This happens a lot… I get an idea for a post or several posts, but i think they’re too important and too complex to not do well so i put them off or i start drafts but don’t finish them and then days turn into weeks and weeks turn into way too long and then if i had just written an okay post about it to begin with i’d be much better off than i am with my month-long dry spell and recovery via a mediocre post. That happens too often. Most recently i’ve wanted to blog about my marriage which was awesome and about California’s passing proposition 8 which was ugly.

Many people might feel that it’s too late to write about prop 8; that i should just let it go. I would have thought so too except that (for good reason) people aren’t letting it go at all. Anymore, i very much support perpetuating the discussion, so i’m going to.

Several weeks ago i got into an argument with a coworker regarding gay marriage. This person was very much against gay marriage because he felt that marriage was exclusively a spiritual thing to perpetuate the family. The reason i bring this up now is because i asked him if he would be opposed to my marriage if i was an atheist and he said that in fact, yes he would consider me a hypocrite (regardless of MY view that marriage is secular). I also asked him if he was opposed to people who happen to be sterile getting married and he said that in fact, yes he was. He went on to explain that he had no choice but to completely follow through with his position despite how extreme it ends up being… Because that’s his position.

On October 24th, 2008 i married a wonderful, beautiful person and nearly everything about the day was perfect. The weather fell in line, the season was dynamically gorgeous, lovely family and friends were there in full support, and Annalise and i had a ceremony that allowed us to emotionally and legally express how committed we are to each other and -just as importantly- how much we love each other. Annalise has all the pictures on her flickr account and many on her blog. Please check them out, our photographer - Annalise’s sister - did a wonderful job.

A week and a half after our wedding, California voted 52% to 48% to overturn a state Supreme Court ruling and amend their constitution to limit marriage to being between a man and a woman.

Last Thursday thousands of people marched around the Los Angeles LDS temple in protest of the LDS church’s support of proposition 8. The following night, similar protests took place in Salt Lake City and Annalise and i were there. We met up with several of our gay friends and walked around Temple Square a few times then went and got some sushi. It was a lovely evening.

A lot of the friends we met up with hadn’t seen Annalise and i either since the wedding or since before the wedding so we were asked a lot about how it’s going. Every time someone asked how married life is or asked how the wedding went i was so happy to answer that it’s spectacular and went spectacularly. At the same time i was slightly devastated that these friends of mine were just told by the majority of voting Californians and the LDS church that they weren’t worthy of experiencing the same joys as i.

Two nights ago i spent several sleepless hours in my bed tossing and turning trying to wrap my mind around the passage of proposition 8. And today i finally got around to reading the transcript of Keith Olbermann’s Special Report about it.

If you haven’t watched or read it, please do.  It’s amazing and it put the issue so simply and so eloquently. Much more so than i could have - or than i am.

And that brings us to tonight. One of the reasons that i’ve struggled so much with writing about prop 8 is because i couldn’t decide whether to be as civil as possible or as emotional as possible. One of those two choices would provide a much more accurate representation of how i feel about the issue.

One thing i definitely need to do is answer people’s questions. First, no i didn’t also protest around the catholic churches here in Salt Lake City. The reason for that is that i honestly don’t believe that the Catholic Church was nearly as influential in getting prop 8 passed as the LDS church was. I know the majority of the proponent votes didn’t come from members of the LDS church but that’s not what i’m concerned about. What bothers me is the amount of time that was spent canvassing and the amount of phone calls made by LDS members in support of prop 8.

Yet there are two other things that bother me the most. First is the amount of money that was donated by LDS members to pro-prop 8 causes. How many of these members donated the same amount of money to, say, ending world hunger or stopping violence or increasing literacy rates? The ridiculously large amount of money raised shows to me an embarrassing lack of moral priorities.

The second thing that really bothers me is the LDS Church’s complete disregard for keeping separate from political issues. Regardless of how i feel about gay rights, churches have no right influencing votes on specific issues in such an enormous way. The separation of church and state is one of the most important foundations on which this great country was established.

Another reason that i’ve had such a hard time writing about prop 8 is because i find the majority opinion indefensible. I’m a socialist, but i always acknowledge how people can support free market capitalism. I’m pro gay rights and i have no idea - aside from pure, simple bigoted hatred - why other people aren’t. It boggles my mind that so many people are so eager to govern other people. Nobody who can benefit or suffer from having a gay marriage voted yes on the issue. It’s cliché now, but i like the protest sign that reads, “Don’t support gay marriage? Then don’t have one.” Because it really is that simple. No gay people want to abolish heterosexual marriage (as far as i know) because it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter that their children are being taught about heterosexual relationships in school.

