Baby Steps

I’ve been told by everyone and their dog that I need to get normal, whatever that is. Thing is I haven’t any sense of what normal is suppose to be. My body is completely confused. For those of you who don’t know I spent some time in the Middle East this last summer. It was hot. I got as use to the heat as possible. Now I’m in Alaska. It is cold in Alaska. The funny thing is I was colder when I was in the Middle East more than I am here. I attribute it to a number of things; I was not sleeping properly, eating properly, and in general working too much. All those things made it feel colder when it was actually warmer. Maybe it is also because now I have the good sense to get in out of the cold when I start feeling cold. I just think my body has come to terms with it sucking all the time so it doesn’t complain as much as it use to.

When I got back to Alaska I decided I was going to start a healthy diet plan. This was going great for about the first week or so when I was back. I got hungry and ordered a pizza with Buffalo wings. I know not the healthiest combo, but I figured I could splurge a little. What I didn’t figure is that I would eat the entire pizza in one sitting and the wings soon after. I don’t think I’ve made myself a meal to date. That has got to be a record for me I’ve gone over eight months without preparing food for myself.

All these items of stupidity tend to show that I am back to my old self. Every now and then I do get a clip that shows that maybe I need a little more adjustment time before I give myself a clean bill of health. One such instance, I was riding in a car down the free way. We were going fast about 75 mph. To me that is zooming. I saw a black tar line on the road. I nearly had a heart attack.

I basically have about a week before I got fly back to Utah. I think I’ll reconnect a couple more dots there. Till the days of winter are over I guess I’ll learn to deal with the cold.

Virtually Back

Well I’ve now got internet in my room again. Odd how things like that have no real existence in the material sense have so much existence. Now what to do with these idle hands, besides type that is.

Not Home Yet

I haven’t known what home really is in the past year and a half or so. I haven’t been able to place roots down. I think I’ve moved too much, spent too much time from my old home, and changed too much to call my old place home. People always say home is where the heart is. My heart is generally where all my loved ones are. But as this last year went by more and more of my loved ones have dispersed. My heart isn’t really anywhere, not that I’m a drifter. My heart has roots but just not in a place. I think I’ve taken one more step in finding my new home.

Green Time

You know I’ve seen my fair share of crappy movies. I’m talking I wonder how some of these ideas get the OK. I’ve concluded that movie execs will pretty much give any movie idea a chance. That is unless you got a really good idea that is based on good plot and will require convincing acting. So I thought to myself what kind of movies would I like to make? I’ve already discussed this with a few of my friends and I have two that come to mind.

The first movie is called “8 string cowboy”. An old buddy of mine told me about the idea of a cowboy that went around with a guitar and got into adventures. I thought that would be really cool if this cowboy knew kung fu. Obviously it would have to be a western. What is the source of conflict; zombies. You got it, a guitar playing kung fu master cowboy in a zombie survival western. I’m thinking of making a twist to it by having it set in the future where it is a post apocalyptic nuclear western. Honestly how many of you wouldn’t want to see this movie?

The second movie is called “B +”. It has Eric Roberts playing a super villain sorcerer who is the head of a crime syndicate ran by various thugs played by the Baldwin family. The sorcerer can only be defeated by the brothers of destiny. The brothers are actually long lost brothers played by Jean Claude Van Dam and Steven Seagal. Pretty straight forward right? Here is the twist, two other brothers think they are the brothers of destiny and so does everyone else. These brothers are played by Pauly Shore and Rob Schneider. It isn’t that you would want to watch this move, it is you can’t help but watch this movie.

Music

I think people take music too seriously. Music is a wonderful thing it can inspire, change moods, give insights into human nature, and all sort of other stuff. People take all these wonderful things and start making evaluative judgments about the music. I really don’t have a problem with that as I do it more than the average bear. People (myself included) then take it to the next level, they make evaluative judgments about people based on the judgments they made about the music. I think people need to stop taking music so seriously. So what, so and so likes really lame music, if it jingles their bell it’s their choice. Does a person liking lame music make them lame? No. Unless you like Creed, then you are lame.

Hate Speech

One of my favorite topics to think and talk about is zombies. Why? I don’t know. Another thing I do a lot is argue. Great facilitators for argument are top X number lists. My work buddies and I started to talk about various zombie scenarios and what would be the top whatever for such and such situation. I noticed a trend in our discussions, when I talk about zombies taking over I refer to it as a zombie infestation while my work buddies call them zombie insurrections.

You are probably wondering what the big deal is. Come on they both start with the letter “I” and heck it really doesn’t change the reality of ten thousand zombies looking to eat your delicious brains. See these words are the beginnings of a serious point, zombies are not people! As you can see the word insurrection implies some kind of rebellion. In that implication is the notion that zombies have some kind of intelligence, a will even. With a will we can even attempt to say they might have a soul, or rights. Let’s get this straight people zombies while once human are not humans. The more we start using human quality words on them the more dangerous it becomes. One of the classic mistakes made in every zombie movie is having feelings of attachment for a zombie that was once a loved one. The zombie lover then falls prey to their attachment because they don’t realize that this isn’t a human and you got a zombie loose on the inside of your defenses. Zombies are a disease or at best an invasion of an unwanted entity. Heck I would say that zombies aren’t even alive, they are the undead after all. Think this is not a problem; just look at all the zombie movies that are starting to add little human characteristics to zombies. We have a problem; when the infestation does happen we can have no doubt, zombies must go. Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer ends up at his house being chased by flesh eating mutants and they start talking peace, and then they blast them? We need to have that kind of mentality.

Other fine points of zombie infestations I would like to make, a chain saw is not a good melee weapon. First it can run out of fuel. That is the last thing you want in a melee weapon. Second it is extremely heavy. Granted it can cause a lot of damage but that leads to three, the amount of splatter with a chain saw is high. The amount of fluids that could possibly transmit the zombie bug (for the sci-fi zombie scenarios where it is a virus that causes it) increases dramatically and increases the odds you will be infected which is death. My personal choice is an aluminum bat. It is light and causes a lot of blunt trauma. This mean you can hit the head of the zombie (its only true weak spot) and not worry about a lot of issues. Wooden blunt objects are to prone to breaking thus the aluminum bat is a better choice. There are some other blunt melee weapons that are good but generally to heavy. I think you will fatigue and be swarmed.

There is still a robust debate regarding which vehicle would be best. I’m of the opinion that one where you can limit in and out access to the top of it and good fuel economy are considerations. The best place to hold up has been Walmart, but I don’t think that is an absolute conclusion. I’ve also tossed the idea around that an area with extreme cold weather would be a good spot to. Zombies must have extremely low heat output thus they would freeze and basically be harmless or even better completely neutralized. Alaska would be a good consideration, sort of like the latest Resident Evil movie (we thought of this way before the movie by the way and they didn’t even site the cold as a possible advantage).

Just remember zombies are not humans. If that sounds like a hate speech, then call me a zombie hater.

Conflict

I was watching football (American) this last weekend. For those of you that follow the sport you all realized the big game was between the New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys. I felt conflicted. I didn't know who to root for, or should I say I couldn't find who to root against. See I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. On one hand I have the historical hatred of the Cowboys. We have this rivalry that dates back to the 70's Super Bowls. I was also pissed when they beat us in the 90's at the big show. That and the Cowboy fans are some of the most annoying ever. Then the Pats; they knocked us out of the playoffs twice in the last ten years, both times I think the Steelers had a legit shot at it all. Come to think of it Patriot fans are some of the most annoying in football. I was glad that someone had to lose, then again I was sad that someone had to win. In the end Dallas lost. I guess it is all for the best.

The Power of Empty Words

It is a shame that often words of importance only matter to people where we don’t have to worry about those words. There is an upcoming issue with the word “genocide”. US lawmakers are poised to pass a resolution on whether or not to call the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during the WWI time frame, genocide. There is a bit of political tension on this topic. Modern Turkey is an important NATO ally with the United States. Currently Turkey is strategically important to the United States joint operations in Iraq.

This issue, being political, is complicated. It is clear that calling the activities that happened during the time frame of the Armenian mass killings/genocide, genocide would embarrass Turkey. Turkey has already received a rebuff from the West by being denied membership in the EU. France has taken it a step further and made a law making it illegal to say the killings were not genocide. For all of Turkey’s efforts to demonstrate that it is a modern westernized state it hasn’t been given much slack.
Turkey’s claim is not an outright denial of the killings. Rather they point to the fall of the Ottoman Turk Empire and the chaos that followed as the cause of the killing. The killings according the Turkish government wasn’t a planned and organized slaughter like the Nazis. People of this view generally contend that it is not the business of government to define history, let the historians define it. They propose that academics examine all the records on both the Turk and Armenian side and render a verdict.

