The Beginning of the End of the Beginning...

2011 is about to close. I am not where I thought I would be, but I'm not where I used to be... and that is definitely a step in the right direction.

An old boss of mine once told me that the Indians have a saying: At some point in your life you will receive seven years of bad luck, followed by seven years of good luck.

From the beginning of 2005 til now, my life has become something I couldn't possibly have conceived of in my youth... I have had people tell me throughout this past year how amazed they are at my resilience, or how well I look, or how much I've accomplished... and I want to tell them that they really, truly have no idea. They don't know.

They couldn't know, really. Even the ones who are so close to me. And that is why I don't scream it at them from the rooftops. That is why I don't give in to all the terrible things that have torn off and eaten little parts of my heart over all this time.

I have been into the most physical manifestation of Hell imaginable: my own mind. Throughout everything, I have managed to be optimistic... I have managed to overcome obstacles because in my heart I have tremendous faith in myself, my family, my friends, and my love of others. I have been hurt, but my experiences have made me realize what is really important:

I spend time with people who want to spend time with me.
I cherish people who earn that affection.
I exalt those who compliment me and our shared ideals.
I appreciate the zeal of passion, the strength of intelligence, and the charisma of confidence, for I find people who can hold conversations with me for hours on end and who can see the world in a marvelous way as I do despite it all absolutely fascinating and beautiful.
I live for the moments when the people I adore demonstrate the reasons for my feelings; they are testaments to everything I believe in.

Above all else, I admire and applaud people who want to change the world, sincerely. I remember wanting to do things for selfish reasons when I was younger... but the resolve that grew in me over the past seven years has taken on a life of its own:

I WILL change the world.
It is as simple as that.

It may not be with a "REAL" job, as opposed to "Artsy" or "Theoretical" jobs, but it WILL be with every fiber of my being, with the core of my essence, with the last bit of breath in my body I will harness whatever strength is inside me and inside those who will join in my Crusade, and we will change EVERYTHING.

For Good.
For Always.

If Naren was right, my seven years are almost up... and I have less than two months left til I miss the "Death at 27" curse that seems to strike creative people who make an impact while they're young... and if his conviction and faith sustained him through everything in his life, it sure as hell can do the same for mine.

This entire past year has been better than the last, and next year can only be better. I have met so many wonderful people; I have had some marvelous experiences; I have loved life as if it were a precious, unsustainable gift... because that is exactly what it is.

The people who have made all of those moments, especially this past week, so unforgettable and invigorating... I hope you know how awesome this ride has been, and how you have contributed to it.

Thank you all, with all my heart.

Let us make 2012 the greatest year of our lives.

With Strange Aeons, Even Death May Get A Life.

Whenever major events come up in my life, I tend to get distant, particularly from people I love and care for... there are certain days of the year which have special meaning for me, when I am difficult to find, or simply stay in all day, preferably with a book or perhaps just my memories. I have grown accustomed to being alone for long periods of time, either simply in a spiritual sense or in a physical way, too. Nevertheless, this can create problems for me when I become... shall we say, overstimulated:  I love being in large groups, and interacting with people, but coming down off it leaves me feeling agoraphobic and estranged, like Emily Dickinson on speed.

I have little to complain of:  my family is wonderful, I live in relative comfort, and those who count me as their friend truly are the best friends I could hope for. My life isn't where I would like it to be... but let's face it, who's is?

The simple fact is, there are horrendous moments of clarity in my interactions with people, where it suddenly dawns on me that, for all our conversations about quantum theory, the potential presence of god, the necessity of change, everything, that in, perhaps, sixty or seventy years, we will be dead, and none of it will matter.

I am not a hedonist or an atheist, but I see nothing wrong in living a life that advocates experiencing as much as possible WHILE it is possible and questioning blind dogma about ANY religious belief. I see nothing wrong in making decisions, good or bad, as long as they are made. And I see no point in clinging to mistakes, regrets, and lost loves in a vain attempt to change the past rather than learning from them to effect the future.

But...

Sometimes, I wonder, if I were given the opportunity to exist forever (as, most likely, pure energy, as I have postulated before in my play, Connections), whether or not I would take it. I think my situation and nature is uniquely suited for this... but would I truly want to see what we turn into? What becomes of us?

Strange aeons, indeed.

What Will Happen to Casey Anthony?

So, I normally try to stay out of things like this, because I think any time another "Crime of the Century" comes along, it distracts us from the real crimes of the century, which usually involve CEOs or the CIA or some other acronym doing something fairly nefarious and doing it for a very long time, unabashedly. We have a tendency in this country to fixate on anything and everything that will distract us from the tragedies of our own lives, as if the suffering and trauma of others will somehow make ours less painful by comparison or proxy. Sometimes this is good, such as when a person channels their pain and trouble into doing good for others, alleviating the pain of others, thus making their own burdens feel less staggering. Most people, however, go on witch hunts, insist that people are guilty or "wrong" because of the way they look or act, and operate without any facts at their disposal, just hearsay that they suck up like sponges from the media, judicial platforms, and even their friends and families. A prosecutor's job is to make you believe someone is guilty no matter what, just like a defender's job is to make you believe someone is innocent no matter what; never forget this. If you do, here are some broad examples of this sort of "guilty by association" reasoning, where the defender either didn't exist or had little to no power:

The Holocaust.
The Salem Witch Trials.
Eugenics.
The Crusades.
Slavery.
Proposition 8.
The Inquisition.
Rwanda.

There are millions of examples of this, some more direct than others, but the simple fact of the matter is that no matter how cool the technology is that we develop, no matter how fast we learn how to travel, no matter how much we understand about our universe... we are still, at base level, paranoid animals who are reasonably sure that we are good, and others are bad. This is flawed, but not entirely untrue, I'll admit; a better analysis would be that we are both good AND bad, all of us, and that judging people based on our opinions or what is masqueraded as fact should always be viewed in an extremely critical light.

Nevertheless, I cannot say that I know, one way or another, whether Casey Anthony murdered her daughter or not. Which was the point. As a prosecutor, when you go into trial, you had better have definitive evidence, visual, quantifiable proof, showing a race of people who predominantly survive (still) on instinct and sensation that THIS ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY IS WHAT HAPPENED.

Otherwise, as this country learns the hard way, again and again, reasonable doubt MUST be accounted for. Just because you believe something doesn't mean it is true. And yes, I'm talking to you, Nancy Grace. By the way, how are those lacrosse players doing these days?

If you, as a defendant, did something, and they can prove it, just admit it. Don't go to trial; you will lose. You will fall farther than you already have, and pay a terrible price for it. The hardest thing for someone to do who has made a mistake is to accept it, and start moving forward. Casey Anthony now only has to admit to one mistake:  She is a terrible liar. Like, seriously; beyond stupid. Reeeeally bad at it. Those lies brought so much upon her that she deserved anything the judge and jury threw at her for those charges. And I have no doubt she will continue to lie. She is a posterchild for the latest generation of attention whores and pathological liars, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Ellen Page win an Oscar for portraying her in the movie they'll undoubtedly be making soon:  Monster 2 - The Casey Anthony Trial.

That being said, here is what I, personally, think will happen to her:


She will try to have a normal life, but it will be impossible. She is a pariah in her own country now, thanks to the media exposure, and having spent so much time in jail these past three years she will be completely unprepared to deal with it. Not even getting married to change her name will avail her; if she isn't lynched by a vigilante mob, she will spend most of her time hiding from the world, and eventually start doing drugs (and, since it's Florida, let's face it, it'll either be meth or scrips).

Because the media CANNOT SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT HER, she will be given her own reality show... probably right after and before, respectively, MTV's newest shows "Sarah and Bristol Do America" and "My Super Sexy Underaged Bachelorette Party." This will satiate anyone literally frothing at the mouth for more news of Caseygate, as well as appealing to all the die-hard folks who protest her innocence as well. Eventually, she will be seen on this show actually doing drugs... and she will be arrested.

The judge and jury, using ABSOLUTE, VISUAL EVIDENCE of her drug use, will give her the maximum penalty, especially if she doesn't plead guilty, and she will probably go for fifteen to twenty years, higher if they get her on Possession with Intent to Sell. Much like O.J., if you are ever in court but come out somewhat clean, don't do anything that could get you back into it, because if the first time around the prosecution does not get their pound of flesh, they will make it their life's mission to get you again and disembowel you the next time.

