A warning. This is a free-floating essay on just what was on my mind. It has a topic in there somewhere but… well, you'll figure it out. :-)

All my life, I've been trying to figure something out. On paper it seems like a simple task but in reality it is more difficult to do than getting laid in High School. The thing is "the system". You know. The System. It's that thing that we all walk around in. Some people call it Life. Others call it the Rat Race. Keanu Reeves called it The Matrix. I call it The System.

I consider myself a sort of lazy anthropologist. In other words I like to sit around and watch people do stupid things and then laugh at them. Afterward I reflect and learn from their mistakes. I jot the life lesson down and then wait for the next unsuspecting subject to walk by and make a fool of himself. Now this seems a pretty solid way of getting through life. Trouble is this means I am spending more time watching than living.

Plus I am leaving myself open to that annoying ass Murphy's Law of, "just when I figure life out they change all the rules!" clause. Which is about as fun as a dinner date with Hannibal Lecter. And to top it all off, I still can't figure it out. The System boggles me. The only consolation I can salvage from this K-2 sized mountain of wasted time is that there are others out there that not only can't figure the system out but are actively being kicked around by the system itself!

One such person announced his utter inability to fight the system recently: Senator John McCain. Yeah, that short white haired dude with the bad attitude. He was all gung-ho about winning the Virginia primary. He was so eager about it that he felt he was above the system and gave a speech that pissed off every religious sect short of the Charles Manson reunion tour in San Francisco. As a result, every God loving and God fearing American on Earth stood up, walked to a polling booth and poked the little button that said George W. Bush.

So much for beating the system.

Still, I have to admire McCain. Here is a man who isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Sure, he's an idiot but that's to be expected. He's from Arizona. I mean arguing religion is a taboo nowadays. The only two ways you can be a religious antagonist is if you're a Palestinian with a pipe bomb or the Pope.

So I find myself watching him and jotting down that life lesson too. "Don't piss off religious people". Okay, got it. I have it right next to "lift the lid". But then I found myself with the biggest question of all. If you can't sit around to figure the system out and you can't try to fight it then what can you do? I find simply floating along the temporal eddys of time without so much as a ripple in the water to be a little insulting. It leads us back to that really big question, Why are we here?

Now I don't want to be too philosophical here but the reason we are here can't just be "planetary ballast". Sure we can't just change the world overnight or become so famous that even the fish in New Zealand are talking about us but we also can't just mill about life wondering which lottery numbers we should pick this week. So what do we do?

This is the reason I'm stuck and The System remains unsolved. Perhaps it's too big a task. Perhaps I should just close my eyes and pray that the answer will come to me. Well, wait. I can't do that. I haven't figured out whom I'm going to vote for and I don't want McCain to get angry with me just yet.

Plus the whole people watching thing is kind of fun. Especially if you people watch at one of those clubs that require you to carry lots of one-dollar bills. There aren't a lot of life lessons to write down but sometimes it isn't the lesson that counts. It's the experience!

Sorry if I've confused any of you out there. Every once in a while you just need to think out loud. And of course have a two drink minimum. Have a good weekend!

-Hy

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