Once More for Gore

Today, Al Gore, Patron Saint of the Global Environment, turns 61 years old. Since the early 1990s, he has been the politician I admire the most, and the one I wanted to see as president since 1992. Back then, I saw Clinton merely as the warm up act with the real show begining in 2000 with Gore's promotion to the presidency. Because Clinton did his warm-up act with a sex crazed intern, the taint of scandal was probably enough to turn many voters against Gore in 2000. I know of one lady who admitted this...the one I had a falling out with over her comments on Facebook. She had written to me that she voted against Gore in 2000 because she claimed that he was tainted by his association with Clinton, which I thought was moronic. We can't control how other people act. It would be like firing an employee because his or her immediate supervisor had an affair with someone else. We're not responsible for another person's sexual misconduct. But, I'd bet serious cash that she's not the only one who punished Gore for the disgust with Clinton's sleaze.

It's a shame that Americans vote on non-issues. In all the years of Gore's public life, there has never been any hint of sexual immorality. He is a man completely in love with his wife, Tipper. He didn't have too many girlfriends before her (maybe two or three, from biographies I've read). Gore exudes fidelity and loyalty. If people find fault with him, its because of his introverted nature. The presidency seems to favour extroverts, as we haven't truly had an introverted president since Jimmy Carter (though I can't tell for certain if the elder George Bush is an introvert or not).

My question to Bush voters in 2000 is: are you proud of your vote? Seeing how disasterous his reign had been, do you think he was good for America? If we judge a president by only one criteria (is America better or worse since the start of a presidential administration?), there's no question that Bush was bad for America.

But maybe that is a good thing. The recent Time magazine features a cover story on how the bad economy will be good for our country in the long run (so long as we don't go back to our mass consuming ways). As painful as it is to go back to the 2000 election and think about it, I remember before the election, I had read an article which predicted that Gore might win the electoral college vote but lose the popular vote, and what that would mean for our country. I remember thinking at the time that I did not want Gore to win that way, because Republicans would never accept his presidency and would continue their obstruction and investigations from the Clinton years to try to bring down Gore. The article I read even mentioned that the Bush campaign people had plans in place to legally contest the election if Gore won the electoral college vote but lost the popular vote.

When the election happened the other way (Bush "winning" the electoral vote--though I still believe that he didn't legitimately win Florida; Gore winning the popular vote by more than half a million votes), Bush played dirty and ran to the Supreme Court to put an end to the vote recount in Florida. No matter which way the election went, Bush was desperate to be president (my theory is because he wanted to avenge his father's defeat in 1992; he wanted to finish the job in Iraq; and he wanted to seal up his father's presidential records from the open records law). The nasty way he behaved in the aftermath of the election and his lack of graciousness to the majority who voted against him in 2000, plus his decision to have a far-right administration instead of a government of national unity, guaranteed that I would never support his presidency at all. Not even on 9/11 and the days following. It's not that I wanted him to fail. Had he been more of the centrist he had promised during the campaign, he might've been more successful than his father. But, he sowed the seeds of his presidency's destruction with bad karma. He has no one to fault but himself. Seeing the sad, broken man he became when he left office was small pleasure after the nightmare of the past eight years.

However, the past is past. Though the Bush years are one of the most painful periods of American history (certainly in our lifetime), I believe the fates of Bush and Gore illustrate an example of karmic justice. Bush wanted to be president at all costs and by not showing humility and grace, and representing the interest of all Americans (including the majority who voted against him), he angered a lot of people and never saw his approval ratings above 40% in the last three years of his presidency. He came into office arrogant and smug, and left looking tired, old and unhappy. By contrast, in the aftermath of the humiliating "loss", Gore grew a beard, went off to Europe, and disappeared for awhile. Behind the scenes, he had invested heavily in Google, started an investment group, updated his old climate change slide show, and focused on his true passion: the environment. By 2006, karmic justice repaid him kindly...with a hit documentary film that won an Oscar, his investments in Google made him a wealthy man, he won an Emmy Award for his creation of Current TV (an innovative Internet/TV channel which airs pods created by viewers), and the ultimate award of all: The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with U.N. scientists for climate change.

Gore gained renewed respect while Bush became the most hated leader on the planet. The tale of these two men recalls that famous Biblical warning: "For what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his very soul?" The fortunes of the two men also illustrate two forms of power. Gore has inspirational power, which is far more powerful than the kind Bush branded about: the power of the gun. This idea has been with me since childhood, when I was baffled by what Obi-Wan Kenobi told Darth Vader in Star Wars: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." For many years, I couldn't understand that statement, because he lost his life to the guy with the power of the light saber. I forget the moment when it hit me, but it was sometime in the mid-1990s. Now, it's kind of obvious. The power of inspiration is more powerful than the power of the gun. Why? Because while you can point a gun at someone's head to make them do whatever the hell you want, doing so only guarantees that they will hate you and it doesn't protect you from someone doing the same to you. Plus, you're not really changing their minds, only how they would act in that moment.

On the flip side, if you inspire someone with your ideas, it affects their inner consciousness. The transformation within can transform our world. Jesus had this kind of power. The might of the Roman Empire may have crucified him on the cross (power of the sword), but here we are 2,000 years later with more than 2 billion of the world's inhabitants who are followers of Jesus. Where is the Roman Empire? It's relegated to museums, ruins that serve as tourist attractions, and the history books.

So...I'm glad that Gore was able to transform the disappointments of the 2000 election into a successful career as global statesman, bringing attention to how we live our lives with respect to our natural environment. Give me inspiration anyday.

In Gore's post-2000 incarnation, he often greets people and groups with the very Asian "wai." This symbolic gesture is a Buddhist sign for humility and gratitude. Though many evangelicals didn't see Gore as a religious person, I always had the impression that he was deeply spiritual (he did attend Vanderbilt Divinity School after serving in Vietnam as a way to atone for the sins he saw in that war). Though he is a Southern Baptist, I wouldn't be surprised if his spiritual views are similar to mine, because he seems to have some Buddhist ideas or beliefs...which you can sense in his Earth in the Balance book.

The cartoon above and the photo from his guest host role on Saturday Night Live in December 2002 play on the stereotyped image of Gore as a stiff and wooden personality. Gore has been known to poke fun at himself, with his favourite joke: "How can you spot Gore in a roomful of Secret Service agents? He's the stiff one."

We may never have gotten to see how America would look during a Gore Administration, but had he been president, we probably would have never heard of Barack Obama. I'm happy with the historic campaign of 2007-2008, that it was the most exciting presidential election season of our lifetime. I'm also happy that Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. No one deserves more good fortune these past few years than Gore...one of the most qualified people to ever run for president. Our country lost a potentially great president, but perhaps he'll play an even greater role for the sake of our planet.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gore! Celebrate in style!

Music Video Monday: Anggun

For this week's music video selection, I decided to showcase Anggun in honour of International Women's Day several Sundays ago. I first saw her video in 1998 when I was in college and addicted to VH1 and MTV. Their schedule seemed to only show music videos late at night, when I was studying. When the video "Snow on the Sahara" played, I was instantly hooked. This song is an example of the kind of song that aims straight to my heart: a gorgeous foreign lady, an exotic melody, and a place name in the title. Nothing spells out "International Smash" more than this song!

Based on a single song, I bought her CD and it was fantastic. Who was this gorgeous Asian lady? It was like she was straight out of a novel idea of mine (still to be written someday). Back in 1993, I was inspired to write a novel about our country's ongoing xenophobia and how too many Americans still haven't gotten over the loss of the Vietnam War. One of the characters in that unwritten novel was to be a Vietnamese singer who falls in love with the American protagonist. Her hit song was to be called "Saigon Serenade." So, when I saw Anggun's music video, it was like a character I had dreamed up in 1993 had shown up in real life with an exotic song of her own. Yow! I love that.

This video is awesome for many reasons, but I truly love the graceful way her hands move. To me, that's the art and mystique of pure femininity. Perhaps it comes from the traditional Thai dances I remember seeing in my youth, where the Thai women in fancy traditional costumes dance in ways where their hands and fingers arch beautifully in mesmerizing movements. Anggun does it quite a bit in this video. The colours are also a feast for the eyes. And I so wish I could be that bird in the video!

Enjoy!

The Debate About Satan

On Nightline last week was a special "Face-Off" on the question of Satan's existence, held at Pastor Mark Driscoll's mega-church in Seattle. Along with the pastor (who is popular among young adults in the Emergent Christianity movement) was New Age Guru to the stars Deepak Chopra, a former prostitute who now has a "Hookers for Jesus" group, and a former minister who once preached hellfire and damnation but now believes hell is nothing but a lie.

I was stoked to watch this, wondering how on earth they could have a conversation in less than 30 minutes, with commercial interruptions. They spent a little too long on the introductions before mentioning that the debate itself was over an hour, followed by audience questions. One can see the whole thing on the ABC News website, but they were only showing snippets on Nightline. Lame. They could've shown the whole thing. Who cares about Jimmy Kimmel's late show after that?


Because of the time constraints, we only got the gist of everyone's arguments and counter-arguments. Surprisingly, I could understand some of the points Pastor Driscoll said. I, personally, don't like Deepak Chopra because he comes off a tad bit arrogant. Plus, when a "self-help guru" achieves popularity among celebrities in Hollywood, they have a kind of taint to me, because we're talking about a town that is obsessed with Scientology and Kabbalah, where people screw each other over, literally and figuratively. When Deepak Chopra came to Powells bookstore awhile ago, I went out of curiosity to see if my impression held up. I've tried to read some of his books but I don't really like his writing style. I may agree with his ideas, but his presentation needs work. Anyhow, during his lecture, which was packed with people, the manner of his speaking truly turned me off. I got the impression that he spoke in a way to show off how smart he is rather than connecting with the audience. He used too many academic words and sounded like he was giving a dissertation on spirituality to a bunch of university professors. After he was done, he took no questions from the audience and I left with an even worse impression of him.

During this debate, the "Satan-believers" (who happen to be evangelical Christians) said the same thing I always hear people who believe in Satan say: "The greatest trick Satan ever played on humans was convincing him that he doesn't exist." What the hell does this statement mean? Anytime someone says that to me, I always ask them what it means and they can never tell me. To me, their non-answer tells me that they are only repeating what they heard someone else say without giving it a whole lot of thought. Its hard for me to respect people who show no thinking behind the statements they all too easily sprout off, as though it would end the debate.

Why is not believing that Satan exists a trick? To me, it makes no logical sense. Another thing these Satan-believing Christians repeat is that "if you believe in God, you have to believe in Satan because you can't have one without the other." Um...that's called dualistic thinking. To believe only in God is unitary thinking. Yes, you can believe in one but not the other. How? Simple. God is all-knowing and perfect. God created the entire universe. God did not create evil. God does not need an adversary. If God is all-knowing...what is the opposite? Obviously, ignorance. Where did ignorance come from? Humans! Since we do not know everything God knows, we make shit up. In our need to be right, we demonize people who disagree. Religions are created, wars are fought, people are killed because they didn't agree with what we believe in. It is our own ignorance that has created this evil. Remaining in ignorance is a form of evil. Refusing to evolve in our thinking is an affront to God.

When I was a teenager, I had to read Lord of the Flies in the 10th grade, then again in my new school in the 12th grade. As a sophomore, I didn't really get the meaning behind the story. As a senior, it dawned on me. There was no evil on that island. The fear in certain boys led to evil being committed. The boys were divided into two groups...one led by a fearful boy who succumbed to savagery, the other led by a boy who thought rationally and didn't let his fears control him or to use that fear to control others. The novel makes a pretty powerful statement about human nature, and of religion as well. For as long as I can remember, in attending other churches, I never liked the fear mongering and sermons that were all about hellfire and damnation. Fortunately, in the church I grew up in, sermons were more about our faith leading to miracles and the hope for a peaceful community of Zion. I rarely heard any talk of hell, damnation, or Satan until my parents started attending a contemporary Christian congregation within our church. The sermons I heard disturbed me, as people focused more on Satan and even blaming Satan for everything that goes wrong in their lives. That's why to this day, I believe Satan is a scapegoat for weak-minded individuals who need someone to blame for the problems in their lives.

No experience is more clear to me than what happened in 1995. I had decided to attend the Contemporary Christian Congregational retreat in Eatonton, Georgia, where my family would be as well as other church folks I knew. I was in the Navy living in Norfolk, Virginia at the time. On my way there, I drove through a torrential rainstorm. Visibility was so bad that I had to stop under an overpass and wait it out. The thoughts I had in my head as I watched the rain come down was one of awe. I thought about how lucky I was to be in my car and I even thought about what it would've been like traveling in a storm like this in the days of covered wagons. Mostly felt awe about the power and beauty of a storm.

I made it to the retreat safe and sound. During a testimony sharing time, two women who also traveled through that downpour actually said that they KNOW that Satan had sent that storm to prevent them from going to the retreat, but they made it and defeated Satan's plan. People applauded them and I was shocked that people actually view challenges that way. To this day, I lose respect for people if I hear them blame Satan for anything that goes wrong in their lives. Take responsibility for your lives!

Watching the Nightline special Face Off, I was actually impressed with Pastor Driscoll. Though I don't agree with all of his spiritual ideas, he did say the reason why he believed in Satan was because humans needed a choice between good and evil in order to utilize the gift of free will that God gives each person, so how can we know love if we don't face temptation and evil?

I'd love to check out his church sometime, perhaps as a YAPS event. We might learn something useful from him, even if we don't like everything he preaches (if I'm not mistaken, he advocates a more "masculine Christ" because he believes that the Jesus so many people think of is too feminized, thus why churches are heavily skewed towards female members as men turn to other interests that don't include religion). He doesn't come across as a Pat Robertson, James Dobson, or Jerry Falwell type of evangelical minister (who are nothing more than shucksters for the godless capitalist class who know that the Republican Party can't win elections without the ig'nant idiots of the Bible Belt). Despite his views, Driscoll does appear smart and sincere, with a desire to make peoples' lives better, and how can we fault a minister for that?

Whether Satan exists or not doesn't really matter to me. But just because I don't make it a point to find out doesn't mean I'm somehow tricked or conned. The Satan-believing Christians think that if you don't believe Satan exists, that means you are denying that evil exists, which I'm not doing. I know evil exists. We just disagree on the originator of the evil in our world. I attribute evil to ignorance or a lack of awareness in a person that his or her actions can have an adverse effect on others. The evil is rooted in the ego run amuck and ego is a part of the human body, not the spirit. I'm bothered when I hear people blame Satan for all that is wrong in their lives, because it's not taking responsibility or even seeing the possibility for what happened.

To give one personal example, probably the most evil that was ever done to me was when I was robbed at knifepoint by a gang of young men on the streets of Johannesburg. After the event happened and I was safely back in my hotel room, and for months afterwards, I never once attributed the event to Satan. I blamed myself for ignoring the warnings of everyone not to be out after sunset. I knew better and made a dumb mistake. I also believed that the young men had no choice but to resort to robbery because they lived in a country that discriminated against their race and where there weren't enough jobs to go around. It's the morality question posed by Victor Hugo's brilliant novel Les Miserables...when a man is starving, how can stealing a loaf of bread be a criminal act in a society that has plenty to go around? Bad situations can lead to blessings, as my robbery experience led to my spiritual renaissance, so how can it truly be evil? If Satan is behind it, he led me straight to the goodness and blessings of God.

Anyhow...I find it interesting that a lot of people I know who believe in Satan also seem to think the man in the photo below is a great Christian man. If I know anything at all, I'd wager that there is no Satan, but if there was, Dick Cheney would come the closest to it. The man just pulsates evil. Good thing he's not in power anymore, right?

Personal Power and Empathy

In a continuation with a few previous posts (see also: "Consulting the Oracle", "I Am a Powerful Being", and "I'm Blaming Jason for Killing a Friendship"), I wanted to write more about the Australian Dreamtime oracle reading I did for myself last Saturday. From the image above, that's the card that I drew for the "present" situation, in that same position.

When I read what each of the cards symbolized, I actually laughed out loud about the meaning behind the oracle card for "Uluru". That card represents power. The little hand you see on the card tells the reader that the card is considered in the reverse position, which has an opposite meaning. Because the card appeared with the little hand in the 9 o'clock position means that I am supposedly coming out of this reverse position into a position of power.

As it stands in the reading, however, the Uluru oracle card in the reverse position means that I had a loss of a sense of belonging (true). The definition in the book also said that I have been in a "dark night of the soul" (very true), which is a time of testing circumstances that challenges the existence of a spiritual force that operates for ultimate good. This darkness had plunged me into the depths of depression (also true). Though the card in the reverse position is a signal of difficulty, it's also a sign of hope.

I simply could not have drawn of more perfect card for my present situation, so I appreciated the message it was telling me. Since I first learned about "dark nights of the soul" earlier in this decade, I looked back over my life and counted the ones I've had. This current manifestation is my fifth official one and has lasted the longest and was the most intensely despairing. The good news is that the previous "dark night of the soul" periods ended in ecstatic bliss, with the one in August 2001 being the most profound. What I've learned through this process is that these periods happen as a "corrective measure" when you have gone off track from the goals your spiritual self had designed before you were born. We're allowed detours, though honestly, I never wanted to take a detour because I know from personal experience that when you are living the life your soul intended, everything flows in near perfect synchronicity. When you are off your path, nothing flows and you feel stagnant, stuck and depressed. The trick is always to learn the exact point where you went off track and why, and most importantly, what you need to do to get back on track.

The card I drew for the "future" was the Barramundi card, which has an image of two fishes. The basic meaning of this card is that any discord or lack of direction is an indication that I am still formulating what I seek in life (true). My power needs updating (very true). The card also indicates success in any endeavor that I am working towards, although the journey may not be entirely smooth and effortless. It also hints that a relationship is forthcoming and would go a long way in helping me find my successful career. This is something a psychic had told me in August 2007, emphasizing that a relationship was the way out of my quandry. I ignored the advice because I want to be established in a career first before I expend my energy in the search for the woman I want to marry.

Anyhow, these two cards in the 7-card layout was the most enlightening. A few weeks ago, I did finally feel like the worst has finally past. It's hard to explain, other than to say that I felt a moment when the "dark night of the soul" finally gave way to the dawn a couple weeks ago. What this means is that at work, I feel a lot happier and enthused even though the environment is as dysfunctional as ever. I don't let the managers' pettiness and aloof disregard for employee relations bother me anymore. I feel as though I am a powerful being, with a spiritual force that shields me from their negative energy. My goal is to keep up with this mindset and to "stay in the bliss" I feel at the moment. I truly am happy and optimistic that my day is coming soon.

This brings me to the other thing I wanted to write about...the lady I've known since 1996 who acted inappropriately in a Facebook debate with me about Obama's tax policies. We had a political debate on March 12 and 13 until she went personal and brought up past issues I had shared with her a decade ago that were personal in nature. She played dirty and violated what every therapist and counselor advises whenever people have "arguments" or discussions: always stick to the issue at hand. Never bring up past issues.

To her credit, she had sent me a personal email apologizing for bringing up my past issues in a public forum (though she did not apologize for bringing up the past issues at all). I debated whether or not to respond to her apology for a week, then decided that she was at least owed a response indicating that I had read her apology.

I explained in the email why what she did was wrong. I also explained that the issues she brought up were no longer issues I was dealing with because of my spiritual experience in 2001 when I received the answers I had been searching for regarding my relationship with my parents. That she still holds me to the same feelings I felt in 2000 and 2001 when I was living back in my parents house after I had failed to land my career in D.C. is unfair and wrong. That was a dark time in my life (much worse than my life has been the past couple years in this nightmare job). For example, she does not know that I actually enjoyed spending time with my parents in the summer of 2006 after I quit my job and moved back home to prepare for my move to Portland. My parents aren't perfect (no one is, including me), but I wouldn't trade them for anyone else's parents. I love them as they are and am grateful for all the things they've given me in life.

I also explained that the reason why I haven't shared the news of my life with her since 2002 was because she had dismissed my personal spiritual experience since it dealt with reincarnation, which she doesn't believe in. While most of my friends don't believe in reincarnation and that wasn't the issue, it was the way she came across (her spiritual experiences are true while I'm the deceived one, even though I had received the answers I had been seeking, which made logical sense to my mind). I realized in talking with her that I could no longer trust her and that we had little in common, other than belonging to the same church and our parents being pretty close friends with one another.

In 2005, I happened to be friendly with a lady at work whose world fell apart when her 24 year old son had committed suicide. In the aftermath, she learned that the people in the church she attended didn't behave in a Christlike manner (avoiding her like she was to blame or cursed). Because of my open-minded spirituality, she and I have had some really great conversations over the years and our friendship endures to this day. She is one of only a few people that I can talk openly about my spiritual experiences, and I am one she can talk about her spiritual experiences as well. I believe God does direct the right people into our lives, and as we let go of old friendships where the common bonds have dissolved, we pick up new ones. There is nothing wrong or bitter or angry about deciding not to maintain a friendship that has no meaning anymore.

When I explained this to her, she responded with accusations that I held anger and pain against her and once again reiterated that I still haven't gotten over my issues. I was shocked because I know what my feelings are. I'm a deeply introspective person who always asks myself when I'm feeling a particularly negative emotion "why am I feeling this way?" I love getting to the root source of all emotions. It's something I learned over this past decade, which was brilliantly explained in the film I Heart Huckabees. The process of deconstruction is very helpful into getting to the root source of all pain.

It is presumptuous of a person (who I haven't had a deep conversation with in years) to assume that I am the same person I was in 2001 when we did have those conversations. I was curious to see if I had ever sent her a Christmas card, so I checked my mailing list (I have kept a record that goes all the way back to 1987) and her name doesn't appear on the list for over a decade. And I practically send a Christmas card to everyone I value. Though the list can get pretty long (in 2000, I sent cards to over 80 people), I try to keep it around 50, so I will purge people from my list each year. My rule is, if I haven't received a Christmas card or at least one letter (in the course of the year) from a person for over two years, they are dropped from my list. New people are also added to the list as I meet them. It's telling to me that I never had an inclination to send this lady a Christmas card and newsletter since 1999.

In the final email I got from her, she made what I consider to be the most audacious question anyone has ever asked me. This is what she asked: "Have you ever wondered why I never developed a crush on you after all the social time we spent together?"

I was shocked by her question, not only because of what she asked, but how the question was phrased. It's hard to ignore the presumption in her words. What her question told me is that (1) she thought I had a romantic interest in her; 2) she thought I think in those terms; and (3) she presumed that I wanted that possibility.

