Worse, the Shire...

On an evening this week, I found myself in the midst of an argument with my sister. The debate was outwardly about my “sneaking” some Worcestershire sauce into a stew she was making. However, as the argument unfolded – or dragged on – it became clear something else was at issue.
Relativism was in the process of crashing our dialectical party.
After finals, I plan to adumbrate, and then develop, an argument for the rejection of relativism, not only in the particular context of the Worcestershire debate, but in general, too. I haven’t the time for it now, though, so in the off-chance that someone should read this post and decide to post an argument – whether sympathetic or antipathetic to my project – feel free. However, do not expect any response until I’ve written all my final papers.
On a side note, although I haven’t read even half of it as of this post, I urge any and everyone willing to expend the effort to read Hans Jonas’ The Phenomenon of Life. Scot, I urge you so especially, if you haven’t already read it. It contains some pointed criticisms of Whitehead’s thought, and presents its own, very appealing version of the philosophy of organism. Jonas’ book is also a far more manageable read than Whitehead’s stuff.
At any rate, I shall return, fortified.

The seeds of Neurosis bear fruit...

This will be a brief little post. It has one objective: to celebrate the band, Pelican. I just got their album, Australasia today. Granted, I haven't really let it sit too long, but I predict I will come to like this album and this band quite a bit. Yeah, they share Neurosis' aesthetic -- and it is Neurosis' aesthetic. But, Pelican's brand of sludge is not the Dionysian ecstasy of Neurosis. It's more like the orange glow of amplifier tubes, or a warm, swiftly moving breeze on sweat-moistened skin. Much metal demonstrates its power in order to strike the listener with a kind of terror and awe, like a petty, omnipotent but nonetheless insecure God. Pelican, on the other hand, asserts its power benevolently, bestowing blessings on its beloved: the listener.
They have a more recently-released album. I know nothing about it. But Australasia is entirely worthwhile.

What comes with ease...

I've been thinking lately about the old dictum, "Nothing worth doing is easy." Some part of me agrees, to a certain extent. Another part of me -- a part with a louder voice and a kind of cynical faith in the tendency of all hope to falter -- finds this little aphorism insufficient. For that part of me, the proverb is like a fist-sized jawbreaker with a tiny core of vitamins. It's layer upon layer of candy -- a positively detrimental nutritional vacuum -- surrounding something of value. The upshot is this: by the time one reaches the center, where real worth exists, one's palette has been so beguiled by pleasant but empty flavor, that what truly benefits one is about as seductive to the tongue as styrafoam packing peanuts. And, of course, there's the fact that one is accustomed by the outer shell of the jawbreaker to exclusively register what is immediately stimulating. As a result, like a dog rendered finicky by a diet of table-scrap meat-fat, not only does one find the good uninspiring, one finds it repellant. Eventually, one conflates one's wants with one's needs, and what is truly needful fades into the river of forgetfulness.
Of course, many men much better than I -- great men, in fact -- have described this phenomenon with infinitely more finesse, insight and erudition, i.e. Plato and Aristotle, among others. They've pointed out that the world is full -- and will likely continue to be full -- of men and women who've fallen to ruin, for all intents and purposes, irrevocably. These people have been so thoroughly disoriented that turning their eyes toward the good -- not to mention teaching them to see it -- would be an Herculean effort. They live like gaping orifices, availing themselves of whatever opportunities for sensation present themselves.
This lifestyle -- which, I'm ashamed to admit, I and almost everyone else I know lives, to some degree -- is one of such weakness, that one begins to find pain in any situation relatively deviod of titillation. One forgets that life is largely composed of plains of ambiguity, which stretch out before one in every direction. These, like all plains, reward one's gaze -- one's effort to distinguish features on their faces -- with blind eyes. What a surprise to find that, amongst the grasses that spring unaided from these very plains, we must sow and reap whatever joy and sorrow will constitute our lives. A real world does not exist between even the most masterfully manipulated spikes of pain and pleasure. Meaning is not a eisegetical matter, but an exegetical one. One must, if one is to be happy, learn to look to the given, rather than at it. Value haunts the world and only if we awaken to the fact the we are not merely in its vicinity, but actually a part, a phenomenon of it, will that value appear to us. The good is steward to whomever darkens its doorway.
However, when one comes bearing the kind of mindset emblematic and consequent of sayings like the one invoked at the outset of this essay -- a mindset that regards the good as something that arises out of strenuous, rigorous, artificial augmentation of what in the midst of which we find ourselves -- one cannot expect to have even an inkling of that in which difficulty or ease lies.
"Nothing worth doing is easy," indeed.

