Deeb Thoughts

Mouthwash and Micturition: A Love Story

2011-09-14T19:45:00.001-07:00

For millennia, men have known that the key to getting laid is good breath and clean teeth. Now, it’s easy. We’ve got toothbrushes, Listerine, floss, and whitening strips. We weren’t always this lucky.

Egyptians are the first people that we know used mouthwash. They mixed water with honey, eucalyptus, peppermint, and cinnamon and swished it around in their mouths. Unfortunately, they didn’t spread their delicious oral hygiene technology and the Greeks were forced to come up with their own mouthwash. Being the genius philosophers they were, they decided to forgo plant-based solutions and drink piss.

What’s better is that even after the Greeks wised up and stopped pee-gurgling, the Romans kept doing it. Also, for some stupid reason the Romans believed that the best piss came from Portugal. I can only imagine this was caused by some sort of elaborate joke on Cicero’s part. The pee-fad became so widespread that at one time, the government actually levied a tax on imported Portuguese piddle.
To their credit, putting urine in your mouth will make your teeth whiter. The ammonia will eat off some of the plaque and gingivitis-causing germs. Unfortunately, it will also eventually dissolve the enamel and make your teeth fall out. Either way, they were swishing urine in their mouths. Come on, guys.

What really gets me about this is that way before the Romans were doing it, Hippocrates recommended using a mix of salt, vinegar, and alum. Modern research has shown that these ingredients would have gotten the job done pretty well. Conversely, modern research has also shown that this would not have been nearly as amusing.

Despite its use for hundreds of years, it wasn’t until the 1600’s with the discovery of bacteria (then thought to be weird little eels that lived in your mouth) that anybody really understood why mouthwash worked. For this, we have to credit Anton van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch father of microbiology. Anton tried out a variety of mouthwashes consisting of things like vinegar, brandy, and coffee before discovering that none of these was a good enough antiseptic to kill off the bacteria living in enamel.

Two hundred years later, some British Baron made a carbolic acid-based antiseptic used for sterilizing surgical instruments, which had never been done before. His name was Joseph Lister. Some time later, some Americans thought they could get people to put the stuff in their mouths, and Listerine was born. Thankfully, since then there’s been no need for people to put urine in their mouths. But J.D. Salinger still did it! Really, he did. Salinger was a strong believer in “urine therapy.”

Teflon, The Synthetic Resin of Our Lives

2011-09-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

What’s your favorite synthetic resin? If you read the above title and didn’t say Teflon, you’re an idiot. You know where I was going with that. Anyway, Teflon rules. Created by accident in the 1940’s, it revolutionized cooking, inspiring a generation of bachelors to actually wash their cookware instead of just throwing it away and buying new stuff.

Teflon’s not only used in the kitchen though. Besides its ability to repel water (stemming from its electronegativity and mitigated London dispersion forces), its low coefficient of friction and general non-reactivity make it ideal for use with highly reactive substances. In fact, one of the first uses of Teflon was in the Manhattan Project – it coated the inside of pipes where uranium compounds were held during enrichment.

It actually wasn’t until ten years later that someone decided to put it on a frying pan, which was then marketed as “The Happy Pan.” Since then, the polymer’s been used in a number of other “Happy” products such as armor piercing bullets and pyrotechnics.

On top of all these wonderful applications, Teflon is also known as the only material that geckos can’t stick to. Doesn’t that make you want to coat a fishbowl in it and throw that stupid Geico lizard in there? That’ll show him for originally using Kelsey Grammer’s voice and then switching to some English nobody. Seriously. Kelsey Grammer’s voice is like dark chocolate wrapped in velvet doing the backstroke in three fingers of fine Scotch. The new idiot sounds like Michael Caine’s effeminate nephew who’s just been kicked in the scrotum.

Don’t Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight

2011-06-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

This man is dangerous.

Prompt: What’s your most vivid childhood memory under age 12?

Suggested by: Polly Nicklin Andres

The most vivid memory of my childhood is getting suspended from school in the second grade for throwing a knife at a kid.

It’s hard to tell if this is a real memory or if it’s just been recreated by telling the story, but I think I can pretty accurately recall what happened. In short, another student at Martin Luther King Primary was chasing me around the playground calling me names, so I threw a knife at him. Before you go thinking I was a badass seven year old, you should probably know that it was a plastic knife I found on the ground, I missed him by five feet, and the kid pushed me up against the basketball hoop pole and hit me in the stomach. I started crying, as was my wont at the time, and a friend of mine went to get a teacher. When she heard the story, I was taken to the principal and given one day of in-school suspension for possession of a weapon. The other kid also received a day of suspension for punching me in the gut.

At the time, my parents saw the whole ordeal as a disgrace to our family. They were, after all, both educators, and it was shameful for their son to be in trouble. As such, they always punished me at home in addition to any trouble I got into at school. I think this year the penalty for my misbehavior was the cancellation of my annual Halloween Party, which made me greatly distraught. Actually, that might have been the punishment I received for writing my bus driver a note that read, “Dear Nancy, I hate you. Sincerely, Ben”. I’m not sure. Regardless, I was sworn to secrecy about the situation, and I’m not sure if anyone else in our family has ever heard about it.

Anyway, I remember loving my in-school suspension day. I was put in a closet-sized room with the kid who hit me and given my schoolwork for the day. As I remember it, I finished the day’s worksheets and homework in a matter of minutes and promptly asked for something else to do. The person in charge of the small, dark, clockless room went to get more work from my teacher, and I stared at the wall. When she returned, she had a small stack of worksheets for me. I completed these, too, and asked for more work. She left again to get more materials from my teacher. As I remember it, this happened all day long, until I had completed over two weeks of both homework and in-school activities. I also remember being given a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. This was the only part of in-school suspension I did not enjoy.

Returning to my normal classroom the next day, I realized that, having already satisfactorily completed the day’s assignments, there was no incentive to pay attention. I think I read, doodled, and stared off into space for the next two weeks of class. I remember being extremely bored. My teacher was not pleased.

Given, this memory may be exaggerated or just completely inaccurate. I have a notoriously terrible memory of most of my childhood, so I can’t be sure.

For the record, my second most vivid memory of this year is peeing my pants on the bus because someone dared me to. Looking back, this may have been the start of my long-standing habit of peeing in inappropriate places.

It's Wine Rack Thursday!

2011-06-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends!
Instead of writing a blog today, I spent too many hours designing this wine rack. I bought a bunch of 1x4's the other day, and I'm going cut the notches for the bottles with a circular saw and my new Dremel tool and stain the wood dark brown. The rack will sit up against the wall under my TV, hiding its cords. Tell me what you think - I'm probably going to start building this weekend.

Update: it ended up looking like this.

Defining Hipster

2011-06-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Look at this fucking hipster.

Prompt: Define 'hipster' and 'scenester' and highlight similarities and differences between the two.

Suggested by: Charlie Vogelheim

A myriad of social stereotypes pervade our culture, and for some reason, people like to fit into them. Most are pretty easy to spot and define. Goths are dark and disaffected, hippies wear tie-die and talk about peace, rednecks are “patriotic” and listen to country music, geeks like video games and Star Wars, and stoners love smoking (and constantly talking about) pot. While there are certainly more intricacies to each of these subcultures, they can be demarcated relatively simply. Harder to simply define, however, are hipsters.

Few societal labels are as nebulous as “hipster”. Yet, while arguments persist on what existentially constitutes a hipster, they’re notoriously easy to spot. The best and most reliable way to spot a hipster is by his or her appearance. While they have a variety of styles, some seemingly universal traits include skinny jeans, blank stares, and stupid fucking hair. Apart from this, they try their best to look different, but in that difference you can spot their similarity.

In addition, hipsters have definite places they hang out. To find a hipster roost in Los Angeles head to Silverlake. In Omaha, their nest seems to be the area around the Slowdown (which I’m told is now being referred to as “Nodo” [this is stupid]) and maybe Dundee. In New York, I think their lair is in Brooklyn. I don’t know. I’ve never lived in New York, but I saw a lot of dudes wearing Keffiyehs there once. Anyway, Hipsters have neighborhoods.

People have tried to define them beyond their style and geographic location, but I think most attempts have failed. Hipsters are oft characterized as trying to be either “ironic” or “authentic.” Despite the semi-paradox of being both, I don’t think that being ironic or authentic has much to do with being a hipster anymore. At first, it probably did. I imagine the first hipster was trying very hard to be ironic with the things he was doing. He drank Pabst Blue Ribbon because he thought it was shitty (he was wrong). He wore big stupid non-prescription glasses because they made him look goofy (they did). He listened to obscure bands he didn’t really like just to seem different. Over time, though, this charismatic proto-hipster had his style co-opted by people who didn’t have the mental capacity to understand his motivations – they were copycats appropriating a style that consequently lost its meaning. It was mass-marketed and branded, just like every other style. Just as the goths had Hot Topic, hipsters had Urban Outfitters, and their sub-culture was cashed in on.

Aesthetic aside, when it comes down to it, a hipster is best defined as someone who desperately wants to be cool. Irony and authenticity are but tools on the hipster’s “cool belt.” Unfortunately, “cool” is an illusive and subjective term. What’s cool to say, Coolio, probably wouldn’t be cool to me. Yet, among college educated middle-to-upper class Americans (who I assume constitute the majority of my readership), “cool” has a similar meaning. The thing is, though, while a certain culture may agree on what’s cool, “cool” still changes over time. That explains why the term “hipster” is so hard to nail down. It’s always changing.

It may seem like “educated middle-class twenty-somethings trying to be cool” is too broad of a definition for hipster. It kind of is, because everybody’s trying to be cool to some extent. The thing that separates hipsters from everyone else is that they’re trying really hard to make it look like they’re not trying very hard to look cool. They wear, listen to, and use ridiculous and inconvenient things to try and seem unique and interesting. Some people buy it. More, however, find hipsters completely obnoxious. Seriously. I know a whole lot of people who fucking hate hipsters. I certainly hate a lot of them. I think this hatred stems from the disingenuousness of claiming to like things with the sole goal of looking cool – that’s what’s always pissed me off about them anyway. I’ve legitimately liked mustaches, indie music, and Pabst Blue Ribbon for a long time; now I think twice about publicly rocking a ‘stache, listening to my favorite bands, or drinking a PBR for fear of being stigmatized as one of them.

In closing, it seems that hipsters piss people off because they’ve appropriated things some people actually like somewhat ironically just to seem different. Further, they authentically seem to like things that are obviously awful. While I can’t say that hipsters don’t actually like stupid crap like v-necks that go down to your belly button, I think that one day, someone’s gonna look back and ask, “why did ANYONE ever listen to fucking Animal Collective.

P.S. Charlie, I know I didn’t entirely answer the prompt you gave me. I think scenester was an early term for hipsters that were really into the indie music scene. They’re kind of the same thing now.

A Note from the Management

2011-06-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

After reckless deliberation, I've decided that my original goal of writing five new blogs a week was too ambitious. All this blog work has left me with little time to concentrate on my other writing projects, which I can assure you are numerous, wide-ranging, and in various states of incompletion. This fact, combined with my customary laziness and lack of monetary incentive, has led me to reevaluate the focus of this blog.

Henceforth, I'll be writing only three long blogs per week. For now, I'll also be posting something short (like this) twice a week. Due to my lack of will, focus, and free time, I may end up not even posting those. If that happens, I'm sure that soon after this blog will inevitably die a slow and largely unnoticed death, just like its first incarnation.

In the meantime, keep sending me things to write about. If you pique my interest, you may just save this blog and possibly... the world! Probably just this blog, though.

Regards and Cheers,
Ben

Bonesman Begins

2011-06-13T18:20:00.001-07:00

Part One of Five

Prompt: Write a fictional piece about what it was like with George W. Bush in the Skull and Bones.

Suggested by: James Moore

It was a shame that the Yale campus was so lit up at night; the two young men in their dark cloaks would have looked much more mysterious without the harsh light from the lamps along the pathway. Nevertheless, they moved silently through the quad, their faces covered by oversized hoods. They walked deliberately, as if each step was more important than the last. They had business to take care of. They were Skull and Bones, out to tap their newest member.

The men’s furtiveness was out of the ordinary; tapping for secret societies was usually a public affair. Dozens of eligible juniors, hoping desperately to join one of the illustrious senior societies, gathered on Branford court each April waiting for a current member to tap them on the shoulder, signaling an invitation to join their ranks. Two senior members of a society going to a single student’s room for a private late night tapping was extremely rare. In this case, though, it was necessary.

That afternoon, their newest inductee hadn’t shown up for tapping. Normally, the organization would have taken this as a snub and selected a new member from the waiting list. At an emergency meeting this evening, some members had proposed this course of action, but it was eventually decided that due to the nature of this particular situation, choosing a new member was not an option. This student was a legacy, as deeply rooted as any the society had seen. His father, a recently elected congressman from Texas, had been a member, as had his grandfather, a recently retired Senator from Connecticut. Despite his less than sterling reputation at the college, George W. Bush was fated to join the Skull and Bones, whether he liked it or not.

The two cloaked men approached the dormitory. They weren’t quite sure what to expect. Why hadn’t he showed up that afternoon? Was Bush making a statement with his absence or was he just uninterested? While many of the members were acquaintances with Bush, none knew much about him. With a feeling of uncertainty that was atypical in Bonesmen, they entered the building. Walking through the halls of the old building, the young men received a variety of laughs and jeers. A hundred years before, students would have been scampering out of sight in the presence of the cloaked seniors; even a decade ago none would have dared challenge the dominance of a man with a Skull and Bones pin. The sixties had clearly taken their toll on the organization’s authority over the student body.

The Bonesmen were unfazed by the younger students’ churlishness. Though their fellow students no longer paid them the respect they were due, the men took solace in the fact that with the benefits Skull and Bones provided, one day they’d have power and wealth their classmates could only dream of.

They arrived at Bush’s room. As was their custom, one of them rapped four times on the door, pausing meaningfully between each knock. Muffled sounds came from the room. The Bonesmen waited. More sounds came from inside – mostly fumbling and cursing. The door swung open. Standing behind it was George, half clothed and fully drunk. He grinned and laughed. “Evenin’, y’all!”

The seniors entered the room, hustling Bush back and closing the door behind them. They were at once overcome by the smell of stale beer and staler urine. “Whoa there,” said the young legacy, “you don’t have to be all pushy.”

The senior member pulled out a scroll from inside his cloak. “George W. Bush,” he read, “like your father and your grandfather before you, you are hereby tapped for initiation into the arcane mysteries of the illustrious order of Skull and Bones.”

George chuckled. “Quit pullin’ my chain, fellas. Tapping ain’t til Saturday. What’s this about?”

The men looked at each other. “Seriously?” one whispered to the other. His partner sighed in exasperation. “George, today is Saturday.”

“Bullshit, you fucker. It’s Thursday.”

“Today is Saturday. Tapping was this afternoon.”

“Hell.” Bush sat down on the floor, confused.

The Bonesman continued reading from the scroll. “You shall report to The Tomb, the safe haven of our society, as the sun sets on the morrow, bringing with you only the clothes on your back and a symbol of your allegiance. Until then, you shall break contact with all your fellows, keeping inviolably secret what has passed at this meeting.”

George looked up at them, then returned his gaze to the floor. He stuck his hand into a pile of dirty clothes; when he brought it out it was holding a bottle of whiskey. In one quick motion, he uncorked the top and took a swig. “What?”

The cloaked men turned to each other in private conversation. “Jesus Christ.”

“I’m not reading that again.”

“You have to.”

“Screw this, Roger. There’s no way this guy is going to hack it.”

“Do you have any idea how furious the Russell Trust will be if we don’t let him in? They’ll take away our funding!”

“Fine. Let’s just make sure he knows where to be tomorrow.”

They turned back to Bush. He was fast asleep on the dorm floor, smiling like an idiot.

“God, God dammit.”

•••••

The next morning, George W. Bush woke up feeling mildly dehydrated. He stumbled into the bathroom in his underwear and looked in the mirror. Written on his chest in perfect mirror-image calligraphy were the words, “Skull and Bones. Tonight at Sundown. You’re an asshole.” As a look of recognition came across his face, the newest member of one of the most elite secret societies in the world giggled like a little girl.

