I need a touch-up/
I need a hair cut/
Need a nip and a tuck/
Need to be plucked and cut/
I need a touch-up
Mother Mother knows everything I think at all times... Conor Oberst used to know everything I thought, but ever since I realized he was a stupid boy like everything else that sucks in my life, I realized that he doesn't actually think much like me at all. Modest Mouse just rock-s0rs. But Mother Mother totally gets it.
Bad week. Bad day after bad day. Bad feelings. I don't know what to do. I'm backsliding again, and I hate it. I had a terrible shift. Dan yelled at me. For talking down to him, of all things! Asshole. I mean, fuck, how much do I have to put up with, and grin about? Nothing is sacred to him, and Steve, and yet I mention his disgusting glove habits, and he says he's going to bitch-slap me.
Nothing else even bears mentioning, it sucks so hard. My god, I am SO delusional all the fucking time! I never see anything but what I want to see! And I KNOW the truth of what's going on, but if I don't want to hear it, I just don't let myself. I am in such denial all the time!
Fuck, I try so hard. When is all this trying going to pay off and let me just be happy? I am so SICK of being sad! I AM SO SICK OF IT. When was the last time I was really happy? I honestly don't even remember it.
Someone called me melodramatic this week. It doesn't matter what I do, it somehow always turns out to be wrong. I work super hard at Tim's, because even if it is a shitty joe-job, I should still at least try to be good at it. All it ever gets me is a lot of pissy customers, and stress. I try to be a good friend, or someone who would be worth dating, and it brings me nothing but hurt feelings. I'm not right for anything.
Why is ordinary life so daunting? I don't get it, I can handle big stuff, but when it comes to getting from Monday to Friday, I'm completely useless.
Everyone in my family has a place, and a purpose. Ucre has his super-religious family, and his well-paying job. Buck is crazy Army Man, and has his wife. My sister's got her kids to take care of and now SHE'S even getting married. Quinn's getting married in three weeks, and him and Courtney just found out that THEY are pregnant. My cousins are all married, or pregnant, or going to college forever. I'm the only one being left behind. And me being nineteen means nothing. It wasn't easy at eleven watching them learn to drive and going out with their stupid boyfriends and girlfriends, and moving away from home, either.
I'm always going to be the extra half of a person that everyone's mean to because it's convenient. I'm always going to be the last little accident that shares only half a set of genomes with anyone else. I'm always going to be the afterthought in the corner of the Christmas dinner table, squished in between babies and guests, with the last folding chair that has the broken seat.
Fuck. God damn. I am so sick of feeling like this. But I don't know how to make it better. Every time I try, I end up fucking something else up.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
eleven minute rule
did you know that many action movies are written around a basic rule that says an action sequence must happen every eleven minutes? If you watch movies like Die Hard, you'll see how closely this rule is followed by Hollywood action writers. :)
Today I pick up my car!!!! And after that I go buy a Haynes Manual FOR my car! Then my brother will attempt to teach me something ABOUT my car! This weekend, he's going to go with me to get it insured, and hopefully Baker's will have my starter in by then! SO EXCITED!!!!!!
My weekend SUCKED! Friday, I was in so much pain from my jaw, and had been popping extra-strength Tylenols like TicTacs that I contemplated calling in and going to the hospital. I called my dentist, but of course his office was closed for the long weekend, and no one answered his emergency line. So I called Quinn to ask his advice, and he told me to go buy Advil and Aspirin and take two of each along with two Tylenol every six hours, and it would knock the pain out enough to work. So...I did!
Predictably enough, I spent the night high off my tree! It was a fun shift, though! I was totally giddy, and me, Destiny and Kelsey had fun in drivethru... there was one lady who almost made me pee my pants laughing! When she ordered, she took a super long time, and then pretty much shouted her order super quick! Destiny and I just looked at each other, and I gave her her total, and she was like, "............okbye!" And us DT girls just burst out laughing!
When she got up to the window, she gave us a ten. We gave her her food. All is well. I was about to give her her change, but she was talking on a cell phone, so I leaned out and was waiting for her to turn her attention towards me, but she just glanced at my hand holding her change out of the corner of her eye, and yelled, "IDON'TNEEDMYCHANGEOKTHANKSBYE" and literally PEELED out of druve thru! It was the FUNNIEST thing!!! I seriously fell on the floor I was laughing so hard!!!
So Friday wasn't too bad. Medicated off my ass, not a bad shift, but my jaw kept hurting and hurting... I got about three hours sleep before it woke me up again. I probably downed about twenty or twentyfive pain pills in those two days... By that night, I was exhausted, in pain, hungry, but nauseous from having ingested nothing but meds for two days. Predictably, I spent that entire night retching in the bathroom... I couldn't go an hour without running into the back, leaving Dan to take care of everything. He was great, and took care of everything, as well as covering me while I barfed, but he still left at three, and after putting lineups of cars on hold while I tried to get my nausea over with and back to work, I finally called Trevor and asked him to come in early. He ended up coming in at five thirty, and taking over for me so I could go home and rest, which I did.
Slept about six hours and woke up to find my face swollen to about twice it's normal size on my right cheek...I couldn't lay on that side, I couldn't touch my jaw, I couldn't put anything in my mouth without sever pain...I could barely even talk. I woke up around three, and decided enough was enough. I needed to go to the hospital.
Called Sherayna. Sherayna was working. Called Quinn. Quinn was helping Courtney babysit. I was shocked. I asked him, Quinn, did you not hear what I just said? I need to go to the hospital. I NEED you right now. "Well, I'm sorry, Alleah, but you just have a bad tooth. How would Courtney feel if I left her with five kids to look after?"
Let's just say he got a lot of the hurt and anger I felt at that point back in his face last night, when I flipped on him for never being around when I needed him.
