Project Gutenberg

Everyone get up out of their seats and applaud for the latest addition to 'must see,' Project Gutenberg. It is an awesome site that provides classic works whose copyrights have run out for free, as in no fee for downloading. It's beautiful. Scoff at those chain bookstores that try and get you to pay for your copy of The Communist Manifesto. Fight capitalism! If you happen to disagree with me on this point and believe that buying into our current economic system is a good idea, you can still appreciate the stellar variety of titles and authors on Project Gutenberg. Just checking the Top 100 EBooks Yesterday, and I'm finding everything from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the Kamasutra to Les Miserables. All of this and the site is very easy to navigate, lacking the hordes of advertisements that so many other sites that offer free things prefer.

As with all seemingly beautiful things, there are negative aspects present as well. First of all, you'll likely have to do more than a little formatting yourself. Many texts are available solely in plain text format which is a pain to look at. I guess this could turn into a positive though as you can make the text size and font perfectly suited for your own predilections. Just takes a little effort. Also, as much as I'm a fan of not paying for things, it's still hard to read things on a computer screen. Where's the romance in cuddling up on your sofa on a winter weekend with your computer? Also, the collection is far from complete and some foreign texts lack an English translation so this is not something to put your complete faith in if you are some struggling college student. There are enough heavy hitters, though, to satisfy anyone looking to prove how erudite they are on a shoestring.

Check it out and enjoy.

Favorite films

Tell me, how do you reconcile it when your two favorite movies are The Princess Bride and Fight Club? On the one hand, I have "Not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum fairy tale" and in the other am maintaining a firm grip on "Mischief. Mayhem. Soap." a wonderful family movie and a movie that contains two of the most disturbing, intense scenes in cinematic history. Sounds like a challenge, to figure out what can make me appreciate them both at the same time. Also, I would like to point out that for a long time, I considered The Girl Next Door my third favorite movie. After considering for a while, I have come to the decision that, though it is a fine movie, a great deal of my appreciation for it comes from the fact I had about zero hope that I would like it. Thus, it is further down on my list of all-time great and no longer deserves to be considered against these other movies. Would have made the mix all the more interesting though.

As far as common threads go, I can only see two. The frequent use of humor, darker, of course, in Fight Club, and the self-awareness these movies demonstrate. Over and over again, they blatantly demonstrate that they know that they are movies, The Princess Bride through the grandson's interruptions and in a multitude of ways in Fight Club, the 'cigarette burns,' the porn splices and the 'flashback humor' line among others. At all times, these movies hold their viewers at arm's length, constantly reminding them that these are movies, the stories of a few people, not the world. If you find the values they extol worthy, adopt them as your own. Otherwise, do not.

As I think about it more, I think I find a third thread, one that appeals to my sense of idealism. The characters in these movies, as cool as they are, are cariactures, exaggerations. They are ideals. The most beautiful woman, the greatest swordsman, the strongest man, an insane, successful revolutionary group. It is impossible for us to achieve these levels, but trying, even though failure is almost a given, to become them makes me happy all over. These are not movies about life. They are movies about the way life could be.

There it is then. Once and for all, I have resolved how I can hold both of these movies in such high esteem at the same time.

Protests

In high school, I guess I could be considered pretty liberal. It's not that I really did anything different like follow Buddhism or become a vegetarian, but I guess my ideas were fairly out there for small town Minnesota. I didn't really care about getting my driver's license and didn't go hunting and supported communism for the longest time. Anyway, I developed some sort of complex as a result of all this, one that made me reject most all ideas that I saw mainstream. I wanted to go around protesting, if I could have found anyone to come with me or if I could think of anything worth protesting. Vive la revolution. That was me, in thought if not in action.

Then I go to college and things change. Things resembling protests and civil disobedience go on around me, and I don't participate. I'm sure there are other reasons I don't join in (things I'd rather do and such), but I've thought about protests more now that they're actually present. This is the philosophy that has arisen from my contemplation. There is an essential problem with protests. You are admitting that you have no power to affect a change yourself and are asking others to do it. Screw that. If you want to make a change, you take responsibility and do it yourself. You don't ask for permission first. If that particular action is illegal, you get yourself into a position to make it legal.

Like most all of my philosophies, this one has problems. What if you want to stop something that is wrong and occurs outside of your being? Say racism or sweatshop labor? Fine, you can respect your fellows based on their virtue and treat everyone who works for you fairly, but that is not helping in other situations. What do you do then? The best I can come up with is use reason and engage in dialogue. Hopefully those who engage in these practices will come to understand what is wrong and stop of their own accord.

Family and lineage

My family sent me a number of e-mails today, all about family; deceased relatives being a certain age today and the recent internment of a great aunt. They asked me to post about them, so here it goes. I guess some context is required here. The only relatives I regularly visit are my paternal grandparents, who maybe seven miles from my home in Baudette. Otherwise, I have family in California, Ohio, North Carolina and just across the border from New York. I have aunts and uncles who I can count the number of times I can remember having visited in the single digits. Still, meeting family is something I look forward to, not something I regard with disgust. Anyway...

A few winters back, my mom's project was a needlepoint family tree. A cousin of hers sent her information and everything and she made it out to something like four generations back. For a while there, she wanted my sister and me to memorize them all. Neither us of did. I'm not really sure why, but I suspect it is because I saw no point to it. I knew nothing about most of these people, and, when your culture's obsessed with stories about heirs-to-the-throne trying to escape their inherited destiny and Romeo and Juliet where family is the cause of tragedy, you tend to treat things beyond your control with more than a little caution. We are urged to find ourselves outside of those things we are a part of. I guess I use to ascribe to this fierce individualism, but the truth is we and our identities are not formed in a vacuum. We become according to what we identify with and what we are set against. Family and lineage is another one of those things. If we see things to be proud of in our heritage, we adopt them into our being. If the things we see are not so great, we avoid them.

More important though, family is a community, one of the strongest that exists because it is the first and the one that cannot be escaped from. No matter what we do, we will always be a Heinrich or Rodriguez or whatever. Before we are an American or member of the NRA, we learn about responsibility and obligation from our families. It is the family that allows us to form greater communities, and, as we consider it, so we consider all other communities.

Besides, thinking back on that family tree, for which my mom won the grand prize at the county fair, now, it is more than a bit awe inspiring to think that I am the result of all these relationships. If they did nothing else, which I doubt rather strongly, they participated in the creation of me, and I ought to commemorate that by being the best person I can.

My LiveJournal post

So I compared the Blogger and LiveJournal that existed in my mind a few posts back. Well now I am thowing myself fully into one of those stereotypical LiveJournal posts that so irritate me. Expect emo and such. Perhaps it's one of those cries for attention. Please don't hate me for this.

Do you ever feel as though you are the only person in the world who is the least bit content or happy with their life? There are times that I feel that way as though the pieces of my life are falling into place. Then, I find out about problems my friends are dealing with and then I think about the problems of people I hear about on in the news, sweatshop laborers and refugees. Am I wrong to be happy while others suffer? Do I shelter myself from what's going on around me to protect my own happiness? I tell myself and believe that I should be willing to subordinate my own pleasure for that of others, but then I see myself now and know that either that philosophy is wrong or that I am failing at it. Neither is that pleasing to consider. One, the way I want to live my life is impossible. The other, I am not good enough.

A second problem arises from this, though. I want people to be happy and content, but what am I willing to sacrifice for that? I am not even talking about myself here but my ideals. If it made a person happy to cut themselves, would I do nothing? Would I not have the strength to make them stop and just hope that someone better than me would come along to fix things? If a person were to do something I thought wrong, to the very core of my being, would I not step in because of endangering whatever relationship we had? I worry.

Language

As many of my friends can tell you, I have some problems with verbal English or, at least, the direction its moving in. Particular favorite sources of hate are unnecessary acronyms, RBF for rootbeer flota and WTF are particularly vexing in that they aren't even shorter than the words which they're shortening, WTF actually having more syllables than the phrase it replaces, and using business names as general nouns and verbs, Kleenex and Google spring to mind in these occasions. In the case of acronyms, I believe the source of my rage is clear though not everyone may agree with it. I simply dislike unnecessary things. Strip life and language down to the essentials. Remove the clutter. As far as business names becoming a part of the vernacular my problem lies in seeing business become such a large part of our culture that begins to permeate our everyday speech. Mostly a knee jerk reaction against business I guess. Not that there's much I can do about it on a broad scale. Language is simply too large an element of culture for a single person to change it. George Bernard Shaw tried and failed, and I think he had more than a few things going for him that I don't.

I realize this isn't that great of a post seeing as how it lacks any deep insights or decisive philosophies, but I do hope that it causes you to think and be a bit more aware of something we engage in everyday, speech. Life and all its elements must not be taken for granted.

Blogger vs. LiveJournal (a fight for the aeon!)

Recently, some friends of mine, users of LiveJournal, have petitioned me to open an account with their blogging/ journaling site of choice and begin posting there. Personally, I have no compelling technical reason to leave Blogger or join LiveJournal. Though Blogger does undergo a fair amount of maintenance and lost one of my posts, an earlier version of 'Posting to 'Spice of Life'' actually, it continues to serve my needs without irritating me too much. I guess I could do a lot more with design and everything, if I wanted to, but I do not and I do not believe I would suddenly become inspired if I were to move to Live Journal. In favor of moving to LiveJournal is the ability to view the limited access sites of my friends who do not want to make their thougths and feelings too public.

