Complementary life update

I wrote a little thing for my family newsletter that I thought might be of benefit to those on the other side of my family and any friends, which also includes a little bit on how we decided to go car-free:

Here’s what’s going down in Bloomington—
I (Joel) have been on furlough from my job since January, and was recently dreading going back to work in May (because I hate that job with a passion—it’s just sitting in a cavernous room with other lowlifes power dialing old people and trying to sell this stupid thing called insurance—I seriously wish it was illegal to do and the Feds would board the place up to save other job-hungry introverts from falling for its $14/hr dangling carrot) when they called me up to announce that my furlough had been extended to September! After I finished listening to the Hallelujah chorus I realized I probably should get back to work on my years-long job hunt which never seems to be over and never will be.

In the mean time, I got a totally unrelated, unpaid and inaccessible internship in bustling Indianapolis, Indiana! You see, all of last year I took an online course to earn a post-bac certificate in Geographic Information Science (GIS) to learn how to use software that you have never heard of it but it’s legit because they use it at the city planning department where I got my internship.

To alleviate the sting of the hour-each way commute from Bloomington to Indy (that’s really what people say here to shorten polysyllabic Indianapolis and it never means the state of Indiana or something that is independent or Indiana Jones) the cool planners at my internship gave me a parking pass at nearby Conseco Fieldhouse parking garage. It’s where the Pacers play (not in the parking garage of course).
The only problem is that the ―car we had recently bought in August decided to breakdown after a couple weeks of commuting. To my surprise we actually got a little bit of money from the carcass of the car. I guess people like to torture themselves and get crappy nonfunctioning cars to work again.

So we did something that has never been done before in the history of AMERICA: we decided to cut cars out of our life. It’s been going strong now for a couple of weeks and we found out that your body actually does not need to refuel at $4/gallon, put up with $250/month payments and endless repairs to live a happy and productive life. I have especially noticed that my personal barometer of road rage has gone down lately, and I have been less prone to checking mirrors every five seconds and signaling when I change directions!

Seriously, we have the bus, the zipcar, friends who think we are crazy and have hit rock bottom but will give us a lift. Well, they’re right on both counts but rock bottom is a pretty awesome place to be sometimes. No place to go but…But then the hard drive on my computer crashed. That really made me reexamine my priorities because I think I have snuck into the generation that would rather have an iPod (thanks Mom!) than a car (thanks for never giving me one, Mom). I mean sure, we have a laptop too but what about when I want to watch semi-legal live Blazer games on the computer and play Scrabble on the laptop? You can see that I have a problem.

OK, enough about me, I will attempt to talk about Alyssa. This portion will assuredly be edited for content. Alyssa is still going to school for a dual degree in Art History and Library Science but lately has been debating dropping the Art History part because it ain’t as fun and probably has less upside potential and will take longer and these Indiana winters are brutal (that’s my opinion) but then she won yet another scholarship for being in the dual degree program (the check came in the mail today) so ethically should she stay in or still drop it plus she needs to maybe do an internship this summer and she got one in Portland right away because she is awesome and Portland is awesome and we/she’d love to see family who are sorta awesome but she also tried to just see if she could get this really prestigious and good career-move internship in the big APPLE (New York, that is) at the Frick Art Reference Library (that’s seriously what it’s called, it’s not someone messing up our last name) and of course (did I mention she’s awesome) she got that internship too but how is she going to live in New York and wouldn’t money be involved in that and then there’s another factor…

Godzilla-sized migraines!!! which by my latest studies are caused by stress and folk’s it’s a ticking time bomb—the more I force Alyssa to be a brazen careerist and ignore her biological and maternal clock the more likely her brain will explode and that’s no place to be.

Other than that we have been busy not taking pictures, not making babies, not answering any questions we raised in this update, and not making trips to Italy or Australia or Camas or Eagle (and –gulp!—hopefully not offending anyone).

The Ultimate Pro/Con List of Car Ownership

Pro:

• You can go wherever you want.
• You can go whenever you want.
• You can be cool.
• You can transport a higher quantity of goods.
• You have privacy.
• You don't have to ride a bus with weirdos.

