Ruby's complicated theology

(Note: we have a silly little garden buddha is our semi-wild planter)

Ruby: Dad, I was praying.

Not being a particularly religious family, I am perplexed.

Me: Who were you praying to?

Ruby: Buddha! And the fairies.

Me: Ah. Is Buddha a friend of the fairies?

Ruby: Yes. The fairies do Buddha good works in the spirit world.

Me: I had no idea.

Ruby: Remember that cat that disappeared in the bushes?

(We have a neighbor cat that likes to lurk behind a giant fern we have.)

Me: Yes.

Ruby: Buddha ordered the fairies to carry the cat to the spirit world.

Me: He's dead?

Ruby: Who?

Me: The cat.

Ruby: No, he's alive! He's living in paradise as a living cat.

Me: Like Elijah.

Ruby: I don't know. I gave Buddha money.

Me: I don't think Buddha really needs any money.

Ruby: He uses it buy treats for his fairy servants. Buddha also asked me to show him THIS flower once a year, every year.

(Shows me a strange orange flower that she found growing in some ground cover succulents we have in front)

At this point, Ruby wanders off, singing "Iko Iko" to the tune of "La Cucucaracha".

She's a prophet.

Paula has started a new blog

It's called eatshopsleepberkeley and it's a blog that deals with

1. Eating

2. Shopping

3. Sleeping

all in Berkeley.

It'll be restaurant reviews and crap. So local interest. But there you go.

I hope to contribute.

More stoner grab-ass philosophy.

While I'm being all deep and shit, here's more crap.

I think we are wired for meaning. Or rather, we are wired for purpose, but grasp for explanation and causal relationships. Lions and penguins don't worry about this stuff, or if they do, it's in a relatively narrow way.

We don't experience the universe objectively and to large extent our self is determined by our relationship with others. The limitations of our biology keeps us shielded from total understanding, so we rely on culture to give us context. Other animals experience their own subjective form of reality that would be extremely alien to us (think sharks, or bats) because they have access to sensory data that we can only experience through the intervention of technology, which gives us an indirect abstraction of the experience. The people who do have a talent for seeing the outskirts of what may be the objective world have to concentrate very hard and use data compression (math, language, data, theory) to understand it. We also can't qualify and quantify what doesn't occur to us to do so, so you could say that Science is a history of the limits of human senses.

The nice fringe-benefit of being curious, imaginative, yet imperfect investigators is we will always have wonder and mystery. We are so good at exploiting this quirk of our natures, we have developed art and religion so we can take that wonder and mystery "indoors'' through our own aesthetic work.

It seems to work pretty good all and all, the subjective indirect experience of the world, at least at the clan level. The key, I think, is understanding our limits as a species. But that's just my subjective take.

One thing to consider is the fact we did pretty good without concerning ourselves with attempting to interface objective world for the majority of our existence as a species. The exploration of the objective, as half-assed as we can do it, has made us healthier and materially a lot more comfortable.

I guess you could say we do interface with the objective world, or else we couldn't engage with it, but I think nature is a parsimonious old cow and we have just enough brain juice to manage in our biological niche.

I haven't slept too well lately, so I feel all spacey and introspective.

Why do I think about gay marriage so much? Am I.... married?

SO now gay people can get married in California. They used to be not able to get married, then they could, and then they couldn't, now they can again. It's confusing. It's also a weird issue, because it sort of tests a lot of assumptions we have about marriage in general aside from sexual orientation.

A lot of the back and forth in the debate in the issue operates under the assumption that sexual love is the primary reality of marriage. Let me tell, it aint. I'm married, and funny thing, it's not a butt bongo fiesta romp in the sack every night. I'm sure there are some sexual athletes out there with the swings and the whatnot doing their thang on their silver wedding anniversary. And I say god bless.

There are many, many loving partnerships -- many MANY MANY -- where sex isn't even a factor.

If, as some say, marriage is merely a husbandry institution dedicated to the creation and raising of kids, then we have a lot of non-marriages in our country.

If, as some say, marriage is an institution that exists to put social control on the sexual impulses of the polyamorous human animal, it doesn't do a very job, otherwise adultry wouldn't be an issue.

The legal fact is, marriage is a contract. Marriage as a legal doctrine, with specific rights and obligations attached to it beyond being a contract, didn't exist in Anglo-American law until the 1770s. Marriage was a religious institution, though there were informal common law practices that were called "marriage."

The law in general doesn't have the mechanism to judge marriage as anything beyond a contract. The law can't comment on the quality of of the affection in a marriage, the sexual lives of the married partners, the way they raise their children or even if they decide to have children, beyond
the particulars of the contract and whatever generals laws apply to the individuals.

Social engineers on both the left and the right throw out a lot of half-assed specious pop sociology about the institution to define it as such and such a thing, something beyond a contract. But when you do that, you getting the outer limits of our legal tradition. Up until recently, social standards would have put the brakes on the conversation before it got even close to legal challenge. But now, we're touching the walls on this. Social standards change, and institutions change to reflect that. To be sure, they don't change seamlessly, and it's next to impossible to predict how institutions will change and what new ones will arise (unless you're a Marxist, of course. Then you are a DIALECTICAL WIZARD!).

