Aren’t you a little fat to be a stormtrooper?

Piss off Leia.

In any event, I started another blog.  It’s mostly about Star Wars stuff.  So, feel free to check it out, Kyle’s mom.

cellblockaa23.wordpress.com

I’m back bitches (component failure)

So after a bit of prodding from my landlord, I’ve decided to (at least try) and give up Facebook trolling in favor of actually blogging again.  Apparently hearing about all the crazy shit that goes through my head one text at a time is not as fun as sitting down and reading it all in one fell swoop.

So let’s catch up quick shall we?  Hi, I’m Jesse.  I still like baseabll and hot dogs and stuff, I’m still pretty fat, I’m still a teacher, and I’m still in ….. good ol… Sidney… Montana….

But now I like rockets and stuff.  Elon Musk is the dude, and I’m trying to learn electronics and chemistry and rockets and stuff.

SO it should probably come as no surprise that I’ve developed a pretty unhealthy fascination with all sorts of space stuff, in particular, the Apollo program.  I’m still in pretty shocked awe that we did that.  Chest pounding nationalism or naw, it’s fucking amazing.  The F-1 rocket engine produced over 1.5 million pounds of thrust, and we strapped 5 of them on the bottom of a bunch of explosive stuff and let er buck.  There’s a group of modern engineers that have pulled one out of storage (remember we haven’t used these bastards in half a century) and are tearing it apart to reverse-engineer it (article).  I think this is awesome, and ALSO where I ran into the whole point of this blog post.  See, as I started watching this, I heard two of the engineers pronounce the word “component” kinda funny… “COMponent”  rather than “comPOnent” as I’ve always heard it.  I thought, well, maybe one of them had a weird pronunciation and they work together, so the other one picked it up.  Let it slide.

Here’s the whole video:

Note 0:29 and 1:34 “COMponent”

So I let it slide until I’m watching this OTHER video about the development of the Saturn V and check out the 19:32 mark where a California project manager in charge of the second stage of the vehicle says it the same way!

Ok, so now somethin’s up.  This can’t possibly be a coincidence.  And sure as shit, (here’s where the nerd gets real)  I’m watching this video on the ACG (Apollo guidance computer) and amid the subtle sexism and black and white late 1950’s documentary style production, one of the project managers (14:44 mark) says it several times.

At this point, I’m flabbergasted, obviously.  So I get to googlin’.  Apparently I’m not the only one to have noticed the phenomenon. It seems that several people have taken physics or engineering courses where this pronunciation is predominant.  Now at least, I begin to understand why so many engineers are saying words like morons.

My initial suspicion is a bold one.  And will probably be proven wrong.  Here’s my thought:

Germans.  Smart, accent-heavy Germans.

So at the end of WWII, the pinnacle of rocket research was up in Peenemunde in Germany.  Werhner Von Braun and his boys were building V2’s and killing Brits with them with astonishing efficiency.  (In his defense, when interviewed about the successful V2 launches on the enemies of the reich, Von Braun was quoted to have said “the rockets worked fabulously, they just landed on the wrong planet.” However, the more I read about him, I sort of doubt he gave a single shit who died as long as he got to keep his funding to build rockets.) Anyway, after the war, we brought all those boys down to the good Ol U.S of A. and put them to work building rockets for us.  Well, first we interviewed them and had our engineers build the rockets, but they kept blowing up, so finally we moved them to Huntsville Alabama (If you’ve ever watched Rocket City Rednecks you’ll recognize the town, and there’s a reason for that.  The old man in the show was actually a machinist for Von Braun’s rocket programs) and put them to work building rockets at the Redstone Arsenal.  They started with the Mercury project already underway and eventually shifted to the bigger and better Saturn rockets that would eventually take us to the moon ahead of those damn Russians.  Actually, it turns out it was probably the Russians who did themselves in, there were 2 competing camps in the Russian space program about rocket design, and they fought so much with each other that they couldn’t really get anywhere after Sputnik and Gregarin and such.  So while they were bickering, all the smart motherfuckers at NASA were huddled around Werhner Von Braun’s campfire (by all accounts he was very charismatic) and listening to him talk about rockets and their, yup, you guessed it, COMponents.  The German word is “Komponente” and stressed on the first and third syllables.  You mix that with a little Alabama drawl and what do you get… COMponent.  Just like CONcrete and REmote control and EYEtalian food.  Then it’s just a matter of all those engineers going out and teaching engineering and physics courses and spreading the pronunciation around

I hope this has been as fun and informational as I’d intended.

