I am facing one of those dilemmas of the impending philosophical fork in the road. I know that a mighty paradigm shift must happen soon if I am to live to my fullest physical and therefore mental capabilities, but it's going to hurt.

As many, if not all of you know, I have been a vegan (mostly) for about 6 months. My philosophical and religious motivations arise from my spiritual practice of nonviolence. My pragmatic opinions hinge on the customer's right to direct markets (in this case toward ethical animal treatment) by refraining from the purchase of products or goods. My conservationist hopes focus on the fact that anthropology suggests that human cultures have suffered more virulent diseases in ways that constantly get exacerbated by herd animal proximity: Mad Cow, Salmonella, Hoof and Mouth, the list could go on. And finally, the simple fact behind my newest dietary change was that I had almost been vegan for two years already.

But I have also known for some time that I show significant signs of hyperinsulinism. Basically, the Pancreas becomes resistant to insulin, which causes the body to produce too much of it. This is especially hazardous when the food sources are high in simple sugars (let's say if I had a Coke and doughnut first thing in the morning) the insulin comes out like the mongol hordes, and, since sugars get burnt off quickly, the overdose of insulin can cause a reduction of my blood sugar to dangerously low levels (think of supply and demand here...what if the XBOX 360 was only going to be available to 3,00 people in the first month. Swarms of people would descend at the first available opportunity to purchase it. So there will, inevitably be a shortage of the systems until the next shipment arrives, etc.). Basically, if I eat too many simple carbs, I will lose energy, focus, coordination (at times), and I will get shaky and possibly irritable or disoriented and aloof.

I have profoundly noticed the effects of my hyperinsular condition on my relationships now that I understand more of its effects.

So, I am adding yet another dietary focus. I am going to switch to a sugar sensitivity diet (probably low gluten and low-wheat). But this quote perfectly describes my unpredictable energy fluctuations in the past few years:

"But there is another issue that creeps in for sugar-sensitive vegetarians...If this is the case, if you try to increase your protein by increasing the amount of high-protein grain (like amaranth) you are eating, you may still find yourself on an emotional roller coaster. I have had many, many clients who went to a strict vegetarian diet because they honestly wanted to feel better. Their non-sugar-sensitive friends had made the change and they felt wonderful.

But the sugar-sensitive vegetarians kept feeling worse and worse. They got dull, tired, irritable, and foggy. And their whole day was spent dreaming about the next high-carb meal. When we added eggs, cottage cheese, and sometimes a little fish to these people's diets, miracles happened. Energy returned, focus sharpened, and life worked."

So...my current hypothesis is this: many of my side-effects that run parallel to studies on hyperinsular individuals can be fought with a low carb, high fat and mid-high protein diet (I still oppose Atkins for most people, but it actually seems ideally suited to my condition). And that bit at the end of the quote about the dramatic turnaround for vegetarians in my position who added eggs and cottage cheese has me worried.

For the next couple of weeks, I am observing my diet very closely, as I try to keep my overall carbs under some ridiculous number that is less than one-fifth the normal recs. I will up the fat and protein intake through legums, nuts, and soymilk. I truly need this to work without the eggs and the cheese, because of my vegan status, but I have a somewhat bad feeling.

Luckily, I have been researching many different areas of diet and body/brain function, and found that 5-HTP is often low in hyperinsulinar cases, so I have bought a bottle at the local chemist (drug store) which I began taking today. I have also read some very interesting things about colloidal silver, which I bought but didn't take today.

So, in general, I am learning a lot more about my own biochemistry and I am hoping to maintain my ethical and devotional practices while still learning to be more healthy and "with it" instead of a space case and a wreck. My withdrawals from society (often not entirely of my direction) are getting worse. I have many loved ones and friends who would love to hear from me, but I simply drift through my days too much. Even doing important work at school, reading fascinating books, and thinking about my next step in education have been affected by my constant state of insufficient clarity of focus.

My body's overactive Pancreas hates my vegetarian diet, but I am holding out the olive branch. I just hope this condition does not get worse to the point where I must sacrifice spiritual integrity to physical safety.

10 days and counting...

I have just picked up the Patrick Doyle score to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Thanks, used CD stores).

