Monday, January 7, 2013

A Long Journey Ahead


I owed y'all this pic from a post three days ago; those are the puppies on my grandparents' farm. Great Pyrnees is the breed, if interested.

Tomorrow I'm going out to get my learner's permit, to submit a job application for the summer, and to get ready to go to Croatia. I just got back from Texas, and have travelled more than a day just to get back to New Jersey. I'm tired, i'm jet-lagged, but I'm still posting in hopes of finding inspiration.

That inspiration comes from the thought of seeing Iva again in three days time. For ten days, we'll be partying, carousing, and acting like general fools until it's time to go back to school. I've never really done something like that, you know. Acted carefree. I care, I worry, about so many things on a daily basis, that I rarely let myself enjoy the blissful moments in life. I'm glad I get the chance to do it now, before my teenage years are completely gone. Below is an image of one of the wind farms I passed on the way to Wellington. These wind mills are absolutely massive, and they provide power to many, many homes in Texas, but they can only operate in the wind.

Right now, I act like a windmill. When the wind is blowing, I can work like a madman, and attack the day with a fervor. When the wind is gone, so too is my energy. It is my intent to become more like a nuclear power plant; providing a continuous source of energy and productivity for years to come. In other words, it's high time I grew up.



Sunday, January 6, 2013

Django Unchained - a review

Call me late to the ball game, but Django Unchained was an absolutely stunning film. It's got lots of guns, lots of blood, just a hint of sex, and lots of good old-fashioned cussing and Mexican standoffs. It's about a black man circa 1858 who gets revenge on the white men who oversaw him as a slave, and on the white men who bought and owned his wife. This black man, in the course of one winter, learns to read, ride a horse, and shoot pistols and rifles better than U.S. Marshals of his time - ALL in the name of him becoming a bounty hunter. It's a fantastic film, but it definitely hinges on the implausible. I will not call this "Quentin Tarantino's best movie ever"; Pulp Fiction claims that title.

I heard tell of certain Hollywood types, nameably Spike Lee, boycotting Django because it's 'Disrespectful' to those who suffered under American Chattel slavery. Quote:

"It'd be disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film. That's the only thing I'm going to say. I can't disrespect my ancestors," Lee told VibeTV in a recent interview.

Lighten UP, Spike Lee! Django was not created to 'Disrespect' anybody other than slave owners and those who profited from slavery. This movie was made to make people laugh, and to get their blood pumping - which It accomplishes in equal measures. You'd know that if you bothered to see the movie, rather than just reading the blurb of a movie critic's review. 

That goes for every one of you who decides to get 'offended' by a Hollywood film, or by a video game. Lighten up! This stuff is entertainment - no more, no less. I'll admit, some movies, like Sam Bacile's "Innocence of Muslims", are created to offend. They are few in number, easy to spot, and rarely commercially successful because they are blatantly racist, sexist, or classist. 

Most grown-up movies are going to make fun of a group of people. At some point in your life, you will be a target, either because of your gender, your race, or where you live. LAUGH IT OFF. If you can't laugh at yourself, no one wants to be around you. If Django was good enough of a movie for Samuel L Jackson, one of the most successful black actors of all time, to act in it,  it should be good enough for Spike Lee to watch it.

I swear, if people keep walking around with a stick up their ass, getting offended about the least bit of political incorrectness, I will personally write and direct a film so offensive it'll make "Springtime for Hitler" look tame. 

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Things get broken... and then fixed.

Let's say you are a very religious person, whose beliefs are centered around the idea that doing good gets you into heaven, and doing bad gets you sent to hell. Let's also say that your notions of right and wrong ARE, in fact, the higher power's definition of right and wrong. This implies that anyone, friends, family or perfect strangers, who doesn't behave 'right' will get sent to hell. Your imperative, then, would be to teach everyone you know the difference between the two, and to make sure that people are behaving properly.

The problem with undertaking this mission is that people are going to question you; "By what authority are you saying these things?" In this day and age, no one's going to take you seriously if you say "It says so in the (insert religious text here)." They want to see your BADGE. Your physical, of-this-world proof that you are telling the truth, and that your message will help them. People will also ask "But what happens to people who never heard your message?" You will need more of an answer than "It sucks to be them; they'll go to hell." Your audience is human, and you must treat them as such.

One of the biggest problems with this mission is that, if you claim that you answer to an all-powerful God, you will inevitably be asked about where God is during disasters. Some modern-day examples; "Where was God during the shooting in Newtown?" or "Where was God in the Aurora theater shooting?" You'll lose your audience if you give a standard answer. I hear this one all the time; "We live in a fallen world. God allows bad things to happen because people sin."

I still don't have an answer to the last question, but I can say that God was with the victims and their families in these disasters. I read in the New York Times about the massive amounts of relief and emotional /financial charity given to those affected, and that donations came from all across America - and even internationally. God was there to comfort the suffering.

I believe that God also has a plan for the world, and that everything that happens works in some way to fulfill that plan. Whether the event is as big as the recession of '08 or as small as an individual getting a haircut, it is all woven into a mind-bogglingly complex plan. Small things can have big consequences, as I'm sure you all are aware. As for what happened in Newtown, I believe that good things CAN come from this tragedy. If it leads to better security for our children in schools, or (more importantly) greater providing of mental health services in schools, then so be it. If it leads to families in Newtown, Connecticut coming together and having closer connections, then so be it.

If one tragedy could cause American families to stop in their tracks, look at their children, and hug them tight. If one tragedy could make parents realize that their children are not to be taken for granted, and make them spend more time with their children at the expense of a few lost hours at work.

So be it.

