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“This is simul­ta­ne­ously the best and the worst thing I have ever heard.”

How is it that I don’t even own a tele­vi­sion and I know what the Mooninites are? (Well, I couldn’t remem­ber their names before read­ing it, but I knew what they were and where the ref­er­ence came from). I think the whole sit­u­a­tion is really an emo­tional onion.

First there’s the laugh­ter when you real­ize that parts of the Boston gov­ern­ment were com­pletely freaked out by Lite-brites. Then comes the reac­tion from the Mayor and the Chief of Police when they real­ize it’s a mar­ket­ing cam­paign. They had only two real courses to fol­low — laugh it off and let the story dis­ap­pear, or double-down on blus­ter — and chose the over-the-top response of arrest­ing the kids who put the things up. The moti­va­tion for it is obvi­ous: They hung up these lights just to make me look redicu­lous! And a man in my posi­tion can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous!

Then you get angry, since it’s obvi­ously a case of the city gov­ern­ment abus­ing it’s power and hurt­ing the peo­ple who’s job it was to hang lighted plaques at ran­dom high-traffic spots around the city. There’s no way those peo­ple deserve jail time — let alone five years in jail — for what they did, and even the judge in the case knew it. So the mar­keters hold a press con­fer­ence and dis­cuss 70s hair­styles.

Absolutely bril­liant. Watching that press con­fer­ence brought back mem­o­ries of Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies to those old enough to remem­ber it (or have seen tapes of it). To those of us who aren’t (or haven’t), we got the a com­plete under­stand­ing of the gen­er­a­tion gap, and how redicu­lous an older gen­er­a­tion can seem to the younger one. The corol­lary to that is the thought that the baby boomers have grown into the tyran­i­cal, self-important fuddy-duddies they used to enjoy piss­ing off. That they have col­lec­tively become Richard M. Nixon. (Of course, that’s not really fair, since it’s doubt­ful that most boomers thought too deeply about the 1960s beyond just the fashions.)

After the glow of enlight­en­ment wears off, I remem­ber one other thing: the kids hang­ing the Mooninite devices are out there shilling for AOL-Time Warner, try­ing to sell movie tick­ets for one ten­ta­cle of a multi­na­tional enter­tain­ment con­glom­er­ate. So yes, I under­stand the six­ties now — it’s been pack­aged and sold back to me.

The other night I was think­ing about fear (in case you’re won­der­ing, I do that instead of sleep­ing). See, I have these Socratic debates in my head, wherein I deter­mine which side of the debate sounds — on the whole — less mind-fuckingly insane to me, and then I refine it, and blend in the less crazy parts of the (on the whole) more insane side, until I come to a con­clu­sion. On good days, this takes the ambiance of a pair of lefty heads, build­ing on a lazy Saturday after­noon — albeit sans Matrix ref­er­ences. Bad days… not so much.

Anyways, I came to the con­clu­sion that hope and fear are flip sides of the same coin: they are both irra­tional emo­tional invest­ments in the future. Hope, for it’s part, is irra­tional pos­i­tiv­ity applied to your pre­dic­tions. Fear, for it’s part, is irra­tional neg­a­tiv­ity applied to your pre­dic­tions. Ultimately, nei­ther one is really worth it, and both are let-downs. The things you fear are never as bad as you have built them up in your mind. So too, the things you hope for are never as good.

I would not be sur­prised if this is because (to me at least) both are forced. I have to make myself afraid, just as I have to make myself hope­ful, as I don’t feel I am nat­u­rally either at this point. Of course, this makes the fear and hope that much more square-peg-in-round-hole, and wastes a lot of my energy. Which in turn becomes an excuse for not doing any­thing to fix the issues under­ly­ing the emo­tions in the first place.

And that’s nat­u­rally slap-worthy stupid.

Oh yes, and at some point, I must cre­ate and use an IlludiumPu236SpaceModulator abstract base class. Perhaps on Monday.

[Redacted because it wasn’t fair to loved ones.]