Second star to the left

Ok, time to discuss some astronomy, logic and something that is either extremely interesting or depressing depending on your point of view.


We know that there are billions and billions of stars in our visible universe alone. We have found evidence of planets around stars so we can easily assume that there are billions of planets out there. Given that in our solar system we have intelligent life on one of the eight planets (Pluto isn’t a planet, sorry) and since there is nothing to indicate that we are in any way unique in the nearly infinite universe then we should expect that there is life all around us in the universe. Given that the universe is billions of years old then numerous planets should have resulted in intelligent civilizations who have achieved space travel and are exploring the universe. Except that we see no evidence of this at all leading to the question “Where the hell is everybody?”

(This is called Fermi’s Paradox as Enrico Fermi was the one who first brought this point up. It also ties in Drake’s Equation, which tries to determine the likelihood of life in the universe, and the Copernican Principle, which states that we aren’t special in the least. Why I know these things and why Kim has to constantly say “Well he’s kind of like Sheldon” when describing me are probably related.)

So here is what all of this probably means. If civilization’s natural endpoint would be massive space traveling cultures like in Star Trek or Star Wars complete with laser beams and Ewoks and the planet Endor being crushed under the debris of an exploding Death Star then the evidence of that should be easy to find. Since there isn’t though then it would seem that we never reach that point (and by we I mean intelligent civilizations across the entire history of the universe.) Or it’s because those civilizations realize that they don’t want to make anyone know where they are so they don’t broadcast themselves. Or they’ve visited us and just decided to drive on the way you do when you get off a highway exit to get some food and take one look at the McDonald’s parking lot and figure you would rather try again ten miles down the road. Or we are living inside a hologram so there is no other life because they just didn’t bother to program that bit. Though that leads to the question of who they are.

Why is this on my mind? Well, partly because I came across this on Wikipedia so I got sidetracked reading about it but mainly because we spend so much of our time thinking about the narrow piece of space and time that we inhabit. Most of the time we probably only think about the few miles we cover in a given day. We can’t really grasp just how vast and full of stuff is really out there. Sometimes it is useful to be amazed by just what is out there just outside our grasp.

Why the internet is killing our minds

Your question of the day: Cats land on their feet. Toast lands butter side down. What happens if you strap a piece of toast on a cat’s back and drop it?

I just finished reading this book called “The Shallows” which discusses how the use of the Internet is rewiring our brains and is making us, for a lack of a better term, dumber. Or maybe not dumber in the largest sense of the world but much less likely to perform deep thinking and true introspection on topics. Essentially, the internet allows us to gain a great deal of data rapidly but prevents us from obtaining actual knowledge.

The main idea behind it is that the Net is designed for constant distraction. You always have interruptions from emails or instant messages. We have trained ourselves to quickly gleam the most important information from a page in seconds without even glancing at any other items on the page. Search engines provide us with answers quickly and keep us from looking around to find a broader picture. We have gained convenience but have lost depth.

For me this is rather fascinating given that my life has been spent half in a pre-internet age and half in a data immersed world and I have to say that on many levels I agree with this argument. I just checked and the number of books I read on a yearly basis steadily fell from 1998 on while I would reckon that the amount of time I spent online rose. While obviously that online time was spent reading I can’t say that I gained anything from it. It isn’t as though I have ever stumbled across a website that influenced my way of thinking as much as a book has. The web just doesn’t have that depth to it.

(It is interesting though that I will end up reading more books this year than I have in a decade and that might entirely be due to my owning a Kindle. For some reason (possibly because I have grown so accustomed to looking at a screen) I read more now that I have one. Much of the arguments about how the web interrupts our thought process with hyperlinks and video don’t really apply with the Kindle though they would with an iPad. Which is why I am sticking with my Kindle.)

I would agree that the internet has shortened our attention span. It is designed to provide information quickly, which is the goal of all computer systems. The web was not designed to answer the philosophical questions of our time. It was designed for the rapid flow of information and / or porn. But what strikes me more is how the internet has not only made our thinking shallower but it has also made us shallow on a more emotional level.

We must admit to ourselves that when we are online we are not dealing with people but with the digital representations of people and as such our interactions in that medium do not match what we hope for in society. Look at the comments section of any site and you will see arguments, name calling and the worst use of grammar that you could ever imagine yet this is all considered acceptable behavior because no one on the other end is “real”. Though there are people I have followed online for over a decade they are no more real to me than Kermit the Frog. There entire existence has been words on a screen. It creates a massive disconnect.

What happens though is this really deadens ourselves to the outside world. We lose empathy and connection. After spending a day watching funny videos of people falling down watching someone fall in the street no longer results in a response of “Oh my God, is that person hurt?” You now reach for your camera phone. Political arguments typically end with calling someone a Nazi. And in the one that I am most guilty: any news story, any confession, any expression of true human emotion is met with a snarky, cynical comment. Even when we are with real people we still treat them as a bunch of ones and zeroes.

The internet is here to stay. No one is arguing that we should turn back the clock. We just have to be aware that the tools we use impact us in more ways than we could ever imagine.

A nation of ignorance

(Apologies for the picture quality. This is what you get when all you have on hand is a four year old camera phone.)

I’ve been wondering about whether or not the average American has become dumber recently. This sign really seemed to symbolize what I am seeing much too often. It was on the elevator at the Shop Rite near my apartment and no, I don’t know why a grocery store requires an elevator. I was stunned when I saw it because the terminology used could only imply one of two things: 1) the author did not know the phrase “Out of Order” or 2) the author realized that most of the people in the store would not understand what “Out of Order” meant and had to describe it instead.

Is it me or this one of the most depressing things that you have ever seen? I mean, we are not talking about high level reasoning here. We are not looking for the use of integral calculus or a well thought out critique on the role of Ophelia in Hamlet. Just a three word sign indicating that one elevator is not operating properly. Yet even something that simple, something so basic that I cannot recall a time where I would not understand the phrase, seems completely beyond the comprehension of the typical Delaware resident.

I am seeing this more and more often. It is almost as though the logic in the movie Idiocracy is coming true. Evolution is now working in reverse. Instead of a continual striving towards excellence we are in a race towards the bottom. Intelligence is no longer a desired trait. It has become an evolutionary disadvantage.