Cons:

• You have to pay a car payment.
• You have to pay for insurance.
• You have to pay for repairs.
• You have to pay for $4/gallon gas.
• You may get stranded it the middle of nowhere and have to replace a flat in the rain.
• You have to share the road with 16-year old girls, drunks and grandmas.
• You have to scrape snow/ice off your car or be rich enough to have a garage.
• You have to sit for hours on clogged highways and streets because everyone else is riding alone in a car or live so far away in the country that you have to drive for an hour into the city except once you get closer to the city all those people living out in the country are still using the same highways and streets.
• You have to pay attention to a million things around you when you drive instead of sitting back and relaxing.
• You support and contribute to a method of transportation which is relatively not as good for the environment as other means.
• You support and contribute to a culture which encourages sprawl and suburbs and drive-thrus and strip malls and parking lots and asphalt and concrete and exhaust and highways that divide neighborhoods and cause the decay of inner cities.
• You don't get to meet with people on public transportation.

and as always, my favorite con--

• You are too empowered for your own good.

Here's a link I don't expect anyone to read because it's kinda TLDRish but it makes some good points about one of the things I discussed above, sprawl.

I dig revolting against cars, phase one in which Doris gets her oats

Here are some of the early ways we are going to get around w/o a car:

• I procured a carpool to my internship in Indy.  This was the most crucial aspect of the revolt that needed to be in place, otherwise I would have needed to get another vehicle.
• We have a bus that connects us to a lot of the things that we need to do in town, like going to campus or going to the store.
• If we ever do need a car, we are setting up an account with Zipcar, a sweet car-sharing service.

Since we don’t have a car and I got a little compensation by selling my shell of a car, there is the opportunity to spend pennies for every dollar I would have spent on a car for other means of transportation.  I still have to pay for gas for my carpool, but it is theoretically half of what I was spending before, plus less because we used to use our car for getting around town everyday.

The bus also has a $1 fare.  That is only annoying because I need to be thinking about having coins or one dollar bills.  I think it would be about $30 to get a monthly transit pass, but right now I don’t think I would ride the bus at least 30 times a month.  My wife rides for free because she is a student. 

Zipcar for us will be roughly $35 a year, plus $9 an hour we use the car. Gas is paid for, as is insurance.  This is a lot cheaper than renting a car or of course owning a car. 

I also want to link to a car revolt-friendly article each time I post.  Streetfilms is putting up a series of videos called “Moving Beyond the Automobile.”  Here is a video from the series.

Revolt against cars, week one

Look, the way I figure it, I have only owned a car like 17% of my life.  I have had access to a car to drive maybe 25% of my life.  I might be a bit of a statistical anomaly compared to the average suburban American 29-year old male, which I would guess has owned/driven more than me.  I did not get my license until I was 17, I did not drive for 2 years on my mish in Europe, and then I lived in a small college town for a couple more years before I decided I needed a car (I really didn’t). 

So it really shouldn’t be that hard to live without a car.  I’ve done it before.  But before was the Czech Republic, where there are buses and trams and metros to rely on.  Before I lived a block away from campus, a few blocks from the grocery, and I didn’t have a job nor a need to travel frequently outside my two-mile bubble.

Now will be more of a challenge.  First of all, it’s not just me, I have my wife, who is remarkably tolerant of the idea of going car free.  She was the one who pushed us over the edge when I was resigned to lassoing us further into debt with a massive car loan.  Second, we live in a medium-sized American college town, except now we are far from campus and I’m not in school anymore.  Third, I have become a fat slob and am accustomed to the enormous luxury of a personal vehicle.

That being said, I will admit that my anti-car roots have been forming the last few years.  I have posted briefly before of my future utopia where we all live without cars.  While that is unlikely to ever happen, I do think that at a glacial pace things may change. 

I decided I wanted to make my personal journey without a car more of an interactive people for the two people who read my blog.  So for the next little while, I will be blogging my experience without a car.  I will relate the struggles.  I will relate the joys.  Stay tuned.

A year and three days later…

I’m alive! The only thing that motivates me to write on this blog is to review books I have read this last year.  Sometimes blogging strikes me as being sooo 2009, but I have got a bit of time on my hands so I might as well crack the whip.  Maybe this will spark me to post more frequently.

