Greetings, friends and fellow bloggers. Here I am at work on the US Independence Day. And I am thankful for it. A little extra on the pay check is always helpful. So, here is what is on my mind today: Freedom. As a concept and as a totality. As a concept, Freedom is relatively simple. Perhaps at the lowest common denominator, Freedom is the ability to exert one's own free will, to have the political prerogative to have access to multiple opportunities for personal choice. I will not be discussing this, In part because I think this concept is a fallacy. As a totality, Freedom is something altogether different. Freedom cannot be seen isolated, by itself, and expected to have any kind of real meaning other than symbolic. This is true for many, many reasons. The simplest heuristic example is this: does freedom mean that one has a right to intrude upon another's freedom. A burglar cannot enter my home, take my possessions, threaten my family, and then claim, "Well, it's a free country". In its totality, Freedom doesn't belong to one person, it belongs to everyone...or it ultimately belongs to no-one. So Freedom does have its own limits and constraints. And it should, as Freedom should never be a tool of oppression. Recall Orwell from Animal Farm: all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I think that the best proxy for Freedom, politically speaking, are Civil Rights - protections from the oppression of others. So to have Freedom, one must give up something in return. I do not believe this is the theory of the Social Contract from Hobbs, and later utilitarians such as Mill and Bentham. It is, rather, a simple recognition that 1. Freedom = responsibility and 2. that Freedom comes at its own cost...ad sometimes that pricy is very high.

Memory: Sometime in August of 2003, I am in Qwest Field in Seattle. The occasion is the Summer Sanitarium Tour. It was really one of the best shows I had ever been to. Mudvayne, Deftones, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, and Metallica. Except for LB, that was a helleva lineup. Just before Metallica started, I saw a t-shirt that sticks out in my mind. The shirt said: Freedom isn't Free.

Segue: Since that time, every Independence Day that I work...or the day before or after if I have the 4th off...I propose this concept to the kids I work with. What does Freedom mean to you? And, if Freedom isn't Free, then what price are you willing to pay for your definition of Freedom?

Greetings once again, my friends and fellow bloggers. So I am talking with somebody today and she said that it's important to forget about things that make you unhappy. I disagree. Forgetting about something isn't coping, dealing, accepting, or coming-to-terms. When one forgets about an incident, a trauma, a tragedy, or even just something unpleasent, then one keeps the thought or feeling trapped in time. So when one does remember, the negative emotions remain the same. However, things like acceptance and tolerance are often rather sophisticated concepts. So, this metaphore just popped in my mind. And I am so happy with it, that I will use it again.

Only by accepting the bad things can one feel better about them and move on. Ok, Let's say that I have a poisonous snake that I carry with me everywhere I go. Now, if I just forget about the snake, what happens? Sooner or later, it will bite me and I will be poisoned and hurt very badly. If instead of forgetting about the snake, I set the snake down and walked away from it...than I would be much safer in the future. Now, you can't just reach into your pocket and throw the snake down; that is dangerous too. You have to learn to carefully take the snake out and put it down. And when you step away from the snake, then you can be free from it.

So, what do you all think? Does that make sense? Perhaps I can refine it a bit more.

Hello, once again, friends and fellow bloggers. I just read an artical on MSN about how PETA objected to Obama swatting a fly away from his face. Now, let me quote the artical, "...that PETA was pleased with Obama's voting record in the Senate on behalf of animal rights and noted that he has been outspoken against animal abuses. Still, "swatting a fly on TV indicates he's not perfect," Friedrich said, "and we're happy to say that we wish he hadn't." Ok, let me get this straight, you are happy with his voting pattern in the Senate, where it really really matter, on behalf of animal rights. But you're upset that he smacked the fly and said, "Got the little sucker". Now, PETA, check this out, if flies are people too, then I think that the fly is the one to blame. Did not Obama politely ask the fly to leave him alone? It's on tape. He asked nicely. But, no. The Fly was very rude, disrespected Obama's boundaries, and even when given the change to leave peacefully, the fly chose to press the issue. If you ask me, and I know you won't PETA, it was the fly that instigated the situation. It was the fly who was rude and disrespectful, and it was the fly to paid the piper. If flies, are people too, then let them get a job and pay taxes! I have to wonder how many of the PETA people don't freek the hell out when a fly lands on their pricy white-uppermiddle-socioleconomic-status meal. Do they say, "eat up little fly, little brother. Partake in my meal and share your diseases with me?" My money says that they smack the little git. Jesus, PETA, cut the prez some slack and clarify your own priorities.

