Spell Wars and Star Check

My good friend +Ryan Kirtley used to work at the same branch of the bank as I did. We spent our days, seemingly working, but in actuality, we would spend a great deal of time swapping +Cracked.com  articles and talking about how terrible the Star Wars prequels are. Seriously, I think I hate Hayden Christensen more +Hitler hated everyone. (Apparently Hitler hasn't joined Google+)

Unfortunately, in an act of severe betrayal +Ryan Kirtley moved to a different branch of the bank. (Something about improving his career opportunities or some such nonsense. Am I right?) But what really suffered were our contributions an analyses of the science fiction genre. Fortunately, we still interact with one another via email. Furthermore, our use of Microsoft Outlook led to a great discovery for the world of science fiction.

So, because the new Star Trek movie came out recently, naturally our email conversation turned into a discussion of the new Star Trek movie. I was perplexed by something in the plot when +Ryan Kirtley responded to me and made a monumental discovery. And I quote,

"From: Kirtley, Ryan 

Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 3:18 PM
To: Velluto, Alex
Subject: RE: HA

And if you remember… Starfleet wanted to start a war with the Klingons. (side note outlook knows Starfleet and Klingons are words) NERDS AT MICROSOFT!!!!

So, naturally, I typed some Star Wars (Notice to the untrained observer: Star Wars is different than Star Trek) words into Outlook and lo and behold that infamous red squiggly line appeared beneath all of the Star Wars words but not under the Star Trek words! SPELLCHECKED! 

As a side note to the untrained observer, since a long time ago in a galaxy far far away in a place where no man has gone before, there has been a feud between "Trekkies" and Star Wars fans. (There has also been a feud between Microsoft and Apple, and more recently Google.) So, it appears, that the overlord Bill Gates has declared a winner in this feud. And that Microsoft favors Star Trek to Star Wars. Now, while the Venn Diagram of Star Trek and Star Wars enthusiasts who like Microsoft don't constitute a majority of the nerd community, it still represents (I would suppose) the vast majority of them. So, I declare to these people, the war between the "Star" franchises officially concluded. 

I now present the evidence:

You will notice, the future director of Star Wars Episode VII, J.J. Abrams is the only word on the Star Wars side not spell checked. This is probably only due to the fact that he was also the director of the most recent Star Trek reboot. I guess that debate rages on.

As for me, I'm an Apple fan so nothing has been decided yet.

Blues and conversations

I was listening to the radio, and they played this blues song called, “The Blues Can’t Even Find Me.” So, essentially, this blues singer was sad about not being able to get depressed. Mission accomplished! You did it! The next track on his album should be called “Never mind”

His life must just be a crazy emotional roller coaster.

“I’m pretty bummed out that I can’t depressed”

“Wait! I’m depressed! Hooray! Now I can write a blues song!”

“Oh wait! Now I’m happy! Crap! I can’t even get depressed right!”

“Oh, now I’m depressed again! Yes!”

At least this guy had some sort of emotional response to things. Recently, I’ve discovered that my general lack of emotion makes me terrible at conversations. Sometimes, people say things to me, and I have no idea what they expect me to say. 

I got my car inspected the other day and the people at Jiffy Lube found some rock chips in my windshield and fixed them. Apparently, there’s a lot of fraud in the windshield repair industry so in order to bill my car insurance, they have to get you on a call with your carrier so you can explain that you’re actually getting your windshield fixed. 

So, I get on the phone with the insurance lady and she says,

“We’re sorry to hear about your glass damage. “

Pause…

I realize….she’s waiting for a response from me.

What am I supposed to say? “Yeah I’m pretty torn up about it.”

Maybe if a family member had died I might be able to provide you with a more emotional response.  Like if a some debris went through the windshield and impaled my dad I could maybe say something back. But if that were the case, I’d probably be a little upset you said, “I’m really sorry to hear about your windshield damage.” Rather than something… you know… about my dad.

Anyway, I didn’t know what to say, so I just filled the pause by describing the process of how windshields get chips in them.

“Yeah, I was driving on the highway and rocks got in my windshield. And you know how rocks leave chips in your windshield when they hit your windshield? Yeah, that’s what happened to me. But you know how that works right?”

