An Excellent Film

I wish Robert Redford had made this movie when I burning out towards the end of college. Basically, he plays a political science professor giving it with double barrels to some kid who is choosing cynicism, criticism and another major over engagement with the real nuts and bolts politics. During the same hour that their conversation takes place, a journalist and a senator square off over the ethics of their respective actions as the senator announces a new strategy in Afghanistan, and two young soldiers who used to be Redford's star students take part in the leading offensive of this new strategy.

To Quote:

Todd: "Well isn't that my point? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, they can't fix things, what the hell is Todd Hayes gonna do?"
Redford; "Bitch? Quit?"
Todd: "Hey, look, I'm gonna pay my taxes, all right? I'm gonna obey traffic lights, allright?"
Redford: "I was thinking about something bigger."
Todd: "Something bigger? Bigger like what, be a congressman? Oh, yeah, super, and then I get to be one of those turds in DC--and I mean, pure pieces of ****--make our laws? I get to be a doughboy, who parts his hair on the same side as everybody else, the guy who, who never says anything even though he never stops talking? Oh, I get to be the guy who, who lecture you on morality, while the page jacks me off under the desk? Oh, yeah, please, the guy who funnels away a million that doesn't belong to him and balls like an evangelist when he gets caught. And how many never get caught, doc? Hey, if that's something bigger than being a good joe with a good job, then, ****it. Yeah, that's where you lost me."
[long pause]
Redford: "You almost convinced me. You almost convinced me that you really know what you're talking about. You're great with words, son, but you know what would make them even better, is if they had a heartbeat. If they were rooted in any kind of experience. If you had knocked on doors, licked envelopes, been to a **** public rally...just put yourself on the line in any meaningful way."

[later]

Todd: "What changed?"
Redford: "You. The students sitting across from me."
Todd: "'Cause we're more shrewd, because we see how things work, because we don't want to live and die for these pieces of ****."
Redford: "No. Because you want to put as much distance between yourselves and the real world as possible. And these, these "pieces of **** [the corrupt and powerful]," they bank on your apathy--they bank on your willful ignorance. They plan strategies around it!
Todd: "So blame me for it all. Blame me because I, I just want to live the good life, because I'm smart enough to? You're gonna blame me, because I don't want to work elbow to elbow with you on a g-----n collective farm? Doc, you're starting to sound a **** of a lot like my parents. They're always harping on me about how they worked so hard to give me the better life, and then they resent the **** out of me because I got the nerve to enjoy it."
Redford: "Todd, what good is a $90,000 Benz...if there's not only not enough gas in the tank, but the streets and the highways are decaying to the point of becoming third world? With all your rants about Congress and the government are true, if things are really bad, as bad as you say they are...when thousands of American troops are dead and more are dying every day, probably as we are speaking, you tell me, how can you enjoy the good life? Rome is burning, son. And the problem is not with the people that started it--they're past, irredeemable--the problem is with us: all of us. Who do nothing. Who just sit, and try to maneuver around the edges of the flame. Now I tell you something. There are people out there, day to day, all over the world that are fighting to make this better..."
Todd: "You think it's better to have tried and failed that to never have tried, right? But what is the difference if you end up in the same place?"
Redford: "...Well at least you did something."

[then later, in class]

Student: "C'mon, when hasn't a big house with high walls been the American dream?"
Michael Pena: "July 5th, 1776."
Derek Luke: "What about December 8th, 1941?"
Pena: September 12th, 2001?"

[later, in the office.]

Redford: "The decisions you make now, bud, can be changed...with years and years of hard work to re-do it. And in those years you become something different. Everybody does, as time passes--you get married, you get into debt...but you're never going to be the same person you are right now. And "promise," and "potential,"--it's a very fickle thing. And it just might not be there anymore...the tough thing about adulthood is that--it starts before your even know it starts: when you're already a dozen decisions into it. But what you need to know, Todd: no lifeguard's watching you anymore. You're on your own. You're your own man, and the decisions you make now are yours and yours alone from here until the end."

This is one of those movies that shows us what it is like to be part of our generation, in the flux: part of our generation and safe and not responsible, or part of our generation and courageous.

And it's really well filmed :) Watch this movie.

Recent Accomplishments, in Ascending Order of Significance

1. Acended to Near Full Time Worker status with the college, thus...

2. Actually have health (and life!) insurance!

3. Learned to read and write Arabic script, conjugate Arabic verbs in the present/incomplete tense, and assemble basic grammatical structures (also Arabic).

4. Clawed my way back into the Land Grab Top 100! (look for "wyldebeenst"--then groan with envy!)

Totally Why I Have Shin Splints

[article--isn't the New Yorker awesome?]

I didn't have them when I hiked summers and wandered around barefoot as much as possible.

And then I took jobs where boot-wearing was mandatory, and lived in a city where barefoot is dangerous. And when I started running again, midwinter...

Whammo. shin splints. I'm so lobbying for barefoot.

So. Question. Is flip-flop as good as barefoot?

David Plotz Reads the Bible

David Plotz, a lifelong practicing Jew, decided to read through the Bible after opening it while bored and stumbling into the gruesome story of the Rape of Dinah in Genesis (also known as "How to get an entire tribe to inflict terrible pain onthemselves, then slaughter them when they are helpless in their misery, even though there are two of you and lots of them; or, "Don't f**k around with the canny bastards who inherited Jacob's trickybastard genes."

So, he decided to read the Bible, and blog it. It's good reading. It's a great relief to see the sheer volume of characters God deals with in "the OT." It's good for the chronically spiritually insecure to be incapable of picking up a theme for God's chosen. They really run the gamut from passive-aggressive, wheeling/dealing, chill, righteous, absolutely unrighteous, dumb, stubborn...also, some God speaks to, and some God does not. You just can't predict who God's going to pick, and what he's going to do for them (or to them, for that matter), or whether or not they're particularly going to like it, or whether even God will keep his promises. Freddy Buechner says that the Old Testament is one tough pill to swalllow for the moralists everywhere--there's no discernible, predictable connection between the moral behavior (or intelligence, or likeability, or theology) of the actors and their general lot in life. Life just sort of happens to them, and they muddle along, and some are better than others, and they reap various practical rewards for their good behavior, sometimes, but there's just no sure way to be God's favorite.

(Oddly, also, the account has left the Barenaked Ladies' "Old Apartment" in my head: "This is where we used to live...")

Excerpt:

"Chapter 8
Another Deuteronomy line that everyone knows: "Man does not live by bread alone."

I know that President Bush is an avid Bible reader. I hope he and his speechwriters have been poring over Deuteronomy. Here's why: We don't have the resources to start another war right now, but we still need to force our enemies to behave. If Bush is drafting a speech that will scare the bejesus out of the Iranians (or perhaps, scare the bemuhammad out of them), he should look no further than the Deut. It's one long threat! A few highlights, chosen practically at random from the thunderous verses of Chapter 7 and 8.

"I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish."

or

We "shall obliterate their name from under the heavens."

or

"God will also send a plague against them, until those who are left in hiding perish before you."

or

"The Lord's anger will blaze forth against you and He will promptly wipe you out."

How do Deuteronomy's imprecations fit together with the book's sublime prayers like the Shema? They don't! And that's what confuses me. It's a Jekyll and Hyde of a book. The Shema, which orders us to love God with all our heart and mind, is quickly followed by rip-their-guts-out Saw-like cursing from God and Moses. That's how the whole book has gone so far: Gorgeous invocations to faith alternate with saber-rattling and lightning bolts. It's like a biblical good-cop, bad-cop routine. I suppose it's effective, because it keeps you off balance. In any given moment, it's not clear if you are supposed to love God or fear Him, so you'd better do both."

Moment of Free Associative Musing: The Torah is full of grandiose promises that don't get fulfilled: inheriting all the land, living in peace, multiplied by thousands upon thousands, bountiful harvests, utter destruction, etc, etc... It reminds me of all the Arabists and Middle Eastern experts who explain that honest liberal-minded moderates cannot govern Iraq--you have to have larger-than-life sheikhs with flowery rhetoric and iron fists, you have to make grandiose promises that you cannot possibly keep, you have to wheedle and deal and be dishonest and play factions off against each other, you have inspire fear in your enemies and be fiercely loyal to your friends, right or wrong. Sounds a lot like God and Moses and the patriarchs.

Flickr SafeSearch

Flickr SafeSearch blocked my attempt to view this image, which I will post very far down on the page so that you don't have to see it by accident. Eileen reminds me that normal non-EMT people see blood and guts and are inspired to more to nausea and revulsion than morbid curiosity.

At any rate, after verifying with Flickr that yes, in fact, I wanted to actually see this picture (which I was attempting to access after having already seen the picture, posted to an archive of the excellent and thrice-worthy-of-mention Luke's Commonplace Book) I got a picture with a full story--the tragically low arc of this man's life, from his youth on the streets to his adulthood, still on the streets. And, I'm thinking, how can you turn away from this? This is, as one of the commentors put, what "man does to man," and it's become my norm for the world. This is humanity, as I see it, and it's why I post things like this.

