If Only I Had a Mission

You all know my life is super boring, right? Well then it shouldn't come as much of a shock to you that I frequently have dreams about TV shows or movies (or at least the characters from them) instead of things related to my actual life. Sometimes I appear in these dreams as myself, sometimes I will see things from the perspective of one of the characters, other times I will actually take the place of one of the characters. I know that's really fucking weird, and quite pathetic, but I've gotten used to that. Since we're watching Sarah Connor now, that's what I dreamed about last night. I remember little about it, as with most of my dreams. What I do remember is that I took the place of Cameron who, if you don't know, is a reprogrammed terminator. The sad part is, that is actually very appropriate. I do probably relate to her more than anyone else on the show, or most other shows, or most other people for that matter. Everyone on the show is always treating her like shit, and I'm always going "Why the fuck is everyone so mean to Cameron?!" Well the answer (obviously) is that it's because she's just a machine, so who cares? There is this ongoing joke on the show about people, who don't know what she is, thinking she has some kind of social disorder because she's pretending to be human and she's not very good at it. The things is though, she acts a lot like I do most of the time. In fact, one of my old friends once told me I was like a machine. I think he meant it as a joke, but he was right. At least Cameron has a mission to focus on, instead of stressing about the fact that people don't think of her as a human. 

"Are you happy?" "I'm a machine. I can't be happy." 

Post-Apocalyptic Hobbies

Tonight my dad and I were watching Sarah Connor Chronicles and, in one of the scenes with Derek, my dad said "I wonder where he found the time to get all the tattoos?" If you don't know the show, Derek is from the future; you know, after the machines destroy everything and the whole planet is basically a huge wasteland. The point is, there probably aren't many tattoo studios around in his time. Well, as I told my dad, it makes perfect sense to me. If I were in his position probably one of the first things I would do is learn to do my own tattoos. I mean think about it; when they aren't fighting for their lives, they're just sitting around in tunnels with nothing to do to occupy their time. It's not like they can watch TV or check Facebook. What better way to keep yourself busy than practicing your tattooing skills? Plus, you could practice as much as you want and who really cares? So you tattoo your arm and it comes out looking all shitty. That arm is probably going to be blown halfway across the state the next day anyway.

"What Can I Say? I Want to Do Everything. Is That Too Much to Ask?"

Today, my mom and I were talking about career possibilities. This always, inevitably, leads to much frustration and confusion. You see, she is offering me all of these, seemingly, great options for different things I could do, and I have no idea how to make her understand why none of them would work for me. I have put hours upon hours of thought into this, and I can't come up with a solution for this problem. The problem being that I get so fucking bored with everything! Nearly every job on the planet has at least some tiny aspect that I find appealing; that's why I have considered (and in several cases actually worked toward) having so many different jobs. The thing is, after a very short time, those things that appealed to me fade into the background and I find myself completely hating the job. What I really want is to do everything. I want to be everything. I need my life to make a difference, to make things better, to change the world. I need to have a creative outlet, to create, to make something beautiful. I need to have something physical to do, to use my strength, to feel powerful. I need to use my mind, to think things through, to analyze things. I don't think there is any career out there that would let me do all of those things, and  I can't stand having a job that doesn't (at least not for any length of time). What am I supposed to do about that?

".....I figure, once I settle on one thing I've excluded everything else. There are so many things I'd like to be." 

Ms. Nobody 2: Still Nobody

Yesterday I said I would write a new post about the idea that each of our choices creates an alternate universe, since some people (Dad!) don't remember my post about it from my old blog. To be fair, I'm sure practically no one remembers that post and most of you probably never even saw it in the first place. 

Anyway, it was inspired by a movie called Mr. Nobody, which I highly recommend. The basis of the movie is that we see all of the different paths one guy's life could take depending on the choices he makes. They showed it in such a way that all of these different lives seem to be happening at once though. 

This made me start to wonder about the possibility of another version of myself who made better decisions than I have, and is therefore living a better life than I am. Then I started thinking about how even the most mundane decision have the potential to cause enormous changes in our lives. When my dad and I were talking about this yesterday, I used the example of the decision of what to eat for breakfast. I said that if you are trying to decide whether to eat cereal or pancakes (both vegan, of course) that you would create two universes, one in which you eat pancakes and one in which you eat cereal. He said "I think it would probably have to be bigger decisions than that to create a whole new universe." But if you really think about it, that decision could have the potential to change everything for you. 

