I'm Bored

2007-07-21

Did you notice that I seem to start most of my posts with the word "so,"  I did, and as such I decided to explicitly not begin my post that way.  It's a 12 step program, like AA, but for people who begin their sentences with so, like, or anyways.  Anyways isn't even a word...

Anyways, that's not the point of this blog, the point of this blog is boredom.  Let's get one thing established from the get go, my life is pretty cool right now.  I have a job I love and an active capoeira community.  For me to complain about my life would be like an occupational surfer, living in Hawaii, complaining that he hasn't "caught" any "like, really killer waves"  of recent... "dude."  Every now and then, however, I do tend to feel like things are getting a bit routine.  It turns out that routine is not necessarily desireable, even when your routine involves potentially getting kicked in the face on occasion.  Go figure.  Now, as far as my immidiate situation goes, my moment of roteness was alleviated by a surprise workshop and an invitation to someones birthday get together.  Said get together offeres the promise of salsa dancing and cake (because those two things go together like stationary and toddlers... think about it).  As you might suppose, I have a point, I will be arriving at it momentarily, and, largely, that point is not to recount how my weekend was (although it was wonderful, thank you for asking).  First, I would like to mention that I added a new feature, it's the ability to put a break in long posts.  It looks a little something like this:

Ok, and we're back.  So has anyone else noticed that we put a decent amount of work into attempting to alleviate boredom in our lives.  I'm not just talking about the "dude what are we going to do friday night," kind of boredom.  To some degree I'm also referring to that "why am I here?" thing that we go through as we wait for the time to pass between birth and passing on.  In other words the need for purpose.  I'm also talking about the desire to not be alone that most of us tend towards, after all, even the most hardcore Dungeons and Dragons fan must emerge from his mother's basement on occasion to find other Dungeon's and Dragons fans to play with. 

Many of us, so I've heard, look to find comfort in the company of the opposite gender, hoping for at least a brief respite from our meta-boredom (don't look it up, I just made that word up, I do that sometimes), and for a time, things may be good.  Often, however, this is simply the equivalent of placing your crazy grandmother in the corner while you get along with your daily affairs.  Sooner or later, your going to have to acknowledge her.  It may not be until a couple of years down the line when you've gained a little weight, and you've lost a little hair, and things start to hurt where the previously did not hurt before, but one day you hear a faint cry come from the corner, and you accidentally make eye contact.  You can try to play it off, but you're pretty much comitted then.

When it comes down to it, I don't think anyone wants to feel like they are trapped in their life.  I think that it is human nature to want to feel empowered and in control of our own destinies (a topic I will hopefully touch on in the future).  If we do not feel like we have this free will, I think it contributes to stress, and can put strain on these relationships that we have, at this point, put so much effort into building.  That's a bad thing, if you're keeping score. 

The initial thought that led me to write this, is that maybe we exist in a society that's somewhat counter productive to human nature.  I can only speak for myself, but I feel like I have to experiece new things in order to feel engaged in life.  I don't necessarily think that the paradigm that exists in society caters to that.  Largely it seems that at some point you choose what you want to be and that's what you are: a lawyer, an engineer, a watch maker.  In order to be successful in your career you specialize.  This can help with upward mobility, but probably leads to years of solving the same problems over and over again.  So, for the sake of illustration, one day, Batman decides that he doesn't want to be Batman anymore.  He'd rather be Wonder Man or something.  "Do you know how to lasso?"  we would ask.  "Do you own an invisible car, truck or plane.  Do you own anything invisible?"  "No,"  he would reply somewhat passively.  To which we would firmly state  "then I just don't think you're Wonder Man material."   To which he would reply  something to the effect of "But I'm freakin' Batman.  Batman."  I'm just saying if it's that hard for Batman, imagine how hard it would be for those of us without utility belts. 

Heil Giuliani

2007-07-18

So, I was poking through digg, and I came across an article about mr. Giuliani that I found interesting.  So on digg, what everyone seemed to be homing in on was the fact that if Giuliani came to presidential power, he would enact some form of fascist, dictatorship.  Honestly speaking, I don't know how much that bothers me as our government has decided that they're pretty much going to do what ever they want anyway.  Please note, if you click that link, it's not real news.  I do agree that we need to erode the culture of persecution, as stated, but that still doesn't make it news.

So, the thing I found interesting is that Giuliani talked of how the issue of crime in America is bigger than, and thusly will not be solved by, government.  He speaks of how society at large plays a role in the development of children, and that the society is no longer in the habit of attempting to breed good citizens.  More specifically, he was speaking of the lack of teaching ethics and virtues in school.  Now this I found interesting, because he's making a very good point that I largely agree with.  I agree that there should be some system in place for teaching kids these concepts of common decency, but we approach such topics timidly.  We ask questions like "if we teach ethics in school, won't Ganesh get mad,"  or we make statements like, "I dunno', that sounds like something Jesus would say.  I don't know if I'm down with that."  It's not like I'm saying that we should start teaching the myth of evolution and the science of Genesis.  I'm just saying that, you know, maybe it's okay to teach kids not to kill each other.  That maybe that's not such a bad thing.  I'm pretty sure that the religions can agree on that one.  And for the religions that can't agree with that, maybe we should reconsider that we really want all the religions present here.  I'm not trying to be a bigot or anything, I just don't want to see any more virgins get hurt.

Origin Story

2007-07-07

So it all started with this nebulous idea between two guys that they should do something interwebs related.  Initially it was conceived as a webcomic, and a rather quirky one at that.  Popsocket (as it was called), was sort of a mixed reflection of both popular media and our unique sense of humor.  For years our personal conversations would end in "This should be a Popsocket!"  Indeed, we even decided that we should start writing them down (we never actually did write them down,but at least we certainly decided that it should be done).  Sadly, only two episodes (webisodes?) of Popsocket where ever produced.  As it turns out, drawing a comic takes a decent amount of effort, and writers have a tendency to be distracted by shiney metal objects  (and dull metal objects, and brightly colored objects, and Wednesdays), so Popsocket never amounted to more than a vauge flicker in the back of our minds.  It's the kind of thing that we might reminisce about fondly on warm summer days.  Who knows, maybe it will see the light of daysome day, but for the moment, it's gone and that's just how it's going to be.  But the fire still burns...

So these two guys can't seem to let go of the idea of collaboratively doing a something together with one another.  The idea of doing a blog actually came from a friend.  He suggested doing a baha'i inspired blog, which made sense to me.  So, the idea rolled around a few more months before actions were put into action (as that's what you do with them).  For the most part, we knew what we wanted to write about, but how to present ourselves with a bigger task.  After several intense brain storming sessions over just the name of the blog (you were this close to reading the cannonical monocle, you don't even know). 

Hopefully this explains what The Candy Coating is about exactly.  We hope to see you there... or here.  Whatever.

Uh...yeah...turn my headphones up

2007-07-01

There was a misunderstanding, in the lands of men. But, then the people got a taste...a taste of the candy coating.