Yes, that's right.  Old fashioned correspondence, remember?  It was that boring stuff they taught you to do in elementary school when you really wanted to learn about dinosaurs or pirates or something cool. Instead the instructor would stand there, completely oblivious that this particular skill would not serve us very well in the near future, and tell you where to put the address and the return address and the stamp.  And then they walked you through that long suffering process of where to indent and how to sign off and to put the return address on the top right or left of the letter (who the hell ACTUALLY did that?  seriously, waste of space).

You probably remembered all of it long enough to send a letter to your grandma thanking her for a birthday check and then never bothered again.

Alright, maybe none of that is true.  But what is true is that I want to get some pen pals, so if you are interested leave your address in the comments or email it to me at kindelingboy@mac.com.  I'll send you something interesting to get us started. 

Why, you ask?  Because it's a medium that combines things that I really enjoy- writing and engaging with my friends.  It also has an added romantic feel to it as well- practicing something that is in many ways obsolete but still possible, if you put the time in.  I've sent one off already, and I'm hungry for more; so if you'd like a pen pal, or just want to have a sample of my impeccable penmanship- speak up!

UPDATE- I'm somewhat wary of posting my home address on the webernets, so if you would prefer to take the first step, let me know and I will email you my address.

REUPDATE- Screw that noise:

•  

• Reddit, via Fark- A very comprehensive breakdown of the last few days, as well as definitions of many new terms you will be seeing and the roles of key figures.
• Andrew Sullivan is posting very regularly with articles, videos, and first hand accounts- including this news report from the BBC, one of only a few that are making out of the country, and a list of choice tweets from within Iran.  The list updates sporadically, so keep it open in one of your tabs.
• Speaking of twitter- it is being used as a primary source for news from within Iran, as most journalists are trapped or being shipped out.  It has become such a resource that the US State Department requested Twitter to delay it's scheduled maintenance.  Here is a list of English tweets from within Iran- sorted by city. 
• Clay Shirky spoke at TED earlier in the year about how easy-to-use social networks like twitter and facebook have changed the nature of news and the media.  Given the circumstances, the folks at TED decided to fast track the talk to the web along with an interview with Shirky about what's happening in Iran.
• Nico Pitney is liveblogging via the Huffington Post.  Regular updates with relevant articles, videos, and links to first-hand accounts translated from Farsi and Persian.
• A great article from the New York Times containing links to videos, photos, and a flickr feed.
• Amazing photos from the first few days of unrest.  Warning, the last few are of people killed or wounded.  There is a lot of blood.
• Pirate Bay is now The Persian Bay, and has gone green to show support.  A lot of people are hoping that Google will do the same soon.
• For those of a technical mind, or anyone with a twitter account, here is a guide on how you can help with getting news out of Iran.

That's all I have, I think.  All thanks to those who posted these links and content.  Please forward these to anyone you think would be interested.  I'll update with anything I think is worth sharing.  Spreading the word is pretty much all I can do right now.  I encourage you to do the same.

That felt really good.  Great day. 

No one ever does my job for me.  I don’t mean to sound bitchy or jealous, I’m not really like that.  I do my job, I get paid, I move on.  I don’t stick around to ponder things, I never wake up in the mornings in some kind of existential funk and have to convince myself to get out of bed.  I like what I do.  I’m just surprised.  Not one ever helps me with my job, it’s not how it’s done.

I remember my first bit of work, a small cafe in Tel-Aviv that my uncle owned.  It didn’t pay much, but my mom said it kept me out of trouble, it kept my dad happy, and uncle Syd let me keep my tips and snuck me wine from his private stash.  It was fun, all I had to do was take people’s orders, serve them food, and clean up the place. 

But every once in a while, a customer would bring up his used dishes, put them on the counter with cash plus tip, smile, and walk out.  They would toss the leftovers into the bins themselves, or put them in the Styrofoam containers I would give them.  Sometimes they even insisted.  I got used to it eventually, even became grateful for it and resentful towards those who couldn’t be bothered.  Even though it was my job, some people would help and do it for me.

Something like that is reasonable to expect in the service industry.  It became harder to come by later in my life, when I joined the Israeli Defense Force.  Going through basic training everyone kind of looked out for each other, but you couldn’t rely on your friends to polish your boots for you.  The few friends I made would point out if my cot wasn’t made up quite right, or if my uniform wasn’t tucked in correctly.  We all did our best to keep each other out of shit.

