Train (Wreck) of Thought

[ ed. note. Warning: this is long. You can tell, just by looking below and seeing it. I shouldn't have to be telling you this kind of thing. ]

My CEO has a yellow Hummer H2.

It's a nice yellow that makes it look like a real-life Tonka truck; it's not faded pastel like a candy. I mean, the faded kind would look pansy on a ruff-n-tuff truck like the H2, but looks great on my friend's Z3. I guess you wouldn't want the roadster too bold of a shade anyway, or else you'd be easily targeted by the police. And you know those cops: they target based on profiling.

Red is one of those targeted colours too, because it stands out. Like on the ski slopes, it's easy to spot a red jacket amidst those khakis and dark shades nowadays. Shades. Do they still call them shades, or is the hip term "sunglasses" now? I think someone poked fun at me for calling them shades, but we all know what I'm talking about, right? Those plastic, polycarbonate, or glass lenses that go over your eyes to shield against bright light. In a city, the lights are mostly buildings, lampposts, and traffic lights. Lots of whites, yellow, red, and greens. I guess the human eye really picks up on that range of visible light, which makes sense why traffic lights have red for "stop". But I wonder how it was decided so readily that green could be "go" -- seems like it's accepted the world over, doesn't it? It could just as easily have been blue, for instance. But then, blue is so overdone these days: phones, lights, bedsheets, gizmos, gadgets, everything is blue. But not a lot of things are naturally blue. Barely any foods. Just blueberries, really, and they're only blue on the outside and kind of an ugly yellow on the inside. And anyway, they're not even in season right now; we should be enjoying strawberries as much as we can. Especially those organic kind. They're small, sweet, and extremely saturated with that strawberry flavour -- I'll never go back to buying supermarket strawberries regularly again. And they're red. Not blue.

Even the sky and the ocean aren't really blue, except that it has something to do with wavelengths of light coming back at us, and some physical optical law of refraction or whatever with the atmosphere. But in the sky, I'm glad when there are nice fluffy white clouds in it, to provide some contrast to the vast openness, some kind of sense of scale against such a grandiose backdrop. I guess that affinity to clouds comes from growing up in Vancouver, except that back then, we saw too many clouds all the time. And mostly they were carrying large loads of water with them to dump on us. I also remember not wanting to wear rain boots as a child because they looked lame and they were made of rubber, which made my feet uncomfortable when I sweat; I opted to get soaked to the bone (and feet) instead of looking stupid. Funny, because when I look back on those pictures of me as a kid, I looked stupid anyway. I suppose I should have just worn the boots and looked stupid while being dry and catching fewer colds.

Hmm, I wonder if not getting sick so often when younger would have helped me grow another inch or two in height, so that I could be 5'10" or taller? Then maybe it would give me more raw power for working out and playing sports. I mean, right now, I barely play any sports, let alone team sports. Still, I consider myself a team player, just not in the active sport sense. I guess if I were taller, I would want to be more active to take advantage of that. And I would look better driving a bigger car, instead of being dwarfed out like a midget in a semi. I mean, I'm not a tiny guy, and I fit my GTI nicely, thank you very much. But I don't think it would look right if I wanted to drive an SUV.

Especially not a Tonka-yellow H2, like my CEO has.