Tuesday, August 31, 2010
September Topic
Hey all- August inspired a lot of good discussion, but it is time to switch gears and jump on the new month's topic. September is going to be set aside for childhood saga stories. Pick the best of times- pick the worst of times and write. They can be short- they can be long, funny, sad- as long as youre writing it's alllll good.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Dark Modern Religion
I wanted religion to be the theme of the month as a way to address things we don't normally talk about. People seem to like to get rowdy about religion, but around here (at least the northern Virginia, DC area) religion is basically nonexistent in everyday life unless you actually look for it. It lingers for sure in the general fabric of our expressions, stereotypes, and politics, but when it comes down to it, I don't really expect to find Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha greeting me in the various public places I pass through. Instead, I find myself subject to the vigilant watch of Ronald, Wendy, and the King. I understand the mythology of a cave man being mocked by an insurance company, but not the tenants that Judaism is built on. Rather than being in touch with hymns and spirituals, I know the tune of the five-dollar footlong song without ever asking for such knowledge. These things are what have become valued by society, with no choice ever being made on our part. Advertising rules everything that reaches any mass of people now, and it is the underlying religion of our country and our wealthy peers.
If something so much as whispers over the radio, has a moment's glimpse on television, or wants to find even a couple views on the internet, advertisements show up, take over, and assure us everything's in good hands. And once allowed to display, showcase, and entice all the magical things that ads do, eventually a collective world forms outside of our own. This world is where all those perfect pizzas and sandwiches and ice-drenched beverages exist, where people seem impossibly happy with their iPods and new cars and vacations and lives. There is this divide that forms, a space that separates us from nirvana, and instead of reading scripture, practicing the good deeds, and believing in salvation to get there, all we need is that dollar dollar bill y'all. But even when we buy our latest favorite golden device, it's never quite like what we're shown that it should be. So we buy more, and do what we can to keep buying more, to chase that golden device in the ads and break the cycle forever. Needless to say, that shit is exhausting, serving the dollar.
Now, it's not that these products and icons and moguls are necessarily evil. If anything they're just really smart and soulless, haha. But really, they're just too big to really be tangible and therefore kind of useless to scream about. And that's just it, they're too big to take down. Once some sort of idea or icon has reached a certain huge number of people, they start to exist on their own, suspended in the stratosphere of our heads, and nothing can really pull them out of the sky. Only time can really deflate them, but even that's not guaranteed to happen any time soon.
So as these icons start to grow and reach constellation heights, questions previously ludicrous almost become relevant, such as this: What is the more recognizable icon around of the world, the crucifix or the golden arches? The yin yang or the Air Jordan silhouette? This is what we've been given this past century, a new cast of idols and phophets, only they don't really give a shit how you act towards each other or conduct your lives, so long as you pay the big man upstairs, in the penthouse.
Having never been very religious, I have a hard time wondering whether we should all be threatened by the rise of these smiley, greasy idols. I tend to think so though, because even if people don't believe in them and hail their marketing and their products as the best answer to the spiritual plights of the world, we're all affected by the tenants that they preach. The goals of society as a whole start to tilt in their direction, and as the great ship tilts, you better grab hold of something (education! job! retirement plan!) to keep from falling in the water and getting left behind. Otherwise, you'll just have to get creative with those sea legs (I'm losing hold of this analogy). The point is, regardless of your beliefs, entities as big as Jesus and Coca-Cola are going to affect society, you, and whatever role you claim in society, and although the Fertile Crescent All Stars may cause wars and hatred and death, at least on the most basic level of the major religions we are seen as human, and ideally we do unto others as we would have others do to us, whereas a Corporate God sees only consumers, and fuck if he cares how or why we do anything.
I guess this jumbled rant has sort of led me to what religion means to people as a whole, and how this brave new era of extremely powerful corporate logos is mimicking the icons of the past only with different intentions. What's even weirder is how the internet is changing the rock-solid religion of the sponsors of what was once during and between the 30 minute sitcoms of old. Now, advertisers are winded trying to catch up to the "stars" that pop up on youtube, and the NEW AND BIG things aren't coming from the same places they always have. People are going to obscure websites that had a good idea of how to reinvent the wheel yet again and deliver information to people in a new and, God forbid, even more convenient way. So the ads have to hunt us; find where we like to go hang out, where ya at? Over at Facebook's? Youtuber's? Twittmeister's? And once they track us down they catch their breath for 15 seconds, slapping us in the face with another soul-grimacing screening of that awful heathen of a woman from Progressive Insurance making awkward-slash-supposed-to-be-endearing(?) chat with some moron walking around in her white hell of bookshelves holding nondescript bibles on how to turn a country's obsession with Michael Cera into a marketable ploy on awkwardness.
But really, no one can catch up with the internet, and I say let it go. Keep what we need (long-winded blogs) and get on with our lives. I say turn down the volume on that woman (Flo, is it? Save me JesuBuddhaMuhamaYahweh!) or just pull the plug on her entirely, especially if you're not actually watching anything. There are so many things better to do than submit to white fuzz of ads on TV when you're not even watching anything. Find your own religion - not necessarily one with scriptures and centuries of history (although I guess they do have they credentials), but one that is worthwhile. The classic religions cultivate passion with often way too specific of an agenda, while consumerism cultivates mindlessness with an agenda that doesn't care about you at all. In the thick of it all there's got to be a better journey. And although the great icons have their own worth - if for nothing more than inspire collective awe at an idea that is known on every continent the same - you have to keep your wits about you. Gotta be careful about what you chase into that stratosphere.
--------------------------
Ricky: Dear Lord Baby Jesus, we also thank you for my wife’s father, Chip. We hope that you can use your Baby Jesus powers to heal him and his horrible leg. And it smells terrible and the dogs are always bothering with it. Dear tiny, infant Jesus, we….
Carley: Hey, you know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don’t always have to call him “baby.” It’s a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby.
Ricky: Well, I like the Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace. When you say grace you can say it to grownup Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.
Carley: You know what I want? I want you to do this grace good so that God will let us win tomorrow.
Ricky: Dear tiny Jesus, in your golden-fleece diapers, with your tiny, little, fat, balled-up fists….
Chip: He was a man! He had a beard!
Ricky: Look, I like the baby version the best, do you hear me? I win the races and I get the money.
Carley: Ricky, finish the damn grace.
Cal: I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T shirt, cause it says, like, “I wanna be formal, but I’m here to party, too.” Cause I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.
Walker: I like to picture Jesus as a ninja fighting off evil samurai.
Cal: I like to think of Jesus, like, with giant eagle’s wings. And singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd, with, like, a angel band. And I’m in the front row, and I’m hammered drunk.
Carley: Hey Cal, why don’t you just shut up?
Cal: Yes, ma’am.
Ricky: Okay. Dear 8 pound, 6 ounce newborn infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant and so cuddly, but still omnipotent, we just thank you for all the races I’ve won and the 21.2 million dollars – woo! (the rest of the family says “woo” too) – love that money, that I have accrued over this past season. Also, due to a binding endorsement contract that stipulates I mention Powerade at each grace, I just want to say that Powerade is delicious and it cools you off on a hot summer day. And we look forward to Powerade’s release of Mystic Mountain Blueberry. Thank you for all your power and your grace, dear baby God. Amen.
-----------------------
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He wears like a white outfit, and He does interpretive ice dances of my life's journey.
Ricky Bobby: Dear Lord baby Jesus, lyin' there in your ghost manger, just lookin' at your Baby Einstein developmental videos, learnin' 'bout shapes and colors.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I had a dream where Jesus was a dirty old bum, and I was about to sock him in the face because, well he's a dirty old bum, but then I thought, there's something special about him...
Ricky Bobby: Because it was Jesus, right...
Cal Naughton, Jr.: Yeah...
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party.
If something so much as whispers over the radio, has a moment's glimpse on television, or wants to find even a couple views on the internet, advertisements show up, take over, and assure us everything's in good hands. And once allowed to display, showcase, and entice all the magical things that ads do, eventually a collective world forms outside of our own. This world is where all those perfect pizzas and sandwiches and ice-drenched beverages exist, where people seem impossibly happy with their iPods and new cars and vacations and lives. There is this divide that forms, a space that separates us from nirvana, and instead of reading scripture, practicing the good deeds, and believing in salvation to get there, all we need is that dollar dollar bill y'all. But even when we buy our latest favorite golden device, it's never quite like what we're shown that it should be. So we buy more, and do what we can to keep buying more, to chase that golden device in the ads and break the cycle forever. Needless to say, that shit is exhausting, serving the dollar.
Now, it's not that these products and icons and moguls are necessarily evil. If anything they're just really smart and soulless, haha. But really, they're just too big to really be tangible and therefore kind of useless to scream about. And that's just it, they're too big to take down. Once some sort of idea or icon has reached a certain huge number of people, they start to exist on their own, suspended in the stratosphere of our heads, and nothing can really pull them out of the sky. Only time can really deflate them, but even that's not guaranteed to happen any time soon.
So as these icons start to grow and reach constellation heights, questions previously ludicrous almost become relevant, such as this: What is the more recognizable icon around of the world, the crucifix or the golden arches? The yin yang or the Air Jordan silhouette? This is what we've been given this past century, a new cast of idols and phophets, only they don't really give a shit how you act towards each other or conduct your lives, so long as you pay the big man upstairs, in the penthouse.
Having never been very religious, I have a hard time wondering whether we should all be threatened by the rise of these smiley, greasy idols. I tend to think so though, because even if people don't believe in them and hail their marketing and their products as the best answer to the spiritual plights of the world, we're all affected by the tenants that they preach. The goals of society as a whole start to tilt in their direction, and as the great ship tilts, you better grab hold of something (education! job! retirement plan!) to keep from falling in the water and getting left behind. Otherwise, you'll just have to get creative with those sea legs (I'm losing hold of this analogy). The point is, regardless of your beliefs, entities as big as Jesus and Coca-Cola are going to affect society, you, and whatever role you claim in society, and although the Fertile Crescent All Stars may cause wars and hatred and death, at least on the most basic level of the major religions we are seen as human, and ideally we do unto others as we would have others do to us, whereas a Corporate God sees only consumers, and fuck if he cares how or why we do anything.
I guess this jumbled rant has sort of led me to what religion means to people as a whole, and how this brave new era of extremely powerful corporate logos is mimicking the icons of the past only with different intentions. What's even weirder is how the internet is changing the rock-solid religion of the sponsors of what was once during and between the 30 minute sitcoms of old. Now, advertisers are winded trying to catch up to the "stars" that pop up on youtube, and the NEW AND BIG things aren't coming from the same places they always have. People are going to obscure websites that had a good idea of how to reinvent the wheel yet again and deliver information to people in a new and, God forbid, even more convenient way. So the ads have to hunt us; find where we like to go hang out, where ya at? Over at Facebook's? Youtuber's? Twittmeister's? And once they track us down they catch their breath for 15 seconds, slapping us in the face with another soul-grimacing screening of that awful heathen of a woman from Progressive Insurance making awkward-slash-supposed-to-be-endearing(?) chat with some moron walking around in her white hell of bookshelves holding nondescript bibles on how to turn a country's obsession with Michael Cera into a marketable ploy on awkwardness.
But really, no one can catch up with the internet, and I say let it go. Keep what we need (long-winded blogs) and get on with our lives. I say turn down the volume on that woman (Flo, is it? Save me JesuBuddhaMuhamaYahweh!) or just pull the plug on her entirely, especially if you're not actually watching anything. There are so many things better to do than submit to white fuzz of ads on TV when you're not even watching anything. Find your own religion - not necessarily one with scriptures and centuries of history (although I guess they do have they credentials), but one that is worthwhile. The classic religions cultivate passion with often way too specific of an agenda, while consumerism cultivates mindlessness with an agenda that doesn't care about you at all. In the thick of it all there's got to be a better journey. And although the great icons have their own worth - if for nothing more than inspire collective awe at an idea that is known on every continent the same - you have to keep your wits about you. Gotta be careful about what you chase into that stratosphere.
--------------------------
Ricky: Dear Lord Baby Jesus, we also thank you for my wife’s father, Chip. We hope that you can use your Baby Jesus powers to heal him and his horrible leg. And it smells terrible and the dogs are always bothering with it. Dear tiny, infant Jesus, we….
Carley: Hey, you know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don’t always have to call him “baby.” It’s a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby.
Ricky: Well, I like the Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace. When you say grace you can say it to grownup Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.
Carley: You know what I want? I want you to do this grace good so that God will let us win tomorrow.
Ricky: Dear tiny Jesus, in your golden-fleece diapers, with your tiny, little, fat, balled-up fists….
Chip: He was a man! He had a beard!
Ricky: Look, I like the baby version the best, do you hear me? I win the races and I get the money.
Carley: Ricky, finish the damn grace.
Cal: I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T shirt, cause it says, like, “I wanna be formal, but I’m here to party, too.” Cause I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.
Walker: I like to picture Jesus as a ninja fighting off evil samurai.
Cal: I like to think of Jesus, like, with giant eagle’s wings. And singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd, with, like, a angel band. And I’m in the front row, and I’m hammered drunk.
Carley: Hey Cal, why don’t you just shut up?
Cal: Yes, ma’am.
Ricky: Okay. Dear 8 pound, 6 ounce newborn infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant and so cuddly, but still omnipotent, we just thank you for all the races I’ve won and the 21.2 million dollars – woo! (the rest of the family says “woo” too) – love that money, that I have accrued over this past season. Also, due to a binding endorsement contract that stipulates I mention Powerade at each grace, I just want to say that Powerade is delicious and it cools you off on a hot summer day. And we look forward to Powerade’s release of Mystic Mountain Blueberry. Thank you for all your power and your grace, dear baby God. Amen.
-----------------------
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He wears like a white outfit, and He does interpretive ice dances of my life's journey.
Ricky Bobby: Dear Lord baby Jesus, lyin' there in your ghost manger, just lookin' at your Baby Einstein developmental videos, learnin' 'bout shapes and colors.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I had a dream where Jesus was a dirty old bum, and I was about to sock him in the face because, well he's a dirty old bum, but then I thought, there's something special about him...
Ricky Bobby: Because it was Jesus, right...
Cal Naughton, Jr.: Yeah...
Cal Naughton, Jr.: I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Jim's Answers to Daniel's Questions
Is it ever okay to lie?
Well one good point that douche made in his video was of hiding people from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Yes.
What should we think of terrible disasters or plights, natural or man-made?
How should children be raised in terms of choosing a religion?
Does free will exist and can it coexist with a higher being?
What should we think of terrible disasters or plights, natural or man-made?
What do you mean by this? Are you talking about man's ability to alter his environment spurring some environmental change aka global warming? Or are you meaning God letting it happen?
When does an alternative lifestyle go too far?
When does an alternative lifestyle go too far?
When it is forced upon you and in some way you lose the freedoms you were bestowed by birth
What happens after this life?
What happens after this life?
I think that life is waaay too complex for it to be by chance. But, again, this is me. I don't think many people take to to think that all this whole universe is (that we know) are carbon based life-forms with other elements mixed in. I'm made up of the same shit a frog is and that is mindblowing to me. When I die, I think my soul or whatever you want to call the thing that makes me uniquely me goes somewhere. Personally, I believe in heaven and hell- so I will probably wind up in hell with everyone else...except for chris and mike lawlace.
How should children be raised in terms of choosing a religion?
Personally, I am going to force my kids to go to church while they are in my house. I definitely will encourage them to ask questions about their forced faith. But I do think that when they get older they will really appreciate the values taught and the sort of structure religion offers. Once they are out of my house they are free to do whatever they want. But for me, part of being a good parent is sometimes making your kids do things they dont want to do for the betterment of them as a whole.
Does free will exist and can it coexist with a higher being?
This is a tough one. You always hear of predestination- you can even read in the Bible where it says God chooses his people beforehand. If that is true how can we have any form of free-will? So this is a big 'I dont know.' I would like to think I have the ability to choose. But then again if God is outside of time then He will ultimately know your decision before you even choose it....
Are actions more important than beliefs?
Are actions more important than beliefs?
I think actions go hand in hand with beliefs. If a you believe that relational violence is wrong and then go to a restaurant and see some guy beating his girl and you do nothing how then can you say that you are against that sort of violence? You've done nothing to uphold your end of the bargain there. I think putting your beliefs into action is pivotal in any part of life.
My own question as I consider myself much more of a moderate after watching this guy's take on atheism (mostly because he makes a lot of assumptions about religious people and those who do not believe in a certain God per se):
My own question as I consider myself much more of a moderate after watching this guy's take on atheism (mostly because he makes a lot of assumptions about religious people and those who do not believe in a certain God per se):
How important should religion be in society? How important should science be to society? And How can they coexist?
The huge thing that pisses me off is this insane P.C. culture we live in now. There can be no talk of Christmas because somebody will get offended. HOW did this happen? Atheists get pissed because they can see a Nativity scene on a hill from a public road. Boom- lawsuit. Muslims can't build a church/rec center/ culinary school on a block near the towers- People go crazy over stupid shit. What's really behind it? I think part of it is that people want to see how far they can bend these rules- people can make money- get attention. I mean how many people are really offended if you say 'Merry Christmas' during Christmas? I mean if someone said 'Happy Chanukah' to me I would just be like thanks- or if I were bold say- oh I'm Christian. It's dumb.
Science does have a place in society- a very big place. I mean you can look how terrible the Dark Ages were when religion basically inhibited any human advances for a few centuries. Then we get people who can kind of push the boundaries a bit and make some huge scientific discovery. I will say that people are very fallible and that tons of things that were considered to be THE answer have been proven to be so so wrong by an ever succeeding scientific group. I mean how can we really be sure of anything when 100 years from now something could be invented that completely proves that we were wrong. But i love science- keep science in schools government.
I don't know how religion and science can coexist. I tend to think that God made everything and man has the task of discovering it all. We have been wrong and we have been right (for now) and I think He knows everything because I think everything has come from Him.
There it is
Monday, August 23, 2010
Animalia: The Aye-Aye
I just stumbled upon this sucker. He's pretty psychotic looking if I do say so, mostly from the eyes. But his feet look very bat-like, and apparently it is nocturnal, although they (National Geographic) say that he is in the ape family. And what a family it is.
wordsmithery: portmanteau
Possibly one of the most important linguistic inventions of all time. Yeah, I went there. I'm not saying it's on the same level as the acronym, but it's close.
Portmanteau is the blending of two words to create a unique single-word combination that flows nicely enough to be repeated and used with some regularity. Portmanteau is the nailgun of the wordsmith's utility belt. It allows for quick and creative joining of two or more words, allowing you to build everything from the clean and simple ("spork") to the complex and innovative ("travishamockery").
Some of my favorite examples:
Jorts
Liger
Globocorp
Recyclomania
Ultrazord
Brunch
Chunnel
Email
Sexploitation
Televangelist
Megaplex
Mockumentary
Diabesity
Begunderway
Crapvalanche
Appletini
I challenge you to come up with your own. Then, use the creations to start a company named after your portmanteau. Like Computotronics or something equally awesome. Become a millionaire. Then, take me on your private jet. That's all I ask.
Portmanteau is the blending of two words to create a unique single-word combination that flows nicely enough to be repeated and used with some regularity. Portmanteau is the nailgun of the wordsmith's utility belt. It allows for quick and creative joining of two or more words, allowing you to build everything from the clean and simple ("spork") to the complex and innovative ("travishamockery").
Some of my favorite examples:
Jorts
Liger
Globocorp
Recyclomania
Ultrazord
Brunch
Chunnel
Sexploitation
Televangelist
Megaplex
Mockumentary
Diabesity
Begunderway
Crapvalanche
Appletini
I challenge you to come up with your own. Then, use the creations to start a company named after your portmanteau. Like Computotronics or something equally awesome. Become a millionaire. Then, take me on your private jet. That's all I ask.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Athey
This guy opened my eyes up to everything that I am and all that I have built around my tiny T-Rex brain so that I may never think for myself. After exploring the inner machinations of my own mind and soul (very primitively I might add) I have come to the conclusion that I, too, would let those heathenous Jews die because, in reality they are going to burn in hell anyways. Why waste time? I'm pretty sure all religious people back that decision. Just checked- They do. SCIENCE? what IS this term? I always thought that hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes, fires, etc etc were just God's haymakers and jabs at this terrible mistake that He made- and that all Christians are trying to do is correct it as much as we humbly can. But, apparently there is a logical reason for all this- the Earth has something called weather. crazy.
Now, I do think God wants to punish me. I try hard to please my Master- but continually fail and know his wrath is just around the corner.... but it's nothing that a good self-beating can't fix- God loves masochism and I credit my good graces to my ability to inflict so much pain on myself (like when I stare at a pretty girl in just the wrong way- He hates that).
And it is true- I hate other people, buuuuut I put on a facade of friendship just so I can undermine it by trying to 'save them' at just the right time in order to prevent them from burning in the seventh circle of hell forever. Before this post I judged everything and everybody and kept a distance with my relationships- because I, of course, didnt want to be tainted by everyone's else's filth. But after listening to this guy, I can finally be human just like the rest of the evolved monkeys. And I'll admit it. I've never had a gay friend EVER. But it's gonna be difficult blazing my own gay trail out there in the real world because, I mean, you can catch it right? No thank you. I'm a new Athey, but I just cant get over that at this juncture.
I'll tell you right now for a fact- being raised by religious parents I realize that mine would simply stop loving me if, in their eyes, I had chosen the wrong path. As a newly inducted atheist, i will love my children 1000 times more than any religious person especially if they try to kill me...and thats my pearl.
Holy Shit! I read Harry Potter while being a Christian. Oh my Science. The old me would pray, but I've learned that the inward look at oneself that prayer offers is a ridiculous waste of time and offers no positive outcome. I've wasted so much time- I could have been practicing all the wild-kinky sex moves that I will now need so i can finally sow these atheist oats. And if anyone wants to challenge me and prove me wrong that would make my day- because i'm atheist now and there's nothing more that i like than being proven wrong. I wont even argue or make a scene like all the other humans do- because i'm in the brotherhood and sisterhood now- cause all women tore off those religious shackles they had on- they are free now!
Magic is fake. God is magic. Therefore, God is fake- that is what is called deduction bitches and I just learned that shit. The only way i would have enjoyed his presentation more would be if he had a pop-up book accompanied by a book on tape- Before this, I wasnt smart, couldnt think for myself, and just was a bad person- thank you fightingatheist- youve changed me for the better.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
It's So Much Easier When It's Fiction
On Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout my college career, I sat in creative writing workshops divulging my inner-most secrets, embarrassments, and breakdowns. Each class contained different people, who knew other people, and this Kevin Bacon connection encompassed the entire tiny all-girl's school that I attended. So why would I confide in them? Well, there was a catch.
I was proposing it as fiction.
It's so easy to discuss drug problems, promiscuous sex, and a potentially dead father when you're attributing these dreadful occurrences to a nonexistent person. But I was inspired last night to ask myself why I can't just put the title of nonfiction on these events. And I've come to the conclusion ... well first of all I've come to the conclusion that I hate blogger because I absolutely pressed "save now" before Firefox crashed and I had written three more paragraphs. I'll attempt to rewrite from memory but I'm sure it will be much shittier because that's what usually happens ... at least that's how everyone always feels after this common issue.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that it's always easier to accept these events when they're attributed to a foreign name. But easy things never leave you feeling accomplished or proud, so I've decided to openly admit to all of the failures that make for interesting tales.
To begin, a quick and relatively empty summary of me:
- I dyed my hair brown two days ago because I was exhausted of being a natural blonde
- I can't quit two things: getting piercings and WoW
- I'm 20 and I have an English and Creative Writing degree from Sweet Briar College
- I'm in the most stable relationship of my life and it's absolutely terrifying
- I'm thoroughly enjoying unemployment, except for the lack of money
- My favorite animal is the binturong
- This is my second time writing anything all summer and though I find that pathetic, I blame it on my lack of inspiration
- The only movie that's ever scared me is The Mothman Prophecies
- I will do your laundry if you live anywhere near me
An actual story will be produced soon, hopefully.
I was proposing it as fiction.
It's so easy to discuss drug problems, promiscuous sex, and a potentially dead father when you're attributing these dreadful occurrences to a nonexistent person. But I was inspired last night to ask myself why I can't just put the title of nonfiction on these events. And I've come to the conclusion ... well first of all I've come to the conclusion that I hate blogger because I absolutely pressed "save now" before Firefox crashed and I had written three more paragraphs. I'll attempt to rewrite from memory but I'm sure it will be much shittier because that's what usually happens ... at least that's how everyone always feels after this common issue.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that it's always easier to accept these events when they're attributed to a foreign name. But easy things never leave you feeling accomplished or proud, so I've decided to openly admit to all of the failures that make for interesting tales.
To begin, a quick and relatively empty summary of me:
- I dyed my hair brown two days ago because I was exhausted of being a natural blonde
- I can't quit two things: getting piercings and WoW
- I'm 20 and I have an English and Creative Writing degree from Sweet Briar College
- I'm in the most stable relationship of my life and it's absolutely terrifying
- I'm thoroughly enjoying unemployment, except for the lack of money
- My favorite animal is the binturong
- This is my second time writing anything all summer and though I find that pathetic, I blame it on my lack of inspiration
- The only movie that's ever scared me is The Mothman Prophecies
- I will do your laundry if you live anywhere near me
An actual story will be produced soon, hopefully.
Token Atheist Video
The guy in the video is an idiot, but I'm going to take a number of points that are good for discussion. I'll put the link to video at the bottom of the post in case you really want to watch it, and then maybe discuss how people pretend to be open about things but are not. At all. Anyway, what do you answer to these:
Is it ever okay to lie?
What should we think of terrible disasters or plights, natural or man-made?
When does an alternative lifestyle go too far?
What happens after this life?
How should children be raised in terms of choosing a religion?
Does free will exist and can it coexist with a higher being?
Are actions more important than beliefs?
My own question as I consider myself much more of a moderate after watching this guy's take on atheism (mostly because he makes a lot of assumptions about religious people and those who do not believe in a certain God per se):
Is it ever okay to lie?
What should we think of terrible disasters or plights, natural or man-made?
When does an alternative lifestyle go too far?
What happens after this life?
How should children be raised in terms of choosing a religion?
Does free will exist and can it coexist with a higher being?
Are actions more important than beliefs?
My own question as I consider myself much more of a moderate after watching this guy's take on atheism (mostly because he makes a lot of assumptions about religious people and those who do not believe in a certain God per se):
How important should religion be in society? How important should science be to society? And How can they coexist?
I don't support this guy's tone or thoughts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaOVPaYf780
I don't support this guy's tone or thoughts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaOVPaYf780
Thursday, August 19, 2010
wordsmithery: homophonic nomenclative substitution
Language is a fluid construct. Wordsmithery is predicated on this assumption. Sometimes the Wordsmith can think about how words are formed. Other times, he/she can think about how they sound.
I've been working on this concept for a while. We'll call it an invention, but really, it's an institution. I am talking about homophonic nomenclative substitution.
Homophonic nomencaltive substitution involves the creation of true-sounding replacements for first and last names. The names, proper nouns, are substituted for common nouns. Punctuation and contractions are allowed. However, slang, ebonics, and 1337/internet speak are frowned upon.
Ideally, the replacement phrase makes some sense. It should, in all circumstances, sound something like the original name. Some are bigger stretches than others.
