I fail at blogging

Bright shiny new things

2011-01-27T19:58:00.001-08:00

I''ll be posting over on tumblr from now on. Please follow me

hugs and smooches!
http://georgesjune.tumblr.com/

What we should have known

2011-01-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

I don't believe in the narrative of my childhood. By that, I mean, I don't trust my recollections. It seems equally possible that I sprang fully formed into early adulthood as it does that I was once small and open to the possibilities of the world. Only my raging disappointments tether me to the belief that I must have once been a child. It is the only way to explain my anger. I keep thinking about SXR's brilliant line, "mourn the lost years". From mourning, it is a short hop to regret and a quick trip to things-i-wish-i-had-known-then.

I wish I had read Tropic of Cancer sooner, perhaps around age 13. And Bukowski - all of him. I am glad I fell in love with Henry David Thoreau when I did. I found Salinger at just the right time. I tried too hard with Nietzsche - it was a time when I was an acolyte in the cult of precocity. Instead of Nietzsche in college, I wish I had read Marx and Emerson. I wish someone had said to me, as a proto-freshman in college when I was a very young 17 years old, "check out the European Philosophers and if that interests you, you may find value in the lingua franca of American legal thought." It never occurred to me that there was a great tradition, equal to the French novel, an intense tradition around the law and theorizing around it. That the law celebrates precise language - the power of words. I am on the fence about Twain. I enjoyed him in school. I love him now. Vonnegut too.

Do books find you when you need them? Is there a difference between
assigned reading and found reading? What do you wish you had known?
What do you wish you had found and when?

Zipper Skin

2011-01-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

I disconnected for a while, a week, to dip into the white hot book of days ten degrees north of the Equator. Each morning rising like mango-scented Pomona, blooming in the flame of day. I was not eager to return to the gray days of winter, the rough texture of wool socks and hard-soled shoes. I anticipated a moss-slick snow-salted wall of melancholy.

I had not taken Pacazo with me. It was too unwieldy to manage, too solid to be thrown carelessly in a canvas sack, tossed lightly on hot sand, to read with wet hands. A week without a computer, without a phone, without access, without required reading. Free to dream under the shadows of passing clouds.

If I asked my mother to select one photo of me as a child, her favorite photo, which would she choose and how long would she have to think about it? These clementines peel so easily, the skin bright and flexible, ripping easily under a thumb nail. In Costa Rica there was a cave that you could explore at low tide but at high tide it transformed into a maw of swirling chaos and noise. You could only see as far as the water would retreat. You could only hear the ocean. It occurs to me that everything can be wonderful and still no one is happy.

The weak light of winter hurts my eyes. I want to crawl into a coconut, wave my fingers at the feeding pelicans, count the devil rays as they fly into the wavy heat of the bay.

The Ghost in the Machine

2010-12-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking hard and heavy on the importance of the mother/child symbolism in Deus Ex Machina by Andrew Foster Altschul (the December book for Rumpus Book Club). It was something that completely escaped my notice until a fellow Rumpuser brought it to my attention during an online discussion. What does the mother/child connection represent? The truest form of love? Connection, in the sense we've talked about before? Acceptance? Potential? If we assume that the parent/infant relationship is a proxy for love (Love??) then what of:

The Producer and his wife - conceiving love but unable to bear it into the world, expelled by the body before it can survive, not even still-born, but early abortion of a never fully formed thing. Who/what is at fault when the body cannot sustain it's creation?

Patel and his wife and child - when Patel's wife says, "I see you." the intimacy of her voice "stabs the Producer near his solar plexus" (p 74) and he literally begins to crawl away on all fours, away from the tableau of father, mother, Baby. But there is something wrong with the girl. "Her face is blank and strangely slack, her eyes dull and drowsy; she's being held by someone off-camera..." Even when love is born into the world, you can't control what it will look like, how it will behave, if it will absorb all you have to give without giving back. The Producer watches the interaction from the shadows, and the interaction is not happening in front of him in the flesh, it is happening over 1000s of miles, remote, "flattened by the camera". He leaves the control room and thinks of the cave, the invisible but real thing in the cave and then Gloria Hamm and his concern for her.

And then - the native woman and child - "In her arms she holds a tiny black bundle: the Producer can make out a wizened scalp, a lumped face with no eyes, a small mouth frozen into a cry." (p. 190) An eyeless black bundle (eyes and windows and souls), mouth open. A love that is not love. A child that should not have been born into the world and was punished. A connection the result of a rape, of abuse, of avarice. "A stark figure of accusation, of fear, shame." And Gloria doesn't look away and she eventually takes the dead child out of the mother's hands. Miley squeezes the Producer's hand. Shaneequio collapses into Alejandra's arms. Paco doesn't slaughter the goats. Connection, Connection, Connection.

