Sickness

 

Look how gracefully we can die!

It’s that time of year again.

Yes indeed, it’s “Get Sick Right Before a Test!” Time!  That special three week period right in the middle of the quarter much loved and cherished by college students around the world.  Normally, I try to avoid the holiday festivities because a) I hate being sick and b) I care about my academic future.

But this year, I figured, what the hell?  Why not give the ol’ Disease ‘n Test a shot this time around?

So, I wandered from my house to class this morning at the crack of dawn, wrote an hour’s worth of lecture notes that resemble a kindergartner’s ritalin scribbles and limped my way home.  My boss, thankfully, was very okay with me missing work, and I snuggled back into bed and had all kinds of wonderful, feverish dreams.

Most of the dreams were the odd, awkward social-type dreams that I have most of the time.  There were some exciting adventures with friends past and present, and I vaguely remember a handcuffed companion from middle school asking me for the time.  That’s about the only distinct and clear thing I can recall from the three-hour nap.

Oh.  Except for one thing:  those awesome dreams you have right before a test.  You know the ones I’m talking about!  The ones that involve utterly failing your midterms?  And then they end with you as a drunken bum muttering somewhere in the streets of St. Louis?  Yeah, those ones!

Of course, that puts my self-confidence meter at an all time high.  Not only have I barely been able to study for my upcoming test (T-minus 14 hours!), but this test is in my hardest class this quarter.  Hurrah!

So, I’m off to study.  Hopefully, I will be able to retain my biology knowledge better than I’ve been able to retain most of the food that I’ve eaten in the last twelve hours.  Wish me luck!

Atheism: On the Attack; Religion: Not Really Doing Anything Great

 

Mankind moves into caves in order to avoid the fallout from WWIII.

 Can’t say that I’m much of an atheist.  Can’t really say that I much care either way if someone thinks God exists or not (though I do think He exists).  But what I can say is that often times I have found the English to be pretty damn silly.

Apparently, a bunch of English atheists have gotten together and decided to put atheist ads on buses in jolly old England.  The problem that they seem to be addressing is the fact that lots of religious folks out there post their ads on buses.  You know, things like, “Jesus Saves,” and “Allah Saves,” or “Yahweh Saves,” and maybe even, “Buddha Saves.”  I’ve always thought, as a religious person, an attractive ad to post on a bus might be something like, “Lifevests Are Located Underneath Your Seats.  Save Yourself!”  Maybe I could convince airlines to paint it on the side of their planes.

Anyway, I’m sort of surprised that atheists would act so bodly.  I always thought that atheists only came out at night when they could sneak out of their parents’ basements and gather at libraries or science museums.  And that only on nights with a full moon.  But apparently, it is not so.  In fact, these English atheists were able to raise something like $200,000 in order to pay for these bus ads.

In a time when religion is on the defensive (or at least more so than it used to be), it seems like moderate folks like myself are constantly being asked to take a side.  What happened to the days when I could believe what I want to believe, and you can believe whatever you want to believe?

Yes, I understand that those days probably never existed.  But I’m just saying, what happened to those days?  As in, why haven’t they ever existed, period?  Even some atheists, like Richard Dawkins, would say that someone like me, a religious person (and hardly a one at that), has a mental illness.  And aside from the fact that, yes, I do probably have some mental illness (ha), does a guy who’s never met me, never even heard my name before, have the right to write me off as a total whack job just because I find comfort in the idea of a loving Universe or God?

If you ask me, he certainly does not.  See, here’s the thing:  when you act like a crazy person for your beliefs, no matter how right you might be about whatever it is you believe in, at the end of the day, you’re still a crazy person.  Frankly, I’d much rather sit back and have a drink with the guy who thinks an overripe banana is his father but who doesn’t care if I disagree with that over the superrational scientist who constantly berates me for not agreeing with him on the God question, which, for all intents and purposes, can’t really be answered definitely either way.

And it goes the same way for other religions.  Guess what?  I’m perfectly okay not believing that I’ll be reincarnated as a cow if act badly towards my boss.  Seriously.  It’s okay.  And I’m okay with you believe that, too.  If it makes you a better person, then by God (ha), believe it.

Also, don’t you go around thinking I’m someone who’s major philosophy is just, “Hey, who the fuck cares?”  Because I do.  I love debating atheists.  It’s fun!  And I love debating Christians, as well.  But it’s one thing to have a friendly debate, and it’s another thing to have a foaming at the mouth shouting match that ends with a broken friendship or an angry rivalry.

