Quantum Jumping

I don't know why I thought that my ideas about parallel universes were original or wouldn't be used by someone else to make themselves a shitload of money.  The funny part is that Google told me about the website, so it must have been something I wrote in one of my emails or attachments.

It's an old sci-fi concept, really.  I remember being a little kid and seeing the episode of Star Trek called "Mirror Mirror," in which four members of the Enterprise crew (Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura) are transported to a parallel universe in which the Federation is a malevolent, tyrannical empire and Kirk and his counterparts are vicious, brutal members of an equally brutal universe.  In Rod Serling's Twilight Zone episode "The Parralel," he explored a story of an astronaut who disappears from the radar only to reappear on a parallel Earth where everything is just a little bit different from his Earth.  In sci-fi literature, parallel universes have been utilized for decades as the basis for multi-volume series.

I don't even want to validate this dude by reprinting his name one more time on the internet in this blog, but he basically agrees with me that there are an infinite number of versions of each of us out there in the multiverse, the product of every potential decision we could have made.  The version of yourself you are currently experiencing is the result of the decisions you've made, but all those other possible decisions were gateways to other universes, and there is where those decisions played out to make you a different person than the person reading this text.  So, if you decided to kiss that girl you were talking to at that party back in 1990, you might have ended up marrying her, and there's a universe containing a you and her that did get married.  Or maybe instead of putting off finishing that novel you've been writing for twenty years, you finished it, published it and became a world-famous author.  This guy agrees with me that there's a universe out there where you did.

This guy believes that these other versions of me are connected to me, available for consultation.  His method supposedly connects one to their more successful doppelgangers, enables transferal of abilities they possess in their universes.  His website offers testimonials about successful practitioners of his methods, people with no artistic skill contacting their parallel Earth Picasso or Hemingway equivalent and becoming internationally recognized artists (with the caveat at the bottom "Please note that these results are not typical").  It sounds awesome, and I'd love it to be true.

But I guess I'm haunted by my theory, that all those other versions of myself are directly connected to me, that all those positions in time and space are available to me because those other people ARE me.  I've always seen the human brain as a quantum engine with which you make your way through time and space with.  Really developed humans can guide themselves through reality with great ease, and I think that all that amounts to is mapping your course through all of those potential realities.  While I have to hand it to this Quantum Jumping guy for getting his theory out into the Combined Consciousness, I think it's wrong to stop at any point with this concept and call it fully baked.  We understand so little that to stop with such an idea at the point where he has kind of contradicts the concept of quantum potential.

Pathetic Nostalgia

I'm finding myself looking back too much lately.  It usually means that I'm not happy with how it's going in the present.  Not an easy place to be.  Finding any good in the world now is a challenge, what with totalitarian rule becoming more likely, IQs dropping off and the concept of a job with benefits becoming a thing of the past.  Struggling in a competitive job market with workers more skilled than myself, in an area where the cost of living is ridiculous thanks to inflated housing prices, food prices and gas over $4 a gallon just wears on the soul.  A wife monitoring my response to this challenge ain't helping either, with one hand seemingly on the button for the ejection seat.

What to do?  I've felt like I've been on the wrong path for a while now, trudging along, failing to achieve any kind of gains in my career since I've met the wife but sustaining myself financially, though barely.  Seems like the only way to get to the next level is to make changes to myself that would fool no one, least of all myself. 

So in this pause, I look back, listening to old songs from the 80's and 70's, a time when the world seemed a less cruel and oppressive place.  ELO, Saga, Hot Chocolate, Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin--all songs written during times when the psychic pressure of the world allowed some beauty to get through the cracks.  Now the world just seems a relentless drive ahead of itself, towards the part of the construction where the bridge isn't finished yet.  Days like this make me want to just go home, tell the wife that if she's looking for financial stability, she should look elsewhere, rent a van, throw my stuff in it, throw my life into my brother's attic, drive my car to another part of the country and start over again.

But it's a moment that passes as quickly as the old songs in my headphones.  I know I can't give up.  But I can take it a little easier on myself, enjoy an expensive beer and a nice vinyl copy of some old album on the turntable while the wife makes dinner in the kitchen, the dog sleeps on the couch and the cats circle my feet for attention.

Funeral for a Friend

A friend died yesterday. I call her a friend though I admit she hasn’t been a part of my life for the past 30 years. But I’d known her since I was a little kid, along with her brother, who ended up being one of my oldest, best friends. I went to her wedding and partied with her in the 80’s. She was older, so me and her brother learned some of the basics of partying and a lot of rock and roll lore from her.

