It's Chess, It Ain't Checkers

There’s a saying that gets more and more true over time: Those that don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.

And this exists in basically all walks of life. Business, music, sports, politics, whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re studying, or trying to figure out, or just trying to enjoy. There are good ways of doing things and there are not so good ways of doing those same things, and when you start trying something out for the first couple of times, rarely if ever have you already figured out the good ways to go about it. Which means we learn. We learn from ourselves and our own experiences, we learn from those around us, we learn from the world and animals and plants and Chinese proverbs and newspaper horoscopes and Snapple can tops and South Park. Stuff happens, we watch it or we listen to it or hear about it, but we gain perspective and we internalize it and hopefully, we can take note of what does and does not work out so well.

The way I see it, we know what we know from one of two ways: intelligence and wisdom.

There's only a few different ways to learn stuff in the world. From the time that we're born, we have to constantly adapt and change and develop our understanding the scope of what we remember, what we can do, and how we learn things going forward. It isn't as simple as, "Okay, I know everything I need to know, stop teaching me stuff now." Like, you never reach that point in life, and yet there will be several times in a person's early life, and probably the middle life, and probably near the end somewhere, that they just sit down and say that they know everything that they need to, and they don't want to hear another damn thing from anyone about what they don't know.

I'm absolutely positive that everyone reaches this stage at least once in their childhood or adolescence. If you're a kid, you think you know shit, and you almost certainly don't. We've all been there, and none of us wanted to hear it at the time we were there. And if you get old enough, I think your mind just literally shuts off, and you stop caring what you don't know because, you're old, how much could you really be in charge of anymore anyway? And if you get old enough, that’s your right to disregard planet earth past the date that you choose to go by. But for the rest of us, there’s intelligence, and there’s wisdom.

So intelligence. The smart way of doing things. The recommended path. This comes from reading the directions. From listening to others. From watching how something is done and trying to emulate it. This is the type of smarts that comes from, well, basically from being smart about things. Intelligence comes from studying for the test you are about to take. From building upon knowledge that has already been acquired. Largely, this involves observation and using patience, and accepting that you don't know about something and you would instead like to learn from another person. Here's what intelligence sounds like: Don't jump off that ledge! Scientific studies have shown that falling from that height into that creek will almost certainly break both of your legs and possibly knock you unconscious. Don't do it, that's a terrible idea. Take those stairs, or the ladder, or fling a rope down. Just be careful, don’t do anything you’re going to regret later.

Wisdom? Nah, wisdom comes from experience. It comes from eliminating the bad choices in life by trying them first, although not approaching it quite like that. Wisdom comes from doing things and learning firsthand why we don't do things certain ways. From hearing others but not really listening to what they say. From disregarding directions. From seeing how others do something but thinking, what if I switch this up and try this over here instead? And sometimes it works out, and it is innovative because you push past an idea that had limited others. And sometimes you do things that are really dumb, or are not seen as dumb at the time but you discover during the process why no one does it the way that you did. Wisdom sounds like this: Don't jump off that ledge! Johnny Legs jumped off that ledge two and a half years ago. Oh, he hit the water and basically got folded in half. It was brutal, blood everywhere, he was in a coma for a month, and he's been in that wheelchair ever since. You wanna end up like Johnny Legs? Get people to help you get bread from the upper shelves at the supermarket, have to use the ramp to get in and out of the strip club? Then by all means, go for it, jump for it kid. We'll watch, see how it goes.

That’s why any time I see something dumb about to happen, I can rationalize it that, “Well, at least some wisdom is on its way.” And wisdom does not come quickly. It comes with time, and pain, and usually a bunch of shit that will seem pretty obvious in retrospect. But just because you already knew something doesn't mean that you can't gain a valuable lesson from hearing it again under different circumstances. Wisdom, it's a drawn out process, like a chess match. And also like a chess match, there are lots of variations on how things can go, and stuff you could have done, and stuff that could have gone different based on what you could have done. So you start off and you suck at it, and you get your ass kicked a bunch, and then you start to do a little better every time. 

At my apartment in downtown Madison a few years ago, we had mice. Plural. We thought it was just one mouse that was really crafty at avoiding capture, but it turned out to be a few of them. This happened the 2^nd year that we lived there, an entire year of 4 guys that were pretty messy and threw more parties than they should have, didn’t always pick up after ourselves, and an old rickety apartment that may have already have had rodents living in it anyway. And I’m not gonna sit here and blame anyone specifically for why our apartment was quite as messy as it was, but there was much discussion of why the bathroom always had clothes in it and why the kitchen never got completely clean. It was discussed.