Some clear patterns emerge as you do this, which are interesting to note.
Here are some of my substitutions (please feel free to challenge any):
Derek Jeter = Doo-rag heater.
William Adams = Will yam add hums?
Kurt Russel = incur truss sill
Skeeter Valentine = Sick? Eat her fowl in time.
Jerry Seinfeld = jury's infield
Billy Crystal = bleak risk hill
John Kennedy = Junk can add heaps.
Leonardo DiCaprio = lean art ode copper yo
This either gets very addictive or very irksome. I'm eager to see comments.
I've been working on this concept for a while. We'll call it an invention, but really, it's an institution. I am talking about homophonic nomenclative substitution.
Homophonic nomencaltive substitution involves the creation of true-sounding replacements for first and last names. The names, proper nouns, are substituted for common nouns. Punctuation and contractions are allowed. However, slang, ebonics, and 1337/internet speak are frowned upon.
Ideally, the replacement phrase makes some sense. It should, in all circumstances, sound something like the original name. Some are bigger stretches than others.
Some clear patterns emerge as you do this, which are interesting to note.
Here are some of my substitutions (please feel free to challenge any):
Derek Jeter = Doo-rag heater.
William Adams = Will yam add hums?
Kurt Russel = incur truss sill
Skeeter Valentine = Sick? Eat her fowl in time.
Jerry Seinfeld = jury's infield
Billy Crystal = bleak risk hill
John Kennedy = Junk can add heaps.
Leonardo DiCaprio = lean art ode copper yo
This either gets very addictive or very irksome. I'm eager to see comments.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Religious Freedom in NYC; in America
Even if it were not Religion month, I think we should open up a post about the proposed community center with a Muslim prayer space two blocks away from Ground Zero and the sort of stir it has created. Here are two videos that put it pretty well in my mind:
Mayor Bloomberg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXm_fUDfJZQ
Keith Olberman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0
Mayor Bloomberg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXm_fUDfJZQ
Keith Olberman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0
My Monkey, Pt. 2
Now towards the end of my junior year, things changed. It is actually somewhat weird. My girlfriend and I broke up and I think I found a bottle of Vicodin on my porch perhaps on exactly the same day. I remember going to her house where I knew she was going to get in a fight with me and probably dump me with this bottle in my car, and I remember just a feeling of numbness as she was crying and screaming, because it’s kinda fucked up, but I was probably thinking, Fuck this, I’m just going to pop some pills and get high and none of this will matter. That was pretty much how my drug use started again, after this long period of abstinence. My urge to get high had never really gone away. I had just given up on it as being something which I couldn't do for availability reasons. But fuck it, I was finally free and single, and nothing was going to stop me. That whole summer I think I was pretty depressed and empty feeling, since I had been in this relationship for a good four or so years by this point, and it’s not easy to give that up. When I got back into drug use, I think I wanted to keep away from opiates and addictive drugs. I did things I had never done before, like acid, ketamine, and molly (powder MDMA). Of course, my old addictive signs were immediately beginning to rear their heads, as I decided to IV the molly and ketamine (these are kinda a no-no, but I was such a needle fiend, I would put anything into that barrel just because that’s what I loved). When the option came up to get opiates, how the fuck could I turn it down?
This is when I got into really heavy opiate use, on an unprecedented scale for me. I was doing IV Dilaudid and OC almost every day. I finally found a good heroin source, and when I first shot that up, I knew there was no other opiate for me. IV heroin topped them all. There was seemingly no downside. It was so cheap and lasted a long time and the euphoria was great. It didn’t turn me into a nodding-out mess, but made me sociable and happy and energetic and motivated. I don’t think a day went by from when I first got heroin that I didn’t shoot it up. I knew that I was going to become physically addicted this way, but I just didn’t give a fuck. It got to be that I needed a heroin shot to get out of bed, because I couldn’t face the day otherwise. Eventually I knew I needed to stop or I was going to get really hooked, so I made a pact with myself to not use for a number of days. Almost immediately I started getting feverish, feeling miserable, every bone in my body aching, sweating while shivering. This was the first time I had really felt somewhat serious opiate withdrawals (when I was doing coke back in the day and shooting OxyContin for the comedowns, I had had my first bout of any sort of withdrawal, but it was relatively minor), and I made it all of two days (which I see now as being pretty damn good self-control compared to what I turned into) before I had to fucking give in and shoot some more H. Ah, the motherfucking relief! Eventually, I made it through some more heroin and detoxed, which was pretty rough, but soon enough I had bought more and more heroin. I used opiates basically every single day that entire semester, 3 or 4 or 5 times a day. It was just a routine, and you grow to need it completely. Every single morning I would wake up freezing cold, stomach retching, feeling like absolute shit, but that was what I loved, because that first morning shot of heroin was absolute bliss, turning your nightmare into a heaven-like happiness where you felt on top of the world.
Eventually, I had no more money and knew I needed to stop, because I had a heroin problem and it just sucked living your every day by the dose, just waiting for that next shot so you could go about with your life. I had to go cold turkey again. This time was a fucking nightmare. I have never felt so goddamn cold in my life (withdrawals in the wintertime suck), and it was like the cold was out to get me, to literally inflict pain on me. Sick to my stomach, couldn’t sleep properly for days, drenched in sweat. Ugh, never want to go through that again. This was when I made it my goal to quit opiates.
Of course that did not last long, and soon enough I was back on heroin again. I don’t know how many times I’ve relapsed since I said I would quit, but it has been a whole lot. I’ve realized that it’s simply impossible for me to quit on my own. I need help, I really do. Very few serious drug addicts can quit on their own. When the option came up and when I had the money, I would always end up buying more heroin and coke to shoot up, because I was such a fucking fiend. It’s tough coming off heroin after a long time, because even after the withdrawals, you just feel so depressed and low and without energy, since the drug depletes your brain’s ability to produce endorphins naturally for a long time. The most I made it in this period was just a little over 3 months without using, which was actually pretty good.
Eventually, I found more and more sources at home, which was bad (previously I was getting all of my drugs from people who shipped them to me). This was basically when my most recent binge began, and never really ended until now. Over time, my usage also escalated greatly. Whereas I always used to pride myself on using moderately, because this conserved more drugs, was safer, and produced a more manageable high, I turned into a binge-monster. I started shooting up really big quantities of meth, which would leave me a freaked-out, paranoid alien up for days at a time, and this became just one more rush that I was addicted to. I would binge on IV heroin and cocaine. Whereas before an 8-ball of coke could last me days if I was shooting it, I could barely make it last one now. Whereas before, cocaine was the most euphoric substance to me—albeit with a nasty comedown that needed to be corrected with a shot of heroin—it became a nightmare. Even from the very first shot onwards, it turned me into a paranoid wreck. I would hear voices that weren’t there and feel like my heart was beating out of my chest, because the rushes were so strong. Almost no drug use was fun anymore. But I just couldn’t stop—I was such a creature of impulse, subhuman.
I became highly addicted to opiates around this time, and when I had legal problems that really made me depressed and scared, I just binged harder on them to cover up the anxiety and pain. My tolerance grew so much bigger then it ever had before. Whereas before, a one-bag shot of heroin would’ve knocked me on my ass, soon I was shooting 5 or more bags at a time and not really even feeling much other than the disappearance of the creeping sickness which reared its head every 8 hours or so. I’ve always liked the monkey on your back analogy for whatever reason. You have to silence that monkey constantly, just to keep him in his cage, with a shot of heroin. Even before I’m sick, I start to feel anxious and uneasy, and I have to think about where that next shot is going to come from. If you wait longer than this, you really start to feel bad. You lose your voice, your stomach is churning, your hands are shaking and clenching. I hate how merciless heroin addiction is. Every single fucking day is like that. Once my addiction had become bad enough, I would begin almost every day by throwing up because of how sick I was, then digging up whatever used cottons I had to try to get a measly bit of heroin out of them so I could at least somewhat appear presentable, but this is a terrible way of living. I would never feel really normal until I got a bunch of heroin in me, and even then it never seemed to be enough to get me a satisfactory high anymore. I can’t remember the last time I had a really good heroin high.
I need to stop, I need to stay quit. I can’t go back to that lifestyle. It throws away all your money, but more importantly, it destroys every shred of self-worth and happiness you have. I hate it so much, but find myself blindly drawn to it, because somehow I never feel normal in life without drugs in me. I was actually starting to before I started this last binge, which has gone on forever. It just takes a long, long time to feel normal again. You can’t expect to just quit heroin after you have been using it for a good long period and feel happy. It’s a long process and it takes tremendous amounts of work. If nothing else, I don’t regret my drug addiction because it has made me a more positive person. I realize that I have to work for things in life instead of sitting here waiting for them to happen to me. That includes my own happiness. I don’t regret ever taking that first pill, because it took five years to do it, but my drug addiction has taught me that. It has also taught me to not judge others with problems and to show more empathy towards others. We are all in this world together, and though it sucks an awful lot of the time, the best we can do is help each other through it.
I do not feel that a serious drug addict can ever quit drugs unless they want to do it for themselves, though. Others can help, but it's really their own path to follow. You can't push it on someone else to quit drugs unless they are willing to do it themselves. They might act better and act like they are going along with the program, but I guarantee they are just putting on a mask and lying to you. I tried to quit drugs for my girlfriend who I loved, and it didn’t work. I didn’t really want to quit until I had gotten myself deeper into drug addiction. Though I ultimately lost her because of my problems, I guess that is how things were destined to be. I also don’t view drugs as being “evil,” and I don’t necessarily think they should be criminalized at all. Our government wastes countless millions and billions of dollars on a war on drugs that it is clearly losing terribly, and the ghettos of the world are in shambles because the black market of drugs there have destroyed them. Whatever happened to my life wasn’t heroin’s fault—it was my own. Everyone has a choice about whether they abuse these things or not, and though they are addictive, I think the responsibility ultimately rests on the user’s shoulders and on the user’s shoulders alone. That being said, drug education is a very important thing and I strongly believe in it. Some of our country’s drug policies disgust me, like places that ban needle exchanges where addicts can pick up clean, fresh needles for themselves instead of sharing needles and spreading diseases, or our infatuation with throwing drug addicts into jail simply for doing drugs, turning them into more hardened criminals who will ultimately turn into repeat offenders. But that just seems to be how things work in our country, so I don’t have much more to say about it. You can research a lot of these things to find out more. I don’t like to preach. But I do know that opiates, amphetamines, and cocaine are not good for me, and that is something I have learned through experience, so I have made it my goal to never do any of these substances ever again. I have long since learned that I cannot do any of these things in moderation, because I am an addict and it is simply impossible for me. Total abstinence is the only way. I also really don’t feel like binge drinking anymore, since that isn’t particularly good for me and is merely replacing one substance for another. I know I can do this, but I can’t do it alone. I plan to seek out therapy and attend meetings and just try a variety of things to stay clean, because I’ve been trying to get clean for over a year and a half now.
--Edward
This is when I got into really heavy opiate use, on an unprecedented scale for me. I was doing IV Dilaudid and OC almost every day. I finally found a good heroin source, and when I first shot that up, I knew there was no other opiate for me. IV heroin topped them all. There was seemingly no downside. It was so cheap and lasted a long time and the euphoria was great. It didn’t turn me into a nodding-out mess, but made me sociable and happy and energetic and motivated. I don’t think a day went by from when I first got heroin that I didn’t shoot it up. I knew that I was going to become physically addicted this way, but I just didn’t give a fuck. It got to be that I needed a heroin shot to get out of bed, because I couldn’t face the day otherwise. Eventually I knew I needed to stop or I was going to get really hooked, so I made a pact with myself to not use for a number of days. Almost immediately I started getting feverish, feeling miserable, every bone in my body aching, sweating while shivering. This was the first time I had really felt somewhat serious opiate withdrawals (when I was doing coke back in the day and shooting OxyContin for the comedowns, I had had my first bout of any sort of withdrawal, but it was relatively minor), and I made it all of two days (which I see now as being pretty damn good self-control compared to what I turned into) before I had to fucking give in and shoot some more H. Ah, the motherfucking relief! Eventually, I made it through some more heroin and detoxed, which was pretty rough, but soon enough I had bought more and more heroin. I used opiates basically every single day that entire semester, 3 or 4 or 5 times a day. It was just a routine, and you grow to need it completely. Every single morning I would wake up freezing cold, stomach retching, feeling like absolute shit, but that was what I loved, because that first morning shot of heroin was absolute bliss, turning your nightmare into a heaven-like happiness where you felt on top of the world.
Eventually, I had no more money and knew I needed to stop, because I had a heroin problem and it just sucked living your every day by the dose, just waiting for that next shot so you could go about with your life. I had to go cold turkey again. This time was a fucking nightmare. I have never felt so goddamn cold in my life (withdrawals in the wintertime suck), and it was like the cold was out to get me, to literally inflict pain on me. Sick to my stomach, couldn’t sleep properly for days, drenched in sweat. Ugh, never want to go through that again. This was when I made it my goal to quit opiates.
Of course that did not last long, and soon enough I was back on heroin again. I don’t know how many times I’ve relapsed since I said I would quit, but it has been a whole lot. I’ve realized that it’s simply impossible for me to quit on my own. I need help, I really do. Very few serious drug addicts can quit on their own. When the option came up and when I had the money, I would always end up buying more heroin and coke to shoot up, because I was such a fucking fiend. It’s tough coming off heroin after a long time, because even after the withdrawals, you just feel so depressed and low and without energy, since the drug depletes your brain’s ability to produce endorphins naturally for a long time. The most I made it in this period was just a little over 3 months without using, which was actually pretty good.