As we all know from historical examples, the only way to make sure someone famous goes to jail is to get them for tax evasion or drug use. Since this country seems to be headed towards turning into an anarchocapitalistic beaurocracy, without taxation or true representation, I'm betting on the drugs.

So that's what I think will happen. Come on America, you all know it doesn't matter if she was found innocent or guilty this time; what matters is how long it takes for her to screw up next time!

...right?

Oh Joy. Oh Rapture.

Okay, since today is one of the latest in a series of doomsday deadlines (and, as yet, nothing has happened) I thought it would be fun to write about it.

First of all, before I even get to playing Devil's Advocate and actually discuss the scientific analysis of the Rapture, I will explain the context of the idea of the Rapture itself.

From very early on in the Abrahamic faith called Judaism, there are stories of people taken up into the heavens, for whatever reason. Perhaps the best known examples are not found in many books because they were deemed apocryphal, yet the ravenous need to learn everything possible about the nature of god, the angels, and heaven has made this a small technicality. The Book of Enoch, the first of all the Old Testament texts which is written in the first person, describes an event which is mentioned oh-so briefly in Genesis:

"And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." - Gen 5:24

This is all you get in the mainstream religious stuff, but in the Book of Enoch you get a startling story of what today we would call an alien abduction, where Enoch is whisked up into a vessel in the sky where God and all the angels pilot it around. Each of them is named, and they have specific tasks they perform aboard this ship, and in the end Enoch is returned, but even though it seems like a very short time has passed for him (a year or two at most) down on Earth the flood has occurred and many decades have passed.

I should like to point out that this story, like all the stories in both the Old and New Testaments, is not fresh; an earlier story that is almost identical to that one can be found in the epic of Gilgamesh, written centuries earlier, and on a wall, which is a little harder to cover up and get rid of than simple papyrus.

Anyway, moving forward in time, you get Christ, and whatever else you believe about him, it is pretty obvious that no one can agree on what the hell he was actually talking about. While religion has the dubious distinction of being one of the only reasons people with money actually spend it on anything, it is also the reason why so few people can get along; knowing you're absolutely, positively right about something means that any seed of doubt must be eradicated, by any means necessary, which is why atheists are just as bad about all this as religious people... the only difference is, atheists live in a day and age where it's no longer acceptable to commit genocide just because you don't agree with someone, although I'm sure if they could have Crusades, they would.

Now, I don't really want to explain the Rapture, since I think it is either completely metaphorical or a colossal load of bullshit, so here is a wikipedia entry about it (the perfect forum for discussing this topic, I believe):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture

As you can see from this extensive entry, that's all that most people have to say about it; their opinions range from truly believing they will float up into the sky to high-five Jesus down to simply passing away quietly in their sleep. Whatever the case, the idea is that some massive purge will happen, leaving many behind to suffer. To me, this sounds almost exactly like what happens after a nuclear attack or meltdown, so I choose to look at it in a metaphorical sense. Anything that happens after the actual "event" is purely speculative.

Okay, so now we come to the mathematics used by this former civil engineer to arrive at both his original proclamation (1994) and his latest one (2011). Since we don't have Lewis Black to take a fossil out of his pocket and say "fossil," we'll have to have a little discussion about that, too:

There are these things called fossils. They take a very long time to form. They are usually the bones, carapaces, or debris left over from lifeforms who lived a long, long time ago, because when protected in the ground from the harmful forces that swirl over the surface of our planet at any given time, they won't decompose. Fossils range from being hundreds of thousands to millions of years old, and they tell us an awful lot about whatever God or the aliens or the flying spaghetti monster was doing before we showed up. Now, other cultures have stories which predate what Mr. Camping calls the beginning of the world; some of my favorites come from the areas which are now India and Pakistan, stories of great, big, colorful deities who wage war with each other and use humans as pawns.

...Krishna, by the way, was a carpenter, born on December 25th.

Now, as we look at the history of our time on this planet, there is one particular thing we must take into account:  It is REALLY scary. Like, poop your pants scary. SO SCARY that for a very long time we didn't even know what the hell that big glowy thing was in the sky, and when it went away for a while each day we went apeshit, killing newborns and all sorts of other stuff. So, when there is so little to be certain of, you really need comfort, something that lets you know there's a reason you exist. Religion is great at this, because it's the same as just saying no: so simple, it's foolproof. Nancy Reagan had it right:

"But what if I start to think that maybe Gabriel really did show up six hundred years after Christ and try to help out the descendants of a handmaiden?"
"JUST SAY NO."

"But what if it seems strange that Jesus shares almost exactly the same story as Horus, an Egyptian god who was hanging around 4,000 years earlier?"
"JUST SAY NO."

"But what if it turns out that this was all just some huge fluke, or worse, an experiment by extraterrestrial beings who now feel kind of ashamed of all the tinkering they did with our genetic make-up and have since left us relatively in peace to quietly destroy ourselves, thus freeing them from any responsibility to the consequences of the project?"
"WHAT PART OF JUST SAY NO DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?! BURN THAT HERETIC!!!"

Now, clearly you can see I'm somewhat biased here. I do try to be open-minded, but blind devotion to ANYTHING is a bad idea, be it politics, religion, or a country club. If we were meant to be a herd, we would be; we would all believe the same thing, and original thought would hold no quarter in the development of our species. But it does, so I must, in good faith, dispute the irrevocable and irrefutable nature of religion as hypothesized by so many over such a long time. Besides, I don't think I would enjoy sitting in heaven if I had to listen to Kirk Cameron babble on all day about tricking your own intelligence, or whatever.

So... back to the Rapture. While many people subscribe to this idiotic notion, the REALLY crazy ones pick specific days. Setting yourself up for failure is not something pretty to watch; I take no delight in seeing peoples' hopes and dreams dashed. I feel terribly sorry for the people who waste away all their life savings, drown their children, or feel compelled to suck others into their mania simply to feel right about things. OF COURSE the world is in bad shape:  it was in bad shape when Revelations was written, too. All doomsday prophecies are reflective of the times they were written in; they're cryptic not because there's a hidden message in them for a specific date or time period, but usually because they were poking fun at the current establishment in a way that would ultimately lead to being nailed to two sticks of wood, or worse. The fact is that EVERY SINGLE GENERATION has had a moment where they assumed the end of the world was nigh... and the smaller your world, the more likely it is. We aren't seeing a tremendous ramping up of doomsday believers, we're seeing an increasingly more connected world, where you can listen to the ramblings of a man two continents away, or see pictures of earthquake devastation thousands of miles away, or see the earth from space any time you want on the NASA channel and watch massive hurricanes twirl across its surface. The possibilities are endless, and so, while I cannot subscribe to the myth that God and/or Jesus and/or Muhammad will come back to take away all the "good" people, I must endorse the very real possibility that all life on this planet could, indeed, be obliterated. It may be by our own hand, but it is much more likely it will be by something far beyond our control, like an asteroid or the Yellowstone supervolcano. It is this uncertainty, this terrible inability to fight back against forces greater than ourselves, that makes us so pathetically desperate for some rhyme and reason in the universe.

Alright... now I'm going to blow your minds.

First of all, here is my favorite part of this recent hoop-la: instead of rational people coming out saying "The world is not going to end at 6p.m. on Saturday, May 21, 2011," OTHER religious folks who would not otherwise seem fanatical under normal circumstances simply repeat the same clunky piece of verse over and over again:

"But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." Matthew 24:36

Great! So, instead of just saying this isn't very likely, they're giving us ANOTHER GODDAMNED ABSOLUTE:  You can't know, so just be vigilant. This is the principle the war on terror relied on:  it is never, ever, ever threat level green. Big brother is always watching you. Don't ever step out of line, for in the next instant you shall be smited.

...Smitten? Smitted? Smat?

...Screw it, moving on; now, I am going to analyze this statement for what it should mean, using quantum theory. I told you:  mind blown.

