went in a complete 360 turn.

There seemed to be no major damage to the vehicle and at that point the car registered a temperature of -14 degrees Fahrenheit. I wasn't leaving my car to inspect the damage. The cold was too much. Lucky for me I had made it to a point where there were no other vehicles nearby for me to crash into. So I continued on my merry way, thinking to myself:

"I am so cool under pressure I didn't even freak out."

Stage Five: Elko

I get to Elko Nevada where the lights treat me to green the whole way home and the streets are clear and rubble free. No traffic to speak of and I arrive safe and sound in the driveway. I get out of my car and see to my dismay that the bumper has some damage to it that has been packed with snow. It is a mark of shame. Nothing major but when you drive around it's hard to show off your car when there's a crack in the front...

Now that I have claimed this story as my own I can enjoy a thanksgiving meal without feeling like I need to tell everyone about my crazy night. Have a good thanksgiving everyone.

The scariest place on earth

Being October I thought I'd hit on the idea of fear. And if you know me then you know that I like to take care of things myself. It's partially not trusting people but partially cause I like to accomplish things and little tasks completed daily make me feel good since big tasks completed monthly annually or other such things take so long and feel so rare.

And then there times in life when you can do nothing about anything and you have to go somewhere else for help. You head to a doctor's office or hospital. These places always give me the creeps and I'll for one say I'm more afraid of a doctor with a stethoscope than a man with a gun.

Even though I know there's real science behind modern medical practices x-rays, chemotherapy, and the myriad of drugs and instruments these institutions seem to demand respect for the people in there just because they work with the stuff I don't have the time or money to study. Almost if they're hiding behind a wall of magic.

And meanwhile every time I see a doctor dentist or medical professional I spend money that I need to be using to be make rent. I can't afford insurance that would cover minor ailments so the places become areas of last resort and only for use of immediate life threatening conditions.

Besides which I always feel that I get blamed for having something bad happen to me anytime that I show up for some type of treatment. If I had only run more been less risky lived differently not crossed that particular street at that particular time I wouldn't be here. So not only am I hurt and looking at risking long term life for short term benefits I'm being blamed for it. Granted there are times when health problems have been my fault like ingrown toenails that have gotten out of hand but still...

And do they always have to be so uncomfortable places to go and wait?

Changing Pastimes

I have a lot of free time on my hands and have had so for a long while. Our culture has a cure for free time not just one cure but many different cures. Music, television, books and my personal favorite video games to name a few. Recently I've been persuaded to get away from that particular medium.

It's really just because I want to do things that other people can appreciate. I've found that the best feeling that a I can get is positive feedback from other people.

Next to that is the feeling of creating something. It's gratifying to have an object that you have made, or participated the creation of. I've appreciated the work of many people when I've played video games but I'm finding that I just end up spending more time than I originally intended when I pick up the latest title.

So I'm trying to wean myself of the habit slowly. It's not something that a person can easily quit cold turkey. Good games absorb your mind more than anything else I know. Part of the fun of them however is sharing the experience with others and nobody else I'm talking with now is gaming so it's naturally falling away.

For the next couple or so I'll be building a model airplane as I feel like I should be making something but as an art student school takes up most of my creative ideas. Refilling the mind juices on doing something someone else has designed ought to improve my artistic skills and detail orientation.

Part of this the feeling that I seem to always have that a person needs to strive to be improving at all times. I think that our global culture promotes this idea. At least until a person has been recognized as one of the best. Then everything is in it's maintenance.

And now that graduation is near and I'm looking to start off working wherever I can I feel like I need to up my art skills so that I'm more marketable. Having something to work on helps.

I'll sign off asking what it is that you like to do with your free time. Is there something that helps you unwind?

To defend the Constitution

I just listened to the a debate on how to treat terrorists either as enemy combatants or as criminals and one point came up that I thought was excellent. Millitary members vow to support and defend the constitution of the United States. Not to defend the people.

This demonstrates the power and importance of ideas. The point was that we as a people need to hold to our highest ideals because they are what make us great.

On the other hand without the people there are no ideals to hold up. It is important then to realize what our military is meant to defend, the ideas and ideals of a nation. And the role that you need to take in the forming of those ideals. The fact that it takes so long for something to become constitutional is a testament to how important a government and its workings are to us.