I have noticed that I have about four or five general interests that all of my reading seems to consist of:

• Sci-fi, especially over the last few years from the glorious Ms. LeGuin.
• Russian Literature, especially from the 19th century.
• Czech Literature
• Dystopias/Utopias
• Good LDS literature (stuff you actually have to look for, not usually found at your neighborhood Deseret Book)
• and recently books dealing urban planning and transportation

I also occasionally dabble in classics or books that have won awards or new and notable books.  That about covers it, now that it now includes almost every book ever written!  But for the record, I do not prefer to read Romance, Westerns, most Young Adult, Mysteries, Thrillers, Belgian Literature, Self-helps, and Political stuff.

Books I actually finished:

The Dispossessed Ursula K. LeGuin

Worlds of Exile and Illusion Ursula K. LeGuin

UKL is I think I have to now admit is my ALL-TIME favorite  science fiction author.  Every time I pick up one of her books I am just blown away by her style of writing, her creative ideas, and a little of je ne sais quoi.  Maybe it is because she is a female writing in a male-dominated field.  Maybe it’s because she lives in Portland.  When I am reading her books, it instills in me my egoizing desire to write an even better sci-fi book, which would be impossible.  She really does take a fresh spin to sci-fi, focusing on social and cultural elements rather than scientific and adventure. 

A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini

This is another great book by the author of The Kite Runner.  It takes the reader deep into the awful, horrible world of women living in Afghanistan under shahs, mullahs, and the Taliban.  It was a good book to read at work because it reminded me that there are places worse than work (I chose to read 1984 at work next for this very reason).

Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt

This is a work of nonfiction based on a blog that I frequently read.  It tells the story of a rogue economist and some of his ideas that go against conventional wisdom, such as:  the biggest reason crime dropped so significantly in the 1990s was because so many would-be criminals were aborted fetuses, and how your name can affect how people look at you in your life and can affect if you get a job or not.  Good thing I have a strong Hebrew name like Joel.  I did enjoy reading this book.  It’s really hard to prove that anything really happens because of something else, and it’s also easy to prove anything when you meddle enough with the stats. 

Bright Angels and Familiars Eugene England

Canyons of Grace Levi Peterson

The first book is the seminal collection of quality LDS literary short fiction.  Almost every story in here is very well-written.  This book provided the jumping off point for me looking into some new authors, such as Levi Peterson.  Let me just say it is refreshing to read stories about my own culture, my own people that deal with the whole range of human emotions and experience.  Most LDS fiction gets a deservedly bad rap, but these books offer a glimmer of hope. 

The Golden Age Michal Ajvaz

This book is written by a Czech author and tells the story of a fictional island nation.  But the book does not really have a story per se, it just tells all about this people, their culture, and about a stranger visiting it.  Why does a story need a plot, anyhow?  This book proved to me that it is possible to just write a descriptive novel, full of great ideas but lacking the rigid plot format that English teachers insist every book must have. 

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability David Owen

I just read that the word “sustainability” was voted the most jargony word of 2010.  No one knows what it really means anymore.  Anybody can claim that they are sustainable.  This nonfiction book is basically a collection of essays explaining that the most energy-efficient places are actually the most densely populated places, not far-flung country dwellers who live off of solar power.  His arguments made sense to me, but I of course agreed with him before I even started reading it.

Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger

Alyssa read this book first, said she didn’t really like it, and going against her judgment I read it anyway.  Mostly because it’s about time traveling, something which I have looked into myself.  It’s a so-so book, she was right.  I sorta never really actually liked either of the two selfish main characters. 

Blazermania Wayne Thompson

Dad got me this awesome coffee table book, replete with color pictures depicting the history of the greatest basketball team ever.  I devoured it instantly.  RIP CITY!

Didn’t finish:

The Scar China Mieville

Good book.  Probably the most bizarrely creative book I read all year.  I got it from the library, and couldn’t finish it in time.  I want to read more of Mieville in the future. 

Altered Carbon Richard Morgan

This was also from the library, bizarrely creative, but it wasn’t doing it for me. 

Earthsea Ursula K. LeGuin

Alyssa and I have been trying to read this book together for about a year, and we are not very diligent at it.  It is LeGuin, I know, but it is fantasy instead of sci-fi and I like it but don’t love it like the rest of her oeuvre.

Already read, wanted to read again:

1984 George Orwell

Self-explanatory.

Referenced in my book review last year:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay  Michael Chabon

I liked it but couldn’t finish it.  I lost interest.

How We Are Hungry Dave Eggers

I read all of this.  It’s a collection of short stories that I have now all forgotten. 