One thing i find particularly sad is people who feel the way i do except for the minor fact that they also support the LDS prophet and trust him completely. The LDS prophet said to oppose gay marriage so they oppose gay marriage. I’m curious if these same people also supported a ban on inter-racial marriage when the LDS prophet supported a ban on inter-racial marriage. I wonder if these same people still support a ban on inter-racial marriage. And while you’re thinking about that, here, have this kool-aid.

This leads to a much much bigger issue. The main reason i’m no longer a member of the LDS church is because i wasn’t comfortable basing my morals like that. It saddens me that people have their morals founded in something as vapid and ambiguous as a deity that may or may not exist, or in something as fallible as the recommendations of his supposed messenger-man here on earth. If people used humanity and human interactions as the foundation of their sense of ethics, this wouldn’t be an issue and principles wouldn’t be so flexible. What would happen is people would say, “Does legalizing gay marriage make hundreds of thousands of people extremely happy? Yeah? Does it hurt anyone? No, not really? Then marriage should be legal, gay or otherwise.”

The next argument with which i have serious issues is the idea that the purpose of marriage is to raise a family. I won’t argue that isn’t a good step in the process of raising a family, but regarding ultimate maxims, Kantian-style, marriage is not explicitly to have kids. A wedding is a means, not an ends, but marriage can very well be an ends. Marriage is a level of commitment.

And even if marriage is a means to a family, i know several gay couples that i would feel as comfortable raising a child as any heterosexual couple i’ve met.

One half of one of these couples is my best friend from when i was four years old. Over the last twenty-three or so years, he and i have changed drastically yet we’re still very close. I was so happy to have him at my wedding and i was sad that his partner of the last four years wasn’t able to make it. You, supporter of prop 8, might have been able to look this dear friend of mine in the eye on the most joyous day of my life and tell him that he isn’t entitled to a beautiful event like this. But there’s no way in hell i ever could – or ever would want to. Like Keith Olbermann said, there’s so much hatred and unpleasantness in the world that when more people want to partake in the most extreme expression of pure love, they really should be allowed to. It’s very simple. It’s about love.

I was going to start with Making Time by the Creation because it’s been stuck in my head for four or five years now, but today i stumbled upon an awesome list of palindromes and immediately knew what i had to do.

Like many people, i was introduced to They Might Be Giants when my older brother (before he started obsessively folding paper) bought the Flood album.  I still argue that that’s their best album, but i’ve realized They Might Be Giants are much more than just that.  One of my favorite TMBG songs is I Palindrome I.  The song itself is only somewhat engaging, but the lyrics and the title are pure genius.  And i think this video takes all of that and expounds:

I would like to try to incorporate many of the palindromes from the aforementioned list into my daily vocabulary, but there’s just so many to start memorizing.  For example, i can totally picture myself in a scenario where i have to say, “Sir, I demand, I am a maid named Iris”.

Another notable is “Sides reversed is” which can go between two occurrences of the same palindrome to make a Super Palindrome.  For example: “A Santa dog lived as a devil god at NASA” sides reversed is “A Santa dog lived as a devil god at NASA”.  Ta Da!

I’m glad i know I Palindrome I for the very simple reason that it makes other parts of my life (like website stumbling) more enjoyable.  Thanks, They Might Be Giants.

In late-’70s Argentina, for instance, a military dictatorship wrecked the country’s economy, deregulating banks and industry, watching living standards decline, and borrowing at high interest rates to create a record foreign debt. Finance ministers, as you might expect, came and went rapidly.

And every time a new one got sworn in, long lines would form at one particular movie theater in Buenos Aires. The management of the Lorca Cine, you see, had a well-worn print of Duck Soup, and they’d cancel whatever else they were showing so people weary of groaning about real economic woes — and the stumblebums who had caused them — could laugh at the ones onscreen.

I propose doing that in the US.  If i owned a theater, i would start showing Duck Soup regularly.  People would get the jokes with renewed poignancy and would be able to laugh about the fact that we might all be fiscally fucked.

