Dearest Internet,

It’s not you, it’s me.

Sincerely,
bakiwop

P.S. – I am truly sorry, if I’d known she was your sister I would never have slept with her.

Way (way, way) back in the day I used to play a lot of sports. I liked playing sports for two reasons: 1) Girls would talk to me, and 2) The “zone.” In sports, the “zone” is where you’re tuned in with (not “to,” “with”) everything around you, it’s something that expands far beyond consciousness where there’s an awareness and exquisite focus of everything happening in the moment along with a fluid, effortless grace and power of physical and mental ability.

For a boy growing up in a Catholic family at a Catholic school it was, simply, transcendence – a kind of partaking in communion with God (and as close to Godly as a human being – well, at least this 16-year-old kid – could get).

That “zone” feeling was addictive.

I’ve found a very similar “zone” in writing, but it’s one I find very disturbing. I’m still connected with a world in the same way I was when I played sports, but with writing it’s a world of my own creation – a world that I am both physically and mentally connected with, but one that is, in this world – the real world – purely mental.

This has two very troubling consequences.

The first isn’t so horrible – I spend a lot of time by myself, and when I’m by myself I can sit, hour upon hour, engaged with people and places and objects (while trying to get it down on pixels) without realizing that any time has, in the real world, passed. When I have no pressing issues in this world I find losing those hours (and, sometimes, days) not entirely unpleasant (and still most definitely as addictive as that other “zone”). It’s a little freaky when it happens, but most definitely nifty, and since no one gets hurt, well, no harm no foul.

It’s when I’m not actively trying to write – when I’m out for a walk with Her, or at dinner with family, or at a hockey game with friends – and the world I created keeps popping into my head, inexorably pulling at my attention (demanding that I partake of it, if you will) that it gets downright unsettling. Not only is that world dragging me – not exactly kicking and screaming, mind you – into it, but it’s dragging me away from all the wonderful people and experiences that I have the good fortune to be surrounded by.

I once got to ask one of my favorite authors what it was like to be a writer, he responded with, “Lonely.” At the time I thought it was a horribly unfair and just-plain-mean answer – here was a talented, rich and famous man surrounded by people who adored him and his creativity. A man who created and populated entire worlds – entire universes! – with interesting, fun characters. A man who got to visit these worlds in his head whenever he wanted. How could he be lonely?

It’s because those fucking worlds drew him away from the amazing fantastic stupendous people and places around him.

I’ve got this little, niggling itch of an idea about how football is so much like religion and why so many churches seem to embrace the concept of the Super Bowl party, but this itch, it’s one of those itches. If I start paying too much attention to it I won’t be back until 11pm with a rumbling tummy, blinking distractedly into Her eyes, trying to figure out why I’d spent the last hours of my life with quarterbacks and priests at a kegger instead of going with Her to see one of those free French films at the Student Union.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for not writing, what’s yours?

Religion has much less to do with morality than it does with salvation.

- bakiwop

Lost is coming back tonight. I know because I keep seeing those promos with the Lord of the Rings hobbit saying, “Where are we?” while walking through the tropical jungle on the island he’s been stranded on for the past 70 seasons.

Really? Shouldn’t he know where he is after being stuck on the same small, tropical Pacific island for 70 years?

(And yes, Lost seasons are indeed exactly 10 times longer for those of us who have to endure those of you who watch Lost.)

What those of us who don’t watch Lost don’t understand about those of you who do watch Lost is why those of you who do watch Lost watch Lost.

Sure, it was interesting at first – big plane crash on a tropical paradise with excitingly beautiful and fit people struggling against all odds for survival while building a golf course – but then airline pilots started getting eaten by large, dinosaur-type monsters which were neither shown nor explained, a wheelchair guy miraculously walked (a plane crash – what a strange way for Jesus to heal the lame) and there was something about a woman trapped in some kind of concrete bunker from the past or something and then, well, those of us who don’t watch Lost stopped watching Lost.

What we couldn’t figure out (besides anything) is why Merry, Pippin, Jack, Kate and Frodo couldn’t climb the tropical volcano to throw the Ring and the sacred 5-iron into Mt. Doom and save all of the passengers of Oceanic flight 815.

All I know about the show these days is, after 70 years, a bunch of people are still stranded on a small, tropical Pacific island, there were some Others from another part of the plane who were also stranded and everybody in first-class was served champagne as the plane was going down, given parachutes and then picked up from the island the day after the crash by a 250 ft. luxury yacht chartered by Oceanic Air.

(And the first class passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 have not had to watch a single episode of Lost. Ever. Makes me want to upgrade my seat whenever I fly.)

