Monday, June 23, 2008

R.I.P. George Carlin

Yes, George Carlin is dead at 71 of sudden heart failure. The man was a counter-cultural icon. His biting social commentary will be sorely missed in the years to come. This is for you George:

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits

(highlight the space above to see the Seven Words You Can't Say on TV)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Major Achievement

I woke up this morning and got out of bed. This, I feel, was a pretty significant achievement. Life seems to disagree, however. After the monumental effort of attaining verticality comes the Herculean task of taking a shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast and driving to work. You would think that that would be enough. That having gone to the trouble of actually going out into the world with clothes on and everything, I'd be spared any further obligation. Not so. Not only does my job actually expect me to produce something of tangible value while I'm here, but I also have committed to helping with a sword demo for my wife's school during my lunch hour today. Will the demands on me never end? Apparently not, because once I get off work I have people coming over to our house for a DnD game. The mental and physical energy required to get through my day is enormous. It would crush a mere mortal like a grape under the eco-unfriendly tires of a Hummer. But like the stoic Atlas, standing strong with the weight of the world on his shoulders, I will persevere. After all, it is in those little moments of triumph over adversity that we find our true character.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Muddled Mental Meanderings

Pardon the alliteration in the title. I do that sometimes. Today seems to be a time of contemplation. I am working on something that I can more or less do on auto-pilot (html formatting), so my overactive brain has decided to wander down some odd paths. I read an article at lunch about the differences between polytheism, pantheism and something called panentheism. Fascinating stuff. For those unfamiliar with the words, polytheism is the belief in many Gods. This is a literal belief that such entities exist as separate beings with disparate personalities and control over different aspects of reality. Not really my thing, to be honest. I tend to see god figures as Man's attempt to personify the forces of nature in a way that our feeble intellects can comprehend. Pantheism is the belief that Deity exists in all things, that the Universe and everything in it are part of a Divine whole. Panentheism is the belief that Deity both permeates all aspects of reality and also extends into an unfathomable "otherness" that exists separate from and independent of our Universe. Interesting, huh? Personally, I don't think that we humans have even come close to grasping the truth behind why we exist and the underlying nature of that existence. I also think that while discovering such truths is a noble pursuit, we'd all be better off if we stopped getting our panties in a wad about who's supposition about such things is more "true" and started worrying about dragging our misbegotten race into a more enlightened and benevolent future. But I seem to be in the minority with that attitude.

In other parts of my mental landscape, I can't help but ponder what it all means. The whole "existence" thing. I'd be fairly disappointed to find out that it was all for nothing. You know, dying off and realizing that we just go "poof" and vanish. I'd rather some afterlife tour guide pop up and tell me that, yes, my life was a trial run for bigger and better things, or that it was a voluntary adventure designed to break the monotony of an eternally blissful (and kind of boring) spiritual paradise. Maybe we are all embryonic little Deities in our own right that have to go through several stages of development before taking over the family business with Universes of our own, thus ensuring new and interesting realities will continue to spawn ad infinitum. It amuses me to speculate about such things. Of course, I'm probably way off base. Even at the level of our fairly droll and predictable reality, nothing is ever so straightforward as it seems. Whatever the answer is, it will probably be something so novel and unexpected that we'll all just kind of gasp in shock at the preposterousness of it and then laugh ourselves silly until our sides hurt and we are all red-faced, teary-eyed and breathless. I mean, the Universe seems to laugh at us on a daily basis. Serves it right if we point and laugh back once we see it for what it really is.

In other news, the fight continues in California over the whole "gay marriage" thing. You have one side arguing for the right to marry who the hell ever they want, regardless of their respective genital configuration and the other side screaming about "unnatural and ungodly perversion" and our "hedonistic society". Well, as far as I can tell, Nature doesn't give a rat's hairy ass about the subject and since when does the State get to dictate who we love and how we express it, anyway? Besides, nobody is saying that they are going to institute gay marriage and outlaw heterosexual ones. Just giving gays the same options is not going to negate what's special and meaningful about my marriage. If Joe Bob and his gay lover, George*, want to sign a paper saying they are legally co-habitating and have an overdressed representative of their respective God figure give them a blessing, how does that do a damn thing to hurt anyone else? Hell, it might even help to bring a few more loving, caring relationships into the world. And we could certainly use more, not less, of those in this screwed up, violence-obsessed, hate-mongering world of ours. What it boils down to is the majority seeking to impose their (mostly religious) viewpoint on everyone else through governmental decree. Sound good to you? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure mob rule is a "bad thing". So are theocracies, if the Middle East is any example. Something to think about.

