messiestobjects

A Non-Post Which I Kind Of Have To Title 'Buddhas And Monkeys', Because I Can't Not.

Well I made it to Thailand. 26 hours on 3 planes, Allentown to Chicago, Chicago to Tokyo, Tokyo to Bangkok, (which wasn't that bad because I dosed up on Ibuprofen and muscle relaxers; slept alot. Possibly drooled on my Asian seatmate. Note to self and advice to others: On long plane rides, muscle relaxers are key. First time I ever slept through a landing. Maybe next time try thorazine?) an overnight in some cheap airport hotel in Bangkok, up and at-'em for another plane ride down to the Krabi province, off the plane and my first Thailand experience was to ride a tuk tuk to some temple whose name I do not wish to mangle right now; I don't have my LP guide in front of me. Saw a bunch of Buddhas and monkeys. Busy day. And now I need to go find a hotel. More later. Or, some other day. Or not. Whatever happens, in the words of the late great Douglas Adams, don't panic. And never forget your towel. 42.

Robots In Disguise And Thai Boys...Well, Also In Disguise

I am so freakin' psyched right now. I was in Wal-Mart earlier today, getting some last minute items I needed for my upcoming trip to Thailand, when (quite by accident, I assure you) I found myself in the toy section. They were selling classic Transformers! Which wasn't as exciting in and of itself, (even though they are perhaps the coolest toys of ALL TIME) as it was when I saw that one of the few of the originals they re-released was Starscream. I had a Starscream when I was 10 or so, and he was my favorite because he was the most difficult one to perform the Transformation on, plus he turned into a fighter jet with spring-loaded missiles, giving me hours of robotic fun. I think I'd had him for about a month when he went missing... I was inconsolable. I even accused a neighborhood friend of stealing him, but it was never proven conclusively either way. I was never able to buy a replacement, and I've thought of poor old Starscream often in my later, more mature years.

What's also awesome is that his Decepticon identity sticker is one of those where you have to cause friction heat on it before the symbol appears. Those date from the Transformer's secret wars days when they had to go around rubbing each other before they knew which team the other guy played on. That's sort of how I understand it is in Bangkok; with alot of Thai girls, there is more than meets the eye. Scott says to watch out for the ladyboys; they assume that the only reason anybody comes to Bangkok is to see them, and can be hard to get away from, sort of a trans-gender tout conundrum. That's a weird cultural, um, thing, that I'm a bit apprehensive about. Seriously, isn't that just a bit off? People go to Paris to see the Eifel Tower and the Can-Can, to Munich for dirndles, lederhosen and beer, to London for Big Ben and Buckingham Palace guards, to Rome for bello bello mozzarella pizzaria little scooters, and to Bangkok for the male street-whores dressed up as (or, shall we say, transformed into) hot women. Oh, and for Lasik and plastic surgery.
Should be interesting.

"Rucker On Acid And Infinite Numbers, Bright Copper Kettles And Warm Woolen Mittens..."

