For the last 7 years, I’ve had a small, yellowed clipping taped at eye level on my cube. It said:

“Opinions. Estimates. Projections.
What ever happened to facts?”

Today, it felt like the end of an era when I took it down, tore it up, and threw it away. It seemed like the credo of someone younger and more naive than something to set me back on track . It’s all perceptions. It’s all opinions. It’s all estimates. There is no black. There is no white. And even if there were, you can pay an expert to prove that what you’re seeing is really a shade of grey.

So, if everything we do during the day ends up being a small part of a larger plan to push someone’s opinion on someone else, the question becomes: When you’re surrounded by a fog of opinion, what is there that’s solid enough to believe in?

In the movie, I Heart Huckabees, the essential question is whether we as humans are all connected, or whether we are all essentially alone. It took the question to extremes where one camp argued that humans are so connected that they are like a blanket. In their view, it didn’t matter whether you live in the mansion on the hill or sit alone on a dung heap, because humanity is so connected that we are, in essence, one. If someone else lives in the mansion, so do you. If someone sits on a dung heap, so do you.

On the other extreme, the movie proposed the nihilistic view that nothing matters because we are so separated from each other that connection and true knowledge of anything are impossible.

Both are extreme views, and the movie happily dumps the viewer in some happy little medium where both views coexist as two sides of a philosophical coin, but it avoids even the smallest attempt at reconciling the two philosophies. If it had made the slightest attempt, I could’ve avoided all this writing, and you could be doing something more useful than reading philosophy 101 from someone who doesn’t even smoke weed or have a pony tail. Yay.

The question is: can the two polar extremes of people being utterly disconnected and completely connected coexist, and both be true?

I don’t think that there is argument against the existence of connections existing between parents and children or among siblings. What about connections to people we just met, where we just seem to “hit it off” without the slightest effort? Anyone who has ever shared a laugh with someone knows that we can share some connection with people. If we can agree these connections exist, can we stand beside the premise that we are utterly alone?

Now, those of you who subscribe to the premise that “all humans are one” can line up at my front door. First we’ll weed out 23% of you for being on drugs, a solid 49% of you for being below average intelligence, and 7% for being guided by some form of higher being. The 21% of the critical thinkers left will get a good old fashioned kick in the nuts (I suppose we can set up some sort of equally painful uteral tweaking for the ladies) to see if it hurts me as much as it hurts you. If we are all one, it should, but it won’t, so we’re really not.

So we’re not one, but we’re not separate? Yes. Both and none. This has nothing to do with magic, jebus, or Stephen Hawking. Simply put, our problem is our brain.

There are cases in which people intentionally distort and misrepresent situations to us, and it makes some of us mad as hell, and throws others into years of therapy, yet our own brains do the same thing to us all the time and we happily ignore it. Our perceptions may paint an untrue picture of what is happening around us, or our brain may fill in the gaps where our perception left off to present us with an uninterrupted picture of what is going on in front of us.

Your eyes are doing it to you right now. Your eyes are taking high quality samples of these words right now and storing them in your brain. It is creating a virtual model of the room you are in, right now and that is where you are living: not in the real world, but in the virtual representation of the world as stored in your head. You’re here, but you’re not. Close your eyes and take a second and really try to picture the last time you were reading a book before reading on.

If you are like most people, you visualized the scene where you were looking at yourself reading. I will extend the assumption of your normalcy to include the premise that you’re not prone to out of body experiences while reading. Yet, quite naturally, you have visualized a scene not as it was, but from a point of view that you could not have held in the real world.

And you do this with everything. You see a table, your brain creates a little table in your head and stores it there. You and I can both interact with the same table, and we can both agree that it is solid and brown without conference. Yet, we will store different tables in our heads based upon what we individually find interesting about it. I might store the short table with the scratch in the leg, while you store the veneer table that could use some polish. We see the same object, yet we create different objects in our minds.

What if we turn the table into a person? There is only one person in the real world, but all of us have built models of that person in our heads based on the attributes that stand out to us. And because you create a little carbon copy of them in your head, you never really interact with the other person. You only interact with your perception of them. Who they really are, can only be felt by them, and even if they could express it with the most truthful of words, you would never reach it. You would always be interacting with someone that you have created, rather than the person who really exists.

They will always exist to you as filtered through you and your perception. You will always project onto that carbon copy the attributes that you want them to have and deny them the attributes that they don’t deserve. You will force their actions to fit into your model of them, irrespective of their accuracy in the real world. Did Jim just yell at me because I’m driving him crazy? No Jim yelled at me because James a dick. Did Mary just pocket that ten bucks off of Jim’s desk? No way! She’s a sweet old lady. And, plus, like I said, Jim is a dick.

So, are the Nihilists right? Are you really making any connection with other people at all? Or are you merely interacting with a model that only exists in your head? If you are only interacting with a model of someone in your head, you are then incapable of making any real connection with them. We are all alone.

Yet, if the only connections that you make with people are really interactions with models of them in your head, then you are God. Everyone in your world was not only created by you, but exists within you. And if everyone exists within one being, then everyone is connected and we are all one.

With talk like this, I should probably take up drugs or drown it all out with some Slayer.

On the way to work, I looked over at the sun rising over the water and thought about how I’d spend my day if I weren’t going to work. I imagined sitting for a little while with some iced coffee, just watching the sun transform itself from the fiery red giant into a pale impression of itself. Instead of then imagining myself spending the day as fully as if it were my last, I could imagine nothing other than myself walking home at 9AM, bored shitless with a full day in front of me.

I wondered to myself, “What’s it all about?” As usual when entertaining something important, I distracted myself. I punched the gas simply to hear the whine of the turbo, and sped off only semi-secure in the answer “cash equals turbo, and turbo is king.”