The view mentioned seems very reasonable. Unfortunately for that stance, the majority of historians have concluded that it was genocide. The argument of defining genocide being an academic endeavor not a government one has some weight to it. I keep wondering why the government would call something genocide if it is recognized as genocide by historians. The only answer I can think of is that it must have some kind of legal ramifications and actions to follow. Another possibility is putting the country on notice that we are aware of the past history of genocide and it won’t happen again.
The odd thing is from my understanding of Turkey; the odds of another genocidal incident would be pretty rare. So it comes down to some kind of legal action right? Well the classification is useless. It isn’t going to lead to sanctions or some kind of reprimand.

I got to thinking about the broader issue of genocide and what it means in the United States. Genocide is a nasty word. It is on par with being liken unto Hitler or a communist. I want to be candid about what I think genocide means in the United States. What I might say will probably offend people so you’ve been warned, stop reading now. People in the United States don’t care about genocide. We fake it. It might be more accurate to say we don’t care enough about genocide, but I’m sticking to my guns, we don’t care about genocide. We feign our strong distaste for genocide. I know what you are going to say, every American opposes genocide. Really, on what level?

My case for my point is Darfur. We’ve know genocide was/is happening. It was just a matter of reporting the numbers. Don’t tell me the public doesn’t know. Time dedicated a lot of recourses reporting on it (excellently I might add). All those rock stars and movie stars have been yelling about it for some time now. What have we done? Nothing. Let me bring it home for you. For those of you who pray where is genocide on the list of things you pray about? Does it wrench your heart to know that genocide is going on? How much do you feel knowing that thousands upon thousands of innocents are being killed? Do you think daily what sacrifices you can make to help it stop? Have you cried one tear for the dead of Darfur? Would you be willing to give up your new HD TV to help, or your PS3, Xbox 360, your new ipod, or how about Christmas, would you be willing to give all that you would receive for Christmas to save one life in Darfur? Well you’ve been able to for several years now, and I’m willing to bet just like me you haven’t done a thing. That’s right we have been able to do something and we haven’t. So when we say Americans care about genocide are we just puffing up and putting on a good face? I think so.

It is hard for me. Realizing how magnificent we were created to be yet seeing how despicable we are. I know my pain gives little to my penitence for inaction, but I suppose it is something, just not something that means anything to the dead. Humanity is an odd meal to eat. It’s flavor a constant paradox.

Suprise

Jake finally woke up to the buzz sound of his alarm clock. He was careful in selecting which alarm he would buy. This particular clock had the helpful and reassuring feature of non-stop buzzing. He felt dull even though he was supposedly sharpening himself for the last four days. His dreams were stressful, even though he really couldn’t recall what they were about. Looking over his cramp quarters, Jake tried to make an inventory of things he need to do right away, maybe he could get some order in his mind if he couldn’t generate such in the piles of chaos he called his room.

Looking over his equipment Jake made his final double check to make sure they were in accordance to the specifications published for the board of review. Seeing his weapon so clean gave Jake a grin. The fabric on his body armor was brushed and soaped clean. Everything was in order, double checked the night before and checked again this morning. Topics, facts, and questions began to buzz in Jake’s mind: numbers, words, definitions, protocols, and on and on. Doubt seemed to cling to very thing he had memorized, but a doubtful recall was all he had and it was better than nothing.

He was told that boards were all about confidence. Confidence was so important that even fake confidence was better than the truth. Well a little fake goes a long way in presentations. Being pulled off the line would be considered a vacation by some, but he couldn’t help feel a little guilty. This was strictly a career move. This board would set him up for another, and eventually an early promotion board. He felt a little sick. He didn’t know if it was the time of day or how he felt. Jake had the feeling all he needed to do was show up and he would win. It was almost set up that way from the get go.

As the door opened and the early light hit his eyes, Jake contemplated what deep thoughts he could gather. Wonderings of the nature of competition, the worth of knowledge, and even his self interest entered his mind. Even though everyone he worked with understood him leaving the line for just a little bit, he couldn’t understand it, or come to grips with it. He just knew that it was what everyone expected anyone to do.

Then it hit him. Like a shimmering glossed katana edge, wait it was a simmering katana edge. A kia was sounded and in a flash the dark shadow zoomed past, steel on flesh. Luckily the victim was only sliced on the meaty parts of his legs. Obviously a low level ninja, otherwise Jake would be dead. “Great” Jake thought, “I get ambushed by a ninja right before the board, who would have thought.” “Well I better stop the bleeding, where’s my medical pouch?”

Beach Master

A little while ago I was looking at some pictures online of the Camp Loll Staffs trough out the ages. It is a bit bitter sweet for me as I have never worked on any Camp Loll staff, even though I have worked with many Camp Loll staffers. I often feel like a human watching his elf buddies sail off into the west when the subject of Loll comes up. I don’t mind so much as I am entertained by the stories and the purpose of Loll.

As I was scrolling down the web page I saw familiar faces. One face I saw was a man by the name of Carlo. Then all of a sudden he stopped appearing in the staff pictures. This reminded me that Carlo is no longer with us. It made me sad. I did what anyone would do with this memory; I went and ate a slice of cheesecake. I know that sounds odd but every conversation that I had with Carlo boiled down to how delicious cheesecake was or looking at pretty women. So have a bit of cheesecake, for Carlo.

Royal Season

Ah the NFL season is here in full swing. So many dreams and hopes for so many fans; so many crushed dreams and hopes for so many fans. It is only week two and expectations are being raised and crushed all at the same time. My team, the Stealers, greatest football organization in the history of the NFL, is doing well, but still it is only week two. I was thinking about all the forgotten people in the history of the NFL. Then the nerd in me took over and I created my list of the most underrated quarterbacks of all time. I’m not a sports expert; these are just my uneducated opinions. Remember this not the list of greatest, but most underrated, you could be horrible and still the most underrated.
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5. Bernie Kosar. Remember when Cleveland was good? You are probably remembering when Bernie Kosar was there. If it weren’t for the heartbreak of the most hated quarterback ever, John Elway, Bernie might have gotten a little more respect. Is he one of the best quarterbacks of all time? No, but he is good enough where people should remember the guy besides Cleveland fans. He was usually in the top 10 in most statistical categories when with Cleveland.

4. Trent Dilfer. Not much to talk about. Then again when have the Ravens ever gotten to the big show since they got rid of him? He wasn’t a great quarterback, but definitely underrated; especially if you consider he has a championship and the Ravens have yet to produce another.

3. Phil Simms. You know for a guy that won a Super Bowl you would think he’d get a little more props. Basically Simms is a very, very good version of Dilfer. For six years he was in the top ten for TD passes. While the Giants at the time were an awesome team they couldn’t have done it without a good quarterback. I think people forget that Simms was a very good quarterback.

2. Steve Young. He has the best QB rating life time. He has been to the big show and won. The two biggest things said against Steve Young: He had Jerry Rice, John Taylor, TO, and a lot of other talent to throw to, and he is no Joe Montana. Yeah it is true that he had a lot of talent around him, but he did well with it. So what he isn’t Joe Montana, nobody is Joe Montana, not even Joe Montana. You are talking about the greatest quarterback of all time. For some reason nobody puts this guy in the same league as the greats of all times. Why? The response is always well Joe Montana was better. Steve Young is/was the best mobile quarterback ever. Michel Vick could only dream of being as good as Steve Young, and at one time people were talking like Michel Vick was the best quarterback ever.

1. Warren Moon. Statistically speaking, this guy rocked. He is on par with Dan Marino, the most overrated quarterback of all time. If Moon had started his career in the NFL there is a good shot some of those records held my Dan might have been held by Moon. But, if you would ever mention Warren Moon in the same breath as Dan Marino people would just laugh at you. I guess that championship Marino won puts him on a different level than Warren Moon. Warren Moon is 4th in all time pass attempts, completions, passing yards, and 5th in all time passing TDs.

Universal Boxes

I remember a while back I posted about how kids are cool. Kids are so cool they can turn the most harden cynic into a softy. Kids also remind me no matter how different two groups of people are there are some universals that transcend race, culture, and religion. What is the unifying element that I observed? Cardboard.

You see kids love cardboard. Cardboard to a kid is like gold. From my memory of my childhood I remember cardboard races down grass/weed hills. Nothing says a good fort to keep icky girls out of like cardboard. You need a sword or club? Cardboard is your answer. You need a shield to block the sword your buddy made? Cardboard is the answer. How tragic a childhood would be without cardboard? I watched a kid use cardboard as a cape, obviously transforming into a superhero of some sort. Then he used it to make wings. Brilliant, that’s absolutely brilliant.

