When you've been banging your head against the same wall for a long time - for years - you can decide to stop banging your head, and there's a bit of relief. For a while. Your skin heals up, and you look better. But the wall is still there.
That sucks.
What I should do instead is invest in a wrecking ball.
6/26/10
6/25/10
the high rates of unintended roadkill
Last weekend I was heading towards Massachusetts on I-88, which is an empty stretch of highway between Albany and Binghamton in the oh-so-beautiful state of New York. -Two relatively straight lanes in each direction, passing through farmland and rolling hills. There is so much of nothing happening on this road that folks often have the chance to read their morning newspapers while commuting to work.
Therefore, when I saw a number of dead deer on the side of the road, and passed over numerous other bloody smears left by the tragic demise of other animals, I thought - how is it that, in all this emptiness, those cars and those animals ended up occupying the same few square inches of space at the same time?! Really, I mean, what are the chances?! It seems so unlikely, and yet....
...and yet I've heard a similar story elsewhere, I think. Pregnancy. Pregnancy, which I've been told is only possible to achieve during a few short hours each month. And I've seen how hard it is - I've watched my friends, with their calendars and their thermometers and their daily testing of cervical mucus, and their months or years of disappointment before success. I've seen some of them plop down thousands of dollars to have it done for them because it just wasn't happening on its own. So how is it that there are so many unplanned babies; how do those eggs and sperm end up occupying those same few square micrometers of space at the same time, at exactly the right time?! Really, I mean, what are the chances? It seems so unlikely, and yet....
Therefore, when I saw a number of dead deer on the side of the road, and passed over numerous other bloody smears left by the tragic demise of other animals, I thought - how is it that, in all this emptiness, those cars and those animals ended up occupying the same few square inches of space at the same time?! Really, I mean, what are the chances?! It seems so unlikely, and yet....
...and yet I've heard a similar story elsewhere, I think. Pregnancy. Pregnancy, which I've been told is only possible to achieve during a few short hours each month. And I've seen how hard it is - I've watched my friends, with their calendars and their thermometers and their daily testing of cervical mucus, and their months or years of disappointment before success. I've seen some of them plop down thousands of dollars to have it done for them because it just wasn't happening on its own. So how is it that there are so many unplanned babies; how do those eggs and sperm end up occupying those same few square micrometers of space at the same time, at exactly the right time?! Really, I mean, what are the chances? It seems so unlikely, and yet....
O iPod! Wherefore art thou 'Shuffle'? Deny thy randomness and come clean!
Ok. Here's the thing:
My iPod has over 5,000 tracks on it. [And here I must say that a) I'm very very lucky to have an iPod and b) I'm very grateful to have one that can hold that much music and c) I'm very lucky to have that much music to put on it!]
...That established, I'll come to my point:
Of those 5,000+ songs, maybe 40-odd tracks are from Prokofiev's ballet of Romeo and Juliet. When I put the iPod on the 'shuffle' setting - which purportedly makes it play an absolutelytotallycompletely random selection of the songs it contains - it inevitably plays tracks from this ballet. Every time. More than once in the same hour.
But the creepy is yet to come: The tracks my iPod randomly decides to play are always a) fight scenes or b) the death of Mercutio or c) the death of Romeo and/or Juliet at the end of the ballet. No love scenes; no pas de deux, no gentle bits of Juliet playing with her doll and teasing her Nurse. Nope, just cold hard steel.
WTF?! iPod - you are either too much of a realist, or too much of a cynic... or maybe just all-around depressing. But don't try to convince me that your 'shuffle' setting is Without-Plan.
My iPod has over 5,000 tracks on it. [And here I must say that a) I'm very very lucky to have an iPod and b) I'm very grateful to have one that can hold that much music and c) I'm very lucky to have that much music to put on it!]
...That established, I'll come to my point:
Of those 5,000+ songs, maybe 40-odd tracks are from Prokofiev's ballet of Romeo and Juliet. When I put the iPod on the 'shuffle' setting - which purportedly makes it play an absolutelytotallycompletely random selection of the songs it contains - it inevitably plays tracks from this ballet. Every time. More than once in the same hour.
But the creepy is yet to come: The tracks my iPod randomly decides to play are always a) fight scenes or b) the death of Mercutio or c) the death of Romeo and/or Juliet at the end of the ballet. No love scenes; no pas de deux, no gentle bits of Juliet playing with her doll and teasing her Nurse. Nope, just cold hard steel.
WTF?! iPod - you are either too much of a realist, or too much of a cynic... or maybe just all-around depressing. But don't try to convince me that your 'shuffle' setting is Without-Plan.
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