Wear Your Spouse

I just saw a news special about this the other night - it's called a Life Jem. You get your spouse cremated and then put 8 ounces of the ashes into a special machine, which compresses it and makes a diamond-like crystal. For about six thousand bucks you could literally wear your spouse around your neck or put her in a ring...

I wonder if beautiful people make more stunning jems. Would Brad Pitt's jem be worth more than mine? Probably.

I thought I could think of something a little outside of the box to write, but I'm really at a loss. Perhaps the comments will be more entertaining. Sorry about this... maybe I should focus on content of quality over consistency of quantity.

Capacity to Love

This morning as I walked to work I passed a couple holding hands. Maybe in their 40's; the guy had grey hair. They both had smiles on their faces. And they both had Downs Syndrome.

The first thought that came into my head was that these people lacked the mental capacity to love each other. (I'm being serious, not poking fun.) I mean, even I, sometimes, lack the capacity to see the world the way other people see it - and even though I think my relative intelligence has helped hone my feelings to really know what trust is, what love feels like, and how heartbreak consumes you, I'd be willing to bet there are people in the world who feel these emotions even more intensely than I. So if I can admit that I may not know what love is, how could they?

Did these people hold hands to touch each other, to feel that electric pulse you feel when you really love the person? Or did they simply want to keep their hands warm and were imitating those other husbands and wives who maintain physical contact during their stroll to lunch?

Then my thoughts jumped ahead of me... what if these people experience those emotions more intensely than you or I would? Perhaps grabbing his wife's hand this afternoon would be on the same grand scale of our first kiss - surely everyone remembers her first kiss. Imagine if every moment - if every kiss, hug, smile - were as intense as our firsts. Would we ever know? Perhaps they do feel this way, but lack the mental capacity to articulate these feelings to others. What we see as a simple smile on their faces would equate to our skipping, jumping, and screaming while tears of happiness ran down our cheeks, the proverbial shouting from rooftops. Who knows?

I have not done ANY research whatsoever and my thoughts are entirely speculative. What do you guys think? Do people with limited intellect experience emotions similarly, less intensely, or more intensely than we do? Or are they blindly conforming to societal influence from the media, the masses, and their mentors?

Change the World

I won't preach my cynical views on why the world is the way it is, but I do this its evolution is in the favor of the very few who step up to the plate to assist it. I read an article about Mr. Trump this morning, and, while many of you know I admire the man, I wanted to point out exactly why I do.

He's pretty rich. Not filthy rich, though - people like Gates (estimated net worth ~$45b), Warren Buffet (~$42b), and many others tower above Trump, whose measly $2.4b resembles a well planned retirement account - a mediocre fortune at best. But what separates Trump from all the others is his ego - his shameless self promotion and ability to take on anything he could dream of.

The new West Side Highway project is underway, as I'm sure many fellow New Yorkers know, with 4 of the total 16 buildings already built. Trump has been working on this project for almost 30 years, and was just granted $2.5m by the city of New York to bury the west side highway, allowing the downtown waterfront to be joined with the rest of the city. For 3/4 of a mile, the highway will be out of sight, creating what will end up to be a beautiful recreational area.

Anyone with an extra hundred million could do this, yet only The Donald has the drive to transform the city. While some other billionaires are investing their money simply to make more money, Trump is putting his money in a public place, where, like his Trump Tower, millions of people will benefit from it each year.

Try to tell me he hasn't changed the world. *it has been brought to my attention that other people have changed the world, too. who'da thunk?*

Given his rather meager share of the world's wealth, I think it's a good analogy to say that the most influential people are not necessarily the most able. What Gates (or many other extraordinarily wealthy people) could have done in 3 or 4 years with the interest he made on his checking account took Trump over 30 years. His ambition is unprecedented, and for this, I ask everyone to respect the little guy, regardless of his ego.

I'm Going to Heaven

So I was thinking... you know how it's pretty common for people to dream about the last thing they think about before falling asleep - an ex, your family, a delicious meal. Sometimes I dream about driving my old car, sometimes I dream about arguing with my parents.

You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning, hit the snooze button, and then have dreams for what seems like hours? You wake up 6 minutes later having had an entire day's worth of experiences. If your mind can make 6 minutes feel like a day, I wonder what it can do in a few hours. They say when you die your brain activity persists for up to 5 or 6 hours before everything shuts down... 6 hours can mean years of dreams.