Duck Soup also contains this incredibly relevant exchange:

Ambassador Trentino: I am willing to do anything to prevent this war.
Rufus T. Firefly: It’s too late. I’ve already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield.

You can watch all of Duck Soup on YouTube in nine parts starting here.  Until i buy my theater, sending you there is the best i can do.

As reported by The Huffington Post (make sure and watch the video to at least 2:05).

After they had submitted the paperwork, they were told it would take about seven minutes and then they’d be ready to proceed with their marriage.  At this point, they came over to Annalise and i and asked if we’d care for some gift certificates in exchange for witnessing their marriage.  I was dying for some gift certificates and Annalise is a good person, so we accepted.

When they got their marriage certificate, we all went into a side room for the ceremony.  The room was small and contained a couch along one wall and three chairs along the other.  The couple stood in front of a wreath and the clerk from the desk, now sporting a black robe, stood at the other end.

Annalise and i snapped pictures on Sven’s digital camera as they signed the final paperwork and then Annalise and i signed.

Then the officiant said some very nice words about love and Sven and Tamara repeated the vows.  They had no rings they were exchanging and it was all very brief and minimal.  Annalise and i were witnesses and photographers and the only ones besides the justice to congratulate them.  We witnessed the wedding to make it legal and we witnessed what appeared to be two people completely in love and completely happy with each other not needing anybody else in the world to validate their union - except, of course, in the legal sense.

Of course i thought about my own wedding coming up in a few weeks.  Especially how drastically it will differ from this one in all the ancillary aspects.  And i thought about how similar it will be to this one in meaning and theme.  How i can only hope it will in many respects be exactly like this one.

Thanks, Sven and Tamara.  Congratulations and Best Wishes.

Not only that, but unlike my sister, i don’t believe in ghosts.  I don’t think aliens try to contact us.  I don’t believe in the truth of palm readers and fortune tellers.  I hate astrology.  Over the weekend, i’ve come to the conclusion that i believe in no supernatural occurrences whatsoever except one.  I have a rock-firm belief in the curse of the billy goat.

And i realize now that it was foolish and naive of me to believe that the curse has something magical to it.  The curse is that the Cubs won’t win.  Period.  The curse isn’t going to let up after 100 years of futility.  The curse isn’t cute like that.  The curse is evil and cynical and no matter how the stars align, the curse wins.  This article, written by a Cardinals fan about the Cubs’ fall, outlines everything that had come together this year to beat the curse.  And despite all of that very substantial alignment, the curse won.

The Cubs had a spectacular season.  They won almost 100 games.  They sent eight players to the Allstar game.  Then they played three of the worst games imaginable.  They even played one history-making game in which every starting infielder recorded an error.  They were awful in their three post season games.

I surprised myself Saturday night.  I didn’t watch the game.  I recorded it and because i was expecting the worst, as soon as the Dodgers scored, i stopped watching and flipped to ESPN to see the final score on the ticker.  I didn’t want to watch the whole game if it ended as i thought it would.  And despite how much i expected the Cubs to lose, when i realized that they truly had, i was floored.  The Cubs had so much and had done so well that the three games against the Dodgers seemed completely polar, almost to the point of surreality.  I was sick to my stomach and i was depressed.

And today is the first i’ve been able to really talk about it.  Today is the day i begin my recovery and prepare for next year.  Thus is the life of a (quasi-) functioning Cubs fan.

I paid someone to carve this into my arm

I chose that tattoo because i adore math and like the ideas represented by the rectangles and the spiral.  17th century mathematician Jakob Bernoulli also had a minor obsession with the spiral.  In fact, he requested that after he die, that spiral be engraved on his grave marker.  Unfortunately for him, the actual spiral that ended up there was the Archimedean spiral.  I’m just glad my tattoo artist followed instructions better than Bernoulli’s engraver.  Permanent spiral representations of self can be a tricky thing.

Not the intended spiral

Last weekend Annalise and i saw another permanent spiral representing the vision of artist Robert Smithson.  He made a rock jetty that spirals into the Great Salt Lake.  He chose (i assume intentionally) the Archimedean spiral for his art.

The second most artistically interesting spiral in this post

Another artist that used the idea of something circling around and around, getting closer and closer to some destination (in this case insanity and suicide) is Trent Reznor.  Nine Inch Nails significantly put themselves on the map with their concept album The Downward Spiral.  As far as i know, Trent never said which spiral he had in mind to describe his character’s descent into madness.  I’m going to predict that it’s the logarithmic spiral since that would imply a more dramatic slide.  The Archimedean spiral would still indicate closing in on madness, but not getting exponentially closer.