So, anyway, there at the top there, Flickr let's you choose to bail out. Eeeeeep! Don't want to see that! Hoy crap! I like my sanitized version of the world, thank you. I don't want to think about people like that, situations like that, crippled kids or those born brain dead or nursing-home-farms or nasty crap. I don't want the ugly stuff of life, just the nice and uplifting. Show me the kittens, baby! It's the new motto for the self-obsessed, the snobbish, the comfortable. Which is, oddly, a lot like shooting up heroin to ignore the sickness and the pain, except that heroin is incredibly addictive biologically, and drowning out the ugly is easier, cheaper, and only psychologically compulsive.

I rant. Here is your picture. This is what the world looks like to me, except add in equal parts Alzheimer's patients in restraints lining the hallways like forgotten children in nursing homes, belligerent and helpless psychiatric patients, 90 year-old grandmothers with bedsores the size of my face in houses with 60-inch flatscreens, and very small, very dead children. And here's a link to the Flickr page, with accompanying story. Sorry, Tegan, if I'm having a hard time hearing God's sweetness and light, lately, he's making such a great effort to be heard above the noise. It's fucked-up-psalm-day, not theological-correctness-psalm-day, maybe i just wanted a hug. And God's not showing up with a lot of those, either.

Thoughts?

"Some firms wouldn't hire me--they'd probably seen the name Bob Jones University on my resume and figured, "If the school can't even call itself Robert Jones University, how bright can its graduates be?" "

"Me and Mr. Jones," a reflection on living and leaving the Bob Jones lifestyle.

"By the time I joined my law firm, no one could have guessed at my past. I had stopped attending church and begun paying fifteen dollars for a single lipstick. I worked a "man's job" and decided to wait to have babies. I fiew to Vegas to play slots with my father. Any of these was enough to doom my soul, but life felt too good, as the preachers had warned, and I couldn't stop. This transformation still comes at a price. I haven't enjoyed a success or a pleasure or a new song without suspecting that the sin was being recorded somewhere to be used against me someday. Fun still unsettles me inside.

"Today, I'm on a partnership track in a top-tier law firm...Now I give advice to Fortune 500 corporations and green-light million-dollar deals. Savvy businessmen respect my opinion. They don't know that I still wake up screaming sometimes. The world is a scary place, and in my dreams I'm still protected. In my dreams, I'm still at Bob Jones, the place where everything turns out right. That's a feeling any person would want. When I see conservative Muslims or Orthodox Jews on the street, Branch Davidians on TV, baby cousins at my family reunion, I can see they've been promised that feeling, too. Under the right circumstances, that promise can be the most powerful thing in the world. Under the right circumstances, you'll do anything for that promise."

In the midst of smatterings of the normal trasnfers, traffic snafus, asthmatics and cuckoo binge drinkers, Barrett and I managed to have the incredible luck of having to do not one, but two "confirmations"--where we arrive far too late and can do nothing but confirm that the patient is already gone and we can't do anything. One 90-ish year old guy, one thirty-ish year old woman. You think it would make a difference, the one being full up with years like Abraham, the other young and mysteriously, unaccountably gone, but the family's faces and tears were the same.

So you look around the house, and they both had their inner-city apartment walls covered in copious amounts of Jesus Crap from the Christian bookstore. So what do you say to the bereaved? We're sorry for your loss. It looks like he was a good man. It looks like she was a good woman. They were on speaking terms with the Big Guy. They're with Jesus now.

But, I, as always, wonder: what if the sunny children and "God Watches Over This House" plaques and eerily matching "When God Closes a Door He Always Opens Another" posters with the little kitten on them were the wife's, and the old man hated it until the day he cursed his last? What if the religious young woman was the worst kind of tyrant? What if the young men were crying because they did not know how to think about the not-so-dearly beloved, what if they were remembering with disappointment that all they had to remember from father or mother or sister was abuse, tyrrany, and rampant egotism.

Something deep inside me is reminding me it's not very good to speak ill of the dead.

And what do I believe, anyway, about this going to be with Jesus when we die? About the chances of resurrection, about he qualifications for eternal life? I'm certainly not on "good speaking terms" with the big guy. I think he's kind of an absentee jerk, in fact, but I'm not about to say it because, hey, my life is still pretty sweet, and there's this big, big payoff for swallowing your questions and toeing the line, so they say, and not much of one at all for saying, "Fuckit, this shit's ridiculous, I'm going to go blow my meaningless life at [pick your empty existentialist excuse for a dull, self-involved, neurotic pasttime]." (Note to self: thank Lewis and Chesterton for taking all the thrill and promise out of hedonism.)

And, hey, I don't even know who I'm talking about, anyway...he doesn't really pop up and endorse particular theologies every November like our good Republican presidential candidates.

Well, this is what that living in a moral vacuum feels like. Gee, it sucks. There must be an alternative...unless you're not sincerely convinced the world isn't a moral vacuum. So do you pretend? Especially if you're pretty sure that people who are convinced that the world is not a moral vacuum are essentially happier, and generally better, people--except when they find themselves incapable of convincing themselves anymore and fall apart into the cynical, the bitter, and the burnt out?

Thoughts and musings...

too amazing not to post

the visual arts meet the statistical...arts.

Dan's Thinking About War Again...

found some right excellent writing. good style, good hands-on info into the soft war on terror. very intercultural, very insightful. Read:

I began to wonder – and not for the first time - where the hundreds of men down the hall, currently employed by the Iraqi government and the United States Army, had been one year ago, before the Reconciliation. Before the Sawha. I was fairly certain to the answer to my question was caked in AK-47 gun powder and dripped with American blood. I trusted that some of the Sheiks truly believed in freedom, if not for their country, at least for their neighborhoods and for their people. Did their pipeswingers? Did these paramilitants believe in anything beyond the promise of a monthly stipend … and should they even have to? Can someone with a full stomach and a warm bed ever rightfully doubt the intentions and ideals of those without, who are seeking the same thing through whatever means present themselves?

I didn’t know the answers to these questions. Not yet, at least. So I began to type what I did know.

[ahem]

So, tomorrow I am taking a rather important test: the National Criminal Justice Officer Selection Inventory, as phase one in my attempt to become a New York State Trooper. It's a pretty important test. I could use a good job. And, hey, I'd look pretty awesome in the uniform. We'll see what happens...

today in world news....

My apologies to anyone who still reads this, I have been rather busy lately. Mostly this is her fault:



But I have to say I have been spending a good majority of my online time here and here and here. Yes, you're right, I never actually pay attention to my facebook wall or posts or inbox. That's because there is no score and bragging rights attached. Speaking of bragging rights, I now have plenty of time to blog because my 10-3, #1 in the league Team Billabongeritis got knocked out in the first round of playoffs by some Hutchdaddy 6-7 upstart from Shenawana and his friends with influence, notably the running-back gods and whoever's great idea this blizzard was.. So much for the best record in the league. I hate playoff systems.

So all this to say, years back I found something notable on from the internet monk, shared it with a few people, and completely forgot about it. Apparently I have done something with my life, as others latched on to the old philosopher. Thanks to brother Jeff, who has no quicklink because he lives in the Dark Ages where he would rather wander the Serengeti in pursuit of small, helpless grazing animals to pick on, I have rediscovered the monk and added him to my regularly browsed feeds on Google Reader. I like the simplicity of his Advent meditation.

This is pretty cool too, if you like Phil Collins.

Oh. And Merry Christmas to all!

[edit]

Tegan (look! you get a special mini blog post all to yourself! you should be proud. anecdotally, i was very happy the other day to remember my xanga password for the first time in months and actually be able to read your blog again. it made me happy. where was i? oh, her name is eileen and she works for upward bound and likes to dance and wear hats which she describes as "cute" and read Barbara Kingsolver and try out new recipes with organic and local food and in fact she is a not-a-lot-of-meat-arian and there are quite a few things about her but i will be skewered by many if i fail to mention that she also likes coffee quite a lot. can you tell from my writing that i finally bought a Dave Eggers book? i did.)

Well, Tegan, just because I can, I dedicate this song to you.

This is what I did Tuesday

First snowy day of the season...bad time to go canoeing.

watch the "video on demand" to see Ange Szymanski in his red Search and Rescue jacket.

the most accurate article.

Yeah, I'm a volunteer firefighter. Wear your lifejackets, little children.

"Beam’s writing never gives in to a jaded or purely ironic tone—and in 2007, that’s no small accomplishment...What Iron and Wine’s music seems to be urging toward more than anything is innocence, and the touchstones in this quest are frequently religious in nature...the heartfelt prayer of Our Endless Numbered Days’ “On Your Wings”: “God give us love in the time that we have / God, there are guns growing out of our bones / God, every road takes us farther from home.”

