Just Scratchin' My Chin, Thinkin'

Why is it that the nation is captivated by the two injured--blowed up--ABC guys, the anchor and the cameraman? That's just two people. My count has close to 2300 US military personnel killed in the past 2+ years in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet no one has followed any of them this closely, excpeting, of course, Ultimate American Hero Pat Tillman. Why is it two media guys get so much coverage when a PFC or a lieutenant gets just about nothing?

Why is it that Dennis Hastert is so fired up now about introducing and shepherding through Congress a heap of anti-corruption legislation, yet when the same program came before him last year, before Libby and Abramoff and Scanlon and Cunningham and the other greasy, lying felons had gotten what they deserved, he had no interest in the issue? That's a politician for you.

The Administration attempts to say that the illegal warrantless electronic surveillance that's been in place for years now is okay, because the President can do whatever he wants. It's because FISA is not structured to meet the new needs of a new age that it's okay to openly flout it. But excuse me, it's still the law, and it's still a crime to break it. Drinking was illegal during Prohibition, and those caught with liquor were punished. Until the law was repealed, then the exact same practice was then legal. If the Administration believes FISA is wrong and outdated, then fix the law, then you'll be in compliance with the Law of the Land. Until then, it has been and remains illegal activity. What I see is total power giving way almost inexorably to impunity, and the will to exploit that impunity. Bastards.

Thinkin' 'Bout the Afterlife

If there's an afterlife, will I see my old golden retriever? And will we be able to communicate? At first blush, this sounds like the greatest, coolest thing ever. I still miss that dog, thinking about her even this morning as I drove to work, and she's been gone since the summer of 1998. She was a great dog, the best I've ever had, and I really do miss her.

But if we're reunited in the afterlife, what are we going to talk about? I'll pet her and hug her, and then she'll ask me why I left her with the in-laws when I had to leave the country for a year and a half, and she died without ever seeing me again. She'll ask me why I didn't take her along, if I thought that highly of her. Being as smart as I always gave her credit for, she'll really press me, and I expect that she'll probably be pretty huffy about it, maybe even downright pissed off. Do I really want that in the afterlife?

If the afterlife is about paradise, are we all in for these kinds of confrontations? I'll be reunited with my grandmother, an absolute saint and probably one of the best and most kind humans I've ever encountered, and that will be really great, but what are we going to talk about? Will I tell her about my college partying, and that post-tequila morning when I woke up literally in my own squat and urine, my face molecularly bonded to a table with my own sick? Uh, probably not, right? Will she talk to me all about her ladies group up there in the afterlife, the celestial quilts they've been making? Yeah, maybe, but I don't think I could bear eternity hearing about that.

Will I find my beloved lost pocket knife in the afterlife? Or will I at last know where it went? Will I find out if that 4th grade buddy really did steal my money that day or not (I STILL suspect him, the bastard!)? Will I get the readout of all of the men my ex-wife slept with while married to me? Will I really even care about that?

Will I get to know the answers to all of the mysteries that Life held? Who killed JFK? Why can't Madonna act? Where's Elvis? What happened to Amelia Earheart? What is the formula for Coca-Cola? Where and who and what was the Missing Link? Why can't the French be civil and polite? Nessie and Bigfoot and Sasquatch and Yeti? Where's Marcos' and Cortez's gold? What is the one true religion? What is our purpose?

And is there a gatekeeper for the answers to these secrets/mysteries? Do I have to grease a celestial palm or kiss a galactic ass to get an answer? If so, how and who and why?

If there's an afterlife, maybe I can get off the planet and do a bit of exploring. I'd love to see the surface of the planets, pick up and toss a moon rock, ride a comet around the sun, see if there if life on Mars or Titan or Europa or Io. Then zap on out of the solar system and go exploring through the galaxy a bit. But how do I get there? Do I physically move, or do I just wish it/think it, and bam I'm there? How fast do I go? How fast does a 'soul' travel? Is it instantaneous, or is it the speed of life, or a scientifically realistic near-speed of light? If I don't know what's out there in the universe, how can I just zap myself to that place? If I don't know the destination, then how do I get there? If I'm traveling at the speed of light, it's going to take 50,000 years just to get to the center of the galaxy. We're talking eternity, after all, so it's not like I'm on a schedule, but I think there'd be ample time in there to develop just a small bit of boredom. I mean, will there be an in-flight movie? Chips and soda? Some board or card games to keep me occupied?