See the cat?  See the cradle?  See the spiral?

So there are some spirals to be aware of as you’re flying out of control or being flushed down the toilet in life.  Did you know that in the southern hemisphere, water actually flies out of the toilet when you flush it?  They have no respect for spirals there.

“Whaaaaat?” Asks a groggy young man in pajama pants and a Jethro Tull, Aqualung tee shirt as he opens the door.

The man, interrupted before his final blow - fist still in the air, hands said Tull fan an envelope and then turns and walks away without a word.

The Tull fan opens the envelope and extracts the letter.  In ridiculously neat handwriting is the following:

I’m sorry to inform you, the recipient of this letter, that you have died.  Your soul is due in Hell at precisely 2:30 pm Mountain Daylight Time today.  Take the number 12 bus from the corner of Main and Fifth South at 2:05 pm.  Do not delay.

Yours Truely [sic],

Satan

“Goddammit,”  says the Tull fan out loud, “And on a Monday to boot.”  He gets dressed and now sports blue jeans and a Thick as a Brick shirt.  The one with the newspaper article on it.  He calls the transit authority hotline to make sure the bus is running on time.  Almost Mussolinish, the lady replies.

The Tull fan grabs his jacket and leaves the house.  He’s decided to walk the two miles to the bus stop to get some air and clear his head before his diabolical bus ride.  Before he gets too far down his street, he encounters a strange sight.  One he’s not sure he would have noticed before, when he was alive.

On this very suburban sidewalk sits a small table with a checkered table cloth.  On top of the table is a chess board with a game already underway.  Kneeling at one side of the table is an old man in a black robe with a very long beard.  The Tull fan is reminded of Led Zeppelin’s fourth (Zoso) album.  Across the table from the old man, sitting in a child’s rocking chair, is a Wilson tennis racket.

Clearly the tennis racket is winning.

“Why don’t you take his queen with your knight?” asks the Tull fan.

“Why don’t YOU take HIS queen with YOUR knight?” repeats the Zeppelin character but with the obviously-implied change of inflection.

“I see what you mean,” He didn’t.  But he continued anyway, “But, what if my knight is swordless?  What if my knight is impotent?  What if my knight is not an L away from his queen and it ends up taking me several moves to get there?”  This last question seemed - although the Tull fan could not say why - to be the most relevant question.

“Then you cheat.  You simply change the rules.  Move your knight diagonally, nobody’s going to stop you.”

The Tull fan decides to cease taking chess advice from someone losing to sporting equipment.  He proceeds on down the street.  At the end of his street, he turns right onto Main street.  He’s traveled approximately two-thirds of the total distance from his home to the bus stop.

As the Tull fan is walking down Main Street, nearing his bus stop, he comes across another strange scene.  He sees a man having sexual intercourse with a toaster.  The toaster is unplugged and seems rather disinterested.

From purely altruistic motives, the Tull fan says, “Maybe you’d get a better response if you plugged it in?”

The man stops thrusting and considers.  After a few seconds he finds the end of the cord and inserts it into a nearby electrical outlet.  Immediately the toaster comes alive.  Sparks start flying, the sound of sizzling and shocking is almost overwhelming and the man with part of his body inside the toaster collapses and dies.  The power goes out all over the block.

Postmortem, the appliance-philiac stands up, his toaster still hanging limply in front of him.  He sighs and glares at the Tull fan.  Then, abruptly, he turns and heads down the street towards the bus stop at the corner of Main and Fifth South.  Clearly, he’s done this before.

At last the Tull fan reaches the bus stop and sees the aforementioned characters also waiting for the bus.

“Did you die when you lost that game of chess?”  Our hero asks the Zeppelin character.

“Yes, of course.  One always loses his or her life when he or she loses a game of skill to an inanimate object.”

The Tull fan decides that this just doesn’t make any sense.  He turns around and heads home as he hears the squeaky breaks of the bus pulling up to the stop.  He doesn’t turn around to see, but he hears the door open and the toaster clang against something as the two men get on.  The bus door closes and the bus leaves.

The Tull fan goes home, puts on A Passion Play, and falls back asleep.  He’s determined never to take for granted again the verity of being informed of his death by post.