That’s another thing, kids daydream about flying. Anywhere in the world there is a kid dreaming about flying right now.

The Best Minds

I was reading “The Oprah Magazine” or “O”. I will once again claim the defense; my current job leaves limited choices in what I can do for entertainment. I would normally just chalk this magazine as a smarter version of “Cosmo” (yes I read Cosmo too). The thing that prevents me from taking that paradigm when reading O is that Oprah is a cultural phenomenon. For the most part I consider Oprah a force for good in the world, and it appears her heart is in the right place (I really can’t divine this because I don’t know the lady and I make no claims about powers to ascertain the worth of one’s soul by looking into someone’s eyes via the TV.) For those of you unfamiliar with the format of O it generally has your standard beauty magazine kind of stuff, then it usually has a section on how to make your life better, and there always seems to be a couple of articles about making the world a better place.

A reoccurring contribution to O (yes that means I’ve read more than one issue) is a section called, “A Million Ways to Save the World”. The description of the section goes as follows, “Award-winning playwright Eve Ensler resumes her monthly mission: to canvass the best brains around the globe for their earth-fixing ideas. “ Another statement follows about Ensler’s specific causes, but the ideas/advice gathered from the contributing people varies in their scope. Normally I don’t have too many problems with the advice people dish out. I’ve noticed that the people Ensler selects is a bit thin when it comes to selecting scientist, award winning economist, and experts on international law, but that is to be expected considering Ensler’s background. I’m sure if I were to select my great minds for advice there would be several sectors lacking, it is natural.

Now when it comes to having people give ideas that could radically or subtly change the world there is bound to be a conflict of ideas. I understand I’m not likely to agree with all the ideas presented in the article. This particular issue seemed to bother the heck out of me. There were two contributors that really chapped my rear.

The first bit is by James Gilligan, author of Preventing Violence. He states, “In our thermonuclear era, the most immediate threat to our continued survival is human violence. So how do we prevent it? By eliminating inequalities of power and wealth based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Throughout the world, the most powerful predictor of violence is the size of the gap in income and wealth between the rich and the poor. The answer? Elect a Democrat as president. Historically, that has been the most direct and effective way to reduce the gap. As equality increases, violence decreases. This is love in action.”

My first thought was wow did I just hear a high school debate thermonuclear war argument? Yes I just did. Mr. Gilligan fails to address the concept, something is the most immediate doesn’t necessarily make it the most probable. For instance the moon spontaneously falling out of orbit is much more of an immediate threat to human survival than nuclear war. It is however much less likely to happen. But according to Hume you never know, well non empirically that is. But I’m willing to accept that we should be worried about nuclear weapons. Mr. Gilligan makes some jumps I’m not quit willing to take. The assertion that inequality is an indicator of violence I will grant, but to assert that inequality leads to the kind of violence that leads to thermonuclear war I will not grant. The statement also indicates that in order for violence to be curbed one has to decrease arbitrary inequality between individuals. What about nations? Should it be the prerogative of those in one nation to eliminate cultural inequalities of another nation in order to avoid nuclear war? I think such cavalier notions would cause more hostilities than it could cease. The key to Mr. Gilligan’s assertions comes from this comment, Elect a Democrat President. I’ll accept that historically a Democrat president decreases equality gaps more than a Republican within the USA. Trends however do little to shed light on the instance in this case. My example for examination, Jimmy Carter. During the craziness that was the Carter Era, the economy got so bad that the pure madness of supply side economics seemed like a good idea, and it turned out to be better than Carter’s economic policy. Let me say that again, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, POTUS, had an economic system so bad it made supply side look good. The world was a much more dangerous place and much more likely to go into nuclear war than when a Republican took office. Another factor is the with the powers of globalization inequality gaps that rise in the United States can often lead to decreases in gaps elsewhere. An example of a Democrat leading to the opposite of this is say a Democrat that is a protectionist and while increases average wages in the United States prevents other countries from entering certain sectors of the economy, thus preventing them from having sustainable economic growth that would lead to gaps closing. So while inequalities my decrease at home, where it has been stable regardless, inequalities may grow or be perpetuated abroad where it is less stable. I’m not saying a Democrat would make a bad president or that one shouldn’t vote Democrat. In fact I think there are a lot of Democratic candidates with good ideas, but there are also just as many Republicans with equally valid ideas. Consider the ideas instead of each candidate regardless of their political affiliation. Regardless Mr. Gilligan does convey a good idea about different strategies to curbing violence.

The next brain to pick is an “Award-winning actress and activist”. It is none other than Jane Fonda. Jane Fn’ Fonda. That’s right Jane Fonda. Let me repeat the purpose of the article, “to canvass the best brains around the globe for their earth-fixing ideas.” So you’re telling me that one of the best minds in the world is an actress who’s most notable accomplishments is a film where she plays a space vixen who crash lands on a planet with a man who wears furs. That’s right Jane Fonda. The same Jane Fonda that didn’t mind all too much when the Communist party in Cambodia wiped out nearly a third of its population in a genocide fest. The same Jane Fonda that while not calling the Communist war criminals for genocide would gladly and gleefully call US soldiers war criminals. Yes the same Jane Fonda that never apologized for calling US soldiers war criminals, and never once thought maybe just maybe the communist were a bad thing for south east Asia. So what is the advice of Jane, almost a noble peace prize winner, Fonda? Let me quote, “Mothers and grandmothers, teachers, coaches, and mentors, let’s help our boys become emotionally literate.” Yes we need those people because you know fathers can’t possibly help boys become emotionally literate. Yes because I’ve never heard of a man teaching a boy, “it’s okay to cry, to forgive, to express love.” I’m sorry I didn’t realize that was OK for women to be role models to girls, but for heaven sakes don’t let men be a role model to boys. You know what happens when a father tries to teach a boy how to be a man, that boy grows up to be a homicidal maniac that has the emotions of a sociopath that will no doubt oppress every woman he sees. I’m all about teaching boys to be more advanced when it comes to understanding emotions, but when did fathers lose the capacity to teach those things?

We are how we eat.

I was reading this month’s issue of Backpacker Magazine. The issue focused on global warming and how it impacted the backpacking community. A large section was dedicated to what we could do to cut our carbon foot print. The magazine gave estimates on how much a particular activity (or change of) would cut our carbon output. The section on the methodology for such calculations were vague but for the most part I accepted them as most of the suggestions seemed intuitive. Of the intuitive suggestions, most were geared towards increasing efficiency or decreasing use of carbon producing activities. However there were a couple of suggestions that caught my eye. These suggestions focused on mainly eating habits. The one’s that seemed most likely to be followed were ones like use a drip watering system for your garden, grow an organic (whatever the heck that means) garden for produce, subscribe to a local farming co-op to have fresh produce delivered to you and so on. Then there were the suggestions that I think will not happen. The highest one on my list of things that won’t happen is cutting a serving of meat out of your diet every day. Yep that’s it just cut one serving of meat out of your daily intake.

I wondered why I thought that. I realized that first the USA has a large diet problem as is. It has already been proven beyond doubt that poor eating habit leads to poor health, yet we still do it anyways. Poor eating habits yields pretty immediate and long term consequences, yet, we still has a whole, refuse to change. I found this particularly funny, because as I was thinking all this I was eating a Twinkie. When I ate the Twinkie it tasted well like nothing really good, yet I went and ate another one just to eat it. But back to the point, if we as a people can’t even get it together when it serves all our personal best interest to do so on a concrete matter where there is no dispute, how are we expected to get our eating habits in order to stave off global warming? Just a side note I believe that global warming is a concrete matter where there is no real dispute, but I’m talking about societies perception as a whole, and plus there is a lot of nuance to the issue that I just can’t seem to articulate at the moment.

Meat is expensive. Gandhi once asked the question of what we could do if we spent our recourses that we spent to acquire meat to something nobler. I often wonder how noble we are when we are asked to give up just a little of a perceived convince as a society and yet refuse to do so. I think that speaks volumes as to who we are. Then again it might not be such a simple task as Gandhi did say that of all things the pallet was the most difficult to master.

Cracker Power!

Boredom is one hell of a drug. I've been told when people smoke pot they have deep conversations that aren't really deep. These talks are sort of like the, do you think Bugs Bunny is hot conversation from Wayne's World. Right now I'm a force fed boredom addict. Remember when Rick James and his girlfriend kidnapped a woman, forced her to do heroin and crack? Take the heroin and crack, replace it with boredom, subtract one part Rick James and girlfriend and then add something definitely not as cool as Rick James. Once you calculated the word problem you get my situation.

