Captain's Log: September 27, 2008

There's not a drop of fuel from here to downtown.  It was really quite unique to pass dozens of seemingly abandoned gas stations on the commute home today; there weren't even any prices listed.  There still seems to be a significant amount of traffic on the roads, however.. I suppose it hasn't been long enough to cause a major impact other than panic-buying and long lines when there is gas.  Although we were able to find one station with a temporary fix, it frustrated me to see people filling up multiple plastic containers, and of course many people are filling up their half-empty cars just because they're paranoid that we won't have any gas for the next several days.  I don't really know what to make of it all.. Given the economy's state, a lack of civilian mobility could cripple the country to a degree not experienced for decades.  The overabundance of chaos is nauseating: multiple hurricanes, no fuel, a stumbling housing market, a crashing economy, bailout after bailout, etc.  And most of us are so worked up about this election that we're at each other's throats rather than uniting together as we should be.  I also can't help but think that this crisis will sway many voters to think that McCain can just dig up some gas out of the ground and hand it over to them.

On a separate note, we received news today that a good friend of ours has not been heard from for at least two days - no phone calls even to his dad or brother, he's not listed in the state docketbook and we've had friends checking the hospitals.  He didn't show up for work the past two days and was scheduled to go out of town last night on a camping trip, but didn't contact anyone beforehand.  I can only hope everything is alright..

A Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad

A few days ago, the government announced that they would be spending 700 billion taxpayers' dollars on corporate bailouts.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tanked, a very complex situation involving banks, lenders, and people who can't pay their mortgages to WaMu (most likely due to the price of gas...).  Well, the government bailed 'em out.. and I mean the banks, not the taxpayers.  Over the next few days, it seems every other corporate entity has needed a bailout, including foreign banks and corporations.  So what the hell is going on?  Citizens are struggling to pay for food and other commodities, and these multi-billionaires are worried about how their stocks are faring!!!  Worse, the $700 bil. problem was handed over to the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, the same dimwit who got us into this mess.  I suppose it can also be assumed that when the government hands 700 billion from one person to another, a few million won't be missed by anyone who doesn't know what's going on.  We are being taken advantage of, blindsided by the people responsible for protecting us from the very same problems that they are reinforcing.  Parents can't support their children, workers can't pay for gas to get to their jobs, college students are being forced to decide between sacrificing their education or taking out loans which may likely build up massive amounts of interest that they may be paying off for the rest of their lives.

I have the most chilling notion that the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan.

It seems there are two roads our country can take - we can continue to be the common class, taxpayer scapegoats, and give up more of what little money the current situation has left us with to bail out the people who sit around making millions of dollars for doing nothing, which may temporarily fix the problem (albeit we'd still have the War on Drugs, War on Terror, War in Iraq, high gas prices, the Patriot Act, a crummy housing market [blame the media] and Sarah Palin) or say, should the government NOT bail out these companies, we'd have an economic meltdown - we're talking people in the streets with guns, corporate mass production halted, food shortages, and a lot of dead or impoverished Americans.  So what's the solution?  Is there an end to this mess of problems?  Well, lets take a look back.. The Great Depression was less than 100 years ago.  Since then, we've had a World War, three or four other major wars, several global conflicts, assassinated presidents, and the O.J. Simpson trial.  I suppose it's safe to say that problems have always existed and will continue as long as mankind does: we create our own misery through our differences that we somehow can't seem to look past.  Today I had to take my African Grey to the emergency room (like I can afford it!) because of a bleeding nail.  He's alright, he's squawking away upstairs right now - but nevertheless it couldn't help but remind me about how I and everyone else in this country have our own individual problems, yet somehow some rich dudes you've never met have to make it that much worse.  I'm not ready for another hundred years of this abuse..  Are you?