I don't think marriage as a legal concept is terribly useful anymore. The spiritual institution is fine, and religious communities should be able to decide what works for them (as long as it doesn't involve coercion) within their beliefs. (As a priest, I'd be all for this, because it means I'm not put in the awkward position of acting as an agent of the state.) And I do enjoy my marriage.

But I think there could be some sort of general partnership, independent of relationship -- two sisters, husband and wife, mother and child, best friends, wife and wife, etc. -- where two people living together can name each other as domestic partners and be assigned any contractual rights that marriage has now. Like I said above, marriage as primarily a sexual union is a hugely narrow definition of what marriage is vs. marriage as it's practiced. Laws against sexually predatory practices would apply as appropriate, and the parties would have to be competent agents.

That's all the thinking I have on the subject right now. You should go have some ice cream.

Slow day at work. Here's all the bands I can remember seeing

New Order
PiL
Sugarcubes
Replacements
Alarm
U2
Waterboys
Simple Minds
Shriekback
Sunn0)))
Wiretrain
The Uptones
The Untouchables
Beck
Rolling Stones
The Who
The Clash
The Pogues
Cubanismo
George Thoroughgood and the Delware Destroyers
Jane’s Addiction
Pixies
Frank Black
Miracle Legion/Polaris
Mr. T Experience
Billy Bragg
Beatnigs
Seahags
Bongwater
Happy Mondays
Pearl Jam
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Primus
Neil Young
Billy Nayer Show
Los Straightjackets
Comets on Fire
American Music Club
J. Church
Monks of Doom
Camper Van Beethoven
Three O’Clock
Sting
Squeeze
Lounge Lizards
Red Thread
Aggression
Millions of Dead Cops
Ministry
BoDeans
Blasters
Morphine
John Zorn
Smithereens
David Bowie
Keith Jarrett
Elvis Costello
Jesus & the Mary Chain
Johnathan Richman
Big Sandy and the Fly Right Trio
Spanic Boys
Fall
Jazz Butcher
Love and Rockets
Yellow Man
Toasters
Skatellites
Burning Spear
LunaChicks
Luscious Jackson
Cecil Taylor
Al Green
Untouchables
Iggy Pop
Pretenders
Peter Gabriel
Violent Femmes
Alice Doughnut
Death Angel
Robyn Hitchcock
Idiot Flesh
NomeansNo
Dead Kennedys
UB40 (yech)
Beausoleil
Stray Cats
Motorhead
Chemical Brothers
Orb
Wedding Present
Nick Cave (The Bad Seeds? Don't remember.)
Monkey Rhythm

So what do I have against blogging all of a sudden?

Don't rightly now. I'm moderately busy and there's been the usual flurry of domestic poop. Owen is a large man of five now, so we had a great birthday party -- delicious margaritas prepared by The Wife for all the adults, and a surreally awesome cake made by my sister.

It was more than a cake... it was a meta-cake, a cake about cakeness.

Paula went out of town, so I was on my lonesome with the brats. I took them to the Make Faire in San Mateo, which is this Mad Max crafts fair with exploding robots and shit. Took 'em for a brief train ride on Amtrak... the twosome had never been on a proper train, so we took a half an hour trip up the line to Martinez and came back. It was pretty okay.

And we got a dog named "Chuy" (chewie) which is the diminutive of Jesus (Hay-sus). He's half beagle and half Chihuahua. He looks sort of like a very large, fat Chihuahua. About the size of a ham. He's very laid back, doesn't bark. He's a good little dog.

So, that's it. I imagine I will blog about some sort of crap one of these days.

I am linking to this for work. Don't get all excited. There is nothing to see here, move on.

http://energytouch.wordpress.com

Why are fedoras cool to uncool people?

Were they ever cool? Why do people who aren't cool and have the occasion to act like a cool person (like late middle aged men at halloween parties) put on a fedora or hawaiian shirt? How are things that aren't cool transformed into signifiers of cool for not cool people?

It's as if not-cool people have a range of expression of what is normal for their not-coolness and the outer edge of it has this twilight zone of not cool things that are outside daily not-cool experience but are still easily accessible, so they become "cool" is only through their unfamiliarity. It makes sense, sort of. Something that appears to be outside of not-cool but actually is not-cool takes on the mantle of otherness -- and since the not-cool aren't cool and can't in fact be cool, they associate all perceived otherness as "cool". Because if they knew what cool was, they themselves would be cool.

I'm not cool. But I don't wear a fedora.

The Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Songs

The artists Komar and Melamid took a survey of music listeners to find out which elements of music were the most and least desirable. The following compositions were the result of those surveys:

This is the most wanted song

This the most unwanted song

I sort of like the most unwanted song.