If God alone knows when the end will be, it is because he is the end (and, supposedly, the beginning). However, the law of conservation of energy states that for everything destroyed, something new takes its place. Therefore, if God is both the beginning and the end, he is happening simultaneously, at every microsecond of every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year of every century. If we let God equal the Big Bang, then God occurred a long, long time ago; however, it is increasingly more apparent due to quantifiable data that the universe is expanding, and will eventually stop expanding and reverse itself; ergo, God contradicts himself. Eventually, the universe will collapse down to a point similar to its original state... but the law still stands, so that energy goes somewhere:  into a NEW Big Bang. God is created again; the universe is created again; most cultures have some form of belief that explains the world we live in now is not the first version, but a later one. This can be extrapolated as a metaphor for the universe at large.

(By the way, anyone balking at this should really take a good long look at their own beliefs, and see if they are any less ridiculous. After all, this is only a theory, not gospel.)

SO, since the universe must begin and end, then it could happen at any time; since it ever happened, it always happened. Look closely at that statement: "No one knows..." There is, apparently, no way to be sure when it will all end. Therefore, we have to accept this as meaning that we could go at any time, any where.

Therefore, the universe just ended. And again. And again. And again.

It is infinitely possible that at every second, the universe is ending, so by concentrating on it, we do not simply verify it but validate it:  the world MUST end, or else we are wrong. If the world does not end, it means that chaos holds sway, and so there are many people who cannot comprehend a world like that.

Instead of seeing it as a day to come, we should see it as an instantaneous crisis: a never-ending perpetual destruction that looms over us and has loomed over us long before we even evolved.

The message is this:  Instead of worrying about when the last day will be, treat every day as your last. Do the best you can, whatever you can, for yourself and the ones dear to you, and cherish every second like it is your final one. Don't worry who will go where, but where we will all go, together, from moment to moment, and concentrate on the here and now, rather than the future or the past.

Now that is a Rapture I can get behind. I hope others can see it that way, too.

Intermedio...

I think it may be a good sign that I'm not writing as much in my blog these days... it means I'm too busy with everything else going on in my life to really dedicate the time necessary to keep it poppin' fresh.

However, there will be more posts soon, I'm sure. Stay tuned!

Resistance... Is... Inevitable...

When this country really started ramping up and our transcontinental railway system blossomed, new avenues of commerce appeared, and one in particular was the transportation of live fish. Now restaurants could get huge watertight railway cars to bring fish wherever they needed it, without needing to cure it, dry it, or freeze it: fresh fish would be most desirable, AND most profitable.

So they started trying to do so: they filled these tanks with water and stuffed them full of trout, salmon, catfish, whatever they thought they could transport within such a limited space. Around the country, trains hauled massive catches from coast to coast, ready to bestow their bounty on new shores, or even in the interior, where transportation had always been a burden.

...And nearly all the fish died. Massive railway cars were opened upon arrival and nearly incapacitated the workers with the smell. Fish died in droves, scores, leaving thousands if not millions of dollars wasted in time, effort, and storage. The people in charge of transportation and the people invested in the fishing industry were tearing their hair out: this seemingly brilliant plan was costing them a fortune. Captivity was not something that had truly been tried yet: zoos would not even exist for many years to come.

Like all great capitalists, they threw money at the problem: they made the tanks bigger; they made the number of fish crammed into the space smaller; they put all sorts of things in the water; they tried everything they could possibly imagine, but it was no use... the fish died, for no apparent reason.

Finally, as all great capitalists do when the environment eventually forces them to examine what they are doing, they consulted someone who probably should have been onboard since the beginning: a marine biologist. Admittedly, such a person was a bit of an oddity, especially in a country just getting its legs into the 20th Century. This man was brought in and told the whole sorry story; he was shown the watertight tanks and given exhaustive data about the mating habits of fish and their needs (much of which he, himself, had written). He listened and read intently, never saying a word, just nodding periodically in a way that infuriated both the laborers and the people who paid them to labor. Finally, after his thorough debriefing and several days thought, he called a meeting with the men who had reached out to him. They sat in a small room, expecting him to tell them it was a disease, a plot to poison Americans, something, ANYTHING that would explain why they simply couldn't get massive numbers of fish with plenty of space and breeding opportunities to survive.

He said, very calmly: "Put a shark in the tank."

...The men in charge were very quiet for a while. Eventually one of them, beet-red, called him a nasty name and wanted to throw him out, but the others, desperate, calmed him down some. They then demanded why someone with his level of expertise would suggest something as incredibly stupid as putting a large predator into a vast food source that was their entire supply.

The man replied: "They have no resistance. Without resistance, animals have no reason to advance, to fight, even to live. Without someone to attack us, we would never grow strong enough to defend. It is the same with all organisms."

Stunned, the men assaulted him with questions, and he returned with answers:

"Won't the shark eat all the fish!?" "No. A shark eats when it needs to eat, and then no more. It also will eat less if its supply is abundant."

"Won't it stress the fish, make them taste badly?" "On the contrary, they expect it; their instincts will be engaged, and therefore they will thrive rather than give up."

"Won't the shark grow too large for the tank?" "A goldfish grows only as large as the space into which it is put; a shark will do the same. It is pure survival."

"What about fish that don't live in the same kind of water as sharks?" "Anything above them on the food chain will do. It is, quite simply, the resistance that is the key."

Now, these men were concerned, but could see no recourse; they had no better counsel to consider. So, experimentally, they filled one tank with water, put in the salmon... and then added a shark. The workers thought they were crazy; admittedly, the men felt a little the same way. The train took off from the East Coast and finally came to rest in the West. When the tank was opened, people crossed their fingers and peered within.

...The fish lived.

Just as the man had predicted, the animals had survived the long journey, and their bodies were even more succulent than anticipated: the drive to escape the shark, the constant pressure of survival, day after day, had invigorated them. Insofar as a fish can have a sense of purpose, theirs had been restored: they had a reason to live.

Now, obviously, people are more advanced than fish. Usually. But the key here is that animal behavior is important to us because it shows our deepest motivations, the reasons we do things, controlled by that part of the brain that is working even when the top of it has gone to sleep. For decades, people have lamented how rarely animals breed in captivity; unfortunately, given how dangerous it is in the world for many of them, their choices are few. But the lesson here is that resistance is the key.

Resistance is the reason you get up in the morning.
Resistance is the reason you try to achieve your goals.
Resistance is the reason you play sports, exercise, educate yourself, have children, fight for something, take a stand against anything.

It is the thing that makes you want to live.

Resistance is the most fundamental aspect of survival, because just about everything in the universe is continually trying to kill us, from black holes to bacteria to that guy eyeing your promotion to that crocodile living in the pond near your house. Resistance comes in many forms, and there are always perils involved. Some fish will die, but without something to fight against you never prevail: without resistance, no one will ever make the world better.

The next time you feel defeated, cheated, abused, misused, ignored, frustrated, hurt, shaken, trampled upon, or just plain fed up...

Remember that Michelangelo took four years to finish the Sistine Chapel, the way he wanted it, no matter what.

Remember that Stephen Hawking, in addition to his other fantastic achievements, has lived longer than anyone ever imagined possible, thwarting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis even now.

Remember that George Washington, commanding farmers, backwoodsmen, young boys and old men, was able to bring forth a new country despite impossible odds and an enemy which at that time was the strongest on Earth, becoming leader of the first nation in modern history to win its freedom from its mother country through direct conflict.

...And remember that, without the shark, the fish would not fight so hard to stay alive.

“Millions of Christians Speak Out After Discovering They’ve Missed the Rapture”

So... I enjoy writing fake articles, apparently. I like to jab at people with satire, because it is fun. And sometimes it is offensive. Which is even more fun. So... please sit back and watch as I attempt to alienate just about everybody on the planet. Enjoy.





“Millions of Christians Speak Out After Discovering They’ve Missed the Rapture”



From California to Maine, Spain to the Ukraine, China to New Zealand, millions of people who identify themselves as Christian were outraged to discover that the Rapture, which many of them had been waiting for since early 2000, had actually occurred on February 2nd, 1984.



The data that led to this conclusion came from a variety of sources, including the Rabbinic Society for Scriptural Analysis, the CIA, and Elle Magazine. In addition, a wealth of police reports and hastily-revised census data from that year that had somehow found its way into the Vatican Archives was recently released by WikiLeaks, prompting an analysis of the information that produced a shocking correlation with the findings of the various aforementioned scholarly institutions.



“It’s quite frightening,” said one rabbi on conditions of anonymity. “Since we know the Messiah has not yet come, and now we have this, it’s time to ask, ‘who’s running the show up there anyway?’”



