@Wudan07

Like Bush, or not, you have to grin at this clever bumper-sticker:

I recently left this comment at The Journeyman Project, which is a blog written by what appears to be 3 guys … bloggin’ bout stuff. Anyway, Sukie, being the avid Internet Guru that she is, stumbled across this site, read the post, commented, and it initiated a some Utah / MoMo bashing on their part. Sukie responded in kind that she is an atheist, which kind of slowed them down, but really just moved them in the direction of atheist bashing (fairly, only one guy jumped on atheists, the other guy has been fairly nice to her. Sigh.

Comment by Almost A Hasbin:

Sukie, atheism is just an excuse to live like you want. I think all atheist are full of shit, and deep down you know that a God exsists. My humble opinion.

…

Is [God] listening to just us and not you?

My response:

lol – If there is a God, can you prove that He cares if you beleive in him? If you can prove that He cares that you beleive in Him, can you also prove that your relationship with Him should be anything other than personal, ie, should you bother other people if they do not beleive in Him?

If we are, in fact, all created by the same entity, then we are equal, and there is nothing you could say or do to truly unbalance the worth of another human being.

Fear is the prime motivator.

Somebody recently regurgitated the old joke, “birth is the leading cause of death” which I am afraid, I have reason to disagree.

I am afraid I must take the side of Mel Gibson’s character, William Wallace, from Braveheart: “Everyone dies, but not everyone really lives.” I am certain this quotation is bastardized somewhat, but, hey, it’s my blog, and I don’t really care.

The point is, if not everyone lives, then what are the hallmarks of a ‘living person’?

I think I might take an aside at this point: I am afraid of everything. Lately, I’m afraid of Americans. Back to our topic.

I would say that our pseudo-lives are marked by fear – we pull our hands back from fire and we don’t like to fall from planes – we are afraid. These things keep us alive. In fact, if you were to sit down and analyze it, our pseudo-lives are so marked with fear, that we move along a pseudo-hierarchy of needs, all the way up to pseudo-self-actualization, at which point, we might be pseudo-happy.

Fear of being naked, fear of being hungry, fear of being alone, fear of being unrewarded, unrecognized – these things all move us pretty far up the line, don’t they?

How far? If these fear inspired accomplishments aren’t ‘real’ enough, what is the gauge for ‘real’ – how do we obtain a ‘real’ happiness?

Life is an experience, isn’t it? I can only sense that there is a real happiness, but since I am not yet self-actualized, I am afraid I can’t tell you what it is. It is almost as though the ‘real’ happiness is just barely beyond my realm of perception, yet I can clearly tell that it is there, and I could almost swear to you that I’ve had run-ins with such a thing.

They say that ‘life is the journey, and not the destination.’

I think I’ve figured out what bugs me about this statement: If it’s not the destination, why do I have the duplicitous feeling that I am both somewhere and going somewhere?

I feel much less fearful, these days. I have tried to close my eyes to several unwanted outside sources and just ‘be’. I, for one, completely understand that ignorance is a luxury I gave up without carefully examining what it was worth – and so we come to one of life’s silly lessons: intelligence is neither a curse, nor a burden – it is an irony.

It is ironic because intelligence is not a quest, nor is it a ‘thing’ you can hold, yet so many seek after it, blindly – you can’t gain it any more than you could lose it.

I guess I better say that inteligence is the ability to apply what you know for the purposes of accomplishing a task.

I digress, life is a doppleganger-ish beast, and intelligence is an irony.

Last night, my destination was a SwitchFoot concert. I must admit that it was Sukie’s idea, although I can appreciate the music. When I met her, she was in to hiphop/r&b, and I was a devout follower of the alternative/punk scene. I even looked it, too.

Well, we’ve both changed, and now she’s in to this music, and I’m in to that (though not really as much anymore …) I’ve always known that I was never really punk at all, though I guess to the uninitiated, it might appear to have been so.

