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!