Par for the Course

A short film I worked on with my intern for my friend Tom Lutz, the Pastor of the local Lutheran Church.

Google is...

Lately I've obsessed myself with attempts at getting a better hold on what the Internet is thinking.
One of the more amusing attempts came from a google screenshot someone showed me displaying the search results for the phrase "Chinese people are..."

Taking it a step further I made my own collection of screenshots from google involving the intimate and unprincipled relationships of human dichotomy.

Three of my favorites so far:
Men are like waffles women are like spaghetti
Young people are no longer interested in buying newspapers or magazines in print format...
Fat people are harder to kidnap


Men are...


Women are...


Old people are...


Young people are...


Atheists are...


Religious people are...


Black people are...


Chinese people are...


Hispanic people are...


Japanese people are...


Jewish people are...


White people are...


Immigrants are...


Myspace is...


Facebook is...


Twitter is...


Fat people are...

Death Bed

“Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don't work, I don't get in a car, I don't f*cking ride in a car, I don't pick up the phone, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as sh*t don't f*cking roll! Shomer Shabbos!”
-Walter Sobchak

A few hours after reading this article, nodding defeatedly and muttering, "Figures," I decided that it deserved a little more thought than my knee-jerk reaction.

I had taken the easy way out, without bothering to ask myself what exactly “figured.”
After taking some time to think, I was reminded of two things: the Sabbath and my Death Bed.

Shomer Shabbos, as Mr. Sobchak meticulously outlined for Donny, is a day where much is prohibited (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakha)

.
As someone who makes bold and ridiculous attempts at fitting as many activities into my life as possible, I found Shabbos to be a ludicrous, bewildering, and frustrating idea, therefore I had to try it.
For those who haven't tried it, Shabbos is akin to those days when the power goes out and you're forced to spend the entire time waiting until you're allowed to use electricity again.

The morning of my attempt at Shabbos I employed a thought experiment I developed called, "Death Bed".
Here's how it works:
I picture my future self on my deathbed lamenting on the aspects of my life where I could have used time more wisely.
If I find my future self asking why it was so important to watch some poor soul on youtube eat 40 pizza rolls more than once, I should probably stop and go do something else.

My future self had no such regrets about Shabbos, so I continued on with my day, eventually realising how Shabbos was its own thought experiment.
Shabbos broke routine in a way similar to Death Bed. In all its restrictions I was forced to reflect on aspects of my life that had previously gone ignored or become habit.

Marvin Minsky made a similar observation by describing the time one spends with a broken leg.
It isn't until the leg is broken that all the little details of walking become apparent.

Perhaps declaring the use of ethanol as a "sin" could be beneficial to some, I'm not sure, perhaps he was just being difficult.

Not so bone idle

"Never discourage anyone... who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."
-Plato

It does not escape my attention that I have the tendency to become something of a misanthropist from time to time. And just in case I find myself forgetting, thankfully I am surrounded by people who will remind me of my critical tendencies.

One area I am highly critical of, as it has been pointed out to me, is religion.
However, as with anything, it does not help to only point out the negative.
If something positive happens, one must make note of it.

Therefore, I post this:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/14/saudi.arabia.woman.minister/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Please, respect the Caviar

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.700-born-believers-how-your-brain-creates-god.html

So here it is, another well written document describing the painfully obvious, albeit with a little more insight; that insight being how babies, while observing a box moving on its own, will become confused, because we, as humans, are born with an instinct for what's alive, and therefore supposed to be able to move on its own, and what's not alive, and therefore should stay still until you say, "Robot, bring me that ladle."

Humans also have some innate disposition in reaching daft yet intuitive conclusions about natural phenomenon they don't fully understand, like rain or wind or carjackings.

Tlaloc, Thor, and Hadad thought they had cornered the market on rain, until we humans came along and noticed that when water becomes exposed to air the liquid molecules turn into water vapor which rises up to forms clouds... and so on and so forth, until these Gods were forced to retire.

What drives me up the wall is how thousands of people, who willingly sit inside a MEGA-church watching some maniac communicate with them through a Sony JumboTron about how he chats leisurely with the Creator of the Universe, will look at a group of Scientologists pushing the latest edition of Dianetics from a kiosk at your local Mall, and whisper to each other, "The stuff those people believe in is crazy."

Uh-huh.

Every belief system thinks alternate belief systems are mentally deranged as manifested in a wild or aggressive way. The only time these people choose to become skeptics is when some unfortunate mild mannered person attempts to make a basic conversation about the weather a little more lively by mentioning something they happened to read in an science article, at which point all the believers literally jump down the mild mannered person's throat in an effort to exorcise the demon before it utters anything else that could coarsely brush up against any of their delicate beliefs which they require to murder female TV personalities.

Points Lost for Humanity

A Man wants to marry an anime character
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Man_wants_to_marry_cartoon_character&in_article_id=380269&in_page_id=2

Proposition 8 set passed in California
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage5-2008nov05,0,1545381.story

Young woman stoned to death by 50 men
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7708169.stm