I am sure that I don't know everything and though I may not always know what is right, I occasionally find myself feeling like I'm certain that I know something isn't.

Today's focus lies on:
1.) the difference between being an exemplary example and the dangers of being noticed;
2.) the idea that diversity can be taught from a standpoint of authoritarianism;
3.) questioning whether or not authoritarianism can allow for freedom of expression

two and three deal specifically with a class I'm taking to fulfill my diversity requirement @ university. The teacher stated that the classroom as "not a democracy" in the first twenty minutes of a two hour course. This was said in regards to whether or not recording class was permissible, and as a response to my statement that in the state of Wisconsin, only one person has to know that a recorder is on - and it doesn't have to be the person being recorded. In the end, her answer was ambiguous.

Her reasoning had to do with statements being taken out of context, put on youtube, and also to promote "freedom" to speak and do as any given individual requires. Meanwhile, I don't see what's wrong with having all of that recorded for posterity. How often does foolishness result negative attention, how often should it? Seems like a natural repercussion of this modern age of the all encompassing microscope vision of a globally connected humanity.

Context. She gave a story about an educator who emulated the dancing of Kanye West by grabbing his crotch, waving his hands and singing out, "hey, ho" repeatedly. Her allusions to his fate were as ambiguous as her ruling on recording class. The context of the story was that the educator was a male, who had/has a propensity for making fat jokes and possibly black jokes. Apparently his picture was taken mid-dance. Apparently his actions were deemed offensive enough for some sort of action against him. The story was super vague, and the context was just as limited.

The implication was that he was a white racist? I don't want to spend a semester discussing whiteness and blackness, because the concepts are meaningless to me. I see people, and their merit isn't judged on anything but exactly that - their merit. The more we focus on race, ethnicity and gender as concepts that form and separate us the longer they will persist. The longer they will separate us from the real "other" the silent minority (10%ers) that dictates life to the acquiescent, majority (85%ers).

I guess I hope that I find myself in the 5% that isn't included - otherwise, I guess I'm just another clueless, closet racist white guy.

"Most white people don't think racism exists," she says. Oh no, it exists, I think to myself while sitting on my hands and biting my tongue, and maybe classes like this help the tragically left behind racists of a bygone era's mindset, but they don't do anything but further a thought pattern of western bias as universal truth and keep perpetuating the ingloriously aging idea that people are to be told what to think.

Isn't diversity something that has to be experienced? Step outside of the familiar and explore the unknown - that's where the ideas that lead to progress can be found, that's where the future is hiding from the present. History is important, respect is also important, but by golly do I despise working withing the constraints of a context where social conjecture is preached as a fact-set.

Like a Saint of Sinners

Honestly, I wonder if time is moving faster these days...

My parents used to fight about what my mom perceived as my dad's ever changing personality. Sometimes I wonder if I didn't get some of that, though fortunately I'd like to believe that I also have plenty of my mom's immutable-ness underneath. Sometimes I feel like a shape-shifter.

My mom likes to talk in conceptual summaries and fantasy metaphors, my dad loves the end times/conspiracy theory rhetoric. Sprinkle in a whole lot of fundamentalism with an equal percent of Star Wars mysticism, a pinch of an absolute religious rebellion and you've got the context for my vocabulary.

If my mom's a woman sized pixie, and her husband was a wizard; my dad is a bard; this makes me the man-child of a bard and a pixie, guided by a wizard after my father the bard succumbed to the succubus' embrace; self aware and noble, he has some rather altruistic ulterior motives of his own, but cut off from me nevertheless.

My steady diet of star wars and pentecostalism really fed into my already vivid imagination. When some teenagers sneak out to have drink and fornicate, I would sneak out to play RPGs with my geeky friends. I did anachronistic reenactments, I fenced in a round. I felt free and happy, "wasting" my time. I still don't see it as a waste, but it seems so wasteful.

I should have been studying, excelling in something - some math or some science - but I still can't see it that way. I don't see a point to it, even now as I dig myself into debt to go to school, I'm loving it, but I don't know what to do next! I still don't know what to do when I grow up.

After realizing that I needed to spend the effort I spent playing video games on real life things got pretty real for me but I've still got the same hangups. I don't want to be a part of a system that hurts people, let alone the planet we all share. I do want to teach children how to read, somewhere at some point, but I wonder if I'm innocent enough to do that without imprinting my own opinions on them; optimally it would just be a desire to learn, think and desire/quest for truth.

My desire to think flows naturally into realms of spirituality, religiosity, metaphysics and mysticism - basically BS. LOL, guess it's time to start writing fiction again. Maybe that'll keep me from thinking too much of my own opinions.

