CHANGE JAR STATS
++ As of February 7, 2005,
the change jar was 41.3% full.
++ I last emptied the change jar
on August 11, 2004.
++ The change jar is projected
to be full on October 21, 2005.
[See change jar photo here]
Last night a woman friend said to me, "You're dangerous, Kilgore."
Words and terms used to describe me in the past include: hesitant, shy, introverted, bookish, withdrawn, "got his goddam head in the clouds," self-effacing, nervous, uptight, safe, very safe, safer than an adorable fuzzy duckling drenched in nonoxynol-9 spermicide and wrapped in a condom reinforced with inch-thick steel bands. But never "dangerous."
I rather like this idea of a Dangerous Kilgore Trout. I stayed up late last night striking Dangerous poses in front of the mirror. For example, I would stand sideways and slump my shoulders to indicate boredom and Dangerous detachment. I also tried leaning against things with my hands in my pockets and a sullen expression on my face. HELPFUL TIP: If you're trying to be Dangerous, I suggest not leaning against an open door until you push it all the way back against the wall. Scraping your elbow on the carpet will not contribute to your Dangerous attitude.
On my way to the store to get hydrogen peroxide and some toothpicks to dangle jauntily from my lip, I practiced saying Dangerous things like, "If you're gonna bring it, then bring it," and "Let's rumble," and "Yeah, I'm Dangerous, baby." At first I said these things in my regular voice, but as I became more comfortable I started using a scratchy, Dirty Harry voice. I ended up coughing a lot, because talking that way makes my throat itch, and today I have a sore throat. I guess I'll pick up some lemon tea on the way home. But that's the price you pay for being Dangerous like me.
Demonlover (2002)
Starring Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, and Chloë Sevigny.
Directed by Oliver Assayas.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 5.5 (out of 10)
A great movie to watch if you harbor insufficient hatred for the human race, Demonlover describes the violent world of corporate espionage. The corporations here are fighting over Demonlover, a website offering, among other perversions, Japanese pornographic animation for pedophiles. Those possessing the secret codes can access Hellfireclub, an interactive torture site where patrons can enter their fantasies and watch kidnapped women getting tortured to order.
This is strong stuff, yet the detached corporate characters discuss their wares as if they were selling vegetable soup or staplers. The best scenes show men and women in suits arguing over contract clauses to protect themselves from child-porn prosecution, or frowning thoughtfully at animation of young girls getting raped by eels. Director Assayas shows torture scenes from Hellfireclub -- most are flashed on the screen quickly or shown in extreme closeup so as to disturb rather than sicken. (He does include one extended shot of a woman chained to an electrified bed.) The timeline and plotline starts fracturing during the second half, and I would have to watch Demonlover again to figure out what really happens. But I don't think I will.
SOUR! The Colorado Mammoth's season is over. They fell Saturday to the Calgary Roughnecks 13-11, losing in the conference finals of the National Lacrosse League Champion's Cup playoffs for the fourth year in a row.
The crucial moment came late in the third quarter, after the Mammoth stormed back to erase a four-goal deficit and tie the game 8-8. Then Jamie Hanford committed a stupid slashing penalty after the whistle (one of many dumb penalties committed by both teams that day -- c'mon, guys, even hockey players know not to fight during the playoffs!) and went to the box for five minutes. Calgary reeled off three goals (including two breakaways) in the next 2:27 to take an 11-8 lead, and Roughnecks goaltender Curtis Palidwor sealed the upset, stopping 21 of 24 shots in the fourth quarter, including several glorious scoring chances for the Mammoth. Palidwor, the game MVP, played brilliantly all game and racked up 41 saves on 52 shots.
Colorado finished the regular season 13-3, winning the NLL's Western Conference by two games. The Mammoth had the best offense (most goals scored) and the best defense (fewest goals against) in the league. They ranked first in penalty-killing, faceoff percentage, and shots attempted. The already legendary Gary Gait led the NLL in goals scored and tied for first in the scoring race. Gavin Prout finished second in assists and third in points. Goaltender Gee Nash led the league in save percentage and finished third in goals-against average. Jamie Hanford ranked first in faceoff percentage. Loaded with talent, the Mammoth entered the playoffs expecting -- and expected -- to win the Champion's Cup.
I'm surprised at how disappointed I am. I watch a lot of sports because I like sports, and I usually don't care who wins. Sometimes I'll root for a team, especially if a Colorado team is playing. But I still don't care very much. For example, it looks as though the Avalanche will lose their Stanley Cup playoff series to the Sharks, and while I hope they pull off a miraculous comeback, it doesn't cast much of a shadow over my life.
But I cared about the Mammoth, dammit! I had season tickets. I went to every home game except one and hollered myself hoarse -- I was famous in Pepsi Center section 349 for yelling "WHO WANTS IT?" when the players battled for a loose ball. I knew all the players' names and adopted as my idol Dave Stilley, the veteran defenseman who always looked like he might soil his shorts when he actually got the ball in his stick. "SHOOT IT!" we screamed whenever Stilley touched the ball, and one day Stilley did shoot it, and scored only the second goal in his NLL career. Awesome.
Mammoth in 2005!
(Discussion Question: Is "Champion's Cup" the most generic, gutless name for a championship trophy you ever heard?)
Many of you will remember the following "Open Letter to Dr. Laura" circulating through email inboxes several years ago after radio pest Dr. Laura Schlessinger, an Orthodox Jew at the time, cited Mosaic law to back up her belief that homosexuality is immoral. The letter opens:
Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.
The unknown author of the letter proceeds to quote other laws from Leviticus sanctioning activities that today we find ridiculous, immoral, or barbaric. Through satire, the writer intended to force fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews into one of two uncomfortable positions: (a) blindly endorsing the ridiculous, immoral, or barbaric laws, or (b) insisting the Mosaic prohibition on homosexuality was valid while the ridiculous, immoral, or barbaric laws were not, which would contradict their beliefs in scriptural infallibility.
A week ago I ran across a link (via The Raving Atheist) to a response from one John Braue, a blogger who studies a little Torah on the side. For each r/i/b law presented in the letter, Braue responds with interpretations of that law from the Talmud, a compendium of legal wrangling compiled by rabbis over thousands of years. By doing so, Braue intends to justify the use of Mosaic law to condemn homosexuality. I find his responses interesting because he uses a logically invalid tactic that I'll call the Argument from Intimidation. Braue ignores the issues at hand and seeks to shock and awe the reader with name-dropping and unexplained Talmudic jargon -- he hopes to stifle counterargument from the reader, who won't want to admit he doesn't understand the technical terms for fear of appearing stupid. Fortunately, I harbor no such fear.
The rest of the letter appears below in italics, with Braue's responses in regular type and my commentary in bold.
When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
You ought not to be making sacrifices at all. It is forbidden to offer any sacrifice outside of the Bet haMikdash. Read tractate Kodashim instead.
Braue's answer confuses instead of convincing me, because I don't know what the Bet haMikdash is, or what a tractate is, or who or what Kodashim is. A persuasive response would have included an explanation of these terms. In any case, Braue seems to argue that the command to sacrifice livestock has expired, which makes this skeptic wonder why the prohibition against homosexuality couldn't have expired as well.