CONTROL YOUR TEMPER

I can't recall the last time I was outright rude to a stranger.  I am not one to start unjustified arguments (especially with people I don't know) and I rarely even honk my horn.  But somehow, I'm constantly bombarded with disrespect.  Is everyone?  I can't even walk through Woodruff Park without some homeless guy being offended that I (a broke college student) don't have money to spare on him.  I would give it if I had it, but it's not my fault they're aiming at the wrong audience.  A few weeks ago, one bum went into a discourse to me about how the staff at Moe's wouldn't give him lunch for free, and that he deserved it because he was obviously homeless.  I told him that I worked at a Moe's (I did at the time), and that I could barely afford to eat there myself.  He replied, "You people are all the same.  F*** YOU and F*** MOE'S!!!" in my face, and I could still hear him even after I'd walked a good 100 feet away.  First of all, for a black guy to use the term "you people" is incredibly hypocritical, and it doesn't even make sense.  Second, that's not a very convincing way to get the other people on the street who can afford to spare money to actually give it to you.  And I didn't even strike up the conversation, the average pedestrian wouldn't even have acknowledged his existence.  But it's not just homeless people.  How about the guy that sees your turn signal on for like 45 seconds but won't let you over, and when you try to get over he decides to scoot around you really quick (on the right, too!!!), what for, just so he can have the glory of being in front?  Cool, you're .03 seconds ahead of me.  Or the guy who's leaning out his car window, threatening to run you off the road for only going 75 in a 55?  Whatever happened to "patience is a virtue"?  These people are everywhere.  The other day my boss and I had to stop at his co-worker's house, and when we got there the co-worker told us it would be 20-30 minutes before he showed up.  So here we are, sitting outside, with nothing to do, and a beautiful tree so easily climbable right before me.  I work my way up, and the guy we were waiting on pulls up, so I start my descent.  His first words upon opening his car door are "GET YOUR F***ING ASS OUT OF MY G**D*** TREE RIGHT NOW YOU F***ING PIECE OF S***!!!!"  I navigate my way down while he continues with, "Real f***ing funny isn't it, you f***ing d***head?  I ought to sue the g**d**** s*** out of you," amongst other incredible obscenities.  I recognize him, I met him once before when he yelled at me on a jobsite for fixing something the sheetrock crew messed up that was preventing me from doing my own job.  "Sorry, man," I reply, "I didn't know it was that big a deal." He's bright purple.  "Its a HUGE f***ing deal, s***head!!"  I didn't say anything else, just got in the car.  I already know one woman at work who's having anxiety attacks because of this guy.  I just don't get it.  I understand that he may have been upset with someone unfamiliar being in his tree, and that's my fault.  But was all that necessary?  Do these people have an actual anger management issue, or is it just the norm to be this inconsiderate?  I can't imagine how different the world would be if for just ONE day, everyone on the planet was able to respect each other like fellow humans.  We all have differences, of course, and it would be impossible and even cruel to expect people to abandon their culture, their lifestyle, or their hopes and dreams.  But is it too much to ask for people to just be humane?  Be excellent to each other, and... 

PARTY ON, DUDES!!!!!

Coaxial-Nightmare

When we moved into our house in 2006, the Comcast guy that came to activate our service told me that our downstairs connection had been cut during remodeling.  So having done a significant amount of electric work in the past month, I decided to try my hand at fixing our house's cable problem.  It has always worked fine upstairs, but the downstairs TV has done nothing more than serve as a blank screen/DVD player for guests.  Many times we've had company ask if they could watch TV when they were over and I've always felt weird about saying that the only reason we didn't have TV downstairs is because I hadn't bothered to figure out the problem yet.  After touching the disconnected ends together, we got a signal, albeit weak and extremely fuzzy.  There were also several places in the cable where rough edges had worn down the sheathing, causing multiple weak spots in the wire.  In addition, whoever wired the cable in the first place wedged it in-between the TV shelf and the wall, meaning that there was no way to pull myself more slack from outside the house.  So I had to cut the wire from the inside, and pulled it out of the wall.  After about two hours fumbling around and trying to find where the inside hole and the outside hole met up, i realized that the old cable had been going through at an angle (which probably accounted for the torn up wire).  I stuck a skewer through the inside hole and taped the cable to it from the outside and pulled it back through the new hole, but that resulted in a cut end on the inside that I can't connect to my TV.  One co-ax screw on cap later ($10 at Best Buy) and the "impossible" cable job that Comcast wouldn't touch is up and running.  And that, my non-existent readers, is what I call some fine African-American engineering.

