What am I doing? I hear this a lot, given that, you know.. I don't have a job and all that.
It's a little frightening and a bit disappointing to realize how much people confuse identity and self-worth and all that with one's job, especially once one has worked in the hive mind-esque confines of a corporation. We haven't evolved much in the past several thousand years; we're still looking to subdivide everyone into tribes, except these tribes have nothing to do with territory and blood relations, which might actually make sense. These tribes are entirely based on what sort of mindless repetitive tasks you're willing to perform and spend all your time thinking about every day.
It's also a little disheartening to realize how much YOU'VE bought into the whole "I am my job" bullshit, especially when you realize how much you've missed out on in life as a result.
Being out of the rat race for the first time in probably 10 or 11 years has given me time to think about what I really want and what's actually important to me. You'd think this would be an easy thing to figure out, but you have to also consider how much cultural brainwashing as well as knee-jerk reactions to said cultural brainwashing there is sitting smugly on top of whatever it is you really do want out of life.
So what do I want? What's really important to me, after all the "I shoulds" and "I musts" have faded away?
The answer: creativity, and service to the world. I want to be learning something new all the time. I want to feel that my existence has meant something to others.
And how do I propose to do these? I think I've finally hit on a solution, and it's been taking up most of my waking time.
I'm currently studying a whole truckload of internet-and-computer-related stuff, namely PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XHTML, Python, and CSS (for the moment), because my eventual goal is to do freelance programming and web design.
If I can pull this off, it solves everything. I'll be able to support myself, but I won't have to sign my life away to some company that'll chain me to one particular location, tell me when I have to get up, when I can eat, when I need to go to bed, and force me to deal with people who have already given up on life for 8+ hours a day. I'll have the freedom to actually DO volunteer projets around the world, or to make music, write, and/or learn more of the arcane, delightfully binary, and human-interaction-free programming stuff I've been in love with since I was eight.
And, if the unthinkable happens, and I actually decide I want to settle down with someone later in life (not likely, given my current love of freedom, and provided, of course, anyone would even be willing to do so, ha), I'll have enough skills and experience built up by that time to get a nice, cushy, $100K+ job somewhere as a database administrator or something.
I finally finished Snow Crash, and before my free time turned into me sitting in front of my laptop with a disheveled semi-circle of books surrounding me, I was playing FFX religiously. Both of these reinspired me in terms of my computer-philia, for reasons I'll explain in some other post (must get back to work).
But, I don't know... I think this is a viable option, and probably better for me in terms of my basic makeup than anything I've decided to do in, oh, I don't know.. the past 13 or 14 years.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
jesus christ this week has been insane
Hmm, let's see. This week, despite having a cold/flu/whatever that was bad enough to drive me to see a doctor, I have:
Essentially, I drove Nur to the airport on Monday so she could go to Utah to be with her estranged husband. She was supposed to give me her apartment key, so I could give it to her friend, who was going to take two of her cats. If she did (and I'm almost positive she didn't), she waited until we were all massively frustrated at the obtuse postmodern nightmare that is JFK International Airport, and Lauren and I were desperately in need of a restroom. Thus, if she did give me her key, it was invariably lost in the generalized airport chaos.
Fortunately, I will not have to commit burglary in order to save her two adorable four-month-old kitties from starvation and/or dehydration. Nur did send the key to Sam, so he'll be taking things from there. I need to help him find someone to take the cats, since he apparently can't. :/
In terms of other subjects, NYC is... not so gret akshually. I'm sure it's fantastic if: #1 you arrive there with someone who knows the city like the back of their hand, or #2 you have extremely detailed maps that show you which way every one-way street is, and so forth. As it was, our main objective was to find our friend Cat, and, barring that, to get food. We never achieved the former, and the latter took us four hours.
And I suppose I could say that another thing I've learned (as recently as... well, now) is that not only did I have a DXM problem years ago, but I'm also enzyme-deficient. I took 30 mg of it (the recommended dose, believe it or not) two hours ago and I am definitely kind of zwalped. According to the FAQ, this shouldn't happen.