Patrick Doyle's music, is complicated and moving. His prior collaborations with director Mike Newell have yielded terrific scores. The menacing tinge of Donnie Brasco has been modified to fit the visuals of the Goblet of Fire story quite well, drawing on a different kind of sonority than Williams' darker pieces in Prisoner of Azkaban. The lyrical beauty of some of the moments of Into the West's score get magnified, almost neo-romantic treatments, adding lush and lyrical beauty, again different from Williams' approach. But all of it is enjoyable. Don't expect a lot of Hedwig's theme...or a lot of familiar sound. Just listen to the score a few times, and I'm sure it will be a rewarding experience. Doyle has also worked in several sonic landscapes very well with other directors. He is one of the member's of Branagh's entourage, having scored most of Branagh's films (inlcuding non-Shakespeareans works like Dead Again and Frankenstein). He also worked with Azkaban's director Alfonso Cuaron (also known for Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien) on both Great Expectations and The Little Princess. He captured the tranquility of Sense and Sensibility fantastically, even composing the aria sung in the credits. Patrick Doyle is a long-time favorite composer.

Scorelovers, look for delicacy similar to Sense and Sensibility on Potter Waltz. Listen to the ethnomusicologist in Doyle that came through so well in the Henry V and Hamlet arias and in the sonic landscapes of est/ouest and Indochine when you hear the Scottish fiddle and percussion on the first, reel-like section of The Quidditch World Cup. Doyle's fascination with vocal sound production also comes through on the second half of that same track with almost martial syllables being wordlessly shouted by a male chorus in a way that resembles a slower version of the black tongue segments of the flight to the Bridge of Khazad Dum in Shore's Fellowship of the Ring score. His tempestuous string arpeggios fly menacingly around The Dark Mark much as his darker orchestral themes in Frankenstein and Needful Things did (in fact, I could see a greatest hits disc in the future sandwiching this track next to the title tracks from those two films). The Rita Skeeter track reminds me of the playful composition and orchestration Ralph Vaughn-Williams employed on pieces like March Past of the Kitchen Utensils (it was used in Sirens) or the delicacy of some dream segment from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. In a sort of sideways tribute to former Potter composer John Williams, the track Sirius Fire seems a kissing cousin of the Binary Sunset track from A New Hope and its later developments into the Force theme, especially in its oboe variation in the scene from Return of the Jedi where Luke is telling Leia about his father. The echoing acoustics of the chorus on Myrtle's Move remind the ear of the music of the baroque choirs, rolling around in giant acoustics of cathedrals...or of a large room in a magic castle...or of listless, howling ghosts...or of the drifting of seaweed below the water's surface mixed with the voice of merfolk. ;) It is an interesting effect which I can't wait to see on screen. Well...I could say more, but this is getting a bit long. :)

I do recommend that people who want the CD for the score either buy the score tracks from iTunes or buy the CD and copy it to a CD-R, removing the three tracks at the end.

They are fantastic tracks, but they are rock...and are thus somewhat jarring after a well rounded suite of music such as this score. The band called the Wyrd Sisters in the book are "acted" out by Jarvis Cocker, the lead singer of Pulp, Johnny Greenwood and Phil Selway, the guitarist and drummer of Radiohead, respectively, and the frontman of the group Add N to (X), Steve Claydon. Cocker's singing isn't as sneery as some of Pulp's songs (I love his sneer, but his personality would come through a bit too much in the film, I imagine, if he applied it full throttle). And the musical underpinnings of such great musicians tackling a wizard rock combo is interesting to listen to, even if you decide in the end that you don't like them. This Is the Night and Do the Hippogriff are both faster numbers, seemingly heavily influenced by the new new wave of artists such as Franz Ferdinand (whose singer had been considered for the film before Cocker was selected). Magic Works is a bit sappy and slow to me, but is probably just slapped on the end trailer from the sound of it.

In tangential news, I am excited to say that Doyle is slated to score Eragon, the first movie of Christopher Paolini's fantasy Inheritance series. John Williams, who stepped down in earlier planning stages of the fourth movie, was therefore free to compose for Memoirs of a Geisha, which also sounds delicious.

With Newell and Doyle and the cast in top form, getting better each film, and of course the Triwizard Tournament to see, you can bet I'm counting the days expectantly. And if the films continue to improve as they have, I would be floored if any of the major cast didn't want to finish the series.

I find it pretty irritating that Buddhism is placed farther toward faith than reason. Okay, maybe some Pure Land schools, devoting themselves to Amitabha, the future Buddha in his heavenly realm of near enlightenment, but Zen? Tibetan? Teravada? Hinayana? Of course, the whole exercise is, at its heart laughably enjoyable. 20 questions to drive a peg into a religious grid oriented along only two axes. Nonsense but fun.

