Archive for October, 2004
Experiences and Sleep
Posted by smokingpen in East v. West, philosophy, religion, siblings, work on October 13, 2004
Have you ever just had one of those experiences that, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get to sleep? Or, if you do get to sleep after an hour you wake up and can’t get back to sleep and so you lay about, or read, or do something else until you are so tired that you sleep, again only to sleep for an hour and start all over again. Yeah, I don’t sleep a lot at night. This is not something that is comfortable to me since I work, I go to school, I have my own projects I am working on and want to move forward with, and in the end I am frustratingly inactive during the vital parts of the day and asleep when I need to be awake – and forcing myself to be awake to try to get sleep regularly isn’t working either.
Now comes the part where people offer advice. And I think that’s great. A co-worker suggested yesterday that I take some pills to help me sleep, and barring that, I use some weird root that will help make my sleeping patterns more normal. That’s great. If not drugs something that will alter my metabolism in such a way that it will allow me to sleep.
There have been other suggestions. People like to offer opinions and I like to listen and then think about and eventually ignore what is going on. What gets me is that before I moved east the advice I was offered was that I needed to concentrate on sleeping during the night and being awake during the day. That seemed like odd advice, at the time, and now seems rather sagacious as I look at how I am reacting to the changes that have taken place. Moreover, the days are different here. I realize that may seem weird of me to say, but they are. I am farther (to distance) north now than I have ever lived in my life and I think that is playing games with my circadian rhythm. I am off now and I don’t know what to do to get it back on track.
I share all of that because I finally got frustrated at several things this evening. For instance, in a period of a week I have finally started beating my sinus infection (a plague of months) and have also gotten a cold. The sniffles, runny nose, that were signs of positive change in me – meaning that my sinuses are finally draining – have turned into a curse of coughs and sore throats and my lymph nodes are also a little swollen. In other words, I have a head cold and I am working backward on a sinus infection, I don’t sleep at night because my circadian rhythm is totally off, and I work way to freaking much… oh and did I mention that I have about four writing projects and a letter (long one) to my mother all in the works on top of school assignments…. Maybe I should just shut-up now.
Anyway, things are good. Books are great. Hundreds of titles pass through my hands daily and I seem to ignore every single one of them. I could not tell you, from one customer to the next, what titles people are buying other than to say that a certain look of a certain book has passed by me multiple times. Beyond that, I don’t see the books. Of course, that is going to change next week when I start to assist customers in finding books and magazines and music; but hopefully my resolve not to spend thousands of dollars on books will be enough to get me through the temptation (now if only I’d remember that on the employee appreciation weekend coming up as we get 40% off books and music for three days and I have a box).
School is also proving to be interesting. I signed up for a World Lit. course next term, financial aid should be progressing as of today, and I also take a philosophy class. All of this so that by January I can transfer to days and overload my schedule with as many credit hours as they will let me take. Oh, and I need to buy a car so when financial aid really does kick in I will be paying for a used car (maybe a Honda) very soon. Which reminds me that one of the girls at work had to replace a tire on her car because it was tracking wrong only to have the right front axle go out on her because the CV (constant velocity) joint had gone bad and then had warn all the way through the axle. I’d asked, when she was talking about the tire, whether or not she had other problems with that wheel and she’d forgotten to mention that one issue. And now I’ve offered to help her save money and change her oil for her (and she’s not even my type).
Church should prove to be interesting. Andy accepted a new calling and now has gone to great pains not to speak to me about the what’s and where-with-alls about it. He met with the High Councilor, Branch President, and possibly the past person with that calling last night (while I was at school) and is very mum about the outcome. I don’t need to know details, but at the same time, I have told him that whatever he needs me to do I am there to do it. Period.
On top of all that I think I am doing pretty snazzy. Apparently in the couple of weeks I’ve been at work I have become the life of the registers. People are trying to keep up with me and to banter like me and I think that is about as funny as it gets. On the other side of that we have a girl (Angel) who was hired and trained about a month before me who is an exceptional employee (and a looker) and who just does what she is supposed to do as a part of her job breaking ground for me. Instead of be the wunderkind that I normally am (because I go to work to work) I am merely another good employee and I am grateful for that.
