Ten ways to unfuck your life

I really need to get around to axeing the motivational crap out of my stumbleupon profile but until then I will put out a list myself. Enjoy it.

1) Eat a turkey sandwich - Tryptophan
2) Clip your nails outside - Less cleanup
3) Get some sunshine - Even if you're not an 'outdoor' type you are still a biological human and sunshine is part of your natural environment. Combine with #4 for added bonus.
4) Get some exercise - You will feel better and paradoxically more energetic if you stick with it.
5) Put down the porn for a while - If you're married or dating pay some attention to that person. If you're single it'll max out your energy which will make 3&4 all the more satisfying.
6) Read something inspiring - Try this, or this, or this, or this.
7) Do something 'wrong' on purpose - I don't mean drop kick a baby or poke a badger with a spoon. Everyone has a set of beliefs for life and they may or may not be working out. Try something counter intuitive.
8) Destroy a movie, a poem or a story - By that I mean pick it apart, piece by piece, and try to figure out how wrong it is. Don't ask me why but this will help you feel better. It might be a good idea to start here.
9) Look at a baby, some part of your soul will appreciate it.
10) Find something to laugh at. If it has to be your friend or neighbor, so be it.

Kirk Cameron's butt buddy: The banana man...

Ray Comfort.

No its not what you feel in the bright sun after a generous application of UV blocking colloidal nano-tech it's the name of one of our generation's greatest dingbats. His blog: (clicking this link will bring you to an IQ deficient portion of the web)

I will say one good thing about Mr. Comfort: He allows more controversial/derogatory comments than those brain dead ass clowns at uncommon decent. And yes, William Dembski is THE guy so mercilessly thrashed in many fine anti-creationist videos courtesy of my favorite youtube personality.

Anyway, I was looking at the RC blog and came across a post where Ray answers a bunch of biased questions, clearly written by sycophants and hangers on to his message that banana's are in fact a nightmare for atheists due to their ease of use and convenience.

Here are my own answers, which I hopefully will soon see in the comments section.

Q1: Do you believe in microevolution? Yes, and therefore macroevolution and therefore the origin of life from natural causes. Microevolution is just evolution over a few generations, macro evolution differs only by timescale.

Q2: Do you believe in natural selection? Yes, it is inevitable. Also the 'lion eats lamb' statement is a little weird as NS applies to both species, not just one. Weaker lions starve, stronger lambs live to outrun the lions another day.

Q3: Do you think that one can be both a Christian and an evolutionist? Yes, though the cognitive dissonance must be something of a pain in the head.

Q4: Do you believe that the book of Genesis calls for a literal interpretation? Yes, and since it is clearly at odds with nearly everything we know now about world formation, abiogenesis, evolution, cosmology and physics we should literally throw it out as erroneous nonsense.

Q5: Do you believe that the earth was created in 6,000 years? There is no way that six days or 6 thousand years would have been enough time for intrastellar dust to coalesce, cool enough for liquid water to form, life to emerge and evolve and arrive at its present state. The earth is about 4 billion years old though its base components are much older.

Q6: In one sentence, what do you believe is the chief purpose of human life? To further mankind, enjoy the rare and fleeting moments we have on this earth and to derive whatever purpose we are suited to. This does not involve bowing to invisible authority unless one is so inclined to do so.

Q7: In one sentence, what is the ultimate purpose of this blog? Mental backflipping and misinformation. Oh and BANANA'S!!!

Q8: Is your belief in God's existence based on faith or absolute knowledge? Faith alone, and faith is never enough reason to believe in anything.

Q9: Do you believe that truth is relative? Truth is a human metaphor for good, reliable information. Even 'good' information is never perfect for it cannot reference every instance of itself in the universe so 'truth' must be relative.

Q10: In one sentence, what is "wisdom"? Wisdom is being able to apply what you know about the world and apply it in a general sense to other situations in order to detect patterns or trends and take account of them in novel situations.

Q11: In one sentence, what is "faith"? Faith is not solely biblical, it applies to a vast host of religions across the world many of them claiming to have exclusive access to the truth/heaven/enlightment and all that. Faith alone proves nothing.

