Carl’s Rants

I’ve not forgotten about you, my online journal.  I’ve simply been busy, or lacking in tidbits and opinions to toss to you.

Or having tidbits that I find… too personal to share.  I mean, I fell into the trap.  Share an online presence, make yourself visible to the world.  But I am a person who enjoys his privacy, enjoys his anonymity.  Even the podcast is mostly anonymous, although I must admit to a certain… trepidation on the rare occasion someone recognizes my name.

And so I took a step back.  But it’s a bit like opening Pandora’s box.  The moment you become visible on the internet- and believe me, you already are- there is no hiding, there is no turning back.

Don’t believe me?  Check out Zabasearch, as just an example.  Now, I don’t endorse that site over any other, but they pull information out of public records.  And it’s scary.  They have my last 4 home addresses.  My friends’ too.  I know where they’ve all been… with just a few keystrokes.

I’m 33 years old.  I have not spoken to, nor heard from, any relatives of mine since May, 2000.

That is the way it is.  That is the way it always will be.  It was my choice and I have not once, ever, regretted it.  In case it isn’t crystal clear:  I don’t know if my parents, or any other member of my family, currently still exists in this world, nor do I care.  For certain people, I wish all the harsh sufferings life can provide, followed by a humiliating and painful cessation of existence.  That isn’t going to change either, so stop asking.

I feel it’s important to say that for two very important reasons.  One, people continuously ask me about my family, especially since I and my wife are preparing to have our own (though this odd track of questions has been dogging me for years).  Some ask in passing, some not so much.  If they are less than important to me, that question is quickly met with a hostile glare and a surly, “I’m not getting into it.”  If they are important to me, I might offer up more detail.  Which leads to the second reason: people cannot ‘understand’ my feelings and attempt to negotiate with me, as if I were merely a petulant teenager.

I respectfully submit to these people that their understanding is irrelevant.  Their understanding is not required.  Nor is their sympathy, nor pity, nor worry.  I didn’t have any of these things when it would have made a difference, and I do not need these things now.  I am a man, my own man, and am fully capable of dealing with my choices.  I don’t require counseling, there is no residual anger to ‘get over.’

Which is not to say there isn’t anger.  Most certainly there is.  Anger, and loathing, and hatred.  And it is mine.  I like the anger, I enjoy it.  It means I am still me, and have not succumbed to docile acceptance of some idiotic notion of peace for all and goodwill toward men.  I don’t want to get over it, I don’t want to move on, or past it, or forgive, or forget, or become ‘reborn’, or heal, or any of it.  There isn’t anything to heal.

People have been trying to ‘fix’ my problems (or me), and I am growing weary of it.  These people don’t know what I went through.  For the very privileged few who do know, almost no one has managed to wrap their head around it.  There is a disconnect in their reasoning somewhere.  These people can’t understand, their minds won’t let them.

I have heard, “you should forgive them,” far, far too many times.   I wonder if they understand that the only thing they are succeeding in doing is irritating me and making me feel more hostile and less inclined to discuss these issues.  There is an underlying note of superiority- intentional or not- whenever one of my friends has said something to me about reconciling with my parents.  As if they feel they are counseling me, mentoring me… helping me.

Trust me, please, when I tell you that you aren’t helping.  Just leave it be.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….

Mother Teresa was an Atheist

Irony so thick you could cut it and serve sizzling next to my egs and toast in the morning.

I recently read an article by Philip Atkinson titled ‘Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy’ (Originally in ‘Family Security Matters’). Please forgive, as I have, his jarring shift from third-person to first-person narrative in his biography, and his dismally inadequate knowledge of history in the article. I wanted to focus on the substance.For a supposedly well-travelled, well-educated man of 60 years, I found his arguments, conclusions, and assertions to be part Tucker Carlson, part Bill O’Reilly, and part Nikita Krushchev, mixed in with a bit of derangment that must be born of obliviousness to actual world events.In fact, I found his commentary so infuriating, I actually wrote him. And I wasn’t expecting a reply. I mean, I tried to be calm and fair in my e-mail, but I didn’t think a person like Mr. Atkinson would read hate mail, let alone respond to it.
Read the rest of this post »

Sometimes I feel like I am the Last Man On Earth.

I am the last remnant of the Old Guard, the old man who sits at the bar and tries to regale all, the young ‘uns with tales of how it used to be.

I watch as all around me my friends lives are consumed by responsibility, family, careers.  We all used to be pretty close.  We used to hang out weekly.

First one moved away.  To better himself, to get married… he and his wife welcomed their second child recently.  I saw him, briefly, last year, while I was in his town on another matter.

