God Dream It!

I'm not an atheist. For me, the jury's out when it comes to the whole 'God' thing. I've always found that every argument is equally compelling for and against His existence, and I'm not really going to go into either, except one.

A little over a week ago, I had a dream that God proved He existed.

Okay, you're saying. That's fine. But how did he prove it? Well, it was basically the plot of the movie Pi, but more personal because it was inside my head. The short of it is that mathematically, things that can be proven and infinite are God's way of saying 'Hello!' Like how Pi is an infinite expression and it's this one perfect imperfect number that makes a perfect shape, a shape that is undoubtedly replicated naturally everywhere just like other patterns and shapes are replicated infinitely in nature (a blood stream resembles tree branches in the winter that resemble the delta of even our most impressive rivers...).

I've thought about this before, so it wasn't a new concept from me. Kind of like in Animal House when Pinto realizes that an atom resembles the solar system when he's high - it's not exactly a religion, but it does get the mind goin'.

So I had this dream, right? And I woke up thinking that from this point I had two explanations for myself.

1) God exists. And He just sent me a personal message proving this or

2) Random synapses were firing in my brain, triggering my own emotional past and a bunch of shit from movies I've seen a few too many times.

If the former is true, and Heaven and Hell and Noah and the Ark exist, then I'll try to be all like "yeah, I believed after that dream, I just didn't wanna get all 'preachy'" but they'll know the truth, 'cause they're angels and shit. So I'll end up in Hell, listening to Kenny G and eating poop burgers for eternity.

If the latter is true, then who gives a shit! I'll be dead and it won't matter.

So I guess I should believe in God for now, until proven otherwise. I don't know if He's as into Us as We are into Him. In my opinion, if there is a God, He doesn't really care all that much about us either way. I put it like this once to Marissa. God is like the inventor of the pretzel. The guy who invented the pretzel just put a knot in some bread, salted it and called it a day. The pretzels today resemble that prototype, and in a way, many of them are almost exact. But then there are other types that are classified as pretzels that more closely resemble chicken wings or cardboard. Or puke.

What I'm saying is that God may have started this whole 'creation' thing, and that would be a reasonable explanation for how everything got here, but the 'why' may have just been an accident, and He may not have even noticed we're here yet, evolving into the terrible beings we have become.

That might be why come 2012, the Mayans predict the world will end. God would look down and be all "Holy shit, where'd all this come from? Sorry about that, Earth. Fuckin' Devil and his pointy tail and horns. I'll fix this." And then the oceans will swallow the sky and that will be that.

The Greatest Show on Earth

I'm not one for professional sports. Or, for that matter, sports at all. I plan on having a quiet night at home on Superbowl Sunday and sports might play a part inasmuch as the cats might wrestle or something. That would be nice.

This whole Superbowl thing. I mean, I don't even see the merit in "watching it for the commercials" any more. I'm not the only person who won't be watching The Big Game, of course. There's homeless people, hipsters, foreigners and the mentally-challenged, to name a few. We non-Bowlies also probably don't go head-over-heels for other culturally-defining events like, the State of the Union Address or American Idol, but I digress. I would say the homosexuals aren't into the game, but come on. This is a huge spectacle, Christina Aguilera is singing the Star-Spangled Banner, there's going to be a half-time show with the Black Eyed Peas and to top it off, Football is just about the gayest sport out there (just close your eyes and listen to the announcers for ten minutes and TRY not to think of it with homoerotic undertones).

But really, what AM I trying to say?

I meant to segue from 'I don't like sports' to 'The Harlem Globetrotters put on one hell of a show.' So let's just assume I did just that and move on.

I took the wife to see the famed comedy/basketball team last night and, well... It. Was. AMAZING. I surprised her with tickets after taking her out for sushi and we both loved every minute. Not because it was the best thing we'd ever seen, but in the same way you just have to appreciate the movie 'Blade.' Is it the best movie ever? No. Will you ever forget Wesley Snipes delivering the line "Some mothafuckas always be tryin' to ice-skate uphill" for no apparent reason? Also no.

So let's backtrack for a second. When the wife and I were just boyfriend and girlfriend, we were in line at the Bagel Grove and saw the next month's list of Utica events on a calendar. I asked, "If you had to, which of these would you want to see if you could only pick one?" Almost immediately, she replied 'The Harlem Globetrotters,' and then added that she also was pretty unfamiliar with what she answered. I told her a little about the event and she was very interested. Unfortunately, this was six years ago and for one reason or another, we had never gotten a chance to see the self-proclaimed 'World Famous' basketball team.