She was a rocker, and lived the rock and roll hero lifestyle though she wasn’t one. Her and the other, older kids in the neighborhood were COOL. They bought us booze when were too young to. They drove us around (really fast). They looked like rock stars, partied like rock stars and lived like rock stars, trying to fan the flames of what was left of the 70’s.

Unfortunately, drug addiction and too many issues finally claimed her spirit. She left the world without having accomplished anything besides giving birth to a couple of kids. Her brother lamented this to me on the phone, finding this the saddest part of the tragedy. I was reminded of Sabbath’s lyric from “Wheels of Confusion:”

“So I found that life is just a game
But you know there's never been a winner
Try your hardest, just to be a loser
The world will still be turning when you're gone”

But I find myself looking around for evidence that the other people in my life have accomplished much more than her. Despite the vast majority of my friends evading the specter of drug addiction, most of them have done nothing greater than keep themselves employed and maybe find someone to love them and maybe have kids with. Not to say that these aren’t feats in the world of today, but was she any less successful in this life than the majority of people?

Then I got to thinking about Generation X, my generation, the generation cursed with enough memory of the 60’s/70’s Utopian experiment so that it’s difficult to accept the world of Zero Tolerance and perpetual war at any cost. The generation that had to suck it during one of the worst economic downturns of the 20^th century. A lost generation stuck between the easy world our parents had and the lucrative world the kids after us had.

Sure, maybe these points are just excuses. But it’s the only way I can explain why so many of my other friends have expressed the same resentment with the way their lives turned out. I’m reminded of Tyler Durden’s rant in Fight Club:

“God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning slowly that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

Chuck Palahniuk is speaking for all of Gen X in that passage. We’re an entire generation that hasn’t accomplished anything. There are no historical events that defined Gen X except for a few big concerts, no historic figures except a few actors and several gifted musicians, all of who are most noteworthy for the way they died or the fact they haven’t yet. Entire books have been written discussing why Gen X is such a pack of underachieving slackers. Whether it’s the way the world became a big, expensive drag after 1980 or because the material shit wasn’t worth selling our souls for, my friend isn’t the only one who sat back and let it ride.

My friend’s gift to me in her parting was an outbreak of rare lucidity. From the time I woke up today, my vision has been sharp and focused. The dark storm clouds hover over my landscape, but their sharp edges make shapes that are beautiful to my eyes. The trees glow softly with the life within them, the dying leaves of the past season bright and vibrant as they scatter in the wind. The cool air tastes clean, and even the rudest driver on my commute is sacred, their car a miracle of human potential. And for a moment I think that maybe this moment is why I haven’t bought the bullshit. You can’t sell people happiness. Or piece of mind. Or any of the other things they make you think they have. Maybe my friend died with her soul intact after all.

“I don't want this anger burning in me

It's something from which it's so hard to be free

But none of the tears that we cry in sorrow or rage

Can make any difference, or turn back the page”

--David Gilmour

Upon Seeing Sicko

I hadn’t counted on the new Michael Moore movie affecting me so much. Sicko not only resolved my opinion of the US Healthcare system, it explained a lot about my self and left me emotionally exhausted.

To say that I’m a cynic would be an understatement, but like someone once said of being a cynic, it’s just a difficult way of seeing the truth. Even so, Sicko made me feel like all of my cynical thoughts had been too gentle, my conspiracy theories naïve and not far reaching enough.

The movie constructs a picture of social engineering on a grand scale, with the media obediently broadcasting propaganda designed to inoculate the average American to the idea of universal healthcare. The conclusions arrived at equate with nothing less than a corporate state working hard to provide as little health care as possible, to add loss of health coverage to the list of fears facing the average American worker. In this scenario, all corporate parties and their puppets on Capitol Hill benefit while the citizens of the US get fucked from every angle mercilessly and repeatedly.

Among the many revelations I had during and after the movie, the biggest was clarity of vision about myself. I’ve always avoided buying too deeply into the “American Dream,” the whole mortgage, marriage and kids trip that so many people think is the right and proper way to go about spending your time on this planet. I’ve always rejected it for so many reasons, not the least being the fact that the more you buy into it, the more it starts costing you your quality of life. Paying the mortgage, having benefits, taking care of the kids—they’re all things that employers know people need to worry about. I’ve never liked the idea of buying into a system based on fear.

Down deep I’ve always know that there was another way to do it. Down deep I knew that there was a Big Lie being told in order to keep a small group of people rich and in control. Universal healthcare is possible if your government isn’t handing all of your nation’s tax money over to defense contractors and oil companies.