- driven to NYC for the first time ever to drop off a friend at the airport (I've been to the city twice before, but either with family or with a huge field trip group)
- answered a three-year-long question, albeit in a disappointing manner (not saying any more about this on here, sorry)
- discovered that NYC is... not quite my cup of tea
Essentially, I drove Nur to the airport on Monday so she could go to Utah to be with her estranged husband. She was supposed to give me her apartment key, so I could give it to her friend, who was going to take two of her cats. If she did (and I'm almost positive she didn't), she waited until we were all massively frustrated at the obtuse postmodern nightmare that is JFK International Airport, and Lauren and I were desperately in need of a restroom. Thus, if she did give me her key, it was invariably lost in the generalized airport chaos.
Fortunately, I will not have to commit burglary in order to save her two adorable four-month-old kitties from starvation and/or dehydration. Nur did send the key to Sam, so he'll be taking things from there. I need to help him find someone to take the cats, since he apparently can't. :/
In terms of other subjects, NYC is... not so gret akshually. I'm sure it's fantastic if: #1 you arrive there with someone who knows the city like the back of their hand, or #2 you have extremely detailed maps that show you which way every one-way street is, and so forth. As it was, our main objective was to find our friend Cat, and, barring that, to get food. We never achieved the former, and the latter took us four hours.
And I suppose I could say that another thing I've learned (as recently as... well, now) is that not only did I have a DXM problem years ago, but I'm also enzyme-deficient. I took 30 mg of it (the recommended dose, believe it or not) two hours ago and I am definitely kind of zwalped. According to the FAQ, this shouldn't happen.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
the 60-day aspartame experiment
My dad refuses to drink regular soda at all. Not surprisingly, if you know my father, he views any sort of modern health news (particularly that meat and dairy products are, in fact, bad for you) as complete rubbish. Thus it is going to be an enormous, titanic struggle to get him to even consider the fact that the aspartame in diet soda may in fact be quite toxic.
I was reading http://www.dorway.com, though, and a lot of the evidence there makes a frightening degree of sense. I still get anxiety attacks (though see last post as well about this... ), chest pains, and heart palpitations despite having quit caffeine, and there's always the matter of my occasionally rather disturbing short-term memory issues. I figured the latter was due to DXM, even though I've had these issues since way before I ever ingested that stuff.
Moreover, I wonder if some of the actually somewhat unusual side effects I used to get from DXM (serotonin syndrome, for one) were not in fact caused more by the effects of the aspartame I would consume in vast quantities. Aside from being converted at temperatures greater than 86 degrees F (or 30 degrees C) to methanol, aspartame is also converted in vivo to aspartic acid, also known as aspartate.
DXM works on a vast number of neuronal receptors, including but not limited to sigma opioid (function is largely unknown), PCP2 (dopamine blockade, AKA when you come off DXM addiction you're subjecting yourself to the equivalent of cocaine withdrawal), and serotonin receptors, , but its primary means of action is through blockade of NMDA receptors. Let's flesh out the acronym: N-Methyl D-Aspartate. DXM blocks these receptors.
In other words... DXM is something of an antidote (albeit with horrible side effects) to aspartame. It kind of makes sense. I started drinking diet sodas when I was 14 or 15, and also began having all sorts of weird psychological issues which I attributed, probably at least partially accurately, to the situation I was living in. However, when the situation ended, some of the issues remained. It's not too far-fetched to imagine that I may have picked up my DXM habit in a bizarre attempt to self-medicate my apparent aspartame poisoning.
NMDA receptors are named thusly because they show a higher affinity for NMDA, a synthetic substance, than for glutamate. Glutamate is present endogenously, however, and so NMDA receptors could also be referred to as glutamate receptors. The glutamatergic system is involved with excitatory (stimulating) responses, while its counterpart is the GABAergic system, involved with inhibitory responses.
This is a strange, strange world we live in; we drink poison every day, and try to counteract it with another poison. Hmm.