Finally, mostly because I am tired, I want to do a shout-out to Rebecca (little sis) and say, just because I don’t answer a comment for a few days or weeks doesn’t mean I cannot or do not know what to say. Some comments are best left for when it is appropriate, or more accurately, when the speaker (me) is prepared to deal with that. For instance, this evening we were talking about conundrums. Which came first the chicken or the egg. Catch-22′s. And as a result of that one of the guys standing around said, “The chicken had to come first otherwise there was no egg.” When I said, “I believe both have always existed simultaneously,” the group became uneasy at the idea until I added, “a woman is born with eggs already within her, as is a chicken, the eggs already exist when the woman, or chicken, exists, though they are not fertile, therefore both the chicken and the egg have always existed together and not separately.” There is no other answer to that conundrum.
I also came up with the dating conundrum. Or, I don’t date because I can’t date the girls I am meeting and I am only meeting girls I can’t date, so I don’t date. Which isn’t entirely true. I am picky, selective, I won’t always just go out with anyone, and the person, or persons, I am willing to go out with have reasons why I cannot ask them out at present.
Oh, the Catch-22 conundrum is Yosarian stating, (paraphrasing) “You have to be crazy to fly these bombing missions, but if you are crazy you cannot fly the missions, but if you know you are crazy then you aren’t crazy; but to fly the missions is crazy and if you’re crazy you cannot fly the bombing missions.” To do one thing another has to already exist. But that one thing can’t exist unless the previous item also already exists.
My next imponderable is: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a noise?
I have a personal answer for this one, but I am curious to know what Rebecca thinks first.
Real Heroes Fly
Moving on Up
Posted by smokingpen in work on October 11, 2004
I have now been working at Borders Books, Music and Café for a little over three weeks now and things are going good. Garth, he’s the store manager, took me aside the other day to tell me what a great job I am doing. He said that Paul (general manager) wanted to move some of the cashiers to other positions within the store and he specifically wanted to see me advance. Apparently I have turned one or two heads around that place.
Of course, that was the same day that I made a pretty spectacular mistake and showed up to work two hours late. Both Debbie and I thought I was supposed to be there at 12:45 and yet what we’d both written down said 2:45 and so neither of us thought about it again (I coordinate my schedule with Debbie since I am currently car-less) until she dropped me at work at 2:20 when I walked through the store, saw someone I was supposed to be working with, all day, and realized what had happened. Garth was short handed that night and told me I could work until close so I did. That was when he told me that I had been doing a good job; and at the same time he started to ask some pretty specific questions about different people and what I thought about them. I like Garth. He’s a good man.
Anyway, I went in to work the next day and they had the following weeks schedule up and there it was. The change that Garth had suggested might be in the works was in place the next day. So, I get to spend most of the day Saturday with Katherine (customer service manager and store trainer) who may also be the only reason I’ve chosen to stay working at Borders and I get to work registers this week and then I will be filler after that. The bookstore experience is proving to be good.
So, I am becoming a bookseller; which is kind of funny, to me, since I had Liz (coworker) ringing people out with me today and after a few customers she turned to me and said, “You are being wasted at the registers, you totally need to be a bookseller.”
Now I am seriously into buying a car. I need a vehicle because my life needs to head in a different direction than it’s been heading in of late. I spend a lot of time at work and school and church and in each of these things seem to lack what I really want. My life is not where I want it to be right this second even though I am where I want to be and doing a lot of what I want to be doing.
The problem with buying a car is that I have to have the money together. This may take some time, but I will be buying a car before the end of the year. Woo-hoo. Time to do some new stuff.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
How Can the Chicken Come Before the Egg
Posted by smokingpen in philosophy, religion, theory on October 6, 2004
How can the chicken come before the egg, or, inversely, how can the egg come before the chicken? Both items are integral to the other. There is no one before the other. No chicken and then egg or egg and then chicken. What this is called is a conundrum. The question is designed to make someone think.