There's other stuff going on too with my decision, mostly the connotations associated with each. As I see it, blogging is much more mature and respectable. Blogs and their writers get book contracts and paying jobs. When a person writes to a blog, it is well thought out and fascinating to all. My perception of LiveJournal, on the other hand, is that it is a chance for people to throw their emotions out to the masses. People do not think when they make LiveJournal posts, they simply record their emotions. People who use LiveJournal are high schoolers looking for sympathy. I think this webcomic is pretty much the source of all these uncharitable thoughts on LiveJournal.

Before anyone jumps all over me for attacking their favorite form of communication, I would like to point out that I often treat my blog like a LiveJournal and my friends use LiveJournal like I want 'Spice of Life' to turn out. It really comes down to the user.

Perhaps I'll open a LiveJournal and simply post reviews of movies and music and literature there. I'll have to think about it some more.

Posting to 'Spice of Life'

I am starting to get worried about posting to 'Spice of Life.' This feeling arose around the time I posted, 'Art and Life.' In that post, I called the opportunity to freely express my feelings 'cathartic,' but, like I opened this post, I am starting to experience a little angst about all of this. I started this blog for a number of reasons; to actually get me writing regularly, to offer an opportunity to organize and develop the thoughts that run through my mind on a daily basis. Catharsis was certainly amongst the reasons, though I do not believe I was familiar with the term last May, but now I am reconsidering that.

To a large extent, I find catharsis healthy. I find the expression of one's deep feelings and complexes a good thing, to the extent that it allows one to get on with their life and stop obsessing over them. My problem is that I do not believe that 'Spice of Life' is the healthiest place for this to take place. That's not to deny there are benefits, there are simply supremely better methods. Communication is stilted when one comments upon the blog. The passion one felt at the time of posting may have gone when a pertinent comment comes up, and nothing comes from it.

Coming back to the source of my problem, the 'Art and Life' post symbolizes it more than anything else. In it, I expressed my distaste for my former professor's choice to save a picture of a cat over a living cat. At most, I should have used that post to organize my thoughts before bringing them before my former professor. Instead, I just let the matter die . Short of her being a reader here, which I find bleeding unlikely, nothing will come of it. As Erich Fromm, one of my new favorite people, discusses in The Art of Being, we must distinguish between those things in our lives that are lively, inspire action within ourselves, and those that are dead and do nothing to make us better people. I enjoy writing here, but I must become more careful with what I do here and be aware of the ends I seek to attain. So, please, if something I post on gets your blood up, do not stop at a comment, bring it up to me in person. Let us make something of it.

Posting on my Blog

Concerns relating to my posts on this blog have arisen, particularly after my 'Art and Life' post. In it, I called the opportunity to express my disagreement in regard to the professor's decision to take the picture over the cat cathartic. The problem is that I have never brought these beliefs before the professor. There are some decent reason for this, I not being sure of her office hours and finding little free time, but, short of her being a reader of this blog, which I do not find bleeding likely, no dialogue or discussion, the two greatest results, will never take place. This distresses me a great deal. Could 'Spice of Life' become a dead end?

Originally, I intended, among others, for my blog to be an opportunity to organize my thoughts. To take the time to put down and organize whatever was going through my mind, so I could better discuss them with others. The 'Art and Life' post, though, causes consternation in that it was the end. It was static and uncreative and led no further than 'Spice of Life.' I cannot allow that to happen, my blog must be a means.

Thus, I recommit myself to opening discussion and invite others to do the same. First up, my professor.

Why I Don't Drink

It was bound to come up sooner or later. I am attending university now, and I am very aware that more than a few of my classmates in high school drank regularly. Alcohol has long permeated the cultures which I live in. Still, it is something I do not partake in, though I have wondered what I would be like were I drunk. I always assumed that I would end up depressed in some corner. Tonight, I feel like putting those reasons down.

Pre-eminently, I do not enjoy the taste. My grandfather brews his own beer, and I am fairly certain that he was offering me drinks of his latest batch before I was in kindergarten. I guess beer has one of those acquired tastes, and, as a child, I never had any desire to acquire it. As I have grown older, I have tried his beer on multiple occasions, I have tasted schnaps and had some wine and champagne, and none of their tastes appeal to me.

I do believe that this is something I could overcome were it not for the second reason. I am deathly afraid of giving up my self-control, something I have heard that alcohol mitigates. This particular fear goes back to elementary school. I did stupid, cruel, unnecessary things then. I freely admit that I do not so much like the person I was, so I changed. I cultivated a will that would hold these impulses that I was ashamed of in check. That is something I am simply unwilling to throw away.

Concerning self-control and will power, it is a theory of mine (take as much heed of it as you want to seeing as intoxication is something that has never happened to me) that people drink to give up responsibility. They want an excuse to do certain things, and alcohol provides that excuse, a way to deal with otherwise inconvenient inhibitions. Personally, I believe that inhibitions are normally in place for a good reason, and, if not, then it is far healthier in the long run to deal with them in sobriety than to get drunk.

There you have it then. The preaching of some jerk college student.

A Crude Life Philosophy

I was planning on opening this post with a little theorizing on the necessity of a life philosophy, then I realized that there was enough in that idea to merit a post devoted to it alone. So, I start instead with a disclaimer of sorts. What follows is just a little idea of mine. If it deserves modification, please provide. If it requires anhilation, inform me so. To live by an incorrect philosophy is something terrible, and, if someone believes this to be wrong, tell me so. Now, to follow all that, like my title says, this is a very crude philosophy. I know it needs to be refined. This is the beginning.

I don't know when it was that I started to believe this, maybe two years ago, but it's a philosophy that, though not in my mind at all moments, is one I come back to again and again. I figured it was time to actually lay it out and develop it.

Life is a game. There are rules, which we know through biology, economics and such, that exist and that you cannot refute. They simply are. Animals obey them. They seek to maximize their own utility and insure the survival of their genetic material, the closest they can get to immortality. Life, pursued in this manner, is far from ideal. It is lonely and selfish. Humans, though, are far more than mere animals. They have imagination and can envision a better world. Even more than that, humans have the ability to make this better world a reality. They can choose to deny their own pleasure and security in the interests of others. Humans can make this a life of compassion.

One of many critical questions at this point (but it is the only one I believe I have an answer for at this point) is 'Why do we need to break these rules? What is so wrong about them?' My answer, humans are complementary creatures. They need one another merely to survive. Besides the fact that humanity does not reproduce asexually, they are not great enough to survive on their own, much less create. Take a newborn baby and toss it into the woods. See how long it survives. That is hyperbolic, but, still, take a young, healthy human specimen and outfit them with all the greatest survival training and equipment, which already requires the direct involvement of other humans. Toss them out into the woods and see how long they live. I don't doubt that they will survive, but what of their lives, when every moment is spent simply trying to live longer. What type of life is that, one spent completely upon oneself and that leaves no legacy? That is why we must live for each other.

Life is simply one long struggle in order to break the rules that govern the lives of animals.

Are there problems with this philosophy? Goodness, yes! There is no good reason for this whole philosophy to have arisen, and I imagine that it is very possible to argue that this entire philosophy is an extension of the will to survive and increase personal utility. Even if the foundations of this thing turn out to be solid, the specifics of the philosophy itself need help. The rules that govern animal life are hinted at only in the vaguest terms, and there is no explanation for when we will know we have reached the end. I harbor no doubts that I have not touched on all of this philosophy's weaknesses.

Still, it is a start.

Kendo

So, I've been taking classes in kendo, Japanese fencing (if you wish to learn more, I suggest checking out the Wikipedia entry on it here or Kendo America's description here) for three months now. I think it's about time I put down my thoughts on my experience on it. I must confess that this post was further inspired by seeing the newest groups of kendo students arrive and struggle with the simple footwork and also by a conversation I had with a friend over lunch on just how practical this particular martial art is.

Personally, I'm a fan. It's the first martial art I've ever practiced, so the high levels of formality and all have been more than I expected. Kendo is not simply about hitting your opponent but doing it the right way and showing the other person the proper respect. Like I said, it's been three months now, and we've only just begun partner practice, as in, partner practice consists of one person holding out their sword to receive hits or kata where every movement is planned out in advance so there is little resemblance to actual combat though the principles are integral to competition our sensei says.

When you're taking a martial art, it seems like the inevitable question becomes, "Do you think you could beat me up?" or "How do you think you'd do against a mugger?" Well, first I suggest visiting Truck Driver Divorce because my friend Zach gives a respectable take on that question in one of his earlier posts. My answer is a bit different. Before I go any further, you must understand that we don't use real swords in kendo. There's the wooden bokken and the bamboo shinai, and both are blunted. Anyway, assuming that I was carrying these around in the street or grabbed one before picking a fight with someone, (I'd take the bokken. It's shorter but heavier with a higher potential for injury to my opponent.) I would win on the grounds that I was carrying around a one meter stick. Weapons do tend to give one an advantage in combat. So for the sake of an argument, we have to say that my assailant is well versed enough in the martial arts to defend themselves against me. My training has been and will continue to be strictly oriented towards competitive, regulated kendo. I sincerely doubt that the sensei will ever so, "Okay here's what you do if someone pulls a knife on you," so I will lack any training that would directly aid me in a random fight. Some the basic concepts like the en garde positions and attack points remain valid in all fights though, so I don't believe my training would be completely useless. It still will probably never come up though.