Under the influence boredom, my work friends and I have gotten into some interesting, yet totally irrelevant conversations. A topic that frequently comes up is the, I can do such and such conversations. This conversation usually boils down to stupid human tricks. Sometimes you get some cool information like hey I could have gone to circus school, or I use to be a ballet teacher. I have no such cool talents or no such cool tricks. Because of this I like to play spoiler and mention things people can't do. Yes I'm a jerk. On one such occasion I mentioned that nobody could eat seven saltine crackers in a minute. I roll with a lot of type A males. This was taken as a challenge. Come on no way seven tiny little crackers can stop them.

Crackers three, humans zero.

How Oprah killed Santa

I remember back in my younger days I had summers where I didn’t do much on such an occasion I did a lot of TV watching. I’d watch it all. I’d watch so much TV that I could say all the words to commercials as the actors in the commercials were saying them. This drove my babysitter crazy. I found that I had a particularly good talent at annoying people, but that’s another story. One show I watched was the Oprah Winfrey show. Back then it was just a day time talk show. It wasn’t the huge daytime show it is today. That was when the talk shows were all the same and you couldn’t catch an A list star dead on one of them. It is funny the transformation the show had developed. Back then it was just like all the other shows. One of the shows was about things men needed to change in order to make their women happy. They had this one guy, where all his wife wanted of him was for him to buy new clothes. As I watched it was interesting to see his argument. He stated that he liked his old clothes and they were comfortable. That seemed reasonable to me. Then his wife started talking about how he wouldn’t even buy new underwear. She mentioned how the underwear he had had holes in them from being worn thing.

I thought to myself I’m never going to be like that guy. What an idiot, you can’t get that attached to your underwear; an old hat, jacket, heck even old shoes, but underwear? I forgot about my adventures in daytime television thinking nothing of the resolves I had made while I was younger. You see I hadn’t really tried to see the guy’s point of view. I just got caught up in the mostly female audience’s snickers, boos, and what have you.

I have a favorite pair of boxers. They have the words, “Santa is Real” written all over them. They are comfortable and I like the message, even though nobody can read them. I think it is for me more than anyone else, as underwear should be. Well after my last wash I’ve noticed that they too have holes in them, in quit embarrassing spots. I was tempted to just keep on wearing them just because I liked them so much. Then memories of day time Oprah came rushing back. I figured I owed it to kid me to at least keep a couple of resolves I made back then. So this way if kid me ever ran into less kid me I could say to him, “at least I wear new underwear still.”

By the title of this blog you might have thought I would talk about how all her gift giving overshadowed good old St. Nick, and in that way killed Santa. Nope, but in a way she did wound my childhood. I suppose it won’t be long until Christmas and I’ll be able to buy another similar item. Well maybe Santa is dead after all.

Dreams of the Woman of your Dreams

I’ve run into this case scenario a lot. There is a guy and girl couple. The guy is having a perfectly normal day and thinks everything is fine. However after the first few moment of the day it turns out that the girl is very very upset at said guy. The guy can’t figure it out. He runs through his head to see if he did anything wrong, and low and behold he can’t think of anything. Well nothing to justify this level of anger. Since this guy is very concerned about this girl he keeps asking what is wrong. Finally, still angry mind you, she tells him. He cheated on her (wow that is horrible you should feel ashamed!). In a dream she had that night (say what? what?Me confused, me no understand, me go start fire now with sticks and rocks.). After telling him this she is still mad, and still feels justified in the way she feels; for a dream. Let me say that again for a dream. You know dream a thing that didn't actually happen.

The female of the species has always been a mystery to me. I want just say that this is string of isolated incidents but the more couples I meet, the more of this dream cheating anger I have encountered. The odds of such an event seem to go up exponentially if the couple is married. I know of one case where the dream event got so out of hand that when the wife woke up she punched her husband. I’m starting to believe that this is some kind of general trend. I always wonder how come women don’t have dreams where their other cooking, washing dishes, and mowing the lawn. Does the effect work in reverse? When a woman has a dream that is really nice about her other does she feel really good about him for at least the day? Even though he never really wrote a wonderful peom about her and sang it to music he wrote? With flowers even.

I know that people are entitled to feel how they want but it seems odd to hold something against someone for something that was not their fault at all, a creation of your own, and most importantly never happened! When I talked to some women about the issue they could give me no good reason why the anger/madness towards the partner was justified. However they didn’t seem to have any sense of remorse over it. It was like saying to me, yeah I know I’m crazy, but you’ll just have to deal with it. From my experience men don’t have these types of dreams often. When they do they seem to have a different kind of reaction.

I wonder if this is a topic I will just never understand.

You Kant Make Me

Lately on a work outing I got to catch up on some “good” reading. One of my co-workers happened to have a copy of the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals (“GMM”). This surprised the heck out of me considering the group that I run with at my job. It got me thinking about some of the old philosophical questions I use to contemplate before I said to heck with it.
The work GMM is itself a very dense reading. Immanuel Kant is considered one of the most difficult reads in the area of ethics. GMM I think is the easiest of his works to digest. He takes a purely logical view of ethics, which leads to some strange conclusions.

One of the concepts discussed at length when talking about GMM is free will/autonomy/choice. I really don’t want to get into the formulation of the categorical imperative, because I’m just too lazy to write that much. But the last post about Charles Xavier gave me some thought about compulsion. It is generally accepted that if one is forced to do something one is not morally accountable for it. That is to say if I held your life in my hands and forced you to do something that would normally be considered immoral you wouldn’t be held accountable for it. A corollary of that is if one didn’t choose to do something then one couldn’t consider the act a moral one, it was just an act that happened. So moral action for the most part; are not mistakes they are choices with deliberate thinking at some stage in the decision making process (the some stage part is for all those consequentialist that have a default action scheme).

The topic of being forced to do something against one’s will is an old topic. Another less old topic that for some reason came up in my mind was that of temptation. There are some prevailing ideas that surface when it comes to being tempted and being held morally accountable. In most Christian sects that I have experience with there is this notion that God will not allow a situation to arise where you cannot resist the temptation. In our system of law we have the notion of entrapment. These notions lead me to some interesting questions. If God won’t allow you to be in a situation where you cannot resist the temptation, there has to exist some situations where you can’t resist the temptation. What would suffice to be too tempted? When you throw in the mix of human autonomy it looks as if God is putting a very severe restriction on it with this line of not being tempted too much thinking. Then again there is always the line of thinking nothing is undoable with God on your side. But that idea sort of makes the “temptation exemption clause” sort of a meaningless statement. In society we seem to have an understanding if someone was tempted by things.

I could probably come up with a clear line of logic based on all those questions but I gave up doing things like that a long time ago.

Marvels of the Universe

I’ve always considered myself a fan of the Marvel Comic book universe. It’s not that I didn’t like the DC Comic book universe, I just always preferred Marvel. As I like to think long, hard, deeply about things that have no real importance in life, I pondered if it was still true that I preferred Marvel over DC today and why.

My initial Marvel Universe is better notion came from the contention that Marvel characters were more complicated and interesting than the DC counterparts. There was the whole notion of the anti-hero; you know the good guy that is sort of bad. A variation on that theme was the good guy with a shady past. You had the Punisher, Wolverine, Ghost Rider; heck even the Silver Surfer fit this class of hero. These guys, and some gals, were complicated; things were never simple for them. On the DC side you had Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. The closest thing you had to a complicated anti-hero was Batman. Even then his shady past wasn’t so shady. And while the Bat was a vigilantly he always maintained his role as an augmentation to the system of justice already in place.

My premise I think is flawed, or incomplete. After further evaluation I think that it is the world of Marvel that is complicated and the characters simple, while the world of DC is simple and the characters complicated. Say what? Let’s take a look at the respective flagship characters from each universe, Spiderman, and Superman. What is Superman’s conflict; Kryptonite right? Wrong, Superman’s true conflict is the temptation of power. In every alternate universe for Sup he is a tyrant. His true test isn’t how he can overcome such and such problem, but how much should he help such and such. It becomes easy for anyone to always have things done their way when given the power to have it done that way. It is this constant struggle between how much should Superman help vs. advancing the good that he can do that makes Superman interesting. No matter how much the world changes ultimately he is always left with that temptation/choice. So what is Spidy’s deal? When you think about it Spiderman’s interest is in his problems not his powers. For instance will Peter ever get with Mary Jane or will he opt out and go for Felicity. Sure Spiderman has a bit of power but that isn’t what makes him so cool. Spiderman is cool because he has trouble talking to girls, everyone either hates or loves him, and he decided to damask himself because of the Super Hero registration act. In Civil War it is the conflict between the heroes that choose to damask themselves and the ones that don’t that makes me have any interest in the characters. By and large the conflicts of Spiderman are generated by the world that he is in, not because of who he is.

