Wednesday Night Essays

It's about time

2006-05-03T00:54:00.000-05:00

Wow. So it’s been an inexcusable while since I posted my last essay. I was gone for white water rafting guide school for 11 days, and then training for Primal Quest started consuming my life more than I’d like. I get back, and it looks like hard core conservatives have taken the place over. Now I know how a certain spineless and message less political party has felt for the last six years. Well, some things I just can’t let go unanswered….

Ain’t Nothing on the Radio
Your thoughts betray you. You may claim to like the look of NPR, but your style is conservative all over.

You start out by slandering its name right off the bat, changing “Public” to “Propaganda.” Rush Limbough would be proud. Yet, by the end of the second paragraph you haven’t put in anything to support the clause. By the third paragraph you mention how “tax cuts have been proven” to have pulled the economy out of the drain, with out burdening us with that actual proof. I suppose, there’s no need if we had already decided to believe what ever you say.

If you listen to NPR as much as you claim, then you would realize that its place in the media is to tell a more balanced side to stories. If the government promotes a plan, then NPR will look into the other side of story. In this case, they looked at the other side of the tax story. When they did spend five minutes discussing the opposite side, at least they did broadcast a university professor compared to a homeless man off the street, which a conservative radio show would have used.

Personally, I listen to NPR just as much as I listen to conservative radio. The key to listening to all radio is to take in their points open minded, and then question what you here. If you listen only to agree, then not only are you not learning anything, but it’s safe to assume that you’re wrong.

America is a Drunken Sailor
Look at us wrong, and we’ll challenge everyone in the bar as to who wants a piece, standing in defiance to an unseen enemy, and yielding only after the guilty, the innocent, and ourselves are worse for the wear.

Do I believe that? No, but metaphors are interesting things. They allow you to go from point A to point B with out actually knowing the way, but by instead following a familiar path. This works great when some one else knows the connection between two ideas that you are unfamiliar with, and can use a metaphor to explain it to you in a familiar way – assuming that person does in fact know what they’re talking about. If they don’t, then you can be screwed pretty quickly. Imagine trying to get around Chicago with a map of New York. Some of the street names may be the same, and you may even get somewhere by accident, or convince yourself that you DO actually see the Statue of Liberty out in Lake Michigan. Metaphors are often used as a way to manipulate the masses by laying out an over simplistic path for them rally across, and actual bypass the real issue.

The enemy Within
I’m getting sick an tired of hearing the “Liberals like the terrorists” argument, along with the other coercive propagandous slander spewing forth from the right in an effort to maintain power, sidetrack the debate, and mislead the people. This includes “It’s unpatriotic to disagree with ________” (fill in the blank with what ever plan they’re currently pushing), and “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” These are juvenile attempts to weaken critics standing before the debate actually begins. It’s dangerous to the country, and is the type of intimidation that shouldn’t make it past the grade school playground, and definitely not into the modern political arena.

Although I have heard some cries from the right regarding blame being placed on the US for its prior intervention in the middle east, I only take these cries with in the scope of future conflict avoidance, not as a solution to the current terrorist network. When you have a problem, the first step should always be resolution; you should not be concerned with assigning blame as to who caused it. When someone fucks up at work, the priority is to fix it. Wasting time blaming someone is counter productive. Afterwards, you can look at what caused the problem and work on making sure it doesn’t happen again. (Yelling at the person may or may not be part of this solution)

In the case at hand, the problem stated rather broadly is terrorism. Lots of crazy people want to blow up as much of our country as possible. Pretty serious problem. The first step is obviously to make sure they don’t do that. It’s reasonable to assume that killing some of them may be a regrettable but necessary part of that step. The second step is root causing, and future prevention. A very reasonable part of this step is to ask why these crazy people want to destroy us. Just saying “they’re crazy” doesn’t quite cut it. Anyone does not at least contemplate the possibility that the US did something to piss them off is being irresponsible.

Here’s a thought experiment to look at this. Imagine you walk up to an obviously disturbed mentally ill person on the street and punch them in the face. They in turn attack you. Is it a reasonable defense to just say they’re crazy, and have them hauled away while you walk away? I don’t think so, you’re obviously at some fault.

Ok, hold on; don’t get your Ronald Regan print under wear in a bind quite yet. I realized that’s a bit of an extreme example. Here’s a better way of laying out the same analogy that’s matches the current situation.

Imagine you’re walking down the street with a cup of coffee. While walking, you trip, and spill your drink all over a person next to you. He (or she) turns around, pulls a out a glock and shoots you. Did you provoke them? Yes. Was it by accident? Of course. Did their reaction in anyway match the provocation? No, not at all. Are they messed up and in need of getting their ass hauled away? Oh yeah. Regardless, you should WATCH WHERE YOU’RE FUCKING WALKING.

For those of you out there who have completely given up your ability of independent thought in favor of talk radio, the above example has you as the United States, the people on the street are the rest of the world, and the mental disable person you spilled coffee on is a terrorist.

Thank you for shopping at Wal-mart, please bend over to allow us to serve you better
I’m no fan of Wal-mart. I haven’t been for years. Those around me quickly learn this via tounge lashings handed out at the appearance of a plastic bag with that fucking smiling face on it. I do this not as an effort to sway opinions, but more as a way to open up discussion and see they HAVE an opinion. Most do not. They see Walm-mart just as what it appears on the surface, a dirt cheap, one stop warehouse convenience store. My foreign friends will comment on some of the negative aspects of American life, the mass consumerism, the superficiality, and the spread out cities, yet be in awe of a spectacular place like Wal-mart, without putting together the connection and dependency between them all. The more informed will be able to comment on how Wal-mart is a text book example of a modern supply chain in work. If you take any supply chain, or MIS classes, Wal-mart will always be praised as the benchmark of which to compare all others. That’s why they kicked the crap out of all the other crappy discount department stores. It has nothing to do with how they treat their employees; I’m sure you won’t find any employees that are better quality or paid more at K-Mart. They haven’t been doing anything different than any other stores haven’t been doing in the last fifty years, they’re just doing it better, plain and simple. They are the spitting image of the possibilities of capitalism.

There is a dark side to capitalism, however, that many of its proponents fail to acknowledge. The larger a company becomes the more money and power it obtains. The more money and power it has, the more opportunity it has to thwart the rules of capitalism. A large company can use money gained in one successful field to enter another field. This can be good, promoting competition, and increasing quality and price. At time though, a large company can instead try to use its position to eliminate the competition instead of competing with it. This goes against the ideas of what makes Capitalism all it is.

In the case of Walmart, I dislike their rural city business plan which requires them to remove all local competition.

Why I Listen to National Propaganda Radio (NPR)

2006-04-12T14:32:00.000-05:00

Simply put, I listen to NPR for the same reason I use a Mac. Looks matter. Sure, under the hood neither NPR nor Macs can stand toe to toe with their competitors, but damn if they don’t look good trying.

While I can get better and more accurate news from Rush Limbaugh (seriously) than I can get from the National Propaganda Radio station, I enjoy NPR’s calm and quiet presentation of the “facts.” I like that their radio hosts have some extraordinarily abnoxious radio voices and I LOVE their music bumps. Conservative talk radio like Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham have too much “hype.” When Ingraham has to talk over with insults and screeching monkey sounds every sound byte of a Democrat talking on a news show, you have to wonder about her sanity and, more importantly, her ability to intellectually combat the Democrat’s arguments. And it’s not that hard to point out the flaws of a Democrat’s arguments. Hypocrisy is their philsophical backbone.

Yet listening to NPR I often find myself digging at my wrists with my finger nails trying to draw blood. A twenty minute segment on the effects of the tax cuts on the American economy which have been soundly proven without doubt to have pulled us out of a deep recession – that tweny minute segment will have fifteen minutes of a single professor of economics from UC Berkely telling us that the rich are getting richer from the tax cuts (which is an obvious effect considering who actually pays taxes) and five minutes of sharply edited and cut comments from a professor of a no-name university saying the obvious benefits of the tax cuts. And this is considered “balanced.”

I just wish we could return to the days before the Spanish/American war when newspapers wore their political affiliation on their sleeves. That’s why so many newspapers are named The Democrat or The Conservative. Newspapers clearly held an agenda just like today, but they were open and honest about it. Talk radio doesn’t claim to be a “balanced” source of news. I know the slant they will give the news when I tune in. And I know the slant that CBS and NPR and CNN will bring to their “news.” Even if they won’t admit it.

It’s the hyprocrisy that gets me. But who should be surprised that a Democratic leaning institution like “objective news” sources should be hypocritical? They are Deomcrats after all.

America the Battered Wife

2006-04-06T10:17:00.000-05:00

America is a battered wife. You know how you hear about a woman who is abused over and over again and keeps returning to the same man who abuses her and you say to yourself, “Damn, why does she do it?” Well, that’s America.

Every time we take a jab, we turn on ourselves and say, “Yup. I deserved that.” Terrorists want to blow us up? <> “Must be because of something we did.” France and Germany, two of the most philosophically defunct nations on the planet, don’t like our philosophy? <> “Well, they’re probably right. We are some pretty bad people who like capitalism.” A company like Walmart has made millions of Americans rich and given even more jobs that pay reasonable wages and offer better benefits than I get at my “professional” position? <> “Yup. They’re just preying on the weak.” The United Nations is so corrupt that a program like Oil for Food can be utilized by a dictator of a nation to make himself and conveniently anti-war nations like France, Germany and Russia rich? <> “We sure are a terrible country for acting unilaterally against those poor, poor murderers in Iraq.” Illegal Mexican immigrants flee their toilet country where the only way to succeed is if you have enough money to bribe your way to the top for a country like America where working hard is literally the best way to the top and when they get here they show their happiness for America how? By waving the Mexican flag? <> “Can’t say I blame them. I kinda hate America, too. We just gotta’ be a little more multi-cultural, I reckon.”

Gotta’ wonder why we keep coming back.

Castaway and Discarded

2006-03-29T21:46:00.000-06:00

I saw the movie “Castaway” for the second time a few weeks back. Repeated viewings of movies are usually interesting and allow a more analytical experience. Castaway was no exception.

