The Donald has endorsed Romney. If you combined their wealth they could buy Newt’s moon base. Concession present?
Gingrich is still crazy. On the very first day of his imaginary presidency he is going to have a work period. I picture him in his living room shouting at his wife while wearing a toga for some reason. Don’t ask, Don’t tell. As long as he doesn’t ask who won. She won’t tell him.
I am a gamer. big time. I play at least an hour or two a day and sometimes a significant amount more. I enjoy a variety of games from RPGs (Role Playing Games) to Platformers to Fighting games and FPS (First Person Shooters). It’s the latter I want to talk about.
Modern Warfare 3 is the newest iteration of the Call of Duty franchise. It shattered all previous sales record sale 6.4 million copies in it’s first 24 hours in the US and UK alone. Needless to say a large sample of the population own a copy and meet daily online to slaughter one another with weapons varying from throwing knives to AC-130s.
For years government and civil agencies have argued over the effects of violence and sex in video games. They have introduced rating systems and labored to institute bans of the most offensive materials. Call of Duty, no stranger to this kind of controversy (an optional level in Modern Warfare 2 had your character slaughtering innocents in an airport to infiltrate a terrorist organization), again feebly pushes the bar with more irrelevant terrorists and global plot convolutions.
It’s not the story of the single player campaign that shocks me, it’s the behavior of some of the players on the players in the online
Timothy: I met a girl.
Doc: Did you?
Timothy: Yes. She’s really sweet.
Doc: I’m proud of you, Tim. I know it’s not easy for you to initiate conversation with women.
Timothy: Oh, it was easy this time. I was drunk. I went to a bar after I quit my job.
Doc: So, you’re drinking again, as well. Timothy you seem to be throwing away the progress you’ve made.
Timothy: I don’t think so. It was just a few drinks and I met a girl.
Doc: Right. What is her name?
Timothy: I don’t know. Or I can’t remember. I’m going back to the bar today to see if she’s there.
Doc: And if she’s not?
Timothy: I’ll have a few drinks.
Doc: You’re enjoying this aren’t you? This acting out. You’re behaving like a teenager again. One, you aren’t supposed to drink on your medications. Two, you’re a recovering addict. Three, without gainful employment you should be saving your money not throwing it away at the bar. Doesn’t all this sound familiar to you?
Timothy: You make it sound so bad, Doc. It’s happy hour 5 to 8. It’s not all that expensive.
Doc: Jesus, Tim, is he back? Be honest with me. Is the king here now?
Timothy: No.
Doc: Don’t lie. I can see it in your eyes.
Timothy:
Doc: Damn it. You have to stop him now while you’re still in control. Your insurance is up at the end of the month. I’ll write you a bigger prescription to cover you. When’s our next appointment?
Timothy: Next month.
Doc: Can you afford it?
Timothy: No.
Doc: Please, promise me you will find a job. I can call your old boss, maybe convince him to take you back, but you have to work with me, Tim.
Timothy: Doc, listen to me. I’m OK. I’m happy for once. I met a girl, for crying-out-loud! Can’t you be happy for me?
Doc: I was happy for you. Now, I’m just concerned.
Timothy: You were happy when I was miserable, then?
Doc: And now you’re happy that I’m miserable?
Timothy: I’m happy not to go to work.
Doc: And what of the Rat King? Tim, he’s imaginary. Whatever he does, you do.
Timothy: I’m in control.
Doc: I hope so, Tim. I hope so.
Doc: Unacceptable.
Timothy: What do you mean, unacceptable?
Doc: You just walked out on your responsibility.
Timothy: Responsibility to who…
Doc: to whom.
Timothy: Responsibility to whom? They don’t give two shits about me.
Doc: Structure, Timothy. You’ve been in this office too many times for too many years to risk your stability. What if he comes back? Years of work undone. Do you want to go back to that?
Timothy: What about me, Doc? I was miserable there.
Doc: Everyone is miserable in their job, Timothy. It’s just the way it is.
Timothy: Then why do it? Why make yourself miserable? Do I make you miserable, Doc?
Doc: No, Tim, the whole thing makes us all miserable. Working. Now you have got a very real problem. We’re in a recession.
Timothy: I was in a depression.
