Adamant's Fire

One Hundred Ways to Fail, One Hundred Ways to Succeed

2009-10-18T16:57:00.004-05:00

A List of One Hundred Things to Do before I Die.

100. Watch all of the Lord of the Rings extended editions in one day.

99. Own Time’s List of 100 Best English-Language Novels 1923 – present.

98. Read Time’s List of 100 Best English-Language Novels 1923 – present.

97. Write a script.

96. Write 100 love letters.

95. Go back to Italy.

94. Wear a beard for ten Halloweens in a row.

93. Write back and forth with an old friend by hand.

92. Own the entire Oxford English Dictionary.

91. Own general histories that cover all eras of all areas of all continents.

90. See a Tyler Perry movie.

89. Watch all of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

88. Play and finish all of the Final Fantasy series console games.

87. Finish a novel.

86. Learn to weld.

85. Drink 250 different beers.

84. Make cheese.

83. Learn to play basic guitar.

82. Take lessons for a martial art.

81. Own all of IMDB’s top 250 movies.

80. Watch all of IMDB’s top 250 movies.

79. Own 1000 books.

78. Fill ten journals with creative outpourings.

77. See four movies in theater in a day.

76. Write 100 poems in thirty days.

75. Write 30 short stories in thirty days.

74. Build a suit of armor.

73. Build a suit of chain mail.

72. Knit an afghan.

71. Read the Bible.

70. Read the Qur’an.

69. Write a book of letters to a future child, whether I have one or not.

68. Learn how to pick a lock.

67. Buy all seasons of The West Wing.

66. Buy all seasons of The Golden Girls.

65. Learn to sketch.

64. Fill an entire sketchbook.

63. Learn a second language to proficiency.

62. Attend five Coheed and Cambria concerts.

61. Attend twenty concerts.

60. Be published in a newspaper or magazine.

59. Learn to whittle and carve.

58. Submit a t-shirt design to Threadless.com.

57. Publish under a pseudonym.

56. Play an MMORPG.

55. Have the perfect day as designed by someone else.

54. Take violin lessons.

53. Listen to the entire Beatles discography.

52. Write a song.

51. Design my future home.

50. Write out an argument for a personal philosophy.

49. Teach someone Canasta.

48. Use all seven tiles in one turn in Scrabble.

47. Take a geometry course again.

46. Take a trigonometry course again.

45. Take a pre-calculus/calculus class again.

44. Take a class/beginning courses in Russian.

43. Cut off all of my hair.

42. Grow my hair out longer than ever before.

41. Build a chair.

40. Stay awake for 48 hours.

39. Sleep for 24 hours.

38. Change someone’s mind after a long discussion.

37. Smoke a cigar.

36. Protest.

35. Name a cat Cosmic Creepers.

34. Give a future child a secret that he or she will only share with whoever he or she falls in love with.

33. Have a vinyl collection of over 50 albums.

32. Dig a hole deeper than I am tall by hand.

31. Ride a bicycle as a primary mode of transportation for an extended period of time.

30. Research my grandfather’s family.

29. Submit DNA to the Genographic Project.

28. Have at least one room in my house that is wall to wall bookshelves.

27. Become a pescatarian for a year.

26. Live on bread and water alone for two weeks.

25. Go on a cruise.

24. Go scuba diving.

23. See the Grand Canyon.

22. Make a personal discovery in the depths of a library.

21. Go geocaching.

20. Keep chickens.

19. Take more horse riding lessons.

18. Be debt free for a day.

17. Have one entirely productive day without distraction.

16. Create an original menu for a restaurant, whether or not I have one.

15. Create or invest a business.

14. Give, over the course of my life, $20,000 to charity.

13. Get drunk in a bar.

12. Take part in a documentary.

11. Memorize a poem.

10. Interview my grandmother about our family.

9. Start a fire from “scratch.”

8. Cut down a tree.

7. Plant fifty trees.

6. Go it alone for a week.

5. Pet an elephant.

4. Become an expert on something extremely trivial.

3. Perform a song for someone I love.

2. Make a secret recipe.

1. Win a damn game of checkers.

Anyone else?

The World Kept Turning, Though I Can't Say I Noticed

2009-10-18T04:41:00.000-05:00

So much has happened since the last post, and there's no way to explain it all. So I'll just cover the main things that have happened.

I finally started grad school. They weren't kidding when they told me it would be hard. Mamas, don't raise your sons and daughters to be grad students. I spend so much time reading, as I should, but I spend even more time avoiding reading, which I definitely shouldn't. I've already been to the library here in two months than I did in the entire four years I was at UCA, and I now have a primary place of residence where I actually sleep night after night. It has been an extremely long time since my head only hit one pillow night after night (though I still switch between my bed at the couch). This - being locked between the apartment walls, forcing myself to read things I know I'll forget - is what the title references. There are days that I don't go outside. And that is very strange.

A lot of things came along with grad school, including a cat named Tonks. She eats like a goat but looks like an arctic fox from behind and a lab rat from the front. She doesn't look so much like a lab rat now that she's gotten bigger, but when I first got her at the end of August, she was definitely a little mewing rat. As much trouble as she's been at times, she's been a comfort to me. She's in my face every morning, and she purrs on cue when I call her name. In a world where I wasn't sure what to expect at first, she was the first thing that made me feel like I had an obligation to be here - if it was only to dote on her like she was my only child (which we all know she is).

