I could never be the center of the universe.

     With the hurricane hitting the east coast of the US right now.  Specifically New York.  I've noticed that if not for the ability to communicate outside of yelling distance. It would seem to the people in the effected area that the whole world was experiencing this storm.  Before the ability to communicate rapidly across great distance, it would seem like every natural disaster was happening to the entire world.  This mind set can be seen all over.

      Generally most films are based in a city, where the events take place, and the person is immersed into a world where nothing outside of that area exists.  It is easier for the person to follow this kind of story, it is also easier for the write to write the story without confusing the reader.  If it is happening in that area nothing that is happening outside of that area matters.  It is pouring rain in that area it is pouring rain on the world.  If a food shortage is happening in that area it is happening to the rest of the world.   Maybe that food shortage is due to lack of access to your area, roads, rails, or shipping is unable to reach you.  Meanwhile a few 100 miles away there are people sitting down to and over indulgent lunch.  The rain is pouring in sheets but 200 miles away in California there are people sunning on the beach.
     It is the stories that I find most interesting when the story is not so centrally focused as to blur the outside world out of existence.  Where you find yourself not just interested in a single set of characters interacting but several different stories happening in the same world, with different stets of characters interacting with one another and across those smaller stories into the larger story as a whole.  These types of stories give me the most intrigue.  I experienced this the first time with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.  There multiple stories happening at once, and then coming together to finish have always given me a better experience than just a single story following a linear path. This is what the world is like every single day.  Maybe these stories don't come together but they are happening all around us.

       It is that philosophy that at the moment that you no longer see what is going on it no longer exists.  I find myself at times of being alone, that I think about what else is going on around me.  Some one some where is getting into a car accident, some one has just purchased a new TV and are really excited about it.  Some one just burnt themselves on a bit of food that just took out of a microwave.  This line of that that all around you people are doing things you do every day, makes me feel like part of something, as insignificant as our existence is to the universe as a whole.  Knowing that you are part of a larger happening is almost inspirational.  As you read this right now, think about the people working that power the website, as you sit in your chair think about the person who designed and build that chair,  Some working in China, most likely. Not that that I am going to start some political high horse of where we get our goods from.  Think about the person working at the power plant that is allowing you to do all the things you need to work. 

      The thought of the millions  of little stories that go on every single day, even while you are sleeping or doing nothing.  There are people contributing to even allow you to be that sedentary.   It is not something most people think about on a regular basis.  When you start to think about it though it is a bit humbling.  You are not worthless you are part a greater whole.  Something you do is going to effect someone else.  Even the bums on the street, they server a purpose.  They might serve as a deterrent to never give up on what you are doing so you don't end up like them.  They may inspire you to help out the less fortunate.  We are all connected some way or another.  You just have to stretch out to the idea of chaos theory to find connections to the most isolated people, the ones in Africa, the ones in South America.  I'll not get into that kind of connection but it there.

First World Problems

     Now there is a large concentration of people on the east coast of the United States.  It is defiantly going to make an impact in those who's lives are effected by the clash of weather that is happening.  It is cool and sunny here in Central Texas, nothing prefect weather actually, but everyone on the east coast thinks that the weather everywhere is horrible, because they are focused on their own narrow bubble of existence   I am in no way trying to call these people narrow minded.  I am simply pointing out that the idea everyone constantly never looks past their on narrow view of the world.  I am sure this exist all around the world but I know that Americans are particularly susceptible to this.  It has to do with our culture of everyone for themselves, which may appear to be weakness but if fact is hidden strength.  When one person is trying to do all the work it is in fact weak, but when you take many of those people, put a common goal of to achieve that, where they are all striving to do there best at reaching that goal, the team effort will take over.  Everyone individuality wants to be the best so the compete inside that team to be the best, all pushing each other to achieve that goal.  That is capitalism at it's finest.  I can go dark, when sabotage happens inside that in order to be the best, but I digress.  

Haiti

     At the moment everyone is looking to the east coast, maybe a lot of people don't realize that Hawaii is about about to be hit by a tsunami.  I am sure everyone in Hawaii is well aware of this fact but there are people in the east coast right no that couldn't give two shits about that.  Why should they what his happening to the is what is directly more important to their quality of life, not what his happening on a remote island thousands of miles from them.  We also have a very short memory of things that happen all over the world.  We hardly think of anything that happened in Haiti or Japan that crippled those countries.  They are still repairing the damage.  No one thinks about it anymore, hell aren't we still building the Trade Center, that was 11 years ago.  Never forgetting something is actually unhealthy, it is part of the healing process to let go of the feelings and memories of the events.  Reliving them is what they call P.T.S.D. now.  

Joy and Pain

     The next time you think your life is miserable, or that nothing is going right for you, think about the billions of people all over the world, realized that you are 1 among them,  that no matter how bad you feel at the moment, some one just lost their child to a disease, someone just got a promotion, someone just found out they are pregnant.  I'm not saying this to belittle your own problems or rewards in life, I am saying this to let you know that there is a world outside your life, that cares about as much for you as you care for it.  Keep your eyes open to everything around you, and realize everyone is human. Everyone suffers and everyone knows joy.  No one is immortal.

being timeless would keep me in shape.

