What's in Store

So today I'm working at True Jersey Supply Co. I'd like to be able to get here more often but it's fairly difficult have a day job that sometimes requires me to work Saturdays in additional to the usually nine to five on weekdays.

Somebody left a stack of flyings for a 'hardcore' Christian rock concert on our counter. I don't think they are going to be there at the end of the night.

Mostly right now I'm bored. Obviously we have an Internet connection in our store, but I find that the Web can only keep me occupied in short bursts. I feel like there used to be a lot more on the Internet than there is now. There is no way that that is true, but I sure do need to find some new sites to visit. The usually few dozen just aren't enough to last me twelve hours.

I don't want to make it seem like no one is shopping here because people are coming in intermittently. I also don't want to make it seem like I have not accomplished anything today because I did receive and tag a shipment of shirts. Again, it's just not enough to take up twelve hours.

Luckily today I am wearing my new Obama '08 t-shirt so when people do come in it's not just the typical "Whose Benny?" conversation that I've had more times than anyone rightly should. It's good to see so many people supporting Obama. Maybe we're starting to head in the right direction...which happens to be left.

Absentee

It's been a month since I've posted anything on here. Shame on me. My loyal readers must have been lost in the woods that is the Internet without this blog. So much for trying to post on here as often as I could. I don't even have a worth while excuse. I have to wonder what good an excuse would be for not posting on a blog that isn't read by anyone. I guess I'd only be telling it to myself, and don't we all give ourselves enough excuses for our own actions without publishing them on the Web? Potentially public exercises of cognitive dissonance never did anyone any good. Though that's a tad presumptuous.

I start a new job Monday. I'm pretty psyched. This is my last real week of freedom and I'm capitalizing on it in my own way. I'm trying to spend as much time relaxing by the pool as I can. It works out great because it's sunny and hot out, and the pool is refreshing and free.

Less than a week. And my weekend is going to be dominated doing things for BGH. Event in Asbury Saturday. Sweating to death printing shirts on Sunday. Then Monday it's on with the tie and out the door at 8:40 am. At least I don't have a commute. Plus it's a good job with decent pay. Take that recession.

Losing My Religion

Religion has never been a focal point in my family. It simply never mattered. It was never a part of our identity or our lives. Now I consider myself to by without religion. I'm an atheist.

My father was raised Catholic in a half-ass sort of way. I'm fairly certain that he is an atheist as well because on more than one occasion he's essentially said as much. He also says that when he was a child it was said that he was to be a priest. Obviously that prophesy was more than a little off. My mother is some sort of Protestant, as if it matters as to what variety. They were married in a Methodist church and that led to myself and my sisters being baptized Methodist.

My parents were going to have me baptized Catholic but they met with a priest while my mother was pregnant with me and when it came out that my older sister had already been baptized Protestant they were run out. Thus my issues with religion began while I was still in the womb.

Those issues continued into my childhood. The closest thing to a religious experience was going to Bible School when I was about six or seven. The thing is that I never realized that it was supposed to be religious. Sure we sat through a bit of a service before had, but it never clicked. I just thought I was there to make friends and color pictures of guys with beards.

After Bible School, religion fizzled out for me. We've always celebrated Christian holidays, but in a completely secular way. It was always more about giving and eating and Santa and the Easter Bunny than it was about Jesus. My grandmother vaguely tried to make us pious little Christians. Every now and then she'd tell us that Jesus loved us or that God was watching. Whenever this came up I'd look at the cross or the portrait of Jesus on her wall and just get scared. It was like I was being told a ghost story rather than something spiritual.

I remember praying when I was in fifth or sixth grade. I was a little embarrassed by this though. I felt silly talking to some invisible deity, even as a child who would make believe he was a Ninja Turtle. Once High School rolled around I considered myself a Deist. I assume God created the universe and then could give a shit about what happened on one particular speck of dust. Doubting even this, by college I was agnostic. I figured if there was some all-powerful creator, who was I stay say whether or not we could know if He exists. He is all-powerful after all.

Eventually the huge implausibility of such a thing being reality started to dawn on me. Had I ever truly believed in God? Not really. Why then should I bother with this forcibly humble label of agnostic? I think it's so unlikely and have for my entire life; so much so that I was always embarrassed by the thought of doing something religious.