I'm obsessed with Glee, but I'm even more obsessed with avoiding work, and it's disturbing the limits I can take it to sometimes. Well, I take that back. The problems I've had have been more external than me, but this weekend it's been really bad - but even that's been because I'm scared. I have two term papers of 20 pages or more due at the end of the semester, and one of them is quite literally impossible. Even worse, I'm the one who let out enough rope to hang myself, no one else. It's crazy how that's happened twice with the two of the most important papers of my entire academic career - one of them being my Honors thesis. A professor won't give me a limitation, and then I go and try to write an impossible dissertation that even people with twenty years more training with me wouldn't try because they understand the nuances that make such far-reaching arguments impossible. In other words, I'm in an inescapable situation, I've got to bullshit my way out of this one, and I don't even know how to begin to cheat my limitations. My goal is to actually put pen to paper today (read: when I wake up this afternoon), so I'll be sure to report my plan of action, however nuts it may be.

Having an apartment has been interesting, but I don't know what else to say about that other than paying rent's alright, but utilities suck because it feels like gambling until the damn bill actually comes in. Is there a utilities god? I need a shrine to him.

I'm planning on starting a Glee series on VDCC.net, so watch out for that. Otherwise, I'll try to post here more often. If nothing else, it will certainly give me a constructive outlet, which I need. Playing video games and watching TV are not constructive, but writing? Writing is good.

Until next time, fellows.

Holy Bejeebus, where have I been?

2009-07-12T10:46:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm back. Sort of. I've thought about posting osmething on here many times, but then I get lazy and go to sleep. Or something.

Anyway, a lot has happen since last we met. Obama became the prez, the world collapsed under the weight of its own greed, and I graduated, amongst many many other things. Also, did you know Michael Jackson died? Haha, just kidding.

Ahhh, graduation - one of the few things that came so close to going right. Then again, the fact that I did graduate should be enough of a good thing to mean that it all went right, but I can't bring my critical self to get over the fact that things could have been different. Magna cum laude is good, right? Sure. The fact that my professor lost the assignment that would have given me an A, thus summa cum laude is just tough, right? Sure. Okay. I'll get over that when I die, eventually.

It went well for everyone else, though. After all, my physics/math major friends can no longer do simple addition. My English major friends either read James Patterson novels or comic books, or don't read at all. My history major friends watch the increasingly screechy oh-shit-it's-the-apocalypse-zomg History Channel, and, of course, Adult Swim, the ol' standby. My fifth year senior friends are still in an exhausted coma after their five-year college marathon. This is all as it should be, as this is the natural order of things after one is educated.

Oh yeah, I'm going to grad school soon. OleMiss, ho! I'm honestly not very excited about it now, but I am excited about the deals I'm getting on my books. I got $170 worth of books for $56! With shipping! THIS DESERVES EXCLAMATORY PUNCTUATION.

I'm also a bit Twitter Happy (tm), and I think I'm going to revive Adamant's Fire as a way to let up on the poor servers, the Fail Whale, etc. I'm almost positive I'm responsible for half of the times it breaks. As of this post, I will have 3043 twitter updates. But I also have over 200 followers! Yay, right? Sure.

I've partially revived VDCC.net, which is now only brain dead instead of completely flatlining. I'll have to do some more massaging (I'm waggling my eyebrows, oh yes) to get that heart pumping. Ifyaknawhatuhmean.

My post important accomplishment, above graduating, is the fact that I finished all of Beast Wars on YouTube. Man, what a great show. I'm contemplating doing a podcast review of the entire show, but I'm not sure I'm ready to do something so hardcore. I've got Season II of Beast Machines to go, and then I've got the whole show in the bag. Woot woot! As for the original Transformers... I can only take so much. Fifteen minutes of that show is literally like three hours in normal time (pardon, three megacycles - everything I know about Cybertronian time I learned from Rhinox).

Otherwise, I'm working. As always.

My question to you, friends and (Twitter) followers: anything you'd like to see on Adamant's Fire?

Mr. Simmons Goes to Washington - Chapter III

2008-12-29T09:46:00.001-06:00

Author's Note: So it's been a while, and since I'm on Christmas break, I thought I would write another chapter for this long held story, just in time for the main character's (and my) birthday. I found some inconsistencies in the first chapter, so let me make it clear: It was Benny Villa, one of the capos for an unmentioned crime family, who was killed, and it's William Langley who's seen as a likely suspect, not the other way around. There was a bit of confusion when I first wrote it (mostly because I didn't know where it was going), but I'll go back and fix it sooner or later.

To read the other chapters of this story if you haven't already (you'll be lost if you don't), click the "Mr. Simmons Goes to Washington" button on the side panel.

The Creative Commons license and the image credit are at the bottom. Please enjoy and comment, if think to do so.

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I nearly have to roll my jaw up to get it off the floor. I’m stunned, shocked.

“Are you yankin’ my chain, Yak? It’s two o’clock, and I can’t take a bad joke right now.” I can hear the Yak sigh, and I see the smoke he exhaled swirl in the lamplight. We’re old friends, but I’ve always only been able to take the bastard in small doses. It would be just like him to mess with my head, but I got a feeling that he’s not lying and it scares me.

