And Now, The End Is Near...

So National Blog Post Month, or NAMBLA, is over. I want to thank all of you who helped me complete this Sisyphean task. Your comments, suggestions, and ideas made it all so easy. I really can't believe November is over. This month was so full of stuff that it rocketed by. I look at the calendar and see things like A Midsummer Night's Dream and realize that rather than monolithic horizon lurkers, they are things done and gone and I wonder how I missed them. I oft times marvel at that bizarre dichotomy of human perception. I first noticed it in basic training, or after basic I should say. I looked back and it seemed like the 30 days went by so fast, and yet I remembered every agonizing minute as if it lasted an hour. How can things feel so interminable, and yet so fleeting? Scientists have seen the areas of the brain where decisions are made become active only after the decision has occurred, so does that mean that we react instinctively, and then our brains do a bit of retcon to make it seem that we actively decided something? Or is it simply that the scientists have yet to be able to fathom the data they are receiving? And what about people who, after having 'suppressed memories' excavated firmly believe they have been abducted by aliens? If our memories can be manipulated can we ever trust our senses? We think that we interpret the world in real time, but actually the totality of our experiential references are memories, and therefore subject to manipulation by either internal or external forces. This thought was made very clear to me after my post about my accident with the table saw. One who was there commented that I got part of the story wrong. It was part that had always puzzled me; I remembered being gently teased for being overly polite while I was bleeding and struggling against going into shock, but I didn't recall saying anything that would have incurred that reaction. After reading my account herein, Deb pointed out that, rather than ask if someone would take me to the hospital, I actually said that if someone could tell me how to get there I could drive myself. Two very different recollections, and hers made more sense. As soon as she told me that, my memory of the conversation realigned itself to reflect this more accurate version, and it all fell into place. But if I had never wrote that post, my version of the events would have continued to be flawed, though I would never have known it. Accurate, to me, but not reflecting reality. Things like this give me pause, and give me great doubts about the legal system. Since we can never be 100% sure of our own recollections, how can we base the life or death of others on those inherently flawed perceptions?
Hmm, this certainly went in a direction I never planned. I'd like to say that I consciously decided to connect NoBloPop to the death penalty, and given enough time I could convince myself that that is exactly what happened, but in reality I just started typing, and this is what fell out.

At least that's what I think happened.

Peace, Friends.
Marius