which reminds me

i hate computers

i really do

i hate them

there is nothing they do that cant be done in some other less destructive way

sure, they accomplish a lot of good

but so does nuclear power.















which reminds me...

One time I went for a drive around the USA in my Jeep. It was pretty aimless. All I knew was that the world needed to be saved and I was going to do it - by driving around a-lot, by myself. At one point I found myself passing through Arkansas, which was interesting in-and-of-itself since I was born and raised in the city of Los Angeles, which happens to be nowhere near Arkansas. (I discovered this particular fact on a road trip I took accross the country, but that's another story.) It was late and dark outside and the highway looked like most highways do when its late and dark outside. Cars and big trucks and glow-in-the-dark lines on the blacktop and little glowing plastic things that make noise and vibrations in your seat when you get a little too lazy about steering. The highway goes along a ridge which makes for some high ground to my right and a valley to my left. I notice light pollution coming up on the lower left side. A nuclear power plant with two big cooling towers belching steam like on the simpsons, except there are no one-shade-of-blue skies and no big-bubble-puffy clouds. The sky is black and the soft yellow light of industry reflects from the structures it means to keep lit. It reflects from the steam and architecture becomes industry becomes power becomes my little Jeep sitting on the side of the highway and my little body standing next to it looking with the awe and quiet wonder with which one might look at the Grand Canyon or, more appropriately, the sun setting into the pacific as seen from accross the Los Angeles basin. The pollution in the air makes the sky burn a million shades of red and turn in on itself, filtering out the harmful brightness of the sun so that you can stare in comfort as it sinks beneath the edge of the planet.


post-script

i found the above image through a google image search of "nuclear power arkansas". i think this might be the same plant that i saw, though you can only see one tower in this picture so it might be a different plant or a different angle or maybe my memory is just cooler than reality. it was his (the photographer's) first time seeing one of these, too. (i've seen the plant in san onofre on the way to san diego plenty of times, but it doesn't count. rather than cooling towers, it just has those big concrete domes with the nipple things on top and i just think of giant breasts whenever i see them, which is kind of awe-inspiring, but not in any interesting way.)