It's funny; I wrote in a personal journal once that my one of my biggest problems in life is that I feel as if the volume knob has been turned up to 11 on every possible stimulus. I think I've always been like this, from birth; as an infant, if anyone sneezed or made any sort of loud noise, I'd scream continuously. I've also mentioned having asthma as a child. Both the excess stimulation and the asthma can be linked directly back to an excess of glutamatergic responses, most likely made far worse by aspartame.
The site I mentioned above proposes an experiment: avoid all aspartame-containing products for 60 days straight, and compare your mental state at the end of the experiment to how things were at the beginning. If you notice a significant improvement, aspartame is the culprit.
I'm going to try this, starting tomorrow (today, really). If my anxiety attacks and heart issues have lessened by the end of 60 days, I'll have my answer.
I was reading http://www.dorway.com, though, and a lot of the evidence there makes a frightening degree of sense. I still get anxiety attacks (though see last post as well about this... ), chest pains, and heart palpitations despite having quit caffeine, and there's always the matter of my occasionally rather disturbing short-term memory issues. I figured the latter was due to DXM, even though I've had these issues since way before I ever ingested that stuff.
Moreover, I wonder if some of the actually somewhat unusual side effects I used to get from DXM (serotonin syndrome, for one) were not in fact caused more by the effects of the aspartame I would consume in vast quantities. Aside from being converted at temperatures greater than 86 degrees F (or 30 degrees C) to methanol, aspartame is also converted in vivo to aspartic acid, also known as aspartate.
DXM works on a vast number of neuronal receptors, including but not limited to sigma opioid (function is largely unknown), PCP2 (dopamine blockade, AKA when you come off DXM addiction you're subjecting yourself to the equivalent of cocaine withdrawal), and serotonin receptors, , but its primary means of action is through blockade of NMDA receptors. Let's flesh out the acronym: N-Methyl D-Aspartate. DXM blocks these receptors.
In other words... DXM is something of an antidote (albeit with horrible side effects) to aspartame. It kind of makes sense. I started drinking diet sodas when I was 14 or 15, and also began having all sorts of weird psychological issues which I attributed, probably at least partially accurately, to the situation I was living in. However, when the situation ended, some of the issues remained. It's not too far-fetched to imagine that I may have picked up my DXM habit in a bizarre attempt to self-medicate my apparent aspartame poisoning.
NMDA receptors are named thusly because they show a higher affinity for NMDA, a synthetic substance, than for glutamate. Glutamate is present endogenously, however, and so NMDA receptors could also be referred to as glutamate receptors. The glutamatergic system is involved with excitatory (stimulating) responses, while its counterpart is the GABAergic system, involved with inhibitory responses.
This is a strange, strange world we live in; we drink poison every day, and try to counteract it with another poison. Hmm.
It's funny; I wrote in a personal journal once that my one of my biggest problems in life is that I feel as if the volume knob has been turned up to 11 on every possible stimulus. I think I've always been like this, from birth; as an infant, if anyone sneezed or made any sort of loud noise, I'd scream continuously. I've also mentioned having asthma as a child. Both the excess stimulation and the asthma can be linked directly back to an excess of glutamatergic responses, most likely made far worse by aspartame.
The site I mentioned above proposes an experiment: avoid all aspartame-containing products for 60 days straight, and compare your mental state at the end of the experiment to how things were at the beginning. If you notice a significant improvement, aspartame is the culprit.
I'm going to try this, starting tomorrow (today, really). If my anxiety attacks and heart issues have lessened by the end of 60 days, I'll have my answer.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
not sure what to make of all this
I'm aware I've been really reclusive lately. It's nothing to do with anyone except me, so please don't worry. I'm having anxiety issues, but I'm not ingesting weird chemicals and having subsequent horrors. On the surface, everything is good, and it seems OkCupid may be coming through for me yet again. Enough on the latter subject. Back to the anxiety issues:
Warnings From World Leaders All Within 72 Hours
A Second 9/11
U.S. Is Funding Iranian Nuclear Program
So... yeah. Fear-mongering? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me. I've seen the whole "We're in for another terrorist attack! Remain loyal to your corporate-controlled government! Only STATE-OWNED media will give you the truth!" spiel before. Nothing ever happens.
