twenty-two seconds to live

* Start writing letters to my father, C.S. Lewis-style

* Finally listen to his old answering machine tape

* Let it all out after however many years it’s been

Everything is a mess.  A shambles.

Everything I’ve ever accomplished adds up to nothing.  All that I touch turns to ash.  There is no future in a world where the rules are unpredictable, where people’s decisions and actions abide by no algorithm.

We’re all faking it, trying to make sense of chaos viewed through a tiny window.  I spend so much time and effort arranging and classifying, only to step outside and realize I’ve seen only a minuscule fraction of the tempest.  Nobody is a person.  No person is alive.

I’ve explored so much, looking for meaning, even at times for happiness.  Those things exist but only as noise.  There is no signal.  I have fully come to comprehend the questions I’ve been facing.  Unfortunately, I do not like the answers.  I had hoped for better.

I’ve been a part of my life for about three decades now, and empirically have found the experience to be highly overrated and unseemly.  I don’t want to do it anymore.

They aren’t easy to find today, the words.

The imagery of a fork in the road implies choices of equal parity.  Go left, or go right.  Stop and think about it first, if you must.  A precipice also comes with two choices.  Step back or jump off.  The terror and anxiety of that situation is far beyond that of any road journey, but mechanically they are the same.  Two choices.  Pick one.  Take your time.

The metaphor breaks down when you look at reversibility and interference.  If you take the wrong road, you can go back and go the other way.  If you step back from a precipice instead of jumping, you could always jump later; but if you jump, that’s it.  There’s no going back.  Also, someone can push you off of a cliff in a burst of action.  It’s much harder to force someone down a road and keep them there.

A sheer drop disguised as a fork in the road would be a treacherous thing indeed.  Just putting a foot one direction to try it out can result in free fall.  By the time you’ve recognized the situation, you are hitting the rocks below.

—

Is there a basic human need to create crisis?  Do people need catastrophe to properly frame the good times?

Humanity is a factory that only manufactures disappointments.

Young men clamor for control over their lives and the world around them.  Old men are resigned to do the best they can with what the world presents them.  Middle-aged men are lost, they don’t know whether to keep scrambling for the false sense of control and stability, or to let go and let life happen to them so they can get busy dying.

I generalize, of course, but I think that is what the mid-life crisis is.  The final death throes of a life spent fighting the Earth’s rotation as it gives way to a more gentle resoluteness to just be.  It’s terrifying to imagine.

When an old man does something for his old woman, obviously against his better judgment, he does it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile.  He knows the world expects nothing else from him.  He is given a pass.  An old man can no sooner argue with an old woman than the sea can stop being wet.  There’s a security in that consensual knowledge, that stereotype, that global understanding.  The entire world mugs the camera and says, “Well, what can you do, am I right?”

How does that relationship work when the man still has a self to worry about, and is still grappling for the aforementioned control?  He could point to the old men, draw on the power of that association, and after what would seem a prohibitive explanation, be given the pass.  However, doing so would be at the cost of his other battle – the one for the self, the one for control over his life.  Winning on the eastern front comes at the cost of the western, etc.

The individual no-win scenarios are the micro representations of the macro struggle of life itself.  Children playing Connect Four learn rapidly to recognize the dreaded unfettered three-in-a-row that represents an impending and unavoidable loss.  The rules say nothing about stopping the game there, though, so two more pieces must be played for someone to secure the win.  Those with a logical mind start playing against “Connect Three, Open On Both Sides” to try to avoid it, but ultimately everyone is still playing Connect Four and when you lose, you lose.  The day a young chess player has the epiphany that there is no ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ based on the number of pieces remaining is a watershed for that player.  The realization later that life is chess, the game is much longer than we expected, and our opponent is far more ruthless and cunning can tend to undo that cognitive victory.  Knowing you have a finite number of pieces with which to play the rest of your life will make you go mad trying to keep them all safe.

Sometimes you wish you could just pass, and not move any pieces.