I am an atheist and always have been. I tried to be religious and it never proved reasonable enough to stick. This worlds got enough problems without worrying about ghosts and goblins.

I still know a fair amount about the Bible. I thought the Passion of the Christ was a decent flick. I love the Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston was amazing in that. I view all of these things as mythology though. Not as fact.

As Richard Dawkins says, all of us are atheists about most of the gods that have ever been believed in by humanity, some of us just go one god further.

The Cake Is a Lie

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. I'm not excited.

Is it cliched to say that I've reach a point in my life where my birthday is just another day out of the year? I've pretty much reached every milestone that one can achieve by merely surviving another year. I got my learner's permit, then my driver's license, then I could vote, then I could buy alcohol, and now there's nothing but the ability to rent a car at 25 and to run for President at 35. While many other occasions such as Christmas and Halloween morph into things that can be enjoyed by adults as one ages, I am of the mind that birthdays are much better in their youthful form.

Normally I'm thrilled by any excuse to bake something delicious, but I'm not even sure I want to make a cake. Alton Brown is currently on TV trying to convince me otherwise.

On Holiday

So tomorrow my parents are off to Florida for the week. They're gonna spend time on the beach, soaking up the rays on the Gulf coast, dine out and do all the things that grown-ups do on grown-up vacations. It all sounds dreadfully boring to me.

Maybe it comes from having lived down the road from the beach my entire life, but I cannot understand the allure of going somewhere where all there is to do is lay on the beach. At least around here you're never more than five minutes away from something else to do. I much prefer heading over to the beach at night for a bit to chill out. I guess it can be relaxing for some during the day, but I'd get bored and then quickly graduate to agitated and anxious.

My idea of a vacation is going to a city. I'd much rather go to a place to experience a bit of culture (food), see sites (restaurants), and meet people (food vendors). Chicago was great, New York is cool for a day of fun, and Philadelphia is...easy to get to. I'd like to get to Baltimore, Boston, and Washington in the near future as well. I'd go to a city in the South but I'm afraid there may be a lot of Southerners there.

Night Mare

Its about 5:30 in the morning and I'm awake because a horse came in the night.

Why is it called a nightmare? There are many words that you can derive meaning from simply by breaking it apart. Percent comes to mind. Nightmare seems unlikely to have anything to do with the sum of its parts. Sure they happen at night, but mine never involve a horse. Perhaps people used get attacked by their horses in the night while traveling. Or maybe before they were domesticated horses were a nocturnal creature that would wander the countryside dragging people out of bed to devour them. I guess I kinda feel like that. My nightmare was more a drama than a horror though.

That's the kind of nightmare that gets to me. Not the kind that involves vampires, serial killers or zombies, the kind that comes from your subconscious to kick you in the gut. It finds some emotion in you and slaps you across the face with a bit of realistic worst case scenario. You wake up scared, angry, confused. Then since you don't really want to say what the nightmare was about but still need to get it out of you somehow, you go online and write a blog about carnivorous horses using the word 'you' where you should actually be using the word 'I'.

Charlton Heston

Having decided to call it an early night, I arrived at home and learned of Charlton Heston's death.

Charlton Heston's most notable role, to me, was that of Moses in The Ten Commandments. ABC plays that movie every year around Passover and every year I make a point to at least watch most of it. I love that movie and it is mostly because of Heston's performance. Heston had an on-screen presence that was second to none. Any time that he appeared in a more recent movie, it was something special. Almost as if a piece of motion picture history was playing out any time a camera was on him.

He brought an element of stage acting to his roles that more modern actors never really attempt. He projected and articulated his lines like he was standing in a theater rather than on a set. That's why he was hands done the greatest person who ever played a minor Shakespeare character on screen (the Player King in Kenneth Branagh's amazing version of Hamlet). I even love the scene in Wayne's World 2 where he is brought it to replace a lackluster actor in a very small role.

I have to mention Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, and Soylent Green as well. All are amazing movies in their own right...but they certainly would only have been footnotes in American popular culture if Heston had not immortalized them with his performances.

His use of his popularity to call attention to civil rights issues was also quite admirable. Any man who once marched along side Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deserves all the respect in the world.

No Justice

I had to go in Thursday for jury duty and it was brief but disappointing. I didn't get picked to be on the jury.

