Can I Ride?

I could write a real sexy blog post that would surely have my readers hungry for the storytelling of literally anyone else. In fact, I SHOULD. Nothing whets my whistle like disturbing the thoughts and dreams of people I consider my friends. Sometimes I have to remind everyone that knows me of the fact that I am a fucking weirdo. I am a grown-up, in professional clothing, with medical insurance and a retirement plan, who does in fact believe that dinosaurs never went extinct, they anthropomorphized into the lizard overlords who currently run the world.

Truth be told, I have always been weird, in the head mostly, but I found my own way to blend into society. For example, I always knew I was a rebellious hellion who would forge her own path. Which is why my good Christian parents could not prevent me joining the naughty boy garbage people gang, also known as the enlisted military. I have been with this group of scallywags for twenty-one years. Turns out, they will keep you around no matter how demented you are ...so long as you aren’t too old, too fat, and you show up to work 15 minutes early. I guess I lucked out, those have been semi-simple tasks to execute for the past couple of decades. However, there is an expiration date to staying young, slim and punctual, it’s around 40, and that’s when the smart military members retire 😉

I am about to leave this club of heathens and join an even mangier bunch of trash pandas, known as veterans, but until I get there, I will be deliberately planning to live life at a much slower pace. You see, being active-duty military is like constantly being surprise ambushed, tied, and hosed down. For example, on a random Tuesday you will joyfully find yourself logging in to what you believe will be a few emails turned into 7 hours of meme-scrolling. Sike! Surprise! You are now in charge of a large project to acquire microchips and inject them into glizzies, so the next generation of warfighters become brainwashed with algorithms and chronic anxiety. Oh, and you can’t say no… you must say yes. Please use AI to draft your complaint that goes nowhere, okay? If that doesn’t sound so bad how about that one time you said “I enjoy running and lifting weights”, and then the military turned around and made it un-fun by telling you to do it every day, in a crowded sweatbox, in under 30 minutes because remember you have to get to work early! Please work 10 hours with no lunch! Yes, you must! When your sleep declines and your cortisol spikes with the caffeine and nicotine you use as emotional coping vices, then you will have to self-report to Doc to check your testosterone levels… not your estrogen levels… the government doesn’t believe in estrogen.

DON’T THANK ME FOR MY CERVIX.

Lol, but don’t get me wrong dear readers, there is actually lot of good to military service, all of the grime goblins I have served with, and continue to serve with, make the trauma of endless tasks under immense pressure…worth it. But lately, the universe is sending me signs that I need to start “livin’ mas”. You know? Not like more things to do but finding more enjoyment in this life… thing. I took a taxi the other day, because sometimes the taxi line is right there and god knows where the nearest uber pickup area is. What should have been a 25 min ride home was in fact a 40 min ride home because my driver was a yapper. He yapped so hard he drove five miles under the speed limit, which is like, elderly slow. At first, I was annoyed. Nay, perturbed. But then the driver told me he works as a cab driver all night and goes home to take care of his dying mother during the day; those are his 24 hours. He told me he’s been watching a show on Netflix called “From” and I said I too have been watching it, and I like science fiction. Amused by this he told me he watches old sci-fi and psychological movies while he is caring for his mom. He gave me about six recommendations, along with a brief summary of each and I wrote them all down. Yea, I probably paid a little more in fare for a longer cab ride, but I learned something. Life is hell. In the military or out of it. We work, we drive ourselves crazy with our own expectations of happiness, and we have very difficult times with sweet little coping mechanisms. Maybe what we need to enjoy are the moments when we are watching a weird little show and tell a stranger about it later. Then, upon learning the stranger also likes weird shows and movies so you give her a list of bizarre films for her twisted little mind so maybe she can enjoy life a little bit too.

Here is the list of movies he shared with a vague synopsis as paraphrased by me. I hope you too can enjoy one of these films one day when you’re bored… if not, oh fucking well, you are probably a really happy person in your perfect little world enjoying your friends and your chill ass job or whatever.  

1. Dark City- weird aliens are swapping memories with human beings to understand what souls are. They live in a city without sun and there are bald men in long leather coats.

2. Flatliners- a group of medical students try to see what happens on the other side, so they control die “Flatline” and get brought back to life. Kevin Bacon is in it.

3. Jacobs Ladder- (my millennial brain had to get past this name that I only affiliated with a certain piercing) This is a guy who fought in Vietnam, he has crazy PTSD but turns out it’s because the government experimented on him, not so much all the war. …Wait what if war is simulation? Did I ever really deploy?

4. The Thirteenth Floor- Virtual reality gone wild. So, imagine making a simulator of reality where the people who live in the simulator think they’re real until someone from a future reality tells them they’re not, only to learn that future person isn’t real either. I mean, what even is reality?

5. Timeline- Time travel. But only to past timelines not to future…(Neil deGrasse Tyson told me time travel is only possible to the future) Anyway, remember the butterfly effect where if you mess up the past it messes up the future? Of course, the main character travels to the past and gets worshipped so they in turn stay, evolving a society, thus messing with THE TIMELINE. Star Trek warned us about this.

6. Source Code- Jake Gyllenhaal on a train but in different bodies for 8 minutes at a time. He has  to stop a terrorist attack but also learn who the bomber is because apparently another attack will happen if he doesn’t stop the bomber. Its giving robocop body and Jason Bourne CIA super secrecy.