Booze, Neo-Nazis, the Fair, and Anna

I've started a second job at a liquor store. I kind of just fell into it because the owner is a distant relative by law who asked me to work for him. No application or interview or anything, just several phone calls, most of which were missed. The job itself is really awesome. It basically consists of me reading or watching TV, restocking whatever sells, and turning away minors and the noticably intoxicated. Mostly I read whatever I'm reading at the time (right now it's a sort of intro to the big names in western philosophy book) and get into long conversations with hobos. At first I was worried about my total ignorance in the area of alcohol, but it turns out that the store's clientel mostly buys 40s and four dollar pints of vodka. So I'm good.

Remember how I said that the owner was a distant relative by law? Well, he's more directly related to my mom. Can you guess where this is heading? That's right. My mom and I work at the same liquor store. This, as I've told Anna, makes me feel a bit like a character from "My Name is Earl." But I suppose there are characters from worse storylines to resemble.

The other night, one of the regulars -- an especially large, muscular, and amiable man -- came into the store. He asked if I was the other ladies son. I said that I was. He said that she's a really awesome lady. In fact, everyone who's ever worked at this liquor store is f*cking awesome! He introduced himself and told me about a couple of the things that my lovely mother told him about me. As I was giving him his change, I noticed one of his many tattoos. I hesitated, but eventually asked, "Are those 'S's on your neck?" He said, "Yea. Neo-style!" I told him to have a nice night. So, my mom is warming up to and sharing information about me with some Neo-Nazi and God knows who else. Yesssssss.

Anyway, today I didn't really do anything. I saw Anna this morning, took a long nap, tooled around online, walked Bandit, cleaned my room a bit, and so on. I went out of my way to be solitary and talk as little as possible to as few people as possible. It was really nice. I feel more energized now than I have over the last couple of weeks. Tomorrow I am going to go speak with the Registrar about transfering a class from CSU that they didn't but which is necessary for a math degree and then, later, go to the fair with Anna. (That last part will be a lot of fun.)

Love

I asked a friend, "what is love?" She said chemicals in your head.

I think chemicals are something and that they may often lead to love but I don't think they themselves constitute it. I'm thinking it -- love -- is something we will ourselves to do -- not something we feel. Active, not passive. Chemicals jamming up our systems is something and can lead to feelings and feelings can lead to actions. But feelings aren't actions.

Jesus and Paul both agree, which is possibly why I fell into this perspective to begin with. Jesus is said to have said that "greater love has no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friends" and Paul is said to have written that "[l]ove is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud . . . [and it] never fails." That last part, on a side note, is hard to reconicle with experience.

It's kind of funny that I think that love is something one wills oneself to do since I'm not really sold on the notion of freewill.

It may be the case that I'm only arguing semantics.

In other news, a new kitten's started hanging out around the yard. She's really young and at first she was afraid of me and the other cats. She took to Bandit, though, who used to kill, or at least try to kill, other dogs for eating his food and now sometimes I catch them eating together out of the same dish. Therefore, Kyle and I have decided that Bandita -- "little Bandit" -- is an appropriate name for her. But I think I'll be calling her Ita for short. She likes to hang around outside the livingroom window sometimes at night and meow and scratch the window until I go outside and hold her for a while. And she likes carrying on conversations with me -- about what, I have no clue. And she's into following me all over the place, except for when she's hunting bugs and climbing trees. She makes chemicals explode in my head.

Thanks, Anna, for the pic.

