Five Traffic Pet Peeves…

I remember when I first obtained my license.  This was back in the day when to get your license you actually had to take a driver’s education course.  I took it during summer.  I remember how utterly bored of the class I was.  Mostly, it was about scaring us to death through the use of ancient films with over dramatic actors, films of the like I hadn’t seen since I was in grade school. 

The one film I remember was about the dangers of driving while tired.  It featured two Afro-Americans traveling in large boat of a vehicle.  The two had been driving for a long time, which I had thought was sinister in a way.  Anyway, the driver fell asleep, and, as right as rain, an accident ensued.  I was a sick kid, and my sickness showed itself in the way that the film humored me.  “No way is this the way accidents occur.” 

Years later, I had the chance to experience the seriousness of the film, when my wife and I were forced to travel from Texas to Virginia without stop because Elvis happened to die some years early on the same weekend that we were married.  I remember at the darkest part of the night we ended up stopping at a gas station to get some coffee.  As we exited the car, hundreds huge moths twice the size of man’s fist were fluttering around us.  I’ve never been on a drug trip, but I imagine that being caught in a cloud of fist-sized moths might be something like one.

I have a bad record with vehicles.  I have been in multiple accidents.  One actually knocked me out for some time.  I would freely admit I am not the best driver.  However, I am not the worst.  There are driver’s out there that frankly get on my last nerve.   Below are five types of drivers I can’t stand.

1. Truck Drivers

In Texas, every other vehicle is a truck.  In rural areas of Texas, every vehicle is a truck.  I see how on a farm or a ranch a truck is definitely a good idea.  It is rugged.  It is large with lots of loading capacity.  It is hard to do any real damage to a truck.  I dislike those who drive trucks in the city.  In a city everything is compact, pushed in tight to fit as much as possible.  Streets are narrow.  Parking spaces are even narrower.  Somehow, truck drivers think they can fit into the tight spaces with no consequences.  Maybe they can fit into tight spaces only to find that when they open their doors, they leave little nicks in the vehicles the rest of us urbanites were smart enough to buy, little reminders of how much these people are idiots.

2. Crooked Parkers

Similarly, there are those who can’t park there car straight.  Either they can’t center themselves in a parking space so that they park too close to the vehicle on their left or right or they park in the space diagonally because they were in a rush to get in to the spot.  It makes things difficult for the vehicles around them.  The owners of the vehicles on either the right or left then have to play a game of Operation, carefully backing out so that they don’t hit into the car next to them.  There are extreme crooked parkers, usually owners of faux expensive cars, tricked-out Hondas, who park park crooked so that no one will park next to them.  These are the real pricks.

3. Slow Drivers in the Left Lane

My wife and I do quite a bit of traveling.  I am the kind of guy who likes to get on the highway and go.  I skirt speeding driving anywhere from five to ten miles over the speed limit just to shave a few minutes off our travel time.  However, without fail, on every trip there is always some snail of a driver who insists on driving in the left hand lane at the same rate of speed as the person in the right hand lane.  What result is a stock pile of cars in the left hand lane all wanting to get around this slow car.  Get a few slow cars in the left hand lane and you get yourself into a maze, the challenge is not just to get around the barriers but at the right time for fear of boxing yourself in.

4. Automobiles that Turn on Red

There is a certain type of driver who turns at red lights only when they see that the light for the through traffic is about to turn green, and not a moment earlier.  Often, these drivers not only turn right in front of oncoming traffic, they often sneak over into the left lane, the quicker of the two lanes.  I like to think of these drivers as squirrels, only willing to go once they see a car coming.

5. Blockers

I think there are also drivers out there who get a thrill out of preventing people from getting in front of them, so much so that they will slow down when the light is green, only to escape through a red light leaving you to sit a the light.   I have noticed an overwhelming number of these drivers talk on cell phones, not realizing that they in fact are causing everyone else to sit at light that everyone could have easily driven through. 

