Monday, March 26, 2007

I think it's safe to say that we all have free will. That's what I believe anyway. I hate thinking that I'm not in control of the choices I make. I mean really, what's the point of living if everything has already been determined? Predestination just doesn't do it for me. We're given free will for a reason.

I think of Life this way. When we're born, we pretty much have one path to walk, er crawl. We can't make decisions yet on our own so we just go with whatever Mom and Dad decide. Then as we get older we acquire the gift of choice. We have the ability to determine how our lives will play out. The more we live, the more our Life path forks and splits and veers and at time's we'll want to just get off and other times we'll want to go back and walk the same path again! Every path we take, has purpose. Every path we take has direction. Higher-ups show us our options and say, "All right, go to it kid!" Then it's up to us. What's amazing is that The Man With The Plan is not concerned about our choices. He has set it up in such a way that no matter what path we chose, we will make a difference on this planet (if that is out desire). Sometimes our own paths will cross and we'll wend up in the same place even if we had chosen a different route. Sometimes we'll end up in no man's land with what initially seems like no way out. In the end though, all paths lead to the same destination, unless of course we give up and take the easy path to nowhere. So we start out on a single path and end on a single path, but in between that there is a huge web of trails to take! In the end, it's up to us to chose. We have been given that freedom. We can ask for help and guidance and then just sit around all day long for a response, but sometimes, I think, our choice doesn't matter, there is no guidance. Sometimes we fail to see it, but this annoyance, this difficult wall we come across time after time, this choice we have; it's a luxury, because in our walk of Life, all roads ultimately lead to the same end. A luxury that at times definitely seems like a huge dilemma.

So what do you do when you're in that situation? Yogi Berra (the baseball player, not yogi bear, the picnic basket stealing cartoon bear) said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." That's exactly right. Make a choice and have faith that it's the right one. If you do what you think is good and right, you'll be taken care of. No matter what you chose you'll have suffering no doubt, but you'll also have times of great joy and happiness. Difference decisions, different time lines, different lifestyles. Same result! It's amazing isn't it? Nothing about our lives here on this planet is simple, yet at the same time nothing about them is complex.

The best advice I can give when needing to make a choice is to just pick something that you will be at peace about. If you're going to be concerned about whether or not you chose the right way, choose another. No matter what your choice, it will be fantastic. And it will be scary. Probably very scary. But like I said before, you'll never be alone. Ever.

"Get busy living or get busy dying. That's goddamn right" - Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding (Shawshank Redemption [1994])

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I mean did you watch American Idol last night? Sweet fancy moses! So check it out dawg. This is my third season of being an avid viewer of the show. The last two seasons I've been pretty impressed with the contestants. This season, not so much really. I mean yeah there are about four or five I think are really good, but the rest just aren't going to cut it. Now I'm sure this next guy has probably gotten a lot of slack from the blogging community, but he's about to get a little more. This Senjia kid. Frankly the boy creeps me the heck out! He's like a cross between Michael Jackson and Prince, but without the singing and dancing skills. And lets face it, without their dancing and singing skills those two artists are only left with creepy. Last night's rendition of You Really Got Me originally by The Kinks made me want to get up from my seat and lock all the doors in my house! And did you see that 10 year old girl balling her eyes out? She must have went thru some kind of drama before the show because really there is no one there to cry like that over! Especially Creepy MJ/Prince Boy. Was she crying because she was extremely happy or extremely traumatized? I don't know, I don't understand it. Right now my two favorite picks are Blake Lewis - The Human Beatbox and Melinda Doolittle, the humble backup singer from Tennessee. My next two favs are the rocker Gina Glocksen and white fro boy Chris Sligh. Is it just me or do all the contestants seem the have names like rock stars already? Anywho, perhaps if Nicole Kidman or Campbell Brown was in the competition, I might have had something to cry over.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

