youtube art

Here’s an excellent clip my sister sent me on youtube the other day. I liked it so much I decided to share it with all of my wonderful readers.

an ode to no haircuts

This is kind of a semi-serious joke post done in honor of my first haircut in over 365 days. Please bear with me.

Hello there,

It was nearly a year when I last cut my hair. I figured by now I’d have a long flowing mane of dirty blond locks such as this:

Unfortunately, this was not the case. When ones hair is short it seems as if it always needs cut. But when one actually tries to grow out his or her hair, they begin to find it actually grows at the dreadfully slow pace of 1/2″ per month.

This is where I started:

a happy bald man, with 1/8″ of hair. I was definetly satisfied being bald as there was nothing to fuss about. However, something dreadful was happening. Because of my sinister eyebrows and bald hair, people thought I was evil.

Like this guy:

I needed a look that conveyed my “real” personality. I was sick of being approached on the street for crack cocaine. The time had come for a new doo.

About 1 month in:

I have short hair. But in my mind it feels long. At this stage the only thing I can do it spike it up. I have dreams of running through the beach with my hair blowing in the breeze.

About 2 months in:

I’m at Bonaroo in this picture and I remember feeling like I was starting to fit in with the hippies…. I was dreadfully mistaken.

About 4 months in:

Here I am in Tokyo eating some Curry (pre-vegetarian days). It’s been almost 4 months and and my hair is still pretty short. It is beginning to curl up over portions of the ear giving me the illusion that I was a long haired man.

About 6 months in:

By Halloween I realized that this was getting out of hand. My hair still didn’t look very long. I was beginning to discover the beginnings of what my friend once referred to as a pseudo mullet.

About 9 months in:

Finally, sometime in the very early winter my hair began to cover my ears. It began to look a lot better, but was extremely hard to control. I began to now see myself as being a “long hair”. Although this was wrong, it was still the longest I had ever grown my hair out.

The growth continues…. (about 1 year in):

Here is Sara and I, about a month or so from present day. I part my hair on the side because it’s the only way it looks semi-normal.

This Saturday I’m getting my first haircut since growing it out. I feel my experiment has been a success and I’m proud that I had the guts to grow it out as long as I could. I am not quiting my quest for long hair mastery, but I am getting it trimmed a bit so I can quit looking like a cave man and perhaps even get a job when I graduate (gasp!).

the morality of meat

After reading various animal ethics expositions in a college ethics class last semester it became apparent, at least to me, that eating meat was morally condemnable. Still, for the love of meat (and pure laziness) I kept up with my past eating habits. Finally, my ego got the best of me and I began to feel guilty for continuing to practice something that I now felt was wrong. Three months ago I quit cold turkey. I’m still alive and well.

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not one of those whiney and domineering vegetarians (by this, I mean that I won’t scorn you for eating meat). However, I do tend to get pissed when people criticize my lifestyle. These are people that have not once questioned the decency of their actions.

“It’s the food chain, man.”

They tell me.

I try to explain that as rationally thinking omnivores, we are at liberty to pick and choose what we feast upon, be it blueberries or cow hide. We’re no longer fighting for survival as man’s “intelligence” has made the so-called food chain obsolete. I then begin to talk about the capacity for animals to suffer and so forth. Still the argument always shifts to:

“But they aren’t human, who cares.”

To me, that statement is pure bigotry. Remember the civil rights movement? Before this racial paradigm shift, the average white layman had no problem treating a black man like shit. It was after all, a common practice. Philosopher and animal ethicist Peter Singer uses the term “Speciesism” to describe neglecting to consider other species as morally considerable.

I don’t believe the area of animal ethics is black and white. However, if you’re going to criticize my lifestyle at least present me with a thoughtful argument. The sad thing is most folks who argue with me only do so because not eating meat it so foreign to them that they’ve never actually thought about questioning the ethical integrity of it. It hurts to think and ignorance is bliss…right?

the great escape

The grimy Ohio snow has recently been replaced with lush green grass and a comfortable spring breeze, and thus it has inspired me to go backpacking.

I should also say that the movie “Into the Wild” and my continued reading of eastern philosophy have offered me more cerebral insight as to why a life outdoors (or at least prolonged yet temporary visits) may actually be preferable to the Western rat maze that I presently live in. I have also yet to see a work of art that offers more beauty than a gently flowing river…trite but true (at least to me).

I found this exposition of why one should set off on a backpacking adventure on the World Wide Web. The rest of the article can be found here.

Why go backpacking? Thoreau suggested one enduring answer. Backpacking is an antidote to industrialized society, where the pace of change accelerates constantly and buzzing swarms of tasks multiply exponentially, yet must be fitted into days that never grow longer. Every day, newspapers recite an endless dirge of war, poverty, oppression and environmental disaster. Backpacking provides an escape, temporarily, from life’s complex and seemingly insoluble problems. In their stead, backpackers need only deal with a far more manageable set of concerns, each elemental in its simplicity: finding the easiest route, summoning the energy to walk that last mile, selecting a good campsite. Backpacking offers an abundance of life’s most repeatable pleasures, the ones that never grow stale: resting when you’re tired, eating when you’re hungry, drinking when you’re thirsty and smashing a mosquito just before it bites.

