The Epsilon Eridani Trail (You Have Died of Space Dysentery)

I don't know what this is. It's a half baked post of an even less thoroughly baked idea, which popped into my head, for some reason, as I was watching Pulp Fiction. I really don't know what I'm doing. But you know what, it doesn't matter, because let me remind you once again, THAT I'M AN INTERNET HUNDREDAIRE NOW!

"There are no final goodbyes on this earth"
-3, Dive

I can't really say goodbye to anyone. This is not a psychological block or some kind of metaphorical statement about conditions specific to my life. None of us really can.

We've reached the point, at least in the Western World anyway, where the only final goodbye is dying.

Until very recently, you very easily fall off the grid without trying. Change your phone number, change your address, move to a new city, and it may be very difficult for anyone from your past to get in touch. And back before the interstate and railroads and clipper ships it was a long time to get anywhere, and if you were to leave for the Oregon Territory or the New World or the Holy Land or from the Tigris-Euphrates Delta to the Cedar Forests of Lebanon to slay the monster Humbaba, you may never be coming back, and let's just hope you were literate so you could send letters or a cuneiform tablet. (And odds are, you probably weren't.) You could still say the kind of goodbye to someone who would potentially live on for many years, and it would be the last thing you ever said to them.

Now I can find someone on facebook or ask the Google Monster. I can Skype with people on the other side of the planet. I can send a text or an email to any of my friends and if they're remotely near civilization, they'll get it. I cannot comprehend actually saying a final goodbye to someone unless they are dying. (Or I guess also if I were dying, but with advances in modern medicine cancelled out by all the miscellaneous radiation I'm absorbing, the expected time of that happening should still be hovering around 2065.) Because I know I'll always have a change to get in touch with them somewhere down the road, even if our physical paths never cross again.

And soon (on a historical scale) we're going to have to start comprehending those big goodbyes again. Because we (and when I say "we" I mean "our great-grandchildren") will be going to space. And in space, everything is really far away. Let's say you're best friend, let's call him Chromicron to give him a future-y sounding name, is packing up his life into a nano-fiber suitcase and taking a new job doing some kind of future job on Mars. He's not coming back for a long time. Because of planetary orbits and the cost of fuel, intrasystem travel won't be cheap or feasible, even with new, much faster forms of propulsion. Light lag between the Earth and Mars is about three minutes, give or take a few minutes for their relative orbital positions. This means with the added communication lag time, instant messaging becomes like texting, texting becomes like email becomes like olde-timey email when we still all used dial-up and it would be reasonable to expect to get your.name@mainstreamemail.com without tacking on numbers at the end that would give Rain Man a run for his money.* (The scary thing is that I really can't even remember a time when everyone had dial-up. Yes, I remember having a dial-up connection in our house growing up, but by the time I understood what dial-up actually was, we already had DSL.)

And what when we leave the solar system? Once we travel fast enough to really start feeling relativity, or, to truly separate ourselves from everything we know, get cryogenically frozen so we don't waste half our lives in transit to Epsilon Eridani. (Revelation Space, anyone? Anyone??? You're really not missing much.) Your friend leaves for another system and you will never see him or her again, unless you follow suit by turning yourself into a popsicle as well and getting shot millions of miles in a little metal tube. (And don't leave me a comment saying "actually being cryogenically frozen is less like being turned into a popsicle and more like being turned into freeze-dried chili-mac," because nobody likes a wise-ass. Actually, do comment, it will make me feel good about myself.)

But right now, we're at a point where the world is small, but not small enough that we want to leave yet, what with all the warmth and life sustaining oxygen we have down here and all the gamma rays and ice chunks they have whizzing around up there. And that's why I'm bad at goodbyes: because I have no idea what they actually are. It's supposed be the last thing you ever say to someone, leave a lasting impression of what they mean to you and hopefully give them something by which to remember you. All I ever say is something lame like "keep rockin in the free world!"  A goodbye used to mean something. And it will mean something again. But for now I can never say goodbye because I'll never really need to.


*This was originally a much more edgy joke about autism. Even I apparently have limits.

I'm an Internet Hundredaire!

