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the only just outcome


Sunday evening, another very enjoyable weekend – lots of downtime with friends. As is tradition for the week’s first entry, I’ve uploaded a new set of pictures to Keaton’s gallery – why don’t you go ahead and check them out here.

Been devouring Wikipedia articles on the Middle East lately, in my continued efforts to educate myself on the elaborate intertwined history of the people and region. While I didn’t start at the very beginning, I am beginning to establish a factual historical picture that I believe is opinion-free and fact-based. With all the shifting borders, disputed territories, and artificial partitions – it’s a tangled nightmare to try and understand the geographical boundaries let alone the religious, tribal, and political ones. I do feel, though, that I’m getting a little better at it. I understand the implications of Israel’s declaration of independence and the resultant Gaza Strip and West Bank. I’m fairly up to snuff on Hezbollah’s motivations in the capture of Israeli soldiers as a bargaining chip for prisoner release, and how that kicked the situation into its current tailspin. For this knowledge, I love Wikipedia; I really do. Too bad it can’t make people stop dying.

Speaking of the Middle East, I had a thought in church this morning that was interesting. Set a reminder on my cellphone to write about it. I thought it might be interesting to think about the current Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict as a fundamentalist who favors signs and portents. From that angle, what might the outcome of this fracas tell us? Let’s think about it.

What does the eventual outcome here mean? On the surface, and from a simplified point of view, we have humans fighting other humans over religious beliefs. Sure there are politics and property rights and cultural aspects, but boiled down most of these things can be said to stem from religion. So, above two groups of humans who are fighting we have the God of each of those groups who, in no small way, defines each group. It only makes sense, based on what the sacred texts of each group tell them, that each firmly believes their God has an active hand in the events of their lives, and that whatever happens, it was God’s divine will. This notion becomes extremely interesting (to me) when you think about the current Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict.

Even though the outcome of this particular conflict is still unknown, could a look at some of the potential outcomes possibly tell us something about the very nature of God? If the assumption is that some higher power is indeed directing or supporting his followers, can an outcome here give humanity in general some insight into the divine?

Will the God of Judaism let his chosen people be once again pushed from the land He promised them? Or will the God of Islam see Jerusalem and Temple Mount once again under Muslim control? Whose God loves His adherents the most? Going one more step: whose God is listening, whose God is rewarding the faith of His people… whose God exists?

Certainly some modern-day Christians would see collapse of the Jewish state as a step backwards in the march to the Second Coming. Without their promised land, the Jews certainly can’t rebuild the temple – another misstep for the unfolding of Biblical end-times prophesy. Three faiths for which the outcome of this conflict could be interpreted as telling of the nature, plans, and, for some, potentially even the relevance or existence of their God. Sure, that may be a hyper-sensitive, reading-into-it, way to look at it – but I’m sure some of the more extreme of adherents are relying on God to see this conflict to what they consider the only just end. Being that it can’t have a just end for both, some will be left questioning God’s plans. Nothing new, to be sure, but interesting nonetheless.

Finally, a qualifying afterthought: I realize that this is most certainly not the first, and is not likely to be the last, time that religious differences have come to a head in the form of humans fighting. I also acknowledge that analyzing a point-view of instances like this on the timeline of humankind and then using that analysis to try and pick a “winning” God may seems stupid. Sure, I’ll admit that Gods and/or their powers likely won’t be proven or disproven by the outcome of one small skirmish along the road from the beginning of times to the end of times, I’ll give you that. But, I still maintain that it’s worth a look, and a good coal for discussion. And, what’s more, maybe the way to look at it isn’t from a point-view, maybe we should consider the longer-term “trending” that’s happening (although, without have an endpoint in sight, trending could be argued worthless in terms of how “far” we’ve come). Anyway, what about those trends? Who’s trends look good, who’s don’t? What would sports bookmakers and odds-men have to say about the world’s religions at this point? Which one is the dark horse, which the frontrunner?

Maybe that would make a good entry someday, trying to get a semi-quantitative count of bad and good things that’ve happened to the major religions since their inception. Maybe a tally of purported prophecy fulfillment, new converts graphed against time, y’know, things that are quasi-measurable. Map all that out to see where they all lie, who’s “winning?” Yeah… maybe someday, but not tonight. Tonight I’m done.

And that’s it, decided to limit Monday’s post to this topic only… binning the other random weekend-writing for mid-week filler. Goodnight folks, love you like money.

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i’ll finish it later


Thursday night. Damn, this week flew.

