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In response to an article and personal story posted elsewhere, friends only.

In 5th grade, after some serious emotional trauma, I split ways with Catholicism. I spent a number of years as an asshole atheist.

I like to claim I turned down Catholicism for reason. That’s true, but elides an important detail. I left the Catholic belief system as an emotional reaction. When the shit hit the fan, I expected a caring, omnipotent, omnipresent hand to keep me from harm, and I saw no sign of such a hand. So I stepped onto a different path. A path with less certainty, but one where I felt more confident of the validity of its precepts. I was a little punk at the time. Religion had been my sole comfort in a dismal world. I wasn’t happy. Then I let go of religion and I let myself do whatever I wanted, and I still wasn’t happy.

I continued on that vein for a couple years. I saw that I wasn’t happy, and so I reinvented my belief systems again. This time, it was organized around a principle of making others happy. I was pretty selective as to the others I applied it to, and the way I applied it, but that’s the same for all remotely functional belief systems, I think.

My older sister graduated high school, went away to college, and became a Wiccan shaman. I was fascinated. I checked out several books on shamanism, and read them. I talked with her friends about it, on the rare opportunities I got.

When she started up at her second university, I’d seen her go through a great deal of emotional turmoil. I’d been there for her while she was dealing with it. I met her cool new friends. I tried to straddle the skeptical and new age worlds.

While I was learning chemistry and physics, I tried new age “energy manipulation” stuff. It was all so mercedes lackey, how could I resist? I started adding Animism as a partial descriptor of my beliefs. It offered a ready-to-plug-in belief system that let me see more, offered a more comforting, richer view of the world. Or so I felt at the time. But I could never quite bring myself to believe it. It hung on, suffering a lingering demise over many years. Bringing comfort and painful disappointment in one package.

In college I looked at things with a new rigor. Somewhere along the line, my agnosticism became pretty militant (I don’t know, and neither do you, douchebag), with strong atheist leanings. I have warm, sort of wistful/nostalgic feelings towards faith and the faithful, like my favorite fantasy novels. So long as they don’t chalk me down with the damned, I get along just fine with the faithful.

John Kerry is a Douchebag, but I’m voting for him anyway. told me about this one shortly after I moved in, but I only just now got around to checking it out. Reminded, as I was, by the use of the word “douchebag” in another comment-turned-entry coming forth in just another minute. =)

Have I chosen the wrong soul sucking pastime? Ought I be flying around in tights, freeing the world from evil doers, rather than running around, waving my tail, killing fictitious beasties and making fabulous meals and new outfits. Hmmm, tough call. =)

Mostly, it’s the user base. I mean, it’s great to be able to play in the same little world with and , but there are other players out there in other parallel vanadiels that I can’t reach. =) Is CoH likewise split? All the cool kids seem to be playing it, but, I’ve yet to hear if all the cool kids are in one place. Also, I’m not sure about the fundamental mechanics of the game. FFXI is pretty clearly an economy game. Harvest items, kill monsters/take their stuff, manufacture items from other items, sell them, give them to mission-granting types, etc. Pick and choose a class combo from 2,100 possible combinations. With a story arc for each of the major cities. Blah-dy-blah-dy-blah.

What little I’ve seen/heard on CoH makes me think it’s just one world, so you can play with or at least meet anyone else playing the game, in the game. There are no items or economy. The character creation and development system is more fine-grained and has fewer macro-options, but more micro-options (in ffxi, your main job, sub job, and race basically determine most of your meaningful stats).

I will not sign up for two of these simultaneously. I plan on graduating. =)

Then again, maybe it’s better I’ve chosen a game with fewer friends/acquaintances on it. I’ll be more likely to get my ass away from the computer and to the gym/cooperative/skate trails, whatever. =)

Unsurprisingly, my parents said buying the house isn’t going to happen. Solely because of time issues. It feels kinda like a certain supreme court decision circa 3.5 years ago, though my parents have many valid demands on their attention I’m frustrated, honestly. I hate, hate, hate receiving money from my parents, is major part because it’s always a “loan”. I have more debt to my parents than I do to my commercial debtors. And I’ve made no payments on it. They never mention it, save to emphasize, every time I borrow, that it’s a loan. Mostly, it’s just there, unmentioned, as a mute testimony to my dependence and how I do not yet have my shit together.

It would have been very cool to feel like I was helping my parents do something that benefited them in some way that the benefit didn’t flow solely from the fact that I got something out of it. Instead, I need to borrow about as much money, per year, as the closing costs on a reasonable house would have cost, so that I can pay rent, etc. Did I mention that the places we were looking at, a reasonable rent would have covered the mortgage and utils without me paying anything? And without them needing to put in a down payment (I’m pretty sure mortgage insurance covers that, no I don’t recall the exact rates, but they’d have be like half the mortgage payment itself to make it totally unworkable.

Assuming even slow appreciation, and a rather high closing cost, it still would have been to their financial benefit. But I don’t know what their opportunity cost would have been.

This really isn’t all about me. I mean, what I’m saying is how I feel, but I suspect my concern over dad’s upcoming departure for Iraq is amplifying my frustration. I worry for him. I also worry for mom. Talking to her about what she’ll be doing when dad is gone was a little saddening. She’ll be running dad’s office (she’s heavily involved in it already). She won’t be taking a holiday vacation. You get the idea.

The following was originally intended as a comment to a post made in ‘s journal. But it was too long, and I thought it might be of general interest. Guess who isn’t transcribing minutes like he ought to be:

I know you weren’t looking for comments, but I feel obliged to offer a few.

A founding philosophical basis of my arguments, which I suspect you will disagree with, is that war and military occupation begets terrorism.

1. I do think Gore would have done a better job than Bush. Mostly by failing to do some of the stupid stuff he did, like invading Iraq, and making the Patriot act. I don’t think he would have been perfect, or would have done what I wanted him to do, but I think he would have been less of an idiot.
2. Pearl Harbor was an act of war, and intended as such, organized and condoned by the Japanese government. Compare this to the events of september 11th. It was organized and executed by a global terrorist network, with no official governmental presence in any nation. Our attack on Afghanistan for sheltering the leadership of the organization may have been justifiable, and likely would have been done by Gore. I was opposed to that war, because of the aforementioned point. War as a response to terrorism is like Kerosene as a response to fire. I opposed the Iraq war because, as Congress found, there was no adequate intelligence to justify the war. The CIA produced questionable supporting intelligence after repeatedly denying the specific questions “what are Iraq’s wmd capabilities?” and “how are Iraq and Al Qaeda linked?” from top administration officials.
3. You may be able to kill some terrorists before they strike, but you may well turn their friends and family into terrorists in the process.
4. What evidence do you have to offer (other than his prior attacks on his own people, which the Republican led U.S. of the time certainly knew about and did nothing to stop, after encouraging the insurgents in the first place) of Iraq’s ties to terrorism? I’ve heard nothing of this. [Honestly, I have a rough confidence in this. It may well have happened under Clinton’s administration, but this is my understanding of it]
5. Re: Bush sitting for 7 minutes. An appropriate response might have been to immediately ask for more information. I personally view his inaction as relatively benign. I don’t think that he could have done anything more useful than what happened without his involvement, and, in light of his later actions, I almost wish he had never gotten up off that chair in that classroom.
6. No, I can’t say that I do know how Germany would react. But I will point out that in many places in the US, including NYC, you know, where the planes actually hit, there were anti-war demonstrations.
7. There’s a difference between defending oneself and extracting revenge. Defending oneself is preventing harm. Revenge is doing unto those who have done unto us. Going into afghanistan only saved lives if it stopped more terrorism than it started. I do not know the answer that one. I do know that going into Iraq has probably started more terrorism than it stopped. The people who flew those planes are dead. They died along with many innocent victims in the towers that day. Not something that many pro-war supporters comment on, but it has some important implications.
8. The plane trick will never work again. You’ve heard, same as me, about the people who brought #4 down from the inside. And the people who tackled the guy trying to light his shoe bomb. Bringing down the towers was predicated on the passive cooperation of the passengers and pilot. Next person who pulls out a boxcutter on a plane is dogmeat. My proposal for terrorism prevention post 9/11 was martial arts training and cell phones for all citizens. Taking what worked and improving on that.
9. So, life sucks. Bad shit happens. Thousands of people die from the flu, in the united states, each year. That’s just the flu. Then there’s cancer, drunk drivers, heart disease, etc. We can take another thousand 9/11’s, without losing a full percent of the US population. Keep in mind, that that particular thing won’t happen again, as I previously mentioned. This should allow us to calm down and think for a moment.

And we need to be calm and think about the goal here. We can afford to.

We want to end terrorism, that’s great. It’s also not going to happen. Terrorism, like certain theories of cancer, is a problem that springs up all on its own, but which can be increased or reduced through various circumstances. We can also take measures to protect ourselves. And reducing terrorism while protecting ourself from what we cannot reduce is the only sensible response to terrorism.

Terrorism is a political act, and as practiced recently (suicide bombers, 9/11 pilots) one of ultimate self-sacrifice. People have to have a cause to make them willing to do that sort of thing. What is motivating these extremist muslims? If they were doing it because they hated freedom, they’d be bombing the Netherlands. Possibly past US violent intervention in the area (and the continuing bombing under both Clinton and Bush administrations), support for Israel, a sense of disenfranchisement, and other things I can’t begin to fathom.

The Bush administration is right, this is a war for hearts and minds. But prison rape, artillery, and unilateral military occupation will win neither hearts nor minds.

We’d be dumbfucks not to work on sensible actions to prevent terrorism. I’m not advocating that we turn our backs to a proven threat. Violence in response to terrorism is a vicious cycle, though. War is an ineffective answer.

I wanted to go to an Outfoxed House Party on Sunday evening, but I slacked on signing up, so now, there are none open within an reasonably convenient radius. Bleh.

Well, I have found a new protein shake, not quite as chock full of micronutrient goodness (less than 50% of a day’s supply of zinc and iron, though 100% of sooo much else), but far more hippy, it looks like a smaller company, and cheaper, but still I lack a blender. Should I suck it up and buy one?

Also, Ro will be in Albuquerque this weekend, and will be shipping me the air mattress he got for me. Yay, no more sleeping on the floor! And still nothing heavy to lug to the next place. Speaking of the next place, I need to talk to my parents about that and soon. Oy.

I already thought Barbara Ehrenreich was cool, but this certainly helps http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0715-03.htm (courtesy )