Loved this…

Not Me Uncle Sam

So I’m new to this whole paying taxes thing, right? Last year I went the H&R Block route and this year… Well, I went the “Oh shit, today’s the 14th?” at 9PM route. So I went to that TurboTax.com because, you know, it’s on the radio so it has to be cool. And it was cool. Pretty fast. To the point.

That and well, it got me a pretty handy dandy “hefty” return from Uncle Sam. But then it did the damnedest thing… After it was all said and done and I was pretty happy it charged me $9.95. What a fucker. But by then who cares? It’s midnight. So I paid the $9.95, watched another episode of Smallville and went to bed.

But anyway, I got my money back thanks to being a student. Next year…oh boy, I may have to flee the fucking country.

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Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

==–
“Hey Lex, what’s the server call to return a friend’s list?”
“Hey Lex, should the meta data be on this loading screen?”
“Hey Lex, can you send me the Communications PRD?”
“Hey Lex, make sure the Mobile Velocity team has the documentation for development. And are you still managing the BREW, J2ME and Symbian projects?”

Say what? I don’t know what happened between now and then but just five months ago I didn’t know cell phones had operating systems. I was too busy driving across the country every other week, going to Burning Man festivals, meeting random girls and sharing a two-bedroom apartment with four of my college buddies. Now, I live in a house with a guy who’s about to be married, have two dogs, have gotten a promotion, pay TAXES and have medical, life and dental insurance. Who the heck do I think I am? And where did this all come from. What’s more, what happened to that nice guy with no temper that partied hard and wrote screenplays in the dark? Because today, I yell at co-workers on a whisper’s whim, forgot what a party looked like and couldn’t tell you what Final Draft is supposed to be used for if my life depended on it.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever you plan in life, forget it! In fact, whatever you DON’T want to do, plan on doing it and it won’t happen. There are too many paths in life to pick just one. As long as I’m happy, I guess I’m where and who I’m supposed to be. . . Right?
-Lex

Time and Time Again…

I know that time moves faster, perspectively, the older we get. But it bothers me now because it feels as if time is moving at the speed of light.

I’ve recently thought back on things that feel so fresh in my memory that I can still feel them, smell them… But when I stamp a time on any of them–it turns out to have occurred long ago. Many months had already passed since that moment. And I have to beg the question, “How? Where did that time go? And why does six months feel like two?”

It leaves me in this strange predicament. I can’t determine, (if I could exist in the perfect existence), whether I’d want time to be a controlled variable or if I’d simply want the ability to observe, appreciate and take in more things than I can now with the time I’m given. But I do know one thing. As much as I love my life. As much as I love my friends. As much as I love my job. I’ve been through a lot of changes within the last few months (years, really) and it doesn’t feel quite as wonderful as one may like to think.

I love you. — Lex

I wonder if anyone noticed that every paragraph in this entry began with an “I”.

My Life as a Rose

So, I’ve been thinking about this flower for a long time. Thinking about it long and hard. And I can’t determine if flowers are smart or fortunate. Highly intelligent in choosing their life form if they had a choice in it. But really, I guess we all had something of a choice in how we decided to interpret reality. Right?

What is it that humans fear most?

Change. Think about it. Humans fear change the most out of anything. In the morning when you wake, it’s uncomfortable because you don’t want to move. Infants cry during birth because the change is so incredibly dramatic. People fear death because besides birth, it is the most drastic change we can interpret. No one knows what death brings and yet it is so terribly feared by many because of the change. From living, to not living. From singing to silence.

You could say that many people desire change. But I’d say that people want to be changed but don’t ever want to be changing. They want new conditions, but the process is uncomfortable, unsettling, difficult. What we truly want is to find a good moment, freeze and be that way forever.

But time moves on. Hearts are broken. Hearts are healed. Things change. People die. And people are born.

The thing we fear most is constantly haunting us and the thing we want most is an impossible reach to obtain. All we can do is enjoy the tragic adventure. Because we’re alive, right? We might as well live!

But flowers… Oh flowers have it. Their change is slight. Their change is absolute. They grow into themselves, become beautiful and stay put until death. Their roots dig deep into the earth and claim their territory, their space and their time in the world. They are the most consistent creatures in existence. And yet, they can still communicate. They can still procreate. They can still live admirably in an ever-changing world. They aren’t distracted by each another. They get what life is about long before any man does, if any man ever does. The flowers, they have time to consider it. And they live. And then they die.