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
It depends on whether or not your daughter is a virgin. The "virgin's dowry" mandated in the Torah is 200 zuzim (or dinarim). The zuz is reckoned at 0.384g of pure silver; therefore, if your daughter is a virgin, 76.8g of silver is an appropriate price (N.B,: the troy ounce is 31.102g). A non-virgin daughter is not assigned a value in the Torah, but the Sages decreed that she should be valued at at least 100 zuzim.
If you don't know whether your daughter is a virgin, shame on you for neglecting your parental responsibilities. Fear not, however; Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi figured this out 1800 years ago.
Once you plow through the foreign terms and the mini-course in precious metals here, it seems that John Braue has no problem with selling women into slavery for as little as 1.23 troy ounces of silver -- about $7.61 as of market close Friday. Are you sure you want to stick with that position, John?
(N.B.: Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi can kiss my ass. Is selling women into slavery okay because he said so 18 centuries ago?)
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
The laws of modesty (tznius) forbid the touching of any woman (save one's wife) in a romantic way (derekh hibba) whether they are menstruating or not. If you can't tell whether or when your wife is menstruating, you have non-Halakhic problems that I can't help you with.
I'm looking at Lev. 15:19-24 right now and it doesn't specify touching in a romantic way -- it just says "touches." It also states that "whoever touches anything [a menstruating woman] sits on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean until evening," so the letter writer's question makes complete sense, given that about 25% of women are having their periods at any given time and anyone might touch a chair on which a menstruating woman sat. But John sidesteps the ridiculousness of this law -- given modern hygiene -- and hopes to lose the reader in a smokescreen of Talmudic jargon.
Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
Actually, it is technically forbidden to own any slave. The reason is that it is forbidden to own any non-circumcised slave (or, in the case of women, who have not been purified in the mikvah). However, a slave who is circumcised (or purified) must then go free in the Sabbatical or the Jubilee Year (Exodus 21:2, Leviticus 25:8-55).
This answer makes no sense. Braue says that you can't own slaves, and then immediately contradicts himself by saying that you can own slaves as long as they are circumcised (or purified) and you release them in the Jubilee Year, which comes every 50 years -- small comfort to that eight-year-old virgin girl you just bought for $15.22.
I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
You are forbidden to kill him yourself. The death penalty may only be administered by a court of 23 ordained rabbis (see tractate Sanhedrin). Since there are no genuinely ordained rabbis (and won't be until Elijah returns), no competent court can be convened.
You know I won't be seeing tractate Sanhedrin anytime soon, John. But that's okay, because you just admitted that it's perfectly acceptable to execute a man on Sunday for bagging groceries on Saturday as long as Elijah returned on Thursday. Once again: are you sure you want to stick with that position?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
Eating shellfish is definitely the lesser abomination. The Talmud and those Rishonim who have commented on the subject agree that there are three mitzvot which may not be violated even under threat of death: murder, forbidden sexual relations, and idol worship. Since the laws of kashrut are not among these, they may be violated for the sake of saving a life (including one's own life).
Notice that Braue avoids the letter writer's satirical point: it's ridiculous to believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, eternally existing, all-loving and morally perfect being would care if somebody ate a shrimp cocktail.
Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
Blindness in one eye (or, of course, both) is considered to exempt one from the positive commandment to approach the altar (in effect, to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem).
Answer the question, John. The guy said he wears reading glasses, not that he's blind in either or both eyes.
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?
They will suffer "death by the hand of Heaven".
So now the God you worship strikes men dead for having the wrong haircut? Isn't it enough that I can't get laid?
I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
Yes, provided that afterwards you immerse yourself in a valid mikvah.
I'm not dazzled by your use of the word mikvah, John. Why don't you address the ridiculousness of adhering to dietary laws concocted thousands of years ago by a desert tribe that had no access to modern refrigeration?
My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
You can't do either; see the answer to question 5.
And see my commentary on question 5 as well.
Braue concludes: "You didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyway: I know you're trying to be funny. Next time, though, try to find some questions that haven't been answered in three thousand years."
I can't wrap up any better than The Raving Atheist: "[Braue] never explains how three thousand years of thinking arrived at answers so very stupid."
The beautiful and creative Trillian again exercised her rights under Article IV of the Chaotic Not Random Reader's Bill of Rights and sent me the wonderful logo above, tweaked from the Google Earth Day design. Thank you, Trillian!
If you've never read Trillian's blog, you must do so today. You must do so immediately, in fact, especially if you share her hatred for Administrative Professionals' Day, Boss' Day, or Take Your Bratty Kid to Work Day.
My left second toenail seceded from the Union yesterday. It's surprising how painless it is to lose a toenail. Maybe I should make like the ultramarathoner in Running on the Sun and have all ten toenails surgically removed. Anyway, if you're a sick fuck like Hubs, I've posted before and after photos for your entertainment.
I drove up to Longmont last weekend for a friend's birthday, and was surprised to see a banner stretched over Main Street proclaiming April 12-16 "Abstinence Awareness Week." Apparently an outfit called Friends First dreamed up this concept. Be sure to check out their website, where you can buy exciting Friends First merchandise, including visors, baseball shirts, sweatshirts, and other apparel that your horny teen will be sure to immediately "lose" at a friend's house. Interestingly, you can buy a women's fitted T-shirt, cut extra-tight with extra-short sleeves, so your chaste daughter can do an extra-good job of showing off her tits. You'll also want to read the FAQ, which introduces the disturbingly Freudian concept of boys between the ages of 12 to 14 going on "Mommy dates."
Hey, I'm just fooling around, Friends First. Here at Chaotic Not Random, it's Abstinence Awareness Week all year round!
Duplex (2003)
Starring Ben Stiller, Drew Barrymore, and Eileen Essel.
Directed by Danny DeVito.
Kilgore rates it: 3 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 5.7 (out of 10)
Note to self: quit watching movies not made by the Farrelly brothers in which the hero, played by Ben Stiller, suffers steadily mounting misadventures, humiliations, public embarrassments, and other heaping helpings of outrageous fortune. (See also Meet the Parents and Along Came Polly.)
Stiller's squirmer Duplex is a mean-spirited movie about a young couple -- Alex and Nancy -- who buys a house in Brooklyn that comes complete with Mrs. Connelly, an elderly upstairs tenant who pays a rent-controlled $88 per month. The old lady proceeds to drive them crazy in a series of mostly predictable gags. For example, the first time Alex and Nancy enter the Mrs. Connelly's apartment, Alex spies a harpoon gun and picks it up. Do you think it goes off accidentally? Yeah, I know I should have put up a SPOILER! warning up, but if you can't see that one coming, you're too dumb to be using a computer. Anyway, Alex and Nancy stage a series of plots to kill Mrs. Connelly. Do you think they go hilariously awry? Isn't it time for your seizure medication?
Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (2001)
Starring Ron Jeremy.
Directed by Scott J. Gill.