It really does bother me how society really does have a negative view towards intelligence and reason. I still remember the first time I saw the “My kid beats up your honor student” bumper sticker. Given that I was an honor student who had to work to avoid his share of beatings I really can’t stand things like this. Striving to be smart, to do well in school and being excellent in your endeavors is something that should be applauded. If I am the best in my school on the football field I am a hero. If I am the best in the classroom I am the jerk who ruined the curve. In school people really did yell at me for doing my best on a test and making them look bad. Imagine if I told the quarterback to suck more so I would look better in comparison. What do you think the reaction would be then?

Some people may say that I am being silly and using high school as an analogy for the rest of my life but I really feel that this hatred of knowledge is perpetrating all aspects of society. How many people are afraid of vaccinations because they believe that it is all some sort of scientific plot? They’d rather risk their lives or the lives of their loved ones than trust knowledge and reason. How many people cling to beliefs that are really no more than superstitions? Walk down the store aisles, watch the infomercials and see how the market plays on people’s ignorance and fear. News coverage on all fronts has become little more than fear mongering. It really makes me worry about the state of our society. I don’t want to be part of the last generation of people who can truly consider themselves to be intelligent.

Now excuse me, I have to go watch my tape of Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Music on a personal level

I read Nick Hornby’s latest novel “Juliet, Naked” this weekend and like most of Nick’s work it is an absolute masterpiece. To be honest if there is any writer that I would like to be like it would be Nick Hornby as his books center around music, relationships and literature and how they all interact. His latest is no exception as one of its central themes is that of being a music fan and the connection that one can create to music.

Of all the art forms, music may be the one that creates the most intensely personal reaction between the artist and the consumer. I think that it is because at its core music is mainly consumed on a very personal level. When you put on your headphones music becomes an entirely solo experience. Only you are hearing that song at precisely that moment and no one around you can even tell what you are listening to. The act of listening alone changes the facets of a song, which is why listening to a band live is so much different than listening to an album. It is not just the fact that the slick production is missing; listening with others changes the way a song sounds.

Compare this to other media. Movies are meant to be viewed with other people, which is why a comedy is never quite as funny at home as in the theater. Laughter is contagious or so say the people who put laugh tracks on television shows. Television is also more of a group experience and most other performance arts require a crowd. But music is pretty unique in that it can really be an intimate experience with mass produced content.

(Yes, I know I should put books in the same category as music here especially given there is no concert analogue for literature. No one is going, “Dude, did you listen to that Tom Wolfe book reading bootleg I sent you?” A lot of these arguments would fit for books as well. Just go with me for a moment. I mean, what is a good song other than a poem with a good beat.)

What the intimacy of music allows for is a connection between the fan and the artist that no other media can match. A song can speak to you, can be used to inspire you, can become the soundtrack for your life. It can be an enigma in which you spend hours trying to decipher every last meaning. Certain artists become parallels for your own life with their records seeming to tie to every moment you encounter. For me I can say things like “The only thing that kept me going in 1998 were Kelly Willis CDs” or “Every time I listen to Josh Rouse something good happens” and mean every word of it. There is a connection there that can’t be denied and that I have never felt from a movie or a TV show.

The strange thing though is that most, if not all, of that connection comes from the fans themselves. When Kelly Willis recorded “What I Deserve” she did not do so in order to provide me personally with music that made my life worthwhile. She created great songs, songs that she felt had meaning and heart, and hoped that someone out there would listen to them. But the meaning and importance that I put into them are all my own. Same as people do with Bon Jovi songs or Bruce Springsteen tracks or god forbid the latest Creed album. Music creates fans who feel an incredibly personal connection to the music even though it may be one the musician never intended.

Nick Hornby understands that nature of being a fan of music. Yes, sometimes it is very geeky to spend all of your life centered around little discs or computer files that you use to define who you are as a person. But to be honest, I’ll still listen to Kelly after a hard day at the office. At times, music is all you need.

A view of the future

Are we progressing as a society? Are we progressing as fast as we once were?

I want to touch upon those questions tonight and they are in part driven by the comment on the last post. Think about how smart the average person is and realize that half of the people out there are dumber than him. Or to put it another way: always remember when you are annoyed at people at the grocery store or the DMV that their vote counts just as much as yours.

I will start with my points on progress though. I find it amazing that in my grandparents’ lifetime they were able to witness the birth of powered flight with the Wright Brothers to man landing on the moon. That was a single lifetime, a little over sixty years. So what about in my lifetime, which began just shortly after the last moon landing? Uh, not much. We’ve sent out a few probes. We could argue that air travel is now more efficient though my time spent at the Philly airport would argue against that. We simply have not made that quantum leap in air travel. Nor have we in automobiles, manufacturing, food production and a host of other fields. On some levels the world has changed little in forty years a statement that is rather unusual.

However, where the world has changed massively in forty years is in high tech and computers and everything built upon the transistor (thank you Prof. Bardeen.) What has changed is the internet and the speed of communication and the pure availability of information. I grew up with libraries and card catalogs and encyclopedias. Those are all fossils now. Just think how much mobile phones have changed the world. Remember trying to meet people in a public place in the days before they existed? Or using Discman and Walkmen to listen to music? Those are the areas that we have progressed.

So from a technology standpoint we are making progress in making things smaller but we still haven’t made what I would consider to be a quantum leap. We may have magnificent toys but society as a whole (and certainly the infrastructure supporting it) has remained the same. And depending on how you view the world’s oil and water reserves we may be closer to seeing a collapse of our infrastructure than the reinvention of it. But even the positive side with the growth of high tech has one huge disadvantage: its best qualities require a certain level of intelligence.

You can discuss cultural divides in a number of ways. It could be racial or cultural or financial or a host of other possibilities. In my mind the next great divide is going to be a combination of technology and intelligence. We are getting to the point where our tech is growing more expensive and more difficult to use and understand. Think about the challenge of hooking up a modern entertainment system versus an old television and stereo. It is a better product but even with an electrical engineering degree I find myself behind my TV with a flashlight trying to figure out where the wires go. Think about the fact that without the internet for preboarding going to the airport is a major hassle. Just think about the challenge a kid would have in school without access to Wikipedia when his classmates do. That is the divide and when you think about the level of education of that average person you begin to understand just how huge a divide it could be.

