In acknowledgement of 9/11

Writing about September 11th seems tacky. I can't think of much to say that has any value and I sure don't wanna force anything. I wasn't personally affected by it so, in a shallow sense, it didn't really upset me.

I was also in 8th grade at the time and didn't quite understand the impact. My class happened to be on a team-building field trip in the woods somewhere when I heard. None of us really knew what the World Trade Center was. We just carried on with our business.

Then on the way home we noticed a lack of traffic and all the flags were at half mast. When we got back to school they had the building on lockdown (apparently because, after the Twin Towers and Pentagon, the terrorists were likely targeteting my grammar school). Then we watched the news footage of the plane crashing over and over. Still, we didn't quite grasp what it meant. That city scape might as well have been a foreign country for all I knew.

But the more I watched the more I realized what was happening. Seeing people run through the streets with looks of true panic on their face was just chilling. I had never before seen the face of someone who believed they were about to die. That day I saw dozens.

The fear slowly made its way into me and I realized just how scared I was once I got home. I had been listening to music on my headphones when I heard a loud, low rumbling. It was getting louder and I could feel vibrations in the ground. My heart stopped and I ran to the window expecting to see a passenger jet barreling into my house. It was a schoolbus.

I can hardly believe it's been 8 years. It feels like half that. This is going to be one of those things that children 20 years from now just don't understand or care about. I'm not sure if I'm jealous or sorry for them.

I'm sorry but I don't know where that photo is from. I found it online

On Vegetarianism

I'm thinking about becoming a vegetarian. It wouldn't be the easiest or most enjoyable thing I could do but I have a few good reasons to consider it.

I've read enough articles and seen plenty of footage that make it clear that our livestock is treated worse than I'd ever thought possible. If you want to see if for yourself go look it up because I'm not gonna explain the horrible shit I'm talking about. The point is that these animals are abused their entire lives before suffering a torturous death.

I've never been against the idea of eating animals but I am against animal abuse and I just don't know how I can tell if the chicken I'm eating was treated well or not. I'm sure there are higher-end brands of meat that are stamped with a seal of approval but they're sure to carry a steep price tag.

Then I consider all the steroids and crap that's squeezed into these animals to maximize their output. And what about all the preservatives and dyes and other chemical crap we're eating every day? Scientists can't find the causes of cancer? You're fucking eating unnatural chemicals every day! We don't need to spend billions researching a cure if we can just stop giving ourselves the disease.

This applies to non-meat food as well. It sucks. I'd really prefer to eat something that I know isn't harmful but the stuff that claims to be, again, is much more expensive.

People always talk about the things they'd do if they were rich. One of my top concerns would be hiring a vegan chef. Hopefully it'd be a chick and I could just marry her eventually to save some money. I have a feeling a personal vegan chef is pricey.

So yah. This isn't the first time I've considered vegetarianism. One of the main issues I've had with it is the idea of becoming a scrawny, malnourished guy. I remember reading an article about how Toby McGuire took forever to bulk up for Spiderman because he's a vegetarian.

But then, as I spoke with a friend about this last night, I realized that all the most badass animals on the planet are vegetarians. Gorillas, rhinos, hippos, etc. Sure, lions and gators are tough but could they take on an elephant? Could a Great White take on a Blue Whale? Doubt it. As long as I ate enough of the right stuff (peanutbutter, spinach, granola, yogurt.. all that shit is fantastic for you) I'll be alright.

Some more things that have me considering this change are two instances where I've heard vegetarianism being lauded by scientists as a superior lifestyle. Once was in a speculative documentary on what aliens might be like. It was claimed that they'd be 'less physically powerful but significantly more intelligent from having realized the benefits of a vegetarian diet.' That's cool and all. Brains over braun any day. But remember that I want both.

The second quote is much more meaningful. Some guy named Einstein said "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." The fact that he called it an 'evolution' rather than a 'switch' really caught my attention.

And when you think about it he has a great point. All life relies on other life for survival. We can't keep pumping hormones into cattle forever. Our population is getting larger and sicker all the time and our livestock won't be able to keep up. We'll end up making more animals extinct than we already have.

So I don't know. I need to do more thinking about it.

I'm afraid I must continue

Have you ever had a recurring dream? Off the top of my head I can recall two. In a way, they relate. They're both about flight. But that's where comparisons end.

I've dreamt more than a dozen times about plane crashes. I'm always on the ground, watching the plane fall out of the sky. It always seems to be caused by extreme wind. The plane just starts to struggle and waver more intensely until it loses control.

Do you ever stop to wonder how graceful planes look in the air? These hulking masses of metal that weigh more than my house are just gliding through the air with ease. They look so small and are so quiet up in the sky.

When a plane is crashing.. when it's struggling to stay in the air.. it starts to look wrong. That grace and elegance are replaced with panic and clumsiness. You don't want anything bad to happen but if it does happen you want to see it. Why? Who knows? It'll probably haunt your dreams until you die. It haunts mine and I've never seen it.

The other recurring dream is much less unpleasant. In fact it's fantastic. I fly slowly through the air just about 6 feet off the ground. I can swoop up and down a bit and adjust my speed. It feels incredibly real and every time I'm convinced that it's real life. I'll think to myself "All this time I could have been doing this if I had just known how! This rules. I'm gonna do it all the time now"

When I wake up I'm so disappointed to realize it wasn't real and I try as hard as I can to remember how great it felt. At the moment I can't remember.

