Ice and Trains

[meowmensteen]

I had a short day planned for work today because we had a new refrigerator coming this afternoon. Of course they called me at 10am to tell me the guys were at my house. Luckily I was able to bail at work, and ride my bike home in ten minutes. Our old fridge was doing that thing again where it decided to run all the time and become a giant freezer. Luckily the property manager said because we've been living here since 2002, that he would buy us a new one. It's so odd having a fridge without rusty shelves in it. The old one was actually made in 1989. The down side is that this new one is huge. It makes my tiny kitchen even tinier.

First thing I did was put some ice trays in the freezer to make ice. MAKING ICE IS SO EXCITING!! Not really, but yes it did work. I now have ice in my freezer, and the things in the fridge are not ice. When I pour cream into my coffee, it doesn't come out like a slushy.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, I've also been watching a lot of train documentaries. There's so many documentaries where they take someone famous or not, and put them on an old train route somewhere in the world. I just watched one where an old Russian ballerina who defected from the USSR came back after the end of communism to take a train ride across Russia to show her very American son her old country. It was cool because not only was it about trains, but also about Soviet history. There was this eerie moment where they see an old statue of Stalin tipped over and his nose smashed. She talked about how she remembered when Stalin died, and how she cried and everyone cried because they were all brainwashed. Looking at the statue's broken nose she was both laughing and crying. She was upset that someone defaced the statue, but also said, "He deserved it. He killed so many people." Then laughed and cried some more. You could see how split she felt about it. It's here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL0SYziZgO8

I know this sounds silly, but I'm fairly confident that I'm going to live to be 101. I have no basis in reality to back this up, but a while back I saw a obituary in the paper for a guy who died at 101, and I just had this overwhelming feeling that I would be 101 when I died too. Who knows, maybe not...note at this moment I was going to follow up the maybe not with an imaginary scenario, but then that would be testing fate now wouldn't it? The reason this wild fantasy came up is that some day all of this stuff we're living through now will be a part of history, and I'll be one of those old people that remembers history. Maybe they'll put me on a train, and I can tell stories about the old United States....yeah, we used to have separate restrooms for men and for women, and those were the only two options.

Comments

[blue-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I think people at the end of this century won't believe how we treated the other life forms on this planet--the industrialized genocide (factory farms), the prisons (zoos), the ethnic cleansing (habitat loss and slaughter), the belief that humans could own other creatures and do with them what they pleased. You have only to witness the vitriol and hatred directed at animal rights organizations to know a nerve has been hit. Animal rights (I don't like this term "animal," for it implies that somehow man is apart from and above other creatures) is the next great cause, and we are in its early days. And there is real risk in standing up for animals, much like there was for standing up for blacks in the 50's or gays in the 70's.

[littlemask.livejournal.com]

I think you're right! This is definitely the issue I feel most strongly about and whenever I just sort of touch on it in conversation I get very extreme reactions from otherwise very calm, reasonable people. Even when I just talk about the responsibilities and obligations of pet ownership people get /offended/ for some reason. I guess they think they should be able to get a pet, not pay any attention to it, and somehow have it behave perfectly but when it doesn't just dump it somewhere and not give a blank about what happens to it next. :/ Back in high school I even made enemies and "drew fire" to myself by speaking up for this issue so I second that "there is real risk in standing up for animals."

[blue-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Yes, people will typically respond with anger when they can't respond with reason. But at least they realize if only at a subconscious level that there is a problem--so the possibility of change is there.