The second and third ones to leave…  They got married, had kids.  First one, then the other.  Their lives are consumed with responsibililty.  Jobs, family outings, baby care, baby-sitting.  Even dinner has become a rare event that must be scheduled.  They have other interests, other needs.  It’s been a long time since we gamed.

The fourth one was unexpected.  He got a good job and moved out to the ‘burbs.  And nothing else changed.  I wouldn’t have thought that would have a profound impact on our friendship, but I feel it has.  Because it is only now that I realize how isolated he makes himself. 

I recall the scant few times I could get him to come out to my house.  It never bothered me before because we lived twenty minutes from eachother, and I didn’t mind driving.  There were more restaurants near him anyway.  Then I moved.  And I was still making more trips to him than he was to me.  It was okay, though, because we were working on his house, getting it ready to sell.  And it was fun.

Now he’s moved further away, and I swear… excepting one trip to my house for a birthday and one trip into town to get a bagel and haircuts… I have not observed him leave a ten-mile radius from his town (even his job is nearby).  I am sure he does.  He has responsibilities outside his comfort zone and family who live elsewhere.  Surely he hasn’t washed his hands of everything to spend his evenings sitting on his couch.

Is this the natural order?  To friendships sag under the weight of time and everything else?  Am I naive to believe things shouldn’t change, that babies should not result in the near-severing of ties, that (a fairly short) distance should not result in the straining of relationships between friends?  Is isolating yourself in your own little new-home bubble the right way to do it?

I mean, I feel like I am standing on a tiny rock in a large ocean of everything else and everything else is moving too fast and too insanely to keep track of it.  I try to hold on to the good things and they slip through my fingers like so many grains of sand.

It’s bizarre, in a sad, depressing, monstrous sort of way, to watch the current Administration lampoon their way through 8 years in the White House.  It’s like watching a polished, white-collar version of what is happening in Zimbabwe or Russia or China.  It’s like watching McCarthyism all over again, only this time there is no one saying, “at long last, sir, have you no decency?” and the egregious violators are not occupying a mere senator’s office, but the highest office of the Executive Branch.

Or are they?  Recently, Vice President Dick Cheney (an appropriate appellation if ever there was one) asserted that he was not subject to a specific Presidential Executive Order regarding record-keeping and reporting of classified documents to the National Archives because his office is not an entity or agency within the Executive Branch.   This has resulted in quite a few senators and congressman slapping their foreheads in exasperation.  It’s the latest maneuver by a dictatorial regime to isolate itself from oversight, justice, and everything else the law and the Constitution stand for.

Fortunately, realizing that a head-on collision with the White House would be futile (because Bush’s pet Attorney General has stalled and declined to investigate every single allegation of wrongdoing ever brought before the DoJ that had to do with the Administration), some senators have found an equally clever rejoinder to the Administration’s assertion:  cut funding for the VP out of the Executive Branch spending appropriations.

Congress has the power to fund or not fund.  They hold the power of the purse, and if the hold in weilding it, we may at least see a decent amount of embarrassment for the Administration.  What can they do?  They have come out and agreed with Cheney that the VP is not part of the Executive Branch.  They have to either keep their mouths shut and watch a good amount of funding disappear, or backtrack on statements made just last week (that’s not really a stretch for them, sadly).  Either way, they get a good slap in the face.

The question, of course, is whether Rahm Emanuel and the other Dems have the cojones to actually follow through, rather than behave like the whipped eunuchs they have been on every other issue.

I’ve had my share of debates, and I have had my share of arguments.  The bulk of these happen over IM, and between Colin and me.  Sometimes, illuminating tidbits come along, but mostly it’s arguing, with Colin antagonizing me, me becoming vexed with his steadfast (and to me puzzling) adherence to his ideas, and finally, with some tacitly agreed-upon truce.  Sometimes the truce comes a little too late (you should see the IM logs on this) and heads need to cool down, and other times, there is some actual erudite conversation.  Take, for example, this excerpt:

<lots of random overtalk> 

(1:55:02 PM) Carl Reyes: okay, well, if you just want to discuss atheism, it is not about faith.
(1:55:29 PM) Carl Reyes: it is about a distinct lack of faith.
(1:55:35 PM) Colin Rego: I want you NOT to say you KNOW.
(1:55:49 PM) Colin Rego: and NOT say I SHOULDN’T allow for it
(1:55:56 PM) Colin Rego: that it is ILLOGICAL when it isn’t
(1:56:04 PM) Colin Rego: logic has nothing to do with atheism
(1:56:24 PM) Carl Reyes: I never said I ‘know’.  I mean, the truth is that atheism is almost as pig-headed as religion.
(1:56:32 PM) Colin Rego: zackly
(1:56:33 PM) Carl Reyes: however, it makes more logical sense, on paper.
(1:56:54 PM) Colin Rego: what makes more sense?  You DON’T have an answer.
(1:57:04 PM) Colin Rego: how does the LACK of an answer make sense?
(1:57:09 PM) Colin Rego: it’s an empty page?
(1:57:17 PM) Colin Rego: nothing is written
(1:57:53 PM) Carl Reyes: that’s cognitive dissonance.  Because you are using a separation of creator from all religions to try to go directly to the beginning.  which is a bit misleading.
(1:58:09 PM) Colin Rego: its not misleading.
(1:58:14 PM) Colin Rego: its called abstraction
(1:58:19 PM) Carl Reyes: it skips over everything that came after the creation
(1:58:25 PM) Colin Rego: sure
(1:58:32 PM) Colin Rego: since we are talking about a CREATOR
(1:58:39 PM) Carl Reyes: which, I might point out, can almost all be explained without any intervention of a creator.
(1:58:44 PM) Colin Rego: not any specific organized religous belief
(1:58:47 PM) Carl Reyes: right
(1:59:14 PM) Carl Reyes: so, I could ask… why would a creator create the universe, only to explain everything after that moment in clearly calculable ways?
(1:59:26 PM) Carl Reyes: why stop the explanation at 15 billion years ago?
(1:59:50 PM) Carl Reyes: why not 10, or 5, or 1… or 100?
(1:59:55 PM) Colin Rego: And I would say, why does anything else matter?
(2:00:15 PM) Carl Reyes: well, then you’ve hit on a central point of quantum physics.
(2:00:23 PM) Carl Reyes: what happened before the big bang?
(2:00:27 PM) Carl Reyes: it doesn’t matter
(2:00:32 PM) Colin Rego: NO.
(2:00:36 PM) Carl Reyes: it cannot and does not affect us now
(2:00:36 PM) Colin Rego: that’s not creation.
(2:01:00 PM) Colin Rego: Not even relevant to what we are talking about
(2:01:29 PM) Carl Reyes: sure it is.  if you and I both agree that everything that happened after the big bang is observable, then we are really both only left with what happened before and/or caused it
(2:01:37 PM) Colin Rego: You said that atheism has a more logical explanation for the beginning.
(2:01:52 PM) Colin Rego: and I still contend that atheism lacks an explanation entirely
(2:04:09 PM) Colin Rego: you have more faith than me.  which, is quite funny.
(2:05:20 PM) Carl Reyes: bite me

<more crosstalk, followed by discussion on how photos can be misleading>

I guess Colin is sort of right.  I mean, At it’s heart, atheism is a belief that there is no god.  I mean, it’s a bit misleading to call it ‘faith’ exactly, but we do take for granted that science will never find god (or gods, or whatever), and this belief we atheists hold isn’t really based on the same things that science is based on.  Which, as Colin pointed out, also explains how some scientists maintain faith.  They can see and believe in evolution, and at the same time hold faith that somewhere along the existence of our universe (or before) something created it as part of an elaborate thought process.

But you know, I just can’t.  Occam’s Razor is my guiding principal in this.  And although this lends itself to a supreme irony in that I hold a strong belief that is more than most people’s religious fervor, it is what it is.  That, and most religious zealots I have encountered sound like rejects from The Crucible.

It is illustrative, perhaps, for me to point you to “The Dragon in My Garage”, by Carl Sagan.  It’s a good read.  Except, where Sagan says, “…the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion,” I say… these people are just delusional.  Colin says it’s possible that I’m delusional.

I don’t have the evidence to prove I am not.  I guess I’ll just have to have… faith.

So today I got cornered by a group of women when one squealed on me and my… perceptions of women.  I hate being cornered, and of course I beat fleet feet.

But it’s not exactly fair, because all I did was say what a lot of guys think, and some women are too sensitive or narcissistic to believe or deal with it.  These are MY opinions, so why shouldn’t I be entitled to them?  I never said all guys think this way.  Just me.  Not my fault that some guys DO think this way, though.  You know who you are.

It breaks down like this:

• You meet a woman.  And for a time, being with her is like getting behind the wheel of a fine sports car.  Fast, nerve-wracking, exciting, exhilarating, high-maintenance.
• You are in a relationship with a woman.  You know each other’s routines.  She’s dependable, there for you, not so high-maintenance.  So what if you aren’t whipping around corners at 90MPH?  You also aren’t hitting trees or rolling over.  It’s like having a sedan (a sports sedan if you’re lucky).
• She gets pregnant.  Suddenly there are other concerns.  No more drinking (and if you think that means just for her, give it time), and what’s in her belly becomes all important.  She’s become a minivan.  Protect the cargo.
• At some point you, as the man… begin to get creeped out by movement going on in there, so your interest in getting some diminishes.  I mean really, I don’t want to feel the goddamn baby kick while I’m trying to think sexy thoughts here people.  At this point, you start asking why you want to put gas in a wrecked minivan.  This is probably the only time I really link this metaphor pretty much directly to a physical state or appearance.
• The baby is born.  Your lovely significant other then has the choice of either reverting back to the (sports) sedan, going on as a station wagon (family above style and fun).  If you are very unlucky, she may try to reclaim the sports car days (partying, drinking, trying to recapture the time before the family), which is almost as bad as her remaining a minivan (becoming so neurotic about the kid that everything else- including you- is completely irrelevant).