To be continued…

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Time

2011-06-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

These are my friends, Bill and Ted.

Prompt: If you had a time machine and could go to any time period and talk to anyone where would you go and who would you talk to? Things to consider: A. the Butterfly Effect. B. Delorians. C. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Suggested by: Sarah Fink

I like time travel. At least I think I do. I’ve never time travelled myself, but seeing people do it in movies has always made me envious. I think I’d really enjoy going back in time and screwing with my past self. Take note: screwing with, not screwing. I read The Time Traveler’s Wife a few years ago and I’m pretty sure I remember a scene where the main character goes back in time and blows himself. I don’t think I’d be down with that.

Future-self fellatio aside, thinking about the complications and consequences of time travel is always interesting. In my mind, there are a few basic scenarios of how time travel could work. They are enumerated and evaluated below.

1. Unchangeable Future – In this scenario, the future (or the time traveler’s present) is set and cannot be changed. His actions sometimes seem to change the course of history, but it always corrects itself to end up exactly how it was going to be. This is basically a waste of time unless you can gain knowledge of something in the past that would be advantageous in the present.

2. Changeable Future – The time traveler can influence events in the past that will change the course of history. In this instance, the time traveler can change his own life in the present by changing his past. Think Back to the Future. Unfortunately, in this scenario, shit can get real. As Ashton Kutcher showed us, the Butterfly Effect makes this type of time travel extremely dangerous. Despite its widespread use in movies and literature, changeable future time travel is not recommended.

3. Space-Time Dilemma – In this one, if the time traveler comes into physical contact with himself, either he or the world will cease to end, as the same matter is not allowed to occupy the same space. This happens in Time Cop. Space-Time Dilemma time travel can be tied in with any of the other types.

4. Alternate Universe – When the time traveler goes back, he creates (or enters) an alternate universe. This seems like the most plausible way to time travel without bothering with the philosophical consequences of changing the past. I guess it’s reminiscent of It’s a Wonderful Life. Kind of. Also, Lost, if that shit made any sense.

5. Observational – The time traveler cannot change anything or interact with anyone. He’s only allowed to observe the past. I can do that with surveillance cameras. This type of time travel is lame.

6. Nonsensical – In this case, time travel makes no logical or coherent sense. It is the best. Our friends Bill and Ted have proven this.

If I had to choose a time travel scenario to use in my own journeys, I’d probably go with nonsensical for ease of use and sheer fun-factor. I imagine scientists wouldn’t let this happen, though, so my second choice would be the alternate universe one, provided I could return to my regular present when I was done.

If I went back in time in this way, I have a few people I’d want to talk to. I can think of many times I’d want to travel to, but my top choice would probably be late 1800’s America. I’d shoot the shit with Mark Twain and then go play with electricity with Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately, I doubt either of them would like me very much, so I’d go home disappointed. If I could change the future I’d probably go to the past and buy a crapload of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Berkshire Hathaway stock. If I’m ever really rich, assume that I’ve accomplished this.

Other things/people I’d like to see/meet in the past include dinosaurs, Leonardo DaVinci, cavemen, Atlantis, Aristotle, the Wild West, Benjamin Franklin, 16^th century England, and Oscar Wilde. I would also very much like to visit the future, but that’s another story.

Egg Day

2011-06-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Not a Chicken.

Prompt: In honor of Egg Day on June 3rd, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Suggested by: Claudia Deeb

The neopragmatic approach to philosophy asks that before you answer a question, you first ask, “Will knowing the answer to this question have any practical effect on your life or the way the world works?” If the answer to that question is “no,” then it’s not a question worthy of an answer, except as a philosophical exercise. The answer to the chicken/egg question, while interesting, has no substantive consequences, and thus, a pragmatist philosopher would not waste his valuable time working on it. I, however, am not a real philosopher, and there’s nothing valuable about my time, so I’ll discuss it now.

It’s curious that this question still persists, as scientists have basically put it to rest. With a little knowledge of evolution, it is easy to see that the egg came before the chicken. We know that all evolutionary genetic mutation occurs before birth, thus, in the egg. The creature that laid the first chicken egg obviously came before that egg, but was not itself a chicken; it was most likely a red or grey junglefowl. Though this creature was not a chicken itself, it laid a chicken egg, and gave birth to a new species. Thus, the egg came before the chicken.

Though the chicken/egg problem (like many philosophical conundrums) has been clearly solved through the scientific process, the thought behind it still provides a paradox. This particular paradox is often known as a causality dilemma, or a case of circular cause or consequence. Many philosophical questions fall into similar situations. Queries like “Why is the sky blue?” and “If a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound?” have definite scientific answers, (namely, “A certain scattering of light through the atmosphere.” and “No, it only creates vibrations. Sound is created in the ear.”), but the thinking behind them is still a point of contention.

To boil things down to their philosophical roots we can always, like an annoying six year old, repeatedly ask “why?” until science doesn’t have an answer. “Why is the sky blue?” will eventually become “why does anything exist in the way that it does?” and “If a tree falls…” becomes “Is there an objective reality independent of human observers?” When we get down to these questions, science can’t help us – the big “why’s” are purely in the domain of metaphysics.

Philosophers have been struggling with these questions for millennia now, trying to once and for all put these paradoxes to rest. Despite their many approaches to each of these dilemmas, none has provided a truly satisfactory answer. We must then ask if these questions are worth answers. A pragmatist would surely say no. Would knowing the nature of existence change your daily life? Would there be any practical consequences if you learned that an objective reality existed independent of your mind? I doubt it.

In this way, neopragmatism avoids philosophical hubris. Anyone claiming to indubitably know the nature of existence is functionally saying, “I’m smarter than any philosopher who ever lived.” The pragmatist, in turn, argues that these questions are likely not knowable, and even if they are, don’t have enough practical value to try and answer. While it may seem like a cop out that pragmatists basically say, “who cares?” when asked deep questions, it leaves them free to focus more on searching for practical truths and answers of consequence.

In closing, I’ll leave you with an extremely important question that even the greatest philosopher may not be able to answer: What the shit is Egg Day?

Faux News

2011-06-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

This could be you!

Prompt: Why is the conservative-right in this country so fucked up? And why do they all watch Fox News like stunned sheep?

Suggested by: Warren Wills

While I agree that much of the conservative right in this country is completely fucked up, I don’t think they’re much more fucked up on average than the rest of our country – they’re just louder. Liberals and moderates can be just as psycho, but they usually keep to themselves. When I was interning in DC, almost every day I’d see the Code Pink ladies chase and harass someone where I worked, screaming, “war criminal!” and “who wants to die!?” Okay, maybe the second one wasn’t Code Pink ladies as much as it was my friend Ron. And it wasn’t in the Russell Senate Office as much as it was a McDonalds on the Las Vegas Strip. My point here is Ron’s not a member of the conservative right, and he’s pretty fucked up. Boom, relevance!

Back to our discussion of what makes conservative politicians and pundits so much louder than their liberal counterparts. In terms of political tactics, conservatives can be much more dirty. They distract from the real issues, distort facts, and throw ad hominem attacks like so much confetti. The sad part about this is it works. The American public is ridiculously misinformed about political issues, current events, and scientific consensus. All it takes to realize that is to look at a few polls (or watch Leno’s Jaywalking). By aggressively yelling and misinforming, conservatives are able to shape the political discourse. When they’re done, people are so angry or confused that liberals don’t get a chance to present their points. They spend so much time, money, and energy debunking baseless or irrelevant attacks on their policies and characters that they have none left for presenting their actual arguments.

I’m not saying that conservatives are the only ones using these dirty tactics. They’re not; most politicians are smarmy. Liberals try it too, but they aren’t very good at it. Maybe it’s because there’s a correlation between educational level and liberality, and educated people don’t take kindly to being dicked around and lied to, or maybe it’s because liberals have higher standards for moral political conduct. I think it also has a lot to do with the media.

One of the largest problems with politics today lies with the news. News media is how people connect with current events. It’s not like 99% of us are able to go to political rallies, congressional hearings, or foreign war zones to find out what’s happening – we need someone to tell us. We rely on them, then, to tell us objectively, to the best of their ability, what has happened. News media used to be good at this. There were journalistic standards and practices that made sure opinions were kept in the opinions columns and real news was objectively reported in a very clear and certain way. When journalists presented false information, it was a big deal and they had to publish retractions and corrections.

While many newspapers still do this and their journalistic integrity is for the most part intact, no one reads newspapers anymore. To tell the truth, I probably haven’t touched an actual physical newspaper in over two years, (except when using it to make model landforms). It seems most people get their news either online or via television. Today, TV news is basically entertainment. Discussing the intricacies of the “TV news as entertainment” is another whole topic, so just watch the movie Network and you’ll be relatively well versed on the subject. Also, you’ll be mad as hell and you won’t take it anymore.

If we were to eliminate entertainment from news, though, other problems would arise. What worries me is that if there aren’t (arguably entertaining) pundit shows like The O’Reilly Factor on television, people would be less informed about issues than they already are. But then, maybe ill-informed is better than misinformed. Not that it matters – news as entertainment is profitable, and thus, here to stay.

Rhere’s such a variety of TV news programming on today that you can almost always find a newsperson to watch who you know agrees with you. This is dangerous. Newspeople didn’t used to be there to make you happy. They were there to inform you of the facts, whether you liked them or not. Most of the time (even on Fox News), real news programs still actually present the facts. The problem is, there’s less and less news programming and more and more punditry. People now constantly confuse opinion reporting with fact reporting, resulting in the fucked-up-ness that was previously discussed. Conservative people watch Fox News because they want to hear someone who tells them what they want to hear just as liberal people watch MSNBC for the same reason.

So what’s the solution to this? I think there’s one that’s fairly simple. Someone should create an organization that objectively reviews news programs and holds them to certain journalistic standards. If they meet the standards, they get to have the organization’s official seal of integrity on their program. If they do bad reporting, focus too much on opinion, or have too high a rate of sensationalism and misrepresented facts, they lose that seal. Over time, having that seal could be something prestigious that the public respects – hopefully people would be more inclined to watch news that was certified as such than the opinion pieces that spam the airwaves every day. If you were arguing with someone and they presented facts from a news show without the seal of integrity, their argument could be more easily dismissed. Or if they told you they didn’t watch shows with the seal of integrity, you could just not waste your time arguing with them.

As our only link to what’s happening in our democracy, news needs to be responsibly conveyed to the people. People who appear on TV automatically gain authority through relative celebrity. They need to use that authority responsibly and we need to hold them accountable. After all, I think we all know enough stupid and misinformed people in our daily lives that we don’t need to see them on TV, too.

Musical Arrangement

2011-05-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't figure it out.

Prompt: Use the words from your favorite song, mix them up and write a short story using every word.

Suggested by: Claudia Deeb

Author’s Note: Today’s post is shorter than 500 words because it uses the words and only the words from my favorite song to tell a short story, as requested. It took more time than writing 500 words normally does, so I deemed it acceptable for posting.

Tonight, I stopped to do a thing I only ever do in whispers. It’s as if he had turned to me, waiting for the company of that restless boy I’ve become. Words, coming from time, echoing like the rains, hurry towards an old conversation. The men must hear the things I say. Drums reflect the melodies I guide along into the night. Nothing hears me as I take some hundred or more frightened dogs down to that ancient lot. There’s this way they cry – as we do out of sure longing.

She rises above in that long, solitary flight. As moonlit quiet or some wild Olympus hoping for salvation, she’s away to Kilimanjaro. 12:30; out in Africa, you drag some Serengeti to me. It’s gonna grow wings, gonna take the stars. What’s inside of you, there? The cure or a man? I know what’s right could never find that forgotten deep, but you bless as sure as some must seek.

Author’s Second Note: If you don’t know the song I’ve rearranged, you’re missing out on a large part of life.

Pot Talk

2011-05-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

Genius.

Prompt: What would California look like if marijuana were legalized? Would it make a difference if it were dispensed by the government in small quantities without marketing it?

Suggested by: James Moore

Since I moved here a few months ago, I’ve noticed a number of differences between Los Angeles and my previous abode in Orange County. Given, I haven’t noticed as many as I did when I first moved from Omaha (I’m still scared shitless by the “severe tire damage” spike strips in parking lots), but I’ve definitely noticed some changes. One of these is the insane amount of marijuana dispensaries I’ve seen. Within two miles of my apartment lie The LA Cannabis Club, Venice Caregivers, Little Amsterdam, Beverly Hills Alternative Herbal Remedies, Robertson Caregivers, The Culver City Collective, and Kind For Cures (cleverly located in a former Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant). Altogether, there are almost a thousand in LA County alone. They’re everywhere, each with a green cross in the window. With this very public and very advertised sale of marijuana already going on, it seems insane to me that the stuff’s not legal already.

I know a ton of people with medical marijuana licenses, few of whom have any kind of medical issues that really need treating. It seems ridiculously easy to obtain a license to smoke here in LA. I hear you can get a weed prescription for PMS. That qualifies about half the state to smoke legally. The half without periods have plenty of other ways to qualify – headaches, lack of sleep, anxiety, whatever. Someone even told me he had it for depression, which seems counterproductive. The best use I’ve been told of, though, is marijuana being prescribed for herpes. I really don’t see what good it’d do there.

On top of that, getting caught with illegal marijuana possession without intent to sell is only a hundred dollar fine in California. That’s cheaper than a speeding ticket for going 5mph over the speed limit. Hell, a ticket for talking on the phone while driving is over $300 after fines (which makes sense – it’s way more dangerous). These lax regulations and slap-on-the-wrist laws seem to be doing everything but encouraging people to get high.

All this makes me think that if pot actually were legalized, not a lot would change for the average person. It’s already amazingly available, easy to find, and hard to get punished for. Not a lot of people would start the habit that hadn’t already. It’d probably keep casual drug users safer; they wouldn’t have dealers pushing them to try harder drugs. The real changes would come at the state level, though. Prisons would no longer house thousands of small time weed-dealers, illegal drug trade would drop off, and the DEA would waste fewer resources on busting grow operations. All in all, people would stop being secretive about something that’s more harmless than drinking a beer.

So, will marijuana ever become completely legal in California? I wish I could say it would. During the post-hippie movement of the 70’s, people were sure it d be legal within the next few years. Throughout the nineties a number of propositions supporting legal marijuana failed. Then this Fall in California, Prop 19, which would have effectively legalized and taxed the sale of marijuana to the public, lost at the polls. It still seems ridiculous to me that this could happen. I’ve heard only a few rational arguments against legalization, and most of them have been pro-illegal drug dealer. The most public arguments I’ve heard are from people who assume that pot is inherently bad and its users are evil. It seems no matter what statistics, data, or results you show these people they won’t support legalization. If you ask me, it’s misinformed and ignorant people that are blocking legal use of marijuana. It’s a shame that the system has to be the way it is in California – smokers with laughable prescriptions get all the benefits of legal weed and the government gets none.

Teaching Jurassic Park to Kindergarteners

2011-05-27T15:03:00.001-07:00

Fierce.

Prompt: Hey Ben, I haven't seen the movie Jurassic Park in a while. Can you refresh my memory and narrate the story please?

Suggested by: Tim Sauer

It’s funny that Tim suggested this post the other day, as I’ve already narrated the plot of Jurrasic Park twice this week. I’m teaching an after-school dinosaur unit to a bunch of kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays and this week’s class was about amber, bugs, and DNA. They’re mostly kindergarteners. It surprised me how many of them have actually seen Jurassic Park, seeing as how I was alive when it was released and hadn’t seen it until a few months ago. Anyway, I’m going to try and narrate the movie like I do in my classes. Every time you see “Q:” the children have stopped me to ask a question, or (more realistically) talk about something completely unrelated.

So, Jurassic Park is a movie about dinosaurs. In the movie they make new dinosaurs and there’s a big park on an island filled with dinosaurs.

Yes, there were three movies.

Ask your parents. Anyway, the movie starts with a man who found some amber, which used to be sap from trees. This amber is special because it has a very old mosquito in it.

Mosquitoes are bugs that suck animals’ blood. So, they found a mosquito in amber, which used to be sap from a tree. Does anyone know why trees have sap?

No, it’s not tree blood. They make sap to protect themselves from bugs. How would tree sap protect against bugs?