Friday, January 4, 2013

You must be water

I just helped my grandparents set up Skype so that they could talk to my sister and I. We have not often talked on the phone, so this is a real step up in terms of meaningful contact. I also just showed my grandmother how to search for & watch my sister’s youtube videos. It felt good inside, to open this avenue of communication for them, since they’re not as up-to-date with technology, but it’s frustrating that there is so much separating us. We live more than five hundred miles away from them, and the fastest way to travel to them takes more than ten hours and several hundred dollars each way.

What’s more, there’s a cold war going on in my family, and the belligerents are my mother and her parents, who have not spoken since my mum’s divorce.

The end result is, I cannot escape my mother’s specter whenever I visit or speak with my grandmother and grandfather. There’s always an unspoken question; “Who do I love more?”

The answer is, I love both. I will not cut one part of my family off in favor of another, no matter what they do. Yes, there are things that my grandparents and I do not see eye to eye on, such as

1. (REDACTED)
2. (REDACTED)
3. (REDACTED)

But that does not mean that I cannot love them, or spend time with them. All it means is that I must watch my tongue and be sensitive to their beliefs, just as you’d do with a friend or family member with different politics. There may never be reconciliation between my mother and her parents, and I have come to accept that. Whether or not they do, I am still my mother's son, and Oma and Opa's grandson, and I will fulfill both roles as best I can. 

You can‘t fix everything, and whatever you can’t fix, you must live with. That does not imply that you can (or should) ignore the problem; it means that if you can’t fix a problem, you must be adaptable. That is a sign of emotional/intellectual health.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Well... shit

Never seen so much horse shit in my life - or cow shit - or chicken shit - or any kind of shit for that matter. On a farm, you literally cannot escape the smell and sight of shit. That said, you get to hunt on your own property, and shoot anything that moves if you feel like it. But even on a farm, there is no escaping the laws of thermodynamics. What goes up, must come down; if you slip off a tin roof, you will fall. If you tied yourself to the roof with a rope, you will dangle from that rope in midair, waiting for someone to cut you loose. Likewise, if you get your face too close to an acetylene torch, you WILL lose your eyebrows, and possibly your nose.

None of this happened to me personally, but it's happened to numerous farm help that have come and gone in my absence from Wellington.

Opa says there may be oil under the land, and we've gotta wait for the oil companies to survey the place, but there may well be enough to get a monthly dividend out of it by the end of 2020.

Hard work pays off; I got my chemistry grade, and I may say with confidence that I am one step closer to becoming a doctor.

Laku noc


Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Back to Basics

It's not every day a New Yorker gets to visit his grandparents in the panhandle of Texas. I haven't seen them in nearly two years - since I started college. A couple of observations today; Newark airport has one of the smoothest security screening systems I've ever experienced. Maybe it's because I got to the airport at 4:30am - an ungodly time if there ever was one - but I was at the gate by 5am with no trouble from the TSA. I had only one carry-on, and travelled by myself, which may have contributed to the ease of boarding. If I may generalize, however, It seems that flying has gotten much easier recently. Fingers crossed that my flight to Croatia will go similarly.

I guess the big take-home message is that things get easier the more you do them. I could make my way back here whenever I needed to, whether or not my grandparents were there to greet me at the airport. The same ought to apply to driving, which will be important as I'm trying to get my license this semester.

(/insert picture of adorable puppies/)

Those puppies are part of my grandparents' livelihood, and they sell for $100 each as sheepdogs, goard dogs, pets - you name it. Things are simpler out here, and the people are much more spread out; 2,000 folks live in an area bigger than the New York Metropolitan area, and everyone's job is tied to the land in one form or another. The town doctor is mormon, and has seven children, the one movie theater in town dates back to the 1930's "nickelodeon" era, and everyone goes to church on Sunday. Did I mention this is a prohibition-era town? Yes indeed, you cannot buy or sell liquor in collingsworth county; it's against the law. While you'd think this reduced the number of alcohol-related crimes & deaths, the opposite is true; this county has one of the highest drunk-driving fatalities in the state every year. Must be something to do with the fact that you have to drive ~50 miles to the nearest gas station that sells beer.

For the next few days i'm going to be working the land: building fences, splitting wood, feeding chickens and milking goats. I'm not sure what life lessons I'll learn here, but one thing is for sure - I intend to be a doctor, not a farmer. If I want to make that a reality, I need all A's next semester.

Ciao for now.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The Male Brain

I read a great book called "The Male Brain" over New Year's, which details the changes that occur in male brains over different stages of life. According to the book, boyhood is characterized by an insatiable drive to run, to climb, to fight and wrestle, and to compete with other boys at every possible chance. This competitiveness to see who can run the fastest, or swim the farthest, or what have you, serves to establish a clear pecking order in a social group, and it can occur with remarkable speed. The consequence of this is that, to a young boy, winning is everything.

I got a clear demonstration of that earlier today, when my five-year-old cousin in law was beat at chess by his grandfather, a sweet, even-tempered man. Alan remarked to himself "Wow, that's strange, I don't usually win." To an older male, this would not be a big slight; to my cousin, it was seen as bragging, highly 'unsportsmanlike' behavior, and he ran off to his room crying, not to emerge for nearly an hour despite his grandfather's sincere apology. My first reaction was to label the kid as a crybaby, but when I considered my own reactions to losing a game at that age, I retracted my judgement. Even today, I'm extremely competitive with everything from grades in school to throwing darts and playing chess. I hate to lose, but when I do, I shrug it off.

After my cousin's tantrum, I sat down and played a game of chess with the grandfather. We were evenly matched in skill and experience, and - for the first time in my life - it ended in a draw. We smiled at each other, shook hands, and said "good game."

The five-year-old in me still wanted to win, though.