Ribbin's Scrivening

I haven't really had the time or brainpower to do much writing lately. Work has been intense, and then I got myself stuck in a nasty cycle of coming home, defragging, being too tired to do anything productive, but feeling like I should do something until it was truly too late to be productive, going to bed too late... rinse, repeat.

Slowly but surely, applications from various PhD programs have been trickling in... "no"s from Davis, Syracuse, Washington, Michigan and Reno's L&E (although apparently I'm #1 on Reno's lit waiting list). Altogether, I'm OK with this. I have a good job and a good social life, and they're both improving. I don't see much reason at the moment to throw all that away to go back to a life of poverty, even if it did mean more academia. Work's moving to SF in May, so I'll likely to move to Oakland about then- closer to Amy, closer to friends, a real city, etc. I'm excited.

Writing has been at a bit of a stand-still lately. Full-time work and the routine that comes with it is murder to my creative mind. By the time I figure work, sleep, commute, human decencies (eating, showering, etc), other things (gym? run?) and a bit of downtime, there just isn't enough time to really get into stuff, and by the time I add other obligations (seeing friends, reading for a journal) there's nothing left. It's tragic, but something I hope to resolve as well when I get up to Oakland. How? Not entirely sure, but I'm hoping that cutting down the time it takes me to get from home to wherever we usually hang out from 20-30 minutes (plus whatever time I need to throw stuff in an overnight bag if I stay at Amy's) down to however long it takes to strap boots to the ends of my legs and wander on down (10 minutes?).

Then there's the car thing. See, my car overheated on the freeway up to Oakland Friday night. I had it towed to a local mechanic's shop, so we'll see Monday if it can be salvaged or if it's dead. This comes at an inconvenient time- I'm still working on paying off Germany, and trying to put some money away to move this spring. If it had come a bit later, I wouldn't have minded (terribly) just junking the car and boogying on without it, but right now it's damned useful to have- work's a 20 minute drive, or an hour+ bus/bike commute, AND public transiting it means I can't get to the gym, and getting from work to Oakland/social life via home goes from 40-50 minutes plus time to swing by home to a mandatory pause at home to swap work/riding clothes and probably take a quick shower, as well as an hour trip from work to home and another 40+ minutes from home to wherever on BART/bike. Brutal.

But it might not be dead, and that would be nice. I'll hopefully find out on Monday.

This is not helping my thoughts about motorcycles. My brother's buying a bike right now. I've been dreaming of one for... well, ever since I picked up that 49cc '82 Towny back in the late '90's. It had bullet holes in the oil tank, needed a lot of work to get it running, and even when I did, it wasn't street legal. I gave up. But the seed was planted. Back in college, I didn't really have enough money to get a bike, and then opted for a car since I really only needed a motor vehicle for long freeway trips, often at night. The car I got was a miserable piece, but it was a convertible and a lot of fun for the month it ran. Then a friend of mine rode through a banshee and all thoughts of motorcycles fled for a while.

They briefly reared their head again in grad school, when it may have actually made a bit of sense to get a motorcycle, but I got a truck instead. Lately, the thought of motorcycles has been popping back up. A friend of mine's been oggling the new Royal Enfields- they're still the classic design, but with updated mechanics. My brother's buying a Honda Nighthawk 250 right now.

But motorcycles are dangerous. They hold the social role of mythological iron horses ridden by the bravest of the brave, the truly reckless and the poor doomed bastards who would die on them. Then I had an epiphany- I was sitting at a light when a motorcycle pulled up. The light turned green, and the bike rolled across and I realized exactly how it worked. I momentarily visualized the pistons pumping the sprocket, pulling the chain to move the wheel, the hand working the clutch, the other on the throttle, the throttle cable linking to the choke, the feet on the gears and brake, everything, and it was just a bunch of metal and gears and oil. Wheels and road, nothing more. Like that, it became a possibility.

Motorcycles are dangerous- no doubt. But they're just machines. The danger of the machine isn't tied to some mysterious force that might kill you out of the blue, but to the quality of the machine your riding, the quality of the rider, the quality of the road surface and the quality of your surroundings- the other drivers around you.

