Hey There Werewolf

I walk to and from work. I enjoy the time to myself, the outside weather, the feeling of connection you get with a city when you experience it on foot and not isolated in your car. I like - and need - the exercise. At night, it gets empty and lonely in a wonderful way, and my imagination gets moving, seeing scenes from the apocalypse, to viewing every passing car or wandering person as engaged in some dark, uderworld criminal schemes I could never understand.

Walking also allows you to run into some serious weirdos.

Now, my walk is of a decent length. Five miles, one way, which means my total outside exposure time is quite high. So, yeah, I'm going to get honked at, screamed at, etc. This is fine: it's what assholes do.

But Saturday night.... It was about 10:20. Pitch black (Austin has sixteen total street lamps, of which six work, and a total of three miles of sidewalk) when i came up on a bus stop. Two people were sitting there. And as I approached, one on the bench looked at me and said:

"Hey there werewolf. It ain't no full moon." and then he proceeded to howl.

Anyway. Here's another fantastic line from the good folks at fstdt:

"my religious beliefs are a core component of my life and make me happy, so why do i care if thier wrong?"

Yes. Why would you want to know the realities of a central part of what you consider to be the being you call you?

Real Quick

This - THIS is why people need science:

"The second is the North Star. The North Star is such an implausible thing if you think about it. This clearly visible star is so precisely positioned it is more usefull at night to indicate a northerly direction than are most compasses. And it is positioned over the most inhabitable axis of this planet as well. "

Seriously. How can you navigate this world and even begin to hope to think about maybe sort of understanding what is going on if your thouht processes is that kind of jumbled mess.

From the joy that is FSTDT

Evolution is Stupid

Did you ever feel the need for a condensed version of all of the creationist's lies, distortions, strawmen and ignorance regarding evolution all in one place?

Well check out http://www.evolutionisforidiots.com

Oh, you'll find it all here.

You'll find bizzare slippery-slope moral "realities" based on distorted, fantasy versions of evolution no scientist ever contended (remember evolution = atheism and atheism = evolution):

"If you are an atheist and you murder 26 people without getting caught, what makes it wrong? Absolutely nothing. The only possible deterrent for killing, raping, and stealing is simply the reaction of society. So if society never finds out, what makes anything wrong? Nothing, right? There's no reason to feel guilty if you're just the result of a randomly happening universe, randomly moving forward in time with no consequence to any negative action, unless society finds out."

And

If you are an atheist, you should not use the word “love.” Since God is love, you should not use this term to describe how you feel about people or pets, since you do not believe it exists. Use a term like “have positive chemical reactions when near,” or other atheism-compliant descriptive terms.

And

If you are an evolutionist atheist, eating anything that was living is a form of cannibalism. You believe that descendants of animals and even plants could be people someday. To avoid becoming a cannibal, you should adhere to a strict diet of milk and cheese, and make sure there are no signs of living organisms in either. Hmm... On second thought... atheists shouldn’t think cannibalism is wrong, because to them, right and wrong don’t exist.

And so much more.

But how does evolution work? I always thought that different effects of natural selection and the occasional mutation led towards speciation. What is really going on?

Well, how about these shared beliefs of all biological scientists:

To believe in evolution, you must believe that your family tree includes monkeys, fish, and rocks. Many evolutionists believed that after Earth randomly formed by itself out of nothing, it rained on rocks for millions/billions of years, which somehow caused inanimate matter to give birth to a single-celled organism. Some evolutionists believe the top of their family tree is nitrogen, and still others, water!

And

To be an evolutionist, you must believe that fish transform into monkeys. Yes that's right. Evolutionists believe that if you move up your family tree far enough, great great great Grandpa is a fish.

And did you know:

And with all the supposed evolution that evolutionists imagine to have occurred over the past few billion years (a number than has been changing since the religion was founded), we've never found an instance of an intermediary species between reptile and mammal, monkeys and humans, dinosaur to birds, or "missing links" as many put it.

Well, then why evolution? Because Hitler and Satan worked through Darwin!