So perhaps, DEM is a book about love and connection, defined by their absence? Our connection isn’t that we were all brought into this world covered in blood. Our connection is that we have all somehow forgotten. We have forgotten that we were vulnerable to the tender mercies someone gifted us. Covered, as we were, in blood and shit and urine, someone washed us, pulled the plugs out of our nostrils and unblocked our mouth so that we could pull that first great suck of wind deep down into the well of our throats and release our guttural cry into the world.

We have lost the memory of our base sameness. We have come to believe- to the point of truth- that we are somehow different, better than or worse than each other. We put on our fine clothes, our hard-soled shoes, run a blunt-edged nail around the corner of a business card and think it means something real.

We ignore those of us who live on the shadow-side of the street. We beat each other with a measuring stick we call beauty. We bare our teeth and call it a smile. We pass judgment and we are found wanting. We are so closely watching each other we never notice the ant mill until we die of exhaustion.

We are a special kind of insane.

Our connection begins at birth in blood and chaos and ends at death. Between the alpha and the omega, we navigate our contemporary inferno with love and sorrow, but no cheap pity or promise of ultimate happiness. Our human task is to suffer, shudder, and struggle courageously in the face of relentless self-criticism, inescapable fallibilism, and inevitable death. And to talk about love.

Rumpus Book Club goes slightly off topic

2010-12-03T04:09:00.000-08:00

SX posed a question: "@everyone I'd like to use the impetus of that Bucky Sinister poem on The Rumpus today and today's fluid, fluent TRBC thread on music from Johnny Mathis through Bob Dylan to Kanye or Arcade Fire to ask a simple question of all of you that I do not know the answer to. This question is nothing but sincere, and pleading, maybe. Why is it so easy, and so fulfilling, to talk about music, inc. the rhymes, lyrics, thoughts, craft, precedents in music, and so daunting to talk about or react to any kind of poetry? That is the question. I would be so grateful for anything large or small any of you are willing to say on this today or at any future date. Thank you in advance. (Please answer . . . ) —sxr

I responded:
@SX I'll counter your question with a sincere question of my own: how are music and poetry so different? Is that a naive question? I'm asking honestly. I have always believed the two were twined together, a twisting banyan tree of our efforts to grasp appearance and reality, opinion and knowledge, illusion and truth - of beauty, love, our deepest passions and yearnings, and the collective struggle of learning to live by learning to die. Maybe the conversations on music represents a modern lightness of being, a new dialogue on poetry.

I don't know what I don't know about music/poetry- I don't uncover them, seek them, excavate them, so much as let them fall on me as rain would. Until recently, music and poetry have been interesting background static, white noise to take up space - squatters in the open gray spaces of my mind. But now that I am going insane, which is its own thing all together, a different kind of chaos, the result of plugging into a connected network without an adequate firewall in place, I find myself crumpled by two words next to each other, gored open by a coda, and poured out by the turn of a phrase, like bathwater over a tiled floor, seeping behind the drywall, flowing down wooden steps. Music and poetry, when they are good are a grand expedition into and transfiguration of our guttural cry. Music and poetry, when they are very good, when at their best, transfigure our guttural cry into a call to care - for causes bigger and grander than our own precious cry.

But a personal response to your question - I do not understand the mechanics of music or of poetry, form and function, I don't have the vocabulary to describe the power of poetry and music to yank me from my anchor. I don't feel qualified to even say, I like - I love - I hate. But poetry and music have the power to unhinge me; perhaps I don't want to talk about such insane things in polite company.
- Show quoted text -

Connection is a form of insanity

2010-12-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

Connection is not communication. Connection is not one hundred people writing some variation of “happy birthday” on a Facebook page or a blog post. It isn’t Paris on Christmas Day or the ring on the left hand or the shared bed or a tattoo. Connection is not found in a box of folded letters or between the thighs. It isn’t blood. Connection isn’t elements linked by time or pattern or result, though it is easy to be confused.

Connection is not being afraid to be the first to say, “I love you”. Connection is telling someone you love you aren’t happy and things might not be ok. Connection is floating on salty swells under the dome of a dark heaven knowing that there are dangerous creatures below you and still turning all of your focused attention to the marvelous outlines of the lunar seas. Connection is a state of openness; a willingness to be seen and heard. Connection is the act of listening. Connection is having patience with every unresolved thing in your heart and the will to live the questions now. Connection is a form of insanity.

If faith is an absence of fear, connection is an absence of shame.

The things we could tell each other about shame. If I shared my shame with you and you shared your shame with me, would we wound each other? Would we automatically fall in love? Would I be dramatic and would you get quiet or would we just pretend that we weren’t vulnerable, the conversation a fever-dream hallucination had at opposite sides of a couch on a random Wednesday evening.