I still would like to think that I have a positive view on society. I believe in the better angels of our nature. But I worry greatly when people assume that science will save us all. Because while science can put a man on the moon it hasn’t sent one there in forty years. And even if it does save us it will only work if we can also understand it.

Starting the season

Back when I was a kid late May and the end of the school year was a very odd time of year for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t look forward to summer vacation. At times there was nothing more than I ever wanted than to finally get out of the classroom and just get away from the boredom and busy work. But in a way the classroom was my playing field and now I was going to have three months on my own with no one keeping score and everyone being a stranger until September when we all saw each other again.

I never realized how strange that was until I got older. I had classmates during the year and in the summer they all disappeared. I’m sure most people had best friends and kids in the neighborhood that they hung around with but I never really did. I had my family and that was more than enough people to have around at any one time. And in a way even as a kid I liked being on my own. I could disappear in to a summer filled with books and game shows and a Commodore 64. I never saw any real need to vary from that world.

I guess that was the Catch-22 with school growing up. I don’t know if I can ever say that I really enjoyed it. I certainly was not one of those people for whom high school was the highlight of my existence. In fact, there are probably a few of my teenage years that I have blocked out of my memory banks and for good reason. But it was in a classroom that I really shined. That I was able to show just how talented I was and in my own awkward, often confusing way try to express who I am to the few people who cared.

As much as I struggle with confidence now I am miles beyond what I was then. I’m still not sure why I struggle so much. I really have achieved everything that I have ever wished for and a few things that I haven’t. Yet at the end of the day I still wonder if I am just a bit of a scam artist using a few math tricks to distract people into thinking that I am intelligent. In my heart though I can say that my life is exactly where I want it to be right now and I don’t know if that has ever been the case before.

So summer is a weird season for me. I look forward to the warmth and the light and lazy days that go on forever. I love being able to be outside with a book and a cool breeze and the knowledge that there is nothing to bother me. But I miss it when people go away for a time. I miss the crowd of friends. I miss the structure. Even though I spend all of my time in an office there is still a change that takes place in summer and you can feel it.

I just hope that one day I will be able to recapture those summer days of youth when the season lasted forever. As you grow older time speeds up. When I was ten summer lasted for fifteen years. Now it will be over before I even notice. And right now I just want to take a moment to stop, look around, and realize just how amazing everything is.

My address to the graduates

Good afternoon, graduates, faculty and family members forced to attend what is essentially the reading of a phone book for the next two hours.

By law I am required to start my commencement address with a pithy anecdote that reminds all of you that while you are about to receive a piece of paper that states that you are, in fact, intelligent in reality you have yet to learn anything about life. Here it goes.

A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender looks at him and goes, “Hey, do you know we have a drink named after you?” To which the grasshopper replies, “You have a drink named Steve?”

Note that this anecdote discounts such important facts as the vocal capabilities of grasshoppers, the naming convention of long legged insects and a bartender deeming it worthwhile to talk to a patron that has no visible ID or method of paying. Let this be your first post-collegiate lesson. Facts matter much less than the story.

I am also required to inform you of the limitless possibilities that await you. That your entire future is constrained only by your own desires. How the future of our very way of life and of human civilization as we know it will be crafted by your hard work, dedication and insight.

That is, of course, a bunch of crap.

You are all graduating into the worst economy in known existence. Most of you are destined to spending the foreseeable future living on your parent’s couch and updating your Facebook status on the pathetic state of your job search along with funny descriptions of what your cat is currently doing. Those of you who are lucky enough to be starting a new job will find that you will immediately placed in a box, slightly smaller than a prison cell, where the flickering overhead fluorescent lighting and ceaseless meaningless tasks will slowly drain you of your will to live until all you look forward to at the end of the day is going home and watching Two and a Half Men and as we all know that is a fate worse than death. And no matter how hard you try, you will never be more successful than that douchebag three rows in front of you whose dad just happens to own a dozen Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises.

I would like to tell you how bright your future is but let’s face it; nothing will ever top your time in college. The people you will meet in your new life will never be as interesting or intelligent as your classmates. No longer will you be able to schedule your life so that you will never be required to be anywhere before noon. The ownership of a beer bong will quickly go from impressive to disconcerting. Staying up all night will go from being status quo to an occurrence that results in you feeling like crap for week. You are all doomed to growing gray, pudgy and old.

So instead of my wasting my breath talking about a life you will never achieve I wish to provide the following pieces of wisdom that will allow you to make the time between now and the inevitable zombie apocalypse bearable.

Pilfer as many office supplies as is humanly possible. The sooner you realize that a laptop case is the exact same size as a pack of copy paper the better. It’s not like you are ever going to want to bring your laptop home, anyway.

Outsource as many activities as you can. Have someone else do your laundry, grocery shopping, and taxes so that you can focus on the more important things in life. If necessary, websites are available that will allow your dating life to be addressed without you even needing to lift a finger.

Whenever you move to a new town the first thing you need to do is become friends with a bartender. Some people would recommend getting a local doctor first but think about how often you are sick versus how often you are drunk. Easy decision to make.

When in doubt, go to graduate school. Nothing beats putting life on pause for a few years.

If you haven’t sold your textbooks you might as well do it now. Otherwise you will simply move them from place to place for the next twenty years, never opening them and slowly realizing that if you did you wouldn’t have a clue about what they say.

Never, under any circumstances, move to Delaware. Find another state. Denial is a good place to start.

Remember, you will need to either remove the head or destroy the brain. I cannot emphasize that enough.

In closing I would like us all to remember the grasshopper. Even though a tiny insect he was able to grasp that most vital piece of information in the world. That I really need a drink.

We need less zeros and more ones

Here is your sign that Wikipedia has gone beyond being the storehouse for all of human knowledge and has now become the resting place for things you didn’t even know existed. Bacon Mania has its own, rather detailed, entry. Not bacon mind you, which certainly deserves a well documented entry, but people’s obsession with bacon. I believe that this marks the inclusion of everything that is ever needed to the internet. I might as well just stop posting. I won’t, of course, but even I’ll admit that it might no longer be necessary from a global enlightenment standpoint.