WTF? Seriously?

I love music.  I've been playing forever, and listening even longer, and I've got some playing in my ears right now.  But I haven't heard a freaking song on the radio that I actually liked in maybe eight years.  Is it just me, or do other people feel this way too?  I haven't heard a single Fall Out Boy or Jonas Brothers song that I honestly thought was good music.  How do these bands stay at the top of the charts week after week?  I know personal taste is a factor, but are people that into the music, or is it just because it's what's on the radio?  Music eventually changes, it has evolved over hundreds of years and will continue to, but I suppose I'm just tired of swooning leftover-emo heartbreaker bands and American Idol semi-finalists.  I'm ready for something that could change the world.  Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but it seems like what's not on the radio is either sucking at Warped Tour funded by teens that wish that punk hadn't died, or is some new scenester trend that sounds just like the last one.  That's not to say that there isn't an occasional song that I'll like, but where are the Doors, the Beatles, even the Nirvana of today?  If each decade since the 40's could be represented by one artist each, I would have to say:

40's: Frank Sinatra

50's: Elvis Presley

60's: The Beatles (by default, but this one could have several)

70's: Pink Floyd

80's: Michael Jackson (runner up: Pixies, but MJ was the definition of 80's)

90's: Nirvana

... And that's where I'm stuck.  All of these artists have left their mark on pop culture (amongst several 

others), but I can also definitely see these artists going down in some music history books in the future.  But what will this decade's defining band be?  Where is the band that your parents don't want you listening to, that breaks the mold of anything done before, setting the bar for musicians in the future?  I can't imagine what future generations will think.  Where is our member of the 27 club?  Lil' Jon is the most 'era-encompassing' artist I can think of, and that's kind of sad in a way.  But... also kind of cool.  Maybe there's a little kick left in the new millennium, maybe the best is yet to come.  With an election and possibility for change coming up, new artists may be inspired, and new ideas may surface.  Or maybe it will never happen again due to dissemination of the music industry, for fear of artists rallying young people towards a cause.  Maybe this is what iPods are for.  Let's just hope for the best.

Read Me in 2100 AD

It's pretty amazing to think about how fast the Net has developed into what it is today.  Sure, it took a good 50 years to get to this point from when it started as a government backup plan, but I'm talking about more like the last twenty or so, and how DOS evolved into the online experience we have today. In 1989-1990, I remember Dad owning a few DOS-based PCs that he used for Quicken 

and word processing and such.  Not much to them other than a command prompt and an 8-bit aquarium screensaver.  My cousins had something like a 2.4 k/s modem hooked up to their PC and ran a very basic net program from a company called Prodigy.  The computer wouldn't dial the server itself, so the line ran through a phone and you had to physically dial in the connection number 

