The Churro Incident

(Or Why My Faith in Humanity Has Been Restored)

I was perusing the concessions area in Costco on Wednesday, anxiously clutching my usual assortment of small change waiting in line for a soda, (20 oz for $0.59, but it’s super carbonated.), when I noticed a display case full of delicious looking churros. Normally all of the food that Costco regularly purveys is gone by 7:30 pm, which is when I’m there, so there aren’t any samples or anything, but on this particular Wednesday churros languidly basked under glowing hot lights on gentle crinkly beds of industrial grade wax paper, turning slowly for the appreciation of all. I was entranced, and began ranting somewhat incoherently to my friend, who was also waiting to garner the absurdly cheep soda. Previous to my love affair with the churros (who, alas, knew not of my infatuation….) a middle-aged woman in front of me mistook me for her husband. The aforesaid information is important, even if it doesn’t seem to be right now. The middle-aged woman made her purchases, two slices of pizza, then, turned, change in hand, and gave my friend and I enough money to buy churros. I was in awe. I honestly didn’t think that people legitimately did random acts of kindness. Munching on my churro, I made my way to some of my fellow housemates, shared the goodness of the idiosyncratic concoction of twisted dough and cinnamon sugar, and related the tale. 

Thinking about it even now I’m still shocked. I thought that to most people I seem, at worst a gender-confused delinquent, and at best, certainly not worthy of a stranger’s kindness. Self-deprecation aside, the churro was delicious, and I would like to thank that woman once again for improving my night and making me think twice.

Picture Source

The Apocalypse

It seems like humanity has a collective, doubtlessly evolutionarily based, obsession with the ensuing apocalypse and end of the world as we know it. After perusing much of the literature regarding the Mayan prophecy (2012, ect.) and being stunned by the sheer volume of books on that subject in the book store, I’ve come to the conclusion, however hackneyed, that humanity, whether we know it or not, is poised on the edge of certain doom and oblivion. Whether or not the Mayan prophecy is correct is a whole other bag of beans, so to speak, but from my own pessimistic outlook… well, call me crazy (or overly optimistic in a twisted way…) but it does seem likely that at some point humanity will be forced to collectively and cathartically pay dues for the extraordinary damage we have done to our world. Right now I’m picturing some crazy hippy rapture in which people that bike or drive hybrids or subscribe to the vegan diet get to go to a Whole Foods Heaven and eat nothing but tofu crackers for the rest of eternity, but the aforestated idea is in jest. 

Or maybe the zombie apocalypse will be the way the world ends, not with a bang or even a whisper but with a moan gurgling out of a rotten esophagus… Or, perhaps more chilling, maybe we’re all zombies but convinced of our own humanity, the true humans being the Neanderthals… 

(Picture Source)

The Monkey Wrench Gang

A Quote and my Ensuing Thoughts

“All this fantastic effort- giant machines, road networks, strop mines, conveyor belt, pipelines, slurry lines, loading towers, railway and electric train, hundred-million-dollar coal-burning power plant; ten thousand miles of high tension towers and high-voltage power lined; the devastation of the landscape, the destruction of Indian homes and Indian grazing lands, Indian shrines and Indian burial grounds; the poisoning of the last big clean-air reservoir in the forty-eight contiguous United States, the exhaustion of precious water supplies- all that ball-breaking labor and all that back-breaking expense and all that heart breaking insult to land and sky and human heart, for what? All that for what? Why, to light the lamps of Phoenix suburbs not yet built, to run the air conditioners of San Diego and Los Angeles, to illuminate shopping-center parking lots at two in the morning, to power aluminum plants, magnesium plants, vinyl-chloride factories and copper smelters, to charge the neon tubing that makes the meaning (all the meaning there is) of Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tucson, Salt Lake City, the amalgamated metropolis of southern California, to keep alive that phosphorescent putrefying glory (all the glory there is left) called Down Town, Night Time, Wonderville, U.S.A.” (Abbey, Edward. The Monkey Wrench Gang. (1975) p. 173)

            Do you ever think about how big the world is? Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the vastness, the seeming infinity of a million, a billion- the ships and hands and faces and personalities and thoughts responsible for my pen, my water bottle, my computer, and the vast sea of ideas and concepts needed to facilitate the miraculous assembly of anything. The people working at the factory, their families, the people loading the merchandise on to trucks then boats or maybe planes and then more trucks, all of which run on gas which came from more people and more families- the planes and trucks themselves- assembled and manufactured independently of their cargo and the think-tank dudes who sat around and said things like, “Imagine if we made something…round! Yes, round! And stuck this round thing on a platform and moved things with it…” and a couple centuries later, “Let’s stick wings on the things with wheels and maybe we can fly.” It completely baffles me, and subsequently causes me to dislike places where money is exchanged for material items. I once heard that someone figured out that money is a measure of the amount of work done to produce an item- if so, it seems like everyone’s in debt to their own feckless desires and to the faceless masses lost in the innumerable billions.