I work as a teller, and this lady comes up to me and says,

 “Hi, my name is Helen”

Pause.

“I’m from Wyoming”

Pause.

“I’m in farming.”

Pause

“I make hay in the summer.  That’s why I’m here”

Pause

“It gets 16 below in the winter”

 It was the most random conversation I’d ever had.  I’m just getting barraged by non sequiturs   to the point that I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond. When I’m just about to make a comment, she changes topics on me!  “I make hay!” “It gets to 16 below!”  

But, once I thought about it, apparently I’m so bad at conversation that she just went on and filled in my part of the conversation for me. This is kind of scary because I don’t know what I’m saying.  But once I thought it through I figured out that she thought that I was a super inquisitive person; almost to the point of being obnoxious.  I was asking all sorts of random questions. My end of the conversation was

“WHO ARE YOU? WHERE DO YOU HAIL FROM! WHAT IS YOUR OCCUPATION!  FARMING? WHAT KIND OF FARMING? WELL WHY ARE YOU HERE DURING THE WINTER? WHAT TEMPRERATURE DOES IT GET TO DURING THE WINTER?” Are these the questions I’m supposed to be asking?

 

“Here come the kids”: A 95% true story

I haven’t written any blog posts since my first one. My last blog post was about agnostics and the existence of God. So every other topic I've thought of writing about since has seemed kind of out of character. So, I’ve decided just to just break character and write about a day at the gym.

Have you ever gone to the gym, not to work out, but for the sole purpose of taking a shower? Let me explain:

My parents got a new dishwasher. I was upstairs while they were trying to install it when I heard a commotion. I went downstairs to see what happened. Apparently, they had forgotten to turn off the water to the dishwasher before taking out the water intake hose. Water was spraying everywhere! We grabbed buckets and we tried to direct the water from the hose into the buckets. I ran and grabbed a wrench to try shut the valve to the water intake. When we tried to turn the valve off with the wrench, the valve broke. So, we came up with the idea to turn the water off to the entire house.  This solved the problem.

So, here I was, covered in dishwasher water, and I had to go to work in an hour. I asked my dad what the chances were that we’d be able to turn the water back on before I went to work. He told me chances weren’t good. This is why I went to the gym just to take a shower.

Now, if you’ve never walked into the gym in workout clothes and walked out of the gym in a dress shirt and tie, it’s an interesting experience. You get some strange looks from the people at the front desk. There’s no real way to cover up the fact that you went to the gym just to shower. I thought about maybe going,

“I came in here, got in shape, found a wife, and found a job! Now I’m done with the gym! I’m successful!”

So, I took a shower, and I was almost done getting dressed when a guy came in from swimming. He proceeded to take off his swimsuit, which wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary. After all, I was in a locker room. What was perplexing was what he said before he took off his swimsuit. He said,

“Here come the kids!”

………

Now, I don’t know why he decided to say this. I have 3 guesses as to what he was trying to say.

1.     He could have meant there were actually kids coming in from the pool. If this were the case, why would he wait until this specific moment to take off his swimsuit? Is he thinking, “The kids are coming, so now is the time to take off my drawers!”  I question your timing sir. I feel like I should have perhaps followed him out of the gym to make sure he didn’t go to any public parks.

2.     My second guess as to what he meant was that perhaps “The Kids” is some kind of stage name he had chosen for his nether regions. To which I would respond, “I don’t really need an introduction. But I appreciate your dedication to stage presence and presentation” Also, I would ask, “If you, in fact, chose this name for your “down theres” why would you choose “The Kids” Why not something a little more manly? Like “Here comes the thunder” perhaps

3.     My third guess of this man’s intentions is that he was, in fact, referring to his privates in a physiologically accurate way. After all, that’s where kids come from. If this were true, I would say to him, “ I don’t really need ‘the talk’. I’ve had it before, but I appreciate your concern for my education.” But I realized that if, in fact, he is giving “the talk” to people, he is doing so by taking off his pants!

