myriad of the mundane

2007-11-24T02:17:00.000-08:00

It's really beginning to get downright frosty out here. It's been dipping into the freezing temperatures around here the past few days due to the very clear weather. amazingly clear for this time of year, in fact. a bit disconcerting.
i'm making some amazing rosehip-hawthorne berry-apple jam this weekend. i just started the process today by grinding all three together and extracting all the seedy bits. it's this thick stew of great healthiness. i'm excited to work on canning it on sunday. i'll let you guys see and read how it ends up going. should be great, though. nothing quite as tasty as home made jam.
in other news i'm doing well in my classes. it's kinda amazing. soon enough it'll be the end of my first quarter at Bastyr. it's a bit freakish how much i've actually learned these past few months. it's intense how many species, properties and local medicinals i know at this point. i fondly greet at least 3 species on every single trip i take around town now. it's really a cool feeling.
how are you all doing?
what's new in your life?

2007-11-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

alright. by popular demand (yes by all two of you,) here's a blog.
what's happened? oh, rockies made the playoffs (WTF?) and then lost, which is more like their style. bush plumbed new lows in approval ratings, go figure. i've been living into our new house. it's lovely and bright and just about right as far as i'm concerned.
i've really picked up myself and found my home at school. it's a great fit even if thinking of paying for it is ridiculously stressful. especially given the fact that the government is behind the times on funding education from birth to grave. surprise? nah, it's a cumbersome giant that needs to be trimmed down. this is just one more proof of that.
and yeah. i need to go to school because i already blew off my o chem review session. i held my own last night.
i'll be checking on all of you soon, be well!

2007-10-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

well, y'all, i just will not be around here that much for a while, it seems. school and work are taking up a lot of my time and knitting and getting our herb garden ready for next year is taking the rest. so i will talk to you guys in a while. be well and happy.

2007-09-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

well all, fall has arrived and with it a new hat i've just finished. knitting is a pretty good hobby to have around here what with the coming of the short days, long nights and almost constant cloud cover. honestly i'm really digging it. not as much as the one i made for sara but it's more me than hers was her. hers was a very simple little thing, 2 2 rib all the way up with a simple but cool pattern set up by the yarn she chose- cascadia yarns is the brand and they are FANTASTIC!

so past that...motorcycle valves are ticking right where they should be, master cylinder and seals are next. i'll be doing one and a professional the other. going to be talking to slave to the needle since i haven't got any more sun or swimming to look forward to for a while now and... it's gonna be a great winter. i can already feel it.
i adore winter. it's a great season. i don't really have a favorite season, i guess, but i don't really favor summer all that much. i like the cool, cold and changing seasons.
hopefully everyone out there is doing fabulously, i'm sure i'll be talking to you all soon.

2007-09-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

i've got turn signal lust.
and i know that sounds very funny but it's very true. i want these turn signals but i have to save my tips for them. but they will be brighter, more energy efficient and just plain better looking than the current set.
past that i've been working like a madman. put in about 24 hours in the past two days. i'm not exhausted but i'm certainly not my spunky self, either. can't wait for a break this thursday and friday. i think i may go camp out because the weather is supposed to be ideal. we'll see.
that's all the more i'm going to say for now. i've got to go check up on you all!

2007-08-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

i think that we can all agree that we have about reached the limits of our extractive culture. there are so many little signs of a system that is out of balance and teetering towards a complete meltdown.
for instance, we are currently- that is we taxpayers- shoring up the financial sector of the economy, specifically the banks, to prevent a world-wide panic and likely depression like the last great depression that my grandparents remember. the only thing between us and that is you and me. but the high-risk investments of the banks continue and they will continue as long as they have our carte blanche. basically here's how the system is working right now: the banks don't have the confidence in each other' solvency to loan money freely which means that your average bank doesn't have any money to lend. since they don't have the money to lend they can't make interest payments to the shareholders and folks with savings accounts.
add to this the dramatic failings of a supremely extractive and environmentally inattentive country like china and you see where our system is going. it is time now to begin the changes to locally sustainable economies instead of the gentlemanly global capitalism that we have now. when 80% of manufactured goods are provided by 1000 corporations you have a problem. there is nothing local about a group producing half of a percent of the global total of goods.
we have got to focus on sustainable solutions to our economic needs. we're too far down this path to just drop the machinery, put it into the ground and live off the earth like the nature-bound cultures before us. there are just too many of us. but we can prevent the wholesale slaughter of the animal life of the planet in favor of a more sustained, balanced approach to life.

2007-08-24T23:23:00.001-07:00

as much as i've seen that makes me believe that we are all going south in a handbasket and that we are going to, through laziness and greed and misplaced confidences, ruin the entire terrestrial ecosystem with us, I have just found a few great reasons to be excited for the prospect of living out the beginning of the end of things.
it's really weird to see the possibility of the end of life in the universe (because it's truly possible we are alone in this great, vast cosmos that we've come to try to understand) but to be more focused on the immediate fellowship with others. I'm not talking faith, either. I have none of that anymore. I am talking about the very fundamental experience of being human: genuine belonging, acceptance and love of the group you've created around yourself. I can truly say that I have entered a new phase in my life and that it is going to be amazing. I've been waiting for it to come to me for a very long time so its coming is a breath of air to me.
today, for instance, i went skinny dipping in lake washington with some friends. i threw off the burdens of society for a while and just enjoyed the lake water, the cold and warm currents and the pre-autumn sun. I feel renewed and filled with energy at the prospects of my life right now.
to be sure there are a great many things that are going wrong but many more are going right.
and so i leave you with this little snapshot of my happiness. i hope that it has left you feeling light-hearted because you are my friends and family and some of the many people i want to be happy in this life. don't lose sight of that, please. there are so many things that can make you sad, angry, hopeless and listless: make sure that you don't sink into them.
that is all.
and thank you, grandma. it's good to be called to your senses every so often.

2007-08-17T12:40:00.001-07:00

just started my new job at a little mexican joint out here this week. it's been really intense and tomorrow night is my first shift busing a section by myself- on the busiest night of the week, no less. i'm glad i've got today to recover a little bit and get set. it'll be fun. it's also my first night being tipped in, which i'm excited for.
past that i've signed in on a house in the ballard area, a great little neighborhood here in seattle where the scandinavians have traditionally lived. it's close to my climbing gym, close to a regular gym and is a big place.

past that i've got a story to relate from a friend of mine. i found it hilarious and witty.
he works in a fishery that collects geoducks. for those of you who haven't tried them, they're great and featherless. basically they're big ass clams. and something has been eating them. so yesterday he set up and underwater cage match between a starfish and a particularly powerful geoduck to see who would emerge victorious. but the funny thing is that he's trying to figure out what's eating his clam. and he simply can't figure out why anyone would eat a guy's clam.
so yeah, funny funny. bawdy humor will always get me to laugh.

2007-08-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

creation. i have said this before and i'll say it again, i love that this spot doesn't let you "post" or "write." no, you are creating. you are the creator of a story, a thought, a rant or anything you chose to create. i love it.
that being said, i also love my life right now! my arm is feeling better every day, my knee is solid most days, i've got a new job, a new house to be in and a new school to get a new career. i love change and this is the king of changes.
that and i read this fantastic report on the BBC. That war report would make bush blush with its obvious lies and tenuous grasp on the truth. but i digress, this is supposed to be a happy time!
and i'm totally wasting time that could be spent on posterity or posterior, at the very least.
summer, is seems, is drawing to a close early here in seattle. i hope against hope that we'll get an indian summer here this year but i'm not going to hold my breath and will be ready for rain.
i can't think of a single other thing to say. i'm drained of creativity since i pounded on my djimbe for an hour the other day.

2007-07-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

today i walked down the 80 blocks to a park just to get my legs warm and stretched out, add a little sweat to my brow and enjoy the feeling of living. it worked.
i caught a glimpse of mount rainier in the sunset as it hung, a pure pink behemoth, over the top of a building. it was absolutely beautiful. it's the sort of sights that makes you smile at how insignificant things can make you believe so deeply in the perfection of the living planet.
i've been trying to keep myself sane by reading the past month or so. i think i've now surpassed 2000 pages for the month, which is something i'm pretty proud of.
it's starting to turn ever so slowly back to fall here. the days are becoming surely shorter and i'm enjoying the changes. it's really beautiful just to feel the earth changing in its own slow ways as you go about your many little facets of life.
it's a beautiful world we're killing here.

a short follow up

2007-07-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

a few posts ago i started to deal with a problem that has us all looking for answers: human civilization is destroying the world, what is the way to stop it. perhaps it would be more accurate to say what is a way of putting a stop to all this destruction, since i'm sure there are many out there.

it has been put into my head by "ishmael" that our culture is one that, from its very beginning some 10,000 years ago has been opposed to nature. we are the masters of this world, the only intelligent life on it that we know of, and we may do with everything as we please. the earth is our gift from the gods, whichever you may believe in.

think for a moment if you will, just to humor me, about what you envision the life of a hunter-gatherer to be.

i don't know about you but i see this naked man running through the forest trying desperately to catch food for his family to eat. i see a man beset by beasts that would kill him and near the point of starvation. don't you? but this isn't the case. check with an anthropology book and you will find that they are well fed and have much more leisure time than we in the "civilized" world do. they also don't have the rates of crime, abuse, drug addiction or suicide that we developed peoples have. they are, in short, as well fed and much, much happier with their lives. true, they starve like everything else if food becomes scarce but because our diet is so richly varied they are the last to feel the pinch. still, living off the land means that we can only eat what the land provides.

the second thing to think about is the Book of Genesis. really, don't groan or begin to recite why you don't believe (i did this, i'll freely admit.) just look at the book. the Bible was written by farmers for farmers and yet the Book of Genesis has a great many confusing things that don't make sense in the context of the rest of the work. if farming is the great revolution we believe it to be in this culture, why is it looked at as a turning away from God himself in Genesis? it's like the Soviets decrying the evils of Communism. the truth of the matter is that it was written by the Semites, who would become the Jews, upon their first contact with the farmers from the Fertile Crescent. and where the Semites practiced strict population control, a must since they could have only so many sheep before the land was over-grazed, the agrarians reproduced out of control. take the story of cain and abel as an example. cain, who is a farmer, slays his brother abel, who is a shepherd. this is what was happening to the Semites at the hands of our cultural forefathers. they were being slaughtered so that we could continue our population growth and till more of the earth. Another interesting point is that Adam means "man." when they spoke of the sons of Adam they were talking about mankind, with themselves and those from the north being the two brothers. Man ate from the forbidden tree and was cast from the Garden, where he ate easily and food was plentiful. Sound like you could apply that to man cutting down the trees to farm the land and build a civilization? it does to me. and the Garden sounds an awful lot like the forests plied by aboriginal peoples the world over. they live off of the land, off of the Garden. No wonder we can't find it!

at any rate, i've realized why this modern life feels so awfully out of sorts. Because we are not following the laws that make the world work and have made the world work for millions of years! we have removed ourselves from evolution, exempted ourselves from the rules and made our own. we have committed the greatest act of arrogance ever conceived of; we have taken the power of the gods, the power of life and death, into our unable hands and have wielded it. and now, in a scant 500 generations we have taken the web of life to the point of collapse with our foolishness. it's time to drop the ball on farming and factories and our entire way of life and live from the land like everything else. when we do, we will allow for other great intellects to come about. we will be the father of the intellectual revolution of the natural world! but only if we stop being a virus upon the land and give up our pretensions of godhood.
we must not be gods but men of the earth.