The Pope issued a furious proclamation condemning WikiLeaks for their actions, and promptly had his Facebook wall hacked and covered in homosexual pornography. President Obama made a brief statement revealing that the United States government had been aware of the situation since the middle of 1984, but that the Reagan administration and every subsequent administration after it had chosen to keep things quiet for fear of “generating a panic.”



“Let me be clear,” Obama said sternly, pointing directly at the camera from behind his podium, “This changes nothing. Even though the Rapture has already happened, this country is still facing real problems, as is the rest of the world. We can’t simply abandon all hope just because it appears that all hope in us has been abandoned.”



Extremist Christian factions are in an uproar, demanding of their leaders just what collecting five thousand guns, storing seven years worth of canned goods, marrying multiple partners and living together in a compound for the past fifteen years has all been for, exactly. The Westboro Baptist Church made a public appearance outside the Capitol Building yesterday carrying signs that said nothing but “WE TOLD YOU SO.” Every member of the family present was brutally stoned to death by a crowd, which many of the police keeping an eye on the proceedings pretended not to see. “What?” grumbled one officer on duty, “Should I be afraid of going to Hell for that?!”



In all the mayhem, stock prices have seen the most perilous crash in nearly eighty years, since all human enterprises are apparently being conducted in the aftermath of the apocalypse. Televangelist and former alki Glenn Beck crowned himself supreme leader of the New World Order of Repentant Hellspawns on his television show, which is enjoying its highest level of ratings, ever.



A recent poll trying to gauge people’s reactions to this crisis revealed that 6% of Americans said “I’m an Atheist, god damn it, leave me alone,” while 10% said “Really? I’m actually not that surprised.” However, a whopping 30% said “I jes’ knew that durn Negro president would bring us nuffin’ but trouble!” and a majority of 54% said “Don’t care, long as it doesn’t interfere with NASCAR.” A wave of attempted suicides has hospitals incredibly busy, while book sales for the Left Behind Series have gone through the roof as people frantically search for some guidebook on how to deal with their new reality.



Al-Jazeera correspondents have made continual statements since the news broke that this is all a Western conspiracy, while Russia revealed that their own discovery of the Rapture was actually instrumental in the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and was not due to the actions of David Hasselhoff as is popularly believed.



The Mormons politely announced that the date of the Rapture had been given long ago by the angel Moroni, but that the exact date was in the sealed pages of the golden plates from which their holy book was translated and which disappeared one hundred and eighty years ago. High Chief Poobah of Scientology John Travolta announced that the Rapture was actually the second coming of Emperor Xenu, and that now the real fight would begin, and not like “that pansy s__t you saw in Battleship Earth.” Mel Gibson blamed the Jews for spreading lies, and many Hindus and Buddhists simply shrugged and went back to humming, or whatever.



Although skeptical at first, many people were stunned into belief by seeing a blurry 8-mm film on the news which clearly shows Joe T. Buckwalter, a plumber in Akron, Ohio, who was 38 at the time of the Rapture, simply vanishing into thin air. By all accounts, Joe was the most honest and hardworking plumber ever to live in Akron, and apparently this proves it.



“He never overcharged,” said soccermom Kelly Zeemas, 55, who used to hire Joe for any and all plumbing needs before his (now explained) unexplained disappearance. “He was punctual, he never made a mess, he never, ever swore, which was just weird for a plumber, you know? And he refused to sleep with me, even when I walked into the kitchen naked that one time. He was a remarkable man.”



George Lucas had his best slaves at Industrial Light and Magic examine the footage to prove its authenticity, and made the stunning announcement that it was, in fact, the genuine article: “Even though we could do some pretty neat effects back then, right around Temple of Doom, we couldn’t do anything like that. It was perfect, no pixilation, nothing that would suggest someone tweaked it, even in the last twenty-seven years; this thing went right from being shot into some hidden vault, like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I would say this is the most important piece of footage in history, even more than the Zapruder film or the original cut of Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB.”



Along with the plumber, the leaked reports indicate that just forty-one other people across the world were similarly taken by the Rapture. Ellen DeGeneres remarked on her show that this number seems surprisingly small, given the widespread proliferation of Christianity in the past 2,000 years. “I guess it, uh, never occurred to me who would, uh, actually be… you know… taken,” joked the comedian and day-time talk show notable. “I mean, I assumed if it ever happened it wouldn’t be me, or Rosie O’Donnel, or Steve Martin, or Garry Shandling… you know, all the funny people. I guess I always figured maybe... babies, or, my, uh, my eighth grade English teacher would go; Mrs. McGillicuddy, yick… she was… oh, she was so boring. She made Shakespeare sound really lame.”



With most religious leaders now in mental hospitals or dead by their own hand, people are turning more and more frequently to the only other high-profile people they feel safe getting direction from: celebrities. In addition to those mentioned previously, hundreds of thousands of famous Tweeters have sent messages ranging from “Hang in there ya’ll!” to “I knew sumthin wasnt right when that Rebecca Black video came out!” to “OMFG All bets are off, choke em smoke em n poke em.” Justin Bieber issued an angry statement via his blogspot that “it just ain’t fair cuz I wasn’t even alive when this went down.”



Youngsters across America and the world have expressed similar sentiments, while their parents, who had been holding it together on the fragile dream that their children would eventually grow up, stop acting like idiots, get jobs and have real lives, OR that they would be spirited away to Heaven with no further concerns or fears, are now at a universal breaking point. “I used to be afraid that I would be taken up, leaving my baby to fend for herself,” exclaimed Michael Lohan, father of famed Disney has-been actress Lindsay Lohan. “Now what?! What kind of horses__t is this?! We’re both still here!!”



Perhaps fittingly, it was Bill Murray, the lead actor of the cult film Groundhog Day, who made the most chilling statement about the date in question. “When I found out it had actually happened on Groundhog Day, just nine years earlier than when my film came out, I just… nodded. I mean, Ramis and Rubin and I used to talk about it, and we all generally agreed that we were currently living in Hell, anyway. I mean, why do you think I’ve never won an Oscar?”



More on this story (and, apparently, the ongoing Revelation) as it develops.

The Pen That Saved NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is, perhaps, one of the pinnacles of human achievement. I have been particularly fascinated by the organization since I was very young; I can remember seeing shuttle launches on the news, remember seeing old grainy films of launches from old, and I especially remember the images of The Others, the people around the world who were doing the same thing... and, in the case of Sputnik, doing it better and faster. It is a small comfort, I suppose, that our greatest triumph came to be thanks to one of the most potent and terrible wars of ideology waged yet... but it is comforting that we, as a nation, were able to get behind something remarkable, even if it was for strange and petty reasons.

When disparate religious groups work together, it is called a miracle. When dreamers work together with engineers, it is called science. Or, alternately, the Holocaust. Dreams are just dreams unless you implement them; our only hope is that people with good dreams, strong dreams, dreams of a better, more successful world, are the ones who follow through with them. Regardless of the reasons, people with dreams often find themselves required to function in a capacity to which they are not accustomed in order to achieve those dreams... they are forced to compromise. NASA is one of the finest compromises our country has ever made, and I sincerely hope that the public will not lose interest in it possibly when we need it the most.

Since 1958, NASA has broken more rules and forged more new ground than any other area of human experience. That level of commitment is stunning; within eleven years, we had traveled farther than mankind had in the last five hundred thousand, and set foot on the surface of a place where no one had ever been born, nothing had ever grown, and no one (we're pretty sure) had ever touched. A recent article made me think of this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/18/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage?

I hate those long addresses, but oh well; it is about the cosmonaut who died in the race, the sprint, as it were, to the finish line.

And that right there is the awful thing about it all. NASA operated at optimum for two reasons: the Soviets were "wrong," and John F. Kennedy died in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. Without those two things, we would have a very different idea of space. NASA is the reason science fiction became one of the dominant forms of creative expression on this planet, from Star Trek to Armageddon, Arthur C. Clark to Isaac Asimov. The 60s was the most tumultuous era in American history, and the Space Program was a huge part of it.

BUT...