As the day wore on, and I became embroiled in more and more minutiae at the expense of larger initiatives, I became more and more aware that my morning question was hanging in the back of my head, stalled like a hung application waiting for input before it could shut itself down. By the time I made it to the gym at the end of the day, the question was eating nearly 87% of my system resources begging to be answered.

Whats_it_all_about>
It’s about breathing and avoiding not breathing?

Jackass>
North

Jackass>
42

Jackass>
Fuck

I don’t know how to…oh you’re going to pay>
Ok. Maybe, it’s about goals and achieving them?

You seem to be asking. What are your goals?>
Dunno. House. Promotion. Kids. 8 hour hard on. Whatever.

And why do you need to a promotion?>
Respect? Validation?

Why?>
To make more money.

Why?>
So, that I can have nice things.

Why?>
Because having a big TV, and lots of music is nice.

Why?>
Because they make like more pleasant?

Why? Isn’t sitting watching a sunrise better than any Hall & Oates album that you can imagine?>
Definitely, yes, but complicated things make life more fun.

You don’t think that simple things are fun? Do you really have more fun with your big TV than that bent paper clip on your desk? Didn’t think I knew about that, did you? C’mon. You don’t really believe that consumer electronics are the keys to your happiness. They make you tired. They clog your head so that you can’t even think. I mean right now you’re talking to yourself, man. But, if you say that happiness is what you’re after, what is the point of being happy? Or is that the point of life?>
Happiness is makes the time go faster, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure that it’s the point of life. I mean there are people out there that derive happiness from the pain of others. Who is perusing the end goal in that situation? That can’t be it.

And the more I tried to delve into the answer, the worse the problem became…

What if Jesus really is the answer?>
I think the biggest cop out in Western civilization is that if you follow a set of rules then you will receive eternal paradise, payable only to you, and only after you die. That’s REALLY burying your head as to the point of life. It’s the perfect cop out to not have to think about any big questions at all. It’s all laid out for you very neatly in verse to quote whenever you feel threatened. But, if you think that life is some sort of dress rehearsal for a pageant that is to take place after you are too deceased to get the invite, you may be wasting what little life you have on things that don’t really matter. Imagine what your reward in heaven will be for a life lived well. That may be what you see as your road to happiness. Whatever that is, you really might want to strive for that now, because you might not get another chance.

Ok, suppose that there is no God at all. We’ve removed that option from the system. No heaven, No Mel Gibson, No George Burns, nothing. What is the point?>
If you eliminate the religious rules, what do you have? Social rules? Governmental rules? Under whose authority do all of these rules exist? Who says you can’t just live on a piece of land, or walk along a “private” beach, or copy some music to further drown out any possibility of thinking? Someone says you can’t. Under whose authority do these rules exist? Yours? If they are not rules that have been developed by you and for you, you are really not bound by them, are you? I’m not saying that there are no consequences to breaking them, but you are not truly bound by them. To follow rules is your choice.

If, then you are not bound by any rules, and living in a world where you are subject only to your own authority, what then is the point of life? It’s just you. What do you say it is?>
Say it>
Say it>
Say it>
And then ask yourself what imaginary blockade is keeping you from seeking it.>

[CTRL][BREAK]

Someone came up to my desk today and asked

Do you ever write anymore?

And I knew exactly what he meant. I don’t. I crank out these retarded little movie reviews that are as boring to read as they are to write, but make me feel like I’ve written something. I haven’t, and I’m wasting both your and my time. And I think I may know why.

Last week, even though Friday was a holiday, I still managed to put in 45 hours, and it’s getting to be the norm. I know other people do that sort of time standing on their heads, but I don’t. I’ve worked nearly every weekend, never eat lunch, and rarely get out of work on time. By the time I get home, I really don’t give enough of a shit about anything to move my ass out from in front of the idiot box, nevermind getting my mind clear enough to sit down and pour something coherent out.

I suppose if all of our jobs were these wondrous hours where we dedicated ourselves to projects that bring out the best in us and the world, rather than just whoring ourselves, selling the only commodity that giant corporations haven’t figured out how to undersell us on (our labor), then when we got home, we wouldn’t even need to spend time unwinding, or shutting down our brains. We could scrutinize our time, and not be faced with the reality that for a good portion of our time, we’re completely wasting our lives (You can accuse me of being overly dramatic on this if you can think back to the last meeting that you were in, and tell me that you couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend your time.) And even when I look at a maximum lifetime of 100 years, it just doesn’t seem like enough time to figure things out, nevermind get anything done.

And this week, this has been bothering me. It’s not just the job. It’s everything: The TV and the radio always seem to be on, derailing any ability that I have to sit and think clearly. I’m not sure if I’m living the life that I want to lead, and I don’t know if the life that I want to lead is made up of my own desires or desires manufactured from a well-targeted marketing scheme. And I really have this nagging feeling that I will never be president.

Today, as if timing were everything, a friend asked me if I could’ve be doing anything at that moment, what would it have been? Because I had just completely wasted 2 hours in a meeting trying to listen to a very knowledeable security expert speak while an audience member consistently derailed his presentation by trying to make themselves the focus of the meeting, and I had messages from two local, and two global sites that needed my help to get them back on track, all while trying to keep my own corporate-wide initiatives moving along, I went just the slightest bit

blank.

I imagine that the purpose of the question was to unconsciously unleash the direction of my true calling in life, but all it did was provide me with an image of myself laying on my back, on the floor in my apartment, simply listening to myself breathe.

And if that is the best dream that I can muster, then something is wrong. Laying on my back should be some sort of recovery from climbing Everest, not the Everest itself.

In the movie, Garden State, one of the main characters says to the other, “You gotta hear this one song. It’ll change your life.” That song is from the Shin’s Oh, Inverted World, which I’ve been slowly growing into over the last few days. I wouldn’t say the album is life changing, but it has put me into a strangely nostalgic mindset. Somehow, it’s made me step back and see that, for years now, I’ve been living like I’m an old man.