2007-07-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

"I take the subway uptown. I think, Have I given up anything by living with another person? Has there been a trade-off? Always, there is a trade-off. And the answer comes to me instantly. I have given up a certain degree of freedom. The ability to plow through my life with utter disregard for the thoughts and feelings of other people. I can no longer read a magazine and throw it on the floor.
"In exchange, I get unlimited access to the one person I have met in my life whom I automatically felt was out of my league. My favorite human being, the single person I cherish above all others. This is the person I get to share the oxygen in the room with.
"And for this, I will happily scrub the toilet. And I won't make fun of anybody who drives an SUV. Unless, of course, they really deserve it. And I'll try to let things happen. Not always feel like I have to control everything.
"With the exception of those things I can control, that is, with my mind." Augusten Burrough.

so, i've been tagged to tell eight things about me...that are interesting or otherwise edifying. and now, the Rules:
We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I am a motorcyclist. Being on two wheels has weedled its way deeply into my blood and perhaps has even affected my genome. It will not leave until I no longer breathe. Also, I have a love for motorcycles older than me or inspired by those older than I am.

2. I believe in the power of people to heal themselves, even though I have little evidence to scientifically prove my view. I figure it just makes sense that the body wants to heal itself and fails only because we have failed to feed it the correct things. As a result, I'm studying to be a naturopath in order to make sure everything that is needed is present for the healing process.

3. I believe that there may be a God but that most folks have it completely wrong by assembling a face and personality for that force. We cannot even begin to comprehend what our creator is in our own paltry lifetimes, so just enjoy the greatest thing there is, existence.

4. I can spend a comfortable night in any environment around the U.S. because I was a scout and learned all those types of skills. I can be at home on a snowy mountain or a lowland desert.

5. I have this one specific person I adore more than each and every breath I take.

6. I absolutely love roots music. folk, country, bluegrass, blues, jazz and rock make my world go round. i enjoy music from the world over but those that are from home are my favorite. i feel like i might feel bad but it's how everything is, aye?

7. I have resigned myself to the idea that we are going to end the world. Or spend way too much time, labor, money and lives later on fixing all the things folks refuse to change for their children's sake, much less for the sake of their grandchildren, unborn or not. It makes me very sad to say this. It makes me feel like a failure but I am part of the problem, very much so, and very little part of the solution.

8. I believe that the purpose of government is defined very clearly in the preamble to the Constitution and that when it works we all have life, liberty and happiness. But when it doesn't we have modern America and Germany before World War II. Ideology in any form robs the follower of individuality and calms the mind so that you don't have to think any longer. That is a great part of why #7 is on this list.

and with me this will die because i have very few friends here on the blogosphere and would feel weird asking anyone but sumo to do this thing.

nothing all that new to report other than the fact that i cut 6-7 inches of hair off my head and look like a respectable human and not a shepherd dog. life is great, but that makes it boring to everyone but me, too.

2007-06-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

first, go listen to the hilarious 911 call from an officer who got paranoid after eating a bag of pot in brownie form. restores my faith in our drug policies...
second, i'm back in the fold for a while again. how long? God only knows and i don't think he's real. so please do enjoy the little shot of myself, humble and lost and wrong as i may be.
it's pride weekend here in seattle and if i were of a stronger constitution i might go have a one night stand with some guy. i've decided i want to know every possible sexual experience at least once. experiment and see what i like, or something like that. since i've got my one life i may as well enjoy the fuck out of it!
i'm also trying to reconnect with the world i lost over the past six months to a year. i am engaging my friends again, you included, and trying to appreciate everyone more than i ever did before.
i'm not lying to anyone anymore ever. if you want the truth you need not have an "honesty box" nor anything anonymous. i will sign my name to my opinions. so ask away if you have any questions of me. mostly i found that the moment i stopped telling the whole truth part of my died away. i want it back and i want it to stay so i am remedying the situation.
not much deep thought this week, mostly just thoughts of the nature of being alone for the first time in my life. it's really an odd feeling, as i'm sure you all know. nothing in this life is so scary nor so necessary as finding the joy in being alone. i am working at it but at this point am merely optimistically terrified of the whole idea of it.
may my strength and self hold out until the silver lining arrives!
i'll be doing the rounds now and saying my hellos to you all. good day!

progress is a false idol

2007-06-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

this world we have created is beautiful in such an unnatural way. it has everything to do with how beautiful a jet looks streaking past an industrial crane. 30,000 feet up and angular, bone white steel make such an impression on the heart. but at what cost?
last week i had the pleasure of getting outside and visiting the zuni reservation in north-eastern new mexico. there are few, if any, pictures. i don't need their aid to remember those things that made their impression on me.
high on an arid mesa we found the stones that form the foundation of a traditional pit house, earliest of the pueblo revolution. everywhere there were pieces of people- curved cranial bones, fragments of tibia or humerus, fingers- pieces of people's lives- pot sherds, former fields- and nothing living anymore. why? because the rains dried up as the earth became warmer after the dark ages, most likely.
The other thing that strikes you about being out with a zuni is how little they care for this world's materials. everything they have serves a purpose and they have precious little extra. still, i have seen something you do not see much of in our modern world: sacrifice is a daily occurance to these people. Tim Edaakie gave me part of his livelihood, a small silver pendant with stone inlay. He is the third generation in his family to be a silversmith, at the very least. his grandparents are world renowned for their pieces of birds. they shape every stone by hand, sometimes to the thickness of a pencil lead. amazing.
they gave us salt. they gave us bread. they gave us mint. they gave us time. they gave us knowledge. they gave us what they could, because we were friends and guests. i gave thanks in return and the promise to do the same if they came to seattle. they showed little interest.
they are happy with who they are and what they do. the injection of western culture has done little to change their ways and worldview. it begs the question, why are they so happy and we so sad?
our buying power has doubled in the past 50 years, perhaps increased even more, but we are not any happier than we began. in fact, the percentage of americans who describe themselves as very unhappy has increased steadily. so why do we continue to consume?
i'll restate the point because it is very important. why, if money and things can't make us happy, do we focus on them so intently?
the other reality that we must face is the fact that this conspicuous consumption must come to an end for the sake of future generations and my own. there is a tide of retirees coming, they are coming fast, and they are going to tax the reserves of federal money to no end.
but i digress. there is only so much space here and you have only so much patience. so let's get back to the main channel of my thoughts for this blog, shall we?
everything a man can come to understand he will come to understand in himself. to fully know himself he must have nature. not only is this necessary for him to know himself but also to know his thoughts. it is sad to see the natural world paved, the air quality degraded, and the water polluted not because these pollutions and bastardizations are borne by my body but because they are truly born by my children! my children and yours will suffer greatly because we are failing them now! no power will forgive us now for wasting their health and wellbeing for our own sloth and ease.
so, i urge you to speak to your representatives, to your presidential candidate and your neighbors. show them that there is no use for a house without a tolerable planet to put it on. the truth is everywhere around you, just look at the stars.

Metaphysics? Religion? Nay, this is neither.

2007-05-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

i was reading a work on the life and religious theory of Ignacius of Loyola a few days ago, smoking a cigar as all true intellectuals must (ha!) and enjoying the heavy spring rain we were having that evening when i stumbled upon a very fundamental realization about the nature of religion. i don't claim that this is all that original or that i'm the first to say it, i'm sure that's not the case. Every single religion fails to describe the reality of the heart. every single one of them fails in its aim: the exposition of God, reality and the truth. but why? so many great minds have committed their lives to the pursuit of the perfect proof of God, the perfect interpretation of his words, how to live well and justly. so many humans have poured their minds, hearts and lives into religion but it fails us in the end. there is a simple reason for this. those of you who have read descartes' "meditations on first philosophy" have surely encountered the fundamental philosophical debate of modern times, how do i know that i am in a world when i can't possibly prove it. really, when you get down to it, your senses are unreliable things. perception colors depth, colors color, colors judgment and memories. our senses fail to give us the correct information. who's to say that they aren't doing so all the time? indeed, we may be in the Matrix right now without even realizing it, being fed just the right signals to stimulate just the right regions of the brain. outlandish? yes, but try to prove it's not the case. you can't use experience to prove your case, nor the body, nor what you can see, smell, hear, taste or touch. indeed, everything can be disproved except for one thing: consciousness. at the end of the day i can say i exist. because if i didn't i wouldn't be able to know it. i would be literally nothing. so i exist. i am. but everything else? it may or may not. i like to think it's out there but i can't say. is this my body? maybe but probably it's just a body.
that is where religion fails.
religion describes the world as it is. it is the mythology of existence and the future. but it operates on the principle that we should be a certain way, behave a certain way, feel a certain way and have faith in a certain higher power than ourselves. such a power may be out there. it's just as likely there is one than there is not, when you get right down to it. but what does it matter if everything is false? if you aren't really experiencing the world, what matter is it that you experience it in the correct religion? it's of no use to follow a set of beliefs if they are based on something that is false, the truth is true in all circumstances while the false is not.
if the world does not exist, religion must be false. There is one thing that unites everyone and every religion, however. They all begin with the thought "i am" and proceed to build from there. the foundation is solid, but the walls are weak.
Why do we need to proceed past the immediately true conception "I am?" because some people need answers for the future. they need safety, security and certitude. There is nothing of that sort in the statement of existence. existence may end with the end of the body, it may be snuffed out in an accident or by lightning. existence is a very uncertain thing. that's why religion came about, why mythology came about. but it is not the true heart of the matter. only the conception I am is the center. to appreciate existence less for the hope of redemption is an insult to any creator that there may be out there. what higher gift could we be given but existence?
so get out there and enjoy what you've been given this once!!!
go take a deep breath of the air and live completely in the moment for a moment.
for heavens sake, go wiggle your toes in the mud and walk barefoot in the grass. you won't get that many chances to do so!

2007-05-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

it's the type of day you can't help but love here in seattle. sunny with rain late. it's that time of the year where we begin to move into the cloudless summer that is the just reward for the months of rain and gray skies. but for now the evening is drizzling its way into night.
the world is a beautiful place again today.

2007-05-13T01:32:00.000-07:00

i can't get to sleep again. it's amazing how a cold, empty bed will change your sleeping.
i am alone. i keep coming back to the words of sylvia plath. at least i think they're her words: "every living thing in this world dies alone." it's hard not to feel the aching weight of it pushing down on my already. a quarter of my life is over and i'm already thinking about the final breath. morbid fascinations of a depressed mind.
i went up to mount pilchuck to clear my head on wednesday. it didn't work but it did give me some solace and time away from the bustle and grinding speed of city life. i didn't get to stay long and i didn't have what i needed to really play. i fell into a stream and got my lower body soaked, spent the rest of the hour drying off in the sun and reading a book, then came down from my perch. at this point thinking still hurts, being alone still hurts and moving around my normal haunts still hurts. most everything hurts.
the process of being single is harder than i remember. the constant evaluation of self-worth, the predication of such worth on the opinions of the world at large and the feeling of being on the deck of a boat during a hurricane at sea are how i sum up the experience so far. the only things keeping me going are my motorcycle, beer, and the hopeless avoidance of staring at a dark ceiling in an empty bed.
most nights i cry. most days i wish i felt fully human again. most evenings i struggle to come up with the energy to find something to eat. the worst of it is that this is all my doing for reasons i don't fully understand.
i have been dragged into this situation, my heart has cooked my brain and now i am left to pick up the pieces and reassemble myself into a cohesive whole. once i'm finished i'm going to get the rod of asclepius in ink somewhere. maybe the nape of my neck.
only the cohesive whole, the sustaining self, can hope to lead others to healing. if i wish to be a doctor i need to have a complete, balanced life. i do not now nor did i with sara. perhaps in the future we will and perhaps we won't. either way i will find myself today, tomorrow and the next day.

2007-05-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

i am a man i could hate right now. the kind of person you speak badly of when you don't know them and worse still if you do. as a result i am leaving the internet for a few weeks, a month, however long i need to bring myself back to humanity. i may already be there but i'm not positive i am. i feel calloused by life and i need to go sooth and remove these so that i will be the best person possible. i'll be around to see you when i return, i promise.
until then, live out peace and fight those who would kill.
jeremy

2007-04-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

well, blogger doesn't seem to like my pictures very much...so i'll go ahead and try to get you a link to the file den that has them on it...
ok...hopefully this works for you guys.
i'm pretty excited.

