February 2005 Archives

Just a quick note to introduce a new member to the community. Sid and I traveled together to Europe to play music with a symphonic band when we were teenagers. We were a fearsome pair and remained close for several years, but our individual hazes in the college years left us lost to each other. We've both been trying over the years to find each other again, and when HST died it made me decide it was time to figure it out once and for all. Persistent Googling allowed me to at least find his parents, and now we are back again to conquer the universe.

So I post this to say two things:
1) Welcome Back Sid! You've been missed and I can't wait to get some time to catch up. Not sure if you'll get the time, but you're certainly welcome to stick around the blog and tell me I'm full of shit when you think it. I've always enjoyed getting your take on things.

2) Another friend once said, its never too late to write. Well, sometimes it is, and I have lost some friends before I got the chance to find them again. But don't let time hold you back. Maybe someone else out there has a phantom from their past they wish was still around. I wish I'd have done it years earlier, but I'm glad to have done it at all. Now is the time.

Do I really need to say anything about this?

It seems the rage right now in media to be talking about what the "blog revolution" really means. Fine, fine, I'll bite. (Beware potential navel-gazing)

In which the author revisits a point that he didn't quite make succinctly.

Themes: Fear, Self-absorption, Murder, SUVicide
Coherence 8/10

I guess we always knew it would turn out this way.

So about a year ago I was in Hawaii. I would really like to be in Hawaii right now. Hell, I'd settle for just being in the Honolulu airport for a few days.

I am, by nature a pretty mellow person. And I've been able to take almost everything in stride. But there is something about traffic that makes me totally insane.

Really, the entire act of driving is insane. There are over 40,000 people killed each year in highway fatalities. Really take a full minute to think about that, instead of just looking at the number and saying: "40k? Yeah, that seems right." This is dying, ceasing to be, exiting physical reality because you wanted to go from one place to another.

It's funny, we live in such a culture of fear, where we are terrified by every little thing, from Anthrax (5 deaths in the last 3 years) to urban snipers (<50 deaths in the last 3 years) to murder (roughly 17,000 a year, many of whom engage in high-risk professions, like stealing from drug dealers), and yet we aren't afraid of the things that really are dangerous. If you wanted to live in fear rationally, you'd run in terror from McDonald's, Marlboros and automobiles: that's what's doing all the killing in this country. (Perhaps the only one we properly fear is tobacco, but then we fear it irrationally too, in the form of "secondhand smoke" which still has never been solidly shown to have a serious effect on cancer rates.) In fact, among 24-34 year olds, more people kill themselves than are murdered by someone else. So statistically speaking, you have more to fear from the person in the mirror than anyone you see on the street.

In any case, I've developed a new coping mechanism that might help others as well as its helped me, and I thought I'd share. I imagine that every other person driving is my mother. I still will get upset, and I've even been known occasionally to yell out, "Screw you, Mom!" but that only helps me get back to how silly the whole thing is. And that's enough to defuse it, and get me back to sanity.

Its official, there is no 2004-2005 NHL Season.

I love hockey. Most of you know that, and know that I've been watching or playing since I was a kid, and know that the lockout is killing me. Its a stupid nobody wins game of chicken that could result in the first time ever that a professional sports league has canceled and entire season over a labor dispute, from which professional hockey will never recover. I also happen to think it's the best thing for the game.

Long time since the last update, and I don't even really have anything to say. I sprained my knee for my birthday (Happy Birthday to me) and have been limping and swearing ever since. And I definitely haven't been of a mood to sit at a computer chair for several hours writing a well-researched entry. I really do need to lower the standards I place on myself for this thing. But why start now?

For now though, I'll remain content with a quick list of updates.

From now on I'm carrying beer with me everywhere