I care about my dead career, my car, taping TV, and a bunch of other thoroughly aimless bullshit that, if left unchecked, will eat enough years to leave me looking back and my life with nothing more to say than, “What the fuck did I do.

It wasn’t always like this.

There was a time when everyone I knew would drop by each other’s apartments with no time table nor plans to speak of. We would end up watching crappy TV together, and inevitably either stay too long or fall asleep right on each other’s floors. There was always a stream of people in and out of wherever we were, and there was always nothing going on in a number of places.

Now, it seems that the apartments have turned to houses, and everyone has grown into adults. Phone calls that used to be made on the road simply to establish where everyone was, now they need to be made 3 days in advance and with a purpose and definite timetable to frame any and all plans. We used to pick each other up and drive together. When was the last time that you picked someone up to go somewhere? When was the last time that you had four people in a car that weren’t either children or another couple?

Don’t ask me, because I couldn’t tell you. I can’t even remember the last time I called anyone just to hang out without including a meal, or the last time someone dropped by unannounced, nevermind someone falling asleep on my floor. I have no idea when the last time I went to a full-on house party was, or the last time that someone wanted to aimlessly spend time with me without plans or time limits purely for the company.

Maybe that’s what growing old is all about. Maybe it truly is about loss. Maybe it’s about losing interest, and having others lose interest in you.

Then again, maybe I should throw the Shins out the window and put the Slayer back in the player.

I’m getting a big, blue fucking mowhawk. Then, I’m coming to your house during the dinner hour.

Ok. Not really. My career is dead enough. I can’t believe that I now use career as an excuse for not doing stupid things.

Shit. Save yourselves.

Bad I: You Get What You Pay For
A Chaintech AV-710 sound card with an optical output would allow a person to watch DVDs from their Home Theater PC with perfect Dolby 5.1 sound. And $27 seems like an amazingly good deal, until one spends 5 days trying to get more than 2 speakers to work. On the fifth day, when I finally got the center speaker to play music for the first time, I literally jumped up and down shouting, “I CAN GO TO BED! I CAN GO TO BED!”

Bad II: You Pay For What You Get
This morning, there was beautiful orange sunrise over the water that I caught over my shoulder while driving to work. I thought to myself, “I’m leaving this to go into a windowless basement for the next 8 hours?”

I felt like a fool until I stepped on the accelerator and thought, “Mmmmmmmm Turbo.”

Bad III: You Get Nothing and Like It
Dearest Netflix, I’ve been waiting for 7 days for new videos, now. Cut porking me and send the goods.

I am unsatisfied. My beard is getting on my nerves, but not enough to shave it off. I’m not happy about my complete decline in muscle mass, but not enough to go to the gym and do something about it. I do nothing more with the weeks than count the days until Friday. It’s a winter rut, and I’m too lazy to do anything about it.

I think this must be some dumbed down, leftover form human hibernation.

Optimism
The warm weather and rain in the last few days have caused moths all over the South Shore to assume that it is now spring. Their unbridled optimism has sealed their fate.

Pessimism
I heard on the news that some cheerleaders got drunk and did some, as one newsman said, “salty” cheers before being suspended from school. I found it surprising that although there was no criminal action, the kids’ names were given out on the air. What was even more surprising was how vehement the female news anchor was about a 10 day school suspension not being enough of a punishment for the behavior. She actually went on to say that the kids should be “banned from cheerleading for life.”

Seriously.

My questions are these:
Since when did simply getting drunk become enough to put a kid on the morning news in a major metropolitan area?

What the fuck is wrong with us as a society that now when kids make a mistake, we feel that the mistake should follow them around forever?

What made that news anchor so angry? Does she hold the sport of cheerleading in the highest esteem? Is she so bitter or beyond reproach that she has completely and utterly forgotten what it is to make a mistake? Or, is she regularly attending AA and wishes she could sit down with Johnny. Jim and Jack and throw some salty cheers at that unloving prick of a corporate suit she married. Man, she should’ve married Arty. With that motorcycle and fringed jacket, man, he knew how to live…but I digress.

When people feel the need to puritanically punish others(i.e. the punishment is much larger than the crime) or have extremely hard line views, I have to wonder how many hookers they lived with in that coke den before they found the “right” way to live, or how many they secretly want to live with now.

I went to visit my Uncle and Aunt on their farm in Maine. Despite hitting the road at 8 AM and spending 6 hours round trip in the car, the trip felt rushed.

When I was a kid, my cousins and I spent hours and hours playing hide and seek in the hay lofts and running around the fields mooing at the cows. When I was young, it was a place for imagination and adventure.

This year, while looking at the empty space where a gate once stood to keep in cows and horses that were long gone, I was overcome with the feeling that I didn’t belong there anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that I belong with the people there anymore: I fit in with them just fine. It was the place that seemed to reject me.

The farm held too many young ghosts running around those overgrown fields and swinging on those non-existent gates to make me feel like I belonged there. It was almost like touring a grade school, where the textured surface of a kickball elicits not only fond memories, but the sense that youth is lost.

There’s a lot of talk in the news these days about the violent video games that kids are playing these days and how some religious organizations are against them citing that violent games will produce violent children.

Today, I realized that the people that are against these games have in the front of their houses of worship a cross, on which a man is nailed, graphically bleeding from his wrists, side and head.

If the people are confronted with a giant, bloody, dead man where they go to find peace, shouldn’t they either be violent themselves or severely skewed in what they can or can’t say is too violent?

As a huge fan of Slayer, death metal, and violent video games for well over 20 years, I can proudly say that video games have had little affect on how I interact with the world. Give me a gun in a video game, and I will pop an enemy’s squash like a melon. In real life, though, I have yet to knife, shoot, mame, run over, set on fire, choke, or in any way laser beam a human being.