The Natural Bernard Malamud

I mentioned this in my last book review, and I how I didn’t really like it and like the movie a whole lot better.  That was before I read the novel’s ending, which is a lot more tragic than the movie.  And…I actually loved the original ending because it made me really think of how much of a jerk Roy Hobbes really was (at least in the novel, but it is there a little in the movie too) thus turning my world as I know it upside-down.

Books I’m currently reading:

An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser

Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction Angela Hallstrom

The BLDBLOG Book Geoffrey Manaugh

Books on the docket:

Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF  Jetse de Vries

Judge on Trial Ivan Klima

The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All movies seen since Christmas, reviewed.

Preface
Unbeknownst to you—and for that matter—me, I am also a movie critic.  And you can’t spell criticize without critic!  I think some reviewers forget this, but not me.  It’s pretty safe, since I will admit up front that most movies are awful and I wish I didn’t spend so much time watching them but I blame it on society and the devil so I am exonerated from all charges and can now freely watch all the movies I possibly can with the caveat that I will snarkily comment on all their perceived failures and denigrate their creative time and effort!
To rate movies I will use my patented “outrageous number/ridiculous movie-related object combo” which will absolutely not stand up to any scrutiny or comparison.

(Theater)
Fantastic Mr. Fox
At first I was bitter at seeing another “kid’s movie” in the theater, because the last movie I saw was Where The Wild Things Are.  I enjoyed the former movie more.  It is funny.  It is cool looking.  In fact, it reminds me of how a Roald Dahl book should look.  The humor is an acquired taste, but I had already acquired it half of the way in.
Rating: 56 Boggises, Bunces and Beans

(on video)
The City of Ember
Again, another kid’s movie.  And again, I was pleasantly surprised.  The premise reminds me a lot of The Giver (which for some reason hasn’t been made into a movie) although there are some cheesy parts.  It is kinda creepy, which I don’t think a lot of movies can do to me. 
Rating:  200 Builders

After the Wedding
This is a Danish foreign film that reminds you how good non-Hollywood movies can be, just by mixing in something different like—I don’t know—an unhappy ending and morally ambiguous characters!  You know characters you can’t tell if they are good or bad, then they are good again and I’m all like huh?  Kinda like real life.  That is, if I lived in Denmark and I went to a wedding party and found out the bride was my daughter and her stepdad was dying and wanted me to marry his wife (your ex-lover).  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  Oops.
Rating:  1,024 Honeymoons

Ivanhoe
Sheesh, all that introductory rambling and I still haven’t excoriated a movie!  Sorry, Mom, but this movie is downright silly.  And I think unintentionally so.  It was a TV movie, granted, but I’ve seen better.  I hope the book isn’t this bad. 
Rating: 2 lances

Twilight
If there is any more written about this movie or these books, the Internet will literally need to have a stake driven through its heart or be shot by a silver bullet or else it will start to suggestively force adolescent sex on you.
Rating: 9 man vampire infield and outfield

(already seen, but recently reseen)
Breach
Rating:  $3-4 billion lost in Government Intelligence
Catch Me If You Can
Rating:  3,000 bounced checks
The Three Amigos
Rating:  20 plethoras of pinatas