And I do suppose that my heaviest religious influence may be from Old Master Lao Tse. But I would describe myself as more Hindu or Sufi than Taoist. Of course, the ideas of the energy of creation following rules and balanced interactions without anything that we would understand as human direction is very close to my Deist and scientific sympathies.

Hmm. I guess I could call myself Taoist for a while

You fit in with: Taoism Your ideals mostly resemble those of the Taoist faith. Spirituality is the most important thing in your life. You strive to live by all of your ideals, and live a very intellectually focused life. 60% spiritual. 20% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

I have been going through some old backup files from past OS upgrades, and I stumbled across a copy of one of my most personal poems. This poem was so perfectly translated from internal passions to external language...like I had exactly transcribed the murmurings of my muse. The words, though minorly flawed in my eye now, sing a cadence of that time and place in my life, bringing to life memories and emotions as if the poem had just been written last night, and I were still a Freshman in college.

I captured that moment so well, that I could not help but relive the whole emotional panoply of the time this poem describes. I share it here in honor of that moment earlier today when I untangled an old forgotten knot of existential angst, transcendentalist empathy, and communal loss.

This poem was written to honor the memory of an acquaintance of mine, who shared much of my circle of friends. I was quite affected when news of his suicide reached me. Clayton was noble and quirky and worthy of memory. I couldn't help but write this poem to honor what we had lost.

But a warning to the tender eye:
My mother has this endearing but cloying habit of reminding me that she worries about how dark I am sometimes. This poem would be a banner piece for her campaign. I felt Clayton's death on a deep, personal, spiritual, and existential level, and the poem does not turn its eye from the abyss of self-loss. Read it only if that warning doesn't make you nervous.

You are with me forever, Clayton.

The Scream

The thoughts of you swagger around inside my head.
The darkness and the light
Swirling so incomprehensibly,
So hypnotically around you
Blind my common vision.
In my mind I can hear the haggard rumble
Of a cry
Prowling upwards through your bowels
And tearing through your soul.
In legion the demons explode from your lips.
The scream is agony.
The scream is reality.
It pierces my soul and violates my ideals.
You are the scream and it is me.
It flows through us and shatters us.
It lives in us as you no longer can.
Despair and anguish fly on its wings to tear at my soul,
To petrify my heart, and to envenom my dreams.
The pain spirals inside me,
The despair shivers in ascendancy.
The rumble builds in my own heart.
talons of steel clawing in my chest to leave me hollow.
The emptiness drains me.
I can feel the numbness
And, O, how I long for that end.
I can feel my heart collapsing,
And finally the scream breaks free of mortal bounds.
It launches itself from your final, shivering breath and escapes.
It passes into memory.
You let it go.
The scream.
The life.
And now, the silence.

10-13-96

In memorium Clayton J. Myers
Jan. 19, 1978-October 4, 1996

The search for a replacement roommate, sadly, is ongoing.

Time is growing shorter, and I truly hope that someone who can reliably pay the rent works out. I can't pay it all alone, and I would be evicted if I had to try.

So, keep your fingers crossed on my behalf!

On the sunny side of things, one of my fellow professors was offered an excellent job somewhere else, and one of the classes she taught (Film and Literature) is one I want to teach and have the qualifications to be able to do so. So, hopefully, I will get to teach a cool class once she leaves here in a few weeks! The school hasn't said anything to me, but I just found out she was leaving at the end of the week, and I intend to make it very clear to my program director that I would like to take over that class. :)

Once I get all this wrangling for a roommate done, I am excited to be able to really sink myself into my writing. With only 4 classes, where I normally teach 6 or 7, I will get paid less, but I will be trapped at home with no money...the perfect excuse to do something constructive with my time while staying at home. :)

I hope everyone's life is manageable, and that you had a peaceful Sunday afternoon.

Here's a poem from a while back. I rather enjoyed it, and don't think I've shared it with many.


Lying next to you,
I was a misfit in my own flesh,
as if I could shed its coverings
and slide between your eyelids
run rejoicing around the contours
of your face
the lines left by smiles
the soft roundness of your lips
to the point of your chin
and down in rivulets
along your body.