It’s not acid. It’s sap. It’s sweet. It’s like what maple syrup is made from.

Yes, pancakes are good. So trees make sap to protect themselves from bugs that want to eat them, like termites, which are little bugs that eat wood.

I doubt that termites ate your entire house, Noah. Like I was saying, sap protects trees from bugs because they get stuck in it and can’t move.

I’m trying to explain what it has to do with dinosaurs. Put your hands down for a few minutes and I’ll get to it. So, over a long time the sap turns into amber, which is also called fossilized resin. In Jurassic Park they found some amber with a mosquito in it, and the mosquito had dinosaur blood inside it.

No, it wasn’t in the mosquito’s butt.

Okay, I guess if the blood was kept in its abdomen it would technically be in its butt. I think it’d probably be in the thorax though. Good use of the word abdomen. Well in the movie they took the dinosaur blood out and got the dinosaur’s DNA out of it. Who can tell me what DNA is?

Very good. DNA is like a blueprint for who we are. In one little piece of our DNA there’s information on our whole body.

Yes, even our butts. But DNA also has to do with our genes, which are different from the jeans we wear.

I don’t know why they’re the same word. They’re spelled differently. Anyway, there’s lots and lots of DNA in our bodies. Dinosaurs had DNA, too. All animals do because all living things have DNA. In the movie they got really old dinosaur DNA from blood inside a mosquito inside some amber and used it to clone a dinosaur. Who knows what it means to clone?

Not really. What would it be like if there was a clone of me in this room?

Yep, there’d be another copy of me in the room.

Kind of like a twin, but a little different because it’d be made from scratch. Do you think scientists can make clones today?

Actually, they can. Has anyone heard of Dolly the sheep?

That’s not the sheep they feed the velociraptor. It’s a sheep that was cloned.

I’m not sure; I think sometime in the 90’s.

We need to move on. Okay, so they clone a dinosaur using DNA from a dinosaur’s blood they found in a mosquito that was found in some amber which is old fossilized tree sap. They made a bunch of dinosaurs and put them in a park and invited some people to preview the park.

No, it didn’t really happen. It was a movie. Okay, there are also two kids there. This fat guy steals some dino eggs and Sam Jackson is all, “hold on to your butts.”

Yes, butts. And then things go wrong and the dinosaurs escape and try to eat everybody, but most of the people don’t get eaten. Also, Jeff Goldblum was there.

Don’t worry about it.

Yes, we’ll do a project now. Everyone’s going to get a plate and some candy and we’re making an edible model of some DNA, then we’ll go outside and see which trees have the most sap and which have the most bugs.

What?

No. Gummi bears don’t have DNA.

So, while it’s an abbreviated approximation, that’s pretty much how it goes down. I hope I adequately related how difficult it is to get through the plot of that movie while teaching science and fielding the questions of a dozen six-year-olds.

Tabula Rasa

2011-05-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Ben, there have been tornados like crazy here in Missouri. In Joplin, hospitals, high schools, and hundreds of homes have been leveled. In this tragic time, please offer us some inspiration by describing what you would do if your current neighborhood and city was unexpectedly destroyed by a tornado or probably more accurately an earthquake. Would you rebuild or would you cut your losses and move somewhere completely new?

Suggested by: Tim Sauer

It seems that every place in the United States has its own set of natural disasters. On the West Coast there are earthquakes, fires, landslides, volcanoes, and tsunamis; in the Midwest and South there are tornadoes, floods, and droughts; the mountains have avalanches; the Gulf and lower East Coast have hurricanes; the northwest has snowstorms and heat waves. There’s really something for everyone.

Each year there’s some big news-covered event in the US that destroys homes and displaces or kills large numbers of people. This year it’s the tornadoes that have ripped through Middle America. Like the trees and building foundations in these areas, peoples’ lives have been uprooted by the storms. Many have nowhere to go; no property left and no investments to fall back on. Their lives have been forever changed.

The silver lining on the funnel clouds, though, is that they provide a chance to start over. For some, this means rebuilding – making your town or city better than it was before. Take the example of Greensburg, Kansas. In 2007, an EF5 tornado tore through the town, destroying 95% of its structures and killing eleven residents. Instead of abandoning what was now little more than a pile of rubble on the plains, the survivors started rebuilding, with the added goal of creating a completely Green town. Since the disaster, every new building in the town has been LEED Platinum certified, and all power comes from renewable resources. Greensburg is an inspirational example of how catastrophe can bring people together and spur them to make their community better.

For others, natural disasters provide a different way to start over – they give the opportunity to get up and go. With few material possessions weighing them down, people are free to leave and settle anywhere they want. It seems many people in New Orleans took this approach after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – the city’s population has dropped over 25% since the levees broke. While it’s hard to know if those people’s quality of life has increased since then, I like to imagine many of them were able to reinvent themselves and escape lives they found less than fulfilling.

Is one of these options better than the other? I don’t think so. Whether one chooses to rebuild or move on, natural disasters inarguably provide a clean slate, and that’s what’s important. While these calamities can claim both lives and property, they give back a fresh start, which can have immense value in itself.

I sometimes wonder what I’d do if my home were destroyed. I think the most impactful factor in my decision would not be the things and places I’d leave behind, but the people. While I’ve never been particularly tied to a place I’ve lived, I’ve most definitely been tied to the people I’ve loved. In that way, I think it wouldn’t be completely up to me if I stayed in a place after it had been destroyed; it would be up to the people I care about. Even if rebuilding seemed like a Sisyphean task, if my friends and family needed me, I’d stay.

Of course, my reaction would also depend on the extent of the devastation. If everyone I knew was dead, you bet your ass I’d stay and build a brave new world from the ashes of the apocalypse.

A Plea/Bargain

2011-05-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

This post is special - it does not start with the underlined word "prompt." I'm not writing a regular post tonight. Instead, I'm asking you for more suggestions. Right now I only have suggestions from three people, one of whom has already had two blogs written. I'd like more diversity in my promptors.

You see, having lots of topics to choose from lets me write what I'm in the mood to write. All the topics I have right now are either intense and thought provoking or take more time and effort than I have. Another night they'll be just what I'm looking for. Right now, not so much.

Cut me some slack and send me some things to write. Remember, I'll do whatever, so get creative with it. I'd prefer if they're not about me. Instead, just request information on a topic you'd want to know more about or a story you'd like to read. Or you can just tell me to stop writing, but that'd be a dick move, so I'd prefer if you just stopped reading instead.

I apologize for my failures, but it's been a long day (I worked out twice) and I have to get up and drive to Beverly Hills at 6am tomorrow. So forgive me today's post and I'll consider not taking Memorial Day off.

The Worst Post Yet

2011-05-23T09:51:00.001-07:00

If I ever see someone curb a dog, I will cry.

Prompt: Yo, what do you do with your days these days? Besides write things and make comics?

Suggested by: Brennan Wallace

If this prompt had been suggested a month ago, my response would have been notably more depressing. Now, I’m employed and I have things to do. Kind of. I work for a company that does in-school gifted education and after-school science enrichment programs in elementary and middle schools throughout LA. While far from full-time, it’s a lot of fun and it pays the bills.

Other than that, most of my time is spent putting off the work I want to do writing things or making comics. This procrastination includes reading, watching movies, watching old tv shows, and listening to music. I really enjoy the distraction of entertainment in its various forms. That may have something to do with why I want to work in the entertainment industry.

Right now I’m sitting at a coffee/tea shop near my apartment drinking coffee and (obviously) writing this blog. I’m feeling particularly uninspired this morning, so this will not be one of my better posts – in fact, it may be my worst - but something’s better than nothing, right?

Probably not. I can think of lots of situations where nothing would have been much better than something. For one, it would have been way better if When In Rome had never been made. I may see how many consecutive posts I can have where I make digs at When In Rome. Maybe I’ll just change the name of this blog from “Deeb Thoughts” to “When In Rome is Still a Bad Movie” and every day make a new post about it. Or maybe that would be ridiculously lame.

Anyway, I was saying that something may not be better than nothing. In terms of maintaining a level of quality on my blog, not writing this post would most certainly be better than posting it, but I have deadlines, which are notorious for shooting down the quality of what I write. But they are often the only things that get me to write at all, so it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. Also, I already missed my deadline on Friday, but I was real busy, so get off my back, chump.

As you may have noticed, this is more freewriting right now than me writing anything of substance – anything… substantive. That’s one of my favorite words, but I don’t get to use it a lot because it makes me sound pretentious. Another one of these words I love is “recursive.” It’s useful more than you think it’d be.

It’s frustrating when you can use big words to more efficiently explain yourself but you’ve got to dumb them down so you don’t sound like an ass. On the other hand, it makes what you’re saying more accessible and avoids many of the problems found in the dense and inaccessible world of academic writing. There’s always a trade off.

Well, I’ve almost hit five hundred words, which was my goal for these blog posts. I even wrote out the number “five hundred” to get that extra word in there. I hope you weren’t too disappointed in this literary diarrhea. Diarrhea is a word I aspire to be able to spell without spell check. Someday, diarrhea, someday.

Jesus, I haven’t shown something this rambling and awful to the world since my Sophomore year of high school when I had to do daily essays in English class. Suffice it to say I’m embarrassed enough for all of us.

The Ben Commandments

2011-05-19T21:04:00.003-07:00

God uses Roman numerals.

Prompt: If you could rewrite the Ten Commandments, what would you change? Add, delete, but keep it at ten.

Suggested by: Tony Deeb

If I could rewrite the Ten Commandments and change anything, I’d have let Charlton Heston carry a gun. Moses screaming, “Let my people go!” with a loaded firearm just seems so right. In all seriousness though, I know my father was talking about the Ten Crack Commandments, and I honestly wouldn’t change a word. Biggie had that shit on lock. In all even more serious seriousness, this isn’t an easy prompt to answer. It requires serious thought about ethics, which is most certainly my least favorite branch of philosophy.

As almost all of my readers are non-religious, I’ll list the original Ten Commandments here for you to peruse. They are as follows (as copied from some Christian website):

ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.'

TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.'

THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.'

FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.'

FIVE: 'Honor your father and your mother.'

SIX: 'You shall not murder.'

SEVEN: 'You shall not commit adultery.'

EIGHT: 'You shall not steal.'

NINE: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.'

TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'

As you can see, the first four are all about God. He really doesn’t want you worshiping anybody or anything but Him. The last six are about man’s relationship with other men. My interpretation of them is as follows: be respectful of your parents, don’t murder people, don’t slam other people’s spouses, don’t steal, don’t lie, and don’t be jealous.

I remember hearing a sermon in church what must have been more than six years ago where the Dean (I attended a cathedral) said that each of the Ten Commandments was basically an expansion on “You shall not steal.” I don’t remember exactly what the explanation of this was, but I think it went something like this: Believing in and worshiping another God is stealing God’s worship; so is using his name in vain and not keeping the Sabbath holy. Not honoring your parents steals from them the respect they deserve for bringing you into this world. Murdering is stealing someone’s life, adultery is stealing someone’s spouse, lying is stealing the truth from someone, and coveting is stealing… let’s say… satisfaction from the life you have. That stuck with me and I thought I’d pass it on.

All in all, the Ten Commandments seem like pretty good rules to live by. What bothers me is that there are only ten, and they’re very specific. I find it strange that God didn’t have room for things like “don’t rape,” “don’t torture,” or “don’t hold slaves,” but thought “don’t do too much shit on Saturdays” was worthy of a spot on the list. Of course you can always argue that it was a different time, but then, it’s God, so it shouldn’t really matter what the time was. I don’t see how biblical ethics can be relative.

Now, if I hadn’t been requested to, I wouldn’t make a list at all. As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m a pragmatist. In my view, the concern of ethics is to find what individual behaviors are best for achieving some sense of the common good. This position doesn’t much lend itself to one all-inclusive list of commandments for living a right life, because it’s not concerned with things being inherently right or wrong. Right behaviors, in a pragmatist sense, are behaviors that best promote the common good. These behaviors can change in different times and places. This somewhat utilitarian view of ethics ends up arguing that morals are relative, which I don’t have a problem with. Many people do, however, and I don’t like arguing with them, hence my general dislike of ethics as a study.

All that aside, I think there are a few rules that are good to live by. For one, the Golden Rule (Do unto others…), is pretty solid. It applies to most situations where an ethical decision needs to be made about how to treat a fellow human. Another I’d add would probably be something along the lines of, “don’t contribute to creating a world you wouldn’t want to live in.” This covers societal and environmental ethics the same way the Golden Rule covers interpersonal ethics. Of course, people have differing views of what they’d want done to them or what kind of world they’d want to live in, so these aren’t perfect. Since I’m not pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy, I’ll just leave that alone. Also, since I’m not pursuing a graduate degree, I’ll call my form of ethics “Neo-Pragmatic Non-Douchebaggery.”

So, those two basic rules would probably constitute my general ethical philosophy. In terms of “do what works to promote a good society,” I think those two rules work pretty well. The prompt, though, asked for a list of ten things, so I’ll leave the general rules behind and give you my list of then ten specific things I’d command people to do if I was in the commandment business.

1. Don’t steal.

2. Don’t murder.

3. Don’t betray people’s trust.

4. Don’t use people.

5. Don’t cause people unnecessary pain or discomfort.

6. Be respectful and reverent towards all life.

7. Be honest.

8. Be conscientious.

9. Be the person you think you should be.

10. Be better than you were yesterday.

Put me on a motivational poster, bitch! To be honest I felt completely pretentious typing those things; it was a little embarrassing. I think it’s because I don’t believe that in coming up with those I’ve done anything anyone else couldn’t do. Everyone knows what it is to live a good moral life – they often just choose not to and then come up with excuses through philosophical justification. Who am I to tell anyone else how to live, and who is anyone else to do so for that matter?

I believe in an ethics of personal responsibility. All of ethics basically comes down to “don’t be a douchebag.” I like to think that everyone is capable of knowing when his actions constitute douchebaggery. I guess it’s a sign of the immorality of the times just how many complete douches I’ve encountered in my life. I'm sure if everybody who reads this spreads the good word of Neo-Pragmatic Non-Douchebaggery, the world will be a better place to live.

Neither Romantic Nor Comedic

2011-05-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

Godawful Trash.

Prompt: What are your favorite three romantic comedies that you've watched recently? If you wrote a romantic comedy what would the premise be?

Suggested by: Kelsey Steffes

Warning: do not read this post. It is both embarrassing and poorly written.

In her prompt, Kelsey assumes I’ve watched three romantic comedies lately. We all know what happens when you assume: you make an ass out of Ben. In fact, I’ve seen more than three romantic comedies lately. Over the past, let’s say… four months… I’ve seen the following romantic comedies: Sweet Home Alabama, The Bounty Hunter, When Harry Met Sally, The Proposal, Striptease, The Break Up, the one with Reese Witherspoon as a softball player, When in Rome, The Ugly Truth, and probably a few others. In my defense, I was unemployed for a large chunk of that time.

My favorites out of that list are When Harry Met Sally, Sweet Home Alabama, and The Break Up, in that order. The worst was When in Rome. I watched it after When Harry Met Sally (alphabetical order on Netflix) and was aghast at how terrible a major motion picture could be. It was seriously awful; I winced a few times. I don’t even want to talk about how upset it made me.

Now that I’ve answered that part of the question, I feel I should explain myself a bit. When I’m bored and in need of some mindless indulgence, I lie in bed, open a bottle of Cabernet, and watch a shitty romcom. I generally limit my options to movies I haven’t seen before, hence all the plethora of Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler flicks and the general lack of Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan classics. It now occurs to me that the next time I get the hankering for some vino and scripted love I should rewatch some of my favorites. I haven’t seen John Cusack in a while. Oh, but I also haven’t seen Must Love Dogs. Nevermind, I just checked and it isn’t on Netflix. But neither is Serendipity. Shit.

In regards to what I’d make if I could write a romantic comedy, I’ve actually given it a lot of thought. My ideas are as follows – (1) a movie about a relationship started via drunken hookup and the struggles that entails; (2) a movie where the main character dates a girl as a favor to a friend to drive her to him but then falls in love with her himself; (3) something with a manic pixie dream girl where the dude isn’t a total wimp; (4) a modern adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing; (5) a remake of When in Rome.