Overall, I liked it; it’s a good flick with a captivating plot, and Tom Hanks does a great job. The two things that stuck out as needing improvement, however, were the weakly portrayed romance (they expect you to take it for granted), and the way they mirrored the character’s coping on the island with the development of mankind. (Essential to the movie, but it comes off as being scripted. Okay, I suppose it was scripted.) Both of these faults were probably due to lack of time; you can only make a movie so long.

Whether I liked the movie or not is inconsequential to this posting though. What is of importance is the question that’s been nagging me ever since seeing the film the first time. (Well, besides that. We all know the box with the butterfly symbol contained a satellite telephone.) The question is whether or not a person becomes a better person from an ordeal such as the one in the movie.

In the film, Tom Hank’s character obviously loses a lot. His fiancée, five years of his life, and basically everything that he had previously defined himself by are now gone. The movie also hints at the psychological problems one could have integrating back to society; showing him rejecting the soft hotel bed in favor of the floor and flicking the light switch on and off as he did back in the cave. This list of things he lost out on could go on and on

What I’m wondering, though, is if there is any sort of a silver lining to it all? Did the experience that didn’t kill him, in fact make him stronger? Throughout the five years he learned lots of independence, and useful survival skills. He also freed himself from a life that was portrayed as being tied to a clock. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way suggesting he’s better off than if he hadn’t been stranded. What I’m asking you to do is to compare him to the person he was before the accident.

Which one has a more realistic view of life? It easy to assume the castaway character would definitely appreciate the subtleties of life a little more than he did before hand. Would he want to go back to the job he had previously though? He didn’t in the movie. (And if the movie showed it, it must be true!) Would he even be capable of taking his old job back? Maybe he wouldn’t be able to perform his previous job simply because he’d find it all mundane compared to the grand scheme of it all?

If this is the case, then not only did he lose all he had, but he also lost what he was. Talking about adding insult to injury.

What Do They Want From Us?

2006-03-22T16:04:00.000-06:00

I can’t figure out what the Left want done about Iraq. Do they want us to pack up and leave tomorrow with no further involvement in the country at all? Do they want us to stick it out until the end but not actually send our troops out into harm’s way? (In which case “the end” would come pretty quick in defeat.) I assume they want us to leave immediately. That is what they say, after all. But do they realize the gravity of the situation? Often it seems they are more excited and interested in the political sniping and watching the President’s popularity plummet than in anything that actually happens in Iraq. I think a strong case could be made to prove that anti-war protestors are less interested in the well being of our soldiers and the citizens of Iraq than they are in the “punishment” of our president. (Yes, I’m calling them “unpatriotic” as well as selfish and short sighted.)

Do the anti-war activists want us to actually react to their piss and moans for withdrawal or do they want us to soundly stay the course but be allowed to keep heckling from the sidelines?

All of this is not to say that the terrorists of 9-11 aren’t interested in Iraq. As evidenced by their very words (taken from the National Security Council’s memorandum “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” ©November 2005):

- Osama Bin Laden has declared that the “third world war…is raging” in Iraq, and it will end there, in “either victory and
glory, or misery and humiliation.”

- Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has declared Iraq to be “the place for the greatest battle,” where he hopes to
“expel the Americans” and then spread “the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.”

- Al Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has openly declared that “we fight today in Iraq, and tomorrow in the
Land of the Two Holy Places, and after there the west.”

Do their words give you the sense that should we up and leave immediately they would just quit? That we would never again be attacked as we were on September 11? If you believe that, well, you can finish the saying.

If we leave now, we vindicate the terrorists of their tactics. Hacking off the head of Daniel Pearl will be proven a useful weapon against America. Attacking our soldiers from mosques so that we cannot fire back, butchering the families of local police officers, hiding behind America’s morals, enforcing radical versions of Islam on their fellow country men and women, forcing women to live as enslaved creatures – all of it will be proven to be the better life philosophy, the stronger strategy than the one America presents. One of not conquering Iraq and subjugating its citizens, but freeing them to choose their own life. Their own future. Giving them the gifts of self-reliance and self-determination.

If we flee now, the blood in Iraq will run thick down the streets. What we saw after the mosque bombing weeks ago will look like a warm-up for slaughter. Is this what the Left would have America create?

America does not become stronger by backbiting itself. It is no surprise that in World War II France fell in a short two months to Germany when its country was so dramatically divided on itself. It changed governments by the month in most cases. Few lasted a full year. They didn’t have a government on the day Hitler came to power or on the day Austria fell because of the great internal division the country was facing.

Is this the course of America? Will we hate ourselves into paralysis? I hope not. That hope is dim at best.

Tech-knowledge-ee

2006-03-22T00:34:00.000-06:00

A week or so back a topic came up regarding the pros and cons of technology. Being the perpetual cynic, I had insinuated that technology might be taking a hold of civilization with negative consequences. It was noted that people of today have it better than any other time in history due to technology, and that any negative side effects are simply brought upon the users themselves. My initial counter reply didn’t post because my internet connection timed out, which is a good thing, because the more I thought about it, the more complex and revealing this issue became.

My first point in my original counter reply was that many users of technology bring negative consequences to the people around them, not just themselves. An example would be people talking on cell phones in inappropriate public places. It’s convenient for them, but also obnoxious to everyone around them. (This just happens to be a subject I’m particularly passionate about.) A better example would probably be weapons used to injure innocent people. This is the ultimate situation of someone using technology in a way that has direct bad effects on others. I have a gun, you don’t. You’re dead, I’m alive.

These examples suggest not only a duality of technology’s effects, being that they can simultaneously be both negative and positive, but they also hint at the relativity of the assignment of such effects. Since the user of the technology (person with a gun) would consider its use a positive thing while the victim (person with hole in chest) would most likely consider it a negative thing, it apparently depends on who you talk to when determining the inherent badness of a technological tool. It follows that if the determining factor is the person, not the technology, then the “badness” must be in the person, not in the technology. (There is a large hole in the way I laid out this argument, but it’s easily patched. I just didn’t bother writing it out.)

This leads to the common conclusion that technology is just a tool. All tools are made up of benign, inanimate objects assembled into clever uses of the six simple machines and often taking advantage of some sort of a power source to further the usefulness. (When talking about the simple machines, I consider the screw to just be a special application of the inclined plane, and instead replace it with the semiconductor doped depletion area to round out the six). Even something as horrendous as a nuclear weapon is just a mix of relatively harmless pieces assembled by man, and is only as bad as the person behind the button. (Oh my god, he just reference WMDs. Quick everyone run around panicking and start invading foreign countries!!) Saying that a weapon is evil is just the same as saying that a garden hoe is evil. Hell, why don’t we just say that the fulcrum, chemistry, and metallurgy are bad. Throw in the theory of gravity, relativity and Maxwell’s equations while we’re at it, and we can have an old fashion Amish square dance.

Or so the theory goes. Something still didn’t quite sit right with me. Does being a tool imply that no assignment of good or evil can be applied to an object? Here’s a simple thought experiment I used to test this theory we’ve come up with.
Imagine a man who wants his wife dead, but doesn’t want to be implicated in a murder. Instead, he tricks another man into killing her by telling him what ever lies necessary. Basically, he uses the second man as a tool in his plan. There is no doubt that the husband is guilty of debauchery in this case, but what of the second man? He wouldn’t have been involved had it not been for the husband, yet he chose to go along with it, and most any court of law in this country would hold him accountable. Hence, the tool is accountable for the action.

Ok, I’ll admit, that might be a little weak. I left out one very important aspect. Choice. The man in the previous thought experiment, regardless if he was being duped or not, still made a choice to participate. He could have opted out, even if it would have had dire consequences on himself. A garden hoe, on the other hand, has no say in what it’s used for. The tool is an object, and the entire concept of morality, good or bad, requires a decision making process to be discerned. That kind of goes back the entire Adam/Eve/Apple fairy tail, where we’re told that morality did not exist until people had the power of choice.

Well, we do have the power of choice, and morality does exist. The question I now ask is where does it exist? Can morality only exist in people, or can it be possessed by objects also? I started this essay talking about the negative effects of technology, with the intent of exploring the issues of how people choose to use it. So far, I’ve only been talking about whether isn’t possible for a piece of technology to be inherently bad. When the topic of “choice” is brought up, it seems ridiculous to try to say that an object can possess a quality involving morals.

That’s not too far of a stretch though. In addition to saying that a person is bad, we also say that that the action performed by that person is also bad. A murderer is a bad person. The act of murdering is also bad. We make this claim based on the results of the action. The person is considered bad because of their decision making, the action is considered bad because of the result. This type morality judgment, to decide how good something is based on the outcome (or intent of outcome), is a common practice in ethics and was laid out by John Stuart Mill, in his writings of Utilitarianism. A little introspection shows that this is often the same process by which we’ve actually been using to determine the morality of a person. We judge them by their actions, which are judged upon the results. A balancing of the good vs. bad outcomes must be performed as well. (This is where all sorts of snags come up in Utilitarianism.) My claim (finally) is that we can also place a judgment on the tools used. If the results are bad, then the tool is bad.

For many, this claim doesn’t really make a lot of sense. They still only see morality as some thing that should be applied to creatures with free will, and see it as pointless to try to apply it anything else. There is, however, a justifiable reason as to why one would wish to apply a judgment towards an object. If an object can be deemed bad, then we can make a decision regarding how to use such an object. If the object always results in bad results, we could say that it is a bad object, and should not be used. (Hey look ma, I just justified book burning. Ok , maybe not.) The opponent can still argue we’ve simply shifted the moral value of the act onto the object rather the person using the object.

Here’s one more example to illustrate my point. The common cold virus. Its not alive, it’s not moral, and it has no use, other than to make people miserable. No one made it, and no one chose to get or give it. There are no positive effects of it. It is useless, and I therefore label it a bad object. Any takers on this one??

Ok, now for a quick recap. I tried to demonstrate why I think it’s possible to consider an object as morally bad. Even if that object is just used as a tool, I mentioned that the consequences of its use can determine its judgment. I also stated that these results are often mixed, some being good for some people, and some being bad for others. The purpose of all this was to introduce the idea that an object can posses inherently bad properties.