I’ve gotten off-topic.  What does it mean to be a good man?  What is manhood?

Surely having a family counts.  You get bonus points too if that family isn’t a bunch of drug-addled criminals, I suppose.  What does it mean to “have” a family?  Anybody can join an army, but very few of those who do will ever be able to say they “have” an army.  The only things a man truly owns, other than his skin and guts (which is a questionable ownership) are what he makes for himself.  Furniture and families.  So we narrow it down.  Don’t just be in a family, be in a family that you are at the “head” of.  What does it mean to be the head of a family?  Charles Manson was the head of a family.  Is he a good man?  Hemingway was a prick and a womanizer.  Show me a man who says Hemingway wasn’t a good man and I’ll punch him in the face, if Zombie Hemingway doesn’t do it first.  Where do we draw the line?  Is all we have the resignation of old men, to sit on the porch waiting for something interesting to pass, or if not, to convince ourselves that we faced the uninteresting with honor and dignity?

What is the appropriate age for a boy to become concerned with the concept of Legacy?

I once cried to my father that I was terrified by the impermanence of everything.  I told him that even if I could carve my face into the Moon, that too would fade eventually, along with all human memory.  He just smiled, told me that was nothing new or inventive to worry about, and that every man has those thoughts at some point.  I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it, though.

I told a friend recently that there could never be any more heroes, and that we would eventually destroy all of the heroes of history.  The sharper the lens used to view someone, the rougher they are to view.  The higher resolution and fact-rich nature of information concentration today makes it easy to see that guys like Thomas Edison and Alexander Hamilton weren’t that great, but there is no antithesis to be found for villainy.  A greater collection and analysis of historical information won’t magically reveal that Pol Pot was a pretty good guy, or that Josef Stalin “wasn’t so bad, really.”  In that capacity, it is only evil which makes an indelible mark on our collective psyche.  The heroes who battled evil fade and are even torn down by truth, but the antagonist is rarely, if ever, whitewashed.

Is that a truth, a source of wrongness?  Are we like a black shirt, washed too many times, never to be as black as the day we were made?

If I wanted to do something about it, although I doubt anyone has ever successfully posited a functional “something” that could be done, would that make me a man?  Or, is the manly course to accept it, and do the best I can with what comes?

Like everything I write and think these days, these are questions without answers.  Masturbatory explorations that will never offer solace or respite to any.  I write to write, and sometimes just marshaling all the words and punctuation marks around for awhile gives me a fleeting sense of ownership over them.

“… they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of American civilization.  I live in a world where, because of my home life, I am exposed to a significantly larger amount of “pop culture” than I would be inclined to seek out on my own.  So little of what we consume is authentic in any capacity, with the most damning thing being the moniker “reality television.”

Lady Gaga is a prototype that in one or two iterations will be an organic marionette, the glorification of vapidity and headless sexuality.

In seeking to broaden the scope of reach and depth of penetration of marketing, have we obviated that the future thinkers and architects of civilization will come from within the target demographic?  How can children that are raised on media consumption in its current form go on to develop the analytical and cognitive abilities necessary to even perpetuate the status quo.  Will it all be automated by then, Idiocracy- or god-forbid Terminator-style?

I built a bookcase for my wife for Christmas.  Hopefully it will be around long after I am gone.  That seems to be novel and quaint now.  Is the concept of an heirloom outmoded?  Have we stopped – in a general sense – making them?  What do you intend to pass materially to your children?  Now, did any of that originate with you, or was it passed to you by a previous generation?  What are we making now that is built to last?

Television does not discover, reveal, and broaden the reach of previously-unknown cultural phenomena, It creates them out of whole cloth.  Ed Hardy wasn’t some cool brand that was spotted on a bunch of trend-setters and piped to everyone else.  A nigh-blitzkrieg of placement within a staggering number of reality shows and on cut-rate celebrities literally built a market for the merchandise out of thin air.  The upside to this is that there is no other reason to wear one of these items, so it can safely be assumed that anyone you see with some of this stuff either a) subscribes to the alternate reality of mass media, or b) is a paid shill.