Anyway, being there among so many young people, Sukie pointed out that these kids were actually about our age. Their brows were not furled from too much stress or responsibility, and it seemed as many of them might never have known what it’s like to pay a bill or the joys of self-sufficiency.

Save the Pinata

I’m laughing so hard I could cry. Can’t we all just get along? Save the pinata!

“How can you make time unless you take time?”

Tonight I’ll be off to Wendover, Nevada, if the weather permits. I’m willing to go, even if the weather does not permit.

I expressed to Sukie my desire to return to a much deeper plane of thought, and I feel that I have, for a large part accomplished this goal. I can see the changes that this has had on myself, and it has caused waves in my personal life that have been regrettable.

I don’t beleive there is a manual for our existence. I know that historically, I was taught to do as Jesus would have me do. I won’t knock people who follow this school of thought, it is an envious one, if you are able to truly stick to it.

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.” -Basho

While not a devout follower of Zen, I take this quote to heart. Instead of being a simple admirer of Jesus, Plato, or Confucius, why not attempt an examination of their motivations?

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

I was just thinking about my post earlier, and I think I’ve caught my train of thought.

What I was saying about homogeneous pairing – some studies may say it’s genetic – it certainly seems psychological to want to be with someone who is a lot like yourself – but I’d wager there are people out there like me, who don’t want to be with someone like themselves, or be with someone who they want to be like – people like me just want to be with someone who can catch the things they can’t, you know?

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve had plenty of time to think about my life, and why I am where I am.

If you know me, you know that my wife, Sukie, is nothing like me. What you might not know is that this is one of the things I really like about her. When I met her, I was a devout grunge/punk intellectualist. I tried to think about the deep things, like why we’re here, and why the world owes me big time, and what I was going to do with my life. She was a very bright, very spunky girl, who listened to hiphop and kicked ass. I was immediately attracted to such kick-ass-ness, but didn’t make moves as that’s not really my style.

If you know me really well, you’ll know that I met her during a rough time in my life, a time that I’ve spent many hours reflecting on – you know? The very crucible of my life, where there were many paths (this reminds me of a Lauryn Hill song I might drop out a bit later) to take.

I guess what I’m really getting at is that I really appreciate my heterogeneous pairing. It’s been a great experience, being with someone who isn’t like me at all. Because we don’t have a lot of common ground, there isn’t that expectancy or the requirement to stay the same – our commitment is more important than our differences, and so the focus is on the ‘together’ aspect, rather than on the individual.

Yeah.

Which of the Samurai Deeper Kyo Cast Are You?
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Edit: Stupid Quizzilla DNS issues caused image to stop loading! I showed them!

Dirty Dancing really isn’t a bad movie. She likes him, he likes her, she gives a little, he gives a little.

They even did a little dancing, too. Patrick Swayze refers to his lover as, “the kind of person I want to be”, and this sly reference to the practice of homogenous pairing bothers me somewhat.

Yes, it’s true, that our current social stigma in Western Culture is that sharing common points of interest, does, in fact, make for a good pairing. When picturing your ideal partner, you might picture your partner to say, “____, I love you, we have so much in common!” You might be very satisfied with this common ground, it’s true, but how true will this ground hold, 10 years from now?

Advocates of arranged marriage have argued that it has a higher success rate (whatever the measure of success might be) than traditional western homogeneous pairings. Why is that, do you think?

I’d have to say that our concept of a partner is often tied up with our concept of self – we change, they change, we, “grow apart”, as is the beck-and-call of so many divorce attorneys.

A professor of mine said that the strongest force in the universe is resistance to change – so, when we base so much of our affection upon commonality, we feel somehow cheated when our partners change, and shift away from the previously shared common ground. This reaction is both selfish and natural.

Well, I was going somewhere with this, by my train of thought has been permananently derailed.

Tell me it’s not cool. I know it is. I wrote the program that draws all that – and I toiled with the lightsaber for some time, but now it’s all there! It’s complete, and I have to say it’s sexy!