That is one of the interesting things about the world right now; we really do have all the knowledge on any subject that you would ever need to have right at your fingertips. If I needed song lyrics from a one hit wonder in 1991 I could find them online. If I needed a listing of the match results from an episode of Raw in 1994 I could find them (as well as a full description of the show along with ratings of every single match). Pretty much every piece of information that I could possibly desire is there for me and everyone else in the world.

The thing is I don’t know if that has made us better as people. For one thing, the signal to noise ratio is absolutely horrible. Part of that is the fact that there is so much trivia out there that even I can’t find what is important. Not that I am dissing trivia, as we all know it is pretty much my favorite thing in the world, but it is tough to analyze what is important in life when you know you could read a Thundercats fan page instead. There is just so much information out there that you can’t find what is important. And even then there are so many conflicting opinions that there is no way to judge what is right. That is the confounding thing about Wiki. The entry is simply what the last person who edited it decided it should be. No guarantees on right or wrong. We just all accept what someone else writes as the truth.

That has to sound strange coming from a blogger. All I’ve done for years is sit down and write whatever is on my mind night after night. I always wonder what people from around the world think when they come to this page. To be honest, I can never figure out how they find it in the first place. But even I would consider this blog to be more noise than signal on the grand scheme of things. Sure, I hope that it is funny and informative and at least a great source of free entertainment but I am not providing the secret to enlightenment here. I’m more interested in discussing who Lindsay Lohan is dating at the moment.

And at the end of the day that is the power and the horror of the internet. We create this tool that can change all of civilization and all we do with it is discuss celebrities and post pictures of celebrities taken from angles that are not humanly possible. (Did you see the Jessica Simpson pictures? Was the photographer lying on the ground as Jessica walked over him?) And at the end of the day that is what most of us want to use the internet for. We are not looking to become more advanced or more attuned, we just want to be entertained. Maybe it is the healthy reaction to being faced with all the information that one can ever fathom. There is just so much data, so many nuggets of information that would make your head spin and question your entire world view, that instead of confront it you turn away and focus on gossip. Because we want simple and fluff.

I’m not saying that we should all use the internet to become philosophers. I certainly am not giving up my celebrity gossip sites. I just think that maybe we are all missing something deeper here. Even to the point that it might be better for all of us to unplug and reset for a little bit. Step out of the data stream and refocus.

When the weather influences your mood...

Coming back to the office from a vacation is never an easy thing. You are faced with coming to grips with the fact that every day of your life is spent doing something that you would rather not do. I am sure that there are people out there who truly love their job; who every day wake up just wanting to race out of the house and see what challenges await. I am not one of those people. I like my job, I’m surprisingly good at it but it is not my entire being.

What makes going to work worse on days like today is that I left a place that was sunny and warm to come home to a day that was cold and dreary. I swear the entire day was just this entire gray blah that seemed to suck your soul right out of you. Even the fact that it was snowing at times did not improve the situation. Typically snow brightens my mood. It covers everything with this wonderful clean, white sheen. Except that today everything melted on contact so instead of making the world pure the snow instead just made everything damp.

So I am in one of those dark, self-doubting moods at the moment. The type where everything in your life is viewed from the negative perspective instead of the positive. I know there are people who would consider this to be no different than my usual personae. I mean, the cynical bastard is always viewing things from a darker perspective than the rest, right? Except for me that is not really true. I tend to view the world with awe and wonder and the cynicism is driven from the fact that the rest of the world just doesn’t seem to possess the same set of eyes that I do. I don’t consider myself to be a part of a flawed world; I see myself as a resident of a glorious place whose habitants consistently fail to do it justice.

I guess what the weather and the fact that I have to work again is driving me to is address a question that was posed to me recently as to why I tend to suffer from a lack of self-confidence. On the surface it really does seem silly that I would so often doubt my own worth. I’ve been extremely successful in life and have already accomplished more than I ever dreamed of. I’ve overcome the obstacles that have been placed in my way. Yet the doubt still creeps in and changes me from the confident, poised version of myself to the insecure, baffling version of myself.

I really wish I knew where that insecurity came from. I always tend to blame the fact that when I was younger I was just a shy, geeky kid who got picked on just a little more than was probably healthy. But I have a hard time believing that what happened decades ago is influencing who I am today. Or at least if it was I should have climbed above it like I did with everything else. In reality I just think it is my analytical mind coming back to haunt me. When faced with a difficult situation I look for the worst case scenario and focus on it. To the point that it will actually arise in a wonderful self-defeating prophecy that makes you wonder just how evolution ever decided that the way my brain is wired is considered to be a benefit. So I lack confidence because I fear that I will fail and I fear that I will fail because I am focused on what will happen if I fail and that focus causes me to fail.

I hate the guy I become when I am insecure. It isn’t who I am at all. The real me is fun and smart and relaxed. I’m trying to move beyond the other guy. I’m better on some days than on others. But I am trying. And with that, who knows, maybe tomorrow will be a brighter day.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I’ve been listening to this song for two years now. It still tugs at my heart every time I hear it. I’m posting it again in honor of the one year anniversary of the greatest Oscar win ever. Fair play to those who dare to dream.

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova MTV Music

Who we are

I discovered something very interesting about my personality this morning. Maybe discovered isn’t the right word. I’ve known about it for as long as I remember but it had never dawned on me how odd it might be or what it might possibly mean. I’ll try to explain.

I was up at 6:30 this morning due to a phone interview I had scheduled at seven in the morning. Now obviously I wasn’t the one who scheduled this call. Even when I was working I couldn’t bring myself to be awake by seven and doing so while unemployed seems a cruel and unusual punishment. But, that was what was set up and I can’t really go “I’m kind of planning on getting wasted on Wednesday night. Could we reschedule for a time when I’m slightly more sober.” Anyway, while lying in bed I had to motivate myself to get up and told myself, “Look, we really need to get going.”

Stare at that statement for a little while. I refer to myself in the plural. It really hit me that when I talk to myself I always refer to myself in the plural. “We need to get our shit together”, “We need to think up a gameplan”, “It’s time for us to get some sleep”. That is how my internal monologue works. The voice in my head is referring to itself and some other component that needs to work in harmony.

I’ve spent much of the day trying to figure out precisely what that means. The best I can think of is that I truly feel as though my physical self and my mental/spiritual self are two completely separate systems. There is the part of me that controls my thinking and feeling and could be considered my soul and then there is my body, which is where my soul just happens to find itself at the moment. Now that isn’t too unique of a thought but it is the fact that I consider them to be so separate. Much of the time I don’t think of myself as a me, more of an us.

