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rarebits
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Location: Iowa City, Iowa, United States
Birthday: 2/1/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: chess & cheese
Dostoevsky & double images
Expertise: See above, below.
Occupation: Other
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/2/2005
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| Well, I've done it. I've defected to Blogspot. No excuses.
See you there, dear reader.
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| In the Public Library
The missionaries have returned. They are young men, bespectacled
and pimply. The tall, ugly one orders the baby-faced one
around. He looks like my Russian friend, but I can hear him speak
in flat American English. I'm sure there are Latter-day Saints in
Russia. I wonder if these young men, let loose to smear their
religion across the landscape, are from Iowa, or Utah, or any other
corner of the painted country. I can see the screen of another
- Gmail. Remember how I asked OnaFish why they could be on the
Internet, and she said they were probably allowed to keep in contact
with their families? I imagine that's what they're doing.
Or perhaps receiving orders from deep beneath the Great Salt
Lake. What would be the difference? The tall one is shifty,
suspicious. He keeps looking
at me as if I might leap around the corner and catch him ogling
something as evil as news, or entertainment.
Order a new batch of fresh white shirts with your Mormon Mastercard.
Bleach your special underwear, and erase yourself from your garments.
God knows you by the whiteness of your shirt.
I am reading Kahlil Gibran:
He who wears his mortality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
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| It might not be the best time for me to post on my own blog, because
I'm in a nasty mood. There are several factors that have led to
this state of emotional affairs, few of which I care to tell anyone
about. Maybe that's the problem. Anyway, I consistently
feel obliged to post on this blog, because I haven't done so for a long
time, and new people keep telling me that they read it. I find
that hard to believe, but thanks for the extra traffic Bmax.
I think part of my current well of depression can be attributed to a
foreboding sense of doom. Doom of the general type, as in all of
humanity, not just myself or my family or my loved ones. The
hurricane/flooding gets me down, and makes me think about the South
Asian Tsunami, and war, and the Sudan, and all that shit. I guess
it's unlikely that there are more crises going on in the world than 10
years ago, or 20 years ago, but it all seems really bad right
now. I guess I could just blame it on Bush. Or how about
Grover Norquist, the arch-conservative, who is the speaker of this
lovely quote:
"My goal is to cut government in half
in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the
bathtub." (via DailyKos)
Interesting. Instead of drowning the government in a bathtub, the
conservatives have managed to spread federal resources so thin that the city of
New Orleans is drowning in a pool of its own waste.
Nice.
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| Here's a nice Quote of the Day:
"Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the
effect of social and moral influences upon the human mind, the most
vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character
to inherent natural differences."
- J.S. Mill
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| In an attempt to clog the blogosphere with references to television
shows that have long been put to syndicated pasture, I feel like
writing about Quantum Leap. My friend Bmax posted about the show
yesterday (bmkessler.blogspot.com), and it was a huge coincidence,
because probably right about when he was posting I was watching an
episode with my sister. Now, I'm not a huge fan or anything, but
my mother and grandmother used to love that show. My mom had
taped them all off the TV and I think she had almost every
episode. Those two watched those tapes until they were just about
worn through. So, it was nice to think about that show, because
it made me think about my grandmother, June Pollack, who died on
Halloween in the year 2000.
The other thing that really got me thinking was the philosophical
implication of Quantum Leap. On the surface, it seems like the
position of the show is that every single person alive has the ability
to mold their own path, future, and identity. That is to say, we
are in control of our lives, free will exists, and we are not guided
down the road of life by anyone except ourselves and the people with
whom we choose to associate. But when you think about it, it
turns out that people are pretty hapless until Scott Bakula possesses
their body and steers them in the right direction with the help of Dean
Stockwell in quasi-futuristic clothing and a computer named
Ziggy. And now, as Bmax has revealed on his blog, the final
episode of Quantum Leap indicates that Scott Bakula is actually an
agent of God! Well that throws the whole free will thing out the
friggin' window! I'm in shock!
More on free will later.
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