Saturday, August 20, 2011

Some decisions are bigger than other girls' mothers

Last year i lived dangerously close to a supermarket that stayed open too late and seriously abetted me in my addiction to cold cereal and almond milk.
My roommate and i would stop in so often we could have been shift mangers, shelf stockers, or mascots easily, but instead we pumped pounds of cash into that place without ever getting it back (except in the form of 10 cents off a gallon at Shell, that's what's up!!)
One midnight, i perused the aisle carrying the most lethal of legal substances (and most easily abused) - the processed and sugar laden, gmo corn-ified, cavity inducing, yet marketed as an essential part of a healthy diet, motherfucking cereal. There is a product for every mood with colorful cardboard packaging lining 100 metres of scuffed linoleum and garish lights that hum and flicker without pattern. Something about the night in question, something in the air or in my soul rendered me helpless against the towering shelves of dry candy breakfast food. i paced agonizingly, wondering if this trip around the corner would all be for naught, unable, physically unable to choose one to put into a bowl and into my mouth. And then a friend spoke to me like an angel:
"Which one is your favorite?"
Unthinking, i replied, "Cracklin' Oat Bran." (duh!)
"Well, why don't you just get that one?"

Holy fuck you just revolutionized my mind. Capitalism has given me so many choices, the internet has rendered my brain inoperable, and my genes make sure i analyze every move with the scrutiny of a forensic scientist dusting for prints, so even consequence-less decisions freeze me solid.
How can i be expected to choose whether to take a plane, train or car to a new life in New York? And yet, how can i turn it into a problem to have access to nearly instantaneous travel, unthinkable to human beings a mere century ago, to have so much just...kinds of it that it bothers me? Oh, what am i going to do, soar through the sky like an eagle, zip across the country on rails in a bed of my own, or man a personal vessel filled with all my crap at 90 miles per hour? Decisions, decisions right?
Well, which way is my favorite?
Trains. Love 'em like an 8 year old boy.
And so it goes.

For the photography segment, i'll present you with some decisions that are never hard for me to make and that's when and now to get inked up. Just a couple of excellent shots of me and my loved ones getting and giving tattoos. Sorry mom.






Somehow permanence is easier for my body to handle than my soul. 

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