newtonian

The ghost of Isaac Newton came to me the other day to tell me there is no god
I said well they picked a damn fine choice of apparition to deliver the news
How do you know, anyways? and he didn't say how but then we went to the corner store for Pepsi's and
I showed Sir Isaac his fig cookies and he said they owed him royalty checks for generations

On our trip around the world, because that happened,
Isaac had to hold my hand so I didn't fall because he could fly and I couldn't unless he gave me
Magic powers too. He showed me the pyramids at night which was something I had always
Wanted to see, like Aladdin. Sir Isaac said to me that i was to be my own god when we sat at the top of the pyramids and ate bag lunches baloney sandwiches

But I didn't want to be.
I told him, I said, hey, you know how it is, Sir Isaac. Then I went off totally not sounding douche-y or condescending because hey, the guy did invent calculus, but so that we would both be sure that by the time we had finished our Pepsi's we would know our place in the universe, which Sir Isaac told me isn't really all that vast, anyways.

It gives me no small joy to look at what I've written in the past; it's like finding an old journal, which I have around the house somewhere. Probably in the basement..

So now I'm 30 years old and I sell insurance. Rather, I will sell insurance; as of this post I'm still in training. Looks pretty lucrative AND it is a good product. Helps people out.

Oh, and I have 2 kids now. Audrey and Isaac. Good kids. Christina stays home with them while I drive all over tarnation. Tarnation is Beaver Falls this week. I miss them all... Good to get back to typing. I remember when I wanted to be a writer at one point in my life. ha ha Suppose I never did reconcile the craft with the amount of personal honesty needed to make it interesting enough for anyone other than myself to read whatever would have been written. Practice makes perfect but lack of use leads to atrophy.

It's late and I should sleep but for some reason the clock is ticking just so and it's the yellowish shade of night that I dream about and feel peaceful and I sit here and type to my future self a snapshot of his past and there really is no reason to stop because when I do I'll see what time it really is and know that morning is coming fast and it's another long day on my leather ass riding all over tarnation to learn how to give people's families peace of mind when it comes to death. You probably know this better than I do, future Seth, but it's really expensive to die.

Likely by the time I get back here, Audrey will read along with me. That thought gives me a proud, satisfied, happy feeling. For all the words in English, there's not one I know that encompasses that feeling. Satisfied, maybe. But more of a future satisfied. Like how parents feel at Christmas. Or when their daughters read their blog posts from 2 years ago. 

Shantih, shantih, shantih and Good night

The extra form below your chin
Sallow, Tallow
Buttermilk skin.
Aye aye aye
Mister Pirate Man
Calling life to Sea again.
Where? O brother, where
Hast thou in Flight taken the once-too-old
Proverb of Nebby Neighbors from hoary domains
to Garbage Stars born of recycled trash smoke?

Hmm?

Who's to say where we come and go if our
Goings and cummings are never more
Than right out-
side your door.
Fear the unknown and fear is known.
Time grown
And trousers roll'd
Through the garden gate we strolled.
Looked
Jumped
Kissed.
One two three
Check and mate
Alone in a dusty, musty pantry
But happy;
Smiling, content.

-found in a notebook along with addresses and descriptions of rental properties. Probably written mid 2010.

Ehh

So the last thing I posted was a picture of young Stan. It needed a home on the web because it needed to be the logo for my fantasy football team - totally turned our season around.

Thank you, Young Stanley

I'm sitting here realizing I don't have anything to say. Anything, at least, worth saying.

So I guess this is a postcard from the present addressed to the past. Past because it will be years from now that I re-visit this blog; unless I need more pictures of Stan uploaded.

I'm working, and that's something that's good to occupy time. I'm still running, although it's kind of a chore sometimes. I still eat less beef than you do. Unless you're a vegetarian. Or have a beef allergy, though I've never met anyone with a beef allergy. I'm still married and we are happy.

The thing I'm looking forward to most in life is buying a house for some reason. It's just the next, logical step. And I can have a garden (a food garden, not a flower garden) and a work bench and a garage and a basement and a kitchen and people I like will come visit and we'll sit outside and drink beer. Or, if beer isn't appropriate, iced tea.

I do stuff with the church. Like tomorrow we're going to talk about important church business. Sometimes, I teach Sunday School.

It's a good life and I'm not complaining.

See you in a few months

It needs a home on the web.

An Experiment With 5 Fingers

After doing a bit of on-line research, I decided to buy a pair of Vibram Five Fingers shoes. They cost approximately $85 and I had to drive to Reyer's in Sharon to find them. They are available on-line (www.vibramfivefingers.com) but given their unique shape and sizing I wanted to try them on before purchase.

