Broken car

A guy accross the street can't start his car.
He turns it over and it won't start.
I am sitting on the front porch watching.
I think about walking over to try and help.
His car is similar to mine.
I have worked on my car a lot.
But I don't go.
This America 2011.
People think that sort of thing is creepy these days.
And so it goes.

I win.

I have seen things you wouldn’t believe. I saw the glaciers of Greenland from 30,000 feet in the light of a full moon while chasing the sun over the horizon. I saw the sun appear huge on the hazy horizon while blazing across the semi-desert of Montana at almost 100 mph. Who gets to say things like that? I DO!

The future is a singularity. It sounds so negative but it isn't really. It’s always been true for the history of the human race. It is true because the future does not exist. It has never existed. What lies beyond the event horizon of is only a perception or impression of the future. It is pure speculation. No matter what time frame you look at, the ancient Greeks, The Romans, The Jews, The Chinese, the dark ages, or the golden age of redneck car lovin’ America. It’s all the same.

I grew up with constant negative speculation of what this singularity will be. An example is the mis-interpreted and overrated book of Revelations. I think it’s a code warning the early church and the Jews that Rome was out to get them; the Roman Emperor Nero being the beast.  My parents, however, believed it applied to them and America. Therefore it also applied to us, their children. Well, the Bible as a whole is re-written and mis-interpreted ad nauseum -- to the point where some of it's meaning was lost do to endless re-writes by scribes over thousands of years and political manipulation.

Someday, this planet is going to still be here. Vines will grow up the rusting skeletons of skyscrapers. Animals will come back and inhabit urban wastelands. The humans will be gone. The rusting skyscrapers will collapse under their own weight. The Pyramids will outlast the 800 meter tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai by thousands of years. Ours is an age of foolish vanity. It will pass. Maybe a few lucky people will survive if they happen to be in the right time and place.  I don't think this is a negative impression.  It is actually hopeful.  The earth will return to it's former natural glory.  Maybe some humans will be here, maybe we won't.

Who knows. Maybe in 100 years it will be a golden age like Star Trek.

The point is that nobody really knows.

I have always lived my life as much as I could. I have lived it as if I came to the end of my days and proclaimed “I wish I had done this.. and this… and this… “ I did some of those things. I travelled. I experienced cool stuff. I learned things. I read books. I debated. I drove a car on a race track really fast. I took pictures. I went out sailing on a nice sailboat. I learned Karate. I went whitewater rafting. I lived downtown, in the city, and in the suburbs. I lived in the country. I learned how to fix stuff. I had relationships. I met interesting people. I made friends. I rejected people. I had jobs that I liked a lot, and bosses with whom I worked well. I told a boss that I didn’t like to stuff it and I quit. I got fired from a stupid job that I hated anyway. I told a boss I didn’t like to stuff it, and I got to keep my job. I drove across the country in a car and saw the Pacific Ocean. I saw the Atlantic Ocean. I was married. I will get married again if I can. I spend time with my family when I can. I went to college full time and got a degree. I did things because I wanted to.

Sometimes people reach middle age and regret not living life enough.  I don't have a lot of those kinds of regrets.  I would do it all over again.  I will continue to live my life and experience what I can because I am supposed to.  We humans are not here so we can live to die. 

An interesting look at the history of the Japanese car industry.

Jeremy Clarkston makes it pretty entertaining.

Ah how different things were in the 90s:

Bethany Shorb, “Supplemental Restraint System” By Bruce Sterling

Interesting article in Wired about some really cool Ballard inspired artwork.








I have been in more then a half dozen accidents in my lifetime.... but... were they really accidents? Maybe I just like being in accidents. The crunch of metal and shock of body being restrained by the seat belt. The uncanny perspective of having the sky become green grass above the car roof for a split second. Recalling the slow motion movement of particles of shattered safety glass flying through the air. Observing the bent, twisted metal, and the gnarly pieces of broken trim for the first time, while still in a state of shock. Is that semi truck going to hit me? Oh Shit! It just hit me! Every time it happened, I always thought about the damage to the car before I even bothered to think about my own state of health. It's amazing that I only pay around $100 a month for insurance... still. Seems like it should be a lot more... like I got away with something. I did get away with something. I walked away every time.

I get in my car almost every day. I don't even think about how dangerous it really is. Even after all of those collisions and the roll over. I don't even worry about it. I worry about stupid trivial shit... like my lost cell phone... or global warming.

The car is such an insane invention. It is massive, world wide insanity. There could be saner, more practical forms of transportation like trains, but we are not having any of that! The car is a semi-private, isolated capsule of getting somewhere else. The daily commute in the average larger city is a bizarre exercise in kamikaze-like competition for road space. "GET OUT OF MY WAY ASSHOLE!!!" It causes massive pollution, wars over oil, road rage, death, pain... and it adversely affects the climate.

Cool to see Bethany's artwork get recognized by Mr Sterling. If I wasn't so damn broke all the time, I would buy the one in the above image in a second. Maybe I am so broke because I have been in so many car crashes.

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/06/bethany-shorb-supplemental-restraint-system/

Small models of places and imagined places:

Core77 Photo Gallery: Otherworldly - Optical Delusions and Small Realities

A gallery exhibition of small models.



A violin repair shop, street scenes, a ghetto, a 17th century micro-brew pub, a library, endless pre-computer age offices, and other surrealistic spaces... An exhibition of pretty interesting and cool miniature models of places that take you somewhere else.

Some are re-creations of real places that have an imagined slant to them probably more the way the artist remembered them then the actual place. Some are kind of dreamy, imagined places.

New experiment

Here is a new experiment. A place to post stuff that I find interesting and in a format that is not so facebookish.