I think what I thought was most right is that people are not as important as the institutions they serve and the ideas they carry. It seems to me that the two are inseparable.

I should just quit information it's a bad drug.

I listened to a this American Life Podcast today about living after one's actions may have caused people's deaths and how people cope. It's good story-telling and within the show talked about how people who suffer from post-traumatic stress isolate themselves and become fearful because they feel that they are at the whim of the universe.

At the same time I think that their are people, even highly capable people who suffer under this notion and haven't experienced any traumatic event except perhaps being isolated. My brain made this connection between death and isolation perhaps because I listened to the audio of the Jonestown suicides and thought of the isolation necessary for people needing to gather like this in the first place and the isolation necessary for this to occur.

I shouldn't have listened to the audio, just as I shouldn't have listened to the audio of the 9/11 emergency phone call but I did. It's been awhile since I heard the former but the latter was the day before my previous post. I did these for a sense of understanding, and perhaps because the internet allowed me to be a rubbernecker without slowing down traffic.

I wouldn't forget these recordings easily, not for their content, but for the sinking feeling that I got when I heard them. Part of human nature wants to analyze bad happenings so that they can be prevented in the future. It seems that part of the nature of the web that we can now be not only passive reviewers such as books and video were before but active reviewers of information and events. This allows for incredible advances in hobbies (just look at some evolution of dance videos) but also creates the ability for a person find content that leaves them incredibly cynical.

In any event I think parts of our national conscience are shaped by the time of year, and by our need to remember things so that we can improve or at least attempt to. But there is a need to move on I think and coming back to the ptsd cases shows this.

Sigh

If only life were simple.

Morals...

Our world is becoming more secular. There are still mega-churches and cathedrals and people proselytizing one religion or another but I tend to think that church is a hard sell in a modern world. Maybe it's always been this way but I wonder how one sells God to someone who sees no reason to believe.

At one point churches sold by threatening those that didn't belong and to a certain extent some still do. But I think that government has put a check on that activity around the world. Once politics became distinct from religion government became the one with the most bite.

Churches exist to fill some need for people, a sense of community, or reassurance that good will happen in the world, etc.

However I don't see that in the future that churches will be a place that people turn to for moral authority. With people in my age group, and at my school I don't know many that attend a service and if they do they are generally Mormon and female. Church doesn't seem to be a guy thing.

So I think that people are turning to government for the function of what is good or bad right or wrong. There seems to me to be two competing moral codes when government is the decider of what is right.

The first is a moral code for optimizing individual powers. Basically whatever an individual does as long as it hurts no one else thus compromising individual rights should be the way to go

The second is a moral code where whatever is best for the group is the way that things should go. Individuals don't matter as much as the collective and we need to optimize for our group.

Nobody holds one or the other exclusively but that seems to me to be the fight in modern society over how we conduct our lives.

Tactless

I just listened to something about the tragedy that happened 9 years ago about this time and I thought I'd be tactless.

We need to forget this.

I thought so at the time 9 years ago and apparently I haven't matured but I think that remembering dark events so that we can hunt down people and hate them and worry about our safety for the rest of our lives is insane.

Remembering people for horrible events and refusing or being unable to move past an event in an individual is a sign of mental illness. Sometimes granted we understand why an event lingers in memory such as murder rape or other traumatic events but the solution to the problems is to get people to move past and not linger on their hurt.

To remember tragedy as a nation seems to me and I will be blunt Fucking Retarded. It solves no problems and causes more issues when we try to avenge or redress the hurt as if there can be a fix to it. I believe that except in one case we've gotten the people responsible and If we focused on that then I might be fine. Instead however we continue practices that treat our own people as not trustworthy and cause issues internationally.

I recognize the need for outlet of emotion. But phrases like never forget piss me off. The type of thinking that has to remember all the old wounds and everything that has ever happened is the reason we can't have peace in the middle east. Nobody can be the bigger nation and forgive.

Constructive thought don't start searching for a people to blame and hallowed ground to bar others off of . Heroism remembered is one thing but we don't remember heroism we remember the pain. Forget it.