Things I desperately want. (In no particular order)

A hug.
A job.
A normal sleeping pattern.
A long black fitted coat.
A deeper understanding of the universe.
A cuddle. (Can that be used as a noun?)
A good amount of money. ($1,500)
A licence.
A brain that understands math.
A new camera.
A scholarship.
A movie marathon.
A pair of wings.

Why I'm not an atheist or a theist.

Forget the Bible, the Koran, the cathedrals, the mosques, the temples, the priests, and forget the doctrines. Instead, think about the central question.

Given what has been proven by science and reasoning, does there still exist the possibility of a "god"?

There are those who say that yes, a god does indeed exist because a book said so. If that were all we needed to prove something, I'd leap from a building and fly. For as the great and powerful Douglas Adams once wrote in his text "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."
But we all know that doesn't quite work (Because some of us have tried).

So books aren't proof.

However! If you ask a scientist why there isn't a god you're bound to either get an opinion or the honest 'Well, I can't say there isn't a god. But I can say that there isn't sufficient proof for the existence of a god.'

Okay so orthodox religion isn't reliable and science is working on something else entirely.

But! There is some circumstantial evidence that points to a god! Evidence that wouldn't stand up in the court of law, like hearsay (the Bible) or something that looks like there may have been someone here potentially sometime in the past but maybe not (the supposed "fine tuning" of the universe. The very concept of "fine tuning" implies that there was a tuner, therefore the name gives the theists an advantage. They do have the handicap of the burden of proof, so we'll let them have this one.)
Moving on, this fine tuning refers to the balances in the universe that led to the formations of stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae, black holes and sandwiches. A nice list of them appears on a website ridiculously biased and untrustworthy. (But they cite sources. That makes it just a little bit more okay to take them seriously.) Fine tuning refers to the scientifically verified fact that if certain constants in the universe like gravity and such were slightly off, the universe would be an inhospitable expanse of space. Here's a quote I found that adequately explains how exact these things must be to maintain life:

"One part in 10 to the 37 is such an incredibly sensitive balance that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height of about 239,000 miles..." "Next, pile dimes from here to the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America. Paint one dime red and mix it into the billions of piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick the red dime are one in 10 to the 37." - Dr. Hugh Ross

Shit, right? But that still doesn't prove there is a god. It's pretty convincing though.

Another fact in regards to the structure of the universe is just how well things seem to work with numbers. In essence there is nothing that says 2+2 should equal 4. Humanity has assigned number values to things and found that certain things are always true no matter how many times you try. This is true for ridiculously complex mathematics. The fact that the universe adheres to these mathematical concepts and theories sometimes boggles my mind. This language which we created ourselves (mathematics) accurately fits inside the universe like it was meant to be there. Most of the time I think, well that's not really a surprise, we built mathematics to explain things so it does what we want it to. But math isn't just a set of bendable rules. It's a ridiculously complex and rigid set of rules that tends to know things before we do. And that, my friends makes no sense. The fact that a mathematical theory can describe things we've never seen before and then turn out to be true implies that math is something central to the universe. The core of what I'm saying is that the math was always in the universe even before we discovered it. It has it's own laws. And I wonder why it does.

But. All rants about math being the "language of god" aside, These are the reasons I cannot accept atheism or theism. Neither side has a bit of real proof.

If science is right, everything is predictable, and if enough mathematical equations were crunched, I could predict the future based on all the atoms positions in the universe, and how they are slated to interact, right down to the atoms in my mind.

If religion is right, everything is predictable because god has the ultimate say in what happens. God is all knowing and all present. Therefore, when the universe began, god knew the end. And that means god knew how the universe would unfold and did it. Therefore god chose how we would act billions of yeas before we were born.

(Come to think of it, science and religion agree on some things.)

Tune in next time when I'll talk about something else.

On my roof.

In suburbia the houses are all basically the same. Mirrored, rotated, copy pasted. It's a much better place to grow up than most people seem to think. I'd much rather grow up in a cookie cutter home than... say live in an impoverished country where drinking water is something you earn. Suburbia also has an iconic beauty that (I hear) was a dream for those back when Steven Spielberg started making movies featuring these neighborhoods. Anyhow. To the main event:

To change things.

I feel like doing something drastic. Like walking out of my house for a month, or changing my name. Speaking the truth to people around me. Anything to simply twist my life into something drastically new. Anything to break the pattern. Anything to bring me closer to the fantasy world I keep in my head.

Beautiful Malancholy.

A beautiful mix of joy and depression. A feeling that reminds you that to miss a pair of lips means you've had them before. That to want companionship means theres hope for it. Even that there is a deep beauty in everything.

I'm taking pictures tonight.

This song is also amazing: Here.

My old habits...

My old habits are still out there, fading. I used to stencil in drainage ditches in my suburban neighborhood. I went back to see what remained of them and to my surprise, some of them were still in good shape. Others were not so lucky. Here are a few of the pictures I took. The rest can be found Here.







This one made me feel especially special. It's a stencil someone else made which they sprayed next to my (and Gabe's) original 6 foot anatomical heart stencil.

A question of dire importance.

I really do want input on this people!

And I know I screwed up the title of it.

I want...

I want to create a piece of artwork that causes people to be removed from reality. I believe that this has been my goal all along. I want viewers to enter into my piece and suddenly know that they are somewhere else. I want to play with perception, twist the idea of reality. I want the "viewers" (it would be a multisensory expirence actually) to enter and become something else. They will leave my art with knoeledge they hadn't thought they would ever posess. I don't want them to be able to express it in words.

I want to explore what is real.
What defines art.
How far I can push the liminal idea of space and time.
I want them to forget they are looking at a piece of artwork.
I want them to expirence it alone.
Trip the mind and have it fall into place somewhere else.
I want it to make them think they are dreaming.
I want them to faint inside it.
I want them to feel both small and infinite.
Expirence nothing and everything in one moment.
Find their senses incapable of comprehending.

So it's over.

Obama will finally win, and Hillary will bow out. Or so I hope. I think Hillary should play this song during her concession speech. It's upbeat enough to allow some optimism, but modest enough to retain the melancholy feel of a speech like that.

But people don't soundtrack their speeches. they really should...

Ghosts on the net.

What would happen to my Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and etc. accounts if I were to die tomorrow? Would they live on as a ghost on the net?

It's an interesting idea. Everything would continue on existing after my death like a carnival ride crafted by a dead man. Pages would load. Slide shows would play. Words would continue to exist with my thoughts and emotions. It's interesting to think of a ghost this way. Just as a profile page still exists after the host dies, so does a ghost. The page doesn't know that it's dead.

And is a page in some small way still the person who made it? If it still contains emotion in its texts and photos, does it not still retain some small part of the individual who made it?

Is this why profile sites are so popular? A natural instinct not only to be remembered by minds that will also die, but to leave a permanent mark on something. Just something to think about.

Oh my god. Look here.

"Hey!!!!my name is Haley and i love life...!" She died yesterday.