TD/HBI 2

Today's the day. The second Thought of the Day/Half Baked Idea comes at ya, and it's fueled by some incredible new musical scores. Bassnectar for beats, Boombox for grooves. Each of these DJ's seems to have found the perfect beat per second ration..these tracks just melt into your soul.

Just bought a shirt online. I'd been in the market for a new sleeveless T-shirt because I'm a placidly stupid American who has the time to concern himself with his sleeveless T-shirt selection. Further, I've got to worry not only about the shirts, but I need multiples because I'll wear them out climbing on rocks for days on end, and just for fun. Jesus. We've certainly made life easier for ourselves, us humans.

Think about it. We started out as a species out in the wild, just another animal on the steppe. Naked, homeless, and still millennia removed from the invention of the Internet, the beast that allows me to talk in your general direction via keyboard. Damn that information superhighway, I'm sure you're thinking.

So we're out with all the animals, equally at their mercy as to the cold winds blowing through the trees. See those nuts and berries in those trees? Good. Now go eat them. Think you can sling a rock at that bird and kill it? Whip it, Scotty. Dude! You nailed it! Nice job. Now rip off it's feathers and beak, char it over a fire, and let's eat it. Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving today, we sit around in our living rooms, eat massive calorie loads, and watch the Cowboys beat the Lions on our gigantic plasma screen TV's that were made in China and then shipped halfway across the world. I'm not trying to say this is a bad thing, but it sure is a far cry from where we've come, and it sure is pretty cushy.

I think that fact that life today has become so easy is what makes me bummed out. There's so little challenge in our basic day to day.

Normally I don't make impulse buys for the reason that doing so makes me feel like just that American.

But then I remember that I bought that shirt to go climbing. Climbing: my salvation and the one thing that feels really fucking hard. I'm not out killing bears, but I can be scared or pummeled and bloodied pretty easily clinging to edges of Granite. I can be reminded that I'm just an animal and am nothing special and that this easy, flaccid life of shopping, the Internet and eventual death by Diabetes is for the birds.

And that takes a little of the sting off my new threads, and the self loathing they bring me.