"But while it may puzzle some that a self-confessed agnostic like Beam would find consistent inspiration in biblical images and characters that are as likely to converse with the Holy Spirit as they are to address a love interest, for Beam it’s a natural, essential part of his writing process. “I like to use [religious images] because it starts you off a little bit further along in the story. You know, you could say Bob and Jerry did this, but then you have to explain who they are. But if you say ‘Cain and Abel’ it carries a certain weight. They have a connotation everyone understands, they symbolize the duality in us all. ... I like using those, because it’s our mythology.”

"...With a second round of mojitos on deck and a crackling, dry August heat making its presence felt on Guero’s outside porch, Beam pursues this line of thought further. It turns out that religion is not merely a cultural shorthand or creative prop for Beam but, like Johnny Cash before him, it constitutes one of the only three topics he’s genuinely interested in as a writer. “You have your three big things that you can talk about, basically, if you’re going to write something that actually means something to you as a human being, which is Love, God and Death. That’s basically the thing. Love, which occupies a lot of our time, because we don’t like being lonely. God, because everyone wants to know that there’s a reason behind what they’re doing and what the hell is going on. And death is just the reality of your finite time here.” "

--From the Paste Magazine interview with Sam Beam, otherwise known as "Iron and Wine," the most whole and full music I've heard in a while. Thanks to Kat for Paste, Mike for introducing me to Iron and Wine, and much jealousy to Becca who saw Iron and Wine in concert, in a tiny venue, before they were big, because her brother was opening the show...

"with the plastic eyeballs, spraypaint the vegetables/dog food stalls with the beefcake p****hose"

[censored lyrics in honor of mrs. kjbls]

Courtesy of dad, I now have the amazing Uncle Jay in my life.

Think Family Life Network gone horribly...right.

"with butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie"

3.

Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.

10.

When I no more can stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire,--
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.

George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul, which you can read online here.

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey

And, in other news, something I agreed wholeheartedly with before it was even broadcast.

A Belated Question

What are the long-term consequences of American unilateralism--namely, the willingness of President W. Bush to employ American military force unrestrained by international consensus or the United Nations?

The answer is increased global insecurity--no one knows who the US will decide to strike next. Additionally, the status quo rules for the use of armed force have changed. If it's acceptable for the US to pursue its interests abroad, unilaterally, using diplomatic, economic and military force to strong-arm lesser countries into compliance, then there is no moral ground to condemn countries such as Russia and China for doing the same. In fact, it's in their interest to cooperate, because the world's sole superpower is being downright bully-ish in pursuing its interests. And they can even use "security" and "combatting terrorism" to justify expansion into other spheres of influence.

The President's actions abroad (the global war on terror, the iraq war, ignoring the UN and global cooperation) and at home (encroachments on civil liberties and the right of habeas corpus, the Patriot Act, labeling dissidents as unpatriotic, labeling criticism as aiding and abetting the enemy) may not be actually immoral, unjustified, and a threat to human rights and the stability of the international community.

But they belong to--and by similarity tacitly lend approval to--the international rulebook of totalitarian and imperialistic governments. They have placed the United States squarely into a moral and structural grey area where totalitarian states exercise military force to achieve their own interests unrestrained by the necessity of membership within an international community. In undermining the authority of international institutions like the United Nations and by ignoring treaty obligations, the cowboy president has made the world a distinctly less orderly, and potentially less peaceful, place. If the United States can invade weaker countries in the name of security, while leveraging economic and political power to obtain consent and compliance from other countries, who is to stop Russia, China, India, or Pakistan (all nuclear-armed countries) from doing the same?

We should be wary of exercising "we can, and we will" diplomacy--lest we be held to the same principle in a weaker moment. This especially worries me in a world where basic democratic freedoms and institutions are disappearing under strongmen such as Hugo Chavez (yes, Steve, it does pain me to say it) and Vladimir Putin.

[in rereading my journal I find quotes]

"We are human and finite, and thus cannot live perpetually in a sense of expectation, or in a continuous Advent. We are distracted by many things. Our spiritual awareness waxes and wanes. If an attitude of expectancy, or an inclination to poignant spiritual experiences, is cultivated by conscious effort of our own, we will suffer severe limitations.

"Such effort totally misses the mark. We will get lifted up in moments of tenderness but we will be cast down in in hours of dryness. The swing of emotions is natural to us, and some are more subject to its swings than others. We musn't despair about this. But we shoudl be aware of cultivating religious emotions under the delusion that these are the workings of the Holy Spirit. Such...are unstable. They get in the way of our communion with God...

"God has come to us because we, by our own power of soul, by our own emotions, even the noblest and most sublime, can never attain redemption, can never regain communion with God...

"True expectancy, the waiting that is genuine and from the heart, is brought about by the coming of the Holy Spirit, by God coming to us, and not by our own devices. Spiritual depth, if it is true, is the working of God coming down and penetrating to the depths of our heart, and not of our own soul's climbing. No ladder of mysticism can ever meet or find or possess God. Faith is a power that is given to us; it is never simply our ability or strength of will to believe.

"To put it simply, spiritual experience, whether it be of faith, hope, or love, is something we cannot manufacture, but we can only receive. If we direct our lives to seeking it for ourselves, we will surely lose it, but if we lose our lives by living out daily the way of Christ, we shall find it...


"The most striking revelation...is the laying down of power that is revealed in his birth. Christ did not spring armed from the head of Zeus. He came as a child...This pattern of complete abandonment of human strength in total surrender to God's will is vital...When we experience God's love we turn away from the notion that...we by our religious efforts can set something in motion that God must obey in response."


"To believe that we, by an effort of will, can mount nearer to God or add one cubit to our stature is as un-Christian as the belief that we have no task as Christians for the mundane affairs of this world. Both beliefs have the same root--the pride that seeks to climb its way to God--and produce the same kind of confusion as the ancient attempt to build the tower of Babel."

--Phillip Britts

fairly amazing...

"click on the pictures to watch the photoshopping in progress"

(no, it really doesn't have anything to do with Firefly, but I'm tired)

the photoshopping is incredible...i want to be a model now. heck, with that computing power, i could be a girl model!

see also make sure you see the change in her arms--it's absolutely staggering

see, I don't like this. people are f***ing with my mind, and it's practically subliminal. a little color here, a little wash there, a little tweak there, and suddenly I'm not interacting with real people anymore. I'm interacting with unconscious expectations in between me and them. I'm judging my life and my experiences against some airbrushed, fanciful unreality.

and it's not just sex and beauty--I'm getting these notions that work should be hyper-engaging, my recreation should be both stylish, exotic, and intensely satisfying, and my relationships should be nourished by sarcastic one-liners and an overweening sense of self-importance.

sigh. the Sports Illustrated guy wrote something quite important when talking about Barry Bonds' breaking the home-run record under allegations of steroid use: these days, it's paramount to always keep spare batteries for the bullshit meter.

or, in the amazing words of Beck,

"don't believe everything that you breathe."

--

edit: and, of course, somebody had to do this, which simply rocks.

Old Poem

If I can speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but am destitute of Love, I have but become a loud-sounding trumpet or a clanging cymbal.

If I possess the gift of prophecy and am versed in all mysteries and all knowledge, and have such absolute faith that I can remove mountains, but am destitute of Love, I am nothing.

And if I distribute all my possessions to the poor, and give up my body to be burned, but am destitute of Love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love knows neither envy nor jealousy. Love is not forward and self-assertive, nor boastful and conceited.

She does not behave unbecomingly, nor seek to aggrandize herself, nor blaze out in passionate anger, nor brood over wrongs.

She finds no pleasure in injustice done to others, but joyfully sides with the truth. (Weymouth NT)

Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up. (GWT)

The love doth never fail; and whether there be prophecies, they shall become useless; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall become useless;

for in part we know, and in part we prophecy;

and when that which is perfect may come, then that which is in part shall become useless.

When I was a babe, as a babe I was speaking, as a babe I was thinking, as a babe I was reasoning, and when I have become a man, I have made useless the things of the babe;

for we see now through a mirror obscurely, and then face to face; now I know in part, and then I shall fully know, as also I was known;

and now there doth remain faith, hope, love -- these three; and the greatest of these is love. (YLT)

" THE fact is that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell patiently the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunsets, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude."

--G. K. Chesterton, 'Twelve Types.'

a good thought on postmodernism:

"'Tis the very difference between the artistic mind and the mathematical that the former sees things as they are in a picture, some nearer and larger, some smaller and farther away while to the mathematical mind everything, every inch in a million, every fact in a cosmos, must be of equal value. That is why mathematicians go mad, and poets scarcely ever do. A man may have as wide a view of life as he likes, the wider the better: a distant view, a bird's-eye view, but still a view and not a map. The one thing he cannot attempt in his version of the universe is to draw things to scale."