I tried them out for about a half mile at first, to get a feel. Then, I wore them all day Sunday to see how they'd hold up as a daily wear shoe. Once you get over the initial awkwardness of putting them on and walking around a bit they are quite comfortable. Yesterday, I went for a 2 mile run. They felt great on the gravel trail at Pearson Park but I got blisters on my arches and a few toes. Well worth it in my opinion. I tend to trod heel to toe, rolling across the full length of my foot. The 5 Fingers make that feel awkward, which forced me to put more emphasis on the balls of my feet and toes.

Long story short, I'm a fan thus far. (Though some better color options would be nice.) 

First Day of School

Today is a great day for learning. The Wife headed off to grad school today, leaving me behind to continue my battle with the percolator. It took three tries, but we reached an accord and I got coffee instead of hot water. Not that I need it, but I'll take small victories.

This may be my favorite time of year, the first week back to school. Working in Oakland gets me an eagle eye view of the incoming freshman class. There's so much promise and excitement before things get real and they get fat. Naive optimism, is there anything better?

Here's a particularly bomb TED talk, noteworthy for the crazy animation and stellar argument. (The last few minutes are exceptional.)

HOT DOGS!

Ahhhhhh back in the Castle, baby. Much like the mob, you try to get out and it pulls you right back. It's been half a month and I've noticed people smile less here. Christina was verbally accosted by a drunk the one night we went out and obesity is rampant.

It's been said that politically, Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with rural Kentucky in between. It's true. Not necessarily a bad thing, but brush your teeth. In a sick sense I'm looking forward to interacting more with the denizens of the city of my youth. There are a lot of good people here, and I hate that they get marginalized (tho I guess I'm doing the same thing).

All I know for sure is family is a blessing. Going to the LC Fair tonight. Pictures to follow.

Practice

Just to try to begin to get in the habit of putting words down each day...

Nothing insightful or interesting happened to me today. I made pancakes for dinner. Teen and I joked about wearing all of one color, how "sweatpants gray" should by all rights be the color of universal surrender. Nothing is lazier or a more appropriate sign of not giving a crap than wearing all sweatpants gray colored clothing.

A final thought:  If we know we will live longer, do we grow up too fast? Is it wrong to feel 18 at 25 if you're going to live to be one hundred?

Journeys

The wife and I went to New Castle for a day this weekend. My dad was preaching at a small church, and at one point in the service people brought up concerns and prayer requests. Two people mentioned loved ones who had to be rushed to Pittsburgh for medical treatment. It's amazing for me to think of this city like that, as a faraway place where the sick and dying must go to be kept alive, but for so many people, a trip to Pittsburgh means a loved one is hurting.

I've been seeing a lot of people bringing up a lot of evidence that the United States is an empire in decline. Some think it is due to the fact that we got away from our Constitution or our old way of life. Some say it is because we are too gluttonous and greedy. Still others say that the reason doesn't matter--that empires eventually and inevitably decline.

People relate to life in two ways, I think. The first is how you see yourself as an individual person. This view incorporates those with whom you interact and their influence on you. The second is how you see yourself as a human being in the long-term sense of humanity. A good example is an old person you love. You want your great grandfather to live forever, but if he does, future children will miss out on all the resources he consumed in his long life.

For me, Pittsburgh, with all its potholes and crappy politicians, is home. For others, it is a last chance. The city has done well at adapting to progress, moving from a primarily steel based economy to one set in education and medicine. There's a certain dignity and clarity involved in seeing yourself as just a small cog in a much larger machine. Imagine what the state of the city would be if it had refused to abandon its coal-fired roots. Pittsburgh no longer shapes the world as it did in its heyday, yet it's doing pretty well. Perhaps we're better off forgetting about the way things used to be and just looking forward. We all share one thing in common: no matter what we do now we are all in the end just future history.

Coincidence feels like Luck

I'm going to start writing on here more because it is good practice.

On Wednesday I went to the grocery store because I wanted bread to go with the fish and green beans I was cooking. Also Wednesday is one of the two days each week that the Powerball is drawn. I usually buy one ticket per drawing because it seems like a worthy investment. So I get my bread after muscling out an Asian couple in the checkout line (I only had one item, they had like 50) and go to the lottery-ticket dispensing machine. I slide a crisp dollar into the slot and press the quick pick button. No ticket. After thinking it best to just walk away, I reluctantly pluck another dollar from my wallet and decide to pick numbers. My finger hovers between 29 and 30. Intuition says 29, mind says 30. I go with 30.

The first ticket drops with the second; oddly enough showing a Powerball of 29. As it turns out, that night the number drawn was 27. Oh well. I don't really play the Powerball to win, but to hang on the promise that miraculous life change is possible and for all we know, imminent.

Nostalgia. . .

Something about the smell of warm air in Pittsburgh always pulls me back to the spring of my freshman year of college. It smells like promise and potential.

Driving home from work today I get the same feeling I had early in 2005. So, I sit here with the window open wide to that magical air and the Shins' "Chutes Too Narrow" wailing from the speakers, and I reminisce about the wonderful world open to a young man with no responsibilities and nothing but optimism for tomorrow.

The world has changed since then. I have grown up--to some degree anyways. And after a period of weary cynicism and complacency, life is beginning to seem like it did that spring. Good things surely are to come. T.S. Eliot said in Little Gidding, "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

I'm ready to revisit the future.

The Troops

I've been giving a lot of thought recently to the Troops. Most people are in favor of supporting the Troops, but more and more Americans are starting to see problems with the wars they fight. Poll

How can such a discrepancy exist? Granted, we don't want another situation similar to the one after Vietnam where veterans were ostracized and defamed for their service. However, our two current wars are unlike Vietnam, where American men were drafted to fight. Any soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan signed up to be there. Maybe they believed in the cause, or maybe they just wanted an opportunity the service provided; either way, they are there by choice. Is it right of us to blindly support them?
The war in Afghanistan has been ongoing for nine years, and we have occupied Iraq for over six. I remember hearing a quote somewhere that I always attributed to Che Guevara that said something along the lines of, "If you want to bring down Babylon, make it stretch farther than its arms can reach." With our blossoming debt and blooming fiscal concerns, is it wise to be spending money on two foreign occupations? Perhaps we should further re-evaluate our devotion to causes that demand so much of our blood and money.

Pripyat

The picture at the top of this blog is a view of Chernobyl from the city of Pripyat, a once rapidly-growing city built near the infamous plant. What was once a flourishing, modern metropolis is now a ghost town, abandoned and still blanketed with pockets of radiation.

Photos of the city are hauntingly beautiful. Inside the abandoned buildings are the remnants of a communist regime that fell not long after the city was deserted. It now stands as a testament to some of the greatest glories and tragic failings of the human race.

We are able to build and create and better our world, but often we end up just making a mess of things. There are reports from the area around Chernobyl that without a human presence wild animals are thriving, although there are also reports of mutation and sterility in some species.

When Europeans were colonizing America, some settlers opted to live with the Natives rather than stay with their brethren. Ben Franklin remarked on the phenomenon, "No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies."


For more on Chernobyl, look here: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/chernobyl-then-now/14634

Swine Flu and the Race Home

I clock out of work at 6 PM, then play a game I call "Beat the Sun Down." The object of the game is for me to get home before it gets dark enough to need headlights. I won today, although it was close.

According to the website flucount.org, there have been 44,555 reported cases of swine flu in the United States and its territories. Of those cases, there have been 1,170 deaths attributable to H1N1 infection.

According to the CDC, an average of 36,000 American individuals die each year from seasonal influenza.


Pandemic or paranoia?

Humdrummery

I don't know if it's the season or events related, but I'm tending towards feeling funky. It's been a waste of beautiful weather.

Is this a common symptom? Should a young man find himself already worn down by the doldrums of lower middle-class life? What future am I anticipating?

I have been reading, "Lies My Teacher Told Me," and James Loewen (the author) has some really interesting thoughts on American's view of progress. He claims that we're a people who equate moving forward with getting better, but often we regress while only feeling as if we are moving forward. For example, Obama was to be a progressive president, yet we're not holding him accountable for failing to live up to those promises. It's not so much actual progress we crave, just the ideology.

On an unrelated note, kudos to Levi's for creating an ad campaign that appeals to me. I don't know who came up with the 'Pioneers' thing you're doing, but I like it.

Rants and Observations

Two things:

While watching TV tonight, I got to watch a commercial where the two dudes from Scrubs were making humorous pleas for nationalized health care. They urged young people (aged 18-29, the least-insured age group in America, according to the commercial) to vote for coverage. As if this thing isn't a mess enough already, now we need Hollywood working the young and impressionable into a frenzy over something they don't necessarily need.

Sure, it's good to have a safety net, but as a supple young man I don't really need to worry about heart attacks or colon polyps or brain aneurisms, or whatever health issues older people have. I eat healthy, exercise, and try to keep certain bad indulgences to a minimal or moderate level. In my opinion, keeping a positive outlook can be better for one's health than "just-in-case" insurance. The body is designed to fix itself after all!

On another, unrelated note, I have a theory as to why American men revere football.

I didn't give too much thought to the sport until last year when I got into a fantasy league. Even then I didn't watch the games or care about outcomes unless the Steelers were doing something worthwhile. This past Sunday I ended up watching a majority of the games. I wondered why.