But back to the buses.  And the English.

The words that are printed on the ads go something like:  ”God probably doesn’t exist.  Relax and enjoy your life.”  I mean, really?  As a person who is a Christian, and thus, presumably the target audience for these ads, I find it a little bit offensive for them to suggest that somehow changing a fundamental and positive part of my core set of beliefs will result in having a better or more relaxing life.  On the contrary, if I suddenly doubted my faith entirely, I’d probably have a nervous breakdown.

What the ad really should’ve said was something like, “God doesn’t exist.  But it’s okay, I love you!”  Or, “God doesn’t exist.  But as long as you’re a good person, we don’t care if you know that He doesn’t exist!”  That would make me like atheists a lot more.  I’d probably even think to myself, “Hey, that’s a nice message from the atheists.  I’ll have to give them a couple bucks to keep spreading the love.”  But that’s not what happened.

Instead, these atheists implied that I am stressed out, not enjoying my life, and have visions of a fiery hell that may await me after I die.  Those are three things that don’t really describe me.  And here’s another helpful tidbit, all you religious/atheist PR folks:  people hate being stereotyped.  Not all Christians are gun-toting Texans, and not all atheists are elitist academic liberals.

And, for all the atheists out there reading this, don’t get offended.  Really.  I love you.  I love atheists!  I live with one! She’s great!  She just baked chocolate chip cookies last night, in fact, and they were totally delicious.  Don’t feel threatened by me because I believe in a loving Universe.  How could that make me think ill of you?  Anyway.

Little Green Men

I say, Pip...these Earthlings have the queerest plumage, wot wot?

Well, what do you know.

Turns out our Galaxy, the little Milky Way, is actually pretty huge.  In fact, it’s massive.  Never in the timid dreams of astronomers, all cuddled up with their pillows and blankets on the couch of their permanmently-inhabited bachelor pads (though I sort of hope, in a deeply passionate way, that the astronomers don’t call their homes “pads,” but rather, “Docking Bay Alpha,” or maybe even, “The Launch Pad,” or perhaps, “Ground Control”), did the Milky Way seem to pour forth such an abundance of creamy white goodness.  To wit:  astronomers used to think that the Andromeda Galaxy was the biggest galaxy in our area of space, but apparently, ’tis not so.

Using mathematics and physics and other such hooplah (hell, for all we know, they could be making this shit up), the astronomers have discovered that, because the sun is going something like 100,000 mph faster than we thought in its orbit around the center of the Milky Way (Em Dubs), the Galaxy is much larger than they had originally thought.  In fact, they now think that we are pretty much on par with that diamond in the sky, that source of all yearning, the Andromeda Galaxy.

Now we’re floating around in a bigger, better, badder Galaxy, and we didn’t even have to lift a finger (well, the astronomers had to, its true, but do they really count?).  That’s pretty awesome.  That’s not something that just happens to a species everyday, you know.  After living in such a tiny little Galaxy, we now have immense opportunities to do just about anything.  The possibilities are endless!

Maybe Andromeda wasn't worth it, after all. What say you, Perseus?

Clearly, the goal that we as the human race have set out to accomplish, which is of course to live in the largest Galaxy possible (or didn’t you know?), may have been accomplished far more easily than we had expected, but I am convinced that now is not the time to celebrate.  This isn’t me just trying to be a Negative Nitta, or anything like that.  I am a rather jocular fellow, at least as happy and as quick to rejoice as any one of you, but I’m hesitatnt to celebrate because of the deeper implications of that must arise from living in a larger galaxy, a galaxy that may even be larger than Andromeda herself.

I have to say, I kind of liked knowing that our little sun is just spinning around on one of the more insignificant arms of an insignificant galaxy that’s placed in a Universe whose size and shape and distance and dimension is totally beyond our meager comprehension.  Yes, I know…it sounds awfully depressing.  And it’s true, the vast expanding Universe with its uncrossable seas of emptiness can certainly lead you to more than your fair share of “Boy, do I feel like a totally pointless speck of matter” moments, but I used to find comfort in the fact that our tiny little Milky Way was sort of our little glowing light of being.  You know?  It’s like our little galactic hobbit hole (just so everyone knows…I don’t really like the Lord of the Rings.  The only reason I really made an allusion to those awful books was because we have this painting in our townhouse that was made by my roommate’s father, and it’s a nice little painting, I’m not sure what exactly the medium is, but I think it’s some sort of acrylic or oil, definitely a kind of paint in any case, and it’s of this tiny little underground cottage-like structure that’s set underneath the roots of a tree that resembles a redwood.  It’s a wonderfully homey little thing, the kind of house you would expect your crazy high school English teacher to live in or some such, and anyway, my roommate insists that the painting was inspired by hobbit holes, and since her father painted it and she definitely has more of an attachment to me, I’m not about to suggest to her or anyone else that the painting depicts anything other than said dwelling.  As I was writing this out a bit, I happened to glance up, saw the hobbit hole painting, and there you have it, it weaseled its way into this post.  There.  So don’t you go around thinking I dress up in a cape and grow a beard so I can pretend I’m Frogins or whatever the hell that little dwarf thing is named, because I don’t.  I grow my beard because I think my face looks fat without it, plus, it actually does keep me pretty warm and insulated from the pounding Seattle mists), all cozy and warm.  It’s our shelter from the storm, our beacon on a hill, all that.  When you’re lost in this big, mind boggling Universe, it’s nice to have a little piece that you really can call home.

