A new Hope? A new beginning

In work

I think my brain has officially died, and left what remains of muscle memory to handle whatever mindless numbing functions I'm supposed to be doing right now. I also think this typing is my attempt at resuscitating myself, but I don't believe its working....working....worki....w.....

WHAT THE FUCK

I CAN'T SLEEP! I DRINK TO GO TO SLEEP AND IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!! Fucking body, I mean, its hot and sexy and all, but won't fucking listen to my commands to go to sleep, or maybe its my extraordinarily large brain, too much shit going on all the time.

My knee hurts... but more of an empathetic pain like when you are watching one of those crazy japanese videos and just as they're getting shot in the stomach with a cannonball, one of the dudes tries to avoid smelling a fart from the guy next to him and gets nailed in the nuts... maybe not like that

I'm just so tired, why won't sleep come to me any other time than when my boss is walking by the office.

Just not fair

Alt forms of energy

I always wondered why there hasn't been more adoption of alternative forms of energy production. I think its the inertia of big business striving to maintain its hold on all of us... man do I hate MNCs (hypocritical because I want to manage one someday).

Some major strides are being made with Solar technology, it seems a new type of panel has been developed thats far more efficient than current technology (>50%) and could provide the first feasible steps for utility-based solar energy production. They say a field of 10,000 sq miles could produce enough power for the entire country.

They work by using mirrors to concentrate beams of light on a single spot, and using the heat energy to create usuable energy (maybe through steam, can't remember exactly), It'd be cool to see more ideas like this prosper. I wish more people around the world would accept the idea that solar energy was a viable source. Its as if people at the turn of the 19th century were to say, well these cars don't work very well, we should abandon this exciting new technology before it gets off its feet.

There's so much unused energy cascading down from the sky every day, what a waste when you consider how many hydrocarbons we burn in our mad obsession with oil and its byproducts. How many natural resources could be saved, pollution avoided, exploitation nullified if we took our eyes off the black gold and bent our minds to the task of these exciting new theories and technologies. What if every building had a large solar panel on its roof, how much energy saved just there, if coastlines employed tidal generators to harness the power of the tides, geothermal plants to take advantage of venting steam. So much energy that goes unused, and simply evaporates into thin air.

Weird dreams

I died in my dream... this isn't the first time, but it was definitely the most vivid. Walking down a beach in Mexico, I found my family and strangers pointing up at the sky at flights of planes flying in straight lines through banks of clouds, but that wasn't what the were pointing at, they were pointing at two black dots moving swiftly through the atmosphere. As they came closer, they looked like huge black combs, obviously alien aircraft.

Now I remember, thinking in the dream, "I have seen way too many alien movies, and very rarely do flights of aliens come in on peaceful missions" so I grabbed my sister and started running away from the beach. I saw over my shoulder the ship land in the beach and people start to approach it, so I ran even faster. Far in the background I could hear sounds like those of phasers on Star Trek in the distance, so I knew shit was going down, I picked up my sister and ran even faster.

All of a sudden I knew things were turning worse, because people started screaming and running in the same direction as me, luckily I was ahead of them, but I think I may have accidently dropped my sister and kept on going, I'm not sure about this part, but I know I didn't stop. Just when I thought I might have outrun the fire turning the landscape a fiery smoky red, I saw the ground erupt around me, and I felt my last thoughts burn up with me as I died.

Then I was floating, in a reddish-whitish-black netherworld...with no substance and nothing around me.

I woke up, and fell back asleep, and was still floating in this ether, but only being half asleep by this point, it was weird because I felt a strange pressure on both sides of my ribs, pressing firmly down. Firmly enough that I woke myself up to end it, and when I fell back asleep it began again, continuing for an undetermined amount of time.

The craziest thing was, I had the dream over again after I finally left the ether (I decided to wake up for awhile and debated what it would be like to die rather than lay there and feel like I was dead). This second time I had prescience and knew what was going to happen, so I took a tank of air and dove to the bottom of a pond when the world decided to burn up.... This changed the entire rest of the dream when I finally surfaced again....

This was definitely a crazy night of dreams

Gotta love TV

The Awards Season... It can't be said enough, you got to love when all the high powered lovely and ugly people in Hollywood get together to celebrate their own ability to stunt the average person's creativity through massive influxes of their own contrived make believe.

I personally like my own life and the ones I read in books much better than the ones I see on TV. I kinda feel bad for those who spend half their lives pretending to be someone else, and the other half avoiding people who are infatuated with that fake personality.

Too much time not being yourself, unless by the very virtue of this being you life, it is you being yourself, and then I definitely don't want to be like that.

I need to curl up with a new book...