If I'm out there in space, bopping around as a soul, what if I do encounter extraterrestrial, that is, other-than-Earthly life? Do they get souls, and will we meet up in the post-life ether? Do we communicate, or do we fight?

If there's an afterlife, I'd love to see a black hole, or at least get a feel for what one might manifest itself as. If I'm a soul, do I escape the gravity of a black hole, or do I get sucked through? If so, where do I end up? In another heaven, the Evil Heaven? Is the soul vulnerable to the tidal and gravitational and energy forces and levels that exist out there in the greater universe? Will I be okay?

And then where does the universe end? Can I wish or zap my soul-self to the physical end of the universe? If so, what's there? Is it endless blackness, just space where the physical remnants of the Big Bang have yet to spread? Where does it end? Or if it doesn't end, do I get the answer to my question of why? Do any of my questions get answered? If so, who does the answering?

And do I get to move around in time in the afterlife? Can I move forward or backward in time? Does time have any meaning at all to an eternal soul? Can I pop myself back to the beginning of time and witness the Big Bang? Can I see what it was all about before there was a reality, before a universe existed?

In all of this I wonder about the existence of God; how can you help it? Does God run this big post-life show as well? If so, doesn't that make him awfully busy? Too many questions, with no indications of any answers at all, nothing to offer but "Just believe," and "Have faith." Sorry, but that's just not good enough. Until the Hubble Space Telescope returns a photo with a benevolent paternal face peering back at us through the countless eons of time and reality, I'll just have to keep asking and hoping for some kind of validation some day.

But I don't think it will happen.

"God Is Mad At America"

More ridiculous, self-aggrandizing Godspeak, this time from the overwhelmed and increasingly pathetic mayor of What Used to Be New Orleans. He's gotten the word, apparently, that God is mad at America, and that hurricanes are the way The Big Man is communicating that anger. So Ray Nagin joins the legions of shameless opportunistic public figures who invoke God to get people's attention.

Hmmm, I don't rember Nagin making too much mention of God when he was cursing the State of Louisiana, the federal government, and everyone else who wouldn't give him the help he was demanding (and deserved/still deserves). No God then, so why is it coming up now? He must be up for reelection, or a tough lay-off announcement is coming, something like that.

So Nagin joins the ranks of the ridiculous and marginalized, the hateful and pathetic, the Pat Robertsons and the Usama bin Ladens, those who have unique divine insight, who know what God is thinking, who somehow have plugged into the Grand Plan.

How is it Ray knows that God is mad at America? Since he's the mayor of What's Left Of New Orleans, I'd have to assume he'd keep his rhetoric confined to his constituency, the people to who he answers, for whom he is responsible, and whom he directly represents. I'd even stretch this out to the larger N.O. metropolitan area, since his public persona and responsibilities do in fact reach beyond just the city limits. But how is it he's talking about the USofA? Where's his legitimacy for such a statement? Sorry, but I can't see a deep and long-term commitment to his religious beliefs as a way to open the door to such statements.

Oh, yeah, and God's mad at black Americans, too. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's why the black communities of the US have been hit by so many repeated natural disasters, right? Like the Midwest wildfires? Nope, that's mostly white folks. Like California rain and landslides? Nope, that's mostly EVERYONE! What a ridiculous, hyperbolic statement. But then again, the guy's a goddamn politician--it's his job to bend and twist and obscure and speak to emotion, rather than deal in truth and facts.

And God's mad about the Iraq war. Yeah, that and hurricanes really go together. Sure, God ought to be mad about the Iraq war, what with all of the lying and cover-ups and innocent deaths and horrific injuries. If he were, though, I'd think he'd give Cheney another heart attack or drop a twister on the White House, maybe even Crawford, but we're not seeing any of that. If God were assed up over the Iraq war, I think he'd be a little bit more direct in his expressions of displeasure.

And Ray continued: "It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans - the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," the mayor said. "This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans." So, if I'm interpreting this correctly, this vision would be one of a future city of and by and for blacks? I can't help but note that this is a surprisingly racist statement. But I guess it was okay to think that, and say it out loud, since it was MLK Day, after all.