"Here comes success (Here comes success)
I'm gonna do the twist (I'm gonna do the twist)"
-Iggy Pop, Success


Yesterday I received $100 from Google. This is because I whore out some space on the Ozone Shack for advertisements. After almost two years, the Ozone Shack finally made some money. They won't pay you until you earn at least $100, and it took me this long just to make that much.

But let's face it. I made money. I made a hundred fuckin ducats. So that's about eighty dollars profit, since it's ten dollars a year to lease the domain name. That means I made about eighty-nine cents a post. Even a lost-generation Orwell was making more than that (adjusted for inflation, converted from pounds and/or francs).

It's ok, I'm like an indie band among blogs. Because I have actual readers, so it's not like one of those blogs that the only writer and possibly his mother reads. But at the same time, you're basically seeing me play in a small, garage-like venue (for example, a garage) and there are seven other people in the room and we're a pretty mediaphobic band so you have to work really friggin hard to find us so you can stand there with your can of PBR while we shoegaze and make almost-witty stage banter whilst wearing ironic t-shirts and making some obscure reference to a book that the frontman and only the frontman has read. That is the Ozone Shack, and it is now a profitable venture.

All I know is that I need to try a lot harder.

Ideolocator

"And I don't know where I went wrong
All I know now is I got to do something... right?"
-Streetlight Manifesto, We Are The Few


So I'm not sure if you've noticed (of course you didn't notice) but I've been posting even less frequently than my already lax posting habits normally allow. This is because I'm on a magical quest of introspection and self discovery and doing something I call "dynamic meditation" where I basically pace around my room and point at the walls and sometimes yell. (This is how I think.) Why do I need to find myself? Because on June 10th at approximately 8:20 PM I yelled "I AM A FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ALBATROSS, AND I AM BEING CONFINED IN A CAGE; A CAGE OF THE MIND, A CAGE OF THE SPIRIT, A CAGE OF THE SOUL!!!"

I have about three and a half weeks to finish finding myself. Most people have to do this in their late 30's and only if they have the time and money to go to Morocco or Tibet and could at least be loosely classified as an artist. I can't even buy booze yet, I consider going to Panda Express a night on the town, and my "art" consists mostly of saying "shit man, that's so sci-fi."

But being a metaphorical caged albatross isn't a good enough explanation for you, is it? I think the albatross explanation is a better one, because the concrete reasons have to do with a) depression and b) the only thing I've had to deal with that sucks more than depression, which is running. Both make you not want to get out of bed and both make you eat a lot of random things at random times. Oh, and I'm also lactose intolerant now. Not sure how that one happened.

But basically I ran so hard that I broke my back in two (2) places and then after doing rehab for a few months realized that I liked hanging out with Scully and Mulder better than I liked hanging out with my real friends. But I just thought I was anemic, and when I went into student health for a blood test they also tested my white blood cell count and cortisol levels and all kinds of other crazy things that sometimes show up in your blood, including blood parasites, and even tested me for something that sounds like the exact opposite of diabetes where eating any kind of simple sugar makes your blood sugar immediately crash. Then they told me I was probably depressed but of course I know better, depression is just a made-up disease by the media and the government and the man, so I hung out with Scully and Mulder some more until I realized there was nothing actually physically wrong with me except for excessive scar tissue in my foot and lower back and a disc that's herniated by about 6 millimeters. But really this all has to do with running, and more importantly recalibrating my brain so that I can be good again. Because having two stress fractures and a herniated disc does even more mental damage than it does physical damage.

So I opted out of living in the mountains and growing a beard and pooping among God's creatures for the summer, and instead am working part time for corporate America (I am legally obligated not to say anything bad about the company I work for) and spending lots of time reexamining myself and, of course, running.

The obvious solution, which I'm doing my darndest to avoid, would be antidepressants. Antidepressants are the American Dream finally come to fruition; it's happiness in a pill. And not only do we have happiness in a pill, we have skinny in a pill, boner in a pill, not-baby in a pill, even hair in a pill. Our forefathers (well, not my forefathers, but somebody's forefathers) crossed this great continent with nothing but willpower and dysentery so that one day, we could take a pill that made all our perceived troubles (but not our actual troubles) melt away and rock-solid erections that lasted up to four hours. They also envisioned places where you could buy funnel cake and then puke it up thirty minutes later without having an eating disorder.