Let me address those three things. When she and I first started hanging out together, it was as two friends going to a movie we both wanted to see. I told her from the very start that I saw her as nothing more than an older sister type. She is about a decade older than me with three children. Those two factors alone guaranteed that I would not be romantically interested in her. Additionally, I wasn't physically attracted to her nor intellectually attracted. Politically, I often suspected that she was a Republican and the Facebook debate confirmed it. In fact, last year when McCain selected Sarah Palin as a running mate, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was that this lady and her parents are exactly the kind of people Palin appeals to (because she's "just like them"!).

I know it might be hard for some people to understand, but men and women can be friends without having a physical or sexual attraction to one another. In all the times we hung out (which wasn't often because she lived in the far flung suburbs of Atlanta and she had children), the thought never occurred to me that she might have a crush or even wondering if she had a crush. If I'm not attracted to a lady, these thoughts simply don't enter my mind because I would be uncomfortable if I even considered the possibility of it happening, and if I did think that, I wouldn't spend any time with the lady I suspected had a crush on me if the feeling wasn't mutual. Just the thought that she might have a crush on me fills me with the kind of ick you feel when you hear the word "incest." Its because I always saw her as nothing more than a "big sister" (our families are like family to one another, since we have often spent the holidays together).

She said that the reason why she never had a crush on me was because of "the pain" I supposedly carry around. Another thing about her question that irked me is her presumption that just because she didn't have a crush doesn't mean that other women might not as well. I've been on the receiving end of a couple crushes recently and those women don't seem to find me depressing or toxic to be around. A lady that I'm interested in doesn't seem to be bothered when I share some of my frustrations about work, though I try to focus on only fun and positive things when I'm with her. I really do not like talking about work with people and don't understand why others do. The reason I focus my conversations on politics, international events, and spirituality is because I'm passionate about those topics and prefer to focus on what I love rather than what I hate.

So, I told this former friend of mine that there are many people in the world who are in relationships despite their having unresolved issues. To say that the reason why I'm not in a relationship because I have "unresolved issues" is her opinion with no understanding of my life. I'm not in a relationship because I'm not needy for companionship. I love living alone and independently and am patient in my search to find only the best match possible. Being alone doesn't scare me like it does some people. If I don't find the one in this lifetime, there's always the next lifetime for me. There is something that I want more than a relationship in this lifetime, which I'm pursuing. I see a relationship as a nice bonus, if I find the one I connect with on all four cylinders (emotional, spiritual, physical, and intellectual). But I won't settle for anything less out of some fear of being alone, because being in a miserable marriage is far worse than living alone with my freedom to travel or make decisions for myself without another person's consent.

I wrote a final email to this lady, being very careful in how I worded things so she wouldn't think I was finding fault with her and getting defensive. Basically, I said that she was entitled to her opinions and that she simply does not get me, but that's okay because I have not shared the details of my life with her in nearly a decade. I dissected the question she had asked me, letting her know that I was pleased that she didn't have a crush on me because that would've been awkward. I also told her that we didn't really have anything in common that makes for a long-term friendship, so I wished her well in her spiritual journey and that she would not have to worry about my presence in her life ever again.

Since I'll most likely see her at family or church events, I let her know that any conversation we have will only be on the surface level. One of the reasons why I had to leave Atlanta was because I desired to be actively involved in my church, but the local congregation was far outside the border of Atlanta to where it was impossible to attend without having a car. Also, the members of that congregation are far too conservative for my liking. Granted, I love a lot of the members whom I've known since 1988, but with most of them, I only talk at a surface level because we don't agree on much outside of our common church heritage. That's okay, though. I save my depth only for the people I consider "true friends"--the ones I feel like I've known for eternity and will continue knowing for eternity. This lady is not one of them.

After I sent the email, I walked back to my apartment and in the lobby was the Ethiopian guy, whom I love talking to. He told me that he was a counselor, which perked up my interest, so I asked him what makes for a successful counselor. We had an intersting conversation and later, I couldn't help but realize what perfect serendipity it was that he happened to be in the lobby and talking about something I am interested in. The lady I had just sent the email to had majored in psychology in college and once considered becoming a psychologist or counselor, until she realized that she didn't really want to hear people's problems all the time. She had her own issues to deal with, and when we first met, she talked my ear off about her marital woes. All I did was listen. Well, she couldn't return the favour, that's why she wasn't empathetic or understanding about the personal info I shared with her.

Talking with this Ethiopian guy made me realize that I would be a good counselor because I have empathy. I can listen to people's problems with a professional detachment and not get dragged down into their issues. The Ethiopian guy said that the role of a counselor is primarily to listen to people's stories and then search for the root source and help the person find the connection or to see it themselves. Perhaps this is the career path I should be seeking for myself, though I can't afford more school and am disinclined to go until I have a substantial portion of my debts paid off.

Anyhow, just conversing with him, I realized that empathy and understanding are the key ingredients to all of this and that's why I felt like I couldn't trust this lady anymore after my 2001 spiritual experience. She thought she had to help me solve "my issues" when I actually didn't want her to. I just wanted a person to hear me out and understand where I'm coming from, whether they agree or not. My personality is all about being understood, because I believe I understand most people at their essential being, whereas I feel like people don't understand me and don't want to. I suppose I shouldn't care if people understand me or not, so that's an issue for me to resolve.

Despite what this lady thinks, I do not harbour any bad feelings towards her. Each person who has come into my life has given me blessings and lessons to learn. With her, I learned to understand how true friends behave towards another and we just don't have enough in common to maintain a friendship. There's nothing wrong with bidding someone farewell and wishing them the best on their chosen paths. I am someone who is loyal to my small group of core friends, so that's where I prefer to expend my energies in maintaining these friendships. Someone who wants to psychoanalyze me all the time and keep reminding me of past issues I once shared with them aren't the kind of people I want to have around in my life. I have personal power and empathy and I want to use them where it will do the most good.

Fun Friday: Bond Theme Songs

Last November, when the latest Bond film hit theaters, I did a Flashback Friday on the best of James Bond. That particular post didn't really hit it big until February for some odd reason and it has been the most viewed post each week ever since. Now that Quantum of Solace is out on DVD, I decided to do a Fun Friday on a Bond theme. This time, the theme songs in a countdown from least favourite to my all-time favourite.

Ever since I watched the latest Bond film in theaters, I have been holding my own James Bond Film Festival, watching one or two per week, in order of release. I even watched Never Say Never Again in a double feature with Thunderball (the film the former one remade in 1983 under a competing studio). I'm up to The Living Daylights now, which is my favourite of the series and the one I've probably seen the most. It was interesting to watch the ones I've only seen a few times as a kid or teenager, so I appreciated viewing them as an adult with the ability to understand the plot. I didn't realize From Russia With Love was so good. My fondness for On Her Majesty's Secret Service holds up after all these years. And I still don't care for Dr. No very much. The villain is barely seen in the movie so I don't really get his motivation for evil. Diamonds Are Forever is better than I remembered it, but I can't believe they had that scene where the car enters through a narrow alley at an angle and is seen coming out on the opposite set of wheels. I had to replay that one with director commentary track to hear them explain that goof. My favourite moment in the film was when the elephant played the slot machine at Circus Circus Casino and got excited when it won. Hilarious!

One of the most moronic scenes is from The Spy Who Loved Me. I don't understand why Jaws drove the van all the way out to the ruins of some old temple (in Egypt). He knows the spies are in the back of the van but he parks the van, leaves the key in the ignition and runs away to play hide and seek with Bond and Agent XXX following him, then he chases them back to the van and tears it up before they escape. What a retard! I had a hard time buying that scene. There was no logical point to have them go all the way out to that temple ruins site. I bet the filmmakers just wanted to use that as a backdrop for an action sequence, for there was no other reason why the villain would do such a thing.

Moonraker was as I remembered...really good until they go up into space. Didn't like Live and Let Die much, or Thunderball. But I had forgotten how good Octopussy is. The Bond films from the 80s are my favourites.

Now we get to the list of my favourite theme songs (I'm not including the instrumental theme music that opens Dr. No and On Her Majesty's Secret Service), starting with my least favourite...

21. "You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell (from Casino Royale)

20. "Tomorrow Never Dies" by Sheryl Crow (for a woman with a string of catchy hit songs, this one was surprisingly bad)

19. "The World is Not Enough" by Garbage

18. "Another Way to Die" by Jack White and Alicia Keys (from Quantum of Solace)

17. "From Russia With Love" by Matt Monro

16. "Goldeneye" by Tina Turner

15. "Moonraker" by Shirley Bassey (my sister and I love to make fun of the "where are you?" line)

14. "Thunderball" by Tom Jones

13. "The Man With the Golden Gun" by Lulu

12. "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney and the Wings

11. "Nobody Does it Better" by Carly Simon (from The Spy Who Loved Me)

10. "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra

9. "We Have All the Time in the World" by Louis Armstrong (from On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

8. "All Time High" by Rita Coolidge (from Octopussy)


7. "Die Another Day" by Madonna

6. "Licence to Kill" by Gladys Knight

5. "Diamonds Are Forever" by Shirley Bassey

My mom thinks the line "diamonds never lie to me" is pretty funny.

4. "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey

This song has what I've thought since childhood was an elephant sound. It's pure classic. I wish they'd bring Shirley Bassey back for one more Bond theme song, since I really don't like most of the ones the came out after the 1980s heyday. She has an amazing voice.

3. "The Living Daylights" by a-ha

It was hard to decide which one I should put in second place. I really love this song, but everytime I hear Sheena Easton's song, I get chills. Her theme song always brings back some good memories and I love a great power ballad, so I have to give her song the edge over a-ha. Besides, she's incredibly sexy.

2. "For Your Eyes Only" by Sheena Easton

Sheena Easton was the first (and only) singer to appear in the title sequence. She does look like a Bond girl. Interestingly enough, Madonna is the only singer to have a cameo role in the Bond films.

1. "A View to a Kill" by Duran Duran

The only Bond theme song to hit #1 on the singles chart. It is the quintessential 80s pop song, featuring one of the most popular bands of that era. I never get tired of listening to it. They really capture the spirit and excitement of the Bond movies in a song. If you ever doubted that this was pure 80s pop, the title sequence in the film makes use of neon colours, which was popular during that decade (hard to believe now...but how did the 80s end up so neon and pastel?). If pop music is so bad, why do most of the Bond theme songs since 1995 suck?!?

Bon...Simon LeBon (of Duran Duran)

Consulting the Oracle

Saturday night, I decided to try it. I consulted the oracle. Okay...not "the" Oracle, but "an" oracle. The new journal I'm keeping this year has various pages to mark things like gratitude, blessings, goals, as well as an oracle cards layout four times a year (during the equinoxes and solstices). If you're familiar with TAROT cards, then you know what oracle cards are. Last year sometime, I found an interesting oracle card set with an Australian theme, so I just had to buy it since I'm a sucker for all things Aussie.

Though I'm not completely sold on TAROT cards and other forms of oracles, I am open minded enough to give it a try. The information revealed was actually quite stunningly accurate. How does that happen? My experience with TAROT cards goes back to 1994 when a lady I knew was really into them and gave me readings. I had her give me a reading before my trip to South Africa. The cards basically warned me that something bad would happen. I didn't believe it, and I ended up getting robbed. She also did a reading for the supervisor of the Palau Community Center, where I worked at the time. We laughed when the cards revealed that he had a lot of problems with his wife, which was true. She was always causing trouble at the Palau Community Center and angering people who didn't hang out there to deal with her dramas.

After I moved back to the states, I became more involved in my church and stayed clear of TAROT cards. Some claim that they are evil and put them in the same category as Ouija boards and seances. For me personally, I think of TAROT and oracle cards as nothing more than information. Sometimes, it helps to have something to spark an idea you didn't consider. Or it can bring clarity to the problem you're pondering.

As one who is interested in ancient Greek mythology, the most fascinating aspect to me is the Oracle at Delphi (pictured above). The most famous story of the Oracle comes from Plato. The Oracle called Socrates the wisest man in Athens, to which Socrates was baffled as to how he could be considered the wisest since he claimed to know nothing. That's the ultimate irony and paradox of the story.

In The Matrix trilogy, my favourite character is the Oracle. In the scene above, from The Matrix Reloaded, she tells him one of the most profound spiritual ideas I've ever heard in a movie. It deals with free will choice. If the Creator (or "Architect") knows the choices you are going to make, how can anything you do be considered "free will"? It's the question that has stumped people for millennia. The Oracle told Neo that he already made the choice. His purpose now was to understand why he made that choice.

That kind of sums up some of my beliefs, because I believe that we existed before we were born and we made the choice of who we're going to be, who our friends are, and what kind of issues we would be dealing with during our lifetime on earth. So, we had free will choice in the spiritual realm, and on earth, we have to understand why our souls made the choices it made. I can testify to personal experience that the most profound spiritual experience I ever had occurred in 2001 after a year long search for answers to my questions. I got the answers to my "whys" in the most ecstatically blissful experience I ever had. I achieved a level of understanding I never had before and its what I'd call an enlightenment experience. I'd love to have another experience like that soon, after my long search for a better and more meaningful job.

Above is a picture of the box my Australian oracle cards set came in. I love the artwork on the cards, using aboriginal style art with various animals and scenes that Australia is well known for (including the Sydney Harbour Bridge). Each card (I believe there's about 46 of them) is round with one image (or connected images with symbolic meaning). The book gives a background story on the Aboriginal legend for that particular image. In this way, I get to learn all about "Dreamtime", which is the Aboriginal belief system for the creation of the world. I love learning about it.

The card below is one of the sample cards from the oracle deck. I actually drew this particular card in my reading on Saturday.

Basically, the meaning behind this card is that one should focus on taking pleasure in our creativity, and in that process, our needs will be met. Since this card appeared upside down in my reading, it means that I haven't found my path in life yet and my focus is diffused with procrastination as a pitfall. Actively pursuing my dreams will generate an influx of new energy which will propel me back into the right direction.

For Saturday's post, I will write more about my Aussie oracle reading, especially the cards that deal with the present and future. I laughed when I read the meanings behind the card I drew for "the present." I believe this ties in with the recent hashing out of issues I had with the lady I wrote about a couple weeks ago who acted inappropriately on Facebook, so it should be an interesting, yet quite personal post worth writing about.

Above is an example of Greek artwork depicting a visit to the Oracle.

My church has an ordinance that I consider similar to that Greek concept. We call it "the Evangelist's Blessing." What it entails is that the person seeking a special guidance for his or her life will approach a member of the church who holds the priesthood office of Evangelist and meet to discuss it. The seeker is given a few scripture verses to read and ponder. There is also some prayer involved, and to show the serious nature of the request, the seeker will be asked to "fast" something for a week.

In 1999, I decided to get my Evangelist's Blessing because I was nearing the end of my college experience and the timing was right for one. The evangelist I specifically chose to give my blessing was a woman at the Salt Lake Congregation. In the past, the blessing was called a "Patriarchal Blessing" but they changed it once women were allowed to hold priesthood offices (after 1984). I was relieved they changed the name sometime in the 1990s, because I have a difficult time pronouncing "patriarchal." Since I was at BYU at the time and Mormons don't believe that women should hold the priesthood, I specifically chose a female evangelist to give mine so I would have personal confirmation that a woman is every bit as capable of serving in priesthood roles and conducting official and sacred ordinances as men are. I've heard all the Mormon and Catholic arguments against women holding the priesthood and disagree, and my blessing did indeed turn out to be profound and immensely helpful.

I fasted music for the week. The Evangelist told me it could be anything I wanted it to be, but it had to be something I considered important. Since I couldn't live without listening to music at some point in my day, I thought this was a good thing to fast. And it turned out to be more complicated than I thought. I unplugged my portable stereo and hid my CDs for the week. My roommates knew me as the guy who would study late at night in the living room while music from the TV Guide channel played in the background, so that was out. I had to remember not to turn on the radio in my car. Even going to a store, if I heard music play, I would walk back out and wait to get whatever I needed to get after my fast finished. I couldn't even watch a movie that week for fear that a song would play during some scenes.

During this week, I read the scripture verses, pondered the stories and meanings, prayed, and was ready to interview again and set the date for the blessing. It was a cool experience to not listen to music for a full week. A week without music! I felt like my intuitive abilities were enhanced. I should try that again, just to see how I feel at week's end. Trouble is, I work with a lady who always plays the radio, so that won't work.

In the summer of 1999, I received my Evangelist's Blessing in the same Salt Lake church where I was baptized as an eight year old in 1980. Someone took my picture but I haven't converted it to digital yet (my ongoing project this year). The Evangelist put her hand on my head and gave the prayer that she, too, had prayed and fasted over. The prayer is recorded and converted into a nice paper copy that the World Headquarters of the church sends later on. It truly is a sacred experience for me to read the prayer whenever I need guidance. Is it accurate? Yes. And the Evangelist didn't really know me, so that's why its so profound.

Though I won't ever post the contents of it on my blog, I will share a snippet of what it said about me. Basically, the blessing said that I was the type of person who would never follow the conventional path that others might lay before me, and because of this, I would travel a rockier path, which I'm capable of doing with God's guidance. Though it wasn't part of the blessing, the Evangelist told me that I was blessed to have a look that can blend in anywhere, which makes travel to exotic places less dangerous for me than it would be for someone else. Its because of her saying this that makes me wonder if I am meant to work in Iraq or Afghanistan for year.

So, there it is. I view my church's sacred ordinance of the Evangelist's Blessing as a modern-day "oracle" that the Greeks practiced. Though it might horrify some in the church to compare the two, I can't help it. In the year I received my Evangelist's Blessing, I also saw a popular film that featured a character named "The Oracle." Pretty profound, I think.

The Tram is Not a Scam by Sam

Last Wednesday, I finally rode in Portland's Aerial Tram to "Pill Hill" as locals refer to the gi-normous hospital complex on the hill overlooking the city of Portland. Awesome view!

The point of my trip was to drop off an application for a position with the Veterans Affairs hospital. Application procedures for government jobs are long, and this one required short answers for five questions. Felt like I was in college again! The trouble with government jobs is that you spend a lot of time reading the instructions, filling out paperwork, and checking and double checking that everything is in order. Then you wait and wait and wait. Maybe you'll hear from them, but most likely you don't. Until you get a letter or a postcard thanking you for your interest. I've heard that the trick is to apply to every government job you qualify for on a regular basis, just so your name becomes familiar that they'll have to pick you eventually. We'll see. I tend to do well on essay and short answers and wish that all jobs required it. In 2006, a job I had applied with Tri-Met required short answers and it landed me an interview, which I cancelled after I got hired where I work now. So, I'm feeling good about my chances. My day is coming.

The point of the post, however, is that I wanted to write about the Tram, which many Portlanders were against. I wasn't a resident here when the deal was made, but I've read old articles online as well as comments by long-time residents. The Tram was one of City Commissioner Sam Adams' pet projects. He really pushed for it and it was connected to the Portland Streetcar (from my apartment, I hopped on the Streetcar to the South Waterfront District to catch the Tram to the top of the hill, walked the labyrinth of the connecting hospitals, dropped off my application paperwork and returned. All told, the trip took a little over one hour. Not bad!). The project ended up costing more than projected (don't all government boondoggles?), but is it really that bad? Projects like these (with the "unforeseen" cost overruns) earned the City Commissioner-turned-current Mayor the nickname "Scam Adams."

However, despite the cost of the project, I think it was a great idea and one that should make its money back. If Portland needed a tourist landmark, the Tram might be the closest thing to one...though once you get to the top, you're right at the door of the hospital complex, which is not exactly the kind of place tourists would want to visit by choice. They should have a special observance platform and something that might draw tourists into staying up on the hill for an hour or more. As it is now, the Tram is mostly used as a commuter connection (between the job site and the streetcar line). It's Portland's version of the Washington State Ferry System.

The view from the Tram is unbeatable though. The weather was good last week, so I easily saw Mount Hood in the distance. When the Tram first started operating, a man who lived in one of the homes below put a sign on his roof with a choice profanity as a protest against what he feels is a violation of his privacy. I can understand his concern...but how can you not love a Tram?!? Ever since childhood, I've always loved vacations where we got to ride in one to the top of the mountain. In my hometown of Stone Mountain, Georgia, they have a nice tram to the top, though you can also walk. And one of my all-time favourite James Bond action scenes occurred on a Tram in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in Moonraker.

It might take a few years, but I think the Tram will be one of Portland's "things visitors must experience" while they are in town. All the city planners need to do to make this more of a reality, though, is to create something worth making the journey to the top of the hill, besides a hospital. Maybe something along the lines of a Cristo Redentor statue...but with a local reference (a giant salmon statue?). Portland needs a landmark. Its time for the creative city dwellers to brainstorm! We can outdo the Space Needle, can't we?

The Writing Life

The photo above was taken earlier this month at the Writer's Dojo in St. Johns, where I go on Saturdays or Sundays to write, edit, and focus on my writing aspirations. That particular Sunday was an open house for members and I met a few people (including the poet you see in red, and an aspiring director). It's nice to fellowship with other creative types, because writing is a solitary artform. But as you can tell from my blog, I love writing and never seem to run out of things to write about. This is a guy who wrote a 700-page novel before editing it down to 570 pages. Still haven't found an agent. In my search for a better job, I have put it on a backburner, but maybe its time I pursue that again.

For about a year, I had promised an old friend from high school a copy of it. I kept promising to send it but never did until last week, when I mailed a copy of the first section of the novel (it's divided into four parts). On Saturday, he sent me an awesome email giving me his first impression of what he read. Since I had based my novel on experiences in my Senior year in high school and the Navy enlistment, this friend of mine was familiar with some of the people who served as characters in the first section of the novel, which covers the senior year. Now he wants to read the whole thing, so I looked to see if I had an extra copy of the entire manuscript in my apartment and sure enough, I did. So, I will be sending that along this week.

Saturday night, I read through parts of my novel after not having looked at it for over a year and not to be boastful or anything, but I thought, "damn, this is really good! It needs to be published." Seriously! I've never felt more passionate about anything in my life than I do about this novel and the importance of it. I believe it makes a statement about what it really means to be a man and I cover so many ideas in there, but the plot structure is pretty strong. It took me years to develop the story idea. The original idea was sparked in November 1989. I didn't start writing it until December 2000. I finished it in December 2004. I edited it down three times in 2005. I've been seeking an agent ever since.