So what happens when you go from living in a tiny little dwelling to an apartment in the middle of a bustling city?  Well, I’m not sure.  My sense of the galactic neighborhood is certainly changing.  I always felt like we could count on Proxima Centauri to watch the dog while we went on vacation.  Wolf 359, despite the whole Klingon massacre thing (or whatever…never really got into Star Trek, either), has always been pretty friendly.  But now, we live in a galaxy that looms much larger.  In a few years, who knows what kind of riffraff might be living just a few light years away?  With all this extra space, well…I don’t know.  Is it so crazy to think that we could have a rogue star or two playing loud rock music all the time, or bringing girl stars home late at night?

But that’s not really all that important.  The sun is the sun, and I’m sure that he (or she, whatever) will be more than able to maturely and ably handle any sort of inter-solar conflict that may occur between himself (herself) and whatever galactic, extra-solar entity comes his (her) way.

What worries me most of all goes back to the fact that we are now the only-known conscious organisms living in the Milky Way, the largest galaxy in this part of space.   Why?  Because it comes with a lot of responsibility, that’s why.  Think about it.  We’re now the Milky Way’s Galactic Ambassadors to any other species with hyperspace or dimension-altering capabilities that could happen along our way.  They will be dignified, honorable, wise, and intelligent creatures whose technological and spiritual capabilities will make us humans look like colonies of amoeba.  There we are, sitting at the Universal Banquet, and the Hopsidian race, in their long flowing gowns, ask our representatives (and let’s just hope that it’s not you know who, for chrissake) what they think about the recent changes in the X4543 Wormhole after that part of superspace suddenly gained the ability to form an energy being who is capable of communicating the secrets of the universe to us carbon-based life forms, and our representatives, with their gaping jaws and bad smelling hair, stammer that we think we should wage utter and total war against any incursions into our dimension, spiritual knowledge be damned, because how can we really trust anything that we can’t shoot?

How embarrassing!  And you know that’s exactly what would happen.  Our poor, simian brains are simply unready for the intensely esoteric nature of inter-Galactic politics.

One time, when I was a kid, I saw a documentary (heh, well, it wasn’t really a documentary at all, it was one of those Discovery Channel specials that are on for five weeks at a time every single night at eight, which of course is prime procrastination time, and it makes you wonder if the Teacher’s Union is in some sort of deal with the Discovery Channel in order to prevent kids from failing fourth grade) about aliens.  It was actually more about these people who got abducted (or so they claim).  The show hired police sketch artists, and at the end of the show, what do you know?  The pictures all look the same.  In any case, the more important thing I remember from the documentary is this scene where the camera is inside someone’s house.  I think there were bay windows, but I’m not sure.  Regardless, there were windows of some kind, facing out to what I assumed to be the front yard, and this is where the camer was pointing.  Suddenly, there was a bright white light, and really intense strange music, and through the intense shining whiteness, you could sort of make out a UFO of some kind.  From the belly of the craft, a ramp descended, and that’s about all I can remember.

In any case, my bedroom window when I was little faced the front lawn, and for weeks after seeing the documentary, I had nightmares about being abducted by little green men.

The point of this all is that if we don’t even know the size of our own Galaxy, what else is there out there that we don’t know?

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And even if they come in white, shining lights, there’s a good chance that we’ll still be afraid.  Well, there’s a good chance that I’ll still be afraid, anyway.  Granted, it’s a good afraid, a sort of healthy fear that could easily evolve into wonder.  But the mysterious seems to be out there, more and more, everyday.  Guess it’s true that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.  Hmm.  And so, little green men.