But yes, I am rediscovering who I am as a runner and hoping that will help me realize more about myself as a human. Actually, it's become sort of the opposite. I'm learning about myself and contemplating the human condition and the soul and the mind and, ok, who am I kidding, I'm running to the point where fatigue and mild dehydration fries my brain.

Here are some things I have realized so far:

• I'm edgy. I got a gritty reboot, which makes me edgy.
• The Virgin Mary cries tears of blood every time you read a book by Deepak Chopra.
• Most people think in clichés, and some can only think in clichés. But like my grandma always said, "three in the bushellbasket is worth five on the lampstand!" Why get a college education when you know that little gem?
• The mind is probably some sort of interface mechanism between the soul and the body. I have identified seven factors (and counting) which determine the nature of one's soul. They are too complex and too nascent in my mind at this point in time to explain in bullet point form.
• Being lactose intolerant is way more fun than being lactose tolerant. Instead just having one kind of milk to choose from, you have soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk ,and even hemp milk. And don't even get me started on all the varieties of fake ice creams I can experiment with.
• Loving something or someone means that you are willing to completely destroy yourself for it. By this definition, running may be the only thing I've actually ever loved.
• This means that Billy Joel was wrong when he said he never loved his first wife, Whatserface.
• If you have lost all faith in humanity, then, and only then, can you justify believing in an ideological absolute.

This whole expedited process of finding myself has taken me through some phases rather quickly. A few weeks ago, as I was preparing finals, I had the introspective (and sleep-deprived) phase where I looked around me and saw nothing but empty people sucking the conformist corporate teet. Then as my blood became less blood-based and more caffeine-based I had that manic, crazy, thousand thoughts a second won't shut up won't somebody please listen to me about how our generation needs courage phase. Then I got edgy, real edgy, got irreverent, got a tad hedonistic. There followed a brief twelve hours of disassociation from reality. Then I had the nihilistic phase, which came in two parts, the first where I realized that my essence at the atomic level is nothing but bullshit and that everything I had realized recently was void because of my own character flaws. Then I had the drone phase, where about four days passed and I don't think I thought anything. Then I had a rekindling of my faith in humanity and the importance of interpersonal interaction, and now I've been two days in the austerity phase, where I just get things done and live simply. It's been a little over a month. I may not find the true essence of myself, if that even exists, but I will probably find something.

But now that I think about it, happiness in a pill isn't exactly the American Dream. Finding yourself in 6-8 weeks, that's the American Dream. And I can't decide if that makes me spiritually bankrupt or just one helluva self-actualizing man.

Let's say neither, for now.

Nature vs. Legislature

It was thought that God was dead, but now it seems He is guilty of patent infringement.

I really wish this were science fiction, but with a world getting more sci-fi by the minute, something like this was bound to happen. Under US patent law, you (and I don't actually mean you, because let's face it, you're reading the Ozone Shack which means you're probably not in a lab doing groundbreaking research) can patent a molecule. Not a means of synthesizing it or extracting it or distilling it or purifying it or packaging it or distributing it or administering it, but actually the molecule itself. You (again, probably not you) have to discover it and prove you discovered it, so it's not like you're all of a sudden going to have to start paying royalties on oxygen every time you breathe. (Or ozone, for that matter, which would spell the end for my stint in the blogosphere.)

But, if a team at Dow Chemicals discovers a new compound, let's call it hexyl-methyl-buggerol, that occurs naturally in the excrement of giraffes, and they patent it, any distributor would have to pay royalties for selling products that used hexyl-methyl-buggerol, even if it were synthesized in a lab. The patent law essentially treats the scientist who was first able to determine the molecular structure of a compound like it would the inventor of a device or piece of technology. And unlike the telephone or the jet engine or fiber-optics, you don't have to actually figure out how to make the molecule to get the patent. You just have to show that you discovered hexyl-methyl-buggerol and our bloated and undiscerning U.S. patent system will grant you the rights to control any use of hexyl-methyl-buggerol.

