Disappearing Days

How is it already Sunday?  There's something wrong with time.  What have you done to it?

Saturday appears to have disappeared.  I know it happened... No evidence exists, though, so I guess I have to admit it didn't.

I'm sitting here, watching George Stibitz, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, et. al.,  lecture a very modern-looking crowd in the 1960s about the early days of computing.  You can still see the excitement on their faces, although aged 6 or 7 decades.  The world changed dramatically in their years, but I bet they wondered where the years went.

My grandfather, born in 1890, saw humanity go from horse and buggy to the moon in his lifetime.  The technology of the day was still steam and pocket watches when he reached adulthood.  There was talk of this magical technology called 'electricity', though.  

As an aside, my father tells me the story of one of his uncles who had the first electric lights in the area, powered by homemade wet-cell batteries.  My great-grandparents' house had no electricity.  Nor did it have running water.

Even though my grandfather lived through all of those technological changes, I can remember my grandparents, in their 90s, talking about how it seemed only yesterday that they were children, playing with their siblings.  You would think this would make it seem like life had been long and filled with enough new things to differentiate eras to the point of making time seem to have been longer.  Apparently that's not how it works.

Digressing, Saturdays are entirely too short.  I bet Sunday will be just as short.  I've no idea what to do about it, either.

Ghosting

Everything's temporary.  I hate how philosophical that sounds.  It's not.  The fact that everything is impermanent is an empirical observation.  

Axl Rose knew 30 years ago.  There's no metaphysical aspect.  Cells have a lifespan.

Yeah, some atoms will still be around trillions of years from now.  We won't, though.  Even the things that make it the length of a human life span will be altered to the point of being almost unrecognizable.

That sounds cold and hard.  Maybe it is.  Maybe not.

When I die, I'm going to try and come back.  No matter how good, bad, or nonexistent the afterlife, I want to let someone know.  If you see me after I die, hopefully a LONG time from now, know that I'm trying to let you know about the great beyond... not scare you to death.

Weekday Jealousy

Isn't it sad that every weekday can't be as anticipated as Friday?  Monday gets such a bad rap.  Wednesday has the distinction of being called "hump".  Tuesday and Thursday are all but invisible.

Sure, there are those with work schedules precluding Friday the possibility of being the most favorable day of the work week, but most blue-collar work schedules include Fridays as the last day of the week on a regular basis, if not every week.  Friday bridges the gap between all ilks.  Anyone who's ever knocked the skin off of their knuckles for a living can understand another person who says, "At least it's Friday."  

Friday can even give the weekend a run for its money.  Friday promises 2 days AND nights composed of whatever anyone wants to do.  Even Saturday can't promise that.

It would be nice to get up on a Thursday morning and say, "All right!  It's Thursday!" with no sarcasm in your voice.  If you can do that, I don't trust you.  Pretty much the only thing good about the other days of the week is that they get you one day closer to Friday.

Staying Power

There's always a flavor of the week.  It takes far too long for me to ever like anything, so those kinds of things usually fly on by.  I never know what they are because they don't keep my attention, long.

Stuff I like tends to have staying power.  Mostly, this is because it takes me so long to be convinced that whatever it is doesn't suck.  Most things don't make it that far, especially not flash-in-the-pans.  As a result, the kind of things I like tend to still be around several decades later.

Ordering Amazon from the Great Beyond

On the way home from work, I saw something interesting.  What does it mean if you see a UPS truck leaving the cemetery?  You know they're not making a delivery.  They certainly aren't going to get anyone to sign for it.  

I don't want to see it if they do.

One has to assume they were visiting the grave of a loved one, or something like that.  Maybe somebody has trouble with addresses.  Either that, or UPS has delivery service to the grave. 

What it Looks Like to Land on Mars

Shining

Two million shimmering, right angle mirrors refract light in a way that makes it look like life is heading right for me.  Mirrors, though, are just another optical illusion.  Just like light from the Sun in the good, good morning, life passes on by.

Tapping

Music has to be made.  Even if it's just in the sound of machinery's rhythmic tune, nothing can stop it.  It's magic.

Rhythm.  Energy transmitted.  Drilling and tapping a metal perfect fifth.

