And to think that I saw it on Matlock Street

I saw quiet the interesting event take place yesterday as I drove to my dad's office. As I approached an intersection, in the dedicated right turn lane, a little fender bender happened. It was nothing major, the pickup in the rear thought the car in the front should keep going through the red light and tail ended him a little. From what I could tell there was no major damage.

So a black guy get out of the truck in back and a white guy gets out of the car in front and they begin to exchange insurance information as just about any two young preppy males of my age group would, by shoving each other. Of course this isn't anything unusual to me and with the light being green and all I start to drive past them.

Right as I get next to them (I was in the lane immediately adjacent to them) the white guy decides that shoving isn't cutting it for him and proceeds to punch the black man. And, just like Pringles slogan says, once he popped (him on in the face) he just couldn't stop. The black guy tried quiet useless to punch the white guy back, but was immediately overwhelmed and the white guy proceeded to beat him to the ground between the cars, then stood over him and continued to beat down on this black guy.

At this point I'm just barely through the intersection. I can tell this white guy isn't gonna stop till the black guy is dead in all likelihood and drive down to the next light to pull a U-turn and get back there, hopefully with enough time to scare the white guy away with the black guy still breathing. By the time I get there, the white guy has already sped off in his car, and the black guy is getting helped by several (I saw at least 10) store employees who had run out to his defense.

Behold the fruit of a generation of idiots. In all honesty, I wouldn't have been surprised at all the see the white guy be one of the people who live across the hall from me at my Baptist College. They're always going on swearing sprees about how horrible this school is and how they hate everyone it. Maybe if their parents had loved them enough to discipline them. Anyone know the charges the white guy would be facing (other than a bogus hate crime charge that the news would try to stick to him of course)?

And as a side note? I think Grandma and I are the only people who semi-regularly update their blogs. I wonder what's going on with the rest of my family. Daniel knows I can't very well just call them ;)

And to think that I saw it on Matlock Street

Hey remember that story?

You know it was a story I was doing back in March about a dream I had? Well I hadn't forgotten about it, just didn't have time to finish it. I'm gonna do that this week (or at least try). So if you want you can refresh your memories with

Part 1

and

Part 2

Part 3 is posted here with some changes and a little extra at the end. I basically stopped it before I was ready to stop it last time, and took it on to the point that I wished to end this section. Also fixed were spelling mistakes (the ones I noticed a least) and some continuity/word changes to make it flow better with the rest of the story.

So, without further delay, Part 3:

I stepped out onto the harsh, unforgiving area surrounding the mountain and immediately felt the unforgiving wind attack. Relentlessly, the wind tore at my skin and bit at my eyes. Raising my arms to shield my face, I approached the mountain and began to search for a path over it. Its jagged terrain seemed equally inhospitable no matter where I looked. The mountain slopes seemed to have been forcefully discharged from the Earth at a daunting angle as if it had been rejected by the ground that once harbored it. Though a part of me desired to find a less severe path, the longer I spent on the scorched ground, the less my makeshift shoes protected me from the severe heat. Already I had to constantly swap my weight from foot to foot to keep either from burning.

Driven only by my determination to obey the lamb, I stepped onto the mountain, grasped a rough outcropping and began to scale what seemed to be as good as a place as any. My efforts were quickly rewarded as I climbed above the wisps of dust and left the heat of that unforgiving ground behind. My victory was short lived, however, as the intensity of the wind rapidly increased. Each inch I climbed was a painful battle that taxed my weary muscles against the downward gusts that threatened to tear me away from the mountainside and fling me into the air.
Slowly, painfully, I dragged myself up the mountainside. After what seemed to be an eternity, I found myself past the extreme slope at the base of the mountain and before a great, winding path as unwelcoming and devoid of life as the base of the mountain. I found a spot relatively free of wind and lay gasping for breath and assuaging my weary muscles.

Having regained some strength, I stood and peered over the wall I had just scaled expecting to find a great distance between myself and the ground below. To my dismay, I found that I had only come 10 yards at most from the mountain base. Dumbfounded, I began to struggle along the craggy path before me as I silently wept.
Each step I took along the path was fraught with pain and danger as my foot slid across the uneven ground. The shoes that had protected me against the heat now threatened to end my life as they leaked what little water they still contained. Though I tried to step carefully, the ground seemed to be ever changing. What I thought was flat ground actually tilted to the side. What I thought was slanted was actually a jagged point that nipped at the soles of my feet. Each stumbled threatened to send me tumbling all the way to the base of the mountain. No matter how I stepped, my feet would either find a sharp point or slide into a pinching outcropping.

As I stubbornly pressed on, I finally began to grown thirsty and hungry. I searched for some gathering of water that could have pooled from some previous rain, but despite the dark clouds that loomed above, I felt that the mountain had never been touched by the gentle kiss of rain. I wearily plodded onward hopping that the end of this mountain would reveal an area like the field I had left. It was then that I became keenly aware of time’s relentless march. Where before I was certain that many days had passed while I wondered in that beautiful field without ever growing tired, I now needed frequently increasing breaks.