--from the same

So I Don't Post So Much When I Don't Have Free Pix Messaging

It's true.

So this will be an imagination post. Close your eyes.

Wait. Open them. Read a paragraph. Then close them and call visions of yours truly to mind.

I have a wicked awesome Leroy Townes shirt, from a wicked awesome show, a few weeks ago. They are fun, souldful, witty, putting the wild west and the lonesome and the down and out back into country and western. It has a bright red rooster on a dark green background, fronted by crossed pistols, and in my head it is the standard for some sort of western rebellion populated by grizzled, weatherbeaten cowhands, desperate prospectors in floppy hats, Mexican priests and weary barmaids with scrappy children. Ensemble la Revolucion!

Recent events have led me to two conclusions: the best moments in life cannot be planned--the best you can do is keep your eyes open, don't get lost in self-pity, dive into whatever is present with gusto, and earn your lumps or victories accordingly. You may not come out a rock star in the end, but you will come out grinning fiercely.

Ya see a curveball coming, and you just have to step up to the plate and swing. "For the rest of your life, you'll look back and wonder what would have happened if you got into that car..."

Speaking of Transformers, I'm sorry, the battered and classy old Camaro is totally cooler than the flashy plastic one--old Detroit iron will always maintain depth of character over electronics and injection molding and air conditioning and other farkle of the like.

So anyway, stepping up to the plate and swinging is what got me in the Genesee River last night, courtesy of Noel and his devilish ladies and evil sidekick miniCronk. But that is another story, for another day, and I may have gone down, but I went down in swinging', and that's what counts, right? Because who knows...next time might be a home run.

[edit]


judge for yourself. classic, weatherbeaten, monkeywrenched with great love on summer days in the driveway by some kid in Detroit saving his bucks for something loud and fast...

or plastic.

Now That's What I Call Music...

just plain awesome. Check out soma fm for more "extremely independent internet radio," especially "Groove Salad."

in other news, Nickel Creek at TitS (that's "Thursdays in the Square" for all ya'll not-Buffalonians) tonight! Free!

Be My Netflix Friend!

So if you Netflix, you should Netflix friend me. Then I'll know which movies you're getting and I can crash your party instead of wasting precious queue spots on movies I could be watching at your house!

And vice versa...

click here!

It's Great Being A Guy

My housemate, Nate, and I took the hour-long minute pilgrimage to Hornell last night, the abode of the only decently stocked grocery store for three counties in any direction. We'd been living off rice, canned beans and tomatoes, and pasta for the last week and it had been a good solid month since we last darkened a grocer's door.

Two shopping carts (and approximately forty cans of tomatoes, black beans, black-eyed peas, chili beans) later, with luck, we won't have to do that again for another month. We are men. You pull down the biggest wildebeest in the herd so that you don't have to do it again for a while, even if you lose a few expendable tribesmen in the process. (Leading, inevitably, to the expression, "It pays to be alpha.")

Incidentally, we stopped along side the road to pay our respects to a sleek apparition of beauty, in excellent condition, a 1997 Honda CBR900RR, in the red and black. From the days when sportbikes were still naturally aspirated, the '97 double R is a beautifully smooth, elegant, well designed machine of death. I know this because it was for sale, and the owner asked me if I wanted to take it out for a spin.

I'll summarise: the owner (Sean) said that it will do 90mph in first gear, and 135mph in 3rd, and that he's afraid of losing his CDL license and/or ending up like his friend, a local BOCES teacher. He's got good reason to worry--that machine has a very obscene amount of power for two wheels. It bike has six gears, but I was too terrified to get to third. I never buried the throttle, but I can verify--it does do 90 in first. Without even trying. It's an utterly terrifying sensation--you could let your mind wander and hit three digits in no time. Flat.

That's the thing that I like about my bike...it goes fast (well, not really, when you compare it with a raging testosterone fiend like the 900RR), but you have to work hard get it to really move. When you want play screaming demon in the twisties, you have to really get your head into it, hit the right spot in the teensy-weensy powerband, work your way carefully through the gears, being terrified the whole time because every little wobble in the road translates through a less-than-performance suspension. If you relax, it relaxes with you, and you can enjoy a nice sedate, comfortable, fun ride through the rolling countryside.

There is no "relax" button on the 900RR (the two "R"s designating its purpose: Racing, and more Racing). It just goes and goes and goes and goes and goes, and if you want a little more power, you just twist deeper in to the throttle, and--whammo--you get way more than a little power. In the words of the inimitable Mr. Jacoby: "You don't ever have to leave first gear! It's the easiest bike in the world to ride!"

So, that was fun, and terrifying, at the same time, and I am happy to go back to my not ridiculously insane, ordinary-mortals motorcycle. Except that there's this taste of the incredible disparity between a minuscule wrist-movements and incredible horsepower response lingering wistfully in the back of my head...

Thoughfulness

I've been researching the Iraq war, and the military in general, and it struck me--whether or not the war is an unpleasant reality that we'd like to push to the edges of our consciousness in order to get on with our lives of cheerful consumption and self-importance, the entire adventure (or debacle, or task of nation-building, however you see it) is the expressed will of the American people.

The American political system, as shaped by the American people, is one in which decisions are made based on powerful emotions: emotions of borrowed superiority appropriated through belonging to a particular ideological identity, for instance, or pride in being courageous, tough, and in touch with the harsh realities of a dangerous world full of nuke-toting terrorists bent on the destruction of Western Civilization.

We are, I am convinced, political consumers. We pay people to produce convincing and stylized political rhetoric that seductively courts our desire to feel both impressive and correct, then we loudly parrot that rhetoric. And we, the people of the United States of America, are content with that system, regardless of its negative impact on the rest of the world, or its great untapped potential to improve the lives of all sorts of people, Iraqi and otherwise.

I feel like we're in a science fiction movie, where our creations have turned against us--the institutions of democracy and the free press have become institutions of mass group reaction, the enemies of sustained community deliberation. We react to events and causes as they occur, and then forget them when something new comes makes headlines. We have the political attention span--and memory--of five year olds. And the dialogue to match.

So. There are new machines. I was absolutely fascinated this week to read, for the first time, news in primary sources. I found blogs by American soldiers both for and against (and ambivalent towards) the war; I found blogs by Iraqi citizens, describing how their lives have changed since the downfall of Saddam and the beginning of a civil war. I found frontline documentary films by PBS, and independent reporters who fundraised from their websites.

I came to three conclusions:

One. The men and women of the armed forces are, for the most part, policy-implementers, not policy-makers. Their loyalty is the mission, and the mission is decided by the elected representatives of the people of the United States of the America. If those people think the mission is important, they will pay attention to that mission from the day the President declares a war (or a conflict), they will research it and critique it and be involved in the process with a long-term view in mind. They have a moral responsibility to, as it is their bombs and bullets that changing other peoples' worlds--and I think Americans have failed their duty to the rest of the world. Not feeling the direct impact of their war (unless agony-at-the-pump can be considered of equal distress with suicide-bombing-kills-hundreds-in-a-market-and-nobody-bats-an-eye-because-it's-business-as-usual), the American people haven't been terribly concerned about being informed of the details of the war and nation-building, until the shit really started to hit the fan and we started to not only look bad, but sustain uncomfortable amounts of casualties.

One Point Five. It's very sad to read in various blogs that fundamentalists are gaining social and political power and bullying/threatening people for things like playing soccer, reading books, doffing headscarves in public, and shaving. The saddest moment in my readings was when a Muslim woman described her decision to start wearing the headscarf.

"I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country...She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.

If M. can wear one quietly- so can I." from Baghdad Burning, 05-08-2006.

Two. Iraq, like anyplace, is quite complex. In some areas, American efforts have been more successful than others. It's entirely plausible that while the US Occupation may be successful and valuable in some areas of the country and completely futile in others--that the Iraq war could have both good and bad outcomes, dependent on circumstances and perspective. Of course, it's increasingly bad, but knee-jerk generalizations about the hope/hopelessness of the and idealizations about the use of military force have certainly hurt the war effort. Each voice on the ground, each primary source will have a different interaction with the US invasion. Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they are grand--no system of government is perfect.

Three. But some are better than others, and right now, I'm tempted to say (without much concrete research into conditions under Saddam to back it up) that maybe, by way of generalization, the average Iraqi was better off under Saddam before the war, and even better off before sanctions were first levied. This is the cost of American will, and it is a cost we inflicted on the people of Iraq quite whimsically. We owe it to the Iraqi people to not cave in to sentiment or knee-jerk reaction or emotive self-important ideology politics, but to have well-thought-out reasons for whatever we do with this mess that is Iraq. We have to give them the best possible chance for the stablest, most effective, fairest chance at peace that we can--whether that means staying the course, pulling out, or working hand-in-hand with the various unsavory characters who occupy positions of authority in Iraq at the moment. It's the least we can do, since we, each and every one of us, through our choices, actions, and inaction, put them where they are today.

research continues

Bibi Z...

it's amazing how long a history Iraq has had. I read an excellent book (that I then lent to Tegan and never saw again) by a sociologist's wife about her time in a small, conservative Iraqi village under the monarchy, and her experiences with the women behind the abayas...

at any rate, can it be said that as long as the Iraqi people have their bibis, and their memories of better days and better people, they have hope?


