Some days creep me out. I remember one of the first times I was seriously creeped out by the world. I was in 7th grade and for some odd reason, my Spanish teacher decided to show our class a video about the life, death, and predictions of Nostradamus the clairvoyant who had a penchant for seeing and cryptically writing about the horror and gorror (new word for gory : )) of death, war, and destruction. I was around 13 years old, struggling with the gorror of my hormones that were leaving half of my hair curly, the other straight, and my body more chubby than I would have liked. And then I was confronted that the end of the world, WWIII, was right around the corner and not going to be caused by the Russians!!!. The movie was creepy and I have often wondered why the school showed a group of impressionable pre-teens a film about clairvoyance, war, and the end of the world. What sort of vision of life were they trying to inculcate in us? I mean it was kinda cool that they showed us a movie about the life of a man who does not really embody the ideals of western science like rationality and reasoned calculation, but that movie did creep me out.

Reading the newspaper, which I don’t do all that often creeped me out too. I was already in a weird mood, spending the whole morning trying to figure out how to renew my passport so that I could indeed leave the country at the end of the month. So at the gym, where I occasionally pick up the left over SF Chronicles to see what the mainstream media is sharing with (and how it is shaping the) American public. No huge surprises but there are times when the news really leaves me worn and wasted for many many different reasons. Bush is moving ahead at least ideologically with his desire for war while the response from the Arab leaders is that “War would open the gates of hell” and yet Bush’s desire I bet still burns stronger. At least there has been a decent amount of open criticism from mainstream politicians and journalists although to frame it as a danger to national oil access, which some have done, is to miss the point entirely of why it is just wrong, bad, for us to go to war. There was one piece of commentary I did liked which was one by our most smiley president, Jimmy Carter .

Then there were a series of articles about our health and healthcare in our country. The cost of healthcare is rising. We are witnessing its largest increase since 1990 (while the economy is spiraling) and in the backdrop of a National Academy of Sciences huge (though not very surprising) report basically outlining new dietary guidelines. Guidelines that the American public for the most part is not even close to following, which is one of the reasons that so many people have whacked out chronic illnesses, which is one of the reasons why healthcare is so expensive. A leisurely stroll through an American supermarket does not make me too hopeful about the nutrition revolution I would so love to see this country go (though there have been some positive reorientations towards health and nutrition for sure).

Night time is when creepiness can turn into extreme creepiness. But thankfully, my night ended with a not-so-creepy-visit to the Alameda County Computer Resource Centerto help out with the getting many Linux boxes set up to send to Ecuador. The place is rad, a huge meandering warehouse exploding at the seams with computer equipment that looks sort of dead but is brought back to life by the staff to exist once again in all parts of the country and world. They had a PDP-11 which I made sure to touch with great respect as it is one of the pieces of machinery, that well, spawned and help form hacker cultural communities, which was the whole reason I was even in the Bay Area that night, having a great time despite the creepiness of the day!