This now brings me to the point I wanted to make two pages ago, but first needed to take a quick short cut through Canada to see all the scenery. My point is that I believe technology has inherently bad aspects to it. When it was stated that “Technology has no negative effects.” It didn’t sit right with me. I’m not a technology abolitionist by any means; I own a car, a cell phone, and with the amount of time I spend with my laptop, I could potentially be considered married to it in some cultures. Everywhere I look, I see misuses of technology. Yes, it is the peoples’ choice, but it seems that the more technology out there, the more bad decisions are made. Instead of using it to allow themselves to do more, they do the same amount, but just become lazier.

With that, I finally realized what it is about technology that irks me. It makes things easier. Every piece of technology or tool ever envisioned was made for the exact purpose of decreasing the work for man. What a beautiful thing. What a curse. That’s why I was having such a hard time identifying the inherent problem with technology, because the problem is also its glory. Any time things are made easier, it means you do less work. If you do less work, you can live a better life, but you also become weaker. If you are weaker, then you have lost something compared to what you were before. Regardless of what you have all gained, which is possibly magnitudes more significant than what you have lost, you have lost something none the less.

This is why every generation will always look at the following generation with a bit of contempt, and a bit of jealousy. The younger generation will always seem to have it easier, and never seem to understand what they have. The older generation will always look back at their own youth, and remember their trials and tribulations, but also remember what they gained by those experiences. I imagine that somewhere in the past there was at least one prehistoric man who looked on his younger companions with disdain as they used their fancy metal tools, when bone had always worked fine for him.

Perhaps Stan Lee said it best, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Yeah, that is the second time I’ve used that quote on this blog. I’ve just always thought it was cool.

"Empty Heads Have Longue Tongues" – Bruce Lee

2006-03-14T10:52:00.000-06:00

Sometimes a man just doesn’t have anything to say. He looks at his hands, works his thumb into his palm and watches the white trail of vacant blood vessels it leaves behind and thinks about that. He watches the gusting wind lean against the sides of cars on the freeway outside of the coffee shop windows and thinks about that. He notices the brown spots of stain along the outside of his porcelain white coffee mug. He feels the aching muscles in his back, the small headache he lives with, the cold toes in his shoes and he thinks that everyone must have little aches and nicks and knocks that they just live with on a daily basis and wonders if anyone has ever felt 100% at any moment in their life. He doubts it. He inhales deeply smelling the coffee beans being ground. Cringes at that crushing, random smack of burned beans on steel blades. He enjoys noticing things and not caring about any of them. He enjoys not thinking. It’s kind of nice.

"Dream Out Loud" - Bono of U2

2006-03-08T10:15:00.000-06:00

I think Bono, as misguided as his political attempts are, is a magnificent person. His heart is true. His advice? Pretty good.

This last week, the “fit hit the shan” and a friend of mine and I started dreaming out loud. We’re starting a business together. It’s just a little baby-embryo of a dream and has a lot of splitting and replicating ahead of it, so I’m not going to shake it around too much to show you guys. It’s not the idea that’s important, anyway. It’s the juice.

People always advise to have goals and work toward achieving those goals as an elixir for happiness. I think they’re right. The clichés are boundless. Open sky ahead. Two roads diverge in a fucking snowy woods (I hate that Goddamn poem by Frost. Every damn high school graduation it’s used as the speech motif.) Bright and sunshiny days. Grabbing the reins of life. Steering your own ship. Blah, blah, blah.

What the clichés don’t capture is the shakes you get from a good vision. The way your stomach gets kind of light and you jump down stairs three at a time because your legs are that stiff jelly of anticipation and you walk around barefoot on cold wood floors to keep yourself grounded.

They miss the doubt felt. I’ve spent the last four years working in a marketing/sales position. I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of business owners. Many are stupid or lazy or clueless. Their businesses don’t fail. Yet, when I think about myself running a business (something I’ve thought about for a long time) I fear I don’t have what it takes. Somehow that slob car mechanic out in the middle of the boondocks whose front office reeks of grease and cigarrettes and who tells you dirty jokes to pass the time and spells the abreviation for advertisement as “add,” somehow he has the magic that you don’t.

The clichés miss the give/take of those first planning sessions with your partner. The introduction of idea after idea, most of them terrible. Some are liquid gold laced language. The structure debates on who is responsible for what and at what percentage. Labeling your customer. Birthing a brand.

Mostly, though, they miss the fact that joy is even possible in failing. That a lost endeavor is still an endeavor attempted. And that means quite a lot.

Stone Aged

2006-03-08T01:09:00.000-06:00

Soul Suicide

2006-03-02T12:01:00.000-06:00

Being a victim is so easy and so stupid.

I woke up today and the trees looked like they had been dipped into a vat of crystal. It had rained through the night. The temperature had hovered at that half heat moment when water in Wisconsin becomes ice on contact. Everything was covered with a sparkling layer of glass. It was beautiful. It made me want to kill myself.

Today I am a victim of the weather. I hate Wisconsin weather. It is fucking cold in the winter and God cursed hot in the summer with a nice slap of humidity to fuck you one extra way to Sunday. Lately, we haven’t seen direct sunlight in days. I can feel my eyes growing like saucers to compensate for the cavernous dark that we live in up here. I look like Smeagol.

Being a victim is so easy. You get to blame anything and everything except yourself for your failings. My bad mood? The weather, duh. Or my fiancé or my parents or my job (extra popular with me) or my house is a dump or my dog ate another Goddamn art pencil of mine.

On a larger scale, we use victimhood to excuse our life failings. You only make $40,000 a year? It is your boss’s fault. He doesn’t reward you for your work or pay you what you’re “worth.” Or it’s your parents fault. They were blue collar and didn’t introduce you to the right skills and people to make you rich. You can’t stop drinking? Parents again. You can’t keep a relationship together? Parents. Maybe a past lover who has “burned” you.

We can find so many excuses. And they feel good. We relieve ourselves of contempt of self. We get pity from friends and psychiatrists and affirmation that, yeah we do have it tough. We feel that making any attempts at changing are pointless. We excuse ourselves of wasting time.

The worse kind of victimhood, though? Feeling like you are a victim of yourself. You feel that your nature is fixed and will never change. Your desires are free to grow and expand and you see a bigger future for yourself, a better future. But you feel that your nature (genetic code, God’s will, whatever curse you want to offer up) is holding you back. You can’t find the motivation to do what needs to be done. You get tired fast or distracted or frustrated. You start kicking doors and throwing books (hoping that they’ll land okay and not bend the pages). And you fucking swear up a mother-goat-fucking whole shitload of tons. The worse? You fantasize of beating the fuck out of someone, busting their nose and teeth and eyes into a canvas of purple pulp of puss and listening to them gurgle on their own blood. Feel the broken knuckles of your hand.

And then you sit down. You sit down. You breathe. You look around your house and you see your fiancé who is so beautiful you’re glad your eyes are saucer wide and able to take more of her in. You pet your dog. You see the look she gives you, the way she climbs on you sitting there, her front paws on your lap, the way that amputated tail wags like she’s on crack – wiggling her whole butt, almost tossing herself off balance. You see the walls insulating you from the cursed cold. You feel the comfort of the warm clothing, the smell of good cooking. And you realize how stupid you sound.

You realize there are fundamentally two ways of handling unhappiness. You make a conscious decision to be happy or you decide to be unhappy. And that’s it. That is it.

McLent

2006-03-01T23:56:00.000-06:00

Well, it’s Wednesday again. This isn’t just any Wednesday though, it’s a special Wednesday. This is the Wednesday when I actually post on essay on time, with good grammar, proper spelling, and maybe even a dash of wit.

Ok, that’s not actually why I meant it’s special. I was referring to the fact that it’s Ash Wednesday. This day marks that special that time of year when good Catholics try to live a purer life closer to god, while remembering the temptation Jesus suffered at the hands of Lucifer while fasting in the desert. Starting today, they’ll give up their vices for forty days; hopefully maintaining this fast through the eve of Easter, after which they can participate in Pagan fertility rituals involving eggs, bunnies, and feasting, and forget about Jesus until Christmas rolls around they get presents.

Despite my jest, I actually always liked lent. Unlike many of the Catholic sacraments which don’t have a lot of practical use, the lentin fast contains a sense of purpose. It reinforces the ideas of self discipline and will power, which make you a better person. I try to practice these on a regular basis and encourage others to do so as well.

Lent also makes sense from a historical standpoint. Back in the glory days of the middle ages when nonsensical concepts like separation of church and state were unheard of, the churches had the mandate and power to forcibly control and mold the populace. Dictating the practice of will power would have been one way to turn parishioners into better citizens. It also fits neatly into their greater plan of imposing guilt and self loathing as a method of creating a perceived need of salvation, which the church was more than happy to supply, well, as long as you paid your dues. Overall, it was a good plan.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, the practice of lent has really lost its meaning. Although people will abstain from certain things for the season, many don’t actually make any sacrifices. They’ll simply trade one vice for another one that is just as easily accessible. They might give up coffee, only to drink more soda instead. Maybe they’ll stop eating chocolate, but then increase their intake of other candy. Granted, I’m not saying that all lentin promises are rubbish; in fact I’ve known many people who really take it serious, and rather impress me. There is one main practice mandated by the catholic church, however, that has always annoyed me, and that’s the meat rule.

For those of you not inculcated with the ways of the meat rule, let me quickly indulge you. The catholic church mandates that good parishioners abstain from eating meat on the first day of lent, Ash Wednesday, and every following Friday until Easter. That’s a total of seven days. (They don't count Sundays towards the forty days, so there's an extra week) One exception, however, is fish, which is not considered a meat for the purpose of the rule, and is thus allowed to be consumed on the forbidden days. I think this has something to do with the fact that people in the biblical era ate fish as a staple, and it follows that eating more fish could potentially allow one to relate more to the people back then. That’s just my theory. It could be that fish was harder to come by years ago or maybe harder to prepare and make taste good, which could at least conceivably make it a sacrifice to eat it. (At least maybe for the person who did the cooking.)