[edit]

and the headscarves are back. this happened in Iran, too...

[edit]

I think the worst is the breakdown of social order. It's not that you're afraid to die--you're just afraid to die whimsically, or for the wrong reason, or for no reason at all, in the middle of what used to be a semi-developed, secular and mildly prosperous country.

[edit]

PBS on Iraqi Police Training: Quantity over Quality, and lots of Haraka Haraka and all the Baraka that goes with it!

American Soldier Hoo-Rah Airborn.

wisdom

in their own words

so there he goes singing the gospel again

"and I could write a song a hundred miles long
Well that’s where I belong and you belong with me
The streets you’re walking on, a thousand houses long
Well that’s where I belong and you belong with me
Oh what good is it to live with nothing left to give
Forget but not forgive, not loving all you see
Oh the streets you’re walking on a thousand houses long
Well that’s where I belong and you belong with me
Not swallowed in the sea

You belong with me, not swallowed in the sea
Yeah you belong with me

Not swallowed in the sea."

Coldplay

Why I Love The Brits (And Their Distant Cousins, The Aussies)

they write (and speak) like this:

"the difficulty is remembering not to be miserable."

I'm totally changing my name to Clive.

It's Called, "I Got Out Of Bed And Didn't Want To Work Out."

1. "Sheep Go To Heaven," Cake
2. "Loser," Beck
3. "Grace Cathedral Hill," The Decemberists
4. "Anna Begins," Counting Crows
5. "Cool," Gwen Stefani
6. "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs
7. "Hotel California," Gypsy Kings
8. "Better Days," Goo Goo Dolls
9. "Weapon of Choice," Fatboy Slim
10. "Say It Right," Nelly Furtado
11. "Alcohol (Live on St. Patrick's Day)," Dropkick Murphies
12. "What's Left Of The Flag," Flogging Molly
13. "There Goes My Hero," Foo Fighters

---edit---

in the process of rambling through old drafts of unpublished posts (let that mystery dig around in your curiousity for a while) two things happened:

a) i found a draft from last June about travel and transience that i subsequently published...

b) and i realized that i've been living in Houghton for a solid year now. i guess it's time to celebrate my one-year anniversary as a bona-fide community member. who's bringing the booze?

which led to a realization: what a great journey.

which led to a smile.

:)

I just did something very important. And it feels good.





"aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" goes the long-overdue release of tension.





Now if only those motorcycle parts would come in the mail.

50$ and 3 days later--I kinda fixed it so that it's worse now.

From "The Biker's Dictionary:"

PMS: No, not that kind, although the symptoms can be surprisingly similar. Parked Motorcycle Syndrome. Common to those of us stupid enough to live where the evil white crap falls. Can also be caused by wrecks, breakdowns, loss of license, or an avalanche of obligations that get in the way of one's riding time. Symptoms include depression, irritability, serious post-ho'ing, and, every so often, a multi-state killing spree.

[sigh]waiting for o-rings to make it all better.

1. Ben Folds is the man.

2. The Aviator is a bad movie to miss the first half hour of.

3. I wish I had a shotgun.

4. Just when you think you have one reliable, fun, open, and honest relationship in your life, your motorcycle goes and voids an entire tank of gas all over the porch for no apparent reason and [Newsies moment] "we're off/to the workbench again!"

5. Except I have no workbench. And no screwdrivers. And no can opener or spatula...I do really miss my housemates.

7. It's a beautiful day.

8. I'm watching Brick tonight.

9. I can't wait for the next "Scrubs" DVD to show up in my mailbox. Hooray Netflix! Soon I will be able to perfectly channel Dr. Perry Cox. Then maybe I can find my own special psychotically charming woman.

hmmmm.

I seem to have slowly lost my blogwriting muse. And I don't have any interesting pictures to post. I need to be re-inspired. Mainly, sunshine and thoughts of motorcycle ownership are inspiring me tonight. Tomorrow it will be thoughts of sleep. After that...thoughts of what exactly "next" is and when to start doing it.

Here's the job description I wish I met the requirements for:

link to site of mystery

In the meantime, it's another all-nighter keeping Houghton safe so all those students can study for their finals...


-----------------

Ooooh! Ooooh! Something to post!

"Tanzania, once dubbed the 'man-eat-nothing' society by its East African neighbours to reflect its socialist leanings, is now outperforming both Kenya and Uganda and is set to increase the growth gap over the next decade. A large measure of its ongoing economic progress can be attributed to political stability (on the mainland) and, a so far, incorruptible top leadership. The former president, Benjamin Mkapa stepped down after two terms as demanded by the constitution and the country's new leader, Jakaya Kikwete was the natural heir. But Kikwete, writes Ahmed Rajab, editor of Africa Analysis, has his own firm views and while he might not rock the boat too roughly, he is likely to sharpen the country's economic direction."

-Ahmed Rajad, in African Business

Notable Event: an African leader aceding to term limits. Sweet! Go Tanzania!

I am SOOO Birthday!

My birthday present(s)!













A sunset from the sunset-dude, a road trip from the road trip girl!






she looks and smells gorgeous after four showerless days living out of a hatchback...




i look and smell differently after four showerless days living out of a hatchback! but(t), I get to wear these awesome birthday-handed-me-down my-very-first-pair-of-Carhartt's beefy-man-pants. Yeah Dan Sahli!





The New River Gorge, West Virginia--Western Hemisphere's Largest Arch Bridge. And more sunshine than we have in Western New York, where it has decided to snow. All weekend.






Happy Birthday to Me!











OH--and we went and saw the Decemberists in concert. The amazing lady accordion-player, as well as several other musicians, were consumed by a sea monster during the finale. Really. They rock out...with sea shanties.

[party in da club/sumthin sumthin dub/hammana hammana shlub...]

So. You have no excuse. You have facebook, and it reminds you that my birthday is in less than eleven hours, and I will finally be able to sing Switchfoot's "Twenty-Four" legitimately. With gusto. On the quad.

You know I'll do it.

So. Here's my Birthday wish list:

1. World Peace
2. Gladitorial Games in my honor
3. Personal, lie-detector mediated interview days with all major Presidential candidates.
4. A dog sled, team, and personal Norwegian dog handler. And a summer conversion kit.
5. A sign from God.
6. A personal early morning serenade from Sting. Followed with a breakfast by Shaffin Hajji and Emeril featuring steak.
7. A woman. (Oh. Wait. That's what Ethan wants. Never mind. I'm fine!)
8. Homemade cinnamon rolls.
9. A statue of me to be erected in the quad.

Ahhh. Rock climbing suits me. So does eating. It's time to leave. You should buy me a song on iTunes for my birthday...

haiku (for brevity)

snow, ice, wind: Buffalo--
by bicycle I to work
go cursing "springtime."

--

Mike's room, bless him, dark;
I housesit, lamplit, his lit.,
many lonely nights.

--

snotty nose, bad bad!
otitis media: ear!
it hurts it hurts! ow!

--

at work to and fro
with lights and sirens we go
one dead and one born

--

"lawsuit!", lady screams--
my protocol's begotten
of prior lawsuits!

sorry ma'am, but your
friend is woozy, post-ictal:
he cannot refuse!

the law is the law--
if we leave and he gets hurt,
our asses: grasses.




ooop--Gordon's here. Time to sign off another successful Safe and Secure Weekend. Until next time!

[grunt]

"Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought."
-Sir William Osler

And in the new category of absolute coolest thing ever, in honor of Ben Howard who will no doubt try this at home despite numerous warnings to the contrary, I give you my latest internet discovery:

Will It Blend?

Now I can't wait for garage-sale season :) We could have entire garage-sale themed parties: get an old garage-sale blender, get various garage-sale knicknacks, and blast away!

In other news, I am heading up to Buffalo next week to put in more time for The Man and extend my stay at Rural/Metro Medical Services for another three months. I'm thinking of taking it easy this time, though, and enjoying city life again. And, enjoying bicycling, as Sera still comfortably sits under her blanket of snow--it's been far to cold to play around with wiring this week.

Water is leaking through the roof on third-floor Chamberlain Center. Strange, chemical-ish odors are filling an office in Luckey. Students are holding a video game festival in Campus Center, simultaneous with Honors Program interviews. To the batmobile!

Under the Radar

Or, in the words of big brother: "Sanka, are you dead, mon?"

Nope.

Just took an early Lent and fasted blogging for a month, I guess--though I'm guessing I won't be getting much credit for fasting when it was completely unintentional. Thankfully, grace being a gift and all, you can profit greatly from things for which you are not responsible.

