David’s Ramblings

I’ve learned a lot of things since I got to college. One of those things is that I still don’t care about sports, even though I go to a school with a real sports team. Another is that Calculus sucks, and it was not entirely my high school teacher’s fault (though he still holds some blame). But the most important thing I’ve learned is to never accept a challenge to post to your website every day for a month when that month just happens to be the month of finals.

Goodness, I’ve got a ton more of these English journals to do, so I’ll make this post brief by copy pasting in one of the one’s I’ve finished. What else am I going to do with them? Let the professor read them and grade me for completion? What a waste.

Rick

I’ve known my latest stepfather, Rick, for about seven years. Yes, I do say latest because I had one before him, and, of course, before that, there was my real father, who I didnÕt even know existed until I was around eight years old. My stepfather Tren makes for a whole range of interesting stories. IÕll just say that one memory comes to mind that defines Tren more than any other Ð the night he threatened to kill my mother.

I was sleeping over at my friendÕs house that night. I remember my friendÕs mother (I donÕt even remember his name for sure… I think it was Brett…) coming downstairs and telling me that my mom was coming to pick me up and I needed to pack my things. The next thing I knew I was in the back seat of the car along with a some clothing and my two sisters, all of which was hastily thrown in, driving away from town. It was a somewhat stressful night, to say the least, so by the time I was ten, I had experienced two fathers, and neither had done very well in my books.

When I first met Rick, I was as excited as my siblings were. He seemed like a great guy to us. I guess thatÕs not really hard to imagine when you think about what I just said of the previous stepfather, but we liked him. He took us out for ice cream and other fun things while he was dating our mom. He even wanted to be sure we were okay with him asking our mom to marry him. It seemed the third time was certainly going to be the charm for my mom.

We had gone a year or two without a father figure by that point, and Rick seemed like a great fit. We figured we’d love to have him as our stepfather; we were quite happy to hold up a sign declaring that fact as our mother’s answer to his proposal. On the one hand, I think we were right; Rick was a decent stepfather (though I have little personal experience to base that on). On the other hand, he certainly could have been better.

In fact, by the time I was old enough to leave home, I couldn’t get out fast enough Ð literally. I left town right after graduation. Not the day after, but the night of, I left directly after the ceremony. I had arranged to move with out of town and live with my grandmother over the summer before I left the state for college. I was really that tired of living under the same roof as him.

LetÕs not get ahead of ourselves though, thereÕs a good six or seven years between the two extremes of practically begging him to be our stepfather and running away from him as fast as possible. The transformation was slow, but certainly definite. I do believe some of it was probably just normal teenage angst, but I feel a larger portion falls on RickÕs own actions.

After the marriage, Rick took no time in getting to work on annoying us, or as he probably thought, establishing himself as the father. Within a few weeks, we were told that we were no longer allowed to watch The Simpsons or The X-Files, which had both been some of our favorites because they werenÕt appropriate.

We then moved into our new home and he spent as much time complaining that we werenÕt working hard enough to move things in as he did moving things in himself. I remember that I happened to have a nasty headache that day, but he was absolutely certain that I was making it up to get out of working. As a result Ð donÕt ask me how this works Ð he decided to declare television off-limits as a Sunday activity. The fighting had begun, albeit sporadically. I remember thinking by even that early point that maybe Rick wasnÕt the cool stepfather we thought heÕd be.

I really should be working on one of my seemingly hundreds of assignments before they’re due this weekend. On the plus side, that includes some writing projects which I plan on posting here when they’re finished. Until then, you’ll just have to wait.

Well, gettin’ ready to go with my Uncle down to Florida tomorrow. I’ll be spending the Thanksgiving break with him. It should be fun, though he warned me to bring a pistol to shoot myself if his kids got too annoying.

Let me be honest with you – I’m completely out of things to post for this “post every day for a month challenge”. I feel less creative every day. It’s good that the weekend will involve me going back to the stone ages (no wi-fi), because it’ll give me an excuse to not make posts for the next few days and hopefully recuperate.

I’ll just say one thing and you can get back to doing whatever it is you’re going to do this Thanksgiving weekend – pumpkin pie is what Thanksgiving is all about. Without pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving would just be another day of the week with a little more food. Pumpkin pie is awesome, and the only reason to bother celebrating Thanksgiving. Don’t let Thanksgiving pass you by without getting a slice, preferably served on the side of a healthy helping of whipped cream. Yum. My mouth just waters thinking about it.

First off, pertaining to my promised one post every day – according to MST which most (read: all three of you) readers are using, I actually have 2 minutes till the deadline. Besides, it doesn’t count as a new day until I go to sleep. I got busy playing some Diablo II… such a classic.

Now, on to the topic of interest. It’s been drawn to my attention that my last post on religion was rather short and blunt. I think it’s time to expound. The squeamish may want to look away, this could get dirty.

