SHUT UP, P@!!

Long time no blog. And I've got loads on my mind. And time to blog it. So unless the hunger in my belly ends up driving me away from the computer (a very real possibility), I'm gonna type for a bit.

You've been warned.

So, it's August already. Saren will soon be 6 years old. SIX!!

Ahhh. Better. I just had a bowl of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. (*sings* "New Apple Cinnamon -- Cheer-e-ohs!")
Yes. I still remember the freakin' jingle from when Apple Cinnamon Cheerios debuted. Back in what, 1989?

Which leads me to the first thing I wanted to discuss. A hundred days ago, Jess said in a comment:
You know what's weird? For the longest time I had this impression of you as being a bastion of pop culture (in a cute way): TV, commercials (can you hear me now?), pepsi, etc. I don't really know how to finish this statement, because it's not like you've renounced those things, but the whole Daniel Quinn thing is a weird contradiction to that. But, hey, it's very human (very monkey?).
After looking up the word bastion ([grin]), I figured I would respond to her. (WOO! Go Jess! A whole new blog entry devoted (partially, at least) to a comment you left!!)
Yes, it was probably at one time accurate to describe me as a "bastion of pop culture". And the fact that I still remember a jingle from nearly 15 years back is evidence of that.
And while I'm not renouncing it, I think that my priorities have shifted. Or at the very least, are shifting. It bothers me (sometimes much more than I let on) that I can tell you who He-Man's alter-ego was (Prince Adam) or the names of Drew Carey's friends from The Drew Carey Show (Oswald Lee Harvey and Lewis Kinensky). But I don't know my neighbors names. Hell, I don't think I'd be able to pick them out of a crowd. Of 3.
I'm not saying that my dependance on pop culture is a bad thing (I still love Alias and Angel and the Bimpsons will be something I watch until the day I die) it's just that there were plenty of other things that I could have taken an interest in while growing up (and still can) but didn't.

Anywhat, I guess, Jess, that my point is that I'm kinda in a state of flux (a good thing, imo). I'm still attempting to find a balance between being someone like Harry Knowles (only, hopefully, less obnoxious) and someone like Derrik Jensen.

You know how humans are really short-sighted? I mean, try to envision 1000 years from now. I'd be willing to bet that most of you, when attempting this exercise will envision a barren nothingness wasteland in 1000 years. This raises two points. One - that most of us believe humanity won't be around that long. And two - that looking that far into the future is difficult, if not impossible.

Let's shorten it to 100 years from now. Same thing, no? Maybe not entirely. I mean, perhaps not everyone sees a lack of humans in 2103. But I'll bet that having a clear picture of what it's gonna look like then is hard to conjure.

What about 10 years? That becomes slightly easier, since we've got a basis for what 10 years feels like. We can postulate on how things are now, and how things are going, and how we'd like them to go (and how they might go) and we can sorta get a hazyish picture of what life will be like a decade from now. In fact, certain aspects of this are easier than others, depending on how much knowledge we've got about different topics. I mean, it's easier to guess what our personal lives will be like in 10 years than it is to picture the world at large.

My point (and I guess I should've just come out and said this 300 words ago) is that human beings are notoriously short-sighted. We build highways without taking into account that people will move here by the thousands in another 2 decades, and so we don't plan for it. We dump toxins into the ocean with no regard whatsoever for the lives of future generations that it will effect. We chop down tree after tree after tree and when we hear the environmentalists say, "If you keep doing this, we will all pay in 100 years" we shrug and say, "I will be dead in 80."

And while becoming ...less short-sighted would be a tremendous boon, my point is that we're short-sighted because for the first hundred thousand years of our lives as a species we didn't need to look that far into the future. There was no need to plan what we were going to do "next Thursday", because life was not that complex. (also, because there was no such thing as "Thursday", but I digress.)

I guess my point of the above ramble was merely that while being more aware of how our actions will effect the future is something we should all attempt to do, we've got a heck of a struggle ahead of us, since we're just not built that way.

What else? AH! Wal-mart.

Gaffer in that Wal-mart thread basically held the position that "even though people complain about Wal-mart crushing the mom & pop stores (the tribal businesses, Lisa), they must not really dislike it, because they keep going there." Or, put another way, the millions of people who shop at Wal-mart have a choice - go there, or don't. And they go. So stop bitchin'.

What gaffer is failing to see is that people will always choose the better. If given the choice between a black & white tv, and a color tv (same price), people will pick the color.
Wal-mart is better than the mom & pop stores. Not better for the employees. Not better for the environment. And (probably) not better for the economy, either. But it's stronger. Wal-mart has much more buying power than the typical small business will ever dream of having. Plus, they're everywhere, so it's just easier for most consumers to abandon the small business and instead go (in droves) to Wal-mart. And so the small businesses fall victim to Wal-mart's march of progress. Not because people necessarily want to shop there (although they'll think they do, due to the shiny ads, and/or the fact that Mom shopped at Wal-mart) but because they're ultimately not given much of a choice.

I complained about it the other day, the fact that I'm just as guilty. But I think (I hope) that Stephanie and I are going to put forth more of an effort to seek out the smaller (tribal, if we can find them) businesses and offer them our patronage rather than always simply going to Wal-mart or Target right away. It probably won't be easy - but that might then be an incentive to make sure that what we're going to purchase is something we actually need rather than something we're just picking up because we're in that aisle.
And if nothing else, it'll broaden our horizons and introduce new experiences to us. I mean, a Target is a Target is a Target. If you've been in one, you've been in them all. And that's just scary if you think about it. There is really no difference between the Targets in Las Vegas and the Targets in Des Moines, Iowa. But shopping at locally owned places will result in a huge variety. Of merchandise, and of the employees. I'm not the most people-friendly-person I know (in fact, I've noticed that a lot of the folks I talk to online...and in Real Life too...) seem to be very anti-social...
I'm beginning to suspect that our culture has something to do with that.

I lost my train of thought there. Or it wasn't fully developed. I'll come back to it sometime...

I was going to post about religion (and I will, someday soon, I promise!) but I think I've probably talked about enough things for now.