Basically, over the past month I've lost my concept of what I thought truth was. It became that much more elusive to me again. I turned the entire christian upbringing I had upsidedown over the course of my late teens and entire twenties. I made it all make no sense at all. Jesus wasn't the son of God who saved my immortal soul, he was a dude who preached awesomeness, and may or may not have been an egyptian wizard, trained in techniques we'd mostly call chemistry; science meets functional superstition.

Somehow, that was more believable to me. Later, he became completely human, just a legend written a hundred years after he died by people who either said they knew him, or said they knew people who knew him, and they all either knew what he said or what he meant by what he said and did while he was around. The Qur'an seems to be a little unclear, but seems to allude to either not dieing, or not being crucified (or just not being dead after due process?)

Killed, rose again - meh, maybe, maybe not. I don't really even know anymore. It saddens me in a way, the world is just that real to me know. So much of the 'real' things that happen in 'real' life just lead me to not believe in what was fed to me as miraculous and true. People don't rise from the dead every day, and people aren't the son of God. He's got a special set of rules.

If it happened today, would science be able to explain it?

If it had a scientific explanation would it be any less miraculous?

and bam, I can't not believe in it again and again, because you know, if you don't believe that Jesus Christ died for your since, you don't go to heaven. It's just that simple to the people who believe it but it's not that simple to me, because the world I live in is different - the same but different.

I don't even know what to make of it, Rome had science and philosophy, economy, religion, they had their modern givens. Islamic societies of the middle ages had the same, greece, egypt, renaissance europe... right and wrong - but in the face of Biblical Truth, absolutely meaningless. Everything mankind has ever done is absolutely meaningless in the face of religious truth - because the next world is where it all counts, where it all matters... but it stems in what we do in this life.

Gotta believe in God - or Jesus - or Jesus as God - but not as a metaphor... never as an obtuse concept, always out of reach. Gotta have strong faith, or you might as well have none. Islam, Christianity and Judaism can tear each other's throats out over the same basic idea because they've all got a slightly different details (added/altered/invented/corrupted)in a text given to them by the same big(gest) GOD.

Always literal, always infallible - but not always that way! These books are not considered infallible by groups within each religion, though certainly not the orthodox opinion, as it pretty much takes faith in the document to have faith in what it says. Its easy to have faith in one divine author than it is to have faith in the unified voice of three dozen men, as translated by thousands of scribes. Or passed down in oral tradition by a hundred men for a couple hundred years.

'Course this is the kind of talk that gets you imprisoned in the middle east, and makes your anties fear for your immortal soul all around the globe.

See, when things get this belligerent I switch into fantasy mode, and it gets easier to think of myself as a shapeshifter in a world gone mad, and not just a child of the west who refuses his context to find people the same regardless - but then I think about judgement day again, and I think that I better get fundamental on something I believe, but then I get confused as to which one is the right one.

I just pray that my actions on my knees, the contemplations from the repentance, the thankfulness, the desire to make something better by my presence will be enough to save my ass if it becomes necessary. Because other than that, what sends you to one heaven, takes you straight to another hell.

Scholarship outside of data collection is opinionship - it's not without merit, but it's not necessarily, and probably not, truth.

1. Surah Al Fatihah (The Opening) - Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi - Tafhim al-Qur'an - The Meaning of the Qur'an

1. Surah Al Fatihah (The Opening) - Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi - Tafhim al-Qur'an - The Meaning of the Qur'an

global domination...

I'm doing some work with a class of international students. My favorite parts are when we "get to" learn about "America." Today we're watching 12 angry men, as the students come from around the world, and although they speak english, we have go to over vocabulary first. Include such winners as, premeditated murder, reasonable doubt, unanimous, slum, acquittal, defense, cross-examination, hung jury, open and shut case, orphanage, circumstantial evidence, witness and forgery.

Kominas and the homeless

Last night I went to see a sunday night punk rock show. I wanted to see the Kominas who just happen to be touring, right through my town to boot. Walked a ways to get there, went the wrong way on foot for a bit. On the way I saw two apparently homeless dudes playing what looked like D&D. They had multihedral dice and papers both copy and handwritten that were obviously character sheets and other adventuring materials. I should have stopped and talked to them but I thought I was in a hurry. I do that to myself.

As we rushed past them I saw a third homeless guy settling in for the night, his sleeping bag spread out in an entryway, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. It was all I could do not to blurt out: Dude, you should go play D&D with those guys (and point back the 20ft). I mean, c'mon, what? you got plans? What are you going to do tonight?

Without my ID, I got turned away from the bar. 29, turning 30 in October, balding, don't drink, don't fight and I can't get into a bar. I laughed it off, patted the bouncer on the shoulder and told him he's a good soldier. I headed back to the car to look for my ID. I wouldn't say I was happy about it but I wasn't exactly worryiny.