What is this novel about, you ask? Well...in a nutshell, I wanted to write a coming of age story based on my life. Basically, an idealistic teenager is struggling to make sense of the world in a time when the old ideas are falling apart at the end of the Cold War. Through an inspiring teacher, who turns out to be an atheist activist, he learns a lesson in tolerance that he carries into his Naval enlistment when confronted with issues of patriotism, human sexuality, and the meaning of loyalty. With this novel, I wanted to connect the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s with the military's homophobic hysteria of the 1990s. What does it mean to be a man and what is homophobia all about? When I was in the Navy, if you mentioned having a tolerance for homosexuals, people automatically questioned your orientation.

At the same time this was going on, the Navy was under scrutiny for the sexual harassment of female aviators at a Las Vegas convention in 1991. What is it about the male gender that can be sexually aggressive towards women on one hand, while being absolutely paranoid that some gay guy will rape them in the showers or their racks at night? What is manhood all about?

Anyhow, that's what my novel covers. I think it reads pretty quick for 570 pages. But I understand that its a hard sell for a first novel to be so long. Most agents and publishers look at the 300 page range, which the novel I want to write next will have no problem being because I want to write a simpler story that focuses on two individuals, which is taken from an experience I was aware of as a teenager and felt a personal connection to. However, I have resisted writing this one because of the dark content (it deals with a serial killer who befriends a lonely teenage boy in search of a father figure). Not that I'm afraid to write dark content...it's just that I'm aware how energy works and with my focus on finding a new job, I need to be as upbeat and optimistic as possible. Writing that first novel of mine really brought up a lot of issues I dealt with in the Navy, so it was emotionally exhausting (but I also had a spiritual experience upon completing it like you wouldn't believe). I love writing, but it uses up a lot of energy, which I need to attract the right job opportunity into my life. I feel really close to that possibility right now, so I can afford to wait on this writing project for a couple more months.

My ideal life is to be a novelist. If not a best-selling literary one, then at least one that makes enough money for the publishers to keep them wanting to publish my next one. My goal is to have a published novel every two years (I would not be like Stephen King or James Patterson who put out several books a year or even like Nicholas Sparks and John Grisham, who publish one per year). There are eight stories I'd like to work on, all literary in design. The first one is about the Navy. The second one, I already mentioned. The third will be about a CIA agent who learns in the spiritual realm that everything he worked for and believed in was a lie, so he has to pay the price in his next life by chosing characteristics and situations that repay the karmic debt. The fourth one will be a courtship and dating story based on old courtesan tales from the medieval ages, but set in the modern day. I'm excited to start working on all of them, but it's hard when my main priority is to land a new job. Looking for work is a full time job in itself, but I'm not going to quit until I land a new job. Once that happens, then I can finally put to rest the 26-month long job search and focus my free time on writing my next novel as I continue to submit my first novel to agents.

Life would be so much easier if I didn't love to write and have this burning desire since I was in elementary school to be a novelist someday. It's the vision for my life that never dies, even though the statistics are against you and there are many writers out there who feel the same way about their works. We are in competition for fewer and fewer readers, who have more and more distractions (video games, DVDs, iPods, Internet, Twitter, BlackBerries). America used to be more literary before the onset of the 1960s, I think. When you think about Kerouac being hounded by groupies in a way that rockstars are now, it's difficult to think of any writer today that would get such attention. I've been in plenty of homes where I did not see a single book or even a bookcase. Hard to imagine, especially for a guy like me, when people's first comments about seeing my place is to mention the amount of books I own. Yeah, its an addiction. But, I'm a writer and that's my life. Wouldn't want it any other way.

Music Video Monday: Gary Jules

For this week's music video selection, I decided on a song that is in the running to end up as my favourite song of this decade: "Mad World" by Gary Jules. The song was featured in the film Donnie Darko. The brilliance in the song is that Jules improved upon Tears for Fears upbeat version, making it a more haunting and thus memorable version. I simply cannot listen to it enough. I always get chills when I listen to it.

A couple years ago, at a YAPS retreat in a cabin in the Snoqualmie National Forest, we had a special service where this song was played and we reflected on the darkness in our own lives. It still remains as one of the most memorable weekends I've ever been a part of and I was especially pleased to know that other young adults in my church have taken to this song.

I hope you listen and enjoy.

Bromance and Breastaurants

Friday night, I went to see I Love You, Man because I needed to see a good comedy for once. For weeks, I've been in the mood to watch a truly hilarious comedy...a laugh out loud til it hurts so bad because I can't stop laughing kind of comedy. The other night, I was hoping Happy-Go-Lucky would be that film, but I didn't laugh once. Despite an interesting premise (a perpetually happy lady who annoys everyone she comes into contact with), it was more "Crappy-Go-Sucky" than anything else, which confirms to me that British humour is so not my humour. Never liked Monty Python movies either. The last funny movie I saw was Tropic Thunder, but it wasn't as funny as I'd hope it would be (I only thought Robert Downey, Jr., Tom Cruise, and Matthew McConaughey were hilarious). Where are the funny movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Down With Love, I Heart Huckabees?

I Love You, Man is billed as the first "bromantic comedy." I'm not sure who coined the term "bromance" but I first heard it a couple years ago on Big Brother All Stars, when winner of season 2, Will Kirby (the evil genius) educated housemates (and the audience) about the differences between "bromance", "romance", and "ho'mance." We all know "romance" (or think we do), but "bromance" is the kind of mutual admiration and love that straight men have towards each other (think George Clooney and Brad Pitt, with all their mutual admiration for each other and constant ribbing over which one has been selected by People magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year issue). "Ho'mance" is nothing more than a booty call that won't lead to a relationship.

The premise of I Love You, Man is simple. Paul Rudd plays a guy who is a serial monogamist. Since adolescence, he has been in one committed relationship after another. He's a "girlfriend guy" who doesn't have a single male friend. Yes, there are actually guys like this. My sister fell for a guy in college who didn't have male friends and basically treated my sister as his "guy friend" to confide in, which confused my sister. It's pretty sad, actually. I believe it's important for people to have same gender friends. One article I read in Time magazine about actor Paul Rudd and this film, the writer claimed that men are biologically programmed to ditch friends after marriage, not gain them. As much as I want to disagree with it, I can't...because I've seen too many friends disappear after marriage. I don't understand this because I don't see women ditch their female friends after marriage. Women are better at maintaining friendships while men seem to let friends go and focus completely on their wives. I have a theory that doing this is part of what causes the midlife crisis, which can turn men into assholes as they dump their wives for younger versions and a convertible. There's nothing wrong with having a male best friend after you're married. Men and women think differently and interests may not coincide on everything.

In the film, Paul Rudd's character is so clueless about how to strike up conversations with other men that he has to get advice from his gay brother, who knows the difference between striking up a friendly conversation versus sending the wrong signals. Throughout the film, Rudd has an easy way with women and seems to prefer their company. His sensibilities tend towards the female side (his favourite day is snuggling with his girlfriend, watching Chocolat). He bungles male bonding moments at a poker game during guy night, or tries to act like James Bond and gets the facts wrong, such as margarita instead of martini.

The reason he's searching for a guy friend? After proposing to his girlfriend and later overhearing her tell girlfriends that she doesn't know who will serve as Best Man and Groomsmen for her Maid of Honour and Bridesmaids, he decides to actively search for a guy friend. Thus, the film follows the formula of a romantic comedy (with a cast of quirky sidekicks) and you can count on gay jokes (Paul Rudd had a funny repartee with another character in The 40 Year Old Virgin as they tried to one-up one another in the whole "Know how I know you're gay?" jokes). There are some good laugh out loud moments, situations that ring true in my own experience with male friendships over the years and being on two all male ships in the U.S. Navy. Gay jokes are a part of guy humour. Male camaraderie might be hard for women to understand, because men and women are different in how they approach same gender friendships.

For example, when I visited one of my best friends Nathan ten years ago and met his girlfriend (who has been his wife for almost nine years now), she was shocked by how we spoke to one another. He and I have playful riffs on each other and when we fell into our routine, she thought we were rude to each other. When we explained to her that this is how we talk to one another, she looked surprised and then said, "with my friends, we just hug!" Later, when it was just Nathan and I, he mocked her statement to me, because he thought it was hilarious.

When I was in the Navy, my second ship had a crew that was 30% female. After being on an all male ship for my first year and a half, I was excited for the dating opportunities of a mixed gender ship. Still, I had the male camaraderie thing going and I was shocked when I heard a girl say that she wished she was a guy because she liked how guys acted with one another. I thought that was an odd thing to say because I've never heard a guy wish that he was a girl. The genders are different, and that's okay. Some guy humour can be a bit too crude even for my liking, but what is it about guy culture? A few years ago, a female co-worker in Atlanta told me that she didn't like watching The Bachelorette show on TV because the guys were so drama free and seemed to get along with one another like it was a fraternity. She preferred The Bachelor shows because she loved seeing the jealousies and cattiness among the women. I've heard other women say that they hate working with other women because of the cattiness. I've worked in all male environments and now work in a majority female environment. Both have pluses and minuses. I fall in the in-between...where I am equally bored by sports talk and by shopping talk. Neither are very interesting to me, thus why I easily fall for a woman who talks international politics. I love substance, not frivolity.

As for camaraderie, the reason homophobia is rampant is because guys show affection in ways women might find odd, but there's a fine line. Guys need to feel safe that the way we show affection towards one another is not mistaken for something else. That's why there are plenty of gay jokes in male culture. Nothing freaks guys out more than having your camaraderie mistaken for something more than just that. There's a reason why the military believes that homosexuals undermine unit cohesion and morale, though I think the attitudes are gradually changing with each generation. The term "bromance" shows that a new breed of male has emerged: one comfortable in his masculine and heterosexual identity not to worry how people interpret his camaraderie with other men.

I Love You, Man is a good film with some laugh out loud moments, but I was hoping for something a little more real and less formulaic. I had a hard time buying the idea that the two men in the "bromance" would actually be friends. Paul Rudd, however, did remind me a lot of my roommate in Washington, D.C. (who has disappeared into his marriage, which I kind of thought he would). I guess some guys are completely satisfied having just one friend who is their everything (best friend, wife, lover). On the flip side, when I was in the Navy I knew a guy who still acted like he was single even though he was married (to a gorgeous lady) and basically referred to her (among the guys) as "in house pussy." I thought that was disrespectful and a bad motive for marriage. I wasn't surprised when they divorced. There is a balance, I believe. I would not be the type to have a weekly guy night but I would not want to give up having male friends either. I like balance. Balance is good. Both scenarios (frequent guy nights vs. abandoning all male friends) seem too extreme and unhealthy.

Shifting gears slightly, Nightline a couple weeks ago talked about a restaurant trend that has been booming in these tough economic times. They call it "Breastaurants." It started with Hooters, where busty women have a preference in hiring and have to wear the standard uniform of a tight T-shirt and bright orange shorts. On my last ship in the Navy, the guys would debate whether or not it was okay for Hooters to discriminate in its hiring practices. In the news at the time was a guy who filed a suit against the restaurant chain claiming discrimination. The guys I worked with held a party at Hooters and asked if I was going. I asked them if the food was any good, and when they said, "food is not the reason you go there!" I declined. What was the point? Perky cheerleader types who wouldn't give me the time of day outside of the premises acting fake so they could get a nice tip on bland food?

If there was a restaurant with an international lineup of females who approach my table and start telling me about what's going on in Uzbekistan, I would be all over them in a heartbeat! The way to my heart is through my brain and I love it when women tell me something I don't know about our world (celebrity gossip shit doesn't count). A restaurant like Hooters that serves its waitresses as mere meat for male customers is degrading for both genders. Yet, its one of few restaurants that has seen an increase in customers in the economic downturn. Nightline sought to explain it. Basically, guys of all ages like flirting with pretty young things but its the oldest trick in the book. Women know how to manipulate money out of men's wallets and into their own. There's nothing wrong with flirting, but when I know I have zero chance with the lady and she's only being friendly to garner a nice tip, that's a game I don't play.

I thought Hooters was a unique phenomenon...one of those Southern redneck contributions to the degrading of our culture, but according to Nightline, there are two other Texas-chains along the same theme. One of them was named after the 1990s television drama Twin Peaks, complete with plaid tops and cherry pie. I'll admit that I would actually like to eat there, since I watched a few shows in the spring of 1990. Though it's not connected to the show, I think its hilarious that someone decided to take on Hooters' unique niche and all of them are doing well in these difficult times. Men are easily entertained, I guess. It's sad that our society continues to promote physical perfection over a developed mind as an ideal. Why is intelligence so hard to find? Staring at a waitress's bustline might make a nice fantasy over chicken wings, but I know enough to know that she won't be going home with me after her shift, so why spend my money there? I'd rather meet a lady at a political or cultural function and click in a way where ideas are exchanged, not money for service.

No Way Back From Iraq

The past two years, on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, I participated in the Anti-War rally, which attracted 15,000 protestors in 2007, and maybe a little bit less last year. This year, I have no idea if they are having it, for the groups that sponsored it the past two years haven't sent around emails or posted flyers. I'm not surprised. With Bush no longer in the White House, it would seem kind of weird to protest against Obama, who voted against the war resolution in the Illinois state legislature.

I'll be honest, though. The reason I participated in the Anti-War march through Portland was because I felt a need to do something to show my hatred of the Bush presidency. I know it's not a very Christian thing to admit or to feel, but I couldn't help it. I hated everything Bush represented and I hated his politics and foreign policy and disregard for the majority who voted against him in 2000. Then in 2003, he dismissed our European allies as "old Europe" just because they wouldn't support his war (the French know all about the folly of quagmire wars, since they endured Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s; and everyone with a brain would understand why Germany would be cautious about going to war). The millions of people around the world who marched against war on the eve of invasion was dismissed by Dickless Cheney as a mere "focus group." Pre-emptive wars doesn't sound like the kind of thing Jesus (Bush's favourite political philosopher, remember?) would do. So, in 2007, I made a great sign accusing Bush of being the fraud Jesus had warned about (taken from Matthew 7:24-29). Lots of people took my picture. Possibly even FBI agents. I'm sure it's in my personal FBI file somewhere in D.C.

I loved participating in the march through Portland. I felt a bond with the others. I enjoyed seeing the various homemade signs with the creative slogans. I saw the rallies as a healthy way to vent all my anger at the reckless and immoral and illegal administration. I participated to make a stand against the president I have hated since the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision that installed him into the White House. My feelings about the war in Iraq itself was mixed. Now that Bush is out of the spotlight and no longer in control of our country, I see no need to participate in any rally, if they even have one. Obama may be our president, but Iraq presents a serious problem for our country.

Though President Obama may want most of the troops out of Iraq by August 2010 (in time for his first mid-term election, where he's hoping to increase Democratic numbers in Congress), I just don't believe it's possible for one simple reason: I R A N. Simple logic tells you that we are committed to the security of the Iraqi government indefinitely. In 1980, a year after the coup that brought him to power, Saddam Hussein launched a brutal war against Iran that lasted eight years. Iran lost a generation of men in that war. Ayatollah Khomeini had said that making peace with Saddam in 1988 was "worse than poison." Now, if you are an Iranian who most likely knew a family member to have died in that war, would you want Iraq free to possibly raise up another dictator? It shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that after the U.S. government knocked out Saddam's brutal regime, we essentially did Iran a favour (we also got rid of their other enemy, the Taliban, in their other neighbouring country of Afghanistan--which kind of makes you wonder if Bush and Cheney are secret agents of the Iranian government). From the perspective of the Iranians, Americans leaving Iraq next year is a GREAT THING. They will finally be able to get their revenge on Iraq for that brutal war by ensuring that the Iraqi government is controlled by Shi'ite Muslims (which is the predominate faith of Iran and Iraq, as opposed to the Sunni Muslims, who were favoured by the secular Saddam, and who make up the majority in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf region).

For this reason alone, I am opposed to the U.S. leaving Iraq anytime soon. I know it's the complete opposite of most Americans. I was against the war in 2003 because of the weak case Bush made for war and the law of unintended consequences (which is the idea that things never turn out the way you plan, because you set a chain reaction in motion that might boomerang back to the originator in a disasterous way that makes things worse off than before). Most Americans supported the war because the Republicans knew how to sell it ("we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"). Americans are a fickle, flaky lot. We are supposed to ask tough questions and really tear apart the rationales for war to expose the president's true motives. At least, that's what Republicans did when it was Clinton in the White House who was trying to sell Americans on war in Kosovo. When it's a Republican president, though, questioning his motives is considered treasonous. Even the mere suggestion that they were motivated by obtaining control of Iraqi oil fields was considered preposterous and not worthy of debate. That hypocritical double standard is the prime reason why I hate the Republican Party with a passion and hope that they never be allowed to run our government again. I want them to go the way of the Whigs...into the dustbin of history (its time to revive the Federalist Party, made up of corporate capitalists types and create a separate party for the fundamentalist wackos, thus guaranteeing that they'll be minority status for the far forseeable future).

So, how do we solve the problem of Iraq? President Obama needs to convince "old Europe" to commit peacekeeping forces to the coalition Bush failed to assemble (token troops from minor countries hardly counts as a grand coalition like the one his father managed to put together in 1990-1991). I know that Europe will balk at sending any troops to Iraq, but this is where he can make a deal. The only way out of this situation is to put Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Perle on trial for international war crimes. Conservatives will cry treason, but who cares? They have no credibility anymore. It's easy to commit a country into an endless quagmire, much harder to exit. Iraq is like quicksand for our country. We sink deeper into the quagmire, but are we truly willing to risk an Iraqi-government controlled by the mullahs in Iran?

Since Bush and company put American in this tough position (not to mention wrecking our economy because of the tax cuts and borrowing money to pay for two costly wars), they should be sacrificed in order to bring our European allies into this nation building project. It's the only wise solution I can see, because if we allow Bush to get away with what he did to our country, a future president might see starting a war as a good way to increase his or her power. This is exactly what our Founding Fathers feared, thus why they included a clause for impeachment ("high crimes and other misdemeanors." Which is more serious to national security? Waging illegal war or getting a blowjob?) and why they put the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, not the presidency.

But, President Obama isn't going to do that. Bush and his cronies will get away with their crimes and the war now becomes Obama's problem. Mark my words, though. We will not be leaving Iraq in August 2010. You can quote me on it.

Flashback Friday: Biloxi Blues

Since today marks an important anniversary date in my life (the day I went to Basic Training in 1991), I decided what better film review for this week's Flashback Friday than the film I watched in preparation for my boot camp experience.

I learned in Basic Training that many of the other guys watched Full Metal Jacket to prepare themselves for experience, thus they had a completely different mindset going in than I did.

People always laugh whenever I mention that Basic Training was the greatest experience of my life. Eighteen years later and the record still stands. Yeah, my internship for Vice President Gore and the BYU Washington Seminar experience runs a very close second, but its just hard to beat what I consider my liberation experience. Oh, the irony! I found personal freedom in the very place where we didn't have any freedom or privacy for nine weeks.

I had enlisted in the Navy on June 19th, 1990 and wanted to ship off to basic at the latest possible date, which was in mid-May of 1991. I wanted enough time to prepare myself mentally and physically. After I went on my first solo trip across country for three weeks (via Greyhound) in January 1991 to visit my best friend Nicholas in Omaha and my grandparents in Atchison, I knew I was ready to leave for basic as soon as possible, so I asked to move the date up. March 20th was the soonest I could go, which worked out well. When my company was in the last week of training in mid-May, I remember looking at the incoming new recruits with their full head of hair and civilian clothes and thinking, "that would be me right now if I hadn't switched!"

To prepare myself mentally, I read books about guys experience in Vietnam (the only military books available), including the "Letters Home from Vietnam" to get an idea of what it was like in the military. I talked to my dad and uncles about their boot camp experiences. My crazy fundamentalist Christian uncle's advice? "Don't drop the soap!" Har-har, he's such a comedian.

What really captivated me in the late summer and fall of 1990 was a book of Neil Simon's play, Biloxi Blues, which I bought and read, before deciding that I had to see the movie. I found an off-rental copy for sale at Blockbusters and bought it. The film came out in 1988 but I don't remember hearing about it in theaters, so I missed out. I've seen only a few movies that take place in Basic Training (The D.I., Stripes, Private Benjamin, and one made for TV movie in the early part of this decade) but none come close as Biloxi Blues to what I experienced. From reading the play and watching the film version, I immediately identified with the character played by Matthew Broderick. He kept a journal that gets him in trouble when others discover it and read the unflattering remarks he wrote of the other guys. I saw this as a warning for my own journal writing. Yes, I did take a blank book with me to Basic Training and I tried to keep up with it every day. At the end of the experience, I had my company mates sign in the back and its one of those things that I treasure reading back over.

Matthew Broderick is hilarious in Biloxi Blues. I love his wit and aspire to be just as witty. However, his comments often got him in trouble with the drill instructor. One of the important lessons I learned from this movie that prepared me well for my own basic training experience was the mind game the drill instructor (or company commander) plays on the recruits. To create division and discord, the D.I. (or CC) will punish the entire company for the mistakes of the individual, while exempting the offending individual from the punishment. Since I knew going in that this tactic would most likely be used, I didn't fall into the resentment trap like others guys did. I just went along with it as part of the game.

What amazes me about this movie is how timeless it is (a sign of a classic). Even though its set during the World War II era, the interactions of guys haven't changed much. The issues they faced were the same ones we faced in 1991 (race, religion, obsession with ratting out the homosexual). Christopher Walken as the Drill Instructor is a brilliant bit of casting (I love the unique way he speaks). While the film does a great job for most of its story, plot and running time, I thought the resolution was kind of weak. It's almost too predictable that someone ends up going crazy and probably a cliche. But, oddly enough, in my own basic training company, one guy did go crazy and another guy ate suntan lotion in a lame attempt to commit suicide.

Maybe basic training is a rite of passage meant to weed out the weak. As this film shows and my own experience testifies, it really is a mind game. The rules are simple...don't stand out. Individualists were made an example of but those who can blend in and put their individuality on hold for nine weeks will do fine. I'm grateful that I had this film to mentally prepare me for my experience. I'm also glad that I kept a faithful journal. It's such an awesome experience to relive as I read what I wrote 18 years ago. Listening to the music from that era also helps, and the songs I most associate with that experience are Extreme's "More Than Words" (a company mate's girlfriend had sent him a cassette single of that song and it became a company favourite) and Wilson Phillips' "The Dream Is Still Alive."