Takes one to troll one.

Ok, guys and gals. Fuck the internet.

There, I feel better now.

Ok, lets call this meeting to order.

I’ve discovered I’m very fond of facebook trolling.  But it’s hard to do and not look like a publicly hated douche, so I’ve had to figure out ways to draw the trolling to me.  Hence what I did today.  Here’s the text of my latest.

“Ok, can we PLEASE talk about this gun control issue? I mean c’mon, it seems like NOBODY CARES ONE WAY OR THE OTHER! 
I kid, of course, but here’s my problem. I find myself curiously aligned with both sides of the argument and am really just disappointed that nobody is making a case I can get behind. So if you want my vote, here’s how to do it.

Conservatives:
1. Make the case that the second amendment guarantees for posterity the right to keep and bear arms, admit that this was written when the most technologically advanced weapon commercially available was a musket, then make the point that that’s all ANYBODY had. If the US is going to be invaded by a foreign enemy, or you really believe the CIA is going to come and rape your wife, they probably won’t be packin Kentucky long-rifles, and neither should you have to.
2.Give in to some stricter acquisition laws. If you have a criminal record, you are “the bad guys” we’re trying to keep guns from. Sorry. If you’ve got a clean record, have passed a federal gun safety course, can prove you own a respectable gun safe, and are willing to wait a few weeks for your AR, I doubt you’re going to find many people that are gonna kick up any fuss when you buy one, at least I won’t.
3. Advocate strongly for the improvement of our mental health system. Your argument here is “Guns don’t kill people, and neither do most people kill people, unstable people kill people”
4.Quit being douches. The “hitler wanted to take away guns too” and “obama gets the secret service but doesn’t think we need guns” posters are not helping your cause. I don’t know any profession in the world (besides perhaps the pope) that can claim more assassination attempts, I don’t you need 24 hour armed guard to keep the neigbor’s dog from crapping on your lawn.

Liberals:
1. Make the case that there is a reason we have the largest military force in the world. If you really believe you need an assault rifle to protect you from enemies foreign or domestic, perhaps you’d be happier somewhere less hated by the rest of the world. Canada’s right up there ^, knock yourself out.
2.Give up on trying to get all the guns unless you’re willing to go door to door and collect them yourself. There are people out there crazy enough to actually use force to protect what they hold dear. That means shooting you. Instead, advocate stricter acquisition laws. There’s really no reason you need an assault rifle RIGHT NOW, unless there’s a real Red Dawn scenario on the horizon, in which case the boy scouts should’ve been prepared in the first place. Advocate for longer wait times, stricter background checks, stiffer limitations on what criminal records and mental conditions preclude you from firearm ownership. You’ll never take the guns they have, but you might be able to make the act of getting a gun a more prudent and reasonable proceedure.
3. Advocate strongly for improving our mental health system. See above, this helps everybody. Your argument is “unstable people kill people, guns just make it much easier and more efficient.”
4. Quit being douches. Your memes aren’t really helping either. While generally less mean, they’re generally not any more accurate or helpful. Stick to what you’re good at (sometimes) with level headed debate and avoid hyperbole and hate mongering. Show some respect to those that truly believe they need the protection they think they get from guns and show them that you love America too. They often think they have that market cornered.

Well there you have it pundits and plainfolk. That’s how you win my vote on the gun control issue. Tune in next week and we can rap about the Oscars n’ stuff.”

 

Now we can bullshit each other all we want about how this is a centrist argument for rationality and civil discourse and blah-de-fuckin-blah, all of which is all fine and good and great for the conversation, but really I’m just baitin the hook and waiting for the morons to speak their peace. Which of course, they did.  If you’re not my facebook friend, well fuck you back.  But if you are, go check it out.  A few of them are nothing short of stellar.  

Please go trolling, I promise I’ll play along.  Or if you have other suggestions for my troll-bait tackle box, let me know.  I’ll get right on that.

OH, yeah and welcome back to the armchair.

Through the Out Door

Fuck. Prince jams are tasty.

As someone who primarily appreciates metal, I feel weird making the above statement. I have received disdainful remarks from fellow hard music afficionados who cannot understand the way I feel.