Sincerity, just for the sake of contrast...

I'm reading Process and Reality -- among other things -- with a friend this summer. I think Whitehead's pretty interesting and his command of language is rather astonishing -- though the density it affords him is sometimes exasperrating. But, any time I run across a philosopher whose thought has such an obviously metaphysical thrust, I have to read him (or her -- I guess it's possible). Metaphysics is what got me into philosophy, after all.
But his vision of the world is so seductive as to give me pause. I find myself -- though only occasionally and vaguely -- wanting to believe.
Just to clarify, the issues that fomented my loss of faith are decidedly not those that I find currently precluding my return to theism. The situation has actually gotten pretty complex, and I'm rather proud that my unbelief has infinitely more depth than I think it did at the time it initially dawned upon me. I simply do not understand how I arrived at religious belief in the past, and I haven't a clue what coming to believe now would entail.
Would a decision to believe be a decision? What kind of decision? Would it be honest? Is it a mistake to consider psychologically- and not rationally-motivated beliefs illegitimate, or accord them less respect? Why would I believe? Would the "edge" that invaded my every waking hour after my crisis of faith disappear? Would the loss of this "edge" -- which I consider one of the engines driving my efforts to succeed and be happy in the world -- mean the eventual loss of any ability I might have to do something great? Is a will-to-greatness -- and I mean a legitimate greatness, not celebrity, etc. -- compatible with a religious sensibility?
Maybe the most significant question is as follows:
What would have to happen for me to be compelled to believe (again)?
Now, this isn't a question necessarily of "returning to the fold," in the strict sense. I am not trying to rationalize finding solace in a religion -- or at least a form thereof -- that is no longer part of my life. I am no longer a Christian for a very concrete, indisputable reason: Christianity failed me. It ceased to fill me with what I then termed "the presence of God." It could not offer a sufficient explanation for the experience of waking up one morning and feeling like something inside me -- something infinitely important -- had died. It could not mask the putrid odor of that dead thing rotting in my heart.
To rephrase the question then, what would? What would awaken the dead or sleeping thing inside me? Would it even be the same thing? It seems that, after all that has happened the last 8 years, I could never believe what I did before my crisis. And, it's not even a question of my ability or willingness to hold any particular doctrine. Real belief never consists in adherence to a checklist of axioms. The quesiton is about the almost pre-conceptual -- or possibly, sub-conceptual -- picture of the world religious belief would necessitate, and in which it actually lives. Could I accept any worldview that has room and role for God?
I've always felt that experience is the only testimony that could bear out God. This suggests that I would have to undergo some overwhelming, transformative experience of God, in order to believe again. I don't know what behavior such a suggestion implies is proper. I don't know where this realization -- that God would have to lay his hands on me for me to know he was there -- leaves me. I can't allay a very palpable, very frightening fear that, even if some decisive moment revealed to me a way or reason to believe, I might later find that the act of aquiesence was also an act of the most profound self-betrayal.
In the end, I guess I'm still scarred by the crisis in my past. That crisis -- at least in some respects -- has been like a tear in my life, a kind of caesura, a breach in the phenomenological continuity of every day.
However, I don't want to give the impression that pain evident in the last few paragraphs has been the most prominent characteristic of my life for the last 8 years. The days have borne many a moment of sublimity and sunlight. Even my pain has been divine. I would not relinquish a second of it for any amount of "peak-and-valley"-less refuge.
Nonetheless, the question burns inside me. And, while it is no substitute for what used to burn there, it is certainly one of the hungers keeping me alive.

What the H. Stands For: A Wager...

When people "use the Lord's name in vain," they do a remarkable thing. Actually, most people behave this way when they use any expletive, whether of Divine origin or not. The acuity of pain or exasperation involved in a situation in which an expletive is used seems to at least partially determine the kind of expletive as well as the vehemence with which a person utters it.*
For example, when one drops a coin or pin, one is wont to mutter a rather weak, "Crap." When one causes injury to oneself -- or another -- one will likely emit a slightly more emphatic, "Damn," or, "Shit." There are even special cases in which one might express pleasure -- of greater or lesser intensity -- with an expletive, i.e. the profanity-laced song of coital ecstasy.*
In all three situations, the more intense the sensation, the more profane and forceful the expletive elicited.
Moreover, it seems that as sensation and expletive-driving passion increase, so to does the complexity of the expletive.* As injury or irritation grow, a simple, "Dick," becomes a, "Stupid, motherfucking bastard."
Similarly, as tension, pain or pleasure heightens, a, "Jesus," becomes a, "Jesus Christ," a, "Damn," becomes a, "Goddam."*
This brings me back to my opening remarks.
Once one has let fly with a grammatical molotov cocktail as powerful as, "Jesus Christ," where can one go next, should an appropriately charged occasion present itself?*
The answer is as follows:
Jesus H. Christ!
Apparently, this one is in a league of its own. Apparently it -- and it alone -- can express what was inexpressible without it. Apparently, it owes its superior expressive utility to some more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts je-ne-sais-quoi afforded the phrase by the mysterious new "H.," or the "H." itself wields some unique exclamatory quality.
The question occurs, then: What does the "H." stand for?
Well, as any frequenter of Yowza should have guessed by now -- or even expected from the outset of this post -- I have no humorous answer. This is a joke whose punchline lies within the set-up. Don't bother combing it's lines, though. It can't be found simply because, as the punchline is entirely without humor, it will not be recognizable as such. Moreover, as I have stripped the punchline of even the most basic degree of discernability by declining to avail myself of the traditional structure of jokes in our culture, i.e. the punchline comes at the end, the reader should immediately reconcile himself with a painful reality:
There will be no resolution, no compensation and no wager. The joke is, by design, un-gettable. You have just waded through another overlong exercise in self-indulgent passive aggresion.
More than likely, the "H." has its origins in the spoken, rather than the printed word. Consequently, the propriety of the period -- which would suggest that the letter preceding it was the first letter of a word, abbreviated by the addition of the period -- is an unanswerable question. My arbitrary ruling is that the "H" is like the "S" in "Harry S Truman," i.e. not an abbreviation. As the earlier discussion suggests, an expletive's power is apparently proportionate to its complexity, which is at least partially determined by the the number of an expletive's syllables. The "H" is simply filler, like Yosemite Sam's "rass-uh-frassin." "Jesus H Christ" is simply longer -- though still brief enough to be "barked" -- and therefore a better expletive.

* This may strike the reader as fairly obvious. I might remind such a reader that Yowza never has, does not currently and never will make claim to any amount of insight -- original or otherwise.

* I am currently doing research for another related thesis, i.e. that the more profane and more emphatic the expletive hollered by a man upon ejaculation, the greater the volume of semen issued.

* It should be noted that, curiously, the moments in which one might employ the most intricate expletives tend to be, alternately, moments of extreme mindfulness and un-mindfulness. They are, therefore, also moments of extreme ostentation and unreflective sincerity, respectively.

* An interesting side note: Because "damn" in the expletive is also "damn" in the imperative, i.e. a command to damn someone, thing, etc., and because God could presumably perform any task more competently than man -- not to mention the extra heft of Divine condemnation -- the more damn-worthy a thing, person, etc. is, the more likely that damning will become a "Goddam"-ing.

