THE GOSPEL OF JOHN (PART II)

Continued from THE GOSPEL OF JOHN – PART I

JOHN AND I are sitting at a Starbucks – it is impossible to drive half a mile in St. Louis without passing a Starbucks – flipping through the Riverfront Times, the city’s alternative newsweekly. John looks like very much like a corporate soldier as he reads: a Starbucks cup clutched in one hand, a Blackberry in the other, and the keys to his Volkswagen Jetta splayed on the table between the two of us like an advertisement. I momentarily consider asking him what Jesus would think of our modern world, but I know John’s days of bearing witness are through. Instead I think about engaging him in an entirely different conversation than the one we’ve been having for the last few days – a conversation about the possibility that he might be wrong.

“What if you are wrong about your atheistic epiphany?” I ask John out of the blue.

The space suddenly grows dead between us. John’s forehead wrinkles as he grapples for the right answer. So far he has considered me to be nothing other than a champion of his cause that he could not have expected this unforeseen curveball.

“Why is Satan called evil?” John asks me after several seconds of searching. “Was it Satan who caused a worldwide flood, pestilences, famines and murder of Egypt’s first born, or was it some other deity?”

I see that John is offering one of the oldest arguments in the book favoring God’s nonexistence. I have heard the argument worded many different ways, but the basic gist is always the same – that how can a God who is so merciful and loving allow and condone (and sometimes even cause) so much earthy evil and suffering?

“It’s not up to me to say whether God is evil, but don’t you think He’s probably a little bit detached just like all parents are,” I declare trying to sound optimistic. “I realize that God’s only Son suffered a human death and went to hell for us,” I add, “but he must have a busy day and can’t honestly be bothered with all the people who die every second.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!” John practically shouts at me. “You make it sound as if God keeps His distance and never looks over our shoulders. Fine, if that is what your version of religion taught you. But in my world God wasn’t only in your heart and in your soul, but He was behind your eyes and inside your thoughts, He knew what you were going to think before you did. He told you not to think about your dick when you weren’t even thinking about your dick – yet.”

“Okay,” I allow, “But as for God allowing terrible death to occur, try this analogy: if I painted a picture and everybody said it was valuable and worth millions of dollars and should be preserved so that it will last for a very long time, and then I tore it up and burned it and people got angry – well, I have the right to do whatever I want with it because it’s MY painting, right? Nobody can say I’m a philistine because I tore up my own painting. I might well be judged for my actions (which will no doubt seem cryptic and mysterious), but nobody can say I was wrong for what I wanted to do with my own creation. Similarly, if God is the giver of all life, than He has the power to do what he likes with the lives of all living things, right? In this way it shouldn’t seem like such a violation if he kills us or inflicts us with disease or simply fails to intervene to spare us, right?”

John stares at me. “I can think of a million scriptural verses to discredit your very plausible theory. Your theory is plausible because you go outside of the Bible to justify God’s actions and inactions, but born again Christians are locked into a scriptural programming that doesn’t allow them to think any independent thoughts. When it comes to God and life there is an answer for anything and everything, and it’s in the Bible.”

“So this type of argument is healthy,” I ask, “because you couldn’t argue like this if you were still under the grip of religious dogma?”

“Of course not!” John answers. “When I was a Christian I was, like – “ he slaps his hand to his forehead to indicate a gesture of hopeless stubbornness, or more appropriately, to demonstrate how reason would have bounced right off his thick skull.”

“Cafeteria Christians are the ones who always say God is loving and merciful. If they actually read their Bibles every once in a while, however, they would find more than enough evidence in there which shows that God is nothing but a spiteful, wrathful and merciless deity.”

The sun is now shining brightly on us, the midday trickle of Starbucks drinkers oblivious to our heresy.

“Why do you think God and War fit together so perfectly like a hand and glove, the Middle East, republicans and homophobia?” John asks. “If you take a Christian and a Beatles fan, 9 times out of 10 the former is going to be a hatemonger whereas the latter is going to be a sensible liberal. I mean – is it just some accident that all the narrow-minded people flock to Christianity?”

John’s passion is convincing, but I wonder if I can’t challenge him further on the matter.

“Is it shortsighted to hate Jesus simply because you don’t like his fan club?” I ask. “Is there another way around it?”

“Don’t even get me started on Jesus,” John begins. “Before we can even agree to take Jesus seriously, we have to ask ourselves why he never left us with an inspired written work as a guide. If Jesus was the son of God, than obviously he was able to read and write, and if he was able to read and write, why wouldn’t he write down what God wanted out of us himself? Instead he placed his historical fate in the hands of fallible humans who didn’t even bother to write down a narrative of his life until a generation after his death and resurrection?”

“Are you saying that Jesus never existed?” I ask.

“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to state that the historical Jesus never existed,” John says, “but there certainly are a lot of questions and conveniences to the story, especially when one takes into account the historical context it occurred in. What would you say to these things?”

“What would I say to these things?” I repeat the query. Suddenly I realize how much easier it is to ask a probing question than it is to answer one. After a short pause I say, “Well, I guess I would say we have certain instincts and we are highly perceptive beings in terms of our auditory, visual and tactile senses and higher order thinking skills. Often we can sense our way through life based on these built-in functions. God must have thought, in addition to scripture, that this would be sufficient for us to go on.”

I don’t consider whether I believe these words as I utter them other than to conclude that they seem plausible enough. I am not trying to convert John back, I am only aiming to keep the argument alive.

“I often like to figure things out and I enjoy the challenge of a mystery,” I say, “but I don’t like to gamble. If you think Jesus left us at a disadvantage by not bequeathing to us a personal written record, I guess the way you interpret spiritual faith would determine the extent of how much this vexes you. (I.e., do you require a certain amount of evidence before you can make a spiritual leap of faith, or do you enjoy the intellectual stimulation of knowing certain things exist and are real without seeing them.)”

“Born again Christians,” John says, “see things both ways. They believe strongly in faith, but they believe the existence of their faith, and the existence of God and Jesus, can be historically and scientifically proved.”

“I read a book once which sought to historically and scientifically prove the existence of Jesus,” I reply. “It was 500+ pages and it didn’t contain a single convincing argument.”

“Exactly!” John beams. “That is what Christians are good at – making things up. If you’ve ever been to an evangelical church, the minister just paces the stage and makes stuff up for half an hour. Other professions and fields of study depend on something solid and substantive, but not religion.”

“What about philosophy?” I ask.

“What about it.” John says.

“Well, philosophy believes that thoughts and concepts are real, so if God is a concept that started in some man’s brain millennia ago and grew and grew into something so large and huge, then can’t God be real?”

“God is only real in this way as a projection and manifestation of our thoughts,” John responds. “But the big man in the clouds with the beard isn’t actually real, He is not going to judge us when we die, this is what we need to get over.”

“This ‘getting over,’ is this what atheism strives for?” I ask.

“Maybe,” John says. “Atheism is not organized like religion is. I am an atheist but I don’t speak for all atheists. There is no atheist creed. I am sure, however, that many atheists would no doubt agree with me.”

RUN, RONNIE, RUN!