On the other hand... I've had a seriously bad feeling for about a month now. I've learned to pay attention to these.
Part of my anxiety is the result of my finally processing and letting go of the past three years or so. In a nutshell, this time period, despite all the fun and nonsense and adventure, was, on a deeper level, about me facing my Jungian "shadow", as well as my past. And so I've been playing out this weird shadow puppet drama, with an improvised script and all my best and worst qualities out on display, because the only way you *can* face your shadow is to run out there and meet it head-on. You can sit at home and analyze it all you want, but until you actually get out there and deal with it in practice, you're not going to get anywhere.
At least that's how it is for me. But as a result, I've made a lot of mistakes, I've lost a lot of people and situations that were dear to me, and the resultant guilt was enough to propel me into my first and hopefully only foray into the delightful world of serious depression, which lasted from about January 2007 until April or May 2008.
But I've beaten that, too, and come out stronger, happier, and more independent. I've been increasingly more and more able to put it all behind me, to not get caught up in useless nostalgia for the good times, and to not get sacked by guilt and sadness over the bad times. "Letting go", though, is a difficult process, and it's not surprising it's caused me quite a bit of anxiety recently.
I don't feel, however, that this is the *only* reason behind my anxiety, though. I've had similar feelings before, though never like this, and... I don't know. Something feels very, very wrong.
My question is, though, what can we do? I'm already working on a (probably wildly unimportant) website aimed at bringing people together a la Facebook but minus the inherent divisiveness. If I think of anything else, I'll do that as well, but.. will it be enough, should something unthinkable happen?
If the economy collapses, will everyone I know and love be all right? And this is of course being well aware that the economy collapsing is a *pleasant* scenario compared to some of the other possibilities.
I'm stocking up on rice, beans, and canned vegetables. I suppose I should stock up on bottled water, as well.
Am I being completely paranoid? Probably. Is everything going to be okay? Possibly, though the current economic crisis is a very real and very powerful reminder that maybe things aren't all sweetness and light out there.
I just wish some sort of higher power would come down and give me even a hint of what's going to happen. I hate waiting for anything.
Warnings From World Leaders All Within 72 Hours
A Second 9/11
U.S. Is Funding Iranian Nuclear Program
So... yeah. Fear-mongering? Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me. I've seen the whole "We're in for another terrorist attack! Remain loyal to your corporate-controlled government! Only STATE-OWNED media will give you the truth!" spiel before. Nothing ever happens.
On the other hand... I've had a seriously bad feeling for about a month now. I've learned to pay attention to these.
Part of my anxiety is the result of my finally processing and letting go of the past three years or so. In a nutshell, this time period, despite all the fun and nonsense and adventure, was, on a deeper level, about me facing my Jungian "shadow", as well as my past. And so I've been playing out this weird shadow puppet drama, with an improvised script and all my best and worst qualities out on display, because the only way you *can* face your shadow is to run out there and meet it head-on. You can sit at home and analyze it all you want, but until you actually get out there and deal with it in practice, you're not going to get anywhere.
At least that's how it is for me. But as a result, I've made a lot of mistakes, I've lost a lot of people and situations that were dear to me, and the resultant guilt was enough to propel me into my first and hopefully only foray into the delightful world of serious depression, which lasted from about January 2007 until April or May 2008.
But I've beaten that, too, and come out stronger, happier, and more independent. I've been increasingly more and more able to put it all behind me, to not get caught up in useless nostalgia for the good times, and to not get sacked by guilt and sadness over the bad times. "Letting go", though, is a difficult process, and it's not surprising it's caused me quite a bit of anxiety recently.
I don't feel, however, that this is the *only* reason behind my anxiety, though. I've had similar feelings before, though never like this, and... I don't know. Something feels very, very wrong.