Lying next to each other
the staggering forces of our desire
focused entire lives of memory
into moments of time

Lying next to each other
the touch of timid fingertips
become the trod of brave explorers
in the continents of our trembling skin
moving slowly across us
those conquerors tred the slow pace of the overwhelmed
haltingly crossing new barriers
and dreamt of manifest destiny

For so long we had been passing by each other
sitting near, but dreaming apart

But lying next to you
the world was whole and new,
The confusion of life
as familiar as my name
was turned inside out.
The experiences and lessons of pain
left me entirely,
and I was a trembling child
lost in the square
looking for his parents in a sea of cold air
and in blank faces
more absence than presence--
completely afraid, but always trusting.

Lying next to you
I thought of the time we'd lost
of the willow lights and empty swamps of a life
passed behind us
while the key was always so close.
Yet we are in a new world now
with entire continents to explore--
misfits in our own flesh
falling into each others,
capturing the entire world in the space of two bodies.

I love the typos that show up on my students' finals. Some recent examples:


"I plan to own my own bossiness"

"as I got holder I began to think for myself"

"drawling by hand"

"I would have a grate career on my said"

my personal favorite of all time is the one where a student wanted a "fast paste career"

Priceless

Sorry to leave two long-ish entries on the same day, but I wanted to mention that anyone who hasn't seen Corpse Bride but whom enjoys animation (or claymation similar to Nightmare Before Christmas) and Tim Burton should make a point of seeing the film. I thought it was a visually stunning work. And well voiced and acted. With plenty of laughs of delight stimulated by Burton's quirky storytelling genius. I could have used another song, though, Danny and Tim... But I guess clay-modeled musicals do have a lot of budgetary restrictions. *grumble grumble grumble*

There was a moment where I was so completely involved in the story that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. As if I were just an extra, on set for this amazing story. It was an ethereal moment. Layer that head-trip on top of a scene in the story that already had me welling up. It was an experience I wouldn't trade.

And no. Please don't compare it in any way to Nightmare Before Christmas. Go to this movie without expectations, and you will enjoy it.

As I did. ;-)

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough.It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor and simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
...
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T.S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.
-from Zen in the Art of Writing, pages 39 and 40

Some of you may recall that I asked for your good wishes at the end of my rant about Jeff, my current roommate.

That request was twofold. One the one hand, I asked for prayers and thoughts over the next few months as I try to find a roommate to replace him, etc.

On the other hand, though, I added a request for thoughts specifically on Saturday of this weekend and left the reason unvoiced.

That is because I had chosen the 10th (a third of the way through my 27th year...three to the third power) as the day to stop my prewriting process and begin actually writing my first draft for the novel that I have been chewing on for more than half a year.

I had already written a little bit from one character's point of view, but this was the real deal: writing a little every day...starting on the main character's story...and meeting my goal of having 300 pages written by the end of the year.

Well, I'm off to a great start. I have the approximate equivalent of about 13 pages done so far, and it looks as if the process may be more natural to me than I had originally thought.

I did discover a frightening fact, however, in doing some research on word counts for first-published authors. It seems that many of the epic sagas in fantasy and science fiction aren't making the companies as much of a return as they would hope for the size of their investments (God forbid, right?). The practical effect of this is that I may have to cram what I think would work best as a trilogy of about 900-1000 pages into a single novel of short to medium size (longer manuscripts are harder to get published when you're a first-timer...there's more of a risk involved).

But a nice event happened during that research as well. I landed on DAW books' site for submission guidelines that had a link to Tad Williams' page prominently listed. Mr. Williams is one of my favorite authors, and I take this as a nice portent...a sign in the sky.

Thanks for any good energies and thoughts sent my way today. I hope they will all pay off when you get to read a finished product (maybe with cover art by Michael Whelan? *fingers painfully and tightly crossed*

I am: Stanislav Lem This pessimistic Pole has spent a whole career telling ironic stories of futility and frustration.  Yet he is also a master of wordplay so witty that it sparkles even when translated into English.

Which science fiction writer are you?

This is actually not one of the best tests in the world (having played around with some of the options to see how the results changed), but I was happy to see Stanislaw Lem had been one of my possible options if I had answered differently on one of the questions where I wasn't certain which was the truest answer for me. Heck, I was happy to see him included at all.

Cheers, Mr. Lem. I hope you have found your Solaris, a world shaped by your dreams into new vitality and life.

