Where Does Time Go?

Part Two of Two.

A Wistful Look, James Carroll Beckwith

He's supposed to be old, like 26.
-The Brain, Brick (2005)

Yes, I did wait a year to use that quote. The previous post tangentially touched on my own pessimistic suspicion that I have missed the metaphorical bus. Like the time I decided to take a real bus home from work four years ago on a torrential day before Christmas - I waited in the rain for twenty minutes (not that it mattered since I had already been in it for four hours at this point) and not a single bus appeared. I was therefore prepared for two to appear at once. It turned out they were cancelled due to the flooding. At other times I instead feel there's enough time to just catch the last one. And yet whenever I take a few moments to just lie in bed and think I glance at the clock to find time is flying and I have somewhere to be - it hardly ever seems to do that illusion where it holds onto a second, but then is there really anything meaningful you could do in a second that would wipe out any death-bed regrets you might have?

While We Miss Chances You Can Almost Hear Time Slipping Away

Part One of Two.

Self portrait, Princess Victoria of Kent, 1835

One September morning eleven years ago David Angell boarded a plane that would lead to his death. On the very same day, due to a sequence of fortuitous mistakes, Seth McFarlane missed the very same flight and Mark Wahlberg cancelled his tickets for that flight at short notice. In another universe where the chain of cause and effect was subtly different; all of them died, or none of them died, or some who died did not and vice versa. When you raise the stakes, the fridge horror of the Many Worlds Interpretation becomes apparent.

Most of us have never dodged a bullet of that calibre, though I don't think it would be unreasonable to say most people have experience of almost being run-over. Not quite the kind of traumatic event that drives a person to madness thinking of all the variables that could have fallen in place and sealed their fate, but with the multiverse theory in mind it becomes apparent that for every recognisable counterpart of yourself that survives a close-call there may be just as many that did not. And now empathically, or perhaps egotistically, your imagination now places you in your other's shoes. For all that you stood outside the path of oblivion you condemned another you to the fate you are so relieved to have been spared.

High School Musical 1 (GA-Slag Finale)

According to the education department, none of what you are about to see... ever happened...

ˍMOIRITAˍ

Starring:
Moira as Rektor Eva McColl
Prij as Che
John McIndöe as Juan Perm-ón
Mr McDougall as Andrea Corr as Perm-ón's Mistress
 Stewart Dent as Class of 2011 Battle Royale Winner
Alan Menzies as Obersturmbannlehrer ab Historie

June 24th 2011
In the Waterfront Cinema the latest movie freezes and the lights come up. The manager enters and speaks to the audience:
"It is my sad duty to inform you that Eva McColl, principal of the school, entered unemployment at 3PM this afternoon."
The crowd erupts in distraught commotion. Amidst this circus our focus falls on straight-faced Che. Oh what a circus...

Ask (GA-Slag FAQ 2)

Prijatelj, Rubberducky, Artemis, Llena, Altavoz

It's hard to imagine things would move on so far that the GA-Slag became part of a different decade. At the time we really were living in the present. By sixth year most of Les Enfants Terribles was in the don't-know-what-we'll-do-after-school class while the majority of the year were in the university application classes. We spent most of that class having a laugh; regularly at the teacher's expense, though she would say at our own expense. It is what it is, and this is the tenth anniversary of the night I was bored and got a freeware FTP application to work and uploaded the familiar black and red image of James Dean Bradfield from the NME. The first rant pre-dates that by almost a full month, but at the time it was being hosted on Stephen's GA-Master site, and so this is really the point at which I took the idea and ran with it. Let's take some questions from the audience...

In Central Europe Men Are Marching

A PROLOGUE TO A SERIES.

The Frankfurt Parliament, Public Domain

In the same year of the publication of The Communist Manifesto the Western hemisphere experienced a wave of revolutionary upheaval akin to contemporary events in the Middle East. The 1848 revolutions were about many things to many people - democracy, nationalism, liberalism, socialism. As I draw my series of essays on my political outlook, in particular the evolution of my relationship with revolutionary socialism (ie, Marxism), to an eventual close after two years; on this national day I look to begin a new series on another of the major ideologies of 1848 - nationalism.

As the European Union appears to be unfurling and prominent independence movements are afoot in Scotland and Catalonia; it seems relevant to discuss ethnicity and nationalism. The primary aim of the series will be to identify the origin of national identity - the interplay of history, geography, culture, and language in binding populations together in shared character. In the same vein as my political series this set on nationalism will start with a republished college essay - in this case an essay on Bismarck's role in the unification of Germany from HND History. While it doesn't deal with issues of national identity, it does discuss the historical processes that led to the unification of one of Europe's last fractured lands into a great power.

From The East / From The South

Chevrolet Camaro Z28 1969

In the fourteen years I've played the various instalments of Gran Turismo I've never really taken a shine to American cars. The first game was heavily skewed towards Japanese makes and even skewed toward particular models - just how many Skylines is enough? GT is often cited as a cause for increased grey imports at the turn of the millennium and back then it was all about Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, Subaru Imprezas, and Nissan R34 Skylines. My dream car at the time was an Impreza 22B. Being twelve years old at the time, the closest I could get to that dream was a treasured copy of Car magazine with the 22B as its cover story ("Catch 22-B"). The Japanese four doors that were dominating rallying at the time were seen as powerful and nimble yet practical family cars. In comparison, the American manufacturers (the Big Three: GM, Ford, Chrysler) had split personalities across the domestic and international markets. General Motors and Ford had their autonomous European operations, and whilst some of their modern models were present in GT2 (Astra Touring Car, Ford RS2000), domestic US models were largely absent and thought of as gas-guzzling lumps of metal that could just about turn left if given enough space (ie, NASCAR). There were really only two US performance vehicles that could rival the Japanese domination - the Chevrolet Corvette C4 and the Chrysler/Dodge Viper GTS, which was really only one until the C5: the Viper.

Martinis, Girls, and Guns

SIS (MI6) Building, radim99, 2007

It seems these days that blockbusters don't just sink or swim anymore, but get stuck in a critical limbo. This year alone there have been three films that come to mind that have had mixed reception: (the pretentious and insubstantial) Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, and most recently Skyfall. I cannot discuss the new Bond film without first covering a little bit of (personal) history of the series. A little bit, or maybe seven hundred words...