Interlude

Before I get to part two of falsification and why my dissertation depresses me, let's have a brief intermission. While we're on the topic of the UFC, there was a news story a few weeks ago about a UFC fighter named Evan Tanner who died in the desert out in Brawley, CA, where he was camping by himself. He had run out of gas for his dirtbike and was about to run out of water, so he attempted to hike to a nearby spring, however when he reached the spring he found it dry; he died of heat exhaustion soon thereafter. The temperatures were near 118, too much even for someone in as good shape as he was. He apparently had a problem with alcoholism that had interfered with his career in the UFC, but was generally regarded as an incredibly nice guy who happened to beat people up for a living.

His death struck a chord with me partly because he was a fellow reddish-haired hipster woodsman type. However, it's mostly an issue of how he died: accidentally dying of exposure in the desert is an idea that tends to ricochet about in my mind for some reason. When Joan Didion wrote about the former Episcopal Bishop of California, James Pike, the only details of his life that stuck with me were the circumstances of his death. He and his new wife drove into the desert a few months after their marriage to see what the wilderness would have been like for Jesus. Their only supplies were two bottles of Coke. Their rental car broke down miles from civilization and they split up to find help - she made it, he died in a canyon. These details stuck with me long after I forgot about the other crazy aspects of his life - his rejection of the Trinity, his expulsion from the Episcopal church for heresy (I grew up listening to liberal Episcopal priests yammer on every schoolday, with their hippy McGovernite ways; you have really want it to be accused of heresy by Episcopalians), his experience of poltergeist phenomena at the hands of his drug addict son who committed suicide, there was all kinds of crazy shit that I forgot all about because it didn't play into my deepest fears.

I've been having recurring dreams about packing up my backpack for an expedition. I don't know what this signifies, as I'm sure as shit not about to go into the desert in my waking life. I dreamt that there was a medication that would protect me from the sun and I was trying to scam some before I headed out to parts unknown. I think there is, on the horizon, an actual medication that would help with this a bit - Melanotan II is in Phase II clinical trials at the moment. It's a peptide that stimulates the production of melatonin in the skin. It turned a dog with white skin into a dog with black skin. I would love, love to have that pill. Desert peoples such as my girlfriend don't understand what it's like to be in the sun for 15 minutes and realize that you need to beat a hasty retreat or face certain bodily injury. The sun! That motherfucker is relentless. He does not care for northern Europeans. My people spent generations learning to adapt to his absence, learning to create vitamin D when it was cold and misty and drizzling, and then like a dumbass I move to Los Angeles, where my kind is not wanted.

Anyways, if there was a pill that could make me swarthy with limited side effects, I would gobble that shit like it was Oxycontin and I was a family member of someone on the Republican ticket. It sounds like Melanotan II has some interesting side effects - the stage I trials showed that men who took it got tan, sleepy, yawny, and prone to unexplained but long-lasting erections. This drug sounds like it is racist against Matthew McConaughey. Also the drug companies are excited about it because it engendered concupiscence when administered to lady mice, and the drug companies are desparate for lady Viagra.

But I digress. One interesting thing about having a blog is that you learn about the themes that dominate your mental life. Mine are apparently disaster preparedness, being a fish out of water in L.A., Episcopal boys schools, and the UFC. Who knew?