Anyway, one night we were just sitting in the living room, watching the Bucks play on TV, and one of the roommates, we’ll call him Chad for these purposes, Chad randomly jumps up and starts yelling and pointing to the ground over by the garbage. And it’s really out of nowhere and startling, so it was hard to tell what he was even saying at first, but finally I could understand “Meece!” which is Chad’s way of saying that he had seen a mouse. Now, it was dark, and we had all had a few beers, and I think we were also willing to ignore this for the time, so we all just told Chad that he was probably just high. Which, he could have been that too. And we didn’t see a mouse again that night. But a few nights later, there was another sighting in the same spot. Then a week later, I saw a blur shoot past in the same spot. So it wasn’t really something to ignore anymore, so we tried to decide what to do about it, rather than decide whether we had to do anything at all.

Now, there are obviously many ways to try to catch things that are hiding in your house. Traps, glue, lures, borrow someone’s cat, bunch of ways. But for god knows why, our first plan was to keep our household bat (like baseball bat) near the kitchen so that upon the next sighting, someone could grab it and bash the rodent to death on sight. Please take a moment to imagine all the ways that this could fail. Take a few moments, I’ll wait.

Okay, good. Nothing ridiculous happened from that approach, but I almost wish it had. I almost wish we had a story of one of us desperately swinging at a fleeing mouse and breaking the tv open. But no, nothing like that. It just wasn’t a good set up in general, because usually by the time we saw that the mouse was there, it was already too late to do anything about it that time. So, the first plan was not a good one. Lesson learned.

Next, we tried to set up a mousetrap with a little piece of cheese in the same corner that the mouse would pass through. We set it up, let it sit for a day or so, and we heard a THWAT come from the corner. But the mouse would never be there, no matter how many times we tried this. Nor would the cheese left as the decoy. For whatever reason, the trap was too sensitive or the mouse was too experienced or maybe this invention never actually works, because I’ve never seen or heard of any mousetrap actually catching one of these damn things myself. But whatever, maybe we had a shitty mousetrap, lesson learned.

Next we tried malt-o-meal. This I’ve seen work because we had a mouse in our garage at home when I was a kid. You give the mice something to eat that will make their stomach expand, to the point that the mouse basically overbloats and can’t move anymore, then it just keels over and dies. So we pour this food in the already dirty corners of our kitchen and wait. And wait, and wait. And nothing. Or at least we think nothing. Looking back, it’s possible that there were a tone of other mice that met their end because of this, I can’t be sure. But because we never saw those results, I still assume that it didn’t work. Maybe mice don’t eat malt-o-meal anymore. I know humans basically don’t. It took forever just to find malt-o-meal in the first place, so screw that. Lesson learned.

Finally, another roommate, who will be Anthony for this purpose, comes back with a glue trap, and that’s what finally got results. One morning we awoke to find this poor bastard just careened face down on the trap, not even breathing anymore. Did we assume it was the only one at the time? Of course. Did we end up using glue traps several more times in that corner? You bet. Is that the end of the story? Hell no.

The end finally came one night when I heard a shriek come from across the hall where my bedroom was. It wasn’t that late, but I had mostly chilled out for the night when the noise came. The room belonged to, well, we’ll call him Flea. Partially because his room was the dirtiest and partially because I’m using names of Red Hot Chili Peppers for aliases here. So Flea’s girlfriend at the time, she runs out of the room, freaking out, and after a bit of discussion, she reveals that she had seen yet another mouse and was disgusted. Well, we’re all a bit pissed off because we were certain that we had already gotten the last damn rat or mouse or whatever the hell. But we determine that we’ll take him down, right here and now, just to be done with it. Like it was personal now, like this mouse had invaded Flea’s bedroom, so any of us could be next if we let this go unchecked. Although again, filthy room, if I’m being honest here. So Anthony, Flea, and myself ran in the room and shut the door. Chad stayed in the hallway.

We started moving stuff around, trying to force the mouse out to run around, and then we laid a glue trap near a narrow space we thought we could force him to go. Then we started making noise and rummaging stuff around trying to provoke a reaction. Suddenly, out of a small pile of socks, the mouse darted forward, which shocked me enough to kind of jump up onto Anthony’s shoulders. I wasn’t scared, mind you, but startled enough to lose my composure for a second. But it didn’t quite work, the mouse went around the bed, so we tried it again, and he shot back around to the book case, and back, and forth, for like an hour. But then we finally get things moved around enough, and we got it to go the right way out of the closet and then around the TV and BAM, we got him on the trap!

