I mean, you either like babies or you don’t. And the fact is, you end up liking babies a lot more when you’re thinking about having babies yourself, I’m pretty sure. But man, our friends have some great babies. Dan and Alia’s little ‘un is just spectacular.

Anyway. I’ll write more tomorrow. Our dishwasher broke and, for the first time, we saw a cockroach in the bathroom . The upstairs bathroom. On my toothbrush.

So, I’ve got some music to write and some phone calls to make, after that I’ll write a real blog.

Some sports related stuff…

Is it possible that it’s really difficult for us to compete in something like the World Games or the Olympics, when our athletes might have terribly confused feelings about being an American in 2006? Is it possible that all the attention on the number of medals we win this Olympics, and our celebration of individual achievement over any kind of team play, is because of a fascination of both sides of the Clark Kent/Superman American identity?

I’m just asking here. Our celebration of anti-intellectualism, of easy answers, of gut-responses, of, essentially, the wholesome simpleness of Clark Kent, the bumbling simpleton who knows the difference between right and wrong because he listens to his heart and his God, could that lead to compacency? When simple unimpressive men become our superheroes, when the marginally talented but fortuitously sexual become our reigning American artists, when tactical decisions of the largest magnitude are made without nuance, then is America becoming a place where things seem to happen without reason, where ends don’t justify means, they seem to occur without means, where winning doesn’t matter?

It’s just a question, really.

There are two professional sports players, Terrel Owens and Ron Artest, both of whom caused enormous upset on their individual teams, and both of whom are some of the most talented players to play their individual sports. T.O. went most of the season without a team because he was such a problem, Ron Artest did the same. How on earth can people be surprised by this? You don’t become players of their caliber (both are considered among the very best in their sport) without an enormous amount of work and a giant genetic lottery win, why shouldn’t they expect the entirety of the world known to them to bend to their will.

In the end, the world did bend to them. They will get paid, they will get anything they want, and they are professionals. They have a job, which is playing a game, and they will get as much money as they want. We, America, were obsessed with the shenanigans surrounding both these players. I’m just asking, is it possible that we see this behavior and we feel like we’ve found an outlet for our outrage because there are white collar white guys, who also worked very hard and had a giant genetic lottery win being born into rich families with white skin, who are responsible for crimes against America and Humanity, but who’s deeds are so much harder to understand than a black guy yelling at his team-mates and wanting 10 million more than his 60 million dollar contract…

Probaly not. This probably doesn’t mean anything, it’s a stupid question, really.

But when we wrestle something like the Olympics to feature LUGE… I’m sorry, I have interrupt here. These people are going down an ice pipe on a sled? I mean, I’m not sure what the math is, but couldn’t you just weigh a whole bunch of people, do the algorithm for gravity and weight vs. drag and then just put the person with the optimum weight on a sled and send them down? Or, why even a person, can’t they just count the right number of sand bags, put a flag for each country, and see what happens…?

Sorry.

When we wrestle the Olympics into featuring something like snowboarding, and then our woman doesn’t win the gold because she’s hotdogging… Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what the hell people are talking about. We didn’t win as many medals as the Germans because someone was better at skiing to a place, then riding a bike to a lake where he had to ice-fish or some damn thing, I can’t even figure out which of these things is a sport and what makes someone good at it. (I mean, in Golf, if you say “closest to the pin buys lunch”, I get that, but is there really a scoring system for dancing? Man, if you got Squeek from Baseketball out there doing pelic thrusts, I’d vote for him.)

Anyone who calls this Olympics a dissapointment is a jackass. The Olympics are the Olympics, it’s a celebration of international competition among amateurs, or at least it should be. If you watched the women’s figure skating and were upset by the outcome because Sasha Cohen didn’t win… Japan won it’s first winter Gold medal EVER, and Japan won it’s ONLY MEDAL last night of this entire Olympics. And the woman who skated was perfect and breath-taking.

Is it possible, I’m just asking, but is it possible that since we think it’s okay to hold people without reason in foreign prisons and torture them there, even though we claim the bill of rights is inalienable, that a man can rise to the highest positions of power in the government and in business based on their family names, even though we claim we live in a meritocracy, that we can wage war on other countries based solely on their ethnic makeup and their ability to be conquered, despite the fact that our country was founded on religious freedom and the idea that all men are created equal, that maybe some of this has something to do with our disappointment in not winning every single event that we compete in?

Probably not. It’s a hell of a stretch. I’m sure the Romans in the 4th Century probably thought the Turks and the Huns were their equal in sport. It didn’t stop the inevitable, though.

There. I promised myself I’d write today.

I won’t apologize for not writing in this blog, I’m just bad about updating it and I don’t really feel any guilt. I don’t expect anything from you in return, I don’t feel like I’ve got any kind of an agreement, spoken or unspoken, and this will get updated when it gets updated.

In other words, Mom, I’ll call you if anything interesting happens to me.

Now, really quick.

Tolerance is really important. You have to tolerate things that you despise, unless you have the right to obliterate those things. For instance, I am intolerant of headaches, I will drink massive quantities of coffee and water combined with Excedrin and Tylenol Sinus or whatever the hell I have to in order to do battle with headaches. I tolerate being overweight. I hate it, but I work around it.

I tolerate religion. I despise it and, to be perfectly honest, I lose respect for people who thank God for the good things that happen to them, and then blame people for random natural acts. God has never made me a better actor, and God has never caused a flood to kill people. The floods are random weather situations and people’s triumphs happen because of either hard work or luck. God doesn’t make a jump shot fall, and God doesn’t punish the leaders of Israel for dividing the promised land.