Yeah, Ray, it's hurricanes. If God were mad at us, why is it hurricanes? Pat Robertson said it way back in the late 1990s that gay pride events would invite hurricanes to Florida. Why do you think he said that? Because, the smarmy sonofabitch knew/knows that Florida is an annual hurrican victim, and he'd most likely get a hit or two, which would vindicate him and allow him to continue to falsely evoke God in his racist, homophobic, self-loathing spume.

So what would God throw at us if he were mad? The Bible talks about fire from the sky, the Angel of Death slamming the Egyptians, locusts, plague, blood from the sky, pillars of fire, that kind of thing. So far, I'm not seeing that in the US. Or, maybe God could just reach on down and touch the hollow heart of Bush and make him see the errors of his ways. That would fix it all up, but it hasn't happened. Or God would zap us down the perfect candidate for the 2008 presidential election, but you know we're not going to get that either. Or, God could buy some time on the national networks and hold a brief statement with some Q&A to address why he's mad at America and what we can do to fix it all up.

But we haven't seen any of that, nothing like it. No remorse from the administration, just more of the same, now tearing down historic buildings at the Nationial Observatory just to make some more room for their own activities. No sense of shame, no admissions of wrong or guilt. Not even admissions of mistakes, or choosing wrong paths for apparently good reasons. Not the slightest hint of self-questioning, just unwavering, vicious forward momentum. I'd think God would make things pretty clear, if he were God, after all. It's not like he's wanting for access or power or influence.

Believe me, if God were genuinely mad at us, mad enough to actually do something about it, we'd know it.

That Infuriating Fuck-Up Kid

I like being a Scout leader. My dad did it when I was a kid, and I remember my time with him doing this fondly. I remember he did a lot of cool stuff with me and the Scouts, as the pack leader to boot. He was a busy guy, a really busy professional guy, but he took that on and did a great job . . . Wow, am I just now recognizing that I'm trying to emulate my dad in doing this, that I'm maybe trying to re-create the pride I have in my father now with my own son, planting the seeds now of future memory? Whatever . . . all I know is that I like being with my boy and doing Scout stuff, teching him and a handful of his buddies about stuff they would not otherwise know. And I even pick up things along the way. They seem to enjoy the time we spend together, and the parents seem grateful, too.

But every time we have a meeting that's attended by this one kid, I come home and have to rant to the wife about him. As indelicately as I can make this, the kid is a fuck-up. He's not a nerd or a dork or a spaz or a dweeb, not a jerk or a twit, or even a terror or a horror. He's just a fuck-up, that's it. His pattern of fuck-up-ness is basically set for life already, at the age of 7 he's set for an entire lifetime of fuck-up-itude. This kid is an idiot, a sadly ignored little jackass who thinks he's funny and cool, and doesn't have the tact or basic politeness to sit and listen to someone trying to help him out, or the brains to sort through what might be useful to him and then take it onboard. He's never been taught any manners, and it's clear he does whatever he wants to do at home, and expects the same kind of treatment everywhere he goes. It's obvious he gets no parental attention, especially the crucial "no you may not..." kind. The kid drives me absolutely nuts, every time I encounter him.

And why is this kid this way? It's Mom and Dad, of course. They don't give a shit about the kid, and that much is obvious. They're too into their own thing, what they're doing and have scheduled. Mom called me one Saturday to apologize that he didn't make it to a Scout event, so sorry that Kid didn't come to the Saturday event because, after all, she had a scheduled coffee with her girlfriends, and there was, you know, just no way she'd miss that. Not the slightest bit of creativity on the part of the parents in getting what the boy might want or need, not the slightest bit of putting aside the adult selfishness for the sake of the child. Not the slightest bit of realization that what we do now creates the future of our children. Who knows if he'll remember this when he's 40, but I can guarantee that Mom and Dad probably wouldn't want him to remember how their event was more important than his on a Saturday morning.


This is kind of what I'm working with, except in a small 7 year-old.