I believe that when Dante wrote the Inferno, he probably forget one level for the sinful drivers, the slow ones, the terrible parkers, the truck drivers.  I am sure that in that level of Hell, these drivers are doomed to suffer immeasurable tortures related to their years of being awful drivers.  I hope such a place exists; it is the only thing that gets me through a red-light I got stopped at because some jack hole wouldn’t let the rest of through.

Technorati Tags: Drivers,Traffic,Slow,Park,Parking Spaces,Blockers,Elvis,Moths,Trucks

Five Shows that Never Should Have Been Cancelled…

Every year there new shows are introduced to network line ups.   Like darts, network executives shoot the television shows at the viewership-dartboard hoping that some of them will stick.  Oddly enough, a show’s success is determined on viewership, which I suspect is based on a number of factors.  One of the factors is the night which the show is shown.  For example, it is clear that currently NBC has a strangle hold on Thursday nights, a night on which the stack its comedy powerhouses My Name is Earl and the Office. 

I am reminded of the lesson of the Family Guy.  It started out on Fox on Sunday nights.  Then Fox started moving it around both its time slot and nights.  Accordingly, a viewership could not gather around the show because Fox did not give it enough stasis to gain a foothold in their lineup.  They ended up canceling the show.  Cartoon Network then picked up the show in syndication where it gathered the viewership it needed.  The shows were the same as they were on Fox.  But somehow on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim it flourished.  Thereafter, Fox picked up the show again.

There are several shows over the years that I have fallen in love with only to be disappointed when they canceled the show.  Below are some shows that for one reason or another were canceled but never should have been. 

1. Arrested Development

Before the Family Guy ever got a foot hold in the popular culture references, Arrested Development tapped into the vein.  The entire series is funny, each scene wonderfully crafted and brilliant written.  However, one of my favorite episodes involves a Charlie Brown Christmas reference.

2. Dead Like Me

This is a show I did not catch until it was too late, mainly because I did not have cable at the time it was on air.  This is a Bryan Fuller show.  Its premise is decidedly Bryan Fuller.  It is about a girl who dies an unnatural death, and, instead of going to Heaven, becomes a reaper, someone who helps souls go to Heaven.  The premise belies its comedic genius.  All of the characters are wonderfully down to Earth and real, with all of their flaws apparent and forgivable.

3. Wonderfalls

This is another Bryan Fuller show.  In this show, the main character whose life is a shambles and cannot decide what to do with her life begins to see and hear objects talk to her.  The objects guide her to do things to make things right.  Like Dead Like Me, the characters here are real and flawed, but, in their flaws, there are redemption for the characters. 

4. Firefly

The mere fact that this was a science fiction show probably made it difficult to survive.  I suspect that Fox did not do enough to promote the premise of the show.  The show echoed the Wild West that existed in the United States after the Civil War.  The show was beautifully done, and the following it did obtain are extremely loyal to it.  Later, a movie was released which also was well done.

5. Andy Barker, P.I.

This show show stared Andy Richter.  Essentially, Andy Richter played a a vanilla financial consultant who comes to occupy the office of an private eye in a strip mall.  Because of this, he is mistaken for a private eye himself.  Subtle and understated, this show was hilarious.  I don’t even think it lasted a full season.

 

Besides the lack of network support, the problem with these shows were that they were too intelligent and too subtle in a time when intelligent and subtle shows are scarce.  Obnoxious shows like Rock of Love, the Bachelor, and other shows that rely on visual stunts rather than good writing prevent shows like the above from every being established.     

Technorati Tags: Cancelled,Television,Arrested Development,Charlie Brown,Dead Like Me,Wonderfalls,Andy Barker,Andy Richter,Bryan Fuller,Firefly,NBC,Fox

The Antithesis of Habit…

Every morning, I wake up prior to the alarm going off beside my bed.  Usually, the television has already turned on by itself, a timer I set the night before.  My wife is sleeping beside me.  She likely has had a horrible night’s sleep.  I watch the news for maybe a half an hour.  I fight having to get up.  I dread having to do those things we do every morning, brush our teeth, take a shower, so on.  Its not that I dislike being clean.  Far from it, there’s nothing like taking a shower or a bath and getting cleaned up.  I think it is the routine, the habit, that I hate.