...in the end, we "won." The moon was "ours," so to speak. Hooray, our very own atmosphereless chunk of rock. With a flag. And a sweet golfing range, with no annoying ponds but about a bajillion sand traps. And once we "won," we were "done." The program continues, but it is no longer about how far we can go, expanding our abilities to traveling great distances; it is about collaborating, working together with our new "friends" to make a home away from home that hangs above our planet and has a 24-hour video feed. The vehicles we fly in are geared towards that end; no longer do we worry about how many days it will take to get to another planetary body, and we treat shuttle launches with the same kind of subdued awe that people must have felt after the "New World" was "discovered" and ships started traveling there regularly.

Whenever people criticize the Space Program, they talk about the cost. They complain that too much is spent, for too little that we can see. They usually don't mention the dozens if not hundreds of things we use every day, from cell phones to Velcro, that are indebted to NASA and the brilliant minds that have worked for it over the decades. What the future holds is very unclear; I have my own personal beliefs which emphasize my feelings about NASA, and about the pursuit of space travel in general... I don't believe we were meant to stay here, on this planet. I won't get into that now, though, that's an insanely long story... maybe another day. I also have my own beliefs about the father of NASA, Wernher von Braun, and where he got most of his ideas, but those will be for another day, too; suffice to say, he shared the same belief I just mentioned, about our reasons for exploring space.

What I want to talk about right now in this post is a story that still hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, a story of ingenuity and terror and a downright dramatic life or death situation that very nearly turned our greatest triumph into an awful tragedy of Greek proportions.

I am talking about Apollo 11.

Most people don't think of anything bad about when they think of Apollo 11; they mostly think of the immortal words Neil Armstrong spoke as he made that first step, the giddy excitement in Walter Cronkite's eyes as the moment was transmitted, the collective exclamation across the world, either of joy or of anger, as the Space Race was ended. When they think of tragedy, they think of Apollo 13, or the fire on earth that claimed the lives of "Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee two years before Apollo 11. They would be right to think of those, of course; Apollo 13 was about as close to a miracle as NASA has ever witnessed, when everything that could go wrong went wrong and yet James Lovell and his incredible crew survived, somehow.

But what people don't know is the story of Apollo 11's return. Not the landing and the exploration, which everyone saw.

The Return.

Upon re-entering the Eagle, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong removed their spacesuits. High above, Michael Collins sat in the Command Module Columbia, waiting for them to return. In the distance, the unmanned Soviet vehicle Luna 15 lay where it had crashed days ago, just before Apollo 11 was launched. The two men brought aboard almost 50 pounds of soil samples, then settled down to sleep and prepare for the return home.

When they woke up, Aldrin saw something which froze him in his tracks: somehow, some way, the circuit breaker that operated the main engine had been completely snapped off. Most likely done when the craft first landed or perhaps when they returned and were moving around in their bulky suits, the two astronauts were completely stunned at first. They radioed Houston and informed them of the situation, and although time has cleaned up the story somewhat, I imagine the first thought on their minds, Michael Collins' mind, and the minds of everyone down in Houston was:

"Oh... shit."

All in all, the Eagle remained on the surface of the moon for over 21 hours. While the men took much needed sleep, the researchers on Earth who had built the Lunar Module took apart the affected piece, broke it in the same manner, and desperately tried to think of a way to fix it in time for takeoff. Now, as the point was made during the events of Apollo 13, there is no rescue in space. It is the worst possible shipwreck imaginable; no matter how long you hold on, no matter how many HELP ME signs you make out of palm trees (or, in the case of the moon, metal rods or even just dragging your feet through the sand) no ships will just happen by (that we are aware of) and see your signal. No one will rescue you; you are on your own. Even a damaged submarine is not in as great a danger as men trapped on the moon would be. To go to the moon and celebrate such a tremendous event, only to acknowledge a mere 24 hours later that everyone up there was dead and stuck on or near the moon would not be the best way to remember the marvelous achievement we had made as a species. Even Collins couldn't have made it back alone; having three people was crucial.

So there they sat, three tiny specks in the eye of the universe, mere inches away from their home in a cosmic sense, and yet unable to reach it. Darkness came, and then went, and Buzz and Neil sat in their interplanetary diving bell and stared, long and hard, at the broken switch that had effectively sealed their fate. Oxygen was precious, and could only be recycled so long; the window of time to return to Earth was closing, as well. Down on the blue planet below, Americans celebrated and snubbed their noses at the Russians, who were already discussing plans for something called "Mir." There were fireworks, and across the world people stood outside and stared up at the moon, our closest relative and the first thing man saw besides the sun when he looked up into the sky since the beginning of our time on this planet. Societies had been born by worshipping the moon; the moon gave us weather, gave us tides, and was, in fact, instrumental in the movement of the forces on our planet that produced the very spark of life itself. And no one down below, except for two dozen very scared men in a white room full of computer monitors, knew in that moment that in order to achieve our fondest wish, we may have made a human sacrifice, and paid the ultimate price for this success.

NASA would be finished. The world would mourn the loss of these three men, just as they had been saddened by the horror of Yuri Gagarin's death. They would call the men in charge fools, psychotic enough to send brave men to their doom, simply to prove a point. There would be no more Space Program; the funding would disappear in the winds of outrage and nationwide grief. All this and more must have flashed through the minds of everyone present in Mission Control on that fateful day and night.


The story has different edges, little details to it that differ from storyteller to storyteller, but the constant detail is how unbelievably stupid it was that no one had thought to send up a spare circuit breaker. The module was, in essence, a gas can with gauges, designed by the lowest bidder to do the absolute most in the shortest amount of time. Everything that could be removed had been removed; there wasn't anything onboard that wasn't deemed absolutely necessary. Keeping the weight down had been crucial; Neil had already reminded Buzz to toss out some trinkets he'd brought along, to make certain the weight ratio was correct. But what was the point of lightening the craft if it couldn't even take off at all?!

Down on Earth, a technician, whose name is lost in the unkindness of history, was staring at the same switch, but unlike Neil and Buzz he could go home if he wanted to, kiss his wife and children, and thank god that he was not qualified to be a national hero. He stared at that switch like he could make a new one grow in its place by doing so, and then he pulled his pen out of his pocket and began to click it. You've seen this habit, I'm sure; people who are nervous or thinking hard may demonstrate a similar kind of tick or unconscious gesture, tapping their foot or licking their lips... or in the case of this gentleman, clicking their pen rapidly. Like most of the NASA dweebs of his day, he probably wore glasses and had a pocket protector, so a pen was always at hand. He twirled it, clicked it, twirled it some more...

And then, just like that, it hit him.

He held the pen before his eyes. It was a Fisher Space Pen, specifically designed for use in outer space. The astronauts each had one, specially made for them, and similar facsimiles were all over the place at NASA. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure how it happened, but this is what I believe did: the man stared at that pen, his mind whirling, wondering if by some incredible chance... some lucky break...

...and then he looked at the end of it. A simple pen, with a retractable point.

He retracted it.

Slowly, like the Command Module moving over the rest of the Apollo craft, ready to rescue the Lunar Module from her womb, he lowered the pen towards the space where the breaker used to be. Sweat beaded on his lip, and his eyes squeezed together, terrified that this would turn out as stupidly in real life as it had already begun to seem in his head. To think that after all the work, all the hours, days, years that had gone into this program, that the first living beings on the moon would become the first dead beings on the moon...

The pen connected with the hole. It fit perfectly.

He took a deep breath. Slowly, the technician pushed the pen. It was tough, but the leverage was there. After a few seconds, it went, and the gauge clicked into place.


Apollo 11... could go home.


On the moon, Buzz Aldrin picked up his space suit, trying to think if there was anything inside, some tool that could be used to jump start the engine. He and Neil had now begun to break things down to their bare essentials; highly trained and capable of dealing with enormous pressure, they remained incredibly calm in the face of inevitable death. As Buzz moved his suit, the broken circuit breaker floated up; he had knocked it off when they reentered the module, it seemed. But finger-pointing and laying blame got them nowhere; Neil instead examined the piece, trying to see if they could reattach it somehow. But there was nothing, no glue, no gum, not even any tape, no adhesive of any kind. Outside, the surface of the moon impassively basked in the unprotected light of the sun. The window was closing; time was running out.

Suddenly, a voice came, crackling in the quiet, making both men turn. From 380,000 miles away, it looks less than two seconds for a voice from Houston to say: "We have a solution."

At first overjoyed, the two men were then stunned when they heard the answer; a pen? But their pens would be back in the command module; absolutely nothing was brought down that was unnecessary. In the rush to make everything like clockwork, they had not accounted for such a ridiculous possibility as being stranded on the moon without their pens.