OK...to preface this entry, I have to explain a little background. When I moved into the house I lived in last year, it was a big place with an upstairs room for one of the bedrooms. My roommate, Jeff, had the upstairs room. Well, the upstairs room was where he had practiced and even done some recording with the band he had been in, Triphammer.

Triphammer had broken up. And Jeff had been working with a friend of his (a drummer) named Mike. When I moved in, Jeff invited me to play with them and see how things went.

Now, at some level, I realized the fickle nature inherent in this situation, and that Jeff probably wouldn't have asked me if I hadn't been living there.

But the band was going great. Even with severe problems finding a bass player who Jeff was happy with, the sound worked fairly well. We even played for friends who received it well a couple of times.

Well, a couple months ago, Jeff threw his hands in the air. But he wasn't entirely honest about it. Instead of saying "we're through" or something like it, he said he was worried for his sanity...things were a bit crazy right then...etc. And what could one say to that really? Especially when it was phrased something like "So I've already told Mike about it and he understands. So we're going to take a break from practicing...a month or two. If that's okay with you, of course."

UGH

Now, Jeff's never been the most sensitive to social conventions or others' emotions. But that remark was such a slap in the face. It felt like [translation]: "Um...I want to pretend that this is just for a month or two...but I'm still going to play with this metal band I've been helping out on bass...and...yeah...um, I guess I should tell you something, since you're in the band."

Seriously. I was that much of an afterthought.

Well...there's the necessary background. I was treated by my roommate (who is far from conscientious of the right things to be a good roommate for me...he throws away obvious recyclables knowing how much I care about recycling, for example) in a very selfish way. And cut off in a very flippant manner from my first band experience, which I had been thoroughly enjoying.

It was all I could do at times not to scream at him when he would talk about his other band the same way he had always talked about bands. He would clothe his frustration at not striking it rich quickly with language about enjoying it for the experience, blah blah blah. He had moved on. It was like living with an ex when s/he had a new boyfriend, and wanted to rub it in your nose.

With all of this broiling on the back burner, along with a healthy dose of frustration at our school's newest attempt to serve the students by treating them like babies...I was a little frustrated.

And *BAM*

Jeff comes home from a noon appointment, and asks me to talk before I start the next episode of Friends, which I was watching on my DVD player at the time.

And he explains how, with his recent loss of job and his plans to go into schooling for CPE in the summer that he had decided to break our lease and leave the state at the end of October to live with family, where he could save more money.

Now, he's doing everything he can to find a person to assume the last 8 or 9 months of his part of the rent, but I am NOT happy. We discussed the 6 month lease options and month-by-month options when we moved in, and he and I agreed that the year lease was the most sensible for our situations.

But, though this has brought me a lot of stress...I would be a lier if I said I wasn't happy in a lot of ways. Jeff is a friend. But he is a friend I don't need in such close proximity, I think. He still hasn't cleaned up the mess of his stuff in the living room from the process of moving in. He was excited about doing more communal shopping and cooking with me, and becoming more vegetarian in the process (both his ideas, not mine) but has eaten even more meat and crappy food while sitting for marathon hours in front of his PlayStation than ever before. And several opportunities to go to parties with our friends from school have come up, and he's pretty much blown them off. Which I know is what's going to happen to me once he moves off.

Like so many others in my life, I will never hear from him again. And I would be lying if I said that I was totally unhappy about it. But there is a lot of anxiety and grief accompanying any hope for future life openings. So, as all too often in the past year or so, I would appreciate any prayers, meditations, good thoughts, spare good energy, calls, emails, etc. that you may have to spare here in the next couple of months.


And on a more private note...send me good thoughts this Saturday. It will be a very important day in my calendar for the next year. I will say more at a later date...for now, just try to think of me this weekend.

Here's a fun list I picked up off of a blog somewhere. Most of the italicized books I have only read in part because they were taught in a class and were only present in sections. And then there's the Talmud, which I doubt anyone alive has read in its entirety...

( Banned )

Just another example of how there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to the propaganda machines of our country. Despite the seemingly timely nature of this quote, it came from an interview Noam Chomsky had with David Barsamian in 1996.

***begining of quote***
Barsamian: In Manufacturing Consent, the book you wrote with Ed Herman in 1988, you described five filters that news goes through before we see it. Would you revise that list? One of the filters, anticommunism, probably needs to be changed.

Chomsky: Temporarily, at least. I thought at the time it was put too narrowly. More broadly, it's the idea that grave enemies are about to attack us and we need to huddle under the protection of domestic power.