This is unnerving not just because someone can claim royalties for something they didn't technically invent, but because it implies that a person "invented" a molecule. It doesn't matter what theological or philosophical ideas you subscribe to, or even if you don't subscribe to any, you know there's something wrong with this. In any possible way of conceiving the universe, the structure of molecule itself was created or designed or came into being because of something  - be it God or laws of quantum mechanics or karmic cause effect or even the evil demiurge Yaldobaoth - something other than the conscious ideas of its discoverer. From a scientific standpoint it is unethical because assigns a human "inventor" to something that already existed or could form in nature, and from a religious standpoint it could be seen as borderline blasphemy, taking credit for something made by the creator. And it is for these above reasons that I find it dystopian that a molecule - and again, not a means of synthesizing it - can be patented.

Now, you may be thinking: "but Nate, it I'm not religious, nor do I have any ethical qualms about this because it provides incentive for scientific progress and supports capitalism. Why should I be terrified by this?"

Because someone has a patent on your DNA, that's why!

For the first few centuries of the patent concept's lifetime, living organisms were considered off-limits as being "products of nature." Then biotech came along and blurred the lines as to what was a product of nature and what was a product of human inventiveness. In 1988 a cancer-resistant mouse was patented, and many disease-resistant strains of crops followed suit. Once we mapped the entire human genome, essentially a collection of very large molecules, it was inevitable that scientists pharmaceutical companies would take the opportunity to stake their clam to specific genes. (And this is not to imply at all that they are nefarious Bond villains trying to control the world by controlling our genes, it's just a logical step to take given legal and scientific parameters.) So right now, the rights to about 10% of your genome are owned by a specific person or corporation. (Hey man, corporations are people too!)

Now obviously, they won't be charging a 3% royalty fee every time that gene replicates itself. But they can claim ownership over any gene therapy drugs that involve that section of your DNA. There are also implications for genetic testing, and basically anything else that involves the human genome. And as the speed we can sequence genomes increases exponentially, it is now possible to patent the entire genome of an organism. An example is the neem tree in India, whose genome is now the intellectual property of the W.R. Grace company. The tree itself may still be a "product of nature," but from a legal perspective, someone owns the information on how to make it.

The good news is that the supreme court has overturned many of these "gene patents," so hopefully all of our DNA will once become public domain. But if that is to happen, we need to realize that adhering to an absolute ideology will only lead us astray. We need discernment and the courage to stop before we get to the ideological extreme, in this case, that it is in the best interest of a capitalist society that every bit of intellectual property can be patented. Because if we did get there, the world would be very sci-fi indeed.

Edible/Audible, Abbreviations Edition

A special installment of the Edible/Audible series, a series where we find out what would happen if your favorite band was a food. This one is dedicated to bands that are commonly referred to by their initials. And yes, I realize I recycled one from a previous installment. What are you going to do about it?

CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival) – Pizza Bagel Bites

Although it may seem more fitting to link CCR with some kind of southern (or faux-southern) food, they’re a band based on single servings that generally will go over well any time. Eat a whole album of these and you may not find it to be as appealing.

BTO (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) - Tortilla Chips

Something generic and non-nutritive, and although it is not a requirement for a party, it helps to have them somewhere in the background.

BOC (Blue Oyster Cult) – Potato Skins with Cheese and Bacon

Does it make sense? No. Is it awesome? Yes!

RHCP (Red Hot Chili Peppers) - Microwavable Burrito
Within their career, within a decade, within an album, and even within a song, they can alternate between riffs that are boiling-lava hot and remaining cool and unaffected by the chaos surrounding them. They are a composite of many textures, ingredients, and even of cultures, and most notably, are something that could only come out of LA. Also, fits nicely into a tube sock.

ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) - Mac n' Cheese

Accessible, reminds you of a simpler time, but can still sustain you well through your adult life.

DMB (Dave Matthews Band) - Chili with Okra

Almost sounds like generic Americana music, but there's something definitely off about the texture...

GNR (Guns n’ Roses) – Grape Nuts

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but this was once one of the most popular foods in America.

RATM (Rage Against the Machine) – A triple shot of fair-trade espresso

Politically and socially conscious, still gets you wired as hell

STP (Stone Temple Pilots) – Carob

Tries really hard to taste like the real thing, but just can’t.

NIN (Nine Inch Nails) - Cytomax

Based on principles of organic chemistry, but tastes like it's spent its entire existence in a laboratory and has never seen a tree, or even blue sky. Definitely takes some time to get used to, and with some people, it just never takes.