Oh yeah. Taking kendo actually gives me a reason to go to the fitness center. Otherwise I would have nothing to train for and my workouts would undoubtedly lose their appeal to me.

Unfortunately, due to time restraints and financial concerns, I probably won't be able to continue in kendo this fall. I sincerely hope things work out, but I doubt they will. Oh well, I'll just have to drown my depression with intensive Tai Chi, which I'll actually be receiving credit for.

Art and life

Last Monday, my Literature professor from last semester related a dialogue that occurred between two characters on the tv series Northern Exposure. Apparently, the characters were discussing art and one asked the other, "If a building were on fire and you only had time enough to save a cat or a picture of a cat, which would you choose?" The character responded the picture because it is only through art that we are able to know what a cat truly is.

This is so cathartic to write because I hold this woman in high regard and have wanted to say she's wrong about something for quite a while, so here I go. I think taking the picture is the worst possible choice here. I'm talking those publishers who passed on Harry Potter wrong. Think of how wrong Grand Moff Tarkin was to disregard the destructive capabilities of a group of Rebels in X-Wings, and you'll get an idea of how wrong this idea is. Can I put this in stronger terms?

Okay, a disclaimer is required here. Rather irritating as they break up the rhythm of my writing, assuming there was such a thing before. I don't know if she subscribes to this belief, but the circumstances in which she related this story do suggest to me that she would take the picture herself.

If you take the picture, you're assuming that the artist was right, that they captured the essence of the cat perfectly. First of all, I don't think this is possible, and what of the rest of the world? You're placing the perspective of the artist above all others. To take the picture is to deny everyone else the possibility of knowing the cat's essence for themselves, to demean the validity of their perception.

Hm. Seems like a lot of build up for not much thought. Oh well, I still think I got this one right.

The Big Time

I know I've hit the big time now. Two weeks ago, the school newspaper ran an editorial of mine that harped on an article from the week ago in which the virtues of Fair Trade, a surprisingly popular issue on campus, the subject of some opinion at least once every other issue of our weekly paper, were extolled and we were all urged to drink it.

Before going further, to sum up my position on Fair Trade, I'm not against it. I simply believe that consuming is a bad method to demonstrate charity. One ought to do something more meaningful than buy coffee.

Anyway, the next week, I was referenced twice by name in other editorials. One guy wrote an article that directly went after mine and a second editorial, written by a frequent, supremely sarcastic contributor refernced me by suggesting that the person whose article he was attacking could 'end genocide in Africa' as I had suggested in my piece. It doesn't end there though. My name showed up in the editorial pages again this week as someone attacked the sarcastic guy and chided him for me.

It's not much, I know, getting your name mentioned in a few editorials, but it's something. Kind of an interesting feeling to realize that other people could be so incensced by your opinion that they would take the time to write a reply. Can't quite describe the feeling, but it's there.

Oh yeah, I received my first piece of fanmail after my boo on Fair Trade piece ran. Just a message through Facebook, the greatest of social networking tools in college, but still cool.

Fasting

We're out of Lent, neck deep in Easter Triduum now. Does this matter to you? I don't know, but it does to me as a practicing Roman Catholic. Today being Good Friday, the second fast day I know of in the Church calendar, the first being Ash Wednesday, the topic of fasting is on my mind, if you couldn't tell from the title of this post. Here we go then, my thoughts on one of the central aspects of Lent.

There are three practices, I as a Catholic, are expected to uphold during Lent: prayer (my relation with God), almsgiving (my relation with my fellow humans) and fasting (my relation with myself). I must say that I'm a great fan of fasting, denying yourself of certain things, in this case copious amounts of food, in order to center your attention on what is truly important and appreciate what you do have. It occurred to me this Lent though that Catholic fasting is pretty weak. We do it twice a year, abstain from meat (not counting fish amongst this group) and limit ourselves to small meals and no snacks. On Fridays, it's simple abstinence from meat. That's really not a big deal. If the cafeteria isn't serving anything good, I can easily match those criteria. That and the whole Friday only thing. This is likely me taking things too literally, but what's stopping me from staying up till early Saturday morning and gorging then? Nothing, except an understanding of what fasting is about. Besides, midnight is such an arbitrary disctinction.

Lately then, I've been thinking that Muslims do fasting right with Ramadan though it's a bit extreme. No food or drink at all while the sun is up. When it's down, you can eat. It's a meaningful denial and the limits on what it starts and ends aren't so arbitrary. I think I'm going to switch over to this method next Lent for the holy days and Fridays, but I'll drink water. Not doing so crosses the line from self-denial to straight-up unhealthy for me. I'm fairly certain that Jews follow this same style of fasting at some point, but I'm not willing to check.

I guess this disclaimer comes a little late, but it's very possible I'm wrong on how one is meant to properly fast. All of this is to the best of my knowledge, which is not as great as I would hope. So, yeah, mistakes and misinterpretations are very feasible.

Memories and grief

I'm feeling the urge to post again. Have a number of post ideas running through my mind, but there's something I need to take care of first. Last Friday, my friend Ann Komadina died. She was a good person, kinder and more generous to me than I deserved. We did more than a few projects together, and I found it very easy to speak with her. For those who frequently visit my blog, she often posted comments. In fact, I'm fairly certain it was her early comments me with the impetus necessary to making posting more regularly. I'm glad to have known and am saddened that others no longer have the opportunity to.

Here I am now, a week later. It gets better, but I still don't think I'm over her death. I don't know if I feel better about writing these things, but, at the very least, I think they could help someone else. Feeling as though you're the only one who feels your grief in the way you do and that noone can understand your feelings is a terrbile way to go. Hopefully, if someone experiences a death the same way I did and feels the same way about it, they will read this and not feel so alone.

I've never read a book on the stages of grief, but I've picked up a little about them. Denial, negotiation, I've heard of them. Didn't really experience them though. When I heard Ann had died, I sat down and stared. I never questioned them. There was no denial. I realized that I couldn't do anything to help her now either, so neither was there any negotiation. For a while, I really hated myself, for not being better to her, but that passes as I try to act and make sure no person ever dies that I regret how I treated, though that makes my failures sting all the more.

No, the strongest and longest lasting emotion that has arisen from is anger. Not some general feeling. No, this anger is directed at those really bleeding good people that I posted about earlier. Seeing them go about comforting people, myself among them, and being decent makes me all the more uncomfortable and angry. "Why can't I be at their level?" I ask myself. "Why can't I be as good as them?" I wanted them to stop and still do to the extent that they're so kind. But I can't express myself to them. I don't want to add to their problems, and they've been overwhelmingly good to those who need it, never showing me less than pure kindness. So I choke on my anger, and it turns to self loathing as I realize how terrible it is to feel this way.

It bothers me that I can't cry when others are around. That first night I went off by myself and cried, but, whenever someone came to comfort me, I stopped. It wasn't a some machoism or a conscious decision, I just couldn't do it. I was still sad, still wanted to cry but nothing would come. Add on to that the fact that I surrounded myself with my friends for most of the weekend, and it disturbed me to see tears stream down their faces when none graced mine. Like I said, it bothers me, like I'm not sad enough that Ann's dead or something.

Objectivity

Came across an article on Slate yesterday that attacks the notion of objectivity. It's entitled The Twilight of Objectivity and brings more of an economic dimension to the debate of what can easily be considered one of the most distinct of journalistic values. I had seen most of the arguments before, but this was the first time I came across them in a while. Thus, I got to thinking that led to this.

Well, I don't particularly care about the economics or practicality of being impartial and fair, but I do care about doing what is right. And I think that pursuing objectivity, as impossible as it may be, remains the right thing to do and a worthy goal. There are valid arenas in which one may present their opinion. Editorial pages. A personal blog or podcast. News articles and broadcasts are not amongst them. These are the places in which the public should be able to go to find the raw material and facts with which to form their opinions. I suppose one could make the argument that one is morally obligated to fight for their opinions, if they believe them to be right and proper, and try to spread them as much as possible. However, it is my belief that this philosophy belies an unbearable amount of arrogance when one applies it to the reporting of news rather than in a more appropriate venue. When one relates an event and tells others how to interpret it, they are placing themselves in a superior position, assuming that should their audience be given the facts straight-up they themselves could not come to a conclusion. Beyond this, what if you're wrong? Your belief is simply wrong. To take an example from the past, you thought that Woodrow Wilson would keep us out of the war and should be elected because of it and your reporting reflected this. Then he gets elected and drags the United States into the first World War. Way to screw up.

On the practical considerations, I believe reporting which seeks to eliminate all bias from its news reporting is integral to a stable society. If the whole notion of objectivity is to be chucked, I would not be surprised if people began to grow more distant and sheltered as they secured themselves by reading only the works of those who agree with them. There would be no common touchstones among people of differing political persuasions. Unbiased reporting provides this. When people use the same sources, they can understand one another a little better and improve their communication.

Arts & Letters Daily

There's a new addition to the 'must see' set of links to the left. It's Arts & Letters Daily, not so much a site as a gateway to a bunch of fascinating articles. The links are ordered under three categories; Articles of Note (typically shorter stuff), New Books (book reviews) and Essays and Opinion (longer stuff). Before I say anything else, I would like to point out that the site design is very clean and effective. You can find everything easily.