Does anyone ever think that maybe a little death metal in the ears or grenade throwing on the screen will prevent some fist throwing in the school yard? Actually, the best players of first person shooters that I have met are the most docile away from the screen. Maybe video games and metal are actually cathartic.

Guilt, pressure, and your local priest statistically have a better chance of damaging your children than Judas Priest or a video game. Do the math.

Movie reviews #226458322
Man on Fire (action): Tired story of the washed up mercenary that turns himself around and saves the day. C (as in crap).
triggermen (action): 2 hours went by and I had no idea why. P.S. Donnie Wahlberg sucks. C- (as in crap minus).
Harold and Maude (drama): I’ve heard people love this movie. I didn’t really get it, but it had a lot of funny quotes and some funny parts. B- (as in not that bad).

Jay
My friend Jay came in to Boston from Sweden for 23 hours on his way to visit his parents in Georgia on Saturday and didn’t tell anyone that he was coming in except me. I think it was payback for having been in the U.S. for three weeks the last time he was here and not having more than 2 hours for me. It was unexpected, and nice.

While waiting at Terminal E and sipping my Dunkin Donuts coffee, I remembered why I like being at the airport: everyone is happy, hopeful, and well, huggy. I can stand and watch people come in for at least a couple of hours without getting the least bit bored. This goes double for the international terminal because the varied cultures of the happy greeters, and the high proportion of exotic looking people coming through the gates.

Jay came in at 6PM Saturday, ate at Grumpy’s, met some friends, and hung out, leaving little time for sleep before heading for the airport at 6:30AM Sunday morning. I give the visit a harried thumbs up.

On the way home from dropping him off at the airport, I encountered the exact opposite of the friendly, hopeful air of the airport at the tolls. There was a fat middle eastern guy with a grey moustache and not-blue-blockers-but-might-as-well-be-sunglasses in the booth. I pulled up, and handed him a $5, and fully expected $3 back. Not only was I surprised to find out that the toll had been bumped up to $3 for passenger cars, but that I only got $.50 back.

When I stared at him in dismay he barked, “4.50″ in a way that typing cannot do justice (but, of course, I’ll try).

I just stared confused and eeked out a confused, “What?”
“Dillehd pletts. Fwad fifteh!” he barked.
“Dealer plates?” I said confused.
“Dillehd pletts. Fwad fifteh!”
“I’m not a dealer, man, this is a loaner while they work on my car at the dealer.”
“Dilled pletts. Fwad fifteh!”
“I’m not a dealer. This is a loaner.”
I stared. He stared.
“Jeem! Check cahd fod dillehd pletts,” at which point Jim came out of the booth and said something ingenious like “Yep. Dealer plates.”
“Dillehd pletts. Fwad fifteh!!”

At that point I realized that this guy was happier with the letter of the law than the spirit, and that for me, the price was not the problem, but this guy’s attitude. It was at that point that driving away was well worth $1.50. Once I had gotten a mile up the road and all the fantasies of perfect snappy responses and choking had faded, I hoped that this guy’s attitude somehow bit him in the ass. Then, I left him behind.

Mouse
For the last couple of weeks, I refused to believe it, but we have had a mouse in the house. I don’t feel good about killing small animals that I don’t intend to eat, so neck snapping traps were out. I mean, it wasn’t the mouse’s fault that he was searching for food in a place that I claimed as my territory. Due to my lack of urinating in every corner of the apartment, the mouse had no idea that I claimed this area as mine. It was merely occupying some small portion of an area that I arbitrarily claimed as my own based on an arbitrary monetary system that it knew nothing about. So, how could I kill it?

My GF bought these clear plastic traps that only open in. Each had air holes, and could be emptied by simply flipping the trap over allowing the door to swing inward fully, releasing the mouse. I stuck a piece of peanut butter coated Wasa (Swedish mouse trap!) in there, and set it in the laundry room overnight.

While I was out with Jay, the ingenious little invention trapped our mouse. Although it was only an inch long, my GF really, really, really harbors some serious issues against mice. As she slept behind closed doors, I released the little thing into a field near my apartment. I think that she closed the door to be as far removed from that mouse as possible, while I, on the other hand, stared at it in wonder, and thought it was really, really neat.

I wonder if my propensity to move mice from the house and snails off of the path is an indication of a big pussy or if it’s more big-heart Buddhist. Then again, in trivial matters, “why” is inconsequential, so who cares?

This year I didn’t vote, but I don’t think it matters. For the last 12 years I’ve written in Ross Perot, as I see it as a vote for entropy. This year, with Kerry set to win Massachusetts, I thought a vote for entropy was a waste of gas.

I was surprised that middle America is retarded enough to vote King George the Religious into office for a second term, but not that surprised. I was surprised at how many people who seemed devastated by the loss.

To those people who find Kerry’s loss devastating, I have this:
1. Politicians lie for a living.
2. Don’t pin your hopes and dreams on a professional liar.

Diana! Venga!
I think I’m becoming a beach person. I spent from 9:30-3:30 on the beach both Saturday and Sunday. During the day, when the sun is shining, everyone one is happy at the beach. Children run and play, people smile, and the sounds of the surf are accented by the sounds of children playing. Mix that with a large Dunky’s iced coffee, a good book, and a generous slathering of sunblock, and the day gets very close to perfect.

And if the traffic gods smile on this perfect day, I park for free.

Movie Reviews #126405
Serendipity (Chick Flick): John Cusack plays one of those screwed up puppy dog guys that chicks love, and bla bla bla. I don’t really remember it, but it was pretty good. I say B.

Kill Bill II (Action): If Serendipity was for the girl, Kill Bill 2 was for the boy. There was action, grossness, and plenty of squinty-eyed tough guys. If Kill Bill 1 was a Kung Fu tribute, this was more of a trubute to the american western. For all the kick ass action, and for putting a real live Delorean in the background of a shot for no other reason than style, this gets an A-.

