till
a) it's gone; or
b) it beats the long odds.

we were just recently faced with just such a coin toss.

i don't know i could have handled it if his last conscious action at home was to emit a quiet meow, stand up, crawl to my lap and curl up to find warmth. she was on the phone, calling the vet on the emergency after-hours line, when he did just that.

instead of getting sleep this weekend, i shed tears, dig? and here i thought myself so cold and detached. hug someone you love and, dammit, immunize your cat.

guitar hero is not fun. fun is guitar hero.

there's something addictive about hitting that awesome chord at the perfect time, going nuts on the whammy bar, maxing out my star power, unleashing the 8x awesomeness at the climax of the song, and hearing the crowd roar the sum of their approval. the resultant positive feedback loop resonates deep in my soul.

the downside is this: to master this game is literally orders of magnitude less difficult than to master a proper guitar. hence my forthcoming disillusionment when i go to pick one up and see no conveniently scrolling notes. hence my sorrowed lack of motion aftereffect.

for the young human male, the definition of fear is looking into the trash in the bathroom and—quite without warning—seeing a pregnancy test. the young human male will only recover upon the realization that the profane object is not related to his own spouse, but instead to his visiting sister-in-law for whom such a thing is perfectly acceptable.

and no, i didn't examine it for results. do you know how those things work?

subtitle: zen and the art of sneaking one whilst the wife is asleep


out the door. sixty yards. right turn—second guess; about face. one hundred fifty yards. left turn. to the end of the road—i pass another hooded figure; i am you and what i see is me? across the street, under the streetlight and into the blackened park.

if my mother knew what i was doing here tonight she'd maybe cluck her tongue at me. maybe.

i see the picnic table in the center of the park's single light (a/(h²+r²)), but the very fact of its visibility rules it out immediately. tonight's work suggests shadow. i lean against a wooden construction barrier covering a muddy hole where too many construction trucks have driven. fascist object, taking away my civil right to step haplessly into the filth if i damn well please, i'll show you.

i tear open the paper/plastic wrapper, pull out one of what i came for. click, puff, puff. for moments all i see is an afterimage of the lighter's sparks and tenuous flame (the crowning achievement of the human race; the machine and very means of alchemy). click, puff, puff. kindle, baby. click, puff, puff.

i had forgotten the taste of this particular brand. acrid to be sure, no cubano, but not wholly unpleasant and linked in memory to far more pleasant nights than this. i fill my mouth again and again, and try and fail to blow smoke rings. some of the foul stuff leaks into my lungs, and oh how i cough. some hobbit i'd make.

who originally thought of this? who decided it would be a good idea to pick some stinky weed, dry it, wrap it in paper, burn it, and breathe the smoke? and in spite of the lungs' immediate and intense instructions not to do it again went ahead and did it again? i conclude it must have been a teenager. probably looking for a way to piss off his dad.

puff, puff. at this short distance the combustion is audible. is it the actual oxidation, or some residual water flash-boiling out of the dessicated leaves and escaping into the entropy-addicted universe? at any rate it's beautiful.

and you: i watch you not seeing me see you trundle down the sidewalk, hands in pockets and mind (omnipresent) in who knows what. have we ever been here before, you and i, roles reversed?

i dare a cop to spot me, approach and smell the smoke, ask questions. in my head i'm oh-so-brash, agreeing to produce my identification only when he produces the warrant, and only if it has been signed by the attorney general himself. puff, puff. what a troublemaker i'll never be.

and you: i see you jogging, see the thin white wires connecting your consciousness to some hidden marvelous device and wonder if i'd enjoy what you're listening to, if i myself have listened to those same words jogging that same road, syncopating steps with the same rhythm of inhale/exhale. i decide it's as unlikely as anything possibly could be—though it is true that everything that happens does in fact happen.

puff, puff. i spit, trying to extinguish the burning that always fills my sinuses when i perform this foolish self-poisoning act, the burning that triggers so strange a response, the burning i hope i never get used to.

there, the school where so recently i made my slow four-year migration from front corners to rear corners. there, the water tower in whose shadow i have lived so long but which i have never climbed. there, the field where i made my first real football tackle. there, a house worth possibly more than all the money i've seen so far. puff, puff.

and you: i can see your balcony from here, can see how he's holding you, and think what you have might last.

existence in every direction, i think. i exist in space and time, always will exist. existence forever, in every direction. this does not comfort me. by ways nothing ever ends, but by the same ways nothing ever begins, does it?

uncharacteristic thoughts, even for such uncharacteristic circumstances, i meta-think. perhaps i've been here too long. puff.

i crush out the cherry-red tip. i'm tempted to leave the ashen remains on the swing set for some naïve elementary schoolkid to find and titter over. the temptation passes.

on the walk home, the chill and the essential loneliness make me feel like a character in one of my own off-center stories. i consider how this one will end, and just who's doing the writing.

when i'm two hundred twenty years old, i'll have finally hit my target heart rate; i'll keep it up for an entire year. hell of a workout.

occasionally i'll look sequentially at carefully patterned ink on piles of paper held together with glue at one common edge. occasionally i'll shine a laser onto spinning plastic and metal disks and turn the reflection into sound and hear it.