I’ve noticed in my own life that i don’t notice nearly as much external (potential) stimulus as i would like to.  With my studies in math and my over-the-top introvertedness, i’ve spent way more time in my own head than i should have and than i think is healthy.  And not nearly as much time on the outside world.  That’s why this blog of mine is so erratic and so rarely interesting, because i’m a terrible analyst of what’s going on out there.

But, occasionally against my better judgment, i’m working on it.

I’ve often wondered if time that is noticed is any different than time unnoticed.  In fact, i’ve been working (inconsistently) on a novel about someone that can consciously control how fast time seems to be going by just by controlling how much attention he’s placing on it.

A very limited example is the following idea:  When i’m aware that i’m driving in such a way as to conserve as much gas as possible, is my gas consumption any different than when i’m driving exactly the same but not aware of it?  On the surface, i’d argue that it is not any different.  However, on a quantum level, observing something can have relatively dramatic effects.  The obvious example is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (measuring the momentum of a particle makes its location uncertain and vice versa), which has been stretched (arguably too far) to philosophy.

A more obscure and more dramatic theory is that of observing dark energy with the potential of the quantum zeno effect.  Essentially, the idea is that by observing dark energy more closely and more frequently, we might be drastically shortening the lifespan of the universe.  C’est la vie.

So there are my escalating thoughts on observing and noticing and the destruction of the universe.  My hope is that just by documenting this some good will come from it.  In the article i mentioned earlier about noticing, they recommend a practice of describing somewhere (e.g., a blog) something that one has seen or experienced earlier in the day that he or she hasn’t shared with anyone yet.  The practice itself is supposed to open more eyes to experiences.  How dangerously apropos.

It almost seems as though you don’t listen to me anymore.  I rate song after song after song but you are so set in your ways that you just keep playing the same stuff over and over again.  I feel that our lack of communication might bring this relationship down.  And i don’t think either of us want that.

I know we didn’t exactly start out on an idyllic foot, My Rhapsody Channel.  It was no secret that i came to you when My Yahoo Channel went defunct.  But i don’t want you to feel as though you’re a rebound product.  Think of it more as, i just hadn’t found you yet.  Granted, you took some getting used to, but i really feel as though we quickly became comfortable with each other and progressed for a while almost synergistically.

That is, until lately.  It seems as though for the past few days every other song you’ve chosen has been either Tool, Nirvana, or Mudhoney…  Rhapsody Channel, i don’t really know how to say this, so i’m just going to come right out and ask…  Are you depressed?  Would it kill you to play some Donovan or Polyphonic Spree every now and then?  I think it would help you feel a lot better.  I know when i’m down, i put on one of your Surf Rock channels and those Pet Sounds get me feeling groovy in no time.

This is a little awkward, but does this have anything to do with Pandora?  Because, i swear, that was a one time thing.  I was lonely one night, Rhapsody Channel, and you were down with “server issues” so i found comfort in the music of another service.  If anything, that only reaffirmed my commitment to you and i promise it will never happen again.  Pandora means nothing to me.

Rhapsody Channel, do you realize that we haven’t heard Sex Pistols in two months?  Two months is a long time to go without Sex Pistols.  And don’t claim that you’ve had a Van Halen, because i know that isn’t the case.  If your Van Halen won’t go away for two months, you should probably see somebody.  Anyway, if you had been listening to me, you would know that i’ve rated Van Halen as “Never Play Again”.  You can’t use that excuse anymore.  We need to look at the real issues.

Maybe it’s my fault.  I know i’ve been sending mixed signals by rating The Moody Blues so high but Bread so low.  But Rhapsody, you have to look at it from my perspective.  To me, those are two very different bands.  Just because i like the Moody Blues so much doesn’t mean that i’m going to love Seals and Crofts or The Carpenters.  But once again, i’m afraid i’m going to have to point the blame back to you .  Your rating system leaves a little to be desired.  I’ve had no choice but to rate Henry Rollins the same as Stephane Grapelli even though my feelings for those two artists are very different.

Anyway, Rhapsody, i’m glad we’ve had this talk.  I feel like we’ve covered some good ground here and come a long way.  And i hope that in the future we can take this relationship to the next level and try some new things like Opera and, if you’re up to it, some Funk.  I have a funny feeling that you and me and George Clinton could some day make beautiful music together…  So to speak.

Good talk, My Rhapsody Channel, good talk.