The articles are heart and soul of the site with such a wonderful variety of topics. With the anniversary of "Electric Kool-Aid Test" and "Selfish-Gene" there have a number of articles on those and their lasting effects, but the variety is wonderful. I have seen and read articles on "A Clockwork Orange," the economics of Fair Trade Coffee and the spat between Hume and Rousseau. If you have a half hour or so, check it out. You'll probably find something that piques your interest and make you think.

Good people, really bleeding good people

My Mass Communications professor said sometime ago that there are two types of people in this world, those who build others up and those who are toxic and destroy those around them. I would like to add a third group of people to this list, those whom you perceive to be so good that they bring to mind your own deficiencies, causing, in a wonderul two-for-one hate towards them and feelings of depression in yourself, only accentuated by your hate for them. These people are the type who manage to be unimaginably intelligent, friendly, athletic, active, helpful and still volunteer obscene amounts of their time. Include a fair helping of humility on top of all this, and they're the perfect person to hate. In many cases, I can manage to transmute these feelings into an unspoken competition of sorts, an impetus for becoming a better person. Unfortunately, if I cannot see the flaws in these wonderful people, I cannot envision myself matching them. They are simply too far above me. I can reason through all the possible reasons for liking them, they're a decent person, they want to make the world a better place, whatever, and I still can't break free from my untowardly harsh feelings toward them.

What does this mean? What should I do? The eternal questions arise.

What does this mean? It means I'm not content or happy. I know that I can still become better, and these people are what I want to become. I realize how far away I am from becoming what I want to be, and that, my friends, is hideously depressing.

What should I do then? Depression is not a pleasant state to exist in. There are only two options that I can see. Either I can settle, admit that I am a flawed person and wallow in these lowering of my standards or strive to become like them. I think it's clear which I prefer. Now I just need to put that choice into action.

Good times, bad times

Last Friday a question occurred to me. Why is it that we remember the bad times, the horrific events in our lives the worst? When you ask somebody, they can tell you the exact place they were when they heard that John F. Kennedy was assasinated. Myself, I was in French class, right before our AP time started when our principal came over the intercom and announced that all teachers should turn on their TVs because something monumental was happening. I figured it was a joke of some manner, that Michael Jordan had publicly declared that he would be returning to basketball again until CNN came on, and I saw the Twin Towers smoking. Why is this? Why do these events stick in our minds so strongly? I believe that it's because we know and expect that good things are coming. Marriage proposals are the result of a long period of dating and courting. Championships come only after smaller wins. First, you take your region or conference, then state and finally the nation or, for some, the world. These good times don't arrive as shocks and aren't ingrained in our memories the same way.

This could all be trash though. When I threw this out to my friends at the lunch table, they could all remember when they first realized what was happening on September, 11th, but, when I offered the counter-example of Kerri Strug's sticking her final event with an injured foot to earn the gold for the American women's gymnastic team, quite a few of them remembered where they were because they were watching it happen.

Forever Midnight

That had to be one of the worst possible prom themes ever. Okay, I'll admit that saying that is hyperbole (the sophomore class at my old high school tried to have a HIM themed Holiday Ball with dead trees or something hanging from the ceiling, and the decorations were nice at the Forever Midnight prom). Come on though, where does one find any romanticism at the time of midnight? It's the witching hour! I, for one, find it rather difficult to keep love in my mind when thoughts of demons and unholy cults performing their profane sacraments keep intruding. Clocks striking midnight are not a symbol of happiness. They signify the final hour. After midnight has struck, the day is over and any deadlines you had that day are now missed. In superhero movies, when does that poor person need to be rescued from rape and muggings? At night.

If anyone is going to come down on me for not joining some committee and working for some superior theme, I would like to point out that Forever Midnight did not destroy my prom experience and making fun of it after the fact is a lot more fun.

Metaphilm

So, it took a little longer than I had initially promised, but I assure that the wait was well worth it for the first installment of the feature I have decided to simply call, "must see."

First up is Metaphilm, one of the most interesting, deep and hilarious sites I have ever found. If you're trying to envision it, think of a collection of movie reviews. Now forget the review part. This site's contributor's aren't concerned with how good or bad a movie is (How else do you explain the presence of Alien vs. Predator on Metaphilm?), but the true meanings of film, from movies as disparate as Fight Club, Akira and I Heart Huckabees, are. Connections are drawn between the conspiracy theories surrounding the assasination of President Kennedy and the board game turned movie Clue and between the celebrated comic Calvin and Hobbes and Fight Club. Both are personal favorites and make a visit worthwhile. Besides these interprative essays, Metaphilm also has a number of fascinating links which consider the purpose of film and the experience of watching it.

At a philosophical level this site's greatest appeal, for me, is its structure. Metaphilm's contributors look for and find meaning in everything. All movies, no matter how banal or excellent, are passages to greater understanding. For them, life has meaning and is very much worth living.

Okay, the last paragraph is a overly romantic, considering how sarcastic these writers can be and how lightly they treat some movies, but I still stand by it. If someone can find any redeeming worth at all in Gothika, it gives me hope for everything else.

New Feature

I'd don't have much time before my morning classes start, but I'd like to alert everyone to a new feature coming to Spice of Life, a listing and comments upon the best web sites I've found. As you can tell, I haven't yet come up with some clever name yet, but that is a good description. There's a lot of trash and worthless sites on the web but there are a number of good ones that exist alongside them, and I would like to share the best of those that I have found with you all. Hopefully I'll start this afternoon, but, in the meantime, I suggest you all install Mozilla Firefox and the Stumble! extension, available on the Mozilla website, which will take you to a random website based on some preferences you set upon installation and ratings assigned by other Stumble! users. It'll make every day of surfing the Internet a wild and crazy adventure or, at least, more so than it used to be.

Meaning of Names

I don't know how much more mileage I can get out of this topic, but I have to be getting close to the end of the line. Whatever the case may be, I'm going to drain every drop of thought I can from it.

This time I'm considering the meanings behind the names of people. If you have been with me for a while or were simply overcome with the urge to read my archives, you'll hopefully remember a post from a few weeks back on naming a baby. Likely one of the more distinctive facets of that post was my preference for demonic names like Mephistopheles and Baal. Clearly, there are some massively negative connotations associated with those names. Generally, I simply liked the sound of these names, but some of the other names like those drawn from mythology and I found pleasure in their allusions to these great figures. Now I'm asking myself just how important the connections drawn by these names are. Is it right to arbitrarily give someone a name with such a terrible history or does meaning not come into it at all?

First of all, I refuse to believe that names determine a person's personality anymore than their Zodiac sign or the lines on their palm. A person can always go by a nickname or last name or something. Still, what would it say if we were to completely divorce a name from any meaning whatsoever, appropriate the elements we liked and ignored the rest? Do we agree with and accept Bruce Willis' line in Pulp Fiction, "Our names don't mean shit," or do we seek and find meaning in all aspects of our lives? Something that ought definitely to be considered within the larger framework of our life philosophies.

At least one can always hope that people, in general, are too ignorant to recognize the source of these names and give the person any flak for them.

Honesty

Honesty is a rather big issue with me, but, as I grow older, this virtue, that was made so simple in Sesame Street when whatever monster comes clean and admits to breaking the other monster's new bike and immediately felt better and everything returned to normal, grows more complex. This post is devoted to investigating and trying to resolve my problems with it.

The best place, as always, is to begin at the beginning. Here it's the question, "What is honesty?," the answer being what all resulting thoughts must hold to. For me, the definition is two-fold. First, honesty requires one to tell the truth, or for many people their perspective on the truth, without making up events or exaggerating while the second aspect is being wholly open. Omitting a critical detail like you insulted the person before they punched your nose may not be a lie per se, but it's certainly dishonest.

Largely, I believe that the first part of the definition should be held to as much as possible. For obvious reasons, lying to avoid responsibility or punishment or whatever is not something one should do. Getting caught in such a lie breaks trust which is necessary to the healthy continuation of personal relationships. The only situation where I would advocate lies is in avoiding a convoluted, meaningless explanation that would only serve to confuse someone and not benefit them otherwise. Rather than go through and explain every step of why you were prevented from going to the library, just say that extenuating circumstances came up.

The difficulty with honesty really arises from the second part. First of all, it's impossible to be completely open at all times and neither should being wholly open be advocated. Can one even express their immediate response to everything that happens around them? I guess they could but nothing would ever happen. We'd spend hours discussing our reactions and counter-reactions and counter-counter-reactions and so on to every statement. Furthermore, our immediate reactions are rarely valid. We have all made bad first impressions and seen them. We don't immediately declare our thoughts to these people. We give them the benefit of the doubt, taking the time to fully consider the whole of our encounter, and hope they show us the same courtesy. We ought especially to be open about those things we aren't proud of. Keeping our sins close to us keeps us from seeing them in their entirety. We need to get them out there, so we can begin making amends.

Now comes the important part. Am I an honest person? Do I follow these criteria that I have spent some time considering? Well, for the first aspect of honesty, I do hope so. If a person asks for an explanation, I try my hardest to make sure I am fully truthful, though there are some issues that I will steadfastly refuse to answer, which leads into my difficulties. Am I an open person? Though I try, the answer is far from yes. As I said before, there are some questions (mostly concerning my attraction to those of the opposite gender and some of my personal failures or sins) from some people that I will simply not answer or reveal that I am lying through my teeth before giving an answer. This is not healthy. How can I expect to form a healthy personality if I'm not fully open and expose myself to other perspectives or advice?