I reasoned that it had to do with the job I have now. For five days each week, I sit in a climate-controlled room staring at a computer. My co-workers talk about breast feeding sometimes. Football, with all its physical triumph and conquest, was suddenly appealing. Watching burly men grind out yard after yard for the glory of the end zone made sense in a primal way. Even though I'm not actually doing anything, I want to, and can relate. The other day, the Wife and I were talking about how being lethargic only makes you more lethargic. So, instead of conquering something myself, I sit and observe.

This theory offers an explanation as to why America shifted its love from baseball to football. When men had to do physical work, they wanted a more strategic, less physical form of sport. What comes to mind when one thinks of baseball compared to thoughts associated with football? Think about it. And don't bother getting health care. Sitting on the couch won't hurt you any time soon.

Eco-Guilt

An article in the City Paper I read last week told about the increasing amount of potentially harmful chemicals in the water supply. Concern over what we're consuming is growing like the Pacific garbage mass. (For reference, a picture of a nerd with a trash ball he caught. http://bit.ly/tOsWo)

Think about it, all the things we consume, be it the food we eat then poop out or the cleaners we use to wash ourselves afterwards, and the packages in which all these consumptibles are delivered have to go somewhere. When one considers the cost associated with certain products, it can make you feel pretty damn guilty.

I feel bad about the amount of waste I generate and am taking steps to make my environmental footprint smaller. (http://www.myfootprint.org/en/ Here's a calculator to show how wasteful you are.) According to my results, there would need to be 5.5 earths for everyone to sustainably live as I do. I told Christina and she replied, "We might as well kill ourselves." Apart from suicide I'm trying to take steps towards limiting the waste I create. I won't drink another bottle of water, which to me is the most over-indulgent, unnecessary frivolity of modern man. I have to drive to my crappy job, but at least I'm angry about it and my car gets decent gas mileage.
I'm trying to eat less beef because on an episode of Manswers they pointed out that only 38% of a cow is butchered for meat. Couple that with the amount of resources it takes to raise cattle and the harmful methane gas they fart into the atmosphere and I feel too guilty to enjoy the deliciousness of that wonderful animal. I also am trying to shower with less soap and I try to keep the ligts off and unplug unused appliances.

Environmentalism doesn't have to be a movement or a brand image, just a subtle change in way of life. In fact, trying to market "green" may end up having adverse affects on what could have potentially been a positive thing. So don't buy a Prius or carbon offsets if you're feeling bad, just tone down on eating cow and using plastic so much. Consumption will never lead to conservation.

Voting

I decided recently that I don't think I am going to vote anymore. I don't see the point. Voting for change didn't really solve anything. The shift from a Republican party-run government to a Democrat controlled one only brought on new complaints and arguments. And the constituency seems to be pissed. A recent study showed that 57% of people would like to see Congress replaced (http://bit.ly/tROqF.)

I began to become disillusioned with politics after the Ron Paul Revolution failed to really materialize. I truly felt passionate about what was going on there, but apparently the rest of the country didn't agree, which is fine although it made me sad. The sadness has worn off; now the whole political process seems like so much wasted effort. People's problems won't be fixed by government. Look at the health care debacle.

So instead of partaking in the burden of democracy, I'm going to put power behind my dollars. Money has more influence than politics, rather than investing time into seeing what candidate best lines up with my views I'm going to see where I want my money to go and dispense accordingly.


On an interesting side note, when I was wondering if it was a good idea to stop voting, this episode of South Park came on: http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103888/

The Shrinking Church

Atheism is a growing force. It is defined by dictionary.com as "disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings." I know the argument has been made countless times by the faithful that Atheism is still a belief system, and thus not much different from any other religion, but until it is debunked, I prefer to believe in a Higher Power. God has been a great presence in my life and I feel bad for people who are missing out on that.

Truthfully though, I can understand the pull away from God. Mankind is evolving. We don't need a god anymore. We can explain away most all things formerly mysterious. The move to a self-actualized humanism is the next logical step in our moral evolution. We don't need all powerful beings forcing us to be good and explaining a sun rise. In fact, the religions of the world are seen as destructive forces instead of instructions on how to live a life of love. On the other side, in trying to stay relevant, the Message has been filtered and watered down to fit current trends and is now shallow and weak. Yesterday in church I was admiring the beauty of the building and the lack of people in the pews. It was like a bus stop for the afterlife, full of the elderly sitting quietly waiting for eternity. My cousin (who works there) was telling me about an ever-smaller budget and a decline in active members. The writing on the wall was sandblasted clean last month.

I don't know what this declining majority is to do. Faith has lost its appeal and church has little to offer modern man. I wish I had solutions, but I don't. All I have is the notion that the God I believe in has less need for us than we do for Him.