We were so jacked that we had finally caught this little bastard, I and my roommates started exclaiming quotes from Alonzo from Training Day. I yelled out, “The shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers!” And then Anthony yelled out “You protect the sheep by killing the motha-fuckin’ wolf!” and then I think Chad yelled out from the hallway, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove!” Which really didn’t go along with what had happened, but it started us going around trying to quote pretty much everything Denzel Washington said in that movie. And then we decided to get drunk and watch the full movie. Oh, and we bashed the mouse’s head in and threw him in the trash, because screw that mouse and all of his free-loading friends.

Speaking of Training Day, did you know they’re trying to make that into a TV show? And that Denzel WON’T be involved? How could that possibly work? And unless the whole series is one long day, why even call it Training Day?

Sounds like some fresh wisdom on its way. Bye now.

M.A.G.A.

These four letters
I have a bone to pick with these four letters
An itch that I must scratch, a conversation I must have
A transgression I cannot simply condone
For I am not in a zone, I am not in a place
I am not in a club that allows me to make these four letters my own
I have tried to understand why, and I figure maybe its
Members Are Getting Atonement

(You see what I did there?)

This subject has given me much to ponder
Much to think on for days as I let a mind like mine wander
I mean, the idea that greatness is returning
Is most disconserting
It implies that greatness was present and then left
Or it was stolen, or it was squandered
When did this occur, exactly?
Maybe A General Assertion will help clear things up

And you may say this is ridiculous and monotonous, since
Making Acronyms Gets Annoying
But the struggle is continuous
And the amount of Material Attained, Gathered, Arranged
And presented for this purpose is generous
For we must come to terms, all of us types of individuals
Either interracial, impartial, or indigenous

Mentally Aware Generations Agree
That this issue that presents us is not with any them, but with we
We as a whole must open our eyes to see
Even if what we see is that
Maybe Anarchy Generates Apathy
And the current catastrophe is exactly what follows
Calamity and dastardly disaster rapidly

Yeah, I got a bone to pick with these four letters
I have an axe to grind
Picture Me, A Grinded Axe, and these four letters
As I fight the urge to sit back and cuss
As I try to discuss the feeling of disgust
Which has been thrust upon all of us
In a way that may in time
Require that Maps And Globes Adjust

Our country just brought to power one of the type of men
Who blends division and conquering with favors for friends
And has established a quick habit to condescend, with
Meaningless Apologies, Ghastly Agendas

And Making Aggression Gradually Acceptable
While playing innocent in the end
A man for whom it was a challenge
To find Musicians Actually Giving Acceptance
At his inauguration
A man who,
Although he may suspend the idea, let's not pretend

That we didn't just inaugurate someone who just might
Mandate A Genocide Accidentally

This is someone that has spent his last two months
Meeting And Greeting Assistants
To those that will help dispel the resistance
Of insistence that those who move up in this way
Be held accountable in this or in any instance
Of campaign trail promises that now risk a hint of inconsistent litmus when
Meanwhile, Accountability Grow Ambiguous
As we bear witness

And plenty out there have been
Moping, Adamantly Grieving Autumn
Others are just nodding and smiling
Going along with the program being rolled out
Merrily Agreeing, Gaining Amnesty
Or so they think, and so they plan
We can sit here and
Make A Great Amount of excuses
Look for cause and effect of the useless
Find a seed to plant from the fruitless
Or perhaps we can even give this new route a try
Make A Genuine Attempt to ignore
The previewed, viewed, and reviewed abuses
Getting you to feel like you need a drink of gin and juices
Until you find yourself
Meeting Alcoholics, Generally Anonymously
Just to reduce it

We've paved the way to go backwards
If you can believe that
A friendly place for all of the righteous
Moderately Anti-Gay Activists
In favor of
Making Angry Generals Ambassadors
That support
Manly Alpha-Guy Armies
That make a priority of
Marking And Grabbing Aliens

Making All Guns Available
And
Making Abortions Generally Antiquated

All coming from a man
That seems to think that things like
The Affordable Care Act, environmental protections
Immigration of Muslims, trans-Pacific trade
And a committed relationship in NATO
Could all be looked back upon one day as
Many Already Gone Anecdotes

I've also seen neophyte zealots from the far right
With eyes lighting up bright when they see signs of
The kind of sights that
Make Aryans Gain Appetite

But lest we forget how many of us have come together

In ways that cannot simply become undone in this country

For the simple fact that we have

Melted And Gelled Anyways
All of us here, together, steadily ready
Different walks of life, different minds
Different skin tones, and different sports teams to cheer for
All of us out here