Somebody started a poll on Topix the other day that had to do with the worst things about the 80’s. The poll was pretty innocuous enough, but among the ten least missed things about the 80’s in addition to ”no Internet” and the “$3.35 per hour minimum wage” was “Reaganomics.” Most of the responders to the poll recognized the survey as a fun way to recount the not-so-cool trends and gadgets of that decade, but one person whose isp said he was from New Jersey got especially touchy when he saw ”Reaganomics” up on the list of forgettable 80’s ephemera. This person turned a thread that could have been a nostalgic trip down memory lane into a political argument.

I thought the poll was interesting because it made me think about how, if one thinks about it, during the 1980’s we almost had to churn our own butter. It seems as if we often take it for granted that life has always been the way it is now with the Internet in almost every home (and pocket) and affordable technologies and safe cars that avoid collisions and practically drive themselves. Maybe there is something to be said about how all the amenities that have made our lives so much more enjoyable and easier have also perhaps fried our attention spans and retarded our ability to naturally enjoy life the way we used to. I don’t often compare the convenience of my iPod to the limited portability and scratchy sounds of my old records or cassette tape players anymore. This is mostly because those things seem like ancient memories, but I also wonder if it has to do with the fact that the ability to have so much at my fingertips so quickly has engendered in me a sense of entitlement so that I feel now that I should be able to automatically summon libraries of information with my fingers - that if I weren’t allowed to instantly access over 70 channels and 1,000+ songs and surf the worldwide super highway of information, than this would somehow be depriving me of my innate human rights and freedoms.

I tend to think I am more or less the same person I was in the 1980’s, that all of us mostly embody the same personality and conscience we had 20-25 years ago. Infants begin to display lifelong habits and personality traits as soon as they are able to take steps and utter words, so I don’t think it is too irrational to assert that my 1980’s child self was much different from the 33-year-old version of me today. But when I recall those old tv boxes with the rabbit ears, the Atari video games with the almost indecipherable graphics, or those unsightly hairdos we wore on our heads during the 1980’s, I am tempted to doubt my belief that a consistent state of mind traverses each decade.

As I sat at my computer like a fly on the wall reading the thread of comments as it unfurled beneath the worst things about the 80’s poll, I travelled down memory lane in my head despite the fact that the virtual conversation had veered away from memories and was turning into a political argument. I wanted to remember things like the tin foil we would wrap around the rabbit-ear antennas on our tv’s to try to get a better reception (imagine doing that with a flat panel tv) or I wanted to recall how dorky fat tires looked compared to the efficient wheels that are on today’s cars. There are definitely a lot of memories to consider about the 1980’s that will ultimately make each of us who lived through that decade realize that life was a lot more primitive back then than most of us probably realize on a daily basis. Besides not having cable and cell phones and cars that get good gas mileage or any kind of fashion sense or blogs or Netflix or (gasp!) Internet porn -  I wonder how we even survived! I wonder if kids today can imagine what it must have been like to have to look something up in the Encyclopedia instead of Googling it (the worst part about this was that every family’s Encyclopedia collection was usually 5-10 years old). Imagine not having e-mail but instead having to send letters via snail mail which usually took 3-5 days to reach their destination. And who remembers those big antennas that were atop each and every house?

As I recalled all the primitive technology from the 80’s and thought about how far we’ve come since that decade, I also forgot to realize how much living conditions advanced during the 1980’s.  The 1980’s is really two decades: the first half of the 80’s with all of its bushy sideburns and high socks shares more in common with the decade that preceded it, whereas 1986-1990 had more in the way of amenities making it a lot like today. The latter is because of two things: cable tv and the VCR (one can also add cassette tapes to this list – and even CD’s which made their debut in rich homes during the very late 80’s – as they had a lot more portability than those old records and turn tables). Cable and VCR’s first started appearing in homes in the mid-80’s, and in a few years they would become popular and affordable enough that many families would have them. The old Atari video games were also replaced circa 1986/87 by a new fad called Nintendo which offered much better graphics and sound than the previous gaming systems. With this explosion of technology came mobile car phones, more fuel-efficient vehicles, personal computers (with bulky monitors and no Internet of course) and movies with more believable special effects that are still relevant and watchable today. Paralleling this technological progression were styles and trends which, when imported into a present-day context, are still popular in many circles today.

By the time Reagan’s second term ended, we were living in a completely different world than the one we lived in when he was sworn into office just eight years previously. George Bush Sr.’s short tenure as president from 1988-92 marked a transitional phase: the Cold War was over, Generation X was coming of age, the Internet was about to make its debut in homes across America, marijuana had replaced cocaine and crack, and the first Iraq War exposed us to the changing ways in which wars are fought and revealed a new rising tension in the Middle East. By the end of the 80’s, America was standing on the threshold to a new future. The Internet was about to revolutionize the way we work and socialize, and tired of a compassionless government, Americans were ready to elect a president who held everybodys’ best interests in mind.

Realizing how much the Internet has facilitated and sped up our lives, I would have to say that “no Internet” was probably the worst thing about the 1980’s. I use the Internet for nearly everything: sending e-mail, shopping and banking, looking up information, socializing, publishing  my art and writing, getting my news, and sometimes even viewing tv shows and movies. The amount of time I spend in the virtual world seems worth it considering how much it opens up possibilities for me in the physical world. In fact, to call the Internet a “virtual” realm almost doesn’t seem right; the people we connect with via the Internet are living, breathing souls, and their virtual presences are nearly as lifelike as their computer generated representations. Despite all the good times I may have had during the 1980’s, I don’t think I could ever go back to a world that didn’t have the Internet. Not being able to go online and announce my disgust for Ronald Reagan and his policies with a chorus of other similar-minded people would amount to slow torture, and I am so allergic to pain that I wince if I so much as visualize what it looks and feels like to prick my thumb.

That being said, I loved what a Pennsylvanian who went by the name of Eric wrote and how he mostly held his own against a couple of republicans in an argument that ensued under the worst thing about the 80’s poll on the Topix website. I could try to summarize it, but I think it’s best to post the original transcript of the sparring which I printed out and have sitting right here before me. Check it out:

[en medias res]

Eric (PA): I think NANCY REAGAN was the worst thing about the 1980’s!

truth (Chicago, IL): Carter and his policies weren’t a pick? Interesting.

Ridiculous (Woodbridge, NJ): Carter was president 1976-80. He was only president really for 11 months in the 80’s. His policies were pathetic though. It’s interesting that so many people chose Reaganomics (76 votes). I have to wonder how many really know what the term means. It was President Reagan’s economic policies that led to the greatest prosperity the United States had seen since WWII at that point.

Big hair was definitely the scourge of the 80’s.

Educator (Tulsa, OK) : Reaganomics… A.K.A. the “Trickle Down” theory.

A bad economic idea that gave the wealthiest Americans very large taxes breaks while not giving any substantial tax breaks to the middle and lower classes, and in some cases raising their taxes.

The theory was that by allowing the richest Americans to become much wealthier, the money would be reinvested into the economy and filter down to the lower and middle class Americans to improve the quality of their life as well. An unforseen factor (duh) was that most of the wealthist Americans did not bother to reinvest their additional earnings and instead banked the money, resulting in many people to rename the “Trickle Down” theory to the “Reverse Robinhood” theory, or in some cases the “Piss On You” theory! [RIGHT ON, TULSA PERSON!]