Connection is the one thing that I want in life, above all other things, in a word.

strangely poetic g-chat

2010-11-29T09:11:00.000-08:00

me: i read the Julie Greicius essay last night
instead of Bukowski
and I wept
and turned my face to the wall
so that my tears
would be mine
alone
and I had a dream
me: in this dream
i kept trying to push
a great sadness out of my body
and my body would clench
to both push
and hold on
me: and I dreamed a poem
that dissolved
just before I surfaced
to the buzzing of an alarm
and the soft static of the shower
and i lay there
with my soul half leaning out of me

There is a certain perspective that pulling away can give you.

2010-11-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

The sailboats seen from the small oval window of the plane look like white freckles on the face of the bay. The water is calm and green and I follow our rippling black shadow as we pass over. The beach is empty. A lone jogger traces the delicate curve of the waterfront. We bank over a harbor, colorful cargo crates stacked one upon another like a toy blocks. A cruise ship releases great puffs of smoke from two fat stacks while idling in port, flags sparkling and wind-snapping from its decks. Tugboats, scuffed and dirtied, cut the surface of the water leaving white scars of wake behind them. A Coast Guard cutter skims along a trajectory that seems intent, contrasting the leisurely pitch and roll of various pleasure craft. I soar over all of this as if a great white sea bird. Wings steady, riding a draft towards a faraway destination. I have no concern for the dark things laying quietly in the depths of the ocean, under shadow of boat, beyond the reach of morning light. These shapes twitch and shudder in response to slight sounds, vibrations of a world they inhabit and a cosmos above them that they cannot know without dying, cannot comprehend even in death. Later, when the gloam deepens to indigo, into the purple of black grapes, the bay a mirror that reflects back the night blooming sky, the dark things will begin to feed. The ships will rock on their moorings and the ropes will rub in their knots. All around, the lights will turn on, small yellow orbs of safety, calling people into the hearts of their homes. The hard men and women of the harbor will rest and breathe in the steam of thick soup. A man cups the head of his child and pulls his wife to him, forming a shoal of safety against the unknowable night. The sea ripples as the dark things feed and feed and feed.

writing truth

2010-09-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

I stole this (can you steal quotes? maybe just fail to give attribution? what is plagiarism in the age of google?) from Stephen Elliot's Daily Rumpus.

Page 50 of The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker:

You have some control over what comes before your mind—you can influence the influx by reading, or by looking through your old notes, or by going to movies, or by talking to people, and you can choose what room of the house or what corner of the yard to sit in, and you can choose to write before or after you've masturbated—this is crucial—and you can choose to tell the truth or not to. And the difficulty is that sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because you think that the truth is too personal, or too boring, to tell. Or both. And sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because the truth is hard to see, because it exists in a misty, gray non-space between two strongly charged falsehoods that sound true but aren't.

If you write your truth, and no one reads it, does it matter?

Do you think less of me now?

2010-08-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

I once read an Ann Coulter book. I had just moved to DC from Texas. I'm not sure how I got the book but I would read it on the metro to and from school. There was a guy that I knew who worked for the newspaper. He told me not to read it on the train, or to at least put a book cover over the jacket. At the time I didn't understand what he meant by that. I never finished the book. I can't remember why. I seem to recall thinking that the book was funny. But then I changed, or the world changed. Maybe I started to notice the people on the train more. Maybe my sense of humor changed. Maybe I lost my ability to be objective. Maybe it wasn't a good book after all. It was a long time ago. I gave the book to my father-in-law. He put the book in his bathroom with the other reading material. Faded motorcycle magazines. A book on wood-working. I don't think he ever finished it either.

I was never political before I moved to DC. And even when I moved here, I fell into it more or less by accident. The accidental political intern. The accidental policy analyst. The accidental government employee. DC is a funny place.

Subconscious - you aren't even trying...

2010-08-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that I was standing on a crossbeam at the pinnacle of a skyscraper. It was night. I needed to reach a box that was beside me on the beam but my hands were full. I needed to put the things I carried down so that I could pick up this box. It was important that I touch the box. But I couldn't get the balance right. I tried to bend at the knees, to slowly lower myself to the beam, but I pitched backwards, and then I was falling falling falling. When I landed, I was an old man in a young girl's room. I asked to leave but she wouldn't let me go. I felt like I shouldn't be there, but I didn't want to leave, not really. I only felt like I ought to leave, but really I wanted to stay and be angry and in love with a selfish sixteen year old.

Then I woke up. And I was lonely.

It burns like the sun in the pit of my chest.

2010-06-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

I don't watch movies like 'Precious' for the same reason I don't go to the Holocaust Memorial. I can't compartmentalize the emotions, I can't get the distance right. The horror and the anger and the sadness and the fear becomes my own and I don't know how to leave it at the door and walk back out into my life. Extreme emotions change me the way that extreme pressure melts rock.

