Close and then nothing

Listening to Debussy music as a I work- What would you like me to be as I write this? Funny? Now is not the time for funny. Debussy music, without fail, brings images to my mind of southern Utah. I don't know why. I think his music reminds me of summer. It seems like Debussy music was always on at our house in the summertime, in my mom's living room stereo system with the 5-CD changer. And I guess summertime has something to do with being outside in the St. George area, cooking in the sun's death rays, frolicking in a lake or a pool somewhere. Go find yourself some Debussy tunes.

What the West Wind Has Seen

I'm reading a book about the months leading up to the Civil War. I'm intrigued by how much southerners loved slavery. Just loved it so much. I always knew they liked it, but not like this. I never knew that the core belief among the south's elite was "Some people are born to be slaves. Other people are born to own them." It is obvious who was in the wrong in this war. Maybe not as much back then. But looking back, it's like... wow. Who's in the wrong today? What social issues today are analagous in some way to what was going on back then? Who is right? Who is wrong? Everyone thinks that they're right. But somebody has to be wrong. We can't all be right. In 50 years, will we look back and say, "Wow -- those guys sure were idiots"? But WHICH GUYS WERE THE IDIOTS?! FUTURE PEOPLE, LEND ME YOUR POWER. TELL ME WHO THE IDIOTS ARE. I DON'T WANT TO BE THEM.

journaling

I'm weird. I've written in a journal for eons. I have several volumes. 10+ years ago, while employed at CaptionCall, I had a lot of downtime, so I typed up all my journals on Google Drive (what I had written anyway, up to ~ 2013 at that time). So I have Journals 1 through 6, but 6 never got finished. Plus 2 mission journals. The reason this is so handy is because I can pull up something on a moment's notice if it's written in there. Earlier, I was trying to remember the ice cream place in Provo/Orem that I went to a couple times growing up that was yummy. I thought it was Magleby's. But that's an entirely different eatery. So I whipped out Google Drive, went to Journal V, searched for "ice cream," and was immediately whisked to April 4, 2005, where Alyssa, my brother's fiance at the time (now they're married), took us all to LEATHERBY'S Family Creamery. This was also the place, 2 months later, I went, and some kid told me to place my right hand on the keyhole of the Area 51 video game, and my left hand on the Attack from Mars pinball game next to it, and then it SHOCKED ME. Heh!

So we just all makin stuff up now?

This is my description of everything related to politics and current culture wars in America.

Vidiot Games

As a kid, I feel like I was better at video games than I am now. This is not something of great importance, probably, in the whole grand scheme of life, but I like to look at this and wonder how it illustrates changes in my personality over the last 30 years. When you go back and play old games, especially on the NES, you realize something: games were INSANELY difficult. Playing emulators as I got older made me reliant on using "save states," something that obviously didn't exist on original systems. So last night, I purchased the Megaman Legacy Collection on the Switch for 8 bucks, which is the first six games in the series. There's a feature on Switch where if you press the L turbo button (is that what it's called?) the game instantly starts rewinding. I suppose it's nice to be able to do this. But, you know what, we never had this feature back in the old days. If you fell off a cliff and died, there was no rewind. There were no save states. It's back to, depending on the game, maybe a spot just before where you died, or if you lost all your lives, you end up at the beginning of the level, or worse, you start the entire game over. So playing the original Megaman, I was struck with how much I suck at this kind of game. Not that I don't know how to move around and shoot and dodge enemy attacks. It's more than that. As kids, we possessed a sort of intense mental endurance that is absolutely lacking today. Or maybe other people have it still. I do not. This mental endurance I speak of, in my own terms, refers to the fact that when you die, you start over, and you repeat the stage over again, and then you die again, and then you start the stage over again, and you keep doing this over and over and over again until you get it right. I apparently don't have this anymore, because after dying 30 times, I went into "rewind" mode, where I essentially gave up on the old school tradition of just re-treading the same stage repeatedly, said to myself, "I'm not going through this garbage anymore," and then proceeded to rewind every single time I died. If I had chosen never to rewind, I would estimate that beating this game for me would take weeks. Do I have the mental endurance to stick with it for that long? A thousand times, no. So how did young Holden do it? I don't know. Was I more patient then? Everyone, especially my mom, made sure I was well aware, as a child, that I was the most impatient child that has ever existed. I rememeber, as a kid, throwing down the controller on several occasions. But I still stuck with these kinds of games as a kid and would eventually beat them. Maybe I was better, quicker, at recognizing enemy attack patterns, so the trial and error was considerably shorter.

Awe

do you have things that make you say "whoa" like Keanu Reeves? What are those things? Here are a few of mine- 1) The blinking of thousands of fireflies. As the weather here in Utah warms, I think back often to the three summers I spent in Nebraska and Indiana, and even though I loved looking at beautiful migratory birds in spring and summer, there was no equal to the sight of fireflies blinking, just tons of them, blinking white, on and off. You know how if you hit your head really hard or your wife punches you, and you see stars? That's the sight. It makes you wonder if you've hit your head. A very ethereal sight. 2) Various thoughts that involve space. Such as thinking about the Voyager spacecrafts, how far away they are, how they've both been just flying through space for 40 years, how they will absolutely continue to fly through space, in all likelihood, for eternity (or until the universe explodes or something). They will be the last remaining evidence in the universe that Earthlings ever existed. In 4 billion years, the sun is going to expand and engulf Earth. And yet they will keep flying. (unless they hit something, or get picked up by another civilization, which is probably unlikely, but who knows). Can you imagine if a satellite landed on earth that contained evidence of a distance civilization that had been gone for billions of years? Whoa. 3) The feeling of my body expanding and floating. This has only happened twice. Once when I was just laying in bed. And another time when a psychiatrist sort of "hypnotized" me into total relaxation. Hypnosis maybe isn't the right word.

Desert Coral

I worked at a place for 5 years, thought I was an okay employee. And then I faded away.

Brian Damage

The title refers to the "name" of a song by Pink Floyd, as it was written on a Pink Floyd shirt I used to have. BRIAN DAMAGE! I wrote this blog for the simple fact that I don't want to forget it, maybe I'll use it in a story or a song or something.

I don't know

WHY DOES NO ONE FIND IT WEIRD THAT CHRISTOPER CROSS AND CHRIS CROSS DIED ON THE SAME DAY. WTF

Guilt Sweep

I love having my wife mad at me (genuinely mad), because then I don't feel guilt about doing things that I normally feel bad about. Like running off somewhere to look at birds. The guilt is swept away.

The Future

If you had an opportunity to know your whole future, down to the tiniest detail, would you take that opportunity? Some people say no, because if you know what's going to happen, then that ruins the future, or you live differently, and then the future is just different anyway. But if the Bible has taught us anything, and it hasn't, it's that Jesus predicted the future to Peter, and said, "you're gonna deny me 3 times," and Peter was like, "Nah I don't think so." And then Peter denied him three times. Then he remembered what Jesus said. Peter gets one future prediction, ONE, and he still totally forgets what is going to happen. Can you imagine if someone predicted everything in your entire life? You'd forget EVERYTHING, YOU BUMBLING FOOL.