2007-04-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

well, i've been a bit negligent lately and i'm sorry for it. i've been working like mad on my motorcycle and it's about to become drastically different from what it used to be. i'll try to post pictures later on this evening once i'm home from my class.
but why post now? because i've got quite the thought process going on and i want to hear your opinions, critiques and reactions to it. i'm sure most of you have had these thought before and can lead me down some interesting paths.

what is time? it is, at its very basis, the way we humans measure change. we have created it becasuse we observed random events- we humans are amazingly skilled at seeing patterns in random events, of making sense of the natural world and codifying what we see- and felt that it could not possibly be the result of chance. nor could the fact that we age and die. all of these things were related somehow and that somehow was the idea of time. with time we can track these changes over the span of moments, years, decades or millenia. we can further codify the world. but since it is a human invention, time cannot possibly apply to all of the matter in the universe. it only applies where we are, here on earth, and where we are looking at the moment. without our hand time is no longer observed or real. but we've been here a very short time. to assume that there was time before us is a mistake. there were events before us, a general progression of randomness before us but there need not have been our invention before us. how could there be? and without time, since we cannot prove it beyond our own existence, there is no use of the concept of a beginning nor of an end. without a beginning there is no need for creation nor an unmaking, an apocalypse. thus, God need not be out there looking over us with his beneficient eyes. without a beginning there is no need for religion because there is no root cause, no chain of causality, only random events played out on a cosmic scale. can we be the product of this? i believe so. with an entire universe to play with random chance could easily be playing out this very scenario on multiple, perhaps infinite, other worlds right now. there is nothing to stop it.

2007-04-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

well, it's just that season again in washington, it seems.
allow me to first point out that i was moved to the point of tears by the murders at VT. i identify with those victims on a personal level and wish that they never had to feel the pain they have and are now feeling. i think the same thing about iraqis, which is most of why i hate this war we're in there. but there are certain things that aren't to blame here.
guns are not to blame. guns cannot do a thing without humans to use them. and, as the popular argument goes, illegality won't stop people who really want them from getting them. like the kids who carried out columbine all those years ago. they were underage but that didn't stop them from having an uzi, shotgun and 9mm handguns. in the same way, these laws do nothing to stop criminals in any city. illegality will only serve to disarm the general, law-abiding populace.
another point, brought up today, was the fact that australia has had no "mass shootings" in about 10 years. that is quite true and it really hasn't hurt them to take the weapons out of the hands of unstable individuals. but truly it does little good in either case.
let us take the shootings this week as an example. even one armed student in one of the rooms would have helped to save lives if not for a rule that no guns may be brought onto campus. who did this prevent? certainly not a murderer but most certainly all those students who do not want to be expelled and lose years of hard work over a gun. it is sad that they did not have the option of defending themselves and other students from this man.
and it is absolutely ridiculous to blame this whole episode on the gun shop cho purchased his 9mm from. he has no criminal record, nothing of note to suggest he shouldn't legally be able to buy a gun and didn't raise any red flags with the shop staff. i could purchase a gun in the same manner for self-defense and they would never be able to guess the difference.
And a good point that comes to mind: why do we keep hearing about how this breaks all the old shooting records? why are we inviting another, larger killing simply for sensational journalism?
anyhow, i'm quite open to all your comments on this and would welcome the discussion.
if you'd like more reading, albiet quite in favor of gun ownership, go here. it's got some good analysis of data used in favor of gun control.
talk to you all soon.

solid, complete bullshit.

2007-04-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

i feel the need to comment on the Imus debacle and the ensuing fallout. mostly because it should not have happened. and i'm not talking about his remarks, i'm talking about the use of him as a scapegoat.
there are a lot of things that don't work well in american society but the issue of race is very much on our minds lately. it's not a bad thing but our reactions as a society are completely wrong-headed and are, indeed, only making the problem worse.
when you single out rich white men to take down, like Mr. Richards and Mr. Imus, you certainly make quite a spectacle. but what does the power want? they want spectacle because they control and profit from them. do not think for a moment that this does anything to change our society in a meaningful way; if there was a chance that this would result in more equality it would never have gotten any coverage. all that the episode is going to result in is the scapegoating of more people and a deepend coarsening of race divisions. no doubt many people are now thinking, as i felt myself all too easily slipping into, thoughts of how black people got Imus canned. about how they made sure this issue blew up in this way. i would also be completely false if i didn't mention the fact that all of this was started by a very liberal media watchdog group. so it seems that those people who wish to free us of bias, racism and corporate greed have succeeded only in making things worse through the use of all of those three to push their agenda.
i do not consider myself to be a politically correct person. i say some very insensitive things about most minority groups. so do you, if you are honest with yourself. but i am not, and will not be, a racist. that is something i will not allow. i have accepted that while the culture i have been raised in is different from others, indeed from black culture in america, it is not better. i am not better than any living man. my experience is different but we are all Life, we are all Men, and we all think and feel and try to work for a better future. I may be different in my thinking, speech and appearance but I, like anyone else, am no more than a man and no less. that's the message that is being lost here. that is the message that should be delivered to the world. even though Don Imus, my buddy Darrell who lives on the street, my friends Gabe and Micah and myself are very different people we deserve to be treated as a whole human being deserving of respect and equal treatment. Don Imus was not treated how you or I would want to be treated in that situation. But he did not treat the Rutgers women how he would want to be treated. He made a mistake and he is sorry for it. This does not give anyone the right to treat him like a sack full of shit, ever. He, as a human being, deserves so much more from us.
Act towards others as you would have them act towards you and these problems of race, gender and denigration will dissapear.

please forgive the inevitability of the disorganization of this post. it's stream of conciousness in action.

2007-04-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

I do have to say that there are a few great things about seattle in winter:
It's really cloudy pretty much six straight months which means you love the sun when it comes back,
Due to the clouds, it's quite possible to read way too many books which means that...
When the summer comes you have more ideas than any other group in the country to discuss with anyone else out there.
Gotta love Seattle!

William Faulkner's Nobel Acceptance Speech

2007-04-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

rough draft

2007-03-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

I saw an old picture today. It was taken somewhere around eighth grade. There are four of us piled onto the seat of an old school bus. But the thing that stuck me was how much everything has changed. The four of us have changed in the years since then so remarkably that I don’t even recognize the others. I don’t even really see myself in that young face. I see me but I don’t see any semblance of the person I am now. It’s a desperately lonely feeling seeing yourself and knowing that you will never be the person of the past. I am now and will never be anything else. When the now runs out I will no longer be. I will just disappear, fading into the eternity I imagine for humanity.
I know that that world I imagine will never exist, I know that we are destruction incarnate and will consume our home until there is nothing but the rafters of mountains and the rotted thatch of a sky left between ourselves and the void of the rest of the living matter out there. The inevitability of it all is overwhelming. It’s the sort of feeling that drives men to faith in God. I don’t have that luxury anymore. Perhaps I did in a life I used to live but no longer. When the final reckoning comes I will die alone like any other thing that has ever lived. We will all die alone.
Please don’t assume that I’m contemplating jumping off a dam or any other drastic measures. In truth I intend to live out my life to the fullest, dangerous end I can manage because this is all I have. I have now. I have no grasp of the past or future or an inevitably destined end. I have now. But I also have the certitude that no matter what else happens Christian men will fulfill their own Bible’s mythical Apocalypse with the machines of industry leading the way. Industry is nothing more nor less than the pursuit of money and money is nothing less than the root of evil. But we praise it as the highest pinnacle of our crude society.
The reason that old picture brought me here is nothing having to do with us four sitting blissfully in our seat. It has nothing to do with any knowledge I wish I had. It has everything to do with the road that stretches behind us. It is a long, dry patch of road with no trees or signs of life. Outside our bubble there is truly nothing to be seen except a long stretch of road running straight away into the horizon. I can tell you what lies at the end of that road. Somewhere, at the very beginning, it has its source in the dusty dirt back-roads of some far away wilderness. Like the streams that came before it, it is brings mankind to those untouched reaches of the world.
I’m not sure of very much. I have known a precious few things in my time here but there is one thing that I know for certain: when we are all dead and gone, and our way of life with us, there will still remain the great expanses of wilderness. When we have outlived our usefulness on this planet there will still be wilderness and there will still be life eking out a life in that wilderness. We are not the end of succession and we are not the final product of life; we are proof that while life will always prevail it sometimes makes forms that, for all their intelligence and supposed sagacity, find the path to inevitable extinction.

Ed Abbey is my illegitimate father

2007-03-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.

Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat--planet Earth--could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama--soap opera with literary trimmings.

The world exists for its own sake, not for ours. Swallow *that* pill!

The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

Money confers the power to command the labor of others. Love of money is love of power. And love of power is the root of evil.

But don’t get discouraged comrades. Christ failed too.

2007-02-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

well, i wrote a great post but i was lost in the electronic annals of history. it happens.
i've been busy with school lately, which is why i'm so scarce. sorry.
i'm going to be purchasing a suit here in the next few days so that's cool. i've also been sapped of creativity right now, it seems.
oh! got the motorcycle back! it's been great riding weather most of the time, too, so i'm in heaven just for that.
for right now, that's all. i'll be around to your blogs shortly.

2007-01-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

just went down to the bottleworks here in seattle and got one of the beers i've been most excited to try. it's the hair of the dog brewery's fred beer. and it knocked my socks clean off. delicious, sweet, hoppy with some great caramel and chocolate notes and superbly balanced so that it didn't really taste as hoppy as it was. well worth the purchase and i'm really happy i got two. next up is adam, a monster of a barley wine style beer. i pray it's as tasty, because this was awesome!
that's it.

2007-01-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

yeah, that's us out snowshoeing. i would be the one closest the camera. flat out!

i'm doing well, just enjoying our rare warm, sunny streak here in the rainy city. it's not so much rainy as it is just plain dreary and grey. but i got back some great news about my motorcycle and i'll have it back, running and happy, sometime in the next few weeks for less than a third of what i thought i was in for. life is good.

2007-01-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

"Behind intolerance there is always fear, regardless of the form of government under which the repression takes place." Moses I. Finley

Took a quick snowshoeing trip this afternoon. Made a few miles' worth of tracks in the dark and came home.
I'm always struck by the world you can make for yourself even in a group. A lot of why I go out there is the solitude that each person carries within themselves in the wild. You are many things in the urban world but out there you are and nothing more. Life in one of its many forms.
I don't pretend to be the most profound thinker. I never could even commit such a farce let alone pull it off but every so often I have a thought worth committing to this, our great new conciousness: outside that small bubble of your self-perceptions lies everything you are ignorant and, indeed, intolerant of. The pair of eyes staring back at yours becomes sinister even if it is only a squirrel. Ignorance breeds this fear in us. It is natural but it is fundamentally anti-social. Nature teaches us not only how to live alone and unaided but also illuminates that great dark question of why we live with other people. I know that I often find city life vexing at best and that it is so cut off from the half of my brain that is the seat of my emotions that the logic can only control me so long.
I really don't know if that makes much sense but it was an insight for me into who I am and so it is good. I just felt like sharing it with all of you.
that's all.

Brilliant!