After leaving the IDF I took advantage of more immediate and lucrative jobs- smuggling weapons out of the local armories and selling them off to whoever.  This wasn’t an environment where people looked out for you, not unless there was something in it for themselves.  My customers would sooner kill me and take my product than help me take out my trash.  That expectation of friendliness was gone.

But now, standing in the middle of some anarchistic African state, I remember working in uncle Syd’s small café.  I remember the old ladies smiling at me as they put their plates on the counter.  I remember the smell of the cheap wine and car fumes as I look inside the small shack made of corrugated iron, and I scratch my forehead with the butt of my pistol.

Inside the shack is the man I’ve been searching for in the African wilderness during the last three days, dangling a few feet above the dirt floor, hanging from the deceptively strong scaffolding.  I spend a few moments staring at the bloated, purple face before I take out my cell phone and dial the number I was given when I picked up the job.

“Yeah, it’s me…  He’s dead, usual payment in rough diamonds if you don’t mind. Another one?  How much for him?  Okay. Great, see you soon.”

I turn off the phone, sigh, and walk into the shack.  No one ever does my job for me, not that I’m complaining. 

"More communication, not less," is probably my motto when dealing with religion in society, especially when it comes to education.  So when people in Germany want to give religious children separate ethics courses, or parents in Quebec complain about the religious education in schools because their children are getting "confused" I begin to squint at my screen and an exasperated "What?" escapes my lips.

I'm having a lot of trouble finding the words to describe my frustration with this kind of behavior.

I finished reading Stephen Fry's autobiography, Moab is my Washpot the other day.  It is, of course, equal parts hilarious and insightful, and I must keep some choice quotes here to be remembered.

Last week an investigation was launched in Bulgaria to determine whether or not a Mr. Emil Leshtanski, diviner of some note, could be charged with causing undue stress and suffering  to hundreds of people when his prophecy that an earthquake would destroy the city of Haskovo on Easter Sunday failed to come to pass.  Apparently divination and other kinds of occult and superstitious rituals are quite the thing in Bulgaria, and so when someone makes this kind of a prediction and, you know... shit fails to fall apart, things get rather nasty. 

It makes one nostalgic for the days when failed prophecies meant increased turnout of the faithful, and didn't result in potential lawsuits.  It is also kind of awesome, beacause you could concieve of this situation in a humourus way.  To me, people trying to sue Madame Cleo for fraud as funny, and this is kind of funny in the same way, but in a way that may not be really PC, which makes me uncomfortable to snicker at it, because these people obviously took this very seriously. 

I just can't help but adopt the pose that those who have watched Robert Newman's History of Oil may be familiar with.  That sort of half shrug, head tilt, small smile kind of expression, oft accompanied by a slight " aaaaaaaaaaand....."  It is the you-have-everything-infront-of-you-to-think-through-this-probelm-and-realize-the-solution kind of expression.  It is the this-is-not-the-end-of-the-line expression, and here comes my liberal guilt, beacuse I want to say that it's the wake-the-hell-up expression, but it sounds too arrogant.

In any case, it all reminded me of a section from Montaigne's essays-

Once upon a time a few non-believing folk made some banner ads suggesting that God did not exist and maybe that was okay.  This happened primarily in the UK but spread to other countries and has spawned a kind of "bus advertisement cold war" between believers and unbelievers alike.  But there was something...different about the theist response.

Here's what the atheists said:



And here is what the theists said:



This was followed by a plethora of other adverts from different groups on both sides of the issue.  Now, I would have preferred it if each side was this clean cut, it would have been a lot easier to write about this if the atheist stance was always 'probably' and the theist response was consistently 'definitely'.  If that were the case then I would have someone to root for.  I would be all gung-ho about it, I would get my big ass foam hand with "#1 Atheist" on it, paint my face with the Bad Religion symbol, and be drunkenly slurring my way through "Dear God" by XTC with the best of 'em. 

But I can't, because although one advertisement went out of its way to imply that there could be a dialogue about this issue and what it means to us, it is the exception to all the others that sprang up.  This doesn't make any sense to me. Hundreds years of discourse about this subject, and we have yet to pass the point where all we can do is assert our own bloody-mindedness?

This piece of news is pretty old by internet standards, but I come to it via something else that just well...