Regardless of the origin of the rule, I don’t think it applies today. You can go into any restaurant or grocery store and find a plethora of sales and specials on seafood during lent. Perch, cod, salmon, chump, shrimp and lobster; it all counts, and most of it tastes quite good. Even McDonalds will offer deals on its fish fillet sandwich over the five weeks. Additionally, you can find many fish fry specials on Friday nights where the entire family can go out and gorge themselves on endless plates of greasy fried perch and french fries. Although these options technically follow the rules, they seam to completely go against the entire point of having the rules in the first place. It’s like the church allowed a giant loophole as to not actually inconvenience its parishioners.

With all this in mind, I’ve decided to participate in the lentin tradition of sacrifice this year even though I have little affiliation with the Catholic church these days, or Christianity in general (Although I do agree with most of the stuff Jesus said; he was on to something). I’m going to give up not eating at McDonalds. Wait, huh? Yeah, NOT eating at McDonalds. Just stay with me a moment; it’ll make sense. Trust me.

I used to eat at McDonalds a lot, especially my first year in grad school when it was the closest and cheapest food available in a timely manner. Eventually though, I started to taste my food and eat healthier in general. It really has little appeal to me now. It depresses me to think what I’m actually putting in my body when I eat there, compared to when I cook for myself, and I not only know, but can pronounce every word of the ingredients. Plus there’s the whole practices of the meat industry, which I won’t bother going into here, but I find rather revolting. These days, I maybe eat at McDonalds once every six months, until today that is.

Hence, to start off lent today, I went to lunch at McDonalds. This is actually a sacrifice for me though. For starters, I wasn’t able to eat the nice healthy lunch of fruit and sandwiches I’ve accustomed too. Second, the closest McDonalds is a mile and a half away. Since I don’t drive my car to work, the only options are either biking or running down the hill and back. Today I chose to run. Although that did allow me to get a short run in, it didn’t allow me nearly as long as I would have liked, which leads to my third point, I don’t have as much time over lunch to exercise. All the sacrifices I make to try to be a good catholic. Plus, do you have any idea how hard it is to run up a mile and half hill with a stomach full of Big Mac and fries? Its six hours later, and my stomach still hurts. (I did consider driving to work, which would also be a sacrifice since I couldn’t get any writing done on the train, it would cost more, and I’d have to sacrifice some ideals, but I just don’t have strong enough faith for that. Baby steps I guess)

The idea for this plan came to me last year when I found myself sitting in airport hungry on the Friday before Easter. The only place without a huge wait for food was McDonalds. As I was eating my greasy burger, it occurred to me that it was lent. I’ll admit that this at first filled with a bit of guilty pleasure, breaking rules that I didn’t agree with. As I thought about it more though, I began to realize how stupid the meat rule really was. I had actually completely forgotten about lent up until that point, and now that I remembered it, I was somewhat disappointed that I didn’t have more Fridays left to eat fast food. I decided that the following year, I would make a point to eat a Big Mac on every Friday of lent. I like the irony, and now, after almost a year of waiting, the time has come. You can call it an exercise in irony if you like, but I just like to refer to it as McLent.

A little competence goes a long ways

2006-02-28T22:33:00.000-06:00

Competency is, unfortunately, somewhat of a rare thing. Some people are immediately recognizable as being very capable the moment you meet them. One of the first clues is often that you can tell they are listening when you talk to them, and they can provide proper feedback or guidance when necessary. If you work with them, they acknowledge that they are there to do a job, and as soon as it is explained to them, they will go about completing it. When they say they’ll do something, you can expect it get done. If they make a mistake, they’ll take responsibility and take steps to fix it. These are our true leaders, and at the very least our good worker bees.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are people who are for all practical purposes useless. They have no drive, and are seldom dependable. Make excusing or covering up a mistake take priority over fixing it. Although they are perfectly willing to stand there and allow the compressed air waves emitting from your vibrating vocal chords to move the small bones in their inner ears and produce electric signals in their brain, there is no promise of making any practical use of those signals. The main problem is that these incompetents will not distinguish the difference working towards a goal, and simply being there while the clock counts down.

My first experience with the competence/incompetence issue on a large scale occurred as a teenager working at the Food Mart. (Ahh, the Food Mart). It was a typical small town grocery store with a number of full time adult employees and a number of high school age kids to fill in the nights and weekend hours. Some of the kids were the competent type, many weren’t. The adults, well, lets just say they worked at a grocery store. At the time I thought that a handful of us were probably the smartest employees at the store, including the management. Looking back now, I’m even more in agreement with that statement.

The competency divide was established very clearly after any new employee was hired. They either got their work done, or they didn’t. In many cases it was the later. There usually wasn’t much of a middle ground, and worse, this was generally just accepted; no probation, no reviews, and no firing. It was just a fact that another person would now be showing up, getting paid, and accomplishing nothing. Although I admit we were minimum wage labor, and that this wasn’t exactly rocket science or saving the world stuff, just stocking shelves and carrying out groceries, still, a lesson was learned. Some of will do, some of us will not. Some of us will build, while others will just consume. Some of us will live, and the remaining will merely exist. (We still get paid the same though.)

If you’re lucky, you’ll have an employer that appreciates competent people. This was not generally the case at the Food Mart. I think that the first manager knew at least on some subconscious level, that half of the stockers were smarter than he was, and he took petty joy over being able to control us. Needless to say, the store was run pretty poorly. In later years, a different manager took a different approach. He realized that he was sitting on a goldmine of competent labor that would work at slave prices, and had no problem using that to all our advantage. He gave us more power and responsibility along with a small raise, and in exchange he got a much smoother operating store.

Years have passed now, however the lesson still remains. What I thought was a problem isolated to a bottom labor force of which some in it would raise above to bigger and better things later in life, is actually a problem that persists elsewhere. Although I work at a great company that has a work force of talented and diverse people, incompetence is still noticeable if you look between the lines. Since it’s a more educated field, the number of people who come from middle class suburban families is drastically increased. I don’t know of any other recent college grads that are first generation college educated. They have the education, some ambition, and even some responsibility, but many often still lack the drive. To many, this is the only job they’ve really had, and have no idea how good it is. To others, they are simply good quality worker bees caught up in a queen’s world. Luckily, we have a very formal review process every 6 months to weed out any non-contributing staff.

One of my points though, is that the managers I had for the first 12 months at my job love me simply because I was competent. All I had to do was be dependable and think a little bit about what I do, and suddenly it’s hard for me to screw even if I try. Although I have no problem staying at work late, or coming in early, I’ll often purposely sleep in if I’m tired, or leave early. Although I do consider myself somewhat of a better worker relative to others, I’ve been preoccupied a lot, and wouldn’t grade myself that great on an objective level, or compared to what I’m capable of.

A good example of a situation that should have made me look poor was two weeks ago. I was wrapping up some reliability data for product qualification that was just about due. Gathering the data had taken a couple of weeks because the collection process was menial and tedious. We’d usually have technicians do it, but are short staffed, so I was fitting it in between other work. As a result I was already a few weeks behind the completion date I had originally indicated. When I handed the data all in, it was all wrong; the units hadn’t been setup properly from the beginning. As far as I’m concerned, this was my fault. Even though technicians did the setup, I should have checked the patterns stored in the memory before hand. I knew that a bug in the setup algorithms had caused improper setup in the past, yet I didn’t even check one unit. More so, I should have noticed it while testing, and should have at least noticed it while wrapping up the data. I messed up, and immediately said that it was my fault. To remedy it, I aligned resources and put together a plan to complete another data turn in as short a time as possible. After getting all the data recollected, and submitted 48 hours later, I found out that I had now made another mistake, this time a simple omission in the spread sheet. Here’s where it gets even better.

I had left work immediately after emailing the spread sheet of data to the colleague in New Mexico who was doing more analysis on it. He had replied an hour later, pointing out my mistake. Since I had already left work though, I didn’t get the email until 11:30pm that evening when I took a study break to check my work account. The only reason I was checking my work account in the first place was because I was already planning on showing up late the next day. The mistake was a quick fix, and I re-sent the spreadsheet within a couple of hours. When I got to work the next morning I found that during an early morning conference call meeting, the colleague in New Mexico had stood up for our department in California, thinking that I had actually been working until 11:30 the previous night. Overall, I was treated like I had gone out of my way, when in reality all I had done was, well, my job. That should be expected. If I hadn’t messed up in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to push it so close.

This brings me to my final point. If you’re competent in your work, you can get away with so much!!. First off, people are willing to overlook minor things if they know that you have the important stuff covered, particularly if they trust that you’re not going to mess up anything that is going to cause more work for them, or make them look bad. Second, if you’re more productive in general, people will assume that you are working hard, and won’t question your actions, unknowing that you already finished your work and are simply screwing off.

Case in point, the Food Mart. I won’t go into details; those who were there in the glory days need no reminders. A while back at my current job I skipped out early of a department meeting to go to the lab to finish some work. It sounds dedicated, but in reality, I needed to get my work done then so I could go to a different meeting for organizing this years bike to work day, and then leave work early to meet a potential new roommate. What I didn’t know is that a group of us were getting recognized for a project we had completed last year. What happened though was that my name got left off the award list, which didn’t really matter any way since I wasn’t there. I didn’t find out about it until the next morning when my managers were apologizing to me not only for me having to work through the meeting, but more so for me getting recognized, a fact that means little to me.

Like I said, a little competence can buy a lot in the world.

You and Me

2006-02-21T12:50:00.000-06:00

People are amazing. I love humans so much.

I love how we struggle and so very, very often triumph. We sacrifice to win. We slowly whittle away our pinned arm from under the boulder with a buck knife – ignoring the pain and terror. We succumb to cannibalism to survive the terrible ice and wind like the Donner Party. We open our homes and our wallets to strangers from across the world who have been swept to sea.

I love how we talk. Long quiet talks about nothing in particular. Talks where we do nothing but the most important thing – massage each other’s souls. We talk tripe like the sky and our children doing remarkably unremarkable things and yet this conversation brings us closer to understanding the universe.

I love the artwork we create. Stories and music and theatre and dimensional works. We replicate reality and through our mind’s filter find something full of grace.

We build. Oh, man, do we ever build. We build tiny things like processors and huge things like the Airbus A380. When God created the fundamental law of gravity I wonder if He truly meant it to only be a suggestion. The suggestion of gravity. I mean, we even walk as if we’re telling gravity to go piss up a rope. Two legs! Damn.