Work in Progress

...It's not just a personal description! I upgraded my Blogger account this weekend, which set the ball rolling for all sorts of innovations--including a subscription to Google Reader, which gives you a constantly updated summary of all your blogs, selected news feeds, Daily Show videos, and, to my great joy: podcasts. It's wonderful. And, as you can see on the left-hand bar, single click republication of the comic, profound, or merely interesting to the blog sidebar. So I don't have to login and publish everytime I want to share something cool with you, my iFriends.

And, work is progressing slowly on my most pressing project, that of paying bills. I reached a landmark 60$ surplus from last paycheck, which led to splurging...Big Al's Pizza! Soon, perhaps, I will be able to afford a new alternator for Sera, and I'll be able to go on ambulance calls without huffing and puffing my way down Centerville road just to watch Houghton 8 go screaming off without me. In the meantime, this blog will just have to be "Notes from the footpath (of doom!)". The quickest route downcampus from Babbit House involves a sketchy footbridge, a slippery slope, and lots and lots of ice and snow. Of course, my morning run to work is always rushed as usually end up snoozing the alarm clock until about 0450 (that's am) for my 0500 shift and end up half-dressed, blitzing out the door into the predawn chill (chill: your face won't move because it's below zero and the wind is busily coating it with snow that feels like sand. from a sand blaster. except really cold.)

I missed Tanzania for a few weeks, but, hey, now I walk with that proud Western-New-York snow-and-wind hunch that says, I'm too sexy for my parka, too sexy for my parka, too sexy by farka... It's good to be here--between the lovely E, experimenting with a hundred variations on rice, potatoes, beans, and other low-budget food made mighty by the currying process, and a few good housemates (here and here) and an eccentric and thoroughly enjoyable neighbor, life is good for Houghton's newest Community Member. I ski on the ski hill, get movies out of the library, take odd jobs lumbermilling and driving, keep things Safe and Secure, and play EMT volunteer-style.

And I screw up my sleep schedule. It's well past my bedtime. I spent four days without sleeping more than four hours in a row at any given time, and then I slept a lot during an afternoon, and I'm still working at five a.m. Except when I'm working at five p.m. Except when I'm working not at all. So, I stay up late and experiment.

For instance, adjacent to my Google Reader share feed (on the left) is a feed from an old blog that I've converted. I post whatever catches my fancy from the wide world of the internet via gmail to the old waybread blog, which should theoretically feed immediately to the sidebar on the new reified-beans blog. And then you can share my stream of (i)consciousness.

In the meantime, revel in this amazing song from a Scottish artist I discovered via NPR's All Song's Considered, 1 February 2007. It's James Yorkston's "Woozy on Cider," and it perfectly fit the mood Saturday at around 620, as I sat in the new superfancy conference room on the new 3rd floor of the Library, watching the sun rise deep and orange and vast across high, mottled clouds on a still campus where not a soul's step broke the newfallen snow...

London-Heathrow

garrrrr...

it's a long hike from Terminal 4 to Terminal 3. But, hey, the ticket counter lady just bumped me from the 4 pm flight to the noon flight, so I don't have a seven hour layover. Hooray! Instead I have five hours in DC. No biggie...maybe they can bump me up to an earlier connection in DC and I'll get to Rochester before Wednesday...that would be nice.

all right. This is expensive. And I'm officially broke. And going home...weather.com said 58 (F) in DC, and I said groovy, that will help me transition a little between sunny Africa and not-so-sunny America. And then I looked up Rochester, where, apparently, it's not enough to be 25 (F) (and thus below freezing) but also adjusted with wind chill down to 16 (F). Brrr....unpacking the wool hat already. Puttin' my thermals on midflight.

Well. I hope for a good movie over the Atlantic! I'm a-goin' hoooooome! Woooohooo!

Not Dead Yet!

Well. I'm back. The sky is yellow-grey outside, thunder is rumbling off the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, and it is freakin' pouring buckets of rain outside. My experience with electricity this trip has not granted me great faith is the Tanzanian electrician. It is with trepidation (and faith!) that I continue writing, because it's been a while since I was able to sit down and actually use the internet.

pause for anecdote

Cousin Kevin, an Electrical Engineering major, works for Catepillar. My father, also an EE man, has been wiring various things around the (American) home for thirty-plus years.

Dad: Youch!

Kevin: Wow. The entire frame of this washing machine appears to be carrying current! But you only get zapped where the enamel's worn off!

Dad: Yeah, I noticed that...

Dan: I had the same problem in an Internet Cafe in Iringa. And, come to think of it, the same thing happened with an inverter we were using to power this drill.

Dan, lacking the proper degree, demonstrates his lack of appropriate jargon. He worked for an electrician, once

Dan: I think it has something to do with a leak from hot to ground.

Dad: No, it couldn't be that. That amount of current running to the ground wire would blow the fusebox.

Dan: Ummm...Dad...That's assuming they actually ran a ground wire to the ground. I've walked around this house a few times and I haven't seen one.

Dad: This system's not grounded?

Kevin: I don't understand how people don't die all the time from all these blatant code violations!

Dan and Jeff, in unison: No, no. People do die all the time from these blatant code violations. If there's really a code...

end anecdote

So did I mention it's raining? I think hurricanes are hitting the East Coast of Africa or something. It's the wettest and longest "Short Rainy Season" they've had in a long time. Which made our safari in Ngorongoro crater quite, quite fun. :) We played in the mud with a Land Rover and a Land Cruiser. The mud gods were pleased. I drove the hairiest bit in the 'Rover, and grinned like a banshee all the way. Good, good times...

Well. Synopsis:

a) Settlers and Risk are fun and all that--but. The game of the year is definitely Bohnanza, the bean-farmer simulation card game! It's wicked cool!
b) Bottle-cap poker is now a family safari tradition. Cokes are worth one, Fanta are five, Stoneys and Sprites are tens and beers are twenty!
c) My beer-tasting tour-de-force has concluded. First place: Tusker. Of course. But it's good to know the reputation is well-earned. It even cured a nasty upset stomach. Close seconds: Castle Lager's Milk Stout, a surprisingly good twist on Guinness, and Savannah Dry Hard Cider, with points for the most aesthetically pleasing bottle.
d) Tarangire Safari Lodge has a breathtaking view. And breathtakingly good food. When they weighed me at the doctor's office the other day, I was "only" down to 74 kilograms...still a few pounds over my pre-Tanzania weight, after a week under the tender ministrations of some exotic intestinal houseguests. I attribute it entirely to that amazing buffet.
e) 4100 Tanzanian Shillings (about $3.80) got me a doctor consult, lab tests, and two prescriptions to put an end to the digestive tyrrany of both (yeah baby! go big or don't go at all!) soldier worms and bacterial dysentery. I've always like the way "dysentery" sounds...rolls nicely off the tongue. I spent the first week of the new year abed (or atoilet) with all sorts of exciting sympoms. Good times. Now I have two more diseases to chalk off my life list!

I would upload pictures, but they're not working. And dusk is falling, and I don't have a lamp for my bike. Cheerio!

hey, look at me, i am here

nipo masumboni...I am in Masumbo, quite possibly my favorite place in the world. We went swimming yesterday, in the morning when there were no clouds. The sun shone beautifully on the massive boulders and ruddy currents of the Mto Ruaha. Paul and I clambered around on the rocks and boulder-surfed the main current and I partook of the opportunity to impart a little well-needed soap upon mine armpits. Life is good. We've (and by we I mean Paul, with a little kibbitzing on my behalf) been putting the finishing touches on the new director's house, and hobnobbing in the evenings with Iringa's finest and dining alternately between the Jacaranda and the Hasty Tasty Too.

It's quite phenomenal to see what has happened in the two years since I was here last. Abbas has married, Masumbo is getting a (admittedly slow) wireless internet hub, the solar water purification program (using cast-off plastic bottles and corrugated tin) is in full-swing, the craft shop has expanded fourfold and has a coffeeshop that serves panini, the bat-box program is getting onto its feet, Andy and Suzie got another baby and the closest thing anyone locally has ever seen to a Vespa...

And other things haven't changed at all. The night watchmen still chill out by the kitchen and are still good for both laughter and good conversation. The river is still the ultimate playground. And, oddly enough, people in the Iringa marketplace still remember me...and are as sharp bargainers as ever.

It's good to be here. Good people, good places, good food, good times.

on the road again...

I love travelling long distances--it's not just seeing new things, it's taking your entire world and routine apart and being free to dilly-dally and dawdle and mess with it so long as you don't miss a flight.

