A Damn Good Friend

Censorship of Suicide Prevention?

The other night our dorms held a “Trick or Treat in the Halls” event for the children in our Martian settlement. Prior to this event there were prepatory events, pumpkin carving, door decorating and removal of posters and signs deemed inappropriate for youth.

Some of these things made sense to remove. But among the things that were mentioned as necessary to cover, I wonder about two.

First of which is a cartoon ghost wearing a bra on a sign explaining the risks of breast cancer. Maybe it’s bad maybe it’s not. But doesn’t breast cancer awareness include the children? Don’t they see the advertisements on television? I’m not one to advocate for something being okay just because it’s been seen or said before, but I’m unsure that this needs censorship?

I am against the censorship of the suicide prevention sign. To censor this implies that the children won’t be affected by mental health issues before they are too old for the trick or treat event. This event includes children up to 12 yrs old. I was 9 the first time I recall mental health related struggles affecting those around me, but in all honesty I may have been somewhat aware of it even before then. I wouldn’t be introduced to suicide prevention till six years later.  I don’t think this is unusual.  When I mentioned this at one of the events, the others around me in a similar age group, the same ones who’d been planning to cover the sign recalled similar occurrences. They noted that they’d definitely known about these things to some degree by 5th grade. We can’t prevent these from being things that our youth have to deal with and giving them inadequate resources makes them things that they have to deal with alone.

In my experience, the deliberate censorship of mental health made it harder to speak about it because it seemed “bad”. Censoring it in the same way that drugs, alcohol, sex and excessive violence were made it seem like something that I “wasn’t spost’ to be aware of yet”.

It’s just a couple signs and in all honesty I don’t think their removal matters in the grand scheme, but I do have to ask: Does it make sense?

“The College Experience” On Being the Sober Friend

Many people seem to think that the Sober Friend, the one who doesn’t party, but will come get you and fix you up misses out on some fundamental aspects of the college experience. And yet in looking back I believe I got to experience some of the highlights of being drunk and/or high without the expense of the traditional substances. Then again, there were still the health services fees and engineering textbooks cost more than boose so...?

1. Master of Vomiting.

Yep...Noro. I can vomit while practically laying down on the toilet. The trick is to strangle the piping. I’m also quite skilled at running while nauseated and, knock on wood, haven’t missed the toilet yet. 

2. Waking up on the floor + awkward interactions with someone I barely know.

Whatever you do, don’t take a shower when you’re severely dehydrated. 

3. Inability to walk a line 

Albuterol after I had the flu

4. Memory Loss

Severe sleep deprivation will do that. 

5. Bloodshot eyes

Sleep is for people who don’t have a major statics project and circuits and a thermo exam due the same day. 

6. Anti-skunk smell procedures

The people across from me didn’t have to wash their laundry but I wasn’t about to get suspended for their lack of caution and found myself freebreeze-ing my room with the best of em’. 

7. The munchies

No excuse for this one. Three weeks four boxes of marshmallow fruit loops. 

“Reality ...is FICTIONAL” -(Rainbow Kitten Surprise)

As the days pass and the news gets continually worse as restrictions come and go like the push and pull of the tide (or a sine wave), I find myself in a daze, feeling like this reality is closer to some distopian fiction than anything that could have ever been real....but it is. 

I find myself listening to music and dancing in my cubical of quarantine, because “Because there's nothing else to do” (Pulp, Common People). I danced classical ballet for many years, but lately I’m finding I need music that is far louder and more psychedelic. With that in mind... here’s a few songs that feel oddly fitting right now.

 “American Hero” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

Because man does Reality seem Fictional Right Now

“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads

How did we find ourselves here, I’m just “Letting the day’s go by”

“Common People” by Pulp

“watch your life slide out of view And then dance [...] Because there's nothing else to do

Anything by Tame Impala Especially 

“It might be time”

“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (Artic Monkeys Cover of this is good too)

“The Less I Know The Better”

“Yesterday” by the Beatles 

My God, How is this not dystopian fiction? How is this not just a book I can toss aside? 

Stay Home if you can my friends. 

Dance in your dorm rooms. Binge watch television from your couch. Work out till you have abs as good as Angelina Joe Lee in Tomb Raider, then watch Angelina Joe Lee in Tomb Raider, then play some Tomb Raider. Skype your best friend and play two truths and a lie. Read the Martian (Andy Weir)... Twice, then Watch the Movie, then study aerospace engineering. Read “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” (Douglas Adams), complete edition (duh), then pretend you’re an alien for a day. Whatever you do, be safe my friends.  