Superstition Ain’t the Way I
Last night I had a nightmare where there were spiders and snakes all over the ground, and I couldn’t get to my shoes. All around me were old graves, but the stones were containers holding human ashes. When the wind kicked up the ashes blew into the air. I somehow got into a Cadillac and drove to some friends house, but they lived on the edge of a swamp. I drove the car out onto a rickety pier, and was concerned that the car was going to fall in, so I backed it into the mud a little.

My GF and I got out of the car and went to the shack where my friend’s lived, but once they let us inside, I realized that they all looked different and had horrible teeth. There was an old lady with way too much makeup sitting on the couch with them, but she walked out of the room when I showed up.

Suddenly, I was sitting on a bench in another room of the shack with my GF, and the daylight was streaming through a picture window behind us. There was a piano in the room and a few people mulling about. Then my grandmother showed up (she’s been dead for more than 10 years). She looked great, but her face was stuck in a smile from an old picture we have of her.

When I jumped up to greet her, she whisked me across the room and started asking all sorts of questions about what sort of woman my GF is. I extolled her virtues and practically gushed to her about how great my GF is until she seemed satisfied with my answer. Then, my grandmother and I danced. Suddenly, I was observing the scene, and my grandfather walked between the observation point and the dancers. He was sullen, but blank, and once off camera, he was gone.

Ok, now the strange part. In my dreams, my grandmother is the harbinger of death. When I dream of her, I get the feeling that someone is going to die. It’s one of the few superstitions that I have tried to shake, but can’t. I think it’s because I called her out of the blue a week before she died suddenly of an aneurism, and when one of her sisters died, I dreamed of my grandmother laying in bed with beam of blue light joining her body and head instead of a neck.

So, for a week after I have these dreams, I wait for the other shoe to drop before dismissing it.

Superstition Ain’t the Way II
From a deleted scene in Serendipity, I give you this:

Close your eyes. Because you are still reading, you’ve proven that you are horrible at instructions, so let’s start over. I want you to imagine a desert. In the desert there is a cube. Close your eyes for a few seconds and really picture it before you move on. Do it this time.

You should now have an idea of the size of the cube, what it’s made of, and where it’s located in relation to the sand. Let’s move on.

In the desert there is also a ladder. Close your eyes for a few seconds and picture the ladder.

You now know what it’s made of, you know it’s position, you know it’s size. You have visualized the ladder.

In your desert there is now also a horse. Close your eyes and visualize the horse.

To find out what in the hell this all means, hold your mouse over each of the following: The Cube, The Ladder, and The Horse.

My cube was made of metal, regular sized and hovering a foot off the ground. My ladder was wooden and like a magic trick, wasn’t leaning on anything. The horse ran right between the observer and the cube really quickly.

Last week my 92 year old grandfather was rushed to the hospital and his family was called in on the premise that he wouldn’t live through the night. It was almost the same thing as what happened to my old friend Clarkie, except before that day, I hadn’t seen my grandfather in over two years. Due to the toll his age has taken on his brain, I don’t really think that he would recognize me, but I’m not sure if it makes me a bad person for not visiting him anyway. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but that’s the way it is.

So, all week I’ve been calling in, dropping by, and being generally available to my family for whatever I can do to make things easier. I couldn’t do much, but at least I could be there. Within a few hours of merely being there, I realized that just being there wasn’t enough. It was then that I realized that I should try to be present. And that is hard. Hospitals wear me out. Encouraging an unconscious person that he is strong when others are telling him to let go on the off chance that he might hear me wears me out. The uncertainty of death wears me out. Trying to look like none of this wears me out in case it is wearing someone else out truly wears me out.

Then, I skip the gym, I have nightmares* and weird dreams, and I don’t feel like writing anything. And I wonder if I really did a good job. I know my Dad did a good job. He always does. I know my Mom did a good job, because when someone is dying, I swear I have never seen anything like her. She is utterly remarkable. Whether I did a good job, or whether there was even a job for me to do is up for debate, but I gave it a shot.

And day after day, my grandfather’s 180 bpm heart rate has gradually fallen to a normal level, my family is a little more relaxed, and I feel like writing again.

The two things that I learned from this are: that death is never certain, and no matter what your opinion happens to be on euthanasia, if someone’s father is dying, don’t tell them that if you were a nurse you’d put him out of his misery. It’s really fucking insensitive.

And if you do, I will not only want to order you a very tall glass of shut the fuck up, but I will note that you are not allowed anywhere near my hospital bed if anything should happen to me.

If you happen to be standing around my unconscious, headless body in a vat thinking, “Jon wouldn’t want to live this way…” I have instructed one of my oldest friends to not only emphatically tell you “Oh yes, Jon fucking would want to live this way” but to bleed any possible inheritance bone dry to keep me breathing. I have also instructed him to add several secret backup switches and jam a multitude of feeding tubes down my throat just in case any of you might be lucky enough to get to one of them to shut me down. I have also given him permission to jump on the hospital bed, if necessary, as long as it is done in a dramatic, non-gay way. However, no matter what he might tell you, he is NOT authorized to draw on me in any way. This includes mustaches, big eyebrows, glasses, or any messages with arrows pointing to any orifice.

Can you dig?

*I had one dream where someone was trying to drag me behind a boat in a shark infested ocean, another where seemingly normal occurrences were nightmarish but looked normal, and a third where a caterpillar was writhing on the drain of a moldy shower while a centipede near him looked as if it would attack me.

As men, we like to consistently think and act like twelve year olds, but there are distinct stages that a man goes through in life. To easily ascertain what stage any particular 12 year old is in, one must simply observe his purchases at the local drugstore. Today, I hit stage four.