I lack something that other people seem to have. Is it a switch? I don't understand how people can watch realistic abuse and then go to the grocery store, out to dinner, home. I can't seem to tell myself that it isn't real, that it is Hollywood. Replica airplanes, fat suits, child actors. Wasps for other people are bees for me; I am stung and the barb stays with me, embedded.

I try not to feel too deeply. I exercise a lot. I try and get regular sleep. I don't drink too much now. I used to feel wildly. Enormous fluctuations from high to low. Unbridled happiness at times, passion, lust, euphoria. But I would also feel such sadness. There was no room inside my chest for all of my sadness so it spread and touched everything that I touched. And I made the people around me hurt and miserable. And then I got older. I aged out of my hysteria and my joy and my sadness. I aged out of my crazy self and into a stranger. A stranger that exercises and sleeps and doesn't drink too much.

I am an emotional creature, as Eve Ensler would say. I can feel the things you feel inside you. I feel things that are not even real, emotions created on a sound stage in California, in a music video, a commercial for coffee. I am afraid that this makes me crazy. Akin to hearing things that are not real, seeing things that don't exist. I feel insane as myself so I've traded for contained estrangement. I choose exercise and sleep. And I don't drink too much. I don't laugh too loud. I don't say the first thing that I think of. I don't watch PETA commercials. I don't make eye contact with the homeless. I don't read about the war. I don't look at pictures of the Gulf. I don't. I turn away. I turn off. I exercise. I sleep. I don't I don't I don't. I don't exist too much.

notes from a journal/how to kill time

2010-06-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

can't seem to get things started at work so I am taking a break. Here are some sketches/notes/thoughts from my writing journal.

A woman goes missing. Her car is found near a popular suicide spot but her body is never found. There are multiple sightings but no confirmed encounters.

A doctor falls in love with an anesthetized patient while operating on him. Feels he will never touch another person as intimately again.

A girl believes that as long as she doesn't open the Christmas present from her grandfather, he will never die.

A fish falls in love with the moon and it is caught on a silver lure.

A package never arrives.
###
"The world is not beautiful, therefore it is."
###
You ever seen pictures from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, people burnt, in pain. Terrible images. One picture, forever on display in a dark hallway of my mind: steps, a black smudge resolving itself into the outline of a man. A person incinerated, only his shadow left behind, burnt into the stone.

"We are the light of the fucking world. U.S.A! U.S.A! If we're so god damned awful, why are there so many fuckers killing themselves to get here?"

The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows.
###
Outside
the birds chirp
they sound like lasers
I gather information
like I am building a wall
but all it is
is throwing cutlery
at a home invader
you won't stop them
but you might
draw blood
ultimately
you just piss them off.
Outside the car
the soft static of rain
###
my grandma cut cantaloupe
and sat down in the pale
yellow kitchen
when she looked up
she didn't know herself
###
The immigrant experience of Army brats. Some people grow up in a different country. I grew up on another planet - a new world. There were no fathers in this world. Just grown faceless men - square jawed, buzz cut, sharp edged intermittent others. There was a lawlessness particular to groups of inadequately supervised children. We did what we wanted and we didn't have to be home before dark. There was physically no way we could stray too far.
###
"The term 'beasts' belongs properly to lions, leopards and tigers, wolves and foxes, dogs and monkeys, and all others (except snakes) which rage by mouth or with claws. They are called 'beasts' from the force with which they rage; and they are termed 'wild' because they are by nature used to freedom and they are motivated by their own free will. They do indeed have freedom of will and they wander here and there, going as their spirit leads them." - Peterborough Bestiary
###
I am small and soft, flesh and blood
and his heart is an axe
that strikes to the core of me

character sketch for a short story

2010-03-11T09:17:00.001-08:00

The cab driver grew up in a small village in Siberia, Russia. He left Moscow in 1992, landed in Miami, and made a declaration in the translucent Floridian light and gentle warmth, that he would never leave. He was a long-haul truck driver for ten years. He had been to every state in the Union. The vast stark sky of Montana in winter was beautiful to him. Arizona in summer with its alien saguaro and deeply etched canyons awed him. Still, he returned to Florida. The mild winters, the flat horizon of blue and green. The salty kiss of the ocean. He sends money to his sisters and mother in Siberia, but he will never return in the flesh.

