“Xanga is amazing.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that Xanga has changed my life. I have no idea where I’d be right now if it weren’t for Xanga, but my guess is probably locked up in an insane asylum somewhere or worse.  Xanga has been my life line. Of late, I’d go so far as to say that Xanga has been a big part of giving my life meaning.

But it wasn’t always that way.  For years I had a Xanga but it was nothing special. It was just a place where I chroniclized a lot of my writing. Mostly just long rants or stylized essays about various subjects that interested me. The only people I shared my blog with were a few of my close friends, some of whom were the ones who told me about Xanga in the first place. And really the only reason I did that is so that I could stop cluttering up their inboxes with my random email rants.

And I’m about a billion times more antisocial in real life than I am online. So the internet has always been a big part of my life. But for the most part I always interacted with it in a sort of aloof manner. I would frequent forums but I would comment in a sort of arrogant know-it-all kind of a way, basically just blasting my opinion out there on whatever topics they happened to be discussing. Usually that’d be politics or philosophy or some random interest such as Magic or Anime of Video Games. Well I wasn’t mean, exactly, though I sometimes came off that way. (Except when someone attacked me. Then I could be downright ruthless.) But I didn’t talk to people as if I respected their opinions. There’s a reason I was able to be that way too. The whole thing didn’t feel real to me. The other people with whom I was interacting weren’t real people per se. They weren’t potential friends. Rather they were just creatures I just didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of.

Sensing there was something missing with my online life, at some point I started to interact a little more with the Xanga community, but they were half hearted efforts. I subscribed to Dan’s blog, like everybody else on the planet, and joined some blog rings. I started answering a few featured questions. But that was about it. I made a couple of comments but I didn’t follow anyone’s blog.  I didn’t really reach out to anyone.

Even when one random essay I wrote was featured once, I probably squandered that experience more than anyone else who has ever been featured. I didn’t reply to anyone’s comments (in my defense reply feature didn’t exist back then!) ,  I didn’t go to anyone’s blogs who commented and try to interact with them. I didn’t subscribe to anyone or even accept any friend requests at first. I didn’t write an entry acknowledging that I was featured. I didn’t do much of anything really. I was proud to have been featured, but I didn’t really show that I cared in the slightest.

That was sort of how I was with all things online. Facebook, Xanga, Friendster. I was a member of these communities, but they weren’t real to me. Reality was something else. Something separate.

This all changed when I made my first real online friend.

By online friend I mean someone who I met entirely online before I ever met them in person (and in many cases I have not and may never meet them in person) and with whom I interacted primarily online and yet with whom I get along as well or better than I do with friends I hang out with in the real world.

In stories, there’s a thing that happens called a “chance meeting”. It’s one of those mysterious and oh so unlikely encounters that leads to something bigger.  They are often the trigger that launches an epic adventure or the beginning of some radical change in the lives of the characters or the world in which they live.

It was sort of like that when I met Hanah.

At some point she had friended me on Xanga and I accepted and I subscribed to her blog. And I skimmed it on occassion.  Then at one point she had a mysterious message on her blog.  The gist of it was that she wished she had a friend that met a certain condition.  And I realized that I met that condition.

I’m not sure why, but I decided to message her and offer my friendship. This was… not exactly normal behavior for me.  I do take chances sometimes. I do act on whim, but I never really was the kind of person who reaches out to people who I don’t know. Not strangers. This was a first.

I didn’t really think that we’d become friends just from that, not close friends anyway. Ha! I don’t know what I thought really. I guess that we’d chat a little and that if she ever wanted to talk to me about anything I’d offer to listen. But I figured she’d get sick of me eventually and forget all about this mysterious person who messaged her out of the blue.

And that was sort of how it was at first. We talked a little via IM but um not much was said. I read her blog and tried to do what I could to try and be a friend even though we knew nothing about one another.

And then there’s that funny aspect of coincidence. Fate. A chance conglomeration of events that changes things.

My life was really weird for a while. There were a lot of things that were really really bothering me but I was sort of in denial about it. I was pretending that I was feeling just fine, but I was really really unstable.

Have you ever known the exact point where you think literally lost it? I think there was a specific day back then where I totally did. Something in me sort of snapped. I changed.

It was about that time when for some reason I started telling Hanah about the things that were bothering me. I told it as a big long story. At first I was just going to share a little. But as I started writing it in IMs and emails I just kept saying more and more and more. It turns out the story was long. It went back for years. And I told even the most miniscule details. I even rambled on about my paranoid delusions, every absurd thought that popped into my head. I obscured the names but I told it as truly as I was capable of telling it at the time.

I’ve never confided in someone who was basically a stranger before. Not ever. I barely ever confided in people I who I considered friends or even with family.

And here’s the amazing part, or at least it was amazing to me. Because Hanah, who I barely knew, didn’t tell me to stfu and leave her alone. She didn’t tell me to go away. Instead, she listened.  And more than that she asked questions and made comments too. And sometimes those comments, were extraordinary. She made me see some things differently. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand but she was able to see right away. She’s much younger than me, but truly in a lot of ways I’m far more naive when it comes to understanding my own feelings.

At the end of the gigantic story she wrote me an email and in it she said… exactly what I most needed to hear. I hadn’t realized it but the thing that was really bothering me was that I had been feeling more guilty than I had ever felt before in my entire life. And she made me see… the good that I had done. She made me see that I didn’t have to feel guilty about the choices I had made. From her perspective, from hearing my story, I had helped. It meant a lot to hear that from someone else.

Afterwards we talked a little but then there came a time when we really didn’t communicate that often. I know why too from my perspective anyway. It was a stupid reason.

It just so happened that at the time I had finsihed telling that story up to the present, it had just come to a happy conclusion. It had ended well. It made a beautiful story really when told that way. Almost like a fairy tale. Only it was real life.

And real life doesn’t really work that way.

A while after I finished telling the story, life took a darker tone. The happy ending was more in my imagination then the reality. Things went bad again. I should have known they would have.

But, I really didn’t want to tell her. I couldn’t lie. But I wanted her to have that story with its happy ending. So I avoided talking to her online. And she also had her own life to get back to.  And also, I felt a little guilty about the whole affair entirely. Who was I to burden this person I barely knew with my problems? It was sort of ironic in a way. She had come to me asking for my friendship and I had ended up using her as a friend while, it seemed to me anyway, giving very little back.

She reached out to me again anyway after a while and we started talking again. I told her, eventually, that the story didn’t work out. But I didn’t really give any details. And she didn’t press for them. Instead, we talked about other things. Random stuff really. They were good conversations. And I promised not to let so long go by again without keeping in touch with her.

And that’s pretty much how it’s been until now. We have occassional conversations about various things. Sometimes really short conversations. Sometimes much longer ones.

Sometimes we talk about anime. She’s really an anime novice. All she knows is Naruto, Bleach, and Fullmetal Alchemist. So I sent her some burned anime DVDs to facilitate her anime education, together with some episodes of Lost which she had missed that I acquired through certain nefarious means.

When I was moving and facing my long many hour car ride to my new home we talked about Music. I asked her, like I did several of my other friends and like I did in my Pulse blog about song recommendations to listen to on the ride down. And she was, a veritable fountain of suggestions. lol. I couldn’t get her to shutup! At one point she had already given me enough song recommendations to fill my entire trip just with her suggestions alone and she said something like “I’m only up to the F’s” going alphabetically. LOL! And her suggestions were all very good too. I’m still going through them actually. I wonder if I’ll ever finish… But I don’t really get why she like The Format so much…

She’s also in the process of applying for colleges now and we talk about that too. I’m trying to convince her to apply to my Alma Mater, Swarthmore College where I think her unique style and personality would fit in perfectly.  But for some reason she’s more interested in some pathetic no name school called Cornell…

And all our conversations are fun. She’s got an extraordinary personality and has an incredible sense of humor. Sometimes she says things in these conversations that literally cracks me up and other times things that really make me think.

We had one of those conversations yesterday. She said she had a bone to pick with me. She wanted to know, why it is that I never mentioned her on my blog before?