And of course Hitler’s idea of a superior race was not without precedent, because everyone knows (or should know) that Darwin himself thought Caucasians were the most evolved race... just like Hitler!

Oh, this is wonderful place. Please stay awhile, or has satan taken over your thoughts?

Alcohol and School

I got drunk last night. And a few nights before that. Probably not the best thing.

While alcohol and school go together like peanut butter and chocolat - ask any college undergrad - this really is only applicable to the younger set of students. At some point in time you aren't just out on your own, old enough to know better and still too young to care, you're both old enough to know better and have a physician showing you charts and graphs of your own increasing body fat percentage.

I use alcohol to self medicate. It really is a last resort. I do a lot of running and writing and I used to read whole books for pleasure - but there are times in this insane schedule I keep where I need to calm the fuck down now . Last night was one of those times.

Running really is a more successful stress relieving venture. I feel better and for longer after a solid run. The two problems with running are 1.) It takes time. You have to run for at least forty minutes to really gain the benefits. When I get home from school at 9:00, and I got up that morning at 6:00, and have to be up the next morning at 5:00, it can be hard to convince myself to lace up the shoes. 2.) Running takes effort. Hey, I dig effort. Love it. But I can only run so many days in a row. I am not an elite athlete. By day five, I hurt. On the weekends I walk to and from work, a ten mile round trip, and my job requires me to stand, lift, and walk for eight hours. Conservative estimates put me between 30-40 miles on my feet on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the week I probably cover only about 20 miles of running (five miles, four days a week), but that's about all I can do. Tuesday evening I hurt. Plain and simple.

So I drank. At the time it seems like I need it, but the next day I wonder why. I need to find an alternative to alcohol that has the same immediacy, but without the guilt, weight gain, and other bodily damage. And no, I don't mean different drugs.

Not that a human being has ever read this, but suggestions would be nice.

Gonna do some bitching

Nobody reads this thing, so I can feel free to indulge. Except, of course, a future employer. Who will read this, and recognize that they might be in the process of hiring a human being, with thoughts and feelings unique to themself, possibly in conflict with the employer's own thoughts and feelings, meaning I will never get a job. Because that's how this shit works. And the things that are online about me pretty much assures my total lack of employment for the rest of my life. What a wonderful modern world we have.

I can't stress enough to people that if you don't have babies and you're thinking of having babies that the best decision you can make in this situation is to just not have babies. I'm at a wonderful stage with my twins now, where every comment made to them that isn't praise, say something along the lines of "let go of the cat's head," results in a screaming, head-banging tantrum that I can't just ignore because it leads to actual physical injury when unchecked.

This happens a dozen or so times a day now, everyday. There's is nothing fun or cute or pleasant about this. From beginning to end it is a nightmare.

I have homework to do. Will I get it done? Probably. But I will do it in this strange, disjointed way, where I won't read an entire sentence to completion in a single pass through. Instead I will search for my place, find it, read a word or two, turn to a child and shout some command like "put down that knife," turn back to the paper, search for my place... and writing answers is somewhat worse. I'm passing school in somekind of psuedo-conscious daze. It's like being stoned but way less fun.

Here's an example. At this exact moment, I can only see one of the twins. I don't know where the other is, and since the house is in complete silence, I will now go searching for him. This is annoying, I am in the kitchen and the kitchen is gated off with little child blocking gates because otherwise we have babies on the counters. So I will now hop the gates and go searching for the missing baby,

Adn the missing baby was found standing on top of the dryer. Having been removed, he is now screaming full force. This goes on through out the day. pretty much nonstop.

Allow me to make this as clear as I can. I hate my life. I hate waking up in the morning. I hate going to work. (I hate my job so much, it takes all I have left just to show up.) I hate raising children. I hate being perpetually broke. I hate juggling four different people's school schedules with one car. I hate living in the suburbs. I hate having no outside social life. I don't want this. Any of this.

Doesn't fucking matter what I want. This is what I have.

