What I'm Reading: World War Z

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by World War Z, Max Brooks’ Zombie-Apocalyptic classic. What’s been most surprising is the depth of insight into various themes that relate to my life. I expected a good read, but I wasn’t prepared to be personally challenged by Zombie fiction. Here’s an example of a passage that struck home:

“They showed us the meaning of democracy…freedom, not just in vague, abstract terms, but on a very real, individually human level.  Freedom isn’t just something you have for the sake of having, you have to want something else first and then want the freedom to fight for it. … They all had such grand dreams, and they’d lay down their lives for the freedom to make those dreams come true.”

I love the idea that freedom begins with a Grand Dream, a dream so strong and all-consuming that the dreamer will stop at nothing to see it realized, a dream so grandiose that it’s worth dying for. I don’t think I dream like that.

What I'm Writing: Scream 4 Review

Hey, so sometimes I write movie reviews for my friend's blog. Here's my review of Scream 4.
Hope you're doing great! I'm doing well, thanks! A bit tired, but I'm at home and my Mom and Dad bought me the best off-brand diet soda ever...Kroger's Diet Drop Red.  It's insanely delicious. 

Turn Up The Lights

It's been awhile since a rap song just blew me away.  In the past few years, mainstream hip-hop's been little more than a bragging contest. Houses, bank accounts, cars, women, even clocks--how many you got, how much they cost.  It makes for your typical song: fun, silly, catchy, and ultimately forgettable.

It's true, though, that art mimics life, and most of our lives reflect those underwhelming rap songs.  Our own lives revolve around what we can get and who we can get with, about how much and how fast. That kind of life is fun, for sure.  And, just like most modern rap, insignificant and forgettable.
Usually, music fights against the forgettable, against the mundane, shocking us out of our grabbing and grasping to point us to something better, more important, more worthy. Enter All of the Lights.

Credit Where it's Due

I'm pretty cynical of today's businesses, especially cell phone companies.  I complain about them all the time--the contracts, the cost of phones, service, you name it.  Mostly I see cell phone companies, and most US companies in general, as the enemy.  I have to fight to avoid getting screwed.

But AT&T just blew my mind.  Here's what happened:

I'm an AT&T subscriber, having been lured by the IPhone.  A few weeks ago, I committed the ultimate IPhone sin by accidentally dipping my phone in the Gulf of Mexico.  Needless to say, it freaked out.  It's currently chilling in a bag of rice, the chicken soup for a soaked IPhone.  While my baby healed, I had to get a beater phone to survive.  I got the cheapest one I could find, a little $20 guy that looked and felt like it was from 1999. No camera, no touchscreen...cellular hell.

So that's the backstory.  Since I was on this tiny phone for awhile without my usual array of ways to communicate with my friends (Facebook, Words With Friends, Skype) I was texting up a storm.  About two weeks into my new phone experience, I got a message from AT&T at 1am saying that I had gone "significantly over" my text message allowance, to the tune of $50 and counting.  I thought it had to be a mistake--I had 1500 texts--but I was freaked out, because I'd racked up some serious overages before. So the next day I check online, and sure enough I was a thousand texts over with a few days to go in the month!

I totally freaked out.  I went to change my plan, thinking that I was screwed for this month, but in a move of pure grace, AT&T lets you back-date your rate plan changes!  I couldn't believe it--I could change my plan to Unlimited Texting for $5 more and avoid the $50 I'd stupidly racked up.  It sounded so above-and-beyond that (after i changed my plan) I called AT&T to see if it was really true.  It was!
So AT&T not only lets me change my plan if I went over for that month (which takes money right out of their wallet) but LETS ME KNOW when I need to do it!  It's an unbelievably gracious move!
AT&T didn't treat me like a customer; they treated me like a buddy.

So, no more complaining for me about the evil cell phone companies!  Way to go, AT&T.  You rock.  

Zach Morris and the Irrelevance of Absolutism

I love all-night road trips and the Diet Dew-filled craziness they entail! I forget what brought Saved By The Bell to mind on my last journey, but once it popped in it stuck, thumping and churning like an old washer/dryer. 

Something that struck me anew after all this time was Zach Morris’s amazing super power—the ability to stop time with his infamous “Time-Out.” 

It was the Deus Ex Machina of afternoon TV. Whenever Zach got into a pickle he couldn’t grin his way out of, he’d turn to the camera like he was coach of the universe itself and yell “Time-out.”  The world would grind to a halt and he’d be able to think things over, rearrange what he needed to, and right his world—literally without missing a beat.  Why he didn’t use it more often, we’ll never know.  

What’s more, he used his incredible power for mostly benign, uninspiring feats—dodging a punch, skipping detention.  For a demi-god, he really shot low.  Sounds like a high-school dude to me. For years I’ve obsessed over the idea of absolute truth—proving its existence, using that proof as a hammer to pound home the reality of God—before coming to the conclusion that it’s impossible for me to prove that absolute truth exists, because I’m not absolute myself.  I’ve been around for  roughly .000001% of history.  My knowledge and experience is the proverbial raindrop in the ocean.  I’m also a prisoner of circumstance and time, powerless to press pause or change the view.  What can I ABSOLUTELY state about the universe? 

While I lamented my inability to declare any truth to be absolute, SBTB reminded me that it doesn’t matter, because I’m not Zach Morris.  Zach had the ability to slip out of the rushing stream of time and take a view from the bank.  The rest of us shmucks have to ride the paddle-less, rudderless tube-ride of life without a time-out.

Whether or not truth is absolute, we have to deal with it. Gravity may not be absolute truth, but it still affects you.  The same’s true for bus schedules, unit conversion, flu vaccines. Even lowly old relative truth can still ruin your day.

So, what do we do?  Actually, you’ve been doing it since you were old enough to make choices: you play the odds.  We do this without thinking most of the time—we treat life as a gambler’s game, and honestly we’ve gotten pretty good at it.  How many times have you looked at a wall and thought, “I might be able to walk through that thing today!”  It’s kind of a “duh” principle, but you catch my drift.  

The choices we make are wagers.  We’re betting things will turn out the way we want, based on what we’ve learned about life so far.

The one area of our lives that seems to rate exception is the spiritual.  We pretend that the same gambling principles of risk and reward don’t apply in that realm.  Instead, we can use the idea of relativity like a talisman, warding off the curse of having to choose a path.  The problem remains, though, that truth you don’t acknowledge still hurts (or helps) you.  The idea of spiritual truth being relative doesn’t excuse us from the consequences of our choice (or lack thereof).

Don’t get lulled into believing that you needn’t make a wise decision about spirituality.  It’s time to play the odds. Unless you’re Zack Morris.  In that case, better have that Time-Out handy.