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The news of my 20 year high school reunion back on Monday got me to thinking about how we perceive time differently as we age. Then I remembered the song Time by Pink Floyd, 4th cut on Dark Side of the Moon, is about that very topic.

Read the lyrics and think about them. If you’re nearing 40 like me, this song probably means something very different for you now than it did when you were much younger.

Time
(Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun,
but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over,
thought I’d something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

This is one of the funniest clips I’ve ever seen. Even funnier if you’re a tech guy and understand all of the stuff he’s doing as he is talking. 10 minutes, but totally worth watching all the way to the end.

Remember — there is no arrange icons by penis.

Today I received word that my 20 year high school reunion is scheduled for Nov. 1st. Certainly it isn’t that time already. There is no way 20 freaking years could have passed since I graduated high school, right? I don’t feel 20 years older than I did back then. I can bring the school, the friends, the feelings, the routine into such crystal clear focus in my mind that it can’t possibly be 20 years ago. It seems simultaneously impossible and deeply shocking that it happened so quickly.

Our perception of time speeds up as we age, the years feel progressively shorter as they tick away. As a consequence, adolescence plays out in an epic high definition sweep, and everything afterward begins to blur. For me, it became noticeable around the time I turned 30 years old. That was back in 2000. Y2K, the big computer panic, the new millennium. Up to that point things seemed to be moving along at a rather orderly pace, and then– woosh. 8 1/2 years have passed in the blink of an eye. The football seasons come and go, birthdays, anniversaries, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, spring, summer, fall, winter like the spaces on a big roulette wheel, spinning round and around.

I don’t think nostalgia is the right word to describe how I feel about my high school years. Nostalgia is a longing for the past, the idealized past. Thinking back, I like to believe I knew how good I had it. I was extremely lucky to have the friends, the relationships and environment I did in high school. Okay, maybe there is a bit of idealization going on with the relationship part, I’m heavily discounting some legendary fights and meltdowns. But on the whole, it was an amazingly good 4 years of my life.

With the reunion coming up, I can’t help but wonder how my old friends view those times we spent together. For instance, I wonder if Mark McCormick remembers the night before our last day of school. We stayed up until 2:00am cramming for Gordon’s Physics 2 final exam the next day. As we were studying, I remember telling Mark that this was it– this was the last time we would ever have to cram for a final in high school, the last test, the last day. What I failed to realize at the time was how poignant a memory it would become, such a simple thing as studying for a test with a friend.

A phenomenally stupid 17-year-old on a church field trip was decapitated by a roller coaster after climbing two different 6-foot tall safety fences at Six Flags over Georgia. Friends say he stood on top of a sign that read “Danger, don’t go in there or you’ll get decapitated by a roller coaster” to boost himself over the barrier.

Police will not release the teen’s name until an autopsy is complete.

Likely cause of death: decapitation by a roller coaster.

It struck me today that as we get older, everyone that we admired as kids will start dying off with increasing frequency. All of the authors, comedians, musicians, actors, directors, poets, teachers, friends– everyone. Bobby Fischer. Peter Jennings. Kurt Vonnegut. Arthur C. Clarke. And now George Carlin.

Growing up, I knew Carlin as just another brilliant comedian. I remember watching his “a place for your stuff” routine with my dad in, what, 1986? We laughed until we cried and still quote bits of that act to one another to this day. It wasn’t until much later when I heard his stuff on religion that he became truly influential to me. The last 10 minutes of his 1999 show “You Are All Diseased” are amazing.

Trillions and trillions of prayers every day asking and begging and pleading for favors. ‘Do this’ ‘Gimme that’ ‘I want a new car’ ‘I want a better job’. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday. And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But…what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago god made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billion and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn’t in god’s divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn’t it seem a little arrogant? It’s a divine plan. What’s the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan? And here’s something else, another problem you might have; suppose your prayers aren’t answered. What do you say? ‘Well it’s god’s will. God’s will be done.’ Fine, but if it gods will and he’s going to do whatever he wants to anyway; why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn’t you just skip the praying part and get right to his will? –George Carlin, from You Are All Diseased

But it wasn’t just his stuff on religion that blew me away. The rant below is from his next to last HBO special, back when there was much talk about the privatization of social security.

Who Owns You by George Carlin

There is a reason education sucks and its the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now. The big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians, they are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.

You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They have long since bought and paid for the senate, congress, the state houses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies. They control just about all of the information you get to hear. They’ve got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That is against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system who threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that.

You know what they want? Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitter jobs, the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pensions that dissapears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in the media, telling you what to think, what to buy.

The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. But nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people; blue collar, white collar, doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on, people of modest means continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all.

But nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. And that’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will remain willfully ignorant of the big red white and blue dick that is being jammed up their assholes every day.

Because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Just 4 days ago it was announced that Carlin will be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts said he would be honored for his 50-year career as a Grammy-winning stand-up comedian, writer, and actor.

He was a genius and a legend.

From The Advocate

Deputies arrest man in bizarre break-in

Sheriff’s deputies arrested a man accused of breaking into a the house of neighbor who returned home at 5 a.m. Sunday to allegedly find him masturbating on her couch while watching the movie “Legends of the Fall,” an affidavit of probable cause says.

The woman text-messaged a male friend who arrived and told the intruder to leave, the affidavit says.

Police later that day questioned Jason Dylan Jones, 30, 17428 Deer Lake Ave., at his home and then booked him into Parish Prison on counts of unauthorized entry into an inhabited dwelling and simple rape from an earlier incident, booking records show.

So ur wit ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns. U anser it n the vioce is “wut r u doing wit my daughter?” U tell ur girl n she say “my dad is ded”.

THEN WHO WAS PHONE?

there is enough treachery, hatred, violence,
absurdity in the average human being
to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man
the average woman
beware their love

their love is average, seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their
hatred to kill you, to kill anybody.

not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy
anything that differs from their own

not being able to create art
they will not understand art

they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world

not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you

and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

–Charles Bukowski, 1966

Weatherman vs. cockroach

Oh my gaaaaaad! Ahhhhuhhghrumphhpp! This is what just happened, that thing was crawling on my leg!

Reporter gets fly in his mouth, switches from straight-laced reporter mode to “omfg dude wtf lolz” mode in 3 seconds (NSFW language)

The fuck is that?? Shit! I’m dying in this fuckin’ country-ass fucked-up town. Shit flying in my mouth. The fuck, I can’t see. Pollen.

Killer flying attack lizard
(watch for the lizard at 0:13)

Scawwtht gahhh geee git goooh!! What the– Get this thing off me man!!