Lucid life

I hate this place. I'm sick of it. I don't want to be here. I don't have to put up with it. I hate this place. Yeah... I want to be somewhere else. Some place where there are no more people. No more of their stupidities, no more putting up with them. No more of these ignorant slaves. No more of their hypocritical masters.

I don't want them in my place. Call me a hatemonger or paint me as an outcast who's got a problem with everyone and everything, I don't give damn, even if it's true. I'm surrounded by fools and I can't stand stupidity. I can't stand pathetic people talking about finding a meaning of their lives or a reason for living. Can't stand losers like cult-members or geeks with stupid beliefs planted in their brains. Like the moron whose sole purpose of living is to buy the latest junk out in the market to subdue their complexes or to get pissed flat in parties talking about having fun. They're a parody to themselves. Can't stand them, don't want them.

I don't want any more of these stupid adolescent morons making up slogans like "It's my life" and protesting about it. If you really have the guts, then leave your homes and get out on the streets. No one's holding you back. Do what you want, if you can, and then tell me how an evolutionist saying "survival of the fittest" sounds like.

I don't want these obsessed dumb fools going on and on about nonsense like love. I see what these ultra-emotional types mean when they ask each other, "Do you love me?" You know what it means? It means: "I'm begging you tell me that the glossiness of my lipstick makes up for the emptiness of my skull, because it's my only eligibility." I don't know what annoys me more: their long nasal 'aww's, or young idiots doing drugs or high-school schizophrenics talking to imaginary friends or brainless teenagers craving mass acceptability of fools getting suicidal over having their looks criticised.

You know how annoyed I get when I hear these semi-human know-it-alls who have less than nothing to be proud of talk about self-esteem? Psychiatrists talking about the importance of appearances in modern society, hideous creatures running off to plastic surgeons asking "Why not", more and more airheads getting self-esteem injected into their foreheads in the form of botox. That's not playing on their insecurities, that's exploiting their voluntary moronic states. Healthy parasites in the brain, criticising the head and the feet.

I want no more of these middle-aged divorced feminists rallying on the streets about another equality right that'll make men leave their bus-seats. I don't want them bragging about their microscopic contributions to mankind and I wont be forced to write 'humankind'.

Celebrities and idols, singers of love songs and writers of romance novels, the ringleaders and perpetuators of worldwide stupidity, followers and fans without a clue as to what they're doing all united under their own causes. I'm sick of them. No more screaming female fans of Mathers, no more weeping fans of Spears, no more of Roberts. No more people watching Friends because everyone else does. No more loving Potter because it's 'cool', because it's not. No more living in cuddly fantasy worlds of soap operas. No more of this feel-good nonsense.

I don't want any more of these minions of the bloodsuckers deciding what I decide. I don't want these cockroach critics trying to tell me what I should choose for myself. I don't want them telling me stuff like what's 'hot' and what's 'not'. I don't want them telling me what's 'in' and what's 'out'. I don't want you telling me to be myself in the end because I already am, so just shove off. Don't talk to me about self-awareness when you are relentless in turning me into another one of your mindless slaves. I refuse to be a part of your mass 'commonization'.

Gurus of fashion setting the latest 'trend', designing the latest must have for the mindless. Evolutionists talking about the competitiveness among the super-apes in order to be on top. Fools say: let's go shopping. Wonder what the shrinks, the deciders of 'right' and 'wrong', might say if say I see a link between these. "Put him on Prozac. Restrain him and put him in an asylum. The boy's delusional and is making up fairy-tales to avoid facing the real troubles of his messed-up life." It's "majority rules" all over again, fools rule. And there's the media feeding the gullible minds with the information it wants to. It's like injections in the head that turn brain into soup.

