Category: Sheer Awesome

Goodbye, Mr. Ebert

Roger Ebert died today. I haven’t talked about him much, but in recent years he’s become a real inspiration for me. I knew he was sick, but I didn’t expect that we would lose him so soon.

I forget the exact article I read that keyed me into the fact that Roger Ebert was so much more than just a movie critic, but I began reading his blog. My favorite posts was the ones where he was not writing about movies, but pondering on our polarized political climate, gun violence, and other issues. I think one of his most powerful posts was one of his last, this one: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/03/a_shooting_in_harsh_park.html

He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t preach, he simply relates yet another senseless killing by gun related violence. The power of the post comes from the fact that it’s short, for the most part simply relates an incident most of us probably didn’t hear about, and most importantly the final paragraph. You can sense his frustration with humanity, almost defeat in his tone. There’s a world weariness that comes through. He sees this incident through a lens that most of us don’t. This is a story that should have made national news. It should have dominated headlines across the country for weeks. But it didn’t. It was lost in an onslaught of other, equally tragic, gun related murders that happen each and every day. We, as a society, as a people, as humans, should all be working together to find a solution, but we don’t. The only discussion that every happens is political posturing. One side shouts “guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” and the other side shouts “gun control now!” All any of us seem interested in is winning an argument, but in the meantime we continue to kill countless numbers of ourselves every single day.

Gun violence is a complex issue without a single simple solution, but we as a society seem incapable of having a serious honest discussion about it and implementing any kind of solutions at all. It kills one’s faith in humanity.

Gun control is almost certainly part of the solution. What the second amendment actually says aside, I don’t think it’s necessary to ban all weapons, but there is no reason that average citizens in a civilized society need assault weapons designed for combat. An AR-15 has one purpose and one purpose alone, to kill lots of people quickly. It is only being used properly when being used to kill lots of people quickly. Whatever else my be true of the Sandy Hook killer or the Colorado movie killer, they were using their weapons exactly as they were meant to be used. There is no justification for weapons of this sort to be made available to the general public.

But there are so many other factors that factor in to the issue. Poverty, poor education, and economic inequality are all factors that are rectifiable, but we can’t have honest discussions about these issues either.

In short, I share his frustration when watching Americans posture and shout and sling old tired memes around rather than trying to find a way to make life better for anybody. I identified with the man. More than I even knew. Michael Shermer reposted this article written by Ebert then I had never read before:

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

I didn’t know he was an atheist. It honestly never occurred to me to wonder. He didn’t blog about religion much. He was simply Roger Ebert, human being, supporter of the philosophy of Kindness. I respected and identified with him without even knowing that he was religion-free just like me.

That’s how it ought to be for all of us.

I will miss Roger Ebert. I will miss his thought-provoking insights, his desire to see humanity rise above itself, his powerful intellect. And yes, dear sister, those times when we were kids and would all sit down and watch Siskel and Ebert review the new movies together.

Good-bye, Mr. Ebert. The world was made better for having had you in it.

The Force is Strong with This One

Today was a noteworthy day. There were two main things I wanted to write down, mainly for myself to be able to look at later. I know, it’s a blog, so this shit is all public and whatnot, but let’s be honest: this blog’s primary reader is myself. It’s cool, I’m not out here to become famous. Does one become famous for blogging anyway?

So the biggie was an on again off again thing that I wasn’t sure was going to happen, but it did. My oldest son, who was still being homeschooled due to wishy washy court rulings, told my ex wife (may the fleas of a thousand camels infest her pubic hair) that he wanted to return to school. Surprisingly, she enrolled him, and today was his first day back in school. This is awesome news, because once he’s returned to school, she can’t take him back out. This is the only fucking issue I won on in the divorce. Well, that and holiday time. On every other issue, mainly financial, I got fucked up the ass with a telephone pole. Still, this whole thing was about my kids from day one. I didn’t expect that the price for protecting my kids would be so steep, or that I wouldn’t be able to actually get custody to protect them from indoctrination into extreme religion, but you take what you can get. I won on a couple of fronts where it came to my kids. That makes the ridiculously insane amount of alimony I pay worth every penny. That and actually being divorced. That’s so worth it too. Jesus fuck if I was still having to live with that woman I would gouge my eyes out with a circular saw.