Stage 1: “They’ve sealed a tiny Spiderman in a cheap plastic case and it costs $1.99 to free him! I’ll free you, Spidey! (shake shake) You got no candy in there, Spidey? Sorry, Spidey. No candy, no savey. Now, where’s the candy and the Mad magazines?”

Stage 2: “Ahem. I would like to purchase some of your finest $1.99 cigars, my good man. You want an ID? From me? As my finely groomed moustache shows that I am clearly of age, I will not be providing ID today. Plus, my spouse has retained my ID at the local cocktail party, and I am currently unable to retrieve it.”

Stage 3: “I would like to purchase this package of gum, these mints, this magazine, these batteries, these sunglasses and oh perhaps a package of those con-doms behind you, please.”

Stage 4: “Ooh, now that is cool. I need to get me one of these babies. Excuse me, could you unlock the Rotary nose hair clipper case?”

Stage 5: “Whoa. These glasses make me look just like Arnold fucking Schwartzenegger. Hasta la vista you punk kids. Excuse me, how much are these? $4.99? Young man, in my day, for $4.99 you could take a young lady out for a night on the town including dinner, break dancing, and a round or two of Pac-Man, and still have money leftover to fill the coal bin. I’ll just take the Depends.”

Skepp
On a ride around hull, we came across a docked tall ship flying a Swedish flag. As this is pretty unusual to see, we pulled over to investigate.

We sat for a few minutes watching the captain fish off of the back, hooking little more than the pilings of the pier. Despite being uncomfortably thin, and wearing a pony tail and a thick black beard, he seemed to be as small and hard as any of the stones that littered the beach. He seemed rather annoyed not only about catching nothing but the pier, but by the Bud drinking, visor wearing boaters pulling their Bayliners along side to ask him astute questions like “Hey, man is that an old boat or something?”

As we got tired of watching the uneventful life of the angry captain, and were ready to take off, I decided that I needed to find out why there was a Swedish flag flying on the main topgallant mast. I walked over to a bearded member of the crew, who was working feverishly to repair a rope. He obviously had very little contact with humans, and had trouble formulating the answer that the ship was a replica modeled after one that had been owned by Sweden, Finland, and Holland. Even though I knew that he was involved in a conversation that he was clearly uncomfortable having, I asked him a few questions more.

He told me that a section of the 500 or so volunteers that ran the ship would spend from a week to a month on board, sailing the ship up and down the east coast giving tours and sunset cruises. According to him, the ship could sleep about thirty, but that could get a little crowded for his liking. He himself had been on the ship for a month, but this was his last day, as he had to get back to school.

I for one, thought it would be pretty cool to sail on a ship for a week, but after seeing the manner of the captain and the introverted personality of the crew, a lot of the romance was lost very quickly. But, it had a Swedish flag. And you don’t see that every day. Especially in Hull.

Note: My GF is irritated that I didn’t mention the Finnish or Dutch Flags flying on the other masts. She is of Dutch ancestry and thinks that I’m Sweden-centric.

Found Inspiration
People can do wonderful things with web design and CSS. I do my best, but I am not one of them. The people who created CSS Zen Garden make me want to re-design the site, but I don’t think I’ll ever hit that level. If I could though, you would worship me. Wouldn’t you? Just say “Yes” and I’ll stop pestering you.

Found Another Blog
Big Whoop, right? Geese Aplenty

Found A Movie Review #2386253
Along Came Polly (comedy): This is supposed to be one of those feel good chick flicks where the ugly dude (Ben Stiller) gets the Girl (Jennifer Aniston). The only things that you will remember is A. Jennifer Aniston dirty dancing in a see through tank top, B.) A really funny character played by Hank Azaria, and C.) Jennifer Aniston dirty dancing in a see through tank top. I laughed a few times, but I have to give this the old C+.

Found a Little Problem
The IRS just sent me a letter to the tune of…

Dear Jon,
We think that either you or your preparer may have fucked up your tax return way back in 2002. We just got to it now, because we’re really…uh thorough and we’ve been told that old Georgie needs the cash.
Just send us $528.00 this month and we’ll call it even. Although, we may tag on some penalties. And some fees. And some other stuff that’ll cost you. But, hey you can afford it big guy! This is America!

Love,
The IRS

Crap hell crap.

Found A Worm
On my way to my car this morning, I saw a worm inching its way slowly across the parking lot. As I stared at it, covered in bits of gravel and following the longest possible course to the grass, I thought, “I should help.” I do the same thing with snails I find on the walkway. I pick them up and put them in the shade so that they don’t fry like the stupid crinkled up worms couldn’t find their way to the grass.

As I reached down to throw the worm onto the grass, I stopped. What if this worm was meant to die on the pavement? What if it were to end a bad genetic line of worms too stupid to avoid pavement on hot days? What if I was interrupting the natural food chain and robbing some ants or a bird of a meal? What if, like Eckels in Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder, I was imposing disorder on a natural order, and making a mess of the future? What if I end up living alone with 15 cats?

I thought all this in thirty seconds while staring at a worm. A worm. What am I a Buddhist? As I wasn’t sure if I had replenished my glove-box stash of Dunkin’ Donuts napkins to wipe the worm slime off my hand, I gave up and let the worm be.

In hindsight, this was probably for the best, although I later realized that I probably backed over it with my car.

From a Co-worker
“What do you have philosophical Tourette’s or something?” 

I might’ve taken offense if the guy didn’t play various Brady Bunch themes to accentuate his conversations, or use phrases like, “Well, I’m a two sneeze man myself.”

From the Boss man
“Thanks for staying late again.  Pick a day this weekend (whenever) and take off a couple of hours early.”

Giving employees time off on times that they don’t normally work may just be the most effective cost cutting measure of the future.

Upon arriving to our usual breakfast spot, we were, as usual greeted by the host. Today, he looked a bit confused and said, “But, you’re an hour early.”