I have never really been a military kind of guy, mostly because I hate the idea of having to lose my identity to the habit that the military beats into you.  Military men are creatures of habit.  When I was in law school, I became friends with another student who was a military man.  The habitual way he did everything showed in every thing he did.  He opened doors in a certain way, in particular when females were around.  The way he ate was habitual, the way he said a small prayer before he ate.  I think to a certain extent it was this habit that eventually caused a rift grow between us.

I am certainly not a creature of habit.  I like the spontaneity of things, letting things happen as they come.  I do not like having being places at a certain time.  I do not like having to wear certain clothing for certain occasions.  I like to be able to wear what I like when I like.  In a word, I like to be comfortable.  This usually means a pair of baggy jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers.  I like the way the clothes are easy to slip on and off, the way  that when you take these types of clothes off, you do not have to fold them or hand them up to wear them again. 

Suits you have to hang.  Button up shirts you have to hang up.  Nice shoes must be carefully removed and perhaps be filled with shoe horns.  This habit eats up time, time spent doing other things. 

The antithesis of habit is laziness.  I hate to brush my teeth or hang up my clothes because I am lazy.  There is no positive or negative aspects to these activities except that they eat up time spent in more pleasurable ways.  I struggle with habit.  It is something I practice forcing myself to do the simple things everyday that are habitual so that when it comes to the larger, more important things, I do not waver in my attention to them.

Technorati Tags: Habit,Laziness,Military,Antithesis

Tolerance is Overrated…

I think to a certain extent, tolerance is over-rated.  According to Webster’s dictionary, tolerance is defined as follows:

1: capacity to endure pain or hardship;

2: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own; the act of allowing something;

3: the allowable deviation from a standard.

Tolerance is always talked about as a good thing.  However, the definition above belies any positive spin that people may place on the term.  Unless you are a sadomasochist, no one likes to endure pain or hardship.  Likewise, indulging beliefs or practices differing from your own or allowing something, does not sound much better.

Don’t get me wrong.  A certain amount of tolerance is required.  In fact, tolerance is not really the right word; rather, one should always have compassion for others.  One should have compassion for those who are in a inferior state than we are.  One should show the handicapped compassion.  One should show the poor compassion.  One should show the disenfranchised compassion.  Mere tolerance is not enough.

However, more often than not, tolerance is discussed in terms of alternate beliefs than are own.  It is commonly held that we should have tolerance for others of a different faith.  This is likely to a misunderstanding of the Establishment clause in the United States Constitution.  The country’s founders believed that the government should not establish a certain religion and that the state should be separate from church.  This I believe too.

However, the founders may not necessarily have believed that you had tolerate the beliefs of others.  I am Catholic.  Catholics are taught that there is only one “true” church, that is the Catholic church.  One of the things Catholics are taught is to pray for the reunion of those persons who strayed away from the Church back into the fold.

There are some practices of the Catholic Church in which others are just not allowed to participate.  For example, the sacred host is reserved only for those who have gone through the proper rites to be able to participate in such sacrament. 

Catholics also believe in the importance of Mary, that she has a special place with God.  Most non-denominational churches believe that Mary is just a woman.  Some go as far as to claim that the Catholic Church worships Mary as a God.  Often, these are the same churches that eschew images of the saints or of Jesus’s life.  These same churches refuse to permit the image of Jesus on the cross. 

I cannot tolerate these beliefs.  Toleration of these nondenominational beliefs means that have to give legitimacy to these ideas, to perhaps admit that the Catholic faith might be wrong.  Accordingly, there is no toleration for this.

Does this mean I am friends only with Catholics?  No.  Some of my best friends are of different faiths.  Consequently, I do not discuss religion with them.  However, if pressed against the wall, I will tell them what I know to be the truth.  