So finally I called Ace, who VOLUNTEERED to take me, without me ever having to ask. Told Quinn last night on the phone that he could chew on that, that the one person everybody in my family agrees is no good for me, was the one person who was there for me when I needed it. So we went to the hospital. I hated it... I hate that place. So we waiting a couple of hours, pretty much for some moose of a male nurse to tap a stick on each of my teeth and tell me he thought I had an absess. Gave me a prescription of T3's (which are the most wonderful invention of mankind) and ten days worth of penicillin. And that was that. I hate life.
We had a bit of an adventure to find a drugstore that was open (this was on Canada Day), but finally we went to London Drugs and got the prescription filled. He took me home, where I promptly went into a coma of unparalelled proportions. At that point, I'd basically sleep for five or six hours, be woken up by the pain, take more pills, read for ten or fifteen minutes til I fell asleep again to be woken up five or six hours later. That went on all through Monday and Tuesday night. Finally on Tuesday, I woke up and realized the swelling had gone down a bit. I then ordered Fast Eddies in for the first meal I'd had in four days (I'd been living on yogurt and liquids). It took me about four tries over the entire day to get the whole meal down. (chicken strips, beef dip sandwich and soup)
On Tuesday, I also had my dentists appointment. They took x-rays, and decided that although my wisdom tooth WAS severely impacted and needed to come out, first I needed to have a root canal on one of my molars that had absessed. Now that's great, because I have no coverage for an operation like that. I don't qualify for benefits at Tim's, I'm not covered on any of my family's insurance, and the only way the government will pay for it is if I get the tooth pulled, which is not an option. I will NOT have my tooth pulled. So basically, I have to find a second job, apply for coverage under personal insurance carriers, which'll cost about a hundred a month, and then pay into the policy for a month or two or whatever they require and get the work done; or foot the entire $4000 bill.
And then once that's done, I STILL have to have my wisdom teeth taken out, which'll cost even more, unless I can get the hospital to say that they are a danger to my health (for instance, they're growing in such a way that they could peirce an artery or something) and get them taken out for free.
So Alleah is not entirely happy about this situation...
but whatever, I'm getting my car today! :)
Today I pick up my car!!!! And after that I go buy a Haynes Manual FOR my car! Then my brother will attempt to teach me something ABOUT my car! This weekend, he's going to go with me to get it insured, and hopefully Baker's will have my starter in by then! SO EXCITED!!!!!!
My weekend SUCKED! Friday, I was in so much pain from my jaw, and had been popping extra-strength Tylenols like TicTacs that I contemplated calling in and going to the hospital. I called my dentist, but of course his office was closed for the long weekend, and no one answered his emergency line. So I called Quinn to ask his advice, and he told me to go buy Advil and Aspirin and take two of each along with two Tylenol every six hours, and it would knock the pain out enough to work. So...I did!
Predictably enough, I spent the night high off my tree! It was a fun shift, though! I was totally giddy, and me, Destiny and Kelsey had fun in drivethru... there was one lady who almost made me pee my pants laughing! When she ordered, she took a super long time, and then pretty much shouted her order super quick! Destiny and I just looked at each other, and I gave her her total, and she was like, "............okbye!" And us DT girls just burst out laughing!
When she got up to the window, she gave us a ten. We gave her her food. All is well. I was about to give her her change, but she was talking on a cell phone, so I leaned out and was waiting for her to turn her attention towards me, but she just glanced at my hand holding her change out of the corner of her eye, and yelled, "IDON'TNEEDMYCHANGEOKTHANKSBYE" and literally PEELED out of druve thru! It was the FUNNIEST thing!!! I seriously fell on the floor I was laughing so hard!!!
So Friday wasn't too bad. Medicated off my ass, not a bad shift, but my jaw kept hurting and hurting... I got about three hours sleep before it woke me up again. I probably downed about twenty or twentyfive pain pills in those two days... By that night, I was exhausted, in pain, hungry, but nauseous from having ingested nothing but meds for two days. Predictably, I spent that entire night retching in the bathroom... I couldn't go an hour without running into the back, leaving Dan to take care of everything. He was great, and took care of everything, as well as covering me while I barfed, but he still left at three, and after putting lineups of cars on hold while I tried to get my nausea over with and back to work, I finally called Trevor and asked him to come in early. He ended up coming in at five thirty, and taking over for me so I could go home and rest, which I did.
Slept about six hours and woke up to find my face swollen to about twice it's normal size on my right cheek...I couldn't lay on that side, I couldn't touch my jaw, I couldn't put anything in my mouth without sever pain...I could barely even talk. I woke up around three, and decided enough was enough. I needed to go to the hospital.
Called Sherayna. Sherayna was working. Called Quinn. Quinn was helping Courtney babysit. I was shocked. I asked him, Quinn, did you not hear what I just said? I need to go to the hospital. I NEED you right now. "Well, I'm sorry, Alleah, but you just have a bad tooth. How would Courtney feel if I left her with five kids to look after?"
Let's just say he got a lot of the hurt and anger I felt at that point back in his face last night, when I flipped on him for never being around when I needed him.
So finally I called Ace, who VOLUNTEERED to take me, without me ever having to ask. Told Quinn last night on the phone that he could chew on that, that the one person everybody in my family agrees is no good for me, was the one person who was there for me when I needed it. So we went to the hospital. I hated it... I hate that place. So we waiting a couple of hours, pretty much for some moose of a male nurse to tap a stick on each of my teeth and tell me he thought I had an absess. Gave me a prescription of T3's (which are the most wonderful invention of mankind) and ten days worth of penicillin. And that was that. I hate life.