Ridiculous (Woodbridge, NJ): Rather than just comment only with emotion let’s look at some facts. Reagan was president from 1980 thru 1988.
In that time:
-Unemployment went from 7.6% to 5.4%
-Inflation went from 10.4%-12.5%(estimates vary) to 4.2%-4.4%
-8 million new jobs were created
-We had the largest peacetime expansion of the economy in our history
-Personal wealth per individual rose $4000, more than anytime before or since
-Interest rates dropped dramatically. Are you old enough to remember double digit mortgage rates during the Carter administration?

When the top marginal tax rates dropped, combined with targeted deregulation, spending and investment did go up. Tax revenue increased. Like I said, largest peacetime expansion of the US economy in history. During this time military spending did increase. That increase in spending created a race that the Soviets were eventually unable to compete in. It led, at least in part, to the collapse of the USSR. With no more “Cold War” the US was able to decrease the amount spent on defense.

Much of what drive the economy is psychological. If consumers feel good about their jobs, their country and the future then they spend. Ours is a consumer driven economy after all. President Reagan made a great many people feel good about being American.

Eric (PA): Wow, Ridiculous, it looks like somebody drank the Kool Aid.

I hate seeing actors switch from a life of acting to a life of politics as if they know a thing or two about governing. I think they get so into their fantasy roles that they think they can do anything, like travel into outerspace to fight aliens, go on a hunt for the holy grail or travel into the future. Leave politics to the politicians and leave acting to the actors. The fact is Reagan was one of the worst presidents we ever had before Bush II. I think most people know this, but some members of the GOP still want to deify him (even thought he’s dead) because he’s all they have.

GOP = Get Over It Party (Ronnie’s dead)

[YAAAYYYY, ERIC!]

Eric: (PA): I also wanted to add:

Just like Ronnie in his later days, I think most members of the Grumpy Oldsters Party (GOP) today are suffering from Alzheimers as well. Can anybody name one young republican besides Meghan McCain? Ann Coulter doesn’t count because she’s actually 72, she’s just had a lot of plastic surgery to look like a 40 year old. The reason why these aging conservatives continue to worship the Ronster is obvious – they are becoming fossilized before our very eyes. Name one progressive thing the republican party has done of late? Right, you can’t. They are stuck in the past opposing everything new and practical that comes along. And I don’t know why they think the 80’s was such a bygone decade – it was actually a decade of decadence and Satan worship, pandemic drug use, perverted & crazy sex and greed. More kids dropped out, ran away, got raped, smoked crack and/or shot up in the 80’s than in any other decade.

Good times!

[YOU NAILED IT AGAIN, ERIC! HEE-HEE!]

wowwow (Buttplug, NY): How do you disagree with facts? I looked all of what that person said and the numbers are a little different depending on where you look but not much. It’s all true. I didn’t think it was so I looked. you can’t just come back with another opinion if you don’t have facts that contradict the other ones just cause you don’t like what the facts are. That is what kool aid drinkers do.

Eric (PA): Here’s a fact: since Schwarzenegger assumed governorship of California he has run that state into the ground. These are all the statistics and proof I need to know that actors who are trained in dramaturgy aren’t fit to be executives of world power governments. California has/had the world’s 4th (or 5th, I forget) largest economy, and last summer the state was broke. I like seeing Arnold as the Running Man, but I don’t like seeing him running a state the size of California. What’s even more surprising than Arnold being “Governator” is that there are enough brainwashed simpletons on crank in CA so eager to elect a cyborg as their leader.

WE LOVE YOU, ERIC!

DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE HERE WHEN YOU CAN LIVE IN THE GOOD OL’ AMERICAN RUST BELT!!!

With Age Comes Wisdom: I am God!

For those of you who are new to Prodigy, this segment is a list of quotations selected by me and written by me, and also edited and published by me. Such blatant hubris would probably be unacceptable if ”With Age Comes Wisdom” were, say, a point of purchase book , but this is a blog so I am allowed to ignore formalities and professional conflicts of interest and get away with considering myself the smartest thinker who has ever lived (with this kind of freedom, why would anyone seek to ponder the various implications of blogging as if it were the bane of all future creativity or something?). The quotations included in this series, when removed from their original contexts, often read like truisms. I think it’s safe to say that these posts are lazy posts, and for lack of anything substantive and interesting to write I decided once on a whim to just pick the best parts from some half-assed things I was writing. Those bits and pieces of writing were slapped together in the form of quotations into a post, I gave it a title and – Viola! – the “With Age Comes Wisdom” series was born. I think of it as a way to salvage good writing from what can basically be considered bad writing. When you write two paragraphs of crap, and only one or two sentences from those paragraphs stand out, you want to find a way to preserve those one or two good sentences, because the sentences that stand out exemplify something in your writing that you hope will last forever.

So without further ado, here is the latest installment of “With Age Comes Wisdom”:

~Judge, Jury and Finger Pointer~

“Judgment comes from viewing others (especially strangers) objectively, whereas we see ourselves as intricately nuanced and complicated. Each one of us is our own glass onion, whereas most of the everyday acquaintances we come into contact with look like the outsides of onions with a layer or two peeled back.”

Tim Freeman

~Loneliness~

“The only person each of us will ever completely know and get to be best friends with in life is the one person who we can’t ever wish to be – ourselves.”

Tim Freeman

~Mind under matter~

“The biggest flaw with chasing after lofty ideals is that they are perfect conceptions of our brains, and these conceptions remain uncorrupted by the real world as long as they stay in our heads. Life, as all of us know, is far from perfect, and when pure notions are put to the test in the messiness of reality, they don’t always hold firm.”

Tim Freeman

When life presents problems, reach for an instruction manual

I HAVE HAD cancer-phobia for a while now and I think it is causing all sorts of psychosomatic rashes, IBS, insomnia, teeth grinding, snoring, panic-attacks, weight gain, fatigue, and memory loss. I keep envisioning Chernobyl disasters, mesothelioma, lead poisoning, and world financial meltdowns followed by anarchic coup d’états. It might seem as if I am a living/breathing dossier full of fears, nervousness and phobias, but the combination of all these hypochondriac ailments is attenuated by the fact that I’m an over-caffeinated, under-slumbered walking zombie. My half-awake haze is an insulating comforter, but the negative thoughts are still able to seep through and pollute my mind from whence they spread throughout the rest of my body eventually distilling in various places causing aches, pains and other types of malfunction.

A weak mind has the power to spread its bad energy via the nervous system to all other parts of the body leading to discomfort, organ failure or sometimes even death. Because of my current phobic state, I thought I would try to circumvent any future mind/body catastrophes by purchasing Emmett E. Miller’s book titled Deep Healing. Dr. Miller has been a highly acclaimed pioneer in the field holistic healing for over 25 years. My mom used to work in health care and she had several of his deep relaxation/guided imagery exercises on cassette which she sometimes doled out to nervous and fearful patients. Each one of these exercises was accompanied by a cool synth audio performed by Steven Halpern, and once you tuned out the world and focused on Dr. Miller’s narration, you suddenly felt as free and safe as a strange sea creature feeling its way around inside of a big aquarium.