Kilgore rates it: 5 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 6.6 (out of 10)
Anybody who has watched any porn at all has seen Ron Jeremy, or at least the 9½" part of him that answers succinctly the question "How is it possible that a man who looks like a toad has had sex with over 4,000 women?" Porn Star is a mildly amusing documentary seeking to reveal the man behind the money shot. The film manages to plumb some depth, showing us a chronically dissatisfied and lonely man with a degree in theatre who still craves mainstream acting success. (The only thing stopping him, in my estimation, is his lack of acting skill.) Too often Porn Star veers into MTV Documentary Land, overusing tiresome interviews with low-voltage celebrities and clips of frat guys shouting "Ron Jeremy is da maaaaaan!" Also, the film tells nothing about how Ron actually broke into porn, aside from a photo in Playgirl, and mostly misses the chance to give the interesting behind-the-scenes information about the porn business that I had hoped to find. (Although Ron does vent about male porn actors who rely on Viagra, and reveals that a good "woodsman" should avoid orgasm for two days before a scene.)
The selfless people at St. Matthew's Church in Tulsa sent me a wonderful letter. The largest printing on the page read:
GOD'S HOLY BLESSING POWER IS IN THE ENCLOSED ANOINTED PRAYER RUG WE ARE LOANING YOU TO USE!!!
I always thought Muslims used prayer rugs, not Christians. But sure enough, St. Matthew's Church in Tulsa sent me a prayer rug. Well. When St. Matthew's Church and I say "prayer rug," we mean "large piece of paper printed to look like an Oriental rug with a large picture of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, with a single tear trickling from his left eye." The instructions on the prayer rug read, "Look into Jesus' Eyes and you will see they are closed. But as you continue to look you will see His eyes opening and looking back into your eyes. Then go and be alone and kneel on this Rug of Faith or touch it to both knees. Then please check your needs on our letter to you. Please return this Prayer Rug. Do not keep it."
The prayer rug was too big to scan, but I scanned both pages of the letter. I know you're busy and don't usually click on images in blogs, but I promise that reading this letter will entertain you more than your recurring dream of licking mayonnaise off of Condoleezza Rice's thighs. You cannot miss the letter's ridiculous opening salutation; the random sprinkling of capital letters, boldface print, and red underlining; and the not-so-veiled promises of the "financial blessings" to come if I follow the instructions exactly. You can read the first page here and the second page here.
The letter brags no fewer than four times that St. Matthew's Church is 53 years old, and refers to this as "very old." Hey, Bruce, you live in Tulsa -- would you mind stopping off at St. Matthew's and mentioning that 53 years is not terribly old for a church? My childhood church in Mason City, Iowa, was over a century old, and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in France was built more than 700 years ago.
The second page had a bunch of prayer request boxes to check off. I went ahead and requested prayers for, among other things: My Soul, A Closer Walk With Jesus, A Better Job, A New Car, and My Children (I got sort of carried away). I thought a while before filling in "Pray for God to bless me with this amount of money: $______________," and finally wrote in $1,000,000,000.00. Start high and work your way down, right? I also requested prayers for everyone on my blogroll and some of my regular commenters. (My apologies to Smallholder, DrReverend, Preyster, Tim, and June -- I got in a hurry and forgot to include you, so I guess you're on your own.) The letter said to "pray about sowing a seed gift to the Lord's work," so I taped a penny to the page and sent it back with the prayer rug. The letter pledges to send "A WONDERFUL, FREE, SPIRITUAL GIFT THAT WILL BE A BLESSING TO [ME] FOR A LIFETIME." I can't wait!
While driving to get lunch last week, I saw a homeless woman at the I-70 entrance holding a sign reading "CASH." Bonus points for keeping it simple, but "CASH" as opposed to... what? Traveler's checks? Gold bullion? Wampum?
Qwest, my local phone company, made a mistake on my last phone bill, allowing MCI to charge me $100.98 for a 77-minute, in-state long-distance phone call. Those of you who have had to dispute obviously bogus charges with the phone company know that I could rant for pages about calling MCI, who told me to call Qwest, who told me to call MCI's Customer Service department, who transferred me to MCI's High Toll department, who transferred me to a different Customer Service department. I will simply say that I was seething by the time I reached Unhelpful Person #5.
"Well," said Unhelpful Person #5, "these are valid charges, so you'll have to go ahead and pay them, sir."
"No, I refuse to pay these charges," I said. "This is a mistake made by Qwest, because I never had MCI as my long-distance company. What do we need to do to clear this up with Qwest today?"
"As I said, these are valid charges, so you'll have to pay them, sir," Unhelpful Person #5 said, and quickly added, "but since you're not an MCI customer, let me tell you about our calling packages that can save you up to 40% on your long-distance bill. Right away I can see that you qualify for our..."
HELPFUL TIP FOR ALL COMPANIES EVERYWHERE: The best time to pitch your products and services is not when you have an angry customer on the phone whom you are trying to cheat out of $100.98.
[Happy ending: I demanded to talk to Unhelpful Person #5's supervisor, who immediately agreed to give me credit for the excessive portion of the bill. The moral of the story: give customer service flunkies two minutes to solve your problem, and then say, loudly and rudely, "You are not helping me. Let me talk to your supervisor."]
Somebody posted a notice on the bulletin board at my workplace for a screening of a movie called Women of K2, about female mountain climbers. I can't be the only person who thinks "Women of K2" sounds like a Playboy photo spread.
AUTOMATED CHECKOUT ENABLES LOCAL MAN TO ELIMINATE LAST VESTIGE OF HUMAN CONTACT FROM HIS LIFE
DENVER -- By using automated checkout at the Albertson's grocery store near Alameda and Broadway last weekend, Kilgore Trout purged the last traces of human interaction from his sad, lonely life, sources reported Saturday.
"Thanks to automatic teller machines, automated customer service phone systems, Internet banking, instant messaging, online shopping, direct deposit, email, voicemail, and now automated checkout at the supermarket, I can go for weeks without speaking to another human being," said Trout, 30, in an interview conducted Sunday via slips of paper shoved underneath his apartment door.
Installed by Albertson's two weeks ago, the automated checkout machines allow customers to scan their own items, weigh produce, and pay with cash, credit cards, debit cards, or personal checks.
Albertson's employee Bob Hotchkiss saw Trout approach the automated checkout system. "People are usually reluctant to try new things, but that Trout guy practically ran over there to use it," he said. "He looked like he wanted some help finding the produce product code on a bunch of bananas, but I guess he didn't want to ask. He looked like he just wanted to be left alone."
"He just left the bananas behind," added Hotchkiss.
"I used to put off buying groceries until I was down to canned corn and spoiled milk so I wouldn't have to endure the checker asking 'How are you today?' and 'Did you find everything you needed?' and having to mutter 'Fine' and 'Yes, I did' in response," said Trout. "But now I can go grocery shopping whenever I feel like it and nobody so much as wishes me a nice day. It's like heaven."
"Now, wait just a minute," you are saying. "You are an atheist, Kilgore Trout. You should be spending your Sunday mornings engaging in self-abuse or giggling at the Daystar network over a bowl of Cinnamon Life cereal. What in the name of Bertrand Russell were you doing in church?"