2007-01-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

got a thought for the past few days. i'm going to just write it out; this is loren eiseley commenting on his thoughts as he thought of the connections of humans to a fish he called the Snout, our very earliest forebearer if you believe in things like macro-evolution. I found it to be one of the most obvious, but unthought of, perspectives out there.
"I have long been an admirer of the octopus. The cephalopods are very old, and they have slipped, protean, through many shapes. They are the wisest of the mollusks, and I have always felt it to be just as well for us that they never came ashore, but-there are other things that have.There is no need to be frightened. It is true some of the creatures are odd, but I find the situation rather heartening than otherwise. It gives one the feeling of confidence to see nature still busy with experiments, still dynamic, and not through nor satisfied because a Devonian managed to end as a two-legged character with a straw hat. There are other things brewing and growing in the oceanic vat. It pays to know this. It pays to know there is just as much future as there is past. The only thing that doesn't pay is to be sure of man's own part of it.
There are things down there still coming ashore. Never make the mistake of thinking life is now adjusted for eternity. It gets into your head- the certainty, I mean- the human certainty, adn then you miss it all: the things on the tide flats adn what they mean and why, as my wife says, 'they ought to be watched.' The trouble is we don't know what to watch for. I have a friend...who drops in now and then between trips to tell me about the size of crodile jaws in Uganda, or what happened on some beach back in Arnhem Land.
'They fell out of the trees,' he said. 'Like rain. And into the boat...We were pushing a dubout up one of the tidal creeks in northern Australia and going fast when SMACKO we jam this mangrove bush and the things come tumbling down.
What were they doing sitting up there in bunches? I ask you. It's no place for a fish. Besides that they had a way of sidling off with those popeyes trained on you. I never liked it. Somebody ought to keep an eye on them.'
'Why?' I asked
'I don't know why,' he said impatiently...'A fish belongs in water. It ought to stay there- just as we live on land in houses. Things ought to know their place and stay in it, but those fish have got a way of sidling off. As though they had mental reservations and weren't keeping and contracts. See what I mean?'
'I see what you mean,' i said gravely. 'They ought to be watched. My wife thinks so too. About a lot of things'
Not long since i read a book in which a prominent scientist spoke cheerfully of some ten billion years of future time remaining to us. He pointed out happily the things that man might do throughout that period. Fish in the sea, I thought again, birds in the air. The climb all far behind us, the species fixed and sure. No wonder my explorer friend had had a momentary qualm when he met the mudskippers with their mental reservations and lack of promises. There is something wrong with out world view. It is still Ptolemaic, though the sun is no longer believed to revolve around the earth...
We see ourselves as the culmination and the end, and if we do indeed consider our passing, we think that sunlight will go out with us and the earth be dark. We are the end. For us continents rose and fell, for us the waters and the air were mastered, for us the great living web has pulsated and grown more intricate.
To deny this, a man once told me, is to deny God. This puzzled me. I went...not in the past, not by the bones of dead things, not down the lost roadway of the Snout. I went back along the pathway to the marsh. I went...in daylight, in the Now, to see if the door was still there, and to see what things passed through it. I found the same experiments were brewing, that up out of that ancient well, fins were still scrambling toward the sunlight. They were small things, and which of them presaged the future I could not say. I saw only that they were many and that they had solved the oxygen death in many marvelous ways, not always ours...The old ways are exploited and remain, but new things come, new senses try the unfamiliar air...We are one of many appearances of the thing called Life; we are not its perfect image, for it has no image except Life, and life is multitudinous and emergent in the stream of time."

2007-01-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

so, first order of business for all you political types: http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/bush_surge_4239.jsp.
great article and you know, it puts down what i think of this whole war thing. rather than taking a good way out W has chosen to escalate the war, kill more people, make more people in the middle east radically opposed to our interests and to further train radical Muslim terrorists all while crippling us financially and deverting our focus from far more important problems.
oh, and do you think that the "war on terror" can possibly end well when we ourselves are creating terror in the hearts of men with our pre-emptive wars? how can we possibly end something we're creating unless we change?
second order of business is the grilling condi got yesterday. did you hear Sen. Obama? "The solution always seems to be six months away." so fucking true! she was not used to getting this sort of treatment and i loved watching her get eaten by those senators. i say they deny funding for the war machine. the bull-headed ignorance going into this whole thing is going to cost more american lives and put us deep into a debt we cannot afford.

Anti-War Song for Sumo

2006-12-21T23:07:00.000-08:00

2006-12-19T00:12:00.000-08:00

it's been one crazy few months for weather, as i'm sure you're all aware. there are parts of the puget sound area that will be without power until christmas, at the very least. we were without for maybe 12 hours over the two days we were pounded with high winds. it's crazy the amount of damage heavy air can bring into the area. 1.5 million people were without power at some point, i think the figure goes, out of something like 3.5 million in the area. and they say weather isn't getting worse!
record rains, 1/3 of the population without electricity and ice so bad i wished i had speed skates to make it to work in. crazy weather. just crazy.
how's everyone? i'll be about to look for you all in a while here.
that's it for now because i need my 4 hours before my day starts again in the morning.
out.

2006-11-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

so it's one big fucking skating rink out there these past few days. but it's finally breaking up and raining again. i never thought i'd be so happy for rain! literally, i've been sitting at the bus-stop waiting on buses longer than i've been on them, even after they kept getting stuck. some buses just didn't come or they'd come so full you couldn't get on because so many hadn't been by before them. this morning i got on the first bus i could after 45 minutes in the sub-20 degree weather after what should have been a 15 minute wait, at the very longest.
but now it's raining so the storm is breaking. enjoy it when it comes your way, y'all!

2006-11-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

i made rick steves' coffee this week. it was an odd experience and brings up a funny story.
when i was first coming up here to visit sara when we were dating and i still lived in denver we were bumming around downtown edmonds and happened to drive by rick's travel shop on the way out of downtown. i hadn't seen one of them before so i commented on it and sara casually remarked that he lived in edmonds. my jaw literally dropped. i don't think i'd have reacted more comically if you'd said brad pitt lived down the block from you. i was stunned. part of this is the fact i watched WAY too much PBS as a kid (part of my inquisitive nature) and as a result i loved watching rick's travel shows. it was a window into another world.
just reminds me, folks, that life is short so enjoy thanksgiving the way you want. i'll talk to you all tomorrow or the next day.
that is all.

bone machines

2006-11-12T10:02:00.000-08:00

are now out of power, so everyone should be out there in the streets.
all of you know i pride myself on being a thinking man with my politics and that's why i'm so happy the knee-jerkers are leaving power as of january.
oh, and i'm more happy than you know that daddy bush is back in W's inner circle. don't believe me? look at the folks he's surrounding himself with. they're all from his dad's circles.
and that is such a good thing. you want to talk about someone who knew statesmanship talk about H.W.
now, past that i'm in denver for another 36 hours or so. amazing how fast your time is gone, eh? i've been with people i love from out here, though, and i'm really thankful sara came out with me. my folks are really falling in love with her like i have, finally. i'm sicker than a dog, though. i had a fever decend on me yesterday and i've still got sweaty fingertips. i'm feeling about a hundred times better today than yesterday, though, so life is looking up. plus, i get to see some of my favorite ladies today. carolyn, lori and caitlin are all making time to hang out.
i can't see boring you all with more rambling, but i wanted to update you as to what is going on.
oh, and it is so fucking sad that sleater-kinney are on an indefinite hiatus! northwest music will be in mourning for a long time.
well, off into the woods.

2006-10-31T20:25:00.000-08:00

oh my shit, my motorcycle fouled some spark plugs and it's a total bitch to get it fixed! i've been at it all week. tomorrow i'm going to bus around and find the right thing, again, and make sure that the drive orifice on the socket is right.
past that, it's so cold out here i'm surprised my nipples haven't squeezed themselves when they nip out. it's cold!

2006-10-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

so, in a little bit i'll have at least one picture of me rappelling off of the hardest and longest route i've sent to date. it was a 5.10c and was a full 30m off the ground or about 98.425ft off the deck. it was wicked. i'm so pumped right now because it's the best climbing i've done so far and it was the perfect release after long days of work.
hopefully all of you out there are doing well. i've been here only very occasionally because i am so busy and unwise. i'll talk to you all soon, though.

2006-09-26T00:37:00.000-07:00

somethings in the news today!
Exhibits A and B will prove to be a cornerstone of my distrust for real politik from the right. and yes, read into that term usage.
A: It seems our illustrious Republican vanguard has been lying about more than WMDs. Like, perhaps, how strong they are on homeland security. and anyone else feel wierd talking about the fatherland (homeland?) I certainly do! It's america, it is my homeland but that shouldn't and doesn't determine my voting patterns. Keeping ourselves and everyone else in the world safe does. And, frankly, right now they need to be saved from us. Wanna know why I favor a defensive force only? So we can't get into this bullshit like Iraq easily.

B: Coming back to the politiks of weakness from the garbage dump of souls, where the hell does Jerry Falwell get off? The man clearly wants you to think because he's quite Reverand he's telling you the truth. The only thing to be said with veritude is that he's not telling you all of it but that's at best and at worst he's flat out sinning for political gain. Additionally, doesn't it seem like he's got some sloth or gluttony issues from that portrait? Maybe the devil really DID make him do it...
I'm guilty of being frustrated and snapping back in ways I shouldn't at people like this. I will own that. But I'm able to step back and realize my mistake, move on from it and discuss these things like a civilized human being. The good Reverand seems not to have figured out how to treat his neighbor as well as himself unless he's really into self-loathing and perhaps, like some other folks i know, some castigation.

2006-09-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

before and after tank pictures coming tomorrow or the next day, latest. the gas tank is done save for one last coating, the clear topcoat. it's a gorgeous deep blue color that's a bit lighter than i was thinking of but is still very pleasing to me.
i got paid 940 dollars for my efforts at REI, catering and tully's. makes all those hours worth it.
more on that in the morning. i'll try to check in with you all later this week. been busy.

2006-09-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

nothing really new to report. just built a bunch of furniture all week.
i'm getting a haircut tomorrow.
that is all.

2006-09-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

so, evidently ABC is off to a Clinton-bashing, let's jump on the corporate welfare bandwagon start of the election cycle. See those ads for their 9-11 miniseries? yeah, they're basically just making shit up and putting it in there to make the Clinton administration responsible for the attacks.
stop with this slander- because it is slander, knowingly and maliciously- and allow for actual discourse on the subject. i would say that they should at least get the story right but further that it is just too damned early to be making movies about this.
Do You Think I've Forgotten?!?!? Do you really?!?! I can tell you where I was, I was in my a.p. U.S. history class with a certain Mr. Baker at D'Evelyn and then continued downstairs to my a.p. Biology class and continued to watch in horror as thousands of americans died. so don't you DARE try to make money off of their death while feeding me false "facts," ABC! There is nothing gentile or refined about this maneuver. it makes me sad, it makes me angry and most of all it just makes me sick that someone would try to profit off of 9-11 without even trying to get the story correct.
that is all.

Picturas

2006-09-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

The cast: Myself, Sara and Zoe, our precious pooch at the restorative Heather Lake.

2006-09-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

hike yesterday, pictures tonight. new parts for bike scheduled for delivery tomorrow. time to mounting unknown. time to after pictures unknown. before pictures tomorrow. elementary, elegant and easy. that's what this is and that is all. see you at your blog.

2006-08-27T01:27:00.000-07:00

found out just how overrated cubans are. it was a good cigar but i've had much better for far cheaper than the market value of the stogie.
it had a spicy start which mellowed out to a forgettable middle section but culminated in a finish that redeemed the cigar with its toasty nut and coffee body and hints of exotic flowers. even so, i put it down more quickly than most cigars i've smoked because it just wasn't a great experience.

2006-08-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

i am going to go smoke a cuban cigar. back in a few hours with the report.

2006-08-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

i found said tank from earlier and am getting ready to go get a ratchet set and tear into my old girl, the CT90, for a complete rebuild. i still am not that mechanically oriented so hope for my success, y'all and maybe it'll become a reality.
past that, i think bush is a fucking idiot. i know that's in vogue right now but i also thought he wasn't a good choice last election when over half of the folks out there thought he was God's gift to this great nation. shows you what happens when you vote party line without thinking.
i haven't been home to see mr. olberman in a while so i'm feeling deprived of national news. somehow the paper just doesn't get everything in, ya know?

2006-08-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

sara says i have waif-y lips.

2006-08-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

i'm so tired. and i totally got failed in my lab. it sucks. just sets me back another damnable year.
if anything it's only strengthened my resolve on the matter because you have to work to get to what you want and i didn't put out my full effort all quarter long, which only helped my teacher fail me in the class. she's still ridiculously hard on the grading of labs but i did as well as i could on what i did do.
but...i found a seat cover for my little motorcycle, which is going to go a long way to making it look respectable and make it much better to ride in any weather AND figured out how to put on a bigger gas tank so i'll have a 200+ mile range per fill-up. now to find the tank in question...