Doc: I’m afraid you’ve traded in a short term depression for a temporary happiness. You have to think about the future.
Timothy: So what would you have me do.
Doc: Ask for your job back. Tell them the truth and then plead.
Timothy: You want me to tell them that I hated my job so much that I would rather die than work another minute, that I hated my boss and my coworkers, then ask to go back to it?
Doc: Not in so many words.
Heaven and Hell, Part Two.
Local legends are often colorful, shocking, and sometimes completely ludicrous. Recently, during my honeymoon stay on Florida’s forgotten coast I have stumbled upon an interesting collection of State Parks and Nature Preserves steeped in folklore and legend. Heaven and hell, not only exist, they do so within miles of one another.
Presenting Elvy E. Callaway’s Garden of Eden:
43 miles outside of Florida’s state capitol lies the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve. This preserve is home to some of the world’s rarest plant species. Trees such as the Torreya taxifolia exist nowhere else on the planet. This “stinking cedar,” nicknamed for the strange odor emitted when it is cut, has long been called the gopher wood. Could this be the same gopher wood that is mentioned in Genesis?
According to secular lawyer turned 1936 Gubernatorial candidate turned Baptist Preacher, E. E. Callaway, it is. Callaway maintained that not only is this area the Garden of Eden in which God created man, it is the site of Noah’s famous foray into ship building. Local author, Malcolm R. Campbell, who apparently during his high school years exchanged dueling letters to the editor in the Tallahassee Democrat with Mr. Callaway about the legitimacy of the Eden claim, is not so sure. However, he admits to having difficulty arguing with a man who had spent 75 years researching the location of the Garden and who’s logic was surprisingly sound. In Callaway’s 1971 book, In the Beginning he presents his case. The book which is out of print and increasingly difficult to find maintains (thanks to Mr. Campbell’s blog):
The theory, though controversial, caught on in and around the small town of Bristol, FL. Locals begin promoting the preserve as the surefire Garden of Eden. They erected signs directing visitors to holy sites and an information kiosk. The signs no longer exist, but photographs in the Florida Memory Photographic Collection document the strange attraction well.
In a charming bit of travel writing I found by author Rory MacLean, on the website travelintelligence.com, he relates the story of a Bristol resident taking him on a tour of the holy garden. The author admits to an emotional feeling upon visiting the site and admits that the area is special whether or not it is the actual garden. That what is important is “that locals believed in its existence. Or wanted to believe in it.” MacLean’s guide even offers the hearsay, “if you check the tides and currents of the oceans that was probable at that time, you’ll find that they’d carry a vessel without a rudder straight from Bristol to Mount Ararat”
In an article for the Orlando Sentinel, Kate Santich reveals that, “This habitat was created at least 14,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, when flora and fauna from northern climes moved south. As temperatures warmed up again, though, those species mostly disappeared except in these ravines, where it stays moist and cool. As a result, the Garden of Eden looks and feels like no other part of Florida.”
Though no one has any hope of proving the Garden of Eden is in Florida, Mesopotamia, or non-existent, everyone seems to agree that this patch of paradise is exceptional. It’s uniqueness may not be proof positive that Adam’s nostrils were breathed to life on the banks of the Apalachicola River or that the rare gopher wood was carved into the great Ark of Noah, but it most certainly inspires it’s visitors.
I am a terrible arguer. The points I try to make which seem relevant and logical in my brain come out hurtful and idiotic when put to word. Something happens between synapse and speaking. An invisible foot about the size of my own foot rises to just under my nose. I am sure I could smell it if I just took a whiff. The moment I try to speak, this ghostly stinker inserts itself straight into my flapping jaws. Strangely, I can continue to orate for more than a minute or so before I notice the salty, sick taste. I spit the foot out of my mouth and begin the cowardly process of argumentative retreat. This dot connects to that dot. That dot makes this line true.
“What I really mean is this…” “No, you’ve got me all wrong.”
The foot, at first content to wiggle it’s jammy toes on my tongue, now kicks and probes with each step in my retreat.
“Oh, no you see…” “You’re not listening to me.”
My face would be bloody and bruised if this foot ever became more than an apparition, but this haunting appendage is real enough to me. It’s ghostly beatings leave me cowering on the edge of the bed. Assuming the position, fetal, apologizing to the love in my life.