However, several questions remain. Will I be able to find joy in lugging a 40lb pack through the wilderness? Can I push through the chaffing of my testicles, those pesky mosquito bites, and my horribly achy feet?

Only time will tell, and with that, ladies and gentlemen. I give you Henry David Thoreau.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

money can’t buy me love

There is a new online dating website called Sugar Daddy For Me that now has advertisements on myspace. The basic premise involves young attractive women looking for old rich men, and visa versa. The site even promotes extramarital affairs.

As a whole, the website looks like it was designed by a 7th grader. The layout it cheesy and cluttered, and the pictures are quite stereotypical and ridiculous. Unfortunately in order to view the sugar mommas and sugar daddies one has to make an account. Curiosity got the best of me.

What i found was shocking! Rich men and beautiful women were not actually using the website. Instead there are average half-wits posing as “sugar daddies” (see quote below), and average girls trying to whore themselves out. Interestingly enough there are many more females then men using the dating site, which is very atypical for online dating sites.

“Hi I’m a 5′10″ male that has blue eyes and blondish red hair i work at wal-mart but am trying to get a job in automotive mechanic sense that is what i love to do” – sugar daddy.

I guess the moral of the story is if you’re a ridiculously wealthy male or a stunningly beautiful female, you wouldn’t need an online dating site to satisfy your shallow wants.

in my own way

I’m about halfway through Alan Watt’s autobiography “In My Own Way”. I’m a little disappointed that this book reads nothing like his usual analogy-laden easy-read philosophy. Instead it’s very convoluted with the names of people, places, and even a little bit of intellectual pretension (even though Watts would disagree). I have however found a few philosophical gems hidden amongst it’s pages.

Regarding Universities – ” They are production lines turning out stereotyped personnel and consumers for the industrial machine-a machine which is more and more subservient, not to human needs, but to the abstract purposes of technological expansion for its own sake, of the money game, and of the competition for the hollow rewards of status. “

About to graduate in May with a degree in marketing this quote really hits home. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for the better part of two years now.

Who will save my soul?

Alan Watts you make me even more cynical.

calling all contemporary christians

I just don’t get it. If I can’t take the Bible literally then how am I supposed to interpret it? Can a true believer please give me a coherent answer?

It seems to me that the majority of “contemporary Christians” (a term I coined for the majority of Christians living in America, it does not include fundamentalists who believe the bible word for word) suffer from a severe case of doublethink.

They’re smart enough to realize that the world is more than six thousand years old, that Noah did not have a big ass boat capable of carrying every species of animal, and that evolution is indeed a biological reality.

Well my friends, when does it end? If I’m just supposed to shrug my shoulders and blow off the entire book of Genesis then when can I start taking the Bible seriously?

Let me put it to you like this:

Say you’re on a road trip in the middle-of-nowhere and you come to a Circle K convenient store. You decide to stop and ask for directions to the nearest gas station as your tank is only 1/5 full. You ask the man behind the counter for directions and without hesitation he begins to tell you a faulty route. You begin to drive and sure enough, forty minutes later you find yourself at the same Circle K store. Red with anger (and nearly empty on gas) you go inside to confront the liar. As you walk in the door the man squeezes out a chuckle and says “Sorry pal, I was just pulling you’re leg! But this time I’ll tell you the real way.”

Questions:

1. Does this man have ANY credibility after he just lied to you?

2. Would you not be a fool to trust this man a second time around?

You see what I’m getting at? Most contemporary Christians have decided to trust the Circle K clerk (despite being a known liar), and they’re now headed sixty miles in the wrong direction! If the Bible is supposed to represent truth (but much of it has proven to be false) then how can anyone believe a single word of it?

In conclusion, this isn’t an attack of Christianity, it’s a call for action. Gone should be the days of swallowing age old dogma. It’s time that the individual starts thinking and questioning things for themselves. It’s time to face whatever boogeyman is keeping you locked away in that dark little closet of so-called “certainty”. Inconsistencies wouldn’t fly on a third grade math test, so why should they on your deepest of metaphysical theories?

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Now here’s a little gem I accidentally stumbled across on youtube after searching for backpacking/hiking videos. While this video isn’t entirely related to my post, I will say that it proves a valid point. The point being that AT LEAST fundamentalists are consistent with their theology, however mind numbing and ridiculous their logic may be.

a brief introduction

I’m starting a blog in which I will (or will not) update on a semi-regular basis. I decided to “start fresh” and scrap the old blog that I lackadaisically kept for an insignificant portion of last year. My intention is to fill a void in my life that can only be captured by writing. And thus, I’ve once again decided to chronicle my thoughts and ideas…however far-fetched, absent minded, and illusory they may be.

The idea for the name “my impermanence” came from a Buddhist concept (yes, I was once quite enthralled/obsessed with Buddhism) that everything in existence is in a state of constant flux. Permanence is a fallacy. All things come and all things eventually pass. Such as life. It is fleeting before our very eyes. And while some choose to choke on the opiate of forgetfulness I try to relish in the beauty and callousness of the truth (and this blog’s title is just a simple reminder to myself).

Consider this an invitation for you to enter my wonderful world of pixelated letters. Feel free to comment/debate or anonymously browse this virtual space. Of course viewer discretion is advised, as some of what you read may shock, upset, or appall you.