“Now why…” he takes another drag, “would I joke about a thing like that?” I’m about to lose my mind. I know it’s two o’clock in the morning and that I’ve had too much to drink. Even a man like me knows he has limits. Why did I take this case? I want to say that it was out of character for me to do it, but I don’t know that’s not true.

“Yak, what the hell is going on? Why would you do something like that?” I hear him stand up. He walks out into the lamplight, and I can see the glint on his glasses.

“For me to tell you that, we’d have to get out of here. I trust my men but I would never push my luck with loyalty. Especially when it’s bought and paid for.” Yak looks at his watch. “The bar closes as long as they stay around, but I may be able to shuffle them out a bit early.” I look at him, eyes wide and feeling completely knocked off balance though I’ve got both feet on the ground.

“Yak, do you realize what –“ I say, a bit too loudly. Yak moves quick and punches me in the stomach. I double over, not expecting him to do something like that, but this is a night for surprises.

“Keep your goddamn voice down. These are hired men that will talk. Luckily, they don’t have anything to talk about, unless you give them something to say.” I’m coughing and sputtering as Yak heads out behind me. I hear him tell the guys guarding the entrance to pick me up and carry me to the bar. In no time, the jerks have their hands on me, dragging me out into the main room and back to Pete. They drop me with a thud, and Pete’s roaring with laughter.

“Need another drink, Tony?” I climb up to the barstool and nod.

“Yeah, but only one. I think I’ve got a long night yet.”
_______________________________________________________________

It’s about 3:30 when Yak finally runs out the patrons by saying that he had it on good authority that the police were coming to the area. It was a good way to get all the kids out of the bar, but it was also a good way to have no business for a few days. Who wants to come to a raided bar? A few more came in, and there was a call for two more rounds on one guy who looked like he just tapped into his trust fund and bought a yacht. True to my word for once, I only had one shot of gin, though I was feeling everything a guy drinks to get away from come back to the surface. Yak needed to hurry his ass up if I was going to keep myself from taking all of his gin with me. Finally, he walks over to the bar.

“Alright, Tony. Let’s get in the car. You good enough to drive?” I laugh, but it sounds like a cough. Damn cigarettes.

“Yeah, Yak. You can put me behind the wheel.” Yak looks at me for a long second before shrugging.

“I could, but I’m worth more than you and more people want me dead, so I need to ride in the back.” I laugh again, longer this time.

“Are you sure about that?” Yak puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Time to go.” He turns around and heads for the entrance I came in earlier.

“Are we going out the front door?” Yak shakes his head.

“Nope, one of the back ones.” He opens a door that looked like part of a wall, across from the entrance where I came in earlier. There’s a staircase, and Yak limps up the stairs. I hear him grunt when he reaches the top. I’m not that slow, but I’m not taking the chance of running into something else. I follow. Breathing hard, Yak says, “We’re going up to the third floor. We’re going – to cross into the building behind the bar, and go down the stairs – on the other side.”

I follow him through the building. It’s obviously his entire business. I hope it’s not the only building, because single targets are easy targets when it comes to the mob. There are beds in many of the rooms, kitchens, bathrooms – a full living setup for fifty, seventy-five, a hundred people – though the only people here are a bunch of drunk guys playing poker in one of the rooms. They see Yak and nearly leap to their feet. When he doesn’t look at them, they come out in the hallway behind us.

“Boss? You need us?” Yak waves a hand.

“Nah, you guys play. I’ve got other business.” The guy looks at me hard and goes back into the room.

“Yak, are you running a full-fledged operation here? I thought it was just a bar.” Yak doesn’t answer. We reach the other set of stairs, and Yak goes down slowly, panting lightly. That left leg is killing him.

I can see the dark street out ahead and a black Rolls Royce. Yak gets in the backseat and gives me the keys to start it. I fumble in the dark for a minute, find the ignition, and crank that beautiful engine. Even when business was good, I could only hope for one of these.

“Where to, Mr. Olivetti?” I say, tipping my hat to him. He chuckles.

“Just drive. Safe areas are preferable.” I pull out onto the street and do as he asks. I figure I’ll drive him toward the poor part of town – the rich part of town is where all the guys who wouldn’t like Yak would be.

“Alright. What the hell is going on?”

“Exactly what I told you.”

“That doesn’t help my aching brain. I’m on the case now, whether I want to be or not.”

“Tell me more about your end of this.” I tell Yak bits and pieces of what had happened since midnight, keeping the William Langley’s name and the fact that I knew where the body was and even saw it to myself. Yak doesn’t make a noise for a good minute.

“Something seems wrong. Why would a girl like that go into your office at midnight? How would she have gotten into the building, anyway?”

“Yeah, I thought about that too, but by the end of it all, I had so many things running through my head it was impossible to stay on one thing.” Yak laughs.

“If you’d stop drinking, you’d have less trouble.” I hate it when people point out the obvious. I feel like a goddamn shooting gallery at the county fair – all easy shots, except with no prizes.

“I don’t have enough of a problem to quit.” I hear Yak sigh, and I grip the steering wheel tighter.