But, put on “Raspberry Beret” or “Kiss” and try to tell me that the funk doesn’t crawl inside you and hang out for a few minutes, making  you a little bit happier. It’s even better when one of these pops up unexpectedly on the radio at work and then I have to duck into the stock room and dance for just a minute or two.

You're happier just looking at this, aren't you? Of course you are.

Related tangent: I stay up way too late for no reason all the time. Like now, for instance. I should have been in bed an hour ago. If I go to sleep right this moment, actually, I’ll accumulate some significant Z’s before my alarm goes off. That’s not going to happen, though, as I clearly am still typing this and have yet to make much of a coherent point. What do I do for all these wasted sleepless hours, anyway? I’m a compulsive clicker, Facebook links, Reddit links, my gmail account again and again.  You’d be surprised how quickly the time flies when you’re preoccupied doing  nothing of note. Occasionally, it does put me in a funk. I’ll look at other people’s apparently awesome, filtered Facebook lives and wonder what the fuck I’m doing with myself…or that maybe I should get a haircut to be more attractive…or that I don’t paint my nails pretty colors often enough…or that I want to take a vacation and be perpetually elsewhere. But just when you have your radio turned on a little too loud for 12am to drown out the sound of your father talking out loud to himself or muttering passive-aggressively to his cats (and yes, of course, you still live at home) a Prince song comes on the radio and suddenly you have just enough drive to close your laptop and try to catch some sleep before Tuesday hurls its ugly self at your face.

So, Prince: thanks for the momentary burst of happy. The elements at work for the preservation of my sanity appreciate your contributions.

It’s a perfect shit storm, Ricky

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, back to the armchair. It’s been some time and as we’ve made plainly clear…. nobody gives a shit.
However, I would like to use this as a space to solve all the world’s problems, or at least those that directly concern the little burg of Sidney, MT.
First, a preface.

To understand a solution, one must first, necessarily, understand the problem at hand. Our problem is multi-fold. First, we live in an area that no more than 5000 or so can justify living in permanently. That, in itself, should be a red flag to a lot of people. Secondly, this little town is near the center of the recent “oil-boom” on the Bakken Oil Formation. This brings what some might call “a fuck ton” of people (i.e. oil companies, their employees and the secondary services needed to support an ever-increasing population.)
Now, as in any increasing population, a predictable portion will be those who can be considered “riff raff,” but in a population primarily male, primarily 20-40, and primarily desperate for employment, this portion is significantly larger than the average public. Now, one thing I’ve always liked about life in a northern town is that the cold winters seem to keep the scallywags to a minimum. However, this winter has been severely abnormally warm and agreeable to survival, therefore the expected “thinning of the herd” has not occurred thus far. Now up to this point in my argument, it would be perfectly logical to assume that an indigenous public would be out of line to assume that the newer portion of the population was in some way negatively affecting our surroundings, Enter the mysterious disappearance of a local woman on a morning jog. Now, I submit that this is indeed a serious situation and in no way merits the fun we usually have around here, but it does further my argument. After this terrible incident, it seems that the public is convinced there are connections between “oil field trash” and “crime rise.” Keeping in mind that at this time there is actually no evidence to support the argument in this case. Now. After the disappearance, and the “apparent” cause, the masses have gone out in droves and purchased weapons of all manner (guns, tasers, pepper spray.) So now we have a scared, pissed off, and armed to the tooth public. Sounds good right? Actually we’re almost all republicans out here so, that is kinda par for the course. Anyway, THEN, a local nite club frequented most often by the “cowboy crowd” burns down under mysterious circumstances. Why is this important? you ask. Well it forces all the cowboys (who, lets be honest, kinda tend to talk shit a lot) to mingle with the rest of the population in the other 3-4 bars in town. So now we have a scared, pissed off, mouthy, drunk, desperate public crammed into less space than it should be…. a perfect shit storm.
Over/under on a shots fired, man down? Somebody better get that teardrop tattoo gun warmed up.

Seven Years of Build-Up

[[[Good thing Jesse has decreed this site dead, because I feel like ranting and this is of a more personal and less hilarious subject matter than the rest of the posts on this site. No formatting for this one. No pictures. Just the copy and pasted rage-turd I bombed out on Word a few minutes ago.]]]

This won’t be particularly funny or witty and even with the California sun shining through my windows and a blissful amount of nothing on my To-Do list, it’s still been one of those days/mornings.