Another great example would be the X-men. If people would just get over their problems with mutants most of the interest in the X-men would evaporate. Now DC had made attempts to capitalize on these kinds of dilemmas with the problems in recent (relatively speaking) Justice League stories. I do have to admit the conflict between the JL and the Justice Lords was great. However it did sort of hinge on the whole Superman power thing I already mentioned. And face it whatever Superman wants goes in whatever league he is in. Well unless he is in my Starcraft/Halo/GhostRecon League, then he’s just a newb that needs to know his place.

So what conclusions have I drawn from all these new thoughts? If you’re asking that question you don’t know me very well or haven’t read my blog, but all six of you should know the reward is not the answer but trying to generate one.

Parents Just Don't Understand

Because of the nature of my job right now I find a lot of time to read periodicals. I try to avoid the gossip magazines but alas I succumb to them. So that should let anyone know that I read almost anything. On the way I’ve been pleasantly surprised and not pleasantly surprised. So in my quest to find interesting and useful reading I ran across a copy of “Outside”. The cover looks like it targets the “Men’s Fitness” crowd. I figured what the heck maybe I’ll learn about a new spot on the planet I can visit or learn some skills when it comes to being outside. One article was amazingly good. It was in regards to what has become of Mt. Everest. Another article was so, so regarding being alone in the outdoors with nothing to survive with, except a knife and a couple of knick knacks. However I’m not going to talk about those as neither effected me drastically in any way.

There was an article that bothered me to no end. It was titled “Demerit Badge” “Is Boy Scouts of America doing enough to keep kids safe?” There were some valid points in the article. One was that the BSA doesn’t share its accident data with other organizations. Another was that the BSA has fostered a culture of not taking responsibility. Another was that the BSA does not train its leadership enough when it comes to outdoor survival issues. Another yet was that the BSA leadership makes bad decisions. Now you can debate the truth of these claims. Fact is that the BSA can do better when it comes to ensuring the safety of the children that it has stewardship over. That’s not what bothered me about the article.

When making the point the BSA doesn’t train its leadership enough the author (Annette McGivney who teaches journalism at Northern Arizona University) points to a defense the BSA raises to that issue. The author paraphrases Frank Reigelman, “it’s hard to enforce requirements in a volunteer organization with 47,000 troops across the country.” Now the author replies with this statement. “That argument would be more convincing if they didn’t manage to exclude gays and atheists from all BSA chapters.”

Now the argument itself I can see. The BSA does manage to enforce some requirements in its organization. But why do you have to drop the gay and atheist card? You could have said the BSA doesn’t allow felons to be in its organization. The BSA also makes sure the leaders are all adults. But these requirements are of a different kind than Outdoor safety requirements. The BSA does enforce some level of training when it comes to say water activities and such, but the statement of Annette McGivney were more than just an argument. It was an underlying statement that the BSA is a non socially desirable entity cloaked in an argument. That what the BSA stands for is sort of stupid.

This bothers me to no end. I have mixed thoughts about the wisdom of the BSA having a ban on gays in its leadership. More and more religious sects are accepting openly gay individuals in their church leadership. As the BSA is a religious organization that accepts nearly all religions I think it is unwise to establish this excluding policy. But you never hear about how stupid the Orthodox Greeks are and how silly and stupid their ways are. The BSA makes an easy target. While I welcome the arguments as I feel that they give new perspectives on the organization, I could do without the condescending nature of the arguments. As for the atheism comment yes that bothers me to no end. The BSA is a religious organization. Atheism and the BSA are two mutually exclusive forces. Anyone who was halfway involved with the BSA or bothered to understand the organization on any level would understand this. I think the atheism card diminishes the argument that the BSA could perform better controls. It also smacks of the condescending tone that in prevalent in attacks against the BSA. I don’t know why people just don’t say what they really mean, “I don’t like what the BSA stands for and the lifestyle that it tries to advocate.”

Self Awarness

Fear is a part of life. I don't care who you are you have to deal with fear. Even the bravest of people are afraid every day. I get tired of the "No Fear" attitude. I don't know what it is about risking oneself for pleasure that makes you brave. I'll tell you what real fear is; being afraid you'll let your friends down because of a weakness you have. That kind of fear can move people to do things that will kill them. Fear is when you have to deal with something in everyday life and you know it can destroy you. The great thing is all of us are brave. If you think you aren't you just haven't looked for it yet.

Selfish Service

Back in the day I use to work for the Boy Scouts of America. One of the principles of scouting was the value of selfless service. The value should be self explanatory but let me explain; selfless service is actually the center piece of scouting. With out the service aspect of scouting the Boy Scouts of America would be just another activity group. The point of the BSA was to teach young boys how to be good men, responsible citizens, and yes faithful members of their respective faith. All these thing hinged on the ability of the leaders to teach these young boys the value of loving others and manifesting it by works. As with most learning at the beginning it seems like something not worth one's time. Sometimes one has to be tricked, bribed, or even forced to learn the first few lessons. That is one of the things about scouting, it is know for it's great out door adventure, structured male bonding, and the ability to teach new skills. With the promise of fun and adventure one is/can ultimately be taught the true lesson goals of the BSA. After the first initial feel of doing good for others I know of very few people who turn back from that life principle.

Well it's time to do some service, but this time I think we all (yes all six of you who read this) to focus on ourselves for a change. That is, we need to take care of ourselves. Mainly I'm focusing in on physical well being but I'm sure there are other categories as well. There are plenty of excuses we use: I don't have enough time, it seems painful, now that is not my idea of fun, etc. . . There are many ways one can improve one's health. An easy way is to make a list of things you do that ultimately are just a waste of time and replace them with exercise. Just as the young boy scout learned by servicing others by his own sacrifice he could be happier, I think by servicing our own health through sacrifice we can also be happier.

Just so there are no excuses I'm posting my run goals (just my run goals not everything else that is done). As we all know I have a hard time running here, so if I can do it there really is no excuse, well unless you are missing a leg, wait I know someone who is missing a leg and still runs. So here it is:

Day 1, 7 mile pace run. Steady pace slow to ease into it.
Day 2, 7 mile increasing pace run. Pace gradually increases throughout the run.
Day 3, 7 mile hill intervals.
Day 4, 8 mile pace run. Moderate pace with increase in speed at the last 2 miles.
Day 5, Intervals, 1 mile warm-up, 1200 meters at race pace 400 meters recovery jog repeat 4 times, 1 mile cool down.
Day 6, Whatever I feel like running. I'll probably run hills and speed intervals till I build up more endurance for a long run.

I should be logging about 35-45 miles a week in the next month or so. I'm trying to build up to a consistent 60 mile run week.

Situational Tests

I'm a big fan of Godzilla. Nothing says enjoyment to me like the Thunder Lizard. He is just cool. Godzilla can knock down buildings with his tail. He as radioactive fire breath. He has defeated countless other monsters and I don't care what you say Godzilla owns Mothera. Godzilla is always a mixed blessing though. On one had if MechaGodzilla is rolling down on you or, just as dangerous, the Monster from planet X; Godzilla is almost all upside. If Godzilla doesn't stop these guys you are toast. However if it's just a 500 ft ape rolling around Tokyo then you have to wonder if Godzilla was really worth it. The big guy has a price. (for how much I love Godzilla I have yet to see Godzilla Wars, yeah a crime)

I'm an introspective person, or so I would like to think. I'm also the worlds biggest day dreamer. I'm talking Calvin has nothing on me. So I like to day dream about things that make me think about myself and the situations I'm in. One reoccurring day dream is the instant insertion of Godzilla in the situation that you are in. In order for you to get the full benefit of the day dream you have to think how you would feel about Godzilla all of a sudden showing up and why. For instance if you are on a really bad date and Godzilla were to show up near by you might think geez all the destruction and panic sucks but I'm sure glad I'm off of this date. Or how about being stuck in traffic, you know you hate traffic, but would adding Godzilla make it a less boring, painful, and generally sucky part of your day? So if you see me being distant and staring off into the distance, I'm probably thinking about Godzilla. . . or zombies. What?

You see I am fascinated by zombies. I don't love zombies but I find them very interesting. (To be distinguished from Godzilla, I would almost never want Godzilla to be annihilated, while I can think of many where I'd get rid of a zombie.) Now there are many genre of zombies: you have the slow but huge numbers zombie, zombies by magic, zombies by science, fast zombies, zombies under the control of a master mind, etc. Needless to say zombies almost always require a social changing apocalyptic setting. I often think how would I handle a zombie infestation of such and such genre. You can apply the same test for zombies as you can Godzilla. Happy day dreaming.