Hell, the kid shows up to meetings with food and dirt on his face, and dirty clothes, dirty shoes. No jacket. His parents don't even check him to see if he's presentable before he leaves the house. His hands are dirty, all the time, making him look just plain grubby. His uniform is a joke, a hand-me-down from an older brother, and Mom and Dad have done nothing to get the uniform in order. The kid was awarded advancement patches for his uniform over 7 months ago, and they still haven't been sewn on. The patches are iron-on, and they haven't even been ironed on. The Korean cleaner/tailor is right up the street, and can get those patches on in the space of two days, for only a slightly expensive $7.00 each. I have sent out reminder after reminder about how the uniform is to be configured and worn, and this kid never looks right. No, I don't expect him to do this himself; I expect his parents to do it for him, and to have him help or to at least learn from it. After all, this is part of Scouts, learning to wear a uniform, take pride in appearance, take pride in accomplishments, that kind of thing. This kid takes pride in nothing but his stupid attempts at clowning around, his lame attempts to hang with the boys who are much more mature and clued-in than he is. His parents' actions show me they have no pride in him, and he therefore has none in himself.

I've told him again and again how to wear the uniform, how to put on his hat, to tuck in his shirt, to buckle his belt, all of these things, and he never does it. He just ignores me, which is another indicator of what his parents have taught him, more correctly have not taught him. It's always starting from scratch, every meeting. The only difference from last year is the color of his uniform and scarf now. It's like talking to a wall with this kid. Damn, he can't even remember, a 2nd grader now at age 7, which hand to salute and shake with, the difference between his right and his left. He doesn't even know how to tie his shoes.

And last night was the kicker. Mom storms back in to the school cafeteria after the den meeting had broken up, about 4 parents and 4 boys left, literally flushed with her belligerent, righteously indignant attitude, puffing herself up for the confrontation, demanding, just flat-out demanding everyone return to the cafeteria. I was immediately worried, thinking there was a safety problem in the parking lot, maybe the horsing-around boys broke something in the school office foyer. Nope, not so. A couple of the boys had called her son a nickname, and she and the son didn't like it. Okay, bad nicknames can be cruel, and I was set for the worst. Nope, not the case at all. It wasn't even vulgar or derogatory, just an exceedingly common and alliterative nickname linking the kid's common name to a very popular national-chain food product. And she got all bent out of shape about that. My first reaction was to say, "This company and its slogan were around 7 years ago when your son was named--by you and your husband--didn't you think that this might eventually come up?" but instead I looked each boy in the eye, told them appropriately seriously enough to please not call him that name anymore, and that was that. Ugly little confrontation over, crisis averted.

But seriously. If you name your kid Bart, he's going to be called "Fart." If you name your kid Cletus, it'll be "penis" and eventually probably some kind of derivation of "clitoris." If you name your kid Richard, he's a dick and a dicky for life. If your daughter is Prudence, she'll be a prude and a prune. If she's Penny, she'll be Skinny Penny, whatever. If you name your kid William, he'll be a willy and a willie and a Billy and a silly willy Billy-boy and any other idiotic permutation you can come up with. If you name your kid Zarflorflington, he'll be "Barf-lorflington" before he hits third grade. This is the nature of kids, of people. They make these aural and mental connections automatically, it's what humans do, recognize and discern and create patterns. (Hell, what's the worst is to be so invisible, so meaningless as to not have a nickname. If you've got one, at least they know you're around, and are paying attention, some kind of attention to you.) These things come out whether bidden or not. It's absolutely inevitable. So if you name your kid after a major US national-chain food product, then what in the holy hell do you expect once he starts to grow up? You should be smart enough to think ahead and know it's coming. If you and the boy don't like it, then develop strategies to deal with it. Or don't name him that in the first place. Just think of the kid named Chuck, eh?

And you can guarantee, I didn't have to say a word to the four other boys sitting in that cafeteria when Mom made her huffy little rant about her boy's name. Even at 7 and 8, they're certainly old enough to see how Mommy came charging to his stupid defense, ordering them to leave her little baby alone. I watched the other boys, my son included, giving each other looks, communicating wordlessly what they thoght about the situation. So, which is worse, telling people to stop calling your boy a harmless nickname, or jumping in there and demonstrating to everyone, boy and adult alike, that he's a spoiled little mama's boy? Yeah, she did more damage in his defense than if he'd just taken the good-natured ribbing, and in the process matured a bit, and in turn even gained some respect from the other boys. How is she going to shield him at school the next day from the name-calling? How is she going to protect him when he's a 17 year-old high school student? How is she going to live for him when he's an adult? Let the boy grow up on his own; anticipate and plan, and help him out with ways to deal with what you know is coming, then let him live his life on his own, and accept that sometimes it'll be painful or unpleasant. That's parenting, and that's the nature of growing up. It's not all sweetened cereal and Disney cartoons.