... these are a few of my favorite things. Rudy Rucker is all nines, baby. If you are the type that often stays awake in bed far too late at night trying to wrap your head around infinity, but then get sidetracked and start thinking about who your favorite muppet is (DR. Teeth), (or wait, Zoot.) (No no, Beaker, definitely Beaker.) then Rudy Rucker is your future favorite author, I guarantee it. (Damn it! I forgot about Animal. This is hard.) Start with White Light. While waiting for it to arrive, go to Rudy's site and try to wrap your head around whatever the hell he's talking about. Other awesome mind-exploding books by him are Frek & The Elixir, and he also wrote a sort of sequel to Edwin A. Abbott's classic Flatland, called Spaceland: A Novel of the Fourth Dimension, which was my first experience with Rudy. He is a mathematics professor and he writes this weird sort of mathematical/mescalin induced sci-fi, which, because it's not like any other sci-fi anywhere, has been given the label of Transreal. I just received his latest book in the mail and I can't wait to devour it. I swear, he may be my favorite author ever... actually my favorites kind of go on swing shift. Next time I start thinking about John Steinbeck, he'll be my favorite. And then Herman Hesse. And then Vernor Vinge.
As for music, for those of you who don't know about The Gun Club, go find a copy of Fire of Love. Honestly, I love it more than anything (today), but the first time I heard it, I got really, really, really angry. They sound aLOT like the Pixies, or a certain very distinctive aspect of them, anyway. Then I found out that The Gun Club was around way before the Pixies, realized that Francis apparently didn't totally come up with that sound all on his own, and I got even angrier... I'm over it now. But damn. Getting older is all about having your deepest illusions shattered. But it's probably becoming one of my favorite albums ever, so at least I've got that going for me.
My Dad plays the dulcimer, and is all into the Pocono Dulcimer Club. They put on a concert earlier tonight and I got to see Don Pedi, a master of the Mountain Dulcimer from North Carolina, play. He apparently was in that movie 'Songcatcher' with Aidan Quinn, which I've never seen, as the white-bearded Appalacian dude playing the dulcimer, which is appropriate because that seems to be exactly who he is. But the dulcimer is a really pretty instrument, and it was actually really fun. Tomorrow, I'm going to Philly with Creepy and her boyfriend's band, who are opening for Murphy's Law. So I'm getting the whole spectrum this week. Hoo-ray for spectrum.
It looks as though I won't be going to D.C. to give my deposition, after all of that nonsense... I'm not really sure why. I got paid, and emailed GBG to tell them I got it and that I was ready to go... but then they never got back to me! So, I don't know what's going on there, but I'm leaving for Thailand this friday, so it sucks for them!

(Wait, of course! Statler & Waldorf!!!)

Cookies, Robert Redford, The Antichrist, And The Real Reasons Why These Things Ought To Scare You

While my brother is away at school, I've been temporarily occupying his room in my Dad's house until I figure out where to go next. After I get back from Thailand I'll have to seriously start thinking about that.
Anyway my point is that on my brother's bookshelf is 'The Purpose Driven Life' by Rick Warren and the entire 12 book series of 'Left Behind' by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. This constitutes some of the scariest pop right-wing christian fundamentalist lieterature (misspelling intended) out there. I worry about my brother. I'd recently read a very good article about the series, and Revelation end-of-times thinking in general, by Joe Bageant, who I was turned on to by Heather and Miss Luongo... those ladies are always finding good stuff out there. But I was thinking about it, and I realized that I've never actually read any of those books, and we Godless perverts are always making fun of doltish fundie preachers who declaim against Evolution without ever really having actually read Charles Darwin's book, or tried to understand the theory in any useful way. One should always know what one is up against. While I have read the Bible, I've been out of the loop on the latest developments in advanced Christian thought, SO, I decided to start with what I consider the easier of the two, the 12 book fictitious series about Tim LaHaye's vision of a post-rapture world. Tim LaHaye is by the way, let me just say, a total freak, dude. Click on this super-scary picture of him shooting laser beams of evil out of his eyes to be led to his website where you will find a most entertaining intro before going to his main page, where you will find his very own voodoo version of that Myers-Briggs personality theory that Miss Luongo is so fond of, as well as vague descriptions of himself and all the books, ministries, and projects he's involved in, with links taking you to where you can buy his stuff, but nothing too personal, I'm afraid. He's got some nice jewelry, though, huh?
Anyway, I'm almost halfway through the third book, but let me tell you that before the end of the first chapter of the first book I decided that I could easily devote a whole new blog to the reading of the series on which I post something every time I came across a statement that was either grossly mis-informed, ignorant, fallacious, or just plain made me laugh at it's own tunnel-vision certitude that it knew the truth based on no facts whatsoever. I realized by the third chapter that I would need a month for each book if I actually tried doing that, and I really want to get through them and be done with it. But, having made the claim, I will attempt to at least illustrate my point just a bit, here. Here's a quote right off of book 1 page 1, which may seem rather minor, but it illustrates something about the fundie mind which I feel is important to understand:

"God was OK with Rayford Steele. Rayford even enjoyed church occasionally. But since Irene [Rayford Steele's wife] had hooked up with a smaller congregation and was into weekly Bible studies and church every Sunday, Rayford had become uncomfortable. Hers was not a church where people gave you the benefit of the doubt, assumed the best about you, and let you be. People there had actually asked him, to his face, what God was doing in his life."