Medics, Advertisers, Gardeners, Accountants
Meat-packers, Architects, Garbagemen, Archaeologists
Michiganders, Arizonians, Georgians, Alaskans
Those of us that used to be
Mexicans, Angolans, Germans, Australians
Macedonians, Armenians, Ghanaians, Azerbaijanis
Those of us that are still
Muslims, Agnostics, Generalists, Atheists
Even the less excusable of us
Misogynists, Assholes, Gold-diggers, And people that just don't even care anymore
That aren't even reading this because nothing changes with these 4 letters
These four words
These four years...

But here we are
Maintaining A Giant Assimilation
Of other ideas, philosophies, and ways of life
And this one gets in, just as right
This is us, all of us
Mixing And Getting Along
Being who we are when we are us, which usually results in
Making All Get-togethers Awkward
We will get through this
Even if we have to look at the next 4 years as
Missing A Government Already

But what I still can't get past are these 4 letters
Lined up like some creed of pride
Claiming to bridge gaps, when perhaps
All it ever did was divide
Because at the end of the day
The thing I fear that you neglect to say
Is Make America Great Again means
My America Goes Away

Freeze

Just. Stop right now.

Please. Just stop everything.

The volume needs to come down, needs to bleed

At exceedingly increasing speed towards its needs

(Wait, scratch that, I meant knees)

Better yet, it needs to freeze

So just freeze

Freeze out the general hum

The hum of the humdrum and the scum and the dumb-dumbs

The ones that bumble and fumble and stumble so humble as they tumble

Inwards, outwards and under the tundra like thunder, blunder after blunder

It’s no wonder that there always remains some other out there

Uncovered, unsmothered, unlov...ered

Scratch that last one

Freeze it out

Freeze out the rush

The undercurrent mush that will not, cannot, shall not just… just shush

The engines in cars, the battery bars,

The cellular, elevator, tele-refrigerator

Energizer enervator relegater

The constant ticking or clicking

That won’t stop picking and keeps on sticking

By the prickling and texting of your thumbs

Everything noisy and vexing, this way comes

And now it’s going out

Freeze it out

Freeze out the walkers and squawkers and knock-knocks,

Cock blockers, beat boxers, punk rockers

All out now

The jockers and boxers and the head-blocks (or something like that) alike

The ones with mop tops or the goldie locks, none of whom know how to stop the

Talk-ta-talk-talk-ta-talk

Per tutte le parole, for all the words, para toda las palabras

Non si dice nulla, nothing is said, no se dice nada

They say nothing and mean even less

The vixens, the fix ems, politicians, smitten and slitherin’

They all stay hidden

Their words stay unwritten, stay fixed on the heads of the pens

Before the ink ever spreads itself thin

But their blabber gets in

Let them never begin

House-leavers and couch-weavers and mouth breathers

Ugh, the mouth breathers!

I mean for god sake, blow your fucking nose!

But that’s not where I wanted to go, so...

Freeze out the silly little gimmicks and limericks and outer inner bits

Among all of the fringes and limits

The frames in space and time within this mind

That tick-tick-tick even when the clock will not wind

The simple sides of the climb that no one else could possibly find

So they stay confined as mine

The intricate plots and photo shops of over-the shoulder shots

The who’s-got-what-from-whiches and witches and switches from each slot

All stored neatly in one spot

The notes and quotes from each boat across each moat that hope to float

The faces in shapes and sizes and spaces

That drapes and rises and chases

All through the escapes and demises and disgraces

All through our scrapes and surprises and faces...

...wait…

What am I even doing right now?

I’m making more noise to describe the noise that I’m trying to escape

Ok, screw it, screw everything I just put down on the plate

I need to escape the… well, I guess the escape

Just let it take flight

And let it have weight

And let it be free

Just let it freeze

And I’ll pay the fee, but let me be free

And let me be me

Just stop everything in one, two,

Two and a half

And three quarters

And three

...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

I can feel it like a shiver

Like it will almost ring

As the the sound gets drowned out and found out

And not a word of mouth can sing

Not a soul can now bring me back to down from this mountain top

To which I am now the king

No longer an heir, now up in the clear, up into the air where

I

Can’t

Hear

A

Thing

The mouths are moving, but the waves never reach

Like enemies at the gate that never quite breach

They crash and claw at me

But no sand moves from this beach

No puedo oír nada.

