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Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - Hidden Valley RV Park, Tijeras NM

Hickory walking stick, November 8, 2011
Hickory walking stick, November 8, 2011

So much for Albuquerque

I came here in large part to get the front end checked out and aligned to correct the altered right front tire wear that cropped up on the way out here with the trailer. But once I took a really close look at the tire wear and the mileage on the tire I decided it was not excessive and scuttled the plan.

So I made my stop at the Apple store, used their high speed internet connection to upgrade a few OS X apps and iPhone & iPad apps that are too big for my Verizon broadband accounts to gracefully handle, and managed to get out of there without any new toys. Amazing!

Walking stick

Having some time on my hands I came back to Hidden Valley and finished up the walking stick I had been working on. More on that tomorrow.

Night camp

Site 100 - Hidden Valley RV Park, Tijeras NM

Beware of Hypnotic Media

To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you — from the cradle to the grave and beyond — which it would be easy, fatally easy!, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up — before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whiskey, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.

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