I graduated this past Saturday. Hold your applause. I’ve been a slave to the institute of upper education for seven long years. Or maybe they were short years. I can’t even begin to categorize how the passing of all that time feels; I’m still a little confounded by it. I’d thought a lot about what it would feel like to be done with a capital “D” and an exclamation point for a very long time, when it felt like there was no light, just infinite miles of tunnel ahead of me. I expected to feel overwhelmed with joy and accomplishment and to be able to share that joy with my family and friends. Truth is, graduation day was a lot like one of my birthdays. You always expect people to be as excited about your own shit as you are, and they aren’t.  I get that it’s difficult for other people to appreciate how hard I worked or how many panic attacks I had or how much time I spent being miserable because I truly felt like I was not going to get the things I wanted for myself.

Saturday was hot….almost unbearably hot and I was surrounded by functionally retarded and drunk Human Development majors. That sounds a lot like whining because it is. The best time of the entire ceremony was the whole two minutes I spent having my name announced, walking across the stage, and getting my picture taken. The rest of the three hours sort of dragged. And as an added bonus, my dad texted me while I was watching the rest of the class of 2011 graduate after I had walked to ask if I would leave the ceremony early because my grandmother was tired of sitting in the sun. I offered a resounding no and stayed for the good stuff like getting to move my tassel to the left of my cap and walking down the row of clapping professors with my degree holder in my hand.  I exited the row of clapping instructors into the waiting arms of no one and went directly to my car where I stood waiting for a few minutes because the wonderful individual I am dating was racing over after work to come congratulate me in person (We’ve only been hanging out for a few weeks and already he was more supportive than my family. Doesn’t say much for my family) While waiting, some strange Asian man walked by, gave me the thumbs up, and offered a “so proud of you!” I did not know this man. He probably thought he was saying something kind to the lonely graduate. I don’t think I felt more pathetic that day.

Maybe I’m mad at my dad. But maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on him. He got me a nice graduation present and has told me a few times over the past two days that he’s incredibly proud of me. Feels pretty nice, but then again there’s shit like this morning when he walked by my room on his way to work and offered some more words of praise and topped it off by congratulating himself for “not coddling me” over the long seven year road to my degree.

I think my blood has been a low boil for a few hours since.

My father’s idea of not coddling me apparently has consisted of: kicking me out of his apartment while I was staying in CA during spring break from classes in North Dakota, blowing up at me countless times for incredibly insignificant matters, blaming my sick mother for everything, acting like I told him I was knocked up when I announced I wanted my master’s degree and etc and etc. In terms of moral support, I cannot imagine someone who has done less or made me feel worse. It’s been seven years of some of the most troubling moments of my life for which he has been the cause of most.

I am incredibly disillusioned with this whole graduation thing. Where’s the sense of joy and accomplishment? Why do I feel less accomplished now than I did when I was still taking undergraduate courses? I feel gypped, but I suppose seven years of build up will do that to you. I’ve grown tired of being disappointed. Maybe the catharsis of all of this will hit me later and I’ll get my happiness then. Fingers crossed.

Abortion

So as I re-visit this aborted project, I can’t help but imagine how great it could have been if only we’d had fans. Supply and demand doesn’t work as well without pissed off college kids asking why nobody is writing anymore.
That being said, I’m willing to write this off as abandoned so long as there are no objections. The page will continue to float in space, so feel free to make poopy on the page at your leisure. Kyle’s mom isn’t even watching this one anymore.

Mythical Beasts and Heavier Things.

Party girls. INSANE party girls….the ones you see FAILblog pictures of, who are passed out with their pants down taking a crap on the toilet at some stranger’s house in the suburbs with a red party cup in their hands and their eyeliner tracing tracks down their cheeks. These shameslooters have to exist somewhere. I know this because I have seen the aforementioned pictures. But I personally have never encountered any of them.

 

I typed the above description before I google searched for the image. No joke.

 

I’ve been to parties and I’ve seen the drunks and the morons (come to think of it, that’s almost all I’ve seen at parties) but never the broad who has ingested 2 hits of ex and a gallon of Arbor Mist before she hit the front door of the fiesta. Where are these women?? Who are their friends? And more importantly, where I can meet them? Well, I am happy to say that I have found them. THEY EXIST. And, not surprisingly, they travel in packs that smell mostly of some strange man’s Axe cologne from last night and that handle of Karkov they ingested.

