New Beginnings

I moved to a new house this weekend. Emily (my fiance), her roommate Bridget and I have moved into a pretty nice house in Henderson. One of my new amenities is a gas fireplace that sometimes leaks and makes me feel high. Another new amenity is the DSL capability. It is my first high speed internet at home and ooh am I thrilled. This jubilation is a little sarcastic if you did not catch it. I both love and loathe technology, as I'm sure you do too.

At any rate, I am making a commitment to be more active on an intellectual level--with both reading and with blog activity. I will be the first to admit that I have not put all that much time into this blog. But my friends, IT IS A NEW DAY.

Perhaps Adam will post more, the bastard.

Coming soon: A series of posts on my reading of Howard Zinn.

What kind of man kills another man? Out of revenge? Out of duty? Out of rage? Out of protection?
I cannot fathom the thought. I cannot even comprehend extinguishing the life of an other.
Perhaps you can. Please explain.

I remember seeing Saving Private Ryan for the first time. The scene where the German soldier and the American soldier end up fighting hand to hand after they both run out of ammunition. They come face to face, eye to eye, with only the thought of killing. The enemy. The German soldier ends up slowly sliding a knife into the American soldiers heart. He gazes into his eyes saying, "Shhhh. Shhhh," while the American soldier screams, "No!" repeatedly. His life is gone, ended in a moment of passion and survival. Kill or be killed. As the German soldier descends the stairs, he sees Upham--the very green, scared, ammunition toting war journalist. The German soldier passes him by without a second glance. Upham does nothing. In another battle scene, this same German soldier is shooting Upham's comrades. Upham could have prevented this, if only he would have acted. He just didn't have the stomach for it.

Was it harder to kill before gun powder? From a distance, behind a gun, you don't have to watch your enemy die. You don't have to look him in the eye and decide he is not worth living. There is separation. Objectification. Like hunting a deer. Maybe it was only harder from a technical standpoint? I don't know.

In the end, Man is and has always been his own worst enemy.

Anti-Terror

I was just listening to a radio broadcast discussing how some state prosecutors are using anti-terrorist laws to prosecute "regular" criminals. The first example involved a young girl who was shot in the head by a gang member in New York City. The people involved in the shooting apparently fled to Mexico, but the prosecutor brought charges against 16 members of the same gang under the anti-terrorist laws stating that they were "intimidating the civilian population." The second example was from Boone, North Carolina where the district attorney was tired of the violence associated with crystal meth labs, and the people who make crystal meth that were getting off with only short jail terms. He tried to bring charges against some of these crystal meth makers using an anti-terrorist law that had to do with the production of weapons using toxic chemicals (they use toxic chemicals to make crystal meth) with the intent to do violence or to intimidate the civilian population. Of course someone who is prosecuted under an anti-terrorist law is subject to stiffer penalties and longer jail terms.

Both examples seem fairly ridiculous to me. It is an obvious stretch to jump from production of an illicit drug to manufacturing chemical weapons. And since when do we prosecute people because they were in the same "association" as someone who committed a crime? McCarthy couldn't have done it better himself.

I don't think that the word "terrorist" should be limited to foreign nationals who illegaly enter the country. There are plenty of examples of domestic terrorism--the Unibomber and the Oklahoma City bombing to cite two. However using anti-terror laws to prosecute criminals just because the prosecutor thinks the regular laws aren't stiff enough? That seems criminal in itself. Not to mention the basic human rights violations that seem to accompany anyone associated with the word "terrorist." This stuff makes me ill.

God is dead

Co-Worker: God is dead.

ChiefJason: No she's not, I just talked to her this morning.

Co-Worker: "Her," huh? What did she say?

ChiefJason: She told me to love you and to die for you.

Co-Worker: Harrumph.

ChiefJason: My sentiments exactly.

Influenza

I have been convalescing for the past four days. I ache all over and have the chills. My nose is stopped and my throat makes me cough. I used to love being sick when I was a kid--who didn't? Who can beat getting to stay home when everyone else is at school? I remember in junior high spending two days straight in my parents big bed reading Dragonlance books. That was nice.

Staying home from work doesn't have the same enjoyment. I'm losing money that I can't afford to lose, I'm getting further behind in my paperwork, and I feel like shit to boot. Sometimes being an adult sucks.

I have made myself Kool-aid and I've watched Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back. Why did they have to make the new ones suck so much? Carrie Fisher is still hot.