So maybe this is just me coming to terms with the fact that my younger brother has recently made the jump to straddle such a hell machine, or maybe I'm rationalizing my want for a hell machine of my own, or maybe my brain got so wrapped up in the mythology of motorcycles that I had to necessarily get over it, but the fact remains- they've become earthly objects again, and that's the first step. Because let's face it, this is going to happen eventually. It didn't (quite) happen when I was 16 and was wrenching on that Towny (well, not more than for a few hours), but it'll probably happen at some point before I retire. If I don't get into grad school, that might be my next Projet Mejeur. We'll see.

And that's about all that's fit to talk about lately. I'm still living in Hayward, still feeling oddly between major motions in life, but also finding a certain comfort in that. I'm looking forward to having my own place to really live into, make my own and exert that bit of control over my world. Explore a new city- not just as someone who guests there a lot, but as someone who lives there. Really make it my own city. And, increasingly, be an adult. I do enjoy being an adult. Nothing else has freed me up to be a reckless adolescent like being an adult, and I love that.

And now, please excuse me- it's late, and I have to get up early to go to work.

Because it's a god damn tradition now!

Repost from a couple of years ago... I was lazy last year.


Dear All,

Happy V. Day. Have fun.

I love Amy, passionately, madly, completely. That having been said: I've taken the excuse of Valentines Day to make that unnecessarily public and saccharin statement, and would like to repost something I wrote back in 2005, based on a repost from a couple of years earlier.

Enjoy...

Fuck You day
I hate Vallentines day with a passion that is rare among the happily coupled. There are several reasons for this, but the ones that really stick out are the blatant comercialism, the fact that it makes more people feel bad than good, and simply because anyone who needs a state-rattified holliday to remind him that he (or she) loves someone is a sick fuck who doesn't deserve chocolate.

Blatand commercialism is always a bad thing, but doubly so when it actively detracts from my emotional or spiritual life. I have never been a fan of any major event (Mother's Day, Father's Day, DeBeers Day, etc) that is primarily designed to up the revenue of greeting cards stores and chocolate companies. Don't get me wrong- I love chocolate! That having been said, I am sickened and disgusted when chocolate is the only reason I enjoy a "holliday" designed the promote love. Love is a wonderful and glorious thing, and using it as an excuse to buy dead-tree cards and cheap greasy chocolate cheapens it immensely. Instead of feeling warm and fuzzy by doing something nice for someone I love, I feel like a consumeristic whore without an imagination.

Then there's the issue of single people on Vallentines day. Invariably, I have single friends who feel bad. Looking at myself, I realize that I not only have something they desperately want, but that I am mindlessly happy with it, and really couldn't give a rats ass about anyone other than myself and the target of my undying love and salivations. Realizing this, I feel about as lowly as I possibly can, not because I have something they don't, but because I don't care. They feel bad, because they're lonely, I feel bad because I'm not, and ultimately everyone suffers. Vallentines day is the one day of the year that I actively prefer being single.

Ultimately, it's a matter of ideals. I have no problem loving the people I do. I admit this openly. I tell them this. I make it a point to be good to them year round. If anyone were to tell me "you should rub her neck so she knows you love her. Do it for ten minutes," something inside me asks two questions: "Why? Am I not good enough?" and, more importantly, "What? Why only ten minutes?" This second one is the ugly one. Besides the fact that I am already made to feel guilty for not buying Hershey Hearts or whatever for the woman I fancy, I'm told to do it on one specific day. Can you imagine how cold the world would be if we only showed love on Vallentines day? I know a lot of people who wouldn't get laid nearly as often as they do now. Heck, when's the last time you kissed someone without meaning to show one iota of love? Imagine you only did that one day a year. I know I don't, and so I refuse to honor any holliday that sets aside one day out of 365.25 in the year for love, inversely denying the existence thereof for the rest. That's sick folks. Just plain sick.