And no, I’ve never once seen a flower cry at death or scream in sadness. No, not once. Not ever.

Which brings me to my next point. Flowers are engineered one way, we’re engineered another way. The thought struck me as my alarm went off the other day. “I can’t possibly have heard the alarm as it went off. I can’t possibly see things as they are happening.”

Not only does sound and light take time to travel, but the brain has to take some amount of time to process and interpret the information it’s receiving…right? So no matter what we do, because our brains are not constant we are constantly living in the past because we are intrinsically blind to the present.

Which brings up my final point. Our brain interprets the information we accept as our reality. But what about the information it cannot interpret? What about the information our brains are not designed to understand? What are we living ignorant to, amongst?

We don’t know anything but what we do know! Which comparably to all the knowledge in the universe draws terribly near to zero’s limit.

I’ll end with a quote from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead:

“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death?
There must have been one, a moment, in childhood,
when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever.
It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory.
And yet I can’t remember it. It never occurred to me at all.
We must be born with an intuition of mortality.
Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words,
out we come, bloodied and squalling…
with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass,
there’s only one direction and time is its only measure.”

Who Am I?

My friend asked me what came to mind when people thought of her. What type of person, what type of feeling do we get when we think of her? And I told her what I thought and how I felt. But then I thought about it more and said that everyone’s opinion would be different and I’m partial so she should take it with a grain of salt. Even if some of us said the same thing, those very same words mean different things to each of us. She agreed. And it ended disquietingly there. It wasn’t until later that I started to think about it again. What a strange concept! Everyone’s impression/opinion of you is based off of their instinct, experience and memory of you. These combined create your essence to them. And everyone’s is different. That said you wear a new mask for everyone you’ve ever met or will ever meet. You are 1 million versions of yourself to 1 million different people at the same time and no two versions the same.

So then who are you? To everyone else you are true in their mind. But in everyone’s separate mind you are true differently. And if two truth’s are different, how can that work? Perhaps the truth is that one person cannot hold the truth independently and that truth is the collection of everyone’s experience of you from beginning to end. But if that’s so, then it’s a lonely thought because it means that no one person can ever know you truly, only partially. And even if this is the case, what mind is supreme enough to collect all of these truths and realize you for you–head to toe, soul to spirit? And if there isn’t one, does this mean that you will never been fully known?

Perhaps it means that only you are capable of knowing yourself truly. But then the odds are against you because in the grand scheme of it all, you’re only one of millions that know you or have experienced you. And I’m inclined to say that none of us know ourselves absolutely because we’ve never experienced ourselves the way others have the privilege of experiencing us. And that itself is a terrifying thought because if it is true it may very well mean that we ourselves know our true selves the least out of everyone we know.

So then who knows? “Not I,” said the cat.

IMDb

Hey, it’s official!

http://imdb.com/name/nm2760431/

The Truth About Burning Man

It took me and Richard twelve hours to get from Los Angeles to the Black Rock Desert. Yet somehow, I only remember three of those hours on the drive back home. And to be honest, that about sums up my Burning Man (BM) experience.

[The Burning Man, and Townies]

When I first stepped foot in Black Rock City (BRC) I was greeted by men who made me ride a bell and roll in dirt, topless over-the-hill women, pot-bellied naked old men, a two hour long dust storm and a painstakingly deplorable thought, “This was a big mistake and a whole hell of a lot of money down the drain.” And, indeed, for the first 12 hours it absolutely was.

If you’ve never been in the desert during a dust storm, there is no comprehensible way to fully understand what one is. You have to experience it for yourself. But I’ll try and communicate it the best way I know how. Imagine if you will, standing in the middle of a mound of sawdust with a 5 mile radius. Now, without warning, the sawdust rises to the sky, swarms the oxygen, banishes the sun and begins harshly penetrating your skin, eyes and lungs. This goes on for hours. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not expecting sympathy, but know that my only preparation for this Hell on Earth was, “A small handkerchief should do the trick.” A small handkerchief will do my ass! Maybe for a dirt devil, but to prepare for these beasts, you need a gas mask and air-tight goggles. All the veterans there had them. But somehow we managed. Somehow we even put up our tent. And then it was over as quickly as it came. The sun came out, the people were still naked and the music was still going. And so were we.