40 percent according to Google

40 percent of World of Warcraft players are addicted to the game. Weekend Sales: 40 Percent Off at Saks. Flu vaccine matches 40 percent of season's viruses. 40 percent of Princeton students and faculty use Macs as their personal computers. 40 percent of Iraq's professional class have left the country. 40 percent of abatement could be achieved at “negative” marginal costs. The number of American consumers filing for bankruptcy increased nearly 40 percent in 2007. Afghanistan's unemployment rate is 40 percent. About 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution. Bush approval rating at 40 percent - Sep 19, 2005. 40 percent of 3-month-old infants regularly watch TV. The sale of digital music globally hit $2.9 billion in 2007, up 40 percent from 2006. Five states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — are next in line with minority populations of about 40 percent. 40 percent of all people with the autoimmune disease lupus have some kidney damage. 40 percent of illegal immigrants are visa overstayers.Your nonprofit salary might be as little as 40 percent of your for-profit equivalent. Vista is still a good 40 percent slower than XP. 40 percent of holiday iPod sales went to first-time buyers.

Asked about the article, MacBain said that she never commented on her private life, but described it as 'probably 40 per cent wrong'.

Songs explained

Labelle -- Lady Marmalade – A man has sex with a francophone prostitute and enjoys it.

The Beatles-- Getting Better – An affair cheers a man up so much that he stops beating his wife

The Who -- Who are you? – A man gets drunk and forgets his friend’s name

Spice Girls -- If You Want To Be My Lover -- A woman likes hanging out with her friends so much that it causes intimacy problems in her romantic relationships.

Styx -- I’m Sailing Away A man is about to go sailing, then has a psychotic episode with angel and aliens and shit.

The Rolling Stones -- Jumpin’ Jack Flash A man who has suffered horribly also enjoys dancing

War – Low Rider -- A self-assured man drives a car around slowly

Peter Gabriel – Shock the Monkey -- A monkey in cardiac arrest is helped by a man

David Bowie – Space Oddity -- A ground control technician is annoyed by an astronaut named Tom

Led Zepplin – Stairway to Heaven -- A lady likes and is really good at shopping

Grateful Dead -- Truckin’ -- A traveling man on drugs would like to sleep in, but people are being loud and disruptive

Rush – Tom Sawyer -- A rude young person walks around like he owns the goddamn world

Bob Marley – No Woman, No Cry -- A man makes a crude axiomatic assertion about the negative relationship of (a) woman and crying

REM – Radio Free Europe -- A man talking in his sleep is recorded

Put me down on the murmur side of the column.

I share a large MAXI-Cube with three women. We each have our own decent-sized alcove with our own little cell and bookshelf that we can arrange our little fillips to individuality.

This is fine. True, I am an anti-social swine and my days are mostly spent weaving elaborate revenge fantasies against my enemies (people who speak loudly on the train, or the tourists riding the top level double-decker bus who dare peer at me… you know, ENEMIES, but these three women are modicums of tolerance. They are always considerate, kind and appropriately friendly with me, a sort of vile Quasimodo-like bastard. Nice, nice people. Very charitable.

But here’s the thing; they whisper. Not about me. About work. This is because, I think, they work in a different department then I do, and do not want to throw their garbage in my yard. They also share managerial duties over a fairly large group of people, and so obviously and correctly must maintain discretion.

But goddamn, the whispering gets to me. If you have ever lived with mice in your walls, you know the feeling; the high frequency skittering that picks at your brain when you’re at the edge of sleep.

I’m all for murmuring. Murmuring happens at the frequency of conversation, so it doesn’t ring some reptilian brain bell, alerting you to the fact you are about to swarmed and eaten alive by scores and scores of fangy little mice. (They go for the eyes first, you know). Murmurs don’t rustle, or twitter. They rrrrollll and bump.

If I were a spy or a cat thief, I’d murmur.

But here’s the rub, and something tending toward a point (as close as we’re going to get in this post): how do you, or do you even, enter that conversation.

“Hey yers, just a point of style… could you murmur? Sort of like this: murmurmurmurmur? I respect the gravity of your communications, but the hissing found at the peaks of your delivery has on occasion shown me the shores of insanity.”

Seems churlish to me.

Also, C., a fellow copywriter, laughs very hard at his own jokes. It bums me out.

Ruby asks a question I am not prepared for

Ruby: They made Frankenstein out of parts from dead people, right?

Me: I believe that's what the story says, yes.

Ruby: So did Frankenstein have some dead person's penis?

Me: I don't think the author got into that in the book.

Good day at work

Wrote some funny scripts before lunch. Listened to Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel on headphones in the afternoon. That's a good routine. Think I'll make that a regular thing.

Doot-de-doot-de-doo

Question for people living in lands foreign:

What is the local equivalent of doot-de-doot-de-doo?

Like a melodic signifier of unassuming contentment?

I might say at the beginning of anecdote: "I was just strolling along, you know, all" (at which point I break into singsong) "doot-de-doot-de-doo..."

Usually something disruptive happens at that point, like a horse falls on top of the anecdote teller from a great height.

Is this place holder something that occurs in other languages?