LATE NIGHT RED LIGHTS

I don’t like the idea having a journal online, but these blogs aren’t really journals.  They’re more like messages in bottles.  We write our thoughts and throw them into the ocean with the hope of someone reading them and caring.  These aren’t journals, because journals are private and we want our thoughts heard.  That is the mind-set I’m writing with.  I want you to hear my thoughts and tell me what you think.  Do you agree?  Do you think I’m a disgusting liberal extremist?  I want to know.  I would prefer useful information rather than rash, angry comments about how stupid or gay I am.  If you don’t agree with me, tell me why.  Maybe, my logic is flawed.  Maybe, you can help me see the truth.  Maybe, you can save me.  But, if angry comments are all you can produce, I’d love to hear them.  At least I know I’m being heard by someone.

If you read this and know me in the real world, I don’t want you tracking me down and inarticulately screaming at me because you can’t believe I feel this way.  If you know me, leave a comment.  Don’t approach me in the real world because of some idea I wrote about.  I probably don’t like you and don’t want to talk to you.  Even if you like my idea, I still don’t want to talk to you.  If you think you will die if you don’t confront me, die.  Unfortunately, I know you won’t respect my wishes.  So, when you do approach me, speak rationally and intelligently.  I won’t argue with you.

Last night, while I was driving my lady home, I stopped at a red-light on post.  I have waited at this light for what have seemed like hours before.  So, I looked both ways and drove through.  I dropped her off and headed home.  This same light was red on the way home.  I stopped looked both ways and cruised through.  A few seconds later I saw the flashing lights in my rear-view.  I was ticketed sixty dollars for running a red light with no one around, or so I thought.  That is a rather low fee in comparison to my previous tickets. 

How do you feel about this situation?  Is it right to punish a citizen safely exercising his own logic.  I hurt no one.  If she hadn’t seen me, no one would have known or cared.  But she did see me.  My first thought was how much bull the situation was.  However, after thinking a bit, I realized the cop was not to blame.  She was just doing her job.  She didn’t make the law, her job just happens to be enforcing it.  This is best case scenario.  In all probability she is an angry dike, who feels powerful telling men what to do and punishing them every chance she gets.  Anyway, I want to assume she’s just doing her job.

Maybe, as a citizen I should propose legislation be considered which would allow citizens to treat a red light as a stop sign when it is late and no one is around.  This would make driving at night much less stressful, but would it make night driving more dangerous?  If it was legal to run red lights when alone at night, people would take advantage of this.  If we stopped at all we would glance to our left and right and take off.  Accidents would happen.  People would die because I was irritated at having to stop for a red light at night.  To save lives, I think we should endure the lights.  I don’t like it, but it seems to be for the best.

There is more to this than safety.  This is also about executive muscle being flexed.  If we are allowed to run red lights at night, what’s next?  It seems logical not to wait for the light to turn green when no one is around.  Unfortunately, logic changes with perspective.  It may seem logical or right for a husband to murder his cheating wife.  She broke her commitment.  She said she would be faithful and she wasn’t.  In his mind that may be worthy of death.  Obviously, we can’t have angry husbands killing their wives.  I don’t want to discuss all the reason why right now.  The point is, if some crimes are allowed to slide, where do we draw the line?  It’s not difficult to see total societal collapse and chaos because I didn’t want to wait a few seconds at a red light.  What do you think?  Do you agree? 

This is not a good representation of what I will usually be writing about.  This was very positive and I am not.  I chose writing about traffic violations over retardation being evidence that there is no god.  That is what you have to look forward to.

INTRO/ MOODS ARE DECEIVING

When I created this, my intention was not to ramble on about my problems and tell the world how cool I think my life is.  I actually only registered an account to be able to read a few of my friends’.  But, lately I’ve felt like I need to express myself.  I have a journal, that’s right, paper and pencil.  I’m a caveman.  I love writing in this fashion but I'm intrigued by the thought that someone may someday read my thoughts.  Even so, I will not post the most intimate details of my life.  So, if you’re looking for sex stories or narcotics experiences, you’ve found the wrong page.  Everything I write about will be meant for reading.  You’re not getting a peek into some secret part of my being that I try to hide.  Sorry.  In fact, most things I write will probably either be written with the hope of being read by specific individuals or ideas I think may interest the average-xanga-joe.