You need something to frighten your people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what's really happening to them. You have to somehow engender fear and hatred, to channel the kind of rage--or even just discontent--that's being arouse by social and economic conditions.

By the early 80's, it was clear that Communism wasn't going to remain usable as a threat for much longer, so when the Reagan administration came in, they immediately focused on "international terrorism." Right from the start, they used Libya as a punching bag.

Then every time they had to rally support for the aid to the Contras or something, they'd engineer a confrontation with Libya. It got so ludicrous that, at one point, the White House was surrounded by tanks to protect poor President Reagan from Libyan hit squads. It became an international joke.

By the late 80's, hispanic drug traffickers became the enemy; by now, they've been joined by immigrants, black criminals, welfare mothers and a whole cast of other attackers on every side.
***end of quote***

Chomsky is wise to point out in other sections of this interview how the enemy is never exactly what is important in this equation...but how the military industrial complex (government investments in research to maintain the abilities of our military) has changed to an industrial military complex (where government investments--including military ones--serve the interests of large and often transnational companies...where the true beneficiary is not the militarily threatened US citizen, but rich investors and business owners)...and how the constant, fervent search for an enemy that can instill fear in the hearts of the people is a time-honored tactic of drawing the people's attention away from even severe socio-economic injustice at home.

And I can't help but think that, no matter how much some people like to criticize Noam Chomsky, time has done little other than prove him to be...well...right.

"For the moment the people are learning how to read
the constitution is the people's creed
from their back pocket they'll take it out for all to see
and their motto is death or liberty.
There are those who will complain--
mostly the privileged few.
Sing a song for Chavez
before the coup."
-from "A Song for Hugo Chavez" by David Rovics

I'm listening to David Rovics right now (if that wasn't already obvious). I chose the particular quote above because it struck me as being painfully similar to other situations in Central and South America in which the US intervened--often training guerilla troops and providing them with weapons (see this web site for more information about that training. We tore down any government that even loosely resembled socialism or communism. We destroyed governance that was building roads, schools, and hospitals. We opposed regimes that used the public goods to help the people rather than corporations and the world bank. And we often put dictators in the place of prior leadership. Dictators such as the Samoza regime that devastated Nicaragua for so long and killed countless citizens in his armed dictatorship.

So read a little bit about Hugo Chavez. I am trying to aid David Rovics bring situations like this one to public consciousness, so that our government, the CIA, and WHISC (the new name of the SOA) can't do it again, right in front of our eyes.

"For the moment the movement's on the rise
It's all happening right before our eyes
But turn on the TV and there's nothing they will say
If he's gone and we don't hear it did it happen anyway"

But Chavez is only part of my note. I also highly encourage you to check out the music of David Rovics. All of it is free for download on his web site. I especially recommend the disc "Songs for Mahmud. I t has a lot of my favorite songs from his work. But he has a lot to say, so find a few songs that look interesting and check him out.

"Listen to David Rovics..."
Pete Seeger

"David Rovics is a guy George W. Bush would probably like to clamp in chains at Guantanamo Bay -- the last American protest singer (or so it seems)... In these days of ongoing neo-conservatism he carries the torch of dissent and protest -- in fact if the great Phil Ochs were to come back from the dead tonight he'd probably be hailed as the new David Rovics."
Andy Kershaw, BBC Radio 3

"David Rovics' music gives life and hope in the struggle for peace and justice. He is an inspiration."
Reverend Roy Bourgeois, founder, SOA Watch

It wasn't a weird or abnormally busy day or anything, today. But a couple of noteworthy (at least for humor's sake...) events did happen to me today.

First, as I was walking to my local Trader Joe's to pick up some odds and ends, I experienced my first cat-call. Now...I've been jeered at many times in my life. Anyone who breaks into triple digits on their weight in the first grade learns how to take jeers, jibes, and raucous cut-downs at some point. And, now that I've taken to walking to work, I get laughs and shouts from teenagers who see me in my felt fedora (shading my easily burned pate). But this wasn't a cut-down. This was one of those inexplicable hit-on-someone-by hanging-out-your-window-as-you-drive-by types of deals normally reserved in my mind for southern rednecks who don't understand the predatory nature of such actions. Or worse...fully understand and think that it's acceptable. First difference: the gender roles were swapped from what I normally think of (obviously, as I'm male). Second, the jibe was something that could easily have been read as sarcastic. The woman hooted and then shouted "bald is beautiful." But she didn't sound sarcastic in the least.