Cacophony of head-banging life.  All the players join in.  Bring the noise to a climax.  

Listen.  Everything works together like clockwork.  Knife-slicing pops of metronome heart-beat staccato.  

Now, it all makes sense.  Inside the apparent chaos is a theme.  Take a second and just listen.

Top 5

Top 5 Reasons to Ignore Top 5 Lists:

1. They're arbitrary.  Someone just sat down and thought that list up.  They were probably just trying to think of something to write.

2. Life doesn't reside in a list.  Most of the world is subjective enough that one person's top 5 may not even make your top 1000.

3. Five is lazy.  Why stop at five?

4. It discriminates against people who've lost, or were born without, digits.  How are they going to count them without 5 fingers on that hand?

5. Don't.  They can be entertaining.  Not this one, though.

Lazy Brains

Intellectual sloth feels so comfortable.  No decisions of consequence have to be made.  Bullet-point life, followed like a punch-list, is so much easier than logical responsibility.

Substituting complacency for fulfillment, a mind can be kept comfortably numb.  Keep curiosity to a minimum.  Celebrate the smallest event on the punch-list that can be considered even remotely close to an achievement.  

Curiosity persistently throbs in your brain, though.  Dreams play solutions to questions you won't work out in the day. It's under your skin.

The difference between being alive and just going through life lies in satisfying curiosity.  There's a satisfying click in your mind when you know.  There you go.

Back to the ER

Spent a few hours outside the ER waiting for news on my Dad, again, tonight.  He passed out a couple of times, today.  Home health people said to take him to the ER.

He's gotten himself dehydrated a couple of times in the recent past.  He may not be drinking enough water.  It's odd, because he used to love water and drank a lot every day.

He's joking with the nurses.  My sister said he's telling the nurses he's 38.  He'll be 86 this year.  That's usually a sign he's feeling better.

Simplified

Here we are, again.  It's colder than it feels.  Processed and scripted into numbness, nothing gets hot, anymore.

Oversimplification is starting to look pretty good.  Everything else lies without intent.  At least simplicity won't add confusion to the lies.

Something's Happening Here

Siberia is the place where Russian dissidents get sent to freeze to death.  At least that's what I've always heard.  Khrushchev messed up when he liked Walt Disney and got sent to Siberia.  That's as far as my knowledge of Siberia went.

Apparently, there's a lot more going on in the Far East of Russia:

Seriously, though, it's pretty cool to see something from a place we've always been told was practically uninhabitable. Even more interesting is that they're politically active. Let's just hope they move towards Liberty and not the false security of collectivism's primordial cesspool.

Happy Valentines Day!

Know someone is thinking about you.

Keeping the First for Another Day

Driving down a road for the first time in a while messes with your head.  Especially if it was once part of a commute.  Everything looks different but familiar.  

It's like thinking about something you shouldn't have to think about, anymore.  In a moment, one thought can turn obsessive.  Next thing you know, you're going down mental paths you don't want to travel, doused in nostalgia and memory.

That's not something I'm prone to do.  I can turn off of a road and never go back.  It's an understatement to say this experience is unusual for me.

Friday All Nighter

I think I'm going to drink coffee and watch old movies.  Until I fall asleep, anyway.  Which means at least until 8 or 9pm.  Fun Friday.  What an exciting life.

In the Fit

An object having four sides of equal length meeting at right angles won't fit well in an opening with a locus of all points equidistant from a central point.

Look at the Time

Old time is dispassionate.  Future consumes at the same rate as the past.  No motive exists other than measurement.

No mercy.  No malice.  Time expands outward until stretched to the ends of the possible, then inward beyond that.  Everything comes and goes.

Aflame

Fire has a primeval quality.  I've probably said that before.  Reiterating the fact doesn't change it, though.  Somewhere in the human psyche exists a need to see fire. There's a dream-like quality to the flames and light that the brain connects to the long-ago.

Even at a distance, it compels.  Making fire feels like an inherent requirement to live.  All other forms of heating seem to be a little cheaper.  Inside a fireplace or a fire pit, flames call out.  Like a coat of light, time-travel and magic, fire wraps everything in heat.