(Note: This doesn’t mean I have multiple personalities or anything. True, there are EC, Chris and Christopher but those are basically variations on who I am. All that differs are which parts of my personality have the volume turned up at any point in time. EC is the funny, cynical one, Christopher is my serious, goal focused work persona and Chris is the default me, a smart, caring guy who never quite seems to understand what is going on around him. But those are all me.)

I’m not sure if this is unusual or not. I’ve never found out how other people talk to themselves. It doesn’t bother me, really. In a way it helps me not feel so alone in the world. Like there are always various parts of me working together. It just might explain why I sometime get lost in my own thoughts and seem to be out of it. That side of me just takes over and I can’t seem to connect with myself for a little while. That isn’t a good thing, it’s what I am typically referring to when I discuss spending time in the dark corners of my soul, but I at least understand what is going on.

Any thoughts out there in cyberspace? How do you talk to yourself? Is this more universal than I think or should I look at upping my medication? I’d be really interested to hear some thoughts.

Have a fun holiday everyone. Please stay healthy out there. (I also realized that in my entire life I have never lit a firecracker. I think I might have held a sparkler once. I never quite understood the point. You light something and it goes boom. Ok, so what?)

What dreams may come

(I’ve been struggling for a topic for the past hour. I have no idea if what I write next is going to work but here it goes.)

A few years ago I read this theory that we create the universe we perceive. To be honest, I think it is the idea behind that whole “The Secret” phenomenon that takes up way too much space in bookstores. The thought is that what we experience and encounter, everything that happens to us, is all a result of our own consciousness. To that effect, if you truly set your mind to something happening it will happen. The universe will bend to your volition.

This is obviously the biggest load of crap ever created. It certainly sounds nice and sells and awful lot of videos and DVDs because it creates this view of God as Santa Claus. “Just ask the universe and it will be given to you, no questions asked.” That is comforting if all you want is stuff and don’t want to put in any effort in return. To be honest, that is not what I dislike about the theory. Sure, that is disgusting but it isn’t bothersome. The following idea is.

Let’s assume that this theory is correct and that my life is truly a collection of all of my conscious and subconscious desires. All of my experiences are molded by my mind. If that is the case why has my life been so unsatistfying? I know that sounds horrible but every single person on the planet can say that about their own lives. Am I to believe that all of my sadness and pain, all of the embarrassment and anger, every negative situation that I have ever encountered has all been of my own doing? That I truly wanted to be miserable? That I wanted to be dumped in college and then spend six months moping about? That I wanted to spend a New Year’s Eve looking around an empty apartment wondering if anyone in the world felt as alone as I did? You’re telling me that I desired that to happen?

It’s why I hate it when people create a world view in which wishing makes it so. It doesn’t. Whether it is fair or not really doesn’t matter. Until I am handed life’s official rule book I’m not sure I even understand what the concept of fair is. Sometimes you can do everything you can and still fail. Not everything will fall your way. That doesn’t mean you failed to create the universe you desire. It just means that you are a flawed human being living in an imperfect world being guided by an ineffable plan. Get used to disappointment.

I still believe in the power of having a positive mental attitude. I think that if you imagine happiness and believe that it is all around you then you will suddenly find yourself in a better place. That isn’t because the fabric of time and space are altered. It’s just that you are opening yourself up to the experience. We all tend to live closed lives because the unknown is scary. We can get hurt. But if you aren’t open you can’t truly call yourself alive. I’ve realized this a lot recently. I often wonder if I’ve wasted a lot of my life. From an objective standpoint I haven’t. My resume shows off all of my accomplishments and I’m damn proud of them. I just don’t know if they mean anything. I just wish I had been more open to life earlier.

My life is still in front of me. My dreams are going to come true. Not because of some hokey idea that by thinking about it they will come true. There will be some dark times in the mix but as long as I relish being alive, take pleasure in the sheer fact that I have somehow found myself and am proud of who I am, then I don’t think there is any other possibility. How could your dreams not come true?

Best of 120 Minutes: Kicking it old school (well, oldish school) with Letters to Cleo tonight.



The random CD for the week:
1) Whatever: The 90s Pop and Culture Box (7 discs, 130 songs, all from the 90s. Best. Collection. Ever)

What is in your heart...

“A risk is worth a thousand dreams.” Jim McCormick

I’m a born dreamer. There is no way around it. Maybe you could even call me a Walter Mitty type figure. I imagine worlds of what might be and spend a surprising amount of time there. Some of them are pure fantasies (I doubt that I will be playing lead guitar in a rock band any time soon) and some, such as that of a writing career, at least have some basis in reality. But they all have one thing in common; they all stay on the dream side of the ledger and are never acted upon.

Why is that? Why can you create a fantasy world in your head and not attempt to find it in reality? It is something I have struggled with for a very long time. I can get lost in my dreams. Sometimes I prefer the imagined world, one where I can control every aspect, to the one I spend my existence in. I’ve had relationships fall apart because I had mistaken the person in my fantasy with the one who was truly before me. I’m not proud of it, being creative and fanciful is all fine and good but at the end it is how you convert those dreams into reality that matters. And more often than not I am content to lead a humdrum existence and a rich fantasy life as opposed to the other way around.

It all comes down to daring and courage, I think. The reason I enjoy my dreams is that I am in charge of them. No one can order me around; there are no outside forces that are beyond my control. It is the one moment in life where I know what will happen next. But when you try to act upon your dreams there is always that risk of failure. It is true that you could live happily ever after but you can also fail and I hate to fail. I don’t want to admit that I am not perfect. I know that I am not (I might be arrogant but I’m not stupid) but I don’t want to be reminded of the fact. Or maybe it is just because of the fact that I might not be able to achieve what I want to have. There is a part of me that prefers not trying to knowing that I was unable to accomplish what was in my heart.

I’m working like mad right now to try to change that aspect of my personality. I’m tired of not trying. My life has been one safe path after another and I’m not sure if I’m happy with where that has gotten me. Sure, I’ve been successful but I doubt that I have maximized my enjoyment of life. It’s why I’m sitting here wondering where I should go next in my life. I’m not just talking about my job, though that is certainly a part of it. Pretty much every part of my life is being reevaluated. I just want to take a chance. For once, for one brief moment, I really want to see if I can turn my dreams into reality.