So last night, I surprised her. We were both very, very excited when we got to the Utica Memorial Auditorium and even happier when we saw that our seats were fucking PRIMO.

If you have never seen the Globetrotters, put it on your 'life list.' If you don't have a 'life list,' get a piece of paper and a pen, write 'LIFE LIST' on the top and then in the left-hand margin (your left, not the paper's) write the number one. Circle that number. Then to the right of that number just write 'Harlem Globetrotters.' Now underline it. You may repeat that last step for emphasis. Don't worry, when you find this list later, you'll know precisely what it means.

Okay, I don't want to spoil it for you Globetrotter virgins, but let me tell you, these guys can play some fucking basketball! And what showmanship! What I liked most about it as an adult was noticing the subtle actions by the refs, the team managers, and most of all, the Washington Generals. How embarrassing it must be to be a General. Getting booed all night, every night, and never winning a game. Oh well, they should probably just fire their coach. It was his fault we were booing them. The nerve of him accurately describing the condition of our fair city - comparing it to a toilet and saying we should be embarrassed to live here. Yeah it's true, but it's like he wasn't even trying to get on our good side. I'm glad they lost. They played like shit anyway. All the 'Trotters (I'm allowed to use that word because I've seen them) literally dribbled circles around them. I'm surprised how close the game ended up though.

The best part of all was the complete disregard for every basketball rule I had ever learned. And right in the middle of a play, there would be 'bits,' like the "steal-the-purse-from-a-spectator" bit and the "skip-across-the-court-with-a-little-girl" bit that I remember from when I was a kid, but what I appreciated most was a prize. See, during one of the longer breaks from the action, this man came up and if he succeeded in making a lay-up, a free-throw, and a three-pointer, he would win....

A ticket to ANYWHERE in the Continental United States...

on a Greyhound bus.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty inconvenient prize. I mean, if it were me, I would probably just take it to Albany or something. I don't really want to be on a bus, even a nice bus, for too long. Do people even still take the bus? Not that there's anything wrong with taking the bus, but at least give this guy a headband or something. But he made the shots. Surprisingly enough, the one he had the most trouble with was the lay-up.

Is that how you type 'lay-up'? I mean, that's what I've been writing, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. I didn't look it up, and 'layup' just looks wrong.

So on to the moral of this story. Just go see the World Famous Harlem Globetrotters some day and experience it for yourself. I mean, what else are you going to do on a Wednesday night during a blizzard on Groundhog's Day?

The Music of the Masses

I just went to lunch at Nola's Cafe in Clinton. It was delicious.

Being married, I haven't had the opportunity to sit alone and have lunch all that much. It's always expected of me to go with the wife, you know, out of common courtesy and all that. I love going out with my wife. We love each other and she's just a pleasant human being to have lunch with. But lately I haven't had the time to dine alone and I forgot how much I enjoy it.

There have been periods of my life which I was utterly alone, and being alone for most of the time makes you not appreciate the times when it's just delightful. When you live alone, go to the movies alone, drive to work alone, have no one to talk to and eat alone, it's not that special. Yes, of course there are friends - I don't mean to say that I wasn't surrounded by friends and family when I wanted, but I didn't notice how swell loneliness can be when I was utterly consumed by it.

What struck me today was, for the first time in a while, I heard people as an orchestra surrounding me, and I haven't heard that in a long time.

Let me explain.

When I first started going out, drinking and, naturally, smoking a bit of weed, I would just sit on a leather couch on the second floor of Space 26 (Utica's most non-'Utica' bar and because of that, Utica's most 'Utica' bar too) and listen to the crowd. Above the dance music the conversations of a room of 50 sounded like a song of its own. The women pitched low and high with whatever story they felt compelled to shout to one another blended with the men loudly requesting another drink from the bartender, all with greetings and introductions of friends to make one seemingly endless verse with no chorus.

It wasn't exactly something you could tap your toes to, but all this nonsense was certainly something that passed the time. And it only worked when I didn't focus in on any words in particular. If I recognized or heard one sentence or conversation above the others, it just didn't sound right. This wasn't a concerto; it was a symphony.