Humans create patterns, and whether we think we notice or not, we integrate other people’s patterns into our own. We seem to do this on a vast scale, with minute patterns being brought to the conscious only when exceptions occur. If I could now only recognize the patterns without first having to see the exceptions.

I Talked philosophy with a guy at the gym who was twice as wide as me at the top and twice as thin at the waist. He was arguing with another guy about the only motivators that a human has are pleasure and pain. I butted in and didn’t agree, but couldn’t find a solid footing from which to argue.

The guy’s argument was very black and white and anything that seems too water-tight is something that I want poke holes in. What interested me was not the argument itself, but the attitude behind the argument. I think I can brake down the guy’s philosophy into 3 statements:

1. Do it, or don’t do it.
2. There’s nothing to whine about, just decisions to make.
3. Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. (link)

I accidentally pinched my hand on the rack until it bled, and because the equipment at the gym is absolutely filthy, I decided that I should stop lifting before risking some sort of infection. If I had stayed a little longer, I might have thought of the cases of the masochist and the religious zealot, and asked what drives them.

Wait a minute. If the gym is that dirty, I probably should quit and go somewhere else.

Philosophy
There are primary properties of objects and there are secondary properties. Primary properties are properties of objects that exist irrespective of perception. An example of a primary property would be the square shape of a table. It is a property that can be proven to all observers.

A secondary property of an object is a property that is filtered through perception. An example of this would be taste or color. If I sat down with an alien, we could both come up with very different taste properties for the table, and the alien may see the table as being red, and I may see it as being brown due to differences in the way that our eyes view colors.

Now, if color is a secondary property of an object, then the property of the object requires that perception is present in order for the property to exist. If this is true, then what color was the universe before there was perception to perceive it?

Your first response will be some form of grey scale. But shades of grey are color.

I was confused. Hope you are, too.

Philosophy II
Who you describe as “I” cannot be merely physical. If we took out your brain and put it into a different body, most would agree that the new body is you and not the previous owner.

Who you describe as “I” is not purely spiritual, as if we wipe your memory (the sum of who you are), most would agree that the new person is still you.

“I” must be comprised of a physical and a spiritual part, right? In cases where brains are split down the middle, two distinct entities emerge. Now, if we could transplant each half into its own body, who of the resulting pair is you? If it were physical and spiritual, they both are you. Logically, the question is: How can 1 be 2?

So, if “I” is not merely the physical, it is not merely the spiritual, and it is not a combination of the two, how can we define the self?

The lesson was on A priori and A posteriori knowledge. A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that can be experienced. There is a keyboard under my fingers, and I have knowledge of it because I can experience it being there. A posteriori knowledge is that can be gained through pure reason. The example given on the tape was mathematics. We can deduce that 2+2=4, but we cannot directly experience the number 2.

At first I understood, and it make me think, which I think is the whole point of the tapes, right? Then, the lecturer asked, “Where does the number 2 exist? Where can we find the number 2?”

And my stupid brain kicks up, “Well it depends on how scared a man is…haw haw haw.” At that point I laughed every time the lecturer said “number 2.”

Everything’s a goddamned joke to you isn’t it, Mr. Dyer? I’ve got a good mind to slap your fat face! You are destroying your life with that…that…that GARBAGE! All right, Mister Sister, I want you to tell me… No, better yet, stand up and tell the class: What do you want to do with your life?!?!

I wanna Rock! ROCK! dun nana naaahh…

Where was I now? Something about poop, right? Bah. Damn.

Movie Reviews
Paycheck: If at the start of a movie, Ben Affleck is some sort of Martial Artist, press the little square button on your remote and walk away. D+.

The Last samurai: I liked it, the GF did not. It was one of those EPIC battle dealies about honor, and being brave against a superior enemy. Plus, there were tons of Ninjas attacking Samuris. Weeeeaaaooooooohhh. Ninjas are cool. My advice is to watch the movie, but don’t watch any of the DVD extras unless, of course, you are interested in seeing how self-absorbed actors really are. When they start referring to their characters as if they were real people, it’s time to go for the square button. B+

Country Reviews
I had a good conversation with someone on the nature of the U.S. last night. He claimed that we are not a nation of preemptive strikers, and that our current role in the world was not in line with the principals that America was founded on.

I claimed that the U.S. government is the most effective form of population control that the world has ever seen. By breaking the role of community and self-reliance in its people, it has produced a cattle like population who not only has its freedoms easily taken from it, but willingly gives them away.

Making a smart man think is interesting to watch.

When the temperature in Boston falls from 88F to 55F in a day, the erratic weather makes me wonder if there’s any connection to an erratic personality and an erratic environment. Then that got me thinking about order and the nature of order. I wondered whether there is an order that we don’t see, or if order is man’s way of defying the world which runs on chance and entropy.

I run on a disordered order. I will walk into a room and drop my coat on the floor. As civilized people know that coats go in closets, this looks like I’ve created disorder in the room. But if you come into the room, and put the coat away, I will wander around looking for the coat for 15 minutes in every place that I would’ve normally thrown it on the floor. In this example, who has created disorder? And with this example in mind explain order.

Please let me know, as I’m going to order some shrimp into a meal and eat the little bastards.

Movie Review #286
Love Actually. I couldn’t find anything in HyperMegaGlobalRentals, so I let the GF pick the movie. I had the choice of Sanda Bullock, Julia Roberts, or Hugh Grant. Grant me strength.

This was a chick-flick mish-mash of criss-cross plots that did nothing but jerk tears out of the GFs eyes. It did have one worthy moment in the film, and it spanned the first 5 minutes. To save dudes the agony, I will paraphrase: If you think love is dead, and the world is a mess, go sit at the arrival gate at the airport and describe what you see.

Ronin
My aunt does a lot of family history research, and digs up tons of family information. She sent some of the pictures she had found to my parents, who sat me down today to look at them. I started rustling through them, like a child through a book, not even realizing that I was doing it until my mother tried to slow me down.

