Atheist Meditations

Twas the Night Before Christmas Eve,
And I'm kinda bored.

With fifty-one and a half hours to go,
before into my belly several beers get poured.



Eh.

Guess I'm just not in a blogging mood.

December has seemed to race by. Yesterday, when Cin and I were cleaning up before having some family over today I found the little note I had sketched out with the title, 'Kitchen by Christmas.' I had done a little drawing of how I envisioned the kitchen might look after some renovation, and then had some bullet points about work to be done. I think the whole Idea came to me one morning as I was waiting for the coffee-maker.

Nice to find an old Idea-note and have seen it through to fruition.

In the last month and some change we have, repaired and painted all the walls (Northern Star, a nice Sherwin Williams color, a stately blueish-gray), painted the ceiling, replaced all the switchplates with groovy brushed nickel ones; puttied, caulked, primed and painted all the trim and baseboards ( with two coats of sexy oil-based white paint ) and made a few cosmetic alterations to the kitchen cabinets. That was step one. Next I divided the cabinets into four quadrants, prepping, priming, and laboriously applying two coats of that same said oil paint to each of them. Completely taking over the kitchen for a shift and then returning everything back to my 35 gallon tupperware storage bin where the materials were safe from marauding kittens.

Many nights in the last few weeks I came home a bit early from work to dive right into painting cabinets again. I can't believe I'm done and I can count the imperfections on one hand. The cabinets were old and mis-matched to begin with, if we were the kind of folks that just throw money at problems, I'm sure the entire cabinetry would have been gutted, for about $500.00 in materials and 80 - 100 hours of labor, we've come a long ways.

Hang some shelves, replace the hood fan over the stove, re-organize and clean like fiends. Feels good to be done.

Still got a window and a back door to paint ( I convinced Cin that it's too cold for the paint to cure ), and we measured for some new counter-tops this afternoon. No rest for the wicked, but I will be taking a few weeks off.

The old wrist has been acting up again, too much painting. . . Trying to lay off the typing till the carpel tunnel symptoms recede. Suppose I could mention that at my physical next month (having good health insurance is a trip), but I don't like doctors. That's a hold-over from my youthful rebellion, if I want to live my dream of staying gorgeous into my fifties I'll have to get past that.

Fifty-one hours to go before I shatter these contemptible chains of sobriety.

Labels: personal

Lo and behold, today is day 60 in my ten weeks of damned sobriety. That means I am at 85.7%, with ( in 2 hours 44 minutes ) only nine more days to go before I'm back on the sauce. That's only six work shifts, and only one more dry weekend. Yeee Haw!

To be frank, it has been a swell experience that has taught me quite a bit about myself. I'm planning on incorporating the system into my lifestyle as a fundamental part of my yearly cycle. A few ten week excursions in a 52 week year, that's got to add to the life expectancy of the liver. It is not easy, but it is not impossible either.

It messes up the destructive routines as well. Gets you to thinking about stuff. Like, some of the factors I got into about 'vangs and using Jesus as a drug in my previous post. Listening to Rhapsody 'Public Enemy' Channel - quality old school stuff by rhyme swingers who use their mikes to advance a position of intellectual understanding - this is all I think of when I think of Hip Hop. Anyways, I'm digging to The Disposal Heros of Hiphoprisy's 'T.V. . . .

On television, the drug of the nation,
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation . . .

A few month back I had an interesting exchange of words with a fellow at work. He asked me what was up, and I replied, 'eh, it's after lunch, so I'm really just thinking about getting home so I can get drunk.' His response: 'good to know I'm not the only one who's feeling that way around here on a daily basis.'

Booze, cigs, television, evangelical 'worship'; ain't it all just an altered state? What percentage of our fellow sentient beings are really just craving an altered state - get through this so we can hurry up and get back to our high?

Like I say, it's got me thinking.

Labels: personal

Listening to 'Moon & Sand' channel on Rhapsody, West Coast jazz. Nice stuff. My neck itches. Haven't shaved in three days. My mind's been encumbered by a species of disquiet of late. No continuity of thoughts has blessed my day; novel observations, annoying obligations, and whatnots fire off from my brain in all sorts of directions. If thoughts be like a flock of birds, when one of mine takes off the rest do not follow.

Is that all that consciousness is? The following of one thought after another - or maybe a jazzy harmony of thoughts - that believes it understands where they are all going? Or, maybe it is the experience/expectation of being able to control your thoughts. That's an Idea with literary antecedent. The great man who sets his mind to seemingly impossible tasks and triumphs with
overwhelming determination. Perhaps a bit of true wisdom has been hidden away in the written word.

I suppose I'm not being nearly precise enough in my syntax. I suppose medically, consciousness is defined as being aware of one's surroundings and responsive to stimuli.

