Time Travel

I have one major theoretical problem with time travel: the possibility that things can exist without any real origin. Say, for instance, that someone goes into the future and sees some new format for playing back recorded music. Then, he goes back to his current time and invents the thing. With time travel, that would work, but we are faced with the question of origin. The only reason he invented the item is because he saw it in the future--but it's only in the future because he invented it.

Here we go

Y'know, I remember there word going around a couple of years ago about Bush claiming that God told him to go to war in Iraq. Last year 'round election time, Bush denied that he had ever said anything like that. I never was able to find out for sure if and when he actually did say that, or what he might have said that could have been construed thus (which, by the way, can anyone tell me when/where/if that happened?). However, now it seems that we have some somewhat substantial backing for such a claim. This article and this one here both report on Nabil Shaath's account of a Palestinian delegation a couple of years ago that Bush attended. I'm going to assume that he actually did say this. Why? Because the White House denies that he did. Now, technically, I understand that this is not conclusive evidence: the White House would make such a statement whether or not Bush did make that claim. However, what with the White House's history of denying every claim of that nature, and with their habitual painting of anyone who makes these claims as a lying leftist, I think it's safe to say that Bush said it.
At any rate, let's assume he said it. Add to it Bush saying at a press conference that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Okay, might I point out he said the same thing in an exclusive ABC interview? Anyway, anybody remember a couple months ago when evangelist Pat Roberts said we should go ahead and assassinate Hugo Chavez? Okay, the topic I'm leading to here is highly visible Christian representatives. It sickens me that there are people like these representing Christendom. Now, I'm in no position to say that anybody is or is not a Christian; I'd just as soon claim I could see someone's IQ. But the thing is, Bush claims to be a Christian, and many (I hate to say the word) non-thinking people (especially many Christians I've met) assume that 1) his views are representative and 2) that Christians should support him because of this. The last election grossly inflated the importance of matters such as gay marriage and abortion. I think it safe to say that any Christian knows on some level that homosexuality and abortion are topics that they need to be concerned with. So, I have to assume that the mental path many people went down during this past election was something like this:

I am a Christian.
As a Christian, I believe that homosexual marriage and abortion are morally reprehensible.
America was founded as a Christian nation, and thus should uphold this viewpoint.
I want a president who is Christian and will uphold God's word.
Bush is a Christian, and as such will oppose gay marriage and abortion.
Therefore, I will--nay--I am morally obligated as a Christian to vote for Bush.

I'd like to quote my buddy Golo from his blog, in reference to the Hurricane Katrina response, that "for all of the people who thought that gay marriage was a 'hot' issue in the last election, look where we are now: over 500 dead because Bush gave a friend of his a job." You know, even though I did not vote for Bush, I feel ashamed that I concentrated so much on topics like abortion or gay marriage. For one, Kerry and Bush have, functionally, the same viewpoint on both issues.
You know, for a long while, I was very internally troubled that my viewpoints often did not at all match up with those of people who I, perhaps wrongly, considered Christian "leaders". These views didn't match up especially when it came to politics and schools of thought. F'rinstance, last year I started reading this book by David Noebel and Tim LaHaye. Go read the excerpt provided there. In the second paragraph (the second paragraph!) of the book you find logic that is spurious at best regarding the human brain. I had multiple points of contention with the book just in the first few pages. I had to ask myself: if I can't read more than 15 pages in a book by respected Christian authors without finding their reasoning faulty at nearly every point, where does that put me? If my Christian beliefs don't result in the same mindset as other Christians, what does that make me? Was I an anti-Christian? I was asking questions and seeking deeper understanding in the same places where these guys were making assertive and seemingly authoritative statements. If my faith wasn't as strong as theirs, what was wrong with me? Eventually, I began to see that maybe there's not that much wrong with me. Maybe it's that some of these people have bigger agendas rather than bigger faiths. I've come more to think that Christianity may not be primarily concerned with staunchly telling people how it is and using politics as an MO to getting other people to lead moral lifestyles. Christianity is about love and helping people in need--and let's face it, everybody's in need somehow. Hungry need food, homeless need shelter, disenfranchised groups need voices, children need love, the socially awkward guy at school needs a friend. Now, I'm not saying to be soft on the truth--I had a guy tell me the other day that religion is about acceptance, and I think, to some extent, I agree. Christianity is not exempt from saying that it has insider information on what the truth is. Sadly, many people assume that Christianity calls for blind acceptance. God gave us brains--why would he ask us to shut them off?
Anyway, I believe I'm rambling by this point. In the past year, I have begun to find other Christian leaders. Kyle Lake and Ravi Zecharias both showed me that not only is it normal for Christians to ask seeminly taboo and subversive questions, it's often a necessity to think things through for oneself. And others, like Albert Schweizer, have inspired me to do start seeking out ways to help others, to step out of myself to love other people. I'm thinking Peace Corps is a viable option for me for the future. And after watching the movie Smile last night, I'm tempted to look further into Operation Smile.