Something To Chew On

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

-Rush, Freewill

We all like to think that we're different, that we're smarter than the average person in whatever demographic we may inhabit, that we're going to make it, that our own individual experience is somehow unique - you act like you're the first person to fall in love, the first person to give birth, the first person to have terminal cancer, the first person to think your car is a spaceship, the first person to be blown away that one time you discovered Rush - we believe we're going to beat the system, we believe we're the universe owes it to us to dispense equal and fair justice that's just a little biased towards ourselves because we all know that we're at its center, we think that history is just one big setup that culminates in Right Now, that it has all lead up to this point, that our dreams mean something, that our actions mean something, that we are more important than just the atoms we're made of and the space they take up, that we are independent, rational, free-thinking, logical children of the enlightenment, endowed with the gift of sapience to solve the Rubik's Cube that is the universe, when really, we might have to come to terms with the fact that we're just being influenced by quantum mechanics and instincts we don't understand.

I Can't Believe it's not Science!

"One more name on the slate, one less minute to wait

Too busy to see two versions of me

One more bottle is dry, one less reason to try"

-Phish, Two Versions of Me

The advertisements for gay.com have stopped showing up. At least I think so. I use Google Adsense for advertising, which basically uses keywords found on the website to generate advertisements that they think readers will be interested in. So apparently, the Google Monster thought that all of my readers were gay, because sometimes there would be a large banner ad that would read "gay.com. Are you?" Apparently the Ozone Shack has become more hetero, or at least the keywords have.

The ads actually have little to do with the content of the site. The most common ones seem to be for actual ozone producing systems and air ionizers.

But lately I have been noticing an advertisement that consists of a link that says "Quantum Jumping." This links to a website that is selling a bogus way to self actualize. The premise is that since quantum theory implies an infinite number of parallel universes, there are perfect versions of you existing out there somewhere. In fact, the site says "In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives." You can somehow commune with these other versions of you by meditating, because I guess the human mind somehow has the power to jump across universes. So basically, this combines a poor understanding of eastern religions with straight up misunderstandings about science to create a product that can conveniently be sold in an sixteen DVD box set that will enable you to be a brilliant painter, successful businessman, world-class athlete, and even recover from cancer.

Now, since I live a very boring life, I sometimes take solace in the fact that if Dr. Schroedinger is correct, there are an infinite many versions of me doing infinitely many cool things in an infinite number of parallel universes, while I lay on the couch popping ibuprofen like they're tic tacs watching season 2 of the X-Files. (The truth is out there and it's wearing a 90's power suit.) And yes, sometimes I wish my consciousness could jump, Tibetan yogi-style, to one of these hypothetical cooler, more interesting places. (And no, in case you were wondering, Tibetan yogi-style is not at all close to as dirty as it sounds.) And when I look back on some juncture where I probably did the wrong thing, I don't wish that I had chosen one different scenario had unfolded. I wish that multiple, if not infinite, scenarios had unfolded. But we're probably still just stuck with one universe, and it is very, very boring.

But let's assume that you could "jump" to another parallel universe. The Quantum Jumping website states that a new "bubble universe" is created every time you make a decision. This is not exactly how it works. If my understanding of quantum mechanics is correct it's more like whenever an electron moves differently or a subatomic particle decays that reality bifurcates. So, I'm far less likely to jump to a universe where I'm touring with Mötley Crüe and using one of Elvis' teeth as a guitar pick than I am to jump to a universe that is exactly the same, and the ratio of carbon-14 to nitrogen in my desk is still still the same, but they are distributed ever so slightly differently.

I think the program is more focused on meditating and visualizing a more perfect version of yourself, which is essentially what Tibetan yogis have been doing for centuries (when they're not doing it Tibetan yogi-style.) The site actually says that it is "science fiction [becoming] science," and I think that the quote by Max Planck may be enough to fool a lot of Americans into buying this. I mean, we bought those fucking abdominal stimulation belts. Maybe it will catch on. But so did the Atkins diet and Hare Krishna and chain letters.

I feel like I'm on a really existential version of a Mississippi gambling boat. But it's alright, because I brought my epistemological derringer.

Science!

Hello Technorati

Here's my claim code:


VS6UDDPQ4WNA