I showed up at the courthouse at around 9:30 in the morning. I didn't bring in my cell phone because I can never seem to remember to turn it off when I have to. Plus I had to go through a metal detector, which I hate, so I tried to carry as few things as possible. A couple of guys from the sheriff's office were at the gate. One was trying as hard as possible to put across that he was a bad ass despite the fact that a light breeze probably would have sent him hurtling into the ionosphere. He was the one saying, "Empty your pockets," before motioning everyone through the detector with an unimpressed nod and a "come get some" hand wave. He seemed crushed that the hand-held detector failed to reveal any hidden weapons that would have turned his morning into something more dramatic.

The second officer was somewhat refreshing. He was younger; didn't seem at all emboldened by his badge and gun. Sitting behind a monitor, watching as bags were x-rayed, he could have been waiting to sell you a t-shirt or a pack of gum. This was obviously just his job and not the realization of any life-long, egomaniacal power fantasy.

The waiting room for the jurors wasn't bad, though I was too scared to try their coffee. My heart sank a bit when I saw a stack of board games in the corner. I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't be there so long that I'd resort to playing a board game with a group of strangers. We only had to wait about a half hour before being led through the halls like a kindergarten class into the brownest room imaginable. Everything was made of wood. The walls, floors, doors, benches, chairs, tables, gates, and barriers were all wood. The only things that didn't seem to be wooden were the asbestoses ceiling and American flag. The messiness of the court reporter's desk was the only other striking feature the place had to offer.

The proceedings were unspectacular. His Honor arrived so we all stood up, a wonderful custom bound to keep all judges humble. The jurors were welcomed and introduced to the plaintiff and defendant in what turned out to be a civil case. This was a bit of a surprise. So many of these cases end up decided in the People's Court and on Judge Joe Brown, that it had slipped my mind that these matters could involve a jury. The case was that of Some Dame V. Mercedes-Benz USA. The former was suing the latter under New Jersey's lemon law. Apparently her car reeked of citrus or something.

The court reporter called out seven names from the roughly 30 jurors who had been called in. The judge went on to ask them about their jobs, hobbies, and feelings about whether too many frivolous law suits are filed in this country (yes). All seven of these folks seemed to fit the bill as competent jurors so the rest of us were cut loose.

All in all, I don't feel like I got the full experience. Hopefully in the future I will be called upon again and this time I will be able to walk away having actually participated in the system. I sort of feel like I got left out in kickball, a slight feeling of rejection without it being a huge loss.

Iron Man

At first I was going to write one big entry about superhero/comic book movies but when I realized how much I'd end up saying and how long that would take to type I decided to cover them individually.



It seems safe to say that this movie looks awesome. Robert Downey Jr. was a stroke of genius to play Tony Stark. Ever since I first heard of this development I've been much more excited than I ever thought I could for an Iron Man flick. The only thing that I'm hesitant about is the fact that it is being made by the director of Zathura and Elf. I often wonder what makes a Hollywood executive look at a resume and say, "This is a guy I will trust with a few dozen million dollars." Don't get me wrong, I like Jon Favreau as an actor. Swingers is priceless and for some reason I really like PCU. It's just that playing Foggy Nelson in Daredevil doesn't qualify you to direct a Marvel movie. Call me cautiously optimistic.

I also hope that this movie treats Iron Man better than the comics industry has in recent memory. He hasn't had a single adventure in his own book that is worth mentioning for longer than I'm qualified to say. More often than not, sub par creative duos are assigned to the book with predictably mediocre and forgettable results. Even when someone outstanding such as Warren Ellis is given writing chores, it seems as though they are calling it in and it never holds a candle to their stronger work. His best recent story by far has been in the pages of Millar and Hitch's Ultimates. He's also been done some justice in the Avengers books. He was even pretty bad ass in the whole Civil War storyline, despite being the pseudo-villain.

His cartoon was also quite enjoyable.



Not that one. The 90's one. Mostly because it had a great cast of supporting heroes. And yes, the vast majority of his villains are hopelessly lame.

Civic Duty

So this week is when I'm supposed to be serving my jury duty. I got the notice about a month ago and there was some confusion in the house because my father and I have the same name, save for our middle names. Of course they do not put a middle initial on the notice so we had to sort it out. I won...or lost, depending on how you look at it.