Anyway, this was something I would do when I just wanted to be away from all the stories I'd heard ten times before or avoiding that person from High School who's name I forgot. It was something that was mine that I could half-drunkenly stumble to and smirk about alone on the couch. I explained this to one of my friends once and after she laughed at me, I saw in her eyes that she recognized what I had heard. I think people always assumed I was depressed up there, but in actuality I was happier than I was at most times. It was a discovery of mine, but like most discoveries of the 21st Century, it's probably already been discovered a number of times.

I never forgot about this real-life orchestra, but it moved behind all the other stuff I've concerned myself with throughout the years.

Today, I heard it again while I was enjoying a book at Nola's. At first it was the usual eavesdropping of inane conversations, like "You just wouldn't believe what my Shawn can do now..." and "It's pretty cold out, huh?..." and so on. When I got into my book, the words around me blended together and I heard the unintended music.

Well, I have to get to work.

I would not have published this blog, but perhaps your standards aren't quite as high as mine. And I told myself that this year I would post more often, because I won't improve my writing unless I actually write something that's not an e-mail.

Was there more to this story? Did I leave any loose ends?

It doesn't matter. What matters is I posted, and I feel damn good about it.

And yeah, I admit to smoking weed for a period of time in my life. I can talk about it now though, because I can pass a drug test, and because smoking weed now just gives me the inspiration to clean my apartment to the point where I'm not stoned any more. And that's not very fun so I stopped.

I usually try to wrap up these posts with something that brings in the story full-circle. Guess that's not going to happen. I'm really out of practice.

Just Looking.

How many applications am I going to send out before someone shows any interest? Of the dozens of resumes and cover letters, I've gotten maybe two or three interviews. And those, I feel, are only polite responses to organizations where I have connections. It's gotten to the point where I am brutally honest in the first paragraph of my cover letters, immediately admitting the fact that I have very little chance of landing this job but am applying on nothing more than a whim. It's like I'm window-shopping on my future. I've applied at banks, libraries, production companies and news organizations. So far, it's still retail.

On top of all that, my video production has hit a roadblock. I bought a new MacBook Pro to edit with and my software is too old to be used on that machine. Now, I have to buy a newer version of Final Cut Pro that will end up costing around $300! Gah!

I suppose that's enough complaining for now, internet. I could go on, but I'll keep it to professional issues for now. But if you only knew what I was going through on top of all this...
all this pain makes me understand Buddhism. But it's not like I'm suffering like the people of Haiti before or after the earthquake. Again, if I put it into a bigger perspective, my problems seem pretty insignificant and self-centered.

I should really blog more. Looking at the amount of posts annually, I'm in a steady decline. Maybe if I typed through all my shit, I'd feel better than I do just stewing in it. Even if nobody reads this, it's the most therapeutic thing I know.

Until next time, this has been one unhappy dude.

Mostly Vegetarian

I'm an impressionable guy with strong convictions. It may be hard to win me over, but once you do, I can be pretty committed to whatever it is you were arguing for in the first place. More often than not, it isn't conversation or movies that win me over - it's books.

Two of the most important books, at least in my life so far, have been the Communist Manifesto and the Tao Te Ching. Both are hardly long enough to be called books, more like "manifestoes," and are brilliant because of their vagueness. By not getting too specific about anything, they are very relatable to life in every era. Neither are perfect, but both have changed my view of the world and had a deep impact on who I am as a person.

But these aren't the only books that have had an impact on me. From time to time, I come across one that really gets me to thinking; whether it's opening my eyes to the life of a boy in the Sudan (What Is the What) or making me question religious dogma or war (Cat's Cradle), completing a good book makes me (in my own mind at least) a better person.

This time, a book has really had an affect on me enough to change my daily habits, and because of it, I'm mostly vegetarian. I know that by using the qualifier "mostly" I'm leaving some space to slip up, but I don't think it's like being a "mostly" non-smoker or anything. I'm just cutting out all meat that has possibly been produced in a factory farm.

So this book that got me thinking is called "Eating Animals," and is something that I would never have picked up had it not been for the author, whose two previous novels "Everything Is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" are everything I want in a book and then some. Jonathan Safran-Foer, wherever he is, has had more of an impact on my life than my college education (and cheaper, too!). Back to this book, it's basically an investigative piece into the practice of factory farming, which is so bad for everything I can't even bring myself to finish off the bacon in my freezer. Foer also goes into the reasons behind his own diet and argues for and against both sides.

But this isn't a book review. That's just what got me started on my new and exciting lifestyle. No, I'm not even being sarcastic about the "new" and "exciting" parts. Every time I eat, I think about every ingredient and get excited about finding new foods. I even tried to cook the other night! (Of course, it took me about twenty minutes to mince garlic and thankfully, Marissa came to my rescue and worked the food processor for me. Thanks, Marissa.)