It’s always a danger when you put one foot in front of the other. The earth should rise up to meet you and all will be well. Sometimes you might fall. But every once in a while when you fall you fly. I guess I shall find out soon enough.

The next five random CDs
1) Cowboy Junkies “Onesoulnow”
2) David Ford “Songs For The Road”
3) Jack Johnson “Sleep Through the Static”
4) Wilco “A Ghost is Born”
5) Various Artists “Born to Choose”

Even Infinity Can Get Crowded Sometimes

(Sorry if I may have posted it before. I can't really write anything new at the moment. Here is an old short piece about the universe that I have written.)

There are an abundance of theories on the true nature of the universe. Most have been invented by theoretical physicists who have nothing else to do other than sit in a windowless office in some neglected college physics building wondering if they made the right career choice. Most of these theories are utter nonsense, filled with meaningless Greek letters and bound to exist only in some scientific journal in a dusty library corner. There is one theory however, little known outside the highest scientific and philosophical circles, which would change all perceptions of space and time, history and myth, truth and fiction.
The theory's evolution went something like this. It had been widely accepted for hundreds of years that mankind lived in this big place called the universe and everything in this universe was made up of little pieces of something called matter. This idea was fine by itself and most people just accepted it as the obvious and went on to live productive lives. Scientists can't leave a good idea alone, however, especially one scientist who had spent a little too much time staring at magnet. "If a magnet has a north pole and a south pole, polar opposites if you will, then matter should have its own opposite, antimatter." This theory was met by much laughter and a few federal grants, until one day someone went into a lab and created antimatter.
There was much rejoicing in physics buildings that day. Not only had they showed that their theories can actually be proven true but they had single handedly created the basis for Star Trek.
The traditional practice of jumping on the scientific bandwagon continued. Another physicist, looking back at the magnet hypothesis, thought, "If we have a universe made of matter and antimatter exists then there must be a parallel universe exactly like ours except that it is made of antimatter." Joy flooded down the corridors of physics departments that day as a theory that could not be proven was accepted into law and you knew that this was going to cause numerous papers to be written.
There was one little known tenant to this theory. Quantum theory does not allow only two of something. An event can be impossible, be unique, or be infinite so if there are two universes there must be a third and a fourth and so on to infinity. This brought smiles to the faces of the theoretical physicists, knowing that in an infinite variety of universes there must be at least one where they rule the world, or are married to supermodels, or preferably both. In fact, much of the time spent in the office was now specifically dedicated to imagining these parallel universes as opposed to finding a way to reach them.
One night, seemingly unconnected to all these previous events, two overworked physics grad students were arguing after a long Friday night in lab. The argument was not over the experiment, or over deep scientific theory, or even on why they weren't out at a bar like everyone else on campus but whether or not the color of a professor's hideous sweater was orange or red. The argument grew so heated that they broke into the professor's office to take the sweater and perform spectography experiments on it. Whatever the wavelength of the light it refracted, that would be the color of the sweater.
After setting up the experiment one of the students looked at the readout and declared the sweater to be orange. The other in disbelief took a look at the results and said that it must be red. "You must have knocked the machine,” said Ray, for that was his name. "Either that or you don't know how to read," replied Ron. They finally settled on reading the results together. Once again the digital meter confirmed what they believed and countered the other’s hard fought beliefs.
They both stepped back to understand the results. They read the same meter but it read differently to each of them. It dawned on them that what they perceived the color of the sweater was in fact the wavelength of the light to each of their eyes. Their perceptions were not wrong. This could only mean one thing; that they found themselves at the intersection of two parallel universes. The sweater truly was at two places at once.
The implications are staggering. All this mucking about trying to find wormholes in the space-time continuum is completely unnecessary. Universes are not parallel but constantly intersecting. It's as if there isn't enough room for all possible universes. Like God couldn't stack all the possible universes one atop another but rather shoved them together and had them intermingle at certain points. Even infinity can get crowded sometimes.
What is more confusing is that what we consider a common past is only true because we all believe it to be true. The present may be common, for the most part, for that's where an intersection point is, but the past may be totally different. Rome may never have ruled the world; the Coliseum could just be the ruined shell of a racetrack. What's true in my universe is not true in yours, which explains errors in history books and everyone's misconceptions of the world.
Does this matter? Can we all accept the fact that we are all caught at a common intersection of billions of universes, all slightly different? Is life with blinders on possible, have we been doing it for centuries? Maybe the stories of dragons and faeries are true, not in my universe perhaps but in that of the storyteller. All I know is that the stories that follow are true, at least to those who walked through the mists of time, stepping from one world to the next in search for truth, love, knowledge, redemption, life.

Wisdom from a boat car

The hermit comment on last night’s post has me thinking. It hits upon, in a very roundabout way, a question that has been bothering me recently. I’ll get to the point eventually; just know that this post might meander a little before I get there.

When I was in college my mom recommended that I read Thomas Merton. She remembered reading his work in college and I reminded her of him. That we tended to view the world in the same way. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas Merton he was a theologian who after growing up to be well educated and a bit of an artist he decided to give it all up to enter a Trappist monastery where he spent all of his days in quiet reflection. In the “never speaking” sense of the word quiet. Yes, my mom thought I would be better suited to live my life as a monk. She still might be right.

The reason for this was in part the fact that I am extremely comfortable being by myself and being alone with my thoughts. I’m not sure why this is the case. I grew up in a big family so it is not as if I spent much time alone as a kid mainly because there was no place to be alone. I always assume it is because I really was much smarter than my classmates so I would go off into my own dreamworld because I related to that better than the people around me. Being content with being alone is a wonderful thing.

However, the fact that being alone doesn’t bother me has resulted in one horrible side effect, which is that I am very unwilling to open myself up to anyone. This is more of what I thought of when I read the comment. There are two ways to be in this world (at least according to my binary mind). You can be open to life and its experiences or you can close yourself off to the world and become a hermit. Being a hermit allows you to control your existence and minimize the lows. Nothing too awful can happen to you because the only person who can hurt you is yourself. On the other hand, you never get those moments of euphoria, that brief glimpse of infinity when your heart just spins out of control. You have to open yourself up for that. True, this makes you vulnerable and people will hurt you in the worst ways imaginable but you will also feel alive. To me that seems to be worth the tradeoff.