Sharaun’s at the gym, I’m here listening to King Crimson’s In the Wake of Poseidon (not the album, well, yeah, the album… but I mean the title track in particular). What a great song. Reminds me of some of the more haunting tunes from ELP’s debut, or even some Threshold era Moody Blues. I’d like to put this song in the movie I’m always talking about putting songs in.

Keaton’s out of sorts, I’ve rocked her to sleep and put her down now three times, each time to have her wake up crying just minutes later. Frustrating, especially since she usually goes down so easily. I think, though, that this last time was the one – she’s woke up and fussed but I let her power through it and she seems to be out now. Not sure what her deal was tonight, Sharaun said she napped well today.

There now, much better: washed the dishes, brought in the trash from the curb, and wiped my ass for good measure (you can never be too prepared).

Goodnight.

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lonely people and holiday inns


Fell of the wagon yesterday folks, what can I say – it happens. Had a good hump-day, did an incredible amount of work at work – so much so that I fear, should something new not land on my desk tomorrow, that I’ve finished a week’s worth of work in a single day. Curse my exceptional efficiency! But, instead of writing an intro here, I’ll default to what I wrote yesterday. Yeah… I did write, but it wasn’t worth posting… just an intro. So here it is, I can’t stand tossing out effort.

Tuesday night finds both Sharaun and I in the computer room, her having made me mute some newly downloaded prospective tunes I was auditioning so she can listen to some bootlegged Justin Timberlake show where he plays songs of his upcoming album. Sounds terrible, like it was recorded in the engine room of a ship with a Fisher Price microphone – but I suppose I’m one to talk. She’s loves some Tenderlegs… and I must admit he has a team of good producers, but I’m just not a fan. Anyway… let’s move along to what little else there is this evening, shall we?

Cleaning up around my desk today, I found a wad of Taiwanese and Chinese bills. I know the rough conversion rates in my head, seems I’d have just about $100 in USD if I were to exchange it. Made a mental note to remember to bring it next time I’m in an international airport, so I can trade-up for some real Christian money, not that heathen BS that’s worthless in God’s country. Seeing the money there got me thinking: I had decided not to exchange it upon leaving the Orient the last time because I figured I’d be back soon enough to warrant holding onto it. I mean, I was there so many times last year, wracking up 100,000+ flyer miles going back and forth, that I just assumed I’d be back before too long. Turns out that my baby-instigated travel moratorium has been more successful that I envisioned – and I haven’t been back in nearly a year. This doesn’t bother me, actually; I’d now much rather stay put. I’m slowly accepting my new role as house-bound parent.

Printed a new picture of Keaton today, hung it on the fabric walls of my cubicle with the others. I feel like I need new pictures every so often, as she’s changing so much right now. The only problem is that having all those images of her looking at me and smiling make me want to be here even less. It’s not quite as bad as if I had a picture of a beckoning Natalie Portman under the sheets in my bedroom, but it’s close. Maybe that was a bad comparison, since the reason for wanting to leave isn’t shared across the two scenarios, but it’s what came to mind.

Ended up reading a bunch of indymedia.org reports on the Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict/war today, spurred by a comment Thom Yorke made on Radiohead’s official messageboard. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I actually stopped reading indymedia about six months ago. Overwhelmed by the limpwristed, milquetoast, liberalness of the articles; the tree-hugging, everthing’s-a-human-rights-violation dreamworld the authors presented was too over the top for even my strong liberal leanings. I mean, you can get a sense of what I mean from their “about” page mission-statement:

The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media’s distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.

Sorry, I just puked up some chai tea and cous-cous.

I will admit, however, that I find it incredibly amazing to be able to read independent reports written from those sympathetic to the Lebanese side of the fighting really was interesting. Seems, rightfully so or not, that most of the international “mainstream” media reports are from Israel’s point of view. As thousands of refugees are being evacuated from Lebanon into southern Cyprus, the Cyprus “chapter” of indymedia is where you’ll find a lot of Lebanon-viewpoint reporting, and I’d recommend it just to get a different angle on things. For the interested, Thom’s comment pointed directly to this article (caution, link contains some graphic images) and urged Britain to “… throw Tony Blair out of office NOW.”

War is bad, missiles and death and broken families are bad; but we knew all that before reading the article, didn’t we? Let’s change subjects.

The iPod seemed to be stuck in some crazy Paul McCartney->Grateful Dead->Paul McCartney->Grateful Dead rut today; sometimes that “random” function is super fishy. Through some short-term data studying, I’ve decided I can get through about 100 songs a day on random. Of course, this includes a good deal of “I don’t feel like hearing this right now” skipping – but nevertheless, 100 songs/day isn’t a bad listening pace.

