Older younger bear lounges his way through the first morning class, ISS.  With conference period next, he decides to return home briefly to assist wrinkly old bears with the upcoming den sale.  Knowing he is not needed to proctor female bears play basketball, he reluctantly meanders back to Vista.  Quickly perusing the premises older younger bear decides his services will not be missed on this particular day, and proceeds back to the den.  Enter text from younger younger bear:  Are you driving right now?  Reply: Yea! Younger younger bear:  Down brushy creek?  Reply: Yea!  Younger younger bear:  I just saw your beautiful face!  Reply: I'm skipping school!  Younger younger bear:  Should I skip work?  Reply: Yea!

After a quick rinse older younger bear proceeds to younger younger bear's den.  Younger bears lose no time in procuring and imbibing the nectar of the gods, brewed in and distributed from the Rockies. Younger bears play the pong ball, plastic cup, and aforementioned blessings from Colorado game (curious for bears? I know!!).  Younger younger bear victorious, younger bears proceed to Big Common Den where bears play pawball game and we meet lady bear and older brother bear.  Younger younger bear is drunk, but brother bears play well, and G and S bears emerge victorious with a comeback that will surely make all ursines proud for hibernations to come.  

G and S bears proceed to G and S den to oversmoke and overdrink. Back at older brother bear den bears decide to go for a dip.  Bears self-equipped with smoke and drink go for a dip.  Older brother bear has liquor that won't last the next hibernation and so older younger bear proceeds to pour libations.  Poseidon, the palm-tree god, Athena, Zues the cloud-gatherer, the Keystone god, the cigarette god, various sea nymphs, and Ozborne Cox are not missed.  After the dip older younger bear begins to eat assorted things about the den. Older brother bear begins to get upset.  Older younger bear insists that a cigarette be smoked inside the den.  Older brother bear relents with stipulation.  Older younger bear insists that all bears sleep in one corner of the den.  Older brother bear is getting upset.  Older younger bear moves blow up mattress into corner of den. Older brother bear insists upon hibernation. Older younger bear begins to bring assorted things about the den into the corner....like Pepto Bismol.  Older brother bear is genuinely upset.  Younger younger bear and lady bear are laughing.  Older younger bear is drinking hot sauce and Keystone while lying now prone now supine with no intention of hibernation.  It is about this time that older younger bear thinks that he is not a bear at all, but a wounded lion. This is when the sleep gods prevail.  In the morning older brother bear kicks younger bears out of his den and moves to a new one.

Note: This allegorical narrative relates the events that took place on the amazing day that was May 26, 2009.

So much drinking.  See above.

A couple days ago on the way to Vista in the morning I was listening to the Bobby Bones show as usual. Often they talk about recent events and they were discussing the case of a thirteen year old boy with cancer. What makes the case controversial and discussion worthy is that the parents refuse to take the boy to a doctor, defending religious cockamania and a health creed woefully summed as "no toxins in the body" i.e. no chemotherapy. Poor poor poor child. No person should suffer the misfortune of insane, delusional parents.

A particular problem I take issue with, however, is the call-in responses of the lay people. Essentially everyone expressed this opinion: "Of course, me, personally, I would take my son to the doctor. But if it is part of their religion that they don't take people to doctors, and practice faith healing, then I don't think it is right to tell them what to believe [and therefore what to do]." Herein lies the precise apologetic, unwarranted respectful attitude accorded to religious belief that the four horsemen abhor and urge us to abhor as well. If all the call ins say that they, personally, would take their child to the doctor the message is that we live in a country where citizens agree to take sick children to the doctor and clearly the parents of the sick boy are extremely marginalized individuals.

To protect such action by deference to religious belief is inexcusable. Where does one draw the line? Should my religion of wanton axe murdering be accorded such deference? No? Because people die ghastly deaths against their will and we are by social contract an anti-murder society? Will the death of this thirteen year old boy (mom now fleeing with boy against court order and law) be anything but ghastly and against his will? Why then the deference? The results are the same. Someone will charge that one is an act of commission and the other an act of omission; acts of commission are held more morally reprehensible than acts of omission, and with good explanation and reason. In this case, however, the crazy, faith-rooted mother blatantly denied the providence of a simple, readily available, life-saving solution. This strikes me as commissional. Just as a parent cannot axe a child to death, a parent should not effortfully strive to deny life-saving treatment to a child, in the name of anything, much less religious insanity. The boy undoubtedly has a limited and distorted perspective on his options and the implication of his mother's beliefs. Therein lies true destruction and for people to accord such lofty deference in the name of belief, with these terrible results, is despair.

Of course, if the boy was not a boy and a man of around twenty years or older then I would support his decision to act as stupidly as his desire will lead him. Adults should have the freedom to harm themselves if they so choose. But because his incompetent parents are making the decision for him and because of his position as an ignorant child I would consent to the prevailing authority of the medical field and the government.