My question is, though, what can we do? I'm already working on a (probably wildly unimportant) website aimed at bringing people together a la Facebook but minus the inherent divisiveness. If I think of anything else, I'll do that as well, but.. will it be enough, should something unthinkable happen?
If the economy collapses, will everyone I know and love be all right? And this is of course being well aware that the economy collapsing is a *pleasant* scenario compared to some of the other possibilities.
I'm stocking up on rice, beans, and canned vegetables. I suppose I should stock up on bottled water, as well.
Am I being completely paranoid? Probably. Is everything going to be okay? Possibly, though the current economic crisis is a very real and very powerful reminder that maybe things aren't all sweetness and light out there.
I just wish some sort of higher power would come down and give me even a hint of what's going to happen. I hate waiting for anything.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
spontaneous parades, whee!
So tonight I went to an election night potluck dinner at White Clay, bringing thrice the normal amount of aloo gobhi with me (it was eaten entirely, hooray!).
A lot of THC was consumed, as was a lot of alcohol. This is important for later in the story.
Sometime around midnight, Steve Fox (who does not imbibe in the former intoxicant, btw) heard Obama jubilation coming from west of us. Shouting "Parade!", he led all 15-20 of us to the northern part of the UD campus, where we discovered a lot of people yelling and cheering and screaming.
Somehow, we wound up taking them all with us.
Over the course of the night, we wound up with somewhere between 300-600 people, all screaming at the top of their lungs, periodically stopping so that the original group of people could give speeches. Steve Fox gave a number of these as well, all very inspiring.
The solidarity was amazing; I've never seen or experienced anything like it. I do of course know that probably 90% or more of the people we somehow accumulated were only there to take part in a spontaneous parade. (I mean, seriously.. wouldn't you?)
Black of spirit and cynical as I am (I spent a good portion of the beginning of the parade thinking about how I could easily see how people get caught up in things like Nazism), though, something about tonight really warmed some as-yet-uncorroded part of my heart.
When we all started to head our separate ways, after the final speeches, the cops, who had been harassing us all night, cornered the organizers from the original group we met up with. They were wearing University of Delaware shirts and were far more obvious targets than any of us. As a group, we all converged on the cops.
"The cops would have harassed them for at least an hour or two if 200 people hadn't shown up in support," Jack said afterwards. He was probably right.
Intimidating the police.. yet another first of the night.
The really funny thing is... this all started because we were high as shit.
A lot of THC was consumed, as was a lot of alcohol. This is important for later in the story.
Sometime around midnight, Steve Fox (who does not imbibe in the former intoxicant, btw) heard Obama jubilation coming from west of us. Shouting "Parade!", he led all 15-20 of us to the northern part of the UD campus, where we discovered a lot of people yelling and cheering and screaming.
Somehow, we wound up taking them all with us.
Over the course of the night, we wound up with somewhere between 300-600 people, all screaming at the top of their lungs, periodically stopping so that the original group of people could give speeches. Steve Fox gave a number of these as well, all very inspiring.
The solidarity was amazing; I've never seen or experienced anything like it. I do of course know that probably 90% or more of the people we somehow accumulated were only there to take part in a spontaneous parade. (I mean, seriously.. wouldn't you?)
Black of spirit and cynical as I am (I spent a good portion of the beginning of the parade thinking about how I could easily see how people get caught up in things like Nazism), though, something about tonight really warmed some as-yet-uncorroded part of my heart.
When we all started to head our separate ways, after the final speeches, the cops, who had been harassing us all night, cornered the organizers from the original group we met up with. They were wearing University of Delaware shirts and were far more obvious targets than any of us. As a group, we all converged on the cops.
"The cops would have harassed them for at least an hour or two if 200 people hadn't shown up in support," Jack said afterwards. He was probably right.
Intimidating the police.. yet another first of the night.
The really funny thing is... this all started because we were high as shit.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
a non-personal post! part 2
This one has unfortunately been read by one of the whopping three people who ever read this blog. Well, two and a half, I guess, because John has read *a post* of this blog, yet hasn't read the rest. I guess the material here *is* a little dense. :D
The post below, however, is not. It's just weird.