Q12: In one sentence what does it mean to you to "prove" something? While I agree that its impossible to absolutely prove anything that does not mean we can't weed out bad ideas based on probabilty and corroborating evidence both for and against.

Q13: In one sentence, why should a person put his faith in Jesus Christ? In my opinion they should not. And to say humans with limited mental faculties subjected to harsh conditions deserve hell and damnation for eternity strikes me as a little cold. Surely an all-powerful being could make some provision for reform or repentence even if the subject in question does not deserve it.

A pint-sized epic journey.

Anyone who knows me is sure to have heard at least one of the epic tales. I list them briefly here now in no particular order.

Fireworks Quest in Myrtle Beach
Street Fighter II with all Characters
The Bamboo jungle epic.
The ultimate swimming comeback story - 12 month intro
Bloody Whitney
Worst trip ever
Arms Race
High Risk, High Reward - The last Halloween
Quitting the Spiritual Addiction
Quitting the Physical Addiction
The End of the World (of Warcraft)
Fair Coin original draft.

I'm sure these dozen tales, all which can no doubt compete with the 12 labors of Hercules or Finn McCool's similar tasks, are worthy of at least one post. Some have already been addressed. These are the stories that live in memory and are told and retold many times before.

The other day, after reminiscing about the bygone days of bomb building and gallivanting around in the woods I decided to pay a visit to google earth and revisit the third item on the list.
The ill-fated expedition to the bamboo jungle. Care to hear more?

Well settle in dear reader, for this is no small tale. Read on to discover heartache, bloodshed, fear, panic, cows, exploration and finally conquest. We begin, like most child hood stories, with a very bad decision.

As a 12 year old I thought myself reasonably intelligent. It seemed the biggest issues I ran into were not those of my own making, not yet, but rather when I decided to do something without first thinking about the consequences.

In this case it was too late in the day for an epic undertaking. When Brian and Paul showed up with younger brother Wade around 5 o'clock and announced their intention to go to the bamboo jungle I knew for a fact that we would be turned back. All we had were our clothes and no food, water, flashlights or anything else should the worst happen. But I was bored and decided to go along. We might be able to make it, I thought. If we move quickly...
If you look at the first picture closely, and I don't expect anyone to do so, you can see the crucial details. Basically the Bamboo jungle was a clump of rocks and trees where small stalks of bamboo were plentiful and more or less free for the taking. To get there one simply had to follow the creek from behind our house downstream past the big pipes, through the bendies and past the little blue pipe.

After the pipe the creek joined with another and at that point became about 30 feet wide and mostly shallow. There were a few points where sand banks or fallen trees or even some big rocks would carve the flow into deeper and narrower channels.

We began by walking south down the road and then headed west through woods. At the time there were a few less houses. The one we cut through was under construction at the time.
2
The area described by the blue arrow is our path through the woods. Remember that house was nothing but a frame and it was fall so the surrounding woods were sparse and easy to traverse. I know they look impenetrable but this part of the journey provided no serious challenge.
3
The above picture is simply the next chunk of land to the west of where we left the road. After the woods there were some cleared fields and if you notice the long strip of field above the yellow push pin icon *placemark, whatever you call it* you see the airfield. It's weird but it is actually a grass landing strip that our neighbor would take off and land from. We headed south, over the blue pipe.
4
If you look closely at this picture you can see where the pipe stretches over the creek. If I remember correctly it was about 8 feet over the creek bed and there was some underbrush to contend with. Paul was scared and we had to cajole him to walk across the pipe. I believe we usually walked on it but at least once I know I shimmied across to avoid falling into the nastiness of the creek.
5
From there it was a straight shot to the Bamboo Jungle. We skirted the woods along side the creek looking for a place to cross the whole way down. Normally we would have knee-high waterproof boots to make it easier but this was spur of the moment so it was nothing but sneakers. We looked and looked and finally we were there, staring across at the object of our quest. So close and yet so far. There was still nowhere to cross just yet. We decided to go with a fairly narrow part of the creek.


The Red X indicates approxiamtely where things turned decidedly against us. Those three trees played a role in a different story, one alas, for another day. The cows merely bore witness to the unfolding tragedy as we began to cross the creek.

