GalacticMu

I had two epiphanies in the last two days while driving around Los Angeles, and neither of them involved methods of mass exterminating people.  If I had a therapist I’m sure they’d congratulate my progress.

The first is lame but lemme get it out: I love airports.  Kind of.

Two words:   Awe.  Some.

I was driving a major thoroughfare that runs under and around part of LAX when a jet came in to land pretty much right on top of my car.  It was that moment of visceral, brain-canceling jet engine noise that my adrenaline and happiness went through the fucking roof and I swooned in the post-coital afterglow.  Initially I felt it was due to the surprise element of a 73,000 lb rocket trying to decelerate onto my head, but the more I thought about it the more I came to terms with how pretty futuristic airports still seem to me.  I’m going to be eating this sentiment next time I’m in one, mind you, when they can’t seem to figure out how to book the plane correctly and have to bump me (DELTA, I’M LOOKING AT YOU) or can’t seem to figure out how to give me free Percocet.  But that day I couldn’t deny it: what a fantastic mindfuck!  Look at that cobbled-together cluster of literally combusting energy energy that humans manage to wrangle into more or less the right direction on a daily basis!  And hardly ever killing people in the process!

The second epiphany is also a basic one.  Sorry.  This one was driving through the 7am marine-layer fog and suddenly realizing that the reason all these scifi shows are popular now is not because viewers are into science fiction, but because they are into experiencing puzzle-solving.

It makes sense:  the world is chaos, a series of unfair, rewardless events ending only in death¹.  TV for too long has presented itself not as a series of temporary solutions, but only as stalled, unfinished interactions.  Reality TV has brought this to a huge pimple head just now ready to bust: it is one thing to wait and see which teen model is going to win a temporary contract with a megalithic cosmestics corporation, but it’s another to feel like we might be participating in real problemsolving.

Bear with me.

I was thinking about Fringe again (as an aside: what the hell is the matter with me?) and I thought, “Isn’t it convenient that they always solve the case.”   To which I thought, “Duh, no one wants to watch a show where clandestine events occur and no one ever figures out what’s going on, where Sherlock Holmes says ‘Well fuck me, I have no idea who did it.’”And then the backlash understanding: viewers are pretending to be problem solvers!  People are getting off on pretending they are clever!  Far out. I’d been reading about how it’s becoming common for owners of sheep-herding dogs to take their pets to “sheep herding camp” where they let the house pet chase sheep around for a few hours in order to treat behavioral issues; as the article states, even a 4-pound Yorkie can be made to feel ‘useful’.

Our brains!  Need to pretend to work if real work isn’t available!  We are house pets given sheep for a few hours.  Don’t deny it.  You know it’s true.

¹Hey dad, mom, I know you were worried before when I told you I’d told my doctor I was experiencing “thoughts of doom” (as a possible explanation for my high blood pressure -weee!) lately and that I didn’t mean against myself or anything, and I assure you that is still the case.  And I’m not depressed.  I think this is a normal phase that athiests go through.  Until they die.  Ha!  Oh my god, I’m stopping, I’m stopping.