The lack of a connection with the rest of the world fostered by modern living creates a sense of unease in me, and causes me to have flickers of odd desire, like someone with an iron deficiency wanting to gorge themselves on steak uncharacteristically.  I want to drive across the country on a motorcycle.  I want to live off of the land for an extended period of time.  I want to write a novel, though I don’t have any idea what it would be about.  Robert Pirsig wrote at length about value and quality, and I have a sense that the last shreds of it are slipping away from us – from me.  Everything is disposable.

Everything I want to do requires me to buy something, and that makes me sad sometimes.  The knife that Bear Grylls uses costs over $700.  Do I need that?  I am not Bear Grylls, though I sometimes fancy myself capable of doing what he does.  At least, I think I would be if I were forced to do so.  Motorcycles.  Typewriters.  If I want to do any more significant woodworking, I need at least a table saw.  And sawhorses.  It doesn’t stop.

Individualism is still capitalism in these parts.  He who shuns the system is still a consumer, just of different products.  Google will serve me advertisements relevant to my interests all the same.

…provided I haven’t been unreasonably naughty.

• Motorola CLIQ (I no longer want this after reading Engadget’s review of it from October)
• Futurama: The Complete Collection
• Tritium Keychain
• Utili-Key
• Advanced Arduino Starter Kit
• Ontario Knife SP16 SPAX
• REI Gift Cards

I’m out of the world for awhile, see you cats later.

A few cursory Google searches will show that a lot of people, both at home and in the media, are asking this question.  It would be irresponsible of me to not pay attention to this fact.

I’m not personally saying Glenn Beck did in fact rape and murder a young girl in 1990, I just want to know the truth.

Why hasn’t Glenn Beck denied the allegations that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990?  Why has Glenn Beck failed to produce evidence that he did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990?  What is Glenn Beck afraid of?

As of this writing, both Glenn Beck and FOX News have remained silent – all while a storm of epic proportions grows around the question.  Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?

I’ve seen a lot in my life, and thought I had reached a point where nothing short of global catastrophe could surprise me.

Then I came home from watching G.I. Joe yesterday (more on that later) to the first actual surprise party I’ve ever had in my life.  My mother, Cory, Ben Moore, nearly everyone from my office that I like, all of our local friends, and my kids were all waiting in my living room.  Streamers, balloons, cake, snacks, presents, the yelling of “SURPRISE” in unison, the works.

I was, for the first time in a long time, completely stunned and speechless.  It was amazing.  Virtually everyone I care about was wedged into my house.  There was a keg in the backyard.

I got presents!  A propane grill was the Mjolnir smash.  Beatrice got a top case.  I also got a rechargeable drill, an Iron Man book, a case of Hoegaarden, and 12 months of Xbox Live Gold.  Several people tossed Best Buy giftcards my way as well – and today I piled them together and got a soundbar speaker system for downstairs with an iPod dock in it.  It will see a lot of use during video games, movie nights, Rock Band parties, and cleaning the house (especially since Cox has taken away the bluegrass music channel.)

Marissa managed to coordinate and pull this off over the past MONTHS without me even having a hint of what was going on.  I will post a picture in this article of my complete kernel-panic shutdown face a bit later.  I swear, there was even a tear.

Thanks to, in no particular order: Ben Moore, Cory, Ben Patterson, Kristin and PJ, Angie, Tom and Amanda, Dave and Felicia, Lee, Cydney, Andrew, Dozer, Noah, Alex, Chris, Casey, Lissa, Mom, Jake, Veronica, Milo, and of course Marissa.

I have the most amazing wife ever – she continues to find new ways to blow me away on a daily basis.  I just hope her birthday next weekend is palatable, since there’s no way I can compete with this.

Inspired by and mostly cribbed from Truppenführung (Hammerstein-Equord, 1933)