Okay, to end on a funny note: go all the way over to the website of Willie P. Richardson, King of the Phone Pranksters. Ugh. I think I've outdone myself on links in this post.

Apparently

Apparently, Power DVD just sucks when it comes to playing foreign DVDs. I downloaded Media Player Classic, and though the playback is still slightly choppy, it's now watchable. Which allowed me to go ahead and purchase the League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, the final work of the troupe.
I'm enjoying my work at the library so far. It's quite an odd feeling not to have classes and studying and midterms and papers anymore. It's also neat to have my own key to the library, and to lock the place up each night. I'm still getting the hang of the job. I'm working the reference desk, so I'm learning to think of all the options available in each situation that arises. It's interesting, and I think I'll enjoy it after a while. The job, if nothing else, gives me time to read.
You know, I guess I didn't have much to say.

This is a decent blog, and a local post.

There's nothing for you here!
Sorry, I've just been watching the collected League of Gentlemen episodes on DVD, from which the above lines (with some liberties taken) come. It's a BBC show that got a little play on Comedy Central about four years back. They just released the entire series in the US this past July. It's one of the first things I wasted my time with upon arriving home. The show is hilarious, but dark, and sometimes downright scary. It just got done watching the 3rd season, pretty much straight through, and it's still got me quivering just thinking of some scenes.
Actually, now that I think of it, Quivering Fingertips might be a good band name.
I've been trying feverishly to get my new external DVD drive to work. Don't get me wrong, now. It plays stuff. However, I bought it so I could watch my German (Region 2) DVDs. It plays The Incredibles fine. The other two I have (Asterix und Obelix gegen Cäsar, 7 Zwerge), however, play very choppily, almost like it's having trouble processing the information so quickly. It's painful to listen to. I tried downloading the patch for Power DVD 5.0. I downloaded the newest version of DivX. I danced naked in the light of the quarter moon with my sacrificial chicken bones and goat innards. Nothing works! Anybody got any recommendations?
I've noticed something interesting about travelling. Both times that I've come back home, I keep thinking I see people that I knew where I was staying. I'll see a haird0 out of the corner of my eye and think "Oh, there's Terri! She used to come in and buy cigarettes every week." Or, "Hey, isn't that the girl who was in my German language course?" I wonder if it's because I'm trying to find some sort of familiar face around to help me re-adjust to where I am. I find it interesting.
Food for thought. And shoes for industry, too.
I'm off.