My formula for deciding when I can put down a book

How accessible and attention-grabbing do books need to be?  My personal theory of literature (credentials, B.S. in English, BYUI; future prolific author; extensively read--including War and Peace, James and the Giant Peach, and Reader’s Digest) dictates that the very best works would of course have interesting openings.  In practice, however, how many times do I nab a supposed classic and find myself snoring through hundreds of pages of absolutely unADHD-friendly delayed gratification?  Look, if we want and expect kids to keep reading for the sake of reading (perhaps a faulty premise), we need to feed them more saccharine laced fluff more along the lines of Twilight, Goosebumps and Everyone Poops! 
I have extra power such as pride and guilt that gets me through some of the most mundane novels, but we all know kids nowadays (and adults too) can’t be trusted to possess such valuable attributes.  It would be nice to know that you gave a book your best effort and at the same time remove the stigma of leaving a  book unfinished.  Therefore I determined that I personally would develop a formula for when I could put down a novel with a dragging plotline and still maintain a modicum of respectability. 
At first I thought I might settle on an arbitrary number, such as  one-hundred pages in.  But that is unfair to longer books, so then I decided that it must be a percentage.  Of course there are books that reward you for sticking around, but there are also clunkers that leave you scratching your head, wondering why you wasted so much time.  I feel that if you read half of a book, you should be moderately far into a plot by then, so that would be too far and too much reading to set as a benchmark.   A quarter of a book is more reasonable, but I am a literary snob so I will err on the side of the author and compromise with 33%.  Think it out:  if a book does not speak to you on some level after a third has been read, you can safely put it down.  It’s fair.  It’s only right.
Then I got to thinking that I need to have a reason to put the book down, more complex than that it is simply too boring.  So I devised this protocol:  after 11% of the book has been read and there is any tangible feeling that I do not want to continue (manifested by yawns, periods of two days or longer of inactivity, or rampant debauchery) I will draft a first warning that details the setting, plot and characters; after 22% of the book has been read and the feeling continues I will draft a similar warning along with any additional developments, and then at the 33% mark I will write a third and final summary, after which I can safely determine that the book is too boring and I can move on.  Now, if the first feeling that I want to quit is after the 33% mark, only one report is needed.  The same rule applies if the first feeling of quitting is between the 22% and 33% marks, except only two reports are needed.  If these rules are followed, all feelings of guilt will be expunged and all pride will be upheld.  If these rules are broken, guilt shall be doubled and pride will be taken away, even that which I already have.

Joel's consumer power, vol. 23: Overcoming planned obsolescence in your life

 

You know planned obsolescence.  It’s everywhere.  You need to buy a new computer every two years.  You need to get a new cell phone every two years.  It’s when designers intentionally limit the effectiveness of their products so that you will buy more of them.  In the case of technology, they are supposedly getting better and better so that when you buy a computer it is quickly obsolete.

The worst culprit of all:  disposable shaving, and more specifically, the Gillette corporation.  They had me duped for years, buying their el cheapo Mach 3 starter kits and then stealing out of my back pocket with their replacement blades that are so expensive even companies that sell bottled water think they are out of line.  And then, do you know how long those blades last?  Guess.  They are scraping the very skin off of your face on the fourth day. 

The worst part of this whole thing was that I used to be a champion of the Mach 3.  I remember singing its praises:  “Those three blades are so smooth when you haven’t shaved for a few days”  and “I love Mach 3 so much I would literally shave myself while flying a fighter plane that was going Mach 3, in a World War II dogfight.”  I was in bed with Gillette, in bed!

It might have been my imagination, but I think the folks in Gillette’s uber-secret design department gradually cranked up the planned obsolescence over the last few years, so slowly that no one would notice.  You know, like the frog in boiling water.    “Maybe we can get it so that they will buy a new blade every day,” I imagine them saying.

Now, people have been shaving for centuries.  They have not always used Mach 3 blades.  I started looking into alternative shaving methods, which abound on the Internet.  Just Google it, there are a lot of cool ideas, like towel-blotting the razor so it doesn’t get wet (which supposedly stops the blades from going dull), to dipping your blade in rubbing alcohol or mineral oil, to using a double-edged straight razor old school style.

I tried keeping the Mach 3 from getting wet, and I tried dipping it in rubbing alcohol, but for me, it just made me feel like a bigger fool.  I still would cut up my face until I would give in and put on a new razor.

In short, life was miserable, and it was because of shaving.  Now, some of you may be wondering, why doesn’t he get an electric razor?  Well, I had some long standing biases against electric razors, but as you will see, they ultimately become my salvation.  They don’t have as close of a shave as a new Mach 3, and it doesn’t feel as effective at first, and of course they are a bigger up front cost.

My wife, much smarter than I, purchased one for me for Christmas.  I immediately loved my new toy.  It’s so sleek and sexy.  I don’t need to shave in the bathroom.  I don’t need to get wet to shave.  It doesn’t hurt to shave.  The blades (so far) still work after a couple of weeks, and they supposedly will work for an entire year.  Yes, it might take a bit longer to shave than it used to, but that is totally cancelled out by a completely unforeseen factor:  I look forward to shaving!  It is so fun now!

And thus we see that by clever design Joel was able to overcome planned obsolescence in his life through the providence of his loving wife, which is truly “the best a man can get.”

A few recent events…

I’m not sure if I want to keep posting this blog or to Alyssa’s, or both.   I am giving myself a decision period of 45 days. 