I'm sick of this nonsense. I'm sick of watching poll results change on TV after every other speech. I'm sick of people with no sense of judgement changing their fickle minds about who they want to vote for. Flag-bearers of freedom, upholders of democracy talking about giving people rights and the freedom-of-speech. Rights justified by psychiatrists and scientists, and what freedom? Freedom that they are going to give me? Right. What's democracy turned into but a management of a lying bunch of hypocrites? Politicians talking about law and justice, warmongers talking about freedom and humanity, confused masses never knowing what to say or do as usual. I don't know what's more ridiculous: people believing in propagandists or the organizers and participants of a cat show talking about human rights. I'm sick of the speeches on terrorism. I don't want colored terrorists. I want terrorists colored. I'd rather have inherited dictatorship than elected stupidity.

I don't want to narrow the point-of-view by putting in examples, but I don't want to be one of those poetic chickens who can't stick it on the face. So this is what I say: I DO NOT want to be another ant in the colony living under the false pretence of freedom. I DO NOT want to be labelled "good citizen" and "consumer". I DO NOT want to be dragged around by this conveyer belt of hypocrisy. I don't want to be dictated by the greedy net of rulers above my head, seen and unseen.

I can't expect 'somewhere else' to be a place other than one in my head, or maybe I'm living a 'lucid life' where I know I'm living it and everything else seems stupid until I take LSD (which I don't).

[Get one back at me at the_shuvom@yahoo.com. Remember that you're living in a world where cheerleading is considered a huge talent.]

By shuvom

In the realms of darkness

I can feel the ominous dark clouds gathering around me, and this eerie feeling that something very, very wrong is about to happen. Through some windows, I can watch the hospital nurse securing the straps around a pair of feet (mine). 'Come near,' I hear, unable to verify the source of the sound. Suddenly I am aware of a jerking motion and the next thing I see through the windows (eyes), is the mutilated face of the nurse, with half an eye and her tongue missing. As terrified screams surround me, in a split second I am struck with a sickening realisation I am trapped in Hell itself; I am trapped in the mind of Hannibal Lector.

It's a good thing that technology hasn't developed any method of entering people's minds yet. Anyone who has seen/ read 'Silence of the Lambs', obviously knows that the mind of Hannibal Lector is undoubtedly the most horrifying place a sane person can ever be. Yet, in spite of being so distorted, such a mind would certainly qualify as the 'Dream Destination' of any budding psychologist, or any experienced one at that. Imagine a mind so twisted and disturbed that you never know what to expect next; imagine possessing the power to make someone kill/injure/disfigure themselves by merely speaking to them for a few minutes; imagine life without a conscience. I for one wouldn't mind taking a look inside that unbelievably unpredictable mind of his, and I am sure many of the fascinated people out there won't mind either.

PROS: The experience of a lifetime. One will be able to have an amazing intellectual understanding of a person's personality at first glance and be able to sum up his past/present/future by just speaking to them for a few minutes. You can also feel the power of being able to influence others' actions. Also, with numerous thoughts constantly invading his mind, you'll never be bored.

CONS: Being stuck in such a twisted and disturbed mind might end up giving you a few twisted ideas of your own. Once escaping the confines of Lector's mind, you'll definitely have to take care if you don't want to end up in an asylum yourself. Additionally, being the controlling centre of such unexplainable acts of violence, it is also not an ideal place for the queasy and the sensitive.

By Jennifer Ashraf

Farewell to gravity

This must be what it feels like when your soul leaves your body. That's all I could think when the first parabola hit, and I floated in zero gravity for the first time. If you've ever dreamed you could fly, you already know exactly how it feels.

That's the most amazing thing about weightlessness -- the fact that something so unnatural and unfamiliar feels so natural, so familiar. The flights create microgravity

environments by swooping along a trajectory that looks like the biggest roller coaster in the galaxy. Each modified Boeing 727-200 cargo jet climbs from around 25,000 to 39,000 feet, and each time it reaches the peak of that invisible arc, varying levels of weightlessness occur inside the craft, from "Martian" levels at a third of Earth gravity, to "moon" levels at one-sixth of Earth gravity, to absolute zero gravity.

On the ground before liftoff, all 27 passengers on my flight were split into groups of three. Alan M. Ladwig, COO of Zero Gravity Corporation and former Associate Administrator of NASA, served as my team's coach.