Well, I went to a service at the First Unitarian Church of Denver, a Unitarian Universalist congregation that welcomes people from all religious traditions, including nonbelievers like me.
"You're skirting the question," you are saying. "Why would an atheist want to go to church at all?"
My lack of belief in God does not preclude my spirituality. Five times I've climbed mountain peaks over 14,000 feet high, and the incredible views filled me with awe. I've completed nine marathons and one ultramarathon, and my life has changed each time I've crossed a finish line. I've marveled at the human capacity to love and to learn and to heal and to achieve. As an atheist I appreciate spiritual ideas as deeply as anyone. I just don't believe that an invisible man runs the whole show.
Being an atheist can be lonely and frustrating. Some atheists -- including this one -- spend too much time arguing against theism. I went to church to find a community of people who had rejected religious dogma but sought deeper communion with themselves, with other human beings, and with the wondrous universe we inhabit.
I hope I've found this community at the First Unitarian Church. I attended an introductory class on Saturday morning with twelve other people from diverse religious backgrounds: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, humanist, Christian Science, fundamentalist Christian, and Eastern religions. We described our spiritual journeys, and I noticed that everyone's story contained the common elements of a past struggle against religious authority, a current search for meaning, and a desire to share the quest with like-minded people. I felt that rare sensation that comes when you belong somewhere.
We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
The living tradition we share draws from many sources:
Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
A good atheist can get behind that, don't you think?
(Full disclosure: Yes, there was an attractive, single woman my age at the meeting. I would have enjoyed the class even if she had not attended.)
IDEAS THAT WOULD MAKE GREAT SCENES IN MOVIES, OR COMMERCIALS, OR SOMETHING
Two guys drive into an airport parking garage, which has a display reading "LEVEL 4: 34 SPACES REMAINING."
One guy says, "They don't know which level I'm going to park on, so how do they always know how many spaces are left?"
"I don't know," says his friend.
The camera cuts to an elderly man in an airport uniform hobbling along a row of parked cars in an enormous parking garage. He comes to an empty space, fusses in his shirt pocket for a moment, and hauls out a small notepad and pen. He grimaces as he makes a tally mark in the notepad, and then fusses some more to get the notepad back in his pocket. Painfully, he starts forward again.
A man in a plain white T-shirt and black shorts runs uphill in the rain. We see him from several angles to establish that he is in extraordinary shape. The man runs past a window of a Bally's or a 24 Hour Fitness or other such gym. On the other side are treadmills lined up looking out on the street. The runner slows to a stop in front of the window and stares through the glass at a slightly pudgy man jogging slowly on a treadmill, clad in expensive shoes and name-brand athletic gear. The two lock eyes for a moment, and then the outside runner goes on his way.
A man goes to a restaurant and receives slow, desultory service. When the waitress drops the check on the table, the man asks her, "Excuse me, but has anyone ever told you that you're beautiful?"
The waitress smiles and blushes; she is a plain woman. "No," she says.
"Well, there's a reason for that," says the man.
A man steps off the light rail near downtown Denver and starts walking rapidly across the Metro State campus, glancing at his watch -- he is anxious to arrive at the Pepsi Center on time so as not to miss the opening faceoff of the Colorado Mammoth game. He overtakes a young woman chattering on her cell phone. The camera cuts to the man's slightly knitted brow, indicating his disapproval of people who talk loudly on cell phones in public. The man draws close enough to overhear the young woman's conversation:
"... well, of course! I mean, that's where the money is! Uh huh. Oh, I have the cutest outfit for tonight. I know -- I'm sooooo skinny! Well, first, I have to work out and tan..."
Recklessly disregarding his own safety, the man seizes a length of steel pipe and beats the young woman... well, no. The man hurries on, misses the opening faceoff, and thinks about the young woman disturbingly often over the next few weeks. He recalls his revulsion at the young woman's shallow words and saucy behavior, and then thinks about how much he wanted to sleep with her, even though her personality disgusted him. The man entertains a variety of increasingly strange fantasies about the young woman, until he realizes the truth: he is a character in a Charlie Kaufman film.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.
Directed by Michel Gondry.
Kilgore rates it: 7 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 8.7 (out of 10)
The Fifth Film by Charlie Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich (brilliant), Adaptation (quite good), Human Nature (well worth your time, if you're unemployed and have no friends or hobbies), and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (haven't seen it). Eternal Sunshine tells the story of the shy, colorless, self-hating Joel and his ex-girlfriend, the free-spirited, manic-depressive, irresponsible, don't-get-near-this-crazy-bitch-even-if-she-is-hot Clementine, who gets Joel erased from her memory after their breakup. Joel retaliates by going to the same doctor to get Clementine erased from his memory, and Kaufman lets the weirdness ride from there. To my relief, the weirdness here is organic to the story, as in Being John Malkovich, and avoids the self-referencing weirdness of Adaptation (which was quite good, but veered dangerously close to the masturbatory awfulness of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill). There's a fractured timeline and a twist that you'll probably see coming, but that's okay. Kaufman weaves some interesting themes here, the kind you'll want to discuss over coffee after the show.
Pleasantville (1998)
Starring Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, and Jeff Daniels.
Directed by Gary Ross.
Kilgore rates it: 9 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 7.4 (out of 10)
I love this movie, with its bizarre and original premise: a modern-day teenage brother and sister get sucked into a 1950s sitcom set in the idyllic town of Pleasantville, where nothing burns, the books are blank, and the Pleasantville High basketball team has never lost a game. Writer-director Ross explores every angle of this concept, dribbling out little surprises as the film progresses, like the firemen who race to rescue cats from trees but don't know how to put out fires. Pleasantville asks, "Is ignorance bliss?" or, more accurately, "Are repression, simplicity, repetition, and homogeneity bliss?" I doubt I will give away too much by telling that the film's answer is a ham-handed yes. Still, Pleasantville is cleverly and humorously written, skillfully directed and paced, and features startling images and passionate acting performances. I liked Jeff Daniels' diner owner-cum-artist the best -- I felt his joy as he discovered his long-suppressed talent.
(Bonus points if you catch the John Madden reference.)
X2: X-Men United (2003)
Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Aaron Stanford, and Shawn Ashmore.
Directed by Bryan Singer.
Kilgore rates it: 7 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 7.9 (out of 10)
An inoffensive, entertaining superhero movie with some real humor and decent action.
Okay, enough analysis. Let's move along to the nit-picking!
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
When Charles Xavier concentrates on killing all the mutants, wouldn't he be concentrating on Jason, the mutant forcing him to do the concentrating? Wouldn't that interfere with Jason's powers, even more so than Storm's winter storm?
Wolverine takes a bullet to the head and goes down, apparently dead, but he recovers due to his powers of regeneration. Does this mean that Wolverine is immortal? What if you cut him into little pieces and dissolved them all in acid?