Goodnight people of the internets.

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please make a daily call soon


Hey Monday, and a good one at that. I think I liked my weekend so much I didn’t want it to end, but more about that later. Tonight was a big night: Keaton’s 1st “solid” food. They call the stuff “rice cereal,” but it’s just mush. She really doesn’t have the whole open-mouthed eating thing down yet, and insists on sucking the spoon. It works, but it’s slow. We filmed it, of course – I think it’s required.

Woke up today and decided I wanted to work from home. Sometimes this is legit, sometimes not. Today, though, my day was 80% consumed with meetings – and I can call into those from home just as easily. The weather has changed from last week’s 100°+ afternoons and I was able to have the house and work in the fresh breeze. Spent some of my lunch break fashioning a couple homemade wasp traps. The wasps in my backyard are worse than any previous year I can remember, they are thick. In fact, when I went outside to scavenge a used two-liter from the recycle bin in order to make the wasp trap, I ended up running back to the house with my arms flailing in wasp-defense. It’s like they knew I was up to something. I made two traps, one baited with meat and one baited with sweet. Wasps are attracted to either depending on the time of year, and since it’s right on the line between the two I decided to try each and stick with the best performer. The frustrating thing is, there are no visible nests in my eaves – but I have observed numerous wasps flying under the tiles on my roof and into my rain gutters. I think they are constructing a massive hidden wasp-civilization.

This new Midlake album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, is outstanding. I love theme and words of the opening track, and the slow creeping harmonies throughout. With melodies recall slower Radiohead, Steely Dan, and even Paul McCartney. Sometimes the “softest” or “laziest” albums are the ones that sound best played ear-burstingly loud, and that’s the case with this misleadingly-sleepy record. But man, this album is ridicu-good. I wish it was colder outside though, and maybe a little grey… this album sounds cold and grey.

Found this great site today, it indexes torrents of public domain movies and TV broadcasts (items which have fallen out of copyright and are thus legally owned by the public and freely distributable). There are some great flicks, and some real stinkers, on there. Thing is, I like a reeking stinker every now and again for sheer tackiness and comedy – so this site is full of gems to me. I want to start watching these things, maybe one per flight or something. What a great way to legally watch some interesting old movies, especially for B-movie fans like me. I mean, who not like down a site that has every episode of the old Flash Gordon or Radar Men from the Moon serials available for legal, free download? What’s better, they’re prepackaged for iPod, PSP, and DVD… awesome.

Guess what? I didn’t want to rewrite the wasp bit at the beginning of the story, so I figured I’d follow up here as an ending. Finally got serious, broke out the 10ft ladder, and did some recon on the wasps in the rain gutter theory. In just a few brave minutes of investigation, I located four obvious nests – each of considerable size. And thus began the first sortie of Wasp War 2006. I struck with vengeance, soaking the nests in foamy death spray. After each attack, I’d jump off the ladder and run for cover. Allowing time for the angry to settle, I’d then move the ladder and attack the next nest down the line. I think I got most of them, although I’m fairly convinced there are a couple more which are better hidden. Those die tomorrow, as they all do eventually.

Goodnight.

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the camera lives in the diaper bag


Happy Sunday folks! Had a nice long-seeming weekend. Mowed the lawn, hung out with friends, had a slight beer overdose, bought and assembled some patio furniture, pulled weeds… yeah it was a good weekend. Need more like that, or a vacation… one or the other. Not much for writing today, but I did manage to upload Keaton’s five months photos to her gallery (it’s not huge, but it bests last weeks small offering), enjoy! I can hardly believe she’s five months old now, it really has gone by fast (just like everyone said it would, imagine that).

Sunday before I Sharaun and I headed out the door for church, I, for some reason, started thinking about an old “cyber” friend of mine I’d met through my old days of Beatles trading. This fellow, Dave, and I became more than just regular tape-traders (yes, this was back before the days of sub-25¢ CR-Rs. We exchanged e-mail on a fairly regular basis, and eventually met in the flesh at a Beatlefest (kinda like a Star Trek convention but for Beatles-nerds). Over time, our correspondence dropped off, but we’d sometimes get or send a nostalgic “catch up” mail. Searching through my old mail for the last valid address I had for Dave, the best I could do was something from 2004. I figured I’d give it a shot, and wrote a three-sentence “hey there” mail to see if the address bounced. Later that day, I logged on to write Monday’s blog entry and saw a new comment from Dave and his wife. My first thought was that they’d got my mail, loaded my site from the link in my signature, and commented on the blog. Nope. Turns out they found me randomly, also spurred by a random “I wonder what that guy I used to like talking to” thought. Being that we both had this thought on the same day, some two years after our last correspondence – I’m totally convinced we had some of mind-meld going on. Crazy.