There is an answer to this question and it’s not flippant. Specifically, the egg and the chicken have always existed together. Just like you cannot get a chicken without an egg you cannot get an egg without a chicken. One requires the other to exist, which in turn requires the other to exist. The chicken and the egg have always existed together.
Basic science points out that you cannot plant an apple tree in an orange orchard and expect the apple tree to produce oranges. The tree cannot, and will not, produce fruit opposite or contrary to its nature. Nature of an object is as important as the substance of the object and the substance of an apple tree is the production of apples; whereas the nature of the chicken is the production of the egg and the nature of the egg is the creation of the chicken. Both living in harmony.
As an extension of this argument it is, then, possible to postulate that a single organism cannot produce millions of individually distinct organisms outside of its nature. One single amoeba will not randomly produce a secondary organism that can survive. Nature has shown that randomly produced organisms are not capable of reproducing and when they are, they reproduce to the original organism and not toward the new organism.
What this means is that man has existed as man and not as ape. An ape cannot produce a man and a man cannot produce an ape, a monkey, a chimpanzee, or any of thousands of other creatures that are genetically related. This does not mean that there are not genetic similarities between man and ape, or man and mice, or man and marsupial, or man and woman; it does mean that man has always existed in his current state and that man cannot produce homo-superior because our genetic structure is design to reproduce an identical genetic structure. Mice are made the same way. Whales are made the same way. Monkeys and apes are made the same way as are sharks, marsupials, elephants, lizards, bugs, spiders, and every other creature under the sun.
Taking this a step forward we look at Darwin’s theory’s on the evolution of the species and discover that this is based on a secluded island with animals and birds that can be found on continents and islands some distance away. The first thing to note in this is that the animals on that island have adapted to their environment. The strong have survived and bred while the weak and unable have died away. Birds with stronger beaks have survived and have bred creating a sub-species of birds, with identical genetic markers, that have a dominantly stronger beak. At the same time iguanas have adapted a darker color for better heat collection and have learned to dive under water and swim. These iguanas have larger lung capacities, darker skin, and better protection than iguanas that live and prosper in more amicable environments. The species, or animals, are not knew; the adaptations that are found on the Galapagos Islands are unique.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is flawed and science built around evolution is also flawed. This does not mean, necessarily, that a purely creationist stance on creation is right either; but that a review of the sciences used is in order. Was there an Adam and an Eve? Yes. I am most certain that there was. Are we descended from that pair of proto-humans? Certainly. The questions shouldn’t be about the religious notion of creation but rather how man came to be and to what end he exists. This removes the question of creation from science, which cannot answer it, and places it solely in the hands of philosopher and religionist – who can hazard guesses but will also never be able to say for certain. In truth, the question about the chicken and the egg is moot and answered only in so far as repeating: As long as chicken has existed so has the egg, and as long as the egg has existed so has the chicken. The chicken and the egg have always coexisted together and no other answer is valid.
Science can be charged with discovering the tenets of creation and answering theories on how worlds are formed, life is derived, and separate species came into existence. This is what science exists to do. At the same time, science should not be relegated to an argument of philosophy to answer what they will never find evidence to support. Scientists cannot pass as law the relationship of man to ape or of any other combination – though the postulation of theory is not wrong. Science, however, can begin to work to discover how life can come into existence by answering questions on how atmospheres and worlds are created and how gravity really works.
In the end the chicken and the egg are literally one and the same. Without the one you cannot have the other.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
It’s October Now and I Needed to do an Update
Posted by smokingpen in On Writing Projects, act of writing, work on October 3, 2004
It is Sunday and the LDS General Conference has just ended. This is the first time in a lot of years that I have not watched or listened to all of the sessions. I do not work, as a rule, on weekends and in coming to New Hampshire I’ve discovered that this rule, of mine, is neither hard nor fast as I now work Saturday’s. In fact, the days off I seem to be getting, at present, are associated with my school schedule and Sunday’s. I refuse to work Sunday’s.