Then Buzz froze. He turned his suit over, and held it up. There, pinned to the front of his suit... was his pen. Collins had put it there, half-jokingly, for luck.

Like the technician, who has faded into obscurity despite saving the lives of men we now name high schools after, Michael Collins is similarly somewhat forgotten. This father of three, who would be remembered mostly in jokes as "the man who went all the way to the moon and never set foot on it," was as much the reason that Apollo 11 did not end in unbelievable tragedy as the nameless technician on Earth. Buzz used his pen; the circuit took it in. Even with the moon's minimal gravity, the pen finally caught hold, and the main engine came on. The Eagle docked with Columbia, and the three men returned home. None of them spoke of the incident with the pen except to one man during their quarantining, and the story never circulated widely, since such a catastrophically bad situation would put a real downer on the whole beating the Russians to the moon thing. Over the years, the story has become legendary, one of the things that people whisper about when they talk about the tremendous luck and, also, tremendous bad luck that NASA has had over the years.


...And that is the story of the pen that saved NASA. There was a time when humanity stood on the edge of a razor, where men sat, lonely and scared, in a vehicle resting on an alien world, unsure they would ever get home, while far and away men flew high in planes that never landed, ready to unleash nuclear Armageddon on a fragile world... unleash them with something as flimsy as a switch. NASA is the expression of the human desire to see something beyond ourselves, to look out into the universe, to break through the hard shell at the edge of reason and everything that is known and can be known... and see what waits on the other side. Whether we want it to be or not, our destinies lie in the stars.

...And some times, even the smallest things... like a simple pen... can mean the difference between choosing to forge onward... or choosing to fall back; to never give up, no matter what...

...or accept defeat.

I Would Like to Write for The Onion

So, I see articles from The Onion all the time, either through my subscription to them or by them being reposted by friends. And, it ocurred to me that I can write. Like, pretty well. And I'm funny. Usually. So I decided I would write an article in the same style as The Onion, and then send it in to them to see if they would accept it. I dunno, I figure what the hell, I'll try whatever.



Here it is: my prospective article for The Onion... and if you are easily offended or have a mental condition preventing you from recognizing satire, I would go find another blog right now.



“New Bill Allows African-American Men to Marry Badonkadonks, Only”



In a stunning move following their refusal to recognize DOMA, the current administration has expeditiously put through a bill which allows black men to marry a white woman’s ass, and only her ass, ending decades of debate and strife between interracial couples.



“Ass at last, ass at last, thank God Almighty, ass at last!” Antoine Dekoisha, 22, chanted outside the capitol today, while his live-in girlfriend of the last six years, Angela Reggerio, 19, looked on. We did not ask her for her opinion, since she was, after all, a woman.



“It seemed like today would never come,” Antoine continued. “I used to listen to my father and grandfather tell stories about the gargantuan behinds they lusted for in their days, and how envious they were of my future and possibilities, what with the enormous rise in obesity and whatnot. Now, they too can finally go after that most succulent of lady parts, without worrying about child support, nagging, and fistfights, which all come from the front of the girl.”



Senator Reginald Haywood IV (D – NY) shed a tear as he looked out over the jubilant throngs of supporters gathered before the capitol building to learn the outcome of today’s vote. “I was raised by a white family in the 1960s, and while all the other young black men of my generation were settling with women of their own skin color with ridiculously tiny waists and hard-to-open blouses, I was always drawn to those phenomenal buttocks that white women in lower class households were so well-known for. My current wife, Tammy, has recently gotten into P90X, so I’m extremely grateful that this change is coming; one more year of dieting and I would straight up shank a bizzle. You know?”



Support for the bill came from some surprising sources, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Christian Council on the Sanctity of Marriage. A spokesman for the CCSM issued a statement saying: “With a divorce rate approaching 65% in this country, it is time for drastic measures to ensure that marriage remains a viable and attractive option. Except for gays.”



White big-bootied women everywhere voiced their opinions on the matter, which eventually we had to listen to; surprisingly, a great number seemed to be in favor of the bill, with the biggest reason for this support being: “Those skinny skank bitches are takin’ our men all the time, leavin’ us holdin’ the bag; once they get married they don’t want nothin’ to do with us no more. So if there’s a solution that keeps both of us happy, then hell yeah!” However, a very vocal minority went babbling on for a while about “rights” and “decency” and “lube” or something, but by then senators were spraying bottles of champagne in the air, and in the ensuing party/Caligulan orgy, all politically-minded conversation ceased.



The organization known as Tiny-Waisted Women Against Tyranny, or TWWAT, vehemently took to the streets of D.C. in protest, waving signs saying things like “FOUR CHEEKS ARE TWO MANY!” and “BADONKADON’T!!” Their key complaint against the bill was summed up by President Tanya Dubmeister, the tanning-salon-owner-turned-lobbyist who explained: “They got to leave them hoes (sic) if they wan(t to) stay with us. Now, this give(s) them a(n) easy out! Bitches be trippin’ if they think we gone (sic) take this lyin(g) down, y(ou) heard me!?” When asked about her accent, Ms. Dubmeister informed us that she studied with African-American girls at P.S. 192 in New York City when she was little, and that those circumstances made her an “honorary gangstah.” Others in the organization, including extremely pale goth chicks, vegetarians, fashionably anorexic runway models and bulimic former high school cheerleaders were less vocal, but all indicated they were not pleased with the bill. “Seriously, how is this at all fair to us?” asked E. Strange, a teen girl who is apparently infested with cats. “Our gimmick is that we are skinny; we are not nearly as good at… at whatever it is that fat white girls do! This totally sucks!”



Sucks or not, the bill will be signed into law in the next few days. President Obama made no comment on the bill, except to nod his head very slightly when asked if he was in favor of it. Afterwards, no one at the press conference made eye contact with Michelle, and it was all rather uncomfortable.



Most state prosecutors, livid that they are white and cannot benefit from this bill, are already planning to fight it in local courts, where the first true tests of any controversial new bill always take place. “I would say this is more dangerous than stem cell research, abortion, and Obamacare combined,” admitted District Attorney Donald Deagan of Jackson County, Mississippi; “we must put a stop to this before something even more horrible happens, like Japanese-American men passing a bill allowing them to just marry a girl’s pigtails, or Latino men passing a bill allowing them to marry more than one woman per country. The line must be drawn, here and now, and believe you me, we will be the ones to draw it!”



“…Ass at last?” Perhaps, like the McRib, only for a limited time.

Meeting Eartha Kitt

When I was younger (it seems much younger, but it was only six years ago) I enjoyed Disney pin-trading tremendously. For those of you who don't know what that is, there was a time when people would collect pins that were Disney-themed, little items from all sorts of films, events, parks, etc. Eventually, this became sort of an empire, with Disney actually manufacturing millions of pins to increase trading. They would even put little in-jokes on them or have special days to encourage trading, which was, at its base, just another way to make money. But ignoring the nature of this, for people who began pin-trading before that all got going, it was truly a wonderful experience. It was like a treasure hunt that never ended; every person had their own interests, their own kind of pins they sought after. In the parks, cast members started wearing lanyards, which were always adorned with a large variety of pins. I myself usually went for anything unusual, something I'd never seen before... I can't really explain what it was that would make me choose one pin over another, but whenever I would examine them in more detail, I usually found that they were rarer, or part of a smaller set, or not technically a Disney pin at all but considered part of the phenomenon even though they had been made ten years or more before the trend really took off. I was particularly intrigued by pins having to do with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which scared the living daylights out of me as a kid; the ride was not quite as terrifying the first time I went on it, back in the early 90s, but the sea has always held a particular fascination for me, so the nature of the story was what interested me more than any specific detail. The Nautilus, I suppose, was what I loved the most, the beautiful and somehow alien ship that was created for the film. Those were the pins I sought, along with Tron, Alice in Wonderland, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and other of the more kooky, less-mainstream materials that good ol' Uncle Walt and Co. produced. It may, in fact, simply be an extension of my fascination with the sea, and all sea life; to this day, there are sharks teeth that I found on beaches and all over the place that I collected and saved, some of them even filling a lamp that sits beside my bed now.