 

Real people who have real lives somewhere.

 

Unfortunately for me, I am only privy to the certification of their existence because I sit in front of them in my 4pm Political Science class. Fuuuuuuck. Cal State made me take a 100 level course because they hate me and want me to suffer death by repeated exposure to Freshmen. I used to sit in the third row from the back until I began to realize that I had inadvertently situated myself in front of a horde of ShameSlooter Party Girls. It was like being on an African safari and catching one still moment where a gang of Cheetas have gathered to lap water from a like….a pond or something. (Do cheetas even do that? And do they hang out in gangs? Whatever. The class I was taking wasn’t WildLife 101.)

 

Cheetas do this too, don't they? Also, notice the typo. Fail. But not mine.

 

They began to talk and I could almost literally feel the anyuerism induced by their discussion hovering at the edge of my brain. Gems like, (I am not even fucking kidding) “Do I smell like Vodka?” and “So like…Thursday was like a good drunk. But Friday, homygawd, was like black-out drunk. I don’t remember anything.” And then monotonous talk about how many calories are in something and….I actually may have blacked out myself and vomited on my neighbor’s backpack. There’s no proof of that happening, but you best believe I came close. I moved seats the next class session and have thankfully not been exposed to any more of their conversations (and I use that term very VERY loosely). I have tried on several occasions to turn around and find out what exactly these Skank-o-saurus Rexes look like, but have thus far been unable to pick out any peroxide blondes with orange tans and MAC forcefields.

 

GAH!

 

This prompts a frightening notion….what if they walk amongst us in plain sight? I shudder at the thought. This brings me to my real point though: California (and more specifically San Diego) FUCKING SUCKS. I am dead serious. Everyone who lives outside of the state thinks the beach is so wonderful and they love the palm trees and the sunshine and I’m sure they imagine life in the Golden State is all rainbows and puppies and blueberry muffins. It’s not. It’s the WORST. Consider for a moment, the following factoids about the place where I was born and raised: 1.) Sure, the beach is nice, but unless you’re making 6 figures a year, you’re not going to be living anywhere close. In fact, if you have a modest income, the closest you could get to the beach is renting out a closet (not even a walk-in) in someone’s shitty beach-adjacent apartment.

 

And this will only cost you $2 Million. Score.

 

Otherwise, you’re going to be living inland with the rest of us schmucks. 2.) Good luck getting to the beach. There are lots of people in California and lots of them came here for the same reason you did. Trying to visit la playa on any holiday or summer weekend is an adventure in traffic and parking spot hunting that will make you want to tear off your own arm, shellack it, turn it into a letter opener, and stab yourself in the face with it. (Thanks for that line, Patton O.) Not to mention the fact that lots of our beaches are polluted with people, litter, and um actual pollution. Oh, and you can’t drink on the beach either. Happy Summer, folks!

 

Like this. Just with more people and litter.

 

You can’t really get anywhere. Say you have a day off in the middle of the week and want to be out and about getting stuff done and doing things and going places. Well, I surely hope you aren’t planning on doing it between 7 and 9 am or 4pm to 6pm because you will be stuck in the parking lot that our Freeway systems become during rush hour. Seriously. What could be a 15 min trip will take you 45. Best of luck. 3.)Oh, and if you don’t have a car you’re F’d in the A with a big D. Public transportation on the East Coast is all about the Subway, where for around 3 dollars you can take a round trip and ride with business professionals and your average working folk. In San Diego, if you want to get anywhere and don’t have your own set of wheels, enjoy sitting on the city buses with the guy who smells like cat piss and holds up the cardboard sign in front of the Walmart. Weird ass people ride our buses here, for reals. You won’t be able to actually LIVE anywhere. Houses here in my suburb of Escondido sneak closer and closer to the half million dollar mark all the time….and that’s not even for a house with a sweet view or a giant yard. Nope! Chances are, you’ll be stuck in a housing development surrounded by 50 other homes that look remarkably like yours. And you won’t be able to get groceries or um…do anything ever because you’ll spend every single dollar of every paycheck you will most likely make in your crappy life paying for your brand new home in Suburb city. And even then, you’ll be living in Escondido which, um, sucks.

 

“Yeah, my house is the uh…big white one on the left.”