2006-08-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

i've become quite the psychic hitchhiker of late. i'm just browsing around when i'm not immersed in my chemistry and picking up the very best ideas i can manage to find. it's only because my brain is tired of trying to categorize everything i take in on a daily basis. that and the world itself just seems to be falling apart at the hands of men. men not so unlike me. sara brought to my attention the other day that i'm a terrible recycler. it's very true and it's very shocking. it's not because i don't try, it's because eating is one of the few things i let my brain rest during. that and sleep are about the only times i allow myself not to think. i've been trying to motivate myself to get back to my homework and all that jazz but i'm sick and tired of doing what i'm told. i've been at it too long and i just need to escape. i'm not a social creature when that's all the society i get. control is not the aim of existence.

2006-08-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

so, i took a trip to see family this weekend. it was a surprise party for my grandma's birthday. it was a good time but i'm so tired right now i can hardly stand up for work in a few minutes. my chem. class is going like pure hell right now.
i can't even believe how terrible my teacher is on grading. she's pretty much the nitpickiest teacher i've ever had. it's like she expects us to know the material like we've gone through a doctoral thesis and this is just that one final class we need to finish before we graduate with a degree in chemical engineering. my post-lab average grade is something like 50% and i spend an average of 2 hours or so on each one for that grade. i think i just don't write it in a way she prefers.
i'm frustrated to the point of not caring anymore almost.
if i don't manage to pass this (that's right, i'm shooting for passing at this point) i can't get started at bastyr until next fall. not this fall, next fall. i hate that i'm just wasting time if that happens.

2006-08-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

yeah, i'm going to just turn off the T.V. for a week or so and let this whole death of the world thing blow over.
it feels like george is dragging us all, kicking and screaming, into the latest in a string of world wars. why the hell does a man who professes to try to love his neighbor as himself want to kill that same neighbor. what does that say about him? either he's suicidal (which means he'll go to hell when he gets the courage up) or that he's only pretending to believe and isn't actually putting in the effort to live the life he professes to lead (so he's going to hell for sinning without any attempt to assuage those sins.) i love it when an argument comes together!
he's just got to admit he's gone and fucked everything up.
and added to that, we're working out way nearer to the tipping point of global warming and what do the leaders of each country do? twiddle their god-damned thumbs! it's like they're expecting to clean it up once it becomes a crisis, which we've already established will be much too late a time for grand gestures. then, adding insult to injury, they proceed to legislate about FLAG BURNING! don't sweat it, guys, when this global warming stuff hits the fan they're just going to burn all by themselves.
hooray death!
hooray incompitence!

I wish God was dead.

2006-07-31T23:30:00.000-07:00

the world is falling apart slowly and you can thank our good friend religion. this is what happens when your identity is completely tied to a rigid set of ideals! this is why temperance is a virtue! this is why wisdom is held by those who sit long and ponder. obviously our president is not nearly up to the task he's forced himself into. this world needs a leader not a decider. i can't describe to you how frustrated i am that our country has instigated and abetted war upon war. if they wanted us to get into one hell of a shit-storm they've succeeded past anyone's wildest dreams. it's hit the fan and we've got no plan for how to win. this is what happens when you let an ape play human for a day.

2006-07-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

do you ever feel like you'll never stop being in transition?
i've been in washington for over a year and yet i still refer to both colorado and here as home. it feels wierd to talk about colorado without saying home. it's where i was born and grew up. but then this is my new home. i guess maybe having my very own place soon will help me feel like i've really fully set down roots here. even so, i can't help but wonder if this happens to more people than just me.
i feel like i'm in limbo, in some ways, just waiting for some catalytic event to clearly define home and former home. it just hasn't come yet. it's a lot like my views on religion right now. i've left my former spiritual home and it almost feels like i'm waiting for some epiphany to come and begin my new faith.
i just hate not knowing what i'm about. i hate not knowing in general, it's one of my most powerful pet peaves. i need to know the answer to it all.
i do know one thing,
that is all.

Randy Described Infernity

2006-07-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

our heatwave has spent itself for the week, i think. it's finally cool out! i can't wait for it to get back down into the 80s. i'm spoiled by the weather here in the great evergreen state. back home in colorado you shrug of 95 like it's no big thing but out here it's sooooo hot by 90 you can just sit inside and feel hellishly hot the whole dang time.
went role-playing last night and it was like trying to have a good time in a furnace with the burners on. i thought i'd die before i did it again today but it did cool off.
come to find out i've done gone and forgotten a lot of my english composition skills since i've been without need of them for almost a year in an academic setting. oh well.
might as well make that all, y'all.

2006-07-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

went to the ol' ballgame today. watched our good ol' Ms beat up on the Red Sox. great day of baseball, all. our new center fielder had the wheels to get it done on defense and the bat to get on for the offense. ichiro went 3 for 5. beltre made yet another great stop at third with a subsequent great throw for the out.
we have to have one of the best fielding team in baseball.
i got the sunburn of the summer thus far, however. so i'm sitting here with a bit of extra rosiness in my cheeks and a bit of itch in my arms.
who do you all root for?
sumo, is your team the A's or the Giants?

2006-07-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

Here's how to celebrate cinco de mayo in style, y'all. let's just say we sent sara's sister out for tequila and she didn't know they weren't all created equal. i think that terpentine might have tasted better.

Here's the climbing pictures i promise you all, too.

2006-07-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

i've been having a recurring problem with backfiring. not me personally but my personal transportation. ok, and me personally, too. but that's a whole other story related to the new job. it's making me a bit unhappy but also makes me want to stick a frozen grape in my tailpipe and shoot it out the back like a cannon...i'll have to try it sometime. maybe it'll be funny.
past that it's just a matter of living and working. i'm working every day of the week now! it's a good thing because i need to make and save money for a month or two out when sara and i move. i'm excited! i'm getting a place! with some of my sense of decorating mixed in, lol.
and i'm totally going climbing today before work! woot!! it's a very good thing that we're getting out because i've been itching for it. i haven't had a chance to do anything more than a pitch in a week and a half now. not a cool thing at all.
i'll show you guys some of me leading on a 5.9 route later on tonight. it's fairly cool and i'm totally not naked. it's amazing.
oh, and i found out there's a clothing optional beach in the area! time to get rid of those tan lines the fun and free way.
anywho, i've got to get along to homework and class so that i can justify climbing later on so you have a great day and i'll talk to you soon.

2006-07-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

really quickly, life is good, i got sara to like climbing (!), i've got the tully's thing rocking steady, found some new music (!), found some old music (!!), helped kill a gay discrimination referendum here in the state (take that Tim, you prematurely geriatric asshole!) and...have been loving on the gorgeous summer here in the otherwise perpetually cloudy northwest.
how have you guys been doing? i hope well.

2006-06-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

so it's been a while since i posted.
i've been talking to the folks about the move. they've raised some good points but i'm going to move in with sara after we talked all of them through to satisfaction. so it's down to the U District in august right after i get home from the family trip.
past that i started in at tully's, which is where i'm headed here in a few minutes to do my final closer before i get keys to the store. so that's fantastic.
past that life is as per usual although i'm pissed about the lack of concern over the environment lately.
oh, and i'm now firmly in the not christian camp. i read some bertrand russell and agreed with him wholeheartedly. perhaps i'll be a jeffersonian christian. very different from the regular kind.
that's all.

2006-06-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

"Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all."

yeah, he's basically saying "we're perfect here in america and we can't ever do anything wrong ever, no way, i'm not listening naaaaaaaaaaaaa i'm not listening naaaaaaaaaaa!" it's straight up political pandering because he's scared of losing the majority in the house and senate. imagine that, having to actually work with others instead of just making sure your party keeps voting with you. interesting concept and one i just don't think our esteemed ape can bend his head around.
and for all you financial conservatives out there, don't vote republican. somewhere, somehow, they've become the big spenders of the party system. seriously. maybe it's the fact that the spinelessness of the democrats means they'll never spend any money on a war or two since they wouldn't get into a fight to save their lives. thing that drives me nuts at present (it changes a lot) is the fact that i have to chose between two parties that really don't represent what i believe in.

2006-06-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

the bed is too short to begin with; we've added pillows; my feet hang off the end. my dislike for people who won't protect the environment "just in case" is growing. it's like Pascal's wager with God's existence. Logically it may or may not be true but believing it saves you from making the wrong choice. It's the argument of ultimate cynical thinking but it does work out. if you'd like, take the iriquois maxim that you must consider how your actions will affect the seventh generation to follow you.
who cares if we have to pay the extra money now if it will ensure that future generations will inherit a cleaner, and ideally still habitable, earth? i'm dead ass broke and i could still part with $100 every year to secure that future. why not require that some foreign aid be put into protecting the environment from global warming in developing countries, too?
hell, we make wars to prevent bad events in the future but refuse to make even a tiny effort to stop the death of every major seaport in america and the world. that's the thing that's going to hurt the world more in the shorter term. global climate change will desertify great areas eventually but it will displace the populations of london, brussels, new york, bombay, shanghai, tokyo, large portions of rome (including the vatican staff and pontiff), st. petersburg, alexandria and the nile delta until almost 1/4 of the way through egyptian territory and way too many others to list. when you think about the numbers of people in the orient alone it is staggering. over 30 million people would be displaced by the evacuation of tokyo, bombay and shanghai alone. and don't forget those are some of the richest farming areas in the world! so now you've got to find a way to farm the gobi desert (a dramatization to be sure but only slightly off the mark) with decreased rainfall in a lot of areas and increasingly harsh weather in general.
so why aren't we even TRYING to solve this problem here? we're the leading polluter for at least the next few years. what the fuck kind of good reason is there not to TRY?!? just try. don't bury your head in the fucking sand!!!
i'll give you a hint about why we refuse to spend any federal money to combat a possibly life-ending problem, it involves one of two things: making sure we can still go thermonuclear anytime we want or the fact that we've taken it upon ourselves to kill everybody else first.

2006-05-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

i just told my dad that sara and i are probably going to be moving in with each other. i am so nervous. i figured while i was at it i'd explain why i don't believe in God and ask him his views on free will and revelation. HA! i am so nervous about it now!!
you know that fear of disapproval from your parents? i really hate feeling that. still, i'm learning to deal with it because i have to live in a way i think is right. it may not be the same as their views but it'll at least be reconciled with my conscience.
i figure that if micah's folks can wrap their heads around him marrying a girl he's only known for a few months my parents can get over my moving in with my girlfriend and best friend of three years, right???

2006-05-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

so, if you guys are ever up here visiting remind me to take you to romio's pizza because it's got some of the best pizza around. i really didn't feel like adding any punctuation for that last sentence so that's what you get right there. deal with it.
it's looking like i've got a job coming at tully's down in the U District. it'll be just like peaberry (job of old) and that's ok with me. at least i don't have to learn anything different in the way of skills.
past that i've just been enjoying our FABULOUS weather pattern this week. basically it goes like this: dump buckets of rain while jeremy is going to and from school then get all nice once he's hypothermic and under a blanket with no plans of getting up until dinner. yeah. fantastic.
i guess i just made up for the lack of punctuation above with some overpunctuation there... sweet!
potatos
taste
good
with
marshmallows
and
brown
sugar
y'all.
that's
all.

2006-05-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

ok, two orders of business here before the drivel about life, y'all.
first, go here! it's funny. i promise with my heart crossed.
second, go here! it's less funny but more pragmatically useful against those "compassionate" types! now i'm not one who enjoys sweeping generalizations but i think we could all generally use this advice. i know i can. and it brings up a very good point and probably hits part of why we're bankrupt as a democracy in the world right now. want to know why people don't listen to us? i can't tell you the whole answer but i'm going to bet this is a part of it. we claim equality but maintain a lower class of servants. servants. we haven't supposedly had those since the civil war.
you think they want you reading that link? hell no. but at least we still have freedom of the press, y'all!
i think it may be next right after privacy, which is almost gone.
i'll conclude by saying a few words: had a test i think went decently, been loving riding my motorcycle but baking in the black, insulated leather and the sun, have begun looking for another job since i can't get hours at REI, have come to the startling feeling of stagnation and dying a bit each day to no avail. help, i think i'm becoming a nihilist!

