Oh yeah, we're so racist/this post contains a dangling modifier

I met a guy in a bar in Cuernavaca who officially bestowed upon me Mexican citizenship.  By the power vested in him by alcohol, I suppose.  He told me three things kept him from going to the United States: racism, capitalism, and George Bush.  One down, two to go.

Some indigenous girls in Mexico once asked me why there is racism in the United States.  I stammered around awkwardly about fear and suspicion of other.

"Are you racist?" they asked.  I told them sure, everyone's a little bit racist.  "We're not," they all agreed.  "There's no racism in Mexico."  Awkward.

Take a stroll around Mexico and ask people about racism, and you'll find that it's true: there's no racism.  I mean, you'll be called "guero" as you walk by (or "negro" if you're black, "chino" if you're any kind of Asian, and so forth).  Oh, and you can only get into clubs if you have light skin.  And all of the actors are pretty much white.  And "indio," the word for American Indian, is a degrading thing to call someone.  And if your baby has light skin your friends tell you you're "improving the race."  Come to think of it, I think I've heard Mexico called a "pigmentocracy."  But other than that, there's no racism.

Note: I hella think there's racism in the US, but it tends to be the subtler, more systematic, insidious kind of racism.  The kind where we flip shit over language, overt stereotyping, and even using light/dark as synonyms for good/evil (no, really, this is the new thing), but then we drop an incinerator in a black neighborhood and call it a day.

Anyway, being one of these politically correct North Americans, imagine my reaction when I saw this on the Daily Show:

That's "for more security."  It's an ad from a Swiss political party that wants to get tough on foreigners committing crimes, and I think it's a very insightful look on how race plays no part whatsoever in immigration issues.  Right, Dobbs?  Article here.  And no, I don't know why this one is in French.


By the way, the tangentially related story during which this was shown is at least six times as infuriating as that ad.

If you've decided that the Swiss are a bit ridiculous, you haven't seen anything yet.  I found this while researching this story.  Cheers.

Parking lot connections

This is my first official Scribble Theology post!  If you're missing what I'm talking about, please note that I changed the title of this blog.

I took a guy's space in the CVS parking lot today.  He was sixty-something, drove a red pickup truck, and wore a black hat with pins on it (I didn't look closely, but it made me suspect that he's a veteran).  He hovered in front of me for a minute, perhaps expecting I would sense that I was in his place and move, then parked next to me.

"I was going to take that spot," he told me as he hopped out of his truck.

"Yeah, I saw that," I said, putting my mittens in my pockets.  "And I said to myself, 'I'm going to take this guy's spot.'"  Not the first time I used humor in questionable circumstances, but at least this time nobody was pointing a gun at me.

I'm not sure he got it, because he told me it was okay.  He showed me the space in which he usually parks--a handicap space occupied by a car with no handicap tag--then told me he was here to pick something up for his wife.  I didn't catch the name of it, but the pharmacist directed him to the "oral hygiene" section.

I am always puzzled by strangers who share with me these details about their lives.  Elderly ones, particularly.  Someone my age wouldn't have told me those things, and if he did, I would have thought "nobody cares where you usually park, and you look like a moron in that hoodie."  But somehow, from the post-middle-aged, these things are interesting.  Maybe it's because they are foreign to me, and I'm more interested in the thoughts that underlie what they say.  Why did this man choose to tell me about his usual parking space and his oral hygiene-challenged wife?

Humans long for connection with others--humans of all ages.  I don't think this man was under the impression these bits of his life were of crucial importance to me or anyone else, but perhaps he's learned over the course of his life not to be afraid to reach out and connect, even to a stranger in the parking lot whom he will likely never see again.

I'm not encouraging you to share with me the state of your partner's oral hygiene.  But perhaps we should all stop and ask how often we miss the opportunity to connect, thinking that it is somehow better to offer nothing than to offer something that might not be interesting.

Start a blog.

Actions to eliminate hypocrisy

I found myself thinking condescending thoughts about others who had Google ads on their personal Blogspot or Xanga pages.  This condescension was obviously unearned, since my blog had not one but two advertising sections.  Right, because with five followers I'm going to be able to write full time and live off advertising revenue.  So starting today, and running until I am highly famous and measure my unique visitors in the hundreds of thousands, you won't be seeing ads on this blog.

The link to Red & Shoulders doesn't count, since it's my site.

I wish I could record dreams

Or at least write them down, but last night there was no pen by my bed and I was highly unmotivated. But seriously, holy crap. I woke up at three in the morning from a CRAZY intense dream. It involved intelligent single-cell organisms and spaceships trying to invade Earth. My mom turned out to be an alien, and for some reason I wasn't supposed to tell Dad for his own good or something (you know how in movies and such the protagonist always keeps information back when you KNOW they shouldn't). But I told him anyway, and we foiled the plot. It was amazing.

LGBTA: The "A" is for "Android"

Tonight I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation 2.09, The Measure of a Man. The plot of the episode is that a cybernetics expert wishes to dismantle Lt. Commander Data, the android second-officer of the Enterprise-D. Rather than accept a transfer that could result in his death, Data chooses to resign from Starfleet. He is told, however, that he is property of Starfleet and cannot resign. Captain Picard challenges the law and a hearing is convened to determine whether Data is indeed property.

Though we have yet to construct anything that can come close to passing for a sentient being, we are already engaged in many of the relevant philosophical arguments today in regards to animals. From what I've read and contemplated, the only sound argument for not endowing other species with rights is that we are human and they are not. Obviously this barrier no longer holds for the United Federation of Planets with its 150 members.

Not surprisingly, Captain Picard wins the day by proving that Data is both intelligent and self-aware, and calling into question the possibility that he may also be conscious. The JAG officer at the local starbase rules that Data is not Starfleet property and is free to choose his own fate.

My question to Star Trek fans across the political spectrum is: what if Data wants to get married? As a machine, it could be argued that he (it) has no sex, making it impossible for him to engage in a heterosexual relationship. So, since marriage is between a man and a woman (right?), he can't get married (except on Risa, which I'm betting is the San Francisco* of the 24th century).

But he presents himself as male. Is that his sex, or his gender? Is he a non-gendered individual who is a transgendered male? He is male because his "father" (Dr. Noonien Soong) made him male, as sometimes happens with humans. Perhaps as he becomes increasingly self-aware, he will decide he's actually female. Is he wrong, since his creator made him male? Or is the creator of his self-identity not Dr. Soong, but, say, God?

We'd better go ahead and let everyone marry whomever they want now, or we're going to get blindsided by the Android issue.

*Actually, San Francisco is the San Francisco of the 24th century, and is home to Starfleet Headquarters.

In which I don't know anything about Toby, and for that I am glad

As "Jean" pointed out in the comments section of my last post, Toby Keith didn't actually write "American Ride." The song was written by Joe West and Dave Pahanish and recorded by Keith. I personally am not of the opinion that there is a great moral difference between writing offensive lyrics and hiring someone else to write them, any more than with other infractions. Nor am I particularly impressed with Keith for not writing the title track of his latest album.