Pyro states that "the father carries the mutant gene." So just one gene controls mutant attributes? But people who suffer from genetic diseases such as hemophilia or Hodgkin's Disease suffer similar symptoms, so why does the mutant gene manifest differently in each person?
The X-Men possess a jet unlike any other on the planet. Jets are, um, sort of hard to make, so who designed it? Does Xavier hold a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering? And who built it? Maybe the "School for Gifted Youngsters" is really an aerospace plant based on child labor. Also, where did Jean Grey learn her dogfighting skills?
Why would Wolverine turn down Mystique? Because of Jean Grey? She's with Cyclops, you asshole! Besides, Mystique is like a meta-fantasy come true: "Okay, Mystique, I want you to look like a cross between Meredith Baxter-Birney and Patricia Clarkson... nice, but a little larger in the nose and a little flatter in the chest, please... oh, that's good."
Why did Jean Grey die? Couldn't she have held back the water, or did her own power consume her? Why didn't she just lift the jet while inside it?
THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 8 (LANGUAGE ARTS EDITION)
People who weaken their writing by using feel instead of think or believe. Yes, your dictionary and thesaurus list feel, think, and believe as synonyms. But these three words carry different shades of meaning. Look at the following example:
I feel Jack Jackson is the best candidate for county dogcatcher.
This sentence is weak because the verb feel can also mean to experience an emotion (or feeling), as in "I feel ashamed when you touch me there, Uncle Earl." So the sentence above implies that you made your decision about the county dogcatcher election not through considered thought, but because you find Jack Jackson handsome, or because of the burning in your loins when Jack Jackson smiles at you, or because of some similar flight of fancy. Compare to these examples:
I think Jack Jackson is the best candidate for county dogcatcher.
I believe Jack Jackson is the best candidate for county dogcatcher.
The first example suggests that you have thought about the county dogcatcher election and have selected Jack Jackson based on the facts and the candidates' stances on the issues, like Jackson's dynamic five-point plan to reduce stray dog rates by 50%. The second example suggests that Jack Jackson's suitability for county dogcatcher has reached, in your mind, the status of a belief, which carries more weight than a feeling. Both examples gained strength by replacing the word feel.
Coordinated use of the adjectives cold and hard to denote gritty reality, as in:
Suddenly the cold, hard reality of Sally's murder struck him, and he collapsed sobbing on the bed.
The cold, hard fact is that Jack Jackson's plan will increase the stray dog rate by 20%.
Yuck, right? "Cold, hard" is a cliché, so don't use it. Go put on your beret and your black turtleneck and think of something original.
Using 1000's in place of thousands, as in:
M@ke E_Z $*$*$*$ in you're $par3 tim3!!!!! M@ke 1000's!!!!!
Just because you're a spammer doesn't mean you can't respect the language.
Ralph Wiley, the worst sportswriter in America. I defy anyone to read all the way through one of this man's articles without struggling to understand his cluttered prose, or wincing at his clumsy wisecracks, or frowning at his affected street slang. Consider this lead to one of his articles:
Twenty-five years ago, when I was around 12 (wink) and a tyro on the Giants/A's beats, one of my fellow "journalists" wrote an article speculating (hoping?) "like the California condor," African-American players might soon be gone from big-league baseball (parenthetically, I felt he meant "good riddance").
That single-sentence paragraph contains three parenthetical clauses, three phrases enclosed in quotes, one bad joke, and the word "parenthetically" enclosed in parentheses. I had to read it four times and look up "tyro" before I could move on to the next paragraph. How much better is the Kilgore Trout version?
Twenty-five years ago, when I was a novice baseball writer, a fellow journalist wrote an article speculating that, "like the California condor," black players might soon disappear from big-league baseball. I feared he meant "good riddance."
When Wiley writes clearly, he's even worse. Consider this idiotic and paranoid passage, from later in the same article:
It is usually the American-born blacks' records and place that are resented instead of celebrated. For example, it's the stolen base that is denigrated as a weapon by baseball sabermaticians like Bill James, at precisely the time when a Rickey Henderson steals 130 bases in a season. There are sour grapes when a baseball man uses stats to tell you a stolen base isn't important.
So Bill James is really a racist in statistician's clothing? You don't want to start down that path, Ralph. Bill James will be more than happy to hand you a stack of printouts and a calculator and explain, in brain-cramping detail, why the stolen base has historically been used ineffectively. Not to mention that sabermetric analyses (including those of Bill James) have consistently rated Rickey Henderson as one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the game. (For a fuller critique, see Rob Neyer's devastating response to Ralph Wiley.)
To catalogue exhaustively Ralph Wiley's sins against the English language would require that I buy extra bandwidth, so I'll just refer you to his archive. But I cry when I read Ralph Wiley's writing, because he is a professional writer. He has published books. The man is a walking argument for strong atheism, because if Ralph Wiley can get paid to produce his awful, tangled prose, there is no God.
People who claim to be Bible-reading Christians and then refer to the last book of the New Testament as Revelations. Hey, homo-hater: the book is called Revelation, because it's just one revelation, get it? It's the Revelation to John. I don't see any break in there where John wraps up and then we get bonus revelations to Carl and Harold.
Online polls. Last night, the NHL's website had an online poll asking, "Which Western Conference team has looked strongest in the playoffs so far?" Almost thirty percent of the 51,899 respondents wisely chose the Colorado Avalanche, but in second place, with 24.18% of the vote, were the St. Louis Blues. The Blues, at the time, trailed the San Jose Sharks two games to none in their best-of-7 series. (Yes, I know that online polls don't really fit in the Language Arts Edition of Things That Need To Go Away Right Now. But I wanted to get this in while it was still current. By the way, the Blues lost again tonight.)
I don't believe in God, but I also don't believe it possible to disprove his existence. If God created the universe, then he is not a part of the universe. If he is not part of the universe, then he need not obey the logical laws of the universe, and any purely logical argument against his existence fails in the face of the believer's refrain: "God works in mysterious ways." Why bother arguing that God's omnipotence contradicts his omnibenevolence? Perhaps in the realm he inhabits it all makes perfect sense.
For the same reason, I don't believe it possible to prove -- or even to argue persuasively for -- God's existence through pure logic. But that didn't stop me from checking out the The Existence of God by philosopher Richard Swinburne. I quickly found out that Swinburne did not write The Existence of God for reading on lunch breaks while munching a Little Juan burrito:
If bringing about E is a mediated action the answer to the quesiton how it was that P's intention was efficacious will be more complicated. It will be that E was the intended consequence of some basic action of P's, A1, i.e. a consequence which P meant to occur through his performing a certain basic action A1 which consists in bring about some state of affairs S.
Not wanting to spend the months of March and April wading through 322 pages of philosophical jargon, I picked up Swinburne's condensed, non-technical version of The Existence of God, titled Is There a God?
In Is There a God?, Swinburne explains his version of the cosmological argument for God's existence. (The cosmological argument states that the existence of the universe requires an explanation, and the only sufficient explanation is God.) Swinburne takes the step of establishing four criteria for a rational explanation of any given phenomenon:
The explanation leads us to expect (with accuracy) many and varied events which we observe (and we do not observe any events whose non-occurrence it leads us to expect).
