it's official. well semi-official. i'll be teaching an ethics and values course next semester at uvsc. technically i'll be aiding the teaching, but the professor set it up so i get the pay and pretty much do everything.
oh crap! i don't know how to teach!
too busy writing papers to post anything else.
there are plenty of reasons to not like idaho and there are two no reasons to like it. here is another reason to dislike this state.
the state of idaho passed a bill commending jared hess and jon heder for making napolean dynamite. now don't get me wrong, i loved napolean dynamite. what i hate is that idaho is so pathetic that it needs napolean dynamite to find any meaning in its poor existance (besides their 'famous potatos' - which i did appreciate mashed with gravy yesterday).
even more pathetic than the bill, are it's contents. here are some highlights of the bill with some commentary.
-"WHEREAS, the scenic and beautiful City of Preston, County of Franklin and the State of Idaho are experiencing increased tourism and economic growth;"
dad, instead of disneyland or bryce canyon, can we go to preston idaho and see where they filmed napolean dynamite! it just looks so scenic and beautiful.
goddamm you idaho!
-"WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export"
those potatos again. seriously idaho, don't you have anything else???
answer - not until napolean dynamite. if i were josh heder i'd tell people i was from magna, utah. the armpit of utah is even better than the buttcrack of earth.
-"WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics;"
did you retards even watch the movie? uncle rico was pathetic (like your state). if uncle rico is a testament to your athletics, then... holy crap... you guys really suck at sports.
-"WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation;"
seriously, you guys are really starting to stretch things. go shove a potato up your butt.
-"WHEREAS, Napoleon's artistic rendition of Trisha is an example of the importance of the visual arts in K-12 education"
again, did you see the movie? i've seen better drawings in the poop-smears of a monkey. idaho must not give a russian's toupee about art.
-"WHEREAS, Pedro's efforts to bake a cake for Summer illustrate the positive connection between culinary skills to lifelong relationships;"
"the positive connection between culinary skills to lifelong relationships"???? summer turned down pedro! rejected! shot down! there is no connection between the ability to bake a cake and getting laid by the same person for the rest of your life. no wonder most idahoans are inbred.
-"WHEREAS, the prevalence of cooked steak as a primary food group pays tribute to Idaho's beef industry"
...and to fat-assed idahoans
-"WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"
yes, they really put that in there. idaho is that retarded
to all this i add..
WHEREAS, Napolean strapping electrodes to his nutsack and shocking his balls in an attempt to travel through time is a testament to the intellect of the people of Idaho.
my comcast internet went out on wednesday and just got repaired, so this is a little late.
i'm thankful for...
-string cheese
-that i'm only really really behind in my classes, instead of really really really behind
-for good friends, past and present, that made me who i am
-that i don't live in idaho (which will be the topic of my next post)
-for all those people who actually got sad because they thought i might be dying. thanks for caring and the good laugh.
i couldn’t sleep last night. insomnia. it’s my worst enemy and last night it struck with full force. i tried sleeping on my stomach, but my mind couldn’t relax. a wool blanket. he must have been freezing. i turn to my side. war veteran. i push my arms under my pillow. disabled. i lay on my back. for food and medication. i fold my pillow. please help. i wrap my arms around a second pillow. those occasional puffs of breath in the chill air. i bundle up my blankets. disabled. i turn onto my stomach again. that hidden, sad, unseen face. i throw off my blankets. he must be so lonely. i wrap myself up in my sheets again. where is he now? i add another blanket. i should have helped. i look at the clock. it’s 3 a.m. and i haven’t slept a wink. i roll over and curl into a ball. food and medication. why can’t i fall asleep? i lie on my back again and flatten out the blankets evenly over my body. does he have family? how could he have gotten in this situation? what does he need medication for? how old is he? does he have much longer to live? is he suffering? is his life as his worth living? i can see his face in my mind. it’s pale grey mixed with bright pink – a lonely sadness, a few days without a shave, a swelling of blood to fight of cold and frostbite. it’s my face in forty years. if those forty years existed.
the increasing glow of light in the room reminds me that i am still awake and won’t be sleeping at all. it’s saturday morning now. i lay between my blankets for another couple hours. i know i won’t sleep, but i want to tell myself i tried. those thoughts and images continue to bounce around my mind.
it’s of no use. there is only one cure. i get out of bed and throw on my some clothes. jeans. t-shirt. sweater. wool socks. sketchers. heavy jacket. knit beanie. scarf. fleec-lined gloves. alexander hamilton. visa.
