Debt On

I hate to keep making excuses for a lack of content, but there is something seriously wrong with my Wi-Fi adapter. I guess I shouldn’t have gotten the cheap one. The damn thing always finds the server, tells me I have a strong connection, and then it just can’t pull up a web site. I’m O.K. with technology, but networking is not my strong suit, so I can’t really imagine what the problem could be. I worked on this for two hours in Seattle and a half hour today, and this is really getting on my nerves. So with all this writing stuck on my laptop, I guess its going to remain there until I figure out a good way to get on the Internet. Sorry!

Well, even though I haven’t written about it all yet, I’m finished travelling. A month of travelling has left me broke and weary, but I’m still busily working on my account of the last month. I have a tremendous amount of pictures to go through, and I have several stories half-written, including the long-awaited continuation to the Denver debacle. Another problem is that Internet access is still intermittent, so I often just have time to read email (and not answer– I’m so behind on my email — sorry, I’ll write back soon if you’ve written me!) and check a few things out. All my writing and pictures are on my laptop, so rest assured I’ll be keeping my eye out for a hotspot here in rural Montana while I’m waiting to start my new restaurant job.

Anyway, just for kicks, here’s a list of the states I’ve traveled through in the last month:
New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. Damn, 16 states in a month ain’t bad!

I’m travelling again and I won’t have consistent access to the Internet for a little while, but I will endeavor to post every chance I get. There’s plenty more to talk about, so stay tuned!

I just wanted to point out that some of the ideas I was getting at in my post Compassion of the Christ were echoed by Frank Rich’s April 10 New York Times column, “A Culture of Death, Not Life.” In it he writes of an American affliction with death, which has been pandered to by the media circuses over Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul II, and even television programs like CSI, giving Americans another grisly body to drool over.

Many Christians it seems have embraced this culture wholeheartedly. Rich writes:

These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by “The Passion of the Christ.” Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title “The Passion Recut,” to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) “Passion” fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD.

Did they really do this? These men and women are assembled to protest a woman dying by watching another man die? Wouldn’t the “culture of life” rather focus on their savior’s life and teachings than on his torture and execution? From Rich again:

Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living. When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul’s vision of a “culture of life.” This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time.

There has been some progress made recently as many Christians and even conservatives have broken with the party line on a religious basis. In another recent New York Times editorial, outgoing U.N. Ambassador John C. Danforth breaks with the Republican Party because he feels that initiatives to ban gay marriage, stem-cell research, and the politically charged efforts on behalf of Terry Schiavo are more steeped in religious doctrine than in conservative policy. He writes:

…the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.

He also writes of the conflict inherent in a political party supporting a religious doctrine: individuals from throughout the political spectrum have used religion has a source of inspiration. Danforth again:

I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God’s call to political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.

So the Party of God doesn’t have such a monopoly on religious doctrine after all. So I reiterate: people on the left have to stop associating Christians exclusively with Republicans. And Christians have to stop mistaking their religion as justification for a fascination with intolerance, death and war. A stance against abortion does not make a “culture of life” when you support a bloodthirsty war against an unprepared people.

We’re going to try out the Google ads and see how they work. The nice thing here is that now if you click on the ads, I make money. So click those links and see what’s behind ’em! More posting later.

I stopped in Denver mainly to find what may be the biggest comic shop around, the Mile High Comics Megastore. I wasn’t quite sure where it was or how to find it though, so I checked in an ad in a comic book I had in the back seat. Problem was, that comic was from 1993, so I wasn’t sure if they had moved.

Denver’s roads in the northeast are fairly straightforward. They have a numbered avenue system that gets lower as you drive south. But it’s not so straightforward, the avenues frequently aren’t connected to one another, so you end up driving down a short dead end which begins at 1008 and finishes up at 1039 and looping around to find the other piece. This realization would come back to haunt me later.

I found the address I was looking for, in a residential suburb, and predictably they had moved. I ended up driving around the city for a while, going downtown and just circling around watching the college girls go by. Finally, I was compelled to stop at a gas station and I found a phone book inside.

I jotted down two addresses: the first address of three for Mile High Comics, assuming that if it was not the largest they would at least be able to tell me where to go. The other was an Internet cafe so I could update the blog.

The address for Mile High brought me to a place called Commerce City. This was aptly named, as the area was populated by massive offices and stores, truck loading, warehouses, and not a soul as far as the eye could see. The avenues had the same problem of not connecting, but far worse, to the point where they ran into each other, avenues were frequently skipped, or roads were called “W. 49th Ave.” but were no more than a residential cul de sac.

One avenue continued going and suddenly dropped at a 30-40 degree angle. I thought my car was going to crash when I went over it, and it barely avoided bottoming out. For sure I had driven off the road, and would not be able to make it back up the treacherous incline. But to my surprise, the drop was a legitimate area of the road, and an intersection appeared ahead for the next avenue.