A I G Stands for American Institution of Greed

Above is a photo of me with the Wall Street Bull on Broadway in Manhattan, from 2002. If you notice, my right hand is a fist. I made that gesture because of what I think of capitalists...which isn't much. That doesn't make me a commie, though. I'm not a fan of "systems" and the problem with our country is that because we went through decades of "anti-communism hysteria", too many Americans think capitalism, as a complete opposite, is the only economic system to have.

The brilliance of capitalism is that it has instilled in our country the idea that any American might get rich someday, thus why so many Americans vote against their own economic interests. This belief that they might be rich some day and not want to be taxed on their future wealth leads many to vote in favour of the arguments made by the wealthy class, who end up laughing all the way to their off-shore bank accounts and tax shelters. Do you think the wealthiest of Americans (the tiny minority that they are) want everyone to be rich?

A friend had forwarded me an email that has been circulating. I laughed when I read it because it was an update of a flyer I saw being passed around shortly after Clinton got elected in 1992. Basically, the email is written from the point of view of some business man who is objecting to the increase in taxes. The letter tries to make the case for why increase in taxes will hurt our economy. It ends on a childish taunt familiar with anyone who has been on a playground. The businessman claimed that if we allow the Democratic president to raise taxes on rich people like him, he will just take his money and leave the country. That means no creation of new jobs in the USA. Doesn't it sound like a childish rant? "I can't get my way, so I'm taking my toys and going home!" All because they don't want to share.

Newsflash! Trickle down economics DOES NOT WORK! How many times does our country have to go through this painful lesson to have it ingrained? If you cut taxes on the wealthy class and give more money to them, the money DOES NOT reenter the economy in the form of job creation. The wealthy class generally takes that extra money and either invest it in the market, put it into tax-free shelters in Caribbean banks, or buy luxury vacations in exotic locations or other luxury goods. They aren't going to use the money to hire more people, which is how to grow the economy. It's all selfish indulgence, because rich people don't want any more people to join their ranks. They want a kind of future that our planet has seen too much of throughout history: a tiny minority of wealthy people and a large poverty class. It's all about power.

While this system that has created so many wealthy people is far better than the alternatives (feudalism and communism), it is also so corrosive that it can undermine any ideology (including tightly controlled dictatorships, Islamic-influenced societies, and even Christianity). However, capitalism has finally met its match that it won't be able to vanquish like the others: the sustainability of our planet. The mindless consumption has hit a brick wall in the past few years. Economists and environmentalists say that if every person on the planet lived the average American lifestyle, it would take FOUR planet earths to sustain such resource depletion. Since we don't have four planets like ours to rape and pillage, that means only few options: reducing our consumption based lifestyle or mass genocide through more wars and other horrific actions. I don't know about you, but changing our lifestyle to be more in line with our planet's resources is the only viable option.

Though I've never been a fan of capitalism for as long as I remember, it wasn't until earlier in this decade that I came up with a word that defines the kind of economic system I would like to see replace capitalism. It's not socialism, because as good of an idea as socialism is, it still presents its own unique problems (such as how Europe's declining birthrate will strangle the socialist economy in a matter of years). The new economic system I propose to replace capitalism is: ETHICONOMICS. Basically, it would address what capitalism does not: a focus on ethics as the bottom line. Capitalism is a morality-free system. Greed has become the operating principle.

We saw this earlier in the decade when Enron went bust. It's funny...when that Bush-connected company filed for the largest bankruptcy in history, the feeling I had at the time was that the same thing would happen to our country when Bush got through with it. In case you can't remember the details of Enron, basically, the executives lied about the financial health of their company and encouraged employees to invest in their company's stocks for their 401k. The executives moved money around from account to account to hide quarterly losses and make it look like they were always gaining until the bubble burst. Where did the money go? Well, executives like Lay, Skilling, and Fastow were living large. Can you say "corporate looting"? To make quick money to cover losses, Enron manipulated the energy supply in California, which caused rolling blackouts that inconvenienced millions of people (can you imagine driving in Los Angeles when traffic lights couldn't operate for hours during designated "black out" periods?). That's the problem with greedy people...they don't care who gets harmed so long as they get rich. And the beauty of our country is that many of the people affected by their greed actually vote the way these wealthy criminals want them to vote!

Now, AIG is the latest company to come under fire because they requested the federal government to bail them out and news has come out that over $130 million of that money has been used to pay about 78 people bonuses that the company executives said that they were "contractually obligated" to pay (or risk lawsuits). What is wrong with that picture? All our government has to tell them is that they will not take bonuses from the government bailout or else face an IRS audit and jail time. If liberals in the Bush era could be accused of "treason" for not supporting his expensive and unnecessary war, why is it not considered treason when people basically loot the U.S. Treasury and companies, causing untold damage to our economy and millions of Americans? The capitalists who brought our economy to ruin are TRAITORS and if we had the kind of passion that the French people had in their revolution, the guillotine would be rolled out for massive "heads are going to roll" form of instant justice.

The problem I have with all these corporations that asked the government for bailout money is that when times were good, they balked at paying taxes and sought to hide as much of the money in offshore accounts as they can (Cayman Islands in the Caribbean is a notorious tax shelter for American capitalists who don't want the government to get its cut). A phrase I read somewhere sums it up perfectly: "Privatizing the profits, socializing the debt." What that means is that these capitalists greedily reap the profits for their own personal benefit, but when their company needs the government's help in order to stay in business, then they want the tax monies. Anyone see anything wrong with that picture? Let's put it back into the childhood playground scenario. Imagine a spoiled rich kid who brings his fancy and expensive toys to the sandbox to show off to the other kids. He won't share his toys and won't even let the other kids touch them. All they can do is watch him play with his toys and be impressed by the fancy devices that light up and make sound effects. Imagine that something happens where the toys get stolen or destroyed. Now imagine the greedy, selfish brat wanting the other kids he taunted to share their toys with him or even to pay for the replacement of his fancy toys! Would that fly?

My message to the person who wrote that letter that's being circulated on the Internet as well as to the AIG executives who are stealing from the people's money so they can maintain their lavish lifestyle: you don't deserve a single penny of the bailout. If you want to cry and take your wealth elsewhere, go ahead. Your citizenship should be stripped away so you will never be allowed to vote again and you should be barred from ever stepping foot in our country. Go live in some developing world country, where the infrastructure is poor. Yeah, you might have a fancy mansion with a security gate and a few guards in your employ...but in a few years, you'll grow to appreciate the kind of infrastructure our country has developed through the taxes we pay.

A true patriot is someone who wants to see this country be the best in everything in the world, and that includes standard of living for all 300 million Americans, not just the obscenely wealthy few.

There is nothing wrong with wealth, if you use it properly (like Bill and Melinda Gates, for one example). The privilege of having amassed such a large amount (more than what any person truly needs to live a good life) means that a giving back to the community is expected.

I've read that wealthy people tend not to be religious and maybe many of them don't believe that there is an afterlife. If that is the case, I can understand why they feel a need to amass as much wealth and luxuries as possible. They have created their own heaven in the here in now (but damn everyone else to hell). One of my favourite passages in the New Testament was Jesus telling a rich young ruler to give all he has to the poor and follow him. The rich man turned and walked away. Jesus told his followers that it was difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why would he say this if it were not true? What did he mean by this? My interpretation is that too many wealthy people have fallen prey to idoltry and betrayed their humanity. When they become more concerned with protecting their properties instead of the plight of fellow humans in need, it is a sin.

That's why I have little sympathy for the wealthy class. I want a fair government that looks after the poor and middle class. Let's face it, the rich don't need government. They can afford anything they want, such as medical care. But looting our national treasury so they can buy lear jets to fly to exclusive tropical resorts around the world and live in well guarded mansions with exotic cars...they have no sympathy from me in these economic times. I'd like to see extensive IRS audits of everyone who made gobs of money in the Bush era. They should face prison terms and have their properties seized by our government for public auction. It's time to make GREED the dirty word it is and to make famous more people like the guy Obama had pointed out in his address to Congress last month. That guy accepted a buy out of his bank and split the $60 million profit (if I remember correctly) to all of his employees and even former employees (it amounted to $150,000 per person). That's the kind of people we should honour. He is someone who values community and someone I would love to work for (his employees are so loyal that they stayed in the job even after receiving that generous gift).

I don't know what AIG stands for, but from now on, I'll only know it as "American Institution of Greed." I hope this culture of selfish indulgence will fade into obscurity like the president who supported it, and that in the Obama era, we see a renewal of shared values of ethics and honour. Yes, it is time to transform the pettiness of capitalism into an ETHIConomy. A new day is dawning and whose side are you on?

I Am a Powerful Being

As I pondered the post I wrote last Saturday about the former friend who thought I was susceptable to joining a cult because I admired Democratic politicians, I just shake my head that she thinks that of me. All because she put me in the category of "searcher" based on my interest in reading New Age spiritual books, my interest in attending other churches and religious services, and my decision to go to BYU. I suppose that my open-mindedness looked to her as someone who hasn't "found himself" yet, because searching is seen as unstable.

However, in the books I've read, if you aren't constantly searching for a better idea or a better experience or a better way of being, you are stagnant. For me, being "stagnant" is the worst feeling in the world. So, I don't see searching as a bad thing. And just because I'm always searching for the next spiritual idea I haven't discovered yet doesn't make me vulnerable to a charismatic cult leader.

I've thought about all the times in life when my strong sense of self made itself apparent. In Kindergarten, I remember that the cool thing to do was put Elmer's glue on your tongue. All the kids were doing it. They tried to get me to do it, but I passed. I thought it was dumb.

In Second Grade when my family lived in Pennsylvania, my class learned about geography. Mrs. Smith told the class that Kansas City was the capital of Kansas. Since I just moved from Kansas and learned about Kansas history in the First Grade, I knew the real answer was Topeka. When I shared this information with the teacher, she insisted that it was Kansas City. The kids at my table all marked Kansas City on their maps, while I put down Topeka. I tried to get the other kids to mark Topeka as the capital but they didn't believe me. The next day, Mrs. Smith apologized to me in front of the class and said that I was correct. Topeka was the capital and Kansas City was the largest city. I corrected her again. Wichita was the largest city in Kansas. Kansas City, Missouri is larger than Kansas City, Kansas.

At church camp in Iowa in the mid-1980s, the cool thing to do was make each other pass out by pushing each other's diaphram up (I don't even know if I'm saying that right). The teens tried to get me to do it but I felt that there was something wrong about it so I refused. I was so alarmed, that I told adults so they could put an end to it.

In the sixth grade, I stood up to the class bully when no one else would. He wanted to pierce my ear with a safety pin and I refused. I fought a kid on the playground who brought a Chinese throwing star to school (violation of school rules) and threatened people with it.

When other boys listened to heavy metal music and flirted with Satanism in the 6th and 7th grades, I stayed clear of that without my parents having to tell me anything. They weren't even aware it was going on and I knew enough that I didn't need their guidance on that.

In Germany, on a class field trip to Nuremberg to visit the famous Christkindle Market, some classmates got drunk on wine. One of the boys sat next to me and reeked of alcohol and wouldn't shut up the whole ride home. I complained to the German teacher who was the chaperone about having to sit next to a drunken jerk, but she denied that he was drunk and my whole ride home was miserable.

Other teens tried to get me to smoke cigarettes in junior high, but it just wasn't for me.

In the evangelical youth group meetings that my father made me attend while we lived in Germany, the adult leaders continuously urged us to give up secular music in favour of crappy contemporary Christian music. It was a serious bone of contention with me, as I loved 80s pop and saw nothing wrong with it. I monitored the music I listened to myself, and stayed clear of groups like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, etc. I didn't need anyone telling me what kind of music to listen to.

At youth rallies that I had to attend with the local group, they had moments where you "give your life to Christ" and they tried to pressure me into "becoming saved." I argued with them, saying that I was baptized already. They wanted to know what church and after I told them the full name (of the RLDS Church), they said it wasn't Christian, which insulted me so I refused to take part.

In Junior year, after the success of the play I was in, we had a cast party at one actor's house (who lived in my neighbourhood). Practically everyone was drinking and passing a joint around, but I declined, even though they tried to make me feel like the odd one for not participating.

In Senior year, I refused to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance, even though the other teens in class taunted me with accusations of being unpatriotic. Still, I stood my ground.

When I graduated, I wore my Batman imprinted Converse high tops as a sign of non-conformity (since the guys all looked alike in our green graduation garments) after one classmate had asked me not to embarrass the entire class by wearing them.

In Basic Training, the Company Commanders selected guys to be the Section Leaders (we had 6 different sections) and the one for my section was an ass who thought he could pick on me. I undermined his authority by making wisecracks that caused the other guys in my section to laugh. What I realized later was that my boldness in not being obedient emboldened them to not be obedient as well, thus why he got frustrated and wrote a resignation letter to the Company Commanders, which they then read to the entire company in mocking terms. The next section leader chosen for my section was cool and I did nothing to undermine his authority until he kept on touching me, even after I told him not to. After a few times, I had had enough and just started yelling obscenities at him and calling him a faggot until he got so embarrassed that he never touched me again. Weeks later, people in the company were still calling him a faggot and joking about his possibility of being gay. Another guy thought he could pick a fight with me and when I unleashed a torrent of obscenities in his face, he left me alone for the rest of the time we were in basic training.

In the Navy, guys tried to influence me to drink all the time (I did have a few episodes of drunken debaucheries, but they weren't as frequent as most other guys), go to prostitutes, get tattoos, hang out in the seedy side of the towns we visited, and rat out gay guys...but I simply refused to take part.

Mormons in Italy and Mormons at BYU tried to get me to join their church, but I never did because certain questions they were unable to answer to my satisfaction. For me to be convinced by any idea, it has to make logical sense, and most religions are inconsistent. In my mind, reincarnation is the only thing that makes logical sense, but that took many years before I would accept it as the most likely scenario for the spiritual process God has set up for our advancement.

I have chanted with the Hare Krishnas, meditated with the Buddhists, prayed with the Muslims, partaken the Passover seder with Jews, listened to the Sikhs, accepted fire from the Hindus, attended an audience with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City, and visited various Christian denominations in my lifetime. Have I left the church of my father and grandmother? I am fifth generation member and loyal to my core.

Yes, I search for spiritual ideas outside my faith tradition.

Yes, my views might be considered too New Agey for some members.

Yes, my views might be considered too Buddhist for some members.

Yes, my views might be considered too Mormon for some members.

But I am an independent agent exercising my free will to believe that which makes sense to me, while discarding the stuff that does not. Some call it "salad bar spirituality" while others call it "cafeteria Christianity." So what? We have to believe the ideas that make the most sense to us, and there isn't a single religion out there that I agree with 100%. I choose to maintain my membership in the Community of Christ because it is my extended family. We don't abandon our families because we disagree with the things they taught us growing up, do we? Community is all about commitment, even when we disagree.

When I was on my last ship in the Navy, a co-worker didn't understand why I did not like telling someone what to do. He said that this would become a problem if I ever became a First Class Petty Officer (E-6), because I would be a leading petty officer in a division. I already had some leadership tasks...such as leading the chemical weapons team during damage control drills. Did I know what I was doing? Hell no! When I was off to Basic Training, MEPS Atlanta selected me to be responsible for everyone's plane ticket and to lead them to the airport. It was about 6 of us, but she noticed that I wasn't up to the task.

My personality is such that I really don't like telling other people what they need to do. I'm not a believer in hierarchy and I often have a problem with people in management, particularly if they don't seem to care about morale issues or are so aloof from the office environment that they allow dysfunction to happen (as my current place of employment proves). I am more compatable with a "networking" type of co-leadership. It's the idea that people are equal and no one has power over anyone else. A true teamwork environment. Each one contributing to the success of the team or goal, based on their unique abilities.

So, considering all that I am...how on earth can someone even begin to worry that I might be prone to join some cult? I've never gotten along with authoritarian types. An example of this was in the 10th grade when I was on the Yearbook staff. The teacher who lead the staff suggested that I draw a cartoon falcon (our mascot) to use as the cover design for that year's yearbook. The staff (made up of students) liked my drawing. We voted on the cover design and my cartoon falcon won a clear majority of votes. It was set. Until the yearbook staff president, who was a senior, complained that "we have a falcon on the cover every year! This year I want something different." So, her desire overrode the majority. I was fuming mad. Had the staff rejected the cartoon falcon by majority vote, I could live with that decision, but to win the majority only to have one person overturn that vote simply did not sit well with my democratic mentality. Hmmm...no wonder why the 2000 elections made me so angry!

What do we know about cults? They are NOT democratic organizations at all. They are founded by a charismatic individual who holds the power over other people's lives. We see this pattern over and over. Jim Jones managed to convince a thousand Americans to abandon their lives in the USA to resettle in the jungles of Guyana in the late 1970s. A Congressional investigation led to a Congressman's death, which caused a panicked Jim Jones to tell his followers that the time had come to partake of the Kool-Aid of death. In the 1990s, we saw what happened with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. He ordered his married male followers to give up their wives to him, and they did. Again in the 1990s, a strange looking fellow named Herff Applewhite managed to convince his band of androgynous followers that it was time to eat some poisoned applesauce so that they could leave their human bodies to catch a ride on the Hale-Bopp Comet, where aliens were waiting to receive them.

What kind of person joins a cult? Usually insecure followers who lack any kind of trust in their own inner ability to live an independent life. Is that person me? The guy with a history of standing up to peer pressure, of battling with ego-maniacs, of being comfortable questioning ideas presented to me? Cults that require members to move to the commune and cut off contact with non-member loved ones just seem like hell to me. I hate being micromanaged in my current job, so why would someone think that I would tolerate having my entire day and life managed by some ego-maniacal control freak? I'm all about personal freedom and I always feel an urge to bolt after three years in a place (whether location or job). I love living alone and having my own place to come home to. Nope, no cult risk here.

This lady who was once part of Jeffrey Lundgren's group, I can see how she might fall under someone's charismatic sway. She's obsessed with doctrinal truth and I've heard her say negative things about the leaders of the world church. She believes that they are too liberal and moving away from scriptural authority, so of course some lunatic who can quote scriptures backwards and forwards might sweep her away from the mainstream church. It was Lundgren's knowledge of scripture that first impressed her. She did notice, little by little, that he would twist things just a tiny bit so followers wouldn't notice. The whole "frog in a slowly boiling pot of water" scenario. I don't know what finally convinced her to get out, but she did before the whole thing turned deadly in 1989.

I've never been impressed by someone's "scriptural knowledge." When I worked at the Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Atlanta in 1997, one guy who worked there was always reading the Bible. He took breaks for 15 minutes of every hour and when he wasn't on break, he would preach to you what you were doing wrong. It annoyed the hell out of our supervisor, but I thought it was hilarious. I would seek creative ways to break through his religiosity by asking him things like "what does the Bible say about taking breaks all the time?" I guess I've seen too many religious kooks that someone preaching the Bible or showing scriptural knowledge simply doesn't impress me much. To me, it doesn't matter if you don't believe in God or if you do. The only thing that matters to me is how you behave. I value intelligence, moderation, humour, and an appreciation for the complexities of life. The tragic flaw with a lot of cult leaders and those who aspire to lead a flock (even the prosperity theologists of mega-churches), they are too serious and often lack a sense of humour. It's the sign of ego at play. A warning sign to stay away.

In evaluating my own life...I realize that I am a powerful being. I don't need to lead anyone or tell them how to think and believe. People have followed my example when I've shown courage to stand up to bullies and misguided leaders who abuse their authority. I have the ability to undermine authority in those who mishandle it. So, anyone who thinks that I'm some kind of pushover who can be talked into anything...you have no clue who I am and what I've done. I am more powerful than you think I am. My desire is to neither lead nor follow anyone. I will merely walk side by side with you as far as our interests coincide in our journeys through life. That's the approach we should all take in our faith journeys. To give away your power to another person is foolish. We need to guard our power and use it wisely in the pursuit of our own spiritual advancement. No cult leader is going to lead you there.

Letter to My Future Son (Still in the Spiritual Realm)

Dear Patrick,

I hear you. You're getting impatient with your earthly dad. He doesn't seem like he's in a rush to bring you into physical existence. He's not dating anyone currently. He only met three marriageable ladies in the past ten years, and struck out on all three. There is that three strikes policy. So...you might want to reconsider having me for a future father. I can't even find a meaningful career that pays a liveable wage salary. I didn't expect to be in this position nine years after I felt on top of the world in my UNPAID internship. I really thought in 2000 that my internship would lead to a career in D.C., with dating and marriage by 2005. I ought to have a kid or two by now. But darn it, when life goes off track, sometimes it really goes far off track.

The news just reported that the unemployment rate in Oregon has topped 10%!!! It was 8.4% in December. When I moved here in August 2006, it was 4.6%. So long as I'm in my current job, I can't afford marriage. I can't even afford dating. Moving to Portland wasn't such a great idea. It's one of those sucky life lessons where you wish you could have a time machine so you can go back in time and not make the mistake. On a positive note...at least I don't have to worry about other mouths to feed, beyond my own. One of the most disturbing things a fellow sailor told me in the Navy was that if you're starving, you can endure it. But if you kids are starving, you will lie, cheat, steal, or kill to bring food to your kids. That's not the kind of father I'd want to be. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have to resort to such desperate measures, but I don't know what its like to have a little being dependent on me for everything.

Yes, I do want to get married someday and have children. I really want a son named Patrick. Patrick Nicholson Carroll. Why Patrick? Because its a great Irish name. They even named a holiday after it. On this day, everyone is Irish. Even President O'Bama. Patrick is a name I'd give myself. As for Nicholson...I like the idea Russians have. Each person has a given name, a patronym, and a family name. That patronym is the person's father's name, with a "-yevich" added on for a boy, "-yeva" for a girl ("Nikolayevich" or "Nikolayeva" for examples). But in English, it would be "Nicholas' son" or "Nicholson." But, of course...the naming of children is a two parent decision, and it's a long way off.

So if you're getting impatient with me being stuck in this moment I can't seem to break out of, maybe you ought to consider being born to another set of parents. It doesn't have to be me, you know. I can think of one person who might be an even better father than I. His name is also Nicholas. But he's a lot better off financially than I am, made wiser decisions, has a fantastic wife, and you'll be happy to have feathered siblings! Four of them. All with personalities to amuse you. How about it, Patrick? Choose them for your parents! I'll be lucky if I'm in a position where I can get married and start a family in 2012. But given the uncertainties of what might happen in December that year, I might wait a couple years before bringing any new souls onto planet earth.

So, Patrick, I'm sorry that I'm just not in the place to bring you to the earthly plane. Maybe if you help lead me to a better job, I can get the ball rolling because a better paying job means I will start dating seriously again. Until that happens, I'm chained to a sinking ship and you're better off selecting more capable parents. Don't let my stagnation keep you from your life plans. Nicholas and Jennifer might bring you closer to your dreams of an ideal life. Trust me, I can vouch for them. They are some kewl peeps!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone!

Music Video Monday: Sinead O'Connor

In honour of St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, this week's music video selection is Irish singer Sinead O'Connor. The first time I saw her perform was on the 1989 Grammy Awards. It was truly shocking. She sang her song "Mandinka" and with her bald head, Doc Marten boots, and angry screeching, I thought she was some kind of neo-nazi punk. She truly scared the crap out of me. My first reaction was: "who is this bald, angry, anarchist bitch?" I wouldn't be buying any of her albums.

A year later, she released the single "Nothing Compares 2 U" (a song written by Prince). It was pretty mellow. The music video was surprising in the emotions revealed. Most of it is a focus on her face and I was mesmerized. She actually looked beautiful (despite her shaved head) and you can see the pain on her face as she sings this song. With one simple music video, she won me over. So much for judging on first appearances! To this day, I consider this music video to be my favourite of all time, because of the impression it left on me (a lesson on not prejudging people based on first appearances). A classmate raved about her album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and recommended that I must buy it. She called it "very humanistic" (whatever that meant).

So, in the spring of 1990, I bought that album and it has become a classic in my music library. The album is pretty strong throughout with a lot of great songs (such as "Emperor's New Clothes", "Black Boys on Mopeds", and "Three Babies"). As I learned more about her that spring, she was the "anti-Madonna." In an interview, she held it in an empty building to emphasize her lack of materialism. Over the years, she caused some controversies...such as her refusal to have the American national anthem play before her concert at Madison Square Garden (offending American fans, though I never saw what the big deal was) and her performance on Saturday Night Live when she ripped apart a photo of Pope John Paul II and called on people to "fight the real enemy" (the Catholic Church). This was during the time that the Catholic Church was under fire for protecting child molesting priests instead of children.

Though she had announced her retirement from a singing career a few years back, she broke that when she released a reggae album. She has sung various kinds of music, including one of old standards, but her career will probably never reach the success of her second album and hit single in 1990.

Mr. Oxy-Contin is the Perfect Man for Ms. Octo-Mom

Rush has been in the news a lot lately and not in a good way. He doesn't seem to realize that he's being used. Each time he opens his big fat mouth and utters a deliberately provocative right-wing opinion, he's only shooting himself in the foot. His popularity level is even lower than George W. Bush's! An amazing feat. To his credit, he is slightly more popular than Dick Cheney. But that's not hard. Even Satan has more followers than Dick Cheney.

Saturday Night Live had a field day mocking RNC Chair Michael Steele as a puppet of Rush. Republican members of Congress find themselves in hot water when they try to distance themselves from Rush and immediately call in to his radio program to apologize to the master bloviator. How did this guy get so much power over the Republican Party? He's nothing more than a bully. Basic psychology tells you that bullies are cowards who always pick on "weaker" and smaller people in order to look powerful. They never pick on someone their own size (which, in Limbaugh's case, it would be hard to find another person of his expanding girth). Rush is nothing more than a modern day propaganda minister who would've fit in well with Hitler's Germany. He targets minorities, women, Democrats, foreigners, Muslims, and anyone else who does not support the rightwing neo-conservative policies of the Republican Party.

Despite his wealth and mega mansions, you can tell that he is not a happy person. He can't stay married. He doesn't live the moral standards he criticizes others for failing to live up to (such as his claim that drug abusers should get prison terms for life, then getting busted for trying to obtain the highly addictive Oxy-Contin for personal use). Why is he addicted to Oxy-Contin? Think of it as his personal stimulus plan. I've also read that he uses Viagra. I'm guessing that he probably uses the services of high priced call girls and pays for any sexual activity. There's no reason why he needs to live like this any longer. He's a rich guy who can afford to give for altruistic reasons.

When I pondered what Rush could do for the sake of good karma and his own soul, it hit me. Also in the news lately is the Octuplet mother, who has been subjected to hate mail and even death threats. Things don't look so good for her when even her own father went on Oprah's show and asked the talk show host if she would be willing to arrange a psychological test for his daughter! Seriously...what kind of person with a history of depression would desire to have 14 children as a "cure"? Taking care of a baby or even twins is stressful enough, with the lack of sleep due to constant feeding schedules. Multiply it by eight and this woman becomes a prime mental health risk who might drown her babies in a bathtub, as one woman did a few years back.

So, why would Mr. Oxy-Contin and Ms. Octo-Mom make a great couple? For one, Octo-Mom is so desperate for money to provide for her children that she had set up a website asking for donations. Apparently, she got enough in donations to recently purchase a half-million dollar home with four bedrooms. She's single and can't take care of all those young kids on her own. Even her own mother is overly stressed and saying critical things about her own daughter in the media. When your own parents are willing to trash talk you to the media, there is something wrong with that family.

Secondly, it appears that both Rush and this single mother are in desperate need of love. What could be more loving than for a self-indulgent bachelor to come in and rescue her by using his own wealth to make sure these children are well provided for, holding them, feeding them, and spending quality time with them. If Rush were to do such a noble act, I'm sure that we would see his heart grow several times bigger (a la The Grinch!). He would drop his hate talk and become a modern day Saul / Paul. It would make a powerful statement about conservativism...that they don't just talk about morality, they actually do something about it!

And thirdly, Octo-Mom could help Rush overcome his addiction to Oxy-Contin and Viagra. Since she took a more creative approach to "curing her depression", she could show Rush that having little beings who depend on you for food, shelter, and love does encourage a kind of responsibility that conservatives like to talk about. No need to take drugs to escape your empty, lonely life. Children make you feel important because they need and want your attention. They can make you become less selfish, as you learn to sacrifice personal desires for the best interest of the children.

For these reasons, I think we found a perfect match. They have much to offer the other and if Rush did such an altruistic act like this, I would be quite impressed that he's not the selfish curmudgeon I've always thought him to be. How about it Rush? Why not a little chivalry in your past-middle aged life? Using your wealth to help these fourteen children means that they won't be getting money from the government. You'll be doing our country a huge favour and it may finally get you the respect you crave from women all over this country. Time to put your conservative values to work where it can most make a difference. Or, you can continue abusing Oxy-Contin until your heart finally blows out, and you die a lonely death where your cat is the first one to discover your body in that mega mansion you call home. How do you choose to live the rest of your life?

Everyone (But Republicans) Saw This One Coming!

Poor Bristol Palin. Dumped by her hunky Hockey player fiance. But did she really expect a happy, fairy tale ending? The guy is captain of Wasilly High School's hockey team. You know he can get any girl he wants, and probably does on a regular basis. He's not ready to settle down. He hasn't finished sowing his wild oats all over the state of Alaska. On his Myspace or Facebook page (as reported in the Huffington Post before it was scrubbed clean during the election season), he proudly claimed to be a redneck who didn't want any kids. Did the Palin family truly expect him to be tamed? He's a wild stallion, if there ever was one. I always got the impression that he was the kind of guy who would joke with his buddies about Bristol's mom being a "total MILF" and probably even fantasizing of doing both the mother and daughter just for bragging rights.

It was funny to see how he became part of the Palin family during the Republican Convention. He got an image makeover by party officials (from scruffy to clean-cut) for the meeting with Senator McCain and the cameras during the conventions (where he played the part well, even kissing Bristol's down syndrome baby...er, brother, that is). However, in viewing quite a bit of photos from the convention, he did not look very happy. Even Palin in an interview or debate had mentioned that her daughter and the boyfriend would get married and realize just how difficult life would be. This statement of hers inspired jokes on late night TV about a shotgun wedding. The blogosphere went wild with conspiracy talk about possible financial arrangements for Levi Johnston in marrying Bristol Palin against his own personal desires. I bet he breathed a huge sigh of relief when McCain/Palin lost the election. He could dump Bristol and return to a somewhat normal life outside of the public eye, without all these image-conscious conservative Republicans trying to turn him into something he's not.

I say, good for him! Who wants to be a part of that dysfunctional family, anyway? He can't be free to be himself if he were to marry Bristol Palin just for the sake of the baby (or babies) they share. That's the problem with Republicans...they love to preach morality to other people and hold others (especially liberals, who don't have sexual hangups) to higher standards than they hold themselves. I always suspected that moral outrage was a smokescreen, and a recent news item confirmed it in part. Eight of the top ten states that "consume the most pornography" are RED (read: Republican-voting) states (including religiously conservative Utah!). Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a darling of the right, is known to have an extensive collection of porn.

I suppose we should feel sorry for Bristol. Children of politicians should be off limits for media consumption. However, Sarah Palin invited such scrutiny when she paraded her children in front of audiences during the announcement speech of her selection as McCain's V.P. candidate last August. She did this knowing full well that her daughter was pregnant, in high school, and not married. Even more audacious, she has a track record of being against sex education in schools and she and her husband are often off doing their own things (self-involved careerists), leaving their children without moral guidance. What did she think would happen?

Palin is just one more example of a politician who legislates morality to other people, when her own home is dirty. If she can't keep her own children from having sex outside of marriage and bringing babies into the world before they are emotionally and financially ready, maybe she should just shut her pretty little mouth. Let other people take responsibilities for their family's moral lives without the prying eyes of government.

I honestly hope this is the last we'll hear about the Palin family dramas. But somehow, I doubt it. I predict that at some point, her other daughters are going to get pregnant when they reach 16. Sarah can't complain. She had Track when she was a horny teenager. I get the impression that the long winter nights in Alaska leaves little for teenagers to do than to create their own warmth the fun way. If teachers won't teach sex education in the schools, they are only happy to learn it on their own...when their parents are out chasing the big bucks from oil companies or competing in the Iditarod.

The above photo shows Levi Johnston's image makeover at the hands of Republican operatives. For all their talk about the common man and that Democrats are "elitists", they seem to prefer the clean-cut frat boy look, than scruffy redneck. I wouldn't be surprised if the break up causes an uptick in fanmail Johnston gets. There are probably many Republican groupies wanting to have his baby. And why not? We have a war machine to feed. We'll still be in Iraq or Afghanistan in 20 years...so Republicans, do your patriotic duty! Make lots of babies for future President Sarah Palin to send to the desert in twenty years.

Kerouac Day: Patron Saint of Literature

On this day in 1922, Beat Generation co-founder and writer Jack Kerouac was born. He is my favourite writer since I "discovered" his books in 2001. Actually, I had heard of him back in the 1980s but never read any of his books. In fact, throughout the 1990s, I would hear a nagging voice in my head to "Read Kerouac, read Kerouac." I ignored it. His books didn't seem interesting to me. Though I was vaguely aware of his more famous works (On the Road, The Subterraneans, and The Dharma Bums), I always thought of him in the mold of James Dean and Marlon Brando. An icon of rebellion from an era I wasn't even interested in (the 1950s).

During my "Dark Night of the Soul" period of late 2000 and the first half of 2001, I was open to new discoveries (in this time period, I also discovered numerology when I realized how often the number 22 appeared in my life in positive ways). So, I decided to pacify that inner voice in my head about reading Kerouac. I bought two books. One was a biography about him (by Tom Clark) and the other was one of Kerouac's last books, Satori in Paris. It was a short read.

Listening to that prompting resulted in one of the strangest experiences of my life. In Satori in Paris, I was shocked to read that Kerouac got into an argument with someone on a train from Paris to Brittany about the proper pronunciation of the town "St. Brieuc." A French friend of mine lives in Plerin, a small town on the outskirts of St. Brieuc. In fact, when I visited him and his family, I had to get off the TGV in St. Brieuc. I always pronounced the name wrong and had my own arguments with my French friend about the proper pronunciation (do you pronounce the "c" or not?). Additionally, the number 22 comes up a lot in Kerouac's life. He was, after all, born in 1922. There were quite a few coincidences between what Kerouac wrote in Satori in Paris and my own life. Though the book is kind of lame, out of all of his books, its probably the one that has the most coincidences with my own life. I'm like a character straight out of his novel. Did Kerouac dream me into existence?

In the Tom Clark biography, I learned many other similarities between him and I (he had an older brother, though he died when they were young children; and he had a sister). He was obsessed with his French heritage, tracing his family roots back to Brittany. Though I have no French ancestry, in elementary school, I thought I did and hoped that I did. I have no idea where my deep love for France comes from. Certainly not my parents!

A decade has nearly passed since I first started reading Kerouac and most of the books I have on him are still in storage back east. I highlighted everything we had in common and hoped to write it all in a journal someday. Never in my life have I ever come across another person where I had so much in common, hitting the motherlode of coincidences. Who knows what it means? I have my theories, but someday in the spiritual realm, I'll learn the truth about these coincidences between his life and my own. All I can say is that I read about 6 different biographies on him and most of his novels, and never have I freaked out so much each time I came across a coincidence between him and I. Truly, I feel like my whole life has been nothing more than a plagiarism of his works. Perhaps I am a character in his imagination, an idealized version of himself, living in some fiction world and none of this is real.

Though I aspire to be a published novelist myself and have a vision of the kind of writing career I desire (a mix of Michael Crichton, Nicholas Sparks, and John Grisham), I consider Kerouac to be my "Patron Saint of Literature." However, most of his books are a mess. I can totally understand why critics hate him, why Truman Capote dismissed his writing speed as "that's not writing, that's typing," why he struggled to get many of his books published. The only novels of his worth reading for most people are On the Road and The Dharma Bums. The others are only interesting to people fascinated by this tragic figure of American literature.

What is it about Kerouac, anyway? He wasn't focused. He moved from place to place (so many cross country journeys). He depended too much on other people, particularly women. He had three wives (though not at the same time!) and treated them all like crap. They paid the bills while he wrote and traveled and wrote some more. He was every bit as restless as his novels.

Part of his tragic life was due in part to his inability to be his own man and step away from his mother's overbearing control over his life. She basically made him feel guilty his whole life over being the one to have lived instead of his "saintly" brother. To cope with life, Kerouac drank. By the end of his life, he was a terrible alcoholic, badly out of shape, and a belligerent and mean drunk. If anyone doubts the ability to destroy one's physical appearances through self-indulgent bad habits (such as alcohol, drugs, or smoking), check out his pictures as a young man versus pictures of him in his 40s. Hard to believe its the same guy. He was blessed with looks that attracted hoards of women (back in the 50s, there was such a thing as "literary groupies") and a writing talent that was squandered on the vain attempt to mythologicalize his unconventional life. What he might have written if he actually created fictional characters and dreamed up situations he never experienced personally.

Is he a great writer? Or did death make him a literary icon that endures to this day? I personally find his life interesting and worth reading about. He is my favourite writer, but only because of the deep personal connection I feel and all the coincidences his life and mine have in common. I doubt that I will ever meet another person on this earth whose personality, views, and life experience closely resembles my own (though I've always had a strong aversion to any form of drug usage and only drink alcohol occasionally but never to excess). From an objective point of view, however, I don't rate his books as high as others, because I've read some pretty amazing novels. You can tell that a lot of creative thought went into the stories, characters, plot, subplots. That's worlds different than merely taking the most interesting experiences of your life and changing the names. Most of his novels lack a plot. You're basically reading it to learn more about how he views his own life experiences. That's not the kind of novelist I intend to be. I prefer the creation of memorable stories with coherent plotlines.

On this day, however, I observe Kerouac Day and seek ways to pay tribute to this iconic writer whose works and life history gave me one of the greatest experiences of my life when I first started reading his works in 2001. Should I have read his works earlier, when I first heard the voice telling me to "read Kerouac!"? I think some things happen according to their own time and I might not have appreciated his works until I was ready for it.

Later today, I might listen to his Dr. Sax that I have on CD. That was perhaps his most unreadable "novel." Hopefully the CD performance of the readers will make it more interesting (I had a hard time reading that book. It's obvious he wrote it while on drugs). Fans who leave cigarette packs and empty bottles of alcohol on his gravesite in Lowell, Massachusetts don't have a clue. Those were the things that destroyed him before age 50. If people want to leave anything on his grave, how about a pen and an empty notepad? Then hit the road, Jack!

I like the photo of Jack Kerouac above and didn't realize until later that I had a similar pose in a photo of mine (below, taken in August 1999 at the St. Paul MN Capitol grounds).

What Must Not Be Sacrificed in a Bad Economy

The past two evenings on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (on your local PBS station), they have featured in depth reporting on public transit in the bad economy. For Monday's program, they focused on the public transportation systems in the San Francisco Bay Area (BART, MUNI, and the other various transit authorities). The problems are nation-wide, including in Portland.

Back in October and November 2004, I went to San Francisco on vacation and really enjoyed the diversity of public transportation options (I rode them all: BART from Berkeley to San Francisco; the Cable Car; the F Market Streetcar; regular buses; electric buses; and the MUNI light rail as seen above and below). The city of San Francisco itself is relatively compact (it's amazing to realize that it's only six miles across the peninsula from the bay to the Pacific Ocean) and walkable (though the steep hills does make you appreciate public transit options). As a traveler to many great cities around the world, it is the public transportation system that helps make travel within a metro area efficient and inexpensive. It's absolutely vital to a city's needs and should be subsidized by the government.

However, in these tough economic times, many cities are having to cut back on services or raising fees to help pay for rising fuel costs and other expenses. The problem with raising fees is that there is a point at which people will not pay, opting to drive their own cars and thus clogging up the traffic. And for those on low or fixed incomes, it means even more money on transportation that won't go towards other bills. Since most cities are cheaper to live on the outskirts, this means that many of those people who work the low wage jobs in the inner city (think of all the cafes, fast food restaurants, hotels, and other poorly paid service jobs) have to commute into the city each day. Cutting back on services only makes life more difficult for people who depend on public transportation to get them to and from work.

When I lived in Atlanta, my car died on me in 2002. Because I was in a low wage job, I had a difficult choice to make. I could not afford to make college loan repayment and a car payment without sacrificing my travel budget. Buying even a used car meant that I would not be able to afford my annual vacations to other cities. So, I chose to live carless. I lived in a great neighbourhood (Buckhead) and didn't mind riding MARTA anywhere I needed to go. The problem was getting to work when my company moved from a downtown office building into a brand new building on the outskirts of Atlanta in Cobb County, just across the Chattahoochee River. By car, it was seven miles from my apartment to the new office building. However, because Cobb County opted out of the MARTA transit system back in the 1970s, that meant I had to ride a bus to a station in Midtown (south of my apartment) just to catch the separate Cobb County bus in order to get to work (which was northwest of my apartment). This translated to an hour to ninety minutes each way just to get to and from work. Three hours of my day was spent waiting for a bus or riding one.

I kept that up for about a year and a half before deciding to move to Cobb County to be closer to work (a 20 minute walk, as a matter of fact). I never liked Cobb County and it was never my dream to live there (I'm biased towards DeKalb County, where my family lives and where I attended my last two years of high school. Its considered the most diverse county in Georgia and second most populated). The Cobb County bus system did not run on Sundays and holidays, which made me wonder how low wage earners got to work at their jobs on Sundays. Someone has to work the stores in the malls and all those restaurants that are open on Sundays and holidays.

Here's an example of how an inefficient public transit can affect a person who does not own a car. When I lived in Smyrna, it was thirty minutes by car in smooth flowing traffic to my parents house in Stone Mountain, by way of I-285, which rings the city of Atlanta. By public transit, it was at least 3 hours! I would have to take a bus from my apartment to the Midtown bus and train station to catch the MARTA train downtown, to catch another train east to the end of the line to catch another bus to take me to my parents house. Three hours to get from one side of Atlanta to another. When my family lived in Omaha, Nebraska, our trip to grandparents' house in Atchison, Kansas took three hours (and we went through four states: Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas). Outrageous!

Eventually, I got tired of my public transit options and never made the salary I hoped to reach in order to afford a car, so I had to decide in 2006 which city I wanted to move to and settle in. I narrowed it down between San Francisco and Portland. The affordability of Portland won me over, but since I moved here, I landed a job that pays far less than what I made in Atlanta, which only made my personal finances even worse. I'll never be able to afford a car when I barely make enough to pay my bills. Fortunately for me, I live within a five minute walk to work and Portland has Fareless Square, where all public transit is free within this boundary. I rarely leave Fareless Square, so my public transit expenses are minimal (usually just a weekly expense when I go to St. Johns to hang out at the Writers Dojo on Saturdays or Sundays).

One thing that surprises me about public transportation is how hostile many conservatives are towards funding it through subsidies and taxes. A pastor at the Atlanta Community of Christ Congregation said that he was proud to have voted against MARTA extending its rail system into Gwinnett County back in the 1970s and 1980s. He bought into the argument that MARTA brought with it crime. As in...inner city black folk would ride MARTA out to the suburbs of Cobb and Gwinnett Counties to rob homes, and returning back to the ghettos from which they came. Those arguments had a tinge of racism. In DeKalb County (the county directly east of the city of Atlanta), MARTA hasn't increased the crime rate. In fact, some neighbourhoods that border the rail line have been gentrified and highly sought by homebuyers.

In college, in one course, the professor pointed out a situation that happened in some resort town in Colorado. I want to say Aspen, but I don't remember exactly. He said that this town was pretty trendy and expensive to live. It was basically unaffordable for anyone who made minimum wage. The problem the town ran into was that the people who were hired to work in the low wage service jobs had to live elsewhere, which meant that the town needed a public transportation system that residents did not want for fear that it would bring crime into their affluent community. That's just weird. They want people to work low-wage service jobs, but they don't want these people to live in their community and they don't want to offer public transportation so these people could afford to commute from other towns to work in the shops and restaurants they frequent. What kind of psychotic mindset is that? Either pay people a decent wage so that they can afford to own a car or allow affordable housing for those who make minimum wage in the stores and restaurants you desire to have in your trendy, affluent little resort town!

The Cable Car above is not really a commuter's choice due to minimal lines. It's a tourist ride that no trip to San Francisco is complete without having experienced.