• We got a new computer.  It’s an Quadcore HP Pavilion with 6GB RAM, 640 GB Hard Drive, Windows 7, Monitor and Printer.  It’s an early Christmas present.  Alyssa sneaked it out of Office Depot on Black Friday.
• I am enrolled in a online course to receive a post-baccalaureate certificate in Geographic and Information Systems from Penn State.  (This was a major reason to get a spankin’ new computer, and Alyssa fell for it!)
• I got a job.  It is dangerous to say anything about one’s job on the Internet.  Suffice it to say that I work for an anonymous company that pays me money, and that I am not doing anything illegal nor indecent.
• I am going to a Blazer game tonight.  Here’s the twist—it’s in Indiana!  I am excited.  I penciled it on the calendar before we even moved here, because it only happens once a year, like your birthday and the number of times you think about income taxes.
• In fact, I got this whole day off, and I’m getting paid for it.  I cleaned this morning, wrapped a present and am going to run a few errands before tonight’s game.

Joel Feik, We Are Offering You A Great Work-From-Home Job Where You Can Earn Over $100,000/Year!!!

I don't think we as a society are quite to the point where we can all work from home and make tons of money, although I for one would welcome this.  Since as a side job I am a futurist, I know that there will be a period from 2017-2033 where work-from-home jobs will be held in high esteem and over half of the US population will telecommute in their jammies.  This of course predates the eventual abolition of all labor starting 2034ish, which comes about threefold: increased robotization, the changeover to an energy-based currency, and the recreation subsidies.

For now though we must wade through piles of spam and scam trying to pluck out the real jobs when we apply on the Internet.  I bet there are more fake jobs listed than real ones, if we take the aggregate total of Internet job listings everyday.  This is excellent news for the fake jobs economy, which unfortunately has no real effect on the real world.  It is good however for fake people, who are more in abundance than you would think.

Sometimes I wonder if I am deluding myself as to whether I am fake or real.  Judging by the amount of fake job offers I get, I could be persuaded that I am fake.  When did this happen?  But seriously, maybe if I switched over to this fake economy I would be better off. 

Hiding on the side of your Gmail is an outlet to this parallel fakeverse.  It is the Spam filter.  You thought you were getting enough fake job offers?  I dare you to take a peek in this filter, but first avert your eyes.  This is where the fake job offers reside that obviously aren't trying very hard to be real.  A few highlights:  multiple e-mails addressed from a MARK HANCOCK that are exactly the same except that they are always signed from a different person, multiple e-mails from the same "company" that loves to use size 28 font, e-mail job offerings that have unsubscribe links, e-mails that don't mention the name of the company, e-mails that use bad grammar, and e-mails that offer to save you money.

I actually like to check the Spam filter.  I get excited to see if my fake friends have been thinking of me.  I am tempted to de-spam all of them, so that they show up in my regular inbox.  Wouldn't you love to have fake friends that never bug you (except with phony e-mails) and that you never have to do anything for?

Look, we all have pseudo-fake friends on Facebook.  Just take the next logical step into the blindness.  Embrace the scam. 

Inspired ideas that fall outside of my stewardship

Occasionally, I have ideas that I think could change the world and make everything better--or I have ideas that would make a certain specialized thing better.  Unfortunately I usually have ideas that I have no control over nor any influence.  When it comes to some of my religious ideas, we have a nice concept in the church called stewardship.  To the best of my understanding, we use this term in the church to explain the principle that everyone is entitled to personal revelation as well as revelation for those people and things over which they have authority.  It prevents people from having revelations for the whole church unless they are the prophet. 

For example, I have previously discussed my idea that missionaries should be called to their mission when they are a lot younger.  It would be so cool, but I don't think the prophet is taking open suggestions on how to radically change the mission program of the church, because of that pesky stewardship clause.  It makes me wonder, is my inspiration from the devil?  Why did I get it, and not the prophet?  Oh well.