And you know, I didn’t have a good answer for that. There were lots of cases where I could have mentioned her. Lots of things I could have said about her but I didn’t. I also didn’t really talk about her to my other friends either except indirectly as in something like “a friend I met online recommended  this movie to me” or this CD and so on and so forth. I think a part of me liked having that totally private connection. But that’s pretty selfish isn’t it?

So to make up for it, I decided to write this to entry about her.  It’s probably way too much. Much more than she expected I bet. Ha! I guess she sould be careful what she wishes for!

But yeah basically I wanted to say that I have a friend named Hanah who was the first friend I met through Xanga. I don’t really know that much about her, but she’s had a profound impact on my life. She’s the first real friend I’ve ever had online.

If I had not known her I probably would not have reached out to as many people. I probably wouldn’t interact as much online. I probably wouldn’t even blog as much. I wouldn’t be as open to making more friends online, to talking to more people, and to opening up to more people. And I wouldn’t have met those other friends I’ve met through Xanga who I’ve become and am becoming closer to.

There are three really now. There’s maybe a dozen people I love interacting with online and in blogs who I’d consider friends. But there are three I met online with whom I feel I have a stronger connection. Three who have changed me and are changing me still. Maybe there is something special about that number?  All good things come in threes?  Right? There’s the one whose words I quoted at the top of this message, whom I traveled half way across the country for the chance to meet in person and there’s the one I just met who loves to role play. All three chance meetings really. I can’t help but think of how unlikely it all was. How odd. How lucky I really am.

But Hanah was the first. And to her I wanted to give my deepest sincerest thanks. You’re my friend, Hanah, and you mean the world to me. I hope we always stay that way.

There. Now I’ve mentioned you! Now give me a break already!

Edit:  Hanah said it was ok to link directly to her blog. It’s xohanahox

I have a friend with whom I regularly chat via IM. We often talk about numerous interesting topics and he often has a lot to say about them. He’s also shown an interest in blogging and interacting with the blogging community…

Only he won’t blog.

I’ve tried to convince him, but he says he doesn’t see himself blogging right now. He says he doesn’t have enough confidence with his writing and he thinks his blogs won’t be good enough. He also says he associates bad memories with writing. And he thinks he won’t have very much or enough to say. He says that he’ll maybe write ten blog entries and then run out of topics and start repeating himself.

Generally he just doesn’t seem to think he’d be able to do a good job with his blog compared to the blogs of other.  And he doesn’t feel comfortable with sharing his writing with the public.

It’s of course up to him whether he blogs and I’m not trying to force him into doing anything he doesn’t want to do. But I told him that I thought he’d make an excellent blogger just based on our conversations and that his entries would be very interesting to other bloggers out there. And I told him that it might be that blogging might help him to build more confidence in his writing, giving him more experience and also that I thought that there would probably be a lot of bloggers out there that if they read his blog would probably be able to relate to him. And I told him that he might make some friends through blogging as I have.

Still he does not blog. Maybe he will one day. Maybe not. I don’t know. But right now he doesn’t seem like he’s going to blog despite my urging.

So I was just wondering, do any of you know anyone like that? Have you ever convinced anyone to start a blog? If so, how did you convince them? Is there anyone you know who never blogs but who you think would make an excellent blogger?

Hmmm… come to think of it I’ve actually got a lot of friends who I wish would blog or I wish would blog more often. Maybe I’m just overly obsessed with blogging.

Eh to each his own I guess, but I think it’s sad. The world would benefit from having his thoughts immortalized in blogging form. A pity he doesn’t see that himself!

Yes, I’m still trying…

I don’t believe in God. I don’t attend church. I think organized religions in their current forms are extremely dangerous. And I doubt I’ll ever believe differently.

There. How’s that? Flameworthy?

I guess I really should explain a little. The big problem with religious debate in general is that we end up merging everything all together and start talking all over each other. Nobody ends up agreeing cuz nobody is really talking about the same things.   So I want to be very careful in explaining myself and defining my terms so that we are all on the same footing.

First of all for the remainder of this document when I say “God”  what I mean is, specifically any form of higher than human super powerful force, entity, group, or power that both A. makes choices, and B. gives meaning to our existence.  The “higher than human” part is very important. The entity or whatever has to be beyond our capacity to achieve in our current state as a species.

So this means that by God I could mean the Greek Pantheon or I could mean Jesus, or  I could mean The Force from StarWars, or some great merged sentient consciousnesses that our spriits join after we die. The key here is making our lives meaningful in some way and being at least sentient enough to be able to make decisions.

By religion for the remainder of this document I mean organizations that meet on the basis of like spiritual beliefs. This can be anything from the mighty catholic church, to a group of boneheads who meet in their garage to worship the aliens who are going to take them back home to their destined methoerland.

Now the biggest problem I find in religious debate is that we waay too often confuse belief in God with belief in Religion.  In reality these two things vary *completely* independently.

You see, you can have people who are even high ranking officials in the church of whatever denomination they belong who deep down in their heart of hearts don’t believe in *any* God let alone the God to whom they assert their loyalty. It’s very easy for people to lie about that and some of these Priests and whatnot have good incentive to do so. Powerful organized religions can be a strong lure for those seeking power and influence over others. And once you have that power, it’s easy to abuse it.

But also there are those who don’t really believe who are less sinister about it. They just haven’t really thought that much about it. Many refuse to really give real thought to whether or not God exists. But they love going to church! It’s a social experience for them that brings great value to their lives.

Or there are others who because of life experiences they’ve had, hardships they’ve been in and whatever, refuse to believe in God any longer. They can no longer accept the idea that there is a decision making power that is Good that could create such hardships in their lives.  But again, that might not have a damn thing to do with whether or not they believe in Religion.

Likewise, there’s those who believe strongly in God who reject religion entirely. They find the whole idea of meeting once a week to be a farce or a waste of time or maybe they are just bored by it all. They may not get anything out of the experience and they find themselves disagreeing so often with the preacher or whoever that they’d rather in their own time establish their own personal beliefs about God.

There are even those who are *in* organized religions, even in positions of power who don’t believe in it. Again, they might just be *using* religion as a means for them to further their goal of spreading belief in God which they would do through whatever means happens to be available to them. They don’t think the religious institutuion has any value in and of itself. It’s just a means to an end.

And that’s just scratching the surface of the many possible variant views people can have on religion and God. They really don’t have to coincicde at all.

Of course there are plenty of people who believe strongly in God and Religion. Just as there are quite a few athiests who strongly reject both the idea of God and the institution of Religion. They believe that religion is a farce and belief in God is just plain absurd.

I’m not quite like them. But I get where they are coming from. I’m pretty close.

So where exactly do my opinions lie? It’ll take a bit to explain. 

First with regards to belief in God.

I’ve always considered myself to be an Agnostic. That’s a lovely little word that will get you nice and ridiculed by both true believers and athiests alike.  People think that the agnostics are the ones who can’t make up their damned mind and try to play both sides at the same time. Panderers. Flatterers. Pansies.  Sometihing like that.

Of course, such lovely scorn! That’s why I absolutely *had* to be one!

No… I kid. I’ve been an agnostic for as long as I’ve known the term and I can’t imagine myself being anything else.

The athiest believes, basically, that the matter of the existence of God is subject to the scientific method. That is to say, we don’t believe in flying unicorns until we have empirical evidence of flying unicorns. In the absence of such evidence we believe and assert fairly and justly that flying unicorns DO NOT exist. We don’t say “I neither confirm nor deny the existing of flying unicorns”. That’d be absurd.  We, scientists, reassess our opinions as additional evidence is presented to us but hold to the best model describing reality that we are able to form given the evidence avaialble.

In contrast, the believer believes in a higher power, largely because they feel they *must* believe. They believe in it, in the absence of evidence or due to evidence that is unconfirmed by the scientisfic community.  And they do so because it fulfills them to believe. It is a matter of what brings their lives meaning.