“I drink, too. I’m not saying you need to stop. You just need to keep from draining a bottle every time you sit down. Why do you drink anyway?” I can barely keep from yanking the steering wheel out of the car.

“I self-medicate.” There’s a pause before the Yak roars.

“Yeah. Yeah. I guess we all do.”

“You got sidetracked, Yak.”

“Yeah, I did. Where were we?”

“Why did you have Benny Villa killed?” Yak gets out another cigarette and talks with it bobbing between his lips while he reaches for his lighter in his expensive three-piece.

“He was the importer for the mob. Bringing in the booze for the ‘easies. For some reason, he thought he could retire. While not in itself a problem, it did become somewhat… inconvenient… for people like me-“ I hear him flick the lighter and see the bright orange out of the corner of my eye “-when he started skimming off the top for retirement. As soon as I knew what was going on, I sent in my best unknown, thus untraceable, man for the job.” He takes a long drag and I’m trying to process what I just heard.

“You mean to tell me that you killed that sonofabitch for money? Just for money? What’s happened to you, Yak?”

“Money makes the world go round, Sweetheart. I don’t know how it is on your side of town, but on mine, it’s still true. You can’t be all smiles and rainbows over here. It’s tough. It’s the city. It’s the blood and guts. You have to be willing to roll in the mud every once in a while if you’re going to live in the sty. If it makes you feel better, the mayor was never going to give him the key to the goddamn city.”

“Not the man I knew.” Yak leans forward.

“I wasn’t exactly planting daisies and singing Dixie when we met, Anthony. I’m exactly the man you knew.” I shake my head, knowing he’s right because-
_____________________________________________________________
We met during the war. I was an infantryman assigned to Yak’s unit after they suffered quite a few casualties in an offensive. He was introduced to me as Yak Olivetti, but I found out later that “Yak” was short for “Jakob.” His mom was a second-generation German immigrant, and his old man had come over from Sicily to get away from the mafia running the island. Once we got to talking, Yak told me that his mom fell head over heels for his dad, but her parents decided to disown her. When he was around four, he saw his dad gunned down by mob men at his fruit stand in a case of mistaken identity. “Irony is a bastard,” Yak told me. His mom died not long afterward from not eating, a side effect of her grief.

I wasn’t an enthusiastic soldier, but Yak took to killing like a fish to water. Yak was always too gung-ho for war, and he ended up getting shot in his left knee because he stopped being careful near the end. One time we finally made some headway and took a little town next to a river. We found four German soldiers sleeping in the basement of one of the houses. There were three of us, Yak, a guy named Paul Vincent, and me, as the rest of the lazy bastards had called the building clear. We just wanted to see if they had anything good to eat, potatoes or something, just as I imagine the Germans had wanted to.

Instead of waking them up and taking them prisoner, Vincent shot one of them in the head with his rifle, scaring the others awake. I just stood there, looking at him, feeling the glue seep out of the hinges of my mouth. Yak looked indifferent. I begged Vincent not to shoot anymore of them. He finally agreed, and we started to walk them up the stairs out of the basement, our guns pointed at them. When we were on the top stair, Vincent kicked the lead guy in the chest and knocked him and the others down the stairs like he was playing nine pens. He took a grenade and threw it down the stairs on top of the soldiers, pushed us out the door, and locked it. The boom nearly rattled the door of the hinges, and I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. I put my hand on Vincent’s shoulder and turned him around. Only pure shock kept me from tearing him apart.

“What the hell did you just do?” Vincent shrugged and grinned – I’ll never forget that grin.

“All of the food was rotten anyway.” I reared back to punch him, but Yak caught my forearm.

“Let it go, Anthony.”

“What the hell are you on about? Didn’t you see what just happened?”

“Trust me. It’ll be taken care of.”

“But-“

“Trust me.”

The next morning at roll call, Vincent wasn’t there. He was listed as AWOL until they found his body in a ditch hacked to bits. He was on his stomach when he was found, a blood trail behind him. He’d been trying to crawl out. I never asked Yak about it. When I went back to my bed that night, there was a package wrapped in bandages from the infirmary. I unwrapped it and found a trench knife with dried blood. I wrapped it back up, went out, and dropped it into the river at the edge of town.

When we came back from the war, things changed quickly for Yak and me. After the war, I went straight into –
_________________________________________________________
I shake my head, getting out of my thoughts. Yak had leaned back against the car seat. I know he was watching me and watches me still.

“Yeah. You’re the same guy.”

“So what do you want from me, Anthony? Why did you come and see me?”

“I figured if I knew anyone with an ear to the ground, it would be you. And now I know who killed Villa, but… I can’t tell that broad that.” Yak laughs.

“No, sir, you cannot.” I’m trying to think, but my mind isn’t dry yet. The gin’s still making my eyes swim. There’s something wrong with all of this.

“Yak, we gotta go back my office.” Yak shakes his head.

“No way. I agreed to come along and tell you what I could, but you need to take me back before you go anywhere else. Hell, take the car, but I can’t go with you.”

“Alright alright. But answer me this: where did you have your man leave the body?” Yak reaches for another cigarette.

“Why do you need to know about the body?”

