Rambling with Words

Saturday, September 21, 2002

To be seen or not be seen

The bus passed a car wash with the obligatory cute underdressed girls jumping up and down waving signs. I was looking ahead but they didn't stand out that much. When you are exposed like that it feels like you are all that people can see but from a vehicle you aren't that noticeable. You don't fill their whole field of vision. I've always felt that I was so noticeable and worried what people would think of me but I'm sure that few people pay that much attention and even those don't usually remember me. We are so self centered to think that we are what everyone notices. While it's nice to be noticed on occasion it's even better to realize that people don't really pay attention to every mistake we make.

I went to see "The Banger Sisters" with Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandan. The premise was silly and the outcome was predicatable but it was still a light weight enjoyable movie. The idea that we have to break out of what is expected of us and how we are expected to behave to do what we want to do and what makes us happy is something we do need to remember. I can't say that screwing everyone that comes along, as Goldie Hawn's character does, is the best way of doing this, but to quit wearing beige and have fun, as Susan Sarandan's character does is a good idea. I'm glad I went to the early showing so I didn't have to pay as much though. It's not a full price move value.

I also finished read "The Red Sky File" by Denise Vitola. It was good. It's set in the twenty first century when the environment is trashed and people are contaminated with every kind of contaminant and prisoners live in a hell of a swamp. The story follows District Marshall Ty Merrick and her partner LaRue as they investigate a strange death on a boat that brings supplies to the delta where the prisoners live in a swamp and survive by believing in every kind of magic and witchcraft.

The interesting twist is that the trashing of the environment is a result of draconian measures by leaders with unlimited power to combat the degradation of the environment. The boats of the River Patrol on the Black River were originally put there to make sure that no one harmed the river. It was the bureaucracy that developed that destroyed the environment with corruption and the killing of legal initiative. A side note was that areas were breaking away as they became anarchistic and took back their own lives.

This is the problem with activism that wants the government to make people do things. This government breeds bureaucracy that destroys money and freedom. It's such a temptation to ask the government to make people do what we want them to do but the same bureacracy will make us do what others want done. Look at Russia. The same government workers bled dry both the tsarist, communist and post communist societies.