It's the second day of school, and I'm beginning to understand that sometimes you drop a class not because you dislike the class, but because the class is at an extremely inconvenient time.

I like Copy Editing so far, after only one class, but I do not like the four hour wait after Copy Editing ends and TV Production begins.  I'm certainly not dropping my TV Editing class.  Copy Editing is more of a print journalism class and while its concepts are useful, and I wanted to get a detailed grasp on them, I must confess that my patience will not allow for a daily extended wait on hard benches in a loud corridor.

I tried to make the wait less interminable by visiting a nearby cafe and working on my laptop and going through my textbooks, but that only lasted for about an hour before I couldn't abide sitting there any longer.  Over the course of a semester, that would get expensive.

No.  Logic suggests that I needs must drop my Copy Editing class.  My worry is that I will not be able to find something to replace it.  All of the classes I want to take are full.  I can only hope that someone drops a class I want making room for me.

Either way, my decision has been made.  Say goodbye to Copy Editing.  What would be juicy is if I could replace that class with something like After Effects.

I sit in a corridor on a bench.  I am between classes.  There is a giant gap in the middle of my day to which I must become accustomed.  I have already had my first class of the day, Copy Editing, followed by a pizza buffet at Double Dave's.

Now, I fill the time with projects and homework.  Today is one of my days for editing the Austin Pets Alive! No-Kill Handbill.  I have reading to accomplish for Thursday.  As I sit on this bench, and time progresses, I become more unpleasantly aware of how comfortable my chair is at home.  I will ahve to find someplace else to sit besides this bench. 

But I am enjoying the people watching as I sit in the hallway.  Students bustle by, intent on their direction, and quite often misdirection.

I have already done my meandering and have found my classrooms and know where I'm supposed to be and when I'm supposed to be there.  Now, I need to wander around and find the secret comfy spots.  Every school has them.  Some place with a nice chair and decent wi-fi and if I'm lucky, a nice view.  Because this bench ain't cutting it.  Seriously.  The bench is bad.

I rode a mechanical bull last night when I went to a place called Rebel's Honky Tonk for an Austin Pets Alive! event. 

I must have been in the bar for about fifteen minutes before my eye landed on the contraption and determined what it was.  I'd never ridden one before but had seen them in enough movies that I was not to be deterred when the attendant cranked that thing up and it started bucking and spinning.

I went right over there before I knew that I was going and volunteered to test it out.  A signed waiver about not suing for injuries later, and a quick lesson in how it all worked, and I was riding that bull and holding on for dear life, all very much aware that everyone could see me flailing about and clinging on for all I was worth.

I can be very determined.  Superheroic in many aspects.  I don't have a real time for how long I was on that thing, but I do know that I had a lot of fun.  I know he never cranked it up past half speed, so I know I've got a long ways to go before I'm a skilled rodeo rider, but I had myself a blast and there's no way I'm not going back, even though my mom's neighbor told me about the accident he had on a mechanical bull ride.  It sounded pretty bad landing on top of his head, but he admitted to being drunk.  I was completely sober and kind of just slipped off the side and couldn't right myself when the beast lurched dramatically, so the attendant brought it to a stop.

All I know, is that if someone says, "Let's go play pool," I'm going to reply with, "I think they have a pool table at Rebel's Honky Tonk."  I don't actually know if they have a pool table there, since I don't remember looking for one, but what kind of bar doesn't have a pool table?  Especially if they have a mechanical bull.  And if they don't, well, I'll simply say, "Oh.  They don't have a pool table.  Hey, but look at this.  I'll only be a moment or ten.  YeeeHAAA!!!"

My apartment complex could have burned down just moments ago had I not decided to walk my dogs a little earlier than their usual twilight stroll.  And what through my wondering ears did I hear, but a fire alarm, and no one near.

So I flew to the door to see what was the matter.  Nobody was home.
Except two litle catter.  Anyway.  I called my apartment complex toute suite, and then 911.

My apartment manager arrived first.  She opened the door and ran into the kitchen to turn off the stove.  It's a good thing there wasn't a backdraft.  She ran in there like she was Xena, but she came out coughing from the smoke and had to sit down on the stairs.

The firemen arrived moments later.  I got heralded as a hero, patted on the back by a passing neighbor.  And I swooped back to my apartment to write the story.

Clark Kent, I want to be just like you.

http://www.history.com/shows/stan-lees-superhumans

Stan Lee's new show Superhumans on the History Channel is incredible.  The premise is that there are people in the world with extraordinary abilities to the extent that they're superhuman in many respects.

With just minor spoiler, the first episode showed a guy that could pass ridiculous amounts of electricity through his body without being sizzled like a normal person.  I have my own theory about how that's possible, but without a medical degree and a dissecting table, I don't think he'll let me test my theory.  I suppose I really wouldn't need to dissect him to confirm some bio-molecular dampening mechanism related to salt and fat levels in his blood-stream and perhaps even a peculiar metallic or crystal mineral imbalance.  Perhaps he has a high quartz diet and somehow the piezo-electric qualities of his blood-stream help to direct electron flow efficiently enough that he doesn't get fried.