In the light of these arguments, I would like to propose something a little bit different. Instead of choosing on day to focus on love and the rest of the year to go about out normal, petty, selfish and abrasive business, let's focus on love all year long, giving our time on February 14th very specifically to a little suggestion by Andrew C. Bulhak-- mostly so it can stay out of the rest of our lives.

-Anselm


Fuck You Day
(or: the guerilla repurposing of a Hallmark Event)

by Andrew C. Bulhak

In a few days it will be the 14th of February; the day when we think of all the people who have profoundly touched our lives and say to them those special words: "Fuck You".

Most people know this day as something else; a Hallmark event during which neurochemically induced temporary insanity is celebrated by spending large sums of money on flowers, chocolate and greeting cards, and wallowing in artificially-induced sentiment. The problem with this holiday is that it excludes those who are not out of their skulls on phenylethylamine. Those who are not in relationships, who do not have a Special Someone in whose name to pad the coffers of florists and gift companies, are marginalized and rendered invisible. If you're not in a relationship, or looking to be in one, you're nothing. Even in this age of political correctness and all-inclusive niceness, this is one form of discrimination that is still wholeheartedly embraced by people who abhor most forms of prejudice and bigotry.[1]

Fuck You Day is not so viciously discriminatory. We may not all have lovers, but we all have irritants. Into every life a little shit must fly, and when shit happens, there's usually an asshole responsible. And there are many forms that these assholes come in; they can be family members, co-workers, classmates, ex-lovers or so-called friends; or they can be strangers; bureaucratic Nazis who refuse to cut you the least bit of slack, or obnoxious neighbors with execrable taste in music, or just the glorps who steal your slack.

For lesser irritants, a simple, confident, decisive "fuck you" will suffice. (Or, if they're an ex-lover, a bouquet of dead roses or gift-boxed roadkill may be particularly appropriate.) But there are some for whom something more elaborate is in order. Something that drives home the message with a personal touch and a perversely loving attention to detail. In short, we are talking about pranks.

Before we proceed any further, faithful reader, we must stress that we do not advocate beating people up, torching their homes or any other such act of unimaginative, meatheaded stupidity. A truly righteous act of vengeance is best worked with imagination, originality and no small dose of irony; in a way that comes out of nowhere and causes the target to realize that they have brought their fate unto themselves; that the trap that has snared them has been lain by themselves. In an ideal prank, the victim is subjected to an act of humiliation mirroring (symbolically or actually) the behavior that first brought them to the prankster's attention and singled them out for a Fuck You Day gift; it would be especially apt if, looking back on the incident, the victim could see several ways he or she could have avoided falling into the trap -- each of which would have required them to stop acting like an asshole. It goes without saying that they should have no recourse; nothing to press charges over, and preferably no tangible evidence pointing to the perpetrator.

Some of the best pranks have an element of subtlety and finesse, a Zen quality of minimalism, in which the prankster's role is merely that of an instrument of fate and the will of the universe (which has a somewhat ironic sense of humour). Additionally, a well-thought-out prank doesn't even have to directly affect the subject; a prank can take the form of a message, in the form of some inexplicable, mediagenic spectacle, which, whilst leaving most observers confused, strikes the terror of the Gods into your intended's heart.

So, this Fuck You Day, think of all the people who have vexed and frustrated you, and let them know that you care.

[1] (Unlike that other holiday, Fuck You Day does not discriminate against those who are happily in love or otherwise not totally disillusioned with the meat market. Rather than saying "fuck you", one can say to the object of one's desires "I want to fuck you". Evolutionarily speaking, it's direct and to the point, without all the superfluous mendacity of flowers, romance and adult-contemporary ballads; and in every relationship honesty is always a good thing.)

Oh, all right. How about this:

I live my life like a dancer in a river, not by beating against the current but by floating light on my feet, skimming the bottom with grace and balance so that I may have no less control than the log barreling down it but the readiness to stand and brace myself when the need strikes and rise from the current like a boulder and proclaim "I am here and I demand to be seen and recognized!"