2006-05-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most beautiful, concise and well crafted statements ever penned by human hand:
"Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

2006-05-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

i'm beginning to think that maybe i should run for public office just for the hell of it. get my name out for a local election and tell the people why i should be allowed to get into the whole government thing. it'd be fun and yet i think i'd be attacked based on my age...just a hunch.
i suppose since my own views are still nacent perhaps i should wait a bit for them to settle themselves down before such an endeavor.
oh, and i'm going to be on-sighting 5.10s by the end of the summer! personal goal there.
that's all because i have to go to work now, y'all.

2006-05-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

i'm fucking tired.
that is all.

2006-04-28T21:14:00.000-07:00

well, i climbed about 50 feet up a tree today just to see what i could view from that promontory. it's great. i could see the water, the mountains and the whole neighborhood. next time i'll bring a camera up with me so i can share.
school is going well. i got a 90% on my first test! can't argue with that. the whole thing is making some good sense to me. i like that. and i like it better this time than when i was in high school, thank heavens. i think i can take a full year of this stuff straight...maybe.
in other news my best friend is getting married in a few weeks. it's basically the definition of the shotgun wedding. minus the shotgun and adding in an M-16 instead. he's rushing so they'll be good to go for his deployment to okinawa in june. so i can understand. he's sure that she's the one and i'm excited for him. trying to get some time off of work to go down and see him. i hope i can manage it. it's going to cost a good deal, as well, and i'd have to put it on a credit card because i'm broke from the bike and school hitting me at the same time. such is life. in other news i'm FINALLY going to get my bike back after almost a straight month in the shop. they basically don't know who they can and can't get parts from anymore which has caused over 2 weeks of delays. so it's kinda their fault but it's also not like they've just had it and haven't been trying to get it done, either. i'm just antsy because the past two weeks have been gorgeous out here. damn i've wanted to go ride basically every single day. there's been one day of rain these past weeks and other than that it's been sunny, warm and generally perfect spring weather.
so i'll be round to say hi in a bit...i have to name the bike now. yeah, i'm one of those kids. but i choose czech names instead of normal names. at least i'm unique. my car was named anezka. this bike is a boy. i'm not sure what he's named yet. more on that to come.
that is all! sukka!

2006-04-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

still working along at that story. it's taken a remarkably different form already. i changed my direction a bit. it's going alright, though.
i've been working more at chemistry. i want to get a good grade, after all. but more i just actually enjoy having something to do with myself and it's better than i remember it being during high school.
i made a better stove! it doesn't have the flame leak problems the last one did nearly as bad and i think that some jb weld will fix those problems most eloquently. i promise i will post pictures of it running like a dream.
my motorcycle should be out of the shop with a brand spanking new clutch tomorrow, i think. i hope so. i really want to hear that engine under me again. been a week since my tantalizing few days of vapor-fueled freedom. soon to be continued once more in rain pants.
that is all.
for now.

Part 1 of a story i'm working on

2006-04-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

It is clear and cold outside. I find myself wondering if I did indeed spend my life in doubt for a valid purpose. Tonight I dreamt that I was back at Neuberg, sweating my way to a new foundation of human understanding when I awoke with a shudder. The open window brought in an icy wind which almost snuffed the fire, the guttering of these flames being that which awoke me from my nap. It feels as though I have been meditating all these years. How can I know my mind has not been decieved by the sinister intelligence? Even this night I still do not know. God, if you are indeed presiding over this vast cosmos allow me to see you before I die. I must know you are there. Perhaps it will do that I should tell you from whence I have come, owing to the fact that it is the very basis for my doubt. You will, no doubt, find me as one from an insane assylum but I assure you that I have spent my life determining that I am not. My mind is clear, my thinking is clear and based only on that one principle I have never been able to doubt: cogito ergo sum. On the evening of my revelation in Neuberg my nacent mind had not matured sufficiently to understand the plane that stood before me. Vast expanses of lightning, indeed it seemed to me more than the whole earth could hold, filled the ochre space. I could feel no familiar pull, breathe no familiar air, see no familiar views and I was terrified. I had found cerberus and was unprepared. I was sure I had entered the very entrance to the final judgement. Then I heard a great voice, echoing across that infinite darkness. "Ecce homo, you have come to the world as it is. Aristotle has not found the true entrance to the cave. DaVinci has found no god to paint. You must find your way to the ultimate truth not by these means but through certainty." This world quickly fades into another, less sinister but no less confusing place. Was it really a place? I believe so, but I do not know. The walls flickered with the light of lamps and candles. the smell of exotic incense fell upon me and the slow, constant drone filling my ears sounded like a man humming a single note that stretched unbroken to eternity. There were wanings, to be sure, but never a complete end. The dynamic aspect ensured me that it was indeed a human sound, as surely as a simple tune might be instantly recognized as human and this gave me great comfort. The walls were close and low, with simple collumns of stone holding up a roof of limestone. There, surrounded by the shells of countless living things the voice came again. "Witness the true freedom of humanity!" It shook my very ligaments and bones with its volume and the resonance. "These are souls who understand nothing, think nothing, see nothing. They are but flies on a plane, always precisely marked but never aware of the greater mind observing them." "Where am I?" I asked simply, not expecting anything in return. "You are in the heart of our first experiments with engineering societies." There was no point to asking more, as the image began to fade and I began to tumble in blackness. Something caught me as I fell. I felt the strange sense of direction returning after my fall through the void, something was there that allowed me to percieve my own being although I knew not what. I found that I was fixed, as if formulated on a pin, an insect on display in a vast world I did not begin to understand. As I gazed around I became aware of small points of light. I then became aware of the hum from the room I had visited previously. It was faint but distinguishable. There were others here! Or I percieved that others were near. I could not see anyone, only hear them. I was alone, a mere point of existence. Once more I was shaken from my thoughts by the voice, that dreadful, cold messenger. "Now you may see where thought leads. This is the very connection of all thought and action. There are few who may enter this realm and none who may understand. Like flies in a web those who come here struggle against a force felt but never known and surely irresistable. They are decieved by it and warped by it. They will return until the understanding is reached. They struggle for non-being but never realize that they have already achieved it. Being is an illusion, a web cast out to snare the ignorant and to fuel the web-builder. All that you see is like a dream of a dream." Then everything faded. The sun shone with that cold wintery intensity, but I could not tell if this was indeed the world. It was as if everything was a phantom of the world I left the night before. Nothing was certain.

2006-04-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

hopefully all of you have now realized that God is the single most homocidal being in all of human history. he's ordered or ordained more deaths than any single person could ever hope to. don't try to tell me God is good when he would condemn so many.

2006-04-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

i've now been laughing at this comment for way too long because i totally appreciate it and am a super nerd:

Is there a sanitary place to have sex in a lab?

This really never comes up, probably because labs are continually staffed with bleary-eyed graduate students spinning cells at odd hours. Hypothetically? Plenty of places are kept clean, but you’ll likely contaminate someone’s experiments if you arrange yourself on the bench. It’s a squeeze, but you might try the autoclave. There’s nowhere cleaner, and it brings new meaning to “steamy.”

2006-04-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

finished my stove, it'll hold about 2 oz. of denatured alcohol and burns pretty darn hot. i'm thinking about using a pop can for my pot since i'll usually be using freeze dried meals... at least when i'm going solo.
i might get something else for bigger groups. probably a slightly bigger aluminum can. anyone know of something that comes in a can of about 32 oz.?
oh, and you can hear the newest built to spill album due out next week right now!! can't wait!!! it is so good from what i've heard so far.
pictures of the stove as soon as the camera is charged, probably tomorrow. it's super tiny and cute for a stove. i'm going to make another to try to do a better job of meassuring and cutting and constructing. i think i'll JB Weld it all together, too, instead of using tape. the tape melts itself off and it heavy. oh well, it still makes it look way better on this one.
i'm working and going to school all the time now. at least i should have my motorcycle back tomorrow or maybe thursday at the latest! another thing i'm excited for. but i have so many bills to pay as a result. darn. at very least i don't have to be stressed about not being able to get my class because it looks like i'm surely in. i'm going to make sure of how i can cement my place tomorrow. this week has been a pain in the ass but worth it. i've spent something like 3 hours each day on a bus going to school then to work. oh well.

2006-04-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

i'm embarking on making my tiny little stove out of two pop cans. i'll be posting pictures for you all later on here...

2006-03-29T23:02:00.000-08:00

i have come to realize that there are certain factors of my life that i prefer to have remain constant in order that i can endure the many changes that occur. i think sara is probably the most important of these. i've been missing her so much since she went back to school. you know how you get into those comfortable rythms of life without even realizing it? her going back to school made me realize it. she's pure ace.
that is all.

2006-03-26T20:27:00.000-08:00

alright, i'm back from spring break. my little sis was out so i had to spend every moment possible with here and sara, of course. i'm sitting here waiting anxiously for my motorcycle and chemistry class to start. i want to get them both finished and move on to the next thing. i'm nervous about it all, really. i have to update my availability at work now, too. god are the next few weeks going to be unhappy ones at work. i'm going to be busting over there just to make it in any semblance of time. but it'll be alright, i figure, because you never really do anything your first week of class anyway, right? right.
how are all of you out there doing?
i've been away from regular blogging i can't even remember what i used to write about. darn it!
had a great couple of glasses of wine with sara last night. always a good call if you ask me. i've begun to appreciate wine more now that i can drink it more often. i'm starting to develope a palate for it. and i love it, i do i do.
had an apex, a michael pozzan, and a woodinville(i think) last night. all good, all bigger reds. all pretty damned smooth, too. it's good stuff.
grapes are way better once they've been fermented.

2006-03-15T22:57:00.000-08:00

got my chem. class at Shoreline and it's only costing me $966. oh, and labor on the new bike is the other big expense but then i'll have a newer bike that will (hopefully) keep running and run well. other benefit is that it's physically a larger bike. i may end up replacing the gas tank and seat when i get a few extra bucks here or there but that is of no importance to getting it running and ride-able. looking for that point in two weeks or less. tomorrow is the last day of my little stint and then it's off so that i can get down to pick my sister up friday morning at the airport. we'll have some good times, i think, so i can't wait.
what are you all going to do for spring/fall break? i only hope for climbing.
i really hope financial aid comes through for Bastyr. it's going to be so frikkin expensive otherwise i don't know how i'll make it work. loans, i guess.
anywho, talk to you all soon.
that is all.

2006-03-10T23:58:00.000-08:00

you know what i hate and love at the same time? when you have to get out of bed but just don't have the will power to do so. awesome. i've now done that twice today. twice in one day!
i am so totally rolling.
i'm basically pulling what geezer and maja do with the two weeks on thing. i've got 13 days in a row and then a week and a half off or something. well...a week, i guess, and one day. i'm getting back at school i'm getting back at school i'm getting back at school...say it enough and i'll do it for sure, i think. turns out Edmonds CC doesn't offer the courses i need in the order i need them in. suck. so i'm going to go to Shoreline CC probably.
i think i'm ready to write down my thoughts more regularly again. i went through a period there where i didn't want to put my life down into writing so that i could forget it was happening the same way every week. you know that feeling? i don't know how i'm going to deal with being out of school and just working. i feel like i'm wasting something of myself away when i do that. part of why i could deal with being a career student. i watched "Stick It" again tonight. makes me want to go get outside and just climb on something. basically it's this bunch of climbers doing routes in the UK. beautiful footage and great bouldering make me want to go get outside and do some myself. i can't wait to have warmer weather. i'm not good enough to climb when the rock face is super wet yet, i'm not hardcore or anything. i'm going to get there, though. mostly because those guys are fukking ripped out! i've never seen such deltoids. so basically it's because i'm ridiculously concerned with how i look. in classic form for me, though, i'm not enough to really work at making myself better...should change that
that's all.