This leads to a conversation, rather one sided I am sure, on work. Work is what it is: meaning, that I stand for about eight hours a day at a register and act as pleasant as possible to as many people as possible and, at the same time, encourage those same people to purchase as much as possible. Lately, that goal has extended to selling a pair of lightsabers we have on display for $99.99 a piece. Several times a day, when crowds are around, we have the tendency to pull one, or both, down and show the people what they can do. You would think, given the nature of impulse buying that goes on, that it would be easier to sell something like that. So far, within the store, the only person who has been successful in that regard is a rather well endowed blond (meaning she has large breasts and it shows) who is also somewhat personable and has this uncanny sense as to what to suggest to people… guys, and then the ability to get them to purchase that same item. Watching her is both impressive and sad all built into the same mold.
Since I work four days out of seven and my schedule is all weird I don’t get a lot of time to sit down and work on other things. My goal for this weekend has been to edit a story I started, and then finish the story, so I can submit it for consideration of publication. Basically, it is a scifi story dealing with a post-dark ages earth where the inhabitants had developed so far that they literally caused the cataclysmic events that turned humanity backward for more than 700 years. The story follows “Ed” who is a survivor of that period and, seeing an end coming, develops a ‘stasis’ booth that keeps him alive for x-1000 years in a specially built cave in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico somewhere. In essence, he’s cheated death and returned to life in a time when technology does not exist, outside of blacksmiths, etc. And those who live near the old cities (or on top of them) believe that the ‘spires’ and ‘columns’ and ‘blocks’ of the old world are haunted and dangerous and therefore lend themselves to a religion (that religion or those beliefs changing on region, area, distance, etc.)
Anyway, Ed is looking for his wife who was supposed to be in the cave with him but was not there on waking and her chamber was also missing. In his searches he believes he’s located her, but, at the same time, can’t get to her. There are very real dangers that lead to the mythology and folklore that the people, living above the city, have created; and which, only the people who live above the cities can go through – if they had the right knowledge and abilities.
As I’ve been reading the material I wrote a month or two ago I have discovered that it is not the material I’d thought I’d been writing. This goes back to the philosophy of successful writing where no first draft is ever a good draft. William Forrester in Finding Forrester said, “The things we write for ourselves are so much better than the things we write for others.” I wonder if what is meant in this is that the things we write for ourselves, that are intended for eyes only are really only meant for the authors thoughts, not meant for distribution, and therefore are much better as a result.
Since I had written that in the creation of a document meant entirely for my use, purpose, etc. it is interesting to me to walk back through it and think I have thousands of words of usable material to find that I have hundreds of words of usable material and other areas that, in hindsight, need to be fleshed out. I have thousands of ideas and I want to expand on the ideas so much, for this piece, for other pieces, and yet, I am stepping back, literally, and saying, “I can write this much here, this is what I want to do to introduce this world to my audience, and then I will stop for now.”
My thoughts have never really worked in the direction of multiple plots/subplots in a story before. Sure, you have the main plot, which is what the story is about, and then subplots, which exist to support the main plot(s), characters, events, settings, and dialogue; but through it all I guess I’d thought that the process was a little less… involved. That isn’t to say that I didn’t understand that the writing process wasn’t involved, but rather that the elements worked together, differently, to form the finished product.
There is a significant difference from reading amateur fiction and fan fiction than from realizing all the parts and how they compliment each other and then, in turn, how they end up creating a full end story. My intent, with the story I am talking about, is to introduce people, and myself, into a whole new world and see where it takes me. There are a couple of other ideas that I want to throw out there, see where they lead, but right now this one will work for me.
Outside of all that, I did get some positive news at work the other day. Specifically, that we are having a 40% off weekend in two weeks on almost everything in the store AND as employees we get to cull the shelves for the next two weeks for items we want. I am buying books on writing and mythological storytelling, finishing some book collections I’ve got, and trying some new things. The weekend should prove to be expensive but not as expensive as it could be.
As a final note: Having moved from Utah where the majority of people are all of a religion and have missions, church, family, friends, church as a common denominator to somewhere where people know each other principally because they work together or go to school together, they don’t know families and they don’t go to church together; I’ve discovered that the common conversation among people is relationships and drinking (as it applies to having sex and relationships). Further, there is a lack of understanding among a certain age group of one person’s willingness to be himself in the face of overwhelming peer pressure. The experience is interesting.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly