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.