Now I’ll sadly admit that I tend to keep myself closed off from the world. Maybe it is a fear of being hurt or discovering that people don’t like who I am or just not having the confidence to stand up and say this is me. I know that if I keep a low profile that no one will bother me and I can lead a calm, if not very exciting existence. And on the surface it is a very successful one. What is most interesting though is right now I am breaking out of my shell and opening up myself once more (in much the same way as I did exactly five years ago) and I have to ask myself why is this the case.

I think it is because the fact that I might be moving gives me the freedom to show myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that if I meet someone here and they don’t like me I can go “Oh well, screw them. It’s not like I’ll ever see them again.” It’s like being on vacation. I’m just here temporarily until I find my next gig so I can be me. Maybe that’s why I’m more open in the blog as well. I’m not me here, I’m EC. I’m an entirely different person and it doesn’t bother me if someone hates EC.

What I’m hoping for is that I can keep this mindset of just being myself and seeing what happens going wherever I end up next in life. That I can stop caring what each individual person might think about me and apologizing for every mistake and perceived fault that I might have. To just go out and live life for once. And do you know the interesting thing? I’m not even sure if I am leaving. There’s nothing that doesn’t say that I can just find peace with myself in this physical spot. It actually might be an option. I would have never thought that months ago but that is what happens when you start being yourself.

There is a quote from the movie Waking Life that I love: “The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.”Maybe that needs to be my motto from here on out. Keep thinking as if I will never see these people again (if it goes wrong) while knowing that a great future awaits (if it goes right). If I could do that on a daily basis I think my life would be much better off.

What follows dreams...

(Some people would be concerned at someone declaring themselves to be their stalker. Me? I appreciate the attention.)

Sometimes the pleasures that technology take from us our the simplest kind. Such as spending a lazy Sunday morning reading the comics section. It’s not something that I do anymore and I don’t know many people who do. I no longer read a newspaper daily at least not a newsprint version. I just flick to the online version and besides I can’t bring myself to subscribe to the Kansas City Star. I prefer a newspaper that has a level of discourse above that of the typical Dick and Jane tome.

But my online reading has taken all of the fun away from reading the comics. The thrill you had as a kid of lying on the floor with the paper stretched out before you. Going through all of your favorites and those lesser strips you read just to have the moment last just a little longer. I don’t know if I ever laughed at Heathcliff or Marmaduke but I read them all the same. Now I’m lucky if I click on the latest Doonesbury or Dilbert. That sense of wonder is gone. I don’t think it is because I am older now. I think it is because I just don’t have that magical piece of paper flicking across my fingertips anymore.

I mention all of this because I just finished reading the new Charles Schulz biography and it made me think about all the time I’ve spent with the Peanuts characters. I’m an unabashed fan, a proud owner of a Snoopy painting and if I ever break down and get a tattoo it will probably be of Snoopy in full World War I flying gear. The strip was just a cornerstone of my life. People referred to me as a Linus. I read it daily and badgered my parents into keeping their Tribune subscription so I could always see it.

That’s what makes reading about Schulz interesting and a little off putting. He was just not what you would call a happy person. Depressed isn’t the right word because if that was the case he would never have gotten out of bed, never been able to create art day in and day out. More like he was continually ill at ease. Based on the biography you could tell that he was phobic and anxiety ridden. He was never sure if he was loved, never understood the attention and never thought that he was good enough. Reading the book it seemed like he was the ultimate guy who could never figure out how to stop and smell the flowers.

For some reason this makes me think of a story I heard about the Apollo astronauts. Years later a reporter went to interview the twelve men who had walked on the moon and found that they all had significant issues on their return. One went off to find Noah’s Ark. Neil Armstrong disappeared into seclusion on his farm. Basically they all came to the realization that they had walked on the moon. What else in their lives was ever going to compare to that moment? I think Charles Schulz found himself in the same position. What happens when you achieve your dream? Where in the world do you go from there.

I’ve been thinking about my dreams a lot lately. I live my life in terms of five year plans and my five years are nearly up. Some dreams I will fall short on and others I will accomplish. The big thing for me right now is to solidify my new dreams and new goals. Find that passion inside me for the next cycle of my life. How do I deal with achieving my dreams? I find new ones. It’s the only way I know how to keep moving forward.

Best of 120 Minutes: Sometimes in life all that matters is a name. A name like Toad the Wet Sprocket. Immortality can be so easy to obtain if you have a cool name.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Tift Merritt “Another Country”
2) The Ditty Bops “The Ditty Bops”
3) Amy Farris “Anyway”
4) Sting “Ten Summoner’s Tales”
5) Kathleen Edwards “Asking for Flowers”

What defines a friend

Sometimes technology has a way of muddling things. Even if the goal is to simplify matters advancements always seem to create more issues than there were before. What is worse is that sometimes what makes us human, those events that cannot be broken down to bits and bytes, become victims of our own attempts at self-expression.

Back when I started up my Facebook account it asked if I wanted to import my email address book in order to determine who my “friends” were. Like everyone else I went ahead and did so and I was glad to see the profiles of a number of my friends from school automatically listed on the page. It was wonderfully simple; one click and I was reconnected with friends around the world. But the very last profile shown made me pause.

It was the profile of a girl I saw a few times last fall and who, thanks to my rampant stupidity regarding picking up a dinner tab, I totally failed to hit it off with. Now I was looking at her picture and being asked if I wanted to make her my friend. It seemed like a totally bizarre and foreign question. I wouldn’t email her because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t respond. I wouldn’t call her because I was certain she wouldn’t answer. Yet it would have been perfectly reasonable if I sent her this request to be my “friend”.

That’s one of those things that bothers me about Facebook. It seems to belittle the concept of friends to the point where they seem to be one of those things you collect and stack in alphabetical order. I wanted her to be my friend but we weren’t and I didn’t want to use a faceless computer program to try to reconcile the distance. Like everyone else I end up with a collection of friends that consist of a mix of people who mean the world to me and people who I like hanging out with and a handful of people I vaguely know. They are all lumped into the same meaningless category. Friend might be just a word but it is a powerful one. It shouldn’t be made into a worthless platitude.