I still got that.

Within the Virtue of Full Disclosure, I have to admit the One Beer Covenant didn't fucking live up to the hype. Too bad, cuz I thought all that shit about Two Loves, One Beer was worthing of getting tatoo'd somewhere on me body. Just fell off that wagon. The groovy shackles of Mistress Addiction were clearly getting a bit too heavy. A bit too obvious.

This weekend I fell back on a technique I've had good success with in the past. Often we overindulge a hair during the glorious Gemuetlichkeit of Oktoberfest in Minnesota. Where the local liquor stores fill with rich, complex beers packaged in colors as bright and fine as our autumnal foliage. Good times, good friends. A man just has to sample them all.

So then I just quit drinking for the rest of the year. Advantage one: the cessation of boozation is finite. Rather than the flawed One Beer Covenant when I was forced to endure the chronic understanding that I would never again experience a Billy Joel-esque 'belly full a beer.' Here I just have to set my sights on New Years Eve, when I get to make the ironic resolution to start drinking again. I'd even reckon a short stint of irresponsible behavior should be permitted after such a display of will. Advantage two: I save a lot of money right before the Holidays which makes buying dinners and gifts much less of a strain. Also, with Cindy's family's notion that Thanksgiving means cramming every member of the family into the same house until nerves are rubbed raw - I'm just saying it don't hurt to have a little extra self-control in the hidden reserves.

So that's about it. We're nearing the end of day three, so I'm relatively sure hospitalization won't be necessary this time. More than anything I'm just a little bored.

Change is good. Altering the routines and experiencing new perspectives drives the creative and spiritual drives. Anything to avoid the zombification of obsessive compulsive behavior.

Peace out.

Labels: personal

My one beer a day program totally sucks! I think I may have made a foolish decision there; the first beer merely cleanses the palate for the next one. I'll never again split a variety pack with a buddy and debate the various styles of ale, lagers, pilsners, and stouts. One beer a day makes it difficult to compare and contrast.

I've decided that drinking wine in excess just ain't for me. I used to love to drink a bottle of Australian Shiraz, smoke a thin cigar and write. Guess I'm not into stained teeth anymore. I'll drink a glass with Cin over a good meal, but excess be denied me. I dug all my old cocktail apparatuses out of storage, and attempted to achieve the perfection of a Stolichnaya Straight Up Extra Dry One Olive Martini. I feel pretty good writing with one of those in front of me, yet by the Wolf's Hour when I'm in need of number three, I usually just go to bed. My ancestry is Irish, not Russian.

Whiskey goes down just as fast and smooth as beer - even faster and smoother in fact - so that beverage was returned to the list of 'inappropriate for regular consumption.' Trust me, nobody wants to be around Aurelius when he's 'Whiskey Friskey.'

RANDOM THOUGHTS

• I can't believe when Petraeus and Crocker testified before Congress they did not have to do so under oath. What a crock .
• The latest issue of Skeptic magazine has a fascinating article on the end of science. Really he's talking about the end of technology, i.e. that most of the major breakthroughs have already happened. A Bee-Girl from the thirties might be impressed with your iphone, but between the telegraph and radar she ain't seeing much science that's new to her.
  

Here's how Mordechai Ben-Ari extrapolates this line of thinking to grapple with ET (I think it's fascinating.)

We have every reason to believe that the laws of physical science are universal, so that even if there is a much older intelligent ET life, it will have the same physics and chemistry as we do. Any scientific revolutions that they underwent are ones that we might potentially undergo, so if that prospect is doubtful here, it is doubtful there too. Discussions of ET life must be careful not to commit the non sequitur of deducing the existence of radically new science and technology from the existence of intelligent life. (Skeptic Vol 13, Num 2 2007, p 26)

I love this line of thinking and Cindy and I debate it frequently. She believes that life is astronomically rare, I favor the notion that life (at least simple life) is fairly commonplace. Within my lifetime we should have definitive knowledge regarding Mars and microbial life.

This debate at astrobiology.com lends my views some support.

Imagine an immense universe filled with countless planets and moons that harbored complex life, many of them even able to evolve a sentient species before an asteroid/solar fluctuation/volcanism/pandemic/war wiped the slate clean. All of them contemplating existence, and none of them ever going to discover a technology that would allow them to escape their host star's gravity.

I think that's beautiful

Labels: Astrobiology, personal

Slowly getting back to the routine here after a long week off staying up near the headwaters with family. Had a swell time. The tallest Red Pine in Minnesota, one of the tallest in the nation, suffered wind damage this spring. About 300 years old, now 'the monarch is dying.' Choked me up a little.