...Yeah.

And this brings me to the point I was trying to make- that this kind of language does our job for us.  It is anathema in and of itself.  It does a better job of proving the atheist correct when he's decrying the evils of belief in God and the poison of religion than any argument in his arsenal.  I would like to think we have moved on from this, and that is why I liked the atheist bus campaign.  Sure,  it was partly because it feeds into this kind of "Outing the Unbelievers" period, saying that we're not all baby-eating crazies, but it was... well, polite I guess.  It felt like a lesson was learned, that after so much time of just reasserting the same creed over and over again, that instead maybe we are wrong, that maybe you are right, and that maybe the best way to help out everyone concerned is to perhaps talk this over. 

I was once enamoured with these heavy hitting titles and statements of unbelief, God Delusion, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The End of Faith, Breaking the Spell.  They helped to flesh out where I stood, made me confident to identify as an atheist.  Now they come off just like the commercial of the kid with the gun- unattractively arrogant. 

There have been a few words from Augustine floating around in my head the last couple of weeks "... they hate like a torture."  It seems that in the original context it is meant to convey that "they" hate something just as much as they hate something torturous, so in other words, "... they hate [it] like [they hate] a torture."  But to me it reads like their particular act of hating is just like the act of torture, they hate so badly that it causes pain, that it destroys, their act of hating is an act of torture.  In this passage it seems that Augustine is accusing the unbeleiver of hating the path of the believer like they hate a torture, but I think it is applicable to people on both ends of the spectrum that assert themselves with such embarrasing cerittude.

As my time in academia draws to a close I feel myself pulled toward the religious news of the day and wanting, dearly desiring, to make some kind of comment, to poke fun, to share a laugh, to share thoughts.  A friend once told me that maintaining a blog after graduation can serve as a good method of  catharsis, a way to maintain whatever skills and insight you gain from your courses, a way of organizing your thoughts and keeping alive whatever spark sent you into your chosen field.  This will take some getting used to, since for me this venue was always a personal one.  But for the first time since the Year of Faith project, I have a genuine urge to "blog" as the kids say. 

Anyway, I just wanted to say something about this particular... thing that I saw via the rabid atheists at Richarddawkins.net.


Now, I don't know what to say or do abut what this Congressman actually said.  I really have no idea where to begin.  But what I would like to point out is the the woman on the right hand side (just over his left shoulder) and her expressions during Mr. Shimkus's spiel.  Her very knowing glances and smiles communicate everything I would have attempted to say on the matter.  It is a familiar look, a familiar kind of amused silence that speaks volumes when presented with this kind of argument.  It is something Sam Harris once referred to as the price one pays for religious literalism and supernatural foundamentalism, "they pay for it in ill-conceived laughter."  It is this same look that I have exchanged in the past with classmates when met with similar kinds of talk. 

Or perhaps what he said reminded her of her grand scheme to firebomb a local Christian orhpanage in the name of reason and unbelief.  It's an expression, it can be ambiguous, but that is what I saw and I thought it was funny.

March...something, 2009

Towcester, Travelodge.

London is a truly beautiful city.  I would dearly love to be able to spend more time there than our current trip can allow but there is one thing that really annoys me.  London does not want to you to get near her, not even slightly.  What I mean is that leaving Heathrow airport is a feat for only the most stalwart and brave men and women.

After finding our way to the familiar Avis rent-a-car building and procuring ourselves a vehicle we were met with roundabouts, reversed traffic lanes, small roads, speeding and impatient locals, and a genuinely confusing motorway.  This is not the first time we have had to do this, and we haven't gotten any better at it, but I do not think it has anything to do with my inexperience or my father's age (though these two combined often turn our joint adventures into hijinks).  I think it is some sort of system to weed out the undeserving.  If you want to drive a car in this town, says London, by God you are going to earn it.  There are no tutorials, no quick reminders about how the English motorways work.  Just thrown into the fray like a Russian conscript.  I felt like my father and I should have received medals making it out of there. 

Slept a bit on the drive over, which is a bit of a tradition now.  It makes the few hours getting to Towcester from Heathrow much more palatable, and so long as I stay awake long enough to help navigate us unto the M... something all is well and I can pass out for a while.  Separate rooms at the Travelodge this time, numbers 42 and 43.  I got room 42.  I know, eh?  No joke.  Very proud about that, take it as a good omen.

