a funny joke

A string of simple words is enough to completely expose goals as irrelevant and disarm ambitions--it is enough to expose the dream of modern society as the most dangerous joke ever to be entertained. And it is a joke.

We spend our lives yearning for more when there is happiness to be found in so little. We spend our lives clobbering over others attempting to prove ourselves in the social hierarchy; we belittle, we compete, and we go to any deceptive or honest means to obtain coveted superiority above another human. This is the American Dream. Are we content with the knowledge that there is so much suffering and that we, the fortunate few, the "brave" individuals we would all humor ourselves to be, spend our days flying off ski jumps, sitting in class rooms, or working in a cubicle?

When I was in elementary school I was taught about the horrible, horrible slave trade of the 1800's. I learned about the underground railway, people who risked everything to smuggle fugitive slaves to their freedom. When I heard the story I knew that had I lived in those days, I would have been part of the underground railway. I would have stood up for what I believed was right and put everything on the line to prove it. What my teachers forgot to tell me was that slavery is still happening, and that even bigger world issues exist. Even so, we turn a def ear to it in order to blissfully live out our lives. We dream of a future with a white house on a green filed, our kids running around chasing ponies, and two new silver cars in the driveway; one automatic transmission Toyota for the wife, and a standard Civic for the husband. The only sound to be heard during the day is that of lazy bumblebees flying around your nicely arranged garden and the laughter of kids playing on the trampoline next door; the sound of injustice so completely muted by distance.

But how can this be? In elementary school I would have called that person a coward, but he is not considered a coward who has his family’s best interest in mind. But is there any other word for the person who sees world issues and decides that it is too complicated to get involved with, or too dangerous? Who remembers those who stood by and watched the slave trade unfold in the 1800's? What teacher talks about the valiant father who decided to run away to the countryside and start a family instead of taking a stand for or against the slave trade? These people are not in textbooks, they are not remembered. They are forgotten not for what they did, but for what they didn't do. It is true that the opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy.

It makes me wonder what good is the person who risks greatly climbing mountains when all that is to be gained is ego, what lasting influence will a brave father have if he runs away from real world issues? Time and again, average North Americans chose apathy if it means that they can continue pursuing their version of the illusive American Dream.

If injustice is a threat, I wonder what kind of life-style we are trying to justify.

thats my sister!

who is currently the most famous person in the WHOLE WORLD!!...or at least IN SALEM!!
Which, I am pleased to announce, means that I too am famous by association. I will be glad to give out my autograph but I only sign bodies...to save on paper of course. Its the green way of giving your autograph.

today

Today
A gray and mournful day
The kind of which on funerals lay
This misty sheet of moisture fall
Down on gray and mournful all
Who, clothed in black and boring cloak
Are sullen, sad, and sunken folk.

Mortuary's dance and frolic whence
The sun is blocked and rain commence
For now does business swell and bloom
When the living sway and swoon
Down to hell if not first saved
By the dirt floor of a grave.

Be spared this fate ye living few,
Act with haste upon this coup
When arrows fall from high heaven,
When our enemy fastly beckon,
Deploy, deploy our sole defensive
Umbrellas bounce and spring to action.

Unyielding black umbrella's attempt
To hold the heavn'ly armament
But yet it is to no avail,
The troops begin to fail and fail.

Bodies limp and faces sleek
Gnarled limbs wet and bleak,
Die in the onslaught ever falling
Fast in sheets of dampness galling,
Out flanked, out numbered, umbrellas swirling
For their children and wives yearning,
The troops by the thousands succumb.

But what did that great warrior state,
If beat them not, then join them late,
And so we must if to survive
To drop all grievances aside
And ask our wet foe to befriend
Those who for years paved o'er their land
And on bended knee to plea
A thousand years of clemency
On one condition tis employed
If all umbrellas be destroyed.

giddy cavers

And you people thought I was technologically impaired! Ha! Not only have I proven you wrong by posting a picture but also a movie! So I never want to hear about it again.


Surprisingly, claustrophobia was about the last thing on anyone’s mind—like the thing everyone knows is there but no one pays attention to…like babies. Caving is probably the most adventurous activity a normal Joe could pursue—the last frontier on earth that doesn’t require an exorbitant budget of those who desire to explore. Add in the beauty of underground geology, technical rope skills, and a good time with a few nutty cavers, and you’ve got yourself the vacation of a life time.