Parakeet Problems

 

Hail to Thee, Blithe Spirit!

Living in Seattle really gets to you.  Especially when you live in Seattle and car-less, and depend entirely on your own two feet and public transportation to get around.  Most people find it disturbing that it can be literally months before you see the sunshine, but for me, that’s hardly what’s most problematic.  What I find more disturbing is that it can be months before I see a patch of ground that hasn’t been smothered with concrete and asphalt.  Do you know how disturbing that is?  Do you, ye dwellers of cities, ever go to bed with a small pain in your back and realize that it comes from the jarring contact of your heel with a hard and impermeable surface everyday for weeks and weeks and weeks?  Did they have chiropractors before they invented asphalt?

But it’s not just physical discomfort.  Walking around at night feels like walking around a grade school without your pants on.  You feel out of place, stupid, and even though there’s really nothing to worry about, there is something hostile about the way those streetlights seem to loom out of the darkness.  Here comes an alley; here comes a taxi ferrying home a drunk.  Someone walks past you, and you can’t decide if it’s safer to make eye contact or not.  What kind of life is that?

Now, before I sound too much of a loser whiner, let me say that Seattle, and city life by extension, offers some things that cannot be found elsewhere.  Music, art, bookstores that make you feel like a good person, etc.  There are definite benefits.  I can go order an omelette at Cafe Presse and pour myself a glass of water from a slender and luxurious looking wine bottle.  It makes you feel very classy, despite the fact that you’re doing all this while you’re wearing your hiking boots with your suit and tie.  Even better than that, I can wander down to Elliot Bay and take in salty air and rainwater all at once, while that cargo ship lumbers so slowly that you only really realize it’s moving after your rain-soaked self has been sitting on a bench staring at it for a good hour.

There are beautiful things in this word, as they say, and it’s true.  But when I’m here, those moments seem more precious on account of their rarity rather than their true essence.  What does it mean to see the sun behind clouds when it’s really just a little bit of a tranquilizer that helps you make it through the day?  I’m not really sure.

Not trying to sound emo, here, I swear.  It’s not depression, it’s just sort of a maudlin dissatisfaction.  Things could be better.

Which brings me to the parakeet problems.  Have you tried to buy a pet bird?  It’s a task.  Let me tell you about it.

First off, you need the right size cage.  If the cage is too large, or too small, the bird can escape, be stuck, get his or her poor head jammed up in the wires, or have any other manner of awful sounding things happen to the timid little creature’s body.  The guilt factor associated with killing or even harming in the slightest way an organism who’s very existence (not to mention the quality of said existence) is entirely in your hands is immense.  Wake up one morning, stumble out to the bathroom, and lo!  Your bird has died.  It’s tiny little body lies limp and dead because you, you!, you idiot, have killed it.  Way to go.  Look at it’s poor little feathers, all ruffled and covered with death.

But alas.  It was too late.  It’s clear from the icicles that have formed along its beak that the ambient temperature of the room was the culprit.  Your bird died a slow, painful death at the hands of exposure to freezing cold air.  ”Why?  Why didn’t I just turn the temperature up a little bit?  Why am I so cheap?” you ask yourself in your bathrobe.  Soon, your girlfriend will come out, pity you (and most likely herself on account of her dating such a pathetic human being), and for weeks after you will feel like the Universe has bored a hole straight through your heart.

The second problem, and the thing that worries me the most, is that having any sort of nonstick Teflon shittery in your pots and pans can lead to your bird’s untimely demise.  A rather dark sounding and typically ambiguous named chemical with the acronym PTFE (I guess?) gets released when your Teflon pots and pans burn, and those PTFEs get in the bird’s body, and, yes, the bird will die.

This scenario is much more terrifying because of deep emotional connections I have to a tragedy that occurred when I was a child, in which a shoe (or was it a sock?) was left above our family’s fish tank, and happened to fall into the happy little colony of fishes.  What happened can only be described as World War I trench warfare on a miniature scale.  Apparently, the dirty shoe/sock was infested with a strand of bacteria whose fish-killing capabilities were off the charts and my poor fishes were soon dead.

The differences between biological and chemical warfare are, to me, rather academic, and therefore, the connection between my fish dying and the impending demise of any fowl that I choose as a companion seems pretty strong.  Relive my childhood memories of dead fish via the death of a bird?  That doesn’t sound great.  Not at all.

But I’m not that despairing.  Things can work out, given a bit of time, I’m sure.  In any case, there they are.  My parakeet problems.  In saecula saecularum.