We build magnificent thrusts of joy like the World Trade Center and Sears Tower. Buildings that dare to shoulder the sky away saying, make room, here we come. We build an island off the coast of Japan – a whole Goddamn island – in order to support an airport. And when the island starts to sink slightly, we build hydraulic jacks that can lift the airport and keep it level.

And we talk about ideas. Ideas about ideas about ideas. We debate morals and argue the rightness and wrongness of actions. Simple actions like choosing to say a thing or not to say a thing and grave actions like ending a criminal’s life or not ending it. We discuss things like the number zero and how fundamentally astonishing a concept it is. How it changed all of cosciousness with it.

And we fight. I love how we fight. We realize the gravity of a kill. We take it lightly not at all. I think the greatest manifestation of what humans are and can be has shown itself in war. We war for peace and prosperity and justice. We kill so that others may live.

Even our smiles are ferocious. What other animals bare their teeth to show happiness?

I love courage. I love men who do what must be done despite the fears that fuse most still. It takes a special sort of soul to command courage. I love stories like in “Generation Kill” where we see a young twenty-one year old man named Fick get out of his armored humvee in the middle of an ambush in Iraq, walk calmly to the front of the pinned down column, ignoring the fatal rounds ripping past his face, and direct traffic – unfucking a fucked up situation. Saving his men’s lives.

I love stories like Victor Frankel’s. A man who sees the oily sick of souls in his concentration camp and still finds joy in life. I even love terms like “concentration camp.” Concentrated carnage. Concentrated misery.

Humans are phenomenal. In the most complicated, beautiful and strictest sense of the word.

Proclamations of Retardation

2006-02-17T22:35:00.000-06:00

On the train ride home Wednesday night, I was on the verge of finishing an essay completely different from this one to post. The ride inspired me to write this instead. As usual, this article suffered from severe scope crepe, and ended up touching on many more topics than intended. Part of it is my need to potentially defend myself for statements I make. Not that that is a bad thing, one should be able to stand behind any statements you declare.

The train on the ride home was surprisingly packed, more packed than I’ve ever seen it in fact. Granted, this simply means that some of the small bench chairs designed to accommodate two average sized people actually have two (most likely larger than average) people in them. A “crowded” light rail car during rush hour in Sacramento isn’t anything like one in Europe or New York. As the car filled up, it became harder to ignore the people around you; everyone was forced to acknowledge the existence of other passengers.

As anyone who rides public transit in this country outside of New York, San Francisco, and to some degree Chicago knows, the passengers generally herald from the poorer side of the spectrum. Most of these passengers are every day normal people, and in many ways it’s actually hard not to respect them. Their reasons for taking the train are generally not because its more convenient, or cheaper than driving, or because of a moral dedication towards progressing public transit, but more likely because its their only option. There is no car at home for them to have to waste money on gas filling up. They do what’s necessary to take care of their family, even if that means taking public transportation to work at a cost of potentially adding hours to their day just to get to work. This is in stark contrast to many of the people driving down the highway that runs parallel to the light rail tracks. As I see many of the fancy SUVs go down the road empty except for the driver who’s wearing a suit and talking on a cell phone, I’d be willing to bet that if their car broke down, they’d probably call into the office and say they couldn’t make long before they’d consider taking an extensive series of busses, and trains to get there.

With that being said, however, there are also the “trashy” people on the train. These are the passengers who have no respect for others around them, talking loudly, and being rude in general. They will often also maintain an unkempt dirty appearance or smell that can immediately turn off others. Alcohol or other substance abuse is often apparent. Although there is most likely a correlation between the propensity towards being trashy and income level, it would be a gross error to confuse the two. You can be poor and still maintain respect for yourself and others. You can also be well off and still be rude in public. Unfortunately, many upper and middle class citizens fail to make this distinction, and instead find the concept of riding public transit somewhat insulting. Sometimes these thoughts make me feel judgmental. Who am I to say what is considered appropriate behavior? Maybe in their culture and background their actions are completely normal, and here I am referring to them as trashy. I recognize that these doubts can lead down the slippery slope of relativistic morality, however, and I take step back again. There are some standards that we should try to maintain, and being polite to those around you is one of them.

On a more empty train, people will choose seclusion while they sit in their own world, pretending not to notice what ever events take place. They’ll keep they’re head down, or staring out the window. It’s a natural response. By not acknowledging the run down appearance and lifestyles that can envelope the personalities on the train, they don’t have to admit that they might be part of it. When I’m faced with these situations, however, I instead try to embrace the atmosphere. Part of it is me feels the need to get by any subconscious prejudices I may have, and to see the people as just living their lives like everyone else. I condemn those who see themselves above public transit; therefore I must refute any negative claims they have about it. Part of it, though, is an egotistical side of me that wants to provide myself with a feeling of resilience.

So the train was crowded, and there was this kid sitting in front of me. (By kid I mean mid to late teens) He seemed pretty respectable, first napping, and then talking on his cell phone quietly. His conversation became louder eventually, and everyone around our half of the train could easily here it. It soon became evident that part of the conversation was revolved around some pot that a friend of the person on the other side of the line was trying to sell. It wasn’t in a real mischievous, dark, drug dealer kind of way, but more in the way a person might casually mention that a friend of theirs was selling a car. In a short amount of time, a couple sitting across the aisle from me chimed in that they would be interested in buying the pot, or “fire” as it was affectionately referred to. Connections were made, calls were placed, and everyone involved seemed much more excited the remainder of the ride.

Maybe I’m some what of a prude, but I think that kid was pretty retarded. Not only was he being loud (rude), but he was doing so while talking about drugs, which I would consider somewhat of a taboo subject to be discussing openly in public. Plus he was publicly getting involved in illegal acts, the selling of said drugs. Seriously, how stupid can you get? Although the chances of an off duty cop being on board is slim, what about a social service worker, or maybe one his neighbors? Here is the following information made available to anyone sitting around us:

his name
his brothers name
his brothers suppliers name
the buyers name
what was for sale
how much
where he lived.

Seriously, how stupid

As aforementioned, my first response was to just think how retarded he was. But then I realized that maybe drugs were just so much of his culture that it didn’t seem abnormal for him to be talking so openly about it. Kind of like speeding on the highway. Everyone knows its wrong, and you can get in trouble for it, but most people still do it, and its not that big of a deal. I wouldn’t think twice if I heard two people talking about how fast they drove to work in the morning.

In all honesty, it doesn’t surprise me to find that drugs are so ingrained in parts of our culture. They probably always have been, and always will be. Also in all honesty, I don’t think it’s as big of deal as everyone makes it out to be. Most drugs should be legalized, or at least be non-criminalized like in Holland.

Its not that I don’t necessarily think the government should have a role in regulating the sale of pharmaceuticals, although I do see personal freedom of choice as having a large part in the debate. It also isn’t that I think there aren’t huge social implications from having easy accessible drugs. It’s just a simple matter that the current drug policy DOES NOT WORK. Regardless if you think people have the inalienable right to live their lives in a hazy stupor, or if you are a straight edge republican demanding a god fearing, moral abiding society, it’s a stretch to say the war on drug has been much of a success, especially considering the side effects.

Drug abuse definitely hasn’t been stopped, although the illegal nature of it has risen prices so those afflicted by addiction are therefore also in increased financial difficulty. Drug related crime is also a huge problem. When I say drug related crime, I’m not talking about crimes committed by those on drugs, but crimes that result because the drug economy. I don’t know any statistics on it, but I’d be surprised if the majority of incarcerated prisoners aren’t there for drug related problems. Plus there’re the problems we’ve caused in other countries. Entire economies in South American countries have been affected because of the large power the drug cartels have do to their wealth.

It’s funny to hear the same people who proclaim the efficiencies of the free market then turn around and insist on trying to defeat the drug problem by eliminating the supply. (Making it illegal) Their own rhetoric says that as long as a demand exists, the supply will be created. Restricting it only makes it more profitable to get into the business, causing many problems to arise. Ugh, this is becoming another essay by itself.

Judge and Jury

2006-02-15T12:00:00.000-06:00

NOTE: I had a hard time writing this essay. It's long because it's complicated and I didn't want to leave something half said. So I'm sorry for the length.

***

I pass a darkened window on a parked car and catch my reflection. It warps with the shape of the glass. The eyes are black sockets of shadow. They haunt me.

One is judged every day. In order to triumph through these judgments it is important to primarily act well and secondarily to pick one’s jury well.

Dennis Pragar in his book “Happiness is a Serious Problem” has a chapter titled “Seeking Unconditional Love.” He details that one of the sources of unhappiness in people is that they seek to be respected and loved for no reason other than that they exist. He labels this as childish love.

There is a quote from “Batman Begins” similar in concept. “Bruce, deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be, but it's not who you are underneath. It's what you do that defines you." I’m going to try and connect the two into a larger point.

That point is this: In life we are judged on every thing we do and say at all times. That judgment then determines if we are “liked” or “disliked” (a prerequisite to being loved). If we wish to be happy and feel good about ourselves, we need to do things that are worthy of being loved. Not, as our self-esteem centered schools are teaching kids today, merely “feel” good about ourselves. In fact, we shouldn’t respect ourselves if we haven’t done deeds worthy of respect.

One earns respect at whatever it is one is doing by doing that task well. We must perform well in order to be respected. And doing something well very often means practicing often. Unfortunately there is no shortcut around that.

As obvious as this is, why are we then surprised at the results of bad behavior? Why do people who cheat on their spouses feel abandoned or hurt when that spouse decides he or she no longer loves the infidel (as in “not having fidelity” to one’s spouse)? Or on a lighter note, why are we surprised when we fail to do something well when we haven’t practiced it? I’m trying to write and illustrate comic novels. Should I be surprised if they suck when I haven’t been working on them for hours every day?

The disappointment comes from a misalignment of self-views and actuality. The cheating spouse doesn’t consider himself a “cheating spouse.” He sees himself as frustrated and being chased away from the woman he loves. So he seeks love in other women. He is not a cheater in his mind. He is desperate.

