How to Carve a Pumpkin

Step 1: Assemble tools and move breakables out of the way.

 

Step 2: Disembowel the pumpkin.

Step 3: Make bad jokes about cannibalism

 

Step 4: Collect innards and separate out seeds for flicking at each other.

Step 5: Begin to carve.

Step 6: Light!

Step 7: Make allusions to Count Von Count from Sesame Street and Harry Potter having inappropriate relations.

Due Process

I wanted to write a new blog entry, but all I can think about is how sensitive adults can be.

That and the Manson murders.

The Mandarin Game

A couple days ago, I remembered a diversity training game that we played when I was in RA training. It was called the Mandarin Game.

It's set up with everybody sitting in a circle. (When we played, it was a big circle, with easily sixty people.) The premise is that there is a little old Mandarin Chinese man somewhere in the world. As the jury, the group must decide what the Mandarin's life is worth.  As the game progresses the criteria changes. The Mandarin goes from a middle aged healthy rich man to an old man on death's door. The rewards for killing him include everything from world peace to global financial stability.

If you make it through the game without deciding to kill the man, an envelope is read, telling you that the man was one who would cure all diseases and bring peace to the world. By killing him, you would have had peace, but under the rule of a cruel totalitarian.

I was remembering how much I hated the ending to that game.

For me, the ultimate flaw is that ending. It was the slap in the face to people who'd decided that world peace was worth ending the pain of a man who would die in a week anyway. I remember a sophomore telling about a family member in the army and pleading with the group to think of the lives that would be saved instead of the one who was lost. I remember feeling smug because I'd done the "Christian" thing and argued to not kill the man. (Ironic, since Christianity is based on one guy taking the fall for everyone.)

Most of all, I hate it when you teach that diversity has a right and a wrong answer.

How Machiavellian are you?

I'm an 82.

Quote:

"Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world - "No. You move."

-Captain America to Spiderman

B.J.:
81 words
Typing Test

Amy:
77 words

Typingtest

Charles Bukowski

“Let it enfold you”

either peace or happiness,

let it enfold you

when i was a young man

I felt these things were

dumb,unsophisticated.

I had bad blood, a twisted

mind, a precarious

upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I

leered at the

sun.

I trusted no man and

especially no

woman.

I was living a hell in

small rooms, I broke

things, smashed things,

walked through glass,

cursed.

I challenged everything,

was continually being

evicted, jailed, in and

out of fights, in and aout

of my mind.

women were something

to screw and rail

at, i had no male

friends.

I changed jobs and

cities, I hated holidays,

babies, history,

newspapers, museums,

grandmothers,

marriage, movies,

spiders, garbagemen,

english accents, spain,

france, italy, walnuts and

the color

orange.

algebra angered me,

opera sickened me,

charlie chaplin was a

fake

and flowers were for

pansies.

peace an happiness to me

were signs of

inferiority,

tenants of the weak

an

addled

mind.

but as I went on with

my alley fights,

my suicidal years,

my passage through

any number of

women-it gradually

began to occur to

me

that I wasn't different

from the

others, I was the same.

they were all fulsome

with hatred,

glossed over with petty

grievances,

the men I fought in

alleys had hearts of stone.

everybody was nudging,

inching, cheating for

some insignificant

advantage,

the lie was the

weapon and the

plot was

empty,

darkness was the

dictator.

cautiously, I allowed

myself to feel good

at times.

I found moments of

peace in cheap

rooms

just staring at the

knobs of some

dresser

or listening to the

rain in the

dark.

the less i needed

the better i

felt.

maybe the other life had worn me

down.

I no longer found

glamour

in topping somebody

in conversation.

or in mounting the

body of some poor

drunken female

whose life had

slipped away into

sorrow.

I could never accept

life as it was,

i could never gobble

down all its

poisons

but there were parts,

tenuous magic parts

open for the

asking.

I re formulated

I don't know when,

date,time,all

that

but the change

occurred.

something in me

relaxed, smoothed

out.

i no longer had to

prove that i was a

man,

I didn't have to prove

anything.

I began to see things:

coffee cups lined up

behind a counter in a

cafe.

or a dog walking along

a sidewalk.

or the way the mouse

on my dresser top

stopped there

with its body,

its ears,

its nose,

it was fixed,

a bit of life

caught within itself

and its eyes looked

at me

and they were

beautiful.

then - it was

gone.

I began to feel good,

I began to feel good

in the worst situations

and there were plenty

of those.

like say, the boss

behind his desk,

he is going to have

to fire me.

I've missed too many

days.

he is dressed in a

suit, necktie, glasses,

he says, "i am going

to have to let you go"

"it's all right" i tell

him.

He must do what he

must do, he has a

wife, a house, children.

expenses, most probably

a girlfreind.

I am sorry for him

he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing

sunshine.

the whole day is

mine

temporarily,

anyhow.

(the whole world is at the

throat of the world,

everybody feels angry,

short-changed, cheated,

everybody is despondent,

disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of

peace, tattered shards of

happiness.

I embraced that stuff

like the hottest number,

like high heels,breasts,

singing,the

works.

(don't get me wrong,

there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism

that overlooks all

basic problems just for

the sake of

itself-

this is a shield and a

sickness.)

The knife got near my

throat again,

I almost turned on the

gas

again

but when the good

moments arrived

again

I didn't fight them off

like an alley

adversary.

I let them take me,

i luxuriated in them,

I bade them welcome

home.

I even looked into

the mirror

once having thought

myself to be

ugly,

I now liked what

I saw,almost

handsome,yes,

a bit ripped and

ragged,

scares,lumps,

odd turns,

but all in all,

not too bad,

almost handsome,

better at least than

some of those movie

star faces

like the cheeks of

a baby's

butt.

and finally I discovered

real feelings for

others,

unhearleded,

like lately,

like this morning,

as I was leaving,

for the track,

i saw my wife in bed,

just the

shape of

her head there

(not forgetting

centuries of the living

and the dead and

the dying,

the pyramids,

Mozart dead

but his music still

there in the

room, weeds growing,

the earth turning,

the toteboard waiting for

me)

I saw the shape of my

wife's head,

she so still,

i ached for her life,

just being there

under the

covers.

i kissed her in the,

forehead,

got down the stairway,

got outside,

got into my marvelous

car,

fixed the seatbelt,

backed out the

drive.

feeling warm to

the fingertips,

down to my

foot on the gas

pedal,

I entered the world

once

more,

drove down the

hill

past the houses

full and empty

of

people,

i saw the mailman,

honked,

he waved

back

at me.