I've been enamored with that Ralph Waldo Emerson quote for quite a while. I believe he is saying that will have no 'Covenants', no childish, black and white rules for his behavior. Rather an Ideal that he will seek to remain in 'proximity' of. So instead of declaring that alcohol is a sin and I will never touch it, he sees a role model of a responsible, temperate man and strives to emulate that behavior.

I liked that thinking. Seemed more mature than the system of 'morality' where one follows certain commandments laid down by a questionable deity in return for rewards of an even more questionable nature. This system also precludes the worthless guilt from 'cheating on your diet.' I swore I was never again going to wank it on a Sunday morning, now I've sinned and feel lousy about myself.

Besides, 'covenants' and the like must be purged from one's consciousness to stay on the active defense against the living death of Obsessive Compulsive Behavior.

Yet I'm also coming to grips with the usefulness of certain rules and routines. I'm learning that the Writer sits down and writes every single day - that should be the proximity I'm shooting for. My policy of writing every Tuesday and Thursday for two hours even if I have to tie myself to the desk chair is working. . .

So I shall have One Covenant, one self-imposed rule that I will subjugate my id to without deviation.

See, I have two great loves in my life, so I can only have one beer.

The One Beer Covenant. I completely love beer. I love every variety and type, the history and the science; hops makes my blood smile. Lately I've been alcoholically ravenous. A bottle of Summit Extra Pale Ale goes in my belly in a few chugs, then on to the next one. I'm not enjoying the beer, only the buzz. So now I will only drink one beer a day.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still get rowdy off a string of martinis or a bottle of wine, I'm only putting the beer hound on the leash. I think this is a big enough change. It's a big enough change.

Labels: personal, pseudo-inspirational

I saw in the paper today that 78% of Americans are still actively keeping up with news about the tragedy that is our collapsed bridge. That makes this news event one of the top ten 'attention grabbers' since 1991, or something like that. Hmm.

First, let me say that the incident did give me some personal insight into what something like 9/11 might have been like for New Yorkers. At first, Cindy's yelling distracted me from whatever I was working on in my room, to see the headlines on CNN or MSNBC. The national cable networks didn't know dick about our local infrastructure, and their reporting was so confusing that I mistook the bridge in question for another one to the south - closer to where my parents live. My father travels a lot with his occupation, so I called him immediately. He didn't have time to chit chat, so I admitted in the trill of the moment that I only wanted to hear the sound of his voice - confirmed that mom was good too - then called my brother to get word on his family. Verizon was overloaded by then, I could not make a call for the rest of the night.

For about four hours everyone in the metro was either trying to call family or fielding calls from out-of-state relatives while watching the news. Even though in the end only about a dozen human beings actually died, the panic effect was powerful.

I think the effect hit me a bit more intensely than it might otherwise have, my father's clan buried two of its own in the two weeks leading up to this; I carried his brother to his final resting place exactly one week before. Bitter irony and the 'rule of three' were pounding on the panic button when I speed dialed the old man.

Thoughts post collapse:

It must be nice to be the Governor of a state with a well known fault line. Any failing bridge is going to collapse during an earthquake for sure, and everybody will buy that as an act of Gawd. Like that Murray peacock who owns the mine that ate those men this week - just keep talking about Gawd and earthquakes, the media will ignore those geologists who define the seismic noise as the sound of the mine collapse, not the cause of the collapse.

Like a morning show guy on KFAI mentioned this week, we finally have a reason be be happy that the Republicans are going to kick us out of our own capital city for a week while they have the theater they call a convention. They have an opportunity to turn the 35W tragedy into a 'win' for them, so for once our Blue State might see more money come back from the federal government than we pay out every year in taxes. They are still the party that holds graft and cronyism in an elevated spiritual realm far above reality, so I'm not holding my breathe. At least I can grant them a possible motive force.

Not to be ghoulish, but I just don't get why we are still sending divers down into the river to put their lives at risk, rather than just bringing in the heavy equipment and getting the clearing process underway. What gives here? It is not like after a week, when the chances of finding a living survivor from 9/11 were zero, the recovery teams broke out the shovels and toothbrushes and turned ground zero into an archaeological site. The remains of the 35W bridge are underwater. We are going to spend weeks, and millions of dollars, and put human lives (not just any human lives, but highly trained divers) at risk to recover remains that are water-logged and crushed, rather than remains that are water logged and more crushed? I understand respect for the dead, but over a million people can not continue to pour money, time, and risk lives over the remains of a few corpses. Obviously, if we lived in a society with limitless resources the bridge never would have collapsed in the first place. . .

