“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.”

Between teaching and waitering, I worked over seventy hours two weeks ago, sixty-five hours this past week, and doing the math, it looks like I am going to be putting in another seventy hour work week. This isn’t a complaint. I’ve been enjoying myself. I’m just trying to figure out when I developed a work ethic. It’s unfortunate though that Ben Roethlisberger makes in one minute on the football field what I made in those 138 hours these past two weeks. So it goes.

When You Were Young

If I had the ability to be embarrassed, there would probably be some internal sensor warning me not to post this, but I have no shame. I find what I’m about to share to be not embarrassing, but a hilarious look into the mind of a young hormonal teenager boy – that boy being me, of course.

It was seventh grade and we were to write in our journal as a bellringer at the beginning of our class each day. While just about every other entry contains some reference to eating chicken wings, particularly Bambino’s or Quaker Steak chicken wings (I was a tad obsessed, which I suppose is why I still eat chicken wings once or twice a week as an adult and even blog about them), some of what I wrote wasn’t nonsense and pretty insightful for a thirteen year old. I wrote about life. Or women. Or about how cool I thought I was. Which I was. Right?

One thing that particularly stuck out: my handwriting was atrocious at thirteen years old. Absolutely dreadful. Maybe it was mostly because I was in a hurry to get the entry done so I could stare at the ceiling and think of saving girls from invading space aliens, but now I’ll remember to be a little more lenient on the handwriting of all my future students.

These were simpler times though, when my only worries were the weekends, friends, girls, basketball, and how I was going to pay for the next dozen chicken wings I was going to eat. After glancing it over, I’m reminded how girl crazy I was as a kid (which maybe explains the way I am today, it’s just that then I wasn’t so heartless). Oh, to be young again. Is it possible to feel so madly, sickeningly in love as one does when they are thirteen, when you swear you’ve seen the face of true love and you could never possibly love again?

Keep in mind while reading this school journal, this was read and graded by my teacher, something I find extremely amusing as a teacher myself, considering some of the stuff that I say. I was one self-absorbed child, that much I’m reminded by reading this, but I suppose that is common for kids at thirteen. I do think though that there are bits of amusing awareness and observance in the midst of my selfish rants.

Enjoy the laugh that this hopefully provides.

“Biggest Pet Peeve” – Sept. 10
I don’t know if it’s my biggest, but it’s up there. That is, idiots who think they are thugs and talk big but they can’t back it up at a fight, whether they don’t show or they have other people to fight with or for them. They also swear every other word and do drugs and actually brag about it in school. If you are going to do it, don’t brag, it’s gay. They also pretend a lot. For instance, they say “I dunno” to an answer in class when they really do. And they also wear the same clothes every day, which may not be all their fault, but they could at least get a paper route or something.

“Love” – Oct. 25
Love is pretty much a joke. People say they love you but they don’t mean it, and you try to tell them you love them, but they don’t listen. I guess true love to me is when you can’t stop thinking about her and you go out of your way to talk to her and when you see her you feel numb and you fall in love with her all over again. You’re not worried about getting in the sack with her, you just would rather spend time with her talking. True love is when you can sit by her and watch her sleep all night.

“Vote for President” – Nov. 2
If I could vote for the president, I wouldn’t vote because they are all idiots. It’s all becoming money and bad talking the other guy. But I really don’t care who wins though. I’m in a pretty bad mood today. I don’t feel like writing about it. I’ll just say one thing. Matt can be a real cock sometimes.

“Dream” – Nov. 15
My dream is to be the champion of shuffleboard. I am a pro. As in professional. My other dream is to marry Meghan, but we all know that’s not going to happen. My new dream is that Bobbie Jo would crawl into an electrical socket and take a bath. Excuse my violence, but she won’t leave me alone.

“Christmas Vacation” – Jan. 2
I got lots of money, I went to the Lube twice, I played basketball, avoided [Girl 1] when she was dying to get me… and the funny thing is, I don’t know why I did that. She’s one of the hottest, probably the second hottest girl in her grade. I don’t know why I’m writing this, I guess I just need to get it out. There’s [Girl 2] whose is perfect in almost every way, the most beautiful girl in our school. But I get mixed messages. She comes to my house over vacation to watch a movie with me and I walk her home and we talk outside for an hour and a half. Then New Years we hang out all night and when we go to bed, we sleep together. Literally, that is… we slept, side by side in a bed with a few other girls. Me and her were using the same pillow and blanket and I could feel her breathing. I know this is corny, but I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about her. She left her scarf the next day, so I took it home, walked to her house, she came to the door, and I gave it to her. She said, “Thank you so much” and I said, “Well, I’ll see you later” and left. I dunno. I probably don’t have a chance with her because, well, she’s [Girl 2], but maybe. I mean, I still have feelings for [Girl 1], but what can I do? I dunno. Stupid puppy love.

omfg, yes.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful world out there that I’m missing out on.