And I feel I lie somewhere inbetween. I certainly do not want to believe that there is nothing more to this existence than what can be confirmed through empriical observation. No.. that’s not eactly true. I really *don’t* believe that.  And I don’t want to ahve a wait and see approach. I’m not very scientifically minded at heart.  I don’t filter knowledge and only see what is there before my eyes, discarding all the rest as irrelevant until confirmed.  I think, and feel strongly there there are a lot of things out there that we don’t have the faintest clue about right now. I don’t think we’ve reached some near end of where physics can take us or some such bullshit that some writers are now claiming. I believe that the set of things that can be understood is vaster beyond imagination than the size of those things we happen to understand right now. And I think and I hope that out there somewhere is something that can justly be called the meaning of our existence. Ala, a God of some sort.

But there might not be.

I don’t care for delusional belief just to make myself feel better either. I’m fully aware that even in the vast size of all that is left to be known, there might not be anything remaotely resembling the idea of a God.  Our lives really very well might *not* have any meaning beyond there here and now. And if that’s the case then so be it. It sucks.

So I neither confirm nor deny the existence of God. I’ll really wait and see. Could very easily be that I’ll have an experience in my life time that will convince me. It’s very much possible. It might not be an experience that will hold up to the stricted scientific rigor but I could still see myself swayed.  I don’t believe right now. I really don’t. But I very easily good.

I also think Scientists are a little too myopic when it comes to matters of faith. I feel like we haven’t aas a society done nearly enough investigation into matters of supernatural phenomena as we should. I think we tend to dismiss rather than seek out an explanation of the supernatural experiences people have claimed to have. Well in part this is not just the scientists fault but also the fault of those who have claimed supernatural experiences who don’t want to give up their beliefs even as reasonable evidence to explain it arises making scinetists less than enthusiastic to enter into a waste of time debate with such irrational people.  And likewise because of the fear of being labeled irrational, many who have had supernatural encounters are too afraid to speak up about them meaning the evidence gets suppressed.

Still, there are soo many people I’ve met who have very sincerely stated that they have experienced things that beyond the ordinary in their lives. And theyse are, for the most part otherwise, reasonable and rational down to earth people.  I don’t believe in dismissing their assertions on some absurd principle that ghosts and spirits and whatnot “can’t possibly exist”. That’s ridiculous. I don’t know if they do or don’t. Both those people had some sort of expeireince. I don’t believe that they are all liars. So I believe that the scinetific community should give them more credence. I believe that these things should be studied in more depth and the truth disovered.  I believe there is a truth and I believe there is an explaantion and I believe it is within our power to understand.

Actually I need to make a small aside here. That idea that it is within our power to understand is really pivotal to my belief system. So in a very real sense I actually don’t believe in God at all and am a hardcore athiest. Why? Because I refuse out of shear stubborness to believe that there is *anything* that is truly and completely *beyond* humanity.  I think that even if there is a God, even if it’s the classical Christian God, I  don’t see why we can’t one day evolve to the level where we can have a chat with good old God as equals.  Yeah that’s arrogant. But I like to believe in limitless potential. Why should we bother with thinking of ourselves as limited? What good does that do us?

OK, phew, now on to the idea of Religion.  Really that’s the thing that most Athiests really have a beef with. Religion. They don’t serioeusly give a damn about whether people in their spare time pray to a Christian God or their pet rock or whatever they feel like. No what they despise is these nstitituions that have arisen in the name of God that as they will clearly be willing to tell you in great depth  are “fucking up society”. They’ll talk about how they brainwash people. They’ll talk about how they corrupt children. They’ll talk about how they instigate wars and  pervert social institutions and hold back the development of science etc etc etc

The arguments aren’t bad and once you get into the details you pretty much *have* to acknowledge that the athiests make good points unless you are just being stubborn about it. Indeed I pretty much agree. But I don’t think it’s the whole story about religion by a long shot.

The problem is, it’s extremely difficult to say whether a large institution ought or ought not exist.  Should it be altered or should it be destroyed? Are we better off with it or without it? What’s the metric we use to decide that?

We have decided as a society that certain institutions are just morally wrong and should be wiped out. The big example is Slavery. That’s sort of the epitome of an evil institution. Slavery takes away people’s freedom and puts them in service of other human beings. It’s clearly unjust no matter how you look at it.

So is organized religion like slavery? Well, I could talk about all the good that organized religions have done. The chariities they take part in. The people they help. The good that it makes so many people feel on a daily basis being part of a group, a community of like minded individuals. I mean, let’s face it, some religions are downright fun! Basically they are an excuse to one day a week get together and have kind fo a party of singing and clapping and hugging and having a good old time.  I could point to those things and say “See! How could *anyone* in their right mind say that religion was like slavery?”

But if you are sharp you’ll see that an argument like that is insufficient. Why? Because slavery undoubteldy had its good points too. One could, and many did back when it was a matter of contention, argue that slavery was “good for soceity”.  But that didn’t matter. It was unjust and had to be dismantled anyway. It was the right thing to do to get rid of slavery even if a lot of people were made happy because of its existence.

Is religion like that? Well, some would argue precisely that. They’ll say that most religions take away people’s freedom of belief. They indoctrinate children at a very young age int oa set of principles and behaviors that have no real basis in any kind of reality and implore them to believe in those principles without examination or contemplation. And worse, those principles are rigid and set and unable to be changed by the populace even should beliefs or circumstances change. This unity of false belief is then used by the people in power to further their own ends that may or may not have anything to do with the populace that enables their power.

In short, organized religion, they argue has been for the most part a Totalitarian Regime throughout it’s history. Just as Slavery is too .

An you know what, I pretty much agree.  Most religions have been totalitarian and most religions still are pretty totalitarian. But you know what? Not all totalitarian systems need to be dismantled! It isn’t enough to say that a system is totalitarian that it must be wiped from the planet. It also has to be unjust the way that slavery is unjust. That is far from proven from the arguments we’ve asserted thus far. Because the people under this totalitarian system, don’t for the most part reject it. They aren’t yearning for freedom and they don’t feel as if their opportunity for happiness and their ability to forge a life for themselves is fully suppressed by the institituion of religion. It’s very different from salvery in that regards.

Rather, I’d say it resmbles something more like a great many totalitarian but not dictatorial Governments. (It also resembles institutions like Corporate Capitalism, but that’s an argument I’ll leave for another day)

And that means, in my opinion, there is room to remake religions into better entities without wiping them out!  We managed to morph most of our totalitarion governments into representative democracies. This was not done by bringing on an era of anarchy but by slowly morphing governemtns, tearing down old regimes and putting down different regimes that were nevertheless based in large part on the ones that came before. Except that they had more freedom.  And there’s still lots of room to improve these governemnts, to make them even more free.  We are constantly evolving them to give the people more input and make the systems more just.

Why can’t it be that way with most religions? We already see in more modern soceities how religions do tend to turn toward more and more democratic systems. And that has a huge influence on how their belief systems evolve. It’s a good thing. But it’s very very slow going. I really think most religions really have to evolve much faster. They are lagging waaay behind and they are dangerous to the development of society as it is. The reason they lag behind is quite explicable though. The people who disagree are not for the most part sticking with these institutions and fighting for change within them. Instead they are opting out either be spirtiual on their own or rejecting religion altogether. The result is, increasingly religiosn are populated with the more fundamentalist thinkers who feel besieged by an outside world that fully rejects them. Rather than evolve, we’ve seen a lot of religions dig their heels in. Even to the point that they fight with tooth and nail over absolutely *absurd* principles like the hubbub over gay marriage.  And I think that situation is really really dangerous.

Totalitarian institutions are always dangerous. We always have to remember that. Even if you have a government ruled by the nicest guy in the world who manages to retain power through his totalitarian policies, it’s still very dangerous. Because you never know who might come after that person. The next person he apponints to be in charge either might not be as good or might not be as strong as he is. And the government could very easily fall under sway of a dictator, a madman, or a thief (or more likely someone who is all three!).  Heck even your nicest guy in the world might one day hit his head in the bathtub and turn into a geneocidal maniac. You just can’t win with totalitarian systems no matter how good an idea they might seem.