This is where “Batman Begins” finds the truth. For one to avoid these kinds of hurts one must constantly strive to be honest with oneself. Only when you properly define yourself in your mind the same as your actions have defined you can you know peace. Even if that alignment means admitting faults you despise. It is better to face the faults and know what must be fixed than to continue life feeling wronged by the “disrespect” of others.

Of course, life is hard. With an unknown expiration date on all of us we should feel the pressure daily.

It takes action to be truly successful. One must work at it. And it is success (I do not necessarily mean material success) that is respected. A man who treats his child with love and discipline is respected as a good father. Likewise, a man who has just become a parent certainly cannot be labeled as a “good father.” He first must struggle through the trials of parenthood and if he comes out victorious only then is he a good father.

Second, it takes a jury to define a man as a success. He cannot proclaim himself one. He is certainly the foreman on his own jury, but not the sole juror. I, for example, have a jury consisting of first myself, then my fiancé and family, my cousin and about half dozen or so friends whose opinions matter. If they should determine my life to have been a failure, I should have need to worry, for it is very likely that my life indeed has been a failure. At the same time, I do not believe I can consider my life a success without their affirmation.

It’s never so easy as that, though. Never will they all get together and debate my pros and cons and deliver unto me a verdict. It will be tiny verdicts like globs of clay pressed onto me over many years that shape me.

Nor should one ever act solely to win other’s approval. That is failure. A man who is guided only by the love of his peers is a wretched creature. One cannot use whether or not taking a certain action would bring more love to one as the deciding factor in taking that action. Rather, a man must act in a moral way and thus attract the respect of likewise moral people.

With all of this come two last caveats. First, the old expression “put yourself in their shoes” is critical and second, keep one’s judgments to oneself.

The more we discover faults in ourselves the more compassionate it should make us toward faults in others. Everyone suffers a misalignment of mental imagery to reality in some way. Critically focusing on the self often has a gentling affect on our own mental jury. It should, at least.

Finally, the harder one can fight at keeping one’s unkind judgments of others to oneself the smoother life will be. Yes, those judgments are critical for the development of the other person, but their expression will manifest on their own. My fiancé should judge me every day. She should work to keep some of those judgments to herself as much as she can and likewise. For no matter how hard we try to contain them, they will express themselves. It is inevitable. The way we address someone that we disapprove of will come through clear enough. It’ll be in the way we shake our heads as we turn our back on them or don’t look them in the eye or snap one word answers to questions. It’ll be in the silence in the evening.

I’ve never seen “giving someone a piece of my mind” work well.

A good life is about balance, it seems. We can neither act solely for the love of others nor ignore the opinions of others on our lives. We cannot work exhaustively nor slack. We must judge, but not share those judgements (and yet share them so as to help the development of loved ones). And all the while, knowing what we must and must not do, we must find the discipline to actually DO such things.

Life is a hard game to win.

Reply "Opposites"

2006-02-09T00:44:00.000-06:00

This is a response I wrote after reading Pue’s Opposites. I don’t know if I actually had any incite to add to it, but it did make me think about a lot. Those thoughts are kind of rambled forth here. I tried to maintain some sort of order and flow. I wasn’t that successful.

The first thought I had reading it was of Readers Digest. Yup, the monthly variety magazine you see in the grocery store checkout. Although I find RD somewhat simplistic and banal when I read it now, I used to read it a lot when I was a kid. It was somewhat of a family staple; we had a subscription, and it was always a happy day when the new issue showed up in the mail. I credit with out doubt, that little book’s role in developing my literary aptitude as a child.

The particular article I was reminded of was labeled “Dueling Proverbs” and consisted of a page filled with pairs of contradicting phrases, proverbs, or tibits of advice. The pair that still sticks in my head today is “Throw caution to the wind” and “Look before you leap”. These have similar implications to the quotes listed in the beginning of Peu’s essay.

For some reason, reading things like this immediately conjure up images of what I imagine native American tribes as having been like. There would be an elderly old man with all white hair, some of it tied long strands of beads hanging along side his wrinkled face hardened from time. He would pass advice on to the inexperienced youth, showing him how to be patient in the hunt, only bringing forth the brunt of his full force when the exact moment arose. The youth would also learn to push aside doubt when he was afraid, and act without hesitation. The youth who began being inpatient and arrogant, would follow use the training to grow into a man. I obviously have a romanticized and idealistic view of tribal life, probably caused from reading too many “historical fictions”. This is especially the case when comparing my view of it to the modern day, where many parents lack values, and couldn’t truly define “integrity” if they had too; more or less pass it down to their children.

Regardless, the advice still remains valid. When you are weak, you must find strength; when you are strong, you must know restraint. The two proverbs which at first seemed contradictory are in reality complimentary. The irony is that learning when to use these skills is just as vital as learning how to use them. It all comes with experience.

Although there might be a link between these two balancing forces and the mental and physical strains that cause the mental condition commonly known as bipolar disorder, I won’t try to draw any conclusions to it here.

In the past, I’ve mentioned to friends that I notice a little bit of bipolar tendencies in my lifestyle. Weeks of extremely driven periods of time followed much more solemn weeks where I have little motivation, receive little joy from the “projects” I’m working on, and am more depressed overall. I kind of assume that most people are like this; at least the interesting people who have any kind of motivation to start off with. Most people I know usually lack the motivation aspect, although they might still meet the depressed criteria. In all honesty I’d rather have the ups and downs if that was cost to have the motivation to work on the interesting projects I do enjoy. I remember case studies from my college psychology class that would mention how clinically diagnosed bi-polar patients would describe as sense of loss for their manic periods after starting medication to curb the extreme nature of their problem. There’s obviously a difference between those diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder, and the average Joe who goes through emotional variance. A great book to read is The Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison. She’s a doctor of psychiatry who suffered from severe bipolar throughout school and into her career. I’m talking the real thing; going for ten days with out sleeping while repainting your entire house twice, and then two days later finding yourself on the living room floor in tears with a bottle of pills in one hand, and gu poised in your mouth with the other. (I made up these examples; its been a while since I read the book, but you get the picture.) She goes through what it was like going on lithium, and losing her creativity and emotional highs at the cost regaining her life.

I kind of assume that if you were to measure and somehow quantify the amount of bipolar tendencies present in the population, and map them out in a histogram, the end result would be normal distribution (a bell curve in lay terms). With exception of a couple of possible outliers, the extreme clinical cases would probably be from the small portion of the population lying on the extreme edge. This implies that any arbitrary line drawn to indicate the difference between a bipolar person, and a “normal” person would be just that, arbitrary. It would be a gradual and grey distinction. I’m no psychologist, but I think this is part of the problem we are having with too many people taking too many drugs to try to “solve” their problems. They see any display of what is actually a normal thing, as an indication that they are sick. It’s even sadder that doctors also buy into this.

I came up with another half baked up theory on explaining it. Scientists say the body cannot store sleep, but I question that position. There’s been plenty of times where I go for a couple of weeks only getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night until I finally just crash, and sleep it off for a morning. It’s almost like drive and determination is derived from a chemical that your body can only produce so much of. I’ll refer to it as “DRIVE”. If you burn it off faster than you can make it, you eventually deplete, and need to rest. Maybe you can build up your bodies efficiency in production and use of this “DRIVE” by practice. Maybe the more sloth like you become during your rest stages, the quicker your body can produce it. Maybe its also like an addictive toxin, if it builds up to much, you will feel the need to get rid of it, causing a restlessness, yet if you live with it built up to long, your body adjusts, and becomes desensitized to it. You will be able to remain at rest for longer periods of time with out feeling the need to purge your system of DRIVE.

The more I write this analogy, the more I like it. It reminds me of ancient Asain beliefs in things such as “chi” or “haragrei.” Although these beliefs often have little or no scientific background, they describe the system in such a balanced and well formed manner, that they can have more practical application than modern medicine or pscychology. In all honesty, though, I’m pretty much just talking out of my ass.

Original Sin

2006-02-07T15:54:00.000-06:00

It starts from a separation of will and knowledge. My mind tells me what is right to do, what the steps are to progress and move forward, but my actions defy me. I sit in a coffee shop when I should be at a client’s office. I write a stupid essay when I should write my comic novels.

My left hand fills a palm full of fat from my waist while my right hand drops another bite of doughnut into my mouth.

I spend more time with my palm pilot planning how to spend my time than I do actually doing things.

My commissions plummet while I write a document feeling sorry for myself.

Now that I’ve gutted myself of the truth, and that is what we do here is tell the truth, I come to the point of the essay.

I’m not alone in this dichotomy of will and want. Every human knows what is right to do. They’ve been given this gift from God. And every human acts despite their self interest regularly and in tiny intervals. Maybe this is the Original Sin that we all beg forgiveness for. Many of us will never kill another human, or even steal their property. We won’t cheat on our spouses or covet another man’s wife. We will honor our parents and hold no false idols as our god and yet we sin. Daily. Maybe the sin is as simple as a white lie to keep ourselves from trouble. Or maybe the sin is this: we go against what is natural and right.

We waste time and we act against ourselves. God created the most amazing achievement in all of history – the human body and mind. And every day we do things to destroy it. We eat garbage – synthetic garbage – that could never be found naturally, like fructose or preservatives. We laze in front of the television digesting stories that have no valuable message or honest reflections of life instead of producing. And when we do produce it requires no physical effort. We go soft of belly and face.

Sin. Those are our sins. God has created the ability for us to know what is right to do and when we consciously choose not to do it, we are sinning against Him.

I was taught that Jesus “lives” in every human being. That when we harm our neighbors we are harming Jesus. If He is in each of us, then perhaps we should worry less about harming Him in our neighbors and more about harming Him within ourselves. Every time we abuse ourselves, we abuse God.

It just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.

What if god.....

2006-02-02T01:48:00.000-06:00

What if god just created existence as a school project? Remember what it was like to work on a grade school project? You didn’t always spend as much time on it as you should, and the final results weren’t necessarily what you had in mind when you set out. Regardless though, when you finished, you had something that you saw develop out of nothing, and were somewhat proud of the result. What happened to it after grading though? Did you keep working on it to fix that one small thing you couldn’t quite get right by the due date? Did you put it on a shelf to keep with you and admire into adult hood? More than likely, if it wasn’t thrown away immediately, it was stashed away somewhere, forgotten, to slowly degrade, and eventually get discarded years later in a cleaning frenzy. Maybe that’s what it was like with god. He created everything, took it in to be graded, showed how it all worked; the ecosystems, the climate, and how the people evolved and worshipped him. He probably lost a couple of points with the whole apple/serpent incidence. Things never seemed to quite work after that, and instead of everything running along smoothly and automatically, he had to keep intervening to keep it from falling apart. Afterwards though, he set it aside, and pretty much forgot about it. He still checked in every once in a while, but never really got involved much. Eventually he just let it to its own devices, and one day he’ll probably throw it out to make room for something more interesting.