What if you think about burning in hell right before you die? I'd be willing to bet that chances are, you'll go straight to hell. And what if you think about reuniting with long gone relatives? I bet you'll see them when you die. That whole tunnel thing - that's just because the last fleeting thought in your mind was to open your eyes to see what's going on around you - in other words, to allow more light to shine on your retina. The presence of light leads you to remember something everyone always said you'd see: the light at the end of a tunnel. Had it not been for this repeated conditioning on the part of society, you would never see a tunnel. Perhaps you'd see a fire, or a sunrise. Something that shows light evolving and growing stronger, but definitely not a tunnel. Tunnels didn't even exsist thousands of years ago - yet people still died. I doubt they had these images of then non-existent tunnels running through their heads at the critical moment of departure.

What if someone whispers things into your ear at the climacteric moment of your expiration? What if a person instills evil thoughts in your head - thoughts of sadness, despair, heartbreak... then what will happen when you die?

I've come to the conclusion that when I'm on my deathbed I want everyone to smile, and people to laugh. I'll play episodes of Seinfeld nonstop and listen to music that brings back happy memories. That way I can be sure when I die I'll go to heaven.

Truth is Simple

I was just thinking about the whole jail ordeal and all that... and it dawned on me that there is an entire booming business in believing what people say. Everything involved with crime can be whittled down to one basic understanding: people don't always tell the truth.

Think about that one. What if everyone were honest? What if someone, in some country not liberated by freedom, made a law that stated "if you lie about ANYTHING you will be killed. If you tell the truth the consequence will be less than if you were caught lying." Do you think people would evolve not to lie anymore?

Imagine this: you're in court, and the prosecutor accuses you of robbing a bank. You decide to lie, and then they find your fingerprints on the safe. You are immediately executed in front of everyone. Would that send a message? Perhaps people would stop lying. If the guy said "yes, I robbed the bank, I was desperate to feed my family and was not thinking straight." "okay sir, don't do this again, promise? You have to give all the money back now." Since the guy has to give all the money back, all he did was waste his own time. That in itself will encourage him not to rob another bank. Why would he want to waste his own time?

On second thought, that system probably wouldn't ever work. But what would work is a drug that prevents lying. If someone developed a drug that could be injected in someone thought to be lying, let's refer to it as a "truth serum," then the entire system used to prove that someone is lying would be out of business. The courts would be used only to sentence people, not to determine their guilt. That would be pretty interesting.

What if something like that were out there? I'd be willing to bet a truth serum would never come to market - think of the millions of lawyers who would pay top dollar to keep that off the shelves. It gets pretty political.

I suppose you could trace lies all the way back to the apple, but who wants to get into a Biblical debate about something that happened before history was documented?

My point, if any, is that people shouldn't lie. It complicates everything. I can't actually think of any good that can come out of a lie. Well, I could, but perhaps I'll wait to delve into that deep thought.

If He Took His Time

Ok, today I'm going to write about a sensitive subject. I watched a documentary on the History Channel last night about the final days of WWII, and the effects Hitler had on the world. All the terrible things that went on surprised me... not that they happened, but why they happened. Check this out.

We all know about the sick things that happened... the killings, the gas chambers. We all learned about it. But did you know that the reason so many Jews were killed? Neither did I. It turns out that American and British forces pushed Germany back east - and threatened Hitler's plan to eradicate the Jewish population in a reasonable way.* But because of the pressure put on Hitler to end the war, he needed to do what he needed to do quickly, so that the Jews wouldn't survive if the Nazi's lost the war. This is why the death camps were built - the gas chambers weren't even designed to handle large quantities of people. It was to murder the 'sub-human' Soviet prisoners, as well as to kill those considered 'unfit' to work, that Zyklon B was first used at Auschwitz. The chambers spared the Nazis having to shoot the prisoners, and was thought to be a much less traumatic experience for the people running them.

Ok, those are the facts. Now let's talk about some of my personal interpretations.

*What if Hitler had been a little less of a lunatic? What if he'd been a patient man, willing to accept a little administrative delay once in a while? Think about the outcome.