We lay there in our tent recovering and reading the Activities Schedule and Map that was handed to us. At first it was amusing. BRC is set up like a clock and camp sites and streets are located by times. So while trying to figure out the map I looked at an ad, “Hey Richard, they’re giving an erotic massage for men at 4:30.” He’d snatch the booklet and laugh out, “How to Pleasure Yourself at 6:00. Sick.” And then that sour feeling kicked us in the gut all at once. All of these ads were erotic. All of these programs were sexual. Every fucking one of them. Had we been tricked? Had all of our friends jokingly sent us to a middle-aged sex camp as a gag? Was the ‘How to Pleasure Yourself’ program just a bunch of men masturbating together watching porn? What the hell was going on? How did we get tricked into this? We were pissed. But we calmed down and went to investigate for ourself. And yet again we were greeted by middle-aged naked men and women, men wanting us to come into their tents, giant penises on wheels and naked trampolines. We’d been had.

[Center Camp, spiritual dancing]

Then night came. And Black Rock City at night is like nothing else in the world. There are full on night clubs with dance floors, bars, lights, music, cage dancers. It is intense. With a peak of 42,000 people, it is the biggest party in America. The entire city fits within a 10 mile diameter lit by fire torches, flame throwers and glow sticks. If you didn’t wear a glow stick, you were a nobody. But you couldn’t get away with not wearing them for long. Men would fly by on their bikes or crawl out of the shadows and stop you with a disturbing, yet alluring kind of charm. “You’re too dark man. Take this gift. The worst thing in the world is to not be seen. Cover yourself with light and let the world know who you are.”

[Center Camp, festivities]

That’s the other thing about BRC, the bartering system. When we were preparing for BM, we were under the impression that we’d over stock ourselves with supplies to trade. Kind of like, I’ll give you a battery if you give me a shot of Vodka. But it’s not like that at all. The system of bartering honestly is a system of gift giving. You don’t need money in BRC. You can get meals, alcohol, toys, hair-bands, coffee, muffins, hugs and even electroshock therapy in the ass. People at Burning Man love to share all. There’s really something kind of sweet about it. It makes you feel good. Sharing becomes something you want to do and you’re happy to do it. Richard and I had so much stuff we just wanted to give it away to people that didn’t have much. And we did, numerous times: to our neighbor Tyler, to the boys who ran out of toilet paper, etc. That was just the way of it.

We learned the hard way that you need a bike to get the full experience of BM. It’s ten miles from one side to the other. That’s a lot of ground to cover on foot. And there’s a lot you’ll miss if you don’t cover it all. They actually have community bikes to share, but some people were audacious enough to put locks on them instead of returning them. It’s best to bring your own bike. Or snatch the lock off of one of the community ones and claim it as your own. (But that doesn’t fit with the BM lifestyle.) But, I digress, bikes are important. Primarily because we didn’t discover until the last day that there were thousands of people our age dancing to our music during the day, drinking our kind of drinks and with bodies that we actually were attracted to. Problem was, they were all at 2:00 and we were at 7:30. Quite the distance on foot, but well worth the travel. The more you explore, the better Burning Man gets.

[Burning Man Temple]

Our last day took the cake. We finally figured out what BM had to offer. We finally found people we could connect with, girls we were attracted to and music we liked. We saw the art on the other side of camp and we saw an oil derrick explode with over 800 gallons of gasoline. You can imagine the intensity of that, I’m sure. And so we ventured.

The truth is, Burning Man is a different experience for everyone and you will never grasp it until you see it with your own eyes. With that said, I’d love to give an accurate depiction of our final night but, honestly, I can’t remember it. All I know is that we went to visit an Absinthe bar, a guy wanted to spank us and play Operation (I refused, though he was nice), I danced wildly in a cage with four girls for what seemed like an eternity and somehow the sun came up without me realizing that night had even passed. The only thing I remember after that is looking at the back seat of the car and seeing our tent stuffed in trash bags and Richard saying over and over while driving down the highway, “I had to do it. I had to do it man. We had to get out of there.” And that was that.

[Black Rock City, looking in.]

I’m not even sure if he remembered how we got home. And he was driving.
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Off to Burning Man

That’s right…I’m packing up and driving off to the Black Rock Desert to experience “anti-culture”. Ha! Apparently the chaos has already begun. A madman set the Man on fire pre-emptively to coincide with the lunar ecplise. But they’re building a new one. And I’m sure its burn will be just as bright. See you in five days. (Or twenty.)

-Lex

X [Burning Man]

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