What if god likes playing SimCity? Most of us have seen the game, if not played it. You build up the infrastructure, and watch the people come and grow. Its fun starting out, but eventually, you often get bored with it. Towards the end, it isn’t as exciting anymore, and unless your city works out perfectly as you planned, most games end up the same way; with total utter destruction. It might start with a random natural disaster that decimates all your beloved plans. You’re not quite sure if it can recover this time though, and after the smoke clears, you just don’t have the energy to do it all over again. Instead you hit the tornado button, to watch further destruction, then the fire button, then the earthquake. Watching everything get leveled provides you with a small amount of joy that the game hadn’t been providing recently. This analogy doesn’t need to be taken any further; maybe god just likes playing SimCity, and is starting to get bored.

What if god was one of us? (da da da da da da da)
Then he’d be over weight, lazy, and have a really big TV. Oh yeah, you bet he’d have a big TV; flat screen, plasma, 120 inch, surround sound, all that stuff. I mean come on, its god.

What if god is really just an asshole. I don’t mean the average run of the mill schmuck either; I mean the real twisted fuck that gets his jollies watching others live in pain and suffering. Remember that time your puppy died when you were kid? Oh yeah, that was god, and it was on purpose, just to watch you cry. And you know what; it was no accident that you were the one to find it as you came running into the room to put on its shiny new blue collar.

What if god didn’t create existence, but instead stumbled onto it. He was roaming through the universe and he came across the planet where this interesting thing called life had developed. Not having seen anything like it before, he was immediately intrigued. Despite the fact that none of the creatures were nearly as advanced as him, they were all quite interesting. The most sophisticated of them had even developed a rather elaborate language, which allowed him to communicate with them far past the basic emotions portrayed by the lesser animals’ verbal communication. They were in awe of his greatness, and trembled in fear at his displays of power. He soon became addicted to the worship bestowed by them, and in return started demanding it. Eventually he even started to believe their primitive religions proclaiming him as the most powerful force in the universe. He became more and more reclusive, surrounding himself only with those who were most adamant with their adoration. Sometimes he would reward those who worshipped him the most, and other times he would punish those who showed indifference. His powers were limited though, and his vision not all seeing as many thought. He couldn’t do all that was asked of him, and would become frustrated, lashing out at the entire world. In the end, many people began to live their lives out of his shadow, just as life had originally begun. He tried for a while to stop the decline, but eventually gave in. He now only focuses on the small things that make the world a slightly happier place; making butterflies and flowers simultaneous appear in Spring time, keeping summer rains exactly the right temperature, and having the perfect snow at least once a season.

What if god is a woman? I bet she’d be really hot. Plus it would explain a lot of things; the mood swings, the irrational behavior, platypuses, and how it’s possible to go 10 miles east, 10 mile north, and 10 miles south, only to end up in the same place. Only a woman would make directions like that possible.

What if god is a man? That would spread light on the whole war thing at least. It would also explain child birth. Seriously. Bowling ball size object. Golf ball size hole. You do the math. No one would sign off on that design plan unless he knew for damn sure that he wouldn’t have to be the one dealing with it.

What if god just took a brake; not a long one, just a real, real, short one? If the million of years it took to create the universe were only 6 days to him, then stepping out for a few thousand years would be nothing more than turning his head aside for a moment, or taking a quick trip to the bathroom at most. That would explain why no one’s heard from him in a couple of millennium. He’s not stupid though, and I doubt he would leave mankind to its own devices, even for just a second. That’s why he sent Jesus down to keep an eye on things while he was gone. Damn, I definitely don’t want to be around when he gets back. Just look at the place! There’re beer cans floating in the ocean, most of the plants are dead, half the animals are gone, and someone poked a hole in the ozone layer! Plus I’m sure he’ll just love Catholicism, and I’m not going to explain to him what we did to Jesus.

What if god is a goat? That might explain all the greenery. It doesn’t explain much else though, so it’s pretty unlikely.

What if god is nothing more than a chemical reaction? Synapses firing as dopine seeps between the interlaced fingers of adjacent cells. The sudden release of electrical current sweeps through the human brain, and awareness is awakened; a thought is born. Emotions such as love and fear begin to be realized, quantified, and analyzed rather than simply acted upon. Instinct is replaced with reason, and for the first time a question is formed. As the brain evolved generation after generation, these questions became more elaborate. Man struggled to explain the mysterious world he found himself immersed in. The concept of cause and effect became an underlying principle in explaining events happening before his eyes. When the question of existence inevitably came up, experience lead man to conclude that only a conscious being such as himself could have created the elaborate puzzles presented before him. The concept of god was born. The nature of being aware presented other challenges. The synapses fired more and more. Reason brought along with it choice. Following choice, came morality, and with it the need for a normative cause fundamental to any philosophy of ethics. Another need for god was found as he became more than simply the creator, but also the ruler. Not all people or cultures followed the rules of morality, but those that did prospered from its benefits, and the beliefs were passed down. Man’s inquisitive nature became his key to survival. The ability to think allowed him to conquer all other animals, and dominate even the most inhospitable environment. The seek for challenge became an inherent and necessary part of his life. Soon mere survival no longer satisfied him. Man’s knowledge of his own mortality caused him to question if there was reason to live at all knowing the eventual end. He sought more, he sought purpose. This final need completed the image of god, becoming God, not just the provider, or the judge, but the end to all means, the purpose necessary to complete a life capable of reason. The synapses fired again, and then were silent. The questions asked had found their answers.

Honor

2006-02-01T15:42:00.000-06:00

“I’ll be honest. Most people wouldn’t have come back in.”
-Finance director for a local car dealership

My fiancé and I just bought a brand new Mazda6. It’s an amazing car. The nicest I’ve ever driven, that’s for sure.

When filling out the paperwork, the salesman filled in the contract incorrectly, giving us the discounts and incentive twice. The end result was about $2300 in extra discounts off the price of the car.

Yesterday, one day after delivery, the dealership called and said there had been a “mathematical error” on the contract. I would need to come back in and redo it. The law says the car is mine, end of story. As of delivery of the car, there was nothing more they could do…unless I was willing. Of course, they didn’t say that. They needed me to believe that I had no choice.

Let’s say it’s been a morally introspective last couple of hours.

Capitalism (and I am a capitalist) is based on the philosophy of two parties freely making a contract of money for a good and honoring that. I bought the car, with the agreement to pay the tagged price. The final price was not the agreement that the dealer and I had. While the law was on my side, I knew the only moral thing to do was to return and refinance the car.

It didn’t make it easy, though. (Moral acts rarely are, I guess) I really wanted that extra $2300. And I had allowed this mistake to continue even after spotting it. I made arguments like, “if it was the other way around, they wouldn’t redo the contract” or “they’re a big company, they can handle the loss” and so forth. But it didn’t sit right. It felt like what it was. Stealing.

When I got in, they took me back by the manager. He said I was right, I could tell them to shove it up their ass if I wanted to. There wasn’t anything they could do about it. He said, it was a human mistake. They very much value customer satisfaction. In order to make things right, he offered me an additional $500 off the price of the car and a year of free oil changes.

To get to the point, as I was filling out the new paperwork with the finance director, he looked at me and said, “To be honest, most people probably wouldn’t have come back.”

What does that say about society? I can understand the temptation. I obviously let that mistake go on hoping to cash in off of it. And I wouldn’t have called them to point out the mistake. None of that was right, but it would have been even less right to hold out on the wrong price.

Honor is a thing of the past, I guess. My honor is only slightly better than the person who keeps the car. Why did I have to debate to do the right thing? Why would a person ever believe they weren’t acting wrongly by keeping the mistaken money? When I told the salesman I would buy the car, I gave him my word that I would pay the agreed price for it. When he offered it to me for less, by accident, why would I believe that my word no longer mattered and that this new price was the price of the car we had agreed on?

Often we hear stories of people finding money or goods or a lost wallet and keeping it. “Finders keepers, losers weepers” is not a moral maxim. It is playground morality. As adults, I would hope our word means something more to us.

In closing, I guess I’m just saddened by the lack of honor among my capitalist loving statesmen. Capitalism only works with honorable people. My skill and money for your skill and money. Honost agreements that are made freely and with full disclosure by both parties. This means keeping your word. I just wish that meant something to more people.

"haragei"

2006-01-29T22:26:00.000-06:00

She was, well, if truth be told and that is what we do here is tell the truth, hot, I guess. She was hot. The clerk behind the coffee counter was well dressed in a trendy pair of low sitting jeans, a tight shirt that exposed just a hint of her belly and a button up shirt left open down the front.

Yet, she wasn’t hot. I couldn’t figure it at first. Her makeup was little and tastefully done. Her hair was professionally pulled back. Why wasn’t she attractive?

The problem was her shoulders. They sloped in and her torso flowed clumsily into her neck with nothing more than a gradual rise. There was no definition of shape. And her head fell forward so that it hid her neck. It was a long, smooth neck – a fine neck – and it should have been on display for the whole world, but she hid it.

Posture. It is the most definitive element of all of us and the first thing we notice about each other, whether we know it or not. And we slouch for a dozen different reasons from laziness to fear. It is fear, I believe, that most influences sloppy posture. The other day I walked into a Pizza Hut. Four feet from me, as I waited for the hostess to seat me, was a table of six Hispanic men. They each turned and stared at me as I stood there waiting, speaking in Spanish and laughing. I don’t know Spanish and didn’t get the joke. I felt uncomfortable. Later as I sat at my table eating I thought back on those thirty seconds of waiting and realized I had pulled my shoulders in and dropped my head to stare at the floor as soon as they started looking at me. It was instinct. I hid within myself as best as I could.