And that, folks, really grinds my gears...

Greetings one again, friends and fellow bloggers. Ok, here's the deal. I am reading the Trinity Blood manga. I am doing this primary because the Trinity Blood anime is on my top 10 list. The manga isn't nearly as good. But off and on, I am reading the manga. Perhaps because I am stubborn. I don't think the manga is nearly as good as the anime. But for some reason I am sticking with it. It is taken me a long time, primarly becuase the new chapters come out slowly and I am really not that impressed with it. Anyway, as slightly above average the manga is, I have encountered a line that is, at least now and out of context, one of the funniest and favorit lines I am read to date. My previous favorit line was from Kawash!ta Mitzuki's Ichigo 100%: "She touched my face and her hands smelled like meat." And while I still crack-up while I type that. My new favorit is this: "This is the fearsome and powerful Pope's Holy command! Go to the hotel in question and bring back a salmon bagel sandwich!"

Greetings, friends and fellow bloggers. I don't believe that I have yet discussed movies in my blogs. And, having just finished Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, now seems as good a time as any to start. If you fear spoilers, you need not fear reading on. I will say that this movie is Eastwood's best, and despite a number of speghetti westerns from long before I was born, I will say that Eastwood has put out, as an actor and/or director, an number of Grand Slams. Gran Torino tops that list. I can easily say this movie makes my top five list. One a side note, there are now eight movies in my top five list: The Pianist; Saving Private Ryan; the Wall; The Princess Bride; Schindler's List; Gran Torino; Dr Strangelove; and Kingdom of Heaven. Gran Torino has 3 three-dimensional character; Eastwood as Kowalski, Vang as Thao Lor, and Her as Sue Lor. (And while I believe in astro-physics and temporal mechanics, I can't quite bring myself to say four-dimensional characters.) I can't recomend this movie enough. Plot, subtext, storyline, narative, character development, dialogue, and presentation are as profound, striking, and relavent as any movie I have seen since the Pianist. I laughed my ass off during a number of scenes; I cried like a punse a number of times; and I found myself deeply moved on a number of levels: spiritual, redemptive, and acceptant. I have not been reminded of duality so much in a movie since De Niro's Men of Honor or Nicholson's As Good as it Gets. Watch this movie!! Drop what you are doing now, and get your collective butts into the video stores, rent this badboy, and holler - here, privately, on IM. Talk some movie with me.

Greetins once again, friends and fellow bloggers. I'm calling-out Props to the Lady Sun Devils. The ASU Women's Golf Team won the NCAA National Championship for the first time this decade. As a recent tradition in Sun Devil sports, the Lady Sun Devils have dominated this sport. Between 1990 and 1998, the Lady Sun Devils won 6 NCAA titles in 9 years. Not too shabby. Their presence on the title podium has been absent during this decade. Welcome back, ladies...you kick some serious buttox!

The 10th ranked ASU softball team contiues to advance in the Super Regionals, a couple more wins and they will be able to defend their title in the CWS. Go Devils.

I have not forgotten about the boys! The 2nd ranked ASU baseball team seem poised to make some noise in the CWS. While not a dominant as they were last year, eyes are on the prize.

All ASU alums and fans everywhere are routing our maroon and gold hearts out. Go Devils!

Greetings once again, my friends and fellow bloggers. In a previous blog I mentioned how it is the little things that can make a difference. And I have been thinking about this for the last week. My life had had some significant changes over the past several months, primarily due to the death of my sister and a marriage blacker than a Nietzschean abyss. I have had a great deal of trouble recovering and grieving from my sister's passing. A few days ago I read something in the Rurouni Kenshin manga, of all places, that calmed my turbulent heart and mind, giving me the first real peace I have had since December.

The quote comes from a dream Kenshin has. He dreams of his first love, Tomoe, at a point where his own heart and mind are in turmoil. In his dream, Tomoe appears to Kenshin and says, "When you smile, I who is inside yourself, will always smile with you." At first I cried as my thoughts and memoried turned towards my sister. After a few minutes, the meaning of that quote struck me as profound. And for the first time I felt that I was able to be at peace with my sister's death. There is truth in that simple statement. My sister would not want me to feel only hurt and loss and confussion and sadness. She would smile knowning that somewhere in my heart, I was smiling too. And I feel as a corner has been turned. Something so simple, and yet to true and elegant can make a difference.