They’re doing it in Europe, in Canada, even in Cuba. They have universal healthcare, their colleges are free, and they have social services to make sure nobody falls through the cracks of society. People give a shit about each other enough to make sure that the lowliest of citizens gets top notch care. It was hard to watch all these doctors and associated people smiling with the knowledge that they were being taken care of by their government in the most basic ways. It was hard because I envied them. It made me feel ashamed of my country and the way it’s decided to sell its citizens out to demons wearing suits. It made me angry that these corporate fucking assholes have done such a good job controlling the behavior of the American public. Like a national case of Helsinki Syndrome, the citizens of the US agree with its captors, believing that universal healthcare and education equates with communism.

The movie made me want to move to Canada. Or the United Kingdom. Or anywhere where I wasn’t going to have to worry about coming up with the money for the healthcare I will surely one day need. A quick look on the internet showed just how hard it would be to score a job anywhere else in the world with the meager skills I have. And then there are all the people that I love here that I would miss if I were to move to someplace else like Canada, or Britain.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the movie is perfect. And I'm positive that it's not as easy to live in some of the countries Mike visits without already having some kind of money behind you. There are a couple of points where he’s just yanking heart strings. But the fact remains that these people he’s talking about are real people. They’re real stories about HMO’s fucking over the little people, letting them die or suffer in the name of saving a few bucks. The tears are real and the problem has been brought on by greed at the highest levels of our government. They’re slowly creating a prison state based on corporate rule, fear and lies about the rest of the world to keep us thinking America is our only choice.

Fuck The IAU

They stripped Pluto of its classification as a planet today, turning it into something called a "dwarf planet" and cutting down the number of planets to 8. Nevermind that they haven't fully explained what the fuck that means. It just seemed oh so important to these pathetic geeks that they get rid of Pluto from the planet list and demote it any way possible. They treated it like a Question of the Ages, as if this was going to change the human race for the better once the job was done.

Apparently the years of patient searching by guys like Clyde Tombaugh couldn't get in the way of "science." Decades spent looking at glass photographic plates of little dots blown so that some snot nosed brat can feel like he has some real Power in the scientific community. Most of the planet is filled with screaming assholes pulling fascist trips, so why not them? After all, these people are experts, we're told, they know more about planets than the average peasant, and we're supposed to obey their decision and forget that it ever was a planet. Those misinformed ancient witch doctors are no match for the hyper-technological superbeings in charge of all the expensive equipment. They were wrong and now the superscientists are here to save us from their stone knives and bearskins.

But the reality is that these douchenozzles voted over this. So there are apparently at least quite a few of these allegedly superior minds that wanted to keep Pluto a planet and wanted to add a few more planets to the Solar System as well. How these people got this vast amount of unchecked power is beyond understanding. Just because this Astronomical Union decided Pluto was a planet in the first place doesn't mean they should be able to recind said designation.

No, I'm afraid that this is just a case of some big egos getting out of hand. I've seen Contact enough to know that scientists aren't infallible. They're just as prone to the power trips and self-righteousness the rest of us feel. Just because they're scientists doesn't mean they're always right. Just because they have credentials doesn't make them perfect. These morons are sitting around demoting Pluto while the Solar System holds real mysteries and questions that they are needed to solve, things that could actually help the human race instead of empowering a very small and short sighted group of people who want the world to adhere to their whim.

Groundhog's Day

Every morning brings the same series of events in the same order and it all leads to work, a place that you need to be in order to survive unless you're one of those people who were born rich, then you just get up and your servants take care of all that crap. I suppose it's no different for them--the boredom and repetition--but at least they don't have to go sell their precious hours on Earth to the highest bidder in order to afford rent, utilities and the occasional concert. I suppose at some point in human history, the ability to perform mindless, reptitious ritual was necessary to survival, and I suppose many people see a predictable life as a source of stability and security. But I've never been one of them. Maybe I'll buy a copy of "Groundhog's Day" starring Bill Murray today.

Happy New Year

The one thing that kinda sucks about blogging is that you're expected to produce new entries on a frequent basis. As this requires remembering your password and actual user name, and as I tend to forget and lose track of all the username/passwords that I have strewn all over the entire, goddamned web, this makes it take even longer to come up with something profound or even interesting to read for you random surfers of the web. But today is the last day of 2005, and I figured that made it necessary for me to put some thoughts here on the blog despite the fact I'm committing verbal masturbation all alone on this page. I mean, come on, who really reads these things besides someone who just happened to type some random word into Google, like "platypus" and ended up getting linked to this? Blogs are the CB radios of the the early 21st century, and most people who write them are either bored, lonely or posting the events of their life so their great aunt in Seattle can see pictures of the new baby. Half the blogs out there are as fleeting as this past year was. Being honest with yourself about it is the first step towards having fun with it. As with life, the best you can hope to accomplish with a blog is to make some stranger feel like they made a connection with someone else. If you've read this far, then I'm impressed. I hope that 2006 brings you everything you need.