Andrew. He'd been Andryeĭ, Andrei, André, but now he is Andrew. There is an enclave of Russians in Miami. Tall buildings along the water where wealthy Russians send their families to live without fear of kidnapping. America is the only safe place he thinks. He follows the news by reading the locally produced Russian newspaper. He is not interested in football, the Superbowl meaningful only because more people arriving at the airport, more fares for him. He has tried and failed to understand the rules of football. He gives up, a mental shrug

His fares are fascinating to him. Some ignore him completely, never looking up from their phones or small black devices even when giving their destinations. Sometimes two or more people share the town car, their conversations peppered with strange words or hidden subtexts. Lovers on honeymoon, kissing and sighing into each others' faces or sitting in stony silence. Some passengers just stare out the window with wan bemused looks on their faces, as if they are sleep walkers just surfacing into consciousness, unsure of how they got there or what their destination might be. Rarely, a passenger will ask him where he is from and how a Russian emigre from Siberia came to be in Miami. He is alternately happy and nervous when questioned directly. Suddenly self conscious of the time it takes to hear the question in English, translate to Russian in his head, compose his reply and back translate into English. Despite his awkwardness he craves this random recognition and he always drives these fares at slightly slower speeds, stretching out the time with them until the final destination is reached.

Literary Isolationism

2010-02-23T07:13:00.000-08:00

Today, the top item on the list of things I don't understand: book clubs. Reading is such a solitary activity that it seems artificial to try and make it into something social. I suppose the understanding of the book can be shared, but even then the entire thing strikes me as intellectual vanity. "Well, what *I* thought...", "Did anyone else notice...", "I found it interesting that..." and so on and so forth blah blah blah and yes - we all think you are brilliant and we agree to overlook each others' posturing for the sake of our own five minutes. For reasons that are apparent, I've never successfully participated in a book club. Though, I did read Ender's Game upon the suggestion of a club and I enjoyed it immensely. However, I believe that I got lost while driving to the discussion and ended the evening crying into the phone while stopped on a residential street somewhere in Southeast D.C.

I prefer to read in the mornings before work. Our row house sits along a Northeast/Southwest axis and the sun arcs over the house from the back left (as you face the house) to the front right. Attached to the front of the house is a covered porch and just beyond the porch a well-established cherry tree. The front room is blue with shadow most of the day and in the evenings the setting sun slants through the wooden slats of the blinds and the light becomes diffuse, as if the sun were setting over a rippling lake and I was viewing the play of the light from underneath the water. A reading lamps sits on top of the rusted radiator cover and coffee cups, soda cans and water bottles take up residence next to stacks of books on dark brown bookshelves.

My morning rituals are not extensive. A refusal to wake up followed by repeated attempts to fall back asleep as a hungry cat chirps and trills in my face while my spouse stomps between the bedroom and the bathroom occasionally offering up titillating trivia such as the time, the time and the time. Once resigned to consciousness for another day I'll feed the cat, take a quick shower during which the spouse pops in to give a kiss goodbye, pull a comb through my hair, moisturize with sunscreen, pet the dogs, grab some caffeinated something and just before I pick up my keys and head out the door I think, "I have time to read just one chapter before I go." And then in the way of things, one chapter - which is always a very short chapter - becomes two and then possibly three and I'll find myself admiring a particular turn of a phrase when it will occur to me that I do actually need to go somewhere.

I revel in the solitude of reading in the morning when the house is slowly recovering from the frenzied aerobics of waking. The cat - now fed - curls up like a white comma on the corner of the bed, nose tucked into his fuzzy belly while occasionally an ear might twitch in response to a sound only audible to cats and the insane; the dogs settle back into their basket of blankets, snoring gently on each others' rumps; the low thrumming of the radiator pump in the basement is an undulating whisper through out the house. All around is quiet, the neighbors having left for work, the back alley absent the illegal craps games and late night ruckus of the night people. It is then that I am truly content, as if I have exhaled after holding my breath for too long.

365+ days

2009-10-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should rename this blog the 'Lazarus Project' or 'Reanimated Flesh' or the 'Robert Downey, Jr." or some other name that indicates that this blog has been lingering in the beyond for over a year now - but we're back, baby. Last year around this time, I was getting all weepy and motivated by books about people more inspiring than me. I set some goals and for the most part, those goals are still on track, though it may be time to let the Olympic dream die. I took up running and have a legitimate running-related injury to show for it. I got a new job with a fancy-pants title and our house came down with a case of termites that developed into a full blown floor replacement.

Oh, and I thought I'd try and write a comic.

My super talented friend Gabriel (what can I say, us super talented types tend to hang together) and I started chit chatting about comic books one day. I was into manga and he was into the American stuff. Over the past year there has been some of this, "We should make a comic." and "Yeah, totally." But there was very little of this, *sounds of people writing and drawing a comic*...

Until last week. Shit started to get serious. I got an idea, G sent sketches, we've been talking logistics, and suddenly our idea has picked up a little legitimacy the way one might pick up a little case of swine flu. It could pass in 7 - 14 days, it could kill us. Either way, I think we are sick.