We had a bit of an adventure to find a drugstore that was open (this was on Canada Day), but finally we went to London Drugs and got the prescription filled. He took me home, where I promptly went into a coma of unparalelled proportions. At that point, I'd basically sleep for five or six hours, be woken up by the pain, take more pills, read for ten or fifteen minutes til I fell asleep again to be woken up five or six hours later. That went on all through Monday and Tuesday night. Finally on Tuesday, I woke up and realized the swelling had gone down a bit. I then ordered Fast Eddies in for the first meal I'd had in four days (I'd been living on yogurt and liquids). It took me about four tries over the entire day to get the whole meal down. (chicken strips, beef dip sandwich and soup)
On Tuesday, I also had my dentists appointment. They took x-rays, and decided that although my wisdom tooth WAS severely impacted and needed to come out, first I needed to have a root canal on one of my molars that had absessed. Now that's great, because I have no coverage for an operation like that. I don't qualify for benefits at Tim's, I'm not covered on any of my family's insurance, and the only way the government will pay for it is if I get the tooth pulled, which is not an option. I will NOT have my tooth pulled. So basically, I have to find a second job, apply for coverage under personal insurance carriers, which'll cost about a hundred a month, and then pay into the policy for a month or two or whatever they require and get the work done; or foot the entire $4000 bill.
And then once that's done, I STILL have to have my wisdom teeth taken out, which'll cost even more, unless I can get the hospital to say that they are a danger to my health (for instance, they're growing in such a way that they could peirce an artery or something) and get them taken out for free.
So Alleah is not entirely happy about this situation...
but whatever, I'm getting my car today! :)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
rain, pain, and automobiles
rawr! Alleah has a sore ear, jaw, and bottom. My ear is full of water from taking my neice and nephew swimming, my wisdom tooth is impacted causing crazy jaw pain, and I fell on my ass while I was drunk last night! I am so fucking haggard! That's ok. The absinthe I'll drink later with Laura, Brianna and Mel will cure all!
This rain is killing me. It is so hard to get up and do anything when you look outside your window and see nothing but gray sheets of precipitation. Someon e please give me a kick in the ass to get me out of my house! Even if it's just to go pick up my car, because even that would be better than watching movies all day, with my curtains drawn! For fucks sake! RAWR!~~!!!!
I obviously have some serious cabin fever. What the fuck is all this rain in the end of June! I mean I know this is the rainforest, but give me a goddamn break! I need sun.
Ok. I really have nothing interesting to say. Please, everyone, promise me that if there are fireworks this Sunday, DON'T go get Tim Horton's! My asshole managers have decided to put me on by myself--ON A FIREWORKS SUNDAY! So it's going to be crazy all night, and I need you guys to help me out by being one LESS customer to spend fifteen minutes serving. My drivethru times are going to be through the roof, and no one is going to get out of that line up very fast. Well...that is if there ARE fireworks this Sunday... someone told me that they heard there weren't going to be any because the city of Nanaimo spent too much on Bathtub weekend, and May Day fireworks. So if there are...I'm fucked... if there aren't, well I'll probably still be fucking busy, but not as bad as it could be.
rain rain, go away....
This rain is killing me. It is so hard to get up and do anything when you look outside your window and see nothing but gray sheets of precipitation. Someon e please give me a kick in the ass to get me out of my house! Even if it's just to go pick up my car, because even that would be better than watching movies all day, with my curtains drawn! For fucks sake! RAWR!~~!!!!
I obviously have some serious cabin fever. What the fuck is all this rain in the end of June! I mean I know this is the rainforest, but give me a goddamn break! I need sun.
Ok. I really have nothing interesting to say. Please, everyone, promise me that if there are fireworks this Sunday, DON'T go get Tim Horton's! My asshole managers have decided to put me on by myself--ON A FIREWORKS SUNDAY! So it's going to be crazy all night, and I need you guys to help me out by being one LESS customer to spend fifteen minutes serving. My drivethru times are going to be through the roof, and no one is going to get out of that line up very fast. Well...that is if there ARE fireworks this Sunday... someone told me that they heard there weren't going to be any because the city of Nanaimo spent too much on Bathtub weekend, and May Day fireworks. So if there are...I'm fucked... if there aren't, well I'll probably still be fucking busy, but not as bad as it could be.
rain rain, go away....
Sunday, June 24, 2007
angels bowling in heaven
Today was the first thunderstorm I've seen since my childhood. Remember sitting with your mom or dad when the lights went out and drinking hot chocolate while counting seconds in between flash, and BOOM!...? That was pretty much me today. Couldn't sleep and was watching a movie when all of a sudden this huge crash above my head just rocked my socks off, and I looked out my window to see mean grey clouds rolling over head. All my neighbors were coming out onto their porch to watch, but just my luck, my apartment faces the opposite direction of where the lightning seemed to be. All I saw was a flash of slightly whiter light o nce in a while, whereupon I'd start counting. The closest was two miles away. That one was scary, because maybe a minute later I heard sirens start going, and I swear my heart took off.
On the brighter side, someone's internet connection likes me, considering I was able to get online at home today for the first time in AGES!
You know today scared me a lot. I've been reading about global warming theories and such, and the idea that all the atmospheric conditions required to precipitate an apocalyptic weather event are present and accounted for NOW has me looking at every raindrop. I know I'm being a bit alarmist at best, completely ridiculous at worst. But it still scares me. I mean, we've known long enough that our actions affect our environment, and have been for much longer than we really realize. We've taken steps, maybe steps big enough to affect the shitpile we've made for ourselves, but A) is it enough, B) can we keep it up without bringing our stupid human ambitions into it (obviously not, if the Bush administration is any example of the future of the human race), and C) have those steps come too late anyway?
Let me give you a synopsis of a book I read a little while ago (this is almost all I can think about lately and most of what I talk about so skip it if I've told you already). It's about the environmental study, the results of which inspired the movie The Day After Tomorrow. All amateur movie critics who hated that movie can just hold their tongue, because this isn't about the movie, it's about the theory behind the movie.