However, I don't believe that this was really crucial to Jean's point, since she goes on to say, "[The song] tells it like it is. This is what the world is like." Apparently this information was merely a shot at my knowledge of Keith: "Obviously you don't know anything about Toby. You are just being ignorant."

Jean goes on to say, "I hate when people don't like a song and attack the person singing it." Now, Jean, this is not merely an ad hominem attack against a lousy recording artist. I didn't say "I don't like 'American Ride,' and Toby Keith is a poser tool in a cowboy hat." I mean, it's true the song does not meet any basic criterion for literature, but it does have a catchy beat, and I wasn't attacking it as a work of art, nor was I attacking Keith as an artist. I was noting through example that his songs are often ignorant, offensive, racist, and out of touch with reality.

Jean: I apologize for not being able to more adequately respond to your concerns. Perhaps I can provide a more thorough answer if you can address at least one of my points. As for your thanks to Toby, I'll be sure to pass them along next time we have lunch.

Toby Keith is a jerk

Friday afternoon I made the drive to St. Louis, Mizzoruh, which despite its big-city identity is situated pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Once you clear Indianapolis, you're basically treated to a good four hours of open road and empty space. This would really be no problem if I could enjoy the company and thoughtful commentary of my favorite National Public Radio shows, but there seems to be an NPR dead zone that covers the majority of the space between Indy and St. Louis.

This leaves me with a problem. I hate rap music. I do not like 21st century pop, which is essentially rap music anyway. I can do rock and oldies, but they're harder to find than you might think. There's still a place in my heart for contemporary Christian music but, like Pepsi, it's really only good for the first few sips. In the midwest, this really only leaves one option--the one that covers roughly 98% of the airwaves anyway: country.

Offensively classist leanings aside, I actually don't mind country too much under very specific circumstances: namely, when I'm driving my car on an open road during daylight (like between Indianapolis and St. Louis). I'll take my mind someplace else for the sappy and melodramatic hymns like Letter to Me in exchange for the chance to rock out to the upbeat western anthems like "Beer for My Horses", a Toby Keith song that I have since discovered promotes lynching. But what really got to me this time was Keith's latest hit, "American Ride," which is basically a celebration of everything that gives country musicians and people who listen to them a bad name.

I knew I was in for a treat when the third phrase of the song bemoaned a "tidal wave comin' 'cross the Mexican border." (It's not a huge secret that I think the whole immigration debate in this country is mostly just mask for racism.) But it got better: "Don't get busted singin' Christmas carols," we're warned before the song even gets to the chorus. The music video spells it out for us by showing carolers having tape slapped over their mouths by hands protruding from sleeves clad in stars and stripes. Really, Toby? Did I miss the government banning Christmas carols? Or is this part of that bullshit perception that Christians in the United States are somehow being oppressed? (The first hit on my Google search for "prayer banned public schools" was this highly deceptive article.)

"Both ends of the ozone burnin," Keith belts out in the refrain, "funny how the world keeps turnin." Oh, I get it! Global warming must be a hoax because we're not dead yet.

The song goes on to derisively comment that you can "spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars," an obvious reference to Stella Leibeck, whose lawsuit against McDonald's became the namesake for the Stella Awards, an indictment of American litigiousness. Not surprisingly, it seems Keith didn't do any research into the case, or me might have discovered that it was an example of a time when our legal system worked.

But the real kicker came when the music video showed an Arabic-looking man grinning maniacally while planting a bomb in his shoe (note: the "shoe bomber," Richard Colvin Reid, was half-English and half-Jamaican). Now, I'm of course not going to claim that there are no terrorists of Middle Eastern decent, but perhaps Toby Keith should consider his responsibility as a public figure not to provide another image reinforcing that stereotype. Then again, that might be a bit much to expect, since we've already seen that his personification of "gangsters doing dirty deeds" is a Black man (see "Beer for my Horses" at timestamp 3:00).

So while on the surface it seems "American Ride" is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on American pop culture, a closer look at the things it's criticizing reveals that it's pretty much just an offensive, highly ignorant, and even racist song. Which, for Toby Keith, is hardly a first.

(That last song isn't racist; it's just ignorant war propaganda.)

Concerning Sea Monkeys

Okay, Christen, just for you.

When I was young, I convinced my mother to buy me a Sea Monkeys set, probably because my friend Jake had them. I don't really remember much about the experience, except that mine were never as big as his and had a disappointing tendency to die. And despite the claim of the Sea Monkeys website that their name is due to their playful, monkey-like behavior, they were boring as hell.

Still, sure that there was a way to make them more fun, I pored over (not "poured over") the accessories catalog, assuring my mother that it was absolutely crucial that my sea monkeys have not only a five-star luxury aquarium, but also their own racetrack. Fortunately my mom is the type to cap her son's allowance at $10 and suggest used mattresses, so there was no budging her.

It has been brought to my attention recently that sea monkeys are neither monkeys, nor from the sea. Both points are correct. "Sea Monkey" is actually a patented, genetically engineered variation of Artemia salina, or brine shrimp, which is native to salt lakes and evaporation flats. Some consider Sea Monkeys to be a separate species, designated Artemia nyos, but they are incorrect--at least insofar as Artemia nyos does not fulfill the requirements of the International Code of Zoological Nominclature (I bet you didn't know that). The nyos, by the way, is not Latin, but stands for "New York Ocean Science Laboratories."

The real marketability of Sea Monkeys are their ability to be packaged and shipped in "instant hatch" formulas. This is because the brine shrimp, in some environments, enters cryptobiosis ("stasis," for the Star Trek fans among you). Sea Monkeys have been tweaked for finer control over this condition, so they may hatch more "instantly" when placed in the specially formulated water.

Both the first-day purifier packs and the second-day egg packs actually contain eggs, I guess so you'll see them sooner, and various salts which (a) allow the saltwater species to survive and (b) make them have lots and lots of sex.

Besides the instant hatching, Sea Monkeys are genetically modified to live longer and grow larger. So maybe that's the problem: Jake had sea monkeys and I, being my mother's son, had some off-brand brine shrimp.

By the way, for those of you who checked out the racetrack link... did you find that commercial as creepy as I did?

(Untitled)

i was a key.
...the heavy clunk of a deadbolt sliding into place
......the symmetry of a locked room
but that use is gone.
...twisted, mottled metal, more rust than shine
......forgotten in a drawer, scratched by other metal
.........that used to be something
awaiting a new purpose
...a ribbon to dangle from, perhaps, and a child to carry me
......releasing what i used to mean
.........so i can have meaning again

Obedience to authority

Natasha just handed me my iPod with the blog entry interface already loaded, suggesting nonverbally that she wants me to write an entry. Unfortunately, I am entirely at the mercy of the creative muse, which is not currently present, and so here ends my post.

Where am I again?

At our old house, my mother's desk was in the southwest corner of her bedroom.  It was a decent-sized desk, though it was still challenged to house a computer and monitor, a scanner, and at least one printer, as well as what was often a clutter of paperwork.