Eventually, I found more and more sources at home, which was bad (previously I was getting all of my drugs from people who shipped them to me). This was basically when my most recent binge began, and never really ended until now. Over time, my usage also escalated greatly. Whereas I always used to pride myself on using moderately, because this conserved more drugs, was safer, and produced a more manageable high, I turned into a binge-monster. I started shooting up really big quantities of meth, which would leave me a freaked-out, paranoid alien up for days at a time, and this became just one more rush that I was addicted to. I would binge on IV heroin and cocaine. Whereas before an 8-ball of coke could last me days if I was shooting it, I could barely make it last one now. Whereas before, cocaine was the most euphoric substance to me—albeit with a nasty comedown that needed to be corrected with a shot of heroin—it became a nightmare. Even from the very first shot onwards, it turned me into a paranoid wreck. I would hear voices that weren’t there and feel like my heart was beating out of my chest, because the rushes were so strong. Almost no drug use was fun anymore. But I just couldn’t stop—I was such a creature of impulse, subhuman.
I became highly addicted to opiates around this time, and when I had legal problems that really made me depressed and scared, I just binged harder on them to cover up the anxiety and pain. My tolerance grew so much bigger then it ever had before. Whereas before, a one-bag shot of heroin would’ve knocked me on my ass, soon I was shooting 5 or more bags at a time and not really even feeling much other than the disappearance of the creeping sickness which reared its head every 8 hours or so. I’ve always liked the monkey on your back analogy for whatever reason. You have to silence that monkey constantly, just to keep him in his cage, with a shot of heroin. Even before I’m sick, I start to feel anxious and uneasy, and I have to think about where that next shot is going to come from. If you wait longer than this, you really start to feel bad. You lose your voice, your stomach is churning, your hands are shaking and clenching. I hate how merciless heroin addiction is. Every single fucking day is like that. Once my addiction had become bad enough, I would begin almost every day by throwing up because of how sick I was, then digging up whatever used cottons I had to try to get a measly bit of heroin out of them so I could at least somewhat appear presentable, but this is a terrible way of living. I would never feel really normal until I got a bunch of heroin in me, and even then it never seemed to be enough to get me a satisfactory high anymore. I can’t remember the last time I had a really good heroin high.
I need to stop, I need to stay quit. I can’t go back to that lifestyle. It throws away all your money, but more importantly, it destroys every shred of self-worth and happiness you have. I hate it so much, but find myself blindly drawn to it, because somehow I never feel normal in life without drugs in me. I was actually starting to before I started this last binge, which has gone on forever. It just takes a long, long time to feel normal again. You can’t expect to just quit heroin after you have been using it for a good long period and feel happy. It’s a long process and it takes tremendous amounts of work. If nothing else, I don’t regret my drug addiction because it has made me a more positive person. I realize that I have to work for things in life instead of sitting here waiting for them to happen to me. That includes my own happiness. I don’t regret ever taking that first pill, because it took five years to do it, but my drug addiction has taught me that. It has also taught me to not judge others with problems and to show more empathy towards others. We are all in this world together, and though it sucks an awful lot of the time, the best we can do is help each other through it.
I do not feel that a serious drug addict can ever quit drugs unless they want to do it for themselves, though. Others can help, but it's really their own path to follow. You can't push it on someone else to quit drugs unless they are willing to do it themselves. They might act better and act like they are going along with the program, but I guarantee they are just putting on a mask and lying to you. I tried to quit drugs for my girlfriend who I loved, and it didn’t work. I didn’t really want to quit until I had gotten myself deeper into drug addiction. Though I ultimately lost her because of my problems, I guess that is how things were destined to be. I also don’t view drugs as being “evil,” and I don’t necessarily think they should be criminalized at all. Our government wastes countless millions and billions of dollars on a war on drugs that it is clearly losing terribly, and the ghettos of the world are in shambles because the black market of drugs there have destroyed them. Whatever happened to my life wasn’t heroin’s fault—it was my own. Everyone has a choice about whether they abuse these things or not, and though they are addictive, I think the responsibility ultimately rests on the user’s shoulders and on the user’s shoulders alone. That being said, drug education is a very important thing and I strongly believe in it. Some of our country’s drug policies disgust me, like places that ban needle exchanges where addicts can pick up clean, fresh needles for themselves instead of sharing needles and spreading diseases, or our infatuation with throwing drug addicts into jail simply for doing drugs, turning them into more hardened criminals who will ultimately turn into repeat offenders. But that just seems to be how things work in our country, so I don’t have much more to say about it. You can research a lot of these things to find out more. I don’t like to preach. But I do know that opiates, amphetamines, and cocaine are not good for me, and that is something I have learned through experience, so I have made it my goal to never do any of these substances ever again. I have long since learned that I cannot do any of these things in moderation, because I am an addict and it is simply impossible for me. Total abstinence is the only way. I also really don’t feel like binge drinking anymore, since that isn’t particularly good for me and is merely replacing one substance for another. I know I can do this, but I can’t do it alone. I plan to seek out therapy and attend meetings and just try a variety of things to stay clean, because I’ve been trying to get clean for over a year and a half now.
--Edward
My Monkey, Pt. 1
8/18/10! I want all of you motherfuckers to mark that on your calendar as the first day Edward is free of his addiction. This is the first day I haven’t taken any form of opiate in over two months, and before that, I hadn’t gone 4 or 5 days free of them in a solid 8 months or so. I barely did anything yesterday—only a cotton shot because it’s a real bitch to wake up in withdrawals (however minor they may be, since I’m coming off of a suboxone detox and not a straight heroin habit) and have to go to work—but I didn’t want to start counting my clean time until I had straight-up done nothing. Of course my problem did not begin 8 months ago, or it never would have progressed to the levels I was using at lately so fast (well, I guess it could and does for others). I have been psychologically addicted to opiates for a solid five and a half years, and my real problems with physical addiction to heroin began about two years ago. I’ll use this post to try to talk a little bit about my history with drugs. I’ll cut this up into portions, because this promises to be long, but as a warning: anyone who doesn’t like long posts can go elsewhere. I’m writing this for me and me alone, just like I’m quitting drugs for me and me alone.
I made it through almost all of high school being pretty damn straight-edge. I didn’t necessarily look down on people who drank or smoked or anything; it just wasn’t something for me. I would imagine every single person who met me to this day would not think I was a party guy or a drug abuser. I don’t give off that image, and indeed for long periods of my life I lived up to this squeaky-clean image. I still don’t think of myself as a party guy. I’m pretty shy and reclusive, which I guess helped speed along my addiction, since for me drug use was never, ever about recreational or social use. I always did it so that I could feel good, fuck everything else. When I was a senior in high school, I got a prescription of Vicodin—a pretty large prescription at that—for some ailment I had that caused a lot of sores in my mouth, so that I couldn’t eat from the pain. I was one of those kids who hated taking medicine for any reason, just because like I said I wasn’t really into drugs of any sort, even over-the-counter or prescription ones, and was kinda macho about not taking them for pain or anything. Unfortunately, I really did need those painkillers, because I hadn’t eaten a meal in days. I am not the type of person who has really had many life-changing moments, but the first Vicodin I ever took was probably the single biggest defining one that happened in my life. I fucking loved it from my very first pill. Now I’m well aware that a lot of drug addicts do not start like this. For most this is a much longer process, and perhaps mine was different for a number of reasons. One, my love of opiates was heightened even more because I linked them with taking away any sort of pain, both physical and psychological. Just like the rush of IV heroin feels that much better when you are hours into withdrawal and you absolutely goddamn need that fix in your veins right now, that first dose of hydrocodone was that much better because it was sweet, sweet relief from the pain. Two, I was not introduced to drugs through social situations, which I do think dilute the effects of drugs for a variety of reasons. You tend to focus on the social experience more than the drug itself I think. That was not me; I didn’t give a fuck about anything else as long as I had that opiate in me. It is amazing how fast my perception of drugs changed from this one time, but that is just how it is. From then on, it was my mission to try as many kinds of drugs as possible because I had found my new calling.
Now at this time I had recently gotten my first real girlfriend. I was very much in love with her at the time, and we had basically spent the last 8 or so months together pretty much every single day. She immediately became concerned about my usage of these painkillers, because one thing that attracted her to me was that I wasn’t like everyone else in high school whose main goal was to get as fucked-up as possible on weekends and party as hard as they could. Also, I had a tendency to want to keep pushing it with the Vicodin. When one wouldn’t satisfy anymore, I would take two; when two wouldn’t, I would take three. And so on. This got her very upset, so eventually I said I would quit and got rid of my bottle of painkillers.
I do not remember how long this lasted, but at one point I just couldn’t help myself and continued using. This was when more signs of addiction began to rear their head: this was when I started to lie about my use on a daily basis and hide it. It probably was when I became more ashamed of my use, since it’s not fun to lie to the person you loved most right to their face about your use, but it became something I was good at and eventually it just became second nature, something I didn’t think about whatsoever. If nothing else, addiction makes you into a complete liar. Who would want to be friends with a drug addict if they told the truth about their problems? Not the kind of friends I wanted, at least, since I was never a fan of the people in the drug scene themselves. I tried to stay as much outside of it as I could other than buying the drugs. My use progressed, and I discovered OxyContin, which was a lot stronger than Vicodin. At this point in my life, I was still open to trying all sorts of drugs, since I wanted to discover what all the highs had to offer. I was doing amphetamines and coke and stuff like that a lot. But I always came back to opiates in the end, and they were what I loved most. That feeling of relaxation and the beautiful, tranquil euphoria I never found anywhere else. I think I got caught by Alex (my girlfriend) one more time in this period, but other than that, it was pretty smooth sailing. After I got caught that time, it was another two years before she found out again, in which time my use would of course escalate (as it always seems to).
My drug use picked up when I went to college, since my freshman year was my loneliest, most depressing year that I have ever had. I had absolutely no friends, and I think my drug addiction made me have an increasingly negative worldview. I felt like I was looking at everyone I saw through a cave, and no one could get close to me. My drug addiction really changed my attitude, in the sense that it just made my views a lot darker. I realized there were millions of others like me, not necessarily drug addicts, but a world full of people with depression and anxiety and so many other problems. What kind of a world was this where so many people were suffering? Why does everyone act happy all the time, when they are just denying that people like this exist? I thought all of the smiling, happy people I saw around me were full of shit—not real human beings—or else they were only smiling on the surface, hiding the pain that lurked down deeper inside of them. I couldn’t relate to anyone around me, I thought. I just felt like an alien wandering in a cold, barren world. It should be noted that I was not really a junkie at this point, because I still had some shards of self-control which would disappear later in my life. I didn’t have particularly many drug hook-ups, since as I said, I knew no one at school, so I would only get drugs at home and bring them back with me. It amazes me now that I could have coke or painkillers on me and actually have them for weeks. What self-control! The first time I tried heroin was when I was a freshman at JMU. I drove to Baltimore with some guy and picked up some, but afterwards I decided it wasn’t worth doing again, since it just felt very sketchy and the heroin I got wasn’t the best. I was not injecting at this time in my life, although I don’t think I had any huge qualms against it. Most of what I remember from freshman year was the constant craving for drugs. Since my connections were not great, I was often left drugless, reading up about them online, wishing so bad I had them. Almost every waking hour was spent thinking about drugs.
Basically from the very start of my drug use, I had the bad habit of self-medicating. Since I am a shy person and probably have some anxiety issues, as well as of course depression, any time that I thought I would be uncomfortable, I would take some drugs. I used drugs all the time to do presentations, for social events that I dreaded, for people that I didn’t feel like dealing with. Any time I felt down and I had drugs around, that was what was going in me. That was just how I was from the start. I think even from the first few weeks and months I knew I was an addict. I think for most addicts, there is a long period of denial, but I don’t ever remember one from me. After all, if I couldn’t give up drugs for the person I loved the most, someone I felt blessed to have in my life, how the fuck was I not a drug addict? After all, I was not stupid and knew that drugs would bring unhappiness into my life, although not particularly much at this point. I really just felt like my drug use was inevitable. I never thought about stopping at this point. It really was a long time before I started to feel like I had a bad problem.
The first time I ever injected a drug was the summer after my freshman year. This was another major turning point for me. I was buying drugs with a guy and we got Dilaudid, which is a really strong painkiller that exhibits a very strong rush if injected and is somewhat worthless through other routes of administration. He offered to shoot me up my first time, and I agreed, because like I said I didn’t really have any strong qualms against injecting by this point (I honestly forget if I was that against it to begin with, but I’m sure I was more against it than I had become by this point). Because it’s such a strong drug, he didn’t put in very much for this first shot, so I didn’t really feel it. It was really just as well, since almost immediately after he shot me up, his mom came in screaming at me to get the fuck out, that she knew her son was using again. He was a lot bigger junkie than I was at this period of my life. Anyways, I took my drugs and a syringe and got the hell out of there. The first time I ever injected myself, later that night—that was the real turning point. I put in more Dilaudid—2mg or so—and proceeded to register to make sure I was safely in a vein (which proved to be a lot easier than I thought it would be), and then slowly pushed in the plunger. Goddamn it, this was the best fucking feeling I had ever had. It felt like all of the air was sucked out of my lungs and there was this colossal tightness which gripped my chest, and then the most euphoric warmth possible began to emanate out of the very center of my being, it felt like my soul, and it overtook my entire body, releasing that tightness, turning it into pure bliss. It felt like I was floating in a whirlpool of warmth that was pushing my body about, and slowly I drifted away into the happiest place I had ever been. Fucking A, I had to have more of that. I honestly don’t think I ever got that good of a rush again from an opiate—even shooting up heroin when I was deathly sick—but fuck it if I wasn’t going to try my hardest to get that feeling back. That was easily the best drug experience I had had up until that point, and my fate had seemingly been decided for me. I was going to be a needle fiend.