“I’m so sorry, I’m drunk.” “I’m so stupid.”
Then and only then the foot stops its ravaging attacks. In the silence after the sickly spill of sweat-stink words, it vanishes into the ether from which it came. And as I lie knees to chest, I contemplate damages done. What toll does arrogance and pretentious assumption take on the most important bond in my life? Why can’t I shut the hell up? Why can’t I shut the hell up? Shut the hell up.
I received an email from my father this morning. It contained a link to a simple youtube video that ran text forwards to one meaning, then ran the same text backwards to an all together opposite meaning. It brings to mind the beautiful passage of war in reverse in the late-great Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five.
Generally I am not a fan of receiving touching emails relentlessly forwarded again and again in aim of making me all teary-eyed over my morning coffee. For some reason however, this little, rather poorly made video got me thinking. What started as a simple “Thank you, I enjoyed the video,” turned into a 4 paragraph rambling/ranting essay. Now in totally narcissistic fashion, I’m posting my response.
I used facts (not checked, but I think generally accepted) from here.
“That was awesome. We are definitely living proof that money is not an important factor in happiness. And divorce, so rampant in today’s society, is a non-issue if you are confident in your choices and who you and your spouse are as a couple. Separate as well as unified identities must coexist and work to strengthen the bond sworn under God to be upheld, an oath as sacred as civilization itself. That love, that bond is a perfect metaphor for man’s marriage to the earth. As mankind tries to divorce himself from the earth, civilization begins to fall apart and threatens to descend into chaos and war over the very needs our spouse, the earth, has met since the dawn of time. We desperately need marriage counseling in this relationship, the most important of our time. As I have sworn my love to Lacey before God and family, I have also sworn an allegiance to this earth. Though my love for both, Lacey and the earth, is not perfect I am trying and will try to my dying day. In danger of sounding preachy, Vegetarianism/Vegan-ism is an environmentalist cause, not just a cry for man to be better stewards of the dominion over the animals given to us by God.
There are many other environmental factors at stake in the grossly inefficient meat and poultry industries. I make no demands of anyone to stop eating meat. I just ask that we choose carefully and eat locally. Your own local economy depends on it. The ideals and values that make rural and small town America so beautiful and necessary are on death row. Big companies first make it impossible for the independent farmer to compete with the ludicrously low prices possible by the disgusting practices of factory farming. (I dare anyone to google their practices and not be mortified.) The farmers must often sell their land to the very companies that have driven them off of it, feeding the beast so to speak. Possibly the most disturbing trend is the closure of all but a few independent slaughterhouses in United States. The independent livestock farmer must now send his animals farther distances at much greater cost to increasingly inhumane houses owned by the same companies that do not want the farmer to succeed. It’s a monopoly that the American people demand every day by the choices they make at the supermarket.
Stop feeding the beast, save the earth. We must save ourselves from the environmental destruction wrought by factory farms owned by multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies. Give the power back to your local farmer and help preserve the values and ideals on which our great country was founded. And good Lord, all I harped on was animal farming practices. Don’t get me started on soybeans. Monsanto has created an invasive strain of super soybean of which they own the patent. So, when a bee cross pollinates their super bean with a regular bean on an independent farm, Monsanto then sues that farmer often taking him or her for more than their worth, forcing them to sell the farm often to, you guessed it, Monsanto. It’s agricultural terrorism. It must stop!
This video that you’ve shared with me obviously had a great impact. It sent me off on a tangent of environmentally based vegetarianism and the absolute need to buy locally to support farms in the area one lives. That was not the author’s intention. It is to boast that a generation such as ours, so often told of our apathy and lack of vision, is one with the most noble and vital cause of preserving our marriages to one another and our earth. A message of hope so badly needed in an era of near oligarchical governance in what should be our people’s republic. We the people must fight for our earth and change the tide. Our marriages and desires are not represented in Washington. It’s the power of money that determines environmental and social policies. It’s the great task of our generation to see that the power is shifted back to the people to protect our values and our earth.
Enough rambling.
Thanks Dad, for sending this video. It has my brain ticking. <3 Thomas”