“I can’t take anymore right now. Stop playing games with my damn head.” I park the car and turn around to face him. “Tell me what you know, or I’m not taking you back.” Yak rolled his eyes and puffed hard on his cigarette.

“He was dumped off in the river on the south side of town where he would be dragged under and swept out to sea.” I felt my heart stop like I’d been shot through the chest.

“Are you lying to me?” Yak should his head.

“Why would I-“

“Are you lying to me?” I yell at him, my face no more than two feet away from his.

“Why would I lie after I’ve told you so much? Jesus, Anthony.”

“Yak, I didn’t tell you, but… I saw the body.” I see the cigarette light drop, the whole thing about to come out of his mouth.

“What?”

“I saw the goddamn body.” Yak takes the cigarette out of his mouth. I can taste the panic rising in my throat. I feel sick, and I’m almost sure that I’m going to throw up.

“That’s impossible because-“

“Because you told your guy to dump the body, but he didn’t, Yak! It was behind Katz Grocery on Putnam!” I finally feel picture coming together like a jigsaw puzzle. “What was your guy’s name?” Yak stays quiet, but I have to push him. “Was his name William Langley?” Yak’s eyes grow wide. He runs his hand through his hair, and finally nods.

“No, but his name was Langston. Billy Langston.”

“Yak, the man was an agent for the Bureau of Investigation and Villa! That’s at least what that woman told me. You’ve been set up!” Even in the dark, I can see that all the blood had drained from Yak’s face.

“The bar!” I immediately turn on the car and gun the motor. “Faster, goddammit, faster!” We got back within five minutes, though it took nearly taking most of the corners on two wheels. When we pull up where the taxi let me out earlier, Yak breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God nothing’s-“

At just that moment, an enormous explosion blows up the front of the bar, knocking out all the windows in Yak’s car. The faded neon sign lands in front of the car, narrowly missing the motor. The entire bar was in flames. Yak screams bloody rage in the backseat, but I have to reach back and punch him in the left knee to keep him from jumping out of the car. He looks at me with murder in his eyes, but he doesn’t move. The blood is back in his face, and he’s so furious that I think his head will blow off just like the sign.

“Jakob… we gotta find that broad.” Yak is shaking now.

“And when we do… I am going to kill her with my bare hands.”

To be continued…

All of this work except the picture is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The photo of the Rolls Royce Phantom I is from the Rolls-Royce website under "Car History", which can be found here.

Goals for the Break

2008-12-18T15:35:00.005-06:00

I'm really really bad about accomplishing goals outside of assignments on a syllabus, but I'm going to try my damndest to do the following things by January 15:

Finish all grad school apps and send them off.
Write at least one more installment of "Mr. Simmons Goes to Washington."
Write the script for a parody of the Law& Order episode, "Russian Love Poem."
Finish Fable II.
Finish Saints Row.
Finish Final Fantasy XII.
Write a review for Tomb Raider: Underworld.
Write a review for Fable II.
Make new icons for sections of the blog.
Make a new post containing links to my major papers.

I think that's plenty.

Quote of the Day IV

2008-12-18T15:21:00.002-06:00

"But why this 'Let-them-eat-cake!' coldness toward U.S. auto companies? General Motors employs more workers than all these foreign plants combined. And, unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor."

-Pat Buchanan, "The Toyota Republicans" (via. John Cole @ BalloonJuice.com)

Filler #5: Journey in the Dark and the Meaning of Moving Beyond the Wheel

2008-12-13T23:16:00.001-06:00

So I was looking through my old journals that I wrote for Core I, and found some really interesting ones that I completely forgot about. Apparently I had a tendency to write LOOOONG journal entries, which makes me feel sorry for my professor, but my tangents are really cool to go back and read now. I was under the impression that I barely understood some of the readings, but this visitation has made it clear that I was indeed on the right plane of thinking.

I thought I'd share the following journal entry, which is a response to Thomas A. Cahill's essay "Journey in the Dark" from The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. The prompt has been lost to time, as it has changed for the classes that came after me, so take this as a meditation on the piece. I think it reads well that way, too.

Without further ado, here is the entry.

Subject: Cahill's essay "Journey in the Dark" and the meaning of thinking differently about time as something linear rather than circular or cyclical.

Answer: According to Cahill, most of the world’s beginning religions or beliefs were based on the cyclical nature of all things. This meant, looking from this perspective, that all things came in a certain order. Everything from the Mayan and Chinese calendars to the moon were cyclical, dependable and perpetual, in nature. As something that is so rigid and precise in its repetition of the perpetual wheel, it cannot be stopped by either man nor God’s hand. However, in today’s world, most believe God is beyond the “wheel” or any of its constraints to space and time, and that, in the end, we can achieve oneness with God. In this approach, man can actually reach beyond the wheel of time and not succumb to its eternal nature. This view was brought about, in legend and lore, by Avraham, or Abraham, an ancient Jew, who, in his heart, listened to God’s plan of spreading Abraham’s seed in a new land where his fruits would be many and good. His wife was barren, and they lived in a city more prosperous than the desert or a foreign land with no cities there. However, God’s offer was to transcend the wheel, to give Abraham his children, his land, his prosperity, against what had seemed to be his fate. He was off in search of a better life when it would have been obvious to all around him that he had the best possible life given his situation.

