Excuse the hiatus, I was undergoing one of those major life events, this one involving the boxing and unboxing of all of one’s personal posessions, an uprooting of sorts that has landed me back in the general vicinty of where I grew up and went to school. I visited the place where I’ll be working today, everyone was cordial and polite. I know the ritual of change is generally averted whenever possible, but I’ve moved so many goddamn times in my life it’s beginning to feel like second nature. One positive thing about it is that I’ve become intimately familiar with my AV setup to the point where I can do it all by sense memory, turn it all on, and have it work the same way I left it before I moved. I never seem to get used to all the boxes though. No matter where I go, no matter the size of the place, there are always too many boxes. I’m reminded of the aphorism asserting the ownership of you by your posessions, and to a certain extent, that is true. I think at some point I’m going to stop giving a fuck about the physical things. It is possible to survive and be happy without them.
I’d say the toughest thing was leaving my friends behind. I’m sure I’ll make more up here and I have family and a friend or two left in the Bay Area. I decided to go ahead and get cable for the first time in three years, mainly because it was cheaper to bundle it with my internet than without, but it’s still complete shite. I’m stunned at the complete lack of watchable programming on TV. I flipped channels until I landed on a movie, then when it went to commercial, I remembered I have it on DVD and decided to watch it in better quality on the DVD player instead. I’d say the only thing worth watching is HD travel shows and maybe the History and Comedy Channel on rare occasion, seeing how I’ll have to wait until December/January for a decent show to come on.
Commercials are particularly atrocious. I remember them being bad and completely innocuous, but it seems the bigger the corporation, the more blatantly bad the advertising. Take for example McDonald’s. Can they more obvertly direct their advertising to the poverty level class of America? Dollar breakfast menus and trogs playing air guitar in their Dodge pickups. WTF.
It reminds of another issue I wanted to write about, one I mainly think about when I’m driving. Having to endure a 2-3 hour commute for a few months in LA I became intimately familiar with how bad the majority of drivers on the road are. Intially I would become very upset with the complete lack of consideration and awareness exhibited by most drivers on the road, but then I considered the fact that the general population is divided into a Bell Curve when categorizing intelligence. There is an average mean intelligence around 100 and given that approximately a third of the world falls into the category of double-digit IQ’s and a startling amount of people can be unmaliciously characterized as being morons, I realized I was getting angry at abject and unintentional stupidity for no reason. There’s nothing these mongs can do about their brains, they are dumb and the DMV has no test for IQ when they’re handing out licenses. The only thing you can do is shake your head in disbelief and go on about your day. I like audio books personally. If it’s an especially lucky day for me, only three or four borderline retards try to kill me on the way to where I’m going a day, and a intellectual distraction is a welcome respite from flipping out and becoming another road rage statistic.
As Obi-Wan said, who is the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him? Oh Alec Guiness, your last name is a delicious beer. Speaking of beer…