Basically, the book is about how the constantly record-breaking temperatures each season is evidence of a developing pattern of stronger weather. The stronger storms we see each season, the record-hot summers (2005, the hottest year ever recorded), and frequency and unprecedented strength of natural disasters are evidence of a coming climate shift and are caused by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn are being pumped out of our cars, factories and industrial endeavors. In short the theory goes, we pump greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere through the burning of fossil feuls, which traps sun rays and heats up the atmosphere. As each year that passes gets hotter and hotter, the polar ice caps melt at an alarming rate. Glaciers are disappearing, polar habitats are vanishing, and ice shelfs so big they form land features visible from space are breaking away because they're melting. If we were continue as we do today for twenty five years, Antarctica will present a vastly different face, as the Larsen B ice shelf which has already broken away from the rest of the ice at the southern pole melts and melts. All this melting ice is pumping tons and tons of fresh water into the oceans of the world, fragile ecosystems that depend on chemical balance and temperature among other things to keep stable.
This is stuff most of us know, and think about and if it isn't, well Al Gore's new documentary will make you think about it, if you decide to watch it (which you should, in my opinion). This is where the theory begins that The Day After Tomorrow is based on. Apparently, all this fresh water in the oceans will dilute the salty water to an extreme degree, and possibly disrupt the North Atlantic Current, an oceanic current that runs from Florida all the way up to Greenland, and over to Atlantic Europe and back down again. It will cause the current to reverse, bringing not tropical warmth to the northern reaches, but instead polar cold to some of the most populated areas in North America. The concept is that weather fronts will stream down from the arctic bringing rain, sleet, snow, and ultimately extreme cold. A climate shift will occur, thrusting most of the northern hemisphere into another Ice Age, which will last for (depending on, among other things, which season it happens in) for either thousands or millions of years.
Ok, you go, Alleah learned that from listening to the freakin dialogue in that stupid weather movie. But the book goes into detail about how shifts like that which is described HAVE happened before and recently, geologically speaking. In the past ten thousand years in fact. It cites archaelogical evidence lending credibility to this theory, facts like the Egyptian Sphinx being much older than previously though because of the discovery of water damage at the base that places the date of it's construction at something like ten thousand years ago at a time when the climate of the area could possibly have sustained such phenomena. This means that there was a civilization that lived ten thousand years ago that had the means to build a structure that still baffles the engineers of today. And from other isolated archaelogical finds (for example a spear with a head made of steel, dated from a time during the Bronze Age), the evidence of ocean-venturing humans taking voyages out of sight of land (requiring skills of navigation, and obviously communication) thousands of years before it was previously thought our ancestors figured out how to float, and mythology that is now being reaffirmed by scientific findings, experts are deducing that we must have been WAY smarter way before we believed we were.
So what happened to child-prodigy-homo sapiens? Where did this super-intelligient civilization go? Well, judging from chemical analysis of layers of ice in polar ice shelfs (which behaves in a way similar to the layers of earth in a canyon, trapping atmospheric elements like carbon dioxide in the snow falling that turns into packed ice) these overdeveloped humans were living at a time the last climate dip occured. They seem to have been destroyed by the onslaught of the last Ice Age.
So how exactly does the climate shift happen? According the the authors of this Doomsday Book, the first few conditions needed for a global superstorm are in place. Rising CO2 levels result in trapped greenhouse gases, resulting in the overheating of the earth. Now if these elements combined to create a "warm snap" as the book calls it--weather warm enough to heat up the Arctic Ocean by just a few degrees. All this heat will trap cold air at the pole. The fresh water flowing into the Arctic Ocean will take on even more heat and warm the Arctic Ocean further. This is where the North Atlantic Current reverses, swinging south, bringing with it, all of the super-cooled air down from the pole in a vicious weather front. The warmed ocean combined with super cool air in the stratosphere will create an imbalance, causing a storm so intense, it would rage for weeks, bringing unprecedented weather conditions to areas completely unprepared for them. The system (or systems, possibly) would bring weeks of snow, and intense arctic cold. The storm would rage on until the imbalance that created was restored (that is until the oceans cool enough for the reversed current to resume it's normal pattern), and by that time, so much snow would have been dumped on the Northern Hemisphere, it would cause a dramatic change in how much sunlight was reflected away from the earth, which would cause worldwide temperatures to drop dramatically. If this storm occurs in summertime, there's a chance the snow might melt, depending on how much has been dropped and how tightly it's packed down already. Given enough tightly packed snow that forms into ice, a cooling trend would start. Remember in geological terms a trend might last anywhere from centuries to millenia. If this superstorm occured in the Northern Hemisphere's winter, and the sun didn't get enough light and warmth to the earth's surface to melt the ice and snow in the next years, humanity would be looking at a lifetime of ice, if we survived at all.
For this superstorm to even occur, it needs enough water vapor rising off the superheated oceans, combined with super-cool air from the stratosphere, and needs to become so large, it's fed simultaneously by intense arctic cold, and tropical heat. Judging from the strength of the storms we see each year, this is beginning to look even more possible than ever before. In my lifetime so far, the world has seen the worst storms in mankind's recorded history. Each year, there's a new "Hottest;" each hurricane flaunts the "highest wind speed ever recorded." With natural disasters growing ever more disastrous, other signs pop up and combine to make a sickening point.
Each period of the Earth's history, (Cretaceous, etc) ended with a massive extinction level event. Ice-Age-heralding superstorms freezing mammoths instantaneously, and comets smashing into a fragile ecosystem causing the extinction of the greatest predators the world has ever seen. Each extinction event has been preceded by a period of decline, most of them millions of years long. If we are within a quarter century of the next extinction level event, than it sheds a chilling light of comparison on our past one hundred years. The pollution and grit we've been sending into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, is eerily reminiscient of the dust and choking air pollution sent wheeling into the atmosphere by the comet that claimed the lives of the dinosaurs. To quote the occasionally morbid authors of this book, mankind is becoming it's own extinction event.