Public Healthcare: Getting Hit by a Car Hurts

I just wanted to bring attention to a great essay that my friend Jake wrote titled “Public Healthcare: Getting Hit by a Car Hurts.” He does his best to make an argument for public healthcare from an apolitical standpoint.

My favorite bit from the humorous essay has to be when he says that a public healthcare system “has the possibility to benefit all Americans, but its potential could be limited by bipartisan lobotomies,” and he goes on to compare the situation of current healthcare reform to congressmen trying to come to an agreement on what kind of pie to make for a fundraiser. The majority choose apple pie, while others choose onion pie. While one is clearly the better option, the conclusion is made that they will combine the ideas to make everyone happy and apple onion pie is the solution:

The apple pie-ers seek clarification from the Bake-off leader who responds, “My decision was made in the vein of preserving peace and bipartisan reform, and now everyone gets to feel like their idea was part of the solution.” The apple pie-ers retort, “You have taken our delicious idea and doomed it to disappointment by making it taste awful.” The leader responds, “Actually, I think it tastes like democracy.” In a final defiance the apple pie-ers reply, “Really, because we think it tastes like failure.”

Good stuff. The essay is long, but it is thoughtful and well worth the read. Check it out right here and chime in with your comments over there as well.

I was thinking, like I do on occasion.

I was prodded into a debate on politics and religion (more on that particular debate at a later time), where my opponent defended the Old Testament by saying that it needs to be read in context of the time it was written – a fairly common argument – which is why things like stoning your wife if you discover she is not a virgin upon consummating your marriage is a command of God in Deuteronomy that is generally frowned upon.

I wonder though, if the God of Abraham is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful and he was creating a book that was to be the unarguable tenet of his followers forevermore – a book where he commands you follow his every word, mind you – shouldn’t he have had the foresight to leave out such things? Or if it was acceptable to God and Christians then, why is it no longer? If God changed his mind concerning a prior command, shouldn’t he have his canonical text revised, lest his devout followers be confused? A humble suggestion for said revision: how about a foreword written by the Almighty himself?

I’ve used the “pick and choose” argument plenty of times in the past, but really examining it, God is either a sexist pig who makes Mrs. God get him a beer out of the fridge any times he needs one and is probably pissed about all these rights his followers afford women nowadays or he is just a very illogical being. Since God is, by his own account, infallible (He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. – Deuteronomy 32:4), he cannot be illogical, so it must be the former. Then again, he is a jealous God, and does his jealousy not demonstrate a flaw? Which implies that he is fallible, thus not perfect, at least in our human understanding of the word. Which implies he is able to make mistakes. If he changes his mind to adjust to human society, like what many Christians imply by their pick and choose method of Biblical adherence, then certainly it is possible that he can change his mind on, say, homosexuality. Then again, if he is, in fact, fallible and illogical, he can adjust his mind not based on society, but based on whatever his current mood inspires. Sure, discussing the logic of God is about as productive as discussing the morality of Mickey Mouse, but regardless, anyway you look at it, modern Abrahamic religions have more glaring plot holes than an episode of Lost.

This was a long way of saying that if you claim that the Bible is where you get your morality, I’m going to say that you are full of shit.

Cormac McCarthy Speaks

Seeing as Cormac McCarthy is probably the most important American writer of fiction currently living, save maybe Philip Roth, and he has only given something like four interviews in his forty-plus years of writing, when the guy talks, all of humanity needs to listen. The Wall Street Journal by far conducted the best interview with the man that I’ve read, much more interesting than the awkwardness of the fluffy Oprah interview a few years ago when they discussed his Pulizter Prize winning The Road.