The show also had a super-strong guy and a blind guy that could see the world with his ears.  I had heard of people with bat-like world sonar who can see by listening to the refractive qualities of sound around them with tongue clicks and small sounds.  I've tried it myself with blindfolds practicing to be Daredevil, but there's only so much you can stub your toe before you turn on the lights.

I'm interested in seeing what other mutants he uncovers in what appears to be a mutant registration act in progress.  I'm certainly not showing my powers on TV.

    I'm driven out of bed at 2:22 am with thoughts racing through my head.  I hear voices crying out, "Why would a benevolent god allow bad things to happen?"
    My mind becomes a whirlwind of emotions seeing within my computer a vast multi-dimensional landscape with characters looking to me as their creator, and I am flooded with guilt and understanding, for I am their creator, their god, yet I cannot create their stories without the drama that must entertain others within my realm of existence.
    The hero must have obstacles to overcome and causes to champion.  I think about my own life and the challenges that I have faced, and the villains I have encountered.  I think about the emotions I have had to overcome and I wonder what entertainment my God and His peers have required of me to make my life story.  What dramas were written into my life and what dramas did I create myself?  What dramas are yet to come?
    To look at the world, I have to see that there are people living realities I cannot comprehend.  People in societies that are abused by rampant violence, disease and starvation.  People immobilized by horrid accidents and living under the thumb of oppressive families.  People who have lost children and loved ones to kidnapping or murder.  And on the opposite extreme, there are people making more money every day than I've made in my entire life.   People in nuclear families with perfect holidays at Christmas and Thanksgiving, who go on perfect vacations to places I've never been.
    Yet all of us have stories that consume us.  Stories from whence we get our triumphs and learn our lessons.  Stories that make us cry and laugh and bemoan our existences.  And we are each the hero and the anti-hero of our own stories.  And do we each have a super-entity watching our stories and rooting for us?  And does that super-entity place obstacles in our paths for the sake of drama?  We would have to be as blind to the whys and wherefores of an extra-dimensional entity living above us as any avatar in any video game that wondered about the level of reality above itself (should it be programmed with a level of artificial intelligence that allowed for such abstract thought).
    I would like to think of myself as a benevolent creator.  Yet, when I look at the history of my writings, I have written some less than benevolent stories that did not have happy endings, some stories that never ended and that never got finished, some horrible villains and some dreadful circumstances.  It is not inconceivable that in some frame of reality these characters exist in a way that allows them freedom of thought along and within the trajectory of the plots I have written for them, incapable as they are of altering their destinies. And I wonder, do they cry out asking why I have allowed their circumstances to occur?
    This is my food for thought while I eat Lucky Charms in the middle of the night and get ready to go back to bed.  I must have the courage to create my characters and write their plots and tell my stories and let my dramas unfold.  It's my responsibility to make the drama and the villains and build the triumphs and prod the hero to success.
    Oh but I want to be benevolent.  And I wonder, does God have this dilemma?
 

I've begun to start thinking of the Internet as a sort of human version of whale-speak.

Consider that whales communicate over vast distances, communicating information such as who they are, what they're doing, and where they are, broadcasting that information to all of any whale within hearing distance in the vast reverberating oceans of the world.  They may be telling stories, for all we know, and we're missing epic tales because we don't actually speak whale.  Nonetheless, humans have learned some very interesting things about whalespeak.

So, with the myriad web-sites and on-line social sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, humans are immediately broadcasting their random thoughts and locations, sights and smells to everyone
within communication range of the Internet.

It's our form of whale speak.  It may not have the elegance of whalesong, but it has the relevance.  The transmissions the whales are sending may even be far richer than our transmissions, for they do have a sensory range beyond ours and they could find things interesting about the world that we hardly see on a regular basis, so their transmissions could contain thoughts and concepts outside our capability to grasp. 

But, we can each of us reach out into the world and instantly transmit our thoughts and concepts and pictures and details about our immediate environments to anyone in the world who can reach out and experience the Internet. 

There are a lot of whales out their speaking and they can listen to who they want.  It's the same on the Internet.  Billions of voices speaking, and we can listen to who we want.

Granted, there are a lot of people in the unfortunate position of not being able to access the Internet due to financial, regional, or social circumstances and perhaps they are blocked by a security wall the size of China.  The first Great Wall of China's marketing has always been that you can see it from space.  Aliens could fly up to the planet and clearly see that somebody was saying to somebody:  STAY OUT

Now, whether or not aliens have landed here and whales have violated the Temporal Prime Directive by boarding Captain James T. Kirk's stolen Klingon vessel is irrelevant. 

But now there is a "Great Wall of China II."  This one could be marketed:  You Can't See It, But It's There.

I think technology levels go up when communication levels reach whalespeak.  Technologically speaking, at some point in the past decade, we reached whalespeak.

It's at times beautiful.  It's at times fun.  It's very often just babble.  At times, it's a complete waste of time and at times it's a Mega God Send.

"Oh, a pod of orca swimming down the straits, you say?  OKay, we'll swim around that."