I'll be posting excerpts from the story line that I am working on as well as linking to photographs and other things that may be of interest to you if you decide to read our soon-to-be-real webcomic. I'll level with you and fess up - I have no idea what I am doing. I've never written more than a short story before and now I am going to try and do a little world creation in my spare time. There may have been an intermediate step that I missed. It's ambitious and terrifying and I hope that you will follow along and let us know what you think.

gaiJEN
stranger in a strange land

the political email forward, dividing families since 1996

2008-10-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wonder who my parents think that I am. They sent me an email forward the other day that sorta blew my mind. Basically the gist of the email was wondering "where did Barack Obama get all of his money?" The email was just the height of well-thought-out, reasoned thinking. Citing damning facts such as "he had Pakistani roommates in college" and "he went to Columbia and Harvard law school" and "his advisor is Valeria Jarrett and she was born in (cue sinister music) Iran! (gasp!!)" I suppose the email wants the reader to believe that Obama is a Hamas-funded sleeper agent that will kill us all in our sleep if we elect him president.

While I understand that the majority of these types of fake news emails are just political effluvium, designed to shock and anger, "OMG - could Barack Obama be accepting tainted, evil, Middle Eastern MONEY??", I am still somewhat perplexed when my own parents send me this shit. I consider my parents to be pretty smart people, maybe a bit encapsulated by their own world views, but who isn't? My family trends conservative, but not fundamentalist. So when I get this kind of email from them, an email that relies on racial prejudices and fear mongering to try and prove a link where none exists (the email even states, "Why haven't the media picked up on this?!") I never know what an appropriate response is. Then the horrible thought came to me: this is a no-win situation.

If I respond, here are some possible outcomes:

1.) i further convince my parents that I am now firmly entrenched in northeastern conspiracy against 'merican values, god, and liberty. They decide, after much fist shaking at the sky, that their only daughter is dead to them. The funeral is lovely, closed casket of course. The obit write up focuses heavily on my time spent working at the RNC and my love of state's rights. They start a scholarship in my name at Baylor and make a large donation to the McCain/Palin ticket in my memory.

2.) i further convince my parents that I am now so far into slimy liberal territory that my sense of right and wrong has become horribly corrupted. My dad dusts off his special forces camo belt, complete with grappling hook, cyanide tablets, 12 inch bowie knife, and signed print of Ronald Reagan and sets out to rescue me from myself. He rappels off the roof of my row house at 3am, but neglects to factor in the anti-theft bars over our windows. After failing to light his portable welding torch, he retreats, only to show up on my door step the next day with a cloth soaked in chloroform. When I come to, I am strapped down in a room while water is dripped slowly on my forehead to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy". A continuous montage of flying fighter jets, waving flags, smiling white children, and gutted deer plays on the ceiling over my bed. After 6 days, I finally bite off my tongue and choke myself to death. My parents have a lovely funeral, closed casket of course, and my obit mentions that I admired John McCain so much that I spent the last days of my life in imitation of his POW experience. My story is used to catapult McCain/Palin into the White House. Four months later, Palin slips wolf poison in McCain's Metamucil. The nation is forced to buy its own rape kit.

3.) My parents are finally completely convinced that I am being held against my will by rogue journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. They imagine the horrors that await my every belabored breath as I am forced to write such obvious lies in defense of a man that any true terrorist hating American must despise. They weep as they picture me, barely able to choke down a cup of steaming fair trade coffee, the warm reusable ceramic mug my only warmth in the cold, barren, modular workspace, the Lawrence Weiner and Richard Serra sculptures menacing from gallery-lit alcoves. In this horror-scape, my parents picture me helpless, heavily guarded by free range chickens outfitted with razor sharp cockspurs and small PETA hoodies. My eyes reflecting the dim light of my Mac book, foxnews.com permanently blocked. My parents begin to recruit other parents whose children went out "there" to the godless northeast for school and never came back. At first a small group, ten, then twelve. The group, called "Save The Future USA" or STFU, is featured on the local cable news channel then picked up by an angry talk show host and launched nation wide. STFU grows like a cancerous tumor, lobbying for the immediate return of illegally held offspring, as well as the abolishment of the estate tax and a return of the 15 cent McDonald's hamburger. STFU eventually becomes the most powerful lobbying machine in the history of the United States. Running the behemoth consumes my parents until they entirely forget that I exist. In 20 years, my mom will find an old report card with my name on it. She'll wonder why the teacher misspelled my brother's name.

