Category: life

Giving up Today for Tomorrow

Living like every moment counts and as if you can change the world is exhausting. Which is why it rarely ever is.

Care of Diana

This is a difficult topic to talk about because so much of it is tied up with powerful emotions… Not just my own but almost everyone on the planet… Anyone who holds out for tomorrow in the belief that when this life is over there will be another one to go to, a better one, regardless of your religious tradition the afterlife you imagine for yourself is one of beauty and light, paradisaical.

I used to believe this, at times I still wish I did.  What a comfort it is to think that despite all the wrongs of this world, despite the pain and suffering, despite all the inequality there will be a time when all wrongs are righted, where justice will be served and peace will reign and that we will be there in the presence of God.  I know the power of that comforting thought, it was one that I clinged to for most of my life.  I know longer feel that way, worse I think that it is a lie, a terrible lie!  It blinds us with a beauty we can do nothing to create while we waste the time we have here now.  It tells us that we are fallen, rejected beings living

on a fallen rejected planet.  It denies the glory of our existence and our ability to change the world today, now.  It excuses us from acting on the injustices we see around us today, it absolves us of the horrors we create here and shifts all the blame and responsibility for correcting it on an invisible, unknowable deity, who at some point in the future, always very near but never quite here, to correct.  This is a madness and a sickness.  If today we vowed to live like there was no heaven and hell to absolve us, this world would be a paradise and the need for one far removed would fade into oblivion.  Man is not fallen, nor is Nature corrupted, beauty and justice are obtainable now.  I wish is was as easy as abandoning the lie and moving forward.  But I don’t believe as seductive as it is and yet I’m no better than the faithful.  Knowing something and acting on it are not analogous to each other.

Acting is always the hardest part.  Daily living is just so much habit and change is overcoming a terrible amount of inertia.  Living like every moment counts and as if you can change the world is exhausting.  Which is why it rarely ever is.   I’m just as guilty as everyone else.  I go through each day in a haze aware of but unsympathetic to the injustice that surrounds me,  inured to it from daily exposure.  How do you overcome this?  How do you do so without losing yourself in it?  I don’t know.  I hope to stumble upon a way.

Painting Again

Necron Jackals

The Rulebook
The Rulebook

Sorry if this post is picture heavy, but talking about painting just doesn’t cut it, you got to show it!  I’ve had innumerable models just sitting around assembled and waiting to be painted.  As part of my goal to enjoy the things I already own, as opposed to lusting after stuff I don’t I wanted to get back to these and actual paint and use them.  Two weekends ago that just what I did and the pics posted here are the results.

So what are you looking at?  Models for the tabletop game Battlefleet Gothic by Games Workshop.  I already own a Necron army (fully painted) for

Necron Dirges
Necron Dirges

GW’s most popular table top game, Warhammer 40k, and wanted to have a space fleet that complemented it so, back when I was living at home and flush with excess cash I bought an entire fleet.  I assembled the models (the ones that required it) days after I got them and since then they’ve been sitting around waiting for me to get back to them, I think about 6 years…  Two weekends ago I busted out the box and my paints (most of which had to be thrown away as they’d been sitting in the closet for… about 6 years) and started painting them up!  These aren’t the best pictures, I know, if you happen to have advice on photographing small, intricately detailed objects I’d love to hear from you.  Anyway what you’re seeing is the equivalent (I think) of corvettes and frigates in-game.  Their purpose is mainly to escort my big ships in the game, keeping my opponents ships and fire at bay while mine move into position.

Necron Dirges
Necron Dirges

This was a really simple paint job.  Everything was base coated in chaos black and then drybrushed over with boltgun.  For the detail work I used shining gold, scab red, and on the larger ones a little regal blue (the colors mentioned here are from GW’s line of paints, jeez this is starting to look like a paid endorsement…).  In about 3 hours I finished 14 models.  All I have left to paint are my 6 larger vessels and then I need to find some people to play with!  I keep trying to get my girlfriend, Diana, into the hobby but so far she’s resisted all efforts at nerdification!

I’m hoping to finish those 6 models this weekend and when they’re done I’ll post pictures here.  Also, in the near future, you can expect me putting up pictures of my two WH40K armies: Ultramarines and Necrons.

Re-reading Camus

My hope is that as I re-read it I can look at my previous thoughts and compare them with what I am thinking now and compare and contrast them, and in so doing see just how my own philosophy and thoughts have changed and in what directions.

Tizian's Sisyphus
Tizian's Sisyphus

I first read Camus in high school.  My sophomore or junior English class was given The Stranger as a reading assignment.  I don’t think I quite understood everything that was going on in that book, perhaps due to failure of my teacher to provide context to the story or to the philosophical debate that was the background of the work.  Despite my original distaste for Camus sparse writing style I began reading his other works and through Camus I discovered existentialism and such philosophers as Nietzsche, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and many other prominent philosophers.

I’ve read many of the complete works of those listed above, but that was about 10 years ago.  I tried to re-read Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Ecco Homo recently and found that I had moved on, had changed that those works didn’t speak to me as they once had.  So, I put those books down and moved on to other things… But, in the back of the mind I wondered, “How much have I changed?”  If a book that had had such a huge influence on my life then, one of the most influential books I’d ever read, no longer resonated with me how much had changed?  Were there other books that I’d find opaque that were once clear?  I wanted to find out.

I’ve just started reading Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays,”  again. The work deals with the issue of suicide and if it makes sense, even in a world that is recognized as absurd.  I chose this book because I remember liking it when I first read it, and I wrote throughout the margins my thoughts and comments on the text.  My hope is that as I re-read it I can look at my previous thoughts and compare them with what I am thinking now and compare and contrast them, and in so doing see just how my own philosophy and thoughts have changed and in what directions.

This is hopefully just the first of a number of posts on the text and my reactions to it.

Quick and Dirty Digital Camera, Recommendations?

I want a small digital camera to carry around with me at all times. I see things I want to photograph all the time on the train, walking to and from the train station, doing random things at random times.

Good Idea?
Good Idea?

  I want a small digital camera to carry around with me at all times.  I see things I want to photograph all the time on the train, walking to and from the train station, doing random things at random times.  I never seem to have a way to capture them though, my cell phone has a camera but it takes terrible pictures…  I have a film camera as well, but I don’t have the space to carry it around, or the time to develop the film myself. 

I’d like a small digital camera that has enough mega pixels or whatever I need to take good pictures without breaking my budget.  I’m not looking for a professional digital SLR either.  I thought about getting the new Polaroid PoGo, so that I can print pictures instantly and have digital copies, but I don’t know enough.  So I’m asking you, what do you recommend?  What do you use?

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