The F Market Streetcar runs down Market Street in downtown San Francisco (from the Fisherman's Wharf to the Castro neighbourhood). Its a very retro design (considered "Art Deco") that makes it cool to look at and ride. This one is used by commuters between a few neighbourhoods in San Francisco.

The map above indicates the various MUNI train lines within the city of San Francisco. The map below shows the BART subway system in the entire Bay Area.

In our tough economic times, with more people riding public transit, does it make sense to cut back on services? With the financial shortfall, how does a city afford to maintain a high class public transit system? If we cut services, we hurt the people who depend on it to get to and from work, which keeps our economy going. More people riding public transit is better for the environment, so shouldn't the local government make public transit funding a priority?

Some ideas I can think of to offset the expense of operating a public transit system and still keep fares affordable is through a special tax on gasoline and toll roads / bridges as well as the possibility of a carbon tax (where people pay taxes on the carbon they use). There has to be a system set up where people who choose to drive over taking public transportation help pay for the operation costs of public transportation. Conservatives balk at any public funding of mass transit (as well as Amtrak)...yet they ignore the fact that our government has subsidized the use of roads and airplanes quite heavily over the decades. This was done deliberately in the aftermath of World War II when they wanted Americans on the road and in the air. It helped boom our post-war economy as our nation transitioned from supplying the war machine into creating the middle class economy (with the Interstate, suburbia, and all the stuff that went along with our car-based culture).

Those times are over in the days of peak oil. We clearly have to transition towards a new mode of transporting people from place to place. Cars will have to get smaller and electric. More people will have to use public transportation to get to most places. It's just a change of how we live that people need to get used to. Attempting to kill off public transit by requiring it to pay for itself is not an option. It will kill our economy. Out of all the things our government funds and subsidizes, public transportation is probably one of the most important. We couldn't have a functioning economy without it. Think about it the next time you see a bus or train go by or when you're visiting another city and don't want to rent a car.

Swinging Towards Mediocrity

On Saturday, I finally watched the movie Swing Vote. I knew it would be a lame movie. Kevin Costner has been slumming it lately. What happened to the guy who made Dances With Wolves, No Way Out, Field of Dreams, The Untouchables, and Tin Cup? Ever since 1996's Tin Cup, he's pretty much been playing the same type: washed up average guy. It worked in that golfing movie, but he's now a typecast and it's lame.

When Swing Vote came out last August, my dad asked if I would watch it. I said no. The premise sounded pretty dumb, not to mention unrealistic. The entire presidential election comes down to one single guy? Yeah, right. 2000 it ain't. I wasn't surprised that it bombed and quickly disappeared from theaters (before the conventions, even). In a weird way that Hollywood seems prophetic, the fall election produced it's own "swing vote"...at least according to media hype, when they plucked a real-life "Joe the Plumber" to represent a demographic group that might swing the election towards one or the other candidate. I didn't write about him in any of the posts about the election last year because I thought he was a farce or twisted joke not worth expending words on. Now that his opinions are safe from affecting other moronic votes, I'll get to him after I review the movie.

You might be wondering why I bothered to watch a movie that I knew going in would be lame. Well, when I went up to Vancouver, BC, my ride recommended the movie to me. She made it sound intriguing and she knew that I love politics, so I decided it couldn't be that bad. Could it? Well...I've seen worse movies. This one had some moments I liked, but read on to learn why I wasn't overly impressed...

In Swing Vote, Kevin Costner plays an alcoholic single dad who lives in a trailer park in Texaco, New Mexico. He works in a factory, putting eggs into cartons and manages to mess up that job. He's clueless about politics and anything else besides drinking and sleeping in. Annoyingly, his tween-age daughter is the responsible and smart one. She wakes him up, serves breakfast and nags him to drive her to school. She lectures him about the importance of voting and reminds him to meet her at the polling place after work.

In a contrived scene to set up the entire outlandish premise of the movie, things go awry with the electronic voting machine, where his vote isn't even cast. Through the use of technology in our information age, everyone is able to pinpoint exactly who the missing vote is and because the rest of the vote is completely tied in the New Mexico county he lives in, and neither candidate won the 270 electoral votes, his vote becomes the most sought after and important vote in the history of America. The media descends on his trailer and turn his life into a circus. The Republican President (played by Kelsey Grammar) and the Democratic candidate (played by Dennis Hopper) each pull out all the stops to court his vote, going so far as to even switch their positions on the environment, abortion, immigration, and gay marriage to win his vote, and thus the presidency.

If you can suspend your disbelief for a second there, the film might be entertaining. It's billed as a comedy, but there were only a few moments I found laugh out loud funny. One of them was when Bill Maher (in a perfect cameo) criticized America for putting the power to decide the president into the hands of a "dumb ass." Pure Maher, all the way! The other person who made me laugh out loud was George Lopez as the ambitious boss of the local news affiliate who sees in this national media circus his big ticket out of there to the attractive media markets in New York or Los Angeles. Because I love politics, the film was tolerable (though I wouldn't watch it again), but there were many things I can rip apart with this film.

First, I have a problem with any film that makes the child smarter than the adults. Though it may happen in certain cases, its actually disturbing to watch a child be more responsible than her parents. Though the actress did a good job (she resembles child actress Abigail Breslin), it was painful to watch such a smart girl having to be the parent to her drunken and "ig'nant" father. Later in the film, we get to see the emotionally absent mother who has her own problems and it was just a bit too much for me to believe. Her mother is so dysfunctional that she makes Costner's character look responsible.

Second, Costner plays the stereotype of the kind of person we often associate with Republican voters: NASCAR-loving, blue collar working, trailer park-living, beer guzzling, low class, ignorant idiot who laughs way too much everytime he makes a comment. The Republican President Andrew Boone invites him aboard Air Force One and tells him that he's the kind of president "you could have a beer with" (gee, I wonder where they got that idea?!?). The President's policy advisor is clearly based on Karl Rove, as he orders anti-gay marriage ads to air continuously on TV in Ohio on election day.

Third, I had a hard time visualizing Dennis Hopper as the Democratic candidate for president. If the filmmakers were truly visionary, they would not have gone with an old white guy to play the Democratic candidate. They should've been more innovative (such as having a Hispanic actor or a woman play that role). The Democratic candidate's name is "Greenleaf." Oooooooh, how "creative"! Is he supposed to be an environmentalist? Of course! Duh.

Fourth, Costner goes bowling! Last year, the media made such an issue of the fact that both Hillary and Obama went bowling to prove their "average-ness" to voters. Obama bowled horribly, but joked about it. Hillary wanted us to believe that she bowls regularly. Why do we insist that politicians be inauthentic to win our votes? I couldn't care less if a politician bowled, watched the same sports, drank the same drinks, did scrapbooking, watched the same movies, listened to the same music. None of that matters in how I vote. I want to know how they would act in certain crisis situations and what their policies are. Hobbies are not relevant. It's only interesting as an aside, but not for the main reasons to vote.

What I liked about the film was the monologue Costner gives before the debate between the two candidates. Its amazing that I had to watch a lot of unbelievably bad and cliched crap before I heard a gem of a line that I wish someone in real life had uttered to the candidates last year: "How is it possible that in the wealthiest country in the world, I can no longer afford to live here?"

The movie ended as I expected it to. There was no other ending possible, I think, so it made sense. Overall, it's just a poorly thought out film full of cliches that hoped to make a statement about the importance of voting and warning against a repeat of 2000, but failed to find an audience last year. I guess since we were experiencing the most exciting election of our lifetime, a movie about an election just wouldn't compete favourably. No drama or comedy could ever outdo the 2008 Presidential Election.

Now, about that fake plumber guy. Somehow, in a speech or debate, the term "Joe the Plumber" came up and then the media had a field day coming up with an actual plumber to shine their spotlight on to receive Warhol's mandated 15 minutes. They found the guy (who's middle name is Joseph), who spoke to Obama at a rally and asked a question about how paying more for taxes would help him out. This average Joe guy was such a con job. He tried to play it cool like he was unbiased and open to both candidate's ideas, but I knew he was a Republican based purely on demographics. He came off like a NASCAR-loving, blue collar working, beer drinking average guy who prides himself on being "ig'nant" because "learnin' is elitist."

He got national attention and mentioned in a debate or two. His fifteen minutes turned into twenty, then thirty. When he first emerged in the media, he rightfully claimed that he was just an average guy who wouldn't presume to know much about global issues that the candidates were expected to know. But, rather than crawl back into his hole of anonymity, he accepted public appearances with John McCain (though he failed to appear at one rally after McCain had called him to the stage).

After the election, "Joe the Plumber" indicated that he voted more for Sarah Palin than John McCain. He didn't trust McCain, but claimed that Palin was authentic. I guess we know which brain was talking at that point! It didn't surprise me though. In fact, I bet on a given night, you'd probably find him at Hooters, oogling the waitresses and talking into their breasts. Maybe Palin could play Poison Ivy in the next Batman film, because she has a toxic effect on Republican men. They mistake her attractiveness with competence.

Now, "Joe the Plumber" was hired by Fox News Propaganda and sent to Israel to report on the uprising there (with what credentials?), he addressed a convention of Republicans about the future of their party (I knew he was a faux-independent and a loyal Republican hack all the way), and has signed a book deal. I don't get how someone like him could be taken seriously. He, along with Rush, Palin, and Jindal, prove to me how badly the Republican Party has fallen. Intelligence no longer matters to this party that seems to aspire to go the way of the woolly mammoth. Fine. Good riddance. Willful ignorance has caused enough damage to our country. If a segment of our population think Joe the Plumber has opinions worth listening to, these people should not be allowed anywhere near the voting booth. An ignorant vote is a wasted vote.

Maybe on future election days, we should tell these people that Walmart is having a sale on beer kegs with NASCAR drivers giving out autographs and Sarah Palin dancing around a pole wearing a Hooters outfit. That ought to keep these people far away from the voting booth!

Message to the plumber: Your fifteen minutes are up, so go fix Palin's leaky faucet! You know you want to!

Music Video Monday: Taylor Hicks

Tomorrow, 2006's American Idol winner Taylor Hicks releases his second official album (prior to American Idol, he had two independently recorded and released albums). I really enjoyed his post-Idol album, named Taylor Hicks, and I was sad to hear that Simon's label dumped him. However, it wasn't surprising. I had read that Taylor Hicks had creative differences over the recording of that album and burned a lot of bridges.

I know that Sean can't stand him and doesn't understand how he won, but Taylor seemed like a likable guy, someone I would've been friends with in high school. To date, he is the only contestant on American Idol that I liked from the audition stage to have won. I like his style of music, sense of humour, and ability laugh at himself. Had I known about him before American Idol, I would've went to see him play at a few clubs near my apartment in the Atlanta neighbourhood of Buckhead in the early part of the decade.

This song, "What's Right is Right" is the first single from his new album, The Distance. I'll buy it by Friday, but at the moment, I'm still listening to U2's No Line on the Horizon and thinking its going to fade pretty quickly. Hopefully Taylor Hicks' new album will be the kind of CD I'll listen to all summer long.

International Women Hold the Keys to My Heart

Today is International Women's Day. Last year, I wrote about all the famous women on the global stage who have affected my life in one way or another. This year, I was going to write about a single woman of global reknown, but the only one I know the most about to write a nice tribute post on is Aung San Suu Kyi, and I already wrote about her for Human Rights Day last December. I had hoped to have read Benazir Bhutto's book before this day so I could write about her, but there's always next year.

Instead, I've decided to write about my long history of being attracted to foreign women. Ever since elementary school, I always felt that I would marry a foreign lady someday...though the nationality always changed as my country of focus changed (as you'll read). The picture you see was taken in December 1999 on my last Sunday at church in Orem, Utah. I had given a sermon and invited Yudelka Castro to come to church that Sunday. We had met in January 1998 when we both had Political Science 200 and scheduled the same lab class (that met early Friday morning). Interestingly enough, in that lab session, only Yudelka and a lady from the Czech Republic were enrolled (along with me). What drew me to Yudelka (besides her beauty) was her sense of humour and intelligence. She's from the Dominican Republic.

At the time, she had a boyfriend (from a South Pacific island, if I'm not mistaken). By the time of my last semester in the Fall of 1999, she was available and we went out. I could've easily fallen for her and actually did. But she had served a mission for the LDS Church and believed her church was true, so I knew it wouldn't go anywhere. She was supposed to participate in the Washington Seminar the same semester as me, and at the time, I was disappointed that she dropped out. In retrospect, I'm glad she did for my own sake. I probably would've fallen in love with her because she had all the qualities that I'm looking for in a wife.

The funny thing about being with her is that I never saw race as an issue. I was completely colour blind when I was with her. What I saw was an extremely intelligent woman who could always make me laugh. In fact, in the summer of 1999, whenever we saw each other on campus, I would ask her, "so, what are you doing after graduation?" Her response was always: "get drunk and have lots of sex!" I would always laugh when she said it. After maybe the fifth time she said it, I asked her, "why do you keep saying that?" She said, "because you always laugh and I love hearing you laugh." Awwwwww...how could I not fall for a woman like her?

She represents a long line of diverse women I've fallen for over the years. It goes back to elementary school, when I used to fantasize about meeting a foreign woman and living in her country. In the First Grade, I actually dreamed about falling in love with a Russian woman and liberating her country from communism. Yes, I actually thought like that as a 6 year old (I think I've said many times that my thinking was different from most people you know). Thank God for Gorbachev! He did what I'd never be able to do, despite the belief in possibilities that my 6 year old self possessed.

In Second Grade, I started on my Japanese kick. There was a Japanese woman who lived in my apartment building that I remember talking to and even going over to her apartment. In Third Grade, I wrote a paper for school about where I saw myself at age 25 or 30. In my 8 year old mind, I thought I would have a Japanese wife and live in Japan. I checked out books about Japan from the library and dreamed about living in this fascinating country. Other years, it was Australian women, British women, and French women.

When Eighth Grade came around, I was in my first year in Germany. At my school on the Army base, there was a Senior named Theresa Waldner who was half-German, half-American. I had a crush on her, despite the age difference. Even at my young age, I sensed a kind of sophistication about her that American girls lacked. At the end of the year, she graduated, but in one of the special days where you could send a flowergram to someone, I was shocked that she had sent me a rose. We kept in touch for a year or so after she graduated. To this day, I am still baffled how a lady four grades ahead of me managed to make friends with me (she even threatened to beat up a bully for me!). When I was a Senior, I barely talked to Sophomores and basically ignored Freshmen and "Subbies" (as we called the 8th graders).

In my Sophomore year, I had another crush on a half-German, half-American girl named Vicki Garcia. She was also a sophomore, but she had a crush on my best friend at the time, Mark Diggs, who had a girlfriend. Vicki and I did go out a few times and had great times. I recently got back in touch with her on Facebook late last year.

In my Junior year, I was back in the USA, attending high school in Georgia that had a large percentage of students from India, South Korea, and Vietnam. One of the girls I had a crush on was named Neha Patel, who was Indian and went by the nickname "Nicki." I wanted to pursue her, but was told that I'd have to get to know the father, who preferred that she date Indian guys. Sounded like too much work. Also that year, there was a Vietnamese girl who had a crush on me (actually, there were two). She couldn't pronounce my name, so she called me "Nickalick." Unfortunately, I didn't pursue her (she was pretty cute) because at the time, I tried to play down my "Asian" heritage and the last ethnicity I wanted to date was an Asian girl (Southeast Asian).

When I lived in Italy as a young sailor, it was my hope to find an Italian girl to marry and bring back to the States. However, what I learned was that most Italians did not want to move to the U.S. They were big on family ties. The few American sailors I knew who married Italian women ended up living there for most of their careers. Italy is a great place to experience for a few years, but I would hate to live the rest of my life there. Italian women are gorgeous. In the barracks I lived in, the ladies who worked in the front desk were all attractive AND intelligent. They loved talking with me because they knew I wasn't the stereotypical sailor. In fact, one of them guessed correctly that it was me when she overheard an Italian woman tell another about a young American who went into a travel agency and bought himself a South African vacation. This lady was married, unfortunately.

While I lived in Italy, I managed to get my name in some French magazine for penpals and received a letter from a French girl that I became friends with. I met her and her family in October 1992. Though I wasn't attracted to her, we maintained our friendship through 1999, when she moved in with a jealous boyfriend and was disowned by her own family. Had she looked like Audrey Tautou, though, I'd probably have pursued a relationship with her.

At BYU, I seemed drawn to Russian women. In one of my French classes was a gorgeous Russian lady named Yana, but she had a boyfriend. In the summer of 1999, I worked in BYU Laundry. There were many times when my eyes would lock with a Russian lady named Olga who worked across from me. I wanted to ask her out until I learned that she didn't speak English very much. That made communication difficult, so I didn't bother. What a shame, though.

Also during my time at BYU, I found myself drawn to a girl who was half-Polynesian, but she had a boyfriend. A Japanese girl, but she was materialistic and went on family shopping vacations to Saipan (when I told her about the sweatshop labour and exploitation of uneducated women from Southeast Asia, she merely shrugged). A South African girl, but she got insulted when I asked if she had voted for Nelson Mandela in 1994. An Australian girl who visited my church one Sunday, but she was fidgety and wishy-washy about the Mormon religion she had joined against her parents wishes.

During the Washington Semester, the lady on the program I found the most attractive was Alexandra, with her fiery red hair, impressive intelligence, and international background (she had lived in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, her father was a diplomat or worked for an oil company). Then I met Jenet at church, who grew up in Germany and had an interest in Eastern Europe.

In my first post-college job, there was a lady from Brazil that I found attractive, but she only liked black guys.

There is a pattern to my life it seems. International is where my (broken) heart is. Perhaps moving to Portland was a mistake, because if I truly desire an international career with a foreign wife, well...Portland isn't exactly an international city like New York, Washington, or San Francisco. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me that the reason why I got a lot of flack from the feminists on the CyberCommunity webboard is because they didn't like my preference for foreign women over American women. I didn't know what she meant until she explained it to me. It was an interesting theory and I'm sorry if my preferences offend certain ladies...but, you like who you like. Right? An international guy with a diverse racial background like me is attracted to women of equally diverse background and experience.

So, in honour of this day, I put out a vibe to the universe: send me an international woman who engages my intellect and where the attraction is mutual. That would make my year. If I want to marry by October 2010, I need to meet her NOW. How about it, God? Please. I deserve a little happiness in life after the hell I've gone through for over two years. I'm not picky about race, ethinicity, or nationality. Just surprise me.

I Chihuahua, Hear Me Yap!

Wednesday evening, I watched the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua because I'm a sucker for talking animals. I just think its hilarious. I love the GEICO Gecko (where did he go? The new ads creep me out), the AFLAC duck, the Japanese-speaking California cow (for the "happy cows come from California" ads), and the scene in Kangaroo Jack where the Kangaroo raps with an Aussie accent.

What started it all for me, however, was the Taco Bell Chihuahua that aired in the late 1990s. Those hilarious commercials were a staple of my college years. The first commercial featured the chihuahua in the back of the car, staring at the two guys in front before finally saying "Yo queiro Taco Bell!" The commercials evolved into more outlandish (and hilarious) scenarios, culminating in the Chihuahua wearing a beret Che Guevara-style and speaking to an adoring mass of people with the revolutionary phrase: "Viva Gorditas!" The Chihuahua went commie on us and it wasn't long before Taco Bell got a new ad agency (they dumped the ad agency that created this character because they wanted more money). It was a dumb move. These commercials were popular and the new agency created stupid ads. It wasn't long, I thought until a talking chihuahua would become a movie.

I used to not like chihuahuas. When my family lived in Lawrence, Kansas when I was 4-7 years old, a family across the street had a chihuahua. It was mean for a little dog. And I always thought they were ugly too. All bark (or yap) to compensate for its small size. More aggressive, perhaps, to make up for being so puny in comparison to other dogs. A roommate in college called them "drop-kick dogs."

My opinion of this dog breed changed because of the Taco Bell commercial. Not only was it effective (I did eat at Taco Bell a lot in my college years. Now, I prefer Taco del Mar), I no longer thought they were ugly dogs. They are expressive.

Also when I was in college, MTV's The Road Rules Latin America had an episode where the cast was being trained to take part in a bullfight. It was a funny episode because the cast was scared to face real bulls as they were taught how to tease the bulls and how to run to safety. When the day came, they were nervous as they entered the arena, only to find that the real task of the mission was to get a key from one of the chihuahuas. There were many of them and the cast laughed in relief that they wouldn't face any bulls. The chihuahuas proved themselves to be every bit as tough, biting fingers. The one with the key became the group's travel partner through Mexico and when there was a fight between two cast members, the guy seemed to find comfort in the faithful companionship of the chihuahua. This breed is particularly loyal to one person.

What sealed my newfound fondness for these dogs was one I saw last year as I waited for the MAX at Pioneer Square. One lady had a baby buggy with a chihuahua resting in it. You could tell from its face that it was LOVING IT. It had such a self-satisfied expression, it actually looked kind of cute.

Unfortunately, Paris Hilton and the movie Legally Blonde turned chihuahuas into trendy accessory items that travel everywhere in a Prada handbag. Not that chihuahuas would complain. They seem to love being carried.

As much as I want a Golden Retriever someday, many apartments have breed restrictions on dogs, with a maximum weight as 30 pounds. I'll never be able to own a Golden Retriever if I can't afford to own a house. I'd love a dog, though...so, maybe if I move into a dog-friendly apartment in the next year or two, I'll get a dog and it'll probably be a chihuahua.

In fact, if I were a dog breed, my personality seems to resemble a chihuahua. I am fiercely loyal to a small group of people and, as I learned in college when I had roomates, I tend to be quite territorial (I feel very uncomfortable when people I don't know are in my living space, which is why I didn't like living with roommates who had friends that hang out all the time). Owning a chihuahua might be good for me, as I'd love to have a loyal dog. I just wish apartments allowed larger dogs, because I prefer a Golden Retriever-sized dog rather than a yappy little dog. But a dog that would be loyal to me and has funny expressions might be a great thing in my life. We'll have to wait and see. My whole life depends upon landing a better paying job, so I can move into a new apartment where pets are allowed (my current apartment doesn't allow any pets at all).

The photo above is the kind of chihuahua I'd like to get. Longer hair than the more common ones.