After all of these, things went through my head, I realized that this stranger had giving me A TON of material for my next blog post and I wanted to thank him. Now, bear in mind, that I have a tendency to take an awkward situation, and make it more awkward. So, in an attempt to express my gratitude, I tapped him on the shoulder and said,

“Thank you so much for what you did. You have no idea how much you’ve helped me.”

……

I realized what I said after I said it. I also realized that there was no possible way to recover from what I said. So, I just walked away.

I saw the man again at the gym, and it was still awkward. So, in order to break the ice, I misguidedly said the first thing that came to my mind,

“So, how are the kids?”

Why God Cares.

It all started in my public speaking class last semester. We were supposed to give a speech to persuade the class on any topic of our choosing. Everyone else in the class, including me, gave a "happy go lucky" speech on some frivolous topic. Then, another member of our class went up to speak and dropped a bombshell. He spoke about God and agnosticism. Agnostics, while not denying the existence of God, in a way rebuke God for letting pain and suffering occur in our lives. My class member proceeded to make his argument and rebuke God by showing some very graphic images of injustices, crimes, starvation, and mutilation. He then argued that if God exists, he just doesn't care. He stated that if God cared he most certainly would have stopped these heinous events from occurring. I regret my decision to speak on a frivolous topic, and thereby not giving myself a forum to counter what my classmate said. However, I now wish to issue my rebuttal.

This argument, as presented by my classmate, despite the graphic presentation, is neither a new nor a revolutionary idea. In fact, I remembered it right away as an argument I learned about in my freshman year of college in my Philosophy class. The argument was first presented by and ancient Greek philosopher named Epicurus. Here is what he said. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

What my classmate, and Epicurus for that matter, fail to take into consideration are two vital pieces of logic. First, the nature of Good and Evil. Second, the reason for man's existence. Let's begin with fault in logic number one:

As argued by many agnostics, if God really cared about us on earth, he would most certainly stop any and all pain and suffering from happening. If we take that logic further, the only way for an Omnipotent God to accomplish this would be to force everyone to choose Good and not Evil. Therefore, the ideal God, in an agnostic's mind, would be a god that takes away our freedom to choose and thereby ends all pain and suffering. Sounds great right? However, I pose a question. What constitutes a correct choice? For example, if a criminal holds someone at gunpoint and forces them to commit a crime, it is not the victims fault that the crime was committed, but the criminal's fault. However, what if the criminal were to force the victim to do a good deed instead of a crime? Did the victim just make a correct decision? No! In fact, evil has been accomplished. The very essence of making a good decision is that the person making the good decision has to act freely and do the good deed out of their own free will. The agnostic's view of an ideal God appears to me as being the exact description of the devil.

This brings me to point out the second fault in my classmate's logic. The lack of understanding of the reason for man's existence on Earth. If God were to force man to make only good decisions, as agnostics believe, what progress would man make? I would ask an agnostic who is also a parent if they treat their children the same way they believe God should treat us. Do they prevent their child from experiencing any pain? Do they always stop their children from making poor decisions? If so, I would suggest they first take a parenting course instead of lecturing God on how to treat us. Most parents who love their children exercise a certain degree of "laissez faire" that is, letting their children learn from their mistakes. It is common experience for almost every child to touch a hot stove. From this experience, the child learns that the stove is hot and should not touch it. If this experience were deprived of us as children, there would be no other way for us to learn about the danger of a hot stove. Likewise, if God were to deprive us, his children, the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of others, I wouldn't categorize this god as a loving God, rather a selfish god who hoards all knowledge to himself, not allowing us to learn and grow. It is apparent that God lets us experience pain, in order to learn from it. He lets us experience sorrow, and grow from it.

In conclusion, God allows man to make mistakes. God is a loving parent, and as any parent, He must not like it that we hurt, kill, maim, ridicule, or otherwise harm one another. However, He let's these things happen because he knows that if He didn't, only evil would come to pass. If all negative experience were withheld from us, we would not have an opportunity to learn and grow, which, in the end, is the very purpose for our existence. For these reasons I know that God is a loving, kind, and merciful Father. Not because he doesn't let me to fall down, but because he allows me to pick myself up.