I can't think of any other kid, in all my interactions in Scouts or in kiddie sports that I just want to grab and get him clued-in. I want to grab him by the collar, look him in the eye and tell him to get his shit together, shape up, and start growing up. No hitting, but a good jerk, maybe a shake or two, to get his goddamn attention and get him into the mode of paying attention. I really believe that's all it would take with this kid, to be jarred and forced to mature with the rest of the crew. Why do you think he was picked on last night? Because he's a grubby, baby-talking fuckup who can't dress himself and who doesn't know right from left, who wears his uniform worse than the 1st graders do, and who doesn't seem to care about any of these things. And Momma got upset by this with her little rampage, breathless, red-faced, all about the hated nickname she and Dad unthinkingly put on the kid when they filled out his birth certificate? She gets upset by that!?

One less kid for mine to compete with.

Thinking Big, Feeling Small

Or more correctly, trying to think big. Just check out the hundreds of stunning images at the Astronomy Photo of the Day (APOD): ; this is my point of departure.

How can anyone with the most basic sense of logic and common sense view these images and not come away with a feeling of awe and wonder? They are visually spectacular, just fantastic images, the colors and structure and flow and even hints at fractals making them art even. But then think for just a few seconds about what we're seeing. For example, take a look at the Snake Nebula (). Read the little note and see that we're looking at an image that's "a few" light years across. Okay, we'll take "a few" to mean a conservative "3." That's only 17,635,499,437,497 miles wide (note that this figure is working in the realm of trillions). By comparison, our moon is about 238,855 miles away and our sun is about 93 million miles away.

And the nebula itself is only "about 650" light years away. Okay, that's 3,821,024,878,124,350 miles on out there (this figure is operating in the quadrillion range). Remember, this a distance at which it has taken light about 650 years just to reach us (light coming from the sun takes just a few minutes).

Just for a bit more perspective, jumping way back down to working with 'just' billions: A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it (the bastards). (Thanks to my bruddahs at Punahou, for this )

This is just a tiny exploration of the cosmic, bascially unimaginable scale on which the universe, that is REALITY takes place. Just the APOD photos of the Earth from orbit, let alone the moon are enough to make me feel small and insignificant. But for others with a bigger mind and ego and sense of self-worth, the photos of distant galaxies and other extragalactic structures ought to be enough to clue you in to your relative size and importance and significance. I meaan, there are photos of entire galaxies colliding and tearing apart, of multi-light year distances of matter and space being devoured by massive black holes and other voracious cosmic bodies that we simply don't understand. Hell, there's one at the center of our own galaxy, driving its spin, making its light, making the whole thing essentially work.

So how does this play into beliefs in religion? How does one reconcile Christian belief in Genesis and the origin of all reality when it's proven conclusively that light we are witnessing from the farthest regions of observable space originates from tens of billions of years ago? How does that jibe with Adam and Eve 6000-odd years ago?

Without rambling on and on, all these photos do is show how unbelievably small and truly insignificant we as humans are. It shows us how small and meaningless our planet is in an observable universe of countless galaxies containing countless trillions of stars, any number of which might contain a dozen or a few thousand or another billion planets full of critters or people or intelligent beings who love and cherish their children just as much as we do.

Just a few million miles out there, in the cosmic neighborhood are asteroids and chunks of rock and ice and space rubble that might just smash this planet into a lifeless husk. There is ample evidence of that, on this planet and on all other observable bodies. Life in the universe is extremely fragile, and just looking at a few of these photos is enough to place that thought into your mind, and keep it there.

So, what then must we do? Well, live your life and think about the transience of it all. The sun won't burn out tomorrow, but for all we know about our solar system, it could all go haywire next week or next year or 100 years from now. A previously unobserved asteroid could emerge from deep space and in just a few months or weeks slam into us and kill every single one of us, likely thereby rendering this blog largely unreadable. Life in the universe is short and capricious and vicious and random. Nobody is exempt and no one gets out alive. Keep that in mind, and live a little bit like you're thinking about that.