Side note: zombies should not be confused with other members of the undead. While zombies are members of the "undead" they are not the same as say skeletons, ghouls, and other zombie like creatures.

Don't Burn Me at the Stake

Disclaimer: to my 5, oh wait I think 6 people read this blog now, readers if you haven't figured it out yet I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or a Mormon. This post will talk about some of the deeper issues associated with Church Doctrine concerning "original sin" or as we like to call it "the fall". This post as always is nothing more than my thoughts, they in no way reflect the CJCLDS stance on the topic. I do use sources that will give a good idea of the doctrine in question, but I in no way speech for the Church. So if you are one of my faithful readers or just some random blog encounter, you can go to http://www.lds.org/ to have any question answered about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

There is a saying in my Church, "I don't have a problem with the doctrine, I have a problem with the culture." That is to say while I believe the doctrines of my Church I don't necessarily think the way those doctrines are implemented by the members of my church is the best. Another aspect is if those doctrines are taught wrong then sometimes you get bad results. One of those doctrines I think fall into this category for me is the "Fall of Man". While I have come to an understanding of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge in a way that explains the basics, I think the way it is taught in my Church stifles a fuller understanding of the doctrine and thus the nature of God, free agency, and our own condition here on Earth.

I assume that the only time members of my Church talk about the fall of man in any meaningful manner is in Sunday School. This leads to a bigger problem I have with Sunday School in general. However I still attend Sunday School whenever possible. I still consider it a treat. For those of you who see Sunday School as a free time, then I recommend getting into a situation where you can't go or you are denied to go. The classes that were once a chore will become sweat to you when you are denied them. Also no matter what problems you have with any meeting I highly recommend you attend them. If you are not deriving benefit from a meeting then it is nobody's fault but yours. But back to the point; the perspective I am coming from is the way the topic is taught in Sunday School. I will go over what I think are the basics of the doctrine and then the way I see it being taught and understood, and eventually my concerns with those ways.

According to Lesson 4 of the "Old Testament Gospel Doctrine Teacher's Manual, 12" titled "Because of My Transgression My Eyes Are Opened" There are three foundations for the salvation of man: creation, fall and atonement. The way the lesson presents the pillars the fall is seen as a necessary part of our salvation. The lesson quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie, "said that our salvation is made possible because of "three divine events—the three pillars of eternity" (A New Witness for the Articles of Faith [1985], 81)." The fall came about because of two commandments given to Adam and Eve, once again from lesson 4 :

" In the Garden of Eden, God commanded Adam and Eve to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Moses 2:28). He also commanded them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Moses 3:17). As long as they did not partake of the forbidden fruit, they would remain in the garden and would not die. But they also would not be able to obey the command to multiply (Moses 5:11; 2 Nephi 2:23). Heavenly Father gave them agency to choose between the two commands."

The fall isn't all bad according to the lesson. The fall carries with it some benefits. Lesson 4:

"As you discuss these results of the Fall, emphasize how the Fall is beneficial to us. Latter-day revelation clarifies that even before the Creation, Heavenly Father intended our earth life to be a time of testing and proving so we could become more like him (Abraham 3:24–26). This required that we be mortals, able to learn to choose between good and evil, which was made possible through the Fall."

So we know that the fall was a component of our salvation and that with it there are some benefits. I want to go a little deeper. We know that there was a fall but what does that mean? Well it means that Adam and Eve disobeyed a commandment from God. However what does it mean to disobey God? In this sense we use the term transgression instead of sin. The best articulation of the difference between sin and transgression was in the April 1981 Ensign in an article titled, "Salvation: By Grace or by Works?" written by Gerald N. Lund, director of college curriculum in the Church Educational System:

"The concept of sin rests upon the concept of law. If there were no law, there could be no sin (see 2 Ne. 2:13; Alma 42:17), because "sin is the transgression of the law" (1 Jn. 3:4). However, for purposes of understanding the Atonement better, it might be helpful to draw a distinction between two important variations in how the law may be violated. A person may violate the law in spite of his knowledge of it; that is, he breaks the law deliberately. But others may violate the law because they are unaware of its existence (ignorance) or because they do not have sufficient maturity to understand the implications of it (lack of accountability). For clarification, let us use two terms to delineate the important differences in these two concepts. Any violation of the law that is willful and knowing we shall call "sin." But any violation that results either from ignorance or lack of accountability we shall call "transgression." The scriptures do not distinguish between these two terms consistently, but such a distinction may help us understand some important points about the Atonement. For example, it helps us understand why children under the age of accountability cannot sin (see D&C 29:47). Any parent who has observed his children’s behavior knows that they often violate laws of the gospel. They hit brothers and sisters, demonstrate extreme selfishness at times, and can be unmercifully cruel to playmates. But while these are "transgressions" they are not "sins," because as Mormon points out, children are "not capable of committing sin" (see Moro. 8:8). Much the same is true of those who have reached adulthood but have relatively little or no opportunity to learn the principles of righteousness. They also violate the laws of God, sometimes horribly so, as in the case of many primitive peoples, but they are of necessity judged differently because they do not "sin" in the sense of willing and deliberate rebellion against God. (See Rom. 2:12; D&C 82:3; also Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938, p. 218.)"

So since Adam and Eve did not willfully violate the commandments of God then they made a transgression and thus the fall. One of the natural consequences to the human condition because of Adam's choice was the introduction of death into the world. More importantly we were severed from the presence of God.

Well that is all good and dandy, thanks for the quick lesson in Church Doctrine. Well what is my gripe? My first area of concern is the light in which the choice Adam made is given. Adam was given two choices and made one. It seems that people are of the opinion that it was the best choice or the only choice. I think this is largely due to the wording of lesson 4 and the use of the word benefits. The fact is Adam had two choices either one of which would have led to transgression. It wasn't the best choice it was a choice, a choice that had to be made. I am personally glad that I wasn't the one to be given that choice because well I don't think I could have made either. People point out that because of Adam's choice we have the current plan of salvation and exaltation, thus it was the best choice. In this regard I would like to remind people that nothing is out of the power of God and a different route that preserved our agency and provided for our salvation and exaltation could have been laid out. For if it truly were a choice it could have gone the other way, and I don't see God as one who would gamble on the possibility of failure.

The next issue that is dodged like the plague is why would God put Adam in a situation where he was going to lose no matter what? When asked this question the usual answer is well Adam made the right choice and see how everything works out now? And the class continues without an answer to the question. Once again I would like to restate my opinion that Adam made a choice. One possible answer to the question (which I have yet to discuss in any depth due to dodging of said question) is that maybe God didn't put Adam in that position because of what God was but more because of what Adam was. That is to say, it wasn't that God created, put Adam there and said, do your best which is failure; rather whatever Adam was, it was not enough in the first place so it was impossible for Adam not to fail regardless of the situation created. Adam would fail regardless of what situation created by God because of what Adam was from his first estate. There was a deficiency in Adam and all of us that would prevent us from succeeding. So grace wasn't necessary because of the choice Adam made but because of the inadequacy of what we are. Yeah God's love is deep like that.

Another issue is that of knowledge. In our first estate we chose to go with God and not the Adversary. We were rewarded for that choice by being allowed to be tested and grow on Earth. Well if we chose and the choice meant something doesn't that mean we had a knowledge of good and evil from the get go? So does that mean God took away our knowledge of good and evil? I have to say no because of our belief that Adam gained it when he ate the fruit. So what kind of knowledge of good and evil did we have in our first estate and why is it insufficient for the next estate? This is a serious question for me because if we can learn what the difference is we can learn how to shape our choices so that our understanding of good is magnified and thus our understanding of God.

Mr. Popular

So contrary to unpopular opinion, being so cold that your body can't sleep even after you haven't slept for a day isn't very cool. However, it can be very funny.

When one is so cold you try all sorts of tricks to ignore the cold. However after time you body just tells you hey buddy you have to get up, I'm not sleeping. Time seems to drag. I think that is the theme for this month, time is dragging.

Twisted Fantasies

In the middle east and I'm sure everywhere else in the world there is this amazing peach soda.

It comes in about an 8 oz bottle. It's the perfect size for sippin. They come in 6 packs. They have the perfect amount of fizzle mixed with peach sweetness. For someone who doesn't drink spirited beverages I imagine this is the closest thing you could get to a pink champagne. Lately I've been day dreaming about sitting at the edge of Crater Lake (I've never been there adding to the fantasy). There is a steep drop off so I can let my feet dangle in the water. It is about 84 degrees out. I lean back on a rock perfectly positioned to support my back. I can feel the cold water flowing between my toes. I begin sipping the peach soda. This takes about 4 hours or so. Then gently I fall asleep.