he’s not where he was yesterday. he’s not in the bus stop booth. he’s not in any adjoining street. not in the park. not in any alley. not on any benches. he’s nowhere to be found. with so little time left, i’m a failure yet again. i hope i will be able to sleep tonight.
war veteran. disabled.
need $$ for food and medication.
please help. god bless you
i’m leaving starbucks with the usual: a ‘venti’ vanilla latte. that they can’t just call it ‘large’ like everyone else bothers me immensely. each time i order, i feel like i’m in a foreign country, unsure if i’m pronouncing it properly and wondering if the college preppie serving the coffee, with his midnight blue turtle-neck and rectangular glasses, is chuckling to himself at my inept attempts.
as the upcoming winter approaches, the air outside has hit a sharp cold. i zip up my fleece jacket, pull my knit beanie over my ears, and hold the warm cup of coffee with both hands. the freezing air bites at my knuckles and wrist. i focus on my latte. it’s still hot, but succumbing to the cold with every moment. with each sip the steam warms my face but quickly fades. i hold it closer to my face. focusing. it’s warm. i should be warm. i should be in hawaii. i should be dying in the tropics. in the heat of the sun, along the warm sandy beaches. not here. not in the cold. it’s just too symbolic. too cliché.
distracting myself with coffee and dreams of another life (or another end of it), i accidentally bump into something. no, it’s somebody. wrapped in a grey wool blanket and sitting in a makeshift wheel chair, he barely moves. a cardboard sign written with black marker covers his face. the only sign of life being the occasional puffs of breath which crystallize in the air and float away with the soft winter breeze. i don’t apologize. and i don’t acknowledge him. and i act like i didn’t notice. and i keep walking. and i can’t get him out of my mind.
as i distance myself away from him, the image burns deeper into my brain. the latte is now cold and useless. i toss into a nearby waste bin and reach into my pocket, pulling out a tattered and worn leather wallet. it’s the only remaining connection to my teenage youth. who’d have thought that those were my middle ages? my mid-life crisis wasn’t resolved with a sports car and bimbo blonde half my age. it was resolved with an ’83 toyota tercel. white. hatch-back. rust all over. with a car like that, the blonde bimbo is out of the question. in fact, any girl is out of the question. i didn’t care then. i had the whole world ahead of me. i had years to counter all that. or so i thought.
hidden between the endless collection of receipts is a ten-dollar bill. andrew jackson. not sure what he ever did for our nation. i pull it out and tell myself to turn around and give it to him. he may be a con. it doesn’t matter. i won’t be needing it much longer anyways. i tell myself to do it. i tell myself i should. i tell myself it is cold. i tell myself that the twenty steps to return to him would turn into forty more steps of bitter cold before reaching my warm apartment. i put the bill back into my wallet and keep walking.
if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=128255
you can imagine what i might say. in seven years i'll post what i had in mind. i think that's the rule. after seven years everything is fair game.
steven e. jones, a physics professor at byu is arguing that the planes and fire during 9/11 could not have brought down the towers, but instead evidence shows they were more likely brought down by explosives at the base of the towers.
here is his paper
here is a deseret news article about him
the phone on the other end rings once. scratched into the painted metal partitions of the phone booth are numbers, names, addresses, solicitations for sex, a message for donnie, and elaborate drawings of distinct body parts. it rings a second time. stickers and flyers overlap each other on the wall. lose twenty pounds in three weeks! earn $$$ from home. the phone rings a third time. find love with one phone call. if you are having thoughts of suicide... as the phone rings a fourth time, i hang up.
the truth is i didn’t want them to answer. it has been almost three years since we have talked and i can no longer recall either of their voices anymore. alive or dead, it’s all the same now. calling them would just bring their son back to life, only to have them lose him again; except to be losing something again, you have to lose it a first time. you don’t lose something that you cast away. you don’t call it lost. you call it discarded. you call it rejected. thrown away. useless. unneeded. whatever you call it, you don’t call it misplaced. maybe set aside and forgotten, but definitely not lost.
the phone rings. it’s on my end this time. do they have caller id now? i don’t answer it. dead people don’t answer phones.