That’s the thing with religion too. No matter how beneficial and good most organized religions might seem to you. No matter how much you love them and want them to persist and don’t want them to change, understand that they are very very dangerous tools that can be abused. The people there, no matter how many titles they might have are still people. They are fallible. They can turn to the darkside. And the systems of most religions are not setup to really give adequate protections agaisnt that.  They are too totalitarian. The populace has too little influence over the decision making process of the leadership. There aren’t enough checks and balances. And it’s too big of a pulpet, to storng a megaphone for the few to impsoe their view points on the many.

That’s why, I say I think organized religions are dangerous.  I don’t think they are bad or good. I think there are good points and bad points and I certainly don’t blame anyone for going to church regularly and enjoying that expeirence. IF that is something that gives you joy and puts value in your life, you absolutely should do that! But while you’re there, please let me implore you! Use a little of your influence to push your church bit by bit toward more democratic principles. To be more open and understanding. To give credence to other view points. Don’t let the fundamentalists foist their demands that you have to listen to the letter of the law of some rules in some damnable book.

Religion is about morality. And we all have our own moral compass that is just as valid as anyone elses. If the God someone is peddling you tells you something is wrong  and deep down you don’t believe it, don’t automatically think that you are a bad person! Think that that person is trying to pull a fast one on you! Cuz he or she probably is! So fight back!! Convince the religion to change it’s view rather than trying to conform to it! Religion can evolve to become a good and productive part of people’s lives without the risk of bringing darkness to others.

We don’t need to wipe out religions like we did slavery we just have to be smarter about how we run them.

So that’s my opinion on God, Religion, and Everything like that.

Come on! Let me have it!

I was asked what my opinion is on abortion so I thought I’d share it here. Maybe, it’ll be controversial enough to make me some enemies for once. That’d be cool. But I doubt it.

My opinion on abortion is actually fairly straight forward and not even particularly interesting.  I can describe it in one sentence. And that sentence is:

It’s none of my business.

That’s not as shallow a perspective as it sounds. It’s not merely out of a desire to avoid controversy (I want controversy!) or to run away from challenging issues that I say that.  I’ve actually given this a lot of thought. And that’s the thing I come back to, it really isn’t any of my business. When it comes to deep heart wrenching moral issues, choices over life and death and what constitutes life, why should it be my business, until the time comes when I have to make that choice or a choice like it? And you know what?

It’s none of any of YOUR business either.

Well unless you are making that choice right now, well then it’s your business. But the rest of is? Why are we so intent on dictating the truth of a complex moral issue to others? Do I? Do any of us really have the right to tell someone what’s right and what’s not about something that is so very unknown?

And certainly, certainly, it’s none of the GOVERNMENT’S business.

That’s the big issue. It’s what everyone spends the most energy arguing about. Should abortions be legal or illegal? Isn’t that odd though? We don’t argue so much about whether a fetus is alive or not. Or whether abortions should happen or not. Or whether abortions are moral or not. Those questions only come up as secondary questions, as means of getting at the answer of the central question which is should it be illegal or not.

I think that’s entirely backwards. Whether or not it is illegal doesn’t matter so much to me. It’s the other questions that are more interesting. It’s the other questions that are hard. Almost impossibly hard. And none of my business too.

That’s why, in the absence of consensus, the government should be getting the hell out of everyone’s way and just let things happen as they will. It absolutely should NOT create laws preventing people from engaging in or providing for abortions. That’s up to the people themselves. It’s not their place.

Unnecessary laws are bad in general. They warp and pervert society. They create belief systems that are not organic developments of our social will but rather the dictates of a small oligarchy of opinion makers. When you have a strict law asserting that something is illegal, people tend to start to think it is wrong because of the law without any reason behind it.   The examples of this are numerous.  Once upon people really did think that mixed marriages were morally wrong. People did think that mixed bathrooms were wrong. Why? Regular people thought this. Not just the villains. A cursory glance tells us this is absurd, but the rule existed. And people believed in the rule. They capitulated to the law. It’s association.

I could go into a huge list of things here that are illegal that probably shouldn’t and never should have been for exactly that reason, but I don’t want to bore you. Simple not particularly controversial examples include under aged drinking or sharing of copyrighted music.  These things aren’t wrong. Or at least if they are wrong, it’s far from obvious that they are wrong and there’s a good deal of disagreement on the matter. And yet the law tells us they are wrong so more and more and more people come to believe it. Without introspection. Without consideration. They just believe. We trust the laws to provide guidelines for right living.  But when laws do not represent the social consensus they become perversions not principles to live by.

That’s the thing with abortion. I think it’s a very good thing for us to argue about it. I think it’s perfectly fine for us to disagree. It should be a matter of serious concern to us about whether in this case or that other case a person should have an abortion. We should talk about it. It’s fine for someone even to try to convince someone to or not to have an abortion, so long as they do so with respect and don’t presume to dictate to the person what they *must* do. Because it really is their decision.  And it’s hard enough without assholes trying to force someone to go along with their point of view.

I’m also perfectly fine with social crusades about it. If a group or organization wants to fight to try and get everyone to believe that life begins at conception and abortion causes the death of that life, more power to them. I don’t agree with that. But they are welcome to argue for it. They are welcome to try and convince people. But they aren’t welcome to try and dictate behavior to people. To try through threat of force or law, make people act in accordance with their world view. That’s just wrong.

And maybe they would succeed. And society will turn in consensus and decide as a group that abortion should be illegal. And that’d be no problem for me. If that’s what the vast majority of people agree, then that’s what it should be.  

But I hope to god that even if that happens we setup some kind of meaningful social group child rearing program and massively expand access to birth control mechanisms and education and everything else. Otherwise it seems like we’d just be screwing a lot of people over. But of course, I can’t imagine that concensus developing unless those mechanisms were already in place, because the people being screwed over aren’t likely to agree any time soon!

But for now, there is no consensus. So each of us must make the choice ourselves and we can ask everyone else what they think and how they feel, but it’s an individual choice. It has to be an individual choice. Otherwise it’s like a kind of bondage. Unless God came down from heaven and told you himself that this was right or wrong and you know it for a fact, you are forcing people to act in accordance with your arbitrary opinions. What gives you the right to do that? Nobody has that right.

So that’s my core position. But there are a few other random external considerations and arguments I will make for now just for completeness.

The Social Economic Perspective - 
The way society is now, it’s virtually impossible to argue that allowing abortion isn’t a net social gain. We reduce the number of births (always good in this age of population overload) and we increase the prosperity and opportunities of those who have abortions and of the children in those households.

The Economic Justice Perspective -
Labor is called “labor” for a reason. To demand that women without choice engage in many hours of hard work to produce a new citizen without compensation really really is a kind of slavery.

The Scientific Perspective -
It really is hard to say what distinguishes the cells after conception from any other cells. Someone with biological training could probably make this point better than I, it doesn’t really sway me as an argument goes.

The Philosophical Perspective -
If the question is what we “label” alive (and by “alive” I mean an existence that we put value in), surely the point at which we make the break is arbitrary. Unless we identify something that can meaningfully called a soul and then figure out when that comes into  existence, really nobody can say what choice is better. To say that life “begins” at conception is the same as saying life begins when we become self aware or when we develop the capacity to communicate.  Or we could make an arbitrary cut off at 3 months after conception or 3 years after birth, or whatever. There are no facts to go on. It’s a label, not a mathematical principle, so we should decide it base on what we *want* to think. What do we want to put value in. What are the advantages of valuing a child before birth as opposed to only after? What are the disadvantages?  I could go into depth about them, but I think pro-life people have a lot of room here to make solid arguments for valuing the fetus, pre-birth.

And of course, there’s one last question to answer, and that’s as always the Hypothetical question. What would you do, Nephyo? You of course will eventually ask. And so I will answer.

I think I would want to have the child. It would depend on whether or not I was confidence I could support the child and give them a decent life and there weren’t any other unexpected matters to consider. But that’s my basic answer regardless of whether I am hypothetically a woman or hypothetically a man in a relationship with a woman making that decision.  Of course in the latter case, I would make my opinion known while fully recognizing that it isn’t really ultimately my choice.  And I’d tried to help that person understand her own feelings and come up with her own decision without trying to force any particular belief system on them.