Finally I found the address I had written down: a single unmarked door in a warehouse with a few telltale comics boxes that told me this served as some kind of office for Mile High. I tried to open the door, at least the persons inside may be interested in hearing my plight and directing me to the proper location. It was locked. I decided I’d move on to the Internet cafe. At least then I could be sure of where I was going.

The cafe was odd. It was fairly easy to find, in a suburb just to the west of Denver. I walked in and two small children look up and scream “HI!” Rarely do you get such an enthusiastic greeting at any establishment.

The woman at the counter was a disinterested Asian woman in her early thirties. She looked at me, with my laptop bag in hand, as if she couldn’t imagine what I possibly wanted.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” she muttered back, with a keen eye on the children behind me.

“Do you have wireless here?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied tartly, apparently unwilling to volunteer any extra information.

“Well… in that case I’ll have a cup of coffee and uh… these blueberry muffins look pretty good.”

“Okay,” she said. I paid her, then she said very frankly, “you get half an hour with your coffee.”

It seemed a little rude. Many coffee shops, with the exception of Starbucks with its needlessly complicated payment system, allowed you to sit for an undetermined amount of time if you bought a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.

“Oh. Do I get anything for my muffin?” I asked, wondering if she’d catch my sarcasm.

She told me no, but I could pay a reasonable price for extra time. I sat down and plugged in my computer. The kids were playing a game and becoming quite loud.

The coffee was terrible. Really terrible. It was weak, flavorless, and she didn’t offer me any cream or sugar. And since she was busy calming down the screaming children, I didn’t feel inclined to ask her for any. Besides, it was so weak the cream may have extinguished any coffee flavor remaining in the drink.

My laptop booted up. The Internet wasn’t working.

I won’t bore you with the specifics of how we tried to do it, but she and I tried to get the Internet running on that computer for the next half and hour, going through my software, her equipment, odd devices to plug into my computer, whatever. For someone who snapped payment limitations at me she wasn’t prepared for someone to actually use her wireless Internet.

I finished my terrible coffee.

Finally, we got it running, and I managed to check my e-mail, write a couple addresses down, and do some blog postings. Meanwhile, the kids were becoming louder and louder, and a friend of the woman behind the counter had come in and they were chatting, so she wasn’t so inclined to calm her children down any more. The whole thing was creating such a racket it was impossible to get any work done, and I’d left my headphones in the car. I yearned for some kind of light jazz music playing, and a relaxed comfortable working environment.

Finally it seemed that my half an hour was up, although I couldn’t be sure as I wasn’t sure how long it took us to get the damn thing running, so I left, without saying a word. The kids screamed “BYE!” behind me.

I went to my car door, right across the street, put my laptop bag down next to me, and shoved my hand in my pocket for my keys.

Oh no.

Part II later!

Due to Internet Explorer not following standards and otherwise being completely ridiculous, this site will remain best viewed through Mozilla Firefox, even though its far less widely used. So nyah.

My friend swears to me these buildings are intended to look like a penis and vagina. They’re actually even more explicit from the other side.

By the way, chains of Pizzeria Unos do not carry Chicago style pizza, despite their claims to the contrary. All Unos restaurants are perversions.

It is far preferable to have a martini from the top of a city than to stand on a windy observation deck peeping through quarter binoculars. The Hancock building lets you enjoy great views of Chicago with windows to sheild the wind while drinking some of the best made martinis around. Its the only way to get a view.

These guys have seriously good rhythm.

And this guy brings a whole new meaning to doing the robot.

This is a bit of a departure for me, but its something that really has been driving me crazy.

I hung out with two social science graduate students in Chicago, liberal intellectual types. At one point I brought up how well I think Kanye West raps.

“Yeah, but he’s a Jesus freak,” one of them remarked, referring to his song “Jesus Walks.”

I explained, although a gross oversimplification, that there are two types of “Jesus freaks.” One that for some reason is intollerant of others and often downright murderous, and another that practices compassion and righteousness.

But this is a much larger problem among liberals. Conservatives have cloaked their ideology with religion to their benefit, and have led many progressives to abandon religion altogether, believing that it entails dismissing science, alienating homosexuals and denying women’s right to choose. This is simply not true.

If Jesus is not a progressive figure, what of the appeals to compassion in the songs of Johnny Cash? Or the invigorated preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Christ sought to feed the poor and bring peace to mankind, what better causes for liberals to champion?

The idea that Chirst could be used to justify military action and blatant intollerance is the biggest scam that conservatives have pulled on the American people. Progressives should be working hard to appeal to the basic morality provided by the ancient texts that have guided our society through nearly 2,000 years. Western civilization was founded upon those ideas and there is still a valuable message ingrained in those writings. This scam has been perpetrated throughout history, as powerful men have warped these ideas to justify their actions.

Please, do not abandon this powerful appeal to compassion. It is being perverted.