Of all of them: sight.  I love music far too much to give up hearing, I love physical intimacy (with the right person) far too much to sacrifice touch, and I feel like I could be more satisfied with my memories of visual input than I could be by my memories of aural or tactile input.

I also think of it like this.  Sometimes when I taste something I really enjoy, or hear music I really love, I close my eyes to concentrate on it more (I think most people do that).  I don’t cover my ears or stop touching things to look at a sunset.  That leads me to believe that if I had to choose, I would give up sight (although it would mean giving up the visual stimulation of movies, which I would miss!)

That would have to be when my mom first went into the hospital.  She raised me as a single parent, was always without exception the strongest person I knew, and, though she had been getting ill and I had been taking care of her at home, having her suddenly incapacitated and weaker than I’d ever seen her before was an enormous blow.

Now, the initial stages offered no room for depression or moping because my mom’s life was on the line and all decisions about her care were being made me, because I have no siblings.

But after things stabilized then everything started to come crashing down.  And crash it did, with a resounding fury.

The way I overcame it was this: I realized that the best way to lose a card game was to play the hand you wish you had been dealt.  The only way to even have a chance of winning is to play the hand you were dealt.  

Did I wish my mom weren’t in the hospital and in need of constant care? Of course.  Did my wishing change a god damn thing?  Nope. Did it help her?  Nope.  Did it help me so that I could help her?  No again.  

We make our plans and the universe says “we’ll see.”  We roll with the punches because not rolling doesn’t help anything.  We change what we can.  What we can’t we don’t fret over and say “this shouldn’t be.”  If it shouldn’t be it wouldn’t be.  Like the Beatles said “there’s nothing you can do that can’t be done…there’s no one you can save that can’t be saved…there’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”

The universe is unfolding as it should…as it must.  What is within my power, I will control.  What isn’t, I release.  It’s that simple and that hard at the same time.

I had to really think about this.

At first I thought strength, because Superman’s speed is a product of his strength so I’d be super strong AND super fast.  HOWEVER, without his invulnerability super strength is a death sentence.  Yawning and stretching could snap your bones, or at the very least pull them out of their sockets, stomp your foot hard enough and you shatter your legs, run fast enough and you suffocate (if you’re lucky…in reality if you go fast enough even a grain of sand would rip through your body, and friction will incinerate you).

So, no super strength.

Heat vision? Meh.

Flight?  Noooooooow we’re talking.  I’ve ALWAYS wanted to be able to fly.  This would be awesome.  But without invulnerability it presents problems.  At sufficient height the cold would kill you.  At sufficient speed a midair collision with anything bigger than the smallest hailstones would be deadly.  So if I choose flight it can only be used in limited situations (low altitude or  limited high altitude flight, speeds under that at which F=MA makes flying unsafe OR wearing protective gear for higher speed flight).   

So invulnerability itself…but without the super strength.  Hmmm…well, I am fairly strong already, although my strength gains would stop once I became invulnerable because strength is, in part, a stress/damage adaptation.  No stress/damage, no adaptation.  Actually, looked at that way, invulnerability is a one way ticket to atrophy.  A system that can’t be stressed can’t respond to it.  From the point of view of your muscles it would be as if you never used them.  Eventually you’d lose the ability to walk because walking wouldn’t induce the stress response that keeps your muscles functioning.

So…though it couldn’t be used to its full potential without invulnerability, I would choose flight.  And I would use it to travel, and help people (not quite sure of the details on that one), and have so god damn much fun I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

I have actually never used any illegal drug.  Not for any moral reason, it just never struck me as something I wanted to do.  As for weed in particular, I have no issue with it, though chronic (no pun intended) stoners do tend to annoy me.

As for it being illegal, I can find no logical justification for that.  Toxicity? It’s less toxic than nicotine. Intoxicating effect?  Alcohol is an intoxicant, and depresses key parts of neurological function that regulate impulse control, leading to the violence and poor decision making it’s noted for when consumed in excess.  The legal history of cannabis in the U.S. reads as one part Puritan/Victorian moral reactionism, one part industrial conspiracy, neither of which is a legitimate basis on which to make policy.

