SuperSatellite ||

Well, I got back safe and sound from my trip to Rochester.  I already have my next trip planned.  Atlanta for Thanksgiving.  Let me tell you how much I [don't] look forward to flying over a holiday weekend.  Woo.  Anyway, the trip left me tired and sore, but I was smart this time and will fly non-stop to Atlanta.  No layover = t3h w1n.

But this comic at Penny Arcade this morning was quite well timed for stuff I’ve been joking about lately (click for full size):

See, I just don’t get it.  It’s all right to use portable electronics during taxi and in the air, both times when the airplane is highly reliant on communications and instruments, but during ascent and descent, well, the laws of physics are suddenly bent and my iPod will apparently crash the plane.  I call FUD on that.  Sure, I could maybe see the problem with laptops and cell with all their wireless signals they pump out.  At least there is potential there.  But by god I will use my iPod so long as I like.  Electronic Sudoku is not a navigational threat, I assure you.  But I promise to turn off my portable VOR.

Which leads me in to other things.  Have you ever noticed that when you are sitting on the plane, you will read anything?  It doesn’t matter.  You know as well as I do that the barf bag says "Occupied" on it.  You don’t know why it says it, but be damned if you don’t know it, because at some point you pulled that bag out and read it.  You’ll sit there and read the nutritional facts on the mini pretzels they gave you, you’ll browse the Sky Mall for over-priced wearable 44" TV displays, whatever you can find.  At some point, you actually finding yourself looking for other things to read, like the covers of books people next to you have, which are always romance novels or something by John Grisham.  You look up and try to read the no-smoking sign, but that’s just a little icon.  Despite the fact that smoking has been banned on aircraft for something near 30 years or so.  As if somewhere, there is a commercial jet where you can smoke.  Where the flight attendant welcomes you to light it up in the bathroom, because the smoke alarm in it is just for show, so tamper away!  If I were a pilot, I would just turn off the no smoking sign occasionally, just to see if people lose their minds when they can’t figure out why it’s off.  Like a rift in the fabric of reality lifted them into a Langoliers universe.  Where they can smoke on a plane.  But just in case you do happen to forget, they always remind you that this plane, like every other one for the past million years, is non-smoking.  So there’s a little lit up sign by every chair.

I had to eat breakfast at the airport before leaving Rochester.  I spent something like $23 on a smoothie and cup of yogurt.  Naturally had I walked another 50 feet towards my gate it was a much better deal.  Like $21.  It’s almost like the cost of gas, you know?  But what I don’t get is how you pay your $23 for your smoothie and yogurt, and the girl working there, she clearly doesn’t care.  She’s not rude, but she’s not a happy young lady.  So you give her the $23, and look down, and there’s a tip glass on the counter.  Haha, I don’t think so honey.  I just gave you $23 for a smoothie and yogurt, I’ll be damed before I shell out another 2 dollars to your unhappy ass.  But what blows my mind is that the glass was full!  Someone actually stood there, thought "hmm…she’s trying awfully hard, what’s $2 more after spending $23?" and plopped down the cash.

This is why I shouldn’t fly.

This thought for the day is a two part idea, one from my own head that I have spent some time thinking on.  Now I think I can effectively break down into words the underlying principle behind this simple phrase.

There is a common example I see pop up from time to time in the discussion of kharma.  It is the idea of the young girl who is raped and killed by some evil man.  He is never caught, and she ends up gone.  The question inevitably arises: why does she suffer, why doesn’t kharma punish him, what did she do to deserve that?  Before, I generally viewed this as a simple misunderstanding of how kharma works.  For the most part, it is usually believed that kharmic effects don’t actually take place during the same lifetime in which they are incurred.  It is only our desire for immediacy, and our inability to grasp that sometimes things take time to play out that confuses the issue.  The show My Name is Earl, while cute and funny, is entirely inaccurate with its handling of the concept of kharma.  I’ll still watch it though   My old answer was a simple expansion on the idea:  the innocent girl was not balancing out an act of this life, but something prior, and the criminal will indeed get his.  Maybe not now, but later.