I wake up because there is a warm gentle sensation on my feet instead of the cool waters of Crater Lake. Low and behold I'm in a hammock. What is that at my feet but it is wolf, licking my feet. If you have ever heard the audio tapes of the "Little Prince" just go to the episode where the Prince tries to tame a Fox. When you go there you now know the voice of the wolf when it begins to talk to me. It can tell that I'm quit alarmed at my sudden change of environment. The wolf puts me at ease and explains I'm at Canoe Lake in MN. (Canoe Lake National Park has the largest wolf population in the United States.). The wolf who's name is Buck points me to a camp fire where there is a skillet with hash browns on it. You know the sort of soft kind, not the patty kind you get at McDee's (though they are delicious anyways). As I eat my hash browns Buck explains I was brought here because Thomas Jefferson wanted to have a talk with me. I'm like TJ? Isn't he dead? Buck explains that there is a statue of TJ near by that can channel the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. (I know what you all are thinking if this is my day dream why don't I just meet TJ face to face? The answer I just wanted it this way.)

After eating my wonderful breakfast I go to the TJ statue. It stands about three feet high. It doesn't move at all. Then all of a sudden a voice comes out from it. It explains that it is the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. Oddly enough TJ sounds a lot like George Clinton. There we have a long talk about the impacts of the Louisiana Purchase on this nation. After learning a lot about the difficult decision TJ had to make regarding the LA purchase I make my way back to Crater Lake via a transporter device given to me by Spock.

You are so mature, unlucky you.

You know I find that kids in general give me a lot of faith in good old humanity. There has been a lot of talk among my circle of friends about how different we are. When you look at kids though you see that we have a lot of things in common. Here are some things I've notice:

If you set a kid in any given area for a period of time longer than five minutes they like to throw rocks.
Kids are insanely curious.
No matter what language or culture, when a kid doesn't get what they want, they let out the universal phrase, "awh" usually followed by some other word (in English it is usually man or dad or mom).
Kids can spot a week parent/adult a mile away (weak as in a push over).
Kids in general think it is cool when school is canceled even when it is a bomb threat.
Kids think cows are cool.

There are plenty more but those are the ones I've seen recently. You know Jesus said that (I paraphrase here) that you must be like a child to be a follower of him. When did growing up become so great? Joseph and Mary left childhood Jesus behind and had to go back to get him. Sometimes we forget things and have to return to get our childhood. (Yes I basically stole this idea from a MLK speech so sue me.)

Hey the horse deserved it.

Well I've had the ability to go online at my leisure now. One consequence of this, I get into obscure news. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. Don't ask me how I did it but I ran across an author by the name of Kenneth Eng. He use to write for the AsianWeek (online at Asianweek.com). Kenneth is a self proclaimed Asian supremacist (no I am not Kenneth Eng). He has written such articles like: "why white people will always hate Asians", "why I hate Asians", and "why I hate Blacks". The Asian Week got a lot of heat for printing "why I hate Blacks". They deserved all the heat and them some. Just by the titles of the articles you can sort of tell that they are just going to be rubbish. You all know me, I just couldn't help read them. My premonitions about the articles where right, they were rubbish. What got me was that none of the responses to the articles seemed to be adequate. There also seemed to be a lack of understanding about some key issues that go way beyond anything limited to Asian American issues. It sort of pissed me off that no one could tear apart such a poorly written body of work. Then I started thinking could it be that so many people don't understand such basic things that would make the writing of Kenneth Eng clearly crap instead of accused crap. I concluded that people were just to lazy to write a full response to something not really worth any body's time. Because my skills are not good enough to tackle things worth peoples time I decided to address the things not worth people's time. So I would like to write about some of the issues Kenneth brings to the table.

The first question/statement I would like to point to is that the notion of Asian is sort of an antiquated notion. What does one mean by Asian? Does missing a tuck on the eye lid suffice to make one Asian. Do you have to have black hair? Do you have to be from an Asian country? If so is India a part of Asia? How about Russia? It seems that Kenneth and many Asians have fallen into the problem of making a generalization without any clear lines. In fact being Asian is a preoccupation of people in America not Asia. If you go over to anywhere in Asia and ask someone if they are Asian you will probably get the response, "I'm Korean" or "I'm Chinese" or "I'm Tia" etc.

This leads to the second point, you can't be an Asian supremacist. The fact is there are very few unifying social/cultural traits of the group "Asian" in America. Almost all of the similarities are artificial at best and make a poor basis for making a social evaluation. Lets face it a Korean would much rather hate a Japanese person than a white person. Just like in Japan you would be hard pressed to find a Japanese person that would marry a Korean over a white person. Unfortunately a lot of these notions have traveled across the ocean. In the end there are hardly any "Asians" that would consider the whole of "Asians" better than whites. You could be a Korean supremacist but not an Asian. This is just the tip of the iceberg of intra-Asian relations.

Third Kenneth makes a point of Asians sucking up to whites. One example he points to are Asians that speak with a British accent to sound more sophisticated. See the thing is everyone, whites included, speak with a British accent to sound more sophisticated. The problem here is that Kenneth seems to think that it is a bad thing for one culture to accept and ingrate a better aspect of another culture. What you say a culture can be better than another in certain respects? I figured Kenneth being a supremacist and all could have figured that one on his own. For instance if it is my culture to rob people, or burn the wives of a husband on a funeral pyre, or to do honor rapes, I think my culture could be vastly improved by adopting another culture's view on such topics. I believe it imperative that one evaluate the aspect itself to conclude if it is a positive trait to adopt. Does that mean the original culture is changed/diluted/lost? Yes but culture for culture's sake is of little value. Diversity for diversity's sake is of little value (not valueless). We have to ask does it provide benefits to society. This brings me to a topic that was lightly covered in a previous series of post involving racism, but the horse doesn't deserve that much.

Fourth Kenneth points to Asians lacking honor. He point to Asians being rather complacent about protecting one's self and standing up for "our community". The oddest thing is he points to the Japanese samurai as an example of honor. You got to be kidding me the samurai, really? I think Kenneth has been watching to many movies made by the white man about the samurai. The reality is that the samurai during the Tokugawa period were nothing but bureaucrats. These bureaucrats made it a practice to live off the broken backs of the peasant. Yes the samurai could have a peasant executed no reason at all. Most samurai were cowards. You know who did most of the war fighting in feudal Japan? The answer is, not the samurai. These are the same group of people that would have a peasant held so he could test his sword out on him. Yep a lot of honor there. Yeah and when the samurai did fight they weren't the most honorable of people. You know who most of the ninjas were? If you guessed samurai you may be on to something. This relates to another of Kenneth's points: black people are weak willed because they were enslaved for over 300 years. Sorry to say the vast majority of "Asians" were enslaved till after WWII. Now does that mean the samurai are of no value? No it just means that there are good things and bad things about every culture and sub group.

Lastly Kenneth's points seem to boil down to everybody hates Asians so Asians should hate back. No Kenneth everybody hates white people. Check that rich white people. Kenneth points to personal experiences of hatred. I got news for you Kenneth, everyone, including white people have suffered hatred of the sort you describe. A question you might want to ask is when was the last time being "Asian" negatively effected you during a job interview? How about getting into college? I have long contended that everyone is racist so we should just admit it and deal with it. Everyone one makes snap decisions about other people, the question is are we allowed to change or reinforce those decisions based upon our merits. If you look at our "Asian" average income and college attendance rates I think you can see where I'm going.

Unfortunately I am probably suffering from what every other person who bothered to respond to Kenneth Eng suffered from. Because while I could write another 5000 words about how poorly written Kenneth Eng's articles are (including style points) I just ran out of motivation. One last note as an Asian people we seriously need to get over our addiction to pop music. Come on enough is enough. I'm begging you please on my knees.

Curse the Girl Scouts

I have been trying to eat health the last couple of weeks or so. I really don't have a huge choice as to what I eat but I try. This eating health usually consists of eating more veggies and eating less needed things like cakes and ice cream. Recently a work buddy of mine just recieved over 200 boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the mail. I took some of the boxes as a gift even though I kept thinking this is a bad idea. As I was on the internet oddly enough, I opened a box and ate one, then two, then three, a whole box of cookies. I wondered, "what am I actually doing?" So I decided to read the nutrition facts. Apparently I just consumed over 200% of my daily saturated fat and over a thousand calories. So what did I do when I discovered such information? Come on do you really have to ask? Yep I shrugged my shoulders and opened up another box.

