jdw. musings

    Immortality comes at what cost? If you pay for internet and a blog, it's pretty cheap nowadays. These words will always be floating around in the digital world, owned by Google. If enough people see these words, advertisers will circle like vultures, round and round until they can get you with an amazingly curated advertisement for trendy men's all natural soap.  Hell, they got me. I love my Dr. Squatch all natural men's soap.    Our hubris creates a lust to live forever. That is why religion exists; to account for the fact that someday we all must die, despite the fact that we want to live forever.  We’ve carved names and faces with blood into stone for thousands of years, and those whispers from the void still talk to us.   These digital words will live in cyberspace for an eternity....or until they unplug the internet 

That's a wrap. 2020 stabbed us in the throat, picked us back up, and stabbed us through the chest. 2020 RKO'd our asses out of nowhere. And then to top it all off, we as a Nation embarrassed ourselves while the entire world watched. The Cynic inside says, "When the going gets bad, we'll all eat each other."  Driving past tent cities in downtown Los Angeles brings out that Cynic in me. All hail America, the mightiest Empire in the World, where brother kills brother, Cain Eats Abel. We give homeless people living in piss and squalor McDoubles instead of money to make ourselves feel better.  If Covid did anything, it forced us to look at the ugliest parts of ourselves: the selfish, sociopathic blueprint that this country was designed to be. We proved that we don't care. Cities like Los Angeles bring people closer together in population density, but strip people of all empathy toward our neighbors.  Our saving grace is our ability to adapt. I wish I could say that...

Manifest Destiny. The Oregon Trail. Oops! You've died of dysentery! Nice. There's nothing quite like a role playing game where it's commonplace to shit yourself to death.  Very realistic, and great for children!  Elementary school computer class usually bore with it an ample amount of time to play " The Oregon Trail,"  a game as old as time, and a great way for a teacher to squeeze in a midday nap as we prepared our wagons for departure. The real fun would begin when it came time to name our pioneers after one another, and then of course heckle and cackle at whoever would be the first settler to contract yellow fever and perish under the digital sun while trailblazing out West. Draconic? Yes. Fun?  Of course !      The drive from Peoria, Illinois to Los Angeles is roughly a 30 or so hour drive, and about 1,600 miles. Plenty of time to gradually lose sanity amongst the rolling hills and jagged, snow covered cliff peaks. The drive carves throug...

    The time has come. Godot has arrived, and the Iceman has cameth and goneth. I never thought that I would start a Blog. Even now, when I spent hours trying to understand this godforsaken website, I still cringe on the inside. Will I turn into one of those self help websites that teach you how to breathe correctly with 30 different guides on posture and technique? Or maybe I'll be a travel guide, where I'll show you how great my life is (with pictures) in order to prove to you how cultured and refined I am. Endless possibilities.           Years of scoffing at reviews of local breweries and vegan soap menageries had turned me off to creating an online journal for all (or none) to see. But then I graduated from college right in the middle of a mass plague, and into a virtually non-existent economy; so, naturally my stance on Blogs has lightened up a bit. What's the point of trying to be a writer if I neglect to share all of my thoughts and o...