Stardate 73155.1

Already too much

When I was 11 years old I crashed my mountain bike. I was hauled out of the woods in an all terrain ambulance and rushed to the hospital. They stitched me up and I was fine. 

This is the point I have come to. That I know it is almost over, that the semester is almost over. Just like the doctor almost being done with the stitches. But it hurts so bad and I’ve already been through too much. I’ve got no more left in me, I can’t take any more, but there is still more to go. 

Stay Safe. 

An Exercise in Unpacking & Havin' More Fun:

Imagine this:

Your shuttle, a lovely blue craft old enough to vote, returns you to mars late enough in the sol that it is already dark and you can feel the cold of the atmosphere in spite of your insulative layers.

Alone, you must unpack your craft and the extensive resupply materials it contains. Because you are alone you cannot leave the craft docked in front of the mass housing unit and since nearby docks are taken you must dock up hill from the housing unit.

How then do you get the supplies into your personal chamber???

Well, if you're me...

While wearing full insulative equipment you drag one of the carts up the hill, load it with the supplies, increasing its mass significantly. Then you push it and a rolling desk chair toward the hill, hop into the rolling desk chair and hold on.

I may be many things, but I'm certain I had the most fun in unpacking.

“Reality ...is FICTIONAL” -(Rainbow Kitten Surprise)

As the days pass and the news gets continually worse as restrictions come and go like the push and pull of the tide (or a sine wave), I find myself in a daze, feeling like this reality is closer to some distopian fiction than anything that could have ever been real....but it is. 

I find myself listening to music and dancing in my cubical of quarantine, because “Because there's nothing else to do” (Pulp, Common People). I danced classical ballet for many years, but lately I’m finding I need music that is far louder and more psychedelic. With that in mind... here’s a few songs that feel oddly fitting right now.

 “American Hero” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

Because man does Reality seem Fictional Right Now

“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads

How did we find ourselves here, I’m just “Letting the day’s go by”

“Common People” by Pulp

“watch your life slide out of view And then dance [...] Because there's nothing else to do

Anything by Tame Impala Especially 

“It might be time”

“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (Artic Monkeys Cover of this is good too)

“The Less I Know The Better”

“Yesterday” by the Beatles 

My God, How is this not dystopian fiction? How is this not just a book I can toss aside? 

Stay Home if you can my friends. 

Dance in your dorm rooms. Binge watch television from your couch. Work out till you have abs as good as Angelina Joe Lee in Tomb Raider, then watch Angelina Joe Lee in Tomb Raider, then play some Tomb Raider. Skype your best friend and play two truths and a lie. Read the Martian (Andy Weir)... Twice, then Watch the Movie, then study aerospace engineering. Read “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” (Douglas Adams), complete edition (duh), then pretend you’re an alien for a day. Whatever you do, be safe my friends.  

Fish = Es TIMES q!?

This was said, this morning out loud in my dorm room, today. In context, it made total sense. 

The Devil Wears A Suit And Tie

He has been reported multiple times. He has a known track record and some young women are lucky enough to be warned to avoid him...

Others are not.

He invites the younger of the college girls, particularly ones with rough home lives, depression, anxiety, self doubt, anyone who is vulnerable or *has a reason to drink*. And then they get drunk and him and his friends take advantage of them.

He does not know who I am.

About a year ago, I stood with another pushing a door open against the cold beconing in two young women. They had made it out of one of the "parties".

We had acquired information about the "party" and one handed under the table I had passed just enough on to an SRA. The party was "not found". The young women had made it out on their own. We snuck them in through the side door of our residence. They would likely have had to leave school if caught.

As we got them warmed up and sobered up (blankets, soda, water), one of them told us half sobbing what happened, the other sat in near silence and said she was fine. They got out before the night was over, but others don't.

Once I saw a man standing outside, a tall almost iconic image of a businessman, smoking a cigarette, wearing a suit. And then he turned and I saw his face and some cold reality hit me. He looks like he owns this place. He does.