Technorati Tags: Tolerance,Catholicism,Mary,saints

The Importance of Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a wonderful painter.  In terms of the list of painters that I enjoy, he would have to be toward the top.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that Picasso was a master of finding the delicate balance between the abstract and the figurative.  I have always been of the mind that to reproduce that which is in front of you does not make an artist; rather, true art requires the interpretation of the thing that sits before you in a way to add more meaning than that which the artist added.  (I understand that mathematically this is not possible, i.e., 1 + 1 does not equal more than 2.  That is the magic art.  However, that is not the purpose of this particular blog.)

What I like about Pablo Picasso is he makes more by taking away.  I point to Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period.  Essentially, during this period Pablo Picasso only painted in shades of blue and blue-green.  A great example of this is his painting “The Old Guitarist”, shown here to the left.  I love how within the blue color there are many different shades.  In the guitar, there is brown.  In the old man’s hair, there is white.  In the floor, there is green.  But all is shaded with blue. 

Coincidentally, Pablo Picasso was a friend of Ernest Hemingway.  Accordingly, what Picasso did with art during his Blue Period, Hemingway seemingly tried to do in his writing.  Hemingway was not overly verbose; rather, his sentence were short and succinct.  They did not say a lot, at least not literally.  Rather, the meaning is found in the spaces between the words.  I recall a story written by Hemingway called “Hills Like White Elephants”.  You can read a copy of the story here. 

When I write, I try to implement this strategy.  In a simplistic way but perhaps in a profound way I implement this strategy is by eliminating all forms of the verb to be.  This over used and vaguely empty word adds little if nothing to a work.  Eliminating all forms of the verb “to be” is not necessarily easy; however, it requires you to write more creatively and descriptively.

In a weird kind of way, this sense of deprivation has a lot of foundations in religious thoughts.  For example, Buddhist believe that suffering is derived from craving, desire, and attachment.  By eschewing those things that you crave, desire, and long for, you finally free yourself so that you can obtain true enlightenment.  Catholics also seem to go through the same process during lent, i.e., giving something up, such as meat on Fridays, allows the Catholic to concentrate on cleansing oneself.

In this modern time of excess, it is difficult to rid oneself of craving, desire, and longing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting that you should give up everything and become a hermit (although I suspect that enlightenment is more likely to come to those who do).  I am merely suggesting that the creative process and meaning arise out of limitations.  As the saying goes, less is more.

Technorati Tags: Pablo Picasso,Ernest Hemingway,Hills Like White Elephants,Buddhism,Catholicism,Long,Desire,Crave,limitation,Blue Period

The Organic Nature of Language

Some time back I had seen a piece on 60 minutes about Canada, and in particular French Canada, where they passed laws which required all signs to be in French, and not English.  I recall how positively totalitarian of the local government to want to control the way people presented their message. 

My mind had wandered back to my days in high school when I studied the French language.  I remember my French teacher emphasizing that the French government had a strangle hold upon the French language.  They in fact had established a governmental body whose exclusive purpose was to oversee the French language to make sure that it maintained an orderly traditional language.  My French teacher made a huge deal about the introduction of the term le hamburger to the French language.  Perhaps this is why people have a problem with the French.

I always thought of language as something organic which changed over time as a matter of usage and accent.  The organic nature of language can be seen in the way words are used.  Think of the word “bad.”  The literal meaning of bad is a negative.  If I say the song is bad, if you took me literally, you would think that the song isn’t worth listening to.  However, in the 70’s the term somehow took an 180 degree turn.  “Bad” seems to be good.  This especially true when used with the term “ass,” as in “That Dude is bad assss!”

A more recent word to get a “make over” is the word drama.  When I was a kid, drama was a play.  However, the word morphed to mean a melodramatic situation a person might have found themselves in.  Teenagers often find themselves in “dramas” over silly things like boyfriends/girlfriends and parents.