The phone rings and no one reaches

No clicks and pings, no dial tone increases

No whispering, no gossiping, no snitching, no speeches

I feel the weight melt away as the pressure releases

Non posso sentire una cosa.

It’s almost like it’s deafening, the weight of not knowing what’s at stake

Not feeling what it takes to be the great break in this muted state

I’m feeling at peace, and I’m feeling awake

It’s like from up here, I don’t just hear things differently, I know them differently

I don’t just hear the peace and quiet, but I feel at peace in quiet

I don’t just hear the faint wind around, I rise and fall with it

I don’t just hear myself breathing, I know that I’m breathing

All in a way that I never knew that I never knew

And never dreamed I'd wanted to

So please

Please just keep it all away today

Just let it freeze

I’ll pay the fee, but let me be free

And let me be me

Driving Them Nikes

Luxury is relative.

I know I could start with something more general, like acknowledge that I haven't posted anything in a few months or talk about stuff I've been doing. But...meh.

Luxury is relative.

Take this phone I used to have. I think it was a Nokia. It got terrible reception, it had a really annoying tone when it rang, and the buttons didn't consistently work on it after the first year. I remember it didn't always turn off when I wanted it to, so I got it taken in class a few times. And the battery was screwed in, so it wasn't like I could just pull the battery pod out like you could with some of the older phones. It was a crappy phone, but it was my first phone and I was in middle school and really didn't even need a phone, so it was awesome. It was the early 2000's, so kids really didn't need phones in the first place, and I figured out at one point I could program my own ringtones, so I actually had a lot of fun doing that. The phone was not great, but it was far and above what I actually needed, so it was luxury to me.Now, that same phone today would be an abomination. It would be archaic to what phones can do now. I would constantly be complaining about it, and showing people how thick it was and pretending to try to give it away so I could get a new one. But, honestly, it would still probably be just fine as a phone. It would still make calls, it would still text, it would...no, that's about it. It would do the things that a cell phone is actually supposed to do, before we decided everyone needed to walk around with super computers in their back pockets. I think it was capable of taking pictures, but not sending them effectively, so yeah, calls and texts.

So having a phone was cool. Having a crappy phone kept things in perspective. If I just didn't have a phone, I doubt I would have really known the difference, but since I know the difference, I do my best to see the positives. It was a luxury, just like it pretty much is today, but I don't think I could ever just go back to not having a smart phone at all times. Do you think you could just go back? I don't. I don't even know for sure who's still reading this, but I know you're probably never cutting social media back out of your life now. It's not a phase, it's not something you're just trying out. This is who you are now, so get past it.

Generally speaking, I think most people take luxury in their life for granted. It’s human nature, whatever you have you end up expecting to be there, rather than being thankful that it’s there. And literally everybody is guilty of it in one way or another. I don’t care who you are. The rich kid that expects his breakfast to be ready for him every morning on a tray. The young business woman who cannot function without her cup of coffee. The old man that reads the newspaper every morning, no matter what. The little things are automatic. And for that matter, so are the big ones. The prisoner who expects to get fed every day in prison. I mean, what if one day, they just decided, “Dude, screw you, you robbed a bank. You don’t get food this week. Deal with it.” Or the homeless guy who suddenly is not even allowed to drink water from the public water fountain.

I mean, they had their water tainted in Flint, Michigan last year. And it took way longer than it should have to even get attention on it, and then again, I’m not positive that the problem has been fully dealt with even now. Of course, this is a tragedy and will probably have long reaching consequences, but at the same time, it seems unreal. It seems like the exact kind of thing that could not happen anymore in a country like ours, because someone would stop it or it would get enough attention that surely they would fix it right away. And yet, I’m positive that the minute I stopped seeing news stories about Flint, it was an assumption made in my mind (that I later corrected) that this problem was solved and I didn’t need to worry about it, and that it could never happen to me where I live. We take things like this for granted too, and they're the things that allow us to survive. What if someone really decided that you were not entitled to living, just ‘cause? Just walked up to you and took your means for continuing life and thought nothing of it? It would make you realize a whole host of things that really don't mean a damn thing, wouldn't it? And a few of you may even feel tempted to make a Facebook or snapchat post as your last act on this planet just to let people know how upset you were about it. At least a twitter update with some emoticons, because who doesn't love emoticons, right? Ughhh.

I know I’ve gotten materialistic to a degree. I don’t need my phone to have all the apps and shit on it that it does, but I do NEED my phone. What if I need to know what temperature it is in Tokyo? What if the Packers trade someone and no one near me tells me right away? Am I supposed to just wait until the news? What if I lose track of how many steps I took in a given week? Not that I ever cared about my steps before, but if I inexplicably need to review my activity, how else will I be able to answer the questions that matter? What will I do?