Reading those ideas, I think probably none of them would be marketable. If they were, someone would have made them already. Maybe someone has and I don’t know about it. Maybe I’ll write it anyway and shoot it in my apartment starring me and a cardboard of Joe Satriani that I got for free from some girl on Craigslist. Yes, I’d tape a girl’s face onto his. I firmly believe that would make it less weird.

I was going to write a whole thing on how romantic comedies give everyone a fucked-up view of relationships and how nobody’s ever really swept off their feet, but then I got a hankering to pop the cork from a bottle of Chuck and watch Sleepless in Seattle. If you read all of this, I’m sorry; you were warned.

End Times/Good Times

2011-05-17T09:50:00.001-07:00

Is the dude on the right taking a dump?

Prompt: Is Jesus coming to earth for a visit next week?

Suggested by: Charlie Vogelheim

In case you haven't noticed the billboards, read the bus benches, or seen the sky ads, I'm here to let you know that all good Christians are getting Raptured this Saturday, May 21, 2011. The Lord is coming, people, and he’s going to wreck this world in a big way.

According to Harold Camping, biblical scholar and Harbinger of the Apocalypse, God spelled things out pretty clearly in the Bible. In the Old Testament, God says (referring to the Great Flood), “"Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth" (Genesis 7:4). Later in the Bible (around 700,000 words later), the New Testament claims that “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). Since that obviously can’t be a metaphor, Camping argues that the end times will come 7000 years after the flood, which he dates at 4990 BCE. (This view differs with many other bible historians – Camping has a somewhat controversial idea that all the “begetting” in the beginning of the Bible doesn’t translate to direct familial lines.) Coincidentally, 7000 years after 4990 is this 2011. He also threw in something about May 21^st translating to the 17^th day of the 2^nd month described as the beginning of the flood in Genesis 7:11.

In case that isn’t enough proof for you non-believers, he also argues his position through mathematics(!). Everyone knows that the number 5 means atonement, 10 is completeness, and 17 is heaven. I don’t need to explain that to you. Now, if you multiply these numbers and square their product, you get 722,500, the exact number of days between the deluge and May 21, 2011. Boom! Shit will indeed go down.

While you might think that the destruction of this lovely blue planet is a bit of a downer, some people are truly ecstatic about this. They’re completely stoked for the end times. Harold Camping’s got a bunch of painted RV’s advertising the “glorious news” that he’s been driving around the country. (You know what that means: Harold Camping is a herald, camping around the country to bring news of the apocalypse.) I’ve seen park benches, newspaper ads, people handing out tracts, even an airplane with a skybanner behind it reading, “Judgment Day May, 21 2011.”

Why would people want to spend all this money to advertise the end of the world? Probably because they actually believe the world is going to end. The bizarre part isn’t that they’re spending shitloads of money spreading the word – that makes sense, they won’t need any cash after the Rapture – the bizarre part is that they think that in the few weeks leading up to the apocalypse a bench ad is going to convert someone to their weird sect of Christianity in time to save them from God’s wrath. I don’t see how a few benches are going to influence God’s picks for the chosen few.

I have to say, I’m pretty excited for this Saturday, myself. I really hope these people are right for two reasons. One, I think a world without super-religious nutjobs would be fantastic – we’d have no problem teaching evolution in schools, stem-cell research could go forward, and Alabama might be okay to visit! Two, I’ve always had a hard-on for the apocalypse, and I’d have a chance to set Operation Fly by Night into action. That’s the operation where I form a tribe of survivors and found a new post-apocalyptic world order. Also I go to Disneyland and there are no lines.

On the other hand, these people being right about the apocalypse would mean that I’m wrong about most everything else. It would mean that the world is only 13,000 years old, a vengeful “capital G” God exists, and that only 3% of the world’s population are worthy of not burning in eternal torment. I’ve always thought these claims to be untenable. I’d really hate to be mistaken about them.

Luckily, I don’t think I will be. It kind of helps that Camping has already been wrong. His previous date for the Rapture, September 6, 1994, already came and went without event. My guess is that Saturday May 21, 2011 will similarly come and go. Then we’ll all have to wait until December 21, 2012 for the real apocalypse.

Unfocused Blog About Urban Hikes

2011-05-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Route of Champions

Prompt: Write about your experiences taking urban hikes with your father.

Suggested by: Claudia Deeb

Good evening, friends. You may have noticed that I didn’t have a post on Friday or Sunday. Or you may not have. I don’t expect you to pay that much attention. Regardless, I’m announcing a certain humbling of my goals for this blog. Instead of writing new posts six days a week like I'd planned, I’ve decided to only do five. I normally write these at night, and Friday and Saturday nights I like to have better things to do than sit alone in a corner with my eyes glued to a small screen. Henceforth there shall be posts every Monday through Friday. They'll probably be posted in the wee hours of the morning.

With that out of the way, I’ll get to the prompt. I know you’re probably jealous that my mother got two suggestions in this week, but it’s for good reason – I’m about out of prompts. Besides this, I only have one in the bank from my friend James, and it’s a really good one I’m going to wait to write until I have a lot of time to spend on it. What I’m saying is I need you to send me more things to write about.

I know at the beginning of that last paragraph I said I’d get to the prompt. I lied to you. Sorry about that. Let’s get to it. When I was a kid, my dad and I used to take walks in Omaha. Sometimes we’d walk to my grandparents’ house. For a lot of people, that wouldn’t be a big deal. It was a big deal for me because I was ten and my grandparents lived about eight miles away.

The walk to Grandma and Grandpa’s usually took us around four hours. Once we added some time by stopping at Pizza Hut on the way. That was awesome. My memory of my childhood is spotty as hell, but I remember that either my dad or I fell asleep at the table at that Pizza Hut. Maybe it was both of us. It was probably him. Another time I really had to pee so we stopped at a gas station in Rockbrook but the attendant wouldn’t let me use their bathroom. My dad got all pissed at the guy behind the counter while I almost pissed in my shorts.

Unfortunately, that kind of does it for my specific memories of these walks. In terms of big picture stuff, I remember having all sorts of deep conversations with my dad and loving them. How many kids get to hang out alone with their father for four hours with nothing to do but chat? For some people that probably sounds terrible. For me it was fantastic. I’m going to do the same with my kids. Hopefully it will keep them from getting fat.

On that note, I’ve been keeping a list of things I’m going to do for/to my hypothetical kids while they’re growing up. I won’t ruin them all for you here, but one thing I want to do is kind of related. I really want to blindfold my children, drive them somewhere, let them out without telling them where they are, and make them find their way home. I always wanted my dad to do that to me. He never did. I think it’d be a great way to instill self-reliance, teach ingenuity, and develop a sense of direction in my children. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it is arguably dangerous to leave a child alone in an unfamiliar part of town. That’s why I’m giving my kid a Glock. If my wife protests, I could see her talking me into getting a Beretta instead.

Flatulence and Fast Food

2011-05-12T22:24:00.000-07:00

Blissful Indulgence.

Prompt:

Discuss the improvement of social life were Farting Pelows more widely used. Discuss the merits of the McDonalds Dollar menu (and why most of it is shitty-ass desserts).

Suggested by: Charlie Vogelheim

For those readers who don’t know Charlie Vogelheim, we worked and lived together for a few months in 2010. He’s awesome. In the lost and found at work, we found a pillow with “pelow” written on it. This became Charlie’s “farting pelow,” a pillow used exclusively for farting on. I like to think that the pelow absorbed some of the fart’s odors and made it not smell so terrible. It’s very likely that this didn’t happen.

When I imagine a world with widespread use of farting pelows, I see a wonderful place. Not because the farting pelows keep farts from stinking, but because you’d know when everyone farted because they’d put a pillow on their ass. Farts are hilarious. Every child knows this, but society tries to hide this fact. We’re all eventually trained to be ashamed of our farts, or at very least, think they’re impolite. I believe that the measure of man’s age lies not in his years, but in his response to farts. A man amused by flatulence is forever young.

On to the next point – the McDonalds dollar menu. As you may or may not know, I have been known to visit the fine city of Las Vegas, Nevada from time to time. Unlike some people, I don’t gamble… or spend money at bars… or expensive hotels… or strippers. I usually go with a large enough group that we split a $30 hotel room between 6 people. We bring all our own beer in the trunk of the car, fill the hotel bathtub with ice, and use that as a refrigerator. It’s also good for waking up in when your kidneys have been cut out.

With a cheap room and cheap drinks, all that’s left is cheap food. On the Vegas strip, everything is more expensive. A Chipotle burrito is ten bucks; a Subway sandwich is the same; even the 7-11 jacks up the price of hot dogs. The only constant in Vegas is the Micky D’s dollar menu. To the best of my memory, the Dollar Menu consists a McDouble, Hot‘n’Spicy McChicken, Value Fry, Value Drink, Parfait, Sundae, Side Salad, 3 Cookies, 2 Apple Pies, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree (plus or minus the partridge). These items make up my only sustenance in Sin City. I have been known to order the entire thing at once.

I distinctly remember being very pleased with the side salad once. It had Newman’s Own Italian dressing. I had it a few weeks later and was sorely disappointed. Nevertheless, the dollar menu provides great taste at an exceptional price. It also provides an excellent colon cleanse the next day. Come to think of it, next time I go to the Strip I’m bringing a farting pelow as a courtesy for the driver on the way home.

Charlie had two other great prompts, and I was going to include them in this post, but they’re much more serious than what you’ve read above. I don’t want my tales of flatulence and fast food to taint the integrity of my thoughtful response, so I’ll leave my responses to them for another day.

Food of the Poor

2011-05-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

This is God.

Prompt: You should catalogue all of the things that your body ingests in one day...in other words, what do you eat these days?

Suggested by: Tim Sauer

The other day, I catalogued all the things I ate. Unfortunately, it isn’t interesting. Here it is:

09:15 – Bowl of Trader Joe’s granola (dry) and 2 cups of coffee

11:45 – Rigatoni with marinara sauce and chicken with spices

17:45 – Rigatoni with olive oil and chicken with spices

22:00 – Saltine crackers and a hunk of Tillamook pepper jack

This is pretty standard for me. Most days in the past few weeks have been very similar to this. If you want to know what else I’ve been ingesting, replace rigatoni with spaghetti, fettucinni, macaroni, or farfalle. Replace marinara with three cheese, garlic tomato onion, or alfredo. Replace chicken with spices with sausage or… chicken without spices. That’s about it. It’s a great way to eat if you’re dirt poor, dirt cheap, or dirt nasty. Right now, I am at least one of these dirt things.

At the beginning of every week I cook a box of pasta, often with some kind of meat. I pour about a fifth of it into a bowl, pour on sauce, and that’s my lunch. The rest goes in the fridge. I do the same thing with different pasta for dinner. I’ll alternate those two pastas over the following week. Sometimes I even switch up the sauce. Those days are exciting.

I did the math, and seeing that I only pay a dollar per one-pound box of pasta and around three dollars per jar of sauce, I’m getting ten meals for eight dollars. For those of you that are really bad at story problems, that’s 80 cents a meal. If I throw meat on there it’s a little more expensive, but a pound of chicken or a few sausages ain’t that expensive to throw on top.

My night snack, saltines and pepper jack, is my guiltiest of pleasures. Luckily for me, it has been a very special time at the Albertsons on Venice and Robertson. With an Albertson’s value card, you can get two pounds of quality Tillamook pepper jack for eight dollars, marked down from, like, fifteen! It’s amazing! When I first found this out, I considered buying a year’s supply of the bricks of red and green flecked heaven. A deal that good couldn’t last forever, right? My frugality outweighed my desire for excess cheese.

I expected the price to be gone within the week. It wasn’t. A week later, I bought another block. Over the course of the next month, the price never dropped. I ate pound upon pound of cheese, even while on antibiotics, which was a bad idea because it almost made me poop in my truck. Then, in the ides of April, tragedy struck. My malleable brick of happiness was now ten (!) dollars. I sulked all the way home from Alby’s.

Last week, I went back to Albertson’s with my roommate. I don’t know why I went; I didn’t need anything. Perhaps it was fate that drew me there. While he was comparing costs on toothbrushes, I wandered over to the aisle of long open-air refrigerators. I saw my cheese. Next to it a tag read $10.99. The pepper jack that had once been my most trusted ally was now mocking me, laughing at my dwindling bank account. But I looked to the right of the P.J. block and saw a different tag, offering the discount price. Above it was a brick of Swiss. For a few moments, I considered forsaking pepper jack for the less edgy, but obviously classier cheese. But then I noticed a most wonderful thing. The Swiss and the pepper jack were in the wrong places. The tag was for the pepper jack. The sale of the century had returned to the dairy aisle!

Shortly thereafter, we left the store, Dan with his toothbrush value pack and I with my curdled and slightly spicy ambrosia. When we got home I cut off a quarter of the block, grabbed a sleeve of saltines, got in bed, and alternated putting a cracker in my mouth and biting a hunk off the chunk. I’ve never been happier - except for those times when I had enough money to not have to worry about a two-dollar price hike on bulk cheese.

Ben, Ivette, & Trijntje

2011-05-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

The Proof

Prompt: Whyy do yuhh ask outt girls that dontt even likee yuhh??

Suggested by: Ivette

So, I was going to do a normal post tonight, but I got caught up in a long text conversation with someone I can only assume is a 13 year old girl. At first I thought it was one of my friends screwing with me; it quickly became clear this was not the case. As you'll see, things got a bit out of hand. After spending over an hour looking for a way to extract a text conversation from an iPhone, I finally figured it out. Thus, not a single letter has been altered. This is what transpired sporadically between 5:41 and 11:10pm on Tuesday, May 10, 2011. Enjoy.

Ivette: Whyy do yuhh askk outt girls thatt dontt evenn likee yuhh??.

Ben: Good question. Who is this?

Ivette: Its ivette

Ben: That's a nice name. Where'd you get my number?

Ivette: Frumm someonee hehe.... soo aree yuhh gunnah anserr myy questionn?

Ben: Maybe if you would spell a single word correctly.

Ivette: Do yuhh even know whoo i amm?

Ben: I have no idea. Should I?

Ivette: Imm 1 off thee twinss in ms. mckays class

Ben: Fraternal or identical?

Ivette: Do yuhh knoww wich twins im talkingg aboutt??

Ben: Probably not.

Ivette: Yuhh know ms. mckay rightt??

Ben: The English teacher?

Ivette: Umm yeaahh..... yuhh knoww the twins thatt sometimes hands outt withh gaby in yur class

Ben: Gaby doesn't have a twin.

Ivette: Omgee nvmdd

Ben: Did Gaby give you my number?

Ivette: Noo someone elsee..... so aree yuhh gunnah tell me yur anserr?

Ben: How do you know they don't like me?

Ivette: Well cuss imm darlenes frendd gabys valeriaas and theyy tell mee everyythingg soo yeaah

Ben: I think they like me. I'm pretty good looking.

Ivette: well likee nott to bee meann butt howw?x)

Ben: My mom says I'm really handsome.

Ivette: Yurr momm sayss thatt but nott the girlsthatt yuhh askk outt hahajk

Ben: That's kind of hurtful, Ivette.

Ivette: Thats i sedd jkingg goshh haha

Ivette: i meann Thats why i sedd jkingg

Ben: Do you want to be my girlfriend?

Ivette: Hell noo... yurr gf iss elitza!

Ben: I have like twenty girlfriends; it's cool.

Ivette: Thenn thankk yuhh for tellingg mee

Ben: Most of them live in Canada so they won't be a problem.

Ivette: Woww whyy all all the wayyy overr theree??

Ben: Why are you adding unnecessary letters to the end of every word you write?

Ivette: Cuss i like to writee itt like thatt haha

Ben: It makes you appear uneducated. You should probably cut it out.

Ivette: Whyy?

Ben: It's unbecoming of a lady.

Ivette: Howw? haha

Ben: It's pointless, irksome, and obfuscates the meaning of your sentences.

Ivette: Yeaah wateverr i might stopp doingg thatt waitt butt im nott sure haha

Ben: See, when you mean "but" and write "butt" it completely changes the meaning. They're very different words.

Ivette: Yeaa i knoww the word butt meanss ass haha. And but its justt the wordd so yeaah

Ben: Wanna get Thai food?