yourself every time you wanted to connect.  The most I ever did with it was print out some inappropriate Mad Libs.  Come along about 3 years and me and my sister get our early Christmas present, a clunky desktop with Windows 3.1!!  It had its basic bevy of programs, from Grolier's Encyclopedia to File Manager, but its true feat was its ability to point at items on the screen with a mouse.  About 1995 was when our family first went online.  We had a 7.0k modem and a small company called Mindspring was our ISP, and even the computer could dial on its own now.  Netscape Navigator was the main browser we used, although its features were severely limited and page load times could sometimes take twenty or thirty minutes.  Mindspring didn't last, and was replaced by Juno and several other cheap ISPs.  By the time all this was happening, Microsoft was ready to release Windows 95, tho OS that really defined the 90's.  Our modem speeds increased to 14.4, then 56k, sites became more complicated, and public chats began popping up all over the Net.  I had my first personal e-mail address in 7th grade on hotmail.com, and chatted frequently on a long gone site called beseen.com.  But something was missing.  I had all my friends' email addresses, and we all had Angelfire accounts and would visit each other's homepages, but it was too hard to directly interact with several friends all at once.  Behold, AOL Instant Messenger.  Although it's still around, it no longer sports the crown it once did.  In the early 2000's, AIM dominated many a high-schoolers' afternoon, whereas teens would choose to chat with their friends online rather than just go hang out.  AIM also taught me that staying up until 4 AM was a good thing, a lesson that I still haven't managed to un-learn.  The fact that we had 'lightning-fast DSL' only made it that much better.  But it was only a few years until one by one all the regulars said BRB, put up away messages, and never came back.  Most moved on to text messages, some got busted on Napster.  The mobility of texting on a cell phone, however, eliminated need to sit around at home waiting in front of your monitor.  So now what?  It hasn't been long since the heyday of AIM, and it's only been 10 or so 

years since 'dot com' even became a household term.  Because handheld devices has advanced to the point where we can access mobile versions of Facebook and Yahoo, the new online trend is to combine it all into one big melting pot: a site where we can display every aspect of our lives for everyone to see; an online Me Generation, each with his own pictures, status updates, comment walls, etc.  You can instantly compile an album that contains all of the posted pictures of yourself and any given friend, and see all the comments that anyone had to say about them.  Sites like Wikipedia offer an enormous amount of information on all topics, each page compiled by users able to devote their time to completing such a database.  Some sites are social news networks that allow users to share updates from around the world amongst each other instantly.  Since wireless internet is available in most major areas, and in our homes, we can access all of these features any time, constantly connected, at access speeds unimagined just years ago.  Technology has come an amazingly long way, but advancements are increasing that much faster with the free flow of information.  

One must wonder: does it come at a price, that we may not yet know of?

The World Keeps Turning

Often times I think to myself, "What will become of me?"  It's a hard question to answer, and often times I wonder whether or not I will "make it" in the world.  Of course I have goals and dreams, things I want to accomplish with my life, but I have a horrible fear of not actually getting to do any of them.  I've tried to pinpoint these doubts in myself, and once I can get past my personal failures (which I am often too hard on myself for) I find the source of it all: about ten seconds from an episode of Boy Meets World where Alan Matthews is majorly bummed for never following through with his goals and instead ends up as a grocery store manager.  When I first saw it, it didn't really mean much to me - I was still in high school.  But as time went on, and I saw how the world really works, I began understanding that feeling.  I hear about kids I knew in high school that skipped all the time and performed horribly who have $90K salaries now, whereas I made nearly straight A's and had perfect attendance in high school but recently just quit my job rolling burritos for eight bucks an hour.  It doesn't match up to me, but as I said earlier, I suppose I can attribute a lot of this to my personal failures.  I have grown from them, but can't help but question where life will take me.  Are there people who go there entire lives wondering when it will all come together for them?  Some of it is probably anticipation - I finally got back in college after two years getting on my feet, so I'm eager to accomplish things and tackle the world, but it is definitely a strange feeling.  It makes me wonder if there are people who have no main interests, no big dreams, who spend their lives unsuccessful AND unhappy.  It always seemed to me that you would be one or the other, unless you got famous doing something you loved.  But there's not enough room in the spotlight for everyone.  I suppose it's one of those things that will perplex me until I'm an old man, looking back wondering where the years went.  Who knows, I could be famous in the future, or I could be a hermit.  The world may no longer exist.  There's really no telling what the future holds, but I suppose it's comforting to remind myself that no matter what, at least I'm working towards something, preparing for the rest of my life.