With the WSJ, he talks about adapting his books, his thoughts on Billy Bob’s All the Pretty Horses, The Road and Blood Meridian, his relationship with his son, what worries him, and what I found most compelling, his idea of a perfect day:

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That’s heaven. That’s gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

As for what he feels is worth writing:

Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

Here’s also what he had to say about his upcoming novel. I’m giddy with excitement.

I’m not very good at talking about this stuff. It’s mostly set in New Orleans around 1980. It has to do with a brother and sister. When the book opens she’s already committed suicide, and it’s about how he deals with it. She’s an interesting girl. This long book is largely about a young woman. There are interesting scenes that cut in throughout the book, all dealing with the past. She’s committed suicide about seven years before. I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years. I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point you have to try.

I’ll conclude this with one more excerpt from the interview, where Cormac was asked about if he ever had fallow periods in his writing:

Someone asked Flannery O’Connor why she wrote, and she said, “Because I was good at it.” And I think that’s the right answer. If you’re good at something it’s very hard not to do it. In talking to older people who’ve had good lives, inevitably half of them will say, “The most significant thing in my life is that I’ve been extraordinarily lucky.” And when you hear that you know you’re hearing the truth. It doesn’t diminish their talent or industry. You can have all that and fail.

Do yourself a favor and read the entire interview. It’s fascinating.

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

Umm… holy crap. From StephenKing.com:

New Dark Tower Book
Posted on: November 11th, 2009 11:21:49 pm
Stephen has announced that he has an idea for a new Dark Tower book, the working title of which will be THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE. He has not yet started this book and anticipates that it will be a minimum of eight months before he is able to begin writing it.

He also confirms this in the video below and he describes the book as coming between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. Anyone that has read the series knows that Wizard and Glass is more or less a prequel to the other books, although it is told in the form of a flashback, before coming back to the main storyline. If I remember correctly, Wolves the Calla starts up immediately where the prior leaves off, which leaves me to speculate that this must be another prequel story of the young Roland Deschain. Which makes me wet my undies a little bit in anticipation.

Holy crap. Too bad only one or two people that ever read my blog will have any idea what I am talking about. He also says that he himself wrote a screenplay for Cell and even completely changed the ending to it. I think it would make a fresh addition to the zombie horror genre, that is for sure.

Astute Observation of the Moment #9

With all of the pitfalls of substitute teaching (e.g. lack of benefits, unsubstantial pay, etc.), there is one major perk: I’m flying through a few books a week. At this rate, my ridiculously massive collection of books to read should be halved by the end of the year.

So, when do I become you, and when are you me… or?

It really blows my mind that I have never come across these Mr. Deity webisodes, especially since they have been around for a few years and I’m always perusing the interwebs for sites and blogs dealing with the absurdity of religion. It took the blog of the awesome PZ Myers to point out that PZ himself was making an appearance in one of the videos for my discovery. These are great. I’ve been sitting here for forty-five minutes watching video after video – and it has been time well spent. Check out a few of my favorites so far below. PZ plays the scientist in the third video down.

Maine sucks.

Well, it looks like Stephen King is still the only cool thing to ever come out of Maine (alright, its coast is aesthetically pleasing and they have some tasty lobster, but as the old adage goes, there are plenty of lobster in the sea). Yesterday, what could have been a monumental day for the fight for legalized same-sex marriage in America, 53% of Maine voters proudly displayed their ignorance and bigotry by repealing the law that made it legal for two people in love, regardless of their genitalia, to marry.

“It has all come together tonight, the institution of marriage has been preserved in Maine, and across this nation,” Stand for Marriage campaign manager Frank Schubert said today.

Also preserved in Maine, the institution of being a douchebag. Membership is apparently high. Join today and you get half-off an entrée at Cracker Barrel.

Of course, those associated with Stand for Marriage are not anti-gay, just anti-human rights. “The campaign was very clear about that,” declared spokesman Scott Fish. “This was a campaign about protecting traditional marriage.” I hope next they fight for legalizing child brides, making dowries hip again, and never, ever letting a black man voodoo trance an innocent white woman into marriage. It’s called tradition, folks. Look it up. Traditions such as segregation, drowning witches, and exploiting the poor are an essential part of what makes us such a unique and strong country. Like how my grandfather will never ever cook the meal or do the laundry. That’s grandma’s job and if she doesn’t know it, he should have the right to slap her until she remembers her role – the sanctity of spousal abuse must be preserved at all costs, to preserve the tradition of the marital hierarchy.