I have since read that it's bad feng shui to have a computer, or other work paraphernalia, in the southwest corner of a room (particularly a bedroom), and I took this quite seriously when arranging my bedroom last year.  This year, however, the limitations of my apartment have forced me to break that rule and put my desk in the southwest corner of my bedroom, where it has access to what is literally my apartment's only three-prong power outlet.

Something about this desk is throwing me off today.  It must be some combination of the way the soft, cloudy-day light seeps through the blinds, and the way my desk is arranged with a printer newly sitting to the left of my monitor, and the layer of clutter that necessitates an archaeological expedition just to find my notepad, but I keep getting this eerily certain feeling that I'm in my parents' bedroom back home, working at the desk there.  I am actually surprised each time I remember that I'm actually in my apartment in Richmond.

Weird.

Feetwashing and Protest

This past summer, while working for a nonprofit called Pace e Bene, I had the opportunity to converse with Father Louie Vitale, a Catholic priest and social activist who started the organization twenty years ago. He was talking about a vigil he'd attended at a military base in the southwest many years earlier, and the religious elements that were made elements of the action.

The protesters divided into two groups, one of which crossed onto the military base to be arrested and one which stayed behind to be a continuing witness. From just outside the line that marked the beginning of government property, a group of Episcopalians gave communion to their friends who had chosen to cross over. But what Father Louie said was the thing that most struck him was a group of Brethren, who set a bench across the line and knealt to wash the feet of those who were about to be arrested. That image has been a powerful memory to him even to this day, twenty or thirty years later.

It wasn't until after he told that story that he remembered I was Brethren. How glad I am to see our quiet witness making such lasting impressions.

On slander

This post title doesn't apply. In print, it's not slander: it's libel. And when true, it's neither.

I try not to vent frustrations about people with whom I deal, but some people are making that very difficult. I really want to drop sharply worded hints about who they are and why they're screwing me.

But I won't.

Damn.

I'm over renting.

Don't you love gifts? I dropped by my apartment on my way through Manchester to make sure everything was in shape and everyone was all moved out. When I went in, I found that my thoughtful subletters had left me some surprise presents!

They included: A completely trashed house, cat poop in the bedroom, and rotting food in the refrigerator.

Obviously I don't have a lot of use for these things, but it's the thought that counts, and it was sweet. My landlord doesn't think so, though. Luckily, I gave him his gift early.

My deposit.

In which I lead the charge

Spurred, no doubt, by my blog entry on the subject in June, Attorneys General and the FTC are pushing for regulations for fake blogs and sponsored blog entries that advertise products.

What's life without a little risk?

When I was little, my best friend Jacob and I divided our "games" into two styles, which we termed "As We're The Guys" and "As They're The Guys."

In the former, we would take on pretend roles for ourselves. We would become explorers in Jurassic Park, the command crew of the fictional USS Merteer in Star Trek, or (in one of our most creative developments) two avatars trapped in a virtual video game world, where the rules were about as well-developed as those of CalvinBall. (We once actually tried to play CalvinBall; this resulted in much resentment, and probably a fist fight.)

The latter style involved the use of Action Figures, usually either Lego or Star Trek. We would take turns choosing which characters we would control and represent, as if picking Kickball teams, and would work together to construct an exciting story. I also once referred to video games--an element conspicuously absent from my childhood, and conspicuously present in my adolescence and (pseudo) adulthood--as falling in to the "As They're The Guys" category. Since even girls had me beat in ownership of Sega and Nintendo products, I would always want to play video games at my friends' houses, and they would always want to do something else.

It should be obvious that our adventures As We're The Guys carried significantly more physical risk than our games As They're The Guys, whether from falling out of trees or from good-natured play turning into a brawl. Jacob's dad was particularly furious when he caught us playing "Cowboy Shootout" in the garage by throwing actual live bullets at each other. "Those could have exploded!" he shouted, and for the next several hours I had a mental image of their garage erupting in a giant fireball.

Though we may have risked more broken limbs in our exploits As We're The Guys, it was while playing with action figures that we put our eternal souls on the line. As we oversaw an episode of Star Trek As They're The Guys, the Enterprise (since our action figures were Picard, Riker, et al., they crewed the Enterprise, not the Merteer) was boarded by a band of particularly dangerous pirate-like villains. Some character--I forget who--said something like "Oh God," or "Thank God," to which the boss villain responded, "We don't believe in God. We believe in Satan." Yes, as atheism, Moral Therapeutic Deism, and plain hypocrisy were foreign concepts to us, it made perfect sense that good people followed God, and bad people followed Satan.

As someone who would go on to be a writer, actor, and habitual devil's advocate, I had no complaint with this expression of a "bad" viewpoint. Jacob, however, immediately stopped the game and, speaking aloud, reassured God, "We don't believe that, we're just talking for the bad guys in the game."

"God knows," I told him.

Canadian, Please

religion

Grasping at ribbons, she considers at the worst possible time the exact formulations of gerund phrases, forgetting for a critical moment that her primary drive should be her own salvation, not that it was likely anyway. Hurled from safety into the ventilation shaft and finding it filled with the grey and golden streamers, she knows even as she passes the event horizon and out of reach that they never would have held her weight in the first place, and so she prays. She prays that her prayer all those years ago was something she meant and not something she meant to mean, and that she will fall through the floor and onto the other side and find that death can't stop her. Or that a giant turbine at the bottom will turn on and carry her up through the glittering ribbons and back to where she started, so she can mean to mean things all over again until she falls back into the shaft.

Thoughts on Brethren and homosexuality

I scribbled up a post on Feetwashing and Four Square about why homosexuality very much is something we should be focusing our energy on in the Church. Check it out.

Also, if you're young and Brethren, puh-leeze talk to me about contributing...

Lost and Found

Sometimes, during my lunch break, I like to take a nap on the lawn in front of the church where I work, under the shelter of a truly amazing pine tree. I generally set the alarm on my cell phone and put the phone on my chest to make sure I'll wake up in time to return to work.

Yesterday, I went through this routine. When I awoke and went to check the time, my phone was nowhere to be found. I checked my pockets, looked under the jacket I was using as a pillow, and examined the ground all around me. It was gone.

I was astonished. Had someone taken my phone from me while I slept? No. There was no way.

My co-worker, Leah, returned from the grocery store across the street, and I had her call my phone. She reported that someone had answered and hung up. When we tried again, my phone was off.

Someone had taken my phone from my while I slept. Had plucked it right off my chest. This was beyond belief.

Looking around, we spotted a homeless guy who had been napping on the church lawn earlier. He was now in the process of lying down on the bench across the street. I went over to him and asked if he'd happened to have seen a cell phone lying in the grass. "No, no sir," he replied, shaking his head vigorously. I thanked him and started to walk away.