Law with naturally occurring inanimate objects generally revolves around not using them to cause harm to others but says nothing about one’s personal use.  If I have a pile of stones in my yard I’m not at liberty to throw them at people or through my neighbor’s window, but I am at liberty to use them for/on myself in whatever manner I choose.  Certainly no authority is privileged to come and remove them or, worse yet, attempt to penalize me for them being there.  Marijuana, given its distribution and growing habits, and the fact that it takes little to no processing (not much more than drying herbs) to render useful in psychoactive applications seems to be a similar thing, and I can’t see a compelling public interest in its criminalization.

So for me, I’ve never smoked it, and I may never, who knows?  But if my neighbor can smoke a Marlboro or drink a Heineken, she should be able to smoke a joint if she feels like it.

1 and 4, answered.

17.  Oh my…for one thing the wanton cruelty I see occasionally on here towards psychologically vulnerable people turns my stomach.  I have no patience for bullying and cruelty and it just infuriates me when I see it.  However, I have to keep in mind that the perpetrators of cruelty are often profoundly damaged themselves.  That does not for one second excuse their cruelty, but one thing I’ve learned in this world is that there is a vast difference between an excuse and a reason, and it’s very hard to solve the more complex of life’s problems if you can’t make the distinction.

Other than that I’d say trolling, which I just don’t get and find tedious and childish in the extreme.  I just want to sit them down and ask them “What do you get from this?  Really, how is your life improved because of your actions? What is your payoff? 10 years from now will you be happy or better because you spent your time this way?” because I seriously don’t understand it.

Fitness-wise…elitist attitudes I find irksome.  We all were beginners once and did some dumbass shit.  I curled in the squat rack more than once.  YES, I CURLED IN THE SQUAT RACK, I AM A FITBLR PUNCHLINE ;) I don’t think enabling people’s bullshit is ever a good idea, but I also think we could stand to be a little bit more compassionate with each other and remember we were once where others are now.

Think of it like this: were you born knowing everything you know?  Nope.  Do you now know everything you ever will?  You better hope not!  We’re all somewhere on the knowledge spectrum, and a realistic but encouraging and helpful word can make all the difference to someone behind us on the path.

So those are my fitblr gear grinders, with a free extra helping of righteous indignation.

I can’t decide because I love them both!!!!

Although…I think I find it easier to relate to Star Trek philosophically, because it’s the story of our species (and others) operating in the universe we know but set in the future, whereas Star Wars, as awesome as it is, doesn’t have much to latch onto in terms of feeling like it’s our story, in the universe we inhabit.

YES!!!   A chance to use one of my favorite thought experiment tools, felicific calculus.

Intensity: Money is only useful if you use it.  The more there is, the more things you can do (though you will eventually hit a point of maximum returns). Therefore the longer I hold out the greater the utility and pleasure of that money becomes.

Duration: Obviously the more money I have the longer it will last, although there are ways to make even more money on a quicker schedule than this annual one.

Certainty: I will almost certainly have pleasure in using this money however it is not certain I will be around to enjoy it.  I may hold out for years with an end goal in mind only to die by accident before I reach it.

Propinquity: Immediate pleasure once I cash in, but not until then.

Fecundity: The pleasure gained by the actions facilitated by the money will with great certainty produce further pleasures.

Purity: Displeasure may result from these actions but is not a likely consequence. The longer I wait the greater the chance mostly pleasurable outcomes.

Extent: One of the things I would do is help the financial situations of certain people close to me, the more there is to do that the easier it will be.

Based on this I would hold out 3-5 years (I would hold out longer if I were younger/had no loved ones in need).  3-5 million would be sufficient to meet all my goals, plus I could put the  money in a savings account.  At a 1% APY that’s 30-50k a year in interest alone, more than enough to live comfortably in many areas.  Also, living off the interest would help me prolong the pleasure, and I can reasonably assume I’m not going to die in the 3-5 years it takes to collect the original millions.

So…where do I sign up? :P