How to do engineering homework: An informative guide and window into life.

1) Procrastinate while convincing yourself you're being productive

2) Find a Location to work

3) Write down the problem

4) Get halfway through and go to staple something

5) Break stapler...

Spend the next, far too long period of time disassembling and reassembling your stapler until several things occur:

- you are fully confident that in an exam situation you could, completely disassemble and reassemble your stapler in less than 5 minutes

- the components of the stapler get so worn out from disassembly and reassembly that the stapler no longer functions quite right in spite of being once more reassembled

-it occurs to you that you will not be asked to reassemble your stapler during an exam and you will be asked to turn in this homework

Addendum: After this particular event occurs, admit it to other engineering students. Upon request demonstrate your ability to disassemble and reassemble your stapler completely and pass off the stapler to another engineering student who obtains an initial 30 minutes of joy from disassembly and reassembly of the stapler. The stapler which still worked marginally after first rounds of reassembly no longer functions from wear. Gift it to the other engineering student and resolve to purchase a new stapler.

Fish = Es TIMES q!?

This was said, this morning out loud in my dorm room, today. In context, it made total sense. 

One step closer to becoming iron man

Even Tony Stark would be impressed with this Iron Man suit. 🔥 

Governor Sunshine: President of Mars

The happiest man I know in this region lives in between the two hubs of our small martian colony. He often sits outside where the lawn meets the sidewalk and greets anyone who passes. As I prepare to depart the martian colony in my beaten blue shuttle, I stop for protein at the hub for quality homestyle nourishment. He wanders in and chats with the group of young women in the booth behind me. Greets the young men who walk in to rush their friends for departure, then he says goodbye to the young women and leaves.

I met him once on a day last year walking back to the habit. I sat and chatted with him for a bit. He was injured when he was young in a shuttle accident, his mind and his leg will never be quite right, but he is happy. He spends his days watching sunrises and sunsets, chatting with anyone near about anything, and watching game shows. Some people call him Governor, others call him Sunshine, few call him by his real name, but he expresses pure innocent joy towards everyone and as far as I'm concerned, he's President of Mars.

Roller Coasters & Higher Education: The Hardest Part

I like roller coasters, at least sometimes, but they are designed to shake you, scare you a bit, give you an adrenaline rush, an experience, before they place you back on the ground. 

For me the hardest part of any roller coaster or amusement park ride is always waiting in line. Waiting in line is when you have a choice. Every moment I have to stand there, watching the ride, listening to the screams, I am making a conscious choice to get on the ride even as this new information is presented to me. My friends will get me into line, and once I am on the ride itself I put my faith in the safeties designed by the roller coaster engineer  and let my body be thrown from side to side. Loop da’ loops or dramatic three story high dives, locked into my seat the greatest stress is over and I can relax and enjoy the ride.

College too is designed to shake you a bit, give you an experience and place you back on the ground. And here too I find anticipation and decision stifling. I find the choosing of classes, the navigation of my non-standard course map to be a horribly straining task. I would rather just go forth and do, but I feel an obligation to myself to consider my options thoroughly. Issue is, I can’t see the future, there’s no way of knowing what option is truly best in the long run. It’s like being asked to solve for a variable, but being given an indeterminate matrix and some subjective phrases or playing 20 questions with only non distinct questions.  You just have to take your best guess and move on.   

The best laid plans of Martians  & “I think it’s gonna be a long long time”

I packed my bags tonight, pre-flight....

And everything went south from there, and not in the way I intended. 

After much deliberation and anticipation packed and climbed into my MAV. This was after, I should note, clearing the frozen Martian precipitation from my windshield. And yes, I know what you’re thinking ‘snow can’t fall on mars’, but due to the atmospheric regulations in this particular valley it does, and what was particularly relevant to me this afternoon was not the particulars of how this is possible but more the difficulty of clearing it from my vehicle. I did so in only the most sophisticated and intuitive manner (utalizing a baseball cap, sock and plastic butter knife when I discovered my car lacked a snow scraper). 

So at long last, I began the journey.

And then I had no breaks. I do not know what is wrong with them, and I wasn’t about to use my education in engineering to stand out in the cold and figure out how they work, or more accurately why they didn’t. I decided I was satisfied with sayin’ alive. 

So my night went south, without me actually making it any further south. Ah well “the best laid plans of mice and [martians] so often fall astray” (Burns, To A Mouse). I guess it’s gonna be “a long long time” before I get home again (Elton John, Rocket Man).

Welcome to life on Mars