Meme answer part 1

Here are some answers to the meme questions. If I don’t mention the artist/film/song, it means I am going to investigate because I have no familiarity.

Questions from JRP:

1. (re)Watch as a Double Feature Metropolis then Brazil. 2. Cleon Skoun - the Naked Communist. 3. Kate Bush - Lionheart.

I had the wierdest experience with Brazil.  I liked it, but could not finish it in one sitting.  I want the Criterion Collection version though so I can just chill and give it a proper viewing.  Metropolis was just...I don’t know, I lost interest after about ten minutes.

What should a conservative in the People’s Republic of Cambridge do to maximize his chances for meeting single, tall, brilliant, and local women?

This site used to sponsor an ad over at Moorewatch, and seems to be chock full of good people.  It could be worth a shot!  I met my tall, beautiful and brilliant woman online.  Nothin’ wrong with it, let me tell you!

How have your thoughts and beliefs on religion changed over the course of your life?

When I was a child, I was Roman Catholic.  Altar boy, then head altar boy, attended Catholic school, the whole bit.  I was amazed and in awe by the majesty of it all, the ceremony, the stories, the idea that soemone was watching out for me and that I would be truly rewarded for living well.

My life as a kid was a living hell of abuse and near torture.  By the age of 10 I was fairly well convinced that God either did not care or actively hated me.  I latched on to the second, and began to return the favor.  By 15 I was absolutely convinced religion was the opiate of the masses and a creation of the weak.  I spent the next 15 years despising any and everyting to do with religion, especially Roman Catholicism.

Now I have a much more subdued and tolerant approach.  Believing in freedom means you have to believe in religious freedom as well.  I hold no ill will toward people who choose to be part of a religion as long as that faith does not intrude upon the rights of others.  I believe strongly in the idea that while we were founded as a nation of Christians, we were founded with the intent to respect all beliefs, including the right not to believe.  I guess where I am at now is that I would object equally to an intrusion ON religion as much as an intrusion BY religion.

What is the greatest screwup you’ve committed in your life that someone might benefit from reading about?

Man, you went right for the heavy questions!

I have been thinking about this since I first read your question about 90 minutes ago, and I think my biggest screw-up was a lifetime in the making, but began to solidify in 1985.

As I mentioned, my childhood was a nightmare.  At age 15, in the event I would come to call ‘Freedom Day,” I was locked out of my house, waiting for my mother to come home from work.  It began to rain.  I went inside the hallway of the apartment building that was in front of our house (we had a small house in the back of the lot) and waited.  When she came home, three hours late, she began to scream my name.  Not unusual.  :) When I came out of the hall door, she flipped out that I wasn’t waiting where I had been ordered to wait, which was on the side porch.  The open porch.  In the rain.  Since 3:30 that afternoon (it was now 8-ish and dark).  Oh look, She’s being irrational again.  The kicks and punches started, and by this time I was big enough to block them, but when my pseudo-step-father came home and saw this transpiring in the driveway, he lost it.  He grabbed her, threw her in the house (and I mean threw) and asked me “What do you need from your room?  You aren’t staying here another minute.”

Thanks buddy.  Ten years late, but thanks.

I went to stay with my grandmother for a bit, and went back to school and began drinking and drugging heavily.  One morning I saw a kid that had been giving me crap for about three years, and I snapped and beat the hell out of him.  The country swore out a PINS petition on me.  Person In Need Of Supervision.

I ended up in what used to be called reform school.  I was given a choice: Juvenile jail at Tryon (the place they filmed the Sean Penn movie ‘Bad Boys,” soemthing called “Industry,” which was a working logging camp in the Adirondacks, or La Salle School for Boys, run by the Christian Brothers in Albany, NY.  When they explained that it was a live-in school and that there were no bars or locks, my decision was made.

I served my term and volunteered to stay until I graduated high school, as it was crappy but millions of light-years better than home.  I stayed in Albany after graduation in the summer of ‘88, and there I began treating my mouth as a repository for every drug and brand of beer, booze and wine cooler I could get my hands on.  My apartment, which was straight outta Compton in the worst ghetto in Albany, became a revolving door for every low-life I could accumulate as a “friend.”

We broke into cars to feed our habits.  We all had shitty jobs from which we would steal from the registers.  We lived like animals.  And in the middle of this I got involved with some drama between a woman named Jen and her on-again-off again boyfriend.  She began to latch on to me to be her new white knight, and I let her.

And the biggest mistake begins to grow out of the ashes of a long list of medium to large mistakes.

Over that summer, I ended up fighting the boyfriend, winning (ha!) the girl, and believing a wild story about her brother masturbating on her while she slept.  Yes, you read that correctly.  She called me in a panic one night and blasted out this story about her brother, and so I drove up there, had her climb out her window and come to my apartment, and went to talk to her dad the next day.  WHO LET HER MOVE IN WITH ME.  I was 18 and she was 16.  I suspect to this day her parents, while good and decent people, were a little glad to be rid of the daily drama and headaches, and they knew I’d keep her close and in touch with them on a regular basis.  Which I did.

But still...Mistake: growing.

September, 1988.  I had a scholarship to SUNY Albany.  I was thining about a marketing degree, but was signed up for mostly general, liberal arts type classes.  Two weeks before classes began, we went on a bender.  The kind of thing you read about.  Drugs and parties and more beer than I can even imagine.  It lasted a month.

I never made it to classes.

Mistake: growing.

SEVEN YEARS LATER I was embroiled in a relationship I hated, barely making enough money to live, had no education beyond high school and was contemplating a return to drugs and alcohol.  Luckily I met the woman to whom I am now married and to whom I very well may owe my continued existance.  She helped me learn that no one is powerless.

So what was the mistake, in a nutshell?

LETTING SOMEONE ELSE CONTROL MY LIFE.  Giving up my power, first to my mother, then to drugs, then to Jen.  One day I realized that all these decisions were mine to make.  I was in control of my own damn life.

Questions from fangbeer

1. Everest (IMAX)
2. Into thin Air, Jon Krakauer.
3. Lead Belly

I have always wanted to see the Imax Everest movie…

Is the pursuit of something you love worth risking your life over?

Interesting.  I have to say it depends on the depth of that devotion to said something.  I can and have imagined scenarios in which I would risk my life over something.  Protecting my wife for one.  I don’t think it’s a good idea to live every day with the intent of risking your life for everything that you care about...that kind of strain would kill anyone.  But yes...I think if you are devoted in one way or another to a person or an ideal, it can be worth that risk.

Is it worth risking someone else’s life over?

Unless they give permission, I would have to say no.  Unless we’re talking “fighting back against the Nazis while in a death camp” serious, then no, I don’t have the right to risk your life over most anything.  Unless you give me permission, in which case we’re risking our lives together.

What are you getting me for Christmas?

Blog posts.  Merry Christmas!  :)

Posted by JimK at 05:22 PM on December 10, 2004
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