I can flip to any page in Deep Healing and find the same calming clinical reassurance offered in those deep relaxation cassettes. Check this out: “Our beliefs about the world often have a much greater impact on our health than what actually is true about the world . . . Your inner images, metaphors, and beliefs together constitute your personal myth about your relationship to yourself and the world.” Awesome! Here is some more food for thought: “The degree of disempowerment in our culture is extreme. At a deep level, many of us don’t even feel entitled to the simplest form of self-expression . . . This nameless dread is simply a learned helplessness.” Wow!

I have only been skipping around in the book so far, but I have found each of Emmett E. Miller’s teachings to be very much like a spiritual/philosophical epiphany. The copious sections of the book are framed by little quotations by famous people (e.g., “A person will become what he thinks about all day long,” – Earl Nightingale), and Dr. Miller provides several anecdotes and examples to clarify his analysis.

An affirmation which appears on page 277 that probably best summarizes the self-actualizing optimism in Deep Healing is, “My body belongs to me and ultimately will do what my brain tells it to do.” This truism is apt because what this book is essentially trying to teach to its readers is empowerment. Dr. Miller is trying to make us aware of how the mind/body processes work so that we can better control the intermingling between our thoughts (brain) and body (vehicle).

The mind truly is a treasure yet at the same time it’s an inscrutable mystery. Like all complicated things, we often need experienced people to help us navigate it and instruction manuals for daily maintenance. Deep Healing by Emmett E. Miller, M.D. is a good instruction manual to have in your library.

Rollins 2.0

If angry, nihilistic punk rock grew up and broke away from its anti-social niche of non-conformity and joined the trendy attire wearing, coffee klatch gossiping, restaurant hopping, Whole Foods shopping, globe trotting, book inhaling world of current ‘It-ness,’ we would get something that looks and sounds a lot like the post-Black Flag/Rollins Band Henry Rollins. Ever the contrarian, Henry 2.0 channels his rage and indignation into keen observations about every type of conceivable pet-peevish thing that irks the hell out of him. Henry admits that he is an angry man but says his urge to rip apart every stupid thing he hates with colorful words and sentences also motivates him to keep living, travelling, reading, learning, seeing, smelling, eating, tasting, touching and breathing. In “Uncut from NYC” (2006) Rollins takes us on a tour of the Trans Siberian Railway, he delineates and laments the humanoid creatures popping up across America which he calls Wal-Martians, and he fires hard-edged insults at the republicans and the Bush administration. Rollins delivers his insights unfiltered, they are as raw and free as the thoughts in his head, and this is what makes his spoken-word performances so funny and entertaining to watch. We all have ideas and images in our head that are blunt, immature, or vague, but decorum requires that we dress them up, make them less obvious, and inflate or trim them before we let our mouths utter them. But a good stand-up comic will fire away in a stream of consciousness style and let all the grotesque and obvious things that we all think on a daily basis fly out of her and fill up the air with reassuring reason. Rollins’ smart and unabashed quick-wittedness makes him very adept at this, and he brings his experience as a punk rock musician to the stage in the form of his huffing and puffing body language (I swear, at least once while watching this DVD I seriously thought HenRollins was going to hyperventilate and pass out). Henry Rollins says what we all know we know but are too afraid to say for fear of looking like simpletons, and if you disagree with him it is only because the truth hurts.

“Henry Rollins: Uncut from NYC” does not contain the comic’s best material, but he still delivers his commentaries in the usual Rollins-esque style of entertainingly angst-fueled, exasperated-at-all-the-weak-minded-stupidity-and-bullshit-of-the-world-ness. Buy it today or get it as a gift for that special open-mindedly angry person in your life.

Heineken: Dutch for Poetry (and recalling shutting down governments)

Last night I drank the 1 pint 8 oz. keg of Heineken pictured above. The coconut monkey, a gift my dad bought for me when he was in Hawaii during the late 1980’s, is a sentimental keepsake and friend, and he’s also one of my best drinking buddies in the whole wide world. He is my Wilson on the stormy seas of life, and I will take him with me wherever I shall go (although he doesn’t have a name, how ironic is that?).

So anyway, I drank this mini keg and I became rather discursive, and in order to let the mental diarrhea seep out I made some refrigerator magnet poetry in the style of Shakespeare. No, I didn’t construct my refrigerator poem in iambic pentameter, but I stayed true to the immortal bard’s bawdiness, and if this poem doesn’t seem too abstract and you think you have some clue about what I’m trying to convey in it, then it may just increase blood flow and cause a tingling sensation in that special area of your anatomy.

Check it out:

Refrigerator magnet poetry and prose is a lifesaver at parties when you feel weird and uninteresting standing around and people keep walking around you and the beer confidence is doing very little to help your reticence. What is one to do in a situation like this? What you do is you walk over to the refrigerator and start moving little magnets with words and suffixes on them around and you begin placing them in a certain syntactical order. You begin conceptualizing a story or a poem which proves to party attendees that you are not in fact stupid but, provided the right medium, you can be smart, interesting, talented, funny, lustful and a whole lot of other things. This word ordering will be the perfect ice breaker to catapult you out of your 5th wheel status to temporary life of the party status. People will gather around you and marvel at what you are doing, and they will no doubt share any relevant related stories – e.g., how much they loved or hated reading Shakespeare in college, or how their friend has refrigerator magnets in German and Spanish. But probably the sweetest part is that you will leave graffiti on somebody’s refrigerator that will last long after the party has ended, thus leaving a lasting reminder of what a hit you were that night. And who knows - somebody may bump into you later on and remember you as the “refrigerator poem guy.”

I bought these Shakespearean refrigerator magnets when I visited the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. five years ago with a group from my college. My Shakespeare professor organized the trip and he was very excited about being in the nation’s capital and seeing as much as he could see in the 1 1/2 days we spent there. He would point out things like the Smithsonian museum and announce what a shame it was that we didn’t have enough time to take a tour of it. He reverently led us through the Vietnam memorial, America’s wailing wall, past all the crying veterans who make the pilgrimage to DC just so they can touch the engraved names of lost friends or loved ones in order to commune with a part of their ghosts. It was my first trip to DC, and I admit that it was a lot to take in. What I will never forget is walking in front of the White House and marvelling at how it physically differed from my lifelong mental conception of it which was based on stock footage I had seen countless times on the news. Cameras give an added dimension to things making them look bigger, and I guess I was taken aback by how much “smaller” the White House actually was than I had previously thought.

