The Occasional Solipsist

I got around to watching Sharkwater tonight, a documentary about the billion dollar shark finning industry that is quickly reducing the world's shark populations to almost nothing, all so that people can feel privileged to eat shark fin soup. Privileged? Really? And bad enough that anyone buys this stuff and supports an enterprise that has people out murdering sharks for their soup, but what kind of douchebag actually wants to do that for a living? I mean who grows up thinking, 'Wow I can't wait to be an active participant in wiping out not just a species, but an entire family of species'?

The result of watching this flick was similar in experience to what happened after I watched An Inconvenient Truth, except now I want to chum the water with shark harvesters instead of with Global Warming Deniers. Now that I think about it, I bet if we feed both groups to the sharks, we could solve a nice pile of the world's problems at once. Hmm, who else would I put on that list? Fundies. Conservatives. Maybe even Steelers fans.

Speaking of Steelers fans, I am having a couple of buddies over tomorrow to join me for this week's Entire Sunday of NFL Football, an old habit I've rekindled that, with the exception of getting to see my wife and kid more, is the single best thing about the new day job. When I was on shift work, I'd end up either working or sleeping through the Entire Sunday of NFL Football, so now I get to spend all day like every other schlub, usually drinking, sometimes cooking something that takes all day, but always watching football all day.

Labels: everything else, family, rants

I started my new job this week, and after a bit of the obligatory 'ok, so now what' ing that happens when you begin a job you're not familiar with, I have a reasonable handle on what its going to be like and what's going to be expected of me. Or at least I think I do, and that equals roughly the same thing.

Labels: family, work

So, last weekend of the summer. And thinking on where it went, I immediately go to 'when did it start?'. The entire northern hemisphere has had a pretty much bullshit summer, at least as far as temperature goes, and this weekend looks to be no different.

I start a new job on Tuesday, so for the first time in a long time, this labour day weekend is actually a long weekend for me since I have said goodbye to shift work. I am looking forward to my family having a more normal lifestyle, and at least my daughter knowing when I'll be in and out for a change. But now that its pending, I find myself thinking less about the new job and the rigamorole that it will entail, and more about what a change it is going to be being home in the evenings and weekends all the time, and whether I will be raining on Superwife's parade as much as I think I will be.

And did you catch that I used the word rigamarole just now?

Labels: everything else, superwife, work

I hardly ever update this thing anymore. Damn you twitter, and your concise method of communicating!

I just updated my Google work calendar to reflect the new job I start in a few weeks, and because its a day job, working Mon-Fri, the damn thing is now full of entries that say ' WORK' on them. So many more entries than this long time shift worker is used to seeing. It's almost like every day from Monday to Friday has this nasty little tag on it that indicates that I have to be somewhere other than enjoying time off or sleeping between shifts. Oh, wait. Its exactly like that.

Yes, I am looking forward to better pay, no 12 hour shifts, a more normal routine, and an increase in at least the potential to mate with my wife. But this having to come into work so often thing. This is going to take some getting used to.

Labels: work

Labels: comics, everything else, movies

Transubstantiation.

It is the change of the substance of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ occurring in the Eucharist according to the teaching of some Christian Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, while all that is accessible to the senses remain as before.

(from Wikipedia)

Before I looked it up, I had never heard of the word myself, though having been raised by the poster-girl for fundamentalist religious zealotry, I knew all about that whole crackers and wine bit as the flesh and blood of christ. But in all the many, many reasons for ridiculing the world's various religions, and the particularly offensive one that is catholicism in particular, I somehow totally missed this.

I mean, if you're a fundie, and you go to church, and you step up to the buffet line for a whole heaping helping of the eucharist, and you are a believer, you actually think that your priest just magically changed that cracker and wine into someone else's flesh and blood. And you ate it anyways. Ergo, you (at least in your head) believe yourself to be a cannibal. Like there wasn't enough material to make fun of here.

This all comes up because I listened to this week's Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast, in which there is a long discussion about a kid who had received death threats for taking a eucharist cracker out of church. When a rational individual came to his defense, and in that defense was hit with a few death threats himself, the story made quite a stir.

Here's a great little article that discusses the whole kerfuffle (crackerfuffle?) in much more detail than I am prepared to.

If you're a fundie, give this article a wide miss. But if you are a fundie you already know to give most things a wide miss. Things like evolution, rational debate, critical thinking, the scientific method.

If however, your brains haven't fallen out of your head and been replaced with divine goodness, this whole death threat over someone mocking transubstantiation is awesome. Pack of fucking lunatics if you ask me. Pack. of. fucking. lunatics.

What's even better is that I very soon get to have a visit with my favourite fundie, in the form of a visit for a few days with my Mom as she comes to stay with us over my vacation.

As an aside, this brings up a recent choice I had to make: Sharing a hotel room with 3 people (and a bed with another dude) while milling around with a whole shitload of comics geeks at Comic Con, or spending a few days trying to survive a visit with my Mom. I stand by my choice. That whole paying to go on an unpaid working vacation in the middle of the summer without the girls with money I don't have AND having to share a room with three strangers (and a bed with another dude) or hanging out with my sometimes loony Mom really wasn't much of a choice at all.