We've always arrogantly considered ourselves our own worst enemy. Aliens? Asteroids? Lucifer and all the temptaion he can throw at you? Nothing compared to the valour, the ingenuity, the salvation of faith the human race can dredge up--or at least according to the movies. The only thing we've never been able to come up with an answer to is our own folly, our own greed, our own ambition and lust, and envy, our ostrich-like avoidance of true problems until our problems come right up to us and demand to be addressed.
Well, now we have the proof, don't we? Archaelogical, metereological, geological, incontrovertible proof that we are standing on the edge of the abyss, staring at the demise of our species, a fate we determined for ourselves.
Or not...
In true, ever-redeemable human fashion, the authors of this apocalyptic book give the reader an out. They say, 'come on if this is a decline preceeding our extinction, it's been going on for three million years' and 'these ice ages have happened before and probably will again in the billions of years the earth has left in her life, with or without us, so how could this one be all our fault?'
And this is true. But no matter what's true, we have to live with the fact, that we know these things now, and what little we're doing to try and prevent it is never going to be enough. If the science and the theory is correct, we'll all know within our lifetimes. So are we going to sit back and find out if we win or lose? Or are we going to at least try and make the time we have left (for each of us is constantly racing against their own silent, terminal alarm clock) count for something? Why should we put up with a cretin politician leading us into danger for what? A resource that is, in it's own way helping to bring about the end of mankind?
...
So I reread this. It sounds like an anarchist, uninformed pontification. But I like it. I mean, reading this book really scared me deep down. Down in a place more primal than anything I experience even once in a while. I mean this goes beyond societal convention, beyond civilization itself, beyond even the basis of human interaction. This is about the one thing every human has, every human in history has had: our planet. Our home. Our modest ball of molten rock is a beautiful accident, Our Mother Earth by virtue of nothing more miraculous than a fortuitous happenstance of the right size mass being the right distance from the right size star; made fertile by the ironic incident of a massive massive asteroid smashing into it, forming a crater so large, we now call it the Pacific Ocean, and then miraculously staying with the Earth to become what we know as the moon, a presence which both comforts us on a primal level and makes it possible for life as we know it to continue, by regulating the tides.
Now that's a pretty lucky accident, don't you think?
So why does humankind, in it's infinite arrogance think it has the right to fuck with something like that?
On the brighter side, someone's internet connection likes me, considering I was able to get online at home today for the first time in AGES!
You know today scared me a lot. I've been reading about global warming theories and such, and the idea that all the atmospheric conditions required to precipitate an apocalyptic weather event are present and accounted for NOW has me looking at every raindrop. I know I'm being a bit alarmist at best, completely ridiculous at worst. But it still scares me. I mean, we've known long enough that our actions affect our environment, and have been for much longer than we really realize. We've taken steps, maybe steps big enough to affect the shitpile we've made for ourselves, but A) is it enough, B) can we keep it up without bringing our stupid human ambitions into it (obviously not, if the Bush administration is any example of the future of the human race), and C) have those steps come too late anyway?
Let me give you a synopsis of a book I read a little while ago (this is almost all I can think about lately and most of what I talk about so skip it if I've told you already). It's about the environmental study, the results of which inspired the movie The Day After Tomorrow. All amateur movie critics who hated that movie can just hold their tongue, because this isn't about the movie, it's about the theory behind the movie.
Basically, the book is about how the constantly record-breaking temperatures each season is evidence of a developing pattern of stronger weather. The stronger storms we see each season, the record-hot summers (2005, the hottest year ever recorded), and frequency and unprecedented strength of natural disasters are evidence of a coming climate shift and are caused by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn are being pumped out of our cars, factories and industrial endeavors. In short the theory goes, we pump greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere through the burning of fossil feuls, which traps sun rays and heats up the atmosphere. As each year that passes gets hotter and hotter, the polar ice caps melt at an alarming rate. Glaciers are disappearing, polar habitats are vanishing, and ice shelfs so big they form land features visible from space are breaking away because they're melting. If we were continue as we do today for twenty five years, Antarctica will present a vastly different face, as the Larsen B ice shelf which has already broken away from the rest of the ice at the southern pole melts and melts. All this melting ice is pumping tons and tons of fresh water into the oceans of the world, fragile ecosystems that depend on chemical balance and temperature among other things to keep stable.
This is stuff most of us know, and think about and if it isn't, well Al Gore's new documentary will make you think about it, if you decide to watch it (which you should, in my opinion). This is where the theory begins that The Day After Tomorrow is based on. Apparently, all this fresh water in the oceans will dilute the salty water to an extreme degree, and possibly disrupt the North Atlantic Current, an oceanic current that runs from Florida all the way up to Greenland, and over to Atlantic Europe and back down again. It will cause the current to reverse, bringing not tropical warmth to the northern reaches, but instead polar cold to some of the most populated areas in North America. The concept is that weather fronts will stream down from the arctic bringing rain, sleet, snow, and ultimately extreme cold. A climate shift will occur, thrusting most of the northern hemisphere into another Ice Age, which will last for (depending on, among other things, which season it happens in) for either thousands or millions of years.
Ok, you go, Alleah learned that from listening to the freakin dialogue in that stupid weather movie. But the book goes into detail about how shifts like that which is described HAVE happened before and recently, geologically speaking. In the past ten thousand years in fact. It cites archaelogical evidence lending credibility to this theory, facts like the Egyptian Sphinx being much older than previously though because of the discovery of water damage at the base that places the date of it's construction at something like ten thousand years ago at a time when the climate of the area could possibly have sustained such phenomena. This means that there was a civilization that lived ten thousand years ago that had the means to build a structure that still baffles the engineers of today. And from other isolated archaelogical finds (for example a spear with a head made of steel, dated from a time during the Bronze Age), the evidence of ocean-venturing humans taking voyages out of sight of land (requiring skills of navigation, and obviously communication) thousands of years before it was previously thought our ancestors figured out how to float, and mythology that is now being reaffirmed by scientific findings, experts are deducing that we must have been WAY smarter way before we believed we were.
