tonite, i decided to drive home.. to my home of homes, the place where my family still resides. it is a pretty generic 5 hour drive but it always allows me to think strange thoughts and view the world’s distances from a new perspective. with the amount of traveling that i have done in the last six months, i have a better sense of geography than any teacher could have ever taught me and even a better sense of cultural differences. for that reason i love the trip.

tonite’s trip was icky and rainy, very gross. of course, it didn’t help that i left at 9PM and was driving really late. at one point, i finally got pulled over for speeding… took long enough. i was honest, didn’t question anything and he only gave me a warning for the speeding! i had passed him going almost 90 miles per hour!!! but, he did give me a ticket for not having my license on me (the one that i lost in a bar in boston when da boys decided to get me drunk and talking!!). so now i owe $45 to the state of new jersey for not carrying my driver’s license… and i even had my passport on me and told the cop that i was going to my home state to get a new license… silliness.

so this made me think about laws and regulations that various states have. think about it – how many stupid laws exist that we follow blindly every day? even speed limits exist because of the oil shortage in the 70’s, not because people genuinely believe they protect us. so we pay for half of a police force to sit and watch how fast we go on the highway??? this seems absurd to me. this is not the land of freedom, far from it. we have created so many restrictions that i would bet the average american commits 10 illegal acts per day, and this is a conservative guess. hell, we don’t know what is legal or not. i know that in florida, it is illegal for me to be on the streets without a man… and there are clothing restrictions too. we seem to ignore these dumb “blue” laws, although they come back to haunt us (sexual laws, housing code laws, etc). how do we as a culture put up with this? why do we allow for our “representatives” to take away our freedoms for nothing in return? honestly, i would be shocked to hear anyone say that the laws we have made in the last 10 years have truly altered the path of our society. frankly, i still live by utah phillip’s quote from a guy he met – “your damn laws; the good people don’t need em and the bad people don’t follow em”. what does that say?

so, in my fantasy world, i imagined that i ran for public office, dedicated to bringing freedom back to our society. i did not hide who i am or what i am about and i refused to play bad politician.. it was fun!

i picked up the latest life magazine, which is highly dedicated to comparing the populations feelings towards school now and school in the 50s. can you believe more people want religion in school today than back then?? this is not a land of free thinking, this is not a land where people are encouraged to explore and evolve. this land is stuck in its own fear and self-obsession. it is a disgrace to the term freedom and i am insulted to be an american. i was thinking that it would be nice to run away to a place where there were no “rulers” but that place does not exist. maybe christiana in denmark, but that is about as close as it gets. it infuriates me to think that i have no true control over my own actions… i am not free, i am bound by the land i live in and i have no control otherwise.

personally, i feel as though the only laws that exist should be to guarentee you the right to the pursuit of happiness. in this, i mean that what should be illegal are actions that cause you or others not to do this (murder, rape, violent acts, stealing, etc.). it is absurd that i can get more jail time for using marijuana than a man can for raping me. it is absurd that i am fined more for driving 90 in a 60 than i am for stealing money from a 7/11. what does this say about our culture?

speaking of which, what is our culture? what is culture? what binds us together as a people? is it the land? the law? how does culture evolve? how do cultures merge? can they merge peacefully?

i can definitely feel the maleness of this world and it confuses me in a big way… everything seems so masculinely dominated in an evil sense of the concept.

one other quick thought that came through my head while driving (and then i go to sleep). i realized that there are specific cues that i use when driving. i use the red lights and how far away they are from me at any given point (using trig) and i use the distance and brightness of the lines on the road to give me where to turn, what to do, etc. also, i find that i feel super fucking butchy when i am driving fast… i wonder if testosterone is kicking in… i feel so mannish in that position. oh well, goodnite!