"You don't think I'd steal from you, do you?" he asked, standing up and following me. I told him I didn't know what had happened--maybe it rolled down the hill or something, but I just couldn't find it. I then introduced myself to him and asked him his name, which he said was Michael, and we shook hands. We chatted for a little bit about my work, his stint in rehab, and our mutual love of taking naps on the front lawn of the church.

"Well," I said finally, "I guess if you happen to see a cell phone lying in the grass.... but I don't think it's here anymore." "Goodbye," he said abruptly, and walked away. Confused, I returned to my office and had my cell phone canceled.

By the way, if your cell phone is lost or stolen, you can put it on a "lost or stolen" list that means nobody can activate it. Cool, huh? Personally, I was more interested in a remote data erase, or perhaps a physical self-destruct mechanism.

Twenty minutes later, Michael dropped by the office and asked if we knew of any shelters he could go to. He was shaking, and was pretty clearly suffering some sort of withdrawal--contextually, I'm guessing alcohol. While I was trying to find one online, he tossed my phone onto my desk. "Hey, you found it!" I said, wanting to give him the opportunity to pass on confessing theft (was this a good move, or was I just insulting his intelligence?). He initially said he found it lying ten feet away from me, but later admitted he'd taken it from me. He apologized repeatedly, and said I looked like a nice person. I assured him that I forgave him and thanked him for bringing it back. "You seem like a nice person, too," I told him. "I really enjoyed talking to you earlier."

He then asked if I had any money, saying he was really hungry. We gave him some snacks from the office, and I caved and gave him the $5 bill that had been making me feel wealthy, pointing him to the delicious pizza at the Whole Foods across the street. He left before we could find him any sort of shelter.

Since he left the snacks at the bottom of the stairs for us to find later, my guess is he didn't spend the money on food. But I'm not convinced a forced detox on the street with nobody there for support would be particularly nonviolent, so I'm okay with it. Besides, if this had gone down differently, he might have ransomed my phone back to me for $20 or something (or tried to, since I didn't have $20).

So I got my phone back, and he got a beer. I call it win-win.

Of one thing I'm fairly certain: If I hadn't shaken his hand and asked him his name, I never would have seen my phone again.

the Web's secret stories

Continuing with TED Talks, yesterday I found what I will not hesitate to say is the most amazing thing I have ever seen on the internet. Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris gave the above TED Talks presentation in 2007, talking about how he mines data about the human condition from the internet and uses it to create beautiful infographics to show the state of humanity. To me, the coolest of his creations is We Feel Fine, which mines "I feel" statements from tens of thousands of blogs every day, categorizes them, and even assigns photos to them.

At the end of the day, despite all my varied interests, I find that the thing I am most passionate about is the expression of truth. Showing the real human condition in accessible and gripping ways. And this, along with Harris's other projects, is that.

Creating technology that makes us more human

I think I've posted a link to this video before, but my mention of text messaging last night made me think of it again. I do think it's very important that everyone see this, so here it is. This time I was all fancy and embedded it.

The e-mail chronicles

I've always been interested in the ways technology destroys us as social creatures. I think I was in middle school when I pondered whether my generation would be adversely affected in their ability to choose career paths because of our exposure to video games that allowed us to save, load, restart, and create multiple profiles. I am angry when I see people texting one person while hanging out with another, and I feel intense shame when I even read, let alone respond to a text message in someone else's presence. And now I wonder, in this age of text messaging and Facebook, if e-mail has become another victim of changing technology. I read in the New York Times recently that "nobody e-mails anymore."

I think I was in the fifth grade when I sent my first e-mail. I sat down at our Packard Bell 386, used the 36.6k modem to dial the Internet, and opened my parents' @npcc.net (which no longer even exists) e-mail account, and typed a letter to my best friend Jacob. At his parents' e-mail address. The subject was "friendly."

It took me a couple of years to break free of my parents' e-mail account, where my only shot at privacy came from the hope that my dad didn't know how to use the "mark as unread" feature. Still an infant on the world wide web, I was overjoyed to discover that I could have my very own web-based e-mail account: for free! And so I became nmk16@startrekmail.com.

It wasn't long before I realized that free webmail was not reserved for geeks, so I migrated to jedi776@homail.com (clearly I was loathe to part completely with my geekiness). The 776 was because my friend Tyler used the number 67, and I reversed it as an act of challenge.

I used to e-mail with people all the time. Friends, love interests, e-mail e-mail e-mail. But at some point it all stopped. Maybe it was the advent of the Facebook message, which took the whole idea of an e-mail address out of the equation. Or maybe it was just that I got a life and became entranced with this novel idea of spending time with people instead of a computer, to the point that I lost my ability to stay in touch over distances. But I actually don't think it's the latter, because not only do I not write e-mails: I don't get them, either.

Of course, we could be looking at a cause-effect relationship here.

Anyway, I think you should e-mail me.

I'm glad I was never 18

I wrote earlier this year about an infestation of sketchy people at Pirate House. One may argue that Pirate House has a continuous infestation of sketchy people (for example: Micah, Steve and myself), but I maintain that the fact that we didn't know any of them--nor did anyone else--qualified them as sketchy even by our standards.

Well, I'm now facing similar difficulties at Tucker's house.

Along with Ketan, Brandi and me--all Metta interns--a high school graduate named Isabelle has been living in Tucker's large, beautiful house. Isabelle is generally quiet, polite, and out of sight--all things I would consider to be good qualities in a housemate. This is mitigated by her tendancy to leave dishes lying around and occasional streaks of the kind of elitism that could only come from going to some fancy prep school.

With Tucker on vacation for a few weeks, we have the house to ourselves. Or we did, until Isabelle, freshly done with her internship but still staying in Berkeley, began bringing a string of friends to hang around the house. They enhance the dish issue, and in their most famous exploit left a huge mess of pineapple in the kitchen, which Brandi had to sweep off the floor. I mentioned this to them, and they responded by spelling "we're sorry" in pineapple chunks outside my cottage. They even cleaned it up later, sealing it as a truly cute gesture (though Brandi is the one that needed the apology). Then they left some more dishes lying around, which Brandi cleaned up.

Now, if you've ever lived with me, you might be saying, "Whoa, Nick. Are you complaining about dishes?" Fair enough. But I've been very good this summer, and it has been getting on my nerves. But that's just the grating inconvenience.

My personal issues are with the friends' attitude and demeanor. They are loud, crude, pretentious, and I'm pretty sure they drank some of Mark's beer. I heard them talking about Princeton, of which I'm glad, because I came to a realization.

I had just been eyeing a PhD in Liberal Studies at Georgetown University. Now, Georgetown isn't Ivy League, but it's still a very good school, with what I imagine is a similar atmosphere (after all, Bill Clinton went there). But you know what? If these are the kind of kids being funneled into these schools, I want none of it.

Don't listen to them!

I was perusing reviews of web hosts today trying to find a possible future home for Nidgin Idberry. Two of the first names I stumbled across, in addition to my old 1&1, were FastCow and JustHost (and I'm not linking either because they suck). I searched around for some reviews of them, and came across this website: www.hostingsthatsuck.com

HostingsThatSuck had a review of FatCow that said "Hold up. We researched this, and there are more positive reviews than negative. We recommend them!" Okay, cool.