That being said, I found the flaw in my logic.  While that answer is not entirely incorrect, it has one trap that we tend to fall into, and that is over-humanizing.  We do this particularly in the girl’s case.  We believe that due to her age, she is, by default, innocent.  We believe that youth brings with it an inherent form of amnesty.  That is not the case.  The events that might take place to the young body do not change the idea that the impact on the being of the mind is entirely different.  The self that goes beyond the physical body is far older, and far more experienced.  The body is a vessel for that.  It will get another, grow, and move forward and upward, knowing that now it is that much closer to escaping kharmic rebirth. 

To us, we would view the event as a tragedy because we attach ideas like age of mind and body all to one constant, a point of birth.  We then further apply false ideas of innocence on top of that.  Layer upon layer of things that aren’t actually real.  The result is that what really happens, never happened to a little girl.  It happened to something older, wiser, and far more capable, beyond any understanding we can really apply with human concepts.  The confusion comes from mixing long held, and widespread ideas, like the one of the one-off life of mind, body, and soul.  One of the primary teachings of Buddhism is that we must escape that sense of "I"-ness.  The belief that I am my body, that they are part of the same thing.  What we refer to when we say I does not actually exist.  The word "I" is just a lingustic tool to ease the association of relationships, the same way "he" or "she" is.  The true nature of that person, what they are and who they are, lies far beyond our shortsighted words.

My second point is on the loss of self (don’t worry, this one should be shorter).  I was talking to a friend the other day about having wisdom teeth taken out.  Luckily for me, I was born without them, so it isn’t an experience I’ll have to deal with.  But, the point was raised about anesthesia.  As a Buddhist, we know we are supposed to avoid all mind altering substances.  Clarity of the mind is a precious thing, and not something one should artificially cloud.  You should never purposefully lose that sense of self, or control.  That’s easy to say for substances of choice: alcohol, chemicals, drugs, etc.  But what about surgery aids?  What if you are in a car accident, knocked out, and they administer drugs to keep you under and do surgery, etc?  It’s an interesting point of conflict.  Obviously, the reasonable answer is that I would have to decline such types of treatment.

I dunno.  It just raises an interesting point about how far one could go before the physical need for relief would overpower the mental need for clarity.  One could argue that someone well trained in Buddhism and/or meditation could, through mental effort, block out and isolate any pain with little more than a local numbing agent.  In that case, providing their own for of anesthesia.  In any case, hopefully I don’t need to force my hand on the matter.

So I am lapsing into longer and longer periods between writing.  Oh well.  You can deal, right?  I should try to establish a routine maybe.  Or do more interesting things that give me funny stories I can tell.

So the Alpha Psi group went to see Urinetown in Wichita at the Century 2 theatre Friday night.  If anyone likes them some funny musical theatre and will be in Wichita, I highly recommend going to see it.  What was crazy was what I found when I got home.  The picures below sort of explain it.  Yes, that is a cactus balanced on the faucet.  My only guess is that my cat decided that the cactus no longer belonged in the window, and decided to rectify the problem with some unique rearranging.  How the clumsy ass managed to not skewer herself is beyond me.

I have decided to buy a house I think.  My landlord is looking to sell the place I am renting, and while it is cheap and convenient, I’d rather not deal with the hassle of a new landlord, new rules, and potentially higher rent.  Besides, at this point I’m really just throwing away $375 each month when I could be building some equity.  Making an investment.  There are some cheap, cheap houses around here that need some work, that when done, would net me a tidy little profit.  I talked to him about buying my house and the duplex next door, but it turns out they are substantially more valuable than I would have ever guessed.  I looked at a couple places Saturday, and am gonna look at another tonight or tomorrow.  We’ll see.

So I was over at Fark.com this morning, and I found this article about Dinosaurs Attack.  It was awesome because I have the complete set.  And the cards are every bit as cool, vicious, and graphic as they describe.  If you ever want to check them out, let me know, I’ll be happy to share.  Imagine if someone tried to market these today.  Really, I would suspect they just managed to slip through the cracks, but still.  Ahh, childhood memories…

After several days with the new guitar, I really am 100% pleased with my decision to buy it.  I couldn’t ask for a better sound for the money I think.  Granted, I’m wearing my fingers down to the nubbies, but it’s good for me!