So I went back to sophomore year at JMU with a bunch of OxyContin, because, being me, I was not about to go back to school and meet my new, random roommate sober. I dreaded such things, just like I dread a lot of things. I had pretty much already become obsessed with the needle by this point: I was in love with the rituals of shooting up—the spoon and the cotton, drawing up the liquid into the barrel and tapping out the air bubbles, and especially the plume of blood as you register and you’re about to push in (how many junkies salivate over this image?). But of course, most of all I loved the rush, something you get from no other method of administration of a drug. It was like starting drugs all over again. To me, drugs are so very different when you shoot them up versus doing them in other ways. Every drug has a distinct rush, and I wanted to feel them all. So going about research with this state of mind, I read that coke had the absolute best rush IV. I had to try this. So I went about getting some coke and OC for the comedown (I would never again do any stimulants without an opiate for the comedown, because that shit sucks, especially if you are banging the stimulant), and began my first experiments with intravenous cocaine. Although at first I did not load up enough coke into the needle to be on the safe side (I read about people saying to put ¼ to ½ lines into it), but once I put enough into the spoon (probably a lot more than I was snorting at the time), I found nirvana for the IV drug user. The cocaine bellringer (named thusly because of the loud, metallic ringing that fills your head after you shoot a big enough shot) was the absolute best feeling I ever had. As much as I love Dilaudid and heroin rushes, they simply pale in comparison to a really good shot of good coke. The euphoria is untouchable. I also walked into one of the most compulsive drugs there is. What makes IV coke so addictive is its combination of that almost absurdly intense rush with a very short duration, so I would end up shooting again and again and again to keep that high/rush going. It turns your arms into a bloody mess as you have to keep re-jabbing the same veins over and over again with increasingly blunt needles (at this point I had not discovered that you could order boxes of 100 needles online for cheap), often missing shots because your hands are shaking so much from the excessive amounts of coke that you can’t register properly and keep the needle in the vein as you inject (also coke is a local anesthetic, so it tends to shrink your veins with use as well, making all of this even harder). All of that stuff just comes along with IV cocaine use—the price you have to pay for that pinnacle of pleasure which you will end up chasing through thousands of dollars and wasted years.
This was pretty much precisely the point where I lost any last remaining shreds of self-control that I had. I was a slave to that needle. I told myself every damn day to not go on a binge, but every damn day I ended up failing. I started looking like a mess and becoming more and more reclusive. Really everything flew out the door; all that I cared about was getting that big fucking rush. Thankfully, this was the two years later that I was talking about earlier, and Alex found out about my drug use again. She told all my drug dealers not to sell to me anymore or to tell her if I was buying from them (since she knew most of them, because I was still buying drugs only around home at this point). Because of this, and because I made her drug test me, since I said I would never be able to quit otherwise, I was able to go pretty sober for the next few years. It was insanely hard at first, and I would sit by myself in my room with my old needles, putting them up against my arm and pretending to inject myself over and over again, and because my mental recall of those insane rushes was so strong, I would actually get lightheaded and my heartbeat would jump up. I even shot myself up with water, but decided this was just more of a terrible tease than anything else. The first few months were really, really hard, and I think for a long time I would try to cheat the drug tests by getting high on various shitty things, but eventually I think after about a year drug use left my mind alone. Things were not perfect in my life, but at least my whole day wasn’t consumed with thinking about buying drugs.
Part 2 later…
--Edward
I made it through almost all of high school being pretty damn straight-edge. I didn’t necessarily look down on people who drank or smoked or anything; it just wasn’t something for me. I would imagine every single person who met me to this day would not think I was a party guy or a drug abuser. I don’t give off that image, and indeed for long periods of my life I lived up to this squeaky-clean image. I still don’t think of myself as a party guy. I’m pretty shy and reclusive, which I guess helped speed along my addiction, since for me drug use was never, ever about recreational or social use. I always did it so that I could feel good, fuck everything else. When I was a senior in high school, I got a prescription of Vicodin—a pretty large prescription at that—for some ailment I had that caused a lot of sores in my mouth, so that I couldn’t eat from the pain. I was one of those kids who hated taking medicine for any reason, just because like I said I wasn’t really into drugs of any sort, even over-the-counter or prescription ones, and was kinda macho about not taking them for pain or anything. Unfortunately, I really did need those painkillers, because I hadn’t eaten a meal in days. I am not the type of person who has really had many life-changing moments, but the first Vicodin I ever took was probably the single biggest defining one that happened in my life. I fucking loved it from my very first pill. Now I’m well aware that a lot of drug addicts do not start like this. For most this is a much longer process, and perhaps mine was different for a number of reasons. One, my love of opiates was heightened even more because I linked them with taking away any sort of pain, both physical and psychological. Just like the rush of IV heroin feels that much better when you are hours into withdrawal and you absolutely goddamn need that fix in your veins right now, that first dose of hydrocodone was that much better because it was sweet, sweet relief from the pain. Two, I was not introduced to drugs through social situations, which I do think dilute the effects of drugs for a variety of reasons. You tend to focus on the social experience more than the drug itself I think. That was not me; I didn’t give a fuck about anything else as long as I had that opiate in me. It is amazing how fast my perception of drugs changed from this one time, but that is just how it is. From then on, it was my mission to try as many kinds of drugs as possible because I had found my new calling.
Now at this time I had recently gotten my first real girlfriend. I was very much in love with her at the time, and we had basically spent the last 8 or so months together pretty much every single day. She immediately became concerned about my usage of these painkillers, because one thing that attracted her to me was that I wasn’t like everyone else in high school whose main goal was to get as fucked-up as possible on weekends and party as hard as they could. Also, I had a tendency to want to keep pushing it with the Vicodin. When one wouldn’t satisfy anymore, I would take two; when two wouldn’t, I would take three. And so on. This got her very upset, so eventually I said I would quit and got rid of my bottle of painkillers.
I do not remember how long this lasted, but at one point I just couldn’t help myself and continued using. This was when more signs of addiction began to rear their head: this was when I started to lie about my use on a daily basis and hide it. It probably was when I became more ashamed of my use, since it’s not fun to lie to the person you loved most right to their face about your use, but it became something I was good at and eventually it just became second nature, something I didn’t think about whatsoever. If nothing else, addiction makes you into a complete liar. Who would want to be friends with a drug addict if they told the truth about their problems? Not the kind of friends I wanted, at least, since I was never a fan of the people in the drug scene themselves. I tried to stay as much outside of it as I could other than buying the drugs. My use progressed, and I discovered OxyContin, which was a lot stronger than Vicodin. At this point in my life, I was still open to trying all sorts of drugs, since I wanted to discover what all the highs had to offer. I was doing amphetamines and coke and stuff like that a lot. But I always came back to opiates in the end, and they were what I loved most. That feeling of relaxation and the beautiful, tranquil euphoria I never found anywhere else. I think I got caught by Alex (my girlfriend) one more time in this period, but other than that, it was pretty smooth sailing. After I got caught that time, it was another two years before she found out again, in which time my use would of course escalate (as it always seems to).
My drug use picked up when I went to college, since my freshman year was my loneliest, most depressing year that I have ever had. I had absolutely no friends, and I think my drug addiction made me have an increasingly negative worldview. I felt like I was looking at everyone I saw through a cave, and no one could get close to me. My drug addiction really changed my attitude, in the sense that it just made my views a lot darker. I realized there were millions of others like me, not necessarily drug addicts, but a world full of people with depression and anxiety and so many other problems. What kind of a world was this where so many people were suffering? Why does everyone act happy all the time, when they are just denying that people like this exist? I thought all of the smiling, happy people I saw around me were full of shit—not real human beings—or else they were only smiling on the surface, hiding the pain that lurked down deeper inside of them. I couldn’t relate to anyone around me, I thought. I just felt like an alien wandering in a cold, barren world. It should be noted that I was not really a junkie at this point, because I still had some shards of self-control which would disappear later in my life. I didn’t have particularly many drug hook-ups, since as I said, I knew no one at school, so I would only get drugs at home and bring them back with me. It amazes me now that I could have coke or painkillers on me and actually have them for weeks. What self-control! The first time I tried heroin was when I was a freshman at JMU. I drove to Baltimore with some guy and picked up some, but afterwards I decided it wasn’t worth doing again, since it just felt very sketchy and the heroin I got wasn’t the best. I was not injecting at this time in my life, although I don’t think I had any huge qualms against it. Most of what I remember from freshman year was the constant craving for drugs. Since my connections were not great, I was often left drugless, reading up about them online, wishing so bad I had them. Almost every waking hour was spent thinking about drugs.
Basically from the very start of my drug use, I had the bad habit of self-medicating. Since I am a shy person and probably have some anxiety issues, as well as of course depression, any time that I thought I would be uncomfortable, I would take some drugs. I used drugs all the time to do presentations, for social events that I dreaded, for people that I didn’t feel like dealing with. Any time I felt down and I had drugs around, that was what was going in me. That was just how I was from the start. I think even from the first few weeks and months I knew I was an addict. I think for most addicts, there is a long period of denial, but I don’t ever remember one from me. After all, if I couldn’t give up drugs for the person I loved the most, someone I felt blessed to have in my life, how the fuck was I not a drug addict? After all, I was not stupid and knew that drugs would bring unhappiness into my life, although not particularly much at this point. I really just felt like my drug use was inevitable. I never thought about stopping at this point. It really was a long time before I started to feel like I had a bad problem.
The first time I ever injected a drug was the summer after my freshman year. This was another major turning point for me. I was buying drugs with a guy and we got Dilaudid, which is a really strong painkiller that exhibits a very strong rush if injected and is somewhat worthless through other routes of administration. He offered to shoot me up my first time, and I agreed, because like I said I didn’t really have any strong qualms against injecting by this point (I honestly forget if I was that against it to begin with, but I’m sure I was more against it than I had become by this point). Because it’s such a strong drug, he didn’t put in very much for this first shot, so I didn’t really feel it. It was really just as well, since almost immediately after he shot me up, his mom came in screaming at me to get the fuck out, that she knew her son was using again. He was a lot bigger junkie than I was at this period of my life. Anyways, I took my drugs and a syringe and got the hell out of there. The first time I ever injected myself, later that night—that was the real turning point. I put in more Dilaudid—2mg or so—and proceeded to register to make sure I was safely in a vein (which proved to be a lot easier than I thought it would be), and then slowly pushed in the plunger. Goddamn it, this was the best fucking feeling I had ever had. It felt like all of the air was sucked out of my lungs and there was this colossal tightness which gripped my chest, and then the most euphoric warmth possible began to emanate out of the very center of my being, it felt like my soul, and it overtook my entire body, releasing that tightness, turning it into pure bliss. It felt like I was floating in a whirlpool of warmth that was pushing my body about, and slowly I drifted away into the happiest place I had ever been. Fucking A, I had to have more of that. I honestly don’t think I ever got that good of a rush again from an opiate—even shooting up heroin when I was deathly sick—but fuck it if I wasn’t going to try my hardest to get that feeling back. That was easily the best drug experience I had had up until that point, and my fate had seemingly been decided for me. I was going to be a needle fiend.
So I went back to sophomore year at JMU with a bunch of OxyContin, because, being me, I was not about to go back to school and meet my new, random roommate sober. I dreaded such things, just like I dread a lot of things. I had pretty much already become obsessed with the needle by this point: I was in love with the rituals of shooting up—the spoon and the cotton, drawing up the liquid into the barrel and tapping out the air bubbles, and especially the plume of blood as you register and you’re about to push in (how many junkies salivate over this image?). But of course, most of all I loved the rush, something you get from no other method of administration of a drug. It was like starting drugs all over again. To me, drugs are so very different when you shoot them up versus doing them in other ways. Every drug has a distinct rush, and I wanted to feel them all. So going about research with this state of mind, I read that coke had the absolute best rush IV. I had to try this. So I went about getting some coke and OC for the comedown (I would never again do any stimulants without an opiate for the comedown, because that shit sucks, especially if you are banging the stimulant), and began my first experiments with intravenous cocaine. Although at first I did not load up enough coke into the needle to be on the safe side (I read about people saying to put ¼ to ½ lines into it), but once I put enough into the spoon (probably a lot more than I was snorting at the time), I found nirvana for the IV drug user. The cocaine bellringer (named thusly because of the loud, metallic ringing that fills your head after you shoot a big enough shot) was the absolute best feeling I ever had. As much as I love Dilaudid and heroin rushes, they simply pale in comparison to a really good shot of good coke. The euphoria is untouchable. I also walked into one of the most compulsive drugs there is. What makes IV coke so addictive is its combination of that almost absurdly intense rush with a very short duration, so I would end up shooting again and again and again to keep that high/rush going. It turns your arms into a bloody mess as you have to keep re-jabbing the same veins over and over again with increasingly blunt needles (at this point I had not discovered that you could order boxes of 100 needles online for cheap), often missing shots because your hands are shaking so much from the excessive amounts of coke that you can’t register properly and keep the needle in the vein as you inject (also coke is a local anesthetic, so it tends to shrink your veins with use as well, making all of this even harder). All of that stuff just comes along with IV cocaine use—the price you have to pay for that pinnacle of pleasure which you will end up chasing through thousands of dollars and wasted years.
This was pretty much precisely the point where I lost any last remaining shreds of self-control that I had. I was a slave to that needle. I told myself every damn day to not go on a binge, but every damn day I ended up failing. I started looking like a mess and becoming more and more reclusive. Really everything flew out the door; all that I cared about was getting that big fucking rush. Thankfully, this was the two years later that I was talking about earlier, and Alex found out about my drug use again. She told all my drug dealers not to sell to me anymore or to tell her if I was buying from them (since she knew most of them, because I was still buying drugs only around home at this point). Because of this, and because I made her drug test me, since I said I would never be able to quit otherwise, I was able to go pretty sober for the next few years. It was insanely hard at first, and I would sit by myself in my room with my old needles, putting them up against my arm and pretending to inject myself over and over again, and because my mental recall of those insane rushes was so strong, I would actually get lightheaded and my heartbeat would jump up. I even shot myself up with water, but decided this was just more of a terrible tease than anything else. The first few months were really, really hard, and I think for a long time I would try to cheat the drug tests by getting high on various shitty things, but eventually I think after about a year drug use left my mind alone. Things were not perfect in my life, but at least my whole day wasn’t consumed with thinking about buying drugs.