But this is not what is most memorable about my DC trip, it is what happened next that will be a conversational font for years to come. As I was walking around, I took my shoulder bag off and placed it on a bench just yards from the entrance to the White House where George “Dubya” Bush was probably inside having a meeting with important leaders. It was very hot even though it was April, and I took off my long sleeve shirt and tied it around my waist. In order to do this I had to set my bag and headphones on the bench, and when I was done I picked up my headphones but carelessly forgot my shoulder bag. I started walking back to the hotel where my group was staying – we were supposed to be leaving in less than an hour – when it occurred to me that my bag was not secured to my shoulder. All of a sudden I had that frightening feeling that occurs only when you realize that, sometime and somewhere within the last couple of hours, you have lost either your wallet or your child. It is a terrifying feeling to say the least, and even though my bag was not as important as either of these things, I ascribed a lot of value to it because it contained all of the mementos I had purchased on my very first DC trip (like a “Anybody But Bush” button and tee-shirt from the Folger Library with a quote from II Henry IV which read, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”). I stopped in mid gait and stiffened as an icy chill shot through my body. I looked down at my side – no bag. I looked at my other side – no bag. I tried to retrace my steps. I remember just having it, where could I have left it? I ran back to a vendor who I bought a pretzel from just a minute ago. He didn’t see my bag. Oh crap! I kept running back in the direction I came from. Suddenly, up ahead, I could see sirens flashing, a lane of traffic was shut down, and sleek black official-looking cars were parked in the middle of the closed part of the street. Men with suits climbed out of the cars. One held a dog on a leash and another flourished a device that looked like an electronic wand. A helicopter circled overhead.

It took less than ten seconds to realize that my worst fears had come true - my unattended bag had posed a clear and present danger for the United States government and the citizens of Washington, D.C. Oh shit! I thought, I have just put the government on high alert! The previous day while visiting the Lincoln Memorial, we were all evacuated by police and security guards because a suspicious looking package was left in a corner behind the monolithic statue of our 16th president. The hundreds of people who had been enjoying the view from the steps of Lincoln’s perch all grunted and groaned as they lazily floated away like a congregation of vagrants forced to find somewhere else to camp. The suspicious package, we would soon learn, turned out to be a box abandoned by a homeless person. But if the War on Terror has taught me anything, it is that there are “soft” targets and there are more premium targets. The Lincoln Memorial is what would be considered a soft target because it is simply a famous landmark, it serves no governing or other vital function that might render its destruction a crippling blow to the nation’s important systems. But I had left my bag only a few yards from the rear entrance to the White House, the home of president George W. Bush and the ruling seat of one of world’s leading super powers! This is the most premium target a terrorist could ever hope to strike if he had the temerity to get close enough, and seeing what a stir the abandoned box had caused the day before at the Lincoln Memorial, I knew I was standing in a deep pile of shit when I saw the helicopters and dogs and important guys in suits.  

As I approached the intersection where all the commotion was unfolding, I found a bike cop and quickly confessed my culpability. Surprisingly, he didn’t tackle me or pull out his gun and tell me to put my hands up. He took my name, license and social security number and radioed that information to someone who was probably sitting before a bank of the highest tech computer and video monitors in the world. That guy read the information back to the cop saying, “echo, T-I-M -F-R-E…” Meanwhile the helicopter circled overhead, its roaring blades disturbing the mid-day touristic peace just like a Lawn Boy disturbing the quiet calm of a suburban Saturday morning. I was shaking and nervous, envisioning Guantanamo Bay bedlam in my near future, and I was afraid to touch any of the buttons on the Walkman secured to my belt lest the sniper with the long range rifle who I couldn’t see blew my head off. It was a tense couple of minutes made all the more nerve-racking by the rudely impatient throngs of tourists who were overly eager to go on their White House tour. Not only had I gone and possibly shut down one of the most powerful governments on the planet with my forgetful carelessness, but I had also ruined the vacations of countless suburban moms and dads and their kids who I would most likely never see again (since I would die in a Cuban jail cell). So now, added to my fearful nervousness of being imminently and secretly tortured as an enemy combatant, was an embarrassment like no other. “Look at that idiot who shut down the government and spoiled our vacation,” people’s eyes appeared to say as they shook their heads and angrily stared at me, the fool who couldn’t even remember to keep his bag attached to his shoulder.

But luckily the cop had a lot of experience with these sorts of things. He was fairly understanding and I think he appreciated my honesty and cooperation. You see, the protectors of Washington, D.C. go on heightened alert every day – no, every half hour – or at least they did 5 years ago in the post 9/11 terrorist paranoia frenzy. Whenever a homeless person would leave a bag full of stuff at a landmark, or a government worker forgot his expensive briefcase in a subway terminal, or a stupid tourist like myself would accidentally leave their shoulder or shopping bags next to big important buildings, the capital’s police and secret service went into red alert and herded people away, cordoned off the area and sent in the dogs and guys with bomb detecting magic wands. And just like all of these routine bomb scares, my ordeal was over in a matter of minutes. Just as quickly as life in the nation’s capital had gone from calmly normal to imminently dire, everything reverted back to normal again. Traffic resumed, the tours commenced and the noisy helicopter flew away. I was a free man, completely forgiven and even felt sorry for by some people. As I walked away, a person in the crowd told me not to sweat it as these things are a daily occurence in D.C. It was a relief for me to learn that I would not be put on trial in a secret military court and labeled as a terrorist. Furthermore, I was glad that I didn’t cause anybody to miss out on their once-in-a-lifetime tour of the White House. I was even happier, however, that my little mishap didn’t interrupt the pundits on cable channels like MSNBC and CNN in the form of one of those live and late breaking aerial footage stories. I couldn’t stand the thought of my newly retired mom, an avid political junky who always keeps her TV tuned to the 24-hour news channels, watching my embarrassing horror unfold at her house hundreds of miles away in real time.

That would be the equivalent of her catching a glimpse of me drunk and stoned at a party constructing refrigerator magnet poetry and laughing with my friends and my coconut monkey which my dad bought for me when I was 11. I could just see her shaking her head and ruefully asking, “What did you do now?”

Don’t Send

The latest commentary in the ongoing new media-old media debate is a book titled The Tyranny of E-mail by John Freeman. Since John Freeman (former National Book Critics Circle president and current Granta editor) also happens to be my older brother, this post will be more or less a puff piece. I posted back in February about a dream I had of my brother starring as a guest on the Today Show being interviewed by Meredith Vieira. This is more or less the second installment to that post.

A portion of Freeman’s book was published in The Wall Street Journal on August, 22nd, and it was called a ‘manifesto.’ Gosh, you would think my brother was the second incarnation of the unabomber or something! Actually, Freeman is quick to point out that he is not a Ludite, but rather a privacy and efficiency advocate. According to Freeman, email is culpable for our shorter attention spans because it interrupts our train of thought every 5 seconds. We are dependent on it the same way we are dependent on the sound bite and textspeak. Email, like all other rapid-fire and truncated forms of communication, gives rise to the Instant Replay and back-to-back commercials. It is part of the chatterbox of sounds and images vying for our senses, and it is both a contributing factor and a symptom of our cubicle existences. It is the zenith of technological progress in the realm of instant communication that cannot be surpassed, and this fact alone makes it worth examining. My brother examines these things in a sort of post-postmodern way (at least that is what I gleaned from the WSJ manifesto). In many ways The Tyranny of E-mail seems to be a segue to the next book John Freeman plans to write, a book about suburbia. Mmmmm, I can’t wait for that one.