I just want to say this right now. I'm not a vegetarian. I'm still a sucker for a good piece of cheese, a hard-boiled egg and even a burger. I just need to make sure all those things come from a local farm where the chickens and cows aren't treated like commodities and the bottom line has nothing to do with saving (and making) money and more on what's healthy. I have never been an animal activist, and this lifestyle doesn't even require me to be one. There are so many reasons to care about where my meat comes from that caring about animals being slaughtered (humanely) is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider the cost of a dozen eggs at Wal-Mart. They're a dollar. And those eggs are already more healthy than those used in fast-food restaurants, which are even healthier than those used in elementary school cafeterias. But even Hannaford eggs are made from chickens who are forced to be pregnant throughout their entire (extremely short and disease-ridden) lives, and who are given no more than the size of your computer monitor's space to live their (painful, antibiotic-filled) lives. The ones that "live," anyway. The unlucky (see also: lucky) ones that don't make it to the cages are simply discarded in an incinerator or buried in mass graves. Ever drive past Tyson Chicken or Purdue? I have. It smells terrible. That's the smell of recently deceased chickens being set on fire mixed with tons (literally) of chicken shit with no long-term plan to take care of it other than to pile it into one place then start a new pile. Of course, Tyson and Purdue don't use their chickens for eggs. These chickens are pumped full of grain and antibiotics to make the chickens grow extremely large and fast, the growth of which is too fast for their tiny bones to catch up and causes what looks like an adult on a two-month-old body. Just think about a three-year-old kid being the size of a teenager. Do you think that kid would require medical attention, especially for all of his broken bones caused from his enormous, Mark McGwire-sized biceps? That's what those antibiotics are for! Just pump a bunch of those into his system and hope for the best. If he dies, well, then he's only in that unlucky (see also: lucky) 25% category that die before they're ready for slaughter. This is how 99(.9)% of the chickens we eat in America are raised, and that's how it saves you money making eggs a dollar a dozen and chicken nuggets on the dollar menu!

Trying to finish the meat in my freezer, Marissa cooked me a cornish game hen, a term which has no meaning when a Purdue wrapper is on the animal before cooking it. I tried to eat it but could not.

Trying to finish the bacon for the same reason, I thought of a pregnant sow, who like the egg-laying chicken is forced to be pregnant her entire life and confined to a cage that she can't even stand up in. Did you know that pigs have been proven to be as smart as dogs? Probably, but you forget about that when bacon is around. Do you think piglets are cute? And I know they're not as big as their brothers and sisters, but don't you think the runts are cute too? I'm not going to tell you what factory "farmers" do to the runts, who are obviously not given the same treatment as another pig who will undoubtedly grow larger than a runt. I don't know what's worse in this situation - ending the life of a suffering animal when it begins or after it has lived out its life (not a natural span, just a few months - enough for the animal to get fat enough) in pain and suffering in a cage with no sunlight.

So you know how on traditional "family" farms, cows and pigs and chickens shit and that in turn grows crops that they eat and so on... Well, on a factory "farm," where there is no grass for the animals to eat, and the animals are all crowded into fields, this shit ends up in big piles. These piles do more for global warming than cars. And yet, we're "trying" to change our habits on cars. Why? Because it costs us less to get more mileage.

But eating meat more consciously will not cost us less, so why should we change our habits? Well, eating meat more consciously will cost you more if you get sick from it. Remember the Avian "Bird" Flu? Guess where that came from? And the swine flu? And e-coli and '24-hour stomach bugs?'

You guessed it. Factory Farms. This is the price we're paying. Not at the store, but in hospitals and in our futures.

But you probably knew this already.

I know I knew most of this already, yet I never let myself think about it because it tasted so good. As a vegetarian band-mate of mine said as I attempted to tease him while cutting into a steak, "There's more to life than taste." I still thought he was crazy at the time, knowing that animals were harmed for the food to be in front of me, but blissfully, purposely ignorant of how it got to the table.

Do I want you to be a vegetarian too? No. Do whatever you want. I just thought I should share all this with you because I wish someone had shared it all with me. And if you find that any of the information I shared with you today isn't factual, please correct me. I didn't look any of the numbers up - I just finished that book and watching "Food, Inc." and it's pretty fresh in my mind.

So yeah, for everyone who questions my newest lifestyle choice, this is why.