In comparison to their egotistical, global-summit-dominion motivated mountaineering counterparts; cavers seem to hold a strong camaraderie between each other. While mountaineers would rather boast about how many summits they’ve sacked in the Himalayas, cavers would be more likely to make fun of your mother over a pint. Maybe the main difference is that mountaineers climb mountains to feed their insatiable ego and cavers cave to discover the cave—not to prove something. I like that.

Tree: a study of gravities influence in its natural environment

Today I had a gravitational encounter with an inconveniently located tree. The star of the act of course was gravity whose role was supported by an innocent skier caught in the grips of its accelerating power. The force of gravities acceleration combined with a nitwit skier's miscalculated turn-to-tree radius stigmatizations led to a rather spectacular collision with a tree. Within milliseconds the skier (me) was engulfed in a spiraling tornado of snow, skis, poles, tree limbs, and flailing body parts. The powder clouds were high enough to touch the hallowed heavens above. When the powder settled there was our hero (me), the innocent skier, lying prostrate on the snow with one still attached ski caught in branches of two different trees, and a ski pole bent at a 90 degree angle. Slightly ominously, a well meaning snow boarder comments on the "wicked spill" and asks if he can be of assistance, but given the red horns that stuck out of the good Samaritans helmet, I decide to graciously decline the generous offer. Figuring it was time for a rest, I limp into the lodge to make my legendary miracle healing concoction (or LMHC for short); split pea soup, Doritos’s, and a pint’a beer (all consumed separately of course). The effect miracle concoction, hastened by dehydration, quickly restores my sense of invincibility and I hit the slopes once more…but not for long before the pain masking properties of the LMHC fade and I feel as though I am 40 years old—on the brink of death.

In other news, I am headed out for New Mexico…you know its going to be good because its like Mexico only better because its new. I’ll be there for a week long caving trip. While caves may not the best place to get a tan, apparently they are the best place to get stuck and die. So I’ll do my best to accomplish one of the two things listed above. Which one could it be? You’ll find out if I never post again.

…A slightly ominous ending, but an ending no less

female insight #1

It is uncanny the resemplance between the female mind and police surveillance cameras. Forget all the good stuff you ever did (assuming there was some), they only catch you at your bad moments--and replay it over and over. These go on your permanent record. Be it a misdemeanor or a federal offence, at any point in the future you are liable to have one of these police videos pulled out months, years, or decades after the transgression. This sudden reawakening of past sins leaves me perplexed because two-thirds of the time I have not only forgotten the incident, but that entire period of my life. For those of you who know me this will come as no surprise. You would think some money hungry tycoon would start advertising for memory altering drugs that would wipe out the "police camera" section of the female brain, I'll keep waiting for it to come out. But until then; for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death will me and my record part.

5 subjects

Has it ever happened to you that in a flash of a second your ideas, values, priorities, and definition of meaning which, one second ago you valued so highly, are now exposed as utter silliness? One well placed sentence is all it takes to switch a world view completely.

I pledge allegiance
To the fact
That I will never live in suburbia.
And for the evil empire
For which it stands
One accursed barren waste land,
Indivisible
With long commutes for all.

Curious; in an unexpectedly interesting segment of class, we wrote down our three main priorities in life i.e. family self work. Then were told to write these three priorities in sequence of “most time I spend with” to “least time I spend with”. Oddly, when I compared the two lists, they were completely opposite of each other—the main priorities get the least time, and the least priorities get the most.

I enjoy astronomy class mostly because of the incredible understatements one can make about the universe. My professor does it all the time “so they discovered that the sun’s core is about 1 million Kelvin…ok? So if you get close enough to that, it’ll burn your marshmallow sticks and ruin your whole party for sure”.

I saw the stars tonight. I can’t remember the last time I saw them, or at least looked at them, but there they were; mocking human existence from their eternal perch. If stars had a consciousness I wonder what they who live for trillions of years would say to those whose lives rarely surpass 90 on a planet a 0.00001 the size of their own. No such deflation of the human ego can compare to that the heavens bestow in the minds of those who listen to the message of their voices.