I do want to perform this, however...
****
Looking for something to spice up those lazy Saturday afternoons?
(shows two people sitting in room looking bored)
Try new Maximum Strength Wonf!
(shot of person 1's hand sprinkling something out of a spice bottle, clearly marked "Maximum Strength WONF", into a drink)
(shot of person 1, looking at camera)
Person 1: It's guaranteed to liven things up!
(shows both people; person 2 takes sip of Wonf-laced drink)
(Person 2 immediately changes; his/her head is wrapped entirely in a towel, and he/she is gesticulating wildly)
Person 2: Ouuouooul! Ouuouuul! (wordless howling noise)
(person 1 winks)
(person 2 thrashes about even more frantically, continues wordless howling, begins knocking over furniture while person 1 looks on, pleased)
(shows closeup of Maximum Strength WONF bottle)
Narrator: Maximum Strength Wonf. It's refreshing.
Person 2 (1/2 body shot): OOOUOUUOUL!
The post below, however, is not. It's just weird.
I do want to perform this, however...
****
Looking for something to spice up those lazy Saturday afternoons?
(shows two people sitting in room looking bored)
Try new Maximum Strength Wonf!
(shot of person 1's hand sprinkling something out of a spice bottle, clearly marked "Maximum Strength WONF", into a drink)
(shot of person 1, looking at camera)
Person 1: It's guaranteed to liven things up!
(shows both people; person 2 takes sip of Wonf-laced drink)
(Person 2 immediately changes; his/her head is wrapped entirely in a towel, and he/she is gesticulating wildly)
Person 2: Ouuouooul! Ouuouuul! (wordless howling noise)
(person 1 winks)
(person 2 thrashes about even more frantically, continues wordless howling, begins knocking over furniture while person 1 looks on, pleased)
(shows closeup of Maximum Strength WONF bottle)
Narrator: Maximum Strength Wonf. It's refreshing.
Person 2 (1/2 body shot): OOOUOUUOUL!
a non-personal post! part 1
Well, this one's *sort of* non-personal, anyway. I don't know how to completely separate my mindset from what I write. What I've posted below was written while I was working at QS Pharma. It kind of shows you what working there was like.
****
MAN, 48, ARRESTED FOR THINKING OF A RED CAR INSTEAD OF A BLUE ONE
Thomas Knudson, a factory worker in Chicago, was carted off by authorities last night after the thought of a red car accidentally surfaced in his mind during a workplace discussion about blue cars.
Knudson claimed the rogue thought arose in his mind due to fatigue brought on by long working hours. "It's never happened like this before," Knudson explained. "I just couldn't think about what I was supposed to for a second."
"You can't have people's thoughts deviating from the norm like this," Knudson's supervisor, Anna Wydkoff, told Tribune reporters. "I'm sorry to see him go, he was a hard worker, but if he was that tired, he's burned out and needs to be eliminated anyway."
Knudson's wife agrees. "It's never okay to think thoughts not dictated to you by an outside source. Tom was wrong, and fully deserves his fate, but he seems to want to do the right thing here."
Knudson is scheduled to be vaporized in the "You Failed" chamber on Tuesday. Some, however, do not believe mere instantaneous execution is enough of a punishment for rogue thinkers.
"We need to figure out how to place people in a state where they're conscious yet do not consume any resources," Senate Leader Harold Whaup suggested. "This way, rather than people escaping from the horrors of their failures through the 'You Failed' chamber, we could instead place them into this state of undeath indefinitely and have them programmed to feel and think nothing but the most intense humiliation imaginable for the rest of eternity."
Rogue thought errors such as Knudson's have declined in frequency over the past few years, but kinesthetic errors have risen somewhat, primarily among the elderly, in whom illness and in some cases mere old age contribute to the inability to control one's movements enough to sync within +/- 0.5 seconds of everyone else.