It was akin to giving a first edition Dickens to a three year old.

There were pictures of people that had long since died that I had never known, leaving me outside with the impression that we all will only be remembered for 3 generations. That’s it. To anyone that didn’t know you, you are merely a picture, a person in a foreign fashion standing happily in a foreign time, completely unaware that the picture being taken of you will outlive you by many, many years.

I was thinking today that when I look at someone and hate the way they’re acting or the decisions that they’re making I’ll try to stop, get into their shoes, and say,

“It’s not easy being me,”

…Because even people who have seemingly easy existences are measured by events I will never know, held against a custom tailored yard stick that I will never see

I was also thinking that I should write a blog that is not only anonymous, but less full of shit than this one.

My Favorite card
My favorite birthday card was “Every feel like everyone thinks you’re a weirdo? [open] Just wondering.”

On Desire II
(slight continuance on this post.)
A guy kept coming to my desk asking me to say things in Swedish. He seemed so enthusiastic about it, that I brought him in a spare Swedish phrase book I had. After listening to him go through the medical conditions that he had (“Can you help me? I have diarrhea.”) for a relatively small number of days, he returned the phrase book genuinely finished with the language.

I thought, “The easiest way to cure a man of a desire is to present him with an opportunity to attain it.”

I think I will call this Theory of Realized Desire. As there is no such thing as original philosophical thought, it is not copyrighted. Rename it at will, and present it as your own. Now, can I answer the question, “Is it true”?

The Library
I hit the library and picked up Sartre’s Nausea, which I will hopefully read this weekend. I’m listening to Playboy’s Jazz After Dark, also a freebie. I wanted to pick up some crappy videos on such topics as country line dancing or Mt. Rainier, but I’m a little video’d out right now. I must say that I was fourth and inches on getting as many of the old In Search Of tapes that they would let me carry out of there, but I held back. This is probably a good thing.

On Desire

“C’mon think, I want you to reach back into those minds and tell us, tell us all. What is it that you fantasize about? World peace? [class laughs] Thought so. Do you fantasize about international fame? Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer prize, Or an Nobel peace prize, an MTV music award? Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk, ostensibly bad but secretly simmering with noble passion and willing to sleep on the wet spot?

You get Lacan’s point. Fantasies have to be unrealistic. Because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore.

In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the “it” that you want, it’s the fantasy of “it”. So, desire supports crazy fantasies.

This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill, or be careful what you wish for – not because you will get it, because you are doomed not to want it once you do.

So the lesson of Lacan is living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires, but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.”

-The Life of David Gale, 2003

We hunt for a laptop or a game or a turbo diesel. When given the option to buy, we walk away.

The Quote

“The two things that a man should never be angry at: what he can help and what he cannot help.”
-Thomas Fuller

I. The Man

• The only person that I have partial control over is me.
• I make the best possible choices that I can with the information that I have at the time.
• There are no good choices. There are no bad choices.
• I always have more than one choice, and the power to choose makes every action my own. Thus, what I do is what I have chosen to do, whether I like it or not.

II. The World

• The world is unordered, and unpredictable. It does what it will, and I cannot stop it, nor would I wish to.

II. The Past

• The past is a mental image distorted through both my perception and my memory.
• Given the distortions of this image, the past as I know it is merely an object in my mind that may or may not have existed.

III. The Future

• The future as I know it is merely a mental prediction, an unverifiable idea.
• I should not mistake this mental image for an accurate model.

IV. Present Tense

• If the past and future are merely symbolic, I have only the present tense.
• If I am only bound by the current moment, I am unbound, the possibilities are limitless, and happiness becomes the easiest choice to make.

The car was taken to the shop yesterday, which is good, but I’m hitching rides everywhere, which is bad. I’m trying to get a rental covered by the other party’s insurance, but the owner of the plow that cut me off is fighting like a bastard. So far he has not only told the insurance company that there was no damage to my car (the owner was not at the scene of the accident, so go figure), visited Gino and my car at the shop to view the damage, and has threatened his own insurance agent with bodily harm for putting in the claim.

To hear someone else’s agent say that they’re own insured can “go pound sand,” struck me as really funny.

So on the ride home yesterday, I found myself imagining the guy showing up at my door and me beating him with a baseball bat. Then, I’d go to jail. Then his brother would send someone with a sharpened toothbrush… Bla bla bla. Escalation, escalation, escalation. All over a fender bender. That all led me to thinking about a friend of a friend of a friend who got shot a number of times because he simply took some a-hole’s parking spot.

It made me sit there and think that life is pretty fucked up, and the feeling took a while to shake.

Expired Domain Scam
I just got a bill in the old snail mail from ICLS that made it look like dyers.org owed $35 for the next year. As I registered my domain for 5 years, I was rather confused. As I was looking it over, the logo and acronym reminded me of ICANN, which as you know, coordinates internet domain names.

Although it did not directly say that the bill was for domain registration, I had to really look it over to see “This is not a bill. By paying you will have your domain submitted to 14 search engines.”

As the logo, the acronym, and the price are very similar to legitimate businesses involved in domain registration, even as a technical person, the letter had me second guessing my registration for a minute or two. I can only wonder how many regular, non-technical folks with domain names that this letter may have duped into shelling out $35. As techies, we expect unscrupulous spam, but when it spills into the snail mail, it seems to be targeting a less technical audience, which, in my opinion, seems much worse.

Marriage Scam
Ever wonder if this legal horseshit surrounding ammending the Constitution to prevent gay marriage is actually a dog and pony show to encourage public outcry, drive up the demand for marriages, and create a larger tax base? Yea, me neither. I never want to do anything that is forbidden. (I’m talking generalities. Pleases do not construe this as me wanting to marry a gay dude.)