as promised, today's post will concern more of my thoughts from my recent trip to St. Louis.

driving through the farmland of Missouri and Illinois, I was struck by the beauty of the land and the green fields of new corn as they passed by at 70+ mph. since I rarely get the opportunity to be a passenger, I spent the majority of the trip back to Kentucky silently watching the scenery.

damn. my words are completely failing me at this point. I wanted to write about the fields and trees, and the beauty and profundity of it all, but it wasn't coming out right. sometimes, you just have to watch, listen, feel, and understand, but you can't say anything–you can't describe it. go out, drive, watch the land, and don't say a word.

ok. now, after my hours of communing with nature, developing the mother of all passenger's sunburns, and taking a short nap, Paul and I got off talking about all kinds of stuff. for hours we talked about cops, criminals, abuse of power, use of force, government corruption, capitalism, communism, socialism, marxism, and the political future of america. I think we started talking about unmarked police cars and ended up with america evolving into its necessary and inevitable socialist structure.
      then for some reason, we talked briefly about the weather, the probability that it's going to be a scorching summer with a possible drought, and I started feeling really xerophobic and basically fearing not only for my life but for the future of the entire human race.
      i saw this future where all the vegetation on the planet died off, the atmosphere filling with noxious fumes and the human race slowly dying out. Paul slowly talked me away from my fear by insisting that we humans are too crafty to allow our atmosphere to wither away. I only hope he's right.
      to top it all off, when we got home I phoned brian to tell him about the trip and to make sure x:13 was still in one piece, and one of the first things he tells me is that a large solar flare is heading for earth and will cause some "atmospheric disturbance." considering my terror from earlier in the day (which i still hadn't fully shaken despite Paul's reassurance), this was the last thing I wanted to hear. brian seemed a bit surprised when I made a comment about this solar flare burning off all our atmosphere and annihilating the human race.

fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view) we're still here, and still seem to have adequate oxygen for at least a few days of regular breathing. after that, we'll see.

in tomorrow's post, I'll briefly review the Fight Club DVD, and probably go off on something totally uninteresting