Part 2 later…
--Edward
Ashtavakra Gita
"I am boundless space.
The world is a clay pot.
This is the truth.
There is nothing to accept,
Nothing to reject,
Nothing to dissolve."
The world is a clay pot.
This is the truth.
There is nothing to accept,
Nothing to reject,
Nothing to dissolve."
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
wordsmithery: incept
Incept -- v. The act of surreptitiously seeding an idea within someone's mind to influence their behavior, often by lying, trickery, or wit. Sometimes done overtly and transparently for comical effect.
Examples of usage:
Teen 1: My mother won't let me come to the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus concert. FML.
Teen 2: Just incept that you cleaned up your room or something.
Bro 1: Dude, I'm trying to convince my gf that a three way would be a good idea.
Bro 2: Want me to incept that shit?
Bro 1: You mean roofies?
White Collar Gent 1: This idea is way out there. Definitely not gonna fly with our boss.
White Collar Gent 2: Don't worry. I'm have a plan to incept it. We'll come out of the meeting with a full budget.
White Collar Gent 1: Do you mean inceive?
White Collar Gent 2: This is why I'm a senior analyst and you are just an analyst.
Examples of usage:
Teen 1: My mother won't let me come to the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus concert. FML.
Teen 2: Just incept that you cleaned up your room or something.
Bro 1: Dude, I'm trying to convince my gf that a three way would be a good idea.
Bro 2: Want me to incept that shit?
Bro 1: You mean roofies?
White Collar Gent 1: This idea is way out there. Definitely not gonna fly with our boss.
White Collar Gent 2: Don't worry. I'm have a plan to incept it. We'll come out of the meeting with a full budget.
White Collar Gent 1: Do you mean inceive?
White Collar Gent 2: This is why I'm a senior analyst and you are just an analyst.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Lao Tzu
"Ordinary people think the "Great Tao" is actually useless. That everyone thinks it is useless, is proof of how great it is. If it was the kind of thing ordinary people thought was useful, it would have disappeared long ago."
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Money Money
One of the issues I have with The Catholic Church is the amount of money that is just sitting there in the form of gold, silver, marble, etc etc. On one hand I can definitely understand using some of the most precious metals as a sign of respect to a Being that is much more powerful than us and one that deserves such reverence. However, on the other hand I don't think God cares if His Word is in gold or bound in just a normal book. Jesus tells some people who want to follow Him to give their earthly possessions to the poor and follow. I see billions of dollars across the globe sitting in churches helping no one, while that money could be used for outreach programs like food services to the needy or something like setting up orphanages. Like I said, I can see the reverence argument, but I think I lean more towards selling or melting down all the gold and silver and using the proceeds to actually help people in need, which is what, I think, God really wants.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Happy Birthday!
Magic Johnson!
"Johnson was first dubbed "Magic" as a 15-year-old sophomore playing for Lansing's Everett High School, when he recorded a triple-double of 36 points, 18 rebounds and 16 assists. After the game, Fred Stabley Jr., a sports writer for the Lansing State Journal, gave him the moniker despite the belief of Johnson's mother, a Christian, that the name was sacrilegious"
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Animality!
Sloth Bear
Inspired by our very recent trip to the zoo, the sloth bear was one of the first mangy beasts that we came upon. And note that it wasn't one of those "where is he? I don't see him? Mom! I'mma throw baby Timmy in to try an get him to come over!" No, not like that at all. The sloth bear found us. I love such combos of animals, especially the ones in which the scientists (or at least the people who made the informational kiosks at the zoo) don't bother to come up with a new name, much like the friendly and suave German language. Just throw the two together and you'll get a good idea of what you're looking at. I love their longer-than-normal-bears claws and their more-bearlike-than-normal-sloths appearance. Plus, look at that fur. Holy burrito, Batman!
Inspired by our very recent trip to the zoo, the sloth bear was one of the first mangy beasts that we came upon. And note that it wasn't one of those "where is he? I don't see him? Mom! I'mma throw baby Timmy in to try an get him to come over!" No, not like that at all. The sloth bear found us. I love such combos of animals, especially the ones in which the scientists (or at least the people who made the informational kiosks at the zoo) don't bother to come up with a new name, much like the friendly and suave German language. Just throw the two together and you'll get a good idea of what you're looking at. I love their longer-than-normal-bears claws and their more-bearlike-than-normal-sloths appearance. Plus, look at that fur. Holy burrito, Batman!
Edward's Compendium of Animals, Part 2
Okay, as I suspected, I was having problems posting images, so I'm going to have to split my Compendium into multiple posts. Sorry, foks.
Here begins part deux:
3.) The clouded leopard--while I considered posting the snowy leopard--the clouded leopard's more famous and beautiful cousin--I had to go with my gut. I am a sucker for stuff like "shadow" or "clouds," hence my preference for Smoke as the greatest of the Mortal Kombat ninjas (Noob Saibot, the black one, probably comes in second). There is something very noble abotu the big predatory cats. Other than lions, I'm pretty sure most are solitary, and this again carries on the theme of the romantic poet drinking himself to sleep every night in a cheap Parisian flat, sitting on a balcony with a pipe and dreaming of the woman he lost.
4.) The anteater--if you want a big motherfucking snout, the anteater reigns supreme. These silly monsters presumably have incredibly long tongues to go with their lengthy proboscises, and I know a few girls who claim they are their best friends (I didn't ask them why). I would give up any number of things (including my friends) to see one of these waddle along at a fast clip as some sort of minorly dangerous predator-beast runs after it, barking and howling in laughter at how ridiculous this particular monster looks.
5.) The aardwolf--one of the lesser known critters of God's wiley hands, this one has the distinction of being pretty fucking early in the dictionary (although not before its friend, the aardvark--are these two related? They seem like essentially different types of creatures, but they do both have that unusual name...ask your local scientist friend, or, if that fails, your priest). A sort of scavenging dog, much like a hyena, these are perhaps a bit dinkier and I suspect would run away with its tail between its legs if it came across the various kinds of laughing hyenas voiced controversially by African-Americans in various cartoon movies.
Okay, that's all for now, folks. Be prepared for more animal love in the future, though, and hopefully others post their various favorite beasts, both obscene and beautiful. For they are all beautiful in the eyes of God, or, alternatively, in the eyes of your local priest. One love, lol.
--Edward
Edward's Compendium of Animals, Part 1
Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated by animals. Growing up, I can't tell you how many books I had about animals, both current and extinct (dinosaurs was a particularly big phase of mine, along with trucks and weapons & warfare, and when Jurassic Park came out, it was like God had answered my prayers--I loved that movie when I first saw it in theaters in '93), I loved looking at them and always wanted to of course touch them, although this proved to be fairly hard to do in the wild. I remember writing in my journal when I went on a famous trip out west in elementary school about my particular excitement from touching ground squirrels as I handfed them food by the Grand Canyon. Stuff like this was infinitely more important than the Grand Canyon itself, and I would sketch little pictures of these devious bastards in my journal. My parents would always be so pissed at me because I'd spend my time "with my nose stuck in books" instead of looking at all the pretty sites around me. But that's how I was as a kid: a bookworm. I am distrustful of those who grew up without reading. What the hell else would you spending your childhood doing? These were in the early days before I was playing videogames much, and a lot of what I know in life came from reading voraciously about anything as a kid. I loved, loved, loved books. Especially cool picture books about military uniforms or about carnivorous dinosaurs (clearly the coolest ones).
This post (which I will update over time) is a dedication to a lot of my favorite animals. I don't have much experience with posting pictures, but I will try to do so in hopes of letting others see the awesomeness of these devilish and sexually ravenous beasts. Just a warning: I tend to like rather obscure beasts, since there are just so many people who like really cliche animals, like lions or horses, and I just don't understand why they are so interested in these rather pedestrians monsters. Some of mine are a little generic though. Again--I will update this over time, so stay tuned:
1.) The star-nosed mole--Look at this little bugger. What a great snout. I also love its gigantic clawed hands. It's crazy because it looks like it has absolutely no face--just pure, raw snout (an honorable mention on my list who also has a legendary snout [which he uses for manic digging into dirt and almost constant sneezing] would be my dog, variously known as "Foul Snout," "The Oaf," or Stink Beast"; Chester is more of a species unto himself than just a normal dog).
--Edward
This post (which I will update over time) is a dedication to a lot of my favorite animals. I don't have much experience with posting pictures, but I will try to do so in hopes of letting others see the awesomeness of these devilish and sexually ravenous beasts. Just a warning: I tend to like rather obscure beasts, since there are just so many people who like really cliche animals, like lions or horses, and I just don't understand why they are so interested in these rather pedestrians monsters. Some of mine are a little generic though. Again--I will update this over time, so stay tuned:
1.) The star-nosed mole--Look at this little bugger. What a great snout. I also love its gigantic clawed hands. It's crazy because it looks like it has absolutely no face--just pure, raw snout (an honorable mention on my list who also has a legendary snout [which he uses for manic digging into dirt and almost constant sneezing] would be my dog, variously known as "Foul Snout," "The Oaf," or Stink Beast"; Chester is more of a species unto himself than just a normal dog).
2.) The barn owl--a very interesting and beautiful bird of prey. One theme you will notice running along this animal list is my love of especially predatory animals. They are sexy, they remind me of self-destructive, romantic poets, sitting on benches in Paris at night, drunk, watching young lovers sharing vows, forever alone and solitary, the poetry of life and of death in their soul. Birds of prey are especially beautiful and erotic and dangerous--they encompass all of the aspects of life. While owls--and especially the barn owl--are not the sexiest of this family, it should still be pointed out that they are indeed birds of prey. If I was asked to pick one particular class of animal that I like most, I think it would be the birds of prey. Either that or predatory cats (or dinosaurs).
What I like about the barn owl is that milky white face, which reminds me of a Japanese ghost or something. 
--Edward
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Decline of Religion in the West
A movement away from religion in the West starts with people. How did we get to this point? I agree that Western society has shifted from small towns and communities centered around a church to a more diverse and spread out landscape that really isn’t preoccupied with religious fervor. But I ask, again, how did we get to this point? You can’t use the social pendulum argument because look a society 50, 100, 200 etc etc years ago…. those people were crazy religious- I mean people would get beaten because they were left-handed and were deranged enough to try to write with their dominate hand! What spurred this social change? Is it the technology that seems to invade our lives more everyday? I think that has something to do with it- what do we do when we get home? We turn on the TV, skype, get on our laptops and listen to music and generally try to avoid living in the ‘real’ physical world. Back in the day people came in from the fields cleaned a goose, ate, and read The Bible- I mean what else was there in those days?
So I’ve established that I think technology has something to do with it- but people being people ultimately have a choice to make. They can either come home and wander down aforementioned technological route or if they are religious at all they can choose to spend some of their precious time off learning more about their faith and teaching a younger generation the values that were bestowed upon them when they were young by people in similar situations. Nowadays most people (who are religious) are choosing not to spend time on their faith and spirituality. But do I think it is a problem?
Interesting question. A few years ago my answer would have been an emphatic ‘YES’, but now I’m split 50/50. People should be able to do what they want- that’s the great thing about a personal spirituality. However, since most people are separating themselves from any sort of religion and spirituality in their lives I do think morals are generally on the decrease- and since that dynamic of the small community centered around a church has changed we as people have lost touch with other people and get into these crazy arguments over 3 dollars- or suing someone because my kid slipped in their store. Come on.
As for the African and Latin America argument, religion is a huge part of people’s lives over there (at least it is in South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland) Even though they are becoming more westernized I think those strong communities that existed here at one time now exist there- and I don’t think it is because they aren’t fully westernized because pre-westernization these people were completely tribal and secluded from one-another unless warring. Now, people of different tribes can gather in these religious communities and have some sort of camaraderie. But we will just have to see how it goes with them when they become more technologically advanced.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Reply to "The Decline of Religion in the West?"
This is a huge, huge topic, and it has really been the basis for a lot of what we've kept bringing up on this blog, often reflected through the creation and consumption of various forms of art. I will continue on with my sort of gritted-teeth, pained hopefulness that all of the corroded ways of society and technology will eventually overtake our human limits to a fault of their own (as I believe it has already started to), which is when we will physically be forced to rediscover what reaches something deeper for us and returns us to what makes us human.
That can't make sense in anyone's head but mine I realize, so I'll try to explain it. Religion in the West has been taking blow after blow from science and technology (with the exception of jumbo-tron Jesuses coming to a Super Church near you) through the centuries, with this most recent century taking it to a whole new level. While I basically take the side of dastardly, nitpicking, and insatiable science in battles against religion over topics like evolution and the afterlife, I recognize, as Edward mentions above, the ultimate gifts and spiritual benefits that organized religion offers a society beyond the distracting zealots, perversion, and battles with Science.
Although my anti-religion phases of life probably never reached the depths of some angsty, authority-hating teens growing up, I did basically hold in contempt anything having to do with the institution of religion, meaning the churches, the meetings, and the mass-oriented nature of religion for quite some time. And I still am severely creeped out by a large portion of what that consists of, but at least now, I feel like I've also come to appreciate the subtler, more powerful benefits of religion, which in the end, have very little to do with the specific words being said, the structure the meeting is held in, or the various controversies that may be related to the institution at hand. These benefits of course, I attribute to the only truly important part of religion in my mind, faith. Faith within an individual is what I took from my experience with religion as a kid. It’s what I found in my friends, in my family, and anything worth loving in life. It just has taken me a while to realize and admit to the power it can have (for good) when applied to a crowd larger than one person.
