Archive for August 20th, 2005
Well, I suppose this might be considered my first actual blog-style post since I cranked the engine back to life on ER.com. I suppose. Although I tend to enjoy living my life somewhat vicariously through the experiences and exploits of others. I suppose. I often wish I could take life back to the basics without so much potential regret. I suppose. Sometimes I wish I had enough time in a day to accomplish everything I’d like to accomplish in a day. I suppose.
I actually have a hard time determining how to best utilize my brain-power. I can’t figure out if I have a whole lotta juice up there or nothin at all. I figure I must be one of the smartest or one of the dumbest people I know. It’s all relative. However, the only annoying thing left in my life is my inability to figure out what to do with myself when I don’t have something lined up that HAS to be done. I work from about 5am until about midnight or 1am almost 7 days a week. Lately I’ve been lucky enough to have a couple of evenings available for ‘nothin’. But I find that even when I have this ‘nothin’ time – I get nervous, stressed and fidgety because I can’t shake the feel that I COULD be accomplishing something rather than not.
The other aspect of it all that I can’t seem to figure out is that the more complicated we make our lives (more money, more cars, more houses, more vacations, more…) the more problems we add. Why doesn’t anybody ever consider this before setting out into the world with the goal of ‘makin’ it’?
Things n’ Stuff – that’s what I used to refer to the reasoning behind so many people’s desire to ‘get there’. I’ve changed those definitions a bit. They now include nothing more that being able to pay ones way through life. Food. Shelter. Responsibilities. That’s it. Everything else is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse if you let your greed get in the way. It’s a blessing if you do some good with your overflowing cornucopia of coin.
I went on one hell of an upward spiral (or downward – I guess that depends on which side of this argument you fall on) about two years ago. Last summer I finally got right where I thought I wanted to be.
That lasted for approximately 2 months. Ouch.
Some of you know the rest of the story and I won’t bore the rest of you with it. I’m in the process of writing a small novella detailing our experiences over the past year that I will be promoting to the major media outlets (see, I’m also an opportunist – is that a bad thing?). I’ll share it with you once I get the final draft completed.
Did the wheels come off because I got greedy? I wonder. Since I’ve always claimed to believe in and follow my karmic path. Maybe my Karma came to get me.
The problem I have is that I’m bound to be financially successful – it’s in my nature as an ‘accomplisher’ – and financial success is a nice perk if being an ‘accomplisher’ is part of ones nature. I can’t just sit around and not accomplish things. I have to be accomplishing things. I hate the status quo. Drives me nuts. Everything can always be done better. There is always a better mousetrap.
I suppose that until I shake the ‘accomplisher’ syndrome I will never be able to take my life back down the mountain and settle into a nice double-wide in Terlingua.
So, for now it’s just another Saturday, I’m gonna go get my 14 hairs cut. Mow the lawn. Have a Miller Light… and pretend I’m sipping a margarita at La Kiva – listen’in to Cooder Graw…
—
…
I’ve had better days, in airports with rain delays
Flat tires in traffic jams, and any time I’ve been damned
I’ve had better days, when the pain wouldn’t go away
And tears watering down my pride
Yea, I’ve had better
…
Well, I’ve got to hold my head up and look around
I can’t let just one day get me down
I’ll have better days, when everything goes my way
I’ll fly over traffic jams, just like Superman
I’ll have better days when the pain just goes away
And the tears leave and I find my pride
Yea, I’ll have better
…
August 20th, 2005
BAGHDAD—When the hot evening sun sets over Baghdad, Sulieman Hassim does not go home to his wife and family. For this Iraqi, the work day has only just begun.
Hassim, 32, is a two-year veteran of the Baghdad police force. Despite earning “danger pay,” he still struggles to stay afloat financially, and has had to take on a second job as a terrorist just to make ends meet.
“After my electricity and water supply were restored, I suddenly had a lot more bills to pay,” Hassim said. “Jobs are still pretty scarce, but I figured terrorists are always hiring.”
