Leaving, part One (Bonus: sawn-off review of "World War Z")

You ever get the sense that a state is convincing you to leave and never return? Not in the sense of being railroaded out of town, or tarred and feathered, but little things.

[Scroll down for the spoiler-free sawn-off review of World War Z]

I was driving a route I've gone about once a week for the past two years, which half of Conway drives to work and back in Little Rock, when I almost got into an accident. Part of me isn't surprised, because when I moved here, my insurance rates jumped up a good chunk. That suggests bad drivers, sorry, and it was confirmed when I actually saw people "drive." Forget about the rushing through yellow lights, or even outright blowing through the reds, that's too expected for people here. No, I saw a guy make a U-turn in the middle of a busy road, weaving around what traffic he wasn't blocking! He was ten feet past the intersection (which allows U-turns legally, but that's another story), and just fifty from an actual parking lot in which he could safely turn about. But no, he HAD to turn RIGHT THERE. 

That's one story from this week, and one smidgen of evidence suggesting Arkansas needs to require a driver's education class.

Thankfully, I wasn't near a collision there. A few days ago, however, I was almost in a pile-up. Yep, thanks to some late braking by the pair of idiots in front of me at the time, we all had to engage in a tactical swerve to a staggered-line formation for safety. They went left and right, and I went right then left and deftly avoided the semi to my right and the ditch to my left, all while pulsing, pumping, and finally slamming my brakes to keep myself out of their cars. I thanked the god of anti-lock brakes and the god of attentive drivers for existing, that day (they happen to be the same god (God), who happens to be the God of Everything, which includes anti-lock brakes and attentive drivers). And of course, I do what everybody does when the cause becomes apparent: I looked. Did I see a grisly car wreck? How about our president, handing out money? Or perhaps Johnny Cash, not so dead? Of course not. So what caused the unnecessary and sudden slow-down? A young girl got pulled over. She was wearing jean-shorts that looked homemade. That's about it.

At least it wasn't nothing (that's happened way too often already).

Then later, THAT SAME DAY, I was turning right, onto a main road, when Bozo McOld decided to pull out in front of me from the bank opposite me. It was an aggressive maneuver, which I can respect, but it did require that I slam on my brakes (and same for Dude behind me) when he realized what he was doing and then immediately apologized by SLAMMING on his brakes in the MIDDLE of four lanes. I'm not kidding; he took up the entire street. Now, had he gunned it from the get-go, everything would've been fine. So it just goes to show you that half-measures don't cook, and that it's better to be an ass-hole than just an ass.

That's not the worst, though. Once, I saw a driver work VERY VERY hard to pull a u-turn to go the wrong way down an offramp. He worked for that shit. And there's a particular stretch of highway in Little Rock that I've witnessed, I kid you not, a delivery truck (big sized) pointed the WRONG WAY (toward me!), and suddenly fix his error and about-face. That was in my first month of living here (welcome to Arkansas; we don't require a driver's education course).

And that's just the road-safety stuff.

Today, I saw World War Z (It was okay, but not nearly dark enough to be a proper zombie horror, and not light enough to be a proper zombie comedy. Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead: those are proper zombie movies/shows and you should watch them all twice. This movie fell short of greatness, but was good for eight bucks' fun. Not worth 3D, but worth the big screen.) After the (decent) movie, there was an encounter between two women in the audience that was honestly more tense and exciting than anything that happened on screen. Many a "fatass" was slung in that discussion, and I was convinced that yes indeed, Arkansas is convincing me to never return.

The places we live, they shape us, but there isn't much of Arkansas I want to take with me wherever I go (that stuff will be covered on a later post; this one is about bad drivers). As always, I'll close with this: Click the ads! All of them! Many times!

Triple-Stamped, No Erasies

Hokai, so, I had a job, selling mattresses, but I don't any more. So I have a lot of free time to look forward to these next few months of unemployment. See, I'm terrible at personal discipline, so this is a problem. Seriously, I've watched Star Wars twice in one day, just because I started with the first one! It's not inherently evil, sure, but there's a certain point where inactivity warps you and you discover that all you've got left to prove your existence is a broken-in couch.

I don't want that for me. I want adventure , so this blog will stand as a re-branding of, well, me, as an adventurist. The idea is, have this as a public record of what I do, which will also give me reason to do adventurous things... like, I dunno, parkour or something (please no parkour, for the love of God). I'm also writing a novel, so the plan is make this blog wildly successful over the next few years (well, overnight would be great, but I am still pretty lazy).

Successful to the point at which people say "Hey, I love your words and want you to lie directly to me, but not on the computer, can you write a novel?" To which I shall respond, "Why yes, of course; here it is!"