My Wife is a Stone Cold Liar - I Raise The Pity Flag

Yesterday, my wife who deals with stress (and here we define "stress" as any entity or experience that doesn't directly and immedietly lead to her physcial comfort and pleasure) by summoning the hatred of evil entities from cultures through out time and focusing this hatred like the light from a thousand suns through the lenses of her demonic eyes onto my crotch, "requested" that I take over all the duties of the house and allow her the "privilege" of holing up in the bedroom to study.

I should point out here that I already do the cleaning, the cooking, I put the babies down at night and for their nap and bathe them and change them, as well as the physical labor involved in the house, plus I am the only person with a job and have been for years now, and if there is anything wrong with the car, no matter where I am in proximity to the car, like, say, she was driving it somewhere else and a tire blows out and I was at home with the kids, it is my duty, despite not being anywhere near the car to fix it, while she gets a ride to the house and I walk to the car and spend the remainder of my evening lying under a one ton minivan praying it doesn't, again, fall off the jack,

So me "taking over the household" for the day wasn't all that much different than what I already do. But, seeing as how she wanted to make this a formal thing, I figured I could leverage this into creating some time of my own. Specifically, I asked that I be allowed the few hours this Saturday, from the time I woke up until the time I have to go to work for twelve hours, my own study time where I can research the exciting work done by both my contemporaries and that historical on Brassica rapa, the world's most awesome mustard plant. She said sure.

So you know what I did from 7:00AM until 9:00AM? I cooked crepes for six people. Crepes, which I have never cooked before, are a major pain in the ass. You cook each one of those paper-thin tasteless pancakes one at a time, waiting between crepes for the pan to reheat. Homeade ravioli takes less time.

And now that that is done my babies are FREAKING OUT. That's how my house works.

Yup. Brassica rapa. The old B. rapa .

I hate my life.

Cycle Issue #2

Cycle Magazine, the physical offshoot of acycle.org, will soon (relatively speaking) have its second issue out.

This is exciting.

acycle.org and the magazine are creations of a friend of mine, Richard. (spawned, this is true, during an evening drinking Czech Republic absinthe on my porch). It's the truest form of a labor of love. There is no funding, there is no advertising, there are no sales (but he is working on that). This is all self produced, self distributed, self funded.

I have been critical of the quality of cycle. Specifically of the writing and the low standards for publication that it presents. Richard and I have argued about this - a big part of cycle is to represent the small press and to represent the aspirations of people currently involved in the act of creation for the sake of creation; people that may yet have developed all the skills nor accumulated the neccessary experience to truelly hone their craft. I understand this. So things that show up in cycle will be of a wider spectrum of quality. But there has got to be at least a spark, a twinkle, a little ember of talent somewhere in the pages and pages of cliched dribble that gets through. Richard, I think now, agrees with me, and the quantity of stuff that gets published has dropped dramatically. I'm not sure the quality has risen yet. But that's a matter of time.

Richard and others have been frusterated by my critique, the harshness with which I "reveiw" that which is produced. Understand, I love cycle. I really do. I love the labor, I love the desperation, the failures, the obscurity. Because it makes every little success that much more sweet. It is this love that makes me so critical. If I didn't care, then I wouldn't spend the little time I have so much as reading it, let alone allowing myself to be emotionally involved.

I want to be more involved, but I am stretched quite thin. For me, writing has always been this struggle between the desire and need to create and my complete inability to comunicate an idea to the world. I am, in short, a bad writer. (bad, like evil, like lock me up it's so terrible.) I would spend more time on writing if that time wasn't already spent writing mind-numbing research papers and brain cell suffocating reviews of other people's research papers for school. Doing that shit will take the soul right out of you and then strangle you with its corspe.

The second issue of cycle will so be out. I haven't seen it, not yet, but I have seen my contribution to it. Those bits Richard selected to represent my own output. You know what? It isn't bad. It's actually a little inspiring. I mean, I've made progress. It feels good.