Yesterday in San Marcos Cass and I attended a Texas Swing Festival that included honorary inductions into the Texas Swing Hall of Fame (Texas shaped plaques).  The average age of the musicians, as well as those in attendance, was somewhere around 75.  Many of the musicians were in their 80s.  They pulled a 95 year old drummer out of a nursing home to play.  95!  He flipped one of his sticks into the air and caught it mid-song!  95!  We left before the event ended cuz we were tired and couldn't keep up with the dinosaurs.  Ninety Five!  The drums!

I made several trips to the bathroom (when your girlfriend's ex-aunt in-law's boyfriend is keeping the rounds coming, well, then yea) where I usually encountered four cowboy hatted/gray haired/cowboy booted/button up shirted 80 year old guys occupying the stalls and one open stall for my long brown haired T-shirted self.  You never can predict the amusing situations you will find yourself in when you wake up in the morning.

I'm feeling the lack.

One of the long standing questions of philosophy is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and its metaphysical corollary "How did something come from nothing?"  Most contemporary physicists, those whose area of inquiry now furnishes most of the accepted answers to philosophical cosmology, maintain that the very question itself is flawed.  Why should nothing be default?  What if there was always something?  Then the question would be moot.  Time itself is now considered to have had a beginning.  Time is not infinite.

Indeed Stenger and Weinberg postulate a perspective to which I am coming around.  We may have a misperception that nothing equates with simplicity; nothing is not necessarily less complicated.  Nothing is the absence of something.  But obviously something does exist.  If it is allowed that something has always existed, then for nothing to exist would require a cause rather than represent the default position. Something is simpler.  Nothing is a mental construct based on and related to the concept of something.  Nothing loses substance. Nothing is more miraculous. 

My favorite dish at present - Spicy Thai Coconut Noodle Soup.  Oh my nigs.

Sliced chicken breasts, coconut milk, noodles, lemongrass stalks, garlic, red onions, green bells, serranos, poblanos, habaneros, jalapenos, chilis, thai chilis, cilantro, lemon or lime, salt, Oriental hot sauce.  You will cry.  From the heat.  And when it's gone.

My top dishes - Kung Pao Chicken (chili pepper-peanut combination is the Secret of the gods), Chicken Caesar Salad, Steak and Mashed Potatoes, Bacon and Eggs (picante sauce), The #1 Combo at any Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin, and Seafood Pasta (not just shrimp but the inveterate invertebrates - oysters, clams, muscles, squid, octopi, the ones that slip out of your mouth and land in the wine glass of the woman in front of you).

Salt/Spicy > Sugar/Sweet.  Tortilla chips, guacamole, and beer is hard to beat.

And now Dave Eggers:

What about dignity?

You will die, and when you die, you will know a profound lack of it. It's never dignified, always brutal.  What's dignified about dying? It's never dignified.  And in obscurity?  Offensive.  Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.  And it's fleeting and incredibly mercurial.  And subjective. So fuck it.

On Saturday I cycled the long road through hell and ended up in Shiner. Hell lies in southern Texas, lost in small towns SE of Austin. I had summarily dismissed the potential difficulty of a 100 mile bike ride - a sin that apparently purgatory won't even purify. Forsaken souls harass hell travelers in perpetuity, taking the form of unrelenting wind and ceaseless hills. The heat rose as the crossing (of hell, remember) wore on and the last 25 miles were comparable to the first 75, and took nearly as long. I fell out of the inferno at 2:30 p.m. (7:00 a.m. start), finally redeemed by Cass and Spoetzl Brewery hefeweizen.

Today one of my disgruntled fourth graders informed me that "Sonny licked my face" and then proceeded to gesticulate how said action took place. I unsuccessfully stifled laughter and told him to tell Sonny that I said not to do that anymore.

Another worried child, at recess, expressed his concern that he would suffer the ignominy of forced completion of hitherto uncompleted work during recess hour. I assured him such a trial would not come to pass and he resumed the more glamorized role of moderately paced fence kicking.

As one who seeks to cite an evolutionary explanation where one seems appropriate, I come to the use of drugs.  Why would we find widespread drug use when the resultant perils are prevalent, serious, and somewhat likely?  I think humans use drugs recreationally to feel, first and foremost, even if there is high probability that negative feelings will be included.  Early humans were crafted in an environment where boredom and/or non-feeling surely were paucities.  Our environment is one where the thrill of a successful hunt, despair of imminent starvation, scramble for scarce resources, and the sheer fatigue of daily existence is essentially absent.  But our bodies haven't changed proportionately, thus, the need for an adequate emotion-inducer to satisfy that void.  Perhaps even the up and down nature of drug use mirrors deeper emotional fluctuations present in early times that were dependent on those now absent factors.

Drugs aren't the only way humans attempt to self-inject emotional experiences.  Horror movies satisfy the need for immediate fear (one would hope we could get over this one), music adds a flavor to mundane events (I think music woudn't have been as enjoyable to early humans), and athletics in all shapes and forms emulate the competition and exertion inherent in natural life while also stimulating the corresponding emotions.