The second is really only important to me. I’m two days off the depression meds and my obsession with the ex girlfriend is waning quickly. I think the therapist is right, they were making the anxiety worse, not better. Today, for the first time in over a month, I was able to concentrate on something other than her, even if only for a while. Seriously, it’s been major fucking with my life. My house is a cesspit, I’m pathetically behind at work, and I haven’t been able to focus on anything I like to do as a hobby, which is sad given that hobbies are about all I have left now when my kids aren’t here. Today I got some work done, I looked at my phone a lot less, and I actually smiled and joked with people. I was even able to carry on a small meaningless conversation about pumpkin spice lattes with the insanely hot woman from two rows over who I can’t figure out if she’s with someone or not. Someday I might even work up the courage to ask her out for coffee. Maybe.

This is significant though. My feelings about her have changed dramatically in the last two days, I finally feel like I’m moving on. I still think about her a ridiculous percentage of the day, but it’s not this constant mopey “oh I wish I had her back I don’t know how I can go on without her” bullshit I’ve been stuck in for the last month. I’m starting to put it in perspective and see her a little more realistically. That’s a good thing, by the way.

It’s still kind of sad, she’s had more or less no good relationships, and I really thought I could be the good one. I wanted to try, anyway, but now I really don’t anymore. If she called me up tonight, I would still be tempted, but I don’t think that will be the case a week from now. She’s not going to, it’s just one of those things I obsess on. My resolve won’t get tested on this issue.

There’s one drawback to this though, I think the meds were actually helping me to quit smoking. It’s an antidepressant that’s actually the same thing as Zyban. Being off of it for two days has sort of thrown me for a loop on the smoking issue. Maybe once I’ve got this whole ex thing in place I can go back on them to quit smoking again. We’ll see. The main thing is that I really feel like I’m pulling back from the brink of absolute disaster. I need to get that under control so that I live long enough to quit smoking.

All in all, a pretty good day though.

You took the kids WHERE???

I’m going to a picnic at Darrel Ray’s this afternoon. I find it kind of cool that I actually know the author of The God Virus. If you’re a member of the KC atheist community, you’ll realize that it’s not all that big of a deal, he knows all of us. But still…

I’m taking my kids too. Part of me.hopes the ex finds out. I can already see her doing a Rumplestiltskin type angry dance similar to when I embarrassed her lawyer during the trial.

Why yes, as a matter of fact. If you didn’t already know,  I am an asshole. To those who’ve earned it.

Introspection

Today I pushed my boundaries.

Every few years or so I seem to go through some kind of change. The best way to describe it is that the answer to the question “Who am I?” changes. I couldn’t tell you what they all are, but I remember a few. A significant one was the one that led me to leave the cult. Another one happened a mere year later when I finally shed Christianity. Yet another happened in May of 2007. That’s the year this blog was created. Another in June of 2008 while I was in Minnesota. The most recent one was November of 2010. I filed for divorce the next month.

Now we come to August 2012. I’ve had a small handful of relationships since being kicked out of my house, ending with the most recent one. I gave her my heart. I couldn’t tell you exactly why I did. Phrases that I put no merit in like “soul mate” and “meant to be” come to mind, but the fact of the matter is I think she and I were a good match. Possible the best match I’ve ever had. We just… clicked. If I could describe my dream woman, a completely made up woman who embodies all of the traits I find attractive, she damn near hits them all.

Then it all went to shit.

Whaaa? Trouble in paradise? How can it be? You two were meant for each other!