Where this gets interesting is that I don't really mind people knowing these things. I just can't admit to them. If a person guesses right about who I'm attracted to, as recently happened, I own up. It's general, probing questions that throw up all sorts of resistance. Perhaps it's seeing the people as I reveal these things that messes me up. Maybe if I wrote my answers down and left the room, I could and would be a more open person. Something for me to consider and try and work towards.

New blog link

Check out the list under Blogs of Repute. It's ranks have swelled by one with the addition of a new blog started by my good friend from high school, Zach. He's an interesting person and knows other interesting people, so it should be fun. Visit it and find another perspective on life.

Pride and Prejudice

Before I went to college, I never even considered reading a Jane Austen novel. Now, in the space of four months I have spent something like twelve hours watching Jane Eyre and the two versions of Pride and Prejudice, in three sittings. That's a lot of British accents and romance. Anyway, I thought that putting down my thoughts on the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and the remake with Keira Knightley who is so terribly pretty.

I'll come out and say this now. I preferred the BBC version though it is really hard to approach the modern version after watching it since there are certain scenes and characters you become attached to that are inevitably cut out or given smaller roles. That's not to say that Keira Knightley's version was a disappointment. It simply wasn't as good. To a large extent, I preferred the BBC's actors, possibly because they were given more screentime and opportunity to develop their characters like Mr. Wickham who desperatley needed more time on screen because his was such an important character. With regards to the new Mr. Collins, I simply did not like the more serious and less comic take on him. Colin Firth definitely is the better Mr. Darcy, being able to portray prouder side than the rather mopey Matthew Macfadyen. Then we come to the showdown between Jennifer Ehle and the Oscar nominated Keira Knightley. As I see it, it's a battle between a more reserved, aloof take on Elizabeth Bennet from Jennifer Ehle and Keira Knightley's more passionate acting. I had a friend who said she hated Keira Knightley in the role because she was so aware of how beautiful she was and spent all of her time emphasizing that. I disagree and have to say that I prefer Keira Knightley in the role. She was simply more interesting than Ehle. Besides, Ehle's curls drove me up the wall.

Besides, the characters, who, of course, are the heart of this film, I have to give the remake the advantage in most everything else except for the few new scenes. The cinematography was far more interesting, for one thing utilizing a moving camera more than a few times and some great extended shots. At the very least, it made the dance scenes much more fun. Also, one thing that really bothered me about the BBC version was that it really didn't seem like the Bennets were that bad off and could have survived not getting their daughters married so quickly, except for a few scenes of father Bennet shaking his head over the accounts. The modern version shows the family in circumstances that are a bit more on the edge. One thing I particularly loved was the new color scheme. While the BBC stuck with a brilliant green for the outdoors and white and black for the indoors, the new version emphasized a mix of warm colors and neutrals all over the place. It simply looked better. I mentioned the new scenes earlier. Personally, I loved the shot of Mr. Bingley prepping with Mr. Darcy before meeting Jane again. It was truly amusing, but the Mrs. Darcy bit and that line before Elizabeth and Darcy's first kiss ("My hands are cold?!?!") were rather silly and far more suited for lighter fare.

There you have it. My thoughts on the film adaptations of a literary classic. Guess I should read the novel now.

Hair

My relationship with my hair is a complicated one. Of all aspects of my physical appearance, I guess that it is the one I am most vain about. My face isn't that great, though my eyes are okay, I guess, I'm rather pale and I have never had a defined set of muscles that made me want to go around without my shirt on.

Thus, I have long depended upon my hair as my most beautiful attribute, which is very strange considering how much I've neglected and abused my hair. If you've kept up with my blog at all, you'll know I had dreadlocks a while ago. Maybe two years ago, I dyed it a brilliant blue, which quickly faded to a rather sickly green. On top of all that, I get maybe two haircuts a year and buy the cheapest shampoos and conditioners I can find.

So, here I am with hair that I put about as little effort into as possible but still believe is beautiful. I guess this is the result of being told for years that beauty is on the inside, a message I took to heart so that I now put no effort into my appearance, especially that which I consider my greatest aspect. Maybe, if I'm not naturally beautiful, I shouldn't try and force it. I should remain the way I was made and not fight my nature.

Looking back, this is one of my stranger posts. Maybe I'll edit it later to make it more coherent or find some great, underlying message in it all. Have a happy St. Patrick's Day.

Here we go

Okay everyone. It's the fifth day of spring break, I've taken care of all the homework that I can do, and I'm feeling the urge to write. Get ready for insane amounts of posts over the next few days. I'm hoping to make ten new posts by Monday.

Also, if you haven't noticed, the first link to a fellow blogger has been posted on Life's Spice. It's to Compos Mentis and is maintained by a good friend of mine. Kind of a mix between a diary as he relates the events of his life and various theories he has come across or come up with. Has a strong community so there are a fair number of thoughtful responses made to his posts and more than a few viewpoints are presented. I strongly urge you to check it out, now.

Webcomics, Part 2

So, tomorrow turned into a week plus a day. You all may have missed my posts and experienced some minor, passing depression, but I certainly wasn't. I wasn't updating because I was too busy having fun with journalism and other wild craziness that occupied my time. Anyway, here we go again. The conclusion to a blogging epic, my thoughts on why you should read the same webcomics as I do.

Ctrl+Alt+Del (http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com)
Another one of the heavy hitters. It's been around since 2002 and recently announced that it would be producing professionally animated and voiced shorts available to its websites premium subscribers. Yeah, it's big, and it doesn't violate copyright laws as grotesquely as 8-Bit Theater, so it can get away with selling books of its archives. It's a little hard to give this a roaring recommendation to everyone because it's so topical and focuses on a certain audience, video gamers, but to those who keep up-to-date on the latest news in the gaming industry, it's gold. Still, for those who don't care about games, it's still strong enough to recommend to the adventurous or those with copious amounts of time. Of all the webcomics with the joke-a-day format I check, it has matured the most of them all. The illustrations have greatly improved since the beginning, but its strongest point is its characters. The relationships between them all are incredibly well-developed, and the writer has kept it interesting with major changes in the circumstances of the character's lives.

Sinfest (www.sinfest.net)
This is, my opinion (which I won't call humble since I'm willing to post it for all the world to see), the greatest webcomic on the Internet. It touches on life's questions and avoids cliches. Come on, God and Satan are characters, and they're funny! What's funnier than the greatest good and evil in existence? A rather pathetic wanna-be player, a philosophical wanna-be whore, some break dancing bookish boy and God's and Satan's respective fanboys! And they're all together in the glory that is Sinfest! It's simply too much. I have laughed out loud more than a few times and take every opporunity to expose my friends and professors to Sinfest. There are flaws, flat characters and some repetitive strips in the past few months, but the current story arc, which is simply amazing, looks to upset this pretty big. Unfortunately, this comic has been on hiatus for the last month and a bit. Gives you all the more opportunity to catch up on the extensive archives. Big warning, lots of sexual innuendo and cursing and stuff that'll offend you if you take your religion seriously and don't like seeing it get made fun of.

Partially Clips (www.partiallyclips.com)
A particularly brilliant webcomic, Partially Clips repeats a piece of clip art three times and adds speech. Hilarity ensues. It's a bit more hit-or-miss than some of the other, hits more often than not, but the brilliance of the gems can beat out anything out there. Be sure to check out Penguin Mom, Gun Fighters, Rock Star, Students on the Steps and Hot Air Balloon (as long as you aren't offended by a certain strong expletive). These are gold. A huge recommendation for this one to everyone in spite of many instances of sexual innuendo and cursing. It's high brow, and you to think about these for a little while. That and their style is just so original.

MegaTokyo (www.megatokyo.com)
Undoubtedly the comic which the most work goes into. The drawings are beautfiul and very professionally done for something being freely distributed on the Internet. They are simply wonderful. The characters are expressive and various angles and distances are utilized to great effect. The story is nothing to scoff at either, about people trying to get a grip on themselves and their relationships in the craziness that is Tokyo. My only real gripe against this otherwise great comic is its frequent use of filler material, stuff that has no bearing on the story. Despite these accolades, it's hard to reccomend. The archives go back several years, and you'll need to read them all to understand the story and the complex character histories and relationships at all. You'll lose a week of your life catching up on it all. It's not a joke-a-day comic either, more in the style of a soap opera than anything else, so it's not for everyone. Those willing to spend their time on it will surely be rewarded though.

Get Fuzzy (http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/)
To round out my list, I present to you the second syndicated strip I follow, Get Fuzzy. It's been around for a while and chances are good that you've seen it on a newspaper page at some point. It's offbeat humor, very sarcastic and mean-spirited at times but thoroughly enjoyable. I'm simply at a loss as to what to say because it's just so unusual. Of course, it lacks an archive, so you'll have buy the anthologies if you want to get all the Get Fuzzy goodness you can get. A worthy successor to the legacy of Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side as one of the few comics worth reading in a daily paper.