4.) My well reasoned response actually convinces my parents to vote for Obama. Obama wins Texas by two votes. Global warming is suddenly reversed, peace settles on the middle east like a fine dust, someone discovers how to make a non polluting energy source from discarded coffee cups, plastic containers, and used condoms. Previously extinct species spring back into life. A 65 million year-old pterodactyl collides with Sarah Palin's helicopter while she is out wolf hunting. A small but tasteful memorial plaque is dedicated to the pterodactyl. A vaccine is created against the common cold, the flu, and fundamentalism. The scourge of dryer lint is eradicated. Everyone shakes hands and makes up in Africa. Vladimir Putin wins the last season of Dancing with the Stars and reality t.v. fades into oblivion. My parents stop sending me ridiculous politically themed forwards thus ending the only communication we ever had. The years pass, the world secure, peaceful, prosperous, but I never talk to my parents again. Without something to argue about, it turns out, we had nothing to talk about at all.

So, there you have it. I suppose I'll just let this particular email slide.

Domestic Abuse

2008-09-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

So I watched the 1st Presidential debate last night and I can't say that I thought either candidate came away with a decisive victory. But this debate was on foreign policy and I feel that this was McCain's debate to take and the fact that he didn't walk away with it...well, I don't think he'll be happy with all of the polling results today. To be clear- I support Obama. I just thought that if McCain was going to have an opportunity to do an end-zone victory dance, it would be after this particular debate.

During the debates, McCain said that he would consider a freeze on all domestic spending except for certain programs like VA and entitlement programs. I have a major problem with this statement. Ok, several major problems:

1. Entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid) is the fastest growing chunk of the federal budget. Entitlement spending accounts for anywhere between 50 - 60% of all federal spending. Not having a plan in place that takes into account the rapidly growing money suck that is entitlement spending is not going to help reduce government spending.

2. Domestic spending includes programs like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration (which we can all agree needs more money, not a budget freeze), the National Institutes of Health (in the spirit of full disclosure, I work at NIH so I have a vested interest in not seeing the budget cut) where medical research is conducted. Other domestic programs include the Environmental Protection Agency, The Education department, the Small Business Administration, the Transportation Department, The Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of the Interior. Despite the vast width and breadth of domestic, non-defense, non-entitlement spending, these programs only account for roughly 15% of the federal budget. Saying he'll freeze 15% of the budget as a way to get government spending under control is like saying, "Here, apply light pressure to this arterial wound. That should help."

3. Inflation dramatically reduces the purchasing power of federal agencies. This means, even if there is a budget freeze and agencies are kept at previous year funding levels, these agencies can not fund as much research, screen as many people, test as many drugs, etc, as they could the year before. The budget numbers might look the same on paper but the power of the budget decreases. What does this mean in real terms? A frozen budget = a cut budget.

Personally, I think it is the height of irresponsibility to suggest a spending freeze for domestic programs. And that's all I've got to say about that.

goal oriented

2008-09-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

So I am reading 'The Last Lecture' by Randy Pausch on recommendation from a kindly therapist that thought perhaps I needed a little perspective in my life so that these seemingly random bouts of debilitating depression become a little less frequent.

I'd watched through the actual last lecture on YouTube and thought it was pretty slick, as in my desk and keyboard were slick with the tears that I unabashedly shed everywhere during Dr. Pausch's hour long presentation. The book expands on the themes of the lecture, concentrating the tear jerking power of the original into a compact and handy book so that emotion can be wrought forth on trains, in beds, on couches, and at lunch tables all across the world.

I bring all of this up not to launch a discussion about my over-worked nasolacrimal ducts, although that could be an interesting topic, to be sure. I bring this up because Dr. Pausch talks about setting and achieving his childhood dreams and this has prompted me to really think about what my dreams in life are. So, I've thought about them and I think I have three that in some way, shape or form, have been with me since childhood.

The first dream will come as no surprise to anyone who even remotely knows me.
1.) Write a book and get it published.
I've always wanted to be a writer. Due to a lot of reasons, I've sort of run away from writing as a career, but lately I've begun to embrace and explore it a little more.

My second dream is not one that I've discusses with many people but might not seem too far out in left field.
2.) Teach at the University level.

My third dream is something I've never discussed with anyone.
3.) Swim in the Olympics.
This will probably come a total shock to everyone. Consider I never took swimming all that seriously when I did swim competitively and couple that with the fact that I am not swimming now and the chances of achieving this dream are very very very small. Think 10 to the negative a lot of zeros. But, the fact remains, this is a dream that I have had since I was maybe 14 and I never gave voice to it, but it was always there, tucked away in journal entries and day dreams.

So there they are - my childhood dreams. They may seem silly to some, unobtainable to most, but there they are none the less.

I've currently got an idea for a book that I think has some promise and I am organizing my schedule so that I can start swimming with a Master's swim team starting in October. I'm working on a plan regarding the University teaching appointment. Who knows what will happen? But I wanted to publicly state my dreams, and in doing so, perhaps take the first step in making them a reality.

climbing the ladder of success

2008-09-04T05:37:00.000-07:00

The alarm went off at some ungodly hour this morning, I think it was close to 5am. I seriously considered calling in sick just so I could sleep for, you know, four or five more hours, which is messed up because I went to bed around 10pm last night. However, calling in sick after taking off for a week to go to Tokyo didn't strike me as the best career move.