If he hadn't invaded so many countries so quickly, he would not have had so many enemies. This we can all agree on. He was a master at brainwashing people. We also agree on this. It has been said that, because of Stalin's conquests and his unpredictability, most free Germans (non Nazi) would have voted to keep Hitler in power if there had been free elections simply to keep their safety from Stalin. This I found quite interesting. The Germans accepted the "master plan" of eradicating the Jews, as long as it wouldn't affect their safety. Now let's imagine Hitler running a tight ship - keeping to himself, protecting Germany from Stalin but otherwise staying uninvolved with the war, being good to his people. He implements a few laws that call for every Jewish man and woman to be sterilized. No rush, let's say they got that done at their next medical checkup. Broke your leg? Finger got frostbite? We're just gonna take those bad boys off while you're here. They could even schedule it themselves, no worries. Can't be here Tuesday, how does Thursday sound? You'd be in the locker room complaining about how you had to get castrated that night, and that you'd be out of school for a week in bed. Like getting your wisdom teeth removed. Had Hitler been a little more patient, well, the Jews might not have survived. Nobody would've stopped it - even the people in Germany would've thought this was okay... perhaps even the victims of the sterilizations would have voted to do it. Lose my ability to reproduce, or get invaded by Stalin, get tortured, watch them kill my family? I guess it wouldn't be a good time to have any more kids anyway, plus no extra mouths to feed. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good plan, all things considered. Although he wouldn't have immediate results, the genocide would've occurred within 2 generations. Boys would be circumcised and castrated, all in one quick snip. This, my friends, would have been the humane holocaust, the one that would've lasted, the one that would have removed millions of Jews from the world, not by murder, but from birth control. And nobody would have been sad. There would've been no personal loss, no crying over broken families. Yeah, people would be pissed that they can't have kids, but come on. People wouldn't realize the damage until years after the damage had been done. No mass graves to dig, no concentration camps. Just a few more hospitals with a few more doctors to steadily remove all Jewish gonads from the world.

It's funny to think that the future of the world was determined by a man's attention span... his desire for immediate results forced Germany into a world war, one that could have turned out drastically differently if Adolf had been a little more patient, a little more sane, and a little more flexible with his schedule.

Cute Little Fella

So, for a change, I decide to watch some TV around 11:30 with Topher. We're both pretty beat from working all day - and we're just flipping through the channels. As Topher talks about getting something to eat I land on a channel where these guys are exterminating rats from a house. They're all over - in the garbage cans, in the basement, in the walls. The guys are literally screaming because there are rats all over. This reminds me of the pet mouse we have, and my gaze wanders over to the sticky mousetrap I've set on the floor, which was covered with dust from sitting there for over a month. I casually said to Topher that we needed to pick up some wooden mouse traps - the ones that you could put cheese in, you know? Topher ignores me and gets up to see what we have in the fridge. As the rats are screaming on TV, Topher yells and I hear a similar rodent-scream come from the kitchen. And right there, in the middle of the floor, is a mouse dragging one of those sticky traps across the floor.

This little guy was really scared. I looked down at him, and then squatted in front of him to better see the look of utter despair in his sad little eyes. He yelped at me, his adorable little face just asking me for another chance. "I'll be good, I promise, I just want another chance. I won't eat any more bread, and I won't walk on the kitchen counter anymore. Just please let me go back to my family." I think I saw the little guy shed a tear. He was so scared.

So I gave it some thought. What should I do now? Topher didn't want anything to do with it, so I reasoned my options outloud but mostly to myself. Would it even be possible to pull him off the sticky surface to set him free? Because of his struggle he became more and more stuck to the surface, all of his limbs hopelessly attached to that dreadful, inhumane trap. It wouldn't be possible to pull him off without breaking a leg or tearing off skin. I quickly abandoned that idea and began to brainstorm the most humane way to end this innocent life.

Should I drown him in the toilet? Hit him with a hammer? Step on him? Freeze him to death? Put him in a container with some ethyl? I quickly decided that exposing him to ethyl would be the most humane way to let him pass. I would put him in that peanut butter jar and toss in a napkin soaked in ethly. Then I realized I had no ethyl. I couldn't bear to step on him, his cries cut straight through me. I wouldn't sleep for a week if I had to kill this creature with my own force....

So I scooped him up with a dustpan and talked to him, to try to calm him down. He was terrified - and for what? For eating some bread I mistakenly left on the counter? For not cleaning up his droppings after looking for a few crumbs? He respected us - and we respected him. We understood each other...and we grew to accept each other. Now I was holding a dustpan with him in it, stuck to a terrible sticky trap, and I was thinking of ways to end his fragile life.

As I brought him outside into the cold I realized something. That no matter how much I didn't want to believe it, this mouse was going to die. Millions of mice die each year all over the world, and nobody even knows. Why should this one be any different. As I walked down 13th street I also realized that I could never bear the direct responsibility of taking a life... As I watched the cabs zoom by I said farewell to my old friend, and left him in the middle of the intersection.

I watched for a minute or two as the cars missed him - I could barely hear his cries as I walked far enough away not to hear anymore. I watched him struggle to get out of the street, his tired bones pressed by the trap against the cold street as he inched his way over to his unfortunate fate. I painfully watched as the cars came close - ooh, ahhh.... but he was still moving. Finally, it was over. I hope he didn't even see it coming, or feel the G forces as the sticky trap stuck to the tire and was flung across the 20' wide street.

As I walked back home in my pajamas I felt happy to have ended his suffering. In tribute, I left the bread out that night, to mourn the loss of our friend, but also to see if there were any more mice so I'd know how many more traps to buy.