So, I started off with a good line last time; let’s reiterate and expound: “Surprise! I’m not Mormon… at least not at the moment.” These words were, as I’ve said before, waiting to fall upon my parents given the right moment… but it turned out I was too chicken and my friend had to let them in on it.

I want to go more over where I am and why, and maybe a little more thoughts about what my parents thought of the news. Where are my religious thoughts right now? They’ve sort of taken a back seat to the rest of life, but I’ve give a fair amount of thought into deciding that I don’t have any idea what I believe. I just know that I believed that I “believed” in the Church because I was raised to. I much prefer to have my own beliefs now that I’m on my own, but I’m not sure what those are yet. I’m keeping an open mind, and hopefully I’ll come up with something, even if it is what I started with.

My basic hope is to arrive at something that I can logically and reasonably believe in. I don’t think that’s too much trouble for whatever deity is out there to work with. When I say logically, I’m even willing to accept religious logic such as “because god says so” as long as it’s reasonable to believe that god exists. I’m not limiting this to undeniable evidence or something, just to something believable.

One of the reasons I found my previous religion to be unsuitable was simply that I was unfairly biased to it, and could see that in my life. When I prayed, I’d convince myself that the absence of promised answers was just some form of answer. The last few years I went to church simply because it would have been hell to not go in my house, not because I particularly wanted to or because I believed. I knew all the right answers to keep up appearances, but that was the best of my “faith” at the time.

Other issues also bring to light the fact that I personally have lost the faith in “God says so” for the LDS religion. Things like why blacks were not allowed the priesthood after Brigham Young (from what I understand, Joseph Smith ordained a black man in the priesthood, perhaps my history is off?) down through the 1970′s. Or how Joseph managed to translate another set of plates that was complete jibberish (Kinderhook plates). Or the fact that learning any of this stuff is said to be detrimental to your spiritual side and you must avoid the “one-sidedness” of the Anti-Mormons wherever possible (which begs the question, if Anti-Mormons are one-sided, what do you call Mormons that will not listen to that other side…?)

It’s possible that these issues could be resolved with time and study. We’ll have to see. My mom would like to convince me that I must come back right now, but I don’t think that is possible or even healthy. I have to know for sure before I come back to something like the LDS church. It’s a lot of commitment, and not to be taken lightly. Until then, if anybody wants to know what religion I am, we’ll go with Satanist… just kidding… Deist. That’s a safe bet for the very minimum I could believe. It still seems logical enough that some higher power helped put this universe together.

Well, I’ll get back to fielding my mom’s constant nagging to drop everything and becoming Mormon. I know she just loves me and thinks she’s doing what’s best.

Today, since I’m totally out of anything interesting to post about (like anything I posted before was interesting…), I’ll write about three awesome movies – Donnie Darko, Boondock Saints, and Equilibrium. None of these movies is appropriate for people who take issue to an R rating, especially for violence, language, or both. So, if that applies to you, you can just ignore my praises and go on with your lives as normal.

Donnie Darko is a genre bender. It seems to be a drama, but once you’ve watched the whole thing, you might be more apt to call it sci-fi. It’s about a troubled teen named Donnie Darko who has an imaginary six foot tall bunny for a friend. As the movie progresses, we see Donnie becoming apparently more troubled, doing all sorts of naughty things that his imaginary friend Frank tells him to do. And then the ending happens, which totally changes the whole meaning of the movie, but I won’t give that away. This movie has a fair amount of swearing, but is otherwise relatively calm. This movie makes you think, and for that it gets a 5Ï€ rating (out of 900º). See if you can figure out what the hell is going on in only one viewing (I couldn’t).

Boondock Saints is a very violent movie. Very violent is actually putting it lightly. We’re talking blood, fingers blown off, toilets dropped on people from the top of a ten story building… the whole nine yards. Boondock Saints is about two brothers who believe they are on a mission from god to kill the bad guys. All of them – the mob, the pimps, the drug dealers, everybody. And they’re good at it. The whole movie is awesome, but I especially love how it transitions between scenes of the detective looking over the crime scene and the actual things that took place. This movie is not for the faint of heart, it includes large amounts of violence, swearing, and a hint or two of nudity… but it’s so cool. 5Ï€.

Equilibrium is also violent. Though it is not as bloody as Boondock Saints, more people die in Equilibrium. The story is somewhat akin to 1984. The world has been devastated by the third world war, and in response has taken action to prevent a fourth by destroying man’s ability to feel emotion. Everyone takes an emotion inhibiting drug, and there’s an iron-fisted force to ensure that “sense-offenders” are caught and given their just reward. The Grammaton Cleric is the main strength behind this force, a person trained with near supernatural fighting ability. We start the movie by watching one take out a room of men with machine guns using only pistols. An awesome movie with a pretty good story line, it’s a shame it got buried by the Matrix in theaters. 4.5Ï€.

There are so many great movies in the world, but these three are definitely worth putting on your list.