Webcomics, Part 1

I would like to share one of my hobbies with you. Webcomics. The online and unregulated counterpart to the syndicated counterpart to the sickly unfunny comics, barring the two I read online, you find in the daily newspaper. Its kind of a niche hobby, since the greater audience and lack of a need to appeal to great numbers allow the comics to gear themselves towards various niche interests; gaming (both video and role-playing) and anime among the more popular. I have grown tired of syndicated comics. They've been sanitized and sunk to the lowest common denominator so they neither offend or amuse anyone. Furthermore, they rarely end. Webcomics break these restraints because they are rarely the principal source of income for their creators and can end, thus allowing for changes to occur within the comic.

I guess this post is prompted by what I see as a renaissance going on in the webcomics I'm reading now. Four of them are currently undergoing what I assume will turn out to be fundamental shifts in the plot direction of the comics. As an art form, these are maturing to the point where they have progressed beyond the joke-a-day format to try new things.

Still, webcomics are a mildly difficult to get into. It takes a lot of time to find the quality comics and then to read all their archives to get up-to-date so the current storyline makes sense to you. Thus, I have taken upon myself to list my personal favorites, the ones I check daily, so you can save yourself a little time. Without further ado, I present...

8-Bit Theater (www.nuklearpower.com)
A classic. If you're into webcomics at all, chances are you've come across this. Originally, the comic required a fair amouont of video game, role-playing comic knowledge, but, now that it's established (having well over 650 individual strips up) it's more character driven. Using sprites from Final Fantasy I (leading to a text heavy humor), the adventures of a group of anti-heroes are told in 8-Bit Theater. Fighter, Black Mage, Thief and Red Mage consistently amuse me with their failed attempts to work together and random acts of violence against the innocent, undeserving and each other. There is a fair amount of swearing and sexual innuendo, especially between Black Mage and White Mage. Realize that you have been warned.

The Order of the Stick (www.giantitp.com)
A bit younger than 8-Bit Theater but immensely popular, now running in the monthly Dragon magazine I believe, is The Order of the Stick. A group of adventurers wander around a fantasy world trying to beat the bad guy and make sense of the inane rules that govern their lives. Nice, simple, fun. This one requires a working knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons or, barring that, at least of the D20 system, but the pay-off is well worth it. The cartoonist has succeeded in generating sympathetic and unique characters, and his stick art style is clean. I like it a lot, if you haven't guessed so already.

The Boondocks (http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/)
The first of the two syndicated comics I follow. You've more than likely heard about this one, the comic about the experiences of a black man and his two grandsons in the suburbs. It's nasty at times (never too much, remember the syndicate), very topical and does tend to treat race as a bigger issue than I believe it should be (that being another post), but it's good, preferable to Doonesbury at least. The art doesn't change much, but it still looks good.

Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire (http://www.dominic-deegan.com/)
Absolutely stellar art is the high point of this webcomic for me. The cartoonist varies up the positions and angles a bit and does pretty good action scenes. The writing is not my favorite, but the story arcs are very good. My biggest gripe about Dominic Deegan is how saccharine it can be. All of the heroes are pure wholly good, no gray areas for them, while many of their enemies to betray decent tendencies every once and a while. The perpetual optimism and generally happiness of the main characters simply seems out of place for some of the horrible things they've gone through or are currently going through. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy sweet and touching, just not that much, that often. Not much humor, unless you think alliteration is simply hilarious, and it's fairly character driven. Be warned that there are over a thousand past strips to work through.

The Last Days of Foxhound (http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php)
This one will probably be the most hit-or-miss of the ones I put up because of the specific background knowledge it requires. Not merely do you need to be a video game nerd, but of the Metal Gear series and Meatl Gear Solid in particular. Liquid Snake has just joined Foxhound and learns to live and fight with his eccentric and evil coworkers. Owes a lot to 8-Bit Theater but stands on its own. If you have that though, and many do because it's such a great bunch of games, it's worth a look. The art is more than a little simplistic and goofy, but I feel that just adds to the humor, when these rough and tough characters just look silly. Another warning, there is a lot of swearing, but you should be able to handle it if you've played the games.

There are another six webcomics I'd like to share with you all, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'm tired now, and I doubt anyone wants to read some monstrously long blog this evening. Come back tomorrow or maybe the next day for part two.

Reflections on Dreadlocks

I had my hair dreaded a few days ago. When people saw me, after voicing whatever their opinion was, one of their first questions was 'Why?' To tell the truth, I don't have a good answer to that. The idea first took root maybe two years ago. It wasn't like some flash of insight. I didn's see some super exemplary guy with dreadlocks and tell myself 'I have to be just like him in everyway.' I imagine I just liked how they looked. Anyways, two years ago was when I first started talking about it. Then, while researching a story about some classmates who were entering a pageant, I learned about a local hair design school, called them up and had an appointment. Let me tell you something right now if you're considering dreadlocks for yourself. They hurt a bleeding lot and took a bleeding long time. There were two people working on my head constantly for around three hours and a third even stepped in for a little while. For that whole time, they would pull tight on small patches of my hair and backbrush for a few minutes. Imagine some jerk kid throwing small rocks at your head and you'll have some conception of how much it hurt. Now realize that you're paying for this to happen, and it all gets a whole lot worse. In the end, I was charged sixty dollars for the hair, which was generous since the lady knocked it down from eighty. I don't know, maybe my stylists screwed up, or she knew how much it hurt. Very quickly I realized that I could no longer wear my bike helmet. My hair was too big, which sucks when the city you live in has a helmet law, and your picture already ended up in the school newspaper as an example of a person breaking it.

I guess another thing that attracted me to dreadlocks, after doing a little research, was that they weren't supposed to require much maintenance. After a little while, the hair is supposed to start growing into dreads naturally and never need to be combed or anything ever again. What I missed was the amount of work that needed to be put in in the first place. For the first four months, before your hair 'matures,' you need to spend a lot of time twisting the invidual dreads and waxing them, so they hold their position. The past few days, I've dedicated forty minutes to working on my hair. This is a big change since I put up with my hair covering my eyes because I was too lazy and cheap to get a haircut and hadn't combed my hair for the past month.

Already I find myself at a crossroads of sorts. Basically, the dreads are taking too well, and I don't want to continue putting in the time to maintain them. Still, I put a rather extensive amount of time and money into this and don't want to give up so early on. I guess my plan now is to use up the sixteen dollars worth of wax I bought and wait to see what happens. What makes this interesting is that a friend doesn't like my new look and is drumming up investors to buy my wax and force me to comb the dreads out. She already has two other people willing to put their money in. Another friend has been maintaing that if I like my hair the way it is, I shouldn't allow her to do this. My response, "It's just hair. I really don't care," which is more than a little contradicted by my decision to get it done this way. I do feel this way though.

You know, I think is actually one of those situations that I can find meaning in. To an extent, I'm glad I tried something different and exorcised the demon that has driven me to do this, but it remains a very superficial and expensive way to demonstrate individuality. Kind of makes me feel selfish, and I want to donate an equal amount of money to charity now. On the upside, people remembered my name when they had something so obvious to remind them of who I am.

Now to send my family and other school friends pictures.

Love

I know Valentine's Day was a week ago, but love has been permeating my thoughts lately. I talked about it with a friend at brunch, heard about in in the homily last week, and thought about while running on a treadmill. Now you are going to be treated to the latest culmination of my views on the subject.

Straight up, love is sacrifice. Love is such a high respect and admiration for God, another person, an idea, an organization, a pet, an artistic work or whatever that one is willing to sacrifice their time, possessions, energy and all aspects of their being to it. For me, the ideal is that, in the case of two people, they so fully devote themselves to one another that they don't attend to their own well-being at all because their partner so fully takes care of them. Simple. What do you think?

Their is a rather large flaw in this perception of love in that it doesn't adequately describe God's love for us. Sacrifice requires one to lose something. God is freaking omnipotent and can't give anything up. To some extent this is alleviated by belief in the Trinity and that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all one and that Jesus is both fully human and divine since humans can sacrifice, but it remains a weak link. Furthermore, how can something completely good love something that is less than it? How can it respect that which it exceeds in everyway? I guess I need to think about this some more, still. Rest assured though, when I discover the answers to it all, I will share them with you.

Baby names

I am just in rut lately with all of these name posts. This ought to be the last for a while though. I'm not quite sure what else I can say about them.

The first time this ever really came up in conversation for me was back in high school. I had some friends who had the more uncontrollable aspects of their lives perfectly planned out. Already they had planned out how many children they would have and what their genders and names would be. Suffice to say, I was rather amused and made fun of them for it. Now, in college, it's come up again. I don't even remember how, but people started talking about what they would name their children and what names they like. I have decided that my opinions that arose during this discussion are of such interest that they must be shared with all.

First of all, I must admit that I have a soft spot for names with classical allusions (as evidenced by my picking of Dismas (the Good Thief) for a confirmation name and Daedalus for just about every weblogin) and the 'a' sound. That pretty much guides most of the choices that you'll find below.

Start off, I'll just put down the names that have no great allusions. I just like how they sound. Darius, Dante, Dominique, Naomi, Leon.

Then there are those with classic allusions. There's the Arthurian legends (Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad, Mordred, Guivere). There's the Greek myths (Daedalus, Icarus, Achilles, Arachne). Finish it off with a little Buddhism, Mara, and Norse, Balder. Demons have some pretty sweet names, which is unfortunate. Kind of stigmatize a kid. Moloch, Mammon, Mephistopheles, Baal, Oni, Kali, Lucifer, Loki.

