The Long Overdue Update: Capital Punishment, Capital City, Capitol Building, Capitalists, and Capital Letter Statements


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Capital Punishment:

I always pick the hottest, most humid day of the year to lift heavy boxes up and down numerous flights of stairs. August was upon me, so that must mean it was time to do some more heavy lifting. As I carried the box filled with assorted books and other odds and ends down the stairs, I realized that moving in August is mostly a phenomenon of college proportions. School starts in August, moving in must occur roughly around that same time, leases last a year...you can figure out the rest.

I recently watched "A Brief History of Time" and think that Stephen Hawking's theory of travel through a black hole could easily apply to the processes involved in moving. The outside of a black hole, like the stuff you usually move and pack first (couches, beds, furniture), are usually pretty massive, and once moved, the apartment looks noticeably different.

But as you move through the apartment, and as you move through a black hole, time slows down to an almost perpetual stand still. Do I want to keep this book? Just how often do I intend to watch this Jackie Chan tape that I haven't seen since I was in Okinawa? That book that I stored under the couch because I was too tired one night to put it in its proper place, comes back to haunt me as I stare at the book box, already taped shut. That coffee mug that I received as part of Employee Appreciation week at work sits on a shelf, and not in the pantry, where all the other coffee mugs sit.

If Moses had come down with 11 Commandments, the eleventh would be this: For every move, let there be at least one box that contains a pillow, a coffee mug, a misplaced cd, three picture frames, one glove, a souvenir from Disneyland, and a roll of paper towells.

SO SHALL IT BE DONE!

Luckily, Anya's parents put up for some movers, so the process of moving was eased...slightly. Anya and I managed to make such an egregious miscalculation of just how much time it would take to load up her apartment, that we ended up following the "pack as you move" method of moving, meaning that after the movers took down the heavy furniture into the U-Haul, we spent the rest of the day, the rest of the night, and most of the next day loading up boxes and carrying down them down to the truck. We planned and packed so poorly, that the largest U-Haul truck, which is usually more than capable of moving the contents of a two story house, had to be sent to Austin with Anya's mom, while we rented another U-Haul truck to pick up the rest of the stuff from her apartment.

Luckily, we had movers on both ends of the trip, and the guys in Austin had the honor of unloading two full trucks, and carrying those heavy boxes up three flights of stairs and into the new place.

The inverse of the black hole/moving time analysis is true of unpacking as well. It starts out usually pretty quickly, but soon devolves into the slow unpacking of those same boxes filled with junk that you packed last.

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Capital City:

Austin is a great place, but I haven't really taken a moment to soak it all in. But when I do, I am:

~10 minutes from Chuy's
~5 minutes from the Capitol building
~5 minutes from the Alamo Drafthouse (which Entertainment Weekly recently voted the number one place in the entire nation to watch movies)
~5 minutes from Amy's Ice Cream
~5 minutes from the UT Campus
~1 minute, as in "I can see it from my window," from the frisbee golf range.
~20 minutes from Schlitterbahn

But at the same time, I am:

~three hours from my family
~three hours from my friends

That warrants a big ol' :-(

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Capitol Building

I can practically see it from my window. Had the internet been hooked up sooner, I would have known about the Cindy Sheehan march and rally on the capitol building that took place a couple days ago. As someone said recently, if you miss one action in Austin, wait around a few days, another one will spring up.

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Capitalists

Not having internet or cable, I completely missed out on all the Cindy Sheehan and Hurricane Katrina happenings. I knew that both were going on, but had I known exactly what was happening in NOLA, I would have done a better job at staying on top of the news.

As it was, I come into the Hurricane Katrina stuff right as all the anger is reaching a boiling point. It seems someone, some people, need to do a little brushing up on the finer points of loving your neighbor.

This hurricane really shows the awful side of our crumbling system of government. Had New Orleans been Palm Springs, or Kennebunkport, I highly doubt that a) the warnings of the past few years would have been ignored, and b) the government would have taken so long to get mobilized in the relief effort.

I hope that some kind of lesson is learned from this big mess, and that future tragedies like this can be avoided.

On a lighter side, I hold tight to my belief that storms and natural disasters should get better names. Hurricane Doom, Hurricane of Steel Rain might get the point across better than Hurricane Oscar or Hurricane Gertrude. A government would respond better to warnings if the leaders of said government were subconsciously aware of menacing sounding storms coming their way. "Oh, we remember what happened to Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Overlord, that we better make sure that we're prepared for Hurricane Destruction."

Maybe not. But Katrina is a Russian ballet star, not a level 4 hurricane.

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Capital Letter Statements:

I once had a philosophy professor who talked about the difference between truth and TRUTH. I own a lot of dvd's, that's a true statement. The Shawshank Redepmtion is a great movie, that's a statement of truth as I see it.

You tell the truth, you know the Truth.

These things I know to be True:

-Mr. Show, which I've watched obsessively in my absence of television and internet, is not only a funny show, but is probably the funniest show I've ever seen. Likewise, David Cross is the funniest man in the world. If you see him perform, or see him in Mr. Show, you KNOW this to be True.

-Chuy's is the best tasting Tex-Mex food in the entire world. If you eat there, you KNOW this to be True.

-Geoffrey Rush's performance in "Shine," which I watched the other night, is one of the all time great performances in cinema history. Likewise, the rest of the acting in that movie is unmatched. Did you know that Geoffrey Rush did not use a hand-double for the piano scenes? While not outright playing (or maybe he did, who knows?) he was able to mimic some of the hardest pieces that have ever been written for piano. Geoffrey Rush is a great actor, you KNOW this to be True.

-John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" is one of the all time great books about somone trying to figure out "the American identity." He captured all the ins and outs of what it means to live in this country better than anyone I have ever read. I KNOW this to be True.

-My Aunt Sherry is an Angel; a gift from a god that I'm sometimes not sure exists. Bad things happen to great people everyday, this is true. That Aunt Sherry is, and was someone that brightened the world Everyday, this is True, and the Truest statement I'll make all day...or all year.

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matt out