This is minor, but it is the first of many rather disingenuous statements made by non-Christians about Christians throughout the series so far. Rayford is surprised that fundamentalist Christians, after a sermon on sunday at a fundamentalist church, actually want to talk to him about God? Heaven forfend! That is so crazy that fundies, like, take their beliefs so seriously! In the Left Behind books, Non-Christians are constantly surprised by the honesty, forthrightness and vigor of a Christian's beliefs, excepting only those who are merrily skipping down the path to the Antichrist's side. Reading these books has made me remember my own thought processes when I was a younger church-going Christian myself. Christians, despite being the largest most powerful religious group in America, tend to feel persecuted and not listened to. For no apparent reason. It's as though they think that the only non-Christian, if you're not a direct servant of Satan, is one who has simply not thought it all through, or doesn't understand the horrors that will befall unbelievers when a vengeful bloody Jesus (long gone is the messiah of love) returns after the rapture. They can't conceive of someone who has read about and understood their religion, and despite being a good person, has decided it was all a load of crap. They think we don't understand what they have found to be the truth in their lives, that we are simply misguided. I would like to bet a LOT of money on the fact that at least %90 of fundamental religious types call themselves believers only because the idea of an MC 900 foot Jesus coming to rip their guts out if they don't become Born Again has scared the living shit out of them. (Or eternity in Hell, yadda yadda. It's all the same idea.) That and/or for the other self-evident reason that these books have reminded me of: Rapture and Tribulation are the ultimate infantile vengeance fantasy. Anybody ever get this taunt on the playground? "My daddy/big brother/whomever can beat up your daddy/big brother/whomever/you!" We all so desperately want to be right, on the winning side, the side that gets cookies for good behaviour. (Not that it means anything, but the authors of the Left Behind books have this weird fascination with cookies. Cookies seem to be around at some of the more touching moments a little too often. Cookies, and Robert Redford. The Antichrist is described in some seriously homoerotic terms more than once by different characters as a more dashing, sexier Robert Redford.) No one wants to be on the losing side of an argument. And these guys have found the biggest daddy and the most horrible retribution ever with which to side with, and are looking forward to the day when everyone who disagrees with them will get what's coming to 'em.
This, make no mistake 'O ye who seek only spiritual comfort, is a religion of fear. It is not based on truth, or righteousness, or most importantly, love. They want to scare the hell out of you, literally, so that you will join their cause, give them money, and spread the fright to others. I'm not saying they don't believe their own crap; I'm sure they do. But they do not believe in Good. Another quote:

"Would it fade, her preoccupation with the end of the world, with the love of Jesus, with the salvation of souls? Lately she had been reading everything she could get her hands on about the rapture of the church. "Can you imagine, Rafe," she exulted, "Jesus coming back to get us before we die?"
"Yeah boy," he said peeking over the top of his newspaper, "that would kill me."
She was not amused. "If I didn't know what would happen to me," she said, "I wouldn't be glib about it."
"I do know what would happen to me," he insisted, "I'd be dead, gone, finis. But you of course would fly right up to heaven."
He hadn't meant to offend her, he was just having fun. When she turned away he rose and pursued her. He spun her around and tried to kiss her, but she was cold. "Come on, Irene," he said. "Tell me thousands would just keel over if they saw Jesus coming back for all the good people."
She had pulled away in tears. "I've told you and told you. Saved people aren't good people, they're--"
"Just forgiven, yeah I know," he said, feeling rejected and vulnerable in his own living room. He returned to his chair and his paper. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm happy for you that you can feel so cocksure."
"I only believe what the Bible says," Irene said.