I wish I had a picture to illustrate exactly the terrain that we faced here. Instead you get a crappy illustration via MS Paint.

It was a good 6-8 feet down to the sandy creek bed. This was easy enough to get down. Brian and I crossed first, taking off our shoes and socks to keep them dry. At this point it was already twilight and we should have already forged our way back to civilization. Brian blazed the first trail and for his troubles got a HUGE thorn stuck inside his foot.

I mean the thing was in at least an inch and it was almost as thick as a friggin' pencil. Panic and Chaos ensued. I told Wade and Paul to get back up the bank (easier said than done) and that I would pull out the thorn and Brian and I would head back on the other side.

The logic wasn't exactly there but at least I was making decisions...the first was probably the best. Removing a HUGE thorn in a friend's foot is something to be done with the utmost care.

"I'm going to count to three," I said. Brian nodded, he was in hell with pain. "Ok, 1...2...[yoink!]"

Screaming followed. We had watched "Alive" recently and I remembered one of the guys did something similar so the person wouldn't be expecting it. Brian tied his bloody gaping puncture wound off with his muddy sock (medical community cringes) and we set off back up the way we came.

Paul and Wade climbed back up. As we were leaving Wade had already made it and Paul was struggling to get up the embankment.

The cows, now on our side of the creek watched passively. It was hard to see much of anything now. We ran, fueled and fanned by adrenaline over the plains dodging rocks and cowpies with admirable dexterity.
This might be hard to see but the red lines indicate our journey homeward. Those three lines of trees each happened to coincide with a 4 foot tall barbed wire fence. There were three total, no injuries were sustained by them.
In the dark of new night and our maddened state of panic and fear we didn't quite notice that we passed the fork and just kept running up the creek. After passing another 4 fences we calmed down enough to realize that we were lost and panicked all over again!

After the 4th fence we noticed some lights and decided we'd take our chances rather than spend the night groping through the dark knowing full well the smelly and prickly horrors we would face. Cautiously we stepped out onto an open space with regularly spaced lights along each side.

The airfield! Life and liberty at last! There was just the problem of sneaking past a well-lit mansion. I think they had some dogs and we were fearful of getting mauled after such a harrowing escape through the woods.
Creeping carefully, and ridiculously, we made our way past the tennis courts and around the huge imposing house. House noises and the weirdness of being able to see more than just vague gray outlines. Finally we were able to creep out to the driveway at which point we launched ourselves back towards the road. The 'end point' is a stone ring that served as a decorative roundabout. I never used it once I started driving. Brian's mom, mounted 'top her mini-van found us here and we were shuttled back to safety. Wade and Paul had to make their way back another way.

Everyone made it home safe and sound, Brian got a tetanus booster and no one was seriously traumatized by the events. However in the interest of objectivity I wanted to see just how far we traveled to come across such a memorable ordeal. The result...
Yeah. 2.08 miles. STUNNING.

Now here we are faced with a decision. Do we decide that the journey was still epic in scope and detail subjectively but not objectively? Or do we, confronted with the inescapable evidence determine that it was not a worthy tale to tell?

(Stop here if you don't want to read my inescapably atheistic reasoning below.)

This tale, one of many many many experiences I have faced is the strongest personal argument I can muster to answer the question: If there is no God, Heaven or Hell then what's the point of life on Earth?

Pessimistically one could argue that there is no point and it makes just as much sense to be good as evil. Or negating those concepts one could say that life exists only to serve self and that any other goal is detrimental.

I'm not renowned for my optimism but age is mutating my personality in ways I did not expect. This tale was not just an idiotic trot through the woods. Nor was it some heroic deed worthy of song and praise. It was a learning experience. Yes looking back it was laughable and anti-climactic but it stands out in great contrast to the rest of middle school.

I'll never forget the next day. On the bus to school Brian recounted the whole tale to Tabitha, a girl our age, who listened to a truncated version and then immediately changed the subject back to more sociable matters. Never mind that brush with tetanus and danger, forget the turbulent adrenaline rampage through the woods and fields of our neighborhood. No what Sally thinks is so much more important.

I already liked girls at that point but I have never given up on the idea that they are just really weird. I still think so.