Abruptly, I found myself at the precipice of an intimidating cliff. Gazing out, I saw an endless, flat expanse. Like the mountain, the expanse was devoid of life. Long dead trees were speckled amidst a sea of blood red sand. At once, I felt both a surge of hope at finding such plentiful wood to burn and a sinking despair that I could find no way down this cliff nor a way back up burdened with wood.

For a moment, it seemed as if the wind’s relentless torrent against my skin abated and instead wisped around me gently as if trying to caress my face or wipe the sweat from my brow. In that moment, the wind seemed to carry a fragrance that made my heart leap. I felt as if I should know this smell, like the scent of a grandfather or grandmother, but the moment was fleeting and left me feeling bitter and abandoned.
Resolved to build a fire, I began to descend the wall of the cliff. Each handhold tore and pinched at my skin, bit and gnawed at my toes, jarred my knees and scraped my face. I had hardly begun my descent when a gust of wind lifted me up and flung me into the air.

Time held its breath for me as for one perilous moment gravity failed to assert its hold over me. Then slowly, like many tiny hands reaching up and grasping at my clothes, I began to fall. Quicker, faster the ground rushed up at me. In vain, I grasped for the wall, but no matter how I moved, it remained just beyond my grasp. With one final desperate lunge, I reached for the wall. Despite all odds, my hand managed to find a hold and my body slammed into cliff face with stunning speed that caused my head to strike a rock jutting out from the wall. The world spun as I hopelessly struggled to regain my senses.

I managed to clear my head just in time to realize that when struck my head, I released my grip and was presently falling head first toward the sandy expanse. Before I had time to try anything, I hit the ground, and the world exploded into stars, then immediately sunk into a black, soundless darkness.

Hey remember that story?

The end of an era

Last night two things of sorrow note took place. If you don't like long political rhetoric, you might as well skip on to the second thing, it's down a little ways and the paragraph is started out bold. The first, and more widely known, was that America elected it's first black president. The sorrow of this situation is not that he's black, but that his election was due largely to the fact that he was black. I can think of no greater racism than to vote for someone based on the color of their skin, regardless of how that swings your vote. What makes this even more sad is that Obama is not particularly impressive as an individual. The things he was saying and the stances he was making would not have won him the democrat ticket let alone the presidency had he been white.

About a month ago I made two speculations. The first was that I was quiet convinced that Obama would only loose if the democrat vote was split by a surge of write ins for Hilary. The second was that the greatest support for Obama would come not from higher age groups (indeed those are split more or less 50-50 with most of Senator Obama's votes coming from minority or African-American based populaces), but rather from those who are in the 18-21 age range. Those people who 4 years ago were 14-17 and have for the past four years seen nothing but South Park, Family Guy, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart representations of President Bush. For four years this age demographic's mind has been utterly poisoned with the presentation of a man (and by extension political party) that is impossibly dumb. So it is no surprise that this age range DID vote overwhelming in favor of Obama. To be perfelect blunt, the democrat party could have nominated a block of cheese and gotten an equally strong turn out.

I now make three suppositions.
1) Obama on the whole is a political pansy. (That's not the supposition part, that's a statement of fact based on looking at his political career, a completely lackluster record until his campaign for presidency when people suddenly began to sing his praise despite any evidence to support such praise.) Therefore I will be so bold to venture that the true power of the next 4-8 years will not be the president but rather the party leader in Congress.
2) Due largely to the efforts of the current administration to control the weak economy left by Clinton and the his foolish law that made it illegal for a bank to not give a loan based on credit history, Obama's term in office will be fondly remembered as a good time for America, but the person who inherits the Presidency from him will be faced with a second even more disastrous economic crisis than we are currently in.
3) For the next several elections it will be impossible for a non-minority to gain Presidency. Now, I must stress again that I have no issue with an African-American, Latino, or Asian being President, my qualm lies in them becoming President because of their ethnicity, furthermore I am equally opposed to a Caucasian becoming President only because his opponent was not Caucasian.

However, none of this is why it is the end of an era for me. For the second thing of sorrow that occurred last night was the death of Michael Crichton known for such books as "Jurassic Park, Lost World, Sphere, Prey, Congo, et el" and movies by the same title as well as "Twister". Michael Crichton has been a long time favored author of mine whose works I have long read and collected.

While it is certainly sorrowful that his life (of 66 years) came to an end last night due to cancer. The truly sad thing for me is his undeniably hostile (or at best indifferent) view of God. Indeed, it's hard to find a science fiction write who believes in God. It's almost a statement of pure contradiction in fact! After all, every sci fi writer believes on some level that man is inherently good and has the power within himself for self-improvement; that the notion of a high (non-alien) being is completely ludicrous. So it was that last night, to my sorrow, Michael Crichton joined the ranks of my other adored sci fi writers such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov in coming to know the pure horror of the wrath of God poured out on those who reject Christ's purifying work on our behalf.

The end of an era