Having said that, I also want to make known that I’m not planning on using this to keep the world up-to-date with my day-to-day activities.  I want this to be a means mainly of transporting ideas to the general population of surfers.  I want to communicate things I think might not be common knowledge, things that I think people need to know to be whole human beings, things I hope will expand minds and melt stereotypes and preconceived illusions about everything.  I know this is farfetched.  But I’m mainly writing for myself anyway.  I know there will be some long speeches when I’m upset and need to vent but I want to keep the emo-crud to a minimum.

Moods are deceiving. 

When I’m in a bad mood, everything is clear.  I know exactly how horrible the world is and how there is no way to fix.  In a bad mood, life is a lost cause.  In a bad mood giving up is the only solution.  But what’s cool about bad moods is how easy they are to end if you know how.   Fairly analyzing a situation is one way I’ve found to end a dark mood. 

For example, and this is completely hypothetical of course, but let’s say I’ve been seeing a girl for awhile and I’m really starting to like her a lot.  Tonight, I call her because we talked about seeing a movie.  Well, she seems to have forgotten about but tries to play it off like she didn’t.  So, I’m annoyed.  We stay on the phone and she talks while I fake a conversation and mope while listening to Elliott Smith.  Obviously, trying to talk to me at this point is only going to worsen the situation, but I stay on.  Eventually, she senses my lack of attention and makes up a reason to hang up.  She says she’ll call back later.  And she does, but she calls as she is paying for a couple of rental movies.  So, then she gets in her truck and tells me she’ll talk to me later because she can’t drive and talk at the same time because she has a stick, which is true although she does have a earpiece she could use if she wanted to.  She said she might call tomorrow or I could, screw that I’m not calling for at least a day.  So, I’m thinking about what just went on.  She forgot our plan to see a movie.  She made an excuse about why she couldn’t talk anymore, then, to make it seem like she wants to talk to me she told me she’ll call back later.  When she calls back, she calls at a time where she has an easy reason not to talk for long.  This really stressed me out.  First, I thought she doesn’t like me.  I’ll end it.  Then I started to think about why she doesn’t like me.  Now I hate myself.  From there it’s pretty easy to think the entire world is a piece of crap and I don’t want to live in it anymore.  So, I’m contemplating suicide because some girl I’ve been seeing a few weeks doesn’t want to talk to me.  This is all hypothetical of course.

In a bad mood like that it’s easy to listen to sad music, sulk about my problems and pick the world apart.  But, once I start to fairly analyze the situation a little more closely, things don’t seem quite so dark.  This girl I’m seeing is very smart.  I love that about her but I’m not going to get off the subject.  Anyway, she probably realized it wasn’t any use to talk to me tonight because something was wrong. She probably didn’t think she did anything wrong, which she didn’t, and thought I'm either tired or maybe just preoccupied.  She didn’t want to waste her evening trying to have a conversation with me when it’s obviously not possible.  She didn’t want me to think I did something wrong and maybe she wanted to see if I’d be in a better mood a little later so she said she’d call back.  When she did, and I wasn’t in a better mood, she made up an excuse to hang up.  It’s completely understandable.  Although, I would prefer honesty.  Again this is all hypothetical. 

The point is logically thinking about circumstances can help improve one’s mood.  It’s true this doesn’t help every mood.  If you’re about to be executed for murder, logically analyzing your situation may not help.  But it did take me from thinking about breaking up with a great girl and killing myself to realizing that I blew everything out of proportion.

There is more to be said on the subject of blinding moods, I’ll continue another time.  I think I like this xanga-thing.  I’ll try not to get too preachy, but it is my right if I choose to exercise it.

…life’s like an hourglass glued to the table.