Anyway, the last year I went to any of the parks was 2005. On one occasion, I was with my folks and two of their friends at the former Disney MGM Studios. We were somewhere near the replica of Grauman's Chinese Theater, if I recall correctly, and we were generally discussing what to do for dinner, when I saw one of the upper-level workers with a lanyard nearby. You could tell which ones they were because they always wore pants and a button-up shirt, not a costume or uniform like the regular employees. They looks like managers in an electronics store, let's put it that way. The most important thing about them is that the upper level folks often had the best pins, for whatever reason.

I walked over to him and quickly asked if I could look at his pins. He seemed distracted, but complied; Disney employees, by then, were instructed to pin-trade if asked, without refusing, unless for a legitimate reason. They had no reason not to, and the pins didn't even belong to them: at the beginning of the day, they were given a lanyard covered with random pins put on there simply for guests, so none of the pins were ever supposed to be kept and taken home and sold on eBay or added to someone's collection (although I'm sure some were). This fellow very politely held out his lanyard and I quickly traded him for two pins (which I believe is still the limit you can trade with one person at any given time).

As I was pinning my latest catches to my own lanyard, a small, very old, African-American woman approached us. She was wearing a sash on her head, and turquoise earrings, and a purple outfit with matching shoes. She looked dignified, but at the same time casual, just someone out enjoying their day. She squinted at me, and the pins on my lanyard, and said "Young man, what are you doing?" I smiled and showed her my pins, and told her essentially how pin-trading worked. The employee stood nearby, sort of staring at me with this weird look in his eyes; I couldn't tell if he was trying to decide whether to push me away, or smile. The woman was intrigued, and said no one had told her how all this worked, but it seemed clever, and I made it sound very fun. I took off a couple of pins (ones I didn't mind losing, I'll admit, not my best ones) and gave them to her. I told her she should try trading, and see if she liked it. She smiled at me and called me a nice boy; keep in mind, this was a chapter in my life when very few people were calling me "nice," so it made me feel really good. She shook my hand, patted my back in that way that older people have, and then walked off towards the entrance of the park. The employee followed her closely, looking back at me sporadically over his shoulder.

As I was walking away, another employee came up and got in front of me, not physically trying to stop me but just making his presence too obvious to miss. I was startled, but I noticed that he had an earpiece on and seemed to be listening to it. After a moment he asked "Who are you?" I told him my name and that my family was nearby. I was a little worried, because no one likes to be questioned, by anyone, even if it's in the most magical place on Earth. I was 21, and he looked to be about ten to fifteen years my elder. After a moment he kind of chuckled and said "Do you know who that was you just talked to?" I said "No." He smiled finally, and got out of my way, and said "That was Eartha Kitt."

I am ashamed to admit that I did not immediately remember who Eartha Kitt was. I had to go home and look her up, and after I had I had the strangest mixture of feelings, sort of foolish and excited and awkward and amused all rolled up together. I had explained pin-trading to one of the most important voices in African-American history, a woman who constantly tried to change the world for the better and made her life infinitely better despite all odds. I wish I had known who I was talking to... but her behavior will always stick in my mind. I hope I stuck in hers, too.

Economy Break-Up

It was my birthday yesterday, and I usually feel, on my birthday, that I don't want gifts or anything expensive, I just want to spend time with my friends and family. So, in honor of my twenty-seventh day of birth, I decided to post one of the shorts I've made: this is a little piece I put together using Xtranormal a while back... enjoy!

"How Time Flies..." or "The Yo-Yo and the Slinky"

Well, as I'm working on music, writing scripts and screenplays, and generally trying to make the days pass more smoothly, I spend a lot of time thinking about absolutely random things. I can remember, for instance, when I discovered that time is not actually a constant, but is affected by even simple things like gravity, momentum, and even physical wellness. One of the most startling discoveries I've ever made, incidentally, is the Oscillation of Paradigms, which is a term I invented for a much more broad understanding of those things we call paradigm shifts.

Allow me to explain:

Paradigm shifts occur throughout human history due to certain factors, chiefly our environment and our UNDERSTANDING of our environment. When our environment consisted primarily of rocks, trees, caves, and winter, and the sky was mostly dark and there were animals out there that could easily gobble us up, our conception of the universe was very different from the conception of the universe held by most people in the 19th century. The conception of the universe (and/or reality) of the 19th century even differed very radically from the concept in the 20th century, but I'll get into that later. For now, suffice to say that as time progresses and we explore more, we learn more, and we change more. Conservative politicians call this phenomenon "flip-flopping."

All kidding aside, conservative notions of the universe (and everyday life, for that matter) should be mostly discredited, since they are, in fact, simply the trickle-down remains of ideas that were once radical themselves; since none of us have ever met a Whig or a Federalist, I think that will serve as a good indicator of my point. In order to retain their grip on reality, people often feel the need to cling onto anything they deem correct, understandable, viable, in the face of a vastly changing set of circumstances. Ergo, if you are raised to believe that the Earth is very young, Man is King Turd of this Rather Smelly Mountain, and that sooner or later all the GOOD people are going to get prime real estate in Heaven, your behavior, mentality and lifestyle will be very different than someone raised with different beliefs, or, indeed, no beliefs at all. HOWEVER, it is just as likely that someone raised the exact same way will respond DIFFERENTLY, which brings us to the root cause of paradigm shifts: imagination.

"Imagination"

The imagination, more than language, religion, literature, music, the arts, ANYTHING, is what separates us from all other life on this planet. So far we are the only animals (that we know of) who have the ability to abstract, intuit things beyond our normal capacity. This trait was considered extremely dangerous, at least for the most part of human history, because it brings change. However, the more people who are happy, the more dangerous imagination is deemed. If fewer people are happy (or, indeed, if most of the people on a single continent are dead, as was the case directly following the Black Death in Europe in the 1300s) than it is less likely that imagination will be considered dangerous, if only for the simple fact that most people are trying to recover from Nature's version of Shock and Awe: hence, the Renaissance and other wonderful little growth spurts.

Paradigm shifts were once enormous and painful periods of labor in human history:  the struggle towards a viable Democracy in America is a prime example. Some would say it took from 1775 til 1781; other might say it took til 1813; still others might say it took until 1865, and still OTHERS might say it didn't even really happen until 1945, at the end of World War II and with the explosive growth of our nation. I myself could find arguments for 1964, 1981, 2001, and 2008, all predicated on specific moments of dramatic change in some fundamental aspect of the country. However, rather than focusing simply on the United States (as we are wont to do here) I will try to focus on humanity at large, as we all deserve a fair shake in this, not just the ones who beat everyone to the top and then threw rocks at the noobs below.

"Religulous"

Let's take a look at a specific period of human history: say, the birth of Christ leading up to the collapse of the Roman Empire. If we follow the logic that Christ was put to death in 33 AD, and the Roman Empire collapsed roughly 300 years later (give or take a little "pontifficating"), we see some fascinating things during that time... chiefly, the almost virus-like spread of Christianity, in several distinct forms: Catholic, Greek, and Russian, not to mention all the little ones who were quickly pushed aside by the majority. (Majority rule really isn't anything new, I don't understand how special interest groups always seem surprised by that...)

Anyway, as Christianity spread, so did unrest: the Roman Empire, despite its flaws, managed to contain itself fairly well for a long time. But on the fringes of everything were people who did not want to be part of the greatest power in the world, who wanted their own autonomy and rights and system of government and aqueducts... well, yes, the aqueducts were kind of nice, weren't they? So, quick quizz: What destroyed the Roman Empire? Was it:

A) The Ancient Mediterranean Chapter of NAMBLA?
B) Legalized Prostitution?
C) A Changing State Religion?
D) Constant Warfare?
E) A Series of Intricate and Well-Designed Roads That Were Easily Accessible By Barbarian Hordes, Forever Immortalized Inside the Giant Golfball at EPCOT?
F) A Freak Ice Age?
G) All of the Above?

If you answered G... you would probably just be guessing, anyway. The truth is, we can attribute the collapse to many things, mainly because we weren't there, and we could say it was actually aliens who saw how quickly we were advancing and decided it would be a good idea to throw a wrench in our plans, if we wanted to: WE SIMPLY WEREN'T THERE. Whatever the case was, a dramatic shift left Europe pretty much paralyzed and emotionally stunted for almost a thousand years. Even before the birth of Christ, the seeds of collapse were sown, but until the Dark Ages, there were very few times in the known parts of the world (a.k.a. Civilized) where anarchy truly held sway for a long, long period. However, all over the world, other civilizations were doing fine: the Mayans, Aztecs, Indians, Chinese, and many others, despite their own issues, were discovering things and creating tremendous works of art and buildings that make engineers today scratch their heads in wonder. Islam was born during the Dark Ages, and thankfully gave the roaming knights something to do other than harass Jews and rescue maidens from their hymens and over-protective fathers.