Notice that LaHaye's idea of a perfect Christian (Irene and others like her throughout the world are raptured right off the bat) is one who became a heartfelt born again believer over her obsession with rapture lieterature? (Again, misspelling intentional.) And of course the other important point, saved people aren't good people, they're just forgiven. i.e., they picked the winning side. Of course there's more to that dogma than just that, they believe in living good lives as well; Jesus demands more than just lip service. But their idea of good lives and, well, good-people-not-saved-people's ideas of what is right and wrong are very different. The unfortunate side-effect of believing in a world gone to hell and a Saviour who is going to come and trash the place anyway, is that the world is no longer worth saving; the only worthy cause is trying to convert people they like and condemning to a very scary end those they disagree with, even trying to keep an eye out for the Antichrist. (Henry Kissinger? Ted Kennedy? Barack Obama? Any liberal gay Jew that happens by?) Forget trying to save the environment, ending the war in Iraq, or approving of stem-cell research (which hurts no one, least of all the dead-end biological goo it comes from!) to help people, or a hundred other issues which, if the fundamental right had any concern for them, they could help to do a world of good. They look forward to the end of the world, and indeed, applaud anything that looks like it might bring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse closer. Sign up for 'ol Tim "laser-eye" LaHaye's newsletter for timely messages on current events related to Biblical prophecy. He might as well gleefully rub his hands and echo one of our President's most foolish comments; "Bring them on!"
I will end this by saying that there are certain things in the Bible that I believe to be true; even certain things in Revelations. Not simply because they are in the Bible, but because they are truths which are self evident to anybody who looks for such truths. Jesus' message of love and compassion, for example. But we are talking about end-time stuff here, and so something out of Revelations which I believe is that there will be many false prophets... can you guess who's at the top of my false prophet list?

Centralia's Got What Ails Ya

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, as we all know, and to celebrate this day in honor of one of America's greatest citizens, Scott, Miss Luongo, Creepy Christy and I got up unnaturally early to drive two and a half hours or so to Centralia, Pennsylvania. We'd been up the night before sharing a tipple of the last of Creepy Christy's New Year's absinthe, and that night we all had dreams, too. Absinthe often causes some off-the-hook dreams, and waking up with images of 30 rampaging tornadoes and two-legged puppies dancing in my head was a hell of a way to start this day. Not quite the same type of dream MLK was talking about, but I had to start this post somewhere.
Centralia, for those few out there who haven't heard of it by now, is a Ghost Town (well, mostly) not far from Hazleton, PA, and it's an ode to it's allure that all four of us were able to actually get up and be on the road by 9:30 am to go see it. It is the inspiration for the video game and subsequent horror film known as 'Silent Hill'. It was once a thriving coal mining town, until one day in 1962, some iidjit set fire to a pile of trash in a poorly located landfill... right on top of an exposed vein of anthracite coal. Well, anthracite coal is highly flammable, and fwooom! The vein lit up and started a massive underground coal fire. Over the next couple of years, after failed attempts at putting the fire out, things for the town started looking bleak... the extent of the problem began to be understood in the 70s when a gas-station owner inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and discovered that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was at a dangerous 180 degrees Fahrenheit! Well, long story short, the fire is still burning today. Most of the residents have died or left town long ago, but there are still some people living there; the Wikipedia Centralia entry lists the population of Centralia at 12, making it the least populated municipality in Pennsylvania. Their houses seem to mostly be the only buildings left standing. We saw streets overgrown by grass leading nowhere, and two or three houses.

I don't know if this is true of all of the remaining Centralia residents, but the Wikipedia entry states that the reason people refuse to leave, despite the health hazards of remaining, is that they believe that the government wants to clear the town so that they can claim the rights to Centralia coal, which was at one point valued in the billions of dollars. They say that there is enough coal underground to keep the fires burning for another 250 years...
There is a section of PA Route 61 that runs right into town which has been blocked off by large mounds of dirt and this sign:

Of course we ignored the sign completely and walked the length of what is locally referred to as the "Highway to Hell". I only know this because of all of the graffiti painted on the abandoned stretch of highway, but it's a moniker that seems to fit.

The reason the road is blocked is that the underground fires have caused severe weakening of the ground, and sinkholes have been appearing all over town. Some pretty large cracks, holes, and other warpage have appeared along Ghost Highway 61 as a result, with smoke and noxious gasses continuously pouring out of them giving the whole thing a deliciously spooky atmosphere.

The blocked section of 61 terminates right on the outskirts of Centralia, where there is an old town graveyard. It was sufficiently foggy, gassy, and iconic looking enough that we all took far too many pictures of decrepit old tombstones and eerie trees fading into the mist.

On the other side of the graveyard is an area that appears to be a landfill, and there are vents all over the place there spewing crazy amounts of coalsmoke and sulfur. After about 5 minutes there, poor Miss Luongo had to leave because the fumes were so noxious. Scott, Creepy, and I stayed far too much longer, killing our lungs so we could take a stupid amount of photos of smoke coming up out of the ground.