My very first onsen

2008-08-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a busy day for me. I woke up just before 6 am and could not get back to sleep.

I met my friend Dee-san for breakfast at her hotel at 9 am. The buffet overlooks a traditional Japanese garden with cascading water falls and a large Koi pond. It was quite a view.

After breakfast, Dee-san and I went to Akihabara to get cameras. I was particularly motivated to get a small point and shoot after lugging around the Nikon D70 for 3 days. I immediately fell in love with the Fuji FinePix J150 but they didn't have an international model (no English instructions or international warranty) and the price was kinda steep (about 300 - 350 yen). A phone call to Norm later and I decided to wait...and sulk.

Dee-san bought herself a nice early birthday present (Lumix Fs5 by Panasonic). The sales people at Yodobashi Akiba were super nice and helpful - almost too helpful. The clerk suggested an international wall plug because he wasn't sure if the chord to charge the camera would be rated for the U.S. (the plug adaptor was roughly $2.00). He rings up the purchase, a process that includes little rubber stamps, multiple receipts, stapling things to the pages of Dee-san's passport, and 2 clerks to keep it all straight. Well, it turns out that the chord doesn't need the adaptor, which - whatever, right? It's $2.00. Well, the clerk is just beside himself. To refund the money requires 2 manager-type people, 3 more clerks, new little rubber stamps, additional receipts, the passport, 27 ritualistic bows, a sacrificial white lamb, and about 30 minutes of time. It was a little much.

From Akihabara we took the subway to Asakusa. Asakusa is home to the Sensoo-ji Temple. Sensoo-ji enshrines a golden image of Kannon (the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy) which, legend has it, was fished out of the Sumidagawa river by two fishermen in 628. We approached the temple through the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) which is protected by Fuujin, god of wind (right side); and Raijin, god of thunder (left side). At dusk, when the lights around the temple turn on, the eyes of these two gods seem to glow menacingly.

In front of the temple there is a large cauldron (for lack of a better word) filled with burning incense. The smoke is supposed to bestow good health and you rub the smoke into your skin before making your way up the temple steps. At the top of the steps, you throw some money (5 yen or so) into a metal grate. I think that the sound of the money hitting the metal signals your presence to the god of the temple. In some temples, you pull a rope and it sounds a gong. At any rate, once you have the god's attention, you pray and then finish by clapping your hands twice. Sensoo-ji temple complex can also boast to the second tallest pagoda in Japan, an interesting fact to toss around at a dinner party, should you feel so inclined.

We left the temple by way of Nakamise-doori. Nakamise-doori is a pedestrian walkway that is chock-a-block with stores. I found a blue and white yukata with koi on it, as well as a handmade change purse made of deer skin. Eventually, we wound our way through and found an onsen that we had both read about and wanted to try.

A word about onsens and sentoos - I realize that public bathing is not for everyone but in Japan, taking a break at a sentoo or onsen is practically a national past-time. An onsen gets its water from a natural hot springs (a sento can heat its water) and different onsen have different types of water, depending on the source. The Jakoysu-yu onsen (which is where we went) has mineral rich, dark colored water (like a reddish brown color) and it is hot hot hot - 45 C. The onsen and sentoos in Japan are subsidized by the government so they are pretty reasonably priced. We paid roughly $4.50 to enter the onsen and we purchased towels and soap for an additional $3 - $4. First we paid the front desk attendant, then we went into the ladies changing room, put everything into a locker, grabbed a senmenki (wash basin) and headed for the women's bathing area.

Before stepping into bath, we washed at a bank of low showers and water spigots. This involved sitting on a low stool, soaping up and scrubbing down. Then you spend about 10 minutes rinsing off, ensuring that there are absolutely zero soap particles left on your body before getting into the bath. There are three baths that you circulate between - the scalding hot, volcanic water bath, the milder simmering bath and the freezing ice bath. I jumped right into the scalding hot water bath. Dee took a more measured approach and went to the simmering, not as scalding, bath first. Honestly, it was quite pleasant after the initial shock subsided. I actually liked the ice cold bath the best and was pleasantly relaxed by the time we were finished.

We ended the afternoon with tempura at Daikokuya and for dessert we had purple sweet-potato ice cream. Dee-san was meeting people for dinner so we parted ways around 6 pm. Norm's co-worker, Lester, stopped by the room to see if we wanted to hit up Shibuya for some shopping. We ended up at Loft (a large department store in Shibuya) and they were hosting something called "Pop Box: Popculture Bazaar". Norm and I especially liked the art from Mad Barbarians (www.madbarbarians.com). We looked around for a while then headed back to the hotel.

And that, as they say, was Wednesday