I'm not sure how we're destributing this issue. The last one was free, and we placed it on some racks in independent bookstores. This one may be different.

acycle.org needs writers. And not just writers, but creators of any kind of medium that can be presented through a computer. The website is going through a rebirth (the servers it originally existed on went kaput, and Ricard got to learn a wonderful lesson about keeping back-ups of shit.) If you are interested, email me and check out the site.

College Generation Update: Just like 10 Years Ago

Perhaps it's a bit of confirmation bias, but I swear I haven't heard a conversation between the two that sit in front of me in biology that hasn't involved, at least once through the length of the class, the words "beer bong." Starting next week, I'm going to keep a tally running.

I made a comment similar to this to a young lady I work with. She is in her senior semester, working on a degree in cellular and molecular biology. She's bright as can be, but gets a little defensive anytime she feels somekind of blanket statement is made about people - anybody - and when I made such a statement she accused me of belittleing the "youth culture."

How do you respond to that? I mean, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I imagine it's not so far from reality that if we took a glance at the spectrum of binge drinkers, people who drink using homemade high-velocity alcohol delivery systems, or those people whose conversations are dominated by how "fucked up" they got and how "fucked up" they plan on getting later, we might just be permitted to apply a huristic and assume youth was involved.

But like I said, I don't have any data here in front of me. So perhaps it's purely anecdotal.

On my side of the world, where I don't live on the college campus, or for that matter, in the same city as the college, or for that matter, the same county as the college, where I have to drive 30 miles to attend class, timing this to wedge between dropping the children off for school and picking them up, and my wife's own classes, and watching the twins, and work, I am happy to report that my car has broken down this morning. Not such a big deal. I got it started, and with luck and a blood sacrifice to the car gods, I may be able to keep it running until Friday night - the only night of the week where I don't have class or work untill 11:00 - where I will take it into the dealer and they will use weasel tactics to get out of the warranty. Which is additionally fine, because as a dual-student household with four children and only one, part-time income, I am swimming in money. I see no issues getting this car - my only car - running again.

I look forward, as a near thirty year-old adult, to begging my parents for money.

My wife graduates in just under eight months. I hope we can make it. (Maybe a beer bong or two tonight will help me power through.)

Where god Doesn't Belong - Or, Maybe, More Nonsense About Babies

It's no secret to the people that know me that I am obsessed with religion and fundamentalism, especially as it has to do with christianity and America.

Unlike other, more prominent critics of religion, I don't think religion breeds an inherent idiocy, hatefullness, ignorance, or destruction of the ability to percieve reality as it really is. I think religion provides an excellent framework for this. But it doesn't neccesarilly create it. There's a lot of argument to be had here, in both directions, because it isn't a black or white thing, but we'll have that discussion later at a point when there are other human beings reading this blog and I can have such a discussion and not just an argument with myself.

Anyway.

So I was trolling FSTDT.com, which is a fantastic website for those of us of a masochistic leaning to be perpetually baffalled and appaled by what goes on in the world.

Now, of course, the internet has a way of magnifying an issue. Rather than keeping something isolated and local, the internet broadcasts to the entire known universe, making some closet-case's personal voyage of mental freakosicity seem more prevalent. The world probably isn't as fucked up as the internet makes it seem. I did, however, run across this quote today that I think does reflect a reality in this world:

"Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a 'neutral' education. All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children. Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution to form the minds of their children, and the fruit of that choice is bitter. The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families leave the church within two years after they graduate from high school; only 9 percent of evangelical teens believe that there is any such thing as absolute moral truth; and, our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable."

Two things are going on here (well, there are others, but two I want to focus on. the homosexual thing is an issue unto itself and it's presentation here just adds a level of surreal chocolately goodness).

1.) There is a mindset among the most ardent of religios people that things are either of god or against god. There is absolutely no middle ground. No grey. There is holy worship or baby-sacrificing devil blowing. So something as mundane as examining the interaction of chemicals in an aqueous solution, or looking at the affect a series of unseasonably cold weather has on cliff swallow populations, or reading a book that isn't about god, is against - not to the side - god.