Now, to the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I knew before watching it that the film was made primarily for children, so I didn't expect much out of it, thus was able to enjoy it for what it is: funny and entertaining. The plot was better than I thought it would be. Basically, a spoiled chihuahua named Chloe is used to living a lavish lifestyle of designer clothing and doggy day care at high end boutiques on Rodeo Drive (her owner is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who runs a successful cosmetic business). Back at the mansion, Chloe lounges by the pool in designer sunglasses while being serenaded by a working chihuahua named Papi, who is owned by the Hispanic landscaper hired by Curtis's character. When Curtis goes off to Europe on a 10-day business trip, she entrusts her beloved chihuahua to the care of a freeloading, irresponsible party girl (her neice?). On a whim, the young lady is invited by her friends on a roadtrip south of the border. Chloe comes along and is left alone in the hotel room while the girls go party. After being dognapped and taken to Mexico City to become part of a dogfighting ring, a chase caper ensues, featuring a diverse cast of humans, dogs, rats, and iguanas.

My favourite scene is when Chloe and her guide through the strange land of Mexico, a former Police-trained German Shepherd, come to the ancestral home of the Chihuahua breed. The leader is a charismatic chihuahua named Montezuma. I loved it when he told Chloe to please call him "Monte", with a wink. That was so brilliantly done! During this segment, Monte tells Chloe and the legion of chihuahuas that their breed is not a toy or a fashion accessory, but a majestic dog with a distinguished history. The other chihuahuas shout out "no mas!" to the examples of disrespect the breed gets from others. It was awesome. I wish more of the movie would focus on this hidden chihuahua city. Monte calls them "chi-warriors."

According to the director's commentary, the chihuahua who played Monte pranced around like he was the shit, because the young female chihuahuas all had a crush on him! It was hilarious to hear that. That's why I love animals, because growing up, I remember being taught in schools that animals were dumb and didn't have feelings. However, as I observed animals, I noticed different personalities. If some people still think animals don't have feelings, they are idiots. Dogs get mad, dogs get happy, dogs fall in love, dogs get jealous. Man, I wish I could see the effect Monte has on chihuahua bitches. According to the director, Monte knew he was a rockstar and played it up to the benefit of the star-struck groupies.

The film was pretty good. A film a family would enjoy watching together without embarrassment. It was a hit in theaters last fall (dog movies seem to be doing well these days) and anytime a movie about dogs is popular, I'm always curious if there is an increase in people getting the particular breed for a pet (this supposedly happened with dalmations in the aftermath of the live-action version of 101 Dalmations, despite that the breed is not considered good pets for children). I hope that this movie won't cause an increase in people wanting chihuahuas because they look good traveling in a handbag. Give this breed more respect than that! The DVD features a special cartoon about the history of chihuahuas that's reminiscent of the cartoon history of rats on the Ratatouille DVD. Educational and entertaining. Who knew this dog had such an awesome history! It's nice to see them finally get the respect they deserve.

Yo quiero Chihuahua!

Flashback Friday: U2

For this week's Flashback Friday, I'm featuring my favourite rock band of this decade, U2. On Tuesday, I bought their latest CD, though I've only had time to listen to it once. Based on a first listen, it didn't hook me from the start like All That You Can't Leave Behind, Zooropa, and Achtung Baby, which are my three favourite albums by the Irish band (in that order). This one is definitely going to have to grow on me. In one of their greatest hits compilation CDs, they featured a new song "Electrical Storm", which is what this new release sounds like. An album full of that kind of song. Not the direction I was hoping for, but at least it's not Pop, the most over the top, over-bloated album of their career.

Next year, the band will celebrate 30 years since the release of their debut album, Boy. Its truly amazing that they've been around that long and still producing pretty good music. Seems like all the music critics are in love with the Beatles and it's doubtful that they will ever be replaced as "the greatest rock band in the history of popular music." In the 7 year career of the Beatles, they did show a remarkable musical evolution from original boy band with silly love songs to artistic genius in experimental sounds, images, and lyrics. Nay-sayers and haters fall back to the Rolling Stones in the Boomer argument of which band is better. But when was the last time the Stones put out a truly great album?

I think at some point, U2 is going to be up there with the Beatles in terms of rock band greatness. In my opinion, they are far better. It takes a certain amount of discipline to maintain a popular rock band over the years without egos getting in the way and breaking up the group. Since I was born after the Beatles-era, I missed out on what was probably an exciting time in music as their artistic genius even inspired the Beach Boys to produce some of their own classic work (Pet Sounds, with songs like "God Only Knows" and "Don't Worry, Baby") that reinspired the Beatles to push even further.

U2 doesn't really have any kind of artistic rival to compete for "the world's greatest rock band." Sure, there are imitators (Coldplay, anyone?), but U2 is in it's own category. It's kind of amazing to me that they are my favourite band at the moment, as I wasn't a fan of theirs in the 1980s when a classmate of mine in the 9th grade tried to convince me that they were the best band. This was in the spring of 1987, before I heard the song "With or Without You."

I had never heard of U2 prior to 1987's critically acclaimed The Joshua Tree album. I don't know how I ever missed the great song "Pride (In the Name of Love)," but my introduction to U2 was through the enthusiastic classmate. Back then, Huey Lewis and the News was my favourite band (I know...its almost too embarrassing to admit. Even an old friend I re-acquainted with on Facebook asked me recently if I still liked Huey Lewis and the News! I can't believe he'd remember that detail after 20 years). The U2 enthusiast recorded the album for me so I didn't have to buy it. I liked "With or Without You," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and "In God's Country." However, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Critics were putting this album on the all-time greatest list and I failed to understand what it was that made this album so great. Even the evangelical Christian youth group my dad made me attend on the Army base each Sunday, the leaders who pushed us to dump secular music in favour of Christian rock were okay with U2. They said that The Joshua Tree was acceptable to listen to. Imagine that.

I never bought a CD of this album, but have been wanting to, just to revisit the album and really listen to it, paying attention to the lyrics. It's supposedly a spiritual album. Obviously on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "In God's Country," but perhaps on more songs as well. I most remember listening to this album on my walkman as my family was waiting to board the ferry at Calais, France to begin our British Isles vacation in the summer of 1987. Even now, anytime I hear "Where the Streets Have No Name", I'm transported back to the ferry pier, in the long line of cars, excited to finally see the country that gave birth to ours. When we attended the British Isles RLDS reunion for a couple days, I asked the British teens what they thought of U2 and of Ireland. To my shock, they strongly disliked the Irish and I later asked my dad why. He gave me a lesson on British-Irish relations that I was completely unaware about. Still, I thought these fellow Christians and church members shouldn't judge a whole country because of the IRA.

The album cover for The Joshua Tree was an instant classic, which has been imitated and spoofed by others. You know what they say about imitation (being the sincerest form of flattery). I think it's their best one.

In 1988, U2 released the gospel-tinged Rattle and Hum alongside the concert documentary (which I still haven't seen but want to). I actually liked this album more than The Joshua Tree, especially the song "Angel of Harlem." It was a nice follow-up to the album that put them into the "stadium arena" category of superstars. Though they continued to impress me, they still weren't my favourite band.

In the fall of 1991, I was in the Navy at my first command in La Maddalena, Sardinia. I remember two officers, who were more like older brothers to me than authority figures, discussing U2's new album, Achtung Baby. They asked if I would buy it and for some reason, I just launched into an anti-U2, anti-German rant. I've never been a fan of German culture (out of all the cultures I've come across, French culture suits my tastes and personality more, followed by Italian culture), so I wasn't pleased to hear about U2 going to Germany to record their next album. In retrospect, it was a brilliant move of theirs. Germany was THE PLACE to be in 1989-1991, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanys into one, once more.

I might never have listened to Achtung Baby if not for a classmate of mine who sent me a copy of the tape in the spring of 1992, swearing that I would love it. She sent me some other music as well. She was a music critic for Georgia State University's student newspaper. In our senior year, she was the one who insisted that I had to buy Sinead O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got album (I was prejudiced against Sinead O'Connor because of her scary and angry performance of "Mandinka" on the Grammy Awards in 1989). I loved that album, so I trusted Stevi's musical tastes. When I listened to Achtung Baby, I was completely blown away. The sound was incredible. Absolutely incredible. From the brilliant opening song of "Zoo Station" to the unique sounds of "Mysterious Ways", "The Fly", "Even Better than the Real Thing," "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," and my personal favourite, "One." I simply could not listen to it enough. It was one of my favourite albums of 1992 and I was still listening to it a lot when I did not expect a follow-up so soon...

Zooropa, released in 1993, seemed to have come out of nowhere. While Achtung Baby was the sound of U2 chopping down The Joshua Tree, Zooropa went even further into musical genius, solidifying their new sound. I had debates with fellow sailors about U2. The consensus I found was that those who loved U2 in The Joshua Tree era did not like the new sound, but those who loved the new U2 sound weren't big on The Joshua Tree. By now, U2 was becoming one of my favourite bands. In 1990, Huey Lewis and the News had lost their status as my favourite rock band to a new group I had discovered: Johnny Clegg and Savuka (and Clegg's earlier band, Juluka), from South Africa. I also like Australian band Midnight Oil and French band Indochine. U2 was in my top five list, finally.

I actually like Zooropa even better than Achtung Baby. It truly captured the zeitgeist of Europe in 1993: the year the European Union became official. In fact, the title song "Zooropa" poked fun at the European bureaucracy, which set about regulating everything, including (according to U2's brilliant sense of satire) "a bluer kind of white." In this "one-two punch", Bono took on a new persona of "the Fly" or "Mephistopheles", with his large wrap-around sunglasses and penchant for devilish pranks (such as calling famous world leaders in the middle of U2 concerts for the delight of fans). I actually had an opportunity to see U2 in concert in Italy, but passed it up to my eternal regret. I missed their "Zooropa Tour", complete with old Trabants as stage lights. In fact, it seemed like everything U2 touched made it cool. I always thought Trabants were ugly looking cars, but U2's embrace of them (in an ironic way, of course) made the old East German car cool (supposedly in Berlin, one can still rent a Trabant to drive around...which is on my "to do list"). Songs that I love from this album include: "Zooropa", "Numb" (sung by the Edge), "Lemon", "Babyface", and my personal favourite "Stay (Faraway, So Close)," which is also one of their best music videos. They even had a song with Johnny Cash! How much cooler could they get?

Then the bubble burst with 1997's Pop. They pushed the ironic, megalomaniacal rock star excess beyond its limit with a lackluster album. Though I loved the lead single "Discotheque" and accompanying music video as they channeled their inner Village People, I liked less than half the songs on this album. It seemed like an album full of rejected songs from Achtung Baby / Zooropa. "Staring at the Sun" was pretty good, but my personal favourite is "Last Night On Earth" because of what I call "the siren sound." Whatever that sound is on this song, I truly can't get enough of it. It's one of their best singles, to date. Too bad the rest of the album doesn't measure up. But, every great band can weather a lame album. However, it was around this time that I was thinking that they might be past their prime. How long can U2 be completely on fire as the biggest selling rock band in the world anyhow?

The Pop-Mart Tour continued along the same vein as the "Zoo TV" and "Zooropa / Zoomerica /Zoomerang" tours...crass excess in commercialism, going so far as to even rip off McDonald's Golden Arches (minus one) for their stage prop. I missed out on this tour, also. If nothing else proves the genius of U2, its that they saw the writing on the wall and returned to the basics with...

2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. When they released this album in October, just a month before the controversial election, I was completely blown away on first listen. This is what perfection sounds like. U2 had finally managed to create the most perfect album of their career. I loved the one-two opening punch of "Beautiful Day" and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." I listened to this album A LOT in 2000 through 2002. It became the healing balm for my soul in the dark days of the 2000 election results and depressing first year of the Bush era. Songs like "Walk On" (a tribute to Burmese dissident and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi), "Elevation", "Peace on Earth", "New York" (my favourite line is: "in New York freedom looks like too many choices..."), "Wild Honey", and the brilliant closer "Grace Finds Beauty."

What's so great about this album is that they stripped away the electronic noise of their previous three albums and focused on beautiful melodies with some of the most profound lyrics of their career. This was the album that was perfect for its time. At the time I listened quite heavily to it, I was "stuck in a moment" I couldn't get out of (I'm repeating that experience, unfortunately). Other lyrics in "New York" that I like include: "I hit an iceberg in my life / But you know I'm still afloat / You lose your balance, lose your wife / In the queue for the lifeboat / You've got to put the women and children first / But you've got an unquenchable thirst for New York." It was interesting that they featured a song titled "New York." The album seemed to do even better in the U.S. after 9/11, as other people found some kind of emotional healing in this brilliant album.

This was THE ALBUM that finally put U2 into my favourite band category (Johnny Clegg had disbanded Savuka in 1994 and restarted Juluka for an album in 1997 before recording under his own name with no band title now). The album is also ranked at #3 on my all time favourite albums list (behind Johnny Clegg's Cruel Crazy Beautiful World from 1990 and Midnight Oil's Earth and Sun and Moon from 1993). I still never get tired of listening to this album. The question I have is...would I have like it as much if they hadn't released Pop? To me, it showed that the band was smart enough to reverse course, drop the irony and costumes, and just focus on the music without the distractions. Artists like Britney Spears and Janet Jackson should take notes from U2 (both seem to think that releasing album after album of sexually provocative songs is doing wonders for their career, but people get tired of the one-note obsession. What's wrong with reinvention? Madonna and U2 prove that reinvention works wonders for a long-term career).

To have such a brilliant masterpiece meant that the follow-up would have too much to live up to. In 2004, they released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. I knew when I bought it that it wouldn't be as good as All That You Can't Leave Behind, but my hope was that it would be better than Pop (anything is better than Pop). There are some gems on this album. The debut single stirred a debate that some music critics thought Bono didn't know Spanish because he says: "uno, dos, tres, QUATORCE!" before singing, "hello, hello...from a place called Vertigo..." Give Bono some credit! He probably knows "Quatro" is "Four" and "Quatorce" is "Fourteen." It's just clever and unexpected that he said it the way he does. Music critics can be a little too serious for their own good.

Besides "Vertigo", I loved "City of Blinding Lights" (it was great to see the song used in The Devil Wears Prada when Miranda Priestly and her assistant go to Paris), "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own", "The Original of the Species", and "All Because of You."

Over the years, U2 has also recorded songs for movies...some of which were baffling, such as "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" for Batman Forever and writing "Goldeneye" for Tina Turner to sing in the first Pierce Brosnan outing as James Bond. Why couldn't they have recorded the song themselves? They would've been a great addition to the group of performers who have recorded a Bond song. The wrote a song for Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York ("The Hands that Built America") which was nominated for Best Original Song Oscar (they lost. Can't remember who won that year, but I felt that they were robbed).

Though I'm skeptical about their new album, No Line On the Horizon, I'm glad to see my favourite band releasing their third album this decade. No other band has made as big an impact on the Zeros Decade as U2 (I include Bono's globe-trotting diplomacy on behalf of "The One Campaign" to rid the world of poverty in our lifetime). On the albums liner notes, I was pleased to see that they are still raising awareness for Aung San Suu Kyi, who still remains a prisoner in her home country of Burma. What can I say, other than Bono is cool, U2 is cool. No other band is greater. Including the Beatles.

In Search of the Paranormal

On February 19th, I went to an interesting lecture at the New Renaissance Bookstore in NW Portland. Its been on the calendar for months and I couldn't wait. Actual Paranormal Investigators! Or Ghost Hunters. Whatever you call them, they do not actually "bust ghosts", as Martina Baker told the captive audience. In fact, she claimed that if anyone promises you that they can remove ghosts from your dwelling or place of business, it's a financial scheme, because it simply ain't possible. Ghosts have a stubborn mindset of their own. They can leave whenever they want ("go into the light!") but for whatever reason, they remain. It's a case of what Buddhists call "attachment" -- the inability to let go of life as lived in the physical body, even after the body has long been disposed of.

Anyhow, I've been meaning to write on this lecture because it's been an ongoing fascination of mine...perhaps since I went absolutely crazy over Ghostbusters in the seventh grade. Of course, I didn't believe in ghosts back then. It was just a great fantasy film with cool special effects. In the years since, I've heard of others having spectral encounters and read about them in books. I always maintain a dose of skepticism, with always the open-minded belief in possibilities. The closest I've come to an otherworldly encounter was when I was alone in the basement crypt of the Cathedral in Bayeux, France in 1994. I felt a presence of evil down there and got the hell out of there. I haven't investigated it online to see if anything weird might've happened in the Bayeux Cathedral, but the feeling was unmistakeably chilling and evil.

I have had several photographs where an inexplicable bright light messed up the photo, which is an indication that a ghost got into the picture, if some theories are to be believed. Then there's that odd incident in 2002, when I developed several rolls of film from my vacation to Boston and New York City. It might have been four or five rolls of film. For the first time in my life, the store actually lost one roll of film. It contained most of my photos in Lowell, Massachusetts, where I had made a pilgrimage to see the various homes and places where my favourite writer Jack Kerouac lived and frequented as a young man (and again as an older man). I couldn't believe it. Months later, I received a strange voice message on my answering machine. It was a lady with a foreign accent (sounded like she was from India or something) and she had pronounced my name "Nee-koh-lyce" and informed me that they had found my roll of film and I needed to come pick it up. When I went to the store, no one knew anything about it. More than that, no one knew of any lady with a foreign accent working there. And no one supposedly called me about the missing film because they never found it. Weird. I was angry about it. Never in all the rolls of film I have turned in for development have ever been lost...and the one time they lose it, was photos taken of the most sacred literary pilgrimage of my life! Weird. In retrospect, a part of me wonders if that episode was the result of a trickster spirit at play, with the strange accented lady being one of those EVP phenomenon.

Back to the Ghostly lecture. They talked about EVP and even played recordings they made which picked up on comments various ghosts have told them. They said that as they investigate hauntings, they run a tape recorder and don't hear anything until they play the tape back. That's when they get some strange sounds and voices that made my hair stand on end and gave me goosebumps. One ghost told the lady investigator that he didn't like blondes. Another ghost told them to get the "F" out of there!

The ghost hunting team consists of Todd and Martina Baker, a married couple who do this on their spare time as a hobby. They don't get paid for investigating, though donations are gladly accepted. This is something they do out of a pure love for the subject matter. They have an interesting partnership. Martina is the self-described psychic while her husband is purely science and reason and logic. When they receive requests to investigate hauntings that meet their criteria, they said that they always approach it from a scientific basis. They have a process by which they try to find logical explanations for various occurrences (such as a banging sound might be a radiator heater acting up). Their website has several cases and other good information. The call themselves the Pacific Paranormal Research Society.

The woman was the more talkative of the duo, understandably. She was cool. Great personality. Really fun, and funny. Her husband seems more serious, quiet, and logic-focused. They seem to be a good match for each other. I learned a lot in this 90 minute lecture about ghosts and spirits and other phenomenon. For example, most of the hauntings they've covered fall under the category of "interactive", which means there is a ghostly presence that will react to you and maybe even try to talk with you. This is about 80% of the hauntings they've covered.

The second most common is only 15% and is what they call "residuals", which is like a film of a past event that is stuck on a loop. An example of this is of the supposed "ghost ships" some people have reported to have seen off the coast of Oregon. Or of old battlefields, particularly famous Civil War ones. The ghosts seen in these residuals aren't even there. It's just a spiritual reenactment of a tragic event that plays on a regular basis. If you happen to be in the midst of a residual and attempt to talk to the ghostly figure, it would as pointless as trying to have a conversation with an actor on the silver screen. Think of residuals as "ghost movies" of tragic events and sit back and enjoy the show!

The third type of haunting covers about 5% and Martina said that she won't even investigate those anymore. It's called "elementals." These are spiritual beings that people think of gnomes, sprites, trolls, and "demons"--though she claims that calling them "demons" gives them too much credit. Basically, elementals are mischievious non-human spirits that are attracted to the energy of people who invite them into their lives. They are attracted to negativity and feed off of it. The easiest way to not have them in your life is to not invite them in consciously or subconsciously. Martina said that most people don't have to worry about elementals and having a bad day or two is not going to cause one to be attached to you. She said that only people who thrive on drama seem to attract these troublemaking spirits (message to all the drama queens out there!).

One surefire way of bringing these beings into your life, however, is the use of the Ouija board. She said that people who do Ouija board or seances in attempt to contact loved ones are only inviting trickster spirits into their lives. A passed over loved one is not going to communicate to you by use of these mediums. I was interested when she talked about elementals and her refusal to call them demons, because I know some people in our faith community back in the Atlanta area who are obsessed with Satan and demons. My disinterest in Satan and demons have made one lady in particular concerned about my own spiritual welfare because she claims that "the greatest trick Satan ever pulled on humans was convincing them that he doesn't exist." She and her relatives love to recount episodes from their lives when demons have appeared and tried to attack them. And anytime something bad happens, they blame Satan and his demon minions. My mom has been one of the most spiritual people I've known all my life and she would tell me that people who focus on demons only encourage more of that kind of phenomenon in their lives. Her view is that "turning towards Christ means turning your back on Satan." I actually feel sorry for people who focus too much on Satan and demons. They put too much credit on "adversarial spiritual forces" whereas I prefer to focus on the positive aspects of spirituality: moments of bliss, coincidences, synchronicities and serendipities. I have no use for elementals.

Martina told us the difference between ghosts and spirits. Ghosts are attached to places. She said that they get most of the calls for investigations when someone is renovating their house. It happens so frequently, that its one of the first questions they ask when someone calls in, asking for them to investigate. The reason for this is because ghosts are earth-bound spirits who are attached to a place, like a home. They are stuck in a loop, not aware that they are dead. Thus, when someone alters their familiar surroundings, it serves as a wakeup call and they respond by making their presence known. She defined ghosts as: G rieving, H uman, O bsessed, S tubborn, and T ired. She said that when the ghosts gets to the point of being "tired", it means they are finally ready to "see the light" and move on to the spiritual realm instead of remain in limbo (earth bound spirits). By contrast, spirits are free to travel and they are not stuck to a particular place. Spirits generally don't haunt. Passed over loved ones are spirits. Patrick Swayze's character in Ghost was a spirit.

One thing Martina mentioned that I was only slightly paying attention to and regret not asking for further information was when she talked about the "poltergeist" phenomenon. She claims that there is nothing spiritual about it at all. The way she described it, an agent (the person its centered on) is the cause of it due to the powerful energy manipulation of one's own body. Often, these occur in pre-teen girls because of the hormonal and bodily changes, added alongside the emotional rollercoaster. The best solution to it is to get the person involved in physical activity to diminish the pent up energy so it won't be released in walloping doses that affect the physical objects in proximity to the agent. I didn't know that. And here I was thinking that the Spielberg-produced film is one of the scariest films I had ever seen despite being only PG. I'm always afraid when I fall asleep with the TV on that it might happen...but I'm glad that Hollywood embellished the idea for a powerful ghost story.