* This is the age-old question of envelope-pushing and its inherent limitations famously answered by Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel and his custom, "these go to eleven" amplifiers.

Mission:If anything, too modest

After months of inactivity on this blog -- a result of the primacy of other priorities -- my vigor is renewed! I have finally decided what the focus of "the Diary of King Douche" will be! I have found the cosmically-significant function my humble site will serve! Hurrah!
I have been called by our Infinitely Bored, but nonetheless Almighty Overseer to spread unmitigated, unreasonably vitriolic, inexplicably, unrepentently bitter negativity -- unredeemed by any detectable humour -- throughout His world, to no potential or actual end.
Consequently, the content of this sight -- by order of the Holy Voyeur -- will be of absolutely no concievable value to anyone. It will not entertain -- that is a promise. It will not console those of similarly pessimistic disposition; neither will it put the "ultimately insignificantly" vicissitudes of everyday life in perspective for those of sunnier temperments. It will not even provide me, God's own prophet, with cathartic release. Absolutely no one will be in any way better for my blog's existence.
I can only hope -- because even the Divine Forecaster cannot guarantee that His Whims may not, in the next moment, shift like the breeze -- that Yowza will stay this course and retain its abyssmally black character. Further, I entertain the ambition that Yowza will actually impoverish at least one person's life. However, this is an unreasonable hope, since making someone else less happy would -- however negligably -- gratify me. Such a situation would signal and constitute this blog's unqualified failure.
In conclusion, I want to allay any suspicions that this mission statement is an exagerration. Nothing funny -- or even interesting -- will ever be posted on this site. This is not elaborate, comedic irony. At the risk of preventing someone else's disappointment, I warn all readers that none of the current posts -- nor any future posts -- reward or will reward attention.
I leave you with the following edificatory remark:
The fruits of all your efforts will fall on the uncaring face of the Earth, where they will shrivel and decompose.

Smothering Grand Central Station: My love affair with hating the telephone

I resisted getting a cell phone for several years. In fact, there was a time -- while I was living the broke life in Denton -- when I had no phone, whatsoever. I had to walk down to a gas station a block from the apartment for all telecommunication. However, the very idea of the insipid chiming of a cell phone made me cringe. I found the fact that I might ever be the loud-mouthed jerk sharing intimate, but nonetheless infinitely mundane details of his life with anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in his company nauseating. Further, being incommunicado was a source of personal pride.
However, I'm sure it's clear that I eventually laid down and let the technical tide wash over me. I'm actually on my second phone.
The suprising part of the situation, though, is that having a cell phone is in so many ways a definite advantage. In fact, it is only irritating when I forget to turn it off before class -- which has only happened a handful of times.
More surprising, though, is the fact that in the last couple of years, conventional, home telephones have become intolerable to me. They assault me with their incessant, inconsequential, needle-like cries. They are subject to auto-dialers and unsolicited solicitors. They transmit the cartoonishly-slow voices of relatives calling during the late morning and early afternoon -- when, as far as they know, no one should be home.
Because I cannot abide these things, I have stopped answering the home phone, ever. I let repeated callers repeat their calls. I let people who should know better than to call "just to talk" to whomever happens to be at the house leave messages. If I decide a message deserves a response, I return calls at my leisure. None of this is necessary with my cell phone. No one -- outside of very infrequent wrong numbers, most of which are actually sources of amusement -- ever calls my cell phone to chat. It is what the phone should be: a tool for necessary communication.
It is a shame, though, that the only opportunities for self-assertion a large society presents are ultimately unsatisfying exercises in passive aggression. Hail to civilization and its howling, ill-tempered child, the bad conscience!

Caught with your red hand in the cookie jar...