As of today, my wife and I are seperated. And I feel at peace. I don't know what the future holds in store for me, but I feel less anger and less betrayed than I did a day before. And I hope that tomorrow will be better than today. I will continue to work, I will continue to pray, and I will continue to be the kind of man I can take pride in. And in doing so, I will bring more to the world than I take from it. Nietzsche wrote at the end of the 19th century, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." And through my sadness and grief, I can see myself being a better man as I have a greater understanding of such feelings. And as heavy as those feelings have been, I can still carry them and not be weighed down so much that I am stuck in the mud. I can envision a better life and a brighter day. And sometimes a small reminder...perhapse from a book or movie or kind worlds from friends and family can remind us of those things that are truely important.

May some happiness touch upon your day.

Greetings once again, my friends and fellow bloggers. I have been thinking a lot about the concept of the tradgic hero recenetly. I have been reading the Rurouni Kenshin manga over the past week and I am at a part in the storyline where the hero, Kenshin, faces the most crushing of all defeats, the breaking of his heart. And I am reminded of the war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. There is a theme in many of Hemingway's novels that highlights the concept of endurance or more poignetly, endurance of suffering. In For Whom the Bell Tolls, there is a peripheral character, one of the antagonists in fact, who speaks about the need for penence, penence not just as individuals, but penence for a whole people, in recompence for the tradgy and suffering brought on all people, the innocent and the guilty, the aggressor and the victim, because all people, good and bad, suffer. And in my reading of Hemingway, what I take from the stories like For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Fairwell to Arms, is that penence and recompence are key elements of heroism. This is why I like Rurouni Kenshin so much...the manga and the character of Kenshin. Kenshin is a character who is a reformed manslayer, a killer and assassin in a civil war, who has tasted too much blood and suffering and takes an oath to live in peace. But Kenshin's oath is more than one never to kill again, his oath is to protect the innocent from those who would do them harm. The recognition is that, whether one causes suffering or whether one suffers in turn or - as so often is true - one both causes and feels suffering, one can and should bring more to the world than one takes from it. But, that alone is motivation...what is far more important is that one act upon that motivation to make the world a better place. Even small contrabutions matter. And, I think, that even small contrabutions add up, they matter.

I leave you now with this poem by John Donne, 1624, as my parting thoughts...

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

May some happiness touch upon your day.

ST'Q

Greetings once again, my friends and fellow bloggers. And Happy Easter, to all. And for those of you who don't recognize Easter, then Happy Sunday to you. Easter is a special holiday for me, and as a tradition in my family, Easter has been the most important of our holidays. My sisters and I and our cousins were still engages in the Easter morning egg hunts even into our later 20s. Of course, by that time, we stopped hiding eggs and hid bottles of beer. Nothing quite like the family tradition of painting up bottles of beer in festive pastel colors. But I digress.

I was thinking about Easter today, sort of nostalgically. I will take the day off tomorrow to spend the day in rest and reflection. Traditionally, I would also part-take in what I had given up for Lent - beer, meat, coffee, soda, hot sauce...whatever it was that particular year. This year, I'll be alone for the first time in many, many years...not since 1997. I will have a lot to think about. And while, I believe, Easter is as much about reflection as it is about celebration, I think too that there are many aspects of Easter that lend a direction towards hope and renewal. From a strictly religious stand point, Easter marks the day of the Christ resurrection, and in so, our salvation, the potential of which is our responsibility to live up to. In salvation, I mean the acceptance of God's grace. What message speaks of hope and renewal more than salvation? Even if that salvation is merely symbolic or unmet potential, it still points to a future of hope. Each new day's light brings with it the promises of that potential.

Secondly, as Easter falls in the emergence of spring, I think to there is a combined symmetry between the renewal and rebirth of spring and the resurrection story of Easter. Lent, as I wrote about before, is about sacrifice; Easter is about the fruits of that sacrifice.

Another reason I love Easter is because I love bunnies. So much as been said and written about the pagan symbolism of the rabbit and the egg, but that takes none of my love or appreciation away from the holiday and its symbolism. Both rabbits and eggs are symbols of fertility and each speaks of spring time and rebirth.