Or my car. There’s a great example. My car is a 2002 Ford Taurus, a shitload of miles on it (that’s the actual reading on the odometer) not great underneath the hood but decent enough that I get by, but guess what, I need that damn car. I mean, what if I’m somewhere that I don’t want to be? What if I can’t drive away from the place I don’t like? That sounds awful. I'm glad I have a car. I can control the climate in it, I can use my stereo to drown out the noises that occur outside of my car. Having a car is a good thing. And you know what, I've had worse cars than my current car that make my current car seem like even more of a luxury than it already is.

My first car was a 1989 Toyota Corolla. It’s color was piece-of-shit white. Washing it never helped. It never actually passed inspection at the car garage I had it registered at, but the guy just felt sorry for me that THIS was how much my parents valued my transportation. The parking brake didn’t stop anything, just made a really annoying sound that made me stop to see what was the matter, what I possibly could have done to make the car yell out in such pain. We took it to a mechanic once to see what it would cost to get it updated, and the guy said he couldn't from a moral standpoint. He said there was so much wrong with it, he didn't want to take our money for any one thing and that paying all of it wouldn't be worth it for a car that sucked that much.

The mechanic actually offered to drive it out back and put it down like Old Yeller for us. He said he’d do it for free.

Thing is, for the last year of high school, it was pretty much exactly what I needed it to be. It got me to and from school and track practice, eventually. It was decent on gas, considering at times there was about as much motor oil burning as gasoline. Even though the driver side rear-view mirror always fell out, it was conspicuous enough that other drivers just kind of got the hell out of the way, on instinct. I never got a speeding ticket because I couldn’t speed. The car topped out at a majestic 44 mph, during which the car sputtered like it was maxing out on bench press. Once I left the keys in it for a whole weekend by accident. I’m pretty sure someone stole it and then brought it back. There was more gas in it on Monday.

But when I would complain about it, my track coach put it in great perspective. He said, “You know what I drove when I was in high school? I drove these Nike’s.”

Well played, Coach Harris. Well played.

The Corolla was not even the shitiest car I ever had either. It was beaten out years later by a Lincoln Towncar that lasted around a month, but that’s another story.

Eh, screw it, I’ll tell you now.

And it’s not really even a story. I wanted a car around age 25 because I was sick of walking everywhere. And I found a shitty car that I thought was bad. Like bad meaning good. Bad like Michael Jackson meant it. This Lincoln Towncar had a V8 in it. It had all original Lincoln tires and rims. It also had the front and back seats torn up, the check engine light literally always was on (probably not by accident) the windshield had a crack in it just low enough that it was legal to drive, and the steering wheel was beat up. This car was a death machine, I was sure it would end up killing me. It just so happened that the first month of having it, I didn’t try to drive it anywhere besides home and work, which was right down the street, or around town in small trips like the grocery store or a concert or two. Also, the radio was busted and the speakers were blown out. So I couldn’t even enjoy riding in this car while I was unsure if I was going to survive. But I had not had a car for several years and wanted to be able to get back and forth around the city if I had things going on and didn’t want to wait for the bus to pick me up.

Anyway, finally, I tried to get it out on the highway to see my girlfriend that lived a few hours away, and it took me about 25 miles out of town before dying for good. The radiator was leaking the whole time and finally blew at the distance where no one could just come and pick me up. Axel, a friend of mine (at least we'll call him Axel here) finally got out there about 2 hours later, after I had been towed to a nearby exit from where I said I was with no reception. It was just perfect. Not to mention my girlfriend was relentless in how I never should have purchased the fucking car in the first place. And being stranded far from home (or should I say far enough from home) puts a lot of things in perspective. One of which is the concept of how much we really do have to change our perception when we think of crappy ways to get around. The crappiest, after all, is the way that doesn't actually get you anywhere.I mean, the car straight up failed at the task it needed to accomplish. If I had tried to ride a bike or hitchhike or even just straight up walk there, I would have gotten there faster. It would have taken a long ass time, but I would have gotten there, as opposed to just not ever reaching there with ol’ Wilbur. Yep, I named the Lincoln Wilbur.

