I'm Back!

Well it has been entirely to long since I last posted something on this blog.  I am going to blame this atrocity on my little incident with a window.  My entire life I have roamed the nights in my sleep doing various odd things; ranging from holding conversations with people, trying to leave the house and sometimes screaming.  but almost six weeks ago I did something a bit different, I punched out my window! The first thing I remember is waking up in the middle of my room with my hand bleeding; my first instinct was to put my hand in my mouth so the blood wouldn't get everywhere.  but after a couple of seconds I realized that there was a lot more blood than I thought. so I stubbled around and felt for my light to my room and when I found it I opened my door to find my roommates standing there with a bat and a hammer.  What they must have saw when I opened my door had to have been straight out of a horror movie.  I was covered in blood head to toe and kind of delirious; after it was figured out that I was awake and no one was trying to break into the house we tried to decide what to do about my hand.  It was when I noticed I couldn't move my pinky at all as well as I could see the bone of my knuckle that we decided to go to the ER. After all of the chaos of the ER trip it was discovered that I had completely severed the tendon to my pinky.  This meant I needed surgery immediately and was soon under the knife to regain the use of my pinky.
Evidently tendon damage is a lot more serious than I thought; I am in week six and I am still not even close to 100% healed.  Here is a visual journey through the perils of window punching.

5 AM in the ER

In the ER

What it looked like Pre-Surgery

Me all doped up after the Surgery

Post Operation Scar

Robot arm view 1

Robot arm view 2

Robot arm view 3

So now I am on week four of wearing this robotic contraption on my hand to rehabilitate my pinky.  the going is slow, basically all I am allowed to do is to push down on the little sling a couple times an hour.  My guess is that I am going to be rehabbing for another month or two.  So that is the basic story of how I became a robot and haven't been posting for a while; I left out the side stories and some of the irrelevant details, because if I hadn't I would be rambling on forever.

Don't Punch out windows,

Ben

Its been awhile

Well it has been a couple weeks since I've posted anything on the blog and I don't have a real good reason why besides I've been living.  I've come to the revelation that worrying about the future is not beneficial in any way.  The big clock above my head is tick tocking and its getting close to transitioning to a new part of my life and this has been stressing me out.  So over the past couple of weeks I've come to the decision to just live, let whatever will be, will be. The future will come soon enough and I am ready for it, so it's time to just enjoy the last moments of this part of my life


Maynard James Keenan said it best in a tool song "Feed my will to feel this moment, Urging me to cross the line, Reaching out to embrace the random, Reaching out to embrace whatever may come"


Let's just feel this moment and let the rest sort itself out


Ben

The Language of Love

I've been thinking about how strange it is that our culture readily accepts violence yet dismisses sexuality.  You Can see this pretty easily in the English language.  For example bludgeon, slaughter, murder, genocide are all words that are perfectly acceptable to say in society; yet saying penis, vagina, orgy or any other sexual terms elicits disturbed stares words of disapproval.  I find this fascinating because to me sex is just an act of love, lust or reproduction which all result in happiness.  While on the other hand violence and war just create hate, death and misery.  So why is it so acceptable to talk about the latter while the mere mention of the former is considered obscene.
Maybe it's just me but this seems to be a large source of our problems in society; we look to violence for resolution instead of love.

Be weary of words, their usage is far more influential than what you think...

No Oil Not So Good?

While it is quite true that our addiction to fossil fuels is extremely startling and pathetic, it is also important to not to rush to other options without fully exploring them.  The biggest point that I want to make in this post is that even the most sensible solution to this problem may cause unintended consequences.  Most opponents of fossil fuels feel that the best option for weening ourselves off of oil is to switch to electricity.  This can be largely seen in the development and advertisement for "all electric" cars.  These cars offer complete freedom from the pump and only need to be plugged in at night.  My problem with this seemingly great solution is with the batteries that would be needed to create these cars.  Because of the need to store large amounts of electricity in the cars they will need powerful batteries.  The problem with batteries is that they are largely dependent on lithium or other alkaline metals which are becoming more and more scarce.  we are consuming lithium at just a fast a rate as oil; every battery, ipod, computer, electronic device produced needs lithium to function.  Like any material on earth it is limited and miners are having to dig deeper and deeper to recover this metal.  To tarnish this idea even more one just has to look at where this metal is mined.  It is being mined in impoverished nations where not only the local workers are being exploited but the land is as well. So by switching to all electric cars might seem fine and dandy at first in America but it would cause many problems.  First off we would soon have shortages of lithium to create the batteries for these cars leading us back to the exact same place where we are now.  Secondly the increased demand for lithium would add more and more work to the already burdened and exploited miners.  Lastly while it isn't as destructive as burning fossil fuels at the rate we are now, the mining of alkaline metals is highly destructive to the earth.  The point of this post is not to tear apart the concept of using electricity to power our world, it is simply demonstrate that even the most viable option in any situation can carry unintended consequences.  Keep your eyes open, as well as your mind and question everything...

Blew My Mind

While on my trek back from Adrian, Michigan with the rest of the football team I started listening to some Tool; Tool is one of my favorite bands of all time and one of the reasons I enjoy their music so much is the fact that their lyrics are so intellectual.  For instance in the song "third eye" they have some quotes from the late Bill Hicks, a comedian, and one of these really caught my attention.  It was: "Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."


This quote blew my mind because it seems so plausible; if E=MC2 that means that all matter is just energy that slowed down.  leading to the conclusion that humanity (and everything else) is simply energy interacting with itself.  so what life/reality/consciousness really is is just a dream; this conscious world we live in and try to understand is simply an extremely large collection of energy experiencing itself subjectively.  so in conclusion, we are all interconnected because we are made of energy and life is but a dream...


Thinking about this will keep me up for a bit.

New Poem

I was looking to waste some time today so I wrote a poem.  This poem was inspired by Modest Mouse's song "parting of the sensory", it got me thinking about how each night when we go to sleep we "part from our sensory".  So in a way every time we go to sleep we die; the reverse of this happens every morning when we awake from our slumber, we are reborn.  I find it fascinating that even though sleep is like a "mini-death" of sorts we still seek it and even look forward to it.  On the converse when we rise from our sleep (or are reborn) we are cranky and resentful that we have been reanimated.  This logic seems to be counter-intuitive to the idea of self-preservation that seems to govern life.  well anyways this is the poem I wrote, its kind of rough; I wrote it in 15 minutes but tell me what you think.

I'll keep making our history
till I part from my sensory
even if its like building
a mud castle doomed to falling
it's the process I am after
all the rest does not matter
as I part from my sensory

It is such a funny thing how
we except death with sweat-less brow
when the wicked clock chimes twelve
and into lifeless dream we delve
ungraciously expecting life
to be re-granted with no strife
as I part from my sensory

But as soon as sense starts to stir
the brain is covered in a fur
of agitation and dismay
that labor is needed today
throws of desperation make call
nothingness is not on recall
as I regain my sensory

I'll keep making our history

till I part from my sensory

even if its like building

a mud castle doomed to falling

it's the process I am after

all the rest does not matter

you won't fade from my memory

when I part from my sensory

There it is...

The Beginning...

Ever since I started piecing thoughts together my mind has run a muck; there has never been a moment in my life where my mind has been clear and I didn't have something to say.  Growing tired of running through my mental playground alone I've decided to "share the wealth" with all of the internet.  My main goal for this blog is to talk things out that I either find interesting, funny, important or down right dumb. So if you enjoy provocative thinking or just the occasional laugh, stick around and I'll think you'll enjoy yourself.