Fascinated with flight but afraid of height. It's just not right. Kite

On toothpaste

I used to hate brushing my teeth. I didn't like that slimy feeling and the nasty aftertaste that every single brand left on my teeth. That's until I used Arm & Hammer 'Advance White' (with baking soda).

Seriously people.. baking soda is the only way to go. It's clinically proven to kick ass and doesn't leave that grimy film on your teeth. It just makes them feel shiny It rules.

Another day = another tale

So I mentioned ants and how I fear them. Let me explain.

I don't feel threatened in the presence of any ants I've ever laid eyes on. I do, however, know that the ants I've laid eyes on are the biggest pussies the ant world has to offer. Our black and even red ants are jokes compared to other continents (as is most of our wild life). They don't do much besides eat crumbs off our floors or get sniffed by my dog.

But did you know if you microwave an ant it doesn't die? Yah. Seriously. And have you ever tried to drown an ant? It's not easy. That's still nothing though. Some ant species we don't have can explode at will to cover an enemy in its stomach acids. If you've heard of the Bullet Ant you'd know its sting rivals a gunshot in pain. There are some (I believe from Africa) that have a sub breed in their colony with mandibles so big they can't actually feed themselves. They need smaller ants to crawl on them and put food in their mouth. They've literally evolved to be a killing machine.

But that's alright. Plenty of organisms have dangerous abilities and, as you may have noticed, none of the ones I've mentioned are inherently deadly. Well these weapons are all hardware to ants' software. And as we all know: Software is king.

Ants will attack anything. They will charge blindly at any foe that's been marked and throw their lives away in the name of the queen. I've seen videos of ants taking down crabs. The bigger ants were actually pulling pieces of the crab's plating open so smaller ants could climb in. That's right: they actually work as a team.

They outnumber us a million to one, they can carry 20 times their own weight and there's over 10,000 recorded species in existence. I'm not saying I think we're in danger of them (yet..) but if we were what could we do about it? How the hell could we possibly stop ants? We couldn't.

So my 'fear' of ants isn't irrational. It's actually incredibly rational. My fear of planes is another story.

Coincidence?

I enjoy playing Tetris and I enjoy loading the dishwasher

A weird dream I had

I'm looking down at these cement steps and see this colony of giant red ants just pouring out of the cracks. They're absurd looking, unlike any real ants I've ever seen. Despite my usual pro-nature tendencies, my instinct is to get a can of Raid and kill every one of them. Why? Because ants scare the shit out of me. If anything is gonna overrun the world it'll be them. But that's another tale for another day.

What happens when I spray these ants is a little hard to explain. Imagine being in one of those hemispherical snow globes. There's a distinct seam between land and sky. Well in this case, that seam began to split. Clouds of gas were spraying out of it and I realized the ground I was standing on was dropping. I looked up in time to see the shell of the sky remaining in place out in space.

Next, I'm floating (for a lack of a better word) in empty white space. I don't remember what I was thinking but I'm positive my mind was blank of the fear or wonder you'd expect to feel at that point. The first thought that came to mind was of a girl I know. At times I've loved her as a friend, others as more than a friend and sometimes as a sister. I'm not sure how I felt about her then but I knew I felt close and the only thing I was thinking of was seeing her.

Worried about her? Missing her? I don't think so. I just wanted to experience whatever this was with her. For a moment I thought about the two of us sharing a relieving hug. Before I finished the thought I realized we were hugging. The scene was changing and I found myself in what I can only describe as the nicest train station minimart I've ever been in. In the way that a movie set only looks whole from the right distance and angle, this room was incomplete. The white glow shone beyond its doors. The room was quite small.

I backed out of the hug and saw my the look on my friend's face. It looked like mine felt. No worry or confusion: just a careless (but timid) curiosity. Without a word we walked together to a rack of magazines. There were dozens of different kinds but each cover was of something I thoroughly enjoyed. There was only one copy of each and they were placed in a perfectly spaced and even arrangement.

I picked one up and said "Watch." I thought of either what I expected to be on a given page or what I wanted to be on that page. Fanning through the pages blindly and selecting one at random revealed that my guess was right. There was an image of exactly what I'd claimed there would be.

I did it again just to be sure. This time I caught the attention of a couple I hadn't noticed behind us. They shared the same expression my friend and I did. The four of us discussed this place we found ourselves in. How we got there and how to get back weren't important. We were more concerned with what it was and what it meant. The other man picked up a magazine and I confidently predicted what he'd see when he opened it.

I was wrong. And I was gone. I felt like I had woken up, not from sleep but from a dream. I had left one place without arriving at another.

That's when I actually woke up and tried to think of what it could mean. The thing is I don't necessarily believe dreams mean anything. Sure, they could indicate things from time to time but not always. In this case I think it was just nonsense. That doesn't mean it wasn't a cool experience though.

It makes me want to get back into trying to have lucid dreams. I once spent a week drinking mugwort tea and pinching myself throughout the day, asking myself "Am I awake?" These things are supposed to help you get there but it didn't work for me. I'll give it another shot though. I've got half a bag of that Mugwort laying around and it looks like pot. Don't feel like explaining it to anyone that finds it.