I felt dirty at first, because of my initial reaction to such meat-market assessments. But then I was just shaking my head and laughing at the oddity of the whole experience.

The second event of notice is a gripe on my part (sorry). I have been taking a lot of the tests on OKCupid.com lately (they're fun...try 'em). They have a similar feature to the tests if you have an account. In said feature, they learn about your personality by having you answer questions users have submitted both for your own preferences in dating...and what you would like from a "ideal" partner. (It's primarily a dating site, I think...but you don't have to pay to join and you don't have to join to take the tests).

Well, I submitted a question. After working my way through a lot of the questions, I was beginning to feel that 1) a lot of them were poorly worded, and thus had no choices I liked, and 2) they didn't have as many questions that directly pertained to me. So I thought of the horrible stories I keep seeing people share on the add_me_veg group here of how family members keep trying to sabotage their choices to be vegetarian by hiding meat in their food. And I figured...that's universal enough. Anyone could imagine dating a vegetarian. So I wrote a question about such situations and gave a nice spread of choices betweer someone saying that they would do it or wouldn't for various reasons (thinking that vegetarians would come to their senses if they tasted meat again...doing it for a laugh...not doing it out of respect for individual autonomoy...and not doing it, but trying to eat less meat out of respect). The rejection of my question said that it was offensive! Now, I can see how some could see parts of it as potentially offensive. But come on...is it more offensive than "would you date [this ethnicity]? Yes. No. I'm hesitant, but I'd try it?" Oh well. I guess my vegetarianism will never cease to offend the populace...

And finally, I just wanted to reiterate one thing. I know that it is no longer "cool" to like Hugh Grant after his prostitute solicitation. But I do anyway. He's a wonderful actor in general...and one of the mainstays of one of my favorite genres: romantic comedy.

I watched The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain today (see it if you haven't. It's a lovely movie). I just love the British wit and its specific applications to the way UK citizens speak. Some of my favorite movies are purely or heavily British. And I don't mean Guy Ritchie! I mean films like Waking Ned Devine. Or Sexy Beast. Or About a Boy. And not to mention BBC comedies! The Office, Coupling, Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served?, Absolutely Fabulous, The Young Ones, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Vicar of Dhibly, you get the idea.

*sigh* I guess being a US citizen isn't so bad. But I long for a little cottage in a village in central Wales or northern England. Waking up and putting on a pot for tea and porridge as the sun is coming up. For a place where the paganus...the villagers...the back-woods folk, if you will, have a religion that requires more training than being dipped in water to preach...and they go to church because they are truly God-fearing folk! Maybe I just long for the preserved glades of a place where the twentieth century and its industiral revolution, enlightenment, and rationalist ancestors are not taken uncritically, but examined with the same cautious eyes that studied the Bretons, the Angles, the Saxons, the Romans, and the Gauls.

Anyway...there are three glimpses into the Saturday sleepy mind of Dan. I hope it's beenf worth the read. :)

Chapter 10 of the Critical Thinking book we use at my school is on constructing arguments. So there is a section on considering evidence from multiple perspectives and a section on deductive argument models/styles.

Now, the deductive reasoning section is insanely useful. Not only in strengthening our own logical conclusions, but also in seeing how many arguments that are presented in our society are logically flawed. For example: a falsely disjunctive syllogism is when we are told that we only have two choices, and there's no middle ground when, in fact, things are not that simple. "Better dead than red," "You're either with us or against us," "Republican or Democrat?"

Unfortunately, most students don't really digest that section because the parts of the chapter dealing with considering evidence from multiple perspectives use the issue of legalization of Marijuana as a test case. Needless to say, most students enjoy the conversation but miss the point.

Luckily, today I had a student approach me at break and discuss his excitement at seeing how the deductive reasoning forms were the basic building blocks of all arguments. In most classes, I explicitly point this out. In this one, I forgot for one reason or another, and yet here one of the students was excited to discover it! That kind of student contact is the scalpal side of the blade of education. It cuts away the offensive tumors (tedium) of the job and leaves me healthy and vital as a teacher. Unfortunately, the other side is like the edge of a broadsword or even a claymore--it's main power lies in driving home the point with a lot of weight and force...hoping that the blade cuts through somehow.