This is an unfounded hunch, but as a Democratic swing state, I wonder had every registered voter had turned out to vote, if the outcome would have been the same. Unfortunately, the conservative right is so passionately dead-set against gay couples sharing with them the happiness that a marriage can bring, while the heterosexual left-leaning citizens, while supportive of same-sex marriage, feel little internal motivation to do much about it. There is the mentality of, “Hey, there are enough of us that believe in this cause, I’ll let them vote. I just don’t have the time to swing by the polls between work and my tennis lessons.” I think we’re all in agreement that one hour out of a single one of our days would be worth the other outcome, no?

This is an uphill battle, folks, and it just got a little more steep today. If this were that classic floppy-disked Oregon Trail game, our Conestoga wagon has tipped over, we lost forty-seven pounds of meat, had to replace the axle, and Bob came down with dysentery, but onward we go. We knew the trek wasn’t going to be easy nor quick – but I’m confident what is right will prevail, just not until people (and that means us liberal-minded heterosexuals as well) step up, take action, and begin to stand up for what is right as human beings and what is right as a country that laughably proclaims its supposed freedom from the oppression religious ideologies. If the federal government isn’t going to step up and do something about this issue of human rights, then it is up to us.

It’s 2009. Everyone knows that racism is officially over.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward [in Louisiana], was widely criticized after he refused to grant a marriage license to Beth McKay and Terence McKay, an interracial couple who ultimately got a marriage license from another justice of the peace in the same parish. The McKays hired an attorney and protested the justice’s actions.

Despite a national uproar and a call by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for him to lose his license, Bardwell, 56, said in October that he had no regrets. “It’s kind of hard to apologize for something that you really and truly feel down in your heart you haven’t done wrong,” he told CNN affiliate WAFB.

He insisted he is not racist and does not treat black people differently. He said he does not perform mixed-race marriages because he is concerned about the children of such marriages.

Boy, thank you for your concern for the well being of their children, Mr. Bardwell. Your noble heart shines through with your concern and we know that you are not racist. It is common knowledge that biracial children can never do well and when they have to ask mommy and daddy, “Could I be president someday?” it would be heartbreaking to have to tell them, “Why no, son/daughter, someone that is biracial could never lead our country. Ever. Maybe Canada, because Canadians don’t have souls.” This is why it is your duty to not oversee these marriages. Mr. Bardwell, we only wish that these close-minded liberals would get off your back. I’m sorry that you had to resign, but at least now you can promptly go fuck yourself.

The sad thing is that he is not alone. It was only in 2000 that Alabama and South Carolina finally removed their state constitutional bans on interracial marriage. The public vote? 60% voted for removal of the ban, while 40% wanted to keep it banned. Which could explain how this doofus could somehow get elected into his position in this day and age.

He did finally relent and give a deep, heartfelt apology on CBS the other day though (which you can watch right here):

“I’m sorry that I offended the couple, but I did help them and tell them who to go to,” he said. “And they went and got married, and they should be happily married and I don’t see what the problem is now.”

Nerdtastic

I now have dual monitors set up for my computer – at least until my brother gets bored with his laptop and wants to use his desktop again. That means I can stream Mad Men or Californication or YouTube on one monitor and surf the interwebs on another. How cool is that?

Astute Observation of the Moment #8

You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts… but I never forget.

Astute Observation of the Moment #7

I still have it in my head that my life is going to be made up of all those crazy and unpredictably fulfilling things that I have always planned on doing in my life. I wonder when the realization will really sink in that the odds are overwhelmingly against any of this ever happening.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Between teaching and waitering, Saturday will be my first complete day off in twenty-two straight days. Goodbye lazy childhood work ethic (unless you consider work to be video games, basketball, and mowing the lawn once a week), hello rest of my life.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work – not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
-Mark Twain

I also need a new hobby. I think I am going to make my own wine.

Never forget…

What say you?

As a writer:

Would you rather live out the rest of your life in total obscurity, poverty, and despair, only to have your the significance of your work discovered posthumously, thus rendering your relative immortality and importance in literature?

OR

Would you rather live out the rest of your life with international fame and fortune and no worries, but have your writing crumble to complete irrelevance after your death?

Really, really think about it. You may be steadfast with your immediate answer, but only until you give it a second thought.

Follow your bliss.

