Right now there are innumerable signals and waves passing through our bodies. That’s not a sexy come-on. I’m bathing in wi-fi. That’s not one, either. The point is, sometimes I wonder what it would be like if it all switched off at once. Would it feel noticeably different? Maybe I would be smarter.

Anyway, in a week I will be relatively unplugged for a few days. I have noticed in the past my thoughts seem much more linear when I get away from computers for awhile. It’s one of the reasons I still use a beat up flip phone from 2007. I keep thinking about an i-phone but I’m afraid I would be tempted to check it all the time.

I’m looking forward to a 10 hour drive across the Great American Desert. Just me and my thoughts.*

*Just kidding. I’ll have my ipod.

As I approach the age of 30 I have an inclination to be less ambiguous. Living with my head in the future created an idleness, rather a paralysis of over-analyization, and along with it a grey cloud through which I may have appeared dispassionate. That I can mostly explain away as a lack of confidence. Fear. I’ve been in the process of letting go of that for some time, and I want that to be evident. I want definition in the present. It’s important, even if I later realize I am wrong. The point of me writing this now is to foreshadow what will likely be more personal pieces than I typically post.

An older recording from my college band Flame-Hand Robot:

Burning Lungs by brettmcatee

Once there was a prince who lived quietly and comfortably in his father’s castle. Word came to town that they were giving out free…toys…no…plague immunizations in the forest but the prince passed, even though plague was serious, because he had grown up reading that dragons liked to trick people with the promise of plague immunizations. Also, highwaymen were a thing. But man, the other kids went, and really had a good day, and didn’t die of plague.

 “If you really wanted to be there,  you’d be there.”

I have a difficult time prioritizing major life movements. I’ve always wanted to live in or near mountains, most specifically Colorado. So why do I still live in Kansas City? Read the rest of this page »

As I sat down to watch “Life Boat,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 movie based on a John Steinbeck story about the survivors of a Nazi U-Boat incursion forced into a tiny…well…life boat, I expected a few good ethical questions to arise out of the human drama.  Whatever the film’s drawbacks, at the end of the evening it had me thinking.

We tend to value human life above all other forms.  Viewing human history and our various violent situations currently suffered, it might be dryly commented that this value isn’t high.  Maybe it isn’t sometimes, but it’s always higher on the list than say…squirrels and trees. Read the rest of this page »