Say it's the weekend and you are planning to go grocery shopping that day. You wake up and you think "Should I have pancakes or cereal for breakfast before I leave?" Well, pancakes would take longer to make; so that would put you, lets say, ten minutes later than if you had the cereal? So you leave the house ten minutes later and because of that you happen to reach a particular intersection at the very moment that someone in another car takes his eyes off the road, and you are killed in a crash. Or we could say that, because you were ten minutes later, you end up being at the grocery store at the same time as someone who you fall madly in love and spend the rest of your life with, or someone who winds up offering you your dream job, or someone who becomes your closest friend, etc. But then, you could think of it the other way and leaving the house ten minutes earlier could put you in the position to die horribly, or to change your life for the better. 

The point here is, even the most mundane choices could potentially be the most important decisions we ever make, and we have no way of knowing whether they are, or whether we made the right ones, or whether there is some alternate version of us out there who made the opposite choice and is far better off because of it. Every time I leave my house (or choose not to leave my house, for that matter) I can't help but wonder what opportunities I may have missed, or created, by leaving (or not leaving) precisely when I did. I know that was long and rambling and kind of insane. Sorry.   

Only 12 hours left to vote  for me in PETA's Sexiest Vegan Next Door Contest. Then you won't have to hear any more about it :) 

Parallel Universes

My dad and I are now watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles. So far I have still only seen the first season, since I never did get my copy of the second season to play. Now my dad is watching it though, so we ordered another copy of the second season to replace the shitty one I bought.

Anyway, I warned him before he started watching it that it was a good show, but he had to ignore the absurd number of paradoxes. We started talking about how the only way the show would work is if you assume it is based on the multiverse theory of time travel. So every time someone comes back to change the past they are simply creating a new timeline in which things will happen differently than the future they came from. Otherwise the whole show is just a big ball of nonsense.

Well, that discussion lead to a discussion about the idea that every choice we make creates a new universe in which we made the opposite choice of the one we made in this universe (did that sentence actually make sense?). I mentioned to him that a long time ago, on my old blog, I wrote a post about that idea. He said "I don't remember that. You should write another one." So I think for tomorrow's post I will write about that. Stay tuned for crazy, complicated, theoretical physics as interpreted by someone who knows next to nothing about physics!

Only 36 hours left to vote :) 

Efficiency

This may seem like a contradiction to those of you who know me, and how much of my time I waste (at least by the average person's standards) on a daily basis, but I have this thing about efficiency. I need everything I do to be done in the most efficient way possible. Even when I'm doing stupid, unnecessary things I need to do them in the most time-effective manner. This means that I am a compulsive multi-tasker. At this very moment, I have seven tabs open. I am writing this post, checking my email, signing petitions, looking at Facebook, checking Pinterest (which requires multiple tabs) and searching for an image to use for this post. I am this way about everything in my life though. I drive fast. I walk fast. When I go shopping, I go straight to the thing I need, get it, and get back out. I am extremely picky about what I eat, above and beyond just being vegan, because I need to feel like there is nothing in my food that is not doing something good for my body. Every calorie needs to pull it's weight. When I work out I do every move more times, or with more intensity, or faster, or longer, or with more weight, or with more stretch, than is actually required. I need to feel like every move counts. On the other hand, back when I used to drink from time to time, I always drank the strongest thing available. I didn't see any need to have ten mixed drinks when I could take a shot or two of 151 and be good to go.

"My god, girl, look at your eyes. What have you been drinking, gasoline?"

*I'm not 100% sure that is the image that goes with that line, but it was the closest I could find. 

**In case you were confused, I wanted to use that line because 151 tastes like gasoline. 

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You Got Me Again, Powers That Be

I recently discovered this game store that sells a ton of used DVDs and I have been going there regularly looking for movies and series to watch. A few weeks ago, I found season one of Terminator; The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I didn't really expect to like it, because I never got into the Terminator movies, but it was cheap and Summer Glau is in it so I thought I'd give it a try. Well, once I started watching it, I got really into it and watched the whole season in a few days. Then I go online trying to find the second season and there are apparently not many out there. Plus most of the ones I could find were crazy expensive. Finally I found one on Amazon for a fairly reasonable price and spent a week waiting around for it to get here. It finally came today and I was super excited until I looked at it. First off, I noticed that it was in the weirdest, and most illogical DVD case I have ever see. The DVDs just stack right on top of each other, no dividers. Then I look on the front and notice a sticker which reads "Lane County Library". I thought "That can't be a good sign." Sure enough, when I looked at the disks, every one was scratched to shit. I decided to give them a shot anyway; sometimes they will fool you like that. Nope! The first disk (which was the least scratched) froze up once, and then later just stopped completely. Awesome. Also, the part where it absolutely refuses to go any further is this really intense scene where you know something crazy is about to happen and now how will I know what was going to happen?!

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