I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

Well, the results are in for the winner of the Defend your genitalia! contest!

I didn't get many entries, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard deciding, so I made Own3d pics for everyone who sent in an entry (Except for Pam, of whom I have no picture to make an own3d pic at this time).

Anyway, here we go. The winner is.... *Drumroll*


Scott, with his excellent in-depth look into the personal life of a penis!

For 2nd place, we have a 4 way tie between Brian, Pam, Jon, and Kristina! [Brian gets two own3d pics because he submitted two entries (which isn't really legal but hey, I'm the guy in charge)] Kristina's was hard because I don't have a picture of her actually own3ng someone, so I had to improvise!









Thank you for participating!

And now, for general own3d pleasure, two extra own3d pics!

I was hoping to tie this post into my blog about Solaris, but I began to realize that the movie really didn’t focus on death as much as love, regret, and renewed life. So here comes my post on death. It includes a revealing tid-bit for you all to talk about, so read on!

Although I’ve grown accustomed to mentioning it casually when the situation permits, hardly anyone knows of the condition I had a little over a year and a half ago. Fall semester of sophomore year, I developed a pretty big problem with death anxiety. Being a secular humanist and an atheist creates a pretty easy world for me to live in, except when it comes to dealing with death. You see, for me, death is the end, there is nothing. You don’t exist. You don’t even think about not existing.

Understandably, this has always scared the shit out of me, although I had managed to keep it out of my mind for most of my life. During that second year at Clemson, I began to get panic attacks whenever I thought about death that usually involved me clutching my chest because I found it hard to breathe wherever I was. It would happen to me pretty much any time of the day, but often hit me during British lit (where we talked about issues involving death a lot) and during movies that focused a lot on it. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, managing to keep my problem hidden, and so it got worse throughout the semester.

In the last month or so, it got unbearable, so I finally told my mother (she’s a pediatric and psychiatric nurse practitioner) and my father. Just the act of telling them did a lot to help, but talking with them throughout the rest of the semester and through the Christmas break did a lot to reduce the number of panic attacks I had. They did a wonderful job of being there for me, although, quite understandably, they got a bit worried about me.

Soon after, I met Karen, and, except for one instance that I’ll get to, I never had any big problems with death anxiety again (every now and then I’ll get a bit scared, but nothing worse than normal). Being with someone made a great deal of the difference. I think before I was scared of death because I was so alone, and afterwards I was so happy that it was easy to enjoy life and not worry about such a silly thing.

Now there are few people that I know that are as accustomed to flying as I am. I’ve been on flights over the Atlantic almost once a year since I was 10 months old, and I’ve almost never been phased by it. I got a little more nervous after September 11th (even though it wasn’t warranted), but was still ok with flying. Last summer I was too sick to worry about the flight over to the UK, but the flight back was very different.

First, you have to understand that I was missing her so much at this point, as we had been apart for 2 months. Second, the cross-Atlantic flight and the ensuing one to Myrtle Beach were the two most turbulent flights I’d ever been on. Suddenly I was scared shitless again. I gripped my seat as the plane dipped every few seconds. I was seriously on the verge of freaking out, not because I was scared of what comes after death, like during my bout of death anxiety, but because if I died then, I’d never see her gain. That was all I wanted at that moment, to be with her, or at least let her know that I was thinking about her. The thought of being lost at sea or pulverized in the wasn’t nearly as bad as disappearing from her life and not letting her know how much she meant to me.

The plane landed, and I went on with life.

Now I’m 5 days away from getting on a plane again, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m more nervous during take off and landing, thanks to the comedian Billy Connolly, who said that after the first 3 or 4 feet off the ground, you’re above maiming height and would be stone dead if you crashed, so best not to worry. I don’t have problems with death anxiety, but should I still be scared of flying, now that I don’t have anyone to be afraid of never seeing?

I’m not going to assume I wouldn’t be missed of my Delta flight plummets into the ocean, and you’d all better as hell mourn forever if it did happen, but I don’t have that strong emotional connection that I did at the time, so would I be as bothered if my plane starts to bounce up and down again? I won’t be returning to my sweetheart after being taken away from her for 2 months, I’m going over to England to check out grad schools, and then will be coming back to do research from the comforts of my home (alone for the first week).

I suppose there is nothing about planes that is particularly scary, since you are much less likely to die in a plane than in a car. The difference is in control. You at least feel like you have some control over your fate in a car, but when a plane crashes, you are carried screaming for a minute into the ground, with nothing you can do about it.

Well, it’s hard to end on a happy note after all of that. I guess I shouldn't worry because, according to the Death Clock, I won't die until Saturday, September 29, 2057!

But to end on a serious note. If my plane ever did plummet: it's been really fun guys. It couldn't have been any better, and it's all been because of you and the other's I've had the pleasure of knowing.

Last night I saw the movie “Solaris,” which I believe is Steven Soderbergh’s retelling of the original story novel by Stanislaw Lem, not of the 1972 movie based on the same book. I’ll give a brief synopsis and a few general comments, then try and take some of the issues that come out of the movie and apply them to what I’ve sat down to talk about.

Think the not-so distant future. The fashion is a little different but we’re still human. Still dealing with the suicide of his wife, Chris Kelvin is living out what seems to be a pretty boring life as a psychiatrist After we’ve become accustomed to our setting, Chris receives a message from an old friend to come to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, where a project that is determined to study the planet has gone awry.

The ‘company’ that is in charge of the project sends him out to retrieve the crew, which is now failing to respond. When he arrives, he finds that what is left of the crew has become paranoid and delusional, and so he sets about trying to convince them to leave with him. After his first night’s sleep, Chris wakes up to find his wife in bed with him, as real as he could remember her.

Soderbergh takes a very minimalist approach to this movie, which I found wonderful. Not since 2001 have we really seen space portrayed as such a silent cold drama. The music is usually fairly quite minimalist synthetic drums and pads. The movie is at its best when the music begins playing, because Soderbergh seems to prefer either having dialogue or music, but not both. You see these very long, drawn out scenes, without the distractions of regular background noise, because a real actor doesn’t need sound, he just needs expression (In fact, the scenes with extensive dialogue are the weakest in the film)

I’m not usually a big George Clooney fan, but he just does a wonderful job in this film of initially conveying that loneliness that we all understand so well, and then the heart-wrenching reality that his wife is back, even if she is just a memory of what was. Solaris gives its characters what they need but can’t have, and it’s great to sit back and watch them deal with this false reality.



I won’t go into much more detail, except to suggest that some of you see this movie. I won’t say all of you, because this movie is only for a certain audience. Don’t see it looking for an explosive sci-fi action flick. Don’t watch it looking for an explanation. Don’t see it if you can’t take a slow-moving film. I’ll quote someone from amazon.com:

Now, I know that a lot of people hated the movie. Actually, "hated" is probably not a strong enough word for what a lot of people felt. And I sort of understand those opinions; I don't agree with them, but that's not the same thing. The movie comes from, and is aimed at, a very specific emotional place, one that is complex and troubling and very difficult to explain.

One of the best quotes from the movie:
We don’t want other worlds… we want mirrors.

Solaris has the ability to give us what our subconscious wants. The reappearance of Chris’s wife makes him believe he has a second chance, which isn’t completely real (As real as an extension of Solaris can be). Would any of you take the chance to have back what you really desire and have lost, even if it wasn’t real?

I wanted to talk a bit about death, but I think I’ll make it a separate post, as it doesn’t tie into Solaris as well as I thought.


Oh, and thank you everyone for your entries in last week’s contest. I’ll announce the winner at the end of the week!