Through some connecting of the dots, the ideas formed by Abraham’s journey into the land of Canaan and past the Great Wheel and the ideas supported by the Ten Commandments can be related. The main point for all to notice is that though the Ten Commandments are law (perhaps guidelines for people in modern times), they are law not for law’s sake, but for the sake of each individual soul. In following these codes of conduct, one appeals to bit of God in each of us. In Genesis 27, it is said that man is created in the image of God. Most cultures consider God to be great in wisdom, fairness, and love. By following the “Decalogue” and other commandments, man ultimately becomes wise, fair, and loving, in Jewish theory. In doing this and becoming this, man becomes more like God. In becoming more like God, man begins to reach beyond the wheel of time, of space, of life, of Earth, of the universal truth, and reaches another universal truth – that God is behind the machinations of the universe itself. And God being behind all this, ultimately controlling it all, and a simple soul of his creation reaching out to him and becoming him (that is, God), actually surpasses the root of time itself.

I believe that, in a lot of ways, this is true. However, I think most humans are more ambitious to find God as a way to immortal living, not as a way past the Great Wheel of All Things (I suppose this is as broad and encompassing as I can get). Cahill (as I found through a little research) is a historian. Therefore, his views aren’t that metaphysical, but factual as to the events of 3000 and 4000 B.C.E. He was making a purely factual connection between that so distant past and the world we are living in today. Though spiritual matters and customs are big impacts on history, the constant human nature is not necessarily looked at as in depth as a philosopher or student of religion. Kellner, however, was making his points from a religious standpoints, as he teaches Jewish history, religion, and ethics. His spiritual standpoint on the Ten Commandments and their godliness (as well as the alternate Golden Rule) are more based in common spiritual thought that scholar-agreed-upon history. I think that, if Kellner had been given a different subject, more room to write, and a little artistic license, he would have come to the same conclusion – many are looking not for oneness with God, but an alternate to absolute darkness in death.

A Little Risky

2008-12-06T16:44:00.000-06:00

Created by The Car Connection

The Monks of Mount Athos

2008-11-29T11:53:00.001-06:00

Monastic Burials on the Holy Mountain

Happy 'Hanxgi'n from the overly stuffed author o' this blog.

2008-11-27T16:49:00.002-06:00

I am stuffed. Good Lawd.

Hope everyone else is having a great Thanksgiving!

Oh, if you must.

2008-11-27T12:02:00.002-06:00

If you want to get me something for Christmas or my birthday (Jan. 6), click that button. If you don't want to get me something on the list, hopefully it'll help you figure out what I might like.

This isn't a solicitation. This is just where I'm going to direct anybody who asks me what I want, because I can never remember. Problem solved!

Firestarters: Highlights of the Highly Miscellaneous Part VI: Thanksgiving Eats Edition

2008-11-27T09:04:00.004-06:00

I have a few food links for teh 'Hanksgivin' holiday. Just a few, but they're worth it.

KamikazeFilms: Normal Person vs ...Gordon Ramsay [Kamikaze Films via. BoingBoing.net] Pretty funny video. If you have an aversion to people cursing a lot (in other words, acting like Gordon Ramsay), then beware.
7 Retarded Food Myths the Internet Thinks are True [Cracked.com] Self-explanatory.
The Subservient Chicken One of the weirdest, most awesome viral advertisement sites out there. If you have trouble getting him to do stuff after a while, be sure to check out the command list. While the chicken costume is extremely creepy, remember this is brought to you by the same people who invented the Burger King.
Holiday Pie-Rets! [The Presurfer] Fun hats for the hungry.
Around the World in 116 Beers [The Presurfer] Cool little project.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Quote of the Day III

2008-11-27T08:57:00.003-06:00

"[T]he Times brings us a template for how to delegate T-day like a CEO. Which means what, nowadays? Running your meal into bankruptcy?"

--Sadie, Jezebel.com -"Turkey Day: Are You A Kitchen Slaver, Or Shirker?"

Attention spans are for suckas.

2008-11-24T09:16:00.006-06:00

Things that I keep wanting to write into my Curriculum Vitae:

"-incarnated as Shiva, destroyer of worlds, -"
"-crushed freshman dreams by giving a successful lecture on Nietzsche, -"
"-fell in love with Kierkegaard all over again, -"
"-cemented power, overthrew the administration, and became 'Overlord,' -"*
"-mastered the craziness that is the 10-hour paper,-"
"-found the meaning of life in the bottom of a bowl of ramen,-"

It almost reads like a Chuck Norris Fact List, doesn't it?

*I don't plan to do this, but it would certainly be an awesome addition to my CV.

Five Things I Could and/or Would Have Asked Chuck Klosterman If There Wasn't a Gap Between My Brain and Spinal Cord.

2008-11-20T00:41:00.004-06:00

Chuck Klosterman is awesome. Not in the awe-inspiring way a hero might be awesome, but in the happy-accident way that a very seemingly regular guy with great writing talent became a best-selling author through some of the oddest series of circumstances is awesome.

He spoke on Tuesday to a crowded room of people, many of which had books in hand (I had Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs), nodding and laughing at Chuck's sense of humor. He's certainly odd, but oddly fascinating in that he reminds me of one of my good friends in manner and speech, yet he seems so different from anybody I know. I think that reading his book caused me to imprint an unreal image on him (as would reading any book by any author that you had never met previously), but now I can at least say that he's a pretty good speaker.