Got a great idea for the Halloween party this weekend, can’t leak it though – I want it to be a surprise. I love that our Halloween party is going to be four-years running this year. Can’t wait.

Goodnight.

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someday i will have to go to a funeral


Thursday night; this week flew. Sharaun’s at the gym (which I pronounce “gime,” as a play on how foreign the word is to me), and I just put Keaton down. I feel like I’ve become an expert at putting Keaton down. I have the touch, the knack, what she needs. I know exactly how long to hold her before she’ll be able to handle the hold-bed transition, know how tightly to cling to her arms and legs while they do her pre-sleep flail, and am an expert at calming her down. This is an immense source of pride for me, you have to understand that. I daresay that I’m actually better at getting down than her mom, and that’s a bold assertion. But that’s me. Boldly sitting here on the couch, the iPod shuffling up the Sundays (I think to mock my boldness), and watching that precious little girl sleeping soundly in her crib. Bold, I say.

I’m turning thirty this year, and I’ve never been to a funeral. I look at this as something to be joyful about. Sure, I’ve had people around me die – but, despite some being blood relatives, I wouldn’t consider myself having had been truly “close” to those that are now gone. That, in and of itself, is kind of sad to even think about. Watching family members pass away having never developed much beyond an acquaintance-level relationship with them. I do take some comfort, though, in the fact that the distance between me and those relatives no longer here was geography-driven – and I didn’t have much of a practical chance at developing those bonds. Lament over lost time aside, the fact still stands that I’ve never once attended a funeral – be it the funeral of a relative, friend, or acquaintance.

I bring the anomaly up because, as I write this, I’m sitting at home on an “extended” lunch break babysitting – while Sharaun attends a funeral. No one close (as if that callous statement somehow makes it better). The woman was a “yard duty” at her school, someone she interacted with quite often. A lot of the faculty and staff turned out, and Sharaun wanted to go pay her respects.

I’m lucky, you know. Someday I will have to go to a funeral, like it or not.

As I grow older, I find that the number of things which I allow to affect me emotionally – specifically those which impact me sufficiently to bring tears or sniffles – has grown. I think having a child has a lot to do with this as well, but I noticed the increase even before crossing that life threshold. Yeah… prior to Keaton, and before my old age, I can remember crying as a child, and at the end of Schindler’s List (y’know, the part with the rocks on the grave?), and that’s about it. All those times I “cried” so cheated-on girlfriends would take me back it was just lab-tears, whipped up for the moment. But now… I fear I’ve turned soft. Know how I know? I saw this picture online the other day, and, without even reading the tearjerking accompanying article, I nearly lost it. That is a human being.

Had my final Lasik follow-up last week, my eyes are doing great and seem to have settled out at 20/15. The nighttime halos that the doctor said I may have, and that I did indeed have, are now reduced so much that I don’t notice them but are supposed to go away completely within three months post-op. The only side-effect that’s still lingering is the extra dryness in my eyes. It’s gotten better than before, but I still carry around drops and usually use them a few times a day. That’s supposed to go away for the “vast majority” of patients within 6mos at the most, I’m just waiting. Again, I think this is some of the best money I’ve ever spent. Restoring my vision to something I can wake up to… that’s just awesome.

Goodnight.

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room to move


With the sickly-sweet scent of yesterday’s decaying epic still fresh in my nostrils, I sit back down to hammer out more words and poorly-punctuated sentences. I’ll keep doing it, you know, until something changes my habits so drastically it falls of my list of valued tasks or until I just don’t care anymore. But with the writing here consuming more and more of my thoughts (although, strangely enough, not my time), I don’t see that happening soon.

Sometime after we got back from Florida, my computer magically turned itself off overnight. Since then, it refused to turn back on… denying even my heartfelt urging. I left it this way for a while, not wanting to do computer work at home, and not really needing it to be operational for anything immediate. I could use my laptop to write blogs, and make Keaton videos, and everything else I do on a daily basis. Today, though, I got tired of not being able to access my RAID array. So, I set about debugging the issue. To make a long story short, I ended up at a bad power supply. Scrapped the power supply, and, while I was all up in the guys anyway, I went ahead and pulled the whole damn mess and migrated it all to a much roomier case. Sure, it sits some 3ft tall and sounds like a Beechcraft, but it’s working again. In fact, I’m typing this on it right now…

That’s it folks, spent most of the night eating burgers with friends – no time to write.

Goodnight.