Fear not; I also have many other impractical and hare-brained ideas to reform the church, the NBA, computer games, world hunger, our nation's clogged highways, and the electoral process, to name a few.  Here's a quick fly-by:

• Why can't men in the church have homemaking or enrichment or book clubs or whatever it is the women do?  Exactly, there's no reason.  Also, I had a lot of great ideas for singles wards, more specifically the singles ward I was in.  Except now I've joined the dark side of being married and feel an irresistible urge to shun all single members and treat them as an awkward disease...
• I have a cool idea to prevent lottery-bound teams in the NBA from purposefully losing games to try and get a higher pick.  Once a team has been eliminated mathematically from making the playoffs, the teams go into a consolation playoff after the regular season with the seedings based on the records they had in the last 10 games of the regular season. The winner of these playoffs gets first pick with the runner up getting second, etc.  It rewards teams that are still trying while not overly penalizing teams that just are horrible and deserve a good pick.
• My favorite computer game franchises, Civilization and SimCity, both could be a lot cooler if they had a multiplayer option for collaborative play.  This would allow players to micromanage some aspect of the same civilization or city.  The players would be on the same team, have the same ultimate goals, but have their own duties and responsibilities.  In Civ, one player could be the defense minister, another the science minister, another the foreign advisor, another a provincial governor, etc.  In SimCity, different players could be in charge of Education or Public Safety or Transportation or Zoning.  I can't believe I'm letting this idea out, it could be worth millions.
• To solve world hunger, we can just make food out of the people who die.  Plus, the state of Indiana could feed the whole world, if the world always wanted corn.
  
• We could get rid of the nation's clogged highways if we scrapped our entire car-based paradigm and switched over to rail and bikes!  Cars are unsafe, expensive, ugly, polluting, and most importantly, too self-empowering.
• It is well established that I champion the idea of an overhaul of the current electoral process in favor of a compulsory Internet voting system that removes middlemen representatives and senators.  The day of true democracy is now within our grasp, people!  Technology has provided a way to bring us back to the glory of our ancient Greek ideals!  We need not disenfranchise ourselves by outsourcing our vote to a politician who has their own selfish aims at heart!  We need not be ashamed that we have no land, the wrong age, the wrong skin color, the wrong gender!  We all can vote on every issue!  What, I say, is holding us back from our destiny?!
  

Books exorcising my weak-willed imagination, vol. 1

Here is what I have read or attempted to read since I got married, starting with books I finished or gave up on:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Probably less than 25% Completed.
Alyssa and I were reading this together for months, even before we got married.  It's a big book.  It was easier than I thought it would be to get into it, but it was even easier to get out.  Did I say it's big?  Cool writing style.  I wish I liked whales and the sea and stuff. 
Rating:  3 Headhunters

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
100% completed.
I have a soft spot in my heart called russkyus literaturus and I have an imaginary quota to fill.  I was curious about ol' Solzhenitsyn and I gave this book a whirl.  It's about a guy serving in a Stalinist work camp.  Not fun.  It convinced me that it would be miserable.  It was kinda miserable to read too.  It's not Tolstoy or even Dostoevsky.
Rating: 16 Babushkas

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

100% completed.
I haven't read any Roth before, and I was wondering what the deal was about that, so I read this.  It's about this star athlete who has a charmed life who has this crazy daughter who is a terrorist and opposite in every way.  It is high on writing style, high on character, maybe a little lower on plot.  Would I recommend it to my Mom? No.  Heck, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.
Rating:  5 yarmulkes

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
100% completed
Five travelers fall to their deaths when an old rope bridge in Peru mysteriously breaks.  Was it some divine fate or just a coincidence?  SPOILER!  That question remains unresolved.  We get a peek into the lives of each of the doomed characters.  This book had a very high literary style that tickled my literary bone.  The characters were very well-developed as well as their stories.  It's a book I feel I need to read again.
Rating:  5 million sombreros

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
100% complete
I love a good dystopia.  I even love a bad dystopia.  This combined my Russian fix with my dystopic fix, and let me tell you, it went down smooth.  It's one of the first dystopias, predating all of your piddly 1984s and Brave New Worlds.  In a world where everything is scheduled out down to the number of bites it takes to swallow breakfast, how could anything ever go wrong?  Oh man, things sure go wrong.  I couldn't put this book down for the first 100 pages, then I started to put it down some but I still read it in like three days.  My second recommendation.
Rating:  73 Department of Redundancy Depepartments

The Telling by Ursula K. LeGuin
100% complete
Even though We is sci-fi, I needed an even purer shot, because I thrive on performance-enhancing books.  I also read this with Alyssa, who was enthralled at reading her first LeGuin.  If you haven't already read her work, why haven't you?  This was my second after LHOD (abbreviations make me sound cooler) and I again enjoyed her feminine, social science approach to sci-fi.  In fact, I like her ideas the most, but I wouldn't say the plot nor characters nor style were that great.
Rating:  33 ansibles