"A Bird in the Hand is Worth Less Than a Flaming Bush"

Now, don't get me wrong: religion has done some incredible things. It evokes a sense of union that binds people together in a way that few other things can. The idea that there is someone (or, Someone) looking out for you, guiding your life in small or even large ways, is extremely comforting, and promotes general wellness, a sense of fulfillment, and also encourages artistic expression (provided it is handled appropriately, and you don't paint The Last Supper with three Christs in it). Religion is the first great step of the human race towards a larger understanding of the universe, because it relies on a line of thought that goes something like this:

"I am very small, and it is very dark, and there are things out there that would like to eat me, and I wish I knew what to say to that pretty girl/handsome guy to get her/him to mate with me, and so in order to keep myself from just walking out of this cold, damp cave right into the jaws of whatever predator is passing by at the moment, I have to have... faith. Faith that things will get better; faith that life is fair; faith that in the end, there will be someone (or, Someone) to welcome me with open arms and say 'Good job.'"

Nowadays, atheism is not nearly as controversial as it once was. Atheism is extremely easy to align yourself with, especially if your car starts when it's supposed to, your bi-monthly paycheck comes when it's supposed to, and you get to (ahem) mate when you're supposed to. As far as I can tell in my observations, for most people, Christians and others alike, it appears that God is similar to government: It's fine and dandy when we need him, but when things go wrong, we blame him. Or someone else's version of him. Sorry, Him.

The ability to completely discredit the existence of god in any way, shape, or form is not something I have within me: I cannot justify this, as there is no proof of his lack of existence, JUST AS I HAVE NO PROOF OF HIS EXISTENCE, EITHER. For those of you out there saying "Look, hundreds of people died in the 2005 tsunami for no reason, that proves God doesn't exist," or "Oooh, look! A rainbow! That proves God exists,"

...NO. BAD. SIT. STAY.

Casually throwing out these things is not proof of God, either for or against; it is proof of YOUR specific belief in or about God. God is a construct that requires us to believe in Him (or Her), because, even for religions that do not require the salvation of everyone, such as Hinduism or Buddhism, if no one else knows what you know, then no one else believes in your SPECIFIC god. It is fair to say, in all actuality, that EVERYONE on the planet has their own personal god, even atheists, for there must be SOMETHING, some THING that they picture when they discredit Its own existence. It is a puzzlement, and it is the best showcase of our imagination I can come up with.

"The Red Shift of Paradigms"

Now, as for paradigm shifts: the most curious thing about them, if we observe trends in a specific field, such as science, is that they come faster and faster all the time. The most significant example and the one that will be easiest for most people today to identify with is technology: it is estimated that technology expands twice as fast in its next phase as the phase before, meaning that the space of time between the creation of the Antikythera Mechanism and the Macintosh compared to the time between the creation of the laptop and the creation of the iPad demonstrates a rapid ramping up in technological advancement. Thus do we come to the heart of the problem: these paradigm shifts do not appear to be predictable, but rather to have a random (though certainly continuous) rate of acceleration. This bring me to the analogy of "The Slinky."

"The Slinky"

Picture a slinky falling down the stairs; for those of you born after about 1992, stairs are what we had before obesity made them fairly obsolete. For those of you born after about 1984, slinkies were coiled metal springs that you could curl up, launch downstairs, and have hours of entertainment watching them collapse and expand, collapse and expand. The rate of their descent is fairly constant, it would seem; however, that is because most of us only had one flight of stairs in our homes, if any at all. If a slinky were to fall down an infinite flight of stairs, it would inevitably begin to speed up or slow down, depending on the angle of the stairs, imperfections in the surface material, air pressure, all sorts of variables. Therefore, if the slinky is human knowledge, and variables include a better diet, imagination, LSD, unions, black presidents, etc. etc., eventually the slinky changes velocity. Try to imagine a slinky hitting terminal velocity; that is essentially what is happening to our technology, today. In the end, either technology will oust us and claim dominance of the planet, no longer needing our guidance because it is so smart it practically invented Jeopardy... or we will obliterate anything that is not reliant on technology, and interact solely through technological mediums, thus ensuring our extinction. The one factor which will inevitably contribute to the outcome (whatever it may be) is the utter and total collapse of our traditional way of life based around cheap fuels and overabundance... but that is not what I am talking about. That's SEP:  "Someone Else's Problem," as whoever is in power at the moment likes to say.

(In truth, it isn't, but apparently the internet has no bottom, so I'll just write another post about it later.)

Anyways, since the slinky analogy only works so far as we can imagine it, we also have to look at another toy example:  the yo-yo.

"The Yo-Yo"

The divine secrets of the yo-yo are indeed quite ancient; using simple physics long before we even knew what physics were, people understood how to do tricks with string and a rounded object carefully aligned with it. The yo-yo goes down; the yo-yo comes up. Simple, and elegant; those of you born before about 1980, you can go wikipedia it, under the entry "yo-yo (disambiguation)." The yo-yo behaves this way, however, for the same reason the slinky behave the way it does: because outside forces act upon it. Once again, simple physics, an object in motion and so forth. But the yo-yo has something very different from the slinky: it can perform tricks. It can cats-cradle; it can loop-the-loop; it can walk-the-dog; it can do all SORTS of things.

The slinky... can slink.

The slinky represents Man's ability to keep going forward, to always advance, but with a constant clinging onto ideas and beliefs that are no longer in vogue or that even make any sense. Despite scientifically proven evidence to the contrary, there are people who simply do not believe anything they are shown, because it would completely obliterate their sense of reality. Given the fact that many of these people own guns and have heavily sheltered compounds, not to mention kegs of kool-aid at the ready, letting them have their reality might not be such a bad thing. Religion and physics are quite fascinatingly similar, in that they often deal with absolutes, and are predicated on old concepts of the universe that have come to be accepted as absolute, fundamental truths. Quantum physics--quantum reality--present us with another truth, something which we had not truly considered before, and it goes a little something like this:

Normal Physics/Religion:

1) I am right.
2) I think.
3) I am.
4) My Sky Cake beats your Sky Pie, and if it does not, you must die.

Quantum Physics/Religion:

1) I am right.
2) You are also right.
3) Neither of us are right.
4) ALL AT THE SAME FRIGGIN TIME!!!

Quantum reality allows for possibility. It creates space for things which we cannot fathom, or would ever imagine. It is imagination, scientifically personified. Therefore, quantum physics insists that there can be a god, and there cannot be a god; quantum physics insists that reality is stable, and yet it is not; quantum physics means we could travel through time... but aren't we doing that already, right now?

In the beginning, there was spirituality, and it was good. Then Newton said, "Let there be gravity," and there was (and other neat stuff, too). Eventually other people said, is the gravity really there? And then Scientology came to pass, and yea, there was much tsouris...

Our ability to hold onto reality is predicated on our strength of consciousness, our self-awareness; people who think they are someone else, genuinely know that they are someone else... for all intents and purposes, THEY ARE THAT PERSON. If we do not agree with them, we run the risk of running head-on into their reality, and creating quite a mess in the process.

The most frightening lesson I learned for this discovery, the Oscillation of Paradigms, is that they are incredibly unpredictable. The paradigm which shaped Germany from 1915 through 1945 is utterly terrifying, but it existed because an entire group of people believed in the same reality. Although these may seem like abstract concepts, their influence on everyday life is quite realistic. Anyone who has ever seen a Bible camp or Congress in session or a football game will agree. The mind is a very frightened thing when it is isolated, so it craves groups, it lumps things, ideas, people, together... but there are times when tremendous disparity exists between fields of thought... even from person to person... periods of oscillation, from one group dynamic to another. Right now we are in a very dark dynamic, a place full of blame, paranoia, accusations, and self-righteous indignation based on lies-that-are-no-longer-lies-because-we-say-they-aren't.

What we oscillate to next... is going to be very interesting, I'm sure.