Road Trip'in = Big Think'in

We are in Austin, Texas this weekend.  We go every year at this time primarily for their annual musical festival and every year I look forward to it, rain or shine, although this weekend I fear is going to be on the rainer side of things.  But don't worry (not that I assumed you were) it will not deter us from having a good time.

There has only been one year that we arrived by plane, every other year we have made the little over seven hour drive.  We used to stop in Dallas as a kind of half way mark (although it’s really like two thirds of the way thing), but we soon realized that Austin traffic mid morning is not anything that should be experienced for anyone, so we now drive straight through or rather my husband drives and I play DJ between a plethora of naps and trying to make sure he is fed.  We tried to reverse these roles one year and it was only too obvious after five minutes of watching me white knuckle my way through Dallas, almost getting hit, cussed at or somewhere in between and G not being able to decide on food and then once food place was agreed upon having to navigate the online menu and the myriad of options to be had proved to be too overwhelming, that our original roles should stay entact for all future driving endeavors.

I actually don’t mind the drive.  It causes interesting conversations to take place out loud and inside my own head.  

Let’s start with an out loud one first.

Why is it that when someone shows a weakness it is commonly, if not crudely, lamented that they are a pussy?

I asked this question and then proceeded to make my argument.

The vaginal is actually one of the strongest body parts.  It cleans itself, it can expand to allow another human child into the world and then it can shrink back to its somewhat original self.  So why is it the word many people, mostly men of course, use to describe someone’s weakness.  Wouldn’t the better term be balls or testicals , which really are a pretty useless member.  They just hang in space without a thought to contributing much to anything.  But no.  If someone says or does something that is particularly bold or courageous they are said to be ballsy.  What the actual fuck?

But again our society has been shaped in a male dominated world; women more often then not being pushed into second class citizenship status, so it does make a king of sense to reduce one of the strongest things about females to a weakness.  The gas lighting that occurs even in today’s modern language is quite astounding.

A thought that I had inside my own head:

I recently saw a social media influencer say that she doesn’t read and the last book she read was probably Dr. Seuss, which I feel is pretty unprobable.  She probably said it to be funny, but when did not reading become something that we brag about?  Wouldn’t it instead be something that you shouldn’t admit because if you do you are admitting to your own ignorance.

I was on a plane once and the flight attendant was telling people to put their luggage in the overhead console like you would a library book on a shelf.  One of the people in line snickered and then quite loudly exclaimed, “Do people even go to the library anymore?”

I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of libraries, books, or reading, although I fear it was probably all of the above.

Is this what our society has become? I can’t help but ask myself.

We make fun of readers now?  We laugh at being ignorant like it’s some sort of something that should be idiolized?

I don’t know what is going to become of our world, but I probably won’t be here to truly witness it’s downfall and that is more than fine with me.  For now I will be more than happy to trip around Austin, listening to music, and living a life primarily in my own head because at least at that point the thoughts make sense.