*Disclaimer: Joe Bob and George are fictional gay men in a fictional gay marriage, which is sure to offend the fictional fundamentalist Christians living three houses down from them. It probably doesn't help that their fictional yard is much better landscaped then everyone else's on the block and since they don't have any fictional children, they have a lot more disposable income than the fictional Christian family with their five fictional kids to support. The author claims no responsibility for a fictional mob beating the crap out of the fictional gay couple in a fit of fictional homophobic violence. Additionally, the management wishes to apologize for the gratuitous overuse of the word "fictional" and assures the reader that the neurons in the author's brain responsible for it have been permanently reassigned to the Basic Motor Functions Department. Ths msasage is brouhgt to yoo by teh leter "D".

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Kingdom Arts & Sciences

We survived our trip to Southern Georgia to attend Kingdom A & S. It was, overall, not a bad trip. There were a few snags here and there. In one case, literally, but I will get to that in a moment. The first and most noticeable thing about it was that it was ungodly hot. Far hotter than early June has any right to be, in fact. We spent most of the day Saturday baking in our armor. Needless to say, nobody really wanted to fight that much. We did some warm up fights in the morning, worked with some of the newer people on a couple things and fought in the one and only tourney, but that was about it. The tourney was... interesting. It was the Queen's Favor Tournament and she had decided that we would fight with two-handed longswords, which few of us are familiar with. Ysabel has been working with ours for a couple months fairly intensely, but I haven't really put much time into it. I ended up fighting Elijah Cameron, a transplanted Warder from the Midrealm, in the first round. Cam is fast. Damn fast. And graceful as all get out. Our fights (best two out of three) were later described as being "like watching two mongooses on meth". Despite the fact that I won the match, it took everything I had. I had nothing left and was dispatched easily in the next round by Thomas O'Toole. Thomas is experienced with a two-handed sword and a hard fight at the best of times. I didn't feel too bad about that loss. I was a bit miffed at having torn my favorite shirt during the fight with Cam. His quillions must have caught in my sleeve (hence the "snag" mentioned earlier) during one of our close exchanges. We were both so focused on the fight that we didn't even notice until one of the marshals called a hold over it. Great fight, though.

On Sunday we met Ysabel's sister, brother-in-law and their new baby boy for lunch on the way back through Atlanta. The kid was cute and lively, but babies aren't really my thing. I tend to scare small children, so I let the women folk have their baby fix while I quietly stuffed myself on a heaping pile of salad. It was still too bloody hot to want anything heavier than that in my stomach.

Once we got home it was back to business as usual. I had to work from home on Monday because the cable guy was coming out to hook us up with digital phone service. We were fed up with AT&T and Comcast had a pretty decent deal on their service bundles. We even got a DVR included for free. That's a Digital Video Recorder for those that are acronymically challenged. Not sure how much we will use it, but, hey, it's free, ya know. I wasn't planning on being home all day, but he got there late and it took a long time to rewire the phone stuff outside. Apparently, it was kind of screwed up. But everything is all better now and hopefully we'll end up paying less for more channels, broadband internet and decent phone service than we were before. Ah, such mundanity is so exciting, isn't it? But never fear, we have plenty of freakish extra-curricular activities coming up in the next little while. Our weekly DnD game, for one. And more sword-swinging antics than you can shake a stick at. Or a sword at. Or something... Well, anyway, stay tuned.

Friday, June 6, 2008

The Early Bird

I came into work early today. Really damned early. Had to get up at 5am, which is approaching the level of blasphemy in my "mornings are evil" philosophy. It was for a good cause, of course. I get to leave early, which means we can get on the road and maybe make it to our hotel at a decent hour tonight. We are going to an SCA event that is hell and gone from us. About 6-7 hours away. And we can't leave until I get home from work. Hence, the monumental effort to get to work early. Granted I'm pretty much a zombie at this point (Brainnnssss!), but all I have to do is survive until 3pm and all will be well. Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself.