entropy in half-stereo

Headphones break. That's what they do. I'm sitting here with my only remaining set of headphones in which both ear-thingies work, but there's no longer anything to hold them on my head. They are the big can-types phones that smother your ears and I have to hold them up with my hands or scrunch it up to my ear with my shoulder. I'm just trying to listen to some sounds late at night without waking people up but the impermanence of all things electronic is foiling my enjoyment.

I have a bunch of headphones that only half work or that I could probably fix if I had a soldering iron. That's the saddest part of entropy: There's that one shining moment of flawless operation, then majority of its existence is spent moldering in uselessness. I wish that when things broke, they went out in a puff of smoke. Scratch in your car? Poof, it's gone. It's unworthy of your worship now anyway. Cracks in the sidewalk? Rip it up before it gets any worse. I'll walk in the grass. At least that's self-healing.

I guess that's one impulse behind consumerism and planned obsolescence: staying ahead of the constant deterioration of matter. Of course, most people--including myself--don't have enough money to keep everything perfect. No new headphones for me until I get a job. You know, a job to pay for new headphones. To break. Noooo.

Perfection is a dangerous illusion. Maybe some people are inspired by the ideal, but for those of us who, perhaps, take things too literally, it paralyzes. If perfection is unreachable, what, then, is the goal? In my life I have been plagued by this mindset: Why can't I just do something in the proper way--the way they tell you it's done? When things start out wrongly I feel like quitting. This is not to say that I don't think I can succeed. There's just this nagging feeling that if I hit reset and start again, things will go as intended--like throwing away your broken stuff and buying all new--I swear this time I'll take care of it.

I think the answer is to proceed in the best way possible--with a clear set of principles. Example: I don't know everything about life or death or God or the Universe. In fact I surely hold a lot of wrong ideas, but this doesn't bother me. Instead I wish simply to go forth with integrity of purpose. I think that even in failure, no endeavor taken with such integrity is a waste.

Holy crap, I actually started this post intending just to bitch about broken headphones. Sometimes I scare myself.

Monticello is the house of Thomas Jefferson. It is a rather small house though it is quite a fine abode. There are a great many people who visit Monticello, and if you do not know my opinion on people it is thus: They tend to diminish my enjoyment. Of places and things. I am also displeased by hasty, strict tour guides who disallow photography.

Colonial Williamsburg is a crap-load of history coming at you all at once. The best thing about Colonial Williamsburg is that the buildings are air-conditioned. Though perhaps my opinion has been colored by the fact that we went it was a million degrees centigrade out. Our strength was drained by early in the after-noon.



So one of the more interesting things about Williamsburg is that they have these little skits and speeches on the street throughout the afternoon regarding the Revolutionary War, and they attempt to get the crowd involved, yelling 'woo' and 'yay' and especially 'huzzah' (often in triplicate), but it's kind of hard to get excited because we all know how it ends. Yeah, OK, I think the Declaration of Independence is alright, but I've read it before and I'm rather ambivalent in my feelings towards King George. Not excited. Sorry. You get a pity cheer.


"Simon says everyone who loves American history look left." In fact, they are looking at Mr. Benedict Arnold. This man seems to be rather unpopular for some reason. I wasn't really paying attention.


"No, you can't 'look at' one of the muskets."

Weird thing I wish I had a picture of but didn't: I saw a young lady ask a colonial actor to hold a large zucchini--which was wearing a nose and glasses--while she video'd him. She said it was "traveling the world". He called it "a prodigious squash" and asked if she was going to eat it after she was done. I employed Google to try and find evidence of this quest (and maybe even see myself on video; I was standing right next to the guy at the time), but no luck. Nothing would have made me happier than to read of this intrepid squash's adventure.

Panorama-rama continues:

Virginia Beach is a quite pleasant place and we enjoyed perfect beach weather. The ocean is too salty. They should really do something about that. It's disgraceful. As you can see we had a commanding view of the Dairy Queen (which did receive our patronage). There is an air force base near the beach, and so fighter jets like to fly over all the time. It's like we're fighting a war or something. I got just sun-burned enough to feel satisfied. I saw a shark's egg and I touched a jellyfish and some girls showed us how we could dig little burrowing crabs out of the wet sand but I never got the hang of it. Then end.

Hey, Blogger, at where at is that button at that lets me upload pictures at? At? I want to post the post with the rest of my vacation pictures, but that post won't be posted without the button that's ain't at where its apposta be at.