Also, didn’t some of passengers flying coach get off the island on a dugout canoe or somesuch because they threatened to make some noise about supporting the airline passenger bill of rights and then, when they got home, gave press conferences while attempting to sue the airline and, after losing the lawsuit, got a life sentence to be served back on the island with only a non-turn-off-able TV, DVD player and a box set of Lost, the Expanded Director’s Cut? (All electronics on the small, tropical Pacific island powered, of course, solely by the smugness of those who watch Lost.)

Oh yes, and the State of the Union given by the President of the United States of American had to be rescheduled because of the Lost season premiere. (Which actually made me glad that Lost was still on the air – the State of the Union interfering with the Lost premiere showed me that people were paying attention to something political that directly affected their lives.)

By the way, my prediction for the Lost series finale is that President Obama is going to put the small, tropical Pacific island on the no-fly list and send President Bush and President Clinton over there to secure the release of all Oceanic flight 815 passengers while President Carter builds new houses for them and Congress passes another stimulus package earmarking over $50 billion in aid for the survivors who will all decide to compete on game shows (with most choosing American Idol, So you Think You Can Dance or Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader with the lone hold-outs being John Locke, who will foolishly decide to compete on Survivor: Project Fashion Cake Design Kitchen, and Jack Shephard who, after a long night of hard drinking, will kidnap Tiger Woods and return to the island after realizing his only regret in life was never double-bogeying on the island’s golf course) and, subsequently, give a hero’s welcome to the pilot of Oceanic Flight 815 who, it turns out, was regurgitated by the dinosaur-type monster after 70 years of digestion.

If I ever become filthy stinkin’ rich I’m going to hire two people to volunteer for me on a full-time basis – that’ll provide two people with jobs who’ll be able to do twice the volunteer work that I could do by myself and will leave me with plenty of free time to a) volunteer on a more casual, part-time basis, preferably somewhere sunny and warm where they give you ridiculously named drinks with tiny umbrellas in them and b) think of how to spend all my filthy stinkin’ richness.

I might even do this if I’m just filthy rich, but if I’m only stinkin’ rich I might have to cut down to one full-time volunteer.

And speakin’ of stinkin’ – I just finished laundry. While I was trying to figure out which way to put the clean sheets on the bed – I never get this right the first time – I thought of those sadistic wankers at the sheet factory. I think they must have a special department dedicated to making each end of the sheet look the exact same as each other end of the sheet. How hard would it be for them to put a small tag on the bottom end of the sheet reading,”this side down” for those of us who are sheet-directionally challenged? So finally, instead of continuing to whine about it for what I am sure would be the rest of my life, I broke out the needle and thread and made a little design on the bottom of the sheets.

I also needle-and-threaded, “Sheet factory people suxors!” on the sheets. That’ll teach those smug sheet factory bastards.

Finally, I am so very excited about the upcoming Nexus One Google phone. I think Google is going to treat the Nexus One just like any of their other services – something to be given away for free (or in the case of the Nexus One, very cheaply, say sub $100) so they can gain a huge market share and then do what they do to make money – data aggregation and targeted ads. So here’s to the Nexus One being a fabulously shiny and pretty piece of hardware (and software) for really really cheap.

And in that spirit of unnecessary conspicuous consumption:

The tree is trimmed, the toy train is running and the ‘nog is on.

As I was trimming the tree this year I dropped one of those beautiful, shiny ornaments – a silver one. It seemed to happen in slow motion. I remember thinking, as it was falling, that all I had to do was reach out my hand and grab it – save the beautiful, shiny orb from destruction – but all I did was stand there, enchanted by the ever-changing reflection of tree, lights and ornaments on its surface.

Of course, it then hit the parquet floor and shattered into dozens of broken shards, but even then, all those tiny and perfect reflections of the tree in all its trimmed glory sparkled back at me.

So I dropped another one just so I could experience it all again.

Update of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony piece.

The video of the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is available online, so please, give your brain a good time and check it out:

• Part 1: Pre-show Risk Cabaret Concert by The Penny-wise Guys, and the very, very beginning of the ceremony.
• Part 2: Lots of introductions. Several past winners return. Benoit Mandelbrot’s keynote address.
• Part 3: Awarding of several prizes. First 2 acts of the mini-opera. The 24/7 Lectures.
• Part 4: Awarding of the rest of the prizes. Win-a-Date contest. Thrilling conclusion of the mini-opera.

Occasionally I read stories of people and companies afraid to donate food to shelters, food banks and other non-profits because of liability – fear not potential food donors! The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act (passed in 1996) is a federal law guaranteeing a donor cannot be subject to civil or criminal liability when giving food to a non-profit for distribution to needy individuals unless the donor voluntarily and consciously gives food they know is bad.

So, you know, don’t do that.

The (very short) text of the law and other info on the law at the U.S. Government Printing office.

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