There are times, though, when a culture steps a little too far and try to avoid letting a word grow organically.  For example, there was a word  that was passed around when I was teaching eighth grade English.  At that time, the word “crunk” was in use.  I never quite got its meaning, never quite understood its usage.  There was no apparent origin for the word.  It seemed to be a word create out of the fabric of nothing. 

Language should be allowed to do what it does without the help of others.  It should be organic.  It should be allowed to change and morph and adapt to the change in times.  However, language should not be manipulated in unnatural ways such that it has no background, no tradition.  Accordingly, language can only be rich and have depth when it is allowed to grow organic.

Technorati Tags: French,France,Canada,language,words,organic,crunk,tradition

The Importance of Symbols…

There has been a long study of dreams by seers and psychologists alike.  In ancient cultures, dreams were often visions used to predict the future or to remove the artificial masks hiding the truth to people.  Freud spent a whole book on the Interpretation of Dreams.  Some experts seem to believe that dreams are merely the replaying of the daily activities, a mind's attempt to understand the daily experiences.

I have always had this problem that I never could actually dream in images.  I don’t see faces.  I don’t see people moving.  I don’t see any images at all.  I do dream.  But I dream in words; I dream in feelings.  I sense things, not like sight or touch.  Rather, I experience them much like I had a sixth sense.

I have never been much of literal kind of guy.  Every picture, every sound had some deeper meaning.  Life for me was much like the Rene Magritte painting to the left.  Truth and falsity coexisting in one image.  I tend to see the veracity of the statement.  It is not a pipe; it is an image of a pipe.

Things have meaning outside of themselves; it is hard for to understand the thing without associating it to some experience that we have had with the object.  I see a pipe, and I am wished back to times when my father, who smoked a pipe, allowed me to accompany him into a tobacco shop.  I recall him holding up different mixtures of tobacco with its rich, sweet aroma.  I also imagine him, pipe in mouth, smoking in the den of the house I grew up in, smoke rising from the bowl of the pipe.

The pipe, for me, is an image of warmth and home.  Trying to describe it to you, without your experiencing the same, without you having smelled the tobacco’s sweetness, without having to see the smoke rising from the bowl, you would not understand my feelings.  When I dream of pipes, I do not see or touch or smell a pipe, I sense the pipe that it is there, the warm feelings I associate with a pipe. 

Freud studied dreams with his patients.  He delved into the subconscious, made people believe that they were royally screwed up.  Men has Oedipal complexes; women had Elektra complexes.  People who smoked had oral fixations rooted deep into psychological problems.  The story goes that Freud himself smoked cigars.  When asked about what that symbolized, he replied, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Obviously, he never knew of Rene Magritte or his painting.  Like Magritte, I believe a pipe is never just a pipe.  Every thing has a meaning deeper than itself. 

I believe perhaps sometimes people forget this, and, in forgetting this truth, they become obstinate and misguided.  For example, there are certain denominations of Christianity who eschew any images of saints and even Jesus.  This is carried as far as refusing to show the image of Jesus on the cross.  These people lack the ability to understand the power of the symbol.  Perhaps it is their belief that the image denigrates the real thing. 

This assumption is faulty.  Assume for example a premise that these denominations would accept, it is the goal of every Christian to emulate Jesus.  (I am reminded of the bracelets that were popular back with the initials W. W. J. D., i.e., What Would Jesus Do?)  Certainly, said emulation is not necessarily for the benefit of the emulator but those who observe the emulator.  They become symbols for others. 

Symbols are important tools.  They allow us to understand that which cannot be understood be the mere use of the five senses.  Symbols are humanities doorway to the insubstantial and unexplainable.   

Technorati Tags: Rene Magritte,Sigmund Freud,symbols,pipe,cigar,religion,denomination,dreams,father,smoke,tobacco,five senses

Sundays

Sundays are like

spreading peanut butter

on raw bread,

crumbs clinging on to the knife.

