Do you ever have so many things to say… you need to make a list?

There are only two things on my list.

But it’s more complicated than that. I have this post I’ve been looking forward to writing. It’s first on my list. The second is a list of 100 things about me. Yes, making a list is on my list. It gets worse… lists are on my list… that’s on the list.

So… Why write this post when I could be writing the one I want? Then, I could get to the list, on my list, and check that off the main list. Silly, no?

The post is a reward. I have to get a bunch of Policy Journal stuff to do. I won’t let my self step in until I’m done. I’ve delayed gratification. I’m not sure why.

Perhaps it’s nap time

I can’t believe it. This month, I will finish my Undergraduate coursework, present one of my papers at the Annual UW Undergraduate Research Symposium, and turn 39. Turning 39 is a trip for two reasons. First, I don’t feel 39. I don’t even feel 30. Lastly, and more traumatically, there are no more birthdays between here and 40. Midlife, the great-divide, all-down-hill-from-here… Middle age. Ack!

The more faithful of my readers will notice that I changed the background color of this site. This feels a little warmer and inviting. Tell be what y’all think.

Today, my little slice of cyberspace will provide a much needed amplifier for something that has been bugging me for quite some time. In the good’ol days… websites were authored by companies and supergeeks. Once you bought a domain name, and found a place to host it somewhere, then you had to code your own HTML. Now, blogs, templates, myspace, and WYSIWYGs make the net accessible to any clown with fingers.

[A tangent] Often, the lovely and talented Mrs. eSquared and I discuss the age where one is compelled to accumulate junk, and display it in the home like trophies. At what age does one see a lil’ darlin salt & pepper set at the goodwill and gasp with excitement? Then do we move from haughty contempt to “won’t this look great next to the ‘gone fishin’ nick-knack on the fireplace mantle”? Both of us have sworn a murder-suicide pact when we get this old.

Back to my point… personal web pages have become virtual display-cases for the useless shit of the internet. Because of the anonymity of the internet, I’m not sure if age is a causal, or spurious variable in this equation. Nonetheless, if you’re wondering, here are some examples of the garbage can fodder that litter the dusty shelves of the internet.

Pop-ups, pop-downs, pop-ins, pop-overs, pop-unders. Yes, I have a pop-up blocker, but there is the very odd instance where one sneaks through. I can appreciate that you might be using a free host (such as tripod or GeoCities). And from the free hosting site’s point of view, I can appreciate the need to bring in the revenue. Wait, you know what? No, I can’t. Pop-ups suck and there’s never any justification for them.

You resized my browser window. I hate that. I’ve got my browser set just where I like it and now you’re forcing me to resize it? Worse yet, you maximized my browser window so I can’t just click on the “Restore Down” boxes up top.

You make me have to scroll left and right. Just because I have my monitor’s resolution set to 1024 x 768 doesn’t mean I want my browser window maximized. In fact, I like to keep Firefox at about an 850 pixel width. Then I put Firefox so it’s flush with the right side of my screen. That way I can view my e-mail folders underneath on the left side of my screen. Your site should fit in my Firefox without a left-right scrollbar appearing at the bottom of my browser. Again, this goes with the above item. I hate having to resize my browser.

You have some God-awful color scheme, font colors, and/or fonts. Your whole page is red text on a neon green background. In script. Italicized. That means you’re either color blind or 13. Scratch that, a 13-year-old knows better.

Animated GIFs. You have more than one. Yes, your row of 863 waving and blinking smiley faces is very nice, as are the blinking purple stars on your page’s background. And your 17 virtual pets. And your And the thousands of dancing hamsters. And the rotating “Sign My Guestbook.” And the spinning envelope with “E-mail Me!” written on it. And the flashing “Under Construction!” sign…four of them. (Just so you know, EVERY PAGE ON THE INTERNET is “under construction,” since websites are updated all the time. Don’t worry, I know you’re working very hard on building your site. I promise not to forget.)

You have an incredibly elaborate Flash interface for your site. If I see a little “Loading” percentage bar in the middle of my screen, I click close.

Your webpage has music on it. If I’m sitting at my desk quietly, not listening to music or the TV, and suddenly this music comes blaring out of my speakers I’m going to have to clean the skidmarks off my ceiling. Now, there are two kinds of music in this particular violation. The first is MIDI, the internet’s elevator music. The second is MP3/WAV/Whatever…an actual streaming song. If you don’t know the difference between the two, it’s OK. All you need to know is that both types suck. Look, if you want me to listen to your cool music? ASK ME. If I want to, I’ll play it. Don’t force it on me. Besides, I’m already listening to music. And it’s better than yours.

You use the friggin’ BLINK attribute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, you only used it once. That’s once too many. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

ur hOLe pAgE iz wRiTTun LiK thS. LiKe OMG! dID u C teh O.c. lasT nItE? I sO hEArT tHat sHw! Like, oh my God, I hope you come down with a serious case of spontaneous human combustion.

Your site requires me to register and log in before I can view the contents. Screw that shit. I’ve got enough accounts and passwords to keep track of already, thank you very much. Yes, of course there are plenty of web sites where a log-in makes perfect sense - for example, Yahoo!, G-mail, and my bank.

CPTnet
2 December 2005

IRAQ: Most recent reflection by Tom Fox, “Why are we here?”

[Note: The following reflection was written by Tom Fox the day before he was
abducted.]

The Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) Iraq team went through a discernment
process, seeking to identify aspects of our work here in Iraq that are
compelling enough to continue the project and comparing them with the costs
(financial, psychological, physical) that are also aspects of the project.
It was a healthy exercise, but it led me to a somewhat larger question: Why
are we here?