Hassim, who has previously supplemented his income with such part-time jobs as guarding gas-fueled turbines from insurgents and driving a taxi, said he was initially unsure that he was qualified for terrorist work.
“My buddy Abdullah [Bahri] worked at the Brotherhood Of Total Islamic War, and he said he’d put in a good word for me with the head sheik,” Hassim said. “I didn’t expect to hear back for a while, but before I knew it, I got an interview.”
While Hassim had worried that his lack of experience and his creased suit would hurt his chances of being hired, he later said “the only thing they seemed to care about was whether I had a car.”
Although happy to have extra work, Hassim is not always able to fulfill his duties as a terrorist, resulting in some unexpected complications.
“Last week, I couldn’t work a suicide-bombing shift because I had to be alive early the next morning for patrol duty,” Hassim said. “I was calling everyone, but I had a hell of a time trying to find someone to replace me. At the last minute, Fathi [Abd al-Khalid] agreed to take the shift. That guy’s such a martyr.”
After less than a month as a terrorist, the physical and mental strain of working 70-hour weeks can be seen in Hassim’s tired, sunken eyes and stooped posture. Complaining of exhaustion, Hassim said that he doesn’t “know what job [he's] at half the time.”
“Several times, I’ve found myself wondering, ‘Now, why am I shooting this guy again? Because he’s just stolen a can of gasoline, or because he’s a cowardly informant of the hated occupier?’” Hassim said. “‘Should I mow down the American soldiers at this checkpoint, or politely flash my badge?’”
Hassim said he had a particularly close call last Sunday.
“I was screaming that U.S. soldiers are murderous infidels whose blood should be spilled without hesitation, when I realized that I was at the police station,” Hassim said. “Luckily, the other officers either weren’t paying attention or they agreed with me.”
Hassim said it “felt strange” to bomb an embassy outpost, punch out, report to work as a police officer, then return to the same site an hour later to secure the area.
“That’s happened a couple times,” Hassim said. “I find myself going, ‘Déjà vu?’ And then I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah.’”
Hassim’s supervisors at both the police station and the Brotherhood Of Total Islamic War were critical of his job performance.
“Hassim’s accidental-kill rate has doubled in recent weeks,” said Capt. Badeer Mustafa, Hassim’s immediate superior at the police department. “Last week, he shot 20 civilians. I might have to dock his pay.”
Mohammed al-Zahass, a high commander with the Brotherhood Of Total Islamic War, has been displeased with Hassim’s performance, as well.
“Second time this week, we’ve had to tell him to hit ‘record’ on the video camera, not ‘play,’” al-Zahass said. “I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Look at the buttons if you’re confused!’ It’s not like you can behead a hostage twice.”
Hassim’s family has also felt the strain.
“I rarely see my husband anymore,” Ghayda Hassim said. “I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the early months of the occupation when Sulieman was out of work like everyone else, sipping mint tea, watching Al-Jazeera at full blast, and ordering me around like a slave. I want my old Sulieman back.”
Although Hassim, like most Iraqis, would like to see an end to the bloodshed, the father of four admitted he just can’t afford it.
“If the situation in Iraq were to stabilize, I could possibly lose not only one job, but two. Thankfully, I won’t have to worry about that for a long, long time.”
August 20th, 2005
KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.
“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: “Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, ‘I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.’ Of course, he is alluding to a higher power.”
Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world’s leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.
According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God’s Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.
The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue “so they can make an informed decision.”
“We just want the best possible education for Kansas’ kids,” Burdett said.
Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein’s ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.
“Let’s take a look at the evidence,” said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden.”In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, ‘And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.’ He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, ‘But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.’ If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling.”
Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton’s mathematics and Holy Scripture.
“Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein’s general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world,” said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. “They’ve been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don’t know how.”
“Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work,” Carson said. “What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitons’ are just secular words for ‘God can do whatever He wants.’”
Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.
“Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the ‘electromagnetic force,’ the ‘weak nuclear force,’ the ’strong nuclear force,’ and so-called ‘force of gravity,’” Burdett said. “And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus.”
August 20th, 2005