Yesterday, I shared an interesting article about religious arguments on Google+, and mentioned atheism. Specifically, I've always been an open minded atheist, almost agnostic at times, but in the past couple of years I've become increasingly hard-nosed, culminating in a final puzzle piece last spring that nailed the subject shut forme.

In a nutshell, it was the question of what causes religion. Not any specific religion, but religion in general. For years, the single biggest argument for religion in my mind was religion itself. Think about it: there are dozens of major religions in the world, and thousands of small ones. From Suffism to Taoism, from Christianity to Wicca, Mormonism, Judaism, Rastafarianism to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, etc, etc. What drives us to religion? Why do people all over the world come up with religions?

In some ways, the answer is obvious: there's something to be religious about, right? We wouldn't have the drive for religion if we didn't, on some level, know that there was a greater power out there. Unless there's a world-wide delusion, there must be something to be religious about. It's a tough argument to beat, until I read a book that opened the right question.

That book, weirdly enough, was a book about distance running called Born To Run. It's a great book for anyone interested in running, evolution and yes, even religion. Anyhow, Born To Run included a brief aside about the ability to think like another creature. In other words, if we're running across the steppes hunting antelope, we can't predict where that antelope might go or what it might do unless we have the psychological ability to put ourselves in the antelope's place and see what course of action would make sense to the antelope- not from the perspective of the hunter, but from the perspective of the antelope that doesn't know what the hunter knows. That ability is actually a pretty advanced psychological process that is developed in each person as they grow. Lacan calls it the "mirror phase"- that phase of our life where we begin to realize that the person in the mirror is us, and thus that that other people we see are not us. Once we realize that, we realize that there are different individuals who have different thought processes and wants. This is the basis for self-awareness, and more importantly, it's the basis for thinking like the prey, and thus being able to predict what the prey will do.

OK, so, if we accept this hypothesis, then obviously those people who are best at this weird little game are most likely to survive. There is quite literally an evolutionary pressure to be able to, and even for a tendency to think like a different entity. Oddly enough, some of the earliest cultural things we can find are evidence of hunting (spear points, burnt animal bones, etc) and evidence of story telling- masks, images, etc. We have evolved to analyze actions from an outside perspective and internalize those actions into a mental narrative. As yet, this evidence of storytelling involves mundane objects- people and animals, but nothing superhuman- there are cave paintings of people spearing buffalo, but to the best of my knowledge no images of a giant wrestling a bull, or people attacking dragons. Everything is firmly rooted in reality, or at least physical possibility.

Still with me? In order to predict where the antelope goes, we need to think like the antelope. This means there's an evolutionary advantage in putting ourselves into the mind of anther creature. Because we rely on hunting, there is evolutionary pressure to do this.

Now, take away the hunting. We're no longer a hunter/gatherer society, and have become a sedentary/farming society. We no longer need to think about what that other mind out there is doing because, let's face it, there's no need to outsmart corn or a tame goat. But the mind is still built to do that. We still have the urge to think about an outside mind. Only now, there's nothing to focus on. With this tendency to conceptualize an outside mind but nothing to pin it to, the mind creates an entity to pin it to. It's not something we ever see, of course, but it's there. The mind, in looking for an outside entity to cast itself into, wanders until the culture creates a collective identity which doesn't exist and thus can never be killed... it expands, solidifies, you see stories of heroes... the heroes do the impossible... the heroes become gods... and bang! You have religion.

Interesting side note: the rise of religion, as far as I can tell, did not coincide with the rise of hunting, but with the rise of farming- the end of hunting.

So what does this have to do with atheism? Well, it gives a good explanation of a possible evolutionary reason for religion that goes beyond "well, people seem to be aware of something out there..." Rather, there is a reason for that world-wide delusion: there is (was) an evolutionary advantage to this sort of outside person manifesting itself in our minds, and now we're stuck with it. Maybe this exact scenario wasn't the reason, but it opens the possibility, and indeed the likelihood, that something like this happened to our minds. Frankly, this makes much more sense than the idea that there's some vague presence out there that controls the stars and that I can never, ever actually conceive of. Now that I know what's causing this, I can ignore it. The result is atheism, and the nail the coffin of religion.