No we weren’t. To quote Tim Minchin “If I didn’t have you I’d probably have somebody else.” Relationships start with physical attraction amplified by pheromones and from that point on they take an assload of work. I think that last part is where we ran in to trouble.

So I find myself suddenly single, emotionally hurt, and a bit bewildered. It’s moments like this when you do your best thinking.

I realized that I’m not ready for relationships yet. I got out of a nearly two decade long marriage a year and a half ago. It officially ended less than two months ago. I’ve been dealing with nearly constant insanity from my ex and the court system of the great state of Kansas for what seems like a bajillion years now, while helping my children deprogram themselves and realize that crazy extremist fundamentalist Christianity isn’t the only choice they can make, and trying to reinvent my entire life all at the same time.

It might not have been the best time to decide to invest a lot of time and energy into a relationship.

So the past several days have involved a significant reexamination of my life. I came to a few realizations.

  • Being single fucking rocks, even at 41.
  • Casual dating with no commitment is ok.
  • Friends with benefits doesn’t work. It just doesn’t.
  • I don’t know who the fuck I am.

Oh I know, I exude mucho confidence here and all aspire to even be a shadow of my cool, but the truth is, I haven’t had much time to figure out who I am after the last change. But I do know this: I feel dead inside.

Every day I get up, go to work, and spend the better part of my day in a felt covered box dealing with somebody else’s problems. At the end of that, I might get a little time to myself, or I might have my kids. There’s not much time left for me at the end of that and what little I had I was giving away. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

So today I got up, put on my hiking shoes, went to a local park, and got myself lost. Really lost. This is a big park, and practically nobody else was there. I’m woefully out of shape and I had one bottle of water.

The point was, I was not guaranteed of making it back alive. Sure, the odds were in my favor, but there’s that chance that I might not. That was the key. I pushed myself past my endurance point and found out I had more, so I kept going. I finally reached the end of my endurance again, and found out I had yet more, so I kept going.

By the time I found my way back to where my car was a few hours later, I was drenched with sweat (it’s over 100 degrees here with Kansas humidity), exhausted, thirsty, and a smidge on the loopy side. My legs were so worn out I could barely walk. A few hours may not sound like much to some of you, but I went from completely sedentary to hiking maniac pretty much today. I had no endurance level, and I pushed the fuck out of it anyway.

AND IT FELT FUCKING AWESOME!!!

I mean it did and it didn’t, but pushing myself  so far past what I thought I could do gave me a feeling of being truly alive. I found myself laughing and the smallest things and just enjoying being alive.

Later I grabbed an old friend (“old” being a relative term since she’s 10 years younger than me and I’ve known her less than a year) and went back out at night to see the universe. It was awesome. It gave me a feeling of being connected with the universe. It’s awesome when you can look up at the sky, see a lot of stars (even in Kansas City they’re hard to see without getting out of town), and know not only what they actually are, but that your perception of them is really looking backwards in time to several different points time simultaneously. One may be 100 years ago, another only 4, another 6 billion. And every atom that makes up my body, every atom that makes up yours, every atom that makes up every thing on earth that we see was forged in a star like that. Not only that, but the star it was forged in died. It died so that I could be here. And it died over 4.5 billion years ago.

SCIENCE FUCKING ROCKS, BITCHES!

I’m still kind of figuring out where this is going, but I think this could be the most interesting change yet.

Will you be happy in heaven when your family and friends are being tortured for eternity?

I’ve been a little quiet lately. There will probably be an update on the reasons for this later… well, maybe. Anyway, Mr. Deity has put out a new Way of the Mister video, and this one is a smidge more blatant than most of his stuff, but very poignant.

It never fails to amaze me how the actions attributed to God are excused. We don’t understand his ways, blah blah blah. Why are the rules by which we judge God different than the way in which we would judge another human? The things God supposedly does would be considered crimes of the most horrendous nature if perpetrated by a human, yet we (figuratively) call it “Love”. I call bullshit. If God is real, he’s a bastard fucker and I’m gonna punch him in the teeth.