2006-03-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

i've come to accept the fact that at this moment i want some friends but i'm just not in the mood to deal with all the stupid, annoying people to have friends. this isn't saying anything about you guys, of course, but more about people i've been meeting random places. i just feel disgusted by some people due to their stupidity. i need mental stimulation and i need knowledge to feel like i'm functioning normally and i just can't accept people who don't feel that way. if you're not into learning something new each day why are you here?
perhaps this is just because i've been seeing more of people who have given up on life or are content to live below their means. some just don't want to work hard enough to improve. that just baffles me. why would you limit yourself not based on intelligence but based on laziness?!? i'm known to be lazy but not at the expense of my future. complacency is easy to fall into but it's also what kills your chances in life.
and fat people annoy me at work. this isn't saying that if you're chubby or obese or whatever that i hate you it just means that you need to be sure to pick up after yourself when you go shopping. i seriously have to clean up after more XL-XXL guys that anyone else. just makes me think: maybe you're lazy and THAT is why you're fat, not your "genes." it's a subject i'm bitter about because i work retail. you realize you don't like certain groups based on their habits.
small people are a pain, too! it's like you owe them for being short and so you get to clean up after them. not so! i'm a small anymore and i can still manage to pick up after myself.
on the plus side i've got three or four long backpacking trips coming up this summer so we'll have some great pictures for you. first up is grand gulch with my brother and dad in april-may. utah is beautiful in the spring because it's not blazing hot yet but it's still warm. after that i've got trips to Denali National Park with Sara, Kodiak with a venturing crew and i'll be doing the Wonderland loop around the base of Mt. Rainier. the final is 100+ miles of hilly terrain and we're going to conquer it in 5 days. woot! my first century in one trip!!
long story short, i'll have some gorgeous pictures to show you all and hopefully i'll avoid becoming bear bait in Alaska.
how is everyone out there? i've been mondo busy with getting back into school and work so i've been delinquent here, sorry.
that is all.

2006-02-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

it has been absolutely fantastic weather here. how's about yours? the sun has felt good and just dried it out here a good bit.
my bike is really broken right now but i'm getting more info about how to fix it as we speak here. soon as its going well i'm going to sell it and get something bigger and newer to work on, lol.
i've been listening to some older modest mouse lately and it's just rocking my socks off. they're louder and clearly younger in these and i love it.
i'm still working out design stuff for my backpack in my head but i think i'm about ready to put pen to paper and needle to fabric and get this thing made. latest improvements include using sleeping pad and tent poles for the frame elements to help me carry my lightened load more comfortably, a dry-bag style closure and silicone sealed seams to ensure that the entire thing is completely waterproof, a sealed outside pocket for my shelter so i don't have to open my bag(and get my stuff wet) to get my shelter out and pitched, and finally a mesh back panel that can be cinched to bring it off of the rest of the backpack to increase airflow in hot climates or just in general. i'm also going to make it pretty simple overall...even though it doesn't sound like it.
i've been pretty pissed at mr. bush this week just for being such a douche then trying to pawn it off as nothing more than a simple mistake. feels like they're trying to save him from the burning stake. seems like they didn't bother even trying to restrain themselves with clinton. double standard, anyone?
i think so.
that is all.

do what you can

2006-02-06T15:34:00.000-08:00

anyone else think that this latest bush administration abuse of power is unwarranted and, worse, erodes the system of checks and balances? because you should be worried! and if you're not a bit dubious about the legality of a program that senate judiciary commitee chairman Arlen Specter has described illegal you've had your head stuck in the sand for too long. so go sign this and at least try to make it better. what the president has done is interpret the law of the united states. interpreted what it meant. that's for the courts to do! the courts interpret the law!! it's their main job, damn it! the president influences legislation and upholds it but does not decide what it means or how it will be applied. i suppose that these are things that legally elected presidents worry about...

2006-02-01T13:39:00.001-08:00

alright, if you need to see something that will make the little nerd in you just crack up go ahead and click here. otherwise, hey, how's it goin there, eh?
i just went ahead and purchased a 4.5 oz. gravity filter so that i can shave some serious weight off of my water filtration needs for backpacking. still going to be using my MSR for any colder weather trips because it still works great and it's way better for just straight camping, too.
past that...i've got to learn how to frikkin sew!!
i really do. mayhaps i'll just go ahead and call diana myself to see when she has time to teach me. because i really want to be able to carry a very small amount of stuff when i go out backpacking/traveling this summer.
god, what else is there to tell you all about?
my life is pretty plain. oh, state of the union!
i'll watch it and let you all know what's going on there. i didn't have a TV last night so i couldn't watch it.

2006-01-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

hey all, i just got back from Paradise. really. it's on rainier and it isn't named falsely. we had great weather after the first hour or so and it was a lot of fun. the first hour it was so foggy we couldn't see the folks we were meeting setting up their tents 30 feet away. it's hardcore fog, that. so we walked a half mile up the trail in snowshoes with full packs before we figured it out. not exactly the perfect start.
i did learn how to self-arrest, though, so now i can use an ice ax the way it was meant. i can self-arrest from a face first, feet first or head first on my back position and got my ax into solid stopping snow the best of anyone in the class. we also glisaded. don't know if that's how you spell it...but it's basically sliding down a steep slope on your butt using your ice ax like a rudder to stear around boulders, trees and the like. very fun, very fast and hopefully i have a picture of that coming to show you all. it was sunny the whole weekend, though, which made for one hell of a nice trip. and i got to take out my 15 degree rated sleeping bag for its first trip. made it very happy, let me tell you what.
i also figured out that hot cocoa and oatmeal go well together this morning.
past that i've been looking into moving out and working like mad. i've also found someone to help me to learn how to sew well so that's always good. i've done a fundamental redesign on my shelter and it'll be better for it and have been slowly refining my pack that i want to make. i'm quite excited for this trip and i've figured out a few more things to build into the pack. like a groundcloth that stows in the pouch for the therm-a-rest frame for the pack to sit on in wet/dirty conditions. i can't wait for summer so i can see how light i can go. winter is a real challenge to going light because you really have no margin for error. if you screw up you could die much quicker than in summer. so i want to wait until then to do all of this.
and i just got done with the hat portion of a peruvian chullo that i'm going to say i made for sara. really it was for me but then i made it too small. i've been doing that a lot with this hat. this is the fourth time i've attempted it. so it kinda fits me but it fits here really well. thus it'll be hers. i'm adding the flaps soon. more pictures to follow. talk to you all soon.
that is all.

2006-01-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

ok, new post. more of a quick update. i ripped through the da vinci code finally this week and pretty much loved the book until after the reveal of the Teacher. after that you could just see dan thinking to himself, "aaannd iiii'm spent! now, how to end this so as best to make it feel like an over-wrought harvard admissions essay..."
i'm also on the cusp of finishing the Bell Jar. it's been making my skin crawl at times and there really is a reason sylvia plath is one of the great writers. some of the scenes illicit a visceral reaction as well as a mental one. i'll finish off One Hundred Years of Solitude next. it's going to take longer. while it's beautiful it's also plodding along in a major way. i want them to come out of the rural solitude you can feel them in through the wording of the book.
and i'm finally getting on my fuzzy, alpaca flap hat. so i'm looking for a simple peruvian pattern to put onto it. it's going to be super sweet! i'll post pictures when i'm done.
also, i've started to design my own outdoor gear now. there's a fabric shop here that sells a lot of different fabrics such as, but not limited to: cordura nylon, 1.3 and 1.9oz silicon impregnated ripstop nylon and gore-tex by the yard. for an outdoor nerd who has just begun to really think about how to shave pounds off my backpack this is the ultimate godsend. i can now design and make my own gear that shaves off every single thing i don't need and keeps only the leanest esssential bits. for instance, i'm going to make an anorak with the 1.3oz rip-stop so that it's fully waterproof and add little mesh panels in the back for venting. i'll then use a drawsting of 1mm cord on the bottom with two tiny toggle clips. same on the top for the hood cinch. with that i'll have adequate breathing while still having a waterproof jacket that weighs only a few ounces. i am about to jump out of my seat thinking about all the awesome possibilities!
again, i'll post pictures.
until then, be well.
that is all.

2005-12-23T19:02:00.000-08:00

alright, all, i'm posting from home. not from washington home but from my original home here in denver. first time in a while, eh?
just went skiing today. and not the pansy alpine style, mind you, i went nordic. i'll say that i'm much better at nordic because i've been doing it longer. today my dad and i conquered an easy black diamond route up the hill a few hours. it was fun, the snow was powdery and it was cold and windy. perfect conditions. our tracks were almost gone by the time we got back to them. it was a great time and i didn't fall once. booyah!
other than that it's been baking, chilling with friends and trying to make sure gabe keeps his mitts of my girl. the latter is proving to be trying at best so i'm going to take a break from seeing him.
for a "best friend" he sure does try to get in her pants a lot...
maybe that's a compliment?
more on all these things later.
until then, have a great christmas or whatever as long as it isn't kwanza (for all you who have no idea what that is, it's a holiday that african-american studies teachers made up in the 70s so that they could have their own holiday; nothing traditional or african about it even though that's how it sounds.)

2005-12-11T18:54:00.000-08:00

well, yet again i really don't care about a title. i think that the title is too darn constricting. it's like a jock strap, you should only use it when you really need it. yesterday my girlfriend, sara, and i decided it'd be a great idea to wash the feather bed. for those of you who have done this two things will come to mind: how you wash it and how you dry it. these didn't really pop into our heads. we thought laundromat but they were all closed. then we though washing machine at home but when we'd stuffed all we could stuff it looked like an airbag had gone off in a space capsule. but, at the end of a long day of searching for a laundromat open past 8:30 (and then, after a short time, 9:00p), we gave up and went with the next best thing...pedal aggitation. and we're not talking about kicking any kids asses into gear here, moms, we're talking about what i like to call the new revolution in home washing!*

*may not be new. also, i may not call it anything other than good cleaning fun.

2005-12-08T20:01:00.000-08:00

you guys ever have moments of extreme clarity when you're ridiculously sick? because i seem to. know what i thought of last night? we humans on the whole are like one human in that each of us is a cell in a whole. countries are organs and continents are organ systems that function together to form the body of humanity residing on the earth. now what you have now is a lot of strife in the body, what would be called cancers and the like; these are people who divide the body against itself and also people who destroy other parts of this body. saddam hussein, bush, nancy pellosi, the religious right, terrorists, they are all examples of this type of human- the type that only see matters in terms of personal or sectarian gains. these are the people who don't deserve a major voice in humanity but they are the ones who always have the lion's share of the discourse. are the rest of us so timid that we wouldn't put these people out of power? i believe that we haven't proved ourselves to be anything but timid as far as politics go and that's why we're stuck with a "lesser of two evils" system rather than a system of proper repressentation of american and world civic values. and so i would propose that we stop thinking that what is good for america is good for everyone. self-interst is important but acting with the world is necessarily in our self-interest lest we be left in the dustbin of crushed countries.

2005-12-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

you can see my feet...they're 25 feet straight up a tree with no branches below then.

2005-12-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

this is our jack-o-lantern that i carved and am still proud of over a month later.

hey guys, this post is about how fun it is to climb things

2005-12-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

and i wasn't kidding. that last picture is true. crappy but true. i was up about 25 feet on a rope you wouldn't think would hold up. i climbed straight up the rope using nothing but rope and knowledge. i used prusik knots. what's great is that i don't have to lug around accenders that cost at least $26 each and weight more than 10 feet of rope that cost a total of $1.90. there really is no feeling like being up a tree solely based on your own ingenuity. in two days i'm going to set up multiple rappel points and climb up at least 40 feet maybe 50+ if i've got the time. i've just had a lot of fun at this. i'll have better pictures, too, i promise. i'll be a little speck, lol.
so i'm excited by the fact that i can do this now. i even did a smooth rappel down to the ground today. maybe i'll take a weighted pack up, too, just to make sure that i can do this all with a wierd weight distribution and a makeshift chest harness...we'll see, lol. at least i'll use it to weight down my rope. we'll just say that i'm training up to get out to lisa's neck of the woods. we'll say that i'm looking at going up some side canyons in the area or maybe a bit more towards Moab. we'll find out later on. trip coming in may, you guys, so if you know anywhere amazing tell me now! i'll talk to you all later.
that is all.

