Football?!?!?!?

A few weeks ago I passed up the opportunity to join some friends for a gathering that would have been enjoyable for its intellectual stimulation as well as being nice just hanging out with some people I really enjoy. I may have picked up a reputation for thinking and intellectualizing too much. So this particular group of friends were sort of in shock (at least one was shocked in a positive way while the others were like "OMG, really? Him?") when I decided to skip that gathering and instead chose to drive down to Stanford to watch a football game on TV. That particular game wasn't overly memorable, nor are most of them, but similar to my love of a cars there is something very family-feeling about it for me. While most of my friends at this point probably look back on their childhood Sundays and recall getting up early for church, wearing uncomfortable clothes, seeing some of their favorite friend--equally fashionably dresse--and spending the day thinking about kindness, good deeds, Jesus, and reverence; my Sundays were nothing of the sort. We spent the day plopped in front of the TV, from 10am to 10pm (give or take a few hours on either side depending on the timezone we found ourselves in) watching our favorite teams run up and down a 100 yard field. On really special days large quantities of Taco Bell or KFC would be consumed as well. So now when I sit down with my childhood friend and watch the Colts play the villainous Patriots I feel a certain connectedness with my family (whom I don't see or talk to nearly enough, which I'm fully to blame for) that few other activities can invoke. I imagine my mom and dad and brother watching the game at the same time and it just feels right.

I don't know what my point it is.

But I do know there is a certain high after the Colts win a game like last nights that lasts for a few hours and is hard to replicate, and unlike many highs, it feels good and healthy, even after the high has passed.

Go Colts!

Best Poem I Ever Wrote

Roses Are Red
Violets Are Blue
Sharks Are Mean
And So Are You

Missing* the Lipless

Here is something stupid. We went to Vegas for Halloween, just a single day. While there we wandered over to the Wynn where you can find a Ferrari showroom. Sigh. I paid the $10 to get in and look at them. And well the closest feeling I can describe it as (this is the stupid part) is a sense of longing like breaking up with a girlfriend.




* Yes, I know it's Kissing.

Where the Wild Things Are

As it turns out the whole world had read this book as a kid. Somehow it was a book I missed, although when I stop to think about it I can't really tell you a book I read as a child, so who knows, maybe I did have it read to me before and I just forget. Anyway, the book seems to sit somewhere on the surface of the American Consciousness and when the trailer came out for the movie everyone was going omg gah gah over it. And it did look like a good movie to me but others were practically brought to tears by the trailer.

Then it came out and I watched it and I loved it. I'm probably lucky that I never read the book as the only complaints I've heard about the movie are where it wanders too far from the exact details of the book.

Max is a great character and a complex child, and reminds me of one of my own family members. I think I fell in love with him over that 2 hour time span and also felt closer to the real person in my life. The movie did a great thing in lending me a bit of understanding.

I don't know if this spoils anything for those who haven't seen it but let me tell you about my interpretation of the movie.

The wild things are not suppose to represent adults, but each (with one exception, maybe two) were little parts of Max but magnified and stripped down to a few simple traits. They allowed Max to see those parts of himself and how they affected other people. One wild thing was the little kid that no one listens to, another was someone who puts holes into things, another was prone to anger and out bursts, willing to destroy his own home if things weren't going perfectly, another demanded that everything be perfect all the time, the other was the quiet kid too shy to talk. The exception to this rule seemed to be KW who symbolized a mix of Max's mother and sister. She seemed to be the one that all the others pinned some sort of hope on, but who had friends that none of them could understand and who she would rather spend her time with. There is a great moment when Max literally (yes literally) crawls inside of KW to hide from the wild thing that symbolizes his anger. He sits inside of her while the other rants and raves at her. And at that moment it seems that he finally gets what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes.

I don't know why I'm writing about this. But it has sat in my head for a week, very happily and it makes me smile when I think of the movie and the way it made me feel. I'd suggest it to anyone, though I hear people are hesitant to bring super young kids to it as it has sort of a sad feel to and it's highly symbolic. I don't have a kid though, so I don't know. :)

400 Words about Sleep

I don't know much about metaphysics; sleep however is a topic I know a bit about, at least in the same way one who spends their days on a farm knows about animals though they've never taken a zoology class.

I’ve been blessed with the ability to sleep well. I can fall asleep on a whim. As I grow older the locations and positions I can sleep in have decreased, but give me a bed and two minutes and I’m out. Struggling with sleep sounds horrible to me and is a thing I hope to never deal with. Unfortunately it’s probably a false hope, like hoping you never have to deal with losing friends, having your loved ones die, or dying yourself. One of the few times I lose sleep is when I’m worrying about that tragic day when it takes me an hour to fall asleep.

Clearly a key question is: how does one fall asleep? I’m not sure exactly. But I can say how one does not fall asleep and from that perhaps we can suppose how one falls asleep, even if we can’t nail down the physiology behind it. Outside of some “problems” with the brain there are two ways not to fall asleep: if your body is too uncomfortable or if your mind is racing, thinking about something. In regard to comfort I can testify to the importance of a good mattress, this is a thing that can’t be overrated in life. But at my age the bigger problem for most of the people I know is the mind--learning to turn it off. What should we think of a mind that can be turned off so quickly? Does its owner posses such great power over their body? Or does its owner actually NOT have a single important thing to think about? Does the owner have a conscious so clear there is no burden or guilt keeping them awake? Or do they have such a deep and profound apathy that the ills of the world, and their own, can’t penetrate whatever defenses they’ve placed around their minds?

Once, on Maui, I was probably 19, I slept on a hard floor in a sleeping bag; I put a CD in, skipped ahead to song number ten, hit the repeat button, and fell asleep to the sounds of a tropical rain storm and this. And life was brilliant.

Tired

What a tired little blog we have here. Not a post since July?!?!?!!? How has the Internet survived without me? Maybe we'll remedy this shortly.

Touch

Feel this ... for a little while.

Left Field

This is a couple days old, but I was happily surprised by Iowa's Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriages. We live in such a bubble out here in California that I forget the fight is everywhere. Anyway the decision/opinion of the Justices is here and is worth the read but the best part is the treatment on child rearing. I'm pretty sure it's the best response to "what about the children?" that I've heard so far.

Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children. The second of the County’s proffered governmental objectives involves promoting child rearing by a father and a mother in a marital relationship, the optimal milieu according to some social scientists. Although the court found support for the proposition that the interests of children are served equally by same-sex parents and oppositesex parents, it acknowledged the existence of reasoned opinions that dualgender parenting is the optimal environment for children. Nonetheless, the court concluded the classification employed to further that goal—sexual orientation—did not pass intermediate scrutiny because it is significantly under-inclusive and over-inclusive.

The statute, the court found, is under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of parents—such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons—that are undeniably less than optimal parents. If the marriage statute was truly focused on optimal parenting, many classifications of people would be excluded, not merely gay and lesbian people. The statute is also under-inclusive because it does not prohibit same-sex couples from raising children in Iowa. The statute is over-inclusive because not all same-sex couples choose to raise children. The court further noted that the County failed to show how the best interests of children of gay and lesbian parents, who are denied an environment supported by the benefits of marriage under the statute, are served by the ban, or how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents. Thus, the court concluded a classification that limits civil marriage to opposite-sex couples is simply not substantially related to the objective of promoting the optimal environment to raise children.

I should learn from this

A quote from a book I just finished:

If he had learned anything it was that family was not so much what you were given as what you were able to maintain.

I'm sort of a bad family member. I'm sorry family for driving you crazy, who knows if I'll ever do better much.