In class this morning, a friend of mine -- who is fond of stealing -- reached across me and grabbed a scarf laying in an empty seat. After inspecting it and deciding it wasn't lice-ridden, he asked me if I wanted it, or if he could keep it. Now, why he asked me this requires a little setting-up. A few months ago, while this friend and I, as well as another mutual friend, were walking back to school after lunch. We came upon an Independent beanie, laying smack-dab in the middle of the road. My friend, the thief suggested I take it. Seeing as how it was probably lost to its owner forever -- I doubt the owner would have thought to look for it in the street; I certainly wouldn't have -- I snagged it and threw it in my bag. To my sticky-fingered chum, I guess this incident served, to a certain extent, as a test. The fact that I did take the hat meant, I suppose, that I shared my friend's penchant for "appropriation." So, consequently, he offered the scarf to me. I got a new scarf for Xmas, though, so I declined.
My friend unzipped his bag, balled up the scarf and was about to throw it into his bag when a guy walked up and said, "Put that back." Now, we could all instantly tell that the scarf was his. We could also smell the palpable embarassment filling the air. My friend was obviously mortified, which made sense. I've been caught mid-theft before, by the owner of a skateboard I was riding away with on my bike. It was like a kind of defeat. There's nothing you can say that eases -- even a little -- the impact of such obvious, incontrovertable failure, or the resultant shame. Of course, when I was caught with the skateboard, I was able to just ride off. Unfortunately, my friend didn't have this option; he had to sit basically next to the guy for an hour. I told him after class that I wasn't just sympathetic, but fully empathetic. But it was still f^&$%*# hilarious. And, as obvious as my friend's embarassment was, what was equally obvious was the relief my other friend and I felt that it hadn't happened to us.

Saying "Hi!" and staying civil: a meditation on restraint

I was in a coffeeshop between classes today with two friends. A guy we all knew -- and who knew all of us -- walked by without acknowledging us in the slightest. Now, I won't pretend that this guy was what I would call a "friend," but he wasn't a stranger. He certainly should have felt obligated to return my nod.
Now, of course, I'm pretty neurotic. But this isn't just some narcissistic response to someone else's casual apathy. The bottom line is this:
In society, we all pretend we care about people around us, about whom we couldn't really give two shits. It seems a petty concession, but it becomes a burden. I resent the fact that this guy didn't -- and apparently, doesn't -- feel the pressure. I also resent the fact that his failure to respond implies, i.e. that while I dedicate more time than I'd like to negotiating the precarious balance that is my relatively non-violent relationship to society, this guy lives without such contraints, flaunting his defiance willy-nilly.
Maybe I'm an anti-social maniac, but just having the strength not to throttle any one of the countless morons that drift across my radar screen everyday requires so much effort that it's almost a career. (Commuting on 35 everyday, not to mention waiting tables has more to do with suppressing murderous instincts than anything else.) Hell, sometimes -- read: frequently -- I find my own sense of self-loathing so overwhelming that it's all I can do not to drive off a highly-elevated overpass to spare myself the debasement that is continued existence. But, as is obvious, I have managed to restrain myself from doing so, though at no small cost, I might add.
I have noticed, though, that most attempts to avenge oneself tend to back-fire. Consequently, I've made a personal commitment to a self-imposed regimen of random acts of violence, both outwardly as well as inwardly directed.
I will destroy things I do not own; in fact, I will seek out and destroy things whose owners I do not know. Or maybe I'll make it a point to steal and break what belongs to my close friends. I'll iron out those wrinkles later. I will certainly over-indulge in drugs and alcohol as often as possible. The only area of my life that I will not assault with self-destructive behavior will be school work.
By doing so, I hope to get a good, well-paying job, which will allow me to expand my oeuvre of long-term suicidal methods. Maybe I'll take up an expensive drug. Maybe I'll slowly give my soul away, so that one day, far in the future, I will wake up with a void inside that is unfillable. No matter what specific approach I take, I will adopt an unfulfilling, smothering, empty lifestyle, one that will obviously end with my biological death, and hopefully end with my spiritual death.
By so doing, I hope to squelch that impulse within me that I suppress everyday of my modern, social life. This way, the next time someone I know walks by without saying "hey," I'll know exactly how to deal with my resentment. More importantly, I'll know how to do so in a manner that guarantees at least another 20 to 30 years of protracted death.