Either way, I am seriously thinking of bringing the whole Crackergate thing up when she comes up tomorrow just so I can watch her explode in a puff of self-righteous outrage.

Labels: atheism, everything else, rants

I have long been a fan of the X-Files. The pilot aired something like 16 years ago, and I spent the first few years of the show's lifespan in an adolescent altered state, and since I was already a hardcore scifi fan anyways, it was a natural fit for me to get into the show.

I have really been looking forward to the new movie, and was one of the faithful fans hoping that it would have gotten made years ago. The above clip is a decent, spoiler-free interview with Producer/Creator/Mescaline-freak Chris Carter about what viewers can expect from 'The X-Files: I Want to Believe', and maybe the future.

For my end, I consider myself a skeptic in the face of the supernatural, (I even hate the word 'supernatural', what a cop-out phrase) but there are many things that I do indeed Want to Believe in. I even have the poster to prove it:



I'm not going to get to go to Comic-Con this summer as I had planned. I was to have attended as press with the company I review movies for, but because I would have paid too much of the expenses out of my own pocket, it just wasn't something I could justify spending the money on.

But I am particularly bummed that I am not going because the movie debuts over the course of the event and it is certain that there would have been a screening, and an interview panel. I might even have gotten to interview Gillian Anderson, or Duchovny. But that's maybe for the best anyways, cause if I did interview Anderson my inner fanboy might have won out and I might have just sat there giggling at her, and with Duchovny I would probably have just kept repeating how fantastic he is in Californication and forgotten all about the movie completely.

However I do get to see it, I Want to Believe that this movie is going to rock. And [begin irony] I have faith [end irony] that it will.

Labels: movies, scifi

Labels: movies, scifi

Ok, so I am at work last night, and I was being inundated with bullshitty things that, though small, were cumulatively working to put me in a very bad mood. Just one little thing after another.

And then, just when I see my cell ringing and I think I am going to get some relief from the one person who I can reasonably expect it from, Superwife calls and immediately picks a fight with me about how this one person who I started the same day as is now my boss, and how much it pisses her off that I am not more aggressive at work. And then she hung up on me. Fucksakes, that one put me over the top. Truth be told, I am still mad about that one.

It just served to remind me that at the end of the day, as supportive as she usually is sometimes is used to be, I am really out here on my own. Good thing I occasionally think everyone else is in my head, or I might get depressed.

EDIT Ok, so now that I have gotten some perspective, I know I am not at all on my own. And if Superwife can put up with me for the litany of shit that I don't talk about, she should be entitled to rain on my parade once in awhile.

Labels: rants, work

Just came home from a 12 hour night shift, and for some reason I don't feel like falling down asleep in bed the second I've gotten in the door. And with no one else around to keep me company, I'll have to settle in for a gigantic bowl of shreddies and some random blathering.

I don't think I do enough of stream of consiousness type writing here. I use the blog, as I have for years, to post my thoughts, but I think I don't keep in mind that this is for me way more than its for anyone else, and keeping a journal is cathartic even when you have nothing seemingly meaningful to talk about.

I was telling a friend at work the other day how I haven't been being a very good consumer lately. How I haven't been reading anything other than comic books, haven't bought any movies or new videogames or gadgets, basically how I haven't spent any money on anything other than the bills in awhile. But then I realized that I have been listening to audiobooks on my iPod, watching movies that I have either downloaded or been doing reviews for, so I have been doing plenty of consuming. I just haven't been paying for it.

Those aforementioned comics that I have been reading lately include the spectacular Dynamo 5, which I highly recommend, as well as the summer series from the big two, Secret Invasion and Final Crisis, both of which are really good, but bear the distinct smell of off-shoot books that I am never going to buy any of.

And I got a big stack of Blu-Rays to review from the company I review for, so I will be continuing to consume those without paying for them. I actually wasn't sure if the guy who owns the company was going to have me work for him anymore; I thought he might have been a little sore that I bailed on going to Comic-Con on him. But the bottom line there was I just couldn't justify spending money I didn't have on something so frivolous, no matter how much fun I might have had doing it. Not when Superwife isn't working, and there are always things I could be doing for her, my daughter, the new house. Either way, it seems like there are no hard feelings.

And as far as gadgets go, I have been very close to taking the iPhone plunge lately, in light of the new data plans released along with the 3G, but the bottom line is the iPhone blows for taking pictures, and if I can't get a smartphone that shoots at least good pics as the cell I have, what's the point of trading up at all. So no consuming there either.

What else? I have been twittering a lot lately, both following and updating myself. I see that it could be mildly addictive, but not in the pervasive way that things like facebook and myspace were for me.

I opted in for the hundred pushups challenge. In 6 weeks, following the program, one is supposed to be able to do 100 push-ups in a row. I took the intial test and could do a grand total of 18 before I collapsed on the floor. So I have my work cut out for me.

And now that I feel a little more tired than when I sat down, here's to hoping that if Trin wakes me up early this afternoon, its a little more pleasant than the rude awakenings her tantrums have been waking me up with the last few days.

Labels: everything else