He read a selection from the section of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in which he lists 23 questions that he would ask someone and, depending on their answers, decide if he could love them or not. He played this game with the audience, and it was a lot of fun (if long). I don't know that we gave enough good answers that he fell in love with us, but there was plenty of endearment for him on our parts.

After the talk, I thought long and hard about a question I wanted to ask him today (Wednesday), as I was going to participate in a roundtable with him. He was great, again, but I fumbled over all the questions I wanted to ask, remembered vaguely what it related to, and simply said, "Your essay on porn was one of my favorites," referring to such an essay in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. He nodded and seemed unsure of what to say to that, not because of the subject, but because there was actually no question. No point of discussion. When he was prompted again later by someone else, it became a commentary on the usability of the internet, which is interesting but not what I so feebly tried to dig out of my poor exhausted brain.

So, to make myself feel better, I am going to provide a list of five questions that, if I had the whole day to do over again, I would pick one (or two) questions to ask Mr. Klosterman. Without further ado:

FIVE THINGS I COULD AND/OR WOULD HAVE ASKED CHUCK KLOSTERMAN IF THERE WASN'T A GAP BETWEEN MY BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD

"You seem to be a pretty popular writer just from what I've seen and from your talk last night. By a pretty fair definition, you have become a part of pop culture. I think you're a great writer, but I am curious: do you think you're a good writer? Or do you think that you owe a large part of your success to your positioning of your writing in the spectrum of what is "cool" and what is "pop culture?"
"Concept albums in music are often either grandiose or completely underwhelming -however, they give the bands another way to actually own their music. In your experience with interviewing quite a few musicians and encountering their egos, do you believe that the concept album is more a tribute to the self (musician) or social group (band), posturing for a place in music history, a service to the fans, or to simply intellectualize the music?"
"Last night, you referred to the bleak outlook for the print media because of the technological age (which I feel was a very valid assessment of where things are going), but I was curious on how you think the Web 2.0 movement will affect other media, with the advent of sites like YouTube and Wikipedia and other advances like downloadable TV shows, media critique blogs, photo hosting, and news aggregators (like Digg)? We know our culture will never be the same, but in what way do you believe these things have affected the trajectory of our culture?"
"What one cultural idea, statement, fashion, political ideology, fiction, meme, etc., have Americans adopted as part of their American identity and internalized, perhaps without realizing it? If it makes the question easier, you can look specifically at a generation."
"Judging from your comments last night, you're not a huge fan of Family Guy. I'm just curious as to why it doesn't appeal to you, and whether or not you believe the show has actually raised awareness and perhaps saved some cultural bits and pieces from completely disappearing from memory?"

*sigh* If only. C'est la vie.

Feel free to answer some of the questions! At least someone will have put them to good use.

Picture of the Day

2008-11-17T17:14:00.001-06:00

[Source]

The Fight for Civil Rights is Not Over.

2008-11-17T09:43:00.002-06:00

So, California Prop 8 passed. Equality rallies have been organized across the U.S. as a response. There have been some radical rogues, but for the overwhelming majority of the time, they have all been peaceful protests.

Now the Catholic Church and the Church of Latter Day Saints (which gave over $20 million to the ad campaign for Prop 8) are crying foul... that protests are a violation of free speech.

From the LDS website:

Quote:

It is disturbing that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being singled out for speaking up as part of its democratic right in a free election.

Members of the Church in California and millions of others from every faith, ethnicity and political affiliation who voted for Proposition 8 exercised the most sacrosanct and individual rights in the United States - that of free expression and voting.

While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.

Once again, we call on those involved in the debate over same-sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

From the Catholic Church

"Proposition 8 is not against any group in our society. Its sole focus is on preserving God's plan for people living upon this earth throughout time," Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, said in a statement Thursday.

Effectively, as I was told while discussing this with a few of my friends, California now has at least three classes of people. Heterosexuals who can marry, homosexuals who can only have civil unions, and homosexuals who have been married. That is a house that cannot stand, I assure you.

But what I don't understand is how LDS can say that the very act of protesting is stepping on their rights to free speech and voting, when they went so far as to try and blackmail opponents of Prop 8 into giving them money. Now that the Anti-Gay Blacklist is up and running, people are screaming all over the place. I've seen it called militant homosexuality, Nazi tactics, Gay Gestapo, etc. etc.

I'm not sure I have a question here, but I'm really just disgusted at what's been going on. I don't think that the blacklist was necessarily the best course of action to repairing gay-straight relations in California and in the U.S. as a whole, but I don't think it was violating any right.

I'm incensed that LGBT groups have been treated as a group that can arbitrarily be denied or given rights. Either they can marry across the U.S., or they can't. Either they can adopt children, or they can't. Either they can be foster parents, or they can't. There can be no gray area here. These episodes in California, which will only continue to get worse as the class differential starts to wear down on those in the gay community who have been denied, will either end up overthrowing the entire system of inequality there and everywhere, or do the opposite in all the same places. The anti-gay movement has begun a fight that I wish I knew it couldn't win, but hatred runs deep in people. We never know how deep until the end.