whenever i do either i create some sort of meaning from the sensory input.

occasionally i'll do both simultaneously and the meaning gets all tangled in my head so that later when i encounter the patterns of one i'll inevitably recall the other without regard for its relevance at that particular time.


i have brilliant examples, roughly sorted by date read:

jurassic park: jon secada
2001 series: lost world soundtrack
the rama series: u2
the stand: nirvana
1984: the cranberries
atonement: fischerspooner
the dark tower series: in various places, out of africa soundtrack, future sound of london, beck, bad company (who make an important thematic cameo in book seven, not to give anything away), moby


and the input is not necessarily linked to books and music. it could as easily be location and music, and often is, viz.:

my honeymoon: muse
the dormitory in which i spent my fourth year of college: audioslave
the shitty basement apartment where i spent the first third of my fifth: the flaming lips
the road: always beck, always to the dismay of my wife



since i have you here, i feel the need to direct your attention to the most powerful weapon in my geek arsenal. oh how i love to analyze data, and, in the process, to be analyzed.

i perceive that a certain wife of mine has trouble understanding a certain dichotomy in my life.

today on the way to work i was plugging a podcast i subscribe to. here's the skinny. it's called skepticality. it reports under-reported news, debunks myths/mysticism/pseudoscience, disseminates critical thought, and (in my opinion) generally promotes quality and discourages crap. it fits me because i try to maintain a skeptical worldview.

i mentioned to her one early episode in which they had discussed the religious philosophies of the framers of the united states government. the thrust of that episode was: most of them were deists, and contrary to popular opinion, did not espouse or endorse any sort of religion or theology. they certainly didn't form religion, much less one specific religion, as the foundation of the state.

there was a certain amount of excitement in my voice i'm sure, because the above is a common misconception (if not blatant untruth) and it was being clarified via a pretty popular channel. though i didn't go into so much depth with her, i gave her the overview. her response, and the last thing she said to me before getting out of the car, was 'sometimes i swear you're an atheist,' not spoken in a flattering tone. [aside:

she independently arrived at the same conclusion when she read what i wrote about the non-science of intelligent design, about which i've gone into greater detail below at no extra cost to you.]


i'd like to try to set the record straight here, partially for mrs matt, partially for personal clarification of thought, and partially so you can figure out who i am (because i honestly have no idea). so at the risk of losing friends but with the hope of enlightening them, here's what i believe. now with extra candor.

i am a scientist—not only by education but also by philosophy: i try very hard to form conclusions from evidence; it's very hard for me to give credence to claims or arguments for which i can't see any support. i'm certainly not perfect in this respect, as i'm sure you have seen in the past, but i do the best i can.

because the universe appears in so many ways to be 15 billion years old, i believe the universe to be 15 billion years old. because of the cosmic background radiation and because the universe appears to be expanding, i believe the big bang theory is accurate.

because individuals (not just human individuals; i'm talking about everything living) who are poorly adapted to their environs are less likely to survive and subsequently less likely to pass their genes along, the good genes of a species get distilled into individuals of successive generations. since mutations from various sources are occurring continuously, existing genes are not static. the process is recursive with continuously new genetic material. i believe the theory of evolution is accurate, though i believe it fails to explain the absolute origins of Life As We Know It™.

because i believe in cause and effect, and because the universe is a very large effect that demands a very large cause (ex nihilo, nihilo fit), i believe in big-g God, who created the universe.

yes, that's right. i believe in God, and i believe that God created the universe, but i do not think the theory of intelligent design (id) should be taught as a scientific cosmology, alternative or not:

firstly: i.d. by its construction is not scientific, in that it defines itself to be irrefutable and claims everything as supporting evidence. the body of science is based on the idea of falsifiability.

secondly: science curriculum is not equipped to deal with God, just as religion is not equipped to deal with meson interactions or the properties of neurotransmitters.

thirdly: the discussion of religiously charged topics is well within the jurisdiction of concerned parents. proponents of id hold that alternative theories of origins be given equal time in science classes; if every alternative theory of origins were to be explained in school, students wouldn't have time to learn anything else. i wholeheartedly believe that varying viewpoints should be offered in every field of knowledge, and kids should make up their own minds, but not everything is solely the job of teachers.

furthermore, choosing which religions' cosmologies are taught in governmentally funded schools is precisely equal to respecting a religion. [aside: guess how i feel about separation of church and state. go on, guess. i'll give you three guesses.]


i'm a fan of the split-brain theory. the left hemisphere is pointy: it is good at solving linear problems, for understanding details and deducing. it balances your checkbook. it's algorithmic. the right hemisphere is round: it sees wholes, it intuits, abstracts, inducts. it hopes. it is heuristic. and connecting the two is the corpus callosum, the largest nerve in the human body. it's about as wide as three or four fingers lined up, though it's usually thicker in women than in men.

the point is this: the only way i can make some sense of the universe is by thinking of it with both hemispheres. i parse science with the left side and religion with the right side. between the two is a tenuous connection too thin to allow much cross-communication (in small amounts and only when needed). it's kept me alive and sane so far.


so. what does this make me? rhetorically speaking, of course.