Bertha Jenkins, 34, of Chicago, had this to say: "I know someday my body'll fail me and I'll fall outside specifications. I just have to try to delay that as long as possible." When told of Harold Whaup's plan, Bertha agreed. "Yes, when I do fail to meet the guidelines for thought and movement I really should be reminded of my utter inferiority for all eternity."
Scientists are currently trying to create robots physically incapable of falling outside thought and movement specifications; one's consciousness would simply be downloaded into these machines, making the need for our failure-prone organic bodies invalid.
But some have other ideas- allowed, of course, by specifications. Greg Watkins, another Chicago native, gave us his take on the replacement of human bodies with robots.
"I don't think that's right. The whole point of these specifications is for us to voluntarily give up our free will and even our individual molecular disparities, not to increase efficiency, but just because it's the right thing to do."
Thomas Knudson agrees, looking forward to his destruction in the "You Failed" chamber. "When we fail, like I did recently, it's a sign that on some probably unconscious or cellular level we don't accept the program anymore, and when that happens we need to be eliminated at the very least."
"Making us all robots would make us one with our programming. We're not worthy of that honor. We need to be able to fail so that we're eternally separate from our holy programming."
****
MAN, 48, ARRESTED FOR THINKING OF A RED CAR INSTEAD OF A BLUE ONE
Thomas Knudson, a factory worker in Chicago, was carted off by authorities last night after the thought of a red car accidentally surfaced in his mind during a workplace discussion about blue cars.
Knudson claimed the rogue thought arose in his mind due to fatigue brought on by long working hours. "It's never happened like this before," Knudson explained. "I just couldn't think about what I was supposed to for a second."
"You can't have people's thoughts deviating from the norm like this," Knudson's supervisor, Anna Wydkoff, told Tribune reporters. "I'm sorry to see him go, he was a hard worker, but if he was that tired, he's burned out and needs to be eliminated anyway."
Knudson's wife agrees. "It's never okay to think thoughts not dictated to you by an outside source. Tom was wrong, and fully deserves his fate, but he seems to want to do the right thing here."
Knudson is scheduled to be vaporized in the "You Failed" chamber on Tuesday. Some, however, do not believe mere instantaneous execution is enough of a punishment for rogue thinkers.
"We need to figure out how to place people in a state where they're conscious yet do not consume any resources," Senate Leader Harold Whaup suggested. "This way, rather than people escaping from the horrors of their failures through the 'You Failed' chamber, we could instead place them into this state of undeath indefinitely and have them programmed to feel and think nothing but the most intense humiliation imaginable for the rest of eternity."
Rogue thought errors such as Knudson's have declined in frequency over the past few years, but kinesthetic errors have risen somewhat, primarily among the elderly, in whom illness and in some cases mere old age contribute to the inability to control one's movements enough to sync within +/- 0.5 seconds of everyone else.
Bertha Jenkins, 34, of Chicago, had this to say: "I know someday my body'll fail me and I'll fall outside specifications. I just have to try to delay that as long as possible." When told of Harold Whaup's plan, Bertha agreed. "Yes, when I do fail to meet the guidelines for thought and movement I really should be reminded of my utter inferiority for all eternity."
Scientists are currently trying to create robots physically incapable of falling outside thought and movement specifications; one's consciousness would simply be downloaded into these machines, making the need for our failure-prone organic bodies invalid.
But some have other ideas- allowed, of course, by specifications. Greg Watkins, another Chicago native, gave us his take on the replacement of human bodies with robots.
"I don't think that's right. The whole point of these specifications is for us to voluntarily give up our free will and even our individual molecular disparities, not to increase efficiency, but just because it's the right thing to do."
Thomas Knudson agrees, looking forward to his destruction in the "You Failed" chamber. "When we fail, like I did recently, it's a sign that on some probably unconscious or cellular level we don't accept the program anymore, and when that happens we need to be eliminated at the very least."
"Making us all robots would make us one with our programming. We're not worthy of that honor. We need to be able to fail so that we're eternally separate from our holy programming."
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