To deny gay rights across the board is to completely disenfranchise so many - these people are your mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, (and, for some and someday) sons and daughters. Many of us have LGBT friends. They are human beings like everyone else, right?

But that's not what the arguments and the laws would have you believe. How many times have you heard the argument, "If we let gays marry, then what's next! Polygamy! Incest! Pedophilia! Bestiality!" How degrading. Their right to love and marry whoever they see fit is compared to having sex with animals and small children? Not only is it a non-sequiter to give this line of argument, but it is deliberately demonizing a very human group of people.

I'm exhausted with the debate, and I have come in only in the last few years of a many decades long fight. I don't see how these arguments can stand. How they cannot be challenged. How they can actually be made into law.

Mike Huckabee recently wrote a book called Do the Right Thing. In it, he writes this:

[Heterosexual] marriage matters . . . nothing in our society matters more. Our true strength doesn't come from our military or our gross national product; it comes from our families. What's the point of keeping the terrorists at bay in the Middle East if we can't keep decline and decadence at bay here at home?

Yes, nothing in our society matters more. Nothing. Let that sink in before you move on.

This is going to become the prevailing narrative of social conservatives, which will come back to bite in 2010 and 2012. Sarah Palin, the one 64% of Republicans would like to see on the presidential ticket in 2012, has a better record than you would think on these issues, but supports an amendment to the constitution.

What a fight there is before us. It's not best to think of it that way (you tire long before the end), but it's the only way to prepare.

An Audience is Desired

2008-11-13T16:12:00.003-06:00

-at my soapbox tomorrow. Come see me preach the good word of Coheed and Cambria at 3:00 in MAC 302. It should be interesting, to say the least.

The healing begins.

2008-11-07T19:11:00.001-06:00

From 52 to 48 with Love.

Cartoonists can still be profound.

2008-11-06T18:17:00.002-06:00

Election Map

2008-11-04T16:39:00.006-06:00

Go here to see the map with more options.

Thanks, fJohn.

Some SNL hilarioso.

2008-11-03T22:56:00.004-06:00

I thought this skit was a lot funnier than the audience let on. If you've ever seen "The View," especially since the addition of Elisabeth Hasselbeck, you can appreciate this video.

Of course, a video post about SNL wouldn't be complete without a commercial parody. I chose The Looker.

The disturbingly hilarious Lawrence Welk Show SNL skit when Anne Hathaway was hosting. Kristen Wiig is awesome.

And to end on a classic note, here's Gap Girls.

Quote of the Day II

2008-11-02T22:08:00.002-06:00

"There was a girl coming home from school and the wind took her portfolio and papers blew up into the air and all over town. It was her portfolio of poetry. Nobody knew she wrote poems, but now people saw and picked them up here and there, everywhere. There were strange poems. There were poems about rocks speaking and geese speaking and birds flying against the wind and standing still in the air and fire in the windows of houses and yet they were not burned. It was quite interesting. To people, this girl, before, had always been known as her mother's daughter, and now she was an individual - a strange individual - in our midst."

Prairie Home Companion, News from Lake Wobegon, Sept. 29, 2008

Quote of the Day

2008-10-30T10:59:00.002-05:00

"One morning I woke up and got his tea ready and his breakfast ready and stuff and said, 'Hey, I need your opinion on something. I want to wear this dress to your wake.' And so I put it on and I stood up on the bed and I said, 'How do I look?' And he started to cry. And I said 'Oh God, I'm so sorry, I'll take it off. I didn't mean to upset you at all.' And he said, 'No, it's just that you look so beautiful. I'm so glad I got to see you in that dress.' And he kept crying, and I held his hand and sat down on the bed next to him and said, 'What's going on?' He said, 'It's just that I woke up this morning more ready.' And I asked him what that felt like, and he paused and looked at me, and he said, 'Well, I guess it's the same thing you felt when you put the dress on this morning.'"

--Andrea St. John, StoryCorps 83: "Dressed for the Occasion"

Obligatory Words on Tragic Events

2008-10-28T16:07:00.005-05:00

I'm sure everyone has heard about the shooting here at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, whether you are living in a dorm on campus or live in the Serengeti - if you get CNN and have caught a snippet of the 24-hour news cycle, you know that there's been a tragedy on our campus.

I wasn't even on campus when it happened, so I can't comment on any hysteria from my friends and fellow students, or really on any tangible signs of grief. I had never either heard or known, perhaps even seen, any of the boys in question. On that basis, I can only offer my weak condolences to the families. I hope you are all able to find peace in the weeks to come.

______________________________________

Arkansas has had an awfully rough news week. First it was the brutal attack and subsequent death of Anne Pressly, a 26-year-old KATV news correspondent out of Little Rock. Then the shooting at UCA happened. On top of all of that, police arrested two Neo-Nazi idiots for an assassination plot to kill presidential candidate Barack Obama and, more frighteningly and plausibly, 110 black students at a mostly black high school (though this school went unnamed). One of the Neo-Nazi jerks was from West-Helena, which is in - you guessed it - Arkansas.

This isn't to say that horrible things don't happen here, just like they do anywhere else. It just seems that we've gotten the lion's share of it in a very short period of time.