And they'll throw money at me (and claim I can see the future, which I of course will not correct) until I can retire and do nothing whatsoever with my life. To the casual analyst, it would seem that I plan on taking a very long route to the same place (why not just skip the writing and the blog, and just do nothing but maybe working crap jobs?). However, they would be forgetting one thing: I have to feed my ego.
Yup, there it is. I like to think I'm important.

That there's my life plan. Subject to change at the drop of a hat, of course (see the rules... listed somewhere).

But, I want to write daily in this blog, because otherwise people will just forget that it exists (seriously, that's how it is with me). The catch is, I get bored, and I lose focus. My solution is to have seven subjects I can address in any given entry. Seven things I feel I can write about entertainingly (totally a word; suck it, dictionary!) enough to actually get people to read all the way through things and again, make them buy my book once it's written.

Here are the ideas I have so far:
1) Mind-jobs (at some point, I will try to convince you that circles don't exist)
2) Principles of a Dignified Life (living by a code, so to speak... seriously... like, tip even when you're poor)
3) Outright Lies (storytelling, of the freeform variety because thick fiction doesn't mix with the interwebs)
4) Cultural Analysis (how Star Wars episodes 1-3 should have been, and the implications of Twilight)
5) Adventureblogging (doing stupid shit for attention, like, unplanned bike trips)
6) People-Hacks (like life-hacks, but with people... manipulating people)
7) Beginner's Luck (I try something with little to no preparation or experience in it, like building a chair)
8) anything else

And lastly, I'll leave you, dear reader, with this thought: click on the ads!! please for the love of God, click on the ads! I don't care what they're for, just click on them; that's how I can make money out of this! Click multiple times! I don't care if you read the blog or not, just visit it ten times daily and click every ad that shows up on it! Make a game out of it somehow, like, how many different ads will Google put in there for you to click?

you'll think of something; you're creative

Drum Song (Post One!)

I was on my way home from work today, and I drove past a group of five or seven touring cyclists. They looked like Gypsies, hairy and hodgepodge. From the tail to the lead, each bike was weighed down, heavy with spare clothes, tents, sleeping mats and one guitar to share. They carried each their own worlds with them, and it showed. Besides the grime building up on every man, woman, and bicycle, every rider had the same distant gaze fixed on their face; that look acquired only when one's goal is nowhere in sight, and hasn't been for miles and hours on end. Even,  their leader, built so strong from God knows how many centuries behind her cranks, wore that same worn, longing gaze.

Still, like a circus, I wanted to ride away with them (hey guys, i have a bike - like me!).

Sure, i was listening to The Temper Trap's "Drum Song," and i was hungry as a rabid dog, and have a brand new bicycle, and it was quite literally magic hour, but still, i'm not convinced i was entirely irrational. Well, save the image of them as a group of Arkansas-based gypsy-cyclists-circus clowns, and the urge to join them was quite reasonable.

Cycling, after all, is about pure, hardcore freedom.

Think about it; the very nature of every single race is to be ahead, to separate yourself, to see none ahead of you and be alone in your vision. Separation and the open road mean you aren't being bogged down (literally not bumping elbows with everybody else of average capability). Ergo, performance in a race equals freedom.

And what about our collective experience with riding? For many of us, cycling, riding that first Huffy, was our earliest experience with truly separating from our parents. Freedom. As we learned to ride, we learned to find our own ways to the grocery store, school (the arcade, honestly), or our friends' houses. Before long, we would come to terms with the fact that it was the ride itself that drew us into late summer hours, and we would find ourselves just... riding. Riding wherever flight took us any given day, till the sunlight fell short of our drive and we had to fumble home in thick twilight.

And then there's the very process of learning to ride without training wheels. Our parents of choice (dad, in my case) would hold us steady, pushing us along, swearing all the while that we could do it. It may as well have been magic, for all we understood cycling at that age (still is magic to me). But in that moment, when our parents let go, we faced all the fear and disbelief that Lief Erickson encountered when setting sail from Iceland to Odin knows where, on the verge of true freedom and revelation. Even as we pedaled, we turned our disbelief and fear (there's no way that's possible!) into reality, magic into marvel (it works, I don't know how, but it works!). I never wanted my training wheels taken off. Speaks volumes of whatever about me.

Bicycles don't come with kickstands any more, not once you're an adult. Their very nature as machines is violated when they're stationary. Even motionless, they seem to fly. Mine does, anyway. There is something about bicycles, good bicycles, that stirs in us something old, that flight for freedom. This blog is an exploration of exactly that.