I think my brain is going to explode.

**Update--Yeah, so I've been pissing myself all day long. You know when you're sick and you think you've pushed all of the pee out of your wee willy wonka that you can get out, then you zip up your fly and sure enough if there isn't a warm tinkle going down your leg. For fuck's sake! I'm paying for a quart of oil at the gas station, trying to smile at the old lady, while my sickly little guy is leeking urine into my cordoroys. This is not cool.

What if?

An Israeli settler next to an unexploded rocket, following a Palestinian attack on a settlement in the Gaza Strip.

What if the Iroquois were to start fighting back? How long would it take before US citizens stopped complaining about getting a room with two doubles when they specifically reserved a king way back in September?

You Are a Mother Fu**ing Tarantula Fu**er

There. Are you happy. You got Tarantular. You got your Title Field. Why don't you just go back to the Pickle you demanding piece of Mothe* Fuck**g monk*y dung.

Furthermore, did you hear I'm getting married?

WHAT THE FEEZEE (sp?)?

I never understood that expression, or knew its origin.

What I DO understand, though, is that I just wrote a post only to see it disappear. Well, not see it disappear, which would be impossible, but only notice that it is gone. And now, even though the same thing will probably happen again this time, I'm composing in Blogger rather than Word because I'm the definition of insanity.

What I said, real quick, was:
If you want, Chief Jason, you can turn post titles on for each post under the "Settings" tab.

Also, I said I liked the name "Cold Room/Warm Heart" (punctuated like that) for this blog, and that the metaphorical meaning will outlast the winter. If, however, you are looking for a name that is more universal, you could take the greatest name I ever came up with, which is:

Tarantular.

In the deleted post I really built it up. But that's it. "Tarantular" is a really good blog name. While I'm on the subject, does anyone know of a better onomatopoeia in the funnies than "Pifft"?

Finally, I told a story about my dog that I don't feel like going through again.

Thank you.

Driving my Saturn to work today with Interpol coming from my dash, I felt good. Maneuvering myself smoothly between the lines, following the curves with just a touch of my wrist. My bowels were empty and my body relaxed. My feet secure in thick socks and snug boots. My favorite long sleeve shirt. The sun bringing out the green of fields and the reds of bushes and the black of people, I was on top of the world. Surely it is good to be alive today.

Tuesday Morning Thoughts

I often have college and high school to do over. It is the subject of my dreams on a weekly basis. I always have missed class for weeks on end and am afraid to go. I fear the reprimands from the teacher and I fear being so far behind and lost in class. There is usually a subplot that is sometimes exciting and oftentimes unimportant. Sometimes I am in my underwear. A few nights ago I realized I had missed classes for so long that I wondered if it would be better to cut my losses and drop out for the semester. These are issues I never really had in school.

Last night I dreamt I was in college and finals were the next day. I was glad to get them over with. I also dreamt I had a new apartment and was smoking tobacco out of a hooka pipe and a strange woman entered the door asking for Brian. I started running at her and she left. I then toasted myself a bagel and slurried cream cheese upon it.

I love the way Frankenstein depicts intellectual life. Victor is an ambitious and talented student who seems to spend his time toting a stack of books around and taking in a few lectures anytime they’d strike his fancy. “Oh,” he’d say to himself as he passed a bulletin board in the quad, “Professor Paddlebottom is speaking on neuroscience at noon. I’ll have just enough time to sit in before we discuss that new Hegel pamphlet at tea.”

Is that how school used to be? Nowadays it seems my grad school chums keep busy reading dense books and then going to class twice a week, a routine that isn’t nearly as enticing as Victor’s. They’re reading enviably alright, and certainly having lively conversations in the taverns, but how much livelier would the intellectual climate be if universities were completely without structure?

Certainly there are more opportunities to invest myself in Milwaukee’s brainy community. What lectures are open to the public at UW-M? Why haven’t I stopped by the Tolkien exhibit at Marquette? Why don’t I carry a stack of books over to the coffee shop and sit for a spell? The public museum is free on Mondays.

Instead, I’ve become sort of an anti-intellectual who cringes whenever someone mentions Lacan at film viewings. I’m forgetting every nugget of Kierkegaard I used to cherish so that when I ask a Master’s student what he knows about the Dane, I’m shocked to hear a substantial summary (that would surely leave Søren cold) following a statement that he knows almost nothing about the subject. I love the occasions when I used to sneak into academic conferences where I understood almost nothing but still felt the jouissance that comes from—as Alanis Morrisette put it—intellectual intercourse. Those days seem to have come and gone. Now I’m eagerly looking for that bulletin board that Dr. Frankenstein must have strolled up to every morning.