Empowered?

I had a vastly entertaining conversation today about why males appear to be dominant in society. Unfortunately, this discussion occurred in a car, so the topic degenerated in to... eating disorders and damsels in distress and how capitalism seems to be ruining everything. But first, a quote I recently received in an email. (Let's not dwell on the fact that I'm a subscriber to Runner's World's weekly emails...)

You don't need a reason - you need a road. Believe in the run.

Now I want to go running, but I'm still sick. (now, possibly, with an intestinal parasite). The aforestated quote is mostly included so that I'll remember it. On with my rant!

My hypochondria was finally sated today after a visit to the doctor for various diagnostic procedures that took 2 hours. (Alright, most of that time was spent attempting to... manufacture... a urine sample.) My favorite part, aside from asking the nurse what the measurements she was talking meant (blood pressure, ect.), peeing perfectly in a cup (all of those UA's finally came in handy), and talking about my myriad of symptoms for a good 20 minutes, was the explanation of exactly how to procure a stool sample. Succinctly, it involves a very miniature spork, a tongue depressor, and a basin. As morning approaches I'm feeling decidedly more and more grateful for flush toilets and a healthy avoidance of all fecal matter. (though evidently something went wrong in that department...)

Well, this has been an adventure. I'm exhausted and therefore decidedly more apparently ADHD than usual.

(Image byrobert-kim-karen at http://robert-kim-karen.deviantart.com/art/Power-Pole-Silhouette-117081430)

Sick- Swine Flu?

I feel like I only value my health when I'm sick, which is ironic, because at that point, it's too late. I had an interesting discussion about my illness with a guy here- it seems, from my symptoms, that I may have contracted the much feared swine flu. (I had a hellishly (no pun intended) high fever for 3 days). The thought that I might have swine flu amuses me endlessly- with all the hype, swine flu appears to be slightly less deadly than the common flu. It seems like America is fiendishly addicted to fear- look at what's on the news- natural disasters, WMDs, wars, and diseases, not to mention child molesters and teens "addicted" to texting. Sure, disasters are entrancing, but at what point do we, in the vernacular of treatment centers, down-regulate to the "chaos" portrayed by the media? Doesn't it seem like the corporations are crying wolf while people over come by the monotony of their lives gluttonously  ingest taller and taller tales? And what would happen if the source of the fear were to diminish- would people, needing their terror "fix" create their own freak shows for the media to decimate? Worse yet- what if the corporations funding the supposedly un-biased news sources decided to throw their weight around? What if they already have?

Maybe I'm Totally Stereotypical

I’ve decided that if I do nothing useful during study hall I should at least write. Achieving prowess rather than pissing around endlessly on the deluded void of the Internet, starving for life and experiences that I am currently forbidden from experiencing. Sometimes I think about my life and wonder what the fuck happened- how the hell did I end up here and when did everything start seeming like an obligation chaining me to the floor of the ocean- oblivion. I’ve realized too that at some subtle point I stepped off the boat of achievement and motivation and became a slacker. It’s not perceptible because of my innate ability to seem like I'm doing work when the true reality is in fact the opposite. I want to do great things but at the same time it all seems like too much effort. I'm 18 and totally bored with life- classic teen angst manifested in an overly competent creature with potential for greatness, but, alas, and alarming lack of follow-through.

Talking seems to require an incredible amount of effort on my part, like an unnecessary baring of the soul that no one else seems to find as exquisitely painful. I think that everything would be so much easier if I could just stop talking, really talking, to people. Things in the vein of, “pass the salt”, simple everyday trifles that leave me feeling safe and secure, rather than unstable and like some one knows a hell of a lot more about me than they should. That’s how it was with Todd, and why I dislike talking to him so much. He consistently hits the nail on the head more often than anyone else and cuts through my bullshit, despite being consistently off about what was actually going on, and still managing to do a damn good job of convincing me that what he’s talking about actually was the problem.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone outside of angsty 13 year-olds has thoughts like these- that there simply must be more to life than the scrappy picture we all know so well, self-absorbed and hideously incomplete, lacking any consistent theme save an undying egoism and narcissistic tendencies. Religion is indeed the opiate of the masses, promising eternity and a paternal figure to forever please, the guarantee that your seed will live on ephemerally after you’ve killed the heathens in a deluded incitement of rapture.