And, of course, can we really have a valid, inclusive discussion of Easter without mentioning chocolate? I think not. And while I will eat every little chocolate tomorrow, I will savor the taste I will have. Dark chocolate, 80% Cocoa. Yummy. Strangely enough, though, I don't eat chocolate bunnies. Too cute. Can't do it.

And tomorrow I will light a candle for those I miss, I will say my prayers, and with a cold beer, I will toast to my family, I will toast to god, and I will raise my beer and toast to you all. May you find some happiness...and maybe some eggs...tomorrow.

Greatings once again, friends and fellow bloggers. I am not entiredly sure what this particular blog is about, other than a comparison of an anime movie, a song, and a quote...and how all three tie into the concept of unfulfilled dreams and broken promises. Perhaps as I type this post up I will have a more clear ideal of my thesis...perhapse not...in either case, I feel that writing out my thoughts will be somewhat cathartic for me. Let's hope so, I effing need it.

Let us start with a animie movie recomended to me by Angus_Mac. The movie is called 5 cm Per Second. It is a bit hard to classify. It has a seinen feel to it. It's a relatively short story about a brief, but close, love between to middle schoolers, a love that while intense, never amounts to anything but shattered dreams and unfullfilled emotion...emotion empty in the end, spent and burnt out in its own nothingness. I think of an emotional black hole, an emotional gravety - unseen because of it's own darkness, but so strong in it's pull, so profound in its force, that it shapes the lives of those attached to it. I think that in some ways, this movie is sad, in other ways it is realist. I will explain more as I type. In this movie, the two main characters are unable and unwilling to put a voice or a name to their own feelings. I use the word unwilling for a specific reason. I think that individuals are enherently empowered, capable of nearly anything socially, emotionally, and physcially possible, yet we are limited by our own thoughts, our own emotions, our own beliefs, and our own experiences. I think that we are capable of exceding our own limits, yet those same limits are very powerful and significan determinates of our own lives. To become more than we are we have to challegne our own boundaries, our own limits (e.g., we have to be willing to see beyond ourselves, beyond our own thoughts and feelings...not an easy task).

Now, if there is a moral to this story, this animie 5cm Per Second, I believe it to be this: our own silence, our own fear, our own limits betray us. And in our own betrayal, we find emptiness. And this concept has brought to mind a couples things: a song, a quote, and a poem I wrote back in high school, jesus, some 25 years ago.

For the song, it is called So Far Away by Stabbing Westward, 2001. Here are the lyrics I think relevent to this concept:

Each night I feel the distance that has grown between us
Open up as lonely as the space between the stars
I wish that I could find a way
To smash my fist right through these walls
Of ugliness and emptiness
And gently touch your face
But every time that I touch you
You feel so far away
And every time that you need me
I feel so far away
As you lie silently beside me choking back your tears
I wonder if you recognize
That silence now defines us
Desperately I try to fight this overwhelming sense
That I may never find
The strength to change
How hopeless we've become
We need to find a way to break this silence
We need to find a way to break this silence that's between us
So I scream your name
But every time that I touch you
You feel so far away
And every time that you need me
I feel so far away
And every time that you reach out
You feel me pull away

For the quote, I really would like to give a proper citation, but I cannot for the life for me recall the originator. A google search did not help either. So please post a citation if you know the source:

"It is of things unspoken of which tradgies are born."

Brutal.

Now, here is a poem I had published in a school news paper back when Regan was president:

I wish my soul to rest, to sleep for an eternity. Never to wake, never to dream, never again to cry.

God forgive me for being such an emo git. I disavow any responsibility to that concept now. I believe in fighting a losing battle. That is why I do the work that I do. It doesn't matter whether I win or lose, the battle must be fought, because the struggle is what is important. But...so many years later...a life time really, on a couple of different levels...I am reminded of my own words, spoken as a child, words I no longer believe.

We are responsible for our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own dreams. And yet, these very same thoughts, feelings, and dreams constrain us, imprison us. And only in overcoming the limits we place on ourselves do we have any possiblity of overcoming the limits others place on us.

I wish that in writing down my stream of thoughts that I can be of some use to somebody, though I know that this may not be the case. But I feel somewhat more at ease having thought these thoughts and reviewed my own emotions. It is my responsibility to face my own dreams, my own short comings, and my own tragedies...even, and especially, those of my own creation. Inaction breads contempt, and contempt breads inaction. Becareful, my friends, of the traps you lay for yourselves. I wish you some happiness this day, free of burden.