But in the meantime, here is some of what we can expect from The Tryanny of E-mail:

“A large part of electronic commu­nication leads us away from the physical world. Our cafes, post offices, parks, cinemas, town centers, main streets and commu­nity meeting halls have suffered as a result of this development. They are beginning to resemble the tidy and lonely bedroom commuter towns created by the expansion of the American interstate system. Sitting in the modern coffee shop, you don’t hear the murmur or rise and fall of conversation but the con­tinuous, insect-like patter of typing. The disuse of real-world commons drives people back into the virtual world, causing a feedback cycle that leads to an ever-deepening isolation and neglect of the tangible commons.

This is a terrible loss. We may rely heavily on the Internet, but we cannot touch it, taste it or experience the indescribable feeling of togetherness that one gleans from face-to-face interac­tion, from the reassuring sensation of being among a crowd of one’s neighbors. Seeing one another in these situations reinforces the importance of sharing resources, of working together, of bal­ancing our own needs with those of others. Online, these values become notions that are much more easily suspended to further our own self-interest. Not surprisingly, political movements that begin online must have a real-world component; otherwise they evaporate and dissolve into the blur of other activities.

It is almost impossible to navigate the Web without having to stutter-step around ads and blinking messages from sponsors. In using this tool so heavily, consumers aren’t just frying their attention spans, they’re forfeiting one of the large sources of information that comes from face-to-face interaction and business. A butcher can tell you which cuts of meat are the freshest; an online grocer may not. That same butcher, if he is good, might not just remember your preferences—which an online retailer can do frighteningly well—but ask you how your mother has been doing, whether you caught the latest football game. These interactions remind us that we are more than con­sumers; they remind us that we are part of the world in a way no amount of online shopping ever will.

If we spend our eve­ning online trading short messages over Facebook with friends thousands of miles away rather than going to our local pub or park with a friend, we are effectively withdrawing from the peo­ple we could turn to for solace, humor and friendship, not to mention the places we could go to do this. We trade the com­plicated reality of friendship for its vacuum-packed idea.”

Wow, cool stuff! Keep in mind that I don’t speak for my brother, nor do I entirely care very much about his moral point of view concerning email - I am more interested in the implications of said moral point of view. I myself happen to enjoy the streamlined efficiency of email and its various applications, and I employ it as frequently (albeit as carefully) as possible. But I admit that I am more easily entertained than my brother is. I like things that are new and shiny, I eat at chain restaurants often because I crave predictability and familiarity. I am part of the Dan Brown herd, the  blind following the blind. I do not necessarily think this is a bad thing, I am merely a product of my era much like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were products of their eras. But I also think right now is the best time in human history to be alive, and email is no doubt one of the countless reasons for this.

My brother, however, is a private person. I stopped sending him emails a few years ago after most of them went unanswered. He has little patience for communicating casually in this medium when a phone call might suffice. This is unfortunate because now he is a very hard person to reach. But this goes back to the point Freeman is trying to make in The Tyranny of E-mail about how we don’t need to be available to everyone 24-7 just because the technology exists to make us available all the time. In the “old days” of the 1980’s, doctors, statesmen and hommicide detectives were probably the only ones who might expect to get a page or a phone call in the middle of the night. But having an email account with your workplace might result in employees working long after the work day has ended, which induces faster burnout rates. All of this and more is covered in the book.

My brother mentions words like “speed” and “burnout” in his manifesto in a negative way, and this made me think of something. If some people’s brains are capable of working at extremely high rates of speed, is the technology of email necessarily a bad thing for them to incorporate into their lives? I thought of this because John Freeman is a man who never sleeps, and he doesn’t read books so much as he scans them. He is capable of juggling many tasks at once, like being the unpaid president of the NBCC while also making a living in Manhattan as one of the nation’s most prominent book critics. Freeman is capable of doing and performing so much with only one brain that it begs the question: why does he think we all need to slow down?

I do happen to know that John sometimes spent 2 hours per day answering emails during his tenure as the NBCC president. When I would visit him in New York, he spent the wee morning hours wading through a backlog of emails from all types of people ranging from work associates to fans. Obviously, with this kind of responsibility resting on your shoulders, it is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. As I watched tv or tried to sleep, I was reminded of my brother’s burden by the constant pattering coming from his keyboard. Often I would hear a tap interrupted by a pause, then another tap and a pause. This sound would repeat itself for several minutes as if played in a loop, signaling the authoritative action of an unnecessary or superfluous email message being deleted. The keyboard pattering, by comparison, sounded more optimistic, as if it was a relief for my brother to finally answer a legitimate email after reading nine wasteful ones.

In defense of my brother’s email tormentors, however, and as further evidence of Freeman’s bionic abilities, one could never anticipate what time-zone he was in at any given moment. Hence sending him an email at 3 am California time didn’t seem like such a sin if you might think he is currently in Germany on a cross-cultural tour to promote literature. What an even bigger surprise it must have been for the senders when they got an almost instantaneous reply too! But I couldn’t help thinking as my brother recounted his email nightmare to his family and talked of the book he planned to write about it, that he was somehow encouraging the inundation of virtual mail that consumed so much of his life by replying to just-received messages at 3 in the morning. Obviously this would tell the sender that he was in fact available 24-7, whereas waiting until the next day to read and respond to a new message might be the more wise thing to do if one doesn’t want to be hounded by email. My brother’s workaholic tendencies made him incapable of turning off, and he essentially became a human octopus. I can only wonder what went through his mind as he answered all those emails, what thoughts his brain formulated. He obviously must have discovered the limits and futility of virtual mail, mapping its paramenters as he sat there glued to his chair while his life whizzed by. He probably became adept at pointing out which emails could have easily been spared with a phone call, which ones were too long, too personal, too short.

The result of all this is The Tyranny of E-mail which not only analyzes the whole email phenomenon and tracks the history of written correspondence, but also seeks to edify email users about responsible use of the technology. It should be a good read with far-reaching implications. My last post was about how we need to put limits on what we say and I think it’s a coincidence that my brother has a forthcoming book about imposing limits on our virtual communication habits as well. This definitely is a time for 30-somethings to think more carefully about what they blurt out either in public or online. After all, we are now adults, and becoming an adult requires a lot of slowing down. Maturity means thinking before you say or do something, and the same rules apply to the virtual world. Fast thinking does not have a premium over slower, careful thinking; and in fact, the opposite may be true.

Pornified: why admitting that you watch a lot of porn is no longer cool

I am very mad at Amazon because I wrote a review for Pamela Paul’s Pornified last night and it still hasn’t appeared with all the other reviews. I’m thinking about boycotting if it doesn’t post because I hate censorship, and any website that would censor the harmless things I write does not deserve my or any other free-speech loving individual’s patronage. Not only was my review harmless, but a lot of intellectual labor went into it. It took me at least an hour to write even though it wasn’t very long. I painstakingly constructed every word and sentence even going so far as to employ a thesaurus at one point. The reason I think my review might not appear is because I carelessly titled it, “I didn’t read the book, but I have some things to say.” This is not a good way to ingratiate yourself with the Amazon algorithms which might search out and try to subvert attention whores who are just trying to use their website as a free platform. But still, I bought and shipped a birthday gift to my brother yesterday using their “platform,” so I feel this entitles me to write at least one free review of a book I didn’t read. Furthermore, I gave the book three stars and deigned to agree with the author when most of the other reviewers ripped her apart.