As is the case with any big crowd situation, there is fear and discomfort for those on the outside. Anyone entering such a group must shed the personal apprehension and nagging voices inside one’s head in order to actually embrace and feel the power at hand. In other words, it's defined nicely by the painfully overused phrase at various camps, “leave your cool at the door.” Once people cross that line and let go of their inhibitions, much can appreciated and much can be achieved. Of course this lends itself to another too-many-times-repeated and recently exhausted-by-the-Spiderman-franchise phrase, “with great power comes great responsibility”. The truth of the matter is, just as an individual yearns for that spiritual foundation to help provide guidance in life, the group needs a spiritual foundation to remind the individuals that support is out there, that humanity is out there.
I think that society is hurting right now, and has been for some time. Basically, since America’s been able to progress at the rate it has since WWII, there has been more free time, more over-protection, more laziness, and annoying generations popping up (ourselves included FO SHO). As much as I wanted to think that authority figures were just lame and too much a representation of “the Man” while growing up, I’ve realized, with the great help of our younger brother/sister generation, that the 90s bred some of the biggest sarcastic and spoiled jackasses that I’ve seen (again, myself not so innocent here). The problem I see now, though, is not so much the secularization and disappearance of our grandma’s religion, but the failure of the spiritual base to keep up. It’s painful to think of the majority of the our generation’s voices being the idiots that post senseless rants about Justin Bieber on Youtube, but I certainly don’t want us to turn into a stuffy tight-ass who nitpicks every little thing out of order with the great history and culture of human history. Money and technology have overridden our senses, destroyed our shock-value, and created hyper- and increasingly soulless-human beings, all wrapped up in the attitude of being too cool to care, too cool to make a living.
The question is, how do we move forward? If people are increasingly secular because we simply don’t care to believe the tall tales of religion or want to listen to a preacher, how do we scrap the Adam and Eve but keep the golden rule? How do we lose the guilt and damnation but keep the community? Like one of my more favorite theories of the universe’s course of expanding and condensing cyclically forever, I feel like we’re bound to go the same way. Our technology works faster than our brains can effectively use it, so eventually we’ll start caring more about how smart we are in what we do with it, rather than how smart it is when we use it simply to waste time. I believe (and hope to all the Gods out there that I’m right) that we will return to something more genuine, but we will figure out a way to do it without going back to the 1950s when even the milk and cookies were racist. We have to win back the minds and hearts of our generation with our abilities as artists, philanthropists, scientists and spiritual leaders alike, not blind marketers of pulpy, unoriginal, hi-tech mush and bullshit.
I think at a certain point the internet’s universality will work against itself and people will end up counting on what’s physically around them to get them through the day (gchat be damned! bwahahaha). To use music for an example, because so much more is available now from all over the world, it can become overwhelming very quickly. Consequently, you might end up caring more about bands that you can physically see and experience, just as you might with your friends you experience on a daily basis, despite the fact that you could theoretically spend the whole day skypeing with friends continents away (even that would be hard though because of the time difference). Hopefully, all this will come full circle and we will find a way to return to something sincere, something spiritual, while progressing forward into something new and of our own. Until then, I’ll just have to keep scratching at the (don’t say it, don’t say the title!) demons in my britches.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The Decline of Religion in the West?
This is going to be a short post and I mostly just want to hear the opinions of others.
I think it is pretty apparent that in the last century religion has really taken a strong hit and has been in fairly rapid decline. According to polls, less and less people call themselves religious and certainly an increasing chunk of the population no longer goes to church or reads the Scriptures. This is due to a lot of factors, but I think that the early ones which really shook up the foundations of the Church were the increase of science/technology and the advent of Darwin's foundation-shattering theory of evolution sometime in the 19th century. Perhaps the global atrocities of the twentieth century, including the two world wars and the Holocaust, also led to a decline in faith. At the very least, many Jews found themselves questioning the existence of God in the wake of the absolute devastation of the Holocaust. Increased urbanization and then suburbanization has broken apart the traditional community ties that were based largely on the church (see my comment on Matt's post, about the importance of community in religion).
All of these things, and undoubtedly many more, have led to Christianity's diminished importance in our country. Do you guys feel that this increased secularization is a bad thing? Do you think that the disappearance of faith, which had characterized Western civilization since the fall of the Roman empire and the Christian Church's succesful bid to fill the void created from the empire's fall, plays a large part in the alienation, aimlessness, and overall unhappiness and anxiety that characterizes our modern, technologically-insane society? With the disappearance of the Church as the primary foundation of people's lives, there is also a change in morals and values. Are these affecting people in a positive or negative way?
And finally, since I am rather uninformed on this subject, will the same thing happen to other societies as has happened to Western civlization? I sense that traditional religions are being pushed out in other cultures, like the African continent or Latin America or Asia, by the rise of westernization, which is spreading rapidly across the globe and dominating everything.
Personally, I do feel that the decay of religious faith is greatly changing our cultural landscape. I think there is less of a sense of community than there used to be, although other things affect this too (everyone commuting great distances in their cars; people spending all of their time on the computer or their cell phone; an overall increase in entertainment outlets and in everything, which pushes people in all different directions). Although I disagree strongly with the way religious conservatism dominated large chunks of our national history (the Puritans of New England or the Southern Protestants, who used religion to justify slavery, and that were incredibly conservative), I think our country/civilization is lacking a sort of overarching spirituality which would bring us together.
Anyways, this is just some food for thought and I'd like to hear some others' comments on the issue, since I think it is a very, very important one.
--Edward
I think it is pretty apparent that in the last century religion has really taken a strong hit and has been in fairly rapid decline. According to polls, less and less people call themselves religious and certainly an increasing chunk of the population no longer goes to church or reads the Scriptures. This is due to a lot of factors, but I think that the early ones which really shook up the foundations of the Church were the increase of science/technology and the advent of Darwin's foundation-shattering theory of evolution sometime in the 19th century. Perhaps the global atrocities of the twentieth century, including the two world wars and the Holocaust, also led to a decline in faith. At the very least, many Jews found themselves questioning the existence of God in the wake of the absolute devastation of the Holocaust. Increased urbanization and then suburbanization has broken apart the traditional community ties that were based largely on the church (see my comment on Matt's post, about the importance of community in religion).
All of these things, and undoubtedly many more, have led to Christianity's diminished importance in our country. Do you guys feel that this increased secularization is a bad thing? Do you think that the disappearance of faith, which had characterized Western civilization since the fall of the Roman empire and the Christian Church's succesful bid to fill the void created from the empire's fall, plays a large part in the alienation, aimlessness, and overall unhappiness and anxiety that characterizes our modern, technologically-insane society? With the disappearance of the Church as the primary foundation of people's lives, there is also a change in morals and values. Are these affecting people in a positive or negative way?
And finally, since I am rather uninformed on this subject, will the same thing happen to other societies as has happened to Western civlization? I sense that traditional religions are being pushed out in other cultures, like the African continent or Latin America or Asia, by the rise of westernization, which is spreading rapidly across the globe and dominating everything.
Personally, I do feel that the decay of religious faith is greatly changing our cultural landscape. I think there is less of a sense of community than there used to be, although other things affect this too (everyone commuting great distances in their cars; people spending all of their time on the computer or their cell phone; an overall increase in entertainment outlets and in everything, which pushes people in all different directions). Although I disagree strongly with the way religious conservatism dominated large chunks of our national history (the Puritans of New England or the Southern Protestants, who used religion to justify slavery, and that were incredibly conservative), I think our country/civilization is lacking a sort of overarching spirituality which would bring us together.
Anyways, this is just some food for thought and I'd like to hear some others' comments on the issue, since I think it is a very, very important one.
--Edward
Post Your Suggestions for Book Club Here
I want to make this the home base for posting your book suggestions for our new book club--Creatio Ex Nihilo (or whatever else someone wants to change it to). Please add anything you want or just brainstorm in the comment section of this post.
Here are a couple of ideas from me. I like the idea of occasionally doing themes or topics to mix it up from just normally doing individual titles. This would be similar to us doing a different director for each month, although the themes/topics could take place over a period longer than a month.
For instance, we could do a graphic novels section, reading a few graphic novels that people suggest or hitting all of the important, landmark ones (Watchmen, From Hell, whatever else, I don't really know the medium that well). We could do biographies, certain types of nonfiction, sci-fi books, books by certain authors, a topic, such as adultery, genres like poetry, epics, drama, etc., etc. etc.
One thing I'm interested doing in the future (farther into it, when people have some titles under their belt and can handle some of these more difficult suggestions for this topic) is doing a segment about the history of American literature. I think, us being American and hopefully interested in learning more about our culture, this would be particularly instructive and also a good journey for us to have together as a group. Because our nation is pretty young, we could tackle this important topic in as little as 10-15 books. So that would take a few months, but not that many. This is what I had in mind as the major books/authors of American literary history (in chronological order): start with the writings of Emerson, who influenced all of those who came immediately after him and helped start the "American Renaissance" of the middle of the 19th century; move onto his novelistic predecessors in New England, Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick); then tackle the two major poets of our country, Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) and Emily Dickinson (some selected poetry by her); then read Walden and perhaps some other selected essays of Henry David Thoreau; skip ahead a few decades to Mark Twain's Huck Finn (Ernest Hemingway, himself one of America's most influential writers, said that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huck Finn"); read a book or two by Henry James, often considered America's finest novelist (a fight he wages with William Faulkner); then move onto the Modernists of the 20th century, with William Faulkner (we'd read his two biggest novels, The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying), Ernest Hemingway (read a smattering of his short stories, which are his true legacy, and perhaps The Sun Also Rises, his greatest novel), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby); then we'd hit the essential post-WWII novel, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; and finally move onto the greatest writers who are still alive, Philip Roth (we would have to pick a book by him, since he has several contenders), Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, which is considered the best novel by an American author still alive), and Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow...be ready for a challenge and craziness). And that's it. That's only about 12 novels, with some poetry and essays thrown in, to cover the literary history of our country, which is something I think we should all learn about eventually, and our book club is the best way to do this. This is a long-term project, though, but I think when we do do it, we should do it all the way through, since you can learn about the themes that weave their way through our cultural history and see how the authors influenced each other. Someone, I forget who, said that culture is really the great minds of history having a dialogue with each other, and this would be our chance to listen in and try to learn something from what they have to say, and I think we undoubtedly can.
Jim had suggested that we read two books by Philip K. Dick, master of science fiction. One was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and I forget the name of the others. This would be a good way to break up the Dark Tower series, which is rather lengthy, but is the first thing we are scheduled to read.
Rie suggested that we actually have scheduled meetings in person so that we have deadlines for our reading. I think this is a good idea, since otherwise people will lag indefinitely. We don't have to match the crazy pace of college literature courses, which I believe rush too much over the greatest works in history just to get as many titles as possible on the syllabus, but I think we should set at least a steady clip, since it's infinitely better to read novels in bigger chunks then to read only snippets here and there before we go to bed or on the way to work in the morning on the subway. You can't really appreciate great work unless you dive headfirst into it, which means spending more time with the authors. Jim and other people who aren't around can be broadcasted into our meetings via webcam or other sexy devices.
Another suggestion I have is that we tackle the current "it books"--The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I am forever out of touch with what's popular at the moment, and I'd like to correct that. These movies are coming to theaters in the future, with Daniel Craig and others, so hopefully we can read them before the movies come out. They are quick-paced thrillers, so no one should have any problem with these.
I'll post some other suggestions later.
--Edward
Here are a couple of ideas from me. I like the idea of occasionally doing themes or topics to mix it up from just normally doing individual titles. This would be similar to us doing a different director for each month, although the themes/topics could take place over a period longer than a month.
For instance, we could do a graphic novels section, reading a few graphic novels that people suggest or hitting all of the important, landmark ones (Watchmen, From Hell, whatever else, I don't really know the medium that well). We could do biographies, certain types of nonfiction, sci-fi books, books by certain authors, a topic, such as adultery, genres like poetry, epics, drama, etc., etc. etc.
One thing I'm interested doing in the future (farther into it, when people have some titles under their belt and can handle some of these more difficult suggestions for this topic) is doing a segment about the history of American literature. I think, us being American and hopefully interested in learning more about our culture, this would be particularly instructive and also a good journey for us to have together as a group. Because our nation is pretty young, we could tackle this important topic in as little as 10-15 books. So that would take a few months, but not that many. This is what I had in mind as the major books/authors of American literary history (in chronological order): start with the writings of Emerson, who influenced all of those who came immediately after him and helped start the "American Renaissance" of the middle of the 19th century; move onto his novelistic predecessors in New England, Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick); then tackle the two major poets of our country, Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) and Emily Dickinson (some selected poetry by her); then read Walden and perhaps some other selected essays of Henry David Thoreau; skip ahead a few decades to Mark Twain's Huck Finn (Ernest Hemingway, himself one of America's most influential writers, said that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huck Finn"); read a book or two by Henry James, often considered America's finest novelist (a fight he wages with William Faulkner); then move onto the Modernists of the 20th century, with William Faulkner (we'd read his two biggest novels, The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying), Ernest Hemingway (read a smattering of his short stories, which are his true legacy, and perhaps The Sun Also Rises, his greatest novel), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby); then we'd hit the essential post-WWII novel, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; and finally move onto the greatest writers who are still alive, Philip Roth (we would have to pick a book by him, since he has several contenders), Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, which is considered the best novel by an American author still alive), and Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow...be ready for a challenge and craziness). And that's it. That's only about 12 novels, with some poetry and essays thrown in, to cover the literary history of our country, which is something I think we should all learn about eventually, and our book club is the best way to do this. This is a long-term project, though, but I think when we do do it, we should do it all the way through, since you can learn about the themes that weave their way through our cultural history and see how the authors influenced each other. Someone, I forget who, said that culture is really the great minds of history having a dialogue with each other, and this would be our chance to listen in and try to learn something from what they have to say, and I think we undoubtedly can.