Ivette: Noo

Ivette: The questionn.!

Ben: Okay, but it's a long story.

Ivette: Soo whoo caress haha

Ben: Some time ago, a Dutch terrorist inserted 5 kilograms of C4 into my abdominal cavity.

Ben: He told me that if I didn't ask a new girl out every day he would remotely detonate the explosive.

Ben: If I hadn't asked them out I'd be dead right now. But I've said too much. He's watching my every move. These texts may have compromised my life.

Ivette: Errrrr!

Ivette: Yuhhr lieinggg!!

Ben: I most certainly am not.

Ivette: Aree yuhhh suree cuss thatt cantt bee truee.!

Ben: I shouldn't even be talking to you about this. If Trijntje finds out I'll be nothing but a splatter of guts in my parents' living room. Forget I said anything.

Ivette: He sedd thiss..... I most certainly am not.

Ben: I did say that.

Ivette: Ok sorryy aboutt thatt.!haha

Ivette: he send me thiss.... I shouldn't even be talking to you about this. If Trijntje finds out I'll be nothing but a splatter of guts in my parents' living room. Forget I said anything.

Ben: I did just send you that. Very good.

Ivette: Haha i know rightt sorryy aboutt thatt hehe

Ben: Are you telling someone else about this? Trijntje is a very private man. If he knew I had told anyone what he did to me...

Ivette: Watt would he doo??

Ben: I thought I was clear about this! He has implanted an incendiary substance in my body. At any time he can press a button, the C4 will ignite, and I will explode.

Ivette: Plzzzz tell mee yurr lieingg.!

Ben: I wish I was.

Ivette: And yuhh justt sayy itt likee wateverss thats whyy i think yurr lieingg

Ben: I'm saying it because I have no one else to talk to. Trijntje (the Dutch terrorist) knows all my friends. He watches my family. I can't talk to them.

Ben: But he doesn't know you and he doesn't know we're talking now. I've been deleting every text after I send it so I don't leave evidence for him to find.

Ivette: Soo likee iss he a reall personn orr wtt cuss this is freaakky

Ben: YES. Trijntje is real and he is dangerous. Do you think I would make up a weird name like that?

Ivette: Umm well i dont know yuhh thatt welll.... who knowss aboutt thiss.??

Ben: No one. I'm sorry for getting you wrapped up in this, but a text from a number I didn't have was the perfect way for me to tell someone without him finding out.

Ivette: Butt iss he like stalkingg yuhh orr wtt??

Ben: He has hidden surveillance devices all over my house. His terrorist cell watches and listens to me constantly.

Ben: That's why I can't call you - the microphones would hear.

Ivette: Thenn how does he know yurr whoole frendss??

Ben: He's seen them at my house or heard me talk about them to my parents. I think there may be hidden mics or cameras at school, too.

Ben: My father, my REAL father, is a very important man in the European Union. Trijntje kidnapped me when I was a child and hid me here in California.

Ben: My parents are well paid by his organization not to tell my real father where I am. My father is now doing whatever Trijntje demands in an attempt to save my life.

Ivette: Wattt.!! So wherr is yurr reall fatherr???

Ivette: So where iss yurr fatherr?? ritte noww??

Ben: In Strasbourg. I can't tell you his name because it would jeopardize his safety. All I can say is he is an influential member of the European Parliament.

Ivette: Thenn who aree yuhh liveingg withh??

Ben: Like I said before, my parents here are just people paid by Trijntje to hide me from my real father. But they're not evil. They're just doing what they must.

Ivette: Butt ive seen yur mom and she kinda looooks like yuhh?

Ben: If you were a rich terrorist internationally wanted by Interpol, wouldn't you try and place your hostage with a person that looks like the child you kidnapped?

Ivette: Idk how em i suppose to knoww... and how do yuhh know all of thiss??

Ben: I spent months in Trijntje's compound in Reykjavik. I listened to conversations and tried to find out everything I could.

Ivette: Andd do theyy knoww thatt yuhh know all thiss?

Ben: No. Not all of it anyway. I've been in the States for a long time. I think they were hoping I was so young when they took me that I'd forgot.

Ivette: Ohh..... butt dudee iff yurr lieinggg omgee!! Dont even say thatt as a joke i suerr!!

Ben: I'm not. I'm sorry for bringing you into this. It was wrong of me. It's just so hard to live with this burden and be able to tell no one.

Ivette: Butt if yuh dontt evenn no mee whyy wouldd yuhh tell mee thiss???

Ben: Like I said before. If I tell anyone I know, Trijntje will find out and I'll be dead.

It was a mistake telling you. I need you to forget everything I've said.

Ivette: Wel ill tryy too

Ben: Please don't try and talk to me about it in person either. If we speak again there's a chance Trijntje will find out.

Ivette: Wait so yuh want me to talk to yuhh in personn??

Ben: NO! That would put us both in danger. If you did I'd have to pretend I had no idea what you were talking about.

Ivette: Ohh thenn oooppss... soo watt didd yuhh meann

Ben: I mean if Trijntje or his henchmen hear or see me talking to you they'll start watching you just like they watch all my other friends.

Ivette: Ohh thenn no dont talkk to mee haha

Ben: I wouldn't dream of it. Just to be safe, I need you to delete all these texts. I've already deleted them from my phone.

Ben: I know this is all crazy and hard to believe, but it's my life. I understand if you don't believe me. I promise I'm telling the truth, though.

Ivette: O okeyy imaa delete all off yurr txt measagess

Ben: Thank you. We should stop talking now. If I don't show up to school in the future you'll know why. If I go missing, please tell the police what I told you today.

Ivette: Wtt!! Aree yuuh talkingg aboutt???

Ben: I believe that within a year Trijntje will try to activate the explosives in my abdomen. I have a plan though, don't worry about me.

Ivette: Tell mee the plann butt nott right noww plzz tell me tomarroww ima go to sleep

Ben: My "parents" are becoming suspicious. We need to stop talking.

Ben: I've already said too much. If I relate it to you the whole plan may be compromised.

Ben: For your own safety, you shouldn't text me again. Goodbye Ivette.

So there you go. I may have scared the shit out of a little girl tonight. At least, with writing skills that abysmal I can only hope she’s a little girl. My hope is that this series of texts taught her the value of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation and she’ll grow up to write a novel about a little boy who is kidnapped, filled with C4, and hidden with a Southern Californian family so that a Dutch terrorist named Trijntje can extort his father’s political power in the European Parliament. Then that novel will get optioned, picked up by Luc Besson, and the world will be a better place.

Post Script: I’d like to thank the good people at Apple for programming the iPhone to learn the name Trijntje after I’d typed it twice. Their autocorrect function made this conversation possible.

Update: I just realized Trijntje is a girl's name. Oops. I knew I should have gone with Thijs. Also, I'm aware that Reykjavik isn't in the Netherlands. Trijntje wouldn't be in the Netherlands, he's wanted and well known there - his (her) terrorist cell operates out of Iceland.

High Art, Local News

2011-05-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

Vaginas.

Prompt: Dear Asshat, Write a post about the relevance of high art in modern American society and methods that we can use to restore art to its former "glory" if you will. Also, fuck you.

Suggested by: Corey Leitch

Asshat here. Today I’ll be writing about the relevance of high art in modern America society. Also, fuck me.

Despite the odious aspersions found therein, Corey’s prompt is an interesting one. “High Art” does seem to be on the decline in the US. While I don’t have any data to back this up (what am I, a scientist?), it seems like fewer people now appreciate “High Art” than ever before. This is strange, as there are more people now than ever before. Even more paradoxically, there are also more educated people now than ever before.

Before I get any further into what’s already turning out to be an unfocussed essay, I’m going to try and figure out exactly what High Art is. While I don’t have the time (more accurately the will) to try and nail down a definition just for art, you can kind of get my definition of art (or good art anyway) if you read the essay I posted on May 2^nd.

High Art, I believe, is art that requires a certain level of intellectuality to fully appreciate. If you look at Georgia O’Keefe flower paintings without seeing something vaginal in them, you’re missing something. If you see a performance of a John Cage piece with no background in music theory or history, it’s going to seem a lot like a boring version of STOMP. This gives High Art an elitist aspect; you can’t fully appreciate it unless you’re privileged enough to have some education in the arts. High Art here is opposed to Low Art, which I think can encompass works in the same media that aren’t as backed intellectually. This line, though, is often blurred, and that’s what I want to talk about now.

For the sake of clarity, I’m going to continue capitalizing High Art. God knows most artists can’t! Bad jokes aside, I think there are a few things that separate High Art from Low Art – none of these are necessary for something to qualify as High Art; they’re just some features it often has. Like I said before, High Art usually has some kind of philosophical backing. A good artist usually puts a lot of thought into his creation and the art has complex meaning. Low Art, on the other hand, often has very little deeper meaning; what you see is what you get. Second, High Art and Low Art often differ in purpose. High Art is often created to challenge its viewers or satisfy an artist’s need for creation. Low Art isn’t made to challenge its viewers as much as it is to please them. It isn’t made to get something off its artist’s chest as much as it is to make him a buck. Third, I think true High Art often takes extraordinary creative and artistic talent. The average person should look at High Art and think, “I probably couldn’t do that.” Low Art is different. It doesn’t take artful talent to create a lot of the entertainment we consume on a daily basis.

Obviously, this is only a cursory analysis of the difference between High and Low Art, but I think it works to separate the two. I believe there is gray area between the two, and most great art often has aspects of both. Whether specific pieces of art are High or Low is certainly a point of contention.

The question now, then, is why is High Art on the decline? There are a few reasons. As stated before, High Art is elitist by nature. It requires an education in and appreciation of the arts that aren’t often found anymore. Many of the people I know that have graduated college did so without studying art at all, except in dumbed-down general education classes that they took because they had to. And I went to a liberal arts college. Many people with university educations have less exposure to art than that. On top of that, tons of people still don’t go to college. Hell, half the population of Detroit is functionally illiterate (I’m not making this up). How can you expect them to appreciate Wagner if they can’t read the slogan on a Coke bottle? High Art is too often completely inaccessible to most people.

Furthermore, High Art is not always easy, even with an education. In fact, I’d say the best High Art is difficult. People in modern America aren’t looking for a challenge in art. They’re looking to sit in front of their TV, magazine, movie screen, or stereo and be placated. They want to zone out and be entertained. You might think, “Fine, if they don’t want to appreciate High Art, they can watch Jersey Shore and I’ll go to the Getty.” But the problem with this is that the Getty is free and MTV makes billions of dollars each year. High Art doesn’t have much of a place in capitalist culture. There are millions of brilliant artists in the world who give up their dreams daily in search of financial stability. Some even decide to use their talents to make Low Art, giving the masses what they want instead of what they arguably need. There’s no funding in our society for challenging ideas – they’re not profitable.

It’s also partly the trend of populism in America that is killing High Art. There’s this pervading view that elitism is a terrible thing, and that what’s really good is what most people want. The problem with this is that the common man isn’t creating art, shaping political policy, or advancing science. He doesn’t have the skills to effectively do these things. My view is that he should leave it to the educated people who have studied these things to take care of it for him. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have opinions and try to influence the world – it just means there’s something to be said for having people with education (both theoretical and practical) in these matters take the lead. The creation of High Art requires study. It requires knowing art history and building on lessons learned in the past. The common man doesn’t have that knowledge and hasn’t learned those lessons. More importantly, he isn’t interested in learning, and that’s a problem.

So, what can we do to “restore art to its former glory?” I think it starts with a fusion of Low and High Art. Artists need to make art that’s accessible, but also thought provoking. Make a movie that’s an entertaining well-told story with difficult philosophical themes and questions. Write a novel that’s relatively easy and fun to read, but challenges the reader’s preconceptions of the world. Compose a score that’s pleasing to listen to, but incorporates complex techniques. High Art’s value lies in the fact that it takes more effort to enjoy. That increased effort leads to a more full appreciation of the work, and provides a deeper satisfaction than that found in Low Art. The trick here lies in making more High Art pleasurable on a surface level, then encouraging normal consumers to learn more and dig deeper into the art, discovering more meanings and gaining a more full appreciation for the work. Through this, they’ll hopefully understand the value that High Art holds.

In short, art needs to be more like the Animaniacs. For those of you who don’t know what the Animaniacs is, it’s a cartoon that was on in the nineties. I used to watch it with my dad. Despite our completely different tastes in comedy, we both loved the show. I liked the fart jokes and characters bopping each other on the head, and he loved the complex references and more cultured jokes that I didn’t even realize were there. The show worked because it had two levels – the kid level and the adult level. There was something for each of us to appreciate. More importantly, seeing my Dad laugh at jokes I didn’t get made me want to understand them. It required me to do some learning about current events and think about complex ideas so I could be in on the joke.

High Art (some at least) should work the same way. There should be something for everyone to appreciate. Entertainment can be (and often is) artfully done. I think one of the follies of High Art is that it has ceased to be entertaining on a surface level. While there’s definitely a place for difficult art, I feel the trend has been to make all High Art more and more inaccessible. High Art is always going to survive, thanks to the educated elite that will doubtlessly continue to donate to museums and pay thousands of dollars for works of art. If it’s going to be anything more than a pleasure of the aristocracy, though, artists need to find ways to become more accessible without sacrificing their artistic integrity. Maybe when High Art can be appreciated by more people, its former glory will be restored.

A Blog for Mom

2011-05-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Write about the impact Legos had on your intellectual and psychomotor development and your thoughts on mothers.

Suggested by: Claudia Deeb

Since it’s Mother's Day, I thought it would be apropos to take a blog suggestion from my very own personal mother. She suggested the first part about Legos last week, and then in an email today asked that I also write my thoughts on mothers. My opinions on mothers are not complicated; I am wholeheartedly for them. I’m certainly glad I have one – especially one as excellent as my own.

I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting and family dynamics lately, in part because I’ve been reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, which tells the story of a Midwestern family. The parents have stayed in the Midwest and the children live on the East Coast. They’re completely dysfunctional. It’s an excellent book.

I’ve been thinking that one of the reasons I find the novel so compelling is because it describes a world I don’t know. My relationship with my mom and dad is as far from dysfunctional as one can be. I’m lucky and proud to have such an extremely close relationship with both of them. In spite of the two thousand miles between us, we manage to talk multiple times a week and stay fully apprised of each other’s lives. I know them and they know me. We rarely argue and we trust each other. They’re some of my most trusted advisors and my closest friends.

When I restarted Deeb Thoughts, I had a stipulation that the blog posts wouldn’t be about my life, except as it related to something more interesting I had to say. Today’s post breaks that rule, but I feel it’s justified. If you don’t want to read about my life, this post might not be for you. This post is for Claudia Deeb who is one of the most important parts of my life. She’s the best Mom I cam imagine, so I think she deserves a blog praising her magnificent mom-ing abilities, even if it isn’t that interesting to some of my readers.

My mother taught me much of what I know about life without me ever realizing it until much later. She showed me the value of rationality, creativity, humor, and kindness with an effortless grace that still amazes me. She was always supportive, but unlike many moms, she balanced her support with honest criticism when I needed it. She’s the first to praise my accomplishments, but when I get too full of myself she’s the first to bring me back to reality. Though we often have differing tastes in music, television, movies, art, food, and books, I have immense respect for her opinion. When she gives me advice, be it for life or a project I’m working on, I always take it seriously and it usually has great influence.

I feel bad that I didn’t acknowledge all the hard work she put into raising me when I was growing up. Seeing the relationship other people have with their mothers now makes me realize how insanely lucky I am. My mom is an amazing woman. I just hope that one day my kids will have a mother like her. With a goofy dad like me, they’ll probably need it.

It’s time to steer away from the sappy stuff, switch gears, and talk about Legos. Legos were far and away my toy of choice when I was growing up. I had a veritable crapload of them. Every Christmas and Birthday, they were almost all I asked for. I’d want entire sets just for one unique piece that I needed to complete a space ship or moon base of my own design. While I can’t say that all this time with Legos gave me especially developed hand eye coordination or anything like that, it did make me particularly skillful at following written directions. It also taught me to love building things. I like to think this explains the erections I get from opening a box of unassembled Ikea furniture.