I once heard that the most common surname is Chang and that most common first name is Mohammed. I would love to name my kid Mohammed Chang Heinrich. Screw with people's preconceptions at the very least.

It's worth pointing out here that I'm serious about these names. When I have kids, I would want to name them like this. Needless to say, my wife will probably end up naming the kids lest they get beat up at school all the time. Maybe I can name the pets.

Shout out

What do you know, but more readers just keeping popping up. I have to thank Facebook for most of that (most all probably), but, hey, it's all good. Anyway, I was thinking that it would be such a huge boost to my ego and morale if everyone who has read Spice of Life would post a comment. Nothing amazing. Just a "Hey" of your own would be cool. Personally, I would like to see real comments outpace those of other bloggers looking to draw me into their site that they're making money off of. I think I need another four real comments to pull that off.

Please. It'll mean a lot to me. Thanks.

My Name

I know I've already done a post on names and everything, but I was kicking around Wikipedia tonight and this stuff I found was just too cool. Or nerdy. Whatever.

My name is Christopher Francis Heinrich, and, as with all things, I'll start at the beginning. Christopher descends from the Greek Christophoros. It translates to "Bearer of Christ," a reference to the legend of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers and an eighteen foot tall giant who once carried the baby Jesus across a river. Francis comes from the Francois, a French name meaning something like "little French person." Finally we come to Heinrich, a Norman variant on the German Haimrich, and means "ruler of the home."

Anyone else see the fascinating dichotomies? Legendary giant and "little French person?" "Ruler of the home" and patron saint of travelers? On top of all this, for coming from a solidly European background, I sure have a lot of diversity going for me with each of my names deriving from a different language. I am just too cool. A walking paradox, it's amazing that I don't explode from all the nomenclatural forces working on me.

Rousseau and Me

I learned something very exciting last night. I have readers beyond my parents. That is ubercool and energizes me to the point that I want to post more.

After I got over this initial rush of emotions, I became more reflective though. In Literature, we read excerpts from Rousseau's Confessions last week. In my reading journal that week, I spent maybe a third of its fifteen hundred words soap boxing on how arrogant Rousseau was and how much I hated him. Now I ask myself, am I all that different? I'm exposing myself in much the same way. I don't talk about myself as often as he does (in fairness, Confessions is basically a memoir), but I certainly have no problem with announcing my opinions to all who might stumble upon this.

I've spent some time thinking about this because I think it deserves some serious consideration and here's what I arrived at. I'm not like Rousseau. Confessions was written near the end of his life, and he was firm in his ideas. Me, despite flaunting my opinions, I'm sure of very little. If you try, you may very well be able to change my beliefs on more than a few topics. Spice of Life is more like my attempt to learn about myself, discover what I believe and build up a foundation for these beliefs should they be challenged.

Writing these same things in a private place would have the same affect, but I wonder if that, in its own way, wouldn't be more arrogant. Here, I open myself up to and invite criticism. If I kept these thoughts hidden in a journal in a drawer, they wouldn't be contended. On a more practical note though, as I mentioned before, simply knowing people read this causes me to write more. I would certainly less productive if these writings were to be kept secret. Yet another consideration is that I may not be willing to express my opinions on every topic, knowing they exist in this public sphere. Fear of people turning against me would limit my full expression. This could turn into a positive though. It is my belief that I shouldn't be ashamed of anything I do. If I do something, I ought to be willing to admit to it. I readily admit that I don't do this as much as I should in my daily life, but writing here is a good starting point.

Everything Bad is Good For You

I don't remember the exact circumstances of how I first came across this book, but the cultural web magazine Slate played an important role. The underlying premise of this book by Steven Johnson is that major elements of pop culture which routinely get ragged on like hyper violent video games and sex saturated and morally ambiguous television series are actually good for the public in that they challenge us and increase problem solving skills and social networking abilities. Anyway, Johnson writes or did write for Slate and someother contributor called him on this last year, posting a refutation of the points he made. Well, someone decided that it'd be great to have a more formal debate between the two, and they traded some e-mails which were later posted on the website. Let me point out that this event alone excites me, that two people could openly and reasonably debate each other without resorting to sneaky tactics, ultimately allowing the readers decide the better of the positions.

Enough of what isn't my opinion. I do suggest that people read this book if only for the ideas it proposes. They're outside mainstream thought and are well supported. Personally, I didn't find it worth buying, but it's certainly worth a trip to the library or a generous friend's house. Johnson divides his book into two parts, the first examining how elements of pop culture including video games, television, movies, and emerging technologies are benefiting the masses while the second investigates the first part's contribution to the Flynn Effect, the finding that the IQ of the regular person has increased over time, and why this has all occurred.

After finishing Everything Bad is Good for You, I find myself agreeing with the benefits Johnson finds in video games. He finds great benefit in the processes (which is where he finds the greatest contributions to our minds from pop culture rather than content) of learning the rules of virtual worlds and needing to utilize the skills of probing (a form of the scientific method) and telescoping (a method of finding order). One thing that confuses me about this chapter is his ideas on why we play video games. He suggests we play because the rewards are clear and immediate. We can beat a boss and get satisfaction from that in Mario, but life is much more difficult, ambiguity ruling our actions and their consequences. Does Johnson suggest this is a good thing or merely offer it as an explanation? I can't remember. I guess I could check, but I'll instead use this as a hook for you to check out the book. Find your own bleeding answers! Or I'm just lazy. Find your own answer to that too!

On to the television chapter. My respect for Johnson is at its highest here as he gives a fair presentation of his beliefs, comparing like shows (Hill Street Blues to West Wing and Starsky and Hutch to Survivor, the highbrow to the highbrow and the lowbrow to the lowbrow). Still, this is where I raise the greatest objections. Again, Johnson places great importance on the processes involved in this entertainment, focusing here on the complexity of the characters and plot. He claims that we as an audience are forced to work harder to understand what's going on in series like 24 and West Wing as references are made to things never shown on screen and passing references have integral importance to some of the plot lines. From this point, Johnson asserts he learn to better understand social networks in our daily lives. I'm not ready to fully contest the truth of learning to learn about social networks from television series, but I would like to say that it's limited. The shows necessarily limit our knowledge of these characters. We only see them for brief moments in certain circumstances. It seems like the rejection of those same ideas he presented in just the previous chapter where our unparalleled ability to interact with the environment was a huge positive benefit. How much can we really learn about these characters if we can't test them? On a side note, I found the little tables he made of plot difficulty to be unintentionally hilarious.

What gets me bad is that Johnson never suggests watching the news over these more entertaining shows. What about the complexity of unscripted real life? What about seeing how declarations by the United Nations lead to other events? I fully admit that there are problems with the mass media, but a half-hour of checking out the latest news online kicks the tail of watching forty-five minutes of ER and another fifteen minutes of commercials.

I'm not going to spend much time on the two chapters on movies and emerging technologies seeing as how movies is largely a rehash of the television chapter except for identifying the limits of movies and the latter chapter is a lot like the second take of the video games chapter only our interaction with technology is not as much for entertainment as games. I will point out, however, that I think Johnson cheats when discussing the Lord of the Rings movies and his reasons for it being so massively successful. It is belief that this trilogy is so popular because it resembles a television series in its length and complex cast of characters. He goes on to make a list of the characters. First of all, if I remember correctly, he includes Gil-Galad, a character who doesn't appear in the cut movies, and these characters are much more simple than those he celebrated in The Sopranos and 24. They're either good or evil. It's pretty clear cut except for the notable exception of Gollum.

Here are the two websites I alluded to earlier. The first is a Slate writer's critical look at Johnson's work while the second is their dialogue.
http://www.slate.com/id/2117395/
http://www.slate.com/id/2118550/

A New Direction

I have decided that Spice of Life is going to start following a little bit more of a method than its standard scatter-shot manner of laying down on the screen whatever has been running through my mind the past few days. I think that the best semi-consistent approach to take with this blog is to post reflections on whatever I've been reading lately. In my Literature classes, so far, we've spent a lot of time working on reading journals. Though the content my two professors have looked for has differed, the core principle remains the same, to display an engagement with the text and cause us to think about it. Well, it works. If I want what I read to have any impact on my life, I should reflect upon it, and this blog grants a great opportunity to do so. There'll still be random thoughts and reflections on the movies I watch, but books are going to be the focus now.

Lying

This is something that's been bugging me since I got back to college. I started taking Synoptic Gospels this semester and the first few classes were meant as introductory info and an examination into the Synoptic Problem (how the gospels relate to each other). Anyway, first thing we're told is that God didn't write the Bible. I guess I'll have to do a little explaining here, so you can better understand my ignoranc of these issues. I went through a public school, and, even though I went to religious education classes once a week since I was probably about six, they were always about doctrine, not so much the Bible. I never spent much time thinking about it. Ethics and morality were more of my concern. Anyway, back to Synoptic Gospels. Okay, God didn't write the gosepls? I can deal with that. Well pile on top of that the fact the authors of the Gospel are anonymous, there are no original manuscripts, and it probably wasn't an apostle of Jesus that wrote them and believing in the gospels as truth becomes a lot harder.

Why do we do this, simplify and lie to children? The world is a complex, difficult place to live in, and they need to learn to deal with it. Feeding them idealized stories that apply to their everyday lives just sets them up for problems later.