Man o man

Walking has been a bitch, and I ran out of the good meds so I'm back to the over-the-counter stuff. I don't think the flights of stairs have been helping, although its a medical fact that if you hurt or break a bone, feeling pain in it will make it heal faster, unfortunately I have bone, ligament and tissue all fucked up so I may not pursue my goal of winning a halfpipe competition by next week... If it wasn't a combination of all three it'd be so much easier, just flesh, just bone, (well not just ligament, you're always screwed on those) I'd be just fine, what a bitch

Onto brighter things, I've been 90% accepted to an Indian traineeship in Mumbai with United Way, the big holdup is on the payment part. They're a little bit sketchy on the accomodations and salary, and from what I've researched, what they're offering should provide enough for 2 meals a day...tops. I'm just worried because they seem so quick to jump on my query for information, its time to delve a little deeper.

Women...

Erg...

But partying till 5 in the morning IN Seattle is always a plus, god knows we have enough coffee to keep us awake.

MMMM

I think bagels, really, are one of the more important features of life, and when you can add cream cheese, you might as well stop worrying about those "what is the meaning of life?" and "who am I?" questions, because just dropping yourself into the luxury of creamfilled delicious bread hardened by a woodfired oven over a period of minutes creating a scrumptous piece of art whose taste is only intensified by the charring effects of the toaster....

Yeah, so I'm either high or drunk, you'll have to guess

Life is good

I got a job for two weeks, its sunny, clear, almost 28 degrees farhenheit, and women like me (some of these points up for negotiation)....

I had crazy dreams last night and my knee only bled a little... can't ask for much more from life than this, maybe a pet gorilla, but thats an ideal situation

Now all I have to do is figure out the rest of my life, a task i'm planning on revising every day for the next 80 years

1st rule of going to the doctor

1^st rule of going to the doctor:

If the doctor says there is a chance “complications,” always investigate these complications as thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly as possible, and then do a websearch

Its yesterday, and I’m in surgery to take out a screw put in place during an old surgery from about six or seven years ago, and the process should take no longer than 30 minutes and probably only 15, if you choose to believe the medical profession. But by now I know that they are all in collusion, and I’m prepared for Murphy to rear his ugly head, and right on time to the minute, the asshole showed up.

By now I’ve met the medical staff attending me and I’ve had my local anesthesia to numb up my knee, I feel I don’t need a general (the type where they knock you out, rape you and leave you to wake up in a Mexican cemetery with no idea of why your boxers are on your head) because I have a ton of errands I need to get done, and I feel like driving myself to them. The whole freefall feeling General anesthesia gives you hampers your ability to stop for old ladies at crosswalks, natural vindictiveness also seems to have this effect. Doc has made the incision over the screw and has placed the screwdriver in its position so I figure the “only ten seconds of moderate pain” is about to begin.

2^nd rule of going to the doctor

If the doctor feels he isn’t going to deceive you and explains you might feel more than a slight “poke” or “jab”… RUN!

…about to begin. Little did I know the act of unscrewing metal from bone with no form of anesthesia is a little like a herd of buffalo tapdancing on your knee, poorly. The doctor then pronounced that I’m “lucky to have such hard bones,” and proceeded to further explain that my “lucky bone” had broken the head of the screw off with half an inch of stainless steel shaft sticking out of my knee. This was also the point where I found out the other inch of the screw was still inside. Soon after this our friendly doctor asked if I was “ok” and told me he would have to do a little more work. Unfortunately I trusted him, and naturally, he proceeded to take a chisel and hammer and attempted to “open up a little space” around the bone. Ten minutes later, I was about to ask about the lights flickering and strange shapes bouncing around on the walls when out of a pain induced fog I heard a distant foghorn softly. It said, “Evan, how are you doing? Are you ok?” To which I answered in the affirmative, and then as an afterthought, the foghorn whispered “Are you in pain?” I nodded my head, but the only people who could see that were the shapes on the wall and I was not entirely sure they were real yet, so I replied… “Well of course, you’re chiseling at my bone and I have local anesthesia for my skin” I’m not sure how forceful this was but I’m pretty sure it was slightly sarcastic so I guess I’m “lucky” he stopped.

3^rd rule of going to the doctor

Always find out exactly what little improvisations are going to be happening before going under general anesthesia.

Now that my knee feels sort of like a sculpture and mostly like a coal mine, the amount of nurses and doctor’s double, I know this is not a hallucination because their eyes were different colored and none of them could get the damn IV in my arm right… they all tried. Finally, three vice grips, a pair of pliers and an anesthesiologist later, while bags of tools are being emptied onto the bed next to my leg and distant voices are murmuring “nope, this didn’t work either, hand me…that...um… thing over there,” they attach the gas mask and I’m blessedly out.

I wake up, find out my recovery time has been doubled, I have a large hole in my knee, my ligament had to be “cut a little” to make room for the drills (plural) and I have a nice new prescription for powerful painkillers along with my stainless steel screw washed of all the blood. And because I couldn’t walk straight, they said I couldn’t drive, so I couldn’t run my goddamn errands!