school

Most of the people that I see in my head regularly reading this blog know that I've been anticipating going back to school full time in the fall. For those who didn't know that, and to make everything clear to those who did know, here's what's up. My fifth year as an undergraduate I added economics as a second major and stayed in pretty good contact with one of the heads of the dept. at CSU in regard to what I should take to get ready to try to apply to Ph.D. programs. Basically, most schools like you to minor or even major in math. I came really close to minoring and, if I had been at a different school w/ slightly different standards, then I what I took would have constituted a minor. Still, after applying to I think nine schools, I learned that my level of mathematical preparation might best be described as “probably sufficient” as one school told me. So, I applied to nine schools and got into four of them. Of these four, two offered me GTA positions, which would pay for tuition and living expenses while I go to school. I went with one over the other (I went with CSU) and now have their contract lying in my cardboard box that holds all my mail. I have till July to sign it and send it back. Part of me thinks that it would be stupid to not send it back but part of me thinks that there is more to consider. For one thing, because of the economic slowdown, this was an extremely competitive year for graduate applicants. I think I've told this to a couple of you. The lady from Michigan State told me, in an email saying that I didn't get in, that this year brought the most competitive pool of candidates that she's ever seen with 300 people competing for 20 spots. So, looking at it from that perspective, I think that if I had applied at a different time, then it seems reasonable to think that I would at least get into the same schools and possibly even into better ones. I was thinking about staying at Mesa for a couple of years and picking up a degree in math (or even asking CSU for a deferment and just sticking around for a year to take some key courses and go on from there and possibly transferring to a better school after I get a masters from CSU). This might be a good idea, though I'm not sure that CSU would be down with it. One other option is staying at Mesa and taking something like six courses and then being prepared to apply for admission to a masters program in math. There are quite a few, like UCCS for example, that offer applied math degrees with an emphasis in business/finance/economics. In fact, I could possibly take off as much as a semester of graduate level econ while working toward this applied degree. In addition to thinking that it could be a lot of fun to study math for the next few years I can't say enough about how much it would improve my chances of getting into a really good school – a REALLY good school – especially if things aren't quite as competitive in a few years. Graduating from a significantly better school has obvious benefits. Namely I could do cooler things with my degree. Also I wouldn't find myself at the end of my life regretting that I hadn't given it my all. These are the upshots. The downshots (why not? If “upshots” is a word...) are that I'd have to pay for my education and living expenses while at Mesa and more than likely whatever graduate school that I end up at for math . . .this probably means debt. I hate debt, even though I'm supposed to believe that it is sometimes justified. Secondly, a Ph.D. in econ takes, on average, about seven or eight years to complete (that's from admission to the program to completion – it doesn't include the time to earn a bachelor's or anything else). So, take seven years for that and add three years of math and suddenly I'm looking at ten years. Thirty-seven seems like a long way out. Being almost forty before I start a career seems a bit scary to be honest. Secondly, while it might look good on paper, it may turn out that I'll get burned out before it's all done. I mean, this is twelve years of school before college, six years as an undergraduate, one more doing math at Mesa, two doing a master's in math, and seven for a Ph.D. and suddenly I've spent twenty-eight of my thirty-seven years of life in school (sixteen years of college). WTF!?! It seems like at some point a person should stop learning and start doing. Finally, this sort of lifestyle requires a certain amount of discipline and self denial that might be good in some contexts but is possibly unhealthy in others. I love econ because it fits my brain well (and I like using my brain) and because I think that it addresses really important issues. I think that it can be used as a catalyst for working toward the greater good – for helping people. But what if in the process of doing this I lose sight of the trees in the context of the forest (or however that adage goes)? What if in the context of trying to help people in a larger and more abstract sense I sacrifice real and potentially real relationships in a more personal and concrete sense? There's a story that I heard about the guy who founded the Salvation Army (I think), where he was doing all these awesome things (in a Christian context) and while helping people far away from home he got news that his daughter had killed herself and he later wrote something to the extent of “you can lose your family in the process of saving the world.” There's good to be said about a person being really disciplined and focused on whatever goal he's set for himself on the one hand (assuming that that goal meets sufficiently good conditions) but there's also good to be said about a person actively working for goodness in a more practical sense in his immediate surroundings. I think that love is important. It's so important that Christianity associates it, one-for-one, with God: “Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love” (1 John 4.8). I suppose one could realistically read that verse as saying that love is a character quality of God's (I think that's very legitimate), but right or wrong I've always read “is” statements as “equivalence” statements. Anyway. You can gain the whole world and lose your soul. I think I'm trying to find the proper balance between goodness/love/etc. in an abstract sense and the same in a more practical sense. I'm still trying to find the balance between idealism and pragmatism. And I have the tendency to err on the side of idealism. To the extent that sometimes nothing ever gets done. And doing nothing really scares me. I guess the Christian perspective that each person is destined for greatness has been drilled into my marrow. And somehow I'm still at Domino's hahaha! Delivering heart attacks for tips, baby.

So that's that. I think I'm going to ask what CSU thinks about giving me a deferment to do math and then, in the meantime, apply to masters programs in math and see where that goes. I'm not expecting CSU to give it to me. I'm expecting them to get frustrated. But, if they do give me it, then I can ask Kentucky for one too (I think they might give it to me – I already talked with them about it a bit) and I think that I'd be really happy to go there, with or without advanced training in math. They're such a cool school – so well suited for me. They're one of four universities in the country that is funded by our federal government to research poverty in America. How cool is that!?!

I was going to say other things, but this is too long already. Maybe in a couple days. I hope you – yea, YOU – have a terrific day. If you're reading this, then there's a good chance that I love you.