But I tolerate it when people say they want to worship God or whatever. I am not respectful of it. I don’t have to be. If you keep kosher or you go to church every sunday, there’s a part of me that respects that because it takes sacrifice and organization and you have to give up something in your life in order to obey a ritual, and I think that ability translates into real world skills. I respect a Muslim who prays five times a day, it takes gumption to do that. It takes moxy.

But, you know what? I don’t pray five times a day. And I don’t pray because I don’t believe. Every time I’ve cast my eyes skyward, even in moments of horror and panic, I knew I was being a fool and I simply couldn’t formulate a prayer. I don’t believe in the supernatural, I don’t believe in monsters, I don’t believe in God.

You can’t make me. You can kill me, you can threaten to kill me, you can say whatever you want, but I will never believe that your God is on his way to judge me, I will never believe that there is a next world where I will get my come-uppance. I tolerate your religion, and many times I go so far as to respect it, but unless I get some kind of super-material world proof that there is a knowing God that has control over anything, I won’t believe you no matter how many times you say it.

So why won’t you get the hell out of my life? Why do you want to deny me the right to an abortion? Why do you want to deny me the right to draw cartoons? Why do you want to deny me the right to learn about science in grade school?

It’s because you are afraid. I think it’s because you know I’m right. It’s because deep inside yourself, you know that God isn’t coming, you know that your prayers aren’t heard. Deep inside yourself, you know that the Messiah’s return has been foretold and missed thousands and thousands of times. I’m not that smart, and it’s easy for me to know that the floods and earthquakes have always been here.

I think it’s because you feel insignificant, because you think you don’t matter. You want to believe that God loves you because you don’t completely believe that the people around you love you. And that’s really sad, it really is. I feel lonely, I miss the existence of God, I hate the coldness of the infinite that surrounds me, and it leaves me in a state of panic and shock sometimes. I’m attracted to a father of infinite power and intelligence that loves me, I would love for it to be true.

But it doesn’t make sense, none of it. And you hate the fact that someone can ignore your truth because it makes you question it, and if you question it even for a moment, you will know it isn’t true. Look, if you had a regular diet and a roof over your head, you wouldn’t give a shit about a cartoon. If you could masturbate without shame, you wouldn’t give a shit about abortion. If you weren’t scared of being wrong all the time, you wouldn’t care if I was wrong.

I tolerate you. I don’t respect you. And I don’t expect you to respect me, my life is ridiculous. But you’re gonna have to learn to tolerate me, because you won’t ever be able to get rid of me. I’m the future – science, industry and freedom are the future. You’re the past

We have just this morning dumped six months worth of construction trash into a hired trash guy’s truck. MAN, the relief you get when you take out the trash. I really wanted us to go through the house and take out every single bit of trash we had, but I think Jordana was worried that she didn’t get a big enough truck, so we just did the construction stuff. Credit little Jordana, she took an hour off work this morning and put her little chicken wings to work and loaded trash into the truck with me.

Both of us worry about the other’s health, and we’ve both admitted to a weird obsession with the other one dying. I feel like this will be cured by finding more things to fill our time.

I’m just kidding, of course. She wishes my weight and cholesterol were a little more controlled, and I wish she had a little more weight on her because I sometimes feel like she will literally shatter if I roll over in my sleep. It’s not that she’s painfully skinny, I think she looks fantastic, but I worry about her back and shoulder pain, and I think if she weighed a little more she’d be happier.

I’m always a little nauseated by the assumption of a shared understanding of beauty. First of all, I’m not the kinda guy who’s universally praised for his sex appeal. After all, this is what I look like…

…but I sorta sneak up on you and next thing you know, for some reason, you think I’m reasonably handsome.

Some people think Jordana is funny looking sometimes. After all, she can’t keep her hands out of her underarms…

But when we’re just sitting there goofing off and talking, like when we’re in the car or reading books or watching TV… I don’t know. It’s not that I’m gonna argue that she’s the loveliest woman in the world in some empirical sense, but there is no woman in the world who I find lovelier. I’m made so incredibly uncomfortable by men talking about the comparative sexiness or hotness of their wives or girlfriends. I’ve got to assume you’re attracted to them, or you wouldn’t marry them. Unless you hate yourself, which, I guess is fine.

But one wants to have someone at their side that the world agrees is attractive, like a sort of calling card. Men and women get dolled up to go out and meet the world, and then walk around unshowered and un-coifed at home with their significant other. I gotta tell you, it’s the opposite for us in this fucked up house. I have to beg Jordana to change out of her pajamas if we decide at the last minute to go out to dinner, but there have been a number of times that we’ve gotten showered and stuff in order to spend an evening at home.

Which doesn’t make that smart or right or morally superior or whatever. We’re bad at selling ourselves. I mean, I’m better at it than Jordana is, but the more time I spend with her, the more retarded I become. I will throw on a baseball hat and not shave in order to go see a play, but if I think there’s any chance we’ll be kissing for a half-hour, I’ll run and take a shower and put on, y’know, *lotion*.

We cleaned the house because we’re refinancing. We’ve installed tile and put up walls and trim and all kinds of shit. It wasn’t until we realized that the house would be basically *done*, and that the dook/CAROLINA game was the same day, that we decided to invite people over. That’s the thing, Jordana gets out of the shower and lies next to me with her hair unbrushed and wet, and I feel like I should invite over a casting director so you can see this girl without her shoulders up, without her jaw set, without a worry in the world. There’s a tuning fork in the middle of me, and her face makes it ring.

In any case, throwing a huge amount of stuff away is a lot like taking your house through the shower. And it’s gonna be nice that we can share it with our friends. Now, of course, I have to go finish the drywall and the closet installation, before I got to Home Depot for more trim.

And no, I haven’t showered.