And this is just me right now, ten years ago when I was in High School I probably would have thought differently. But I’d still try to be supportive and in no case would I ever think that I wanted to have the child just because I thought to not do so was some deep moral wrong akin to premeditated murder. I’m not sure if it is entirely good or entirely bad in every situation, but I definitely don’t believe that it’s anywhere near on level with murder. And I really can’t imagine anything that would make me believe that.

So why then, in such a situation would I want to have the child rather than an abortion? Well, to be honest I’m not even the least bit sure whether I want to have children at all and honestly I suspect strongly I wouldn’t be a very good Dad, though I’d of course do my best. But still, if the situation arose, I’d want to do it.

Why? I’m not entirely sure myself. But I guess I just think, all else being equal, that that chance of adding a unique potential to the world is worth gambling on.

So that’s my opinion on abortion.  I guess that means I’m pro-choice.

Feel free to flame.

You know I was just thinking how Xanga has been waay too nice to me. I mean I see on these other blogs how people get into arguments and fights that last for days and generally tick each other off. I’ve seen other bloggers get assualted by deranged individuals trying to discredit them, or get insulted randomly by people they’ve never heard of. I’ve heard of other bloggers getting blackmailed because of what they wrote or even picking up a stalker or two.

No such luck for me. 

Every person I’ve encountered on Xanga so far has been polite, kind, generous, or even sweet. They’ve all been impeccably behaved, good natured people that have been a joy to interact with online. Nobody holds grudges. Nobody seems to get insulted. I can only think of one sort of mean sarcastic comment I’ve ever gotten in all the years I’ve had this blog and even that one wasn’t so bad.  Sure I’ve gotten some weird and sometimes annoying private  messages but nothing really cruel or twisted, and besides that’s only fair since I’ve sent some weird private messages I probably shouldn’t have too. Nope. Nothing really dramatic has ever happened on this blog at all. Everyone’s just so dang nice.

What wrong with all of you people?

Seriously. I feel left out. It’s like I’m not getting the whole Xanga experience. Am I really that uncontroversial? Is it really true that I never offend anyone? Does everybody just end up agreeing with me? Could it be that no one who has ever stumbled upon my blog was the least bit crazy or an asshole at heart? I find that hard to believe. Or is it that all the psychotic and deranged trolls are too lazy to read through one of my gigantic posts? Maybe they don’t like how my blog is all plain, uncolored text. Maybe they need colors and music and video and pictures to keep them distracted long enough to remember to pick a fight? I wonder…

Well whatever the reason I’m a bit sick of it (and sort of bored to boot). So to that end, maybe I’ll start writing about some more controversial subjects starting with the one I was asked about in response to my last post.

But if I do this, you dear readers have to hold up your side of the bargain as well! I want some controversey! Let’s have some drama! I want to be ticked off. I want to get into a verbal combat with someone so I can practice my skills. I fear they are starting to dull.

So unless you’re all a bunch of pussy-footed lilly-witted pansies…

Bring it on!!

Way back when I remember on Leonidas’s blog (anybody remember him?) he wrote in passing about how everyone has a sort of back and forth banter that happens on their job that is similar to the way in which people communicate on television shows like The West Wing or Friends.

I thought this was quite odd to say in a sense because one of the things that always seemed weird to me about modern television shows is how unrealistic the dialog seemed to me.  It’s sort of … too rapid… too perfect.  It’s like everyone knows exactly the most clever thing to say in response to a comment. In real life though, I think people flounder a lot more. Dialog isn’t scripted. We just do the best we can, and often we try to say something clever or smart and it comes out just plain dumb. Sometimes that results in embarrassing moments or even painful moments or extreme misunderstandings. Other times though it results in even more interesting and humerus exchanges than could ever be thought up by the now well paid writers of modern television programs. 

So what I’m saying is, basically, communication in real life is a lot more messy and a lot less artistic, than in TV programs and movies and books.  And now you’re saying something along the lines of “Well Duh.”  Yup, I like torturing you by boring you with obvious points. Deal with it.

But even so, despite how sadly imperfect we all are at it, smalltalk does happen. Water cooler conversations. Coffee shop conversations.  The movies and televisions shows are idealized manifestations of real phenomenons. People learn to do this sort of dialectic dance, spinning words cleverly around one another to create a kind of atmospheric effect. You learn how to put people at ease, how to make people smile or feel comfortable. You learn how to get people to befriend you, to open up to. You learn how to create a casual environment where individuals can part company not thinking particularly ill of one another. You learn how to spin an encounter so that it becomes a kind of entertainment for all parties involved. Ever person involved may well forget every word that was said ten minutes later, but still, you feel mildly amused and it can be a casual break in the unending tedium of existence.

We learn this oh so useful skill of engaging in smalltalk as we grow up and through practice again and again in a million different empty encounters.

Well…. most of us do anyway.

Or rather I should say, most of you do anyway. Or so I’ve observed.

Me? I’m no good at it. I don’t know how. Nor do I really care to know how.  The problem is, the beginning of these conversations don’t work for me. These conversations, they always start with these questions.  You exchange sort of tokens of your mutual curiosity about one another. You each are expected to ask these questions and give these trite well prepared and practiced answers. It’s much like an interview, only the only thing riding on it is the likelihood of the person you are communicating with ever bothering to talk to you again. And sometimes it’s not all clear whose loss that is.

But for me, I find it hard to show real interest in the answers. When I ask them it feels like I’m lying. And I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to say empty words because I am supposed to.

What’s your name?  I don’t care?  What do you do?  I don’t care. Do you have any plans for the evening? I don’t care. Where did you go to school?  I don’t care.  Where are you from? I don’t care. How old are you? I don’t care. How are you doing? I don’t care.  Do you like sports? I don’t care.  What kind of music do you like? I don’t care. etc. etc. etc.

I Just. Don’t. Care.

Why should I ask? Why should I answer? These questions aren’t important. You can tell they are ritual not substance if only in that they virtually always take on the exact same form. People don’t even bother to vary their language to make it at least amuse me a little, you know? Come on. I get sooo bored.

I got asked a particularly annoying one the other day it damnably pissed me off. Someone asked “Do you go to church?”   That the person even asks says more about the person asking than the respondent. Nobody who doesn’t go to church would ever ask that question without a trigger. I said I didn’t, except on special occasions.  And the person had such a disappointed look on her face and she said “oh” and them quickly changed the subject. 

What a pointless encounter. I didn’t care about it.  Waste of my time.

There’s a big problem with not caring about smalltalk though. People get the impression when they interact with me sometimes that I just don’t care about them. They think that I’m not interested in them or that I am so arrogant that people don’t matter to me at all.  Or worse they think they’ve offended me in some way and they start to get  fidgety or uncomfortable. Sometimes they go silent or even defensive.  And I realize, they’re waiting for me to ask them pointless drivel questions! I’m supposed to be asking them what they do and how they’re doing and what they’re favorite sports team is? It’s like a dance you see only their dance partner isn’t moving at all. He’s just standing there staring at them. No wonder they are made uncomfortable!

But they are misunderstanding me. It’s not that I don’t care about people. It’s not that I don’t care to know who random strangers are.  I do.  The problem is,  I just don’t care to know the answers to all these  particular random common questions  I don’t care what kind of music they like or where they went to school or what their major is. Who cares? Why do the answers to any of those questions matter in the least? Certainly the answers to none of those questions are going to be the primary determiner of whether or not I will befriend someone or whether I want to talk to someone again. Not at all.

No… what I want to know… what I really want to know.. is how you think. I want to know how your mind works and where you are coming from. I want to know what kind of person you are. I am infinitely curious about that. Every person I meet I want to know. I’m fascinating by different thought processes. I’m curious about people’s perceptions on life. I think that’s more important. I think that’s who people really are. That’s what I want to know.