Hey folks,

I got another blogpost up at http://noncetravel.blogspot.com about our trip up the Münster in Freiburg.

I also promised some thoughts about family, but I don't think that'll be posted on the blog.

This trip to Germany was rather cathartic for me in a number of ways. Germany, to me, has always been where my heritage is but not where I'm from. I'm an American, front to back and center to crust. There has always been something awkward about Germany to me- like a place where I was perpetually trapped in being a child who loved to play in the woods across from my grandmother's house and asked awkward questions about adult conversations. I was there once since I was a kid, ten years ago when I was 19, but even then I didn't have a lot of agency- I pretty much got dragged along with by my family, and when they released me I hightailed it to the UK.

This time was different. This time, I was an adult, and could take Germany on my own terms, and that extended to my family as well. I loved Germany. I always have, but now I love it as an adult, not just from childhood memories of chocolate and playing in the Baggersee (gravel pit lake where local kids and young adults go on hot days). I love the history and the food (and the healthy approach to food), the friendly, no-nonsense people, the sensible approaches to public transit, all of it. For the first time ever, I could see myself living there.

Also, this was the first time I interacted with my family as an adult, and got to meet my cousins as adults or nearly-adults. I got to experience my uncles teasing each other and cracking jokes like my brothers and I do, saw how one of my uncles looks and acts exactly like his father (my grandfather), saw the whole family through my eyes, rather than what I'd heard about them from my parents. I think I have a very different read on them than my parents do.

Mostly, it was great to see my grandmother. I remember her as a strong and vibrant woman, but not someone I ever really knew that much. I'd heard she was getting quite old and increasingly cut off from the world, so I was prepared to sit with her, pat her hand, but essentially focus on remembering her in her prime. Instead, I had a chance to get to know an old woman who has trouble walking, is hard of hearing and hard of sight, but also very wise and very loving. She is isolated from the world and dependent on others, but not nearly as bitter as I had expected or as I would be. She was clearly elated to be surrounded by her family- three children, and 7 of her 9 grandchildren- and overwhelmed and in love with all the faces in the room.

I was surprised how much I loved my family, and how much they loved me. I haven't seen any of them in a decade, and well over half a decade before then, but we- all of us- were enthusiastic to catch up, hear about lives and plans, my cousins in college or going to college or having finished college and living in Switzerland, all that. I never realized it was possible for there to be so much familial love with so little acquaintance.

It was a chance to reconcile my past with my present and, to a degree, my future. From talking to my dad (the best source for accurate, dispassionate information about my mother's family history), I got some new insights on the family tree going back a hundred years or so, and some of the background informing the politics of the older generation that are often pointedly ignored by the younger one. From talking to my uncles, I got a sense of how things are now, and the increasingly dispersed and diverse clan (well, as diverse as a clan of upper middle class Germans can be- this is, after all, a family where my uncle was almost disowned for marrying a woman from Cyprus who was Greek Orthodox to boot!) From talking to my grandmother, I got a sense of how much time has passed and how much she really knows about all of us- her children and grandchildren, my mother, uncles, cousins, brothers and myself. It was humbling.

Hey folks!

New posts from our shenanigans in Germany up on noncetravel.blogspot.com. I'm not getting over here to announce each one, so go check it out. Also a bunch of new pictures!

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! To those who don't- Happy December 25th, I'll see you in Hell. Drinks are on me. I hear they have excellent firewater.

Hey folks!

Still alive, still in Germany, still too busy to read.

Here, it's me! Dithering on about food and ranting about open spaces!

http://noncetravel.blogspot.com/

Travelog! Now with pictures! http://noncetravel.blogspot.com/

Blogpost! München! http://noncetravel.blogspot.com/

Hey folks!

I'm safely in Germany! I'll be here for about 10 days, and have put together a quick-and-dirty blog for the occasion at http://noncetravel.blogspot.com

First post's up. I'll try to mention new ones here as they go up, but don't count on it- check early, check often.

Have fun!

-Anselm