I have a real problem with Santa Claus too. What do we tell children this fantastical story? What's wrong with believing in the capacity for human charity and that those gifts came from people they know and can love rather than some creepy guy who's always watching you?

The Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny just seem like excuses for rampant materialism. Whoa, something happened or someday is coming up. Quickly, let's shower people with candy and material gifts.

End rant.

Being Special

Confession time! I was an avid reader when I was younger. I still am to a large extent, but my interests have diversified and I have friends that I spend time with now. Still, I read a lot when I was in elementary and junior high. I would read everything. I burned through children and teen series like Animorphs, Goosebumps, and even a few Babysitters’ Club. Around my freshman year of high school, Michael Crichton and John Grisham became my favorites. There was always one thing that irritated me in these books though. The kids. I don’t why they did this, (maybe because they didn’t know any young kids or something) but those two could not write believable kids. They were always too perfect and never died. The ones that boiled my blood the most were in Jurassic Park: The Lost World and The Witness. The adult characters couldn’t stop praising how clever and brave these little kids were. I, being about the same age or older, couldn’t help comparing myself to them. Now, you need to understand that I was a bit arrogant at this age. There were about seventy other freshmen, and I was at the top of the class. I thought myself pretty smart and was enraged that these fictional characters were getting all these kudos. “Just give me a chance,” I thought, “and I’ll show them up. I’ll even stop the bad guys way faster.” This was unbelievably arrogant of me, being jealous of fictional characters. On top of that, I had no real reason to feel this way. My world was fairly insulated, and I had managed to not realize that there were millions of people smarter and more talented than me.

So this finally brings me to my point. At some point in my life, I was told that for every person alive today, there are sixteen dead people in the past (which is a really stupid and impossible to accurately calculate statistic if you think about it. Still it gives us a starting point). Seeing as how there are over six billion people alive today, that’s a lot of people who have walked this planet. I’m not special. Everything I’m decent at, there’s at least one person who did it better and had other talents on top of that. Then you have to figure that there is a whole pile of people who didn’t have the same opportunities as I had, and, that given the chance, these people would exceed me as well. Short of the Day of Revelation coming upon us tomorrow, there is going to be a lot more people better than me as well.

I think we all need to square this fact with ourselves. We are not the best and probably won’t be so. Failing to realize this will only lead to disappointment. Once our egos are stripped away by this though, I believe we come to something better. We see our shared relationship with the rest of humanity, recognizing that we’re all in the same boat, and are able to see that their being and existence means as much as ours in the long run, hopefully leading to mutual respect and fair treatment.

I think this was a pretty good post.

Evolution

Something I’ve been wondering about recently is evolution, particularly the development of non-physical traits. Preferences and tastes are what I’m especially holding in mind. I guess this post is at least partially inspired by a National Geographic or Discover article my mom showed me some time ago about a study on what people find disgusting. As I remember, some things people found disgusting, like kissing in public, were cultural. Other things though, like dead and rotting animals, were found disgusting universally. Could there have once been ancient people who found decay enticing and feasted upon it only to be killed by the diseases carried? My question then though is what prevented those same ancient people with the hardiest immune systems from surviving? Were there just too many and too virulent diseases on their rotten meat? Are we born with some innate tastes that keep us alive? Do we know as babies to avoid rancid pork and molding bread?

There’s no doubt in my mind that tastes are rather heavily influenced by nurture. If a person found themselves in financial difficulty, say a college student, for a while and spent that time eating a lot of cheap ramen noodles, it’s not hard to imagine that they won’t like them later in life. On the flip side, some people learn to enjoy foods they once hated. I hear truffles are like that.

Something worth thinking about I guess.

Thoughts on Journalism

One day I hope to be a journalist, preferably for a newspaper or news web site. Thus, my thoughts often turn towards this topic. I recently have had a number of post worthy thoughts on journalism, but none of them are long enough to justify a single post, so, if you'll bear with the schizophrenic nature of this paper, I'll slap them up in my usual manner.

I was reading an article by the International Herald Tribune today on recent attacks in Iraq and arrived at what I believe to be a rather unusual revelation. Though the reporters hold nothing back when detailing the deaths of 'the good guys' (those whom the readers are most likely to sympathize with, in this case being the American and Iraqi soldiers) I don't believe I've ever read how many insurgents died in their fights with American and Iraqi forces. I do understand most attacks are carried out through suicide bombings, where it's pretty obvious how many insurgents died, but what about these skirmishes I keep hearing about. Short of surviving insurgents taking the dead with them or injured fighters dying away from the action, shouldn't there be bodies that can be counted? Why do our news sources shy away from this? Do they fear it would make us appear brutal in the case of many dead insurgents or pathetic if there are few enemy deaths?

Before I left for college, my dad asked a reporter who used him as a source for stories on the Outdoors page for his thoughts on journalism and was told that it was the worst paying job this side of working for the Department of Natural Resources. Well, there is one way I figure to get rich through journalism, be a liar. More than a few of those publicly denounced journalists were in the running for a Pulitzer prize, and movies have been made about their lives. As long as money can buy happiness and allow these fallen writers to hide from their failure, they're living pretty well.

Journey

Today I will post what I believe to be the closest thing to an original idea I've ever had. It's possible that you've heard this or variations of it before, but I came up with it independently. All similarities are coincidences. I'm fond of telling people this personal philosophy when we walk somewhere together, and they find themselves stopping and waiting for me because I walk so slow. I don't remember where or why I first came up with it, but it was greatly refined during my Literature class this semester. While reading The Odyssey, the professor introduced two terms, dilatory and teleological. Both relate to journies, dilatory being the tendency to enjoy the journey and avoid the end, and teleological is the desire to reach the end, complete the journey.

Anyway, here it goes. What is our destination? It's not some store or friend's house. For all of us, it's death. Our lives are nothing more than a journey towards our eventual deaths.

Whoo, great idea Chris. Going good so far with all your originality. Hold on though. It gets better.

A have a number of problems with modern American society, but one that bugs me is our tendency to rush, driving headlong into whatever destination takes our fancy. For all our lives, we're told to look towards the future and keep our eye on the goal. When we're young, we focus on the time when we get our driver's license or turn twenty-one and can start drinking legally. One of the most cliche lines in the world is "Are we there yet?" As a society, we don't care about the journey. Only the destination. I think we really need to readjust our priorities because this is screwed up. Though death is not something we should fear, it certainly isn't something we should be rushing headlong towards. Life is a journey and is all about that journey. The destination is really a secondary concern. If we keep caring only about the destination, we are missing so much. I say we need to slow down. Bike instead of drive, walk instead of bike, and admire our surroundings. Enjoy or, at least, pay attention to every moment of our lives a little more.

You know, if anything affected this idea it's the town where I grew up. Baudette, Minnesota. Population 1,400. About two hours away from any city worth going to. In school, I was happy if my team only had to drive an hour to get to our meet or whatever. There have been more than a few times that I've spent more time driving to than spending time at the place I ended up at. If I only cared about the destination, I would have wasted a lot of my life on the road.

Looking back on this post, I see that it really resembles the aphorism "Stop and smell the roses," but I'm still proud of my idea.

A Stupid Idea That Needs To Be Proven Wrong

I came up with this idea maybe a year and a half ago. I was taking a Philosophy course online and decided to make up something that made absolutely nosense but was logically correct. Anyway, I worked out this clever idea, and now it's driving me insane. If you asked anyone if it was right, they'd tell you it didn't make any sense, but I can't see what's wrong with it. So, I'm posting this in the hopes that someone smarter than me can prove it wrong.

Here's how it goes. Noone assumes that all change is instantaneous. In books, it's cliche to write that something, let's say a person's hand, moved faster than the eye could follow, almost appearing in some new place. We know, however, that the hand had to move through points between its beginning and end. But you can't measure these points. Let's say the hand started at point zero and ended up at point ten, moving in a straight line. At one point, the hand had to be at points one, two, and so on. But the hand still has to get from point zero to point one, so it has go through points one point one, one point two, and so on. Do you see where I'm going with this? No matter how little you divide up the distance, there will always be a gap that the hand magically teleports past. Thus, these changes are instantaneous, skipping over some points.

Please, someone prove this wrong. It's such a stupid idea, but I can't do it myself.

Creepy Calls

Today I was working on my finances and had to call up Wells Fargo because I was paranoid that my credit card wasn't being fully paid off and that interest was building up on me. Anyway, I called up their 800 number and was greeted, unsurprisingly, by a machine. This was a special machine though. Now only did it have a speech recognition system, which I avoided using as much as possible, but it was designed to sound like a real person as much as possible by using phrases like "Hold on while I look that up" and "Okay, here it is. What do you want to do now."

This really irritated me. Come on. It's obviously a machine since it speaks in that jilted, recorded way and asks you to speak your needs into the phone. I guess Wells Fargo is trying to make calls a little less stressful and personal, but the voice is just creepy. I know you're a recording. You're not fooling anyone, so quit faking humanity! Hearing the computer tell me "Okay, here it is" makes me laugh and then I get redirected to who knows where because of the stupid speech recognition system. Personally, I would much rather talk to a real person, even if the spot had been outsourced, and they had a thick accent. At least jobs are being created then.

On the bright side, when I ended up talking to people, my problem was quickly solved, and I shouldn't need to call back anytime soon.