streaming consciousness…

Updates from January, 2008 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  hardie karges 11:20 am on January 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: flight, international, travel ( 14 ), US Customs   

  You Can’t Fight US Customs 

  The Customs guys in Houston had a little table set up on the ramp to the airplane for the international flight. I’ve never seen anything like that, so ignore it. They flag me over. I’m Mr. Profile, by the way. They have a picture of what the typical bad guy looks like; it’s a picture of me. Hey, can I help it if I’ve got an eccentric flair for fashion? I’ve got carry-on luggage, so immediately I’m suspect. Under US law, if you’re carrying more than $10,000 in ‘monetary instruments’, then you gotta’ report it. No big deal; I know all that. I travel all the time; it’s a way of life. I deal with Customs officials all the time; it’s a way of business. I even do my own Customs brokering, so know the rap. They think I’m trying to be a smart-ass. They want to see all my money and such so we do that, counting every penny. Back then, ATM’s weren’t so popular, so I had traveler’s checks, plenty of them, since I buy handicrafts. It all added up to about $9,300 or so, well under the limit, or so I thought. Let’s wrap this up and get on with our lives. But no, the guy with the badge is getting excited. He leaves and comes back a few minutes later, telling me to follow him on to the plane. Like a good citizen, I obey. We go into the cockpit, where he informs me he wants to ‘know what that bulge in my pants is’. I shit you not. I had to pull down my pants for some pervert with a badge while two pilots and a flight attendant looked on. I guess know I know why it’s called a ‘cockpit’.

   

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  hardie karges 11:34 am on January 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backpacking, foreign countries, time ( 6 ), travel ( 14 )   

  Turning 50: Years, Countries, Jobs 

  To be alone in a sea of strange faces is not only natural, not only not dreadful, it’s heavenly, relying on the basic goodness of mankind, unlearning the violence inherent from our fathers’ mistakes.  Still the best part of travel is coming home to the nest, complete with mother and son, and shitting in it.  Sometimes I don’t need to travel; I just need to BE without direction or schedule, an extra in the movie with no lines to read.  I need no extra lines on my face to show my age, like a giant redwood lying shattered on the forest floor cut full girth across the grain of resistance, with no quarter-sawed comfy little beds and all their fibers lying smoothly between their teeth.  Fibers one and all had their lives cut short, perpendicularly open-ended ready for anything, large or small, objets d’art or mansions in the sky.  I need contrast, the constant zigzag between poles, both north and south.  The World’s Oldest Backpacker (WOB) hits 50 (countries, years old, states of mind) with no regrets and unrepentant.  Someone asked, “How long you been travelling?”  Thirty years and counting…. Turning fifty was just like old times, alone and lonely, abandoned by my friends, walking the streets of London without an umbrella or a prayer.  The rain hovers around me like weak soup, reminding me of why my ancestors left so long ago.  I find solace in a pasty pie and a pint, and I’m glad for it.  All that’s behind me now, older but wiser.
   
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  hardie karges 11:30 am on January 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: entertainment ( 3 ), tourism ( 4 ), travel ( 14 )   

  Brave New World of Tourism 

  Tourism is the great modern gold rush, linking past and present, rich and poor, traditional and modern, in a gradual melting pot of cult and culture.  The modern rich get their entertainment by viewing the past as expressed by poor traditional peoples.  The only problem is that it puts itself out of business.  If successful it changes the very thing that drew tourists in the first place.  This is the new colonialism, tourist colonies and sunny beaches, Interzone girls and forty inch screens.  The brave new world is a chicken shit travesty, a burlesque of the real world, dancing girls included.  Entertainment is everything now, the real thing itself, not just what ‘holds us’ between the real things.  

   

   

   
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  hardie karges 11:22 pm on January 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Earth ( 3 ), infinity ( 8 ), life ( 33 )   

  The Possibilities of Life 

  This is the Blue Planet, bathed in oxygen, a fire smoldering under control, not explosive enough to self-destruct, just oxidize and slowly turn to rust in the solid parts, slowly turn to life in the warm wet zones along rivers between thighs. This is it. Don’t look for more of us ‘out there’. It’s a pipe dream. However many planets there are out there, there’s one in that many chances of finding civilized life like ours. We’re it. Blue-green algae, yeah sure, there’s probably more somewhere. There’s probably no reason to stock up on cyanobacteria for that cryogenic tour. ‘Intelligent life’, though, that’s a different trip. First of all, you’ve got to realize that if humans go extinct here on Earth, then they probably wouldn’t come back again. Ever. Okay, I don’t really know that, infinity being a bit unpredictable, but I suspect it’s true. Platonic Forms are wishful thinking, anthropomorphism in its idealistic form. Think dinosaurs might make a comeback some day? Don’t bet on it. Second, intelligent life in any other circumstance, whether time or space, would not necessarily look like us. Is an ape really any smarter than a bear? Isn’t the possibility equally great that they might produce some mutant offspring with grossly oversized head that might one day outsmart all the others and rule the world? They themselves are an evolutionary improvement over their dog-like ancestors and can already walk on their hind legs to boot. Their trained dancing numbers even show those psychotic qualities so intrinsic to the master race.