Then I was checking out other hosts on the same website and I came to a startling realization.

The text was identical.

Compare:

You have seen the number analysis above. Numbers don’t lie. You should look no further. EasyASPHosting comes with 30-day money back guarantee so there is little risk to you to try host your blog, build company website or sell your products with them. Follow the EasyASPHosting discount link below and get their special limited time 15% discount via the coupon code (the coupon code may have expired so hurry).

You have seen the number analysis above. Numbers don’t lie. You should look no further. HostExpress comes with 30-day money back guarantee so there is little risk to you to try host your blog, build company website or sell your products with them. Follow the HostExpress discount link below and get their special limited time 15% discount via the coupon code (the coupon code may have expired so hurry).

You have seen the numbers. You should look no further. Follow the Dot5 discount link below and get Unlimited Everything (diskspace, bandwidth, email accounts) at only $4.95 $3.95 per month. Hesitate no more. They come with 30-day money back guarantee so you have no risk to try them. Dot5 Hosting can get you started today.

I found the Dot5 review, by the way, by researching the worst internet companies out there and plugging them in to HostingThatSucks to see if they got a good review. They did. There are a couple of variations, depending on whether the host is big enough to have negative experiences floating around on the easy-to-find portions of the net. So it's either "You've heard this bad stuff, but here's OUR verdict" or "we couldn't find any bad stuff about them, so here's OUR verdict."

Why?

Many bloggers make money by writing paid reviews on their blogs. Some seed them in, nonsensically, as nonsequiters to their normal writings. Some slip them in between legitimate reviews. And some blogs (okay, many blogs), like HostingThatSucks, set up an entire fraudulent website devoting to writing rave reviews for terrible services, making their bucks at the expense of those poor suckers who are trying to research products.

Oh, that site I linked to there? Paid Opportunities. It's a blog about making money online, much like one I tried to start and abandoned within a week. The irony is Paid Opportunties is basically devoted to taking money from companies to sell you on using their services to make money online. So it's half sincere, since the author is making money on it, but there is no reasonable expectation that you will too. It's essentially a pyramid scheme.

In the quest to make money online--or just to make money--we are finding that it is not the decentralized responsibility and groupthink of the corporation that is responsible for unethical practices in the market. It is the simple fact that greed--individual greed of individual people--trumps integrity.

nickkauffman.blogspot.com does NOT recommend HostingThatSucks OR Paid Opportunities.

Nico

Cherry? Plum? Cherry plum!!!!

Chris dropped a bike off today and asked if we would like to go pick cherries.  He had discovered a cherry tree with ripe fruit on the street.

We went and only managed to get a few cherries off the young tree.  It was too weak to climb well, and the cherries were too high to reach.  Between jumping, minor climbing, and Chris sitting on my shoulders, we managed to get a few, but our dreams of great spoils were unmet.

Then, on our way back, we found a much bigger tree.  Chris climbed up, with a boost from me, and threw down some very large cherries.  Looking around, I found another one just a bit down the street, which proved highly fruitious.  Now we had lots of cherries, enough for a pie or a cobbler.

These are things you never think about until someone mentions it.  Obviously, there aren't a lot of fruit-bearing trees on public land in, say, Indiana, but in California (and Mexico) you see a lot of trees--lemon, cherry, lowquat--just hanging out on the side of the road, with nobody to pick them.  All the fruit goes ripe, falls to the sidewalk, and gets smushed.  Nobody would think to harvest it!  In fact, we got a lot of strange looks from people passing by on the sidewalk, all of whom declined our invitation to take some of our bounty.

This is because of our attitude of scarcity.  We think value comes from the supply chain--something we pay for, that comes from an official source.  We need to move into a paradigm of abundance: urban gardens, food cooperatives, harvesting those feral fruits.  I had a great idea to create a website that used Google Maps to mark every fruit tree on public land, but this already exists.  However, it is scarcely used, so try and spread the word about neighborhoodfruit.com.

Oh, and it turns out they weren't cherries at all; they were cherry plums.  But whatever, we're still making pie.

It's worth some bad karma

I wish horrible fates upon people who want to have long conversations with me via text message.

Actually, I wish horrible fates upon people who want to have long conversations with anyone via text message, because it distracts them from actual social interaction.

Teaser is up

Rather than jump the gun and leap into a project I can't finish, I decided to put real preparation into Nidgin's second launch.  I'm doing some editing of my old episodes, writing new episodes, and planning some stuff out.

Meanwhile, I like prepping for things I can't have yet (I once bought a cell phone even though I didn't have--and didn't intend to buy--a plan), so I give you the website, with an exclusive prologue (I'll take it down when I launch the story):

The Adventures of Nidgin Idberry of Frockleton

I got my spiritualist terms wrong.

It's clairaudiant, not audiovoyant.  My Latin failed me.

California here we come

I've been in Berkeley, CA for a little over two days now, and I'm only now finding the time to blog.  Granted, I've found the time to write one journal entry, do some push-ups, and play some cheap addictive computer games, but very little.  I also skipped my planned blogging, e-mailing, journaling and story-writing this evening in favor of dinner with my fellow mentees.  Given my extraordinary budget constraints--the sort that will almost certainly leave me broke (at best) by the end of the summer--I opted for water only and waited, like a circling jackal, until at last two women found themselves unable to finish the gigantic salad they were sharing, at which point I swooped in and had myself a free supper.

I'm here to work on Pace e Bene's Nonviolent Stories project, about which I will blog at a later date--perhaps once I start work the week after next.

Tonight my Indian housemate did some high-end astrology for me (in India, astrology does not mean reading your weekly horoscope or figuring out which signs to avoid, but very complex readings that involve Jupiter looking towards Venus in the fifth house with his third eye and whatnot) and told me some potentially mildly profound things.  I do not place much faith in these things, though I'm open to being demonstrated wrong (all I'd been told previously was that Capricorns love spreadsheets, are bad news for Libras, and don't believe in astrology).  Ketan asked if I got angrily easily (yes), if my last two years were tumultuous (maybe), if I completed something major in 2008 (yes) and if I had a lot of luck (yes).  I tried to evaluate everything for those traps in which everybody thinks things describe them, and while some of the things he said were vague enough to qualify, others were familiar enough to raise an eyebrow.  He said women fall for me easily (hehe) and the next 17 years of my life would be good.  He also suggested I should wear yellow sapphire to improve Jupiter, swim in natural water to balance my mood (by fighting off the sun), that I need many blessings, and he warned that if I get married before I'm 28, especially to someone with a weak Mars, my partner will die.  He was very adamant about this and cited a time his father gave someone the same warning.  She disregarded it and five days after the wedding her husband was hit by a bus and killed.

As long as I'm having readings done, I've also met someone who is audiovoyant--she hears voices that tell her things that turn out to be true, and does readings for people by listening to what the voices tell her about them.  I'll have to get one of those done.