As they talked about their paranormal experiences and explained various aspects, I couldn't help but think of all the movies I've seen where such ideas were presented. Films such as Ghost, Just Like Heaven (the scene with various ghost busting efforts is hilarious), Dragonfly, White Noise (another creepy film), The Sixth Sense, The Others, Poltergeist, and of course, Ghostbusters. Speaking of that hit 80s comedy film, I read that Dan Ackroyd still wants to make a third one. However, I think if he does, it needs to be re-booted with a new cast and a different approach (rather than having the plot lead to an ancient god coming to destroy our world). I'd love to have a crack at writing the script, as it would be the ultimate dream come true for the 13-year old in me.

Earlier this week, I watched another ghostly film called Ghost Town. It was pretty good, but not as funny as I thought it would be. The bad thing about the film is the British guy in the lead role. I read in a magazine that he's considered the funniest guy in the world, which I found to be overblown hype. He was annoying and rarely funny. He was completely wrong for the role. In fact, he dragged the film down. He's simply not leading man material. If they had to go with a British actor, why couldn't they have gotten Hugh Grant, Jude Law, or Ewan MacGregor, who have been known to be funny as well as having A-list credentials? I liked the supporting actors in the film: Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni, Kristen Wiig, and Bill Campbell. The British guy plays a misanthropic Dentist who has a "near death experience" under surgery, which gives him the power to see and hear dead people. When ghosts realize that he can see and hear them, he becomes a magnet for every earth-bound soul in New York to help achieve closure so they can move on to the spiritual realm. Interesting concept, good story...the only flaw is the British actor. Proof that casting makes all the difference in the world. This movie lasted about a week or two in theaters last fall. Had they gone with a different actor, it might've been more successful.

The photo to the left represents my favourite ghosts. How uncanny that they look like my best friend Nick and his wife! When I first met Jennifer in 2005, her ghost story fascinated me. I hope she took good notes about the ghost she knew. It might make an interesting story to write about.

After the lecture, I asked Martina about being able to go on an investigation with them. Unfortunately, she said that she and her husband don't investigate with the general public. Suggested that I should seek a group of dedicated ghost hunters / paranormal investigators in Portland to join up with. That was one of the "new things" I had planned to do this year. I am still somewhat skeptical and need my own freaky ghost encounter experience before I'm a true believer. From a spiritual standpoint, I understand the reasons ghosts exists, but I truly would like to come face to face with one. Preferrably this year. That would make my year, I think.

The Latest Bachelor Continues the Losing Streak

I'll admit to a guilty pleasure...I have seen most seasons of ABC's reality dating show The Bachelor. There are a number of reasons...(1) I'm curious to see which of the ladies I would be interested in; (2) I find the stereotypes about the whole "princess" fantasy that many girls seem to have and never outgrow to be hilarious in an almost vomit-inducing way; and (3) I wonder if the losing streak will ever be broken. I don't know how many bachelors ABC has featured, but not a single one (NOT ONE!) has ended up in marriage with the woman they selected on the show. There have been several Bachelorette shows and only one has made it to the land of matrimony (Trista and Ryan, already getting ready for baby #2). It begs the question...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS SHOW? How is it possible that a bachelor is given an opportunity to meet 25 ladies and completely blow it?!? And then he cries like an idiot (photo above left) after rejecting one lady in favour of the other! Total wuss.

They've featured a venture capitalist, a restaurant entrepeneur, a Navy pilot, a British guy, a comedian (who was rejected on a Bachelorette show), a brother of a Hollywood actor, a wine grower scion of a famous family-owned tire company, a professional football player, and even a doctor. In fact, it was Dr. Stork (that was his real last name) that had my all-time favourite bachelorette reject. A mid-30s doctor thought they had a bond because of their common profession, so she really thought she would get a rose, easy. When they had their one on one conversation on the very first night, she let it be known that she was ready to have children. Dumb! DUMB, DUMB, DUMB!!! What kind of woman would start talking about wanting children to a guy she just met?!? That's a near guarantee that you'll scare us away. So, when she didn't get a rose at the very first rose ceremony, she was shocked and made a scene as she left. She probably uttered the most classic line of any seasons, hands down: "My eggs are rotting!" She got angry because she believed that Dr. Stork was at the age where he needed to think about settling down and starting a family. That was her diagnosis for the Bachelor Doctor! However, he had other ideas on how he wanted to live life and she couldn't understand that. Newsflash: women and men really do think differently!

The show does make for some amusing battle of the sexes stereotypes. However, can we have at least one season where not a single woman utters words like "princess, Prince Charming, fairy tale, white picket fence," etc.? This isn't a damn fairy tale, okay? It's not even "reality", as the current bachelor, Jason of Seattle admitted in an interview.

I have my theory on why the show is so unsuccessful in leading these men to the land of matrimony. I've long suspected that most people who appear on the show have ulterior motives. Its hard to deny the instant fame factor for the bachelor. Plus, there's the ego vanity of the male species. Many guys often brag about their sexual exploits to other guys in locker room talk...but the show offers visual proof. The bachelor gets to live out whatever pimp / rockstar fantasy he wants. The trouble is, a lot of the women might have ulterior motives as well. If any think being on the show is a ticket to stardom, or a foot in the door to a Hollywood film career, they're only deluding themselves. I'm guessing that there have been at least 15 Bachelor shows by now. At 25 women per show, that's an alumni of 375 women. Where are most of them now? Trista is the most famous one because she is the only one who found a marriage partner through the show and had a wedding on television. Every other lady? Forgotten. Well...except for "Ms. Eggs Are Rotting." Shortly after that season, I learned that she had a personal ad on Yahoo Personals and even thought of responding as a joke.

Still, I can't believe that out of the 25 ladies, Bachelor Jason had trouble deciding. It was the first time where a bachelor decided he didn't like his first choice. Bachelor Jason broke up with his first choice on national television and asked his runner up if she'd consider dating him. They claim to be in love, but this show only makes one cynical about love. Hearing these people drop the "I love yous" so quickly is bizarre, to me. It's probably the most shallow kind of love...as close to love as a group of narcissistic people could get.

One lady in my previous job in Atlanta used to watch the earlier seasons of the show. She told me that I should be the next bachelor, before laughing. Hey, I'm self-aware. I know I'm not TV material and I would have zero chance with these plastic ladies who probably view Barbie as the ideal female role model. The way so many of them view marriage just screams out traditional, 1950s-model to me that I'm not interested in. In each season I've seen, there are actually few ladies that I would find interesting enough to pursue. Better examples of the "type" of ladies I naturally gravitate towards are found in movies. Such as the character Charlize Theron plays in Sweet November. Or the lady Audrey Tautou plays in God is Great, But I'm Not. Or someone like Abigail Adams. Or Annette Bening's character in The American President. Or Kate Beckinsale in Serendipity. I see none of these quirky, intelligent types who live life by their own rules in any of the ladies on The Bachelor shows. They are nothing but plastic, vapid, shallow women with ulterior motives.

The bachelors fail to find love because it's a love created in Hollywood. It's all about their needs, their feelings, as fleeting as it might be. Bachelor Jason truly sounded like a chump when he said that after making his choice of Melissa, he really loved her and wanted to marry her. But even as he spent Christmas with her, he found himself thinking about the lady he had let go, Molly. When he broke up with Melissa on national television, she demanded to know what she did to cause him to not want to work things out. Isn't that what true love is all about? The desire to work on the relationship? He kept saying that something changed. He didn't know what it was, but he felt the spark going out. What's he going to do if he feels it going out with Molly at some point? Will he pursue Deanna next, the lady who had made him the runner up on her show and even appeared on his show to ask if he would dump both women and pick her? Crazy. These people are crazy!!! They cheapen love to a form of narcissism and then claim that they don't want to hurt people, even as they go about doing exactly that because they can't be honest about their feelings and what they are really looking for.

I suggested to a friend that if they truly wanted to shake up the show, they should film it in Utah and then he could have both or even all of them! Why not? He might have a chance, because you really can't get to know people on the group dates, speed dates, and process of elimination. Its hard to really know people over a short period. I read somewhere that you really need to know someone for six months before you have a good idea of who they are, because most people who can fake desireable qualities are not able to sustain it for the long run. The truth will come out over time.

Even if I was telegenic and the kind of guy with the easy gift of attracting a broad swath of women, I would not do a dating show like this because the deck is stacked against success. One thing that has truly stuck out for me in all these seasons is that the women are indistinguishable from one another. Not only do they seem to look alike (in the way that beauty pageant contestants seem to resemble each other more than the women you see in real life), they talk and behave alike. The focus is on looks and career. Not depth and intelligence. I doubt that they would find an authentic person on that show. What lady would pronounce so easily that she loves the bachelor after a one-on-one date in the private suite, knowing full well that two other ladies also had one-on-one dates in private suites of their own?

One of the coolest things about this season is that Melissa's parents refused to be on film and thus, weren't allowed to meet the bachelor (show's policy is that all aspects of the courtship, dating, and relationship--including breakups--had to be captured on film). She kept apologizing to Jason and wondering why her parents were acting like that. What an idiot! Not everyone wants to be on camera and have millions of viewers all over the country see where they live and how. There is value in living anonymously. If you have great family and friends, and do things that you enjoy and love, what would be the purpose of wanting fame for fame's sake? That's the tragedy of all these reality shows. Too many people see it as their ticket to the big time, but the reality is, appearing on the show will be their only experience with fame. They are cursed by Andy Warhol's famous quote about everyone being famous for 15 minutes. They had it, then it's on to the next beautiful person. Beauty is a dime a dozen. Intelligence and a well developed soul is the rare find...and I doubt there will ever be such a lady on any of these shallow shows.

I'd love to see the show shake up its format. Obviously, the selection process doesn't work. If I were the bachelor, I'd probably clear the room before the first rose ceremony because I'd want to know each of the ladies' spiritual and political views before I handed out any roses. One thing I would love to see is a diverse group. In past shows, they've had a token minority thrown in here and there. If it were me on that show, I would want more than token minorites. I would want diversity across the board...my dream show would be more MISS UNIVERSE than the current MISS TEXAS that the show seems to be. And the process of elimination would be much more fun if ladies were given the boot anytime they uttered "princess", "fairy tale", "Prince Charming", "white picket fence", and "rotting eggs."

I'm glad this show is finished. Truth be told, I'm usually doing other things while the TV is on, because I don't have time to really sit and watch TV. I like doing multiple things (I've been known to watch TV while reading a book with music playing in the background). As for the loser bachelor and his wishy-washy-ways, I give his relationship three months, tops. Then he'll see if Deanna still wants him (she was supposed to get married on the same Saturday in May as my sister's wedding, and Deanna is from Smyrna, Georgia).

I probably won't watch The Bachelorette season. However, there's one bachelor I'd love to see ABC try to hook up: Rush Limbaugh. He needs some loving and it would be hilarious to see if these shallow, plastic, fame chasers would be more repulsed by Rush's grotesque weight, political views, or personality. Or would his wealth be enough to blind them through the course of the show? Inquiring minds want to know. So, how about it ABC? Hook up the rich bachelor so he can exchange his Oxy-Contin for love. You'll be doing Democrats a huge favour!

Music Video Monday: U2 "Pride"

This week is going to be a GREAT week! Tomorrow, U2's long-awaited new CD is finally released. Already, No Line on the Horizon has gotten mixed reviews. Time Magazine compares it to the overbloated Pop from 1997, People Magazine compares it favourably to their last CD, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. We'll see which review comes closer to my opinion. However, I'm not expecting it to approach the stratospheric levels of All That You Can't Leave Behind, since I consider that the most perfect album of their career.

In honour of U2 this week, I decided on another U2 video this year. Many of their videos on YouTube aren't allowed to embedded elsewhere, so I have to go with video footage from the Sunday before Inauguration Day, when U2 sang their classic "Pride (In the Name of Love)" to the incoming president Barack Obama. The song was appropriate, as it was also the weekend of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and that song is the Irish band's tribute to the slain Civil Rights leader.

I'll review the new CD at some point this week or next after I give it a few good listens. For Flashback Friday, I'll recap U2's career from my point of view (I didn't actually care for them much until I heard Achtung Baby in 1992 and after 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind brilliance, they secured themselves as my favourite band, possibly of all-time).

So, have a great U2 week! One of these days, I hope to attend a church service that does a "U2charist" (it's supposedly popular in young adult circles in contemporary Christian churches, where people sing the more spiritual U2 songs during the church service. In a couple services I participated with YAPS, Sean had the Bono and Mary J. Blige duet of U2's classic "One" play during a moment in the service, which is the closest we've ever gotten to a U2charist).

"The Shack" Surprises and Inspires

For Christmas, Christine gave me the novel The Shack, which was pretty funny because I had thought about giving her that novel for Christmas. It would have been hilarious if we had given each other that book as gifts! But, I went for something else, because I wasn't sure if this was a good book since I hadn't read it. I wanted to read it, because it has made some waves in evangelical Christian culture. Several people had recommended it, and you can't walk into a bookstore without seeing it on display somewhere. It's likely to become a book club favourite, at least among Christians. However, even the New Age bookstore in Portland sells it, and they don't normally sell evangelical Christian books (they have a preference for Gnostic Christian literature, along with New Age spirituality, eastern religions, psychology, and any philosophy that's about self-improvement and tolerance).

Naturally, I'm skeptical when something is popular among evangelical Christians because I know from personal experience that our views are quite different. I especially don't trust them in regards to politics because they were instrumental as a voting block to electing the most disasterous and un-Christian president we've seen in our lifetime. If some spoiled brat of a scion from a dynastic family that got wealthy because of its ties to Hitler's Germany could get evangelicals to vote for him en masse while he sets upon destroying everything that made our country great...they don't have a lot of credibility. But I knew that already. In the 1990s, I was shocked to hear evangelical Christians supporting the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, Jesse Helms, and their ilk. Tom DeLay, in particular. He's the congressman who went to Saipan, where corporations basically enticed poor, uneducated women from the developing world (Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines) with "good paying jobs in the USA" only to basically make them indentured servants in the U.S. territory of Saipan, working long hours for little pay just so American shoppers at Wal-Mart could buy cheap clothes with the "Made in the USA" label. DeLay went to Saipan in the 1990s as part of a Congressional inquiry into the employment practices and saw nothing wrong with sweatshop labour! Now, would Jesus approve of these practices (exploiting people all in the name of cheap consumer goods)? Yet many Christians believed that DeLay was a most holy and righteous man, a good Christian who deserved their support and votes.

See what I'm getting at? Evangelical Christianity has undermined their own credibility when they support conservative politicians who talk Jesus to voters, but in reality, their own actions betray the Christ they claim to believe in. Yet, we give these people credibility and think nothing of their evangelizing to non-Christians in an attempt to win souls for Christ. Its no wonder why so many people were turned off by religion and grew cynical. The previous president, embraced by evangelicals, has done even more damage to Christianity, however. Proof of this is in bookstores and video stores everywhere. Back in the late 1980s and the 1990s, you wouldn't find books about atheism on the bestseller lists or documentaries mocking religion (Jesus Camp and Religulous) playing in theaters. There was a kind of prejudice about atheists being immoral, if not evil. Now, it is Christians that many feel they cannot trust. Obama probably couldn't get elected in any previous election, because the false rumours of his being a Muslim. However, after a disasterous reign of a president they fully embraced, now evangelical Christians lack credibility to people who associate Christianity with Bush's presidency. Would Jesus have wanted this association? Somehow, I highly doubt it.

So, as I read The Shack, I had a natural dose of skepticism. I'm not interested in reading "Christian propaganda" (which to me is the heavy promotion of "Jesus died for your sins" sort of guilt-tripping that I simply don't buy into). That was my main concern in reading this...but I kept my mind open that there was a reason this novel resonated with millions of readers. First, the prose was quite good. None of the vomit-inducing horribly bad writing which made the Left Behind series of books virtually unreadable for me (I couldn't read beyond the first page of the first book it was so bad). The second thing I liked about The Shack was that it was set in eastern Oregon, with references to Portland and the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound. I love it when a story is set in an area where I live. Though there were a couple instances where the novel is unmistakeably Christian in terms of pushing the Jesus died for your sins belief, it wasn't the main focus of the story, just a kind of subtle reminder.

Basically, the novel is about a man who experiences perhaps the worst thing any parent could have: the abduction and murder of a child. Four years later, he's still in what he calls "The Great Sadness" when he receives a mysterious note in his mailbox requesting that he return to the place where the crime was committed: a rundown shack in eastern Oregon. He thinks its a prank by the murderer, but the message was so odd that he feels that it might be from God, so curiosity gets the better of him.

What he finds at the shack is nothing short of miraculous. He has a spiritual experience that changes his life. The novel plays with your expectations of God, as God appears to the man as a hefty black woman (reminding me of the Oracle in The Matrix trilogy). Jesus appears as he supposedly was in real life (looking very much like the Middle Eastern man he was instead of the blond haired, blue eyed man preferred by Europeans and Klansmen). The Holy Spirit in the guise of an exotic woman named Sarayu complete the trio. What ensues is a mix of profound conversations, laughter and tears, and even outright anger as the man seeks answers from God to his pains. The novel is meant to answer in a satisfactory way why bad things sometimes happens to good people. Its the whole debate between free will versus pre-determination. If God knows ALL, why does He allow bad things to happen. That sort of thing.

I can't recall when a book kept me so riveted where I had to read it and nothing else until I finished it (it might have been Dan Brown's Angels and Demons that I read in 2006). I'm still slugging my way through Revolutionary Road, but I must say that I'm truly impressed by the depth of The Shack. Its the kind of book that has fallen into my hands (by way of Christine) at the right moment in my life, when I'm having some intense dialogues with God, myself. Only, I'm not getting answers back as to the path my life should take. I keep taking the wrong path, it seems, when I'm wanting guidance on the right path that will lead me towards the career I have a passion for.

Once I finished the book, I was impressed by the questions it raised, some of the answers it provided, and most especially for the kind of Christianity it advocates. Basically, it seems to indicate that churches oftentimes stand in the way of people's relationship with God. Instead of allowing institutions to block our way, we should seek a personal relationship without interference. Yes, it does express the standard Christian view that Jesus died for our sins, but it also offers so much more. This is a book worthy of a reading and discussion group. I highly recommend reading it. Not once did I experience a "gag reflex" as I do whenever I read something cheesy or cliched. This novel gave me an emotional experience to the point where I felt like I was there with them.

I've read that the film rights have already been sold and it shouldn't take long before it becomes a movie (2010, perhaps?). I would love to see Queen Latifah play the role of God in the film, as she would do an outstanding job. Hopefully, the film producers will create a beautiful film that offers viewers a glimpse of heaven on earth and the grace of God as they leave theaters in complete awe. I watched a documentary about the growth of "spiritual cinema." Author Dan Millman, whose spiritual book Way of the Peaceful Warrior was made into an excellent film in 2006, hit the book and film critics squarely on the head. He said that critics automatically dismiss any book or film that has "a message." Somehow, that's a no-no. I noticed this in reviews of every film of spiritual content for several years. Granted, some films have failed to live up to the mark (Conversations With God, The Celestine Prophecy, The Da Vinci Code), but I always appreciated the "take-home spiritual lesson."

I have my own theory on why critics are cynical towards films and books with a spiritual content. It truly hit me when I walked the streets of Manhattan in 2002 (from the WTC site to Times Square). New York City (the center of American finance, where many literary and film critics are based) has a certain energy and vibe to it that is unique. I felt it in the six hours I was there in 2002. I knew that if I lived there, it would be easy to become a snob and think of the rest of America as "flyover country." Even the show Sex and the City had an episode where one of the ladies met a guy who had never left the island of Manhattan. It illustrated the arrogance of some people who believed that Manhattan is the center of the universe and the rest of the planet isn't worth visiting. After 6 hours of being in awe of this massive city, I totally could understand the cynicism. The city was created by the hands of man, so these cynics have fallen pray to idoltry in the magnificence of mankind. It's hard to find the wonder and awe in an invisible creator one can't prove exists by the scientific method. Many find some kind of transcendant spirituality being out in nature, far away from the creations of man. But for those who live in a city like New York and rarely venture out, I can see how cynicism creeps into their being without their even noticing it.

Cynicism is a defense mechanism. The person doesn't want to be taken for a sap or a fool, so they drink in cynicism as a special elixir to keep them "in the know" and too smart to fall for any unproven ideas, particularly in regards to spirituality. What I find most laughable, though, is that many of these people didn't see the financial crisis coming. Some were snookered by ponzi-schemist Bernie Madoff. I've been a spiritually-minded person since at least Kindergarten (the first time I can recall praying to God). Yet I don't fall for financial schemes. There have been a few times where someone tried to get me involved, but I always felt alarm bells go off within my body. So, what is the point to be so cynical about spirituality while blind to financial schemes peddled on Wall Street? Who's the sophisticate and who's the fool?

Despite my open-minded spirituality, I haven't joined a cult, I haven't been converted by controversial religions such as Scientology, the Unification Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses, or even the LDS Church despite having gone to their university and sitting through many religion classes and getting the full indoctrination experience. Cynicism about any spiritual idea because one might have had a negative religious experience once makes me sad. The world of spirituality is worth exploring, and although I am interested in a lot of New Age ideas and concepts, I don't believe everything I come across. I believe in possibility and promise, but I always (ALWAYS) test every idea I come across through my own experience and experiments. Living life that way opens the door to some pretty amazing life experiences.

I guess my message to cynics is to be more open-minded about spirituality. You don't have to believe everything that you read, but dismissing outright any book or movie with a spiritual theme or message is the kind of narrow-mindedness they accuse of certain religious people. The message to evangelical Christians is that they also need to be more open-minded about spirituality. By focusing on the death and resurrection of Christ in an attempt to gain converts, they might be pushing people further away. Authentic Christianity is about the Life of Christ. Its about the human relationships as we seek to be better, more loving, and more forgiving people. If the goal of life is to understand why things happen, it does not benefit us if we set our minds on pre-conceived notions without testing the validity of what we've been taught. If more Christians read The Shack and made their churches more like the way described in the novel, Christianity would be a far more profound experience.