Legos gave me an excellent outlet for my childhood creativity. Unlike some kids, who just assembled their kits and had them sit there, as soon as I was done assembling, I took my models apart. I’d then use the pieces to make my own creations. Instead of using mass-marketed toys to recreate scenes from movies, I built my own imaginative characters, worlds, and plots. Legos are one of the things that made me fall in love with storytelling. They also taught me to look at the world analytically, break it down into parts, and find the best way to reassemble it. I guess I should thank my mom for buying me so many of them. To be fair, I should thank my dad, too, but he’ll have to wait until next month for his laudatory post.

Advice for the Unemployed

2011-05-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

Prompt: What should one do when he/she decides to up and quit his/her job in an unpromising job market?

Suggested by: Emily Andres

Emily, you asked the right person. In the past few months, I’ve become an expert on what to do when you up and quit your job in an unpromising job market. Here is a list of the do’s and don’ts of unemployment.

Do: Move somewhere new. If you’re leaving your old job behind, you should leave your old residence behind, too.

Don’t: Move from your new residence to a different apartment two weeks after moving in. This is a hassle. Also, a waste of money, which is going to become very tight.

Do: Ride a motorcycle. Motorcycles are awesome, badass, and fuel-efficient. They help you get places. They also help you get laid (I’m told).

Don’t: Sell the reliable motorcycle you have and buy a 35 year old motorcycle from some guy on Craigslist for $1800.

Do: Take your newly purchased motorcycle into the shop for an inspection and tune up.

Don’t: Get it back, ride it for less than a week before a couple bolts from the choke flap get sucked into the motor, thus necessitating a $900 repair bill.

Do: Think about getting another form of transportation once your bike has been in the shop for the better part of a month.

Don’t: Buy a 22 year-old truck from some guy on Craigslist for $1000.

Do: Make sure your truck can pass smog check.

Don’t: Spend three hours at the goddamn DMV only to find out that the guy you bought the truck from didn’t exactly own it.

Do: Go get a bill of sale from the guy you bought it from that proves he had bought the truck from another guy.

Don’t: Drive all the way to East LA just to have Jose ask you the name of the guy he bought it from so he can fill out the paperwork.

Do: Find a good paying job doing something you actually enjoy.

Don’t: Expect to support yourself with a good paying job doing something you actually enjoy when they only schedule you 5 hours a week.

Do: Start a blog that encourages you to write something new every day. This will make you feel good about yourself.

Don’t: Watch a different romantic comedy before bed every night. This will make you feel bad about yourself.

Hopefully you’ve realized by now that I have done every do as well as every don’t found above. (If you didn’t, it’s because of people like you that I have to spell things out for everyone. Grow a brain.) Though extremely specific to my life, this should work well as general advice for anyone who has up and quit his or her job in an unpromising job market.

But I also have a few pieces of special advice just for my cousin Emily. Em, we both know that if you’re going to be happy, you’ll have to move to Los Angeles and start a “Rough Jazz” band with me. We can play dueling oboes. Or you can just stand near me holding a tambourine while I read the lyrics to Papa Roach songs while wearing some kind of animal mascot costume. I’m relatively sure we’ll get rich and famous either way.

So, there you go: a recipe for success. I bet you’ve learned a lot and need some time to plan out all the good decisions you’re going to make. I’ll leave you to it.

Death and Dying

2011-05-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Death, dying, and the afterlife - a Ben Deeb story

Suggested by: Jack Hanger

Death and Dying

“Do you want it fast or slow?”

I didn’t respond. She was just doing her job. It was obvious she didn’t really care how I wanted it. Honestly, I didn’t care either. That’s why I was there in the first place. Life had taken a series of long and arduous dumps on me, and I had given up. After I was kicked out of my third apartment in four months, it was almost as if something had physically broken inside me. I was done.

There was a long period where I considered offing myself, but that seemed like too much work. Instead, I just gave into nihilistic self-indulgence and started doing whatever the fuck I felt like. That’s how I wound up staring at the ceiling while whatever-her-name-was straddled me.

“Do you want it fast or slow?”

Those may have been the last words I heard as a healthy man. I don’t mean to imply that I was in fantastic shape before all this – I wasn’t. I was a fat asthmatic piece-of-shit thirty six year old. I just wasn’t sick yet. I wasn’t infected.

A few months after my evening with this particular hooker, I found out I had HIV. You’d think that would have given me something to care about. It didn’t. I like to think the doctor was fazed at how unfazed I was by the whole thing. He told me I was dying. I smiled and said, “Who isn’t?” He gave me prescriptions for about a thousand medications, and I went about life like nothing had changed. For a long while, that illusion held. I didn’t bother taking the pills, but I didn’t get any worse. It went on that way for years. My life hadn’t changed in the slightest.

Enter the pandemic. At first, no one was quite sure what was happening. All over the world people began getting sick. It started with disorientation and sleepiness, which gave way to intense fever. Young, healthy people were the first to go. Most died before they could even get to a doctor. Not that the doctors could help – they were all sick, too. Within a week of the first case, reports were saying that 98% of the human population had been infected. Within two, 75% had died. Most of the rest were hanging on by a thread.

In the few days after it started that had any semblance of order, epidemiologists put out a few theories on the nature of the plague. They said the patterns they found could be explained by an extremely aggressive airborne virus. The results, they said, were similar to computer models of outbreaks in which no human was immune.

According to the few scientific theories put forth in the midst of the crisis, it wasn’t the virus that was killing everyone. It was peoples’ own bodies. Before the airwaves went dead, a woman on the news explained that the disease was tricking the immune system into overcompensating. In response to infection, the hypothalamus would drastically raise body temperature to try and burn out the virus. While the fever killed the host, it proliferated the virus. That explained why the young and the healthy were dying first. The stronger the immune system was, the faster and higher the fever grew.

Unfortunately, intense scientific experiments are hard to perform in a state of emergency, so no one was able to verify these theories before they croaked. But I’m living proof that they probably held some water. The last death from the pandemic was over a month ago. Humanity is gone, but I’m still here. Am I uninfected? Most assuredly not. The virus didn’t just magically steer clear of the air I was breathing. I’m sure it’s coursing through my veins right now. What it wasn’t able to do was spur my frail immune system into action. My own deadly disease saved my life.

In the later days of the cataclysm, someone noticed that all of us infected with HIV and AIDS were just fine. Well, as just fine as someone with AIDS can be. In any case, we weren’t dying quite as quickly as the rest of the human race. To cope with this fact, some assholes started equating the pandemic with the Rapture. We were the sinners left on Earth to feel the vengeance of Armageddon.

Many of the survivors, to the best of my knowledge all infected with HIV/AIDS, sought each other out in the aftermath. I didn’t bother. The last thing I want is to spend the end times with a bunch of weepy disease-ridden idiots. I’m not about to go make friends just in time to pretend I care about their slow agonizing deaths. I’m fine by myself. In that respect, not a lot’s changed.

I’m sure that before long my HIV will advance into AIDS. Hell, it probably already has. Now I’m just sitting here wondering if I’d have been better off dying with the masses. If life wasn’t worth living before the outbreak, how could it be now? Is there any rational reason I shouldn’t go find a gun and be done with this? I’ll be gone soon either way. I guess it’s about time I answered a question I should have answered long ago.

“Do you want it fast or slow?”

Okay! I realize that story was depressing as shit. I also realize that it didn’t fully address the prompt. Jack, I apologize for not including afterlife in this post. To make it up to you, I will provide cursory answers to your other two prompts.

Prompt #2: ALL MARINE LIFE, and why it is infinitely superior to ALL OTHER LIFE (specifically Narwhal v. Condor, and to a lesser extent Albacore v. Raccoon).

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that all marine life can kick all other life’s ass. We’re lucky they don’t. In the case of narwhal v. condor, giant horn beats giant wings every time. Albacore v. raccoon is a tougher issue. The raccoon might win in a fight, but I’m not sure how well raccoons swim. I do know that albacore can't walk very well. Regardless, raccoons taste much worse than albacore. Trust me.

Prompt #3: If you had to completely cover your face with one terrible substance, what terrible substance would you choose?

FOR THE PURPOSES OF DETERMINING WHETHER A SUBSTANCE IS TERRIBLE- ask yourself two questions:
1) Would this be terrible for me if I were to in fact do this?
2) Would this be terrible for other people if they were to do it themselves?
If the answer to either question is no, then the substance is not terrible.
BONUS QUESTION:
3) Would it be terrible for other people to watch me do this to myself?
If so, congratulations! You are smearing your face with a truly terrible substance. We are all proud.

I spent a while thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that while there are many substances that would get resounding yeses to all three of your questions, the worst thing I can imagine completely covering my face with is a mixture of feces, urine, vomit, semen, pus, and let’s throw in blood for good measure. Here’s a question for you: what does it say that the things I’d least cover my face in already reside within my body?

This Misadventures of Me and Coolio

2011-05-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Write about Wierd Al Yankovic songs that you actually like better than the original parodied song.

Suggested by: Brennan Wallace

When Bren asked me to write this, I doubt he knew that Weird Al’s Bad Hair Day was the first album I ever owned (on cassette) or that Weird Al was also the first concert I ever attended (at the Nebraska State Fair). Looking back, it’s hard to pick out one song of his that I liked better than the original version, because I think I liked all of them better. That’s probably because my childhood was pretty far removed from pop culture and I had never heard many of the originals. I can still remember hearing The Kinks’ Lola for the first time and being confused when the letters weren’t spelling out Yoda. I think I was in high school.

If I had to pick one song of Al’s, though, it’d be Amish Paradise. It was the first rap I memorized, and to date, I think it’s the only one I know that isn’t entirely misogynistic. I liked Amish Paradise so much that I just had to hear the original version. So, naturally, I asked my parents to get me Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise for Christmas. Christmas morning came and I saw a thin square present under the tree. I grabbed it and ripped apart the paper. Underneath was my Coolio CD. I think it was the first CD I ever owned. (It may have actually been the Space Jam soundtrack; there’s no way to be sure.)

After opening the rest of my presents, I remember going up to my parents’ bedroom and popping Gangsta’s Paradise in the CD player. At that point it was probably the only CD played in that bedroom that wasn’t Beth Nielsen Chapman, James Taylor, or the Phenomenon soundtrack. I have a very vivid, but probably inaccurate memory of me lying in bed between my parents as Coolio’s first track began. If I’m right, it’s just Coolio and another dude talking, and Coolio gets really upset about something and says lots of ‘mothafucka’s and ‘shit’s. Within about thirty seconds of hearing Coolio’s potty mouth, the music was stopped. I was told that the CD was inappropriate and that I wasn’t allowed to listen to it. My parents didn’t even permit me to hear the title track whose parody I so loved. I never saw Gangsta’s Paradise again.

A similar thing happened a few years later when I obtained a copy of Green Day’s Dookie at a neighbor’s garage sale. That was better though; I got through the whole album before my dad found it and took it away. If I’m right, Dookie doesn’t even have that many cusses in it; my dad just thought the title was a bad word. So, yeah, that, combined with me not having cable TV until I was in high school, my mom thinking that buying movies on VHS was extremely stupid, and the fact that only classical music was played in the car probably provides a decent definition of why I’ve always been so far behind in terms of pop culture. You know, it’s probably due to the sidelong exposure to pop culture Weird Al provided that I was able to forge meaningful relationships with my peers at all.

It’s been a long time since I listened to Weird Al. But I’m mostly caught up now in terms of pop culture, so I bet I’d know at least seventy percent of the songs he parodied when I was a kid. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited for his upcoming album, Alpocalypse. I have a feeling “Party in the CIA” is gonna be the #1 summer jam of 2011.

The Characters

2011-05-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Favorite strangers. People you've only met once and never saw again, but still tell stories about. Oh, and I want each person to have their own limerick.

Suggested by: Kelsey Steffes

So far with these posts, I’ve been trying to take each suggestion and make it my own. I’m not going to do that with this post. Kelsey will get what she asked for. Kind of. I spent a while thinking and I can only actually think of one person that I only met once, never saw again, and still talk about. That person shall be known as “Broken Home Kid.” We'll start with him then move on to some of my favorite semi-strangers.

#1. Broken Home Kid
Once upon a time, I worked at an outdoor education facility in a large park in Orange County. We had school groups come in for science camp during the week, and on the weekends we had recreational programs for non-school groups. The programs we’d run were extremely varied, but I was often scheduled to take camping groups on hikes. In the fall of 2009 I took a group of cub scouts on a hike up to what we called Snake Hill. I pointed out interesting plants and animal tracks along the way as I usually did, but when I got to the top I noticed a bunch of wind caves in a nearby rock formation. I pointed them out and asked the kids, “What kind of animal might live in there?” One kid shouted out “mountain lion!”

Immediately after another kid screamed and asked if he was going to get eaten by a mountain lion. I told him he didn’t need to worry because mountain lions never attack large groups of people. (Note: Mountain lions are known to attack lone bikers and joggers. I spent a lot of time during my crepuscular runs around the park thinking about what I’d do in the case of a cougar attack. Most of my plans involved having the wherewithal to grab my phone and record a video of me getting eaten.) Then another kid piped up, announcing, “But I want to get eated [sic] by a mountain lion!”

“No you don’t! That wouldn’t be any fun.” I replied.

“Yes I do! I want a mountain lion to eat me because I live with my mommy and I want to live with my daddy!”

Silence. Then, from the back of the group, a woman says, “I told you, you can live with Daddy when he gets better.”

I let all that sink in for a minute, decided not to acknowledge it, and continued with the hike. Was this the right move? What would you have done? In retrospect, I kind of wish I had decided to probe a bit. What was his dad getting better from? Was it cancer? Alcoholism? Insanity? In any case, now I’ll never know. Here’s his limerick.

There once was a boy on a hill
For whom life’s value was nil.

His dad was sick in the head;
the boy wished he was dead.
He dreamt he’d become a wild cougar’s next kill.

Anyway, that’s Broken Home Kid. Like I said, he’s the only real “favorite stranger” I can think of. I can, though, think of interesting characters whom I never really knew, but saw often and still speak about. All of these characters attended Chapman University at some point between 2005 and 2009.

#2. The Guy Who Never Wears a Shirt
By far the most famous of Chapman’s characters, The Guy Who Never Wears a Shirt (known to his friends as Shirtless Guy) was often spotted around campus – you guessed it – not wearing a shirt. (Sometimes he wore a cloak, but I think we can all agree that doesn’t count.) At his prime, very few people saw him shirted – pretty much only those in classes with him where the professor demanded it. I had a special relationship with Shirtless Guy: we shared an adjoining bathroom in the campus dorms. The first day I got to Chapman I saw him hanging upside down from the balcony outside my room. He was wearing only a bed sheet. During that year, despite sleeping across a thin wall from each other, we didn’t have many interactions. I do remember that he used all my toilet paper without ever buying any, so I started taking mine with me when I left the bathroom. I believe from this point on he wiped with printer paper and notecards, of which there was an ever dwindling stack on top the toilet. Eventually the LA Times ran a story on him. After this, he claimed he hadn’t been doing it for attention and started wearing a shirt. Good move, Shirtless Guy.

In California there once lived a man
With a torso impeccably tan.
A shirt he refused,
No TP he used.
He probably now lives in a van.

#2. Techno Dave
Oh man, Techno Dave was great. He always wandered around wearing gigantic headphones bobbing his head to the beat of techno music. Often it was so loud you could hear him coming. Techno Dave might have been kind of a perv. This is evidenced by two facts: One, I distinctly remember at the school’s semiannual “undie run” he showed up in a trench coat. All he wore underneath was a sock. Two, when I was an RA I got a noise complaint notice from Public Safety. I went to the offending room to check it out. In the stairwell, I could already hear techno music blazing. It got louder as I neared the room. I knocked on the door and a large shirtless Mexican man opened it. In the room was another shirtless Mexican man, sitting on a couch, staring intently at Techno Dave, fully clothed and dancing his little ass off. Not wanting to know what the hell was going on with this… situation… I asked them politely to turn the music down and walked back to my room completely unnerved.

Also, I knew someone in a creative writing class with him who said he spelled color “colour” and favorite “favourite.” Word has it a teacher asked him to stop, and he furiously responded that he refused to write in anything but “the Queen’s English,” which isn’t even a proper use of that term – I looked it up.