I mean hey, ladies, if this doesn’t describe your man, awesome.  But you know, don’t assume that’s the case.  Every time I hear, “That’s not true.  Men think women are more beautiful than ever while pregnant,” I want to laugh.  Because I guarantee you that at least sometimes, guys aren’t thinking beauty.

Now, this has nothing to do with love.  This is sexual attraction and physical preference.  And if you say, “Love makes it attractive,” I’ll laugh even more.  Love helps, but I mean, come on.  You didn’t start dating the guy you are with because you loved him.  You probably didn’t even wait to sleep with him until you loved him.  So please don’t try that line now.

So what’s with the ‘7 Random Things’ blog posts traversing the intarwebs lately?  Are people that curious about other people they have never met?  Are they so intuitive that 7 random factoids laid out in list form will serve to give them greater insight into the author?

I remain highly dubious.  I could write my list, and being devoid of context or further knowledge of my person, you would probably come to the conclusion that I was a mass murderer or worse.  Or bizarre beyond reason.

And so it goes for anyone.  Your 7 random things are pointless and mostly banal expressions of narcissism.  You aren’t that interesting.  Neither am I.  But I bask in my hypocritical nature.  I write this blog because I want to send my opinions on the airwaves.  Doesn’t matter to me whwether you read it, though if you do my ego derives sustenance.

The other day I spent a solid hour (maybe longer), discussing nostalgia with my friend Dave.  Well, specifically, it started with Dave marveling that there is a Nirvana retrospective… you know, for kids who don’t know the band Nirvana.  Fucking Nirvana.

And I had already been contemplating such things, so it wasn’t really a shocker.  I mean, Nirvana’s album Nevermind was released in 1991, In Utero in 1993.  These guys brought grunge to the mainstream.  With bands like Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, they set the stage for all the rock (good and bad) that followed.  They helped rid us of all the house party shite that dominated the late 80’s and early 90’s.

But this isn’t about the incredibly fantastic music.  This is about nostalgia.  In 1993 (the year I was intrduced to Nirvana), I was 18.  That was 14 years ago.  14 years ago is a long time.  To put that in perspective, in 1990, when my parents sat back and listened to The Eagles 1976 hit Hotel California, I laughed my ass off at how pathetically… oldies it was.  And here I am, now, saying no one will ever play grunge the way Cobain did.  When did I get that old?  I’m only 32, and yet I remember being 12 and thinking how very old 32 must be to my parents.  The year 2000 seemed so far away as to be nothing more than a concept, and here we are almost four fifths through the first decade of the 21st century.

When I rocked to the newest tracks by Cobain and the gang, my friend’s 13-year old daughter wasn’t yet conceived.  Star Trek: The Next Generation was in it’s 6th season, and would end the following year.  It has been 13 years since TNG went off the air.  As Dave pointed out, you could still get snow on a television set.  Thus, the opening sentence of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, “The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel,” had meaning. 

These were the days before MP3s, before $15 DVD burners.  Before LCD and plasma.  Before ridiculous TSA limits on liquids and RFID tags in passports.  Days when typewriters still ruled the office.  I heard a staccato ‘tap-tap-tap’ the other day and actually had to think for a full minute before I realized I was hearing an old typwriter.  These were the days before the Internet as we know it.  Dial-up BBS’s were the norm, and rare at that.  In 1995 I had a Compaq Presario with a 250-megabyte (yes, MEGAbyte) hard drive and 4 megabytes of RAM.  Today I have a 2-gigabyte memory stick attached to my keys, and over a terabyte of hard drive space in my home computer which is itself on the verge of obsolesence.

They don’t put casette players in cars anymore.  I cannot remember the last time I saw vinyl records.  Hell, I can’t remember the last time I held a physical Audio CD for longer than it took to rip the music to MP3 for my ipod.  Very few people still use VHS players.  Remember the old ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ signs?

The women who I thought were hot in ‘93?  Kathy Ireland is 44.  Tia Carrere is 40.  Demi Moore is 45 (Ashton was 15, and probably waxing the carrot to thoughts of her in uniform from A Few Good Men, or as the incredibly hot seductress in Disclosure).

Need I go on?