So what happened to child-prodigy-homo sapiens? Where did this super-intelligient civilization go? Well, judging from chemical analysis of layers of ice in polar ice shelfs (which behaves in a way similar to the layers of earth in a canyon, trapping atmospheric elements like carbon dioxide in the snow falling that turns into packed ice) these overdeveloped humans were living at a time the last climate dip occured. They seem to have been destroyed by the onslaught of the last Ice Age.
So how exactly does the climate shift happen? According the the authors of this Doomsday Book, the first few conditions needed for a global superstorm are in place. Rising CO2 levels result in trapped greenhouse gases, resulting in the overheating of the earth. Now if these elements combined to create a "warm snap" as the book calls it--weather warm enough to heat up the Arctic Ocean by just a few degrees. All this heat will trap cold air at the pole. The fresh water flowing into the Arctic Ocean will take on even more heat and warm the Arctic Ocean further. This is where the North Atlantic Current reverses, swinging south, bringing with it, all of the super-cooled air down from the pole in a vicious weather front. The warmed ocean combined with super cool air in the stratosphere will create an imbalance, causing a storm so intense, it would rage for weeks, bringing unprecedented weather conditions to areas completely unprepared for them. The system (or systems, possibly) would bring weeks of snow, and intense arctic cold. The storm would rage on until the imbalance that created was restored (that is until the oceans cool enough for the reversed current to resume it's normal pattern), and by that time, so much snow would have been dumped on the Northern Hemisphere, it would cause a dramatic change in how much sunlight was reflected away from the earth, which would cause worldwide temperatures to drop dramatically. If this storm occurs in summertime, there's a chance the snow might melt, depending on how much has been dropped and how tightly it's packed down already. Given enough tightly packed snow that forms into ice, a cooling trend would start. Remember in geological terms a trend might last anywhere from centuries to millenia. If this superstorm occured in the Northern Hemisphere's winter, and the sun didn't get enough light and warmth to the earth's surface to melt the ice and snow in the next years, humanity would be looking at a lifetime of ice, if we survived at all.
For this superstorm to even occur, it needs enough water vapor rising off the superheated oceans, combined with super-cool air from the stratosphere, and needs to become so large, it's fed simultaneously by intense arctic cold, and tropical heat. Judging from the strength of the storms we see each year, this is beginning to look even more possible than ever before. In my lifetime so far, the world has seen the worst storms in mankind's recorded history. Each year, there's a new "Hottest;" each hurricane flaunts the "highest wind speed ever recorded." With natural disasters growing ever more disastrous, other signs pop up and combine to make a sickening point.
Each period of the Earth's history, (Cretaceous, etc) ended with a massive extinction level event. Ice-Age-heralding superstorms freezing mammoths instantaneously, and comets smashing into a fragile ecosystem causing the extinction of the greatest predators the world has ever seen. Each extinction event has been preceded by a period of decline, most of them millions of years long. If we are within a quarter century of the next extinction level event, than it sheds a chilling light of comparison on our past one hundred years. The pollution and grit we've been sending into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, is eerily reminiscient of the dust and choking air pollution sent wheeling into the atmosphere by the comet that claimed the lives of the dinosaurs. To quote the occasionally morbid authors of this book, mankind is becoming it's own extinction event.
We've always arrogantly considered ourselves our own worst enemy. Aliens? Asteroids? Lucifer and all the temptaion he can throw at you? Nothing compared to the valour, the ingenuity, the salvation of faith the human race can dredge up--or at least according to the movies. The only thing we've never been able to come up with an answer to is our own folly, our own greed, our own ambition and lust, and envy, our ostrich-like avoidance of true problems until our problems come right up to us and demand to be addressed.
Well, now we have the proof, don't we? Archaelogical, metereological, geological, incontrovertible proof that we are standing on the edge of the abyss, staring at the demise of our species, a fate we determined for ourselves.
Or not...
In true, ever-redeemable human fashion, the authors of this apocalyptic book give the reader an out. They say, 'come on if this is a decline preceeding our extinction, it's been going on for three million years' and 'these ice ages have happened before and probably will again in the billions of years the earth has left in her life, with or without us, so how could this one be all our fault?'
And this is true. But no matter what's true, we have to live with the fact, that we know these things now, and what little we're doing to try and prevent it is never going to be enough. If the science and the theory is correct, we'll all know within our lifetimes. So are we going to sit back and find out if we win or lose? Or are we going to at least try and make the time we have left (for each of us is constantly racing against their own silent, terminal alarm clock) count for something? Why should we put up with a cretin politician leading us into danger for what? A resource that is, in it's own way helping to bring about the end of mankind?
...
So I reread this. It sounds like an anarchist, uninformed pontification. But I like it. I mean, reading this book really scared me deep down. Down in a place more primal than anything I experience even once in a while. I mean this goes beyond societal convention, beyond civilization itself, beyond even the basis of human interaction. This is about the one thing every human has, every human in history has had: our planet. Our home. Our modest ball of molten rock is a beautiful accident, Our Mother Earth by virtue of nothing more miraculous than a fortuitous happenstance of the right size mass being the right distance from the right size star; made fertile by the ironic incident of a massive massive asteroid smashing into it, forming a crater so large, we now call it the Pacific Ocean, and then miraculously staying with the Earth to become what we know as the moon, a presence which both comforts us on a primal level and makes it possible for life as we know it to continue, by regulating the tides.
Now that's a pretty lucky accident, don't you think?
So why does humankind, in it's infinite arrogance think it has the right to fuck with something like that?