 

Sundays move slowly,

eating away at time,

an impending end to the week,

and the weekend.

 

Tomorrow,

The week begins,

a week of labor,

a week of working to

a brand new weekend.

Technorati Tags: Sundays,Sunday,week,weekend,peanut butter,time,labor

Why Batman is better than Superman…

When you think of super heroes, you think really of two main characters: Batman and Superman.  Both of these mythic characters have deeply impacted the face of popular culture and provided the world with an ideal of what the composite nature of what a super hero. 

Interestingly enough, these two figures who are the symbols of super heroism, these ideals of all that is heroic, these two figures can not be any more different. 

Superman, although alien, is really the symbol of all that is morally ideal about humanity.  Superman is red state.  He is God, home, and country.  This is why often Superman is shown with the American flag flowing behind him.  Superman is about the majority.  I find it interesting that in order to disguise himself, Superman, puts on his glasses and becomes Clark Kent.  I suppose the people inhabiting Superman’s world are either extremely moronic or severely near sighted because he never fooled me, nor I suspect anyone else.

Batman, on the other hand, is a human and is the symbol of the human need for justice.  Superman is blue state.  He is anti-nationalistic; rather, he is intercontinental.  Batman has traveled all over the world to capture super villains.  Batman disguises himself with an actual hood.

Frank Miller wrote the Dark Knight Returns which features an all out fight between Superman and Batman.  Frank Miller does a great job of playing on the real differences between Superman and Batman.  In true Frank Miller style, Batman wins the battle royale.  Every since I read the Dark Knight Returns, I have always been a fan of Batman.

I also find it interesting that “gangsters,” “thugs,” and “pimps” display the Superman symbol on the back window of their trucks or as large gold medallions around their necks, or as huge images on plastered on their T-shirts and hats.  It seems that the moralistic nature of Superman is antithetical to the “gangster"/”thug”/”pimp” life style.  Ultimately, the symbol Superman represents is really hollow.

Batman is not idealistic.  He is practical.  He is not about the ideal.  He is about what is fair.  He is about the minority.  He is about protecting the weak.  As I write this, I am reminded of an ongoing dispute between the two Mikes on ESPN Radio in the mornings of whether or not Batman is in fact a “super” hero.  Regardless, I think Batman is more of a hero than Superman.

Technorati Tags: Superman,Batman,Superhero,moral,justice,red state,blue state,battle,Frank Miller,Dark Knight Returns

Karma is a Faithful Bitch…

Anyone who has read me blog in the past knows that I am a Catholic.  My Catholicism is important to me, defines who I am, at least in part.  I try to live be a good Catholic.  One of the main issues that people who have had faith issues is how can someone who has done evil all there life but suddenly forgiven their sins on their death bed and be admitted into Heaven.

I have never had issues with this with the forgiveness of those who have committed wrongs against others all their life.  This is due to my belief in the concept of karma.  Karma, at least the version I believe in, is the concept that you have a luck piggy bank which holds cosmic credits which are spent in an effort to have good things to happen to you.  If you do something negative, you take from the cosmic piggy bank.  If you do something positive, you add to the cosmic piggy bank.

There are times when we see people who have gotten where they have by stepping on others, taking credit for what others have done, or have put others down in order to lift themselves up.  We see these persons as lucky, we wonder how it is that they get everything they get with minimum work or effort.  We hate them for this.  Or perhaps you do.

Me, I believe in karma.  I know that ultimately the individual who has gotten where they have on the backs of others will face a down fall.  In my experience, the greater the rise, the greater the wrong caused to others, the longer and harder the fall.  Think about the Enron scandal.  Think about Barry Bonds.  What comes around goes around, as the saying goes.

I think about the poem “Richard Corey” written by Edward Arlington Robinson, which was later put to music by Simon and Garfunkel.  A rich man who had everything who killed himself. 

Accordingly, never think that those who take advantage of others will not get their due.  They do.  We may not see it, but they do.