I've uploaded all of the day's pictures on my smugmug page in my Centralia, Pennsylvania gallery, and some of them are pretty cool, though they're all along the lines of the ones I've posted here.
For further reading, I highly suggest the wikipedia page already mentioned, as well as the entry over at Damn Interesting, and this page also.
Finally, in honor of my newfound superhero-like ability to upload my videos onto YouTube and post them here, I leave you with my pièce de résistance, which I call 'Smoking Crack'.

Low Quality Videos Of High Quality Times

I've finally figured out how to get some videos on here that I've taken on my travels that I've been wanting to show people for a while now: I uploaded a bunch of stuff to YouTube! The video quality is not even as good as the low-quality video they were originally captured by my digital camera with, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.
I'll start out with a video I took of the Whirling Dervishes at Mevlevi Monastery in Istanbul.

This next one is a nice little old communist lady waving commie flags and dancing to some old Songs of the Republic in Red Square, Moscow on November 7th, 2005.

And this one is from my trip to Petra, in Jordan, where I caught them filming a very silly looking dance in front of the famous Treasury building for an Indian commercial.

This one is also from Jordan; it is in the ruined Roman city of Jerash, and involves an Arabic marching band... an Arabic marching BAGPIPE band, to be more precise, performing, oh my god, 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' See it to believe it.

This one is less exciting, but it's from my Blackhawk ride in Iraq; it shows us taking off from the Washington Heliport in the Interzone in Baghdad and a few minutes of the view of my ride over the city of Baghdad.

Now, this last one was not taken by me. I found it on an unmarked CD along with all those found photos that I've posted on my smugmug page. After watching it you're going to think that I'm a bad person for putting it up, but believe me I don't find this video funny. I put it up to remind one of how cruel and stupid people can be.

I Was All Like, Yeah, And He Was All Like, Nuh-uh, And I Was All Like, Dude, Yeah-huh

I was over at Cosmic Variance yesterday and got into a small discussion with the guy who wrote this post about Richard Dawkins, and after going back and forth a couple of times (comment #s 66-70 & 72-73), was rather solidly given the "talk to the hand, buddy". I'm not sure if it's because I was not being clear enough in my argument, or if it's just that I'm an embarassing moron to have show up on your science blog and blather on about a subject which I have no degree in...
The gist of it was that I initially posted a comment saying that I don't understand atheism any more than I understand religious certainty, and that I felt that the more reasonable philosophy for a rational person (which I assume scientists generally are) to assume is agnosticism. Atheism, to me, is every bit as much a belief based on no empirical evidence as [pick a religion] is. I've never understood how anyone, especially scientists who require proof of everything, can say that God does not exist, end of story. There is no proof that he does and there is no proof that he doesn't! How can you prove that God does not exist? You can't! And Mark (the writer over at CV) came back with a more delineated definition of what atheism meant to him: "Atheism means that you do not believe in god, not that you will say with absolute certainty that one does not exist."
I looked up atheism on wikipedia, and sure enough, most atheistic philosophers assume that definition. Which really kind of throws me for a loop... that statement makes no more scientific sense than the idea of religious faith, which atheists spend so much time bashing. What that's saying is that you believe that God does not exist, not that you know. So then atheists, by that statement, really are the exact opposite side of the coin from religious wack-os, with about the same amount of rationality! Both sides are stating a belief about God or the lack of one, with nothing empirical backing either up.
When I tried explaining that, and that agnosticism seemed a much more rational approach for a scientist, he didn't seem to get my point (which is likely my own fault; my reasoning seems clear to me but I'm sure it's muddier than I think it is, half the time) and didn't acknowledge that he, by using that definition of atheism, was stating a belief. Instead he said that he felt uncomfortable with "beliefs", and that on the subject of the currently unprovable, he'd rather state "I don't know" and then try to figure out the truth... Then I pointed out that that is exactly what agnosticism is! Agnosticism means simply, lack of knowledge. I said that we were actually in agreement, and that we were just approaching the same conclusion from different sides... then he never responded to me again. There are of course many possible reasons for this, the most likely that he was simply getting annoyed with me. I admit, were I in his shoes and some snot-nose was trying to out-comment me on my own blog, I'd snub him down right quick also.
But it's a discussion which has many facets and I'm really intrigued, which is why I'm having trouble shutting up about it.
The thing about agnosticism is, of course, that like atheism, it can also have a couple of different interpretations. I think that Mark and other sciencey smart-guy types tend to shy away from agnosticism because it does have certain religious overtones. Gnostics were an early sect of Christianity that purported to have an insider's spiritual knowledge; Agnostics chose the name for themselves precisely because they want to say that they do not have any such luck. However, some people that call themselves Agnostics believe very firmly in God, but that any knowledge of such a vastly superior being is currently unknowable to the likes of us hairless apes. That's probably why certain rationals prefer the moniker of atheism, because while they won't say with certainty that there is no God, they prefer to have the cloak of what seems more likely in this Universe to them as being the case, the disbelief in God, keeping all possible distance from any sort of religious flavoring whatsoever.
To me, Agnosticism means that maybe there is, maybe there ain't. If he wants me to know, he'll tell me. If I don't hear from him, well, we will just have to wait until all the facts are in. Meanwhile, I don't need religion to tell me to be nice to other people (well, at least not to kill or actively harm them... being nice is often a tall order in the face of the ignorant) regardless of what they choose to say they believe the truth to be, and Agnosticism won't stop me from knowing that evolution is a fact or from eagerly awaiting any news about more great scientific discoveries that open more doors to the Universe for our tiny, hungry little brains.
After reading about the many different types of agnostics on the wikipedia page, I'd have to say I'm a Weak Agnostic, but that I prefer the alt-term of Open Agnostic. As I said on CV, The Universe is God, science is his means of communication, and it is a scientist’s duty to follow wherever that may lead, whether it proves that God is intelligent or accidental. (Ok I just added a few bits there... I'm always editing myself. It's a problem.)
I am willing to be wrong about any of this... I don't in fact have a degree on this subject and it's not like I've read anybody's thesis on atheism vs. agnosticism... chances are, they're identical viewpoints with different tones. Atheism just sticks in my craw (what's a craw?) because it seems to me to be an irrational viewpoint shared by a large group of people who are in most other matters extremely rational.