It is this kind of pigheaded nonsense that leads to the craziest varieties of religion. Now, again it could be the internet amplification effect, but it appears that this thought process is growing. Thanks to folks at the Discovery Institute, and thousands of concerned citizens the nation over, we are seeing challenges to science and education from an exclusively religious stand point.

The whole separation of church and state thing isn't working out as well as it could. God is like some kind of trailer park stalker: no restraining order - no piece of paper - is gonna keep him from gettin' what he wants from a woman. We need to be a little more strick with god.

A.) God must remain wholly separate of anything even resembling science. Sure, this only further supporst crazy people's belief that science is anti god. I'm fine with this.

B.) God must remain wholly separate of anything even resembling education. When god gets into the classroom, people get stupid. He's worse than a bully.

Ugh, you know what? the babies are freaking out again. This is what they do. They create havok. It's fucking insane. There is no interaction they can have, whether with each other or their environment, that doesn't lead to horror. It is simply the most stressfull and terrifying aspect of my existence. I can't think straight. I can't do anything. While my wife is at school and I watch the twins, my life is relegated to some kind of coarse torture. It is so very, very loud, and there is no way to distinguish screams of fear from screams of danger from screams of happness from screams of screaming for screaming's sake.

I haven't had a coherent thought is 22 months. I'm in school too. You would tink, hey, since you're home for such a damn long time, I bet you get tons of studying done. This is the thought process of someone that does not have small twins. This is the thought process of someone who thinks a lack of time means having to TiVo several of your favorite shows because, gosh darn it, you have to go out with friends on Saturday night.

My friends slipped into the ether years ago. The most exciting Saturday night I've had in recent memory is the night I got a full eight hours of sleep.

If you are thinking of having children, I just - Fuck... I mean - seriously. Just think about it for a while. I have seen three movies in the past seven years . If I want to go, say, to the grocery store I have to gather four screaming idiots into a car and then herd them through an otherwise civilized place. I am the asshole that creates the nightmare shopping experience for everyone else. I swear, I buy three bunches of bananas three times a week. I was checking out, and the cashier says to me "Man, you must like bananas," and I almost penetrated his heart with one of those yellow spears.

When I found out my wife (whose reproductive parts have since been surgically rendered inoperative) was having twins and I told people at work, somebody said to me "oh, you are so blessed." And all I could think was that there are trailer parks full of equally blessed people. Jesus, I never meant to have this many damn children. See? This is the problem with our health care system. My wife and I, as struggling students, had this kind of decision to make: 1.) Rob a clinic for birth control pills, because our income does not allow us to aford insurance 2.) As a married couple, and as humans, forget that we are sexual beings and remain together in abstinence or 3.) produce babies by the gallon. We tried number 2.), but guess what. Sometimes we fuck. It just happens, and over the counter propholactics or not, sometimes a little spermy gets through and BAM more damn children.

When they extracted the last two, and she was all spliced open, I handed the doctor a twenty and said, while gesturing to the collection of exposed organs in my wifes womb/abdomen, "Do you think, maybe, since you're here and all..."

Babies for Sale

* Note to FBI: They're not really for sale. I'm just annoyed.





WTS/WTT

Two 22-month old twins. Fraternal. Blonde hair, blue eyes.

Very healthy. Strong eaters. Strong climbers. Capable of covering any surface two and half feet above the ground or less in a thick, impenetrable layer of crayon and snot with a speed incomprehensible.

These babies need a new home. Preferrably one with miles and miles of open field so they can roam and destroy. If you are deaf and own no possessions that have any value or meaning (including your home) then these might just be the kids for you.

The larger, stronger of the two babies, Leif, is capable of magnitude 11 force-fits with durations up to an hour observed. During such fits it's important to have a fully padded area as Leif will attempt to penetrate any hard surface with his head. All organic life should exit the immediete vacinity of the fit to avoid injury/death.

Darwin, the smaller, angrier of the two has learned the powers of deception and aggression and wields them to his maximum benefit.

If interested I'd be happy to trade these babies for an Xbox 360 or even a gift certificate to a decent restaraunt. I am in the South Austin area, but am willing to meet you at any point on the earth.