So my thinking in all of this, I didn’t need the nicest car for what I was doing at any given point. I actually think it was better to have a car that I could just kind of run into the ground. The Corolla had set expectations low enough that I knew not to do anything stupid with it in the first place, it didn’t even pretend to be capable of traveling to a distant city. And obviously, when I got a new car, I wanted to have it better than the car that I had been used to that was sufficient for high school. The point is, there’s nothing wrong with taking steps forward, as long as you appreciate those steps forward. One of the best ways to appreciate what you’re given is to start out with something humble and have to aspire and yearn for better.

And always remember: No matter what you're driving, there's someone watching you drive it while all they can do is keep driving them Nikes.

Don't panic, don't panic... Why aren't you panicking?!

Everybody panics.

Well, there's a deep nugget of insight, right? Huge revelation for your Thursday morning. That's right up there with "Everybody poops" and "everybody hurts". Everybody panics? Yuck.

It's true through. Everyone has their own way of not taking things in stride in some way. And when it happens, it's rarely handled well. Any kind of activity, any kind of population, any kind of stakes, you find people panicking in some form. I mean, just look at Reservoir Dogs. For those of you unfamiliar, Reservoir dogs is a movie about a jewelry heist that goes horribly, terribly wrong, from things like the cops showing up to men getting shot to not being sure who has the stolen jewels to undercover cops. The plot itself isn't really all that spectacular, but the dialogue of the movie drives everything else. Anyway, one of the characters, called Mr. Pink (his only name in the movie) has a little soliloquy about panicking when discussing things that are not going right:

"I mean, everybody panics. I don't care what your name is, it's human nature, you f***ing panic. But you panic on the inside, you take a breath, get control of the situation, and deal with it. What you don't do is start shooting of the place and f***ing killing people."

Obviously, only part of that has anything to do with what I'm actually talking about, and I pretty much already made that point, but who doesn't love talking about Reservoir Dogs, right?

Panic has a lot to do with uncertainty, I've found. I mean, people rarely panic when they are familiar with a situation, no matter how absurd the situation is. Being familiar with a situation means you know what to expect, which tends to put us at ease or at least allow us to remain calm. You can know what's coming and still be upset or excited or angry or something else about it. You can even explain to others what's going down, and what's at stake, and how to get your head around it. And as a result, whatever you're dealing with becomes the new normal, and we don't panic about normal.

Ooh, you know who had a good quote about panicking? Heath Ledger did:

"You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow, I tell the press that a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But if I say that one little ole mayor will die, well, then everyone loses their minds!"

Did I say Heath Ledger? I meant Heath Ledger as the Joker, but same thing. Plus, who doesn't love talking about the Dark Knight, right?

So yeah, things stay on plan, everything's fine. Things don't stay on plan, and things might not be fine, because new territory is usually unexpected and misunderstood. And I know that many people actually deal with panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, or a few different forms of something similar. And it can be difficult to grasp at the time. I've had a few times that I felt a large pang of anxiety hit me in the last few years, just thinking about everything I have going on in my daily life and everything that I want to get done in the near future, and it all felt overwhelming when I looked at it all at once and wondered how the hell it would all get done. You could make the case that I felt this way because of the lack of an overall plan for every part of the things I still want to get done. Or you could just say that I let my mind wander and take on too much all at once instead of looking at each individual task, one by one.

Now, I have a few different things that could bring me back down from letting my stress and anxiety pile up like that. I can just take a few deep breaths and let myself resettle. My fiancé, Tara, has always been very helpful when I need to re-center myself and deal with something. I can go work out, shooting hoops or running or lifting or something of that sort. I can play music here in my apartment, or just listen to music really loud and dance around to it like an idiot. I can read a book, cook something, go for a walk, I can call up a friend or a family member, hell, I can sit here and write about it. I always feel better about whatever I'm doing after I write it out on paper. It's almost a way of getting the thought out of my head so I don't have to carry it around as much.

Not to mention, I mean, so many things that we deal with in our daily lives are really not so bad if we can just finish them and get to relax that they are finished and are smaller situations by themselves. Work, chores, bills, school, traffic, groceries, sleep, sports, errands. It's all manageable, even though it might not see it as a single pile. Over time, the stress from little things will invariably have a larger collective effect on your daily life and health than single traumatic events, unless you're one of the few people out there that terrible shit just constantly happens to, in which case all the traumatic stuff will actually seem like regular, mundane stress. But for the rest of us, daily life will be the thing that wears us down and stresses us out, over and over and over again. Finding a way to process and move past that daily stress makes everything that much more easy to deal with.

On the other hand, there are some situations that you don't just write about and stop thinking about. Like, there are moments that you don't just release and forget about, but instead just kind of stick with you, and you actually have to keep thinking about them even though the moments have passed. There are some things that you have happen, and then you literally do everything you can to forget about them for a while, until some time has passed and you can fully process exactly what the hell happened.