Jim had suggested that we read two books by Philip K. Dick, master of science fiction. One was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and I forget the name of the others. This would be a good way to break up the Dark Tower series, which is rather lengthy, but is the first thing we are scheduled to read.
Rie suggested that we actually have scheduled meetings in person so that we have deadlines for our reading. I think this is a good idea, since otherwise people will lag indefinitely. We don't have to match the crazy pace of college literature courses, which I believe rush too much over the greatest works in history just to get as many titles as possible on the syllabus, but I think we should set at least a steady clip, since it's infinitely better to read novels in bigger chunks then to read only snippets here and there before we go to bed or on the way to work in the morning on the subway. You can't really appreciate great work unless you dive headfirst into it, which means spending more time with the authors. Jim and other people who aren't around can be broadcasted into our meetings via webcam or other sexy devices.
Another suggestion I have is that we tackle the current "it books"--The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I am forever out of touch with what's popular at the moment, and I'd like to correct that. These movies are coming to theaters in the future, with Daniel Craig and others, so hopefully we can read them before the movies come out. They are quick-paced thrillers, so no one should have any problem with these.
I'll post some other suggestions later.
--Edward
Friday, August 6, 2010
Organized Religion for Unoriginal People
A person is smart, people are stupid. We’ve all heard this before, and in the realm of our “personal” faith, it very much rings true. Organized religion has caused more problems than it has fixed. It has done more harm than good. This isn't specific to organized religion. It could be about anything. Why do we find the need to take a good idea and ruin it?
When people get into more taboo discussions such as politics or religion, one of the first questions people ask is "What are you?" Why do they need to know what little box I would check on an application form? What if I check the "other" box? I can never have a simple answer for them. I can't pull a word out of a hat that completely defines or encompasses what I think or believe. The fact is, not one single person should ever be able to do that. You want to know what I believe? Then go use the bathroom because we are in for a long night. If you can answer with a single word because you see yourself as part of a group, my question for you is why? Spirituality is most personal belief you can have, yet you share it with millions. Have we completely lost the ability to come up with original thought?
People are so terrified of something different that they find the incessant need to label everything and everyone. They are even more fearful of those who they can't label. If you tell somebody that you don't really believe in god, they immediately want to label you as an atheist or an agnostic or some other bullshit. But I'm not those. You need a label? Fine, I belong to the church of Matt DeBruycker, I'm the priest, pastor, imam, and rabbi, I'm the only member, and sorry we aren't looking for more. Does that make you feel better?
I feel perfectly comfortable being the only person that believes what I believe. I don't need to try to convince others that what I believe will change your life. If you believe that you're right, why do you feel the need to push it onto others? Who are you trying to convince? Them or you? I don't start missions or wars to spread the teachings of my beliefs. Are we so scared of being wrong that we need to be around others who believe what we believe to feel more comfortable? Will having more people agree with you make you more right?
When people get into more taboo discussions such as politics or religion, one of the first questions people ask is "What are you?" Why do they need to know what little box I would check on an application form? What if I check the "other" box? I can never have a simple answer for them. I can't pull a word out of a hat that completely defines or encompasses what I think or believe. The fact is, not one single person should ever be able to do that. You want to know what I believe? Then go use the bathroom because we are in for a long night. If you can answer with a single word because you see yourself as part of a group, my question for you is why? Spirituality is most personal belief you can have, yet you share it with millions. Have we completely lost the ability to come up with original thought?
People are so terrified of something different that they find the incessant need to label everything and everyone. They are even more fearful of those who they can't label. If you tell somebody that you don't really believe in god, they immediately want to label you as an atheist or an agnostic or some other bullshit. But I'm not those. You need a label? Fine, I belong to the church of Matt DeBruycker, I'm the priest, pastor, imam, and rabbi, I'm the only member, and sorry we aren't looking for more. Does that make you feel better?
I feel perfectly comfortable being the only person that believes what I believe. I don't need to try to convince others that what I believe will change your life. If you believe that you're right, why do you feel the need to push it onto others? Who are you trying to convince? Them or you? I don't start missions or wars to spread the teachings of my beliefs. Are we so scared of being wrong that we need to be around others who believe what we believe to feel more comfortable? Will having more people agree with you make you more right?
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Death is Certain. Afterwards, Not so Much.
I feel like one of the biggest things religion tends to do is answer the unanswerable questions we mortals were strangely given the power to ask but not know. Of the many questions, I find death particularly interesting, because of its inescapibly universal charateristic. I know that certain religions have defined certain paths souls or spirits or what-have-you take in the afterlife, often times depending on the acts this individual committed in his or her time on earth. This seems like a harmless enough of a mechanism through reward and punishment to guide the religious in their lives. But for most people that I've observed (including myself at a younger age), the mechanism seems to have the same effect that comes from parents telling their kids that Santa Claus is always watching, and if they are good, then they get loads of presents of all their favorite things; if they are bad, they're damned with coal and socks (I always need socks these days so I'd say that damning gift is case-based) and back-breaking chores, like digging the parents a pool in the backyard.
The effect of all this, however, isn't so straight forward. On paper, you'd think if kids were told (and assuming they believe Santa has the power to do this in addition to making them feel uncomfortable in various shopping malls) that Santa knows if they ever act bad thus begetting them crummy gifts, then the children would straighten up, pat each other on the back, and start preparing those tax forms for Daddy (it's always about the taxes) in order to get the gifts they justly deserve. Instead, after the first few Christmases that the kids are conscious of this broad schema, they start to notice that maybe they weren't so good throughout the year, punching their little brother in the stomach or setting the window curtains on fire, and yet lo and behold, they still receive presents promptly on Christmas morning. After a couple go-rounds of this they start relaxing a bit even though they still share that initial guilt during the worst moments. I feel like this is about as good as religion's reward and punishment scenario can work on the whole. People generally try to be good, but they're human - they're animals at their core, and sin will inevitably come in some form or another, maybe not all the time, but at least once in a while (more often with more stringent criteria - I'm looking at you, guilt-inducing Preachers).
But, you can always be redeemed, you can always be forgiven, because if you couldn't the Church would either be empty or full of liars. So there's always that creeping feeling of guilt and shame, but after a few repenting days/weeks/months(/years in jail) you're reborn and as good as new - people put on the rinse and repeat cycle for all their years. I feel like if people actually witnessed their friends and families who had sinned and died without repenting burning in Hell, then the point might hit home a little harder. Fortunately, we don't witness these things, and we also don't see the "good" ones playing tetherball with Papa God up in heaven, daquiries in their free hands. In fact, we don't witness anything that happens to the dead. We witness nothing. I mean we can still see their body and feel the warmth leave, but it becomes pretty clear that something very important is missing.
Again, this is where the consciousness comes into play for me. It appears that they can no longer experience anything, because there's no activity, no brainwaves, no letters home from camp in the clouds. They are no longer functional, but more importantly they are no longer conscious, and all that's left will become one with the rest of the natural world in no time at all. But these molecules, these particles that composed their body, were not suddenly introduced at birth and whisked away from existence at death. They've always been there. The only real change was the consciousness, on and off like the flip of a switch. Why, after all of eternity, do we suddenly get this blip of light in our eyes, sound in our ears, and the world at our feet, and then return to the same eternity that came before? Seems pretty ridiculous. But it happened.
This is where I start to wonder why people worry so much about death, painting pictures of burning, horrific hell or 72 degree, sitting pretty heaven, heaping golden chains and tridents on the casket for showing off in the afterlife, or laying out blueprints for the constellation they want to become. People can spend their whole lives worrying about death. Ain't that a little, I don't know, useless? After my brief high-speed internet search on afterlife in Judaism (out of curiosity, because I don't think I had learned about their thoughts on it before), I learned that there really isn't a whole lot of emphasis on the afterlife in Judaism (pending credible source). Seems, they think it's more important to reap the rewards of good deeds in the living life not the dead one. I have to say it makes a lot more sense to reap the benefits of loving all things in the life where you can actually feel some of that love returned to you. Now, don't get me wrong, I know their are instant rewards (ie in this lifetime) in likely all religions (obligatory Lennon's "Instant Karma" reference), but I just thought it practical to not have to worry so much about things we can't actually know. We've got life, so we should live it. Plenty of time for eternity later. And I think if anything, returning to the consciousness element of it all, death appears most like sleep, well dream-less sleep. You're just out, at rest, at peace. And that doesn't really seem so bad. For something (death) that so resembles what everyone can pretty much agree on that they love (sleep), it's almost surprising people don't welcome such relief at the end of a long life. But then again, it's hard to see humans welcome anything they don't understand.
I don't know, in the end I feel like the kids outgrow the whole Santa sham, but realize they should still probably be relatively good, because no one cares about assholes, in this life or the next. In the same way, I would think the religious (the reasonable ones) would also guide themselves more immediately on the consequences of their actions in this life and maybe take into account the whole heaven/hell thing as a more of the figurehead to their morality, just hanging out and looking powerful until death shows up. Thereafter, it's out of anyone's hands, leading to an involuntary leap of faith. So I guess if believing in something on the other side makes the leap easier to take on the preparatory steps up to the edge, go for it. Otherwise, I'd say just worry about things in this life, enjoy your blip, and have faith that everything will continue on as it always has whether you're alive or not (it will).
The effect of all this, however, isn't so straight forward. On paper, you'd think if kids were told (and assuming they believe Santa has the power to do this in addition to making them feel uncomfortable in various shopping malls) that Santa knows if they ever act bad thus begetting them crummy gifts, then the children would straighten up, pat each other on the back, and start preparing those tax forms for Daddy (it's always about the taxes) in order to get the gifts they justly deserve. Instead, after the first few Christmases that the kids are conscious of this broad schema, they start to notice that maybe they weren't so good throughout the year, punching their little brother in the stomach or setting the window curtains on fire, and yet lo and behold, they still receive presents promptly on Christmas morning. After a couple go-rounds of this they start relaxing a bit even though they still share that initial guilt during the worst moments. I feel like this is about as good as religion's reward and punishment scenario can work on the whole. People generally try to be good, but they're human - they're animals at their core, and sin will inevitably come in some form or another, maybe not all the time, but at least once in a while (more often with more stringent criteria - I'm looking at you, guilt-inducing Preachers).
But, you can always be redeemed, you can always be forgiven, because if you couldn't the Church would either be empty or full of liars. So there's always that creeping feeling of guilt and shame, but after a few repenting days/weeks/months(/years in jail) you're reborn and as good as new - people put on the rinse and repeat cycle for all their years. I feel like if people actually witnessed their friends and families who had sinned and died without repenting burning in Hell, then the point might hit home a little harder. Fortunately, we don't witness these things, and we also don't see the "good" ones playing tetherball with Papa God up in heaven, daquiries in their free hands. In fact, we don't witness anything that happens to the dead. We witness nothing. I mean we can still see their body and feel the warmth leave, but it becomes pretty clear that something very important is missing.
Again, this is where the consciousness comes into play for me. It appears that they can no longer experience anything, because there's no activity, no brainwaves, no letters home from camp in the clouds. They are no longer functional, but more importantly they are no longer conscious, and all that's left will become one with the rest of the natural world in no time at all. But these molecules, these particles that composed their body, were not suddenly introduced at birth and whisked away from existence at death. They've always been there. The only real change was the consciousness, on and off like the flip of a switch. Why, after all of eternity, do we suddenly get this blip of light in our eyes, sound in our ears, and the world at our feet, and then return to the same eternity that came before? Seems pretty ridiculous. But it happened.
This is where I start to wonder why people worry so much about death, painting pictures of burning, horrific hell or 72 degree, sitting pretty heaven, heaping golden chains and tridents on the casket for showing off in the afterlife, or laying out blueprints for the constellation they want to become. People can spend their whole lives worrying about death. Ain't that a little, I don't know, useless? After my brief high-speed internet search on afterlife in Judaism (out of curiosity, because I don't think I had learned about their thoughts on it before), I learned that there really isn't a whole lot of emphasis on the afterlife in Judaism (pending credible source). Seems, they think it's more important to reap the rewards of good deeds in the living life not the dead one. I have to say it makes a lot more sense to reap the benefits of loving all things in the life where you can actually feel some of that love returned to you. Now, don't get me wrong, I know their are instant rewards (ie in this lifetime) in likely all religions (obligatory Lennon's "Instant Karma" reference), but I just thought it practical to not have to worry so much about things we can't actually know. We've got life, so we should live it. Plenty of time for eternity later. And I think if anything, returning to the consciousness element of it all, death appears most like sleep, well dream-less sleep. You're just out, at rest, at peace. And that doesn't really seem so bad. For something (death) that so resembles what everyone can pretty much agree on that they love (sleep), it's almost surprising people don't welcome such relief at the end of a long life. But then again, it's hard to see humans welcome anything they don't understand.
I don't know, in the end I feel like the kids outgrow the whole Santa sham, but realize they should still probably be relatively good, because no one cares about assholes, in this life or the next. In the same way, I would think the religious (the reasonable ones) would also guide themselves more immediately on the consequences of their actions in this life and maybe take into account the whole heaven/hell thing as a more of the figurehead to their morality, just hanging out and looking powerful until death shows up. Thereafter, it's out of anyone's hands, leading to an involuntary leap of faith. So I guess if believing in something on the other side makes the leap easier to take on the preparatory steps up to the edge, go for it. Otherwise, I'd say just worry about things in this life, enjoy your blip, and have faith that everything will continue on as it always has whether you're alive or not (it will).
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