 

4.) You will have to associate with the dumb slooters I mentioned earlier. That is not to say, however, that I have not met incredible people here in San Diego that I am proud to call my friends. But let’s be honest. I spent 24 years looking for them and so far the count of awesome people I love compared to folks I would gladly shove into an active volcano is not impressive. 5.) We don’t have seasons…EVER. We get rain. A couple times. I know to some people (some of my friends mostly who live in areas where it snows heavily in the winter) this sounds like paradise. But it will probably be 80 on Christmas. You may not want your snow, you may hate your inclement weather, but time seems to lose all meaning when every day is fucking 90. Maybe I’m just bitter because it’s November and it is actually 90 degrees outside today. And anyway, people in California cannot drive to save their yuppy lives. It rained one day last month and there were 300 accidents. THREE HUNDRED ACCIDENTS….BECAUSE OF SOME MODERATE RAIN.

 

Only a slight exaggeration.

 

But, to put aside the bitter rage curtain for a moment, I haven’t always hated California. I must have loved it at some age. I went to Disneyland every year for the longest time and up until I was in the ninth grade all I owned were shorts and t-shirts. There must have been some California in my blood then. I have had my moments. Especially around 5:30pm in the Fall, when the sun is just about to slip below the horizon and the palm trees and everything else looks mostly orange; when I’m doing 55 in a 45 on the long straight-a-way down Mission Ave in my grandpa’s ’84 Toyota pickup, with the windows down, and AC/DC playing on Rock 105. But mostly, I have to admit, I’ve never been terribly fond of the people….the places. I think I want pick up the things I put down in North Dakota four years ago. The wooden door jamb of PS – 12 where I carved my name. The snow outside Boyle Hall that Jesse Nesper told me to try and eat once and I did and thought it was pretty tasty. The duct tape on our walls that tackily held up Christmas lights well into the following semester. But I think if I went back to find them, I would discover they had not waited around for me. So, if the question is (and this is a rhetorical musing that is in no way soliciting a response) “where do I belong?” and the answer is “I don’t know, precisely”, then what is one to do?

I Just Wanted Brownies.

A few points to make first:

1.)    I live with my Father. Or rather, I live at my Father’s house. The contributor to 50% of my DNA spends 98% of his time at his girlfriend’s house (that’s blog math, folks), making the occasional guest appearance to mow the lawn and kill spiders (the spider murdering done at my behest because Fathers are always better at killing bugs than their daughters. It’s science.) My father is a mechanical engineer and a pseudo bachelor, so that should give you some insight into how the house is “decorated”. The sparse furnishings consist of two tables, a rocking chair, a pair of aging plaid (no joke) couches, and a 50” flatscreen, high definition TV. This behemoth is seated atop a wooden something-or-other that used to house my dad’s old record player back in the day (which was not always a Wednesday, Dane Cook, you hack). The wooden contraption used to have a flat top until it blew off somewhere on the 15 South from the back of my brother in law’s pickup (don’t ask). Such being the case, the Scott Stiener (go ahead, Google him) of all TVs is set on top of a stack of my dad’s old college textbooks and secured in place by packing tape.

2.)    I suck at being an adult. Seriously. I’ve just barely mastered clothing myself and being on time for class. That being said, I cannot cook for myself (or other people, really). At any given time, the list of things I am prepared to whip up to sustain my existence are: (barely) grilled cheeses, canned soup, steamed veggies, grilled chicken (plain, on the old Foreman grill), peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and tuna salad. Toss in the occasional boxed macaroni-n-cheese plate, and that about does it. It should follow that I cannot grocery shop. To clarify, I love grocery shopping (it’s very Zen), but I’m pretty sure that I’m doing it wrong. I wind up with a jumble of items that would not add up to a decent meal in even the most creative chef’s home. These previous two points leading to my third:

3.)    There is never any real food in my house, ever. Because my father is a bachelor and does not cook, because calling myself a quasi-adult is an insult to quasi-adults everywhere, and because most of my endeavors are a fair sized pile of FAIL, my pantry consists of the following: canned tuna, soups, two bulk boxes of expired oatmeal, expired condiments, expired boxes of instant potatoes, and what has to be almost 30 cans of peaches (not expired). In my defense, I did not put these items there…..father did. To my detriment, my apathy makes it hard to throw any of them away.