And you're probably thinking at this point, "Okay, here's where Victor is going to tell another embarrassing story about himself." Because so far, this blog has featured a lot of my egg-on-face moments. And I really should try to move on to other people's embarrassments at the very least, right?

Well, maybe another time.

One time, I almost choked to death on my friend's blonde hair.

Okay, now that you've got some terrible mental image, I'll tell you what happened. I was at track practice in Texas a while back and it was windy. Most of you that have never lived in Texas might not understand what I mean by 'windy'. I don't mean there was a breeze and the flags were flying in a certain direction. By windy, I mean we were looking up in the sky, making sure Dorothy and her house weren't gonna be moving through the area. Wind is not playing around in Texas and at certain times, it seems to keep changing direction over and over again.

So, like I said, track practice. I'm warming up by jogging and stretching and doing my high-knee circuit, and a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a year or two showed up. Let's call her Pam. I'm not sure why, but she's Pam in this story. Pam was a little bit younger than me, and she had been working out with the same coach as the one I was currently training with, but she had been gone for a while and it was the first time she was coming back in a while. So I was excited to see her and she was excited to see everyone at practice, me included. Before you ask, no, we were not actually interested in eachother (to my knowledge) but we were very good friends.

Pam was a little bit shorter than me, and she had long flowing blonde hair that she usually tied up to work out. But since she was not actually training that day, her hair was just blowing all over the place. But when she saw me, she ran up to me and gave me this enormous hug that caught me a bit off guard just because I didn't see that it was her until a moment or two before the hug was initiated. And then all at once, I was caught off guard for a completely different reason.

Somehow, a large portion of her long blonde hair blew directly into my mouth. My mouth was open in surprise and it turned to greater surprise when I realized that I was tasting hair all at once. And then it turned to greater surprise/horror when it became clear that some of the hair had actually moved all the way to the back of my throat and was kind of stuck there. In my mind, it became clear all at once that I was actually kind of choking. This provoked a bit of panic in my head. Oh shit, I don't know how I'm going to stop choking, I thought to myself. There's no way for me to reach the hair with my hand, and there's way too much hair. The hair is everywhere. What am I going to do? Am I going to choke to death at track practice? Who dies at track practice?!

So I took about 10 seconds to recollect myself and then decided to try to get out of this without drawing more attention. Which, by then, was going to be difficult. The hug had been going on for about 10 seconds, and it was a bit awkward, but I couldn't do anything else. I mean, I didn't know how to sit there and deal with someone pulling their own hair out of my mouth, and as far as I could tell, Pam had so much hair that she didn't immediately know what was going on behind her back. So I doubled down on the hug. Just when it felt like we were both letting go and were going to start catching up, I went in for a larger and somewhat more aggressive hug. In fact, for part of it, I picked her up with the hug and started spinning around. I actually started pulling my head back to the side in a certain direction so that the hair started to slide out of my windpipe very slowly, all while trying to keep the focus on the friendly affection that was going in an interesting direction. And I could hear her laughing nervously while this was going on, but I couldn't be sure if she actually knew what was going on, because Pam actually had a nervous laugh on a normal basis. Looking back, she probably didn't know what had gone down right away, but knew it was weird.

So this hair extraction that was masking as a long-lost hug, it lasted a good 30-45 seconds. During which time I wasn't really saying anything, because what can you say while choking in such a ridiculous manner? You can probably guess that I did in fact get the hair out of my throat, since I lived to tell about it. Pam had this uncomfortable smile stuck to her face as she laughed when I finally released her, and I'm pretty sure I had a look of confused terror on mine. When we did start talking, we completely ignored what had just happened and she started asking about practice or school, or whatever the hell else. I don't think we ever fully acknowledged to one another that she almost killed me with her hair.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of choking, especially on a human body part, or out in public, or at track practice. But I must say, if it happened a few more times, I might actually be able to get through it without panicking. And then, I'd be worried for a different reason. Namely, why is something this ridiculous become a norm in my life? What decisions that I make are contributing to this situation occurring over and over again? Every once in a while, I think you have to look at the problems that you're dealing with and ask yourself, is this something that other people have problems with? If not, what are others doing differently to prevent this, and should I be doing them too? Is there a risk that I have just gotten used to taking? Should I be more fearful and respectful of what wind is capable of?

Just saying, don't worry so much if you panic in a new and stressful situation. But maybe review things a bit if these situations are only happening to you.

Bye now.