There was a young man named Dave
Who wanted to go to a rave.
But no one would go,
So he listened to techno
And became two Mexicans’ slave.

#4. Hover Boy

Of all of the characters I knew at Chapman, I think Hover Boy is my favorite. It might be because I knew him the least. He certainly didn’t know me. Now, when discussing Hover Boy, it’s essential to point out that he had a girlfriend. We called her Hover Girl (through no fault of her own except dating Hover Boy.) Hover Boy walked all over campus with his girlfriend. You know how when some people walk with their significant other they put their hand on that person’s lower back as they walk? He did that, only without actually touching her. He’d just hover his hand over her back. Sometimes it was her butt. (Those were good days.) It wasn’t just every once and a while either. It was all the time. The weird thing was, we never saw him alone, meaning we never saw him with his arm down by his side. One of the benefits of going to a small college was that at least once a day someone would see Hover Boy. If they saw me, they’d let me know, and I’d get really excited and run to wherever he was.

Then, sometime in 2008, tragedy struck. Hover Boy’s girlfriend was suddenly nowhere to be found. I don’t know if they broke up or she left the school or what, but seeing him without her for the first time completely ruined my day. His hand was at his side. The spell was broken. I never saw him hover again. I like to think that Hover Boy has since found a new Hover Girl, and that he’s out there somewhere, with his arm at a perfect ninety-degree angle, hovering away. Oh, and I should note that I never saw Hover Boy wear anything but soccer shorts or running pants.

A young student once fell in love
With a girl who seemed sent from above.
He stuck out his hand;
It hovered her can.
Which was hilariously funny, kind of.

So, there you are. One stranger and three semi-acquaintances I never really got to know, but will never forget. Originally, I had planned to include in this list Pajama Dude, (subsequently Robe Dude), Bishop the Rapper, Street Tony, and Bluetooth Guy. But then I decided this post is long enough as it is. Also, I’m actually kind of friends with Bluetooth Guy now, so I don’t know if that’d be okay.

Ben and the Art of Taking Your Motorcycle to a Damn Mechanic

2011-05-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

Prompt: How about writing something that discusses what being a person of good character is in 2011 as opposed to 1911?

Suggested by: Tony Deeb

I think today’s prompt may have been a subtle test from my father to see if we have the same concept of what constitutes good character. It’s a tough test. Good character is a doozie – philosophically at least. To get into what makes a person metaphysically good you have to have some kind of conception of the good. That takes some serious work. One the other hand, if you just discuss good character practically, it’s relatively easy to define; a good person is one whose actions are kind, honest, temperate, selfless, modest, courageous, friendly, conscientious, &c. In this essay, I’m going to tackle the idea of good character philosophically.

About ten minutes before starting this post, I finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It’s a novel about a number of philosophical concepts, but its chief concern is Quality. Yes, capital ‘Q’ Quality – what makes some things better than others. Why is that relevant to this essay? The concept of Quality is tied to the concept of the Good. I think that what makes someone a quality person is the same as what makes someone a good person.

A little more about the book: Early on, the protagonist (who is basically the author), argues that Quality is something that everyone knows when they see it, but no one can define. He says that when looking at a high-quality painting, or reading a high-quality poem, we all know it’s high quality without really being able to explain why this is or how we know it. He finds it confusing that what creates Quality in one thing can have the opposite effect on another. He ultimately decides that Quality is indefinable. After this, he goes on to eschew rational scientific thought, claim that Quality is not derived from form or substance, and present a lot of other confusing and unnecessary arguments. It’s all pretty difficult to get through; even more so if you don’t accept Pirsig’s basic premise that Quality is indefinable.

As soon as Pirsig claimed it was impossible to define Quality, I began trying to define it. After some thinking I came up with a definition: a thing has Quality to the extent that it effectively accomplishes given goals. Let’s say that in looking at a painting, your only goal for that painting is for it to instill in you a sense of beauty. If it effectively instills a sense of beauty, then it is a high-quality painting, because it accomplishes the goal you set for it. But we don’t set just one goal for something, there are usually multiple goals tangled up. When you’re looking at a painting, you don’t want to only be instilled with a sense of beauty. Maybe you also want it to be thought provoking and display signs of artistic mastery. The more you know about art, the more you can add to what you think paintings should accomplish. The more goals you have for something, the more you can appreciate things that fulfill all those goals.

This method of how to judge a thing’s quality allows for different perceptions of quality from person to person. What you want a certain painting to accomplish may be different from what I want it to accomplish. You could think it’s amazing and I could hate it. We have different conceptions of what goals good art accomplishes. Does this mean there’s no objective basis for what constitutes good art? Universally: yes, opinions of good art vary drastically between cultures and time periods. Realistically: not really, because we share a culture that provides the framework for judging Quality. While we might not share the exact goals we think good art accomplishes, people within a culture generally agree on what a thing’s general goals are.

It’s important to note that our goals for things are usually subconscious. I’ve never made a list of things I think good art accomplishes, gone to a museum, and checked them on a list; neither have you. We’ve all got preconceptions for what we think what the goal of art is, largely beyond our conscious control, and they’re all slightly different. The only case in which these preconceptions are radically different is when someone from one culture is judging Quality in another. In this case, the goals things are expected to accomplish can be so different as to be irreconcilable. That’s why views of Quality vary slightly within a culture (taste) and drastically between cultures (complete misunderstanding).

Quality, in this sense, doesn’t just apply to art. It applies to everything. What makes a quality refrigerator? Well, what do you expect out of a fridge? What do you want it to accomplish? If your fridge accomplishes those goals effectively, you’ve got a quality refrigerator. Another advantage to this view of Quality is that it allows a thing to be high quality in one aspect and not in another. Does the aforementioned high-quality fridge count as high quality art? No, and you (hopefully) wouldn’t expect it to.

Now what does all this have to do with being a person of good character? Well, if you apply my definition of quality, a person has quality to the extent that he or she accomplishes the goal of being a person. So that makes it easy, right? We’ll just define “the goal of being a person.” Unfortunately, that sounds suspiciously like “the meaning of life,” which is not really in the purview of this essay. So instead of answering the question metaphysically, I’ll answer it pragmatically and say that the goal of being a person is living happily in a happy society. Thus, a quality person (or a person of good character) is one who is happy in a happy society. Admittedly, definitions of the goal of being a person are up for debate, but I think this one works, and that’s what pragmatism’s all about.

Notice that I didn’t just say that a good person is a happy person – there are terrible, terrible people who are probably pretty happy – that’s why I included the happy society part. I think that man is by nature social, and when discussing the purpose of individual humans, you also need to think about the purpose of humanity as a whole. You can’t be a good person if you’re happy and everyone around you is miserable. To be a good person, you’ve got to try and make everyone else’s happiness your concern.

So, over a thousand words later, I think I can finally answer my dad’s question. What does it mean to be a person of good character in 2011 as opposed to 1911? The answer lies not in a difference of goal, but in a difference of how that goal is achieved. The qualities I outlined in the beginning of this essay – things like kindness, honesty, temperance, selflessness, modesty, courage, friendliness, and conscientiousness – are still part of being a good person. And unless people start finding happiness through mutual rudeness and disrespect, they always will be. They help achieve the goal of living happily in a happy society.

However, other parts of being a good person have changed as what it takes to live happily in a happy society has changed. People living today have been exposed to insanely different things than they would have been a century ago. I’m extremely happy with a laptop and an iPhone. In 1911 I might have been extremely happy with a Model T and a radio. Also, social norms have changed. Back then, a beautiful woman wearing a bikini would have been an outrage. It wouldn’t have made for a happy society. I don’t think we can say the same today.

In the end, though, these little differences are small compared to the big-picture qualities that seem immutable. If you don’t believe me, read Aristotle; they’re some of the same values he outlined in Nicomachean Ethics twenty-four centuries ago. So, while the difference in behavior of a good person today and a good person a hundred years ago may seem drastic, I’d imagine they’re not actually too far apart.

Bin Laden, Snot, Dead

2011-05-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

Prompt: I assume you're watching Obama. Have you noticed that he has a booger that is causing his nose to whistle? I would like you to blog about the aforementioned booger.

Suggested by: Cherie Connors

As you know, President Obama gave a speech to announce the death of Osama Bin Laden tonight. Before I get on to my main topic of this post – the President’s alleged booger – I’d like to point out one interesting fact: somehow, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson received word of Bin Laden’s death before anyone else. Prior to the news break, he tweeted, “Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free...home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” This led me to believe that The Rock was probably part of the “surgical strike team” that Obama sent to Pakistan. Thus, I think we can safely assume that The Scorpion King beheaded the world’s most infamous terrorist with a two-by-four.

Okay. Let’s move on and talk about some nose candy. During his speech tonight, did the President have a booger causing his nose to whistle? It’s a hard-hitting question. I’m going to give it a solid “maybe,” and let the good people at Fox News take it from there. Instead, I want to discuss the implications of presidential nostril resin. I don’t mean implications in terms of what effect it will have on poll ratings or foreign policy, but more in terms of what it means that the President of the United States of America can actually secrete mucus.

In short, it means that he’s human. But then, (with the exception of my friend Magic Dennis down in Venice Beach), we all knew that already. It’s just that we have a hard time seeing him as such. The dude’s the most powerful man in world. He’s in a whole other league. It’s hard to imagine our commander in chief peeing, pooping or (god forbid) vomiting. Bodily fluids and high-profile people just don’t seem to mix. But politicians, celebrities, and other people you know about but haven’t met all have the same kind of lives we do. Sure, some of their lives are arguably more important, but they still have to do the same gross shit as the rest of us. Underneath everything the media makes them out to be, they’re real people.

I’ve always had a hard time with that fact. People in the spotlight have never seemed completely real to me. That’s been changing, though. I think a lot of it also has to do with social media. It allows high profile people to bypass the PR experts who coach them on upholding their professional image. Without their professional filter, they’re free to spew crap to the masses. Celebrities are now able to show us what they’re really like behind their polished media facades. Hell, Twitter alone has destroyed my opinions of countless actors, athletes, and politicians. I don’t need to know that Shaq had a ham sandwich for lunch or that John Cusack has trouble writing grammatically correct sentences. They’re supposed to be off being professionally dunk-tastic and disarmingly charming (respectively).

The more information you have about someone, the more real they become. I think what’s changing with celebrity is that between constant news coverage and the rise social media, we’re being shown the mundane, regular part of famous people’s lives that we’d never had access to. It’s making them more human, and in the process, less mysterious. When Obama can have a booger in his nose like the rest of us, part of his power and part of his allure is gone. It’s not a bad thing, but no one really is larger than life. Except the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson - that dude’s huge.

The Incident of the Bloody Hand Man in the Nighttime

2011-04-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Write about the FYE Floor and What Would Deeb Do!

Suggested by: Mike Alfaro

Long ago, before the rise of Twitter, Lady Gaga, or even Barack Obama, I lived in a little place called Henley Hall. The year was 2006 and I was starting my first semester as a Resident Advisor in the Chapman University dorms. There were a few weeks before the school year when all the RA’s moved in. These weeks were action-packed. We had to go through intense RA training, try and plan for the upcoming year, and decorate our dorm floors. My decorations were Captain Planet themed. I have to say they were pretty half-assed. They were better, though, than the decorations I put up the following years, which were quarter-to-eighth-assed at best.

After these few intense weeks, my residents arrived. I lived on a “First Year Experience” (FYE) floor, so all of my residents were new to Chapman. Thus, they moved in early to attend orientation. I’d decided before they arrived that I was going to be the “cool” RA. I wouldn’t bust anyone who wasn’t asking for it and I’d be someone they felt comfortable talking to when they had problems. I didn’t think I’d actually be able to pull this off – if you weren’t aware, I’m not very cool at all. I gave a speech the night they moved in. It went something like this: “Rule number one: don’t drink in the dorms. Notice: The breaking of rule number one is rarely noticed unless you’re being loud. Rule two: Don’t be loud.”

For some reason, my residents enjoyed this speech and actually believed that I was cool. So, they started a bizarre kind of fan club for me. They called it “WWDD” – What Would Deeb Do? The de facto leader of this pack was Mike Alfaro, the fine young man who suggested this blog topic. They did all sorts of nice, funny, and slightly creepy things in this group. They took a picture of my head on a photo vacation, left a love letter (complete with lipstick print seal) at my door, and made a Facebook group in my honor. In short, they gave me a completely unneeded ego boost. They also made me feel really bad about lying to them about what a goody two shoes I was.

We had a good year. I liked them and they liked me. They’ve all changed an incredible amount since then, but so have I. There were talks of an FYE reunion, but it never quite materialized. We’ll just say we’re saving it for a time when we’ve grown so far apart that we actually have a lot to talk about.

In my three years as an RA at Chapman, I accomplished my goal of not busting anyone who wasn’t asking for it. That being said, I did have to bust two people. Both were drunk non-Chapman guys who were visiting their girlfriends on campus. Recently, I discovered the report I wrote to public safety about the first incident. Here it is in short: The glass plate over a fire extinguisher was broken, public safety was called, the culprit was found, and he agreed to pay charges for the broken glass. However, Chapman residence life requires in-depth reports of all violations in the dorms, so I had to write a long version. I submitted the text found below. Despite how ridiculous it is, none of my superiors questioned me about my report. Names have been changed to protect the innocent… and guilty… and me (if anyone still cares).

Chapman Public Safety Incident Report: January 29, 2007

It was a dark but lively night on the East wing of the 2^nd floor in Henley. Resident Advisor Benjamin Nicklin Deeb was relaxing in the study lounge with residents of the floor and fellow Resident Advisor Graham Travis Towers, discussing current events, when the group heard the sound of glass breaking down the hallway. Deeb sprung from his chair and darted into the hallway to see a young man dash into room 217. Next to the fire extinguisher box at the end of the hallway lay a pile of broken glass, another clue that might lead to the source of the suspicious goings-on. Mr. Deeb could not be sure, but he suspected the broken glass on the floor and the sound of breaking glass were somehow connected.

Deeb, in tune with his usual fearless character, knocked thrice on the door of 217. There was no answer, yet Deeb was not deterred. He had a sneaking suspicion that because someone had run into the room, that same someone would be in the room some thirty seconds later. He continued to knock for what seemed like seventy three seconds until finally the door swung open. As the door opened, all Mr. Deeb saw was a hand from behind the door, beckoning him in. His natural intuition, spidey sense, and Residence Life training told him that he may be entering a potentially dangerous situation, so he kept one foot in the hall and asked the man to come out from behind the door. The man emerged, showing a bloody gash on the back of his right hand. Once again, something told Deeb that this bloody hand was somehow connected to the sound of shattering glass and the shattered glass on the floor and the man running into the room and the man opening the door in a suspicious way. Deeb looked at the bloody hand and said, “Are you okay?” The mysterious man replied something that sounded like, “Yeugh, fine.” Mr. Deeb looked the man fiercely in both eyes at once and asked, “Did you break the glass on that fire extinguisher box?” The man replied, “Ungh, uh, um, I’ono, mmmmmm.” Deeb, seeing that the man was clearly intoxicated, replied, “Well, good sir, if you will not tell me, I will be forced to contact an officer of campus law.” The man looked at him and said, “Wha-? No man, whatever.” and promptly closed the door.

After the door closed, resident advisor Graham Travis Towers entered the hallway and asked Mr. Deeb, “Do I need to call P. Safety?” Deeb looked Towers in his fiery eyes, gave him a resounding high five and yelled, “You know it, bro-ham!” Towers proceeded to call Chapman University’s public safety dispatcher, who sent an officer to investigate the situation along with some maintenance workers to pick up the shattered glass. During this waiting time, the RA duo put the facts together using many flow charts and Venn diagrams concluded that the sound of breaking glass had indeed resulted from the glass breaking. Further, they realized that the glass being broken was very probably the work of the man who had run into room 217, who coincidentally was the very same man who later drunkenly opened the door to that very same room. When the public safety officer, Lt. Spartacus arrived, Mr. Deeb told him of the night’s events as they unfolded in a much more concise fashion than in this report, and the two proceeded to room 217.