Pretty much dead for the rest of the day.  Made contact with Grandmother and had tea.  She still knows how to handle her children, still funny, still old.

Currently 8pm Proper English Time and I feel like I'm going to die.  No interesting British personalities on BBC One through Four.  I kept wondering when I was in Heathrow whether or not I would run into someone like Eddie Izzard or Stephen Fry, much like I imagine people must feel when they go to Hollywood.  That sounds like I'm trying to deny that I give any credence to that familiar People magazine and Entertainment Weekly kind of cult of personality that is built by movei stars and such, and I'm not.  Well, not really.  What I'm trying to say is that you could show me a lot of popular American TV and movie personalities, actors, directors and I wouldn't do much more than try to be polite.  But if you then asked, hyothetical and extraordinarily powerful and well-connected person of my long-winded imagination,

"Alright then, who would you rather meet?"  A very long and jumbled list of names from Great Britain would come pouring out, starting at around Clive Anderson and Rowan Atkinson, and ending at around....um...shoot.  Backside of the alphabet is a little sparse here.  The furthest along I can get is Arthur Smith... Hmm... Lets just mention Stephen Fry again, shall we?  Right.  This doesn't mean that I think that the stars on this side of the pond are more worthy of my attention and fanboyishness than the other, I just tend to seek them out more.  Given that these days I can pretty much pick my own entertainment at leisure, I find myself willing to spend time with the people from the BBC rather than from any local media source.  Especially now that Battlestar Galactica has ended.  Not quite sure where this is going...

Anyway, more later.  Kind of want to curl up and die now.

March 19, 2009

Mid-flight.

35,000 feet, just passing over Baffin Island now, almost half way to London.  I'm writing this by the light of the media screen fixed in the seat in front of me, I don't want to turn on the overhead reading light less I disturb my fellow passengers in the artificial night of the darkened cabin.  I get like this on flights, especially long ones.  I don't like being confined like this for so long, and I'm usually a pretty patient person, so I imagine being cooped up in close quarters with people you don't know, with bad air and worse food, would make most people feel unpleasant.  I never put my seat back, despite being tall, I usually silently curse the person in front of me when they choose not to exact the same courtesy, which of course this particular person has chosen to do.  Bastard.  I never say anything of course, I just hope that their luggage gets lost or something, but not really.

I'm not sitting in my original seat right now.  My father and I were originally sitting in the middle, dreaded positions for two large men, but as luck would have it the seat beside me was free, and so I took it, seizing it like it was some unknown, infinitely renewable energy source that would make myself and my children's grandchildren rich and powerful.  Flights, especially long flights, are all about conserving one's space, and so one must make every effort to take up as little space as possible keeping books, jackets, bags, and duty-free items to a minimum.  This is something my father, my dear sweet father, does not understand, with two (2!!!) carry-on bags, two phones, a bag of duty-free alcohol, a large and cumbersome jacket, and a bag of water and munchies that he decided to purchase just outside the gate.  It was simply wrong, and I felt embarrassed, but ah well.  Everything is amazing and no one is happy, right?  Right.

So I moved over and we had an empty seat between us, which was great because Dad was looking awfully cramped and awkward with all his inefficient things.  I tucked into my new book and looked forward to a not all together unpleasant flight.  I fantasized about what we would be able to do with our extra seat.  There would be many who would seek to acquire it, but what to do?  Would I hoard it, to be enjoyed by the Elliotts and no one else, to be lauded over the other passengers for the precious resource that it was?  Or would ours be a more benevolent reign?  Would we share this space with our brothers and sisters, in a show of sympathy to the plight of us all?  Would we identify with their struggle for comfort?  Would we give it up to the two charming French girls beside us, friends with a vast and awkwardly busy aisle between them? All these questions come to mind, but as the cabin doors closed I pushed such thoughts aside, because really, I wanted the extra space to myself.  Not in order to boast, but to enjoy, humbly thanking No One In Particular for my luck. 

But in my heart I knew the question was coming.  I could see the intrepid stewardess, perhaps even the head stewardess, walking with purpose up and down the aisle, making diplomatic visits to other people lucky enough to have excess land, bargaining for their space, but to no avail.  They knew the score, when would they ever get such luck again? 