Technorati Tags: Richard Corey,Simon and Garfunkel,karma,what comes around goes around,fall,rise,Catholic

A Barrier of Distinction…

There are certain television shows and movies that I just cannot stand to watch, shows that set up a situation, which, like a time bomb, threatens to blow up in the face of characters, particularly those involved in the carrying out of the plan.  These are not necessarily horror shows.  Horror movies really do not pull into them such that I am able to distance myself from them.  On the other hand, there are certain situational set-ups, often where one character does something which threatens to shatter the the self, the psyche of someone else, I just can’t stand to watch.

I remember one episode of the Family Guy where Meg believes joins the Flag Squad with the hopes that she might finally be accepted by the cool kids.  At one point in the show, she and her fellow Flag Squad members perform at the half time show during a football game.  The cool kids in an attempt to embarrass and humiliate Meg use a catapult to hurl raw rancid meat at Meg.  I think out of all the Family Guy shows this particular episode bothers me the most.

I was not the coolest kid in school.  I want to believe I was not on the bottom of the social ladder either.  I was never really the subject of humiliation or ridicule, and I count my lucky stars that was the case.  However, I saw it occur, and it bothered me so much so that I refused to hand out with this who engaged in such activities and even went on the offensive, often humiliating and ridiculing those who tormented those who did not have the same social aptitude as others.  I respected those who stayed on the fringe, who really did not care with others thought. 

It is funny how as you grow older, things that matter when you were younger do not matter that much any more.  When not forced into social situations, the same bullying present in primary and secondary schools seem to fade away.  People with same likes or occupations generally hang out together.  But as the saying goes, deep wounds are hard to heal. 

Even today, I find myself reverting to my old practice of making things about me and them.   I often find myself judging people I do not know making them my unknowing nemesis, a person to fuel my distrust and dislike.  My nemesis often propels me to exceed at whatever matters most to that person.  This is done out of spite, to make my nemesis understand that he is not the only person who can do well. 

Comically, my nemesis never knows that I have singled them out as the person who most be fought and beaten.  I never have words with them.  Never let them get to know me.

Inarguably, this competitiveness can be healthy, but, it is done at the expense of person who does not know me.  My need to draw this line, a distinction made between us and them, creates a barrier that prevents me from possibly gaining a new friend.

A good friend of mine once told me that when he first met me, he has a strong dislike of me.  I imagine he drew the line, the distinction barrier which prevented him and I from being friends.  Perhaps a year later, we found ourselves in the same social situation; we broke bread at lunch every day.  We found ourselves talking together and getting to know each other.  From there, we grew in friendship, perhaps one of the closest friendships I have ever had.

I try to be a little more tolerant of people today.  I typically try hard to listen others.  I attempt to give them a chance before I make judgments about them.  I try to remember that there are differing view points than my own and try to honestly understand those view points.  It is hard, but, in the end, it has made me a much less angrier person.

Technorati Tags: Prejudice,First Impression,Family Guy,Bully,Bullying,Nemesis,Tolerance

The Silence of Noise

Whenever my wife and I have any work done on the car, she insists that I turn off the radio and listen.  She wants me to hear the noises of the cars so that I can make an assessment of whether the car is operating better than it was prior to the automotive work performed on the car.  I know there are times when she chides me after she has come home from using the car, complaining that I have left the radio on the car turned up to loud.  (I have since then learned to reduce the volume of the radio before turning it off.)

When I was going through law school, she had constantly inquired how I could read my textbooks and listen to music at the same time.  For her, the music, the noise, was purely distraction and could no other purpose than to lead my thoughts astray from what I really should be focused on.  She revealed to me that in order to study, she needed perfect quiet and stillness.

I have always like music that was “noisy”.  One of my favorite bands is Meat Beat Manifesto whose music is almost entirely noise. 

Likewise, Sigur Ros, although not as noisy as Meat Beat Manifesto, still is noisy in its own way. 