2005-12-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

I figure that i should take a more circumspect view of the world as it relates to the divine but i have found that so often people absolutely refuse to think before they speak. on of my favorites for all time are the men who would say that God doesn't love, nor did he create, gays. now i would say if you're believing in a God who created every single thing in the universe you'd necessarily have to concede that he made gays, end of story. if he made everything and gays are alive then obviously he created gays. very simple logic there. easy to tie together. you can't hide behind the guise of God to disguise your own ignorance and prejudice. because one of the things that i see most often is that those who believe in the Christian God do so because they are weak individuals who need a crutch. every person who has ever lived has done something wrong. even the Lord doubted God on the cross- if either or them are what some people think they are. the truth is that religion is a way of staving off death and a way of attempting to make ourselves feel a purpose in our short time on earth. i am already at least a quarter of the way through my life. and it feels like i've barely begun. i will say that this unknown arena after death is something that i don't like but it is something that i can't examine with reason. and anything that i cannot examine with reason is something that i will put off until later. considering i've got an easy way into heaven if i'm wrong i'm not that worried. am i going to go to hell? you can't possibly know. i'll say that i've commited enough sins to go if it's real. but you and i don't know if it is do we?
so i will say that for the longest time i've gone to church without the faintest idea of what i was there for. i must have a sceptic running my soul because only once did i feel the presence of God in my 18 years of being a churchgoer. nothing of it rang true to me. it was the hour of my life that i lost every week to be around people i never felt comfortable around. they were the people i was convinced were judging my every move. and the gossip that spread like wildfire only served to confirm my beliefs: the church is the place for the weak hearted or the hypocrites. the most righteous men know little of it and instead follow personal responsibility to salvation. again, if any of this exists.
what do you think? Is religion really the opiate of the masses or is it the only thing keeping us human anymore?

the first draft of the first pages of the fictional account of me

2005-12-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

Somewhere between the end of high school and the beginning of my real life as a functioning adult i'd hit a roadblock. that cliche moment of my life where in the middle of studying for one career i suddenly found myself either wanting another or wanting to become a hippie. the solution changed almost as often as the weather as the two sides fought for supremacy over the rest of my life. the stakes were always high as i knew that it meant enjoying the next 60 years or hoping that my decision about the existence of God was seriously flawed. To be sure the intellect that could be said to reside with me was nascent and had none of the worldly charms nor graces of those my peers had seen develope in their short time. still, they held, for me at least, a certain quaint charm and value. at the beginning of what was to be my twentieth year none of these thoughts had dawned on my with the same ferocity that they soon would. i was a calm, shiftless gulf intent on becoming useful and respected.

as new year's day passed i was enjoying an admittedly short escape from the reality of life away from the woman i loved. there we sat drinking orange juice- not for lack of convivial feeling but because we were still hung over from the night before- while we waited for the celebration of the brand new year with a truly decadent seattle tradition: watching with fascination as, for ten minutes or perhaps slightly more, our famous space needle was devoured in fires and explosions of green, white, red, blue and every imaginable phosphorescent combination thereof. meanwhile, from the inside, people who had paid a pretty penny for a ticket to the party at the top sat in a grey haze as thick as those i often imagine carpeted civil war battlefields.
this, of course, brought me back to the reality of my own, for the sake of this obvious metaphor, clouded situation. i was a second year student in college with grades far below what was expected from a person who had standardized tests scores as high as mine happened to be. here i will add that i am not being egotistical or praising myself unduly. i have been able from a very young age to turn out consistently high rankings in standardized tests. i have always been, and still remain, among the top ten percent of all people taking any test that i have been forced to waste myself taking. the reason is simple, if there is a right answer on the page i can find it at least eight times out of ten. that is not to say that i am actually intelligent but only to say that i can read into the intent of questions and find the answer that most closely resmembles the lesson i am supposed to learn from them. this fact meant that even though i never earned a semester with grades above a C average, i made it to the 90th percentile of individuals taking any standardized test be it the ITBS, the ASVAB or the ACTs. the most startling part of the test was that i even showed up to take it, as far as i was concerned. after all, only two years prior to this very day i decided that i would much rather sleep than show up for my schedules SAT test. my father repeated his mantra that someday i would learn the errors in my ways and that it would be by taking the hardest way through them. i often joked that it was not up to me because i was a Scout and we must always go about anything we undertake the hard way. i still believe that there is a grain of truth to that saying today.

the scenario would not be so bad if it were not the general tenor of my life. those things that i enjoyed i did and those things which i did not enjoy i did not do. a very simple equation but one that meant that while i would read the story of the famous jumping frog of Caliveras County or the beautiful and haunting tale of a mariner cursed i would never do any assignment related to these.
the reason was twofold: firstly, i didn't enjoy doing essays or answering assinine questions, and secondly, there were far more stories in the world than i had time to read. the second, sad fact meant that even though i wanted to experience all that a human could experience i did not have the time nor ability to do so. this is the cruel twist of life. you can only enjoy the knowledge of life when you have almost passed beyond its breadth and into the harsh, final firing of your neural net. is that blinding light the beginning of something new or is it truly the end of all that you ever were?
at the end of my senior year of high school i was quite sure that it was the new beginning and that i wanted to be a nurse. this would allow me, i thought, to travel the world and to see the many sights that my fellow humans had to put on for me. but two years later while i was doing clinical in a recovery facility i realized that the best a nurse, or any human being for that matter, can do is watch the dying as they pass from this life into nothingness. it was then that i realized that i could never wash myself clean of the endless tide of blood that always seem to pass under the watchful eyes of doctors and nurses.

There are endless proofs that God may never be proven to exist. an ironic fact, to my mind. perhaps the one that rings most true to me is the argument that God and the Big Bang have equal philosophical footing in relation to the basis of their conception to us human beings. both make an argument for something we cannot see and will never experience but nonetheless believe we have strong evidence for. the faith of a man is unshakeable if he believes he has seen proof of his God in the sky, his life, his family or any other thing that is dear to him.
and now i'm tired for tonight. in tomorrows assignment i'll find my lighthearted banter!
stay tuned.

2005-11-28T23:05:00.000-08:00

i feel so absolutely alive right now! i want to just suck the world into my lungs so that i can know it intimately then breate it all back out to share with everyone. wouldn't that be amazing?
i'm also feeling the desire to write something new. something that i can turn into the story of my life so far. it really not very hard. but i need to add a layer of meaning beyond the words and that's a hard thing. the rhythm and meter are easily seen within the language itself but to make it plod along or spring forth from the page is a challenge that must not be underestimated.
what would the story of your life have to include? long comments are more than welcome. i'll read every word because you are my friend and mean a lot to me.

2005-11-22T19:47:00.000-08:00

alright, so i just got some bad news at work: they did not approve my vacation time. this is something that i stipulated when i was hired. i let them know that i might not be there at all in december so that i could visit home. they said it was ok but now they don't. it's really not cool at all.
past that i'm doing alright. just working my way along. i haven't slept more than six hours at all in the past week so i'm feeling a little bit tired but it's really not that bad. i think i'm getting used to it. but i might shoot for 7-8 tonight because i don't really have to be up late for anything. we'll see how that goes.
and i'm waiting for my marmot helium bag. it's really light and really nice and this means that when sara and i go camping we have enough sleeping bags. so it's a really good thing. and it's rated to 15 degrees F. so it's a good bag for winter, too.
and it is really deeply into the winter right now. it's awesome. there is a lot of snow everywhere in the mountains and yet it's still mild down here in seattle because of the water. we've had fog every day this week and over the weekend, too. but it isn't really raining yet. that's later on. the winter hasn't been as bad as i've been expecting but we've got a month until it's at the very shortest days of the year here so we'll see how it goes. it's already dark now by 5:30 so i can't imagine how much shorter the days are going to get.
i've also been knitting an ear-flap hat. it's super sweet. it's kelly green with brown and a yellowy khaki color spun together and it's alpaca so it's super soft and comfy feeling. it'll be a 1-to-1 rib so it'll fit close and i think it's going to be one of my favorite hats. i just need to add a little peruvian pattern in white or black or ruddy brown and it'll be a great looking hat. i'll post pictures when i have them. it'll make me look like the supreme gaylord of the block.
also, i scored the highest in my motorcycle safety class. and i got the compliment of looking like a fish in water when i got onto the bike. my chest practically just puffed out a foot when i got that one. because i worked really hard to make myself that relaxed on a bike.
more on all of that later on, homies.
i don't actually say that in real life so don't be alarmed.
that is all.

2005-11-15T09:43:00.000-08:00

i now officially have a gear-head problem.
it's been building for a few months now but i can't stop talking about how great MSR denali snowshoes are for their light weight and durable frame with modular float tails in a variety of lengths to match weight and conditions nor can i stop looking at gear. like the marmot ski pack...their newest one...it's light, has a horseshoe frame with a plastic back form to support you and can take skis any which way but sunday. it has a rope stash on top and is made to attach crampons and snowshoes to. it is made for winter ascents with randonee ski setups. so i want it but don't need it. i have an ascent pack already but it's not made for it. it's a technical daypack and it rocks for summer backpacks when you can go without much gear. it's rated to 29 lb. and will take a 3L hydration resivoir. it's a great little pack. but i want a pack for ski touring. i want it big and i want it with features. so i'm looking for it. it's taking a while. not many big companies have these types of packs, surprisingly. they're gearing toward mountaineers and not alpine tourers.
but that's alright.
i've just got a bad habit of finding the most awesome gear and loving it too much.

in other news i'm doing quite well.
i just made another $100 today and i'm happy for it.
plus i get to work at REI all day starting at 1p. it's gonna be great.

i've found myself yearning to get outside so i'm trying to plan a climbing trip on friday. we'll see how i go with that. it should be good fun. i haven't been in a few years so i'm going to blow but it'll be great fun even so. i'll get pictures, i'm sure. it'll be great. more stuff to put up on the wall at work.
that is all for now.

This is something to keep in mind in the bad times

2005-11-11T18:19:00.000-08:00

Written by an Australian Dentist...
To Kill an American

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American. So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is . so they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)

"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.

An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country! As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.

Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists. So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

a preacher from the East expects me to know the least

2005-11-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

hey all, sorry about not posting for a while. i've been busy working, working on the bike, visiting sara at school and getting outside.
i went on a trip into the mountains with the intention of climbing a number of peaks. so i set off with a fully loaded 50+ lb. pack to points unknown. got snowed on all day and night- about a foot and a half to be exact- and came back down without bagging a single peak. i still had a great time with my co-workers, though, and had some great, quiet time in the pristine outdoors that i'm just starting to get to know here in washington. we've got three ski areas open here now! it's the earliest that they've opened ever!! guess that my little snowball of prayer on my vest at work is working. i'm happy.
i'm working on making a carrying box for my bike that is appropriately quirky. i've got two wine crates that i'm modifying to fit together like a clam shell. i've got some fancy latches and a locking mechanism for the other side. it's going to look stupendous. i'll post pictures. i'll also find pictures of the trip...that link is to a site of one of the guys i went with. just click on the last link for vesper peak- it's number 12. i'm the front one in the fifth picture. it was great!
let me know how you all have been, too.
that is all.

2005-10-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

you know what the single best thing about blogger is? to post you have to create. it doesn't say compose, it doesn't say write and it doesn't say post; it says create. a great mentality to be in when you come into something like this.
if you said everything in and ordinary way no one would be here to read. we are all trying to be cooler, funnier and sassier than usual just to be outside of ourselves for a while.
like how you always think of that perfect line as soon as the person has walked off.
ever have that happen? i hate it when it does. drives me crazy. and it happens to me a lot.
"your mom tries to...uh...oh man give me a sec" just doesn't work.
that is all.