But let’s say she actually accepted my friend request. What would she know of me? A couple of witty status entries, a list of books I’ve read, a couple of favorite movies, nothing of any real significance. True, all of those items are a part of who I am but I don’t know if they show the full story. Seurat proved that you can paint a picture with only dots but at the end of the day you need distance and a hell of a lot of dots to gain the full image and even then it isn’t anywhere near seeing the same image with your own eyes. If all you knew of me was my Facebook profile (or maybe even the blog) I don’t think you could say that you actually knew me. All those things are just a handful of dots compared to the complex, contradicting, ever-changing picture of who I actually am.

What I fear is that people will start using Facebook and its ilk more and more as some sort of friend management system. A way to neatly compartmentalize all of those wildly inconsistent people who make up our lives. Keep everyone to quick soundbites and away from the deeper picture. And while I love everyone who messages me through Facebook and I will use it daily myself because it is wonderful to hear from everyone I just hope I don’t become dependent on only knowing the digital form of my friends. They are so much more than a collection of zeros and ones. We should always have a chance to remain analog.

Life on pause

I figured I’d end the year on a question that someone asked me recently that I wasn’t able to properly answer. It’s an appropriate question for the last night of the year: Am I happy?

That’s a really difficult question for me to answer and there aren’t too many questions that I can’t figure out. My entire income is based on people posing really difficult questions to me and my coming up with quick and insightful answers. But trying to say if I’m happy or sad is not a binary answer, which is really difficult for this 21st century digital boy to process.

I’ll start where I always start, facing the fact that I am as blessed as any one person could ever hope to be. I’ve got a great job, a wonderful family and a relatively worry free life. I don’t worry about my next meal or paying the rent or whether I am going to be mauled by a large bear when I go to pick up my mail. I lead an insanely cushy life where buying the complete series of Voltron DVDs seems like a perfectly wise investment. As a result I don’t know if I should have anything to complain about.

But as anyone who has read this blog will have undoubtedly noticed by now I complain about pretty much everything. Some of that is for show, some of what I write here is written as EC as opposed to Chris, but a lot of it is real. And I think it is because I seem to have lost the plot to my own life story. I’m not sure what any of this means anymore. I have a lot of stuff but little meaning. As another friend of mine once asked me when I talked about my job “But is it getting you any closer to a state of grace?” Forget my job leading me to a higher purpose, I don’t know of any aspect of my life that is.

That’s what really has been bothering me the most. I don’t think it is existential angst or that given my lifestyle I’m probably in my mid-life crisis; it’s that I just don’t feel the same possibility of impacting the world that I had just a few years ago. I don’t want to give up my belief that I can change the world. I’m not very adept at simply being a cog in a machine.

I know that I’m missing a few vital pieces to my life. They’re pretty damn obvious and sadly, do not include the Lego Millennium Falcon. At least I know where to get one of those. As with everything else in my life, the challenge is to get me to go out and try knowing that I might fail. Having spent my entire life putting myself in positions where it would be impossible for me to fail that is a very frightening proposition.

So what’s the answer to Am I Happy? Right now I’m content. I’m worry free. That’s not the right way to live. I’ll be changing that next year.

Happy New Year everyone. Go Illini. New Year’s Resolutions and my year end review of concerts and books will be coming in the next few weeks. I’ll end the year on an upbeat note…

Taking stock...

At this moment I find myself roughly 93 million miles away from a large ball of hydrogen and helium that as a result of nuclear fusion is supplying me with all of the light and heat that I need to survive. If I glance out the window I can see a sphere of carbon about 225 thousand miles away, which seems to be smiling at me. In the entire course of human existence twelve men have stood on that sphere and looked back at the blue green ball in the sky that I call home. At that distance if they put their thumb up in the air they could block the planet from their view entirely.

For most people, this is nothing to write home about.

I live on a planet composed of tectonic plates shifting in every direction. At times the pressure formed by these plates colliding is released in such a manner that entire cities are leveled. Occasionally entire mountains erupt spewing molten rock and sulfur out into the countryside. Sometimes this freezes whatever was in its path in a state of eternal rock.

We all consider this to be completely natural.

Given the right combination of air pressure patterns winds can arise in such a way that a funnel cloud will descend from the sky, ripping up everything in its path. A few hundred miles away from me right now a city no longer exists because the sky took it away. During this huge bolts of electricity can streak across the sky, turning darkness into day. Uncontrollable and unpredictable, it’s a seemingly purposeful dance of sparks and fireworks across the horizon.

No one in the Midwest even blinks an eye at this. We just say that it sounded like a train.

I have been known to find myself in a large metal box 35,000 feet in the air held aloft only by the applied knowledge of thousands of years of the study of physics. In doing so I have crossed oceans while I slept and have seen the same sky that my forefathers saw hundreds of years ago. I’ve attended weddings where I could not understand a word but was treated like a guest of honor all the same. I’ve had dinner with people from every continent and almost all walks of life.

This is simply viewed as having an interesting life.

I have a heart that has pumped non stop for 34 years, lungs that consistently fill with oxygen and 30 feet of intestines. My eyes have allowed me to see my niece two hours after she was born, my ears have granted me the wonders of hearing Sufjan Stevens and my nose has let me understand what it truly is like to be in New Orleans. I have experienced emotions so strong that I have sprinted to a computer to write them down in an attempt to store them for the future. Others write music or paint pictures or scream from rooftops just so they can let people understand what it feels like to be alive.

And we don’t typically notice any of this.

Isn’t that weird?

What is it about life that makes us completely blind to the sheer majesty of it all? Is it because we are all so focused on the details, so intent on making the next paycheck or the next meal that we can’t look up and go “wow”? Is it because if we did that is all we would ever do; stand there, jaw agape at how we’ve somehow gone from swinging in the trees to talking on cel phones?

I don’t have the answer. That might be the only time in history that I have admitted that in public. All I know is that over the past few months I’ve been so focused on results and end states that I haven’t enjoyed the moment. You could probably replace months with years and not have much of a complaint on my end. But right now, I just kind of feel like looking around and going “wow”. I complain about my life too much. It would be much better if I stood in awe of it for a change.