The explanation is simple.
The explanation fits well with our background knowledge.
We would not otherwise expect to find these events (e.g. there is no rival explanation which leads us to expect these events which satisfies criteria (1-3) as well as does our proposed explanation).
As an example, Swinburne offers that in 1846, to explain an irregularity in the orbit of Uranus (at the time the most distant planet yet discovered), French astronomer Urbain Leverrier proposed that an unknown planet could be pulling Uranus out of its expected orbit. The discovery of Neptune proved Leverrier correct. Swinburne uses this example to establish that rational explanations can include "unobservable entities."
Swinburne then argues at length that God best fits these criteria as an explanation for the existence of the universe; in particular, that God is the simplest such explanation. A sample:
It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something. And so many things. Maybe chance could have thrown up the odd electron. But so many particles! Not everything will have an explanation. But the whole progress of science and all other intellectual enquiry demands that we postulate the smallest number of brute facts. If we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do so -- even if inevitably we cannot explain the existence of that simple being.
To his credit, Swinburne never claims this proves the existence of God -- he only promotes God as the most rational and probable explanation for the existence of the universe.
I had to chew on these ideas for a few days. At first I objected that God is always the simplest explanation for any phenomenon. Medieval physicians found it simpler to say "It is God's will" to explain the death of a child from leukemia than to invent the fields of microbiology, organic chemistry, and pediatric oncology.
Then I objected that, as baffling and inexplicable as a godless universe might be, it pales in complexity compared to an all-powerful, all-knowing, eternally existing, and perfectly good being who exists everywhere and yet remains unobservable. Think about that. We humans are so limited in power, so lacking in knowledge, so mortal, so morally flawed, and so locked in time and space that we can never comprehend God's existence, let alone explain it. How can a rational explanation be simultaneously simple and incomprehensible? (A related aside: Swinburne has a frustrating habit of writing things like this: "However, if there is a God, who being perfectly good, will love his creatures, one would expect him to interact with us occasionally more directly on a personal basis..." How does he know? How can any human claim to understand the motives and behavior of a being so thoroughly unlike us?)
Finally, after much hard thought, I objected that Swinburne had left a very important -- possibly the most important -- criterion for rational explanations off his list of four:
5. The explanation must be verifiable or falsifiable.
This renders Swinburne's Uranus-Neptune example useless. Neptune, after all, was not an "unobservable entity," as Swinburne claims -- it simply had not been observed yet. Astronomers were eventually able to find Neptune and verify Leverrier's theory. Had astronomers been unable to find evidence supporting the existence of Neptune, or if they had found evidence contradicting the existence of Neptune, the theory would have been discarded and new theories formed to explain Uranus' irregular orbit.
All rational explanations must submit to the evidence. But nobody can find evidence to support or contradict the existence of God, because he is unobservable. God, then, is not a rational explanation for the existence of the universe. This does not mean that he does not exist. It does mean that Swinburne has no business appropriating the language and methods of science to support his argument.
I'm going to bed.
[WARNING: Do not leave comments like: "I find evidence for God in the laughter of a child." I will find you, break into your house, and force you at gunpoint to copy by hand the complete written works of Bertrand Russell.]
Motive Mayhem, written by mM (Salt Lake City). This guy writes original, first-person essays with an optimistic slant on a variety of subjects. He also likes to pick up 45-year-old hookers. (He just gives them rides. Jesus, you're sick.) I like to keep an eye on this blog because I have a feeling mM is a young guy struggling to find his style. Keep struggling, mM.
Naked Villainy, written by The Maximum Leader (Fredericksburg, Virginia) and his Ministers: The Smallholder (Shenandoah Valley, Virginia), The AirMarshall (Washington, D.C.), The Foreign Minister (Germany), The Big Hominid (Seoul, South Korea), and The Director (Hollywood). In order to prepare for the coming Mike World Order (MWO), you would do well to read this blog "dedicated to the dissemination of The Maximum Leader's (and his Ministers') thoughts and comments." Generally this means bare-knuckle political arguments among The Maximum Leader and his Ministers, who hold wildly disparate views on the war in Iraq, the best ways to combat terrorism, and this year's presidential election. At least everybody seems to agree that Jennifer Love Hewitt has earned the title of Official Sex Goddess of the MWO.
The thing I like best about this blog is the way The Maximum Leader begins each post with "Greetings, loyal minions" and ends each post with "Carry on." Every time I read this I see The Maximum Leader in his jewel-encrusted floppy cap, standing on a stone balcony and speaking to his subjects, who have halted their everyday business. A shopkeeper selling cast-iron pots pauses mid-haggle, a man carrying water buckets on a yoke stops in the street, and even a group of monks ceases chanting to drink in the wisdom of The Maximum Leader. Then The Maximum Leader says, "Carry on," and the commoners resume their activities, refreshed by the sage words of their Maximum Leader.
[Full disclosure: I hold the prestigious post of Loyal Minion at Naked Villainy.]
Primal Purge, written by Anna (somewhere in California). Who's sicker: Anna or Skippy? Which is bigger: The Great Wall of China or the Grand Canyon? I can't describe this blog, except that it's strange and disturbing and you should read this post first.
Stupid Evil Bastard, written by Les (Michigan). Come here for well-reasoned posts and news articles on issues of interest to atheists, technogeeks, and gamers. You might also want to stop by if you suffer occasionally from uvulitis or if you like to look at guys with shaved heads and long beards.
The Raving Atheist, written by The Raving Atheist (???). If you believe in God, I would avoid this site unless you have a thick skin, because The Raving Atheist thinks you're stupid. (See his strong atheist assumptions here.) Insightful commentary on atheist legal issues, hilarious Onion-style fake news articles, and acid criticism of theist thought and philosophy.
This is Class Warfare, written by Bruce (Tulsa, Oklahoma). Bruce doesn't much care for President Bush and his cronies, and he'll tell you about that (and other political issues) in long, original posts written with class conflict in mind. Often I read Bruce's entries and find that he's found an angle on an issue I hadn't considered. He also posts his own beautiful photographs and would be happy to recommend some music to you. (Note to Bruce: I know you spell it "bruce" online, but uncapitalized proper nouns give me hives.)
DISCUSSION QUESTION: Is Tulsa well-known enough to stand on its own, like Denver and Phoenix, or it is necessary to specify "Tulsa, Oklahoma"?
Running on the Sun (2000)
Directed by Mel Stuart.
Kilgore rates it: 7 (out of 10)
Running on the Sun examines the lunacy known as the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race from Badwater in Death Valley (elevation 282 feet below sea level) to Mount Whitney (elevation 8,360 feet), crossing two mountain passes on the way. Race organizers schedule the race in July, when daytime temperatures reach into the 120s and the temperature of the pavement exceeds 200 degrees. Aspiring Badwater runners commonly train on treadmills in saunas.