Birds fall from the window ledge above mine

Coming to you live, from our studio in Tucson, Arizona, it's-a my blog! Okay, it's not so much a studio as it is my friend Chris's brother Jamie's computer. Okay, it's not at all a studio. Shut up. No one asked you.
Anyways, this is my last day in Tucson. Why am I in Tucson, you ask? Let me backtrack a little bit. When last I posted, I was still in Denali, AK. Chris and I left on the 18th and headed down the Alcan Highway from Alaska to Canada. Canada was quite a bit more disappointing than when we came up this past spring. Then, the sun was shining, we didn't know at all what awaited us in the great unknown last frontier, Canadian girls were very attractive, and gas prices only twitched the corners of your mouth down a smidge. This time, we didn't see a single female road construction stop/slow sign holder under the age of 50, gas prices had risen to the level of outright rape at over $4 a gallon (that's after you convert liters to gallons, Canadian dollars to American dollars, and my full wallet into an empty wallet), and we knew exactly what was in front of us: going back home. Don't get me wrong. There's no place like home, as they say. But home is not what it once was after being in Berlin and then Alaska. Less luster, less shine. Who knows? Maybe doors will open in the world around me and in myself enough that living there will be as exciting as anywhere else. Anyways, back to my story of our trip back to da states. We decided to be as parsimonious as, well, as people who were very parsimonious. We couldn't get around the gas prices, and we probably filled up 3 times a day. As far as lodging, we decided to camp every night we could. I paid for pretty much all the campsites in Canada, as I had the foresight to stash away some Canuck bucks over the summer. We got a lot of guests in the gift shop who had just been in Canada, and wanted to pay with that colored Monopoly money they use there. I would trade that money out with my own throughout the summer. I had about $100 Canadian (roughly $75-80 American) when we left Alaska, and I think I have maybe $10 left now. It was good to have the old paper money, because many campsites are based on trust, especially when they're in parks. We would usually arrive after dark, and thus after the offices had closed, so we would have to self-register for the campsites. They trust you to just leave the money in the envelope. Nobody monitors or enforces it, so it's sometimes hard to make yourself cough up the dough. We did, though. I got some good use out of my sleeping bag and pad, finally; I didn't use them much in Alaska. In fact, others used them more than I did. I loaned out the thermal sleeping pad (a pad that goes under your bag to keep the ground from sapping all the heat out of you and your bag, and also provides some comfort between you and rocky ground) a bunch to a coupla people, and a girl named Jillian used my bag for about 3 weeks after her heater stopped working. Anyways, it was often frustrating to try to camp in Canada. Once, we were trying to get to Willow Lake campground. It was about 16 km from the main roadway, and once we got there, we realized that major construction work was going on there, and the place was completely closed. We tore at our hair in frustration, and went on to another place. The states are a little better for finding campgrounds. In the West, there are state and national parks everydangwhere. We came down through Montana, and stopped in Helena to visit the opening of a new native American history display. Admission was free, and we got to feel really embarrassed and downright utterly ashamed of our American ancestry in an air-conditioned setting.
We went from Montana to Idaho. The small part, on the east side of the state. We left the main road to head over to Preston, the town where the film Napoleon Dynamite was filmed. Unfortunately, it was very late when we got there, and we didn't recognize anything at all. That is, until we were leaving the town. South of Preston is La Tienda, the convenience store seen in one of the deleted scenes of the movie. We turned around, went in, and asked whether it was "the place". It was, and in fact, there were places back in town that had maps of the filming locations. We made as much of a night of it as we could. We saw the thrift store, Pedro's house, Rex and Starla's house, the bowling alley, the high school, and the Rex Kwan Do building. It was pretty cool. Okay, okay, I give, it was flippin' sweet! I guess.
Utah was alright. Apparently the state has its own Mormon film industry. We thought about going to see "Mobsters and Mormons" in the theater, but didn't take time out to do so. We did go to Zion national park, though. It was beautiful, though nothing spectacular sticks out in my mind about it. We went from there to Nevada, and from there we headed on to the old AZ. We spent a couple of nights at the Grand Canyon, and one of those was actually in the canyon. Yes, we hiked about 8 miles down (and back up!) within the span of a day and a half. I usually don't take medications, but let me tell you, I'm glad I took a couple of Aleve before the last 5 miles going back up the second day. It was awesome being down in the canyon, if you could stand the smell of mule urine and scat along the trail. It was amazing how much plant and animal life there is in the canyon. You usually just see the pictures and assume it's just all colorful rocks. Much, much more.
Then, we finally arrived, after our ten-day journey, in Tucson, Arizona, to stay with Chris's brother for a few days. We saw the University of Arizona, watched the Corpse Bride (good, very good, methinks), went to the Desert Museum, saw some Javelinas, ate at a nice Italian restaurant, ate some Krispy Kreme doughnuts, watched a few episodes of The Office and some MST3k, hung out a few bookstores. Actually, at a huge used bookstore here, I saw (and held in my own geeky little hands) for the first time actual Firesign Theatre albums on vinyl. Joy!
Hey, speaking of things that could potentially make me happy, I would love for the old TV show Police Squad (the forerunner to the Naked Gun movies) to come out on DVD. Why don't you shoot y'self on over to Amazon.com and put yer e-mail address in the "E-mail me when available" box. Shoot, they'll only ever send you a couple, maybe three e-mails at the most about it, and every e-mail address is a vote for the show to be put on DVD someday. C'mon, do it for your old pal Casey. He'd do the same for you, except your taste in television programming is probably much, much better.
Anyways, that was my trip, for the most part. I'm sure I've bored you enough by now. Hey, tell you what: I'll try to have more regular, shorter posts in the future, now that I'll have the internet ready at my quivering fingertips. Okay, that sounded almost a bit gross.
Okay, bye.