I try to look deeply, deeply interested in my book, completely ignorant of my surroundings, ignoring my stupid luck.  What, this seat?  Never seen it before, nope.  No idea where it came from. But of course the question comes, infinitely soft and polite...

"Excuse me?  Yes, I'm sorry but would you mind...?"

It's a convincing case, not that it needed to be.  Two parents and their infant are looking for a third seat.  There's a window seat in it for us, not that that was much of a bargaining chip.  I would like to say that I approached the situation like a hard-boiled detective in the pages of some black and white graphic thriller.  I would have liked to look the kindly woman (who would necessarily become a grizzled veteran of the airline industry who lives on airline fuel and packaged peanuts) right in the eye and said,

"Not for anything less then a bottle of your finest duty-free scotch and the number of that stewardess in business class.  You know, the one with the legs."

Fisticuffs would surely ensue, or better yet, a battle of wits as the noble stewardess tried to best me in a match of words, cheered on by the rest of the passengers who want to see the sour and impolite detective finally get his due.

Any excuse to be a bad ass motherfucker.  But no.  I feared the question because I would not be able to say no.  I didn't need the extra space, I would have have given it up to anyone who needed it, and if I didn't my father surely would have.  We're all in this plane together.

So here I sit.  I can see the sun rising, greeting us as we head over Greenland at 520 miles per hour.  Everything is amazing, and I'm happy.

On a whim I entered an O Face competition hosted by the lovely Jhayne Holmes, and it turns out I won!  We did an interview about the history of O facing which is up on her LJ right now.  Give it a look see.

March 17,2009

Day of departure.  The fine art of making it successfully through airport security OR how I learned to stop worrying and learned something useful.

If you come to the airport wearing several layers of baggy clothes, carrying all sorts of electronics, change, and large, durable, travel-ready boots, then you are the reason airport secuirty takes so long.  It is not unskilled staff, it is not the increased safety guidelines, it is not lack of manpower, it is because you haven't learned anything. 

I fly a lot, probably more than most people, and being a caucasian male I probably don't get the worst of what airport security has to offer.  But is it really too much to ask that people take the time to think about what they are wearing before they get to that forboding line, where one at last parts with their loved ones and joins the indigenous, soon to be airborne population?

I have an outfit that I always use in case of airports.  It doesn't contain any metal, has lots of pockets, and does its best to make me look harmless.  I use a belt that fastens using velcro- ergo no metal and no reason to have to take it off and put it back on again.  The pants are button up with plastic buttons, so there is no metal fly that would set off the metal detector and force me into that ever so lovely and not at all embarassing "crotch sweep" with the magic metal detecting wand.  I don't carry any change, and if I somehow manage to aquire some before I go through security it goes in my jacket which goes through the x-ray machine, along with any other piece of metal or electronics or no-way-this-will-set-off-the-metal-detector bit of whatever on my person.  All my jewelery goes in my carry-on bag, and all I have with me when I go through that souless gate is my passport and boarding pass.

I don't do this for my own benefit, though it is nice.  I do it for the convenience of my felow travellers.  Going through airport security isnt usually much fun for anyone, and if you go in with only your own convenience and bloody mindedness at heart, you have only yourself to blame when the buzer goes off.

End of rant.  Sitting in front of the gate now, wondering how many pictures I will need to take so that my grilfriend won't "murder me".

-Skytrain graffiti in sharpie: "Say no to yamakas"
-Car full of women screaming/singing Killing In the Name by Rage Against the Machine (Fuck you I won't do what you tell me, fuck you I won't do what you tell me... MOTHER FUCKER)

I should probably write something about my time in Yellowknife, because it was really great and full of bits that should not be forgotten.  However something recently came to my attention that I think is worth noting and bringing to the attention of my friends.

A while ago I StumbledUpon an animation called "9" by Shane Acker.  It was beautiful, dark, short, sweet and was one of the first jewels I found using that service.  If you have not seen it and have about 10 minutes to spare then I suggest you click on the link and sit down for some very solid animation.  Do that before you read the rest of this, because it will make it that much sweeter.


Ready?


Tim Burton is producing a movie based on "9".  Not inspired by, not "suggested by" but a full length movie version of what you just saw.  Not only that, but Timur Bekmambetov, of "Nightwatch" and "Wanted" fame is also involved in producing the film.

The preview looks astounding.

It will be released, predictably, on 9-9-09.  I'm looking forward to it, aren't you?