And, you get to experience random things. Like, for instance, being chastised by a guy who barely spoke English for sleeping while wearing my shoes at the interfaith prayer room in London's Heathrow Airport...a drab little cube with an arrow pointing to Mecca and a bench where weary travellers like myself can practice their own form of contemplative prayer. I thought it was awesome that I got to slumber there and hear/see the Arabic poetry in motion that is daily Muslim prayer. I get the impression that the drab cube way off the beaten track exists so that faithful Muslims who work the airport's various menial jobs can excercise their spiritual duty of daily prayers (replete with foot and hand washing, rugs, and vigorous Sunna/Shia debates) without freaking out international travellers. It's a far cry from the quite posh "Meditation Room" here at Amsterdam's Schiphol.

By the way. I learned last night that if you use the loo's next to the exclusive executive travel lounges (where economy class people like me are not allowed) you can score yourself all sorts of perks. Like free showers. Hot showers, with no time limits (granted, there are no towels if you aren't a paying customer, but who needs towels when you are a well-equipped, moisture-wicking hiker sort?)

On the downside, if you spend the night in a Dutch airport, you will be serenaded nonstop by bad/cheezy/sappy American pop music. It's their version of elevator music. Grrrr...need Gorillaz!

Well, I'm almost out of time. Next stop: Tanzania. cheerio!

weee heee!

I'm out of here! See ya in January!

Well. As the newest member of Houghton College's crack security force, I am once more enjoying the perks of being paid to sit around waiting for stuff to happen. But now I have free, unlimited access to the internet--the perfect place to while away hours without the needless fear of being productive or useful.

And since I've finally got access to a computer less than five years old, I've been happily introduced to incredible time-wasting power of Google Earth. Never before has a mere computer program come so close to actually making me nauseous. If you start, for example, with **** Centerville Drive, Houghton NY 14744--my current living address--you will see satellite photographs dimly displaying the foresty setting of the northern "suburbs" of Houghton, NY as witnessed from a simulated altitude of 4,485 feet (a little under a mile up). Type in "Moshi, Tanzania" and the earth falls away beneath you as you soar, digitally, to a simulated altitude of 1,503 miles in less than two seconds. The earth moves beneath you as you move eastward, crossing the Atlantic ocean in the time it takes you to sneeze, and suddenly you are falling, quite rapidly, crossing all those tiny West African countries, gaining speed as the Democratic Republic of the Congo speads out beneath you, falling even faster as you move over Lake Victoria and the massive Mt. Kilimanjaro fills your vision...

Actually, your computer screen. At any rate, your descent slows as the land becomes blurry and green, as if your eyes were sparing you your impending impact, a moment frozen in terrified agony in your head. And you are there. 7,657.23 miles away, as the crow flies if he happens to be a crow capable of cross-oceanic endeavors and feels so inclined. It's quite disorienting, at first.

And, in six days, this old crow, charting a course from Buffalo, NY to Washington DC(282.5 miles), across the Atlantic Ocean to London, the UK (3,672.31 miles), take a short layover (6 hours), then hop to Amsterdam (the shortest leg yet at 230.22 miles), followed by the longest layover in the trip (16 hours, overnight), and then embark on the longest flight (a whopping 4,275.65 miles) to Kilimanjaro International Airport, Moshi, Tanzania, arriving on the third day of his sojourn, logging an extra 45.13 miles overland (as even the average crow could fly, with proper motivation) and an additional 803.45 air miles (should the airline pilots choose to follow the incredibly overachieving crows and their ridiculously straight lines).

Ahhh. Thanks to all who chose to contribute their opinions and the ever-accommodating Amazon.com, I will be accompanying myself with good reading. Thanks to none of you, I'll be provisioning myself with granola bars, oatmeal, crackers, cheese, and a beef stick for the duration of what will be, if all goes according to schedule, something like 52 straight hours of airline flights and layovers. Note to self: bring the nalgene bottle.

Well. Cheerio! I'm off to explore blog-land and try to find Mollie's blog again. (hint, hint...Mollie). Until next shift, cheerio!

okay, so my phone died and I have an appointment with traffic court to explain why I haven't fixed the muffler on my truck which is currently immobile due to a faulty alternator, so this will be very short:

1. and most important. I am going to have a lot of empty time in my life soon and reading will be very important. I'm putting in an order to Amazon by the end of the week. What should I buy/borrow/read? Stipulations: absolutely nothing involving analyses of postmodernism and/or Evangelical Christianity.

2. no, it's not a sin to not feel as I feel; but it is a sin not to feel at all, or to feel only what it is safe or accepted to feel. Remember the ringing condemnation of Christ: We played a dance for you, but you did not dance. We played a dirge for you, and you would not mourn. Mindless obedience or the heartless participation of a safely detached observer, both are missing something vital. If you can witness something beautiful or sorrowful without being moved, isn't there something disturbingly wrong with you? Something problematic with your soul?

Furthermore, there are sins that are not individual: corporate sins of a church that emphasizes dogmatic intellectual conformity over freedom in Christ--freedom to explore, learn, grow, experience, and express in the guidance of the Holy Spirit the fullness of a unique and awe-inspiring human life. A fullness that goes far beyond attaining correct theology or learning how to go through the motions of some particular Christian community.

A church where people are incapable of independent response to something beautiful and human because they have been trained into passively waiting for someone in authority to tell them how to act appropriately is a broken, dysfunctional, lifeless church. If you have to curtail or conform your actions because of the sanctions or standards of a church, isn't there a problem with that church?

Conformity to Christian social structures is not holiness; in the words of Flannery O'COnnor, to be holy is "to be specially, super-alive:" full of the grace of God, and participating fully in the image of God--the creative and oft-surprising image of God that is reflected with special treasure differently and uniquely in each and every human being.

There were at least five people at that concert who, well schooled in the consequences of being nonconformist in Christian communities, disappointedly sat down because they were the only ones standing in a crowd who stood and sat as if someone was holding up signs: "applause," "stand," "clap," "sit," "heel," "stay," "good boy, have a biscuit."

I'm not saying that everyone there should have participated or involved themselves in that particular moment. But they came and provided an environment where they remained disinterested observers while musicians laid their souls bare with incredible grace, beauty and energy; and I find their response tremendously callous and fearful.

Callous hearts worry me, and strong social structures that encourage and discipline (to use Foucoult's words) hearts in conformity or quick obedience to the status quo terrify me. The church should have noting to do with these things. The church is where people come alive in Christ. If music and poetry cannot move you--either to mourn or to dance or even to lift your eyes to heaven and not see whether the people next to you are standing or sitting or leaving--what can?

I don't think it's just a matter of taste--that the polite, detatched spectators in this moment would be fully awake and alive in another context. I think there's some genuine soul pathology at work here. And God wants souls to be alive and involved, sensitive and able to percieve and respond to people in a myriad of ways and expressions.

Well, I could go on. But the pathos of my daily life is calling. Actually, not calling, since my phone won't work. Alas. I'll be in Buffalo next week, working overtime for the holidays, and if I don't call--sorry. no phone...

wow

just got back from an internet-less week in Buffalo. put in 86 hours of ambulance work in six days...and a Jars of Clay concert.

conclusion: i love EMS, so long as I'm not burnt out. and Jars so helps you not be burnt out...pretty stinkin' incredible show. BUT...I was absolutely furious at the tepid audience response. I have decided that it is a sin to pay someone stand up in front of you and pour out their heart and energy and emotion and just sit and watch and refuse to answer with the same heart and energy and emootion. The whole audience just stood there. And sat down on cue the moment a slower song began. It's like they were totally incapable of experiencing passion or emotion publically without someone telling them what to do: stand, sit clap, yell, sway from side to side, move around...but only on cue. And only when everybody else is too.

It's wierd. I guess I got pretty indignant...work makes me pretty hardened, pretty deadened, pretty numb. We work in an efficient health-care machine and we are expected to be clinical and detached. It's like working with inks or motor oil or concrete or manure--it gets under your fingernails and in your hair and imbeds itself in your skin and you start smelling like death all the time.

And then something like Jars of Clay or Kate York comes along and sings and dances over you like clean pure spring water and you know what it meant to fishermen and camel drovers and dusty-street-worn tax collecters to have their feet washed by a man who's eyes were everything not deadened and stale. You know you need it, just to stand and let something real and human and intimate wash over you so you can feel something again, anything again, like a real breathing person and not some machine.

It's just plain wrong to see something beautiful or heartbreaking and appreciate it detatchedly. There's no way to avoid it in the information age, with the overwhelming flow of more information than can possibly be attended to. But when you pay someone to come and strip themselves (metaphorically) naked on the stage and be intimately human in the most powerful manner possible, and just sit and watch, that's wrong. Dead wrong. Detachment will kill your soul so fast it's unbelievable. And a little salvation is right there saying, uncross your arms, shake your feet, stop looking for the right cues and right responses, and live in this beautiful moment. Breathe or dance or close your eyes or sign along or something, please give me a sign that your heart is still beating! Respond to beauty and sorrow, feel beautiful or broken yourself through identification with something human, participate somehow for the salvation of your soul...it may not feel safe because it requires creativity and initiative and risk-taking...someone may ridicule you, or despise you, or see you vulnerable, or worst of all you may see yourself in all your glory and weakness...

but the smug alternative is so much worse.

thought of the day:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." --C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Reason #8 to live in Upstate NY

Yeah, baby. The Cronks have (had) a plethora of less-than-beautiful apples in their backyard from the old apple tree. First we grabbed a handy tennis racket and taught them the meaning of...tennis raquet; then we got ol' Bertha out and really put the fear of God in those apples. That's not apple you see exploding off the head of that driver.