Personally I looked at it like I had won. Everyone tells me that it is the most boring thing ever, but I see it as an experience none the less. I actually think that it would be pretty cool to sit on a jury. Not that I've ever heard anything good about it, it just seems like the best possible situation in which to observe the justice system.

The one thing that is bothering me is that I haven't gone in yet. I called Friday and apparently jurors in my group weren't to show up Monday. I called Monday and my number was not one of the ones going in Tuesday. Called tonight and I have to call at noon tomorrow for instructions regarding the afternoon session at 1:30 PM. So do I have to go in, just not in the morning? Do I not have to go? Maybe I have to go Thursday? I haven't the foggiest. The whole 'call in for your fate' structure sucks.

I also don't know what it means to wear clothes that are fit to wear before the court. I'm thinking puffy shirt and powdered wig.

My MP3 Player Loves Elvis

Music is something with which I've always struggled to identify. I can appreciate a catchy tune about as well as the next person, but that is the limit of the depth. I spent most of the 90's, and thus my childhood, simply listening to what other's liked. My sister's insipid and repetitive pop music, my dad's aging rock, and my friends' alternative music. Can't help but wonder to what Green Day and The Offspring were supposed to be an alternative. Of course these days Green Day is punk. Or neo-punk. Or pop-punk. Who knows? Can you imagine walking through a music shop that was actually divided into all of the self-gratifying and ego maniacal sub-genres that musicians are constantly inventing?

Nothing against music or musicians per say. I just tend to dislike anyone who buys into their own hype or views their own work as being more pivotal and groundbreaking than it actually is. Kanye West and The White Stripes, I'm talking to you.

I do enjoy certain music. Stone Temple Pilots is my favorite band and I do enjoy Green Day and The Offspring despite my genre ignorance. Flogging Molly is also quite remarkable. I tend to evaluate music based upon whether I can appreciate the lyrics while also enjoying the accompanying noise. Seems like a silly thing to say but when so much out there is decidedly unpoetical, to say the least, it becomes a necessary statement. There is a lot of music out there that doesn't seem to have anything to say. Unless it is a purely instrumental piece, I think that's a problem. I also understand that most music tries only to speak to a very specific audience, and that is perfectly acceptable. I'm just not in very many audiences.

Patriotism

I consider myself to be a patriot.

The thing is that I'm one of those patriots that rarely sees eye to eye with the government. One of the issues with democracy is that you almost always are going to have a narrow majority whose views are going to be pressed on the entirety of the nation. (Better than the views of one person or of a very small minority being pressed on the masses, but still.) Even then it's just the narrow majority of the registered voters who actually make it out for an election. I'm also of the mind that people who whine but do not actively participate in the democratic process are no better than those people whose views include taking away freedom and use the system to do so and find so little resistance in their quest. Those freedoms include a right to marriage for all, freedom of and from religion, and the freedom to control one's own body.

There shouldn't have to be laws saying who can marry who or other such nonsense. Especially in a society where less than fifty percent of marriages last. In the making of those laws no mention of God or gods should ever come up. Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, Mohammad, Thor, Zeus, Buddha, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all their friends should not be used as an excuse to oppress. Beyond the religious implications there is no valid argument for banning homosexual marriage and in a secular nation a religious argument should not be one at all.

I'm a patriot in that I believe in the United States Constitution above all else. Take the flag and the pledge to said flag and throw them away for all I care. They are not what matter. They are not the foundation of our country. They are not what ensure our freedom. They are not what the President and every member of the Armed Forces swear to uphold and protect. So when someone like Barack Obama comes along and does where a flag on his lapel, that's okay. The words coming out of his mouth show he is a patriot because he speaks of living up to our Constitution. Decorations do not matter.

Patriotism is a belief in freedom for all in all facets of life, a belief in the founding principles of our nation, and belief that we as a nation can find our way out of the dark to again become the beacon we once were.

Unpleasantries

Once again greasy food has proven itself to be the bane of my existence.

I've gotten sick every single time I've eaten from KFC. That keeps me from actively pursuing it as sustenance, but has always failed to keep me from ingesting the tender, fried morsels while in their presence. Who's to tell if my curse would ever be lifted?

Today's episode was due to some greasy, delicious pizza that ripped me apart royally once inside. One does not discuss such things in polite company, suffice to say that I will be spending at least part of my day tomorrow cleaning my car door.