Phoenix

Yesterday, Kyle; Jami; and I drove to Cortez and today we drove to Phoenix. I really like this part of the country. The drive around Telluride is always fun. Camp memories. The drive outside of Cortez for the first few hours was amazing. We drove through the Navajo Nation. I remember it strongly affecting me a few years ago when Kyle and I made the drive down to Southern CA for another wedding. I think I remember watching the sunrise or set and it was a borderline religious moment. Very similar experience today except for drawn over a bit of a longer time. And I wasn't driving today so I really got to sit back and absorb more than I otherwise would. Eventually we got to Flagstaff and it got a lot less flat and a lot more trees started popping up. By the time we got to Phoenix it was all over. It's been so disheartening and exhausting being in this city. All it is is boxstores, chain resturaunts, and plastic people. I don't know how to explain it except for that leaving the emptiness and entering the city I became very angry. Or dissappointed. Dissapointed that this is what progress apparently is. This is not progress. We've traded in our souls and connection with each other and I suppose to some extent the land and air and such for our own mini-gods. And they're not even cool gods. Boxstores, chain resturaunts, and ticky-tacky houses. This is not progress.

Needless to say I've felt better. But I'm beginning to feel better. Jami and Kyle are in the other room watching TV (our hotel room is pretty bad ass -- a sleeping room and a living room / kitchen). It's the first time I've really been able to be alone on this trip. People, even the best of them, are exhausting.

So, tomorrow's the wedding (my cousin's -- did I mention that?) and the next day we head back. I think we'll probably go home in one shot, going around Cortez. Oh, and Mom's back in Junction and Dad's cancer is suffocating everyone. His shit is beginning to fill the house and has already taken over a big chunk of the yard. Bandit can't even really walk around anymore b/c of it. I know that this is very likely the last time that I'll live in this house. Which is okay. It means, though, that I need to go through all of my stuff in my closets and really decide what's important b/c I can't keep anything in that house after this move. I'll never get it out again and I can't drag it all over wherever I end up with me.

I may try to make a trip up to Fort Collins shortly after getting back from this trip. A friend up there is really hurting and I feel strongly compelled to spend an afternoon with her.

This Morning

Every morning when I go outside to start my car, my dog's sleeping right there outside the door and about 5 or so cats are hanging around the door.  They're always really noisy and they like to follow me to my car and back telling me, the whole time, how they're hungry.  One of these cats (a quieter one that typically avoids the comosion and hides back under the truck and lets the other cats tell me what's going on) was pregnant earlier and had recently given birth to her kittens but I haven't seen them.  My dad says he hears them in such and such a spot every now and then.  Anyway, this morning there was a little tiny kitten (like maybe 4 or 6 inches long) lying dead on the blanket that Bandit usually sleeps on.  So, that was about the first thing I saw this morning.  I stood there for several moments looking at it and then I noticed that none of the cats were really talking to me. They were all kind of just standing and sitting around looking at me or the kitten.  They were all quiet.  It was kind of surreal.  Then my dad picked up the kitten and put him in the trashcan.

crazy people

so i was going to make a passing reference to something through my facebook status but decided that it needed a little more context than a couple of lines.  so, i remembered my friend Anna has a link to a blog that she keeps and thought vuala.

the house i'm living in is the house that i more-or-less grew up in and growing up, for whatever reason, we had two fridges.  so, the house has two fridges but it's only me here and i finally got around to cleaning one of them out so that i could unplug it.  basically it turned into a storage unit for my dad's overflow of expired food.  anyway, deep in the freezer i found some old hamburger and i thought that rather than just throwing it away, the cats might like it (especially since i've been told more than once (including by a guy who has a degree in environmental science) that city dumps are designed in such a way as to not allow things to decompose).  ANYway, it was frozen so i put it in a frying pan with some water to unfreeze it.  that was a big mistake.  it stunk up the house SO bad.  it basically smelled like a dumpster.  so i tried to think of a way to deal with it.  i'm sure that febreeze or something would have been alright, but it seems like if one can smell rotting meat then there's probably rotting meat in the air.  i figured that if i had dropped some meat on the counter or something, i'd probably clean up the spot with bleach.  so i thought that cleaning the air with bleach might be a possibility.  so i boiled some bleach and water, thinking that the steam would go into the air (just like it did with the rotting meat).  i'm not sure if it made the place smell any less bad.  i certainly noticed a bleachy smell, but i may have also just gotten used to the nasty meat smell.  eventually i went into the kitchen to make sure that there was still liquid in the pot that was on the stove and there was, but the bleach water had turned red.  i thought "hmmm."  for whatever reason, i didn't throw it away last night and found it again this morning except for that it was kind of popping and stuff -- the same sort of sound as when you put your ear up to a can of pop.  i was going to take a pic of it.  i had it in the camera's screen with the proper lighting selection or whatever and then the camera died right when i pushed the button.  hopefully b/c of bad batteries and not some crazy weird fumes that the mutant bleach water's puttin' off.  lol.  i'm sure it's the batteries.