And then… after I know or at least have an inkling about how someone thinks and I find that person to be a fascinating and interesting person, well then I become curious about all the rest.  Now I want to know what your major was and whether you like video games or anime or sports.  Now I want to know what your hobbies are and how you spend your days. And I want to know a lot more too! If I think you think in an interesting way, then I want to know EVERYTHING about you! I want to know how you were raised, who your friends are, what your dreams are, whether  or not you ball up your socks, etc. etc. etc.  But that comes later. After I know you, at least a little. Before that, I honestly can’t get myself to care that much.

Strange huh? I know it’s a pretty arrogant perspective in some ways. So sue me. That’s just the way I’m wired.

That’s why I guess I like blogging. Because I already learn so much about how people think from reading their blog that by the time I hold a real conversation with them via IM or comments or in private messages or in person, I’m already super curious about you. Now I can seriously ask the ritualistic questions and actually care what the answer is. And I can ask other questions too. Or sometimes I’m just content to listen to you talk about whatever it is that you want to talk about. Because any information I get about these people wherever it comes from is information I want to have. I appreciate all the knowledge whatever its source.

So when I realized this weird perspective on ordinary communication I developed, I set out to make my random encounters more valuable to the ends of making friends and so the stranger would encounter me and say:

“How are you doing?”

To which I’d reply:

“I’m doing alright. So… what do you suppose is the meaning of life?”

Or maybe:  “Do you think people have free will?” 

Or: “What’s your dream job?”

Or: “Do you think we should go to a federal flat tax system?”

Or, particularly popular… “Do you think abortion should be legal?”

As you can imagine… these encounters didn’t often go so well.  And I don’t actually like to argue. In person, I get tired of it quickly.  Often arguments involve both people stubbornly asserting the truth of things that could easily just be looked up.  I do like debate. I’m interested in interesting topics. But I hate to argue. And this approach lead to a lot of arguments and also a lot of disgusted incredulous looks. And of course, my favorite response, the person who backs away slowly as if you are contagious or some sort of deranged lunatic. :-O

Heh. So I don’t do that any more unless I’m totally bored. I only experimented with it for a short time.

So I learned, sadly, slowly, I learned to ask the normal questions. I try to keep the boredom out of my voice and look interested all the while I’m really looking for a clue, a hint into something interesting… something different…

But my boredom still gets the better of me and I just *have* to make the encounter a little bit different. I’ve got to at LEAST vary the language a little. So instead fo saying “How are you?” sometimes, I just have to say something like “How is your part of the cosmos?” or “How is reality striking you today?”  Same meaning. But sooo much more fun!

Enough rambling. Now I’m going home to go read HellSing…

So I’ve been reading shoujo lately. And I’ve gotta stop that.  I’m definitely more of a shonen guy and now I know why.  Because I’m a sap. Reading this shoujo stuff, it messes me up in the head. Makes me too emotional.  Makes me think weird thoguhts.

Not that I don’t like Shoujo. I always have. The few I’ve seen or read I’ve enjoyed.  Like Kare Kano (His and Her Circumstances).  I thought that series was absolutely brilliant.  Fushigi Yuugi I thought was fascinating. Ayashi no Ceres interesting, though I hated the ending. I even don’t really mind Sailor Moon, though I wish I’d seen it subbed.

But I actually don’t like many of the characters in those series. Yui was cool in Fushigi Yuugi but Miaka just annoyed me to no end.  And I can’t think of *any* character I was fond of in Ayashi no Ceres. And although I didn’t dislike any character in Kare Kano, for some reason none of them stuck with me to the point that I really remember them very well.

No my favorite Shoujo isn’t shoujo at all really. It’s InuYasha!  Inuyasha is just a plain brilliant series. It’s more shonen than shoujo most would say… but… actually the shonen parts are pretty mediocre. It’s the parts where it sort of morphs into a shoujo series where it really becomes exceptional.  And it had a big effect on me back when I was in college. I became obsessed with it.  And it made me sort of emotionally unstable. Well ok, I can’t really blame that on the anime, but it certainly didn’t help any.

So recently I’ve been reading Imadoki and Pretear. And I’m just starting MeruPuri. I finsihed Pretear just last night. And I think that caused me to wake up in a really weird mood this morning. Sort of irrationally upset over things I thought I’d put behind me.

I’ll tell you my impressions.of Imadoki and Pretear now, but be warned I will give spoilers. Nothing huge, but you know how it is.

Now the thing about Shoujo I’ve noticed is that they tend to live or die by their main character. A heroine generally. The extent to which I like them depends on the extent to which I like the heroine. But then maybe that’s just becuase I’m a guy.

First Imadoki. This is probably my favorite shoujo after Inuyasha (which only partially counts). And really there’s only one reason for that. I really like the female protagonist of this story! Tanpopo. Basically there’s this scene in volume one where she’s like “No matter what, You are going to be my friend!!” The scene is really really cool.

Yeah so after that Tanpopo could do no wrong in my book. She’s just awesome. And she doesn’t really disappoint me throughout the series.

The other characters I’m less fond of. The male lead, “Scoop” as he is called, I find somewhat boring. I find his brother to be significantly more interesting and likable but even he gets on my nerves. The side characters are funny but not developed enough for you to really get into. Although, I will say the “Flippy” character is probably one of the most unique characters I’ve encountered in anime. He’s hilarious.

The plot overall is simple but still very engrossing. It’s a basic high school drama story but with a weird flower theme going throughout. (Tanpopo means dandelion) I found it all thoroughly enjoyable. There were scenes in it that I found very touching. You can tell Yuu Watase is just an incredibly skilled story teller, and she’s gotten better as her works have progressed. I can’t wait to read her most recent works.

Now, Pretear is another matter.  The plot of Pretear is a warped version of Snow White oddly mixed with Cinderella aspects. The strange thing is that instead of seven dwarves and a prince they have seven prince-like “Leaf Knights”. And each Leaf Knight controls an elemental power. And they all fight against the “Princess of Despair”. The only way the Leaf Kngihts can defeat the princess of despair is by calling upon the power of the Pretear (the heroine) and, I kid you not, “merging” with her.

So my feelings on Pretear are mixed. I don’t know how much I like it or not. The first volume, I was sort of bored and bewildered by the oddity of it all. The second volume pissed me off. Really, I really didn’t like the heroine in this volume. She was driving me crazy the whole book long. I almost stopped reading. I couldn’t relate to her emotions very well.  I didn’t like how she was like “Oh I suck I shouldn’t have asked” when she found out the story of the past of the old pretear and breaks down crying. I didn’t get that. Of course she should have asked! And what’s the problem? In fact it was pretty easy to guess what had happened anyway. Big deal. Yeah no surprises in this manga. You can figure out who the Princess of Despair will be like in the first ten pages.

But the thing that really bothered me about Himeno, that’s the heroine’s name, in this volume was the scene where Mawata, Himeno’s step sister asks her to go with her to see Sasame who is sick. Sasame is famous and Mawata obviously likes him and he happens to be the leaf knight of sound. And Himeno just tells her “no”! It’s sooo mean. And there’s no reason for it. Why not bring her sister? I didn’t get it. Presumably it’s to protect her “secret”, but she can always ask her questions in private. And then to make matters worse, Himeno, after denying her step sister, brings her best friend Yayoi along!  What the hell? How does that make sense?

OK, so that’s why at that point I was thinking I didn’t like Himeno and I wasn’t going to like Pretear very much.

So imagine my surprise when the manga managed to redeem itself in the last two volumes.

Himeno is much more understandable to me in volume 3. I really felt I could relate to her concerns about being appreciated only because she was the pretear and feeling like people are sheltering her. I especially could relate to the idea of wondering if your friends are really your friends. Do you really matter to them? That idea that people aren’t seeing her for who she really is, so oft repeated in so many stories, was expressed very well here.

Volume four the final volume ends the series in a very well done but fairly predictable climax. Himeno is quite enjoyable to watch in this part as she comes to grips with her feelings and that of everyone elses. There is even a part where she sort of admits her msitake with Mawaka and even explains it! I wasn’t expecting that at all. Overall it makes Himeno into a very real and understandable (though still somewhat annoying) character with natural flaws. I don’t like her nearly as much as I like Tanpopo, but I found myself fond of her characterization and in the end I liked the series.