I have always very much dismissed this realm of spirituality, but both of these people seem quite rational and have found startling truth in their skills--Ketan did a reading that told him he would be abroad soon, perhaps in the United States, before he ever found out about Metta Mentors, and now he is abroad for the first time in his life... in the United States.

Actually, I think I dismiss this sphere because I don't want it to be valid.  If astrology and audiovoyancy are able to predict the future, that means I am not able to control the future, and I am not satisfied with that.

Even though, scientifically, I'm still an epiphenominalist.

Many guides to making a living writing suggest blogging to build examples of writing.  I think this post just screwed me out of a job, now that I'm crazy.

I wish fiction writers made money.

As soon as I have time I'm re-launching The Adventures of Nidgin Idberry of Frockleton.

I'm done.

Living Slowly

I think this place is superior to the places I've lived in the United States in pretty much every way.  Everybody is cool.  The food is good.  There's a beach.  What else is there to say?

Life as a college graduate

Fifty-eight hours ago, in the sweat-drenching heat of our main gym (why?  why?), I finally nabbed my Bachelor of Arts degree.  It looks depressingly like my high school diploma.

I spoke at baccalaureate and received lots of positive feedback.  Praise is always awkward.

I numbly loaded the last of my life into my van today and left Pirate House behind.  I decided I want to start college over.  Dad asked if that meant I wanted to do it differently.  No, I just want to do it again.

I learned a lot: Hardee's starts serving breakfast at 3am.  You should not use the word "hick" with any volume in public in a small town.  The quality of my work varies inversely to the time I spend on it.  "Irregardless" is a dictionary word (but my Mac, like me, refuses to recognize it).  It takes 2.5 liters of water to make one liter of Coca-Cola.  Straight bourbon is not straight bourbon unless it has been aged for at least two years.  And the greatest modern philosopher is a fictional talking gorilla.

I read once that "I" is the most commonly used word in the English language.  Maybe just spoken language?  I write a lot of research papers that do not use "I."  That was the same book that told me the world's fastest animal is the African swallow.  I remember feeling very defensive about my own favorite animal, the Cheetah.

/nonseq

In 29.5 hours I will be leaving for Mexico.  If I had regular readers to write to they would be familiar with my feelings about a fishing village called Sayulita.  Since I estimate that zero people who read my blog then still read it now, I'll just say Sayulita is a way awesome place.

After that I'm going to Berkeley.  I have an internship with Pace e Bene, which is way cool.  I'll be working on their Nonviolent Stories project, interviewing, transcribing, writing, and producing film.  Way, way cool.  I also may be doing some work with Free Range Studios, which is certainly equally cool.  You may know them as the people who produced the Story of Stuff.

By the way, if you haven't yet seen the Story of Stuff, you should watch it.  Here's a link to it.  So yeah, those guys.  And me, working with them.  Way cool.

By now everyone knows that birds learn to fly by getting shoved out of the nest, right?  Well, I've just been shoved out of a nest, and I'm currently in freefall.  I don't know what I want to do.  I'm starting at Bethany in the fall, but I don't know if I'll stay there.  UC's Master of Liberal Studies (MLS) degree looks pretty cool.  So does law enforcement, which isn't really related to my educational path, but it's what I've wanted to do since I was about six.  Can you be a peace activist and a cop at the same time?

I wish.

Well, I have to unpack a house's worth of stuff and shove it all in an attic tomorrow, so I'd best be getting to bed.

Peace

Nick

I told you texting was repugnant

New York Times article today about the negative effects of the texting society.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html?em

Epic fail

My career as an author was short-lived.  Despite 70-some people going to the web page where my book was for sale, I sold zero copies.

Okay, I sold one copy, if you count the one my girlfriend bought.

I guess I'm not making my living that way.

Take that... you.

From NYTimes:

"The polls that show more Americans abandoning organized religion don’t suggest a dramatic uptick in atheism: They reveal the growth of do-it-yourself spirituality, with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away. The same trend is at work within organized faiths as well, where both liberal and conservative believers often encounter a God who’s too busy validating their particular version of the American Dream to raise a peep about, say, how much money they’re making or how many times they’ve been married."

Ha.

I'd like to buy a kidney, please.

I tend to assume the state is right until I form an opinion otherwise.  Which means that up until now, I'd always figured that making it illegal to sell organs was the right call.  Fair's fair, right?

Maybe.  But let's be utilitarians.  Rich people buying their way off the waiting list isn't fair, but it shortens the list.  Plenty of people who aren't willing to donate kidneys (or chunks of liver) for free would do it for the right price.  I know i would.  So yes, people with money have an advantage, but it does help everyone else on the list.  Isn't that capitalism at its best?

Nick Kauffman, L.L.C.

At the age of 17, I wrote the following at the beginning of a blog entry:

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Rivernico News, a division of Nicolas Entertainment, a subsidiary of Nickslife, which is owned by Miller Kauffman Parentals Inc., who are in turn owned by the United States Government (along with the United Kingdom, Israel, and your soul).

I would like to note that I am now a 51% owner of Nickslife, though Miller Kauffman Parentals still have a large share.  And despite a level of teenage hotheadedness that even most people familiar with my current hotheadedness wouldn't believe I possessed, I'm still proud that I was making snide political remarks five years ago.  You know, before it was cool.

I remember very much enjoying that whole company/subsidiary splicing of my life.  Beyond its comedic value, it gave me a sense of order.  I could divide my life into segments, each one tailored to some specific purpose.  Today, I find myself seeking some clarity like that for my writing.

There is a lot I want to write.  I have two worlds of fantasy-fiction waiting for me to put them into novel form for my first few million dollars.  I write poetry (though it doesn't really sell).  I write moral and theological commentaries.  I want to write my life stories.  And sometimes I just want to write what I'm feeling.

How do I parse all that?  All these authors I read have specialties.  They write about one thing.  I don't want to restrict myself that way... though I suppose I could actually write all this stuff I want to write and see what succeeds.

Then there are the readers.  Not the ones I don't know; I'm fine with them.  But I can't have my Grandma reading memoirs of my college days.  I can't have my professors reading my fantasy fiction (after all, that genre is loaded with the myth of redemptive violence).  And the things I want to write don't always mesh or agree with each other, so even if I wrote under a pen name, would I need more than one?

Sometimes I think about starting a new blog so I can just write and write and write and not worry about my audience.  Who cares if some random person from Bangladesh stumbles across my blog and reads all my innermost thoughts?  I'll never meet them.

But then, I want to claim what I write.  In anonymity, nobody matters.  Maybe people with interesting things to say, sure, but my only selling point is that people know me personally.

I want to assure everyone that my real writing looks nothing like my blogging.  When I blog, I write until I'm tired of writing.  When I write, I actually take the time to form some sort of conclusion.

My first "book"

I am not a romantic, but also I am. I am sometimes good at thinking up last-second unique gift ideas for people. Sometimes. And I suppose by "thinking up" I mean "getting hit with," because any real thought on the matter will usually result in the sort of crippling failure that leads me to beg my girlfriend not to give me anything for Christmas, lest I feel guilty for my lack of comparable effort.