Finally, our NPR station has devoted an ass-load of time to dwelling on the tragic event (despite my disdain for the network, a savvy listener can filter useful information out of their hopelessly 'objective' propaganda). They had a doctor on this afternoon who had evidently had some positive role in the treatment of victims of 8.1.7 (yeah, whatever). This crisis response official was asked about a scenario that kept him awake at night and he did not have an answer that involved asteroids or the eruption of Yellowstone. His response was an influenza pandemic. He stated that it might not be this year or the next, but it would happen within his career as a physician, and that our hospital system could never handle it. We have 20% less hospital beds today than we had in 1970. Large segments of society would have to be triaged and isolated. Think Katrina. To summarize, we have not had a pandemic in the history of 'modern' hospitalized medicine, but we are due, and we're screwed.


Remember to live life in the moment and appreciate all that we have. Any of the French Louis' would have unhesitatingly slain their own fathers to have a lifestyle that most of us take for granted. Plus we have access to the level of education and understanding that would have driven them to abdication or suicide. Don't shirk from the subversive truth. Revel in your consciousness, enjoy your existence. Move our culture forward.

Labels: current events, personal, pseudo-inspirational

A few things that have happened to me in the last twenty-four have been difficult to file logically in my head.

If a man, dressed up in somber greys with a black tie, comes into Walgreens to purchase a single sympathy card; why would the woman behind the counter tell him to, 'have a great day' ?

Also, I sort of participated in the strangest conversation with some cousins last night. After defining a sanctuary city from Las Vegas as, 'where they look down on Vegas, a place where they actually have some taste, some culture,' he supported his position by describing a great house there in terms of square footage?!?

No. This is not my humble opinion, wealth does not equal culture. Taste is not defined by square footage. Sheer volume can impress (like when you walk into a cathedral) but what delineates taste lies in the how one uses that space. "Four hundred and sixty square feet, with a piano," fails to convey the sense of awe I'm sure you felt.

In my former life I was forced to work in the homes of many of Minnesota's richest families. Nothing can invoke the irksome sense of ironic tragedy like the combination of surplus wealth with zero taste. I liked to look at it with a Dante'sque Eye, they created their own Hell of Disharmony that they are too ignorant to suffer from. Nothing like a bored hausfrau using a credit card to fill an emotional void, then trying to explain to you what she 'created' in this room.

Of course, some know that they have no taste, or just want to have it without understanding it, so they hire an interior designer. An interesting little niche of the New Bourgeoisie, usually artistic trophy wives who make a 'business' out of designing rooms for her husband's friends. Chatting up other women and showing a healthy amount of tits to the Man of the House.

Oh well, the world is a huge place and every human being has a whole world of contextual opinions about how that world does and should operate. The distance between my own treasured consciousness and that of others makes the nothingness between galaxies seem but a skip.

Everything that is you be within your mind. From the depths of your emotions to the thrilling peaks of your passions. You can create nothing (except a child) that is not defined by the limits of your imagination and fineness of your understanding. Seek to understand many things. Experience deeply. If you open yourself to the lives of others and the works of artists, both contemporary and those speech even death has not stilled, something great will begin to grow within you. Culture will become more than square feet and damn piano.

It is your life. It is your consciousness! Revel in consciousness!

Labels: personal, pseudo-inspirational

In the last few months I've read quite a few books on the Evagelikal Brownshirts and arguments for Atheism, from Chris Hedges trip and a half (see highlighted sidebar) to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Many have been some fine works, while others have been a bit indulgent - regardless, I jumped naked from the shower yesterday morning to transcribe these thoughts to a water stained piece of paper: We Hold Atheism to be Self-Evident.

It all seemed so fucking obvious, once I had finally gotten this horrible realization out of my subconscious and onto paper. Atheism is self-evident. A priori, just like fucking congito ergo sum.

To quote the Ballad of Bill Hubbard (which I'm listening to now, trying to distract myself from the sounds of wii downstairs) 'lightened my heart if you like. . .,' this is what I've known since the fourth grade but could never get my head around. This is the casus belli of my pathetically late partisanship of counter-culture and socialism. I know 'self-evident' is a loaded term, yet I just know it is right.

I'm never going to make an effort to convince anyone ever again that they might want to consider atheism. Every developing mind confronts the reality of N0-G0d, and they either grapple with it or shirk backwards into something less mature. That's not completely fair, cuz religion is a socially transmitted virus. Those religions that are most effective at stunting the development of children and precluding the chance that they might ever achieve adulthood, are going to be the most successful viruses in the pool. Mother's once threw their children into the flaming mouth of Moloch, religious parents will lobotomize their own children rather than face the horrors of a child who might not reinforce their desperate, childish, world-view. Mongol remains have deformed heads, as the culture would mold the soft skulls' of their infants into cones - what damage did that inflict upon the potential for consciousness? And the bloodthirsty fucks slaughtered all civilization in their path.

Retarded theists can and will destroy everything thinking, civilized individuals have worked for thousands of years to make our culture into. Homicidal monkeys . . . aw fuck it. Just fuck it all.

Labels: A-apologetics, personal