In celebration of Pi Day (which ironically enough falls on Einstein's birthday), I figured I'd tell you my top 10 reasons for being obsessed with the number pi. If you were hoping I didn't know it was Pi Day today, then think again friends, think again, because it's time for Captain Jimmy's Top 10 Reasons for Being Obsessed with Π!
  • In one of my favorite movie trilogies, the Matrix, Neo has exactly 314 seconds to reach the "source" of the Matrix in The Matrix: Reloaded. Coinkie dink? I don't think so.
  • Π is a Greek letter and what is not to like about the Greek? They love food, so do I. They love to party, so do I. The ancients loved mathematics, what do you know, so do I!
  • I remember this little rhyme from my Calculus class in high school. Cosine, secant, tangent, sine, three point one four one five nine!
  • You really can't get any more random than the number π. In fact if you ask me, π is the epitome of randomness as all the numbers from 0 to 9 each appear eerily close to 600,000 times within the first 6 million digits of π.
  • I knew a guy in high school that could calculate any equation you threw at him instantly in his mind. He'd approximate π with the square root of 10 in his mental calculations. He also always wore sandals and denim shorts every day to school, even in the snow. And he made up his own language of grunts and odd sounds. This doesn't really make me obsessed with π, I just find it funny.
  • Π is an irrational number (and not in the same sense that women are irrational). The fact that π is infinite just boggles my mind. You can't comprehend forever or even half of forever! For a number to just go on and on without repeating is nothing short of spectacular! I'd say the same for e or the square root of 2, but the only downside is those aren't Greek letters.
  • Π is also a transcendental number. This generally means that you can't use an algebraic equation to obtain a root value of π. This also means that someday π will be just as confusing as my 10th grade English class.
  • Ever hear of the Buffon's Needle problem? Consider this. We have a floor with parallel lines evenly spaced, drawn on it. Because we're insane, we drop an infinite number of needles of known, consistent length on the floor. Provided that the space between the parallel lines is greater than the length of the needle, the probability of having the needle lie across one of the lines after we drop it is, you guessed it, π!
  • While you can't eat π, you can certainly eat pie, and as you are now well aware, pie is one of my favorite desserts!
  • Π is always π. Even if it isn't called π, the ratio of a circle's circumference to twice it's radius is always, now and forever the same number, 3.14159 blah blah blah. I don't care if you're measuring in inches, miles, kilometers, furlongs, parsecs or what-have-you. Unless your circle exists in warped space-time or a non-euclidean space, this will always hold true no matter what age, planet, galaxy, universe or state of mind!

Monday, March 12, 2007

I can't comprehend where you could possibly be right now. How will you come back from your deep dark thoughts and emotions? How will you possibly survive when you're entire world is taken away? How will you hold back the anger? How will you possibly find peace? How will you ever find your way, when you think your Light and path have been stripped away forever? Life can give us such joy and happiness and then take it away again in the blink of an eye. To you, there are no reasons anymore. There is nothing anymore that is fair, nothing that is right, nothing that is true. And in this deep disparity, there are no words. No words that will comfort, console, or caress. For there is only us, and our thoughts and our prayers. And while it may seem worthless now, it's not. Because while lost in your anger and fear and confusion it will be that Light that guides you back. It's a Light that can never be distinguished ever after being abandoned. And in time you'll come to find and rely on it once again, for you'll be lost forever if you don't. You'll never forget what Life was before, and you'll never forget what it will be to come. All will be made right. The only words I can muster now are, "I am so, so sorry for your loss." And in all honestly, what good does that really do you right now?

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Wow! I just found out that I am officially ranked in the nation in the GAV (Great American Volleyball). Check it out! It may not be much, but it is me!

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

I'm sure you all know and have heard that we are observing a new Daylight Saving Time this year, and for a couple years to come. What you all apparently don't know is that it is NOT Daylight Savings Time. Please stop saying it that way, and typing it. About the stupidest thing I have seen yet is an email I got at work about updating my PDA for the new DST. I was so happy to see the subject "Daylight Saving Time" and read about Daylight Saving Time in the first sentence. Unfortunately every sentence after that it was back to Daylight Savings Time. We are not keeping a multitude of savings of daylight here people. We are saving daylight in the singular form on a daily basis. And since I'm on the topic of pronunciations, it's pronounced Alz'hime-ers. No where in the word is there a T, and no where should there be a hard T sound. It's not All-timers. And the planet is NOT your-anus, it's yer-a-nis. And the last time I checked, you were going to get your prostate checked out, NOT your prostrate. And the word height never did and never will have a th at the end of it. Sweet fancy moses!

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Someone explain to me why a urinal cake would be completely missing from a bathroom urinal? Now I know that eventually the urinal cakes disintegrate and/or chip off over a very long period of time from people that urinate sand and small stones apparently. But there is no reason why a cake would be there in the morning and then not there in the afternoon. Especially when the cake is actually in a plastic cage. The only possible reason would be a change in cakes, but of course this would involved a cake replacement. You know, where a new cake (that isn't invisible) gets replaced with the old one. This brings me to the only conclusion. There is someone who thinks it's funny to reach into the urine infested porcelain manifestation, lift up the cake holder, grab the urinal cake and then walk out of the bathroom with the cake in his hand. While I find this much more disgusting than power peeing sand, it is unfortunately much more believable.