50-mile Umstead Endurance Run : Badwater Ultramarathon :: jerking off in restroom of pudding factory : ménage à trois with the Bush twins*
Watch this documentary and meet: a man who had all his toenails surgically removed, two men who lost legs to anti-personnel mines, a gaunt racewalker who glides along the road like some bizarre species of insect, a major in the U.S. Marine Corps and his gung-ho buddies, a crew member who explains that "crew" stands for "cranky runner, endless waiting" (sound familiar, Preyster?), a woman who trains full-time and can only afford to live in a tent, and an Englishman whose wife attaches a can of Murphy's Stout to the back of their support van like a carrot before a donkey.
Director Stuart shot Running on the Sun in straightforward, low-budget fashion, letting the athletes and the images tell the story. You see athletes who start out joking and confident, then slowly break down under the pressure of heat and altitude and pure, punishing distance. Their bodies rebel, refusing to accept water or food. Some of them quit, and probably not the ones you think. The sick fucks among you will want to replay over and over again the disgusting foot montage, featuring raw, blistered flesh and squirting pus. The finishing scenes are touching, although most of the runners can hardly speak by that point. Try to hold back tears when you see a crewman tell his barely conscious brother, "Gabriel, you know you are my hero." Just try.
*SAT-analogy-as-comedy concept shamelessly swiped from Norbizness.
If you clicked on Chaotic Not Random from IP address 159.212.71.# at 11:30:26 a.m. MDT yesterday, then I thank you for giving CNR its 10,000th hit.
I finished 16th out of 91 finishers in the 50-mile event at the Umstead Endurance Run last Saturday, including 12th out of 68 men, and 5th out of 11 men aged 30 to 39. Not bad for my first ultramarathon!
I sent an email to friends and family announcing that I had finished the race, and jokingly offered to send a photo taken afterwards of my swollen, blistered feet to anyone who requested it. To my surprise, four of my friends responded that yes, they wanted a photo of my disgusting, pus-encrusted feet. One of these guys made this picture the wallpaper on his computer monitor. I always suspected my friends were a bunch of sick fucks, but now I know for certain. (I will not thank you for pointing out that I am also a sick fuck for taking the picture in the first place.)
A week or so ago, I posted an entry about a Double Play Baseball handheld electronic game sent to me by the beautiful and alluring Trillian (see 3/30). I didn't mention (because I didn't want to ruin the surprise) that a couple of weeks before that, I had purchased for Trillian a Space Invaders handheld electronic game.
"Wow," you are saying. "That's pretty amazing that the two of you just happened to independently buy each other cheesy handheld electronic games. When's the wedding?"
It gets better. Both of these cheesy handheld electronic games were manufactured by Excalibur Electronics! Isn't that wild?
"Yeah, that's nuts," you are saying. "That's... [right now you are stifling a yawn]... really something, or something."
Anyway, I decided to celebrate baseball's Opening Day by playing a Colorado Rockies versus Chicago Cubs game on my Double Play Baseball handheld electronic game. Of course, Double Play Baseball doesn't have actual team lineups or real player statistics or anything -- I just had to pretend the Rockies and the Cubs were playing and keep my own stats. (It's amazing what I'll do to amuse myself when I've already masturbated and I'm out of barbeque-flavored Corn Nuts.) Not surprisingly, the Cubs trounced the Rockies 16-7, pounding 20 hits and 9 home runs. Here's the box score:
In other sports news, the Colorado Mammoth professional lacrosse team concluded their regular season by embarrassing the Anaheim Storm 17-10 and boosting their NLL-best record to 13-3. When Gary Gait scored his sixth goal of the game, Mammoth PA announcer Willie B dubbed the feat a "sock trick" (like a hat trick in hockey -- get it?) and threw his socks on the field. Hundreds of fans followed his example, and the game had to be delayed for several minutes while Pepsi Center workers cleared the debris. I'm not kidding. How sublime is that?
Back when I was 20 and a newly minted college dropout, I worked at a Kraft Jell-O pudding plant. I helped manufacture those six-packs of plastic cups filled with gelatin or pudding. If you're eating one of those right now, turn the cup over (finish the pudding first) and on the bottom you'll see a bunch of numbers and the letters "MC". That stands for Mason City, Iowa, my hometown. Sometimes I point that out to small-breasted women in the grocery store. "See?" I say. "I bet you never noticed that before." They never give me their numbers, though.
I worked 12-hour shifts at the pudding plant, from 6:00 at night to 6:00 in the morning. When I went to work, the sun was setting, and when I got off work, the sun was rising. The factory itself had no windows, so day and night ceased to exist for me -- I only knew twilight. To add to the confusion, we worked four days on, four days off. This meant that I might work Monday through Thursday and have Friday through Monday off, or I might work Saturday through Tuesday and have Wednesday through Friday off, or some other weird combination. I hated working that schedule. After a while your internal clock pops a spring and strange ideas start rolling through your skull. It's no surprise to me that Jeffrey Dahmer worked in a chocolate factory.
I was not a Kraft employee. I worked for Kelly Temporary Services on a team of workers including people from North Iowa Vocational Center, an outfit that provides jobs for developmentally disabled people. You have guessed correctly that none of my duties required advanced language or mathematical skills. My favorite job was dragging around a pallet truck and picking up empty cardboard boxes and taking them back to a machine that bundled the cardboard for recycling. I liked that job because if I hurried and collected all the cardboard (it's not as hard as it sounds), I could ditch the pallet truck and sneak off to a secret bathroom in a corner of the factory that nobody seemed to know about. The bathroom had a single toilet and a lock on the door. I would set the alarm on my watch and sleep on the floor for 20 minutes. Sometimes I would jerk off, too. Quit looking at me like that. I always washed my hands before I went back to work.
My least favorite job was loading stacks of plastic cups into a huge machine. This job was so slow and tedious that I developed strategies for dealing with the boredom. For example, every time I finished loading a case of cups, I would keep one and put it to the side as a counter. Only after I set five cups aside could I look at the clock. So loading plastic cups at the pudding plant taught me patience, an asset that became valuable later when I started running marathons and ultramarathons. (I can say with confidence that the words in the preceding sentence have never been placed in that particular sequence before.) Sometimes I would overload the machine with cups and then go to the bathroom, where I would catch a five-minute nap. "Wow," you are saying, "you sure used to sleep a lot back then." I still do, asshole. Mostly with your mom.
Once Kraft experimented with a cheesecake snack product and I got tapped to help make it. This meant unwrapping 50-pound blocks of Philadelphia cream cheese and dumping them into a huge vat. I bet you didn't know that Philadelphia cream cheese came in 50-pound blocks. I always thought about taking a bagel back there and spreading some of the cream cheese on it, but most people in Mason City don't share my sense of humor, and I probably would have gotten fired. After I put the cream cheese in the vat with some sugar and milk and artificial flavorings, I would turn the mixer on and then stand around while some Kraft guy talked to me. The mixer was really loud, and I was wearing ear plugs, so I couldn't hear anything he was saying. He seemed pretty excited about it, though, so I always nodded in agreement. I hope he wasn't telling me about how he liked to molest little kids or anything like that.