As for the other characters though, there are a lot but not a whole lot I like. Kei the light knight was interesting. I wanted to learn more about him. And I liked Mannen the knight of Ice quite a bit.  I thought Sasame Knight of Sound was going to turn into a surprise villain throughout the series, but that didn’t really happen, which disappointed me. So I ended up not liking him very much at all. He’s sort of annoying. And I think the main male lead, Hayate is just a jerk.

Mawate is kind of interesting. The older sister, I forget her name is boring and cliche as is the mother. The father is fun and I love Himeno’s best frined Yayoi. She’s funny and has one cool scene where she has cool lines.

Anyway,that’s pretty much it. Overall decent. The ending is sort of emotional, if predictable. And that’s what made me feel all weird last night and this morning. Made me think too much.

As with ALL shoujo everything works out in the end and everyone lives happily ever after in both these series. Bleh. That’s one thing I don’t like about Shoujo so much. Still overall I have to say it was good stuff. At least to me.

But too emotional. Too sappy. I like that stuff ,but it’s been too much of that at once. Now I need some good death and violence to snap me out of the Shoujo induced melancholy. Please, give me killing! Give me violence!  Give me wanton destruction!  I want mindless level building and random screaming and powering up. I want to be lost in lengthy battle scenes that take three volumes to describe and like 2 seasons to animate!  I want transformations into freakesh creatures accompanied by absurd inconceivable powers!  In short. I need me my classic Shonen Anime!  I’ve about had enough of Shoujo for a little while.

I sleep too much these days. I always have really. But lately it’s pretty annoying. I keep sleeping in two to three hour bouts at a time. I then wake up for a couple hours then go back to sleep. I’ve completely lost the art of getting a good night’s sleep. I don’t know why. I just can’t sleep for 6-8 hours at once. It’s impossible for me now.  I end up sleeping much more than that in the end, but it’s small sleep sessions followed by periods where I’m tired but unable to sleep. I hate this feeling. I wonder if poor eating habits has anything to do with it?

So I paid movers to move most of my stuff out here. Well actually my new job paid for most of it when they reimbursed me which was quite nice of them.  But I am psychotic.  When the movers came and delivered all my stuff a fit of madness hit me and as they started to work on putting together my stuff I said to them: “Oh don’t worry about it. I’ll do it myself!” 

I guess I was thinking that I’d give them a holiday or something. Do something nice for these random movers. I hated that feeling of sitting around watching them while they were working their asses off hauling my stuff around. I know I was paying them for it, but it felt wrong anyway.  And plus I thought the activity of constructing stuff would do me good.  And I wasn’t worried too much, after all I had put all this stuff together all by myself the very first time after I got them too.

The mover guy looks at me and says incredulously:  “You think putting all this stuff together will be easy?!?”

I laughed and said: “No. I don’t think it will be easy. I think it will be fun!”

The movers thanked me profusely as they left. Probably the easiest job they ever had. And I gave them a nice tip anyway. I was happy to get them out of my apartment so I could start to get busy with the work of putting this stuff together.

Well guess what? 

It’s not fun.

OK, at first it was fun. Or at least not bad. When I was putting together the easy stuff, like my chair and the lamps and the table.  But now has come the monster of a project. The Futon. It’s not a little simple futon. It’s a big monstrous futon. And I see the pieces lying on the ground staring at me. I remember now that it was quite a nightmare putting this beast together on my own last time. The thought of the repeat experience does not fill me with joyful anticipation. I am dreading it. It’s just one of those tasks that is just unbelievably annoying to do by yourself. It’d be a pretty trivial two man job, but for one person, or at least for one not so skilled in the arts of construction as myself, it is a royal pain in the ass. Sometimes I like challenging myself with absurd tasks like this. Sometimes I just get sick of it.

The other annoyance with construction of these things is that I took them all together myself too way back when I moved from Elkton to Bethesda and stuck it all in storage. And back then I wasn’t too bright too cuz I put all the bolts and screws and other tiny pieces in one giant bag together. Meaning that as I’ve constructed I’ve spent an insanely long amount of time just going through this bag trying to figure out which pieces belong to which item. Admittedly I was in a super hurry back then, but man that was a dumb thing to do.

I’ve still got two bookshelves, two desks and a futon to put together, and until I do that I can’t finish unpack the numerous boxes I’ve got stacked up again my wall.  It’ll probably be weeks before I am truly settled in here.

And all I keep doing is sleeping…

Well that and watching anime and studying to learn PERL for work and spending way waaay too much time chatting with friends online and doing my xanga thing. The phone fiascos also sucked up a sick amount of time (more on that later). Sigh. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, if I had three days for every one that everyone else had, everything would be perfect. 
 
Let me randomly talk about something else I do that is psychotic much like the builder thing.  Every time I’ve moved into an apartment so far I’ve replaced every single light bulb with a Compact Florescent Lightbulb. And every time I’ve left an apartment so far I’ve left the light bulbs.  I do this because they are better and I feel that the next residents of the apartment should have the benefit of the CFL bulbs. This helps save the environment! Or so I imagine.

Of course it’s quite possible tha the maintenance people just go in and return all the lighbulbs to the original lighbulbs to be “fair”.  I hope not, but I’m almost certain that’s what they do. But even then, maybe they take the new bulbs and take them home and use them in their own houses. Still a plus for the environment. Or they give them to friends. Or they use them for hallway lights and stuff. I’ve noticed in a lot of these apartment complexes many but not all of hte hallway lights have been replaced by CFL bulbs. Maybe that’s how they do it, by scavanging CFL bulbs from people like me who leave the bulbs when they depart. 

Still, there’s a small chance, that they just throw them away.  That would be bad. Very bad. It’s worse than not getting the benefit of the switch, it’s actually environmentally negative since they contain mercury.

Because of that thought, when I left my last apartment I left a note for the maintenance people. It said   “FREE STUFF!” Oh yeah, that’s cuz I couldn’t fit all my stuff in my car so there was abunch of junk I just left for them to have. IT also explained the value of compact florescent lightbulbs and said that they should use them as they see fit. I’m pretty sure most everybody knows about CFL bulbs now, but still, it seemed like a good idea. Just in case.

Of course from my own financial perspective replacing all the bulbs with CFL bulbs over and over again makes it so that I do not gain any of the economic advantage of using CFL bulbs. You have to use them for a long time before the saving in electricity start to exceed the cost of the bulbs. But I still wouldn’t feel good about myself if I just took my bulbs and let the next people suffer with non CFL bulbs wasting energy. It seems wrong. Likewise I brought bulbs for my parents to replace throughout their house. And if you are a friend of mine and you aren’t using CFL bulbs and are reading this, let me know! I’ll buy you CFL bulbs too. It’s high time we wiped out the ancient incandescent regime! Increased efficiency is a cheaper and more effective means of reducing dependency on fossil fuels than converting to alternative fuels. And besides, twisty bulbs just look cooler anyway.

I told my boss I like to get up early and go to work early like around 7 or 8 am. That’s sort of true. I do like to wake up early and I feel my brain works much better in the morning.  He said that’s fine and he’s flexible with my hours so I can get there early and leave early which is awesome.

But it’s past 7 and I’m not at work. I’m here blogging. I probably won’t get to work until 9 again. Nor have I yet gotten to work before 8:30. Heh. My boss is going to think I’m a liar. Oh well.

Day two of random rambling complete

So I figure I’ll try doing like so many bloggers do and blog something every day. It’s not that I haven’t done this in the past because I haven’t had anything I wanted to say every day. I most certainly did. But all the things I wanted to say were too hard to say. It requires too much effort. I didn’t want to just ramble on about random stuff.

But hey, rambling on about random stuff aint so bad?  I think I’ll do that for a while and see how I like it. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe the practice writing will do me some good. Maybe it’ll help me keep my sanity.

So today was Mother’s Day. I splurged and got my mother an Amazon Kindle book reader.  This is the first time I’ve been so far away from home that it was virtually impossible for me to visit for mother’s day.