After six or seven years traveling from Harvard to Glasgow to the University of Chicago in post-graduate bliss, Bill Brower confided to me that he felt as though he’d finally earned his bachelor’s degree. Perhaps he was being falsely modest, but I understand the sentiment completely. There was a time when someone was either “college material” or he wasn’t, and there was nothing to be ashamed of either way. I simply don’t think I was, or am, of the higher education breed. After “earning” a BA in English, I feel like I’m just about ready to start my junior year in high school. I’d be a top-notch student, certainly, but I honestly think that’s where I ought to be.

I must have written a horrendous paper for Dr. McGuire in my third year at ONU because she suggested I retake the basic composition class. I was too proud to even consider her suggestion, though, or to even think that she meant it as more than another jab at me on account of how “different” I was. I rarely don’t regret not taking her advice, though, if only to learn not to write sentences like this one. I’d love to have another shot at college, to earn good grades and take valuable internships. I’d love to see where that would put me in today’s job market.

The job market is the real test, unfortunately, because opportunities for academic growth outside of a degree program are rare in my town. All that anyone does is go to art shows and prattle on about Lacan. Maybe I should move to 18th century Ingolstadt, or, I guess, read a book.

Go Philadelphia!

I was taking one of my students to an appointment the other day and we were listening to the Raleigh (pop) hip-hop station, 97.5. I put "pop" in parenthesis because I think that most to all of the mainstream hip-hop is a bunch of shit. Luckily, the NC State independently run station (88.1) plays "underground" hip-hop every weekday from midnight on. I readily admit to being a novice in the area of hip-hop but am quite willing to learn.

At any rate, this song by Destiny's Child came on the radio--the one where they say, "I need a soldier . . ." referring to needing a man or boyfriend or what not. So my student says, "I have a soldier."

"Oh yeah?" I respond.

"Yeah, a soldier can be a boyfriend or a girlfriend."

My first response was to talk about how traditionally a "soldier" had referred to a male of the species, but instead I didn't. I let it rest. I said, "Well that's pretty cool."

I was suprised and impressed that, at least in this immediate teen culture, "soldier" was readily used to refer to both males and females, effectively stripping the common military term of any gender stereotypes. I thought that was pretty damn cool.

When the President Talks to God

I was thinking yesterday about writing how I felt about the Iraqi elections. I was feeling somehow convinced that maybe this was a good thing, that maybe, despite all of the bullshit, despite the war mongering and culture raping and oil stealing, that maybe, just maybe there was some hope in it all. I am not convinced that there is not hope. However I think the hope exists apart from and in spite of the occupying United States military. The 8 million or whatever Iraqi people that chose to participate in this election did so, not because they support the U.S. invading their country, or that they support the democratization and westernization of the Middle East. No, they did so because it symbolized a shred of hope that they had some amount of control over their own future and the future of their home. They are a strong people and a noble people and I feel ashamed for what my country has been doing to them for the past decade or so.

I saw a Bright Eyes show last night. Having never seen a Bright Eyes show before, I came away with the feeling that it probably wasn't the best show that Bright Eyes has ever played. I was, however, swept along with the passion and emotion of Conor Obursts protest songwriting. His song, "When the President talks to God" was fucking amazing! All of the false pride or good feeling I had perhaps felt for what my country was doing with the Iraqi elections quickly evaporated. Here are the lyrics to that song:

When the President talks to God, are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our womens rights, and send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike, when the President talks to God?
When the President talks to God, are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line? Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind, when the President talks to God?
When the President talks to God, does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed? Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed, when the President talks to God?
When the President talks to God, I wonder which one plays the better cop.
"We should find some jobs, the ghetto's broke," "No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't;
just give 'em more liqour stores and dirty coke!" That's what God recommends.
When the President talks to God, do they drink near beer and go play golf while they pick which countries to invade, which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess God just calls a spade a spade when the President talks to God.
When the President talks to God, does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head, when he kneels next to the presidential bed?
Does he ever smell his own bullshit? When the President talks to God?
I doubt it...I doubt it.

Talk about it.