4.)    To add to your now impressive repoitre of useless facts about me: after I consume one of my substandard meals of what may be loosely termed “food”, I want chocolate. Badly. I will go to almost any length to get it, barring driving anywhere and spending money (I’m a lazy addict). This lead me to experience what I now know as the Overwhelming Brownie Fail of 2010, or….the point of all these other points.

HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN:

One night a few weeks ago,  after eating a dinner of what I can only assume was 12 Saltine crackers and a half a can of unrefrigerated regular Coke, I needed baked goods. To my glee, I had cocoa powder, sugar, flour, and oil. But of course….OF COURSE…..no eggs. Important math I wish I had known at the time: Brownie Ingredients – Eggs = Confectionary Abortion. Well, I remembered Vegans existed (and according to my friend Jessica, they absolutely shouldn’t) and surely they must eat brownies (because, Christ….who doesn’t?), I consulted Google (or what I am convinced is the real –life realization of SkyNet).  Picking the easiest possible recipe led to me having to heat up flour and water to make some sort of paste that was going to replace the eggs.  I imagine that said goo could have easily replaced whatever exists in Lindsay Lohan’s meth-addled cranium and make her more highly functioning.  Aaaaannyywhooo…..mixing the flour-brain-substitute into the rest of the brownie batter required the use of a hand mixer. I did not have one because I can only LOGICALLY assume that my father knew I would one day be making shitty brownies and would need it and therefore threw it out to make my life more difficult…..for funsies.  My lack of hand-mixing technology left me with an un-mixed mixture with bits of white flour-brain hanging about and did not resemble anything I would want to eat at all. But whatever, I’ve done stupider stuff for less valid reasons than my simple chocolate-lust, so in the oven she went! The uncooked spaghetti noodle inserted in the middle of the pan test failed after the allotted cooking time via Skynet’s directions so I let my abomination sit in there for a little longer…..and a little longer. When I figured I had singed it to my satisfaction, I took it out and sampled some. What I ended up with was slightly brownie-esque, but mostly inedible.  I ate 1/3 of it. The flour-brain bits did not melt in the oven as I had hoped and turned out to be flavorless, hard/chewy little surprises. Mmm. After letting my chocolate shame sit in the fridge for three days, I decided it was time to get rid of it and pretend it never happened (this, coincidently is also how I treat crappy exboyfriends).  While removing the plastic wrap keeping this sugary crapheap “fresh”, the fucking brownies cut me…..and made me bleed. THAT’S RIGHT…..I created a baked not-so-good that formed such an angry crust that it broke skin and drew blood from the hand that brought it life.

And that wasn’t even the lamest thing I’d done that week.

I am a false prophet and deferential calculus is a superstition.

Well folks: the time has come.  Anytime I have regular social contact with a person or other reliable outlet for my admittedly long-winded rants it’s inevitable that I will eventually launch into a tirade about my faith, and a little over a week ago a young lady in one of my classes gave me the pretext I needed to rant about it here.  In fact when the young lady in question leveled a cold stare at me and pronounced the words “Atheism is not a religion, you don’t HAVE a faith.” From above her “Copper Basin Bible Camp Counselor 2008” t-shirt, I may have smiled a bit knowing that I finally had a reasonable excuse to blog about my chosen spiritual stance.  Now I understand that some of the folks who read this blog went to school with me, and since where we come from that’s a 13 year relationship they may remember me being kind of a tool about my skepticism from 6^th grade till graduation.  I’m really sorry about that guys; I was an angry kid.  If you want consolation reflect on the fact that most of you were enjoying above average success in Academics, Athletics, or social endeavors while I was moping around my basement listening to the Counting Crows.  That said: I absolutely and incontrovertibly have a religion, and as a result I have faith in a somewhat indirect way.

There’s this terrible misconception that because Atheists don’t believe that the bible (Or the torah, or the Vedas, or the Necronomicon) contains an accurate depiction of historical facts, don’t believe in the existence of a soul, don’t believe in an afterlife, and don’t believe in a personal god that we most view the universe as a cold machine grinding toward a meaningless solution.   Folks infer that an existence without miracles or salvation is also without hope or purpose.  While I can only speak for myself here; dwelling on that stuff just doesn’t give my people a fair shake.  It’s like judging Christianity based solely on biblical descriptions of Hell, without paying any mind to the sublime message of tolerance and mercy that is the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s like judging the Evil Dead series without watching Army of Darkness.  In short, it presents a view of my faith so incomplete as to be wholly misleading and just a little insulting.