If I understand the message of God, his response to that question is that we
are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I
understand the message of God, how we take part in the creation of this
realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength and to
love our neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves. In its
essential form, different aspects of love bring about the creation of the
realm.

I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as “love” is
the word “agape.” Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a
profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all
God’s children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as
“never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow
human beings.”

As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the
operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to
hunt down and kill “terrorists” are, as a result of this dehumanizing word,
not only killing “terrorists,” but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women
and children in the various towns and villages.

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I
dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its
way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically,
structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or
her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process
that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

“Why are we here?” We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization
that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by
oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop
people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God’s children, no
matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

_______________

Thank god for backups. Let me say it again… THANK GOD FOR BACKUPS! Its Easter morning and with coffee in hand, I marvel at the clear, blue sky above me after the dramatic presentation of the elements yesterday. Julie is at church, and I have the morning to myself… just me and the kitty.

I make my way into the office (with somewhere between a saunter and a stagger) and continue my quest for software. I recently formatted my laptop, and needed to reinstall my software.

At this point, let me chase a metaphorical butterfly off the trail and into the field a bit. To know me, is to know my prowess for computers, and my penchant for gadgetry. I consider myself pretty net-savvy and exercise caution and discretion when called upon. I have redundant security from firewalls to real-time software protection. It’s not as secure as the Pentagon, (I hope) but then again, I’m not responsible for any National secrets… just my wife’s PhD program documents.

Ok… back on the trail… I wanted to download a download manager (yes, I see the irony here). In order to get the free program, - (clue #1 I missed) I needed to download a different program first (clue #2). Perhaps I was insufficiently caffeinated; not paying attention or just plain dumb… I don’t know, I clicked the button and the hard drive began to make a lot of activity noise. Not the soothing whirr that it normally whispers as it is fetching a file, or executing a command. This was more like a pepper grinder… with a motor. Then the pop-ups started.

The first one was NOT the gentle warning one might expect. Perhaps I watch too many Navy movies:

Ensign: Sounding excited: “Sonar to COM… come-in COM.”
Captain: Calm and controlled, “Go ahead Sonar.”
Ensign: “Uh, Skipper… we have an unidentified sonar ping at zero-two-niner, over.”
Captain: “Ok Ensign, keep an eye on it.”

- Minutes later -

Ensign: High-pitched, nearing panic “Sonar to COM… come-in COM.”
Captain: Calm and controlled, “Go ahead Sonar… take it easy son.”
Ensign: “Wehavetwotorpedoescomingin… ETAforty-fiveseconds”!
Captain: Calm and controlled, “Take evasive action.”

If this were my ship… this is what this communication might have sounded like

Ensign: High-pitched, completely panicked, “SonartoCO”!
Glub… glub… glub… glub

I was able to fire off a screenshot of the warning I got before I was eatin’ seaweed…

Recently, I was invited (more or less) to read someone’s blog that I respect.  Respect for many reasons, the greatest of which (or right now) is her writing.  I’ve always enjoyed her prose, but reading her blog gives me a greater appreciation for her sense of humor and her craft as a writer.  

What this means to me, here and now, is the inspiration.  When the sun is shining, there’s money in the bank, the cars are both working well, and I don’t have an assignment looming over me, I fancy myself a decent writer.  However, I am not disciplined in the slightest.  The primary reason I don’t write in this silly blog, is I have great difficulty figuring out what to write about.  I have the same problem approaching a paper, or even an essay question.  Once I get going, and find my stride, I’m pretty good.

Unfortunately, its taken me this long to figure this out.  How can I endeavor to improve my writing, if I never, ever practice writing?  So… my intention is to use this forum to write about serious shit, silly shit and, of course, just shit.

Well… it took me 24ish years, but I finally passed 8th grade math. See Mr. Higbee… I did it!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

No doubt – I have bored my reader away from my months of silence.  So, I’m virtually assured I will be the only contributor and reader of my blog.  

It’s 1:45 in the morning and I can’t sleep.  I’m watching some really bad show on E about penitentiary romance, “Love Behind Bars.”  I wonder if Foucault had this in mind when he wrote of the Carceral in, “Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.”  

I am overwhelmed by the utter lack of substance we have as a culture.  Yet at the same time, we have a most imperialistic culture.  Like the BORG, from Star Trek the Next Generation, the American “popular” culture relentlessly overwhelms aspects other culture.

Commercials at 2 am consist of sixteen-year-old girls in bathing suits pretending that all they do is ‘hook-up’ on a phone chat club.  I can’t decide which part of this little charade most mystifies me.  The fact that there are phone hook-up places (that compete with the internet); they make enough money to pay the sixteen-year-old and the advertising time; or there are legions of pubescent boys dialing the phone.  Who knows.

The single most nauseating feeling I have about the whole thing is the insufficient distance between shit like this and myself.  

Clearly, the critical path of logic and decision the brought us, as a culture, to this abysmal position is long, crooked and sinuous.  I believe in both chaos and tipping point theory.  What if there were a way to locate the pivotal decisions that contributed to our cultural architecture.  

I don’t believe in time-travel – at least as we’ve conceived it at this point.  However, what if there were a way to change the trajectory of the production of culture.  I’m not suggesting anything as drastic, or fictional as messing with the ‘time-space continuum.’  Given this concept, and the impossibility of time travel, what can I do to change the trajectory of popular culture today?  What degree of change will have significance?

Now what.

I am in the middle of writing a paper on the postmodern nature of the Wikipedia, the online opensource encyclopedia. While researching, I stumbled across this database error that one of the system administrators copied when one of their disks filled. In my own nerdy way, I think this is ironically funny. I thought I’d share