May hell be real & worse than any literature imagines & may his cigarettes send him there.

“Torrefaction” and the Potato Principal

There comes a point at which my mind no longer wants to absorb new information and I become extremely distractible. Junk food and music become the primary motivators for staying at my desk. This is the point at which I consider my mind a fried potato. 

Tonight that point was hit with the word “Torrefaction,” which describes a process of heating a biomass fuel in an inert atmosphere (like nitrogen) to make it into a more efficiently burning source. Pretty cool right?

I’m working on understanding some Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) techniques for something I’m writing and hence came across the word. 

Today began at 9am with some light physics (literally physics regarding light)

Continued on with some dynamics that took way longer than it should have

Came back around to TGA hit “Torrefaction” and now my mind is burnt toast. 

Aside from interuptions for food, hygene and laundry (bothersome repeated tasks we’ve yet to find ways out of) today has been dedicated to engineering and yet here we are nearing midnight, still with more to do and a fried potato of a mind. 

Wasps in Engineering

This morning I awoke early, stirred from my rest by the sound of "Travel" playing at the time specified the night before to my personal device assistant. I reviewed thermodynamics in my quarters before dressing hastily and heading off a bit behind schedule, while consuming nourishment from a pre-packaged tube (Go-gurt). It was a day in the typical martian life.

Upon arriving however, I discovered a hoard of people crammed outside the room, rather than seated and chatting with as usual. Their exclamations were soon made clear. Our particular room in the Hab, was overrun by wasps. Why they were there, no one could say, perhaps the inhospitable conditions outside drove them in? Then again, whose to say why any of us were there.

Our executive Starfleet officer instructed us to not disturb them as they circled, otherwise activities continued as usual, pardoning the occasional interruption of a flying creature.

It seemed, contrary to popular belief, the redshirts were more afraid of the wasps then the wasps were of them.

Martian Cocktail

How to mix a Martian Cocktail:

1. Grab generic cup

2. Add cranberry juice

3. Add orange juice

4. Add ginger ale

Why make a Martian Cocktail?

Because all the juice options separately tasted a little off. It's not quite the American summer camp classic "Bug Juice" (that is more based in color than flavor) but a slightly more grown version. Still non-alcoholic, but named for its color.

Does it make sense?

There’s a caricature hanging on my wall, with it’s date marked as the 11th of September 2019. I look at it several times a day and wonder about my personal insensitivity. 

I sat for said caricature on said day, and truth be told I was smiling. 

I won’t attempt to justify my role in this. I was there, same as everyone else. I ate the food, same as everyone else. If we were wrong (and I believe we were) then I was wrong. 

The caricature in question was drawn at an institution event, a club fair, somewhat of a celebration. Isn’t it wrong? Wasn’t it wrong, to be at a celebration, at a military institution, on a day that marks a great American tragedy? That same night a remembrance ceremony took place. Doesn’t it pervert the nights remembrance ceremony to be hosting a celebration during the day that could have occurred on any other day? I won’t claim that people born on the 11th should’t celebrate their birthday, their births remind us that horrible things and good things can occur simultaneously. I do wonder about the justification of an institutions celebratory event. 

I will not pretend to remember 9/11. The fact is I simply don’t. I do not remember that day, nor any of that year. Regardless, it was a tragedy that affected an incredible number of Americans. I believe it was insensitive to hold the fair on that day and I have my sincere regrets about my part in it. 

A second event also occurred that seemed ill timed. 

A young man, about to graduate died on 9/15/19 in a car crash. Yesterday, 1 week later the institution held it’s 200th celebration. Today it held his funeral. I will not say that the institution should have altered it’s plans on such short notice, but I will say I believe they should have provided more than just 1 echo of his name as so many students mourn his loss and fight off anguish at the denial of half mast rights for the enlisted young man.   

Does it make sense? To What Degree Should We Mourn For Losses To Our Greater Community?