Friday, June 22, 2007
driving with the big boys
my god, I never realized just how much I actually sucked at driving until last night.
You know those stupid coming-of-age movies that almost always have some sort of driving school scene in them? One where the instructor shouts insructions frantically while being bounced around the passenger seat by the manic lurching of the inexpertly handled vehicle? Then the shot cuts to the white-faced teenage driver who knows he's gotten himself in too deep but can't bring himself to just stop the car and admit it? Those scenes almost invariably end in a minor crash of the car (it has to stop somehow, right?) up the side of an embankment, or just before the precipice of a bridge, and the poor shocked driver laying his head down on the wheel in agony, convinced he's going to fail his test worse than any other fail in the history of the automobile.
Well, I'm not going to say I was THAT bad! But my brother's beast of a truck is definitely a touchy vehicle. More forgivijng in that it'll take most of what I could throw at it without stalling, but boy when I did something wrong, me, my brother, and the half-deaf granny walking her dog a block away KNEW IT. It was okay-ish when we were up on the logging roads in the mountain. I was able to get up to a speed where I could change to all gears without encountering any cars to make me panic, and at the ends I had to learn how to turn that monster truck around in tight little forks of the road, Quinn doing most of the steering so that we could actually get it done in less than fifteen minutes, lol! But after I'd been up and down the two mile long logging road about four times, and was shifting up with a minimum of trouble, if not shifting down quite as well, Quinn looked at me the same look he gave me on my first driving lesson and said, "wanna try on the road?" Unlike the first time, I responded with a vehement, "not a chance!" and he said, "too bad. Put it in first and roll forward. Flip your turn signal on." I of course had no choice but to do as he said, the fucker.
Thus began the worst driving experience I've ever had! We're talking shifting down into first instead of third, we're talking steering into oncoming lanes when attempting to shift down, we're talking pressing the clutch AND the throttle when shifting at all! I span that poor trucks tires out at every intersection! And at every intersection there was at least one pedestrian left to simply gawk absolutely flabbergasted at this most terrible of drivers, the worst of the driving school movie scenes come to life before their eyes. Before the end I was screaming all the way every intersection and Quinn was laughing so hard through his instructions I'm pretty sure he peed himse;lf, but I didn't take my eyes off the road long enough to check.
I think I can say with some certainty that I'll have an easier time with Llowyn's mom's hatchback, the only other standard I've had significant experience with.
:(
You know those stupid coming-of-age movies that almost always have some sort of driving school scene in them? One where the instructor shouts insructions frantically while being bounced around the passenger seat by the manic lurching of the inexpertly handled vehicle? Then the shot cuts to the white-faced teenage driver who knows he's gotten himself in too deep but can't bring himself to just stop the car and admit it? Those scenes almost invariably end in a minor crash of the car (it has to stop somehow, right?) up the side of an embankment, or just before the precipice of a bridge, and the poor shocked driver laying his head down on the wheel in agony, convinced he's going to fail his test worse than any other fail in the history of the automobile.
Well, I'm not going to say I was THAT bad! But my brother's beast of a truck is definitely a touchy vehicle. More forgivijng in that it'll take most of what I could throw at it without stalling, but boy when I did something wrong, me, my brother, and the half-deaf granny walking her dog a block away KNEW IT. It was okay-ish when we were up on the logging roads in the mountain. I was able to get up to a speed where I could change to all gears without encountering any cars to make me panic, and at the ends I had to learn how to turn that monster truck around in tight little forks of the road, Quinn doing most of the steering so that we could actually get it done in less than fifteen minutes, lol! But after I'd been up and down the two mile long logging road about four times, and was shifting up with a minimum of trouble, if not shifting down quite as well, Quinn looked at me the same look he gave me on my first driving lesson and said, "wanna try on the road?" Unlike the first time, I responded with a vehement, "not a chance!" and he said, "too bad. Put it in first and roll forward. Flip your turn signal on." I of course had no choice but to do as he said, the fucker.
Thus began the worst driving experience I've ever had! We're talking shifting down into first instead of third, we're talking steering into oncoming lanes when attempting to shift down, we're talking pressing the clutch AND the throttle when shifting at all! I span that poor trucks tires out at every intersection! And at every intersection there was at least one pedestrian left to simply gawk absolutely flabbergasted at this most terrible of drivers, the worst of the driving school movie scenes come to life before their eyes. Before the end I was screaming all the way every intersection and Quinn was laughing so hard through his instructions I'm pretty sure he peed himse;lf, but I didn't take my eyes off the road long enough to check.
I think I can say with some certainty that I'll have an easier time with Llowyn's mom's hatchback, the only other standard I've had significant experience with.
:(
Thursday, June 21, 2007
On lethargy and global warming
Lethargy is such a bitch! I just can't get anything done lately! Anytime I go out, it's always to spend more money, and I'm SICK of it! I need headshots. But everyday, all I can think about is how much time left (be it hours or days) before I have to go back to work. Doing a show is never like this. I only have to look ahead to the next thing I have to do. If I'm at rehearsal, I'm thinking about how much time I have before my next shift. If I'm at work, it's how much sleep will I get before my next rehearsal. I should never have a choice about wether I will do something or not, because if I allow myself to consider to doing something other than what I know I should do, I won't do it.
I'm going to buy a digital camera. I need one, both to avoid pro costs for my headshots, and because life is easier and awesomer and recordable with a digicam around. A couple nights ago, I lost the opportunity of getting a picture of Ace trying to get into his car without touching the ground forever just because I forgot my phone at home. I also need to call Burton about the youth company, and Kayte about lessons. I need her to help me work up a monologue. At least now that I've worked my way through the ridiculous amount of new DVD's and books I've bought, I'm bored most of the time so I might as well look through my plays for a good monologue. Generals are in just a couple months. Enough time if I start now, but I cannot afford to put this one off. I MUST be at these generals, which means resume's, headshots, and monologues. I must do everything I possibly can to get Angela Ashton. If I procrastinate this one to shit like I do everything else, I might as well get used to Timmies because I obviously don't have what it takes.