From what I gleaned from the Amazon and other reviews, Pornified is a poorly researched and passionate (i.e. biased) book which attempts to caustically demonize the adult entertainment industry. Basically, it uses all the old arguments (many of which are feminist arguments) to call attention to this destructive obsession which is reeking havoc on families and marriages, women, children, teens, society as a whole not to mention men’s minds. According to the author, it is a corrupting and perverting force and perhaps the biggest bane of healthy relations in America. Keep in mind, this is inferring a lot from the scant reviews I read, the title and alluring cover of the book, and the fact that the genesis for this commentary had its origins in a TIME magazine story which ran a few years back.

But still, I felt like I had to stand up and say (or write) how I feel about porn. I think my opinion matters more than a lot of people out there who claim to know so much about the genre not least because of the fact that I was raised on pornography. Yes, I am 33 years old and I am a walking study in the long term effects of what more than half a life of getting off to porn will do to a person who is still relatively young. And lucky for me, I turned out normal. Contrary to what a lot of people might expect, I am not promiscuous, I have never contracted an STD, I don’t sexually harass girls or women (although I do stare), and I don’t set demanding expectations for my sexual partners. I have never videotaped myself masturbating and posted it on a tube site, I have never had cyber sex with a stranger, and I do not wear revealing clothing or send any other sartorial signals which might announce to the world that I am a “slut.”

If I am such a walking example of how porn is practically harmless, you might wonder why I side with Pamela Paul’s basic thesis that some things about it are simply ”bad.” Well, my gripe with porn is probably a little more intellectual than her’s and is mostly rooted in the fact that, when I came into contact with adult magazines and films in the early 90’s, porno was still a very private obsession for most people. It was not considered cool or even safe to transparently advertise your preferences for adult film genres and sex toys like it is today. Blabbing on about how much you dig seeing lesbians kiss or how you own a vibrating Fleshlight in the 90’s would quickly earn you the reputation of a pervert, and even worse, it could get you in serious trouble. I guess we all took it for granted back then that most of our friends and associates probably dabbled in porn, but these self-gratifying habits were protected by a sacred fortress of solitude that made engaging in them seem that much more pleasurable and salubrious.

Now when I see these people unabashedly debating the viscosity of lube and spit, or when I hear porn stars announcing the station identifications of local Middle America radio stations, or when I see a CGI John Holmes trying to sell me a taco in a TV commercial - I feel like I’m being violated. When porn oversteps its lecherous boundaries into normal, clothed society, there is a problem. Some people might see this as a lifting of the veil, or an overcoming of our more counterintuitive and destructive puritanical tendencies. But I disagree. I think we need veils in order to live, and we create boundaries to protect and uphold us. When people have no secrets they become vulnerable.  Without rules of eitquette and deportment, life becomes a never-ending bachelor party full of fart and penis jokes. “Hey, Bob. Want to see my dick, I just got it pierced?” “Um, no I don’t.”

I think I began to realize that the recent “coolness” of porn – started in 1999 by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla back when they did the Man Show together – had burned itself out when I awoke one morning to hear the DJ’s on the local radio station in my small little non-city interviewing Ron Jeremy live on his decision to retire from the porn business (as if porn stars ever retire). To hear the yokels in my backwards little Rust Belt town cajoling the so-called “king of porn” in real time as I went about my morning rituals caused an unsettling feeling. Knowing that every little weasel in the corner of nowhere that I called home had a personal relationship with Ron Jeremy that was similar in nature to mine, this robbed my secret admiration of the smut king of a huge part of its authenticity. I liked to think that by occasionally cranking one out to a scene starring Ron Jeremy and some callow newcomer to the biz was my own little private escape, and this gave these innocent corpulent and hirsute fantasies a sense of sophistication. It was like I was learning from the world master of the quicky himself, and to see a man who is so disgusting yet so confident in action added greatly to my own optimism and self-esteem. I thought of how I might someday employ his little tricks and seductive charms (like when I’m on a Royal Caribbean Cruise for instance). But to look at the world now and see all sorts of people from all walks of life admitting their fawning appreciation for this man and what his existence has meant and done for them, it seemed like a sci-fi movie in which the nation’s drinking water becomes tainted by truth serum.

These sorts of unchecked revelations are careless, reckless and unhealthy to say the least. There is a time for humor and lust, and there is a time for seriousness and professionalism. When the lines between pop culture and porn culture begin to blur, we set ourselves up for potential embarrassment and disaster. We become a society devoid of decorum where anything goes.

Americans’ ubiquitous exposure to porn is no doubt a symtpom of our overall decline in dignity and etiquette. We are rapidly becoming a nation of bad manners. This is evident in the decline of the standard dress code, the increase in the average waist size, and the elevation of numerous tawdry trends to full-blown domination status. People are starting to wear Bermuda shorts and baseball caps to church, foul language is uttered in places where it formerly wasn’t permitted, and tattoo covered skin is displayed everywhere. Despite the widespread awareness of the life-truncating effects of prolonged tobacco use and alcohol consumption, people smoke and drink more than ever now. Corporations don’t help either when they trample tradition in order to make a quick buck by marketing items which, at their core, are generic, garish, offensive and vapid. Entertainers have abandoned the more sophisticated art of tact and subtlety in their acts and now subject us to bombardment after bombardment of hackneyed immaturety (I swear, if one more recycled sitcom employs a reference to porn in order to invoke that single bachelor/ette levity…). And adding fuel to this fire is an ever-increasing trend of laziness. Generation X, spoiled by their Baby Boomer parents, never seemed to learn the value of hard work. They expect and crave the good life, but many of them lack the discipline needed to earn it. After sitting back for decades and having everything handed to them, they have suddenly grown up, and the awareness of their stark mature lives is no small cause for concern for many of them.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that a porn craze should emerge in this sort of early post-postmodern landscape. Many people who profess their love of porn were most likely raised on it like I was, and they’re probably just trying to bring their otherwise healthy obsession into the light as a way of moving out of the dark ages of the more repressed 80’s and 90’s. But progress is not always a good thing, and having a voluminous knowledge of adult cinema is a useless conversation topic in my opinion. Nobody wants to sit around and discuss the merits of Ron Jeremy’s latest directorial feature, or whether Jenny Layne looked better as a D cup instead of an A. This type of chatter belongs in the realm of sci-fi geekery, and any glib revelations about one’s porn viewing habits should be discouraged just as much today as they would have been ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. I hate to envision a newfangled world where keeping up with the Joneses means having a bigger wall of XXX rated DVD’s than they do!

Probably the most ironic thing about all of the professed “coolness” of porn lately is the fact that, despite having seeped out of its mostly inglorious and invisible niche into more respectable culture, the adult entertainment industry still manages to attract the lonely, the socially awkward, the desperate and the depressed. To have a heavy dependence on porn is to turn away from a life of healthy normal relationships and become immersed in a world of unquenchable virtual sex. Porn may always have a few advantages, but for a lot of people it is a heavy millstone, and the addiction comes when one tries to squeeze water from that stone.