He warned each of us to sit as still as possible during the heavy-gravity "valleys" along that roller-coaster trajectory -- keep your head aligned with your spine we were told, don't move your head, choose a single point in front of you and stay focused on it. Rapid eye movements create vertigo, and vertigo generally leads to vomit. Some of my flight-mates took anti-nausea meds like the scopolamine-Dexedrine cocktail popular with NASA flyers.

Those taking "scopedex" time their hits like deadheads dropping acid before a show -- "Should I take it now? I want it to kick in before takeoff time so I'm good to go when the parabolas start." Others like me just crossed fingers and crammed chewing gum, ginger candy, crackers or Altoids into flight-suit pockets.

Inside, the plane is an empty hull, apart from 30 seats in the rear. Along the length of the craft, nearly all windows are welded shut.

A good thing for nervous first-timers like me, perhaps, because looking outside can induce motion sickness. But the real reason they're blocked is that when this plane isn't a weightless pleasure craft, it's a cargo vehicle for hauling goods -- part of Zero Gravity's patented business plan. Inside, we begin the first climb into a weightless parabola. Before we float, we feel the opposite of floating -- the 1.8-G pull-up feels like invisible hands pressing down on my skull, shoulders, face, spine. The heaviness is so vivid, so dense, it's almost painful. Looking around the plane, all of my flight-mates -- journalists, astronauts, Zero-G employees and a few radio contest winners -- look like they're in yoga class. Rows of people seated with crossed legs, spines erect, heads motionless. We gaze forward at the Diet Rite sponsor sticker slapped on the forward cabin wall, as if it were a mandala. The weight feels unbearable, as if the hair, skin and muscle hanging on our bones were suddenly replaced with lead replicas.

Then, just when the weight can't get any heavier, it vanishes. And all of the passengers, seated seconds ago like brass Buddhas, release folded legs and float into the air like translucent silk scarves. The sound of floating is squealing. Our blood has been replaced with laughing gas. Everyone's giggling uncontrollably -- all there is to do when you float for the very first time is laugh. Because it's impossible. Because it's unnatural. Because it feels like that dream of flying over rooftops in moonlight. And the joke in your bones is that all of this feels perfectly natural, as if all your life you were meant to float. The cable news correspondent does a back flip. The guy whose best friend won a ticket on the radio leaps into the air, spins laterally in vapor. Two passengers do push-ups off each thers' backs, hovering like fleshy UFOs.
My flight coach grabs my hand and we propel off the padded floor, a Superman leap into air along the craft length. Each parabola lasts less than a minute, but feels like five, 10, 20, maybe an hour. Time evaporates along with gravity.
My coach and I land on the other end of the craft, and the flight manager shouts a command for all to be seated and in pull-up position -- back to yoga pose.

The heaviness that follows as the plane descends into the next roller-coaster "trough" is just as intense as the floating euphoria.

We've landed next to Buzz Aldrin -- the second human to ever touch the moon -- and I ask him how this compares to the first time he felt weightlessness. Aldrin is kneeling, with head and shoulders erect, palms flat on knees, motionless like a monk among rows of serene, seated monks. "The last time I've had zero gravity was for real in a spacecraft," he says, smiling. "Zero gravity in airplane is the same, in terms of physics -- it's just doled out in shorter doses." The astronaut tells me he scuba dives often, because he grows homesick for floating. "These flights are a good eye-opener for the public, and they help open up the feel of space to more than just government-sponsored people or the very wealthy," Aldrin says. "There could be lotteries to open this up to those who can't afford the $2,950, and the commercial sponsorships help. " As he finishes speaking, he grips his knees and falls silent, leaning forward into the pull-up. The weight mounts again, and this time the pressure seems endless.
Then, all of a sudden, the floor disappears. We become small clouds. We are lifted. A day later -- seated not on a plane floor but behind a laptop -- I understand what Aldrin meant. I, too, feel homesick for floating.