Name Calling And Other Green, Black & Yellow Issues

Aha! I was right! About too much water in American toilets, I mean. There's a great post over at Inky Circus about how wasteful our current system is. They also link to another article on the subject worth a further read, which reminded me of how the company of mercenaries I saw alot of in the Interzone in Baghdad, named 'Blackwater', (you should all have heard of them, if you pay attention to news) is named after what the sewage treatment business calls water with nasty smelly human poo in it. You can't make this poop up folks! The other thing it talks about is how in the future men will have to pee sitting down, if we want to solve the problem with urine separating toilets. Screw that; when I finally have my own place, I'm getting a waterless urine-separating urinal installed... I never understood why all houses with men residing in them don't have urinals already, anyway. Much less water wasted in those, and it would stop all fights about having the lid up or down. Another Green issue on everybody's mind is this unreasonably warm winter, and whether it is Global Warming. This article says to expect 2007 to be the warmest year on record, a record originally set in 1998... a quickly moving upward trend if I ever saw one. They're also pulling out the 'ol El Niño defense again. I haven't seen a real snow in 4 years, and now this! Grr, argh. Global Warming is really cramping my style, man.
Anyway, I'm going to Thailand! I was hanging out in my Dad's house, trying to figure out if I should find an apartment, or where I want to work, and all kinds of deep life issues that I am apparently still not equipped to deal with properly, when I realized that there is no reason I can't run off and play for a bit before settling those questions. I've done everything I needed to do by coming back to the US for the moment, and while there are other issues on the horizon, at the moment I have a more or less clean calender and so I decided to go on the trip I'd wanted to go on after leaving Baghdad in the first place. I also wanted to get Lasik surgery, and after some research discovered that it's actually cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket and get it done in Thailand than it is to get it done here! Don't believe me? Check out US prices, and then go to the site of a very famous hospital in Bangkok and check out their prices and add that to the price of a round-trip ticket purchased at least a month in advance from expedia. The total pricing may wind up being more or less equivalent, but then you also get a sweet trip to southeast Asia out of the deal and a nifty passport stamp. It's totally a no-brainer.
I leave at the end of the month and will be gone for about 3 to 4 weeks. Sorry TF, (Can I call you Tim? You always sign in as TF, even though your name is Tim, and I feel kind of weird calling you TF if you'd prefer Tim. Let me know.) I'd love to go oil-drilling in Canada, but I hadn't heard back from you and I get antsy left to my own devices. If it's still an option come March, drop me a line.
In the meantime I am still having some issues with my old company about whether they will pay me or not and whether I am going to Washington DC later this week for a few days to give my deposition or not. I imagine I'll have a better idea of what's going to happen there by tuesday.
Meanwhile, go buy this shirt. My friend Heather made it (I think) to promote a book written by my newest friend, Miss Luongo. (Do you mind if I call you Miss Luongo? It fits, somehow, but if you don't like it I'll stop.) It's called "The Hard Way" and comes out sometime this spring. (Which, judging by the weather, is any time between now and April. I think that in May, summer will be here.) It's her debut novel, and I both painfully admire and jealously despise anybody I know that actually gets something published. Apparently it's a really really good book too, which shoots up my admiration even further, and sends my covetous black heart even lower. I can't wait to read it.