     The funniest thing about people I have noticed is that they expect the people on film to stay looking the same for the rest of their lives.  It is most noticeable in a film that has been ingrained into your cultural psyche like Star Wars.  None of the actors that were in that film back in 1977 look the same as they did.  People see Carrie Fisher now, and think "What happened to you?!"  Well that's easy, time happened to her.  Granted there are people that choose to deny their own natural aging like Joan Rivers and Cher.  They end up looking like some strange kind of doll.  Granted she doesn't look her age, but she doesn't look normal either. It comes down to taking care of yourself.  I'm not that old by any stretch of the idea, maybe I'm just at the point when I think that I should probably be taking better care of myself, and I think about the fact that I'm too old be become any good a gymnastics.  Not that it is something I ever really wanted to do but I look at the people that can do things like that and I feel a bit envious.

Joan Rivers 1960

    I am however young enough to get into shape, and perhaps gain a bit of muscle mass.  I'm already a big guy, from the perspective of what others have told me.  When I was 18, I was very fit, being in both swimming and marching band.  Now I feel like I could be keeping in better shape than I am.  I've gained 60 lbs. since high school.  Maybe that isn't a lot for some people, but the idea of breaking the 300 lb barrier makes me feel fat.  I'm not trying to demean anyone's struggles with weight.  I'm just stating my own feelings about my weight.  As I said in post a few months ago, I was going to start running.  That plan fell a bit behind because I was unable to find a routine to work into my week.  I think I have found one, and now I am ready to commit to it. 

     Enough about my plans to get into shape, what really made me want to write this is the notion of eternal beauty or youth.  It is the entertainment industry that helps add to this idea.  Once some one is on film they remain that age in people eyes for much longer than a real person normally would.  Carry Fisher has been 25 years old, dressed in that golden bikini for over 29 years.  All those nerds that saw her in it, which was filmed in the early 1980,  they see 

Joan Rivers 2012

her now and wonder what happened to the petty girl they had those fantasies about?  Well, she had children, she had a drug and alcohol problems, she went through depression.   They are all things that contribute to the aging and break down of a person's body.  There are a lot of Teens and 20-somethings that think they are going to be beautiful forever. I know I'm probably guilty in thinking that.  I just figured I always had time to turn things around.  It is a kind of downward spiral of laziness.   The more you feel like sitting on  your ass, the more you sit on your ass.  You gain weight you keep sitting on your ass because you don't want to put out the effort to move your ass.  Then you suddenly realized you're buying pants that are several inches larger than you'd ever thought you'd have to buy.  It hits you like this creepy epiphany, and you want to just magically go back to being 20. Then not fuck up that next 10 years.  You can't however, now you have to work that  idiotic mistake off. Well maybe that's just another adventure in this thing called life.

     The idea though of being stuck in time, the torture some actors must feel at seeing their younger selves,  The great shape they were in, the good looks they had, maybe that is why they feel that need to maintain that look.  The pressure to remain ageless,  to always look 26 years old at peak athletic ability. It must be painful.

     You're older then you ever were and now you're even older, and now you're even older, and now you're older still.  You're not going to be 23 again even though there is a beautiful film of you showing off your body.  Everyone who sees that film expects to see you looking like that when they meet you in person.  That is horrible to subject anyone to that.  If you don't look like then, people get mad at you they feel let down.  They think you are a failure for not maintaining the look you had, back when you were so young that nothing you did would really effect that look.  The thought of growing old it terrifying for some.  I would imagine.  women feel the most pressure, if they start out in the industry beautiful and were cast for being beautiful then as their looks fade, their talents as an actress must be even better than the fact they are no longer in Hollywood's narrow view of beauty.  It doesn't just happen to porn actresses, it happens to all of them.  As their looks fade and so do their presents on the screen.  Sigorney Weaver has stayed in the game for a while,  you can speculate on weather she has had any work done, chances are she has.  Her looks were not completely about being beautiful, and more about being strong and tough looking, while appearing vulnerable.
      Men, however get a bit of a break.  They can get older, their hair can turn grey, they can lose that look of youthfulness, and become "dignified."  They can't become fat though, once they gain wait, gain a belly or a double chin, they are done.  Val Kilmer has fall to this, young and beautiful for all those years, he got older.  I am not sure weather it was just becoming weary of maintaining his weight or if it was a medical condition that caused him to gain weight but, people are suddenly point out what a failure he is.

     The point I was trying to make when I see people who complain about how an actress or actor who use to be hot, that person lives in a bubble of time in which they think the actor must remain. They are just people, don't age and remain beautiful for their entire lives.  The actors you see on the screen are not gods they are regular people. If one could live inside that bubble of time, where you were always young and beautiful and fit, it would be great, but you'd have to be swinging off of Jabba's barge before it explodes for the rest of eternity, like groundhogs day.  After a while you'd just want to kill yourself because every day is exactly the same.  