I have to tip my hat to the Girl Scouts. KFC's Colonel has nothing on these ladies. Whatever secert ingredient that the Colonel puts into his chicken to make you crave for it daily is nothing close to the cookies. Also you feel kind of bad if you don't eat them. I'm looking at a box right now and there is a picture of girls learning how to train and handle owls! How cool is that! I want girls to learn how to handle birds of prey. With a motto like, "Courage, Confidence, Character" you have to eat the cookies. Hey I want young girls to grow up to be women of bravery, confidence, and principles. I gotta eat those cookies. Come on all those hopes, dreams, and smiles on the box can only happen if I open it up, right?!? Heck the box is even made out of 100% recycled paper. This is a win win situation. I don't smoke so my arteries can take a slight hit. It is my duty to sacrifice a little to gain so much. Hey I know what you are thinking, I'm trying to shake responsibility for eating over 2000 calories and 400% of my saturated fate intake for the day. The truth couldn't be farther, I'm taking credit for it. Curse you Girl Scouts putting me in this impossible position to do good with bad. Or is it doing bad for good. Hey now they are getting into my racket!

If one of my childhood heroes wans't the Cookie Monster then I think I would have some serious ideological problems. But luckly C is for Courage, Confidence, Character and . . . Cookie? Well that is good enough for me.

Spread the Poverty

I just read an article in Scientific American. The article pointed to evidence that when people think about money or are introduced to stimuli that would invoke thoughts of money one becomes less likely to ask for help or to help other people. I thought the result was fairly interesting but not all that shocking. After I thought about it for some time I noticed an oddity about the study, there seems to be a link between asking for help and having a desire to help other people.

This seemed very counter intuitive to me. For the most part, the people I know that help people the most are least likely to ask or accept help from another. I have always attributed this character flaw to a bit of hypocrisy in all of us. I think the core of is one is to prideful to accept help as it seems like a weakness and one is willing to give help as it seems like a strength. So it is OK for others to be weak but not me. This of course is never really the case as asking and accepting help often requires one to swallow ones pride, or deal with some other fear of inadequacy; in such the asking requires more strength than most acts. It is those acts which dominated the urges that would hinder self improvement that require the most strength.

But I digress. I have long thought that not asking for help was fundamentally an issue of pride and fear. After much thinking and a deeper understanding of the article in Scientific American it has become clear to me that not asking for help is fundamentally an issue of greed. When one helps others one gets the benefit of altruism. When one does not allow others to help them one denies that gift of altruism to others. That seems quit selfish to me. I get to enjoy the benefits of being benevolent but you don't. I can not view that as anything else but hording. Thinking of money instinctively brought about selfish behavior in the study, one of which was not asking for help. I remember a long long time ago I said to someone, "Hey sometimes you have to serve by letting yourself be served."

Alls well that ends well

First I would like to say I'm not a communist or a communist sympathizer. With that being said I would like to make a grip about capitalism. There is this general notion in a capitalistic system that all things can be boiled down to capital. In most cases this is true. A house can be converted into capital thus be transferred to cars or a wide variety of things. Heck capital can even be converted into some non materialistic things such as feelings of enjoyment and such. Now comes my grip; the notion time is money and money is time. I agree that time does equal money. The more time you invest in obtaining capital the more money you will probably get. However, this does not mean that once you get that capital you can regain or buy that time back at a later period. Granted there are things that capital can buy that will maximize you time, but time spent is time spent you don't get it back. So where am I going with this you may wonder. Prepare for the rabbit hole. . .

Next I would like to talk about holistic health. (how are these topics related? Just stick with me on this.) I would like to define what I consider holistic health. Holistic health to me is realizing that all aspects of you life effect your health. That is to say your social relationships have just as much bearing on your over all health as how many miles a week you run. What holistic health isn't to me is the use of crystals and snake oil to cure negative health conditions. Don't get me wrong I think alternative medicine has a great role in one's overall health, but when it comes to needing a kidney transplant you need to see a doctor. I've also noticed the aspect of alternative medicine that seems to be most successful are areas regarding pain management. Pain management is a huge deal in overall health. In order to have a holistic approach to health you have to fix and develop your non health related fields in order to be healthy. Some of these fields include increasing your faith, developing meaningful ties with your family and friends, etc.

So how does my grip with capitalism and holistic health relate? The answer is one word marketing. Lately holistic health has been associated with the concept of wellness. Because of this there has been a flood of wellness products that have arisen. Hey feeling a little unwell, then just take a sip of this new wellness drink and you'll be ok! Better yet spend the weekend at this wellness spa and it will magically erase the fact you have ignored your health for the past six months! We have gotten to the point where we think that if we work 70 hours a week that you can buy your health back. The problem is that your holistic health takes time and work. No amount of capital will replace that. You can't buy a 3 mile run every day. You can't buy being there for your kids. You can't buy having conversations with your parents. You can't buy going on that hike (but you can buy some really good hiking trips, but you still have to go on them). No amount of wellness products and services are going to replace the core of holistic health. You have to place your health as a priority. That takes time and often a lot of work. In these times we have become so accustomed to being able to buy something and/or have it quickly that we forget there are no capital solutions to the human being.

The Hype

A long long time ago I use to debate which band was the greatest of all time. Now you might observe I am not a musician of any sort or a historian in the area of music and if you haven't I'm confessing it now. Needless to say due to my complete lack of qualifications and the complete lack of qualifications of the people I associated with there was virtually no meaningful products of these debates. One comment does stick out in my mind however, "Led Zeppelin is the most overrated band of all time, it doesn't take away from the fact that they are the greatest of all time."

This statement lead to a vast new way of thinking for me. The concept is simple, one could be overrated and yet still be the best. For instance one could think that Michelle Jordan was the greatest basketball player ever and still overate his ability to win the game. One of the problems with being overrated even if you are the best people tend to get a warped image of you, and in turn a lot of unfair criticism comes your way. I think the United States is in this boat. We are overrated, lets face it. We are no longer the industry leaders in a lot of sectors, and our social stats in certain areas are less than what could be. However this does not mean that the United States isn't the greatest country here on Earth. It just means we've been hyped and now the illusion of the hype is fading away. Personally I'm glad the hype is going away. So what wisdom can we derive from this? None. There is nothing from the fading hype that will help us. So why bother blog about this you jerkface? First it's my blog and I blog what I want. Second this just gives me a perspective on the next big hype, China.

Yep China is the next big hype. Don't get me wrong I think China is an amazing country filled with potential and will have a huge impact on the world. I also think China is hyped just like us, or US err whatever. So what advice do I have for China? Get ready for the criticism. You thought the rest of the world was tough on you before, just wait. You need to do this, you need to do that. You will never make it so everyone will be happy, and some how everything will be your fault.

You know they say that China is the next super power that will match the US supposed hegemony over the world. I can't wait.

The Most Dangerous Game

I love water. Water is a great thing. I love the ocean, lakes, rivers, and drinking water. As with the rest of life your love can be the one that hurts the most. I remember back in the day I use to play this game called gulp poker. Since the group decided not to bet money we would bet drinks of water. (Neither I or my friends were into drinking spirited beverages.) I'm also a horrible poker player, but in this area I have a lot of wealth. Yes I can drink a lot of water. One game my friend/nemesis(at the time) got me pretty good on one hand. I ended up drinking so much water that I threw up, well water. Now you would think that my water stupidity would end there; oh how little you know me if you thought so. I've discovered a new game. The game is called lets drink all the water in the buffalo (or whatever ride you are in). Now the game starts to really get interesting when you load about 24-30 liters of water in said pimpin ride. I ended up drinking 7 liters of water in one sitting. Needless to say this is a stupid game, but hey it's what I do.

Greed is Good

When does one draw the line when it comes to being happy with your level of self improvement?

I have noticed a trend in my life; I'm never happy with the level of developent in my life. The question becomes is this a bad thing? I know that there are a lot of people out there who are of the philosophy that you have to be happy with you. I understand this line of thinking but I can't help thinking that with this as your guiding principle it is easy to become complacent about where you are in life. Is it good to be unhappy or uncontent about yourself if it pushes you to be a better person; you know the best you can be? I understand that one has to temper this with patience and a lot of wisdom. But I can help thinking about what Lance Armstrong said, patience didn't get me over that mountain (I paraphrase). Is it good to be a person who is never satisfied with where they are in life if it drives them to be better? Can one be unhappy with oneself yet still enjoy the simple pleasures in life? I think it can as I have done so. I have this feeling that the answers to these questions are more of degree than kind.