There is little that I would rather do than take up an autodidactic lifestyle for the next few years of my life, putting aside the formalities of institutional education and the absurdity of society’s traditional lifestyle in exchange for wandering and exploring and researching and reading on my own, without worry and because I choose it. I watched the 60 Minutes piece on John Kanzius today and wondered if the days of determined self-learning and inquisitive inventions are fizzling to an end (and no, Snuggies do not count as inspired inventing). While it is still too early to tell what John Kanzius’s impact on cancer treatment will be, I find myself amazed at the things he did while he was alive and the progress he had during his research, all without an all-important college degree.

For one reason or another, it made me think of Henry David Thoreau’s autobiographical Walden, a memoir that has stuck to the inner workings of my mind in the years since I’ve read it. To Thoreau, his choice to isolate himself from society in his good friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin on the edge of a Massachusetts town for two years was much more than a search for self-reliance, both in and beyond our world, but it was a calculated experiment which would evaluate the economic, spiritual, and social benefits of living a simplistic lifestyle. Noting people’s curiosity in his experiment, he created a book examining what he was doing and what he had learned that would undoubtedly go on to inspire thousands since its publication. He had only the occasional distraction of visitors and his visits to town every few days as he spent those two years reading classical literature and writing, and going beyond it by experiencing the sounds and sights and solitude of nature for himself, learning as much as one could ever learn about oneself in the process. He frowned on the consumerist and materialist attitudes of his time, something I and many I know do as well. This is a prison I am yet to escape, but I am digging the tunnel.

Joseph Campbell, a writer I ferociously admire for his works in comparative religion and mythology, also took the untraditional autodidactic route to finishing his education. When his advisors did not support his choice of studies when pursuing his doctorate at Columbia University, he backed out, spending the next five years studying and writing and learning on his own, nine hours on average each day. He never again returned to graduate school, yet became one of the most respected and widely read writers in his field (and became close friends with one of my favorite American authors, John Steinbeck, in the meantime). “Follow your bliss,” he famously coined. And he did. And Thoreau did. And Kanzius did. I have not – at least, not yet.

I am not Alexander Supertramp – I just don’t have the necessary survival skills nor the mental determination nor even the desire – but there would be a liberation in shedding one’s traditional lifestyle of societal acceptable routine and throwing aside the bureaucratic institution of education for one’s own, making my way across countries, learning from those I meet, learning from what I choose to read, learning from seeing and doing and experiencing. After all, is there an education more valuable than that which is self-taught and self-motivated?

Astute Observation of the Moment #6

No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you’re not superior to sex. It’s a very risky game. A man wouldn’t have two-thirds of the problems he has if he didn’t venture off to get fucked. It’s sex that disorders our normally ordered lives. I know this as well as anyone.

-Philip Roth, The Dying Animal

Guess who is going to learn a new language?

Okay, let me rephrase that: guess what schmuck is going to attempt to learn a new language… probably not fluently, but maybe enough to passably understand what someone may be trying to convey if a desperate situation were ever to arise and so I can put a check on the “Speaks Second Language” box on a job application thus increasing my value as a potential employer.

In actuality, I have absolutely zero idea how this is going to work, but I discovered on the Erie Country Library website, they offer free online language lessons called Mango to anyone that has a library card. I’m talking Spanish here, I’m talking French, I’m talking German, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian. Since I have some free time in my hands between subbing and waitering, I am going to start with the one language that is most practical being a teacher who wants to move somewhere where it doesn’t snow 8 months out of the year: Spanish. Apparently, it is one hundred online lessons that one can do at their own pace and will give a general understanding of the language. According to the site itself:

Mango uses real-life situations and actual conversations to more effectively teach a new language. By listening to and repeating after material designed from native conversations, you’ll not only learn the individual words and phrases, you’ll know how they’re used in practical situations and conversations. You’ll learn more than grammar, vocabulary and conjugation, you’ll learn how to communicate.

Interesting… and the best part is that it is free, so if after spending some hours on this I find it worthless, then no big loss besides a few hours of my time (and maybe my pride for being STUPID). Since I have two years of high school Spanish under my belt, hopefully much of this will come back to me quickly. I will keep you posted as to if it is a worthwhile expenditure of one’s time or not. If it works though, expect me to be fluent is seven languages by the end of this week.

Ol’ Blue Eyes

“I’m not unmindful of a man’s seeming need for faith. I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.”

-Frank Sinatra, 1962