A few months back, I attended a lunch with Dalia Mogahed where I met Kaitlyn Foley, who just happens to have been traveling with the band for some sort of reason, probably her work. Being turned away turned me to attempting to contact her. As we're basically strangers with a common interest I know it was awkward but through the call and a little happenstance, I managed to meet up with the bassist and his, I'm guessing younger, brother.

I walked into the back room to find the stage covered in a man hunched over a sitar, wailing. And then he was done. He picked up an electric guitar and introduced himself as Sarmus, saying that his band had been detained by the government, and proceeded to play a pretty sweet one man electric guitar show. Though I laughed at his statement... I'm hoping it was a joke? Right? I mean it's punk rock, right? I hope he's able to form the band he wants. His music was powerful, passionate and had a very good sense for melody.

Next came Prop Anon. Prop Anon's name is Gabriel, his email list was laid out in two columns, one read "Gabe" and the other read "Email." I had to stare at it for a minute before I realized that I was supposed to sign my name there. I was the first name on the list beneath his.

Prop Anon's shit was tight and he lives up to the name of his EP "Todo Corazon" - All heart. Solo (man & a macbook) Hiphop show, Prop Anon was lively, intense and confident. Playing along to an unforgiving track on a computer is hard work. Making it look good is an even tougher proposition - Prop Anon made it look fun. If I'd been familiar with even one of his songs, I would have possibly taken to the dance floor. His album is available for limited time (free) download here.

And finally the Kominas.

Michael Mohammad Knight wrote a book called "The Taqwacores." Qutoes on the back of the book call him the "Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic Literature," and say that the book is "a manifesto for the muslim punk movement." A movement that the book invented more so than revealed. The author does not want any credit for the movement, saying that it was "already there."

The book is about a group of muslim punks, who all (re)interpret Islam in their own way. Removing verses from the Qur'an, tattoos, dogs, weed, drinking, sex and even orthodoxy all find their way into the life of each character. Each making differing choices but finding acceptance for each other in what they do share, Allah (God), rituals of religion, sometimes culture and punk rock.

The Kominas take their name from one of the bands in the book. They put on a great show. They remind me of the clash, but fueled by paki-power and pure punk rock fury. Watching them makes you want to buy their CD and see them again. At least that's what it did for me. Bass grooves round out the guitars that swing between begging you to scream "Oi" and making you want to skank while the drums hold it all together. Everything I want in a punk show, plus a couple of top notch mohawks and something like a shalwar k'meez.

It was the straight hot sauce.

I left after their show as it was already past my bedtime. As I drove away I saw Omar from Sarmus sitting in front of a mailbox on his phone and at least three members of the Kominas in the back alley. I should have asked them if they knew where the IC was. As I realized how similar touring and being homeless are.

paying not to turn it on

so for the first time in my adult life I'm paying for cable by choice. I've lived with people who wanted cable and have asked me to help pay the bill (and I have because it's not worth an argument) but before now it'd never been my choice.

I found out at the beginning of summer that there was cable in my apartment free. I paid a bill and they told me that I had cable TV when we were going over my services. I didn't even have a TV hooked up. I even chose not to after finding out that I had it.

But then I caved.

I got a coaxial cable and started eating up a little too much worthless TV. It started with morning news. I hate morning news but there was a string of Obama's on TV stints that I wanted to watch (including his speech from Cairo) and I am usually up in the morning with little I want to do (something I'm working on).

The formulas are ridiculous. A bunch of douchy dudes and the 25+ aging-yet-still-supposed-to-be-attractive-in-a-middle-class-kind-of-way-but-only-because-she's-surrounded-by-a-bunch-of-douchy-dudes type woman. Or you can watch CNN and their rotating cast of chisled, attractive young news casters.

Same banal crap on repeat. I'm done talking about it. What's sad is that I was actually watching it. I got hooked on Iran and then Michael Jackson died and it snapped me back into reality and I turned it down. And then finally off.

Ah, but I do love the history channel's overacted reenactments and baseball and the discovery channel's coverage of the apocalypse and 2012. Sportscenter doesn't suck and I think the finale of Daisy of Love is on... tonight?

Meanwhile, Charter is bankrupt, DSL sucks and there is no air signal anymore.

There's a thunder storm brewing outside right now. I'm watching it roll in. A whole world of things to do and there's rarely anything good on TV. Night time is better suited to reading or socializing with close friends. Relaxing, whereas TV is exciting and advertising sucks! Yet, I'm paying for it because it's five dollars more expensive than broadband.

It must be time to work on priorities again.

Truth and Facts: Religion

Golly. I just spent almost forty minutes watching some youtube vids about Islam and Christianity. I am at such extreme odds with organized religion but I find myself easily put off by those who would refute the revelation. It's easy to attack religion. Horrible things people have done quickly destroy the shreds of decency or credibility attained by a given belief system. A reminder of the importance of separating what people do in the name of a religion from the true tenets of a religion.