Sorry no ninjas in this one. 

You like me because I'm a scoundrel,

          Ian

This post might more interesting

   
     I hate those moments when I feel like writing but there is nothing I can think of to write about.  It is like a burp you can feel in your chest but no matter what you do that little annoying pocket of air is stuck right there. You don't want to force it too much because what if you end up bring up more than just the gas?  But you want it to go away because it is annoying you, it is not painful but persistent   That is what it is like when I suddenly feel the urge to write but don't have anything in particular to write about.  Maybe it is these moments that free writing might be it's most productive.

Everyone loves a picture of Cthulhu in a blog.

     Essentially I am doing that now by just writing about having nothing to write about.  The problem with this is that what I maybe writing is more than likely not going  to entertain the reader much.  It is just mindless writing to get words onto a page to satisfy some mental or emotional need to write.  I don't know if this effects many people, it doesn't often happen to me but when it dose I find myself scribbling on a paper, or writhing quotes from films, and I open up Word and stare at the empty white page and think, look at all the potential to fill this thing with nonsense.   It is what I do most of the time I see any opportunity to inject my thoughts into anything.   

     People call that trolling, that is the current popular term for it.  Gone are the days of calling it, being witty.  It had become the art of causing people to become upset at you for what you said, which in turn entertains you and hopefully entertains those around witnessing said trolling.  There are some people that take it to the point where it could be called cyber bullying.  Which is why being called a troll has such a negative connotation to it.  I admit that sometimes the things I say are not nice, but they were not intended to be hurtful, just funny.  I tend to use this as a defense mechanism, as well as a way to deal with a stressful situation.  Something to break up the tension of a situation.  Or distract attention from something.  It is a spiral that can land me into trouble some times.  The more stressed I am the more sarcastic I tend to become.  That is a bad situation when arguing with anyone.  Because I get stressed I make a joke, they are angry they don't find it funny the respond poorly or angry to the joke, which leads me to become more stressed so I respond with more jokes.  Suddenly I am in lots of trouble when it was really something very small to start off with and I could have avoided the fight by just keeping my mouth shut.
      Shifting gears at random since I am writing this while I am also working, It has come to my attention, when we think think of accents we think of how accents sound when someone from a different country speaks English.  I wish I had the perspective of say a German speaker, that could hear that it was an Irishman speaking German in an Irish accent.  The concept of it sounds strange but it is completely possible.  Speaking any language you'll speak it in your American accent.  A native speaker of that language gets that unique perspective.  It is fascinating to me.

     I've been told that these wall of text I put up could be less intimidating if I threw a few pictures in to the blog to break up all the text.  That way people don't think they are reading as much as they are all at once.  The problem with that is finding a picture that is not too distracting to the reader that they stop reading and stare at the picture... Or maybe you're just staring at Rita Hayworth.  I know I would be.

     Sure she's distracting.  I should probably  find a different picture to put up.  It is however interesting enough to make people actually stop to read a little.  Maybe I'll talk about Rita Hayworth, but really I'm not going to talk about her.  To be perfectly honest, I've really only looked at pictures of her.  I've never put the effort to watch any of the films she was in.  I might say more about her if I did.
   Instead she is just this pretty lady that I found out
about watching the film "The Shawshank Redemption"  as is for most of the people who talk about her.  I could read the wiki about her and educate myself, but then I might find she is less of the angel I picture her in my head.  It might destroy the image of the person she is that I have build up in my mind.   I'd rather just keep her as she is in my mind perfectly innocent...

Okay maybe not THAT innocent.


     I figured a smattering of images on a blog might be a nice change to my usual large block of text of misspellings an poor grammar.  It is working so far, I mean breaking up the text enough.  With Halloween coming up, I'm going to have to get my costume together, I'm planning on getting the outfit together for the Velveeta Cheesy Skillets.  It is obscure enough for people to ask me who I am, and not guess right away, and silly enough to fit my personality.  

The trouble is I can't grow a 5'o clock shadow like that in a day, so I'm going to have to spend several days growing a something that any normal guy could get done in a day.  Once that is done it just a matter of putting on the rest of the get up and then profit!

The fact that she looks like she is terrified yet strangely aroused is just what I am hoping for.  I don't know how well this will go.  But who know it might turn out better then I think.
     I'm not sure who will end up reading this, but I hope you enjoyed reading it.  I always appreciate some kind of feed back.  Even thought the most feed back I receive is from my mother.  Which all though sweet and loving as she is, doesn't really count.  I'll see if I can add more ninjas next time a get the sudden urge to write something.  This is just a random rambling of a blog, not informative about society  but then again I never have been much part of society,  I'm just here to distract you for a little while, so you try not to take life too seriously.  I know not as good a some drugs out there, but you can at least be seen with me and not get arrested by the cops... well most of the time.
      You like be because I'm a scoundrel.
           Ian