mason garden

This was an assignment for my sociology class, and I thought it would be worth preserving here. Viola:

Americans don’t “die.” Some of us come to a “tragic end;” a few lucky heroes “go down fighting.” Most of us will quietly “pass away” in the night, our journey marked by the quiet beeping of our mechanized companions.

Death frightens us. We don’t experience it. We don’t understand it. We don’t like to be reminded that all of us must one day sleep that final sleep.

It’s strange for a country with such a strong Christian heritage to so fear the end of our sin-filled lives. Maybe it’s a lack of faith. Maybe we have too many Baptists confusing all the Methodists. Maybe the Presbyterians are stirring doubt in the Catholic’s hearts.

Maybe we’re all true believers but afraid that our piety won’t stand the test of the final judgment. Maybe we don’t believe that death is just a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe don’t want to be silent passengers on the train when it finally jumps the end of the track. Maybe we want to be up front, with the engineer, shoveling coal for all we’re worth and singing “I’ll be Home for Christmas” like Rudolph after one too many eggnogs.

We’ve seen the elderly, lying in their beds, tubes in their noses. Slow. Old. We remember too clearly the piggy back rides, the ice cream cones, the wonderfully happy Thanksgiving dinners. It’s so easy to see ourselves lying there, with our loved ones too scared to share our few remaining days.

As so we shut it out. We turn out backs. And no one dies, really, because we know that if we hide our heads under the blankets the monsters can’t get to us. We’ll be safe through the night, and tomorrow will dawn and everything will be OK.

This is neat: paper softwalls. It’s a 6.5ft tall, flexible, collapsible paper wall.

I ran across this gem of an essay tonight thanks to a link from slashdot. The essay is about how MMORPGs will take over the world, and everyone will have a virtual life to go along with their real one. It’s humorous of course, but there’s a whole lot of truth in there I think.

Some choice quotes:

Aristotle said it best: "society is a house, change is a tornado full of woodpeckers."

and:

And if you’re chuckling and shaking your head at the glazed-eyed geeks who can’t tell the difference between game money and real money, let me ask you something: when Square bought Enix for $727 million two years ago, do you think they they actually stacked crate after crate of cash on a flatbed truck and then drove the $727 million over to their offices?

No. That money only existed as numbers in a computer. In fact, not even 10% of the money in the American economy exists as physical, printed currency. All of the rest exists on servers and hard drives and in the imaginations of the people. It has value for the exact same reason WoW gold has value: because people think it has value.

It isn’t a question that I believe in God or have faith in Him. More like I have less faith in myself. That is where my doubt comes from.

Yesterday was so nice….other than our DVD player having issues….but there was very little homework and no reading. Ah, to relax and sleep. It’s been really nice yesterday and today. There were a few clouds and the temp was down. Felt about 77 degrees most of the day. I’ve decided to try out James diet. I’ll miss solid food…ah well loosing some weight is good. As soon as my ankle gets better I have good intentions to exercise. With class I tend to want to do mindless activities and I guess that counts.