Well, this Valentine's Day was one of those finer moments for me. I had most of the vignettes I've written so far bound into a book, dedicated it to Natasha, and gave her a copy. Until now, only two copies (one for me and one for her) existed, but after reviewing it a few times I decided it's not a total embarrassment, so I've made it available to the public through Lulu.com. You can see the listing, along with a couple of the poems, here.

I can't really push anyone to buy it, which is why I will never be a good salesperson, but if you click the link and say "that's kind of cool, Nick," I will be very grateful. Of course if you choose to buy it, I'll be more grateful, but almost all the poems are available for free on this blog if you look for them.

Regarding the current infestation in Pirate House

Last night I was doing homework (playing video games) and generally minding my own business when the door opened and several loud voices entered my home.  Under the guise of recycling a glass jar I exited my room to investigate.

Apparently Micah had gone to the college's air band concert and met some guys that know a guy that know a guy that he knows, so he invited them all to come back to our house.

As of today, they are still here.  Micah left to go study.  I don't know where Steve went.  So here I sit, with some random guys hanging out on my front porch and storing their beer in my refrigerator.

Well, the joke's on them.  Because every hour they stay here, I'm stashing two of their beers elsewhere.

Proving God

Some of you may be familiar with philosophers' attempts to prove God's existence.  The simplest is put forth by Descartes, who in doubting reality, realized the only thing he could be sure of was that he doubted.  Here's my paraphrase:

I doubt, therefore I think.
I think, therefore I exist.
I doubt, therefore I am imperfect.
I am imperfect, therefore imperfection exists.
Imperfection exists, therefore perfection exists.
God, by definition, is perfection, therefore God exists.
God is perfect, therefore God is good.
God is good, therefore God would not deceive us.
God would not deceive us, therefore the world and my experiences in it are real.

This proof actually shares the same fatal flaw as the other God proof I've heard:

Something can exist either in thought or in reality.
I can think of God, therefore God exists in thought.
It is more powerful to exist in reality than in thought.
God is, by definition, the most powerful, therefore God exists in reality.

The flaw, of course, is that we are asked to accept that because something is conceptualized, it must exist in accordance to its intrinsic characteristics.  Yet if I believe that God is, by definition, a delicious jelly donut sitting on my desk, there is still no jelly donut on my desk.  Those of us not well schooled in metaphysics may not be able to articulate exactly why we know these proofs are bogus, but we do know it.

(Note: I am not a philosopher, so if you're outraged at how much I screwed up my summary of these ideas, I apologize.)

However, in some of my musings this year, I have come across my own conditional proof that God exists.  Conditional in that it does not prove God, but makes God a necessary derivative of another belief.  Here it is:

If we have free will, God exists.

Maybe some of you are nodding your heads and saying "good point," or shaking your heads and saying "nope."  You have probably already jumped ahead through everything else I'm about to say.  If, however, you're going "huh?" then you can benefit from reading my explanation.

It started in Mexico.  I have no real explanation for why it started in Mexico, except perhaps that I (like Descartes, it would seem) had a lot of free time on my hands.  It was then that I began doubting free will.

It seems, scientifically, that to believe in free will, you must at some point stop your understanding of physical science.  Scientifically speaking, our brains are very complex systems of electrical signals and chemical reactions that form what we experience as thought.  Like everything in nature, these systems react to stimuli in the environment, chug through some insanely complex equations, and churn out an answer.  It's conceptually no different from the reaction you get when you mix baking soda and vinegar, or when you charge a battery, or when you plant a seed.  There are variables (how much vinegar you used, how long the battery is charging, nutrients in the soil, and so forth) that, depending on the complexity and our ability to measure them, we may or may not be aware of.  But if we were to know all of these variables, we could predict the outcome.  Chaos theory says that we cannot--that the universe is far too complex for us to predict outcomes like that.  But if we were omniscient about the present, we would be able to predict the future.

Are you buying this?  Let me ask you something: if you flip a coin, what are the chances that it will land heads?  Fifty percent?  Fifty-one percent?  Say you flip a coin and it lands on heads.  Given the exact physical circumstances of that toss--air currents in the room, your pulse, everything--what were the odds that it was going to be heads?  I claim 100%.  If you built a time machine, went back in time, and observed that coin toss again without changing anything (forget Heisenberg for a second), it would land on heads.  Every time.

Apply the same concept to a choice.  What will I eat for breakfast?  Cereal or eggs?  I think I'm choosing, but I'm actually just running an equation in my brain based on my hunger, how long it's been since I last ate eggs, how much time I have before I have to be in class, and so forth.  I may choose to make eggs.  If I go back in time and watch that play out again, I will once again choose to make eggs, because that was the outcome of that equation (note: for this reason I don't believe in alternate realities--at least not according to the "we create one with every choice" theory).

The end result is predetermination.  Given the exact same circumstances, we will make the exact same choices, just like the same math equation will always yield the same result (and don't give me any plus-or-minus crap or start talking about the number i).

There's a whole concept in philosophy that assumes all this, and goes on to explain our experiences and sense of self: epiphenominalism.  "In the Philosophy of Mind, a dualist theory of mind-body interaction which maintains all mental events are causally dependent upon physical events (i.e., brain states). According to this theory brain events cause mental events, but not vice versa" (Maricopa).  Essentially, our experience of making a choice is actually a side-effect of our body making that choice.  It's an illusion, unintended by the brain--a "ghost in the machine."

You may disagree, but I think all of this makes perfect sense.

So where does free will come in to play?  Do we have free will?  I believe I make choices all the time.  I believe I have free will.  Maybe I'm just suffering from the delusion of mental existence, but maybe I'm right, and there actually is free will.  But here's the thing:

To the best of my scientific and philosophical understanding, free will is impossible.  Therefore, free will can only exist by divine miracle.

Divine miracle means God.

My Trek trek(s)

ONE

Having replaced my crappy, falling-apart free bike with a new Trek 7.2FX, I've been riding a lot more. A fast car may not win the race, but it definitely makes you more interested in entering.

Gripped by some mild form of the kind of madness that leads people to climb Everest or drop $60 grand to circumnavigate the globe (yes, I signed up), I decided that I would return to Goshen for Spring Break not by car, but by bicycle.

Within ten minutes of leaving home, I was miserable. The sky was gray, it was starting to drizzle, and, having no experience with making the journey in this particular manner, I didn't know if I had five hours ahead of me or seven. I didn't even know how far it was.

However horrible this idea was turning out to be, though, I couldn't turn back. There would be no shamefully trudging back into the house, and I couldn't risk the possibility that someone had witnessed me, backpack on my back and duffel bag strapped to my bike, going one way, and would be there still to witness my failure. So I decided that I had to make it decently close to halfway, at which point I could call Mom and beg for her to come get me.

