The thing I can't figure out about graveyards is whether they are the most natural thing ever, or the most unnatural thing ever (because obviously there is no way they could be any thing in between). I suppose on the one hand, if we consider primitive man, death must have been a commonplace occurrence, but so was superstition and misunderstanding, so perhaps it is only natural that they would want to save the corpse of someone they knew who had died, and preserve it by hiding it beneath ground so predators couldn't desecrate the body. On the other hand, why would they make a plot of ground unusable in order to store a completely useless corpse inside? I'm not entirely sure of the origin of graveyards (and Google is way too far away for me to type it in) but they bother me. We all know we will never need any of those bodies again; we all know that the things that we loved about our loved ones who have died is not buried with their bodies, but gone off into whatever ether awaits us after death; we all know that we ourselves will die someday, and that our lifeless bodies won't care about whatever happens to it, and yet, graveyards continue to exist.
In all honesty, I know when my loved ones die that they will be buried, and I imagine I'll visit their graves, and I think it's good to have a place to feel you can still connect with those who have died and speak to them in some way, but that doesn't change the way I feel. Personally, I don't want to be laid out in a row with other empty bodies that I never knew, in perfect grids so as to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and to pack as many bodies into a small space as possible. I don't feel like that will help me rest in any way, or help my family not miss me as much. Ideally, my body can be used in some way that benefits someone after I die, and then it would be nice if it could be buried under some old tree on the imaginary property that I own, quietly laid to rest like an old junker parked in a grove of trees, with a sapling growing up through the engine until it becomes a part of the landscape.
H8 #2: Cash
I feel like money, while necessary, was the beginning of the end for civilization (although civilization didn't really exist yet) as it introduced the concepts of riches, poorness, hoarding, and the sorts of things that lead to basically every conflict in the history of the world. I understand the need for money, and I accept the fact that I live in a world where it is impossible to exist without it, but can't we all move on past using cash? Last week I went to pay a citation (infraction: "tire requirements." Yeah, I hadn't ever heard of it either, and neither had any of the workers at City Hall when I paid the ticket) with Clayton, and figured it would be a
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| USELESS! |
Ignoring the fact that I had just paid a locksmith with a credit card the day before, and that he had run my card will sitting in the back of his van and instantly printed me out a receipt, I accepted the fact that I was dealing with local government, and trotted outside, Clayton in tow, to walk to the bank. The bank had a long line, and no walk up ATM, so Clayton and I had to walk through the drive thru ATM, walk back to City Hall, throw the money on the counter (after which Clayton picked it up, straightened it all out, and turned every bill upside down, backwards, both, or neither, because he loves being annoying). The lady wrote us up a receipt, stapled it to my ticket, and we continued on our merry way.
Really? Was any of that necessary? Why do we even need cash, except so we can be robbed or give it to hobos and those annoying kids that hold up their upside down batting helmets outside of the front doors of Wal-mart? Strippers? I'm sure we could work out some system where you press a, "TIP" button and some diode in front of you lights up so the stripper (I mean, exotic dancer) will know that you just tipped her, and instantly become very attracted to you (because, I mean, I know only suckers think that strippers actually like them, but they really do like me you know - I mean, they have to like someone sometime. How do you know it isn't me?). I suppose cash is good for those people who don't want their purchases tracked (that is, conspiracy nuts and people buying stuff illegally) but we could also work out a system of universal gift cards that could be exchanged in the same way cash is for those times when it's absolutely imperative that no one know what our money is being spent on. Cash has become an inconvenience, and I don't know many people who use it anymore.
And to those in charge down at City Hall, seriously, get it together. I feel relatively certain that just with the money I paid you for a made up crime last week, you could buy and set up a credit card machine and save everyone a lot of trouble. You won't though, because that requires actual work on your end, while if you do nothing it just causes extra work for everyone else.
H8 #1: Cell Phone Chargers
I'm pretty sure this one is obvious, and much like making a joke about airline food (wow, remember the days when there was still airline food to joke about? No? Me neither.) but seriously folks, let's get it together. I've owned four or five cell phones in my life time and every. single. one. has had a different charger, even those manufactured by the same company. "No big deal," you might be thinking, "why shouldn't they all have different chargers?" BECAUSE THAT'S STUPID. There is no reason that every cell phone couldn't be charged by the same type of charger, if we simply made a universal jack on each cell phone. Imagine if each phone (or mp3 player) had a different sized headphone jack, so you could only use one particular set of headphones for each device. That would be ridiculous and everyone would pitch a fit (and well they should). Motorola has seemingly gotten with the program, and at one point I was even able to charge both my phone and my bluetooth head piece on the same charger (that was before I left my bluetooth receiver lying in my sister's yard for a few weeks). I hate cell phone chargers because it's one of those cases where the fix is so simple, but we had to go out of our way in order to make things more difficult for everyone. Before you make the argument, "Oh, so should you be able to power your Xbox with a Playstation 3 power cord?" let me say that first of all, yes, you should, and secondly, cell phones are devices that are designed to be carried with you at all times, to all locations, and are NOT designed to actually make it through a day of active use. Now, not only do I need to carry my phone with me, but I need to carry a charger as well, to make sure I have a way to get some power into the odd parallelogram hole on the side of my phone. I HATE IT.
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| My point exactly. |
LV: Not Knowing What Time of Night it Is.
Being a diurnal creature, I tend to think of night in terms of the day. For example, I think of the darkness as following the setting of the sun, rather than accompanying the rising of the moon. Part of being outside during the day is that I, even if only subconsciously, always have a sense of what time of day it is. This is mostly due to the sun, but probably also because I'm used to certain things happening at certain times of day - birds chirping in the morning, increased traffic around 5 p.m., a temperature drop in the evening. However, there is this marvelous feeling that normally happens somewhere between 2:30 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. when all time stops and our world is replaced with a different, unearthly, shadow version of our world. It has to be that late because before then people are still up playing World of Warcraft and beating their wives, and after 5 people are getting up to go to work (and, for the truly dedicated, to beat their wives). In these few hours nothing seems to change or move and, whether I'm inside or outside at this time of night, I have no clue what time it is. It's a heavenly, magical hour that makes me feel as if I'm having a dream where I'm in my own neighborhood but everything is off in some small unseen way, and I'm the only person among all the houses and streets and yards and trees. Usually some distant horn will sound, or I'll trigger my own motion sensor light and terrify myself out of my imagined utopia, but the time between night and morning is unlike any other part of the day.
Saturday I got up at 4:30 a.m., worked for most of the day, drove an hour and a half with my wife and friend to see Clayton and go to a hockey game, drove an hour and a half back, played video games, watched movies, hung out and talked with my friend, and next thing I knew Margaret walked up behind me, after a night of sleep, to find me still awake and furiously writing on the back of an envelope at 6 o'clock on Sunday morning. One minute before she walked in and I would have guessed it was around 1:30 or 2 a.m. I love that, and I wish it could happen all the time.