That's fear.

word.

and Happy Birthday Nathan. I'm taking my car off the road.
--


and for the record, Chuckles, NO! Dear God no! I do not work for Houghton Custodial. Oh. You said Maintenance. No. Not yet. That would be cool though. I landscape with Creekside Landscaping, a.k.a. Allan Yanda. And pick up odd ambulance shifts in nearby Springville. And cut down trees with Glen Falkhe. And do odd jobs for pretty much anyone who will pay. And maybe in a few weeks, I will wear the grey of the faithful Houghton Safety and Security. We shall see. I'm becoming a bona fide community member. See also: bona fide day laborer. Yeah!

more thoughts (no bills!)

Hmmmm....

Watched "Failure to Launch" last night. It's ridiculously awesome if you re-watch portions with the French language overdubs. Especially the "Nekkid Room." My house is totally going to have a naked/library room. With a reading hammock. And a minibar. Terry Bradshaw's in pretty good shape for an old man...good call, Jeff. I'd move downstreet in a heartbeat. Find me a job.

As for dragons, I'm all for slaying them, and I'm all for the Shire. I think I'm game for going out and slaying them in groups. Not groups of dragons--groups of dragon slayers. In other dragon-slaying news, I'm nine pages into the uber-project. Maybe another seven to go. It's lookin' good. The secret, I've found, is Oreos and good Pollywogg Holler berry wine. And late nights.

I had a good discussion with a beautiful woman yesterday. Is sin action, or an attitude of the heart? The seven deadlies are all attitudes of the heart--Rage, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Greed. (thanks to little Wetherby for the help on the last three...not my specialties :) If the sin comes out, it evidences the heart infested with death--and in need of salvation. Following that line, sometimes a little active sin is a good thing. Like a nasty case of stomach cramps, it evidences the need for healing--salvation. Our salvation is not gained or lost--it is a series of losses and gains. We lose our lives, we get them back.

"As a man dies many times before he's dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last." -Godric

And I wasn't cutting a line between my friends in the world captivated by lies, and myself outside and redeemed. I am struggling not with necessarily straight-out lies, but influences, values, the ideas that drive my generation. They're mine as much as they are theirs, and they are my cultural context--both struggle and joy. I like being a twenty-first century American twenty-something...but like any other place or time, it's got questions to be answered and difficulties to be overcome. Got a need for the wind and wisdom of God, just like every generation.

Well said, Katrina. Reminds me of a few shiningly great of examples of artists who escape the status quo and give a little time to those not single teens or twentysomethings, who I shall celebrate here.

Cheers go out to the artists of Iron & Wine, for love songs like "Naked As We Came" celebrating the romance of those married with children. And the writers of Firefly and Serenity for integrating Zoe and Wash and the various and sundry stresses of married life into the tale of life on a starfaring freighter. And, of course, The Flaming Lips and Death Cab For Cutie for making the theme of love in the face of death O-So-Trendy right now with "What Sarah Said" ("Love is watching someone die/Who's gonna watch you die?") and "Do You Realize" ("we're floating in space...that happiness/makes you cry...that everyone you know/one day/will die?")

And, right back atcha Jeff, you should watch "Friends with Money," a really awesome and very NPR (so trendy right now) film about the lives of three married well-to-do couples and their unmarried and not-so-well-to-do friend. Which includes the coolest married couple I can remember being portrayed on film, with the chipper husband blissfully unaware that all of his friends thinks he's gay. Good flick.

So. Dr. Tawfiq Hamid is here, advocating peaceful Islam, and I am off to pretend to be a prospective student in class because it's too cold and wet to cut lawns today. I think it's becoming a trend. I shall call it, "winter." Just signed up for a few shifts driving the old ambulance. Good bye, lawnmowing, I shall miss the paychecks.

thoughts after bills

so bills are obnoxious--glad all I have to worry about is the phone and the student loans. elsewise I might go mad.

a quick thought before I head back out into the un-wired-world.

I have a lot of friends (guys and gals, but more guys than gals) who are late twenty-something, single, living at home or on their own, Playstation and X-Box owners who simply don't want to grow up.

I don't mean that in a derogatory way--it's just that my generation of guys has no real desire to marry, settle down, have a career, become a grown-up. I think that's why one of my friends just got a divorce and a new girlfriend.

We're the type who have mid-life crises at twenty-five. We get divorced and start hitting the bars again at thirty. Maybe because we grew up being told that grown-up life is boring, and hence grown-up's lives are over. Life, if it was to be lived, was to be lived in that hedonistic aura of high school and college individualistic excitement. At least, that's what every marketing image we've ever seen has told us.

And now they're telling us that we can be youthful and accumulate toys and have adventures and never settle down or accumulate responsibilities. Because once you have responsibilities and commitments you are no longer free. life is over.

Of course, without responsiblities and/or commitments, life is pretty much meaningless. But we haven't realized this yet. We keep wondering where we've been sold wrong--why we feel disappointed with our marriages, jobs, where the excitement and feelings of significance and importance went. Maybe they're over there, around the corner, if I could be free I would be able to live it up, to taste the excitement again...

huh. It's not a clear idea so much as a feeling I had yesterday while moving dirt from point A to point B and thinking about why one of my childhood youth group friends is getting a divorce. But I have work to do, so I don't have time to pound out something really incisive and profound. Just found it interesting to think about twenty-something angst and flailing in terms of the mid-life crisis.

When you're raised in a materialistic paradise where everyone is told everyday by image-based advertising that glamour and excitement and wealth and sensuality are your birthright, and the good life is there for anyone who can go out there and buy it, and you don't feel it, feeling left out can be really devastating. You could be happy and fulfilled and instead you're feeling cheated and held back.

You were meant to be larger than life; treating yourself to good things, being on the cutting edge of teachnology or music of something significant, being someone impressive, suave, exciting and hip and involved, oh yeah--these are the stuff of the good life, real life. Think about MTV's The Real World: the hijinks and instensity of high school and college are real life. Dating isn't a preparation or precursor to real adult life--it is real life, the only life exciting enough to warrant attention. Exploring your identity through new musical, emotional, sexual, stylistic or ideological experiences isn't a stage in growing up to a stable adult--it's all there is to life.

If it isn't epic, it isn't living. If you're settled, you're boring. If you aren't mobile, you're dead. Growing up is the act of becoming irrelevant, too consumed in commitments to be free and wild. We have nothing to look forward to because being young and free was supposed to be the best time of our lives, and we particularly blessed for being born American in the golden age of Living It Up For Me.

There's no glamour to growing up--nothing to look forward to, no really exciting prospects to something like marriage or commitments. Sure, it's a lie once you think about it--but how can you stop and think about it when it's so widely assumed? And who is proclaiming any sort of desireable alternatives? Smug, boring evangelicals?

well. brain vomit. I wish I had time to edit. oh well. cheers!

Road Trip! (lette)

Took a few days off to play a coffeeshop with Hiram in Lancaster and visit Timmie and Mollie in Philly! (I only regret that we did not see Dave Lilley...)

And, since the boss is out of town this week, I'm out of work. Hooray for Lost Season Two (holy crap stressful ending batman!) We missed the Season Three premier by an hour because we broke for dinner before watching the Season Two finale...bummer. You can't watch a season premier when you're totally excited about the last season's season finale. Have to see if we can catch it on rerun or iTunes or something.

so. I have to go do office work. but for your enjoyment (if blogger doesn't mess with me): pictures!


"Dance the spears with me, dark one!" If you look close you can see Mollie's not-quite-bemused disbelief in the background.


So this is the museum of art where Rocky runs up and down the stairs while getting in shape to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger", and they put this statue of him up in the middle of the steps, and then everybody said, dude, Rocky isn't art, so they took the statue down, and then all the tourists complained, so they put it back, but this time in a discrete corner so that the artsy fartsy types wouldn't be insulted and the tourist types could get their pictures. but that's unimportant. important: I'm rockin' awesome. A frickin' tank. Rock Out Me!



Ummnm. Hi? She likes to dance. And I have a cool hat.



And, hey why not pay a little homage to karate kid, too...you can't see Timmie doing the same thing next to me, while people are trying to take their wedding pictures with us in the background. Yes. Wedding pictures. Four separate weddings rolled up to take pictures in front of the museum. And with Rocky. What can you say? It's Philly...