All Of A Sudden I'm Using Pop-Culture References To Explain My Murky Thought Processes Entirely Too Often, And I've Only Been Here For Two Weeks!

This year I resolve to give up McDonalds. Well, their meats, anway. A good McDonald's breakfast is still entirely acceptable, from time to time. It's not like I eat alot of the junk, but I do get the craving about once or twice a month, and when I give in I always feel really bad later, in my gut. I read Fast Food Nation, and saw Super-Size Me, but they didn't really affect me... Cheeseburgers are tasty, mm,m. But that feeling you get after about twenty minutes of digestion of a lump of McCrap anthropomorphizing in my belly as it gets all googly eyed and joyfully eats away at my innards to the tune of 'Happy Go-Lucky Me' has made me realize that the madness must stop.
Well, welcome to 2007. And all that. I had a pretty good New Year's... my friend Christy had a little shindig at her place. She's my oldest and best friend in Stroudsburg, so it was great to hang out again after such a long time. I didn't know anyone else there, but I met some really great people, whom I will call the New Stroudsburgians as they are after my time in that crazy burg. I also met the incomparable Miss Luongo, at long last. All of my Old Stroudsburgian friends know her, but I'd never crossed paths with her before, and they can never shut up about how cool she is, so naturally I put off meeting her for as long as possible, but in this town fate is like a bathtub drain and we all meet sooner or later before getting sucked down. I'm afraid there was some heated discussion about the validity of certain standardized personality tests, and whether it's true that they are the 21st Century's substitute for Horoscopes, fulfilling the basic human need of telling you very nice, deep, and completely made up things about yourself... follow this link to take the test and then take your results and go here to read a more detailed description of what you're really all about; Both sites are lifted from Julie and Heather. It all reminds me of a brilliantly inspired yet never-ending movie from 1991 named 'Until The End Of The World' by Wim Wenders where this guy invents this little machine that looks a bit like a Sony PSP that can record dreams. By the end of the movie, one of the main characters has become a junkie on her own dreams and shrieks like a madwoman when someone tries to take it away from her. It's the ultimate narcissism because it's the ultimate technological navel-gaze, and personality tests are a bit like a lower level version of that. Not that that's a bad thing, I mean, if I were to condemn narcissism, I'd really be a hypocrite.
So of course this discussion brought out the worst of my tendencies, helped along by some of 'ol Hobnail's Potable, and I may have revealed entirely too much about myself to my new friend, while I spent very little time actually hanging out and getting to know her and the others... It's bad enough having deep personal flaws, it's worse being cursed with eternal hyper-awarness of them. Like that scene in 'Boogie Nights' where Philip Seymour Hoffman is berating himself for being such an effin' idiot.
But in summation, as my friend Heather says, Julie is very Zen. She got me pegged in like ten minutes, which is supposedly what my beef with the test is really all about because INTP's apparently intensely dislike being pegged. (No dirty comments, please. It would be too easy.) Anyway, I had a great time, which is also predicted by my test because we're very self-involved and love arguing for the sake of the argument, and even if we are proved wrong, (and I'm not saying I was, I'm just saying) we enjoy the game.
And I have a new favorite site, named Damn Interesting, and it really is, too, unlike this site.