What I think people don’t realize is that paradoxically, there is silence and stillness in noise.  It is not uncommon for my deepest thoughts to come to me in the midst of loud, noisy music.  Within the patterns of music, the parallel beats, the repetition, it is easy for one to look introspectively seeking answers to one’s question.

This is not surprising.  I am reminded of meditation techniques used by various spiritual and mystical practitioners.  Generally, it involves the repetition of a word or a syllable over and over again, not quiet or stillness.  It is not incredible then to give music with its repetitive beats and music should also serve as a gateway to finding one’s deeper self.

Don’t get me wrong.  Not all music has a meditative effect.  Certainly, pop songs sung by Brittany Spears and Madonna are likely not to create a sense of stillness and peace in the listener.  On the other hand, bands like Meat Beat Manifesto and Sigur Ros may be a key for those without peace in their lives to find stillness in the brief moments of the day.

Technorati Tags: Noise,Silence,Meat Beat Manifesto,Sigur Ros,Meditation

Themes on Emotions (A Study in Haiku)…

Joy

A musical note,

Angelic form hovering,

touches internal.

 

Fear

Iron wall of ice

Eviscerates the bowels,

Leaving one empty.

 

Sadness

A metal vice grip

clamps onto your pulsing heart

pulling it under.

 

Boredom

The red sun lingers

upon the barren skyline.

I long for movement.

 

Technorati Tags: Haiku,Emotions,Joy,Fear,Sadness,Boredom,Poem

Why I Don’t Like Tom Hanks…

When I was in elementary school, “Bosom Buddies” was in syndication.  This is the first time I had ever seen Tom Hanks in acting.  Admittedly, I liked the show, particularly, the opening credits where the character played by Peter Scolari was holding a paper bag and the Tom Hanks character was throwing oranges into the air which Peter Scolari’s character would then catch.  There was something about the two characters living a dual existence, kind of a split personality.

Then they didn’t show the show in syndication anymore.  But Tom Hanks continued to work in movies.  In particular, he showed up in comedic movies.   Splash, The Money Pit, Turner and Hooch, The Burbs, and Joe Versus the Volcano.  He was fine in this role as a kind of comedic actor.  His kind of laid back enthusiasm made him the perfect person to play these roles much like Will Ferrell plays his roles to well.

But, unsatisfied with this role, Tom Hanks attempted to move into more dramatic roles.  This is where my dislike of him began.  Mr. Hanks was inappropriate for the role of a gay actor in Philadelphia.  I found his acting unconvincing and awful.  The funny thing about it is that because of the movie’s topic, Mr. Hanks was destined to be lauded for his performance; how could anyone fail when such a good cause was on the line.  Almost anybody would have been lauded in that role.

Then, because of the stepping stone that Philadelphia gave Mr. Hanks, he was able to other roles he was inappropriate for merely because of his status.  Mr. Hanks was a terrible voice choice for Woody in Toy Story.  (So was Tim Allen for Buzz, consequently.)  He not convincing as a mentally challenged person in Forest Gump.  Role after role he landed but was ill-suited for.

Thereafter, he began his power play, stepping behind the camera and turning his attentions to directing and producing.  I think thereafter he held his grip on Hollywood, and hence the nation, by advancing his own agendas at the expense of the true art that movies are meant to be.

I think the icing on the cake was his role in the Di Vinci Code.  As a Catholic, anyone supporting an anti-Catholic agenda has lost my respect.  For a man who holds the nation’s attention in his sway, he should have known better to star in a movie which is blasphemous and disrespectful to a faith. 

In a word or two, Tom Hanks is an actor of circumstance who, instead of recognizing where his talents should best would be applied, i.e., low-budget comedic films, has grasped the neck of Hollywood, in attempt to make himself forever relevant.  This in a word is why I will not willingly spend another dollar in support of Tom Hanks.

Technorati Tags: Tom Hanks,Splash,Toy Story,Bosom Buddies,Peter Scolari,movies,Philadelphia,Hollywood,agenda