A man that stands up straight, holds his chin level to the world and looks me in the eye is a commanding figure. It doesn’t matter if he is a ditch digger, as the saying goes. He commands.

A woman who keeps her shoulders back, not hiding or flaunting her chest, who keeps her head back so it rests in a line with her spine and not hanging in front of it, who lets the world see her without trying to hide, is a creature of grace.

I only wish myself and my peers would take better care to sit up straight once. When we walk, we let our heads lead us, as if being dragged by a collar. Japanese martial artists call their center of balance haragei – a spot just two inches (or so) below our navels. If we must be pulled, imagine being pulled from that point of our bodies. Let our legs and arms follow in our mind and we’ll see an instant result.

My dad, on my graduation day, told me to “stand up straight and show them who you are.” Let the world hear his advice. It’ll instantly change your life. People six inches taller than you will look up to you. Your coworkers will take you serious, your clients will respect your word and you will feel more confident. By doing nothing more than sitting up straight.

That's not water......not that I would clean it up anyway

2006-01-27T19:34:00.000-06:00

I have a confession to make. Well, actually it’s not really a confession for me, but more of a confession for the entire male species. Here it goes. Sometimes, although very rare, we pee on the floor. There, I said it; pretty disgusting, I know. Despite all the male bravado surrounding our ability to pee standing up, the fact of the matter is that by standing up, one is farther away from the bowl, and the farther away you get from the bowl; the larger the margin of error is. It’s simple math and physics. We obviously don’t do it on purpose or anything like that, but occasionally there are factors beyond our control; splashing, angled streams, and of course the completely unpredictable double stream; hard to stop, impossible to control. In the end, we just plain miss.

I’m sure our ancestors might think this pretty humorous, and even be somewhat appalled that we put the toilet in the house in the first place. They were smart enough to put the toilets outside of the house, or at least have a designated spot or tree farther away from the village. Leave it to a modern society obsessed with convenience and anything that allows us to be lazier, to move the toilet inside the dwelling. Granted, I have no inclination to move it back outside, I rather enjoy the modern convenience. I just find it funny that if you are outside, you have to go inside in order to use the facilities, just to have the septic system pump it back outside.

Even more humorous is the tendency of people in the US to insist on having labels like bathroom, washroom, or restroom, as if by naming it something else, you can cover up the completely natural, yet very unclean nature of the room. If I’m out and about, in need of a rest, I’ll look for a bench to sit down on, and at no point will I consider taking a nap in a nice smelly, dirty, restroom that most likely has pee on the floor, as a feasible option. At least in British speaking countries, they’re honest enough to just plain call it the toilet. No hiding anything there.

I’m getting a little off the subject now though. The reason I brought this up is because the bathrooms at my place of employment (which contain no actual baths) are quite possibly the most abhorrent I’ve ever seen. Even though I work at a Fortune 500 company that constantly ranks amongst the best places to work in the country, I’m often disgusted when entering the men’s washroom. It isn’t the same type of disgusting nature found at restrooms in Union Station, Washington DC, though, or my parents’ house back in WI. Those places suffer from lack of care, which allows the grime to deposit day after day, stacking up week after week. The restrooms at work, are actually cleaned at least twice a day, which can lead to a different kind of dirtiness. Instead of all the grime melding into an indiscernible layer of filth, every little speck now shines out in contrast of the cleanliness of the floor. The amount that accumulates during the brief times between cleanings is a true testament of the utter disregard for the use of public space.

One day not to long ago, for example, there was a distinctive yellow liquid on top of the urinal. On top of it! That just doesn’t make sense. You’d have to either be very tall, or actually pointed up in order to pull that off. More importantly, it’d be incredibly hard not to notice your error. You don’t miss a urinal with out being fully aware of it. I would assume that a reasonable person would at least make some effort to amend their mistake. I know I would grab some toilet paper from one of the stalls and wipe it up. Isn’t that just common courtesy? Then again, you know what happens when you assume.

One explanation I had for this apparent lack of respect for your fellow bathroom dwellers is has to do with the large number of engineers employed at my office. Putting that many dorky guys from a discipline not known for excellent hand eye coordination in one place is bound to increase the number of aiming accidents.

After further consideration, however, that hypothesis didn’t quite hold up. For one thing, despite the number of dorky engineers we have on our campus, there are also a disproportionate number of active, athletic, and potentially coordinated ones. More so, even the most uncoordinated poor soul can improve his ability with some practice. I’d think that the repetitive nature of using the bathroom on a daily basis would allow ample time to improve one’s aim before reaching adult hood.

In the end, it just comes down to a matter of responsibility, an issue that is plaguing our society. People increasingly seem to have the attitude that if it’s not their assigned task, they shouldn’t do it. Perhaps more importantly, there’s the perception that if you can’t get caught for something, then it’s apparently not wrong. During lunch hours it’s not uncommon to see food spilled in the corridors leading between buildings. I once even saw an entire tray spilled across the carpeting. No where in sight was there a person hurrying back with a fistful of napkins to take care of their mess. Instead, it was just left there to soak in, and make people step across.

Why is it that people no longer take responsibility for their actions? Could it be that there’s a slight sense of empowerment achieved by knowing that someone else is there to do your dirty work, allowing yourself to focus on what you consider the “important” stuff. Maybe these traits are just magnified in the work place, where people are more in the mindset of “this is what I’m here to do.”

Of course there’s also the distinct possibility the people are just plain lazy. Unfortunately, that may lie at the root of this problem. Laziness maybe the mother of innovation, but she also births many other bastard children who run loose terrorizing the neighborhood, possessing no aspirations beyond becoming crackwhores and maybe someday, if they’re lucky, getting that big screen TV.

Oh, by the way. Apparently aiming isn’t just an issue in men’s bathrooms; women’s bathrooms have issues also.

Opposites

2006-01-18T17:36:00.000-06:00

“Your life is not a dress rehearsal.” – Dr. Phil McGraw.

“All good things come to those who wait.” – Unknown.

Two bits of advice. Both seemingly opposite in their message and both seemingly true. So which do I follow?

Yes, yes. Everyone get over the chuckles that I have read (indeed, am reading) a book by Oprah’s favored shrink. The man…how do I say this politely? The man knows his shit.

That’s the truth and that’s what we do here. Tell the truth.

So which is the better advice? Likely, I’ll find that it’s a combination of the two, as most things in life are, but I must first examine both a little.

Mr. McGraw’s quote gives me a sense of urgency. He’s saying, stop wasting your damn time. Move! You have limited hours and once lost, never regained. Take action immediately. Without hesitation. There is no second chance at any of this. Let’s repeat that. You will not get a second chance at life. Cliché as it is, it could be repeated thirteen thousand times and still wouldn’t lose its truth.

On the other hand, the fact is good things take time to cultivate. To use the tritest of trite analogies, a seed cannot be planted today and harvested tomorrow. Nor can it be planted today, abandoned and harvested in autumn. It takes time, care, patience and a little bit of hope. That last, hope, may be the most important of all. No farmer can truly toil the earth and be hopeless about his efforts.

Yeah, it is an exhausted analogy – the planting thing – but an incredibly accurate one. Why so accurate? Because it is natural. It is the way things are. It is reality. And if reality exists, then those of us who exist inside of it can do nothing but abide by its laws. So, if it takes a natural system that willingly rolls along with the laws of existence to illustrate how we should live our own lives, then so be it.

Back to the point. Just as the farmer cannot act hopelessly, nor can I plot a future for my family and myself, make efforts to reach it and all the while have no hopes of ever achieving it.

I think my initial confusion lies in thinking the two statements are opposites. They are not. Only when they are coupled does anything truly remarkable happen. They are the yin and yang, the male and female, of motives (though I can’t label specifically which is which). Only when they come together does anything actually get made.

If I don’t act today and plant that damn seed it will never have any chance to grow. Mr. McGraw urges me to do it today. Summer is coming and soon it’ll be too late. The vitality of spring will be lost and so will your chance be. So Dr. Phil says, hurry up and act now.

But then Mr. Unknown strolls up (slowly, I might add) and says; now it’s in. You have to watch it, take a little care and tend it from time to time. Watch it, but don’t stare. The harvest will come and you can feast then. Just have some damn patience.

Every six months or so (eerily regular) I get restless. My job suddenly becomes unfulfilling again. My home seems dull and unsuitable. My progress on these comic novels seems pathetic and my waistline becomes a point of obsession. I now look at these moments as rainstorms. These are the moments when I come back out of patience mode and water myself. No, I don’t pee on my own head (as difficult as that is to visualize, I think it would be easy to do). I scramble and feverishly assault all of them at the same time.

I do push-ups in the morning and weightlifting in the evening. I drink a gallon of water a day and stop drinking caffeine (the headache from that is horrid) and I eat the cursed broccoli.

I write hundreds of words a day and draw as often as I can. I read. I discuss plots and thoughts and politicians.

Mostly, though, I spend money. I buy new art supplies, new software and, mostly, new books. Sure, I read a lot of them, but invariably, not all of them. All done in the name of “research.”

Anyway, back to the point. This goes on for a couple of weeks, a month at most, and then I’m back into a slow gradual coast where everything is just “fine” and not great or terrible. A level and sluggish progression. Some psychologists call this being “bi-polar.” I call it life.

Naming something, though, has a way of solving it, too. No, I’m not saying I’m going to name my condition a mental disease. I am saying that naming the facts of how I behave has a good chance of helping me to stop behaving that way. I would like steadier waters. These accostments of aggressive accomplishment followed by long weeks of wafting are exhausting. Hell, that sentence was exhausting.

When next I find myself frantically trying to live like I’m on fire, I’ll stop and think of a cliché to pull me out of it. Something like, “slow and steady wins the race” or “stop, drop and roll.”

Does this make sense? Am I the only one who lives like this? I doubt it. But, maybe.

A Quick Apology

2006-01-18T15:46:00.000-06:00

I'm wordy. And I have the vain problem of thinking that my words are unique in their value. Just not so.

As this goes along, I'm certain, my writing will get better. I'm a novice so bear with me.

In short, I'm sorry for this whole damn website. That said, tonight is the first of our posts. Hope they don't bore. Too much.