Anyway, I decided to get her something related to books since she is the person I know who loves to read more than anyone else I know, except perhaps two friends I recently met who are equally psychotic about, ur I mean interested in, reading. I read a lot too. And I like owning books so I’ve got quite a collection. But these days my obsession with reading books has been replaced by an obsession with reading on the internet. I read an insane amount of blogs and news sites and I think I could read Wikipedia all day every day until the day I die and never get bored. I love that site so much. Anybody who has a problem with it, is going to have to take it up with me. We might just have to go at it. I will defend the virtue of the Great Wiki until the day I die!

Anyway, not sure if my Mom will like the Kindle or not. She won’t get it for a few days, I ordered it late and I want to go through and configure it and put some extra reading material on it for her (which I will acquire through certain mysterious mechanisms better left unspoken). My Mom’s not big on newer technology though. But she loves her GPS and is just now starting to get into text messaging on her phone, so she might like it. One of the problems with mother’s day gifts, and to a lesser extent with gifts in general, is that they always *say* they like it, if they care about the person giving them the gift, even if they don’t really. Oh well.

I learned today that my credit rating is somewhat lower than I expected. Maybe I should have checked that *before* I spent $400 on a small electronic gadget eh?

Anyway, it’s not horrible, but it’s far from good.  Yuck. I played a little game for about a year with surviving off of zero interest and low interest credit cards and bouncing balances all over the place. It was fun! And I love numbers manipulations. But there was just this one damnable card. I couldn’t get the internet online payment to work for the life of me and I got lazy and there were other things in my life vying strongly for my attention so I forgot all about it. Well more like I didn’t really want to think about it as it made me feel bad so I didn’t.

Well, soon, I had the debt collectors calling me. Oh what fun. It’s paid off entirely now, but grr stupid credit system takes a while to clear. Eh, at least now I know what it’s like. 

Still, it annoys me cuz my low credit score means I might not be of as much help to my friends as I’d like…

Other than that my finances are looking damned good now. I’ve got a lot of income compared to the past, and very little outflow. A very cheap apartment that is a decent size and close to work and where all I have to pay utility-wise is for the electricity, not the gas heating. And I really don’t use much electricity (hooray for CFL!). I’ve got DSL now so I can drop my cell phone internet access so a lot less a month to pay for that and DSL is cheap. And I paid off my car entirely way back over a year ago so no worries there. It’s a 2006 and I intend to drive it into the ground. Student loans are trivial. Car insurance is not high (never been in an accident, unless you count that random encounter with a wall). I canceled my WoW account, my TiVo account, my NetFlix account, and my Amazon Prime membership. I’ve still got xbox Live but that’s free for 6 months, I’ll decide whether I keep it after. And right now I’m trying to go without television and watching TV online. I might change my mind and get DirectTV in the future but for now we’ll see how I like it.

And… that’s about it for monthly and yearly expenditures. I don’t pay a lot for food and my car gets decent mileage. And I’m great at finding good discounts on stuff online. It’s like a game for me. Fatwallet and SD are wonderful. I enjoy it so much.

Assuming this job goes well life should be financially easy.  Of course if I get fired I’m screwed, but that’s always true. Maybe with less financial stress, or guilt over being a burden on others, it will make it easier for me to focus on trying to advance a real career in writing. We’ll see.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Sometimes you look around you and it just seems like everyone is just
plain miserable. You look at your friends and family and coworkers and
even strangers and they are all facing these horrible problems or
dealing with these deep emotional traumas. Everyone seems down in the
dumps. Everyone seems like they can’t really get anything to work out
right. 



During these times, it just seems like nobody is the least bit happy. 
And you just can’t help but wonder, is there something in the air? Did
someone unleash a misery virus upon the populace? Life can’t really be that bad for everyone can it?



And this feeling can get worse, much worse, if you suffer from the
affliction known as Xanga Addiction, as I do. (Well Blog Addiction in
general really.)   You see as you peruse the world of Xanga, you will
find that there are times when every corner you turn there is someone
engaged in full fledged lament over you name it.



The bloggers are angry and bitter over this and that. Crusading
bloggers lament how their words aren’t heard. Story writers and poets
sigh over how little interest their works of art generate.  And
absolutely everyone cries over their failing relationships, their
estranged family members, their miserable jobs, and their numerous
failings of character (and of course how much xanga sucks). Lost loves
and unrequited loves seem like the only kinds of love that exist when
you read blogs. Abusive and apathetic relationships seems like the only
lasting relationships that ever persist between people. And everyone’s
family just so happens to be tyrannical and controlling. On top of all
that every single person thinks themselves hopelessly over emotional,
out of control, unorganized, inexperienced, unlucky, and incapable of
succeeding at all the things they try and pursue. Everyone thinks they
have made horrible mistakes. Everyone seems to even doubt that they are
really a good person. In the world of Xanga, it never seems otherwise.



Even the famous pillars of Xanga seem to have their dark times. Those
times when they seem disgusted with the world and with the community
and often enough with themselves. And of course they have to share it
with us in long and detailed blog entries or maybe just quick and
mysterious pulses.  And even those who strive *not* to put much of
themselves into their blogging still manage to have their moments where
they too seem lost in a moment of deep trauma, sadness, rage, or
despair. And that’s not even taking into account those situations where
people get into direct conflicts with other bloggers. Those result in
some deep misery spreading in blogs and comments far and wide.



I am as guilty or perhaps more so to contributing to this phenomen than
everyone else of course. I don’t pretend to be otherwise. When there
are things that bother me, I blog about them, though often, mercifully,
I keep the most depressing rants under protected (or just in private
journals) and spare the general readership my sorrow. Still, no doubt,
there are times when others have read my blog in conjunction with all
those others and thought as I have often thought “man, everybody’s life
is so screwed up!”



But to be honest… I wouldn’t have it be any other way.



I learn from other people’s problems. I grow from seeing parts of their
lives and how they deal with them. And I can, sometimes, try and help.
Albeit it is unlikely that one quick scrolled comment or message can
have any kind of significant impact on anyone who is really having any
real substantive problems in their lives. But still, it can feel good
to try. To interact with people. To try and share in their lives just a
little itsy bit. Maybe we can somehow say something that means
something to someone some day. Maybe it will make a difference.  And
maybe in turn they will one day say something to us and all unknownst
to them it will make all the difference in the world to us and change
our lives for the better. Even if it is, only a tiny little bit of a
change. Maybe someone can make us see things differently.



It’s unlikely. I know. But sometimes it does happen. And it’s a
beautiful thing. That’s one of the many things that makes blogging an
amazing experience. I wouldn’t ever want it to change.



But even so, there are just these days when I just get overwhelmed by
it all. So much misery and anger and hatred and sadness and of course
fear. So very much fear. 



And I just can’t help but wonder you know? I just wonder…



Where in the HELL are all the HAPPY people out there?



They’ve gotta exist. Not everything can be sadness and sorrow all day
every day. I believe that joy exists out there in equal measure to
saddness. It’s just that nobody wants to talk about it. Maybe we’re all
afraid we’ll make the bitter people all the more jealous and angry so
we hold back.



Or maybe life just does suck for most people.



Then again, maybe it’s attitude. Maybe we all are just need to make
ourselves feel better. Maybe we just need to get a little happier about
things. To look on the bright side for once. And maybe we sometimes need a little help too.



Well luckily for all of you xangans out there, secretly I’m a Wizard. A
Sorcerer really. OK so not so secretly anymore. Ah well. But I’m pretty
good. I’ve got a lot of a magical spells in my repertoire that I can
call upon as the need arises. 



And just for you, I’m going to cast my very best spell.  Trust me. It’s
a good one. I’ve only cast it once before, but now seems like as good a
time as any to bust it out again.



Hmm, what were those magic words again?



Ah yes. I remember now.



OK. Here goes.



Ahem.



ONE.  TWO. THREE.



*****   EVERYBODY CHEER UP!!!!!!!   *****





There.



::Nods in satisfaction::



That’s better.