Lt. Spartacus, with even less fear than the already fearless Benjamin Deeb, knocked on the door, and this time Ms. Julia Childs, resident of Henley 217 who had not previously been in the room, opened the door. The man with the bloody hand scowled in the corner behind her. She turned around and screamed “Barry! Did you break the glass?” He mumbled and slurred in response, and came towards the door. Lt. Spartacus, truly a hero among men, talked to the mysterious bloody handed man, and made sure Julia was safe. At this point, Ms. Childs was crying and asking why the bloody handed man, whom she identified as her boyfriend, was giving the public safety officer such a ‘tude. He kept on mumbling, every once and a while providing a coherent response that wasn’t “I dunno.”

The Lieutenant took information off of both of their Washington State issued drivers licenses and discovered that the man’s name was Barry Manilow, a resident of Seattle, Washington. He was also, very likely, a huge douche bag. Finally, the mysterious douche bag of a man had a name to match his face and/or bloody hand. Benjamin Deeb, however, still thought of him not as Barry or even Barry-tholomew, but rather as ‘Bloody Hand Man,’ an appropriate nickname, considering the events of the night. The public safety officer made sure of the public safety of all parties and informed Barry Manilow that he would be billed for the broken glass at his home address in Washington, but criminal charges would not be pressed and he would not be escorted off campus. Both Lt. Spartacus and Benjamin Nicklin Deeb retired to the study lounge, or as some call it, the playroom, where Lt. Spartacus debriefed Benjamin on the situation, and the two eventually parted ways.

It would seem that this would put and end to the night’s activities, as all loose ends were tied up and the conflict was resolved, but this was not necessarily the case. Well, it was the case, but it may not have necessarily been at the time. What may have happened in an alternate reality where the conflict was not resolved? We may never know, or we may, but that’s a story for another day.

"An Essay on Originality in Film" or "The Plot of 2 Fast 2 Furious"

2011-04-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Write a review of 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Suggested by: Dan McLellan

When I got this suggestion, I thought it would be easy. I’d watch 2 Fast 2 Furious, think about it in terms of plot points and themes, and compare it to a famous work of literature, like, I don’t know, Shakespeare or Melville or something. I had planned a witty little essay about similarities between high and low culture. It’s important to note here that I really had no idea what the movie was about (I merely assumed it would feature cars that were fast and people that were furious). My only exposure to the film had been when a friend tried to coax me back into a bar for more PBR by screaming, “2 PABST 2 FURIOUS,” which I found both hilarious and persuasive.

Well, I just finished watching 2 Fast 2 Furious, and I can now tell you that my planned goal is impossible. The plot breaks down as follows: Brian O’Connor is arrested for underground street racing. He is taken into custody by the FBI, who tell him they need his unique skills in underground street racing to take down a crime lord. If he completes his mission, they’ll clear his name of all former charges. If he refuses, he’ll go to prison. He agrees, convinces the crime lord he’s not with the FBI and meets a beautiful woman who’s been deep under cover with the crime lord, trying to destroy his organization from the inside. She’s banging the crime lord, who makes it clear that Brian is not to have her. They fall in love anyway. Brian is given the opportunity to either take down the crime lord or run away from the whole situation, but in doing so he’d have to leave the girl behind. Using a ridiculously convoluted plan, he manages to save the girl and take down the crime lord.

Does the plot as I outlined it seem like it relates at all to any kind of literature ever written? I racked my brain for over an hour trying to find some parallel to draw between 2 Fast and anything I’d ever read. I began to think that the movie, while admittedly terrible, was actually original. I thought I had stumbled onto a fresh idea, hidden away in the depths of an ever-growing heap of blockbuster action crap. This blog would have been all about the lack of originality and innovation in modern motion pictures and its salvation in 2 Fast, if it weren’t for one fact: last week I watched Vin Diesel’s xXx with my dad.

Have you seen xXx? If you have, you’ll probably start to realize what I’m talking about here. If not, go up two paragraphs to my summary of 2 Fast 2 Furious and replace the name “Brian O’Conor” with “Xander Cage,” “underground street racing” with “extreme sports tricks,” “FBI” with “NSA” and “crime lord” with “Russian anarchist.” That’s the plot of xXx. To a tee.

This saddens me deeply. I know that movies with similar plots often come out at the same time (a la A Bugs Life/Antz, Volcano/Dante’s Peak, and Armageddon/Deep Impact), but this seems ridiculous. Especially because the director and lead actor featured in xXx were also the director and lead actor in The Fast and the Furious, which was a total rip-off of 1991’s Point Break. Come to think of it, that means both Fast and Furious movies just stole their plots from other films. I guess tomorrow I’ll have to watch The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and find out if they managed to work street racing into the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo or something.

Note: Before all you rabid Fast & Furious fans jump down my throat about it, I know I left out a giant part of the movie about his ex-con childhood friend who he enlisted to help. But removing the friend didn’t change the plot at all and the role was played by what must be the only actor in the world worse than Paul Walker, so it can’t be that big of a deal.

The End of United States Hegemony

2011-04-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

I drew this space shuttle.

Prompt: Can you do a blog post on the end of the space shuttle program and what the future of manned space flight will be?
Suggested by: Alex Malotte

An excerpt from Vladimir Johnson’s ”The End of United States Hegemony,” written for The French University of Chicago’s 21st Century World History class in October of 2102.

In most cases, it is difficult to identify an exact point in history that marks the beginning of a country’s decline from hegemony. In the case of the United States, however, finding this turning point is easy. While most nations in the modern era have collapsed slowly due to economic, political, and environmental factors, the fall of the US was rapid, devastating, and completely preventable. Though some debate exists over whether the country was already in decline in the first decade of the 21st century, most historians mark the middle of 2011 as the beginning of the end for America as a superpower.

In September of 2010, the US Congress passed a bill that called for the end of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s space shuttle program. Though not controversial at the time, the passing of this bill had far reaching effects that none could have predicted. Over the course of the next year and a half, three of the four remaining US space shuttles were retired and sent to museums around the country for educational purposes. On June 28, 2011, space shuttle Atlantis was launched out of Cape Canaveral, flying STS-135, the final mission of the space shuttle program. After a brief mission and rendezvous with the International Space Station, Atlantis landed without incident on July 10th, marking the last day an American craft would travel outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

In the weeks after the landing, as the final shuttle was stripped down at Kennedy Space Center, President Barack Obama, his entire cabinet, and key members of congress were invited by leaders of the European Union to France’s Guiana Space Centre in South America to discuss the future of manned space flight.
The American delegation arrived in French Guiana on August 19th. Once assembled, European Space Agency officials escorted the leaders onto a prototype space vessel touted to replace the American shuttle and herald a new era of manned space exploration. Once aboard, the doors sealed behind the American visitors and the craft began takeoff procedures. Recordings from inside the vessel have shown that President Obama originally believed the launch initiation warnings to be some kind of “bizarre French joke.” It was not until the final countdown initiated and leaders of the European Union appeared on a screen that the President realized the gravity of the situation. The European leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, and Angela Merkel informed the Americans that they were now hostages of the EU and would soon be launched into low Earth orbit.

The launch proceeded as planned, and the leaders of what was then the world’s sole superpower were rocketed into space. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden, (who had not travelled to South America due to his self-professed intense fear of “Montezuma’s Revenge”), was contacted by European officials and informed of the situation. The leaders of the rest of the free world began making demands. Biden was told if the United States wanted to see its top politicians returned to Earth, he would have to make serious concessions.

The remains of the American government rallied to organize a rescue mission to space to retrieve the President, but it was too late. With the dismantling of the final space shuttle already in progress, the US had no hope for a manned flight. Some reports showed that Department of Defense representatives attempted to bribe Chinese officials into “lending” their space vessels. The Chinese response, documented in many Asian news articles, translates loosely to, “go screw.”

Upon news that a rescue was impossible, Biden immediately traveled to Geneva, where negotiations lasted for the following three days. During this time, Biden reportedly did not eat, sleep, or have a single bowel movement. By the end of the summit, the Vice President agreed to dismantle over sixty percent of the American military, cede political power of the country’s financial institutions to European bankers, and “make the Kardashians just stop.” (The meaning of this final demand of has been lost, as all mentions of who these “Kardashians” might have been were suspiciously erased in the days following the space-hostage situation. Some historians now blame the Kardashians for the whole affair.)
On August 26th, 2011, upon completion of the agreed terms, President Obama, his cabinet members, and the accompanying congressmen were returned to Earth. All were unharmed and in perfect health, with the exception of Hilary Clinton, who lived the rest of her life with sporadic bowel cramps later linked to the consumption of copious amounts of freeze-dried ice cream.

Thus was the planet’s political balance forever changed. America’s role in shaping international foreign policy declined, its military all but collapsed, and many of its best politicians vacated their offices for fear of a space kidnapping. After the disastrous first few years of the Trump Administration, most major corporations emigrated from the then destabilized United States, taking millions of jobs and billions of dollars with them. Much of the American public followed. By 2015, the United States of America was a shell of what it once had been. Though it is almost ancient history now, it is interesting to note that this once great country’s brutal downfall could have been prevented by the simple continuation or replacement of a government-funded manned space flight program.

Day One: Tying it All Together

2011-04-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

Prompt: Kittens are the most wonderful creatures on earth. Neighbors who work on their cars in the middle of the night. Insane people who insist on populating the planet with their offspring. Is the uprising in Libya hopeful or just plain scary? The Shawshank Redemption style freeing of hundreds of Taliban members from the Kandahar prison. With pretty much everyone the world over loving coffee, why not Mormons? Corn on the cob. Native American mysticism. Is it okay to have a cocktail in your water bottle while you're at work?
Suggested By: Christine Kirk

First of all, I'd like to thank Chris for being the first of my friends to suggest a topic for my new blog. Second I'd like to say, "Go screw, Chris. I don't want to write essays on everything you that crossed your mind between 8 and 9pm on a Monday night." Third, I'd like to announce my new favorite insult, "Go screw." Losing the "yourself" really gives it an old-timey succinctness not found in other invectives. It also sounds like something people from Boston say, and Boston is probably my favorite New England city.

If you look at the beginning of this post, you’ll see that next to “Prompt” I wrote not just one suggestion, but multiple. I did this for a few reasons, but mostly so I didn’t have to write a whole week of blogs just for Chris or figure out a way of choosing between multiple prompts. Staring at that big hunk of suggestion, I began to think I had bitten off more than I could chew. Then I remembered that I’d bitten off way more than that before and chewed the shit out of it. Hell, I once bit all the corn off an entire full sized cob before I even thought about chewing.

So I removed my testicles from my fanny pack, made myself a cup of coffee, and accepted the challenge. I should take this time to mention that my roommate works at Starbucks, he gets a free pound of coffee every week, and I’m the only one in the apartment who drinks it. This means, obviously, that I drink too much friggin’ coffee. I need it though; when you have neighbors who work on their cars all night, a little pick me up in the morning is more or less required for conscious thought. I don’t know how Mormons live without the stuff. I’ll just assume those special underpants they wear release a constant stream of caffeine into their bodies. The constant intradermal caffeine intake would also explain how they seem to be able to bonk like Energizer bunnies. Seriously. Those people have a lot of kids.

It makes sense that they try so hard to have offspring, though. I mean, even if you are Mormon, you have to admit that to an objective observer some of those beliefs are kind of hard to buy. If you want others to share your seemingly insane beliefs, the best method of indoctrination is raising children. It’s the same with getting people to believe anything, though. It’s much easier to acculturate kids from birth than it is to convert adults to a new belief system. Trust me, I’ve seen Jungle 2 Jungle.

If you haven’t seen it, sorry. I’m not here to summarize the plot of the seventh highest grossing PG-rated film of 1997 for you. Stop reading now and rent the movie.

Since you ignored my instructions and kept on reading, I’ll just point out that it shows how ridiculous the American way of life can seem to someone with different traditions and values. I bet if more people watched that movie there wouldn’t be so much hatred in the world. Also, Tim Allen’s life probably wouldn’t seem so sad. Really, though. If the American troops had just played a dubbed version of Jungle at the Kandahar prison, I’m sure the inmates would have seen the parallels between how they felt about the American presence in Afghanistan and the confusion over Mimi-Siku’s pet tarantula and his Native American mysticism, had a good laugh, and gave up digging their escape tunnel.

Unfortunately, there are some problems that can’t be solved with Jungle 2 Jungle. Take the situation in Libya. That shit’s a mess, politically, tactically, and philosophically. For those of us in the Western world, it’s hard to believe that dictators like Gaddafi are still allowed to exist in the 21st century. It’s scarily bizarre seeing democratic revolutions that developed countries went through centuries ago being played out in the modern era with modern weapons. We know from our own experience that (real) democracy is worth the struggle, but is part of its value contained from a nation working through that struggle itself? I believe that given enough time, democracy will prevail anywhere people demand it. But without outside help it takes time, and in many cases, considerable bloodshed. The question then becomes, “Can the developed world sit by and watch as rebels in developing countries fight and die for something our ancestors have fought and died for us to have?” The US government, and the majority of the international community said no. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize how tricky the situation would be. Now that they’ve chosen to act, they have to ask a new question: “How many of our soldiers lives and our taxpayers dollars should we devote to a humanitarian crisis halfway across the world?” I don’t know the answer to that question.

Neither, though, do any of the news pundits forcing their stupid opinions down our ear canals. I don’t watch a lot of 24-hour news, but what I have seen of CNN, MSNBC, and especially Fox News lately seems like a lot of angry, reactionary idiots struggling to see who can yell loudest. The only other place I’ve ever seen that kind of behavior is in a room full of arguing problem-drinkers. Maybe that’s it. Pundits must not have coffee in those cups. Normally, I’ve got no problem with a little whiskey in a water bottle at work, but I’ve never had to inform the opinions of millions of TV-watching Americans. But then, maybe someone will read this blog, offer me a writing job on the Daily Show, and all that will change.

Oh, and cats pretty much suck.

The New Deeb Thoughts

2011-04-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, you're probably thinking, "What the hell? Deeb Thoughts is back? There haven't been any new posts in a decade!" Your thoughts about Deeb Thoughts are stupid for two reasons. One, this isn't that Deeb Thoughts; this is a completely unrelated blog (albeit by the same author at the same web address). Two, the last entry on that Deeb Thoughts was 17 months ago, not a decade.

As you may or may not know, yesterday was Easter. Forty days before that was Ash Wednesday. The period in between these two dates in the Christian calendar is Lent. Lent is a special time when people used to fast, abstain from sex, and pray a lot. Now they mostly try to quit smoking, fail at resolutions, and eat fish on Fridays. Despite my lack of religion, I made a Lenten goal to be an all around better person – less sleeping, drinking, TV-watching, more working, writing, exercising, &c. I ended up spending Easter with a group of trash people and a plastic bottle of whiskey in Las Vegas. I’ll leave it up to you to guess how I did with the rest of my goals.

Now that I’ve fallen off the wagon, I’ve decided to hit the ground running. (Excuse the mixed and not entirely apt metaphor.) Today begins the first day of Not-Lent. To celebrate this, I’m going to write a blog post every day until Ash Wednesday 2012.

We all know that blogs are generally lame, poorly written, masturbatory diaries of aspiring writers that really have nothing worthwhile to say. I bet you’re thinking, “Why should I give a shit about Ben’s blog?” Good thought. Here’s why you should care: I’m not going to choose what I write about. Every post I make is going to be based on suggestions from you idiots. If you have anything you’d like to know more about, make me research, read my opinion on, or force me to write, email your suggestions to DeebThoughts@gmail.com. In the case that I get multiple suggestions a day, I’ll pick one and keep the others in mind for future posts. Maybe I’ll even write more than one post a day.

The reasoning behind this is simple. Most bloggers suck because they don’t really care what their audience wants to read. Mine wont, because I’ll only write things that I know someone wants to read. By pleasing an audience of at least one, I’m already better than most bloggers. Also, I hope to make you think, laugh, or learn from each post, even if it isn’t your suggestion.

So, now’s the time to give me suggestions. In each post I’ll include your original suggestion, followed by an essay of no less than five hundred words. It may even be exactly five hundred words, like this post. You can request poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction, whatever. If you want an extended metaphor about French onion soup and Kant’s Categorical Imperative, I’ll even do that... but it won’t be good.