I sided with Pamela Paul not because I want to be an old fashioned fuddy-duddy, but because I am a 1980’s fuddy-duddy. Like her, I would like to see porn go away. Not completely, I just want to see it go back in the closet where it belongs. Perhaps I realize that everybody peeks at porn, but to be constantly reminded of this serves no purpose for me and I’m sure a whole lot of other people. And when people try to use the fact that we’re all secret perverts as justification for destroying all barriers in the world, I get especially mad. I am the kind of person who likes to destroy the world each night and awake to it rebuilt again. I can’t fathom living in a world with no laws, no boundaries and no moral point of view.

Finally, I just want to mention that I think it’s funny that despite the fact that nearly limitless porn is now available for FREE to everyone who has a computer and an Internet connection (did I mention it’s FREE!), people still feel the need to divulge and brag about their masterbutory fetishes to the world. It’s funny because I would think this kind of easy accessibility to all the porn our brains and bodies can handle would enable us to get back in touch with enjoying it the way we used to – in the sanctum sanctorum of our own homes, bedrooms and closets.

33

IN A FEW DAYS I will turn thirty-three. Thirty-three is a significant year, not only because Christ the Lord is eternally thirty-three, but because many other celebrities have kicked the bucket at that age as well. Christ Farley croaked when he was thirty-three years young, and I am especially troubled by this not least because of the fact that I tend to have sleight issues with weight and hyperactivity just as he did (there is also a scary image of a freshly dead Chris Farley I saw once, and it seared its way into my brain to such an extent that I cannot watch his movies to this day without feeling a sickening rising/falling feeling in my stomach). Layne Staley also died at thirty-three – too late by many of his fans’ expectations (and probably the artist’s own as well), but frighteningly young nonetheless. And who can forget John Belushi, the first modern day celebrity with a penchant for excess who set the precedent for dying at thirty-three. Then there is Eva Peron, William S. Burroughs, Jr., Sam Cooke and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy just to name a few.

I have no intention of dying in my thirty-third year, which is why the demise of so many talented careers at this half-grown age is troubling to me.

It is as if there is a preternatural curse on the number thirty-three as it pertains to the lifespan, and it is similar in many ways to the curse that plagues the twenty-seventh year of life. Several entertainment luminaries like Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain have all died at the age of twenty-seven, and I even knew a few people who took their lives at this age as well. The curse regarding dying at twenty-seven is cosmic in nature, and gets its significance from an astrological phenomenon known as Saturn Return. Basically, Saturn Return is a deep life assessment that occurs approximately every 27-30 years, which is the same time it takes the planet Saturn to complete its orbit (i.e., wherever Saturn was at in its orbit when you were born, approximately 27 years later it will be in the same place in the heavens). The first Saturn Return is viewed as a crossing of the threshold from youth to adulthood, and some believe people like Kurt Cobain who kill themselves in their twenty-seventh year are unwilling to relinquish their childhoods and mature into adults. This theory holds a lot of water when one considers the types of entertainers who have offed themselves either directly or indirectly at this age. But it is tragic that nobody told these people that growing up (or “old”) is not obligatory, as there are many fifty year old men and women who like to watch the Disney channel or curl up and read Harry Potter. Sure, Nirvana may have broken up and never recorded another album after In Utero, and Kurt could have gone solo and ended up trying too hard resulting in something that sounds like Days of the New - but he is no longer with us, and Frances Bean doesn’t have a daddy.

Luckily for me, the thirty-third year of life bears no potentially ominous significance in the realm of astrology. The number 33, however, does have revelevance in the similar field of numerology – and it’s optimistic relevance too! 33 is special because it is one of the Master numbers (double digit numbers which cannot be reduced) along with 11 and 22. According to the website www.decoz.com, these numbers, “are called Master numbers because they possess more potential than other numbers. They are highly charged, difficult to handle, and require time, maturity, and great effort to integrate into one’s personality.” 33 is viewed as the most powerful of the Master numbers not only because it is the highest, but because the other two Master numbers – 11 and 22 – can be combined to form it. According to www.decoz.com, 33 is marked by a, “determination to seek understanding and wisdom before preaching to others.” It is also referred to as the “Master Teacher.” It is not surprising, therefore, to see this number ascribed to Jesus Christ when he was at the height and climax of his earthly and eternal mission.

But if 33 is so rich with abstruse compassion, wisdom and enlightenment as the numerologists say (I abstained from quoting more from the website; but, trust me, this is what they say), it did not teach people like Chris Farley and John Belushi a whole heck of a lot. If it taught these men anything, it is not to gamble with your life and think that you can cheat death for another day by snorting all the coke you want. It taught them the cost of their own mistakes. In the case of Layne Staley, he learned the ultimate enlightenment of what he was putting in his veins. But since these has-beens are all dead as a result of their brief and scary satoris, their lessons can be passed on to the rest of us. Their final acts exist as visceral reminders (WARNING GRAPHIC PIC) of the death that hovers not too far above all of us. We can either cling to death and its inevitability, or we can embrace life as long as we’re alive.

I pray that 33 won’t teach me a harsh and permanent lesson like it did to the aforementioned celebrity party animals. I like to think that I am not playing with fire like these people were. Sure, I have my vices; but you won’t see me on any three day coke binge any time soon. I think I would have to gain 100-150 pounds before I resembled Chris Farley, and the only coke you will ever see me using is Diet Coke. But if 33 is the “Master Teacher,” who knows what it will teach me. Jesus often spoke in cryptic parables, and if 33 imparts its wisdom in a similar way, I may find myself sifting through life parables to find the gems of enlightenment contained therein.

Or not. I am not an acolyte of numerology, nor did I even know much about it until I went to www.decoz.com the other day on a whim and looked up the significance of the number 33. But my ability to think analytically makes me somewhat superstitious, or at least I want to believe that my various interpretations of life and the world carry spiritual and supernatural weight. I like to think there is more to life than just coincidence after coincidence. The mysteries are too great, and I don’t find the statistical assurance of coincidence convenient enough. But I think grasping for answers in the stars or picking apart number patterns is misguided. It is simply a way of drawing parallels, and this is where it derives its most intellectual fascination for me.

But it does make you think if there is not something more to everything we see around us. And it goes a long way in proving a point which Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons makes over and over, that the laws of physics (and mathematics and hence science) are God’s laws. There is order and balance all around us, in our bodies, in our ecosystems, in everything. The natural order is very clean and orderly. Whether one is an atheist or not, it has to be admitted that this is a miracle. It can’t always be taken for granted the way the seasons change, the way nature is very resilient, the way language and numbers – the building blocks of human understanding and communication – are so mathematically ordered.

And, of course, the way a celebrity mired in addiction often dies at the age of thirty-three calls to mind this order. It is a coincidence big enough to make even a statistician scratch his or her head, and it should be an actuarial warning to Hollywood people never to hire a coke sniffing, heroin shooting artist/actor for role in a big production if he is an the eve of his thirty-third birthday.

But I still want the pair of boobs featured at the top of this post!