one of my dad's most frequently used phrases when my brother and i (and my sis) were groing up was, "don't be an idiot."  he would rarely tell us directly what constituted idiocy or WHY doing something would signify that you were an idiot -- only that it did and so don't do it.  don't be an idiot.  i think my dad is a structuralist -- one who believes in absolutes -- unfortunately i also think that his notions of absolutes are disconected with reality.  anyway.  this, as it turns out, was also the only piece of advice that Dwite Shrewt from the Office got from his dad.  my brother pointed this out to me and thinks it's quite humorous.  it is.  this whole "don't be an idiot" thing has apparantly had quite an affect on my brother.  he's told me a couple of times that there have been many times when he's been just at the cusp of doing something when, suddenly, the image of Dad will come into his mind and like a Faustian angel or devil, will say, "don't be an idiot."  and then Kyle will often decide against doing what he was about to do.  it didn't have the same effect on me.

i told dad this morning about my experience with cooking rotten meat and boiling bleach to cover up the smell.  first he said, "oh is that what that smell was?  i thought it was the carpets." whatever that means.  the second thing he told me was, "yea, when i clean i mix bleach and amonia together.  i figure if it might kill me it's got to kill the germs."  i've pointed out to him before that this is, essentially, mustard gas but, like i said, his absolutes aren't in sync with the rest of the world's and i didn't feel like arguing with him.  so instead i said, "yea, but you're insane."  he laughed but this got me thinking.  

over the last year or so i've noticed that i've begun to see certain traits of my dad's come out in me.  like a desire to go into buying and selling various collectibles b/c if you do it right it pays much higher than the stock market on average and plus i could avoid wearing a suit.  but then i don't go into it b/c, in part, i see what it's done to my dad.  also, i've done some other slightly off things especially recently.  for example.  at Domino's, we have to keep the "scruff" of hair shaved below about half way up our neck.  I HATE THIS!  i HATE shaving -- especially there.  i can't do it more than twice a week without getting all bloody and razor burned, almost regardless of the razor/cream/etc. that i use.  also i think it's a stupid cultural norm.  so i figured, "hey, i can just pluck out all of the hair with tweezers under that line and i won't have to shave for weeks.  i did and it's true.  it's been really great not having to shave, but the day after i did it i noticed that the inside of my neck hurt pretty bad.  almost like i cut myself with a rusty piece of metal.  

see, these things that i catch myself doing from time to time are, basically, what i think a crazy person would do.  pluck out your beard with tweezers one hair at a time?  if i was some sort of prolific writer or something and after i died this came out, then people would probably be tempted to say something like, "well there's a fine line between genius and crazy" or something like that.  but when you get right down to it, it sounds like crazy-man stuff.  

so, given that i think my dad is pretty well disconnected from reality, and given that his whole side of the family is kind of like that, and all of this other stuff, i think i'm at the point where i'm going to try to start asking myself a pretty straight forward question when i come up with creative solutions to problems.  much like "What Would Jesus Do," i'm going to try to start asking myself, "is this something that a crazy person would do?".  if it is, then it still might be worth a shot.  firstly, i think (though i don't know) that much of what constitutes "crazy" is socially constructed and i don't have much respect for social constructs.  secondly, every invention came out of a context where it first didn't exist, so just b/c society didn't yet have automobiles didn't mean that it was a waste of time for men to play with fuel combustion engines.  it may have been crazy but not bad crazy for Edison to spend so much time on his light bulbs.  but there is bad crazy -- the kind that takes over your life and leaves you worse off.  if it takes over your life and leaves you or others better off or at least no worse off, then fine.  but if it takes over and screws you up somehow in the process -- if the cost outweighs the benefit -- then this is bad and i know that this is what happened with my dad.  also, i think crazy kind of runs in my family anyway.  everyone in my immediate family has been diagnosed with either OCD or depression; suicide runs in the family; and so on.  

so, like i said, i think i'm going to try to make a concious effort to not be bad crazy and ask myself from time to time, "is this something a crazy person would do."  for example, when i thought that it would be a reasonable idea to fry some trash (rotten meat) and boil some bleach, this would have been a good time to ask, "is this something that a crazy person would do?".  it doesn't seem like the line that seperates that on the one hand and mixing bleach with amonia on the other is extremely wide.

as for now, though, i'm going to lunch with Anna and her family, which doesn't sound crazy at all.  just like a lot of fun :)