Penny Arcade! - Eerie In Its Accuracy

language warning: Penny Arcade! - Eerie In Its Accuracy

Oh, dear LORD! This is SOoooo real to life. Video games are crossing some strange line.

Why would you want to get knocked up in a video game?

Don't think I'll ever get tired of listening to this ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn1pf0Xi3nU

How many times have i heard the phrase: "I will never date you 'cause you smell. like. bait."

So what? who cares? we're doin' it how we like...

Love it.

Shoulda' stumbled accross PAIN years ago.

My day today

I was going to delete this because it's useless emotional drivel ejected from a self-pitty party.

Then I decided it's relevant because I really felt this bad, if only for a while.

Then laziness won, and I decided not to decide.

I cried when I sent it

the letter from my physician

the recurring panic attacks

ending my career

little hope

sadness

And one again I felt t

The thrust and twisting blade

should have done better

Eviscerating me again

Try harder

Fail

Self's blood cries from the ground

his spirit shrieks towards sheole

Forcibly discharged from flesh

Cold empty blackness

No warmth

void

But this is a tremendous thing

There is now No ambition

There exists no pride

No deceptive worth

quietly awaiting

empty

And something that is empty can most easily be filled.

So …

dread naught

ignore the tears

the breast that quivers

The unsteadiness of my speech

The slight quivering of my lip

The self in fragments in my hands

Observe! the glorious dawn of a new beginning.

On Feminism

There's a tension between the good of the individual, which must be considered, and the good of the whole, which often requires sacrifice from the individual.


Nether of these can be dismissed, ignored, or downplayed. If we continue with our analogy of the body, we see that if enough heart cells are unhealthy, the body (whole) will die, but that if the whole dies, the cells of the kidneys, liver, and bone are soon to follow.

So, what of feminism?

As it turns out, raising the next generation of young is a lot of work, and most men aren't up to it. I could spend pages and pages defending those two statements, but I'm going to let them stand for now as assumptions.


The problem,then, becomes this: There is a critically important, time-consuming, and labor intensive job that is vital to the survival of our species, that no one is doing.

This, of course, is completely the fault of men. (Seriously - not being sarchatic) It is a shame that men have been so remarkably seflish as to disenfranchise women to the point where they don't trust us to do OUR job (which is to honor them, protect them, provide for them, etc) so that they can do THEIR job.

As a result, we have women attending to trivial things like the running of corporations and street cars and rivet guns and legal defenses, that could be deeply and profoundly engage in the enormous task and honor of raising the next generation of human beings.

I fear for the species when the best and brightest of our women cannot be bothered to raise children.

In thinking further (or, my arguments against feminism)... (part 1)

If we think about sin, we'll essentially see that the things defined as sin are things that harm others or somehow tear down the community.

The ten commandments in fact are a litany of do-unto-othersisms:
1. Don't kill who? Others
2. Honor who? Others (your father and mother)
3. Don't steal from who? Others
etc. etc. etc.

It's as though God felt we needed reminded that we are a social organism, and humanity as a whole (or the tribe or the other form that community might take) MUST be more important than ME.

So, if we challenge our selves to look into the aspects of the ancient Jewish religion which modern sensibilities find most disturbing:

Women - why are they commanded to be subservient to men?
Homosexuality - why would it be sin?
Destroying other cultures and ways of life because they hold fundamentally different values? (worship other gods etc)

The problem of sin nature ("So, what of sanctification")

It's disturbing to me that many tend to equate "sin nature" to "human nature". I can say it no more plainly - This is destructive.

Case in point - it is completely in my nature to want to give my girls big hugs and praise them when they've done well. It s completely in my nature to want to want to be intimate with my wife. Most people would believe these things are good.

It is also completely within my nature to occasionally want to kick someone in the teeth, or be intimate with women who aren't, in fact, my wife. The vast bulk of those who make up any sort of moral standard distribution in the bell curve sense related to this certainly agree that these things would be BAD.

I am able, without too much undue intellectual exertion, to think of twopossibilities; the evolutionary and the religious.

1 - evolutionary: Humanity has evolved a nature without any intervening divinity. Because of interactions between the actions brought about by this nature and the environment in which my ancestors lived, certain traits have led to more success in survival and the production of offspring than have others.

Due to the complexities inherent in the higher order species, these traits are, at time, at odds one with another. Example - most modern human males experience a tension between the urge to spread the genes (not my wife) vs. nurture existing offspring and strengthen family (wife). These dual options present the tension between quality vs. quantity, and are further complicated by the evolution of predatory species which use our reproductive traits against us, much in the same way a hunter would use deer musk.

In this model, right and wrong are simply constructs of our highly evolved social nature that we have superimposed over an essentially a-moral process.

2 - religious: Jeanie's explanation is one of the more sensible treatments of the sin nature that I've encountered.

She seems to be proffering (at the risk or speaking for her by elaborating on her assertions) that sin nature is a specific subset of human nature. More explicitly, it is a tendency to self-centered behaviors that are not only destructive to the community, but either directly or indirectly to one's self. The sin nature is, therefore, the egocentricity with which we are all born.

It is not difficult to recognize the process of socialization that begins shortly after birth, during which we learn empathy for others and are taught things like how to live with one another, good citizenship, etc. It seems obvious to me that this is not a spiritual or religious process, at least not in the strictest sense, although it could be argued that it is in the sense that absolutely everything bout a homo religiousous (humanity) is in some way religious or spiritual.

If we accept Jeannie's definition of the sin nature, and accept that the religious experience is essentially that of the subverting of the sin nature to something higher, where does that leave us?

It would seem that this is a long lived process, essentially spanning religious and non-religious activities and, in most cases I'm sure, the vast bulk of one's years on earth. Some are extremely successful (Mother Theresa, for example), and others fail miserably.

So, what factors play into this process? How much is rooted in the spiritual, and how much the biological? (or, is there even a distinction to be made?)

And, if this is a process, what is to be made of this crazy doctrine of sanctification?

Song lyric - work in progress

Think melodic and poetic - sort of a U2 influence.

Are you still there for me?
Am I still there for you?
Have either of us ever been there at all?

The design at play
The end of the day
The time of my life
The time of yours

The things I say
The one, the way,
The twist of the knife
It pours

I know I’ve hurt you
Did you really live for me?
Or was your devotion
To people I never see?

The doubts that rend
The thoughts I bend
The looming cliff
The chance to choose

The value Grey
Lack will to stay
The wager stiff
Will I even know if I lose?

Bend my thoughts
My mind strains at the edge of it’s capabilities
The flat-spin ensues.
The wine helps me hit the silk.
Problems I cannot solve
Questions I cannot answer