“you are going to die.”
they say that when you face death, your life passes before your eyes. that’s never happened before, but i guess it happened this time. what they don’t tell you is that each memory is just another face of death.
age three. i’m taking my big wheel down the hill. i shouldn’t remember it, but i’ve been told enough about it that i do. too young. too stupid. too small to slow myself down. the grass around me is passes by too fast. the concrete gutter comes too quick. it took eleven stitches to stop the blood and orthopedic braces at eleven to fix the smile.
age fourteen. once again i’m heading downhill. mountain bike instead of a big wheel. i’m in control this time. nothing can stop me… except that groove in the dirt road. now i’m flying over the handlebars, colliding with a jagged rock, and skidding across the dirt path. gauze, bandages, soap, bactine, neosporin, tape, scissors, and i still have a three inch scar that turns violet in the cold.
age twenty-four. first, i’m checking my blind-spot. second, i’m saying “oh shit” to myself. third, a white flash of shattered glass sprays into my face as my silver ‘91 honda accord bounces off the front of a red and white semi. i find myself hopping over a curb, going through a fence, and resting safely in a car lot. nobody is hurt, but my car is proclaimed dead.
age twenty-six. this afternoon. he is giving me the bad news. dressed in a sky blue dress shirt and white lab coat, his silver stethoscope reflects the fluorescent light from the ceiling. already, i forgot how he said it. i’m going to die. that’s the gist of it. for some reason really i don’t care. i guess it just hasn’t hit yet.
i took the bus back to work, grabbed my things, and started walking home. it’s a bit overcast tonight. no rain, but the humidity mixed in with the cold air makes it hard to breathe. eventually i get to my empty apartment, finish up the rest of a leftover salad, and crawl in bed. i don’t feel like telling anyone. even if i did, there is nobody to tell; it’s just me, my bed, my pillow, and the darkness. as i lay and try to clear my head, the day’s events seem abstract and disconnected; bits of individual scenes with no chronological order. beside me, red glowing numbers of an alarm clock incrementally rise with each passing minute. as i watch them, my eyes get heavy and i swear they are counting down. right before i fall asleep, it hits.
"yeah, no matter what happens i know we'll always be great friends... i'm glad i can count on that"
it's ironic how sometimes what makes a friendship so great, can be the very thing that brings about its demise. but then again, maybe that's a sign that the greatness was just an illusion. a farce. a fabrication that one creates to have some hope in this world. a hope that a relationship beyond the superficiality of popularity and convenience can exist.
usually when a friendship has an abrupt end, it's sad and depressing. this isn't. i'm not sure what it means. perhaps it's because a realization has been made. perhaps it's being content. perhaps it's because it is not an end. perhaps it's being too tired and busy to think about it. perhaps it's because it's what's right.
who knows.
in the end, you get up, straighten your tie, and smile with the rest of 'em.
i can. and i'm saying it right now.
i'm screwed.
it's almost 2 am. i just finished my paper on plato and am supposed to write an 8-10 page paper on nietzsche's birth of tragedy, but i still have no idea what i am going to write it on. the paper was due a week ago and i thought by now i would have an idea. nope. no clue. nothing. zip. zero. zilch. nada. jack shit.
i'm also supposed to have some of aristotle's nichomachean ethics, two sections of nietzsche's thus spoke zarathustra, and several pages of a disseration on gadamer and wittgenstein all read by tomorrow.
let's say it all together again.
i screwed.
also known as god's army 2
i should be working on a couple papers right now, but i thought i'd write up a very short review of states of grace which i saw on saturday.
it's much better than god's army and makes some pretty bold moves.
now back to plato and nietzsche
the closing speaker for the religion and democracy conference held at uvsc and westminster college was irshad manji, who spoke about islam and gender equality. suffice to say, her presentation was excellent.
she basically discussed how the quran can be understood in ways that both give women more rights and suppress them. however, the ways that it guarantees certain rights can be utilized to overpower those that can be read to suppress them. according to the quran, if a woman earns her own assets, she gets to keep 100% of them and use them as she pleases. some readings of the quran state that if a man supports a woman, he can do with her as he pleases. by enabling a woman to earn her own assets, her husband (or father, brother, etc) has no right to control her.
furthermore, most men and women in islamic nations are illiterate and uneducated. with their self-earned assets, women can be educated on how to read the quran for themselves, as well as educate their husbands similarly, thus enabling them to see what the quran says for itself, and not just its interpretation by largely patriarchal imams. liberating women, will liberate men.
the best method for achieving this is through micro-business lending for women. doing so will enable women to educate themeselves, earn their own assets, educate others, and ultimately create more free islamic nations.
her ultimate goal is to see western nations funding these loans.
and of course there was a lot in between.
just finished watching a screener of new york doll. this touching documentary follows arthur 'killer' kane from his drugged-out days with the new york dolls (who largely fathered both the punk and glamour rock movements) to his days as a service missionary for the los angelas lds family history center, and back again to playing a reunion show with the dolls.
go see it. and when you do, be sure to stick around during the credits to see a beautiful rendition of a poor wayfaring man of grief performed by kane's bandmates.