As a teacher, I always try to teach them the benefits of the subtler and more precise blade. Sadly, my arms are getting tired from swinging that heavy side like a machete. And it feels like the progress, if any, is painfully slow.

Luckily, the diamonds in the rough...the students who intuit from the swings of a broadsword how much more useful something like a scalpal would be...they make all of the effort worth it.

I know I have been away from LiveJournal for a long time. A lot of circumstances led to this...including moving to a new apartment, fighting with Verizon to get the phone on in the new apartment (we spent almost a month without a home phone)...an even longer wait for DSL (almost two months and counting)...a renewed fascination with reading, perhaps because of the time I am no longer spending on the computer...drafting notes for my novel...walking to work for exercise (I'd rather swim, but why pay 35 bucks a month for a gym membership just to be able to swim...right now it's not financially feasible)...grading term papers...and generally surviving all life could throw at me.

I have, it must be said, been somewhat depressed. Part of this was due to finances, which I won't say much about here. Suffice it to say, I tightened my belt a notch or two.

But mostly, this depression was a result of a continual diminution of contact with my loved ones and friends. I miss all of you. It was only my introverted, outsider, social outcast childhood that gave me any preparation for being so long separated from the normal means of communication. And that is all I will say for now.

I close with a profound thanks for your love and fellowship. The good parts of me are the ways in which I am what you made me. My finitude and faults are, in many ways, the places in which I have failed in maintaining contact and warmth in relationships. You are all lights in my night sky, both enchanting and illuminating by your very natures, and I thank you for being you.

"As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask."

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

"If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."

"If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?"

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'"

"In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation."

"In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."

"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve." (I think this one is a Martin Heidegger reference, Paul Tillich also says something very similar)

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."

"Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies."

"The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity."

"What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal."

Well...there are some quotes I found on a quick internet query.

This post makes a nice opportunity for me to mention something that happened to me the other day. (To understand why, it is important to know that Erich Fromm is a psychoanalyst by training).

I was speaking with one of my similarly-aged and -trained colleagues at my school about some of the options I have been considering for my future career dedications. As many of you know, up until recently, I was on fire to be a literature professor (of science-fiction, more specifically) at a liberal arts college. Well, a couple of things have been agging at me.

First, as a white male, I am going to be lowest on the totem pole in terms of being hired as a professor. I don't say this out of malice. I prefer systems of equal opportunity within the skewed spectrums of morality and equality of identity that are workplaces in the US, and I am highly aware that the danger of any improperly preferntial hiring can greatly threaten the richness of a faculty, thus effecting students' overall quality of instruction. I'm just noting that a job as a professor may be hard to come by for my position.

Second, the books that have really lite my fires lately have mainly been books about psychology. Specifically, I have really been passionate about learning more neuropsychology...the integration of new biological and medical imaging based knowledge of the human brain with insights of psychic structure that have shone forth in recent psychology.

Third, I have to teach all of my classes how following your instinct can often take you farther in life (if you are a good critical thinker who is also used to looking for logical fallacies or self-deceit in your thoughts and instincts, that is) than normal "rational" decision making processes. Our subconscious mind, whence arises instinct, is the part of our brain that finds patterns and creative solutions to difficult problems. And what are our decisions in life if not complicated problems? So...the fact that I was feeling strangely called by neuropsychology did not go unnoticed.

So...I was speaking with said colleague. We had already spoken on a couple of occasions about my thought about potentially studying psychology...but in our most recent conversation, I mentioned how a lot of my recent readings have focused on neuropsychology, and she made the passing comment "oh, there's a lot of money in that."

Well, as someone with a fairly well paying entry-level teaching job...I know (sadly) how much more mobilized we can be toward our dreams when we don't have to worry about making all the bills. I am not very driven by money...but the prospect of being paid well for my years of study...in a research and scientifically oriented field which combines my love of reason and philosophy with the insights of the new human sciences (in this case sociology and psychology)...and loving the material to boot...is hard to resist.

She gave me some names to contact at her PhD program and, luckily, it is a program with religious ties (and APA certification...which is the standard for psych training)...which means that a neuropsychology degree focusing on the question of religious experiences would be perfectly suited to their faculty and curriculum.

So...I will still focus on the two prospective books that keep growing in my mind...the sci-fi novel and the neuropsych-religion-ethics book.

But I might, as I gain more info, be changing my shipping lane of preference that will carry my goods to the field of service. I still love literature...so don't hate me, guys. :)