I learned from working at the pudding plant that everything comes from somewhere. Look at all the crap spread around your house. Go ahead, do it. Pick up some random item, like a toenail clippers. Some group of people, somewhere, depends of the manufacture and sale of those toenail clippers for their livelihoods. They get up early and spend all day making the best damn toenail clippers they know how. They get mad at their daughters for buying toenail clippers made by other companies. They worry that people in Mexico or the Phillippines might be willing to accept lower pay to make toenail clippers. One of them probably drives a truck with license plate TOENAIL.
There were some cute girls working at the pudding plant. But I never talked to any of them.
LOCAL MAN FINISHES 50-MILE ULTRAMARATHON, CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING FUNNY TO SAY
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Kilgore Trout finished the 50-mile event at the Umstead Endurance Run near Raleigh, N.C. on Saturday in 9 hours, 47 minutes, 46 seconds. As of press time Sunday night, Trout had nothing funny, ironic, snide, or sarcastic to say about the experience.
Trout, 30, delighted bystanders by charging up the final hill while screaming with joy. One spectator, who termed the scream "a barbaric yawp," said, "Given Kilgore Trout's habit of distancing himself from real emotion through the use of ironic detachment, I though he was probably spoofing some movie, maybe yelling 'Freedom!' or 'Adrian!' or even 'Elaine!' But when I saw him collapse into his sister's arms in exhaustion, I realized that I had witnessed from Kilgore Trout a spontaneous outburst of genuine emotion."
The race was the first ultramarathon for Trout, a veteran of nine standard marathons. Witnesses speculated this may have caused him to act in unfamiliar ways, such as when he grasped a friend's shoulder and said, "I'm glad you could be here today."
According to one witness, the gesture and statement of affection "appeared entirely sincere... not at all what we've come to expect from the distant and emotionally crippled Kilgore Trout. By running 15 miles further than he's ever run before, he derived a sensation of achievement that undoubtedly caused him to momentarily forget his wreck of a life spent hopscotching from one embarrassing failure to the next."
Trout frustrated bystanders by refusing to drop the mask of sincerity, spending the afternoon excitedly describing details of the race to friends without the use of sarcasm. Later Saturday evening, he even proposed a toast "to goals achieved."
"'To goals achieved?'" said one shocked witness. "That's just the kind of cheeseball phrase that Kilgore would normally twist into some snide, cruel joke. What the hell has gotten into him?"
Experts predict Trout's newfound happiness will last until Monday afternoon, when the lonely routine of Trout's daily life will crush his spirit anew.
Deviant Synapse, written by Eric Piotrowski (Madison, Wisconsin). Eric P is an electronic musician, Flash animator, science fiction writer, Go player, and high school English teacher who could use some help grading essays. He has some vague misgivings about the Bush administration, corporate America, and U.S. policy in East Timor, but likes to keep that sort of thing to himself. "Don't be so timid," I keep telling him. "You should speak up about that stuff if you really care about it." But he just blushes and shuffles his feet. If you can identify more than two of his devilish TPCQ's (Tangential Pop Culture Quotes), you're a better man than I. Don't miss clicking on his patented TimeWasters™.
Enjoy Every Sandwich, written by Skippy (Toronto). Skippy hasn't made love to a woman since August 3, 2002, at 4:00 in the afternoon. He can't hold a job. He doesn't feel pretty. He jerks off five times a day. He can't sleep without medication. He failed, as a child, to get molested by a Roman Catholic priest. He can't spell. He posts those damn church signs and Quizilla quizzes. He's Canadian. Skippy can't do anything right except write lengthy, original posts filled with insight and humor about world politics and the hot, hot ladies of CNN. And the only blog name better than this one was Skippy's last one: "I Hate Myself and You Love Me For It."
Go Fish, written by Mac (near Philadelphia). Mac writes a spirited blog that mixes autobiographical posts about her dog, her job, and her husband with scathing attacks on conservative Republicans in general and President Bush in particular. Be sure to check back often -- that girl cranks it out.
Happy Furry Puppy Story Time, written by Norbizness (Austin, Texas). A hilarious blog that wages bizarro war against Lorenzo Lamas, the Bush administration, and every single person employed by ESPN. I'm listed on his blogroll along with -- no kidding, I just counted -- 170 other blogs. (Attention Norbizness: There's no comma in Chaotic Not Random.) Be sure to enter the caption contests to win valuable prizes!
Life(?) of Trillian, written by Trillian (Chicago). You want original content? Trillian's post today ran 3,762 words -- just a routine epic post from this gifted writer. Read this blog and marvel as a nice British-American girl confronts romantic disasters, crass coworkers, Chicago elections, her idiot boss, and a sadistic physical therapist. Forceful, witty, touching, and real. This is the best blog I know of.
Mike's Baseball Rants, written by Mike (Philadelphia). Maybe you think you're a baseball fan. Maybe you think you're hot shit because you know that Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, or that Ty Cobb really had 4,190 hits instead of 4,191. Fella, you don't know jack. Mike, a proud member of the Society for American Baseball Research, can calculate stats you've never even heard of. If you want to read this blog, it helps to enjoy looking at tables -- looooooong tables -- with titles like "Effect of Wind Velocity and Popcorn Quality on Slugging Percentage Adjusted for Park Factor, National League 1876-2003." Or you can skip the tables and read informed articles about baseball issues like competitive balance or the Pete Rose controversy. If you're of a sabermetric bent, be sure to catch Mike's critiques of Joe Morgan's online chat sessions.
Shanghai Noon (2000)
Starring Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan.
Directed by Tom Dey.
Kilgore rates it: 4 (out of 10)
I hate macaroni and cheese. I have always hated macaroni and cheese. When I was a young Trout, my father would try to convince me that I should like macaroni and cheese. "You like macaroni, don't you?" he would say. "And you like cheese, right? So you should like macaroni and cheese."
I like Owen Wilson, and I like Jackie Chan, so I figured I would like Shanghai Noon, the buddy movie starring both of them plus the fetching Lucy Liu. I was wrong. With its rickety plot, clanking jokes, and feeble groping at a Message about Friendship and Loyalty, I would have rated Shanghai Noon lower if not for Jackie Chan's trademark fight scenes and two genius comedy lines from Owen Wilson that had to have been improvised, because they didn't fit in this script. Go rent The Royal Tenenbaums and Legend of Drunken Master instead.
Hell's Highway tells the story of the Highway Safety Foundation, the people responsible for those safer-driving-through-scaring-kids-shitless films you might have seen in driver's education. An interesting if not riveting documentary, Hell's Highway includes interviews with two men who carried movie cameras to the scenes of car wrecks and filmed the awful wreckage, the mangled corpses, and the merely injured screaming in agony; and spliced the footage into films like Signal 30, Wheels of Tragedy, and The Last Prom. The documentary uses copious footage from these films, so avoid watching Hell's Highway if you're unwilling to look at headless bodies, dead babies, people with glass ground into their ruined faces, and blood splashed everywhere. Of course, you probably are willing to look at such things, which is what makes these films so weird and fascinating. The documentary also includes interesting commentary from an educational film historian (how do you get that job?) who helps put these bizarre films into historical and cultural context.
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