We’ve got priests and prophets folks, we’ve got unfathomable mysteries and fantastic claims, and we’ve got truth, beauty, and love.   Our priests work in the science department of your local high school s and university and they practice our faith even when they refuse to be counted among our number.  Every time a teacher tells their pupils to look at their hands and all around them and realize that absolutely everything around them down to the tiniest quark was arranged by the birth of our sun or the death of a star tens of billions of years ago they are giving a sermon.  To my ilk and I they are revealing a sacred and humbling truth: We are children of stars, molecular constructs that began a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.  In fact according to most astrophysicists the iron in your blood and all the other heavy elements in existence can only be formed in the exterior of a red giant; a dying star a dozen times the size of our sun.  Now a person can certainly believe this and believe in Jesus Christ at the same time, and in fact to many people these theories are tantamount to evidence of a designer, but to me they are my genesis, my cosmic heritage and yours as well.  That huge night outside our sky; vast beyond comprehension or imagination but filled to the brim with light and awesome force is enough for me.

We’ve had and continue to have prophets as well.  Democritus the Greek philosopher and father of modern science proposed basic atomic theory, the origin of civilization, the existence of other planets, and the spherical shape of our planet 400 years before Christ.  It would take over 2000 years for many of his theories to be validated.  Aristotle is another important prophet for my crowd, his system of logic is still the primary method for determining if something is true, false, likely or unlikely.  The list of our visionaries goes on: Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Franklin, Locke, Laplace, Jefferson, and Sagan.  Were they all Atheists?  Certainly not (Though most of the folks on that list were) but the contributions they made were made by applying REASON to observable reality, by refusing to accept claims without evidence or dismiss phenomenon without investigation, and that is why we claim them.

Mysteries? You bet we’ve got ‘em.  From the grand to the miniscule, from the mundane to the fantastic one of the most exciting things about the faith I’ve come to is the sheer scope of our ignorance.  When I go outside back home in the winter I can look up and see something that defies the laws of thermodynamics-snow.  We’ve split the atom, traced the heavens, and mapped the very blueprints of life itself, but we have no idea how ice crystals can form in clouds.  The enormous body of knowledge that composes physics, astrophysics, quantum physics, and atomic physics is built around the idea that the laws of physics apply everywhere all the time, but they don’t seem to hold sway in black holes.  There is so much left to learn, so much more we can understand and still I’m told I believe in a cold predicable universe.  Hogwash, baloney, and bullshit folks, the universe I believe in is just as brilliant with mystery as anything to be found in the Koran.

Finally truth, beauty, and love.  I’ve saved the mushy stuff for the end because I doubt many of you kept reading after I mentioned listening to the Counting Crows in my basement and frankly this is for fellow skeptics more than the bouncy teenager I referred to at the beginning of this rant.  I don’t believe babies have souls.  I do believe babies are innocent, wonderful, and as near perfection as a thing can be.  When I look at a baby I’m dumbstruck by what I see- unrealized potential, a multitude of experience yet to be had, humanity at it’s most transcendent.  I see a human being absent malice, arrogance, and deceit.  A baby has only trust and wonder, joy and fatigue, and something that amazing doesn’t need a soul, it provides the greatest possible inspiration towards compassion and the hope for our species and that is enough.  Why be good if you have no soul to preserve and defend?  Why care for others and yourself if you don’t believe in an afterlife?  It is because I don’t believe in a soul and don’t expect and afterlife that I feel compelled to do right by others and my planet today.  This is the only chance I’ll ever have to be good to you.  The fraction of an instant that is my time on earth is all I get.  I don’t want to wreck things for the people I share this world with or the unknown generations that will inherit it.  Deep down I know you feel the same way, and that’s why I don’t need a god: I have you.  When things are hard, when I’m beat up, broken, and alone I’ll call you.  I’ll knock on your door and accept the comfort you always provide with humble gratitude and I’ll never forget the load you’ve borne for love and friendship.  When I see you frightened I’ll step between you and any harm that threatens you, when you’re angry I’ll hear your grievance, and when you decide to start wearing cowboy boots I’ll march in a gay pride parade on your behalf.  Do you want to know why?  Because even though you’re mostly just a collection of elaborately arranged carbon atoms: you’re beautiful, as am I, as are we all.

Peace,

-RPF

“My country is the world and my religion is to do good.”-Thomas Paine