With their metaphorical imagery and and sometimes outlandish claims, it's easy to attack holy scripture and prophecy. As the majority of religious texts are made up of these two things (and their incredible antiquity), it follows that they too are not difficult to take "issue" with. To the contrary, I've found a fair amount of universal truth in the religious holy books of various monotheistic, religious traditions and what I struggle with is typically found in the doctrines extrapolated from the text. Doctrines typically enforced by corresponding zealous orthodoxy.

I quickly come to odds with the opinions of others that don't make sense to me. I struggle with the gospels of the bible's new testament as valid accounts of the life of a man called Jesus as they were written (here & here). However, the words attributed to the man and his teachings contain some solid advice for living a rightly guided life. Regular lessons on the importance of humility and keeping our thoughts and actions in line with each other are fairly universal themes usable and understandable by all (greek & aramaic). When the doctrine is focused on these aspects of the gospels I have no qualms with it. But unfortunately, as I and so many others have experienced (evidenced by the sheer quantity of people who leave their faith behind in a clamor, railing against their former religion), the doctrine seldom stops here.

There's defense of faith, apologetics, interpretation of scripture and prophecy; there's a whole bunch of misogynistic crap. One of my troubles with monotheistic religion is how I don't hate women. If I am given the choice between religion and God (الله, YHWH) I choose God every time, and regardless of revelation, I don't believe that God sets a different standard for women. I don't believe that a man's hair and a woman's hair are any different, or that lust is something that affects only one sex due to the nature of the other.

If it doesn't make sense to you, maybe it's not for you. Rules are made to be ... broken? I mean really, there's all sorts of rules in the Talmud, the bible and the Qur'an. If there aren't any rules then no one ever does anything wrong? I don't think so. Humans are humans were humans, we're humans and we've avast an incredible (or is it tiny?) amount of knowledge in our age. Our technology has changed (improved?), we've discovered medicines and mastered running water (also, I'm sure it smells better these days than it has in some prior ages and places) but how much have humans really changed? Hopefully we've gotten more civilized from the "Ten hairs away from baboons," that Lewis Black uses to explain (@ 8:11 ) the Jews of the old testament.

Taking ancient religious texts and ideas at face value is dangerous. Words can share or could have shared many meanings in the time and place they were written and mean very different things now (see above Jesus links). Look at any religious website trying to disprove another religion and the subsequent counter-arguments. Another repercussion of face value texts leads to end times, armageddon-end-of-the-world style prophecy.

Despite a vast and varied display of incredible circular logic religious debate is by and large a moot point. Because in the end a person can't believe in something they don't believe in. You've got to want to believe in it. If you don't want to believe in it you won't. Perhaps the Qur'an says it best in the 109th surah, al-Kafirun (سورة الكافرون); the disbelievers/atheists (literally translates in the xerox morphology as "the infidels"): "O disbelievers (1) I worship not what you worship (2) nor worship ye that which I worship (3) and I shall not worship that which ye worship (4) nor will ye worship that which I worship (5) unto you your religion, and unto me mine (6)" (Pickthal).

Maybe some people need religion. Maybe they need the exact religion they have, exactly the way they follow it. Whether it's factually true or doctrinally correct, so long as it's not preventing you from living the way that feels truly right to you, why fight against it? If faith is what's important, doesn't it have to be important to you. In a way, faith is making yourself important by putting what you truly believe above all else. Both the sinner and the saint can claim that only God can judge them. Changing a little here or a little there, removing passages or expanding on the ideas presented therein might make one's religion worthless to another or dangerous to many. It could also be exactly what someone needs to feel comfortable in their own skin.

This is thin ice though. Picking and choosing what to believe is the fast track to heresy and apostasy in religion. It is really not uncommon for me to feel that the "message" and the location of "power" in religious organizations are off-base and/or in the wrong hands. I struggle with taking all of anything at face value. When 90% of something is amazing and 10% is forgettable I want to focus on the 90% and forget about the 10%. I want to utilize what empowers me to strive and eliminate what hamstrings me from the same.

Whether debunking spiritual prophecy or using science to prove the existence of a creator God, isn't the important question: how does what you're doing make you a better person, today? How are you making the world a better place? In an interview on "Radio Without Borders," (Wisconsin Public Radio) author Michael Mohammad Knight reminisces about early 90's Hulk Hogan. Paraphrasing the Hulkster, he says, "Hulkamania is a standard you can never reach, but you just keep trying."

Chew on this:

Wouldn't God want us all to be the absolute best we can be? Both together and separately. Fulfill all your potential potential. Utilize all that God has blessed you with. Maximize opportunities through preparedness and right action (right place, right time and ready to go). Whether you call it lucky or unlucky; free will or fate; the hand of god or random chance. If rules guide you there, follow them. If they lead you away from there, find your own path. No one walks your road but you and only God can judge you. Sometimes, words just get in the way.