Other than a couple of hills that gave me the opportunity to get all the way to my 24th gear (and to reconsider the literalness of the term "breakneck speed"), my first real ray of sunshine came when I hit the intersection of 300 and 1000, the first landmark of my journey. And speaking of sunshine, the sun was starting to come out at this point. I stopped for some water and rode on.

I rode and rode and rode, passing at least two intersections of Country Club Road and Country Club Road, which made staying on Country Club Road somewhat of a challenge. I did go off my planned path a couple of times, which I discovered only today as I examined my route on Google Earth.

And then it happened. The happiest moment of my life: seeing the sign that said "Warsaw City Limits." Two hours, and I'd made it to Warsaw. Elated, I rode on, stopping at Arby's for a bathroom break and some water. And on I rode.

The three miles from Warsaw to Leesburg were a bit tedious, and the five miles from Leesburg to Milford were even worse. It was getting darker and colder, and the traffic on State Road 15 was causing more stress than the leisurely country roads I'd stuck to so far. But I did make it to Milford, where I stopped for a power bar and some gatorade, and my bike fell on me (yes, on me: I was sitting next to it) and bruised my wrist. I then got on Old State Road 15, which was refreshingly devoid of traffic, and rode on.

The ride from Milford to New Paris was better than the previous two legs, but I was getting pretty tired of biking and biking (and biking). But once I made it to New Paris, Goshen was simple. And once you're within the city limits on the south side, it's not far to my house. All told, stops included, I made the 44.5 mile ride in 4:15, for an average of 10.47 mph. That's probably just over 11 mph average during actual riding, which I'm pretty happy with given the nasty winds and hills that sometimes had me at a walking pace.

TWO

I do not want to find out what it feels like to bike 45 miles and then not exercise afterwards, so I took my bike out for a ride around the bike trails today. I went down the millrace and then detoured into Shenklin Park, thinking I'd take the trail through the woods and up to Indiana Avenue, then head over to Kercher Road and back home. I rode through a couple of shallow but formidable puddles, then found my plan challenged: the river had flooded, and the trails in the woods were entirely underwater. There was only one thing to do.

I kept going. The water probably wasn't more than eight inches high at its highest points, but it was enough to soak my feet (and the only shoes I brought). I had to keep pedaling, forcing my bike through the sand and gravel under the water, because stopping meant standing in cold river water. And I also had to keep a close watch to make sure I wasn't getting in too deep or, as became a danger at one point, that I wasn't leaving the trail and riding straight into the river.

When I made it to the edge of the woods, I changed my plan. Instead of heading over to Indiana, I went back through the woods. It was just too much fun to resist. It was even more exciting the second time because, due to the angle of the sun and its reflection on the water, I really couldn't tell where I was going.

I rode back up the millrace, ditched my shoes and socks on our back stoop, showered, and stole some of Dad's clothes. Then I had a power bar and some milk, and Mom gave me twenty dollars. It's my twenty dollars, but it's still nice to have money.

So far, spring break has been good.

Time, money, and the state of the world

There is not enough time in my life right now.

Perhaps I am, three and one half years in, learning what it is like to be in college.

I have 12.5 credit hours of class per week, but since the .5 is a PE credit, it doesn't reflect actual class time.  So I am in class for 13.5 hours per week.

The official estimate is that we should spend three hours outside of class studying for every one hour we spend in class.  While this might actually be necessary for me this semester, I've never done it before, so we'll settle on two.  I need to spend 24 hours studying per week.

My manager continues to only pretend to hear that I need fewer hours.  I work 22-30 hours per week.  We'll settle on 24.

I teach Sunday school, which also requires me to be in Church.  I won't pretend I spend any significant amount of time preparing for this.  Two hours per week.

That's 63.5 hours per week, just from my schedule and associated regular responsibilities (75.5 if I spend the suggested three hours studying).  On top of that, I am required to write an article for an academic journal, which is a bigger single assignment than I have ever previously had, by March.  I am preaching in church Sunday, and in chapel next month.  And I am possibly working with one of my professors to refine a paper from last semester, because she thinks it might be polished into something worthy of publication.

Somehow, they expect people to apply for graduate school amidst this mess?

It is not even close to possible for me to stay on top of everything.  I have yet to complete a single assignment for the new semester, and have done only one required reading.  Never have I felt so stretched out--and stressed out.

As I drove earlier tonight through the reflections I'm now rehashing, my source of stress quickly shifted from the time to the money.

The only significant time sink I can ditch is work.  Unfortunately, while my savings might be able to feed me for the rest of this semester, I'll be unable to spend any on anything else.  I might have more money if they didn't keep adding new books for me to buy and obscene graduation fees to pay.  I will have no bar nights with friends, no bike to ride to campus, no movie or game rentals, no visits to the coffee shop, and no completion of my nearly-complete David Sedaris collection.  In a sense, my current schedule is almost a blessing, because if I lighten it I'll have nothing to do with any leisure time I finally gain.  I can survive without my job, but only in the literal sense (and perhaps the spiritual sense, as my work is certainly ethically questionable).

Then my thoughts shifted again.  Even I am not selfish enough to dwell on myself for too long.

I will be fine.  I have an extensive support system, from my parents, who I'm sure would never let me starve (though a little hunger would probably be good for me), to friends who range from "you need to eat, I'm paying" to "take this money."  For me, financial stress is a question of whether I can go out with my friends.

For some people, it is a question of life and death.

What stupid idiot came up with money in the first place?  Why do we need this?  Someone has to die because what, he didn't sell enough coffee beans, or Wal Mart came and drove him out of his livelihood?  Does anyone see this happening?

God and I had a little shouting match about this tonight.  Or rather, I had a little shouting match about this tonight--the nice thing about having a shouting match with God is she usually lets me win.

But as Saint Francis so many years before, I found the question being bounced right back at me.  Why do you allow poverty?

"Listening to God."  There's some sort of thematic focus on that next week that deviates from the standard Lectionary for the Church of the Brethren.  It's an interesting topic, and one I can take a few different ways.  I suppose it boils down to the usual dichotomy between Biblical and bearable, the former being this:

God speaks to us with the suffering of others.  Every cry for help in the world is God's call for us to stop dicking around and do what Christ told us to do.  It happens halfway across the globe as thousands starve in a world with more than enough food for everyone, and it happens in our own cities as weathered people beg for spare change in the streets.  And like any good child, we've become adept at tuning out our parent, and even better at justifying it.  The hungry children in Africa or Asia are too distant for us to immediately help, and the hungry man on the street corner is probably going to spend the money on drugs.

We make these stupid indefensible arguments so we don't have to give up our flex money or, worse, look these people in the eye.  Do you feel like a piece of your soul dies every time you pretend not to see them?  I do.  And I can tell you why: it's because we just hung up the phone on God, again.

Awful, isn't it?  I feel awful.  You probably feel awful.

Let's go to church and sing a while and pretend we've done our bit.

Hey, if it ain't country...

"You're the one that was listening to that... what was it... opera music."
"...I don't listen to opera."
"Well what was you listening to?"
"Jazz."
"Whatever."