Anyways, my bro is out of the shower, which means DRIVING time! Tonight I start on the big stuff! If you are planning to be on the road tonight CHANGE YOUR PLANS because I am driving my brother's beast of a standard, which is both massive AND standard transmission, and discovered the taste of blood a couple weeks ago, when the tires jumped fourbying, and snapped my brother's finger in the steering wheel. Look out world! Alleah has graduated to killer 4 by 4's!
I'm thinking of organizing a communal garage sale with my rbother and sister. That way I can get rid of my stupid shit I have lying around.
I'm going to buy a digital camera. I need one, both to avoid pro costs for my headshots, and because life is easier and awesomer and recordable with a digicam around. A couple nights ago, I lost the opportunity of getting a picture of Ace trying to get into his car without touching the ground forever just because I forgot my phone at home. I also need to call Burton about the youth company, and Kayte about lessons. I need her to help me work up a monologue. At least now that I've worked my way through the ridiculous amount of new DVD's and books I've bought, I'm bored most of the time so I might as well look through my plays for a good monologue. Generals are in just a couple months. Enough time if I start now, but I cannot afford to put this one off. I MUST be at these generals, which means resume's, headshots, and monologues. I must do everything I possibly can to get Angela Ashton. If I procrastinate this one to shit like I do everything else, I might as well get used to Timmies because I obviously don't have what it takes.
Anyways, my bro is out of the shower, which means DRIVING time! Tonight I start on the big stuff! If you are planning to be on the road tonight CHANGE YOUR PLANS because I am driving my brother's beast of a standard, which is both massive AND standard transmission, and discovered the taste of blood a couple weeks ago, when the tires jumped fourbying, and snapped my brother's finger in the steering wheel. Look out world! Alleah has graduated to killer 4 by 4's!
I'm thinking of organizing a communal garage sale with my rbother and sister. That way I can get rid of my stupid shit I have lying around.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
thanks for the wisdom, Dr. Nonconformist
who knew it would take over a month to get within thirty six posts of fivehundredthupdate? I know I know I haven't been online in forever...in fact in just over the month and a half I've been living in my new place!!! Which rocks0rs more hardcore than anyone can imagine! I love it, it's the perfect place!
Work is okay, I'm doing four shifts a week now. It is more brutal than it should be considering the fact that I'm still technically part-time... my sleep schedule has now lockd itself into an unbreakable patterns of midnight to noon days, and afternoon nights, causing havoc and mayhem with my personal relationships. I am not a flake, I am just night shift! Hopefully, in July when I don't have to babysit my neice and nephew anymore, I'll be able to break this stupid cycle, cause it is le suck. I miss everyone so much! Last night I mished to my work at two AM cause Dan was the only one I knew who was definitely awake. That turned into a drunken and high night with Davies and Devin after they tracked me down at home after Tim's. We drank a litle at my place and then mished to sevvie, and then to McDonald's who rejected us like the grease-coated scum that they are, and then to Burger King. It was aroun five by the time Devin cut out to crash, and Davies walked back to his car at my place with me, debating the politics of global warming with me the whole way (scary shit! watch An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore; it will scare the piss out of you).
So. That's my life. Pretty freakin boring. I've been reading a lot and buying DVD's on my days off. Hangin out with Ace. Once in a while I'll see someon else, but not often. I'm super sick of the grind...I need to get out of this town for a week. I need Florida, or Vancouver, or ANYTHING! I'm so sick of everyday crap. The spat I got into with one of the supervisors over respect, babysitting four days out of seven, and working every other day of the week, plus one more, just to fuck my system over even more. I haven't had a whole day off since before I moved from AKA house. I need a vacation so badly at this point.
Anyways, I'm just a whiny bastard. I really need to focus on more important things like my head shots and getting ready for generals, and everything else that could possibly make me more happy. Enough talk. I'm ready to go do something. I'll post again when I get internet. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. BIG HEARTS!
Work is okay, I'm doing four shifts a week now. It is more brutal than it should be considering the fact that I'm still technically part-time... my sleep schedule has now lockd itself into an unbreakable patterns of midnight to noon days, and afternoon nights, causing havoc and mayhem with my personal relationships. I am not a flake, I am just night shift! Hopefully, in July when I don't have to babysit my neice and nephew anymore, I'll be able to break this stupid cycle, cause it is le suck. I miss everyone so much! Last night I mished to my work at two AM cause Dan was the only one I knew who was definitely awake. That turned into a drunken and high night with Davies and Devin after they tracked me down at home after Tim's. We drank a litle at my place and then mished to sevvie, and then to McDonald's who rejected us like the grease-coated scum that they are, and then to Burger King. It was aroun five by the time Devin cut out to crash, and Davies walked back to his car at my place with me, debating the politics of global warming with me the whole way (scary shit! watch An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore; it will scare the piss out of you).
So. That's my life. Pretty freakin boring. I've been reading a lot and buying DVD's on my days off. Hangin out with Ace. Once in a while I'll see someon else, but not often. I'm super sick of the grind...I need to get out of this town for a week. I need Florida, or Vancouver, or ANYTHING! I'm so sick of everyday crap. The spat I got into with one of the supervisors over respect, babysitting four days out of seven, and working every other day of the week, plus one more, just to fuck my system over even more. I haven't had a whole day off since before I moved from AKA house. I need a vacation so badly at this point.
Anyways, I'm just a whiny bastard. I really need to focus on more important things like my head shots and getting ready for generals, and everything else that could possibly make me more happy. Enough talk. I'm ready to go do something. I'll post again when I get internet. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. BIG HEARTS!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)