Now here are some books I am in a partial state of undressing:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
about 25% complete
I snagged this book as well as a book of critical essays about this book, ready to swig some turn-o'-the-century Irish kunstlerroman, get hungover, vomit, and then examine the contents of the vomit.  But, blimey, I am having a hard time getting into it.  You have tricked me again, every list I have ever seen of the best books ever written!  I am enjoying the critical essays more than the book so far, but I haven't given up hope yet.

The Natural by Bernard Malamud
about 75% complete
When this book walks down the street, do people say, "there goes the best book there ever was?" Um, no, they don't.  And books don't walk.  I do feel like I am breaking a personal vow to never see a movie and then read the book, but we got this book for really cheap at a Red Cross Charity Booksale, and I could hear it calling my name.  So I read it and was immediately drawn in because of the familiarity of the story, but after settling in I realized that I actually liked the movie better and I think this Malamud was a bad writer and somehow he got lucky and they made a cool movie about his kinda dumb book.


Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
about 5% complete
Too early to tell.  Dickens stories have some pretty great expectations from me.

On the Docket:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers
something by Faulkner

A date with Cappy makes me happy

Alyssa asked me why I capitalized the second word of the title of my last post, and postulated that I just like to randomly capitalize words that I think are important, like the British sometimes do.  And my Answer was that I would Never consciously do Something like that.

Here is a recap of last night's date:

• we went to Target.  That was the date.  What?  Don't act like it's not an awesome date.
• we had over $100 left on our gift card, and it was literally burning a hole in my wallet.  
• Here are some highlights of our big subsidized spending spree (in order of importance):
• Hershey's Bar with Almonds
• a new blender I call the Blenderbuss (we were blenderless)!
• a new 11 piece set of casserole dishes!
• granola bars
• pasta and sauce
• nylons

• Here are some of the lowlights:
• a comforter that couldn't comfort the most comfortable person ever to have been comforted
• we couldn't find any raspberry balsamic oil (you know, to lure fruit flies)

• and other things were purchased, and we still have $20 left!  
• then we went to Borders and snooped around, buying nothing.  
• We switched through a couple musicals before ultimately watching old Mr. Rogers clips.

 

Are Interpretations created in the mind or do they exist on their own?

A great philosophical rift opened between me and my wife last night as we lay trying to go to sleep.  I don't know how we didn't discover this sooner:  I am a true-blue, through-and-through metaphysicist while she is a staunch materialist. 

This argument got started while discussing possible interpretations of Rosenquist's "I Love You with My Ford" (pictured above).  I offered up that to me, it was a tripartite flag (in the style of Germany's) representing the nation of pop art. 

Then she said something, I wasn't really paying attention, but our conversation hit on the requisite salient points:

• my interpretation was silly;
• there is no correct interpretation;
• if we knew what Rosenquist said about this work it still wouldn't be the correct interpretation;
• there are a lot of possible interpretations;

at which point a point of contention arose:  how many possible interpretations are there?  She said something to the effect that as soon as someone thinks of one with their mind, there is born another interpretation.  I countered by saying that the interpretations exist before anyone even thinks of them.  Not only that, but there are an infinite number of interpretations.

She bristled at my theory.  She asked "how can an interpretation exist without a mind to think it?"  I said that "there were an infinite number of interpretations possible the moment it was created" which I later amended to "even before it was created there were an infinite number of interpretations."

Well, as you can see we were clearly going deep dish.  She stuck to her guns, I stuck to mine.  It was a long war of attrition, but we realized that she dwells among the world of tangible things while I am adrift in the world of ideas. 

No insults were thrown, except she called me "Platonic" which I took as a compliment, and I lovingly called her a "flesh-and-blood pragmatist wretch" and then we started talking about the chronology of the Indiana Jones movies somehow.

If you are curious as to the answer to the question contained in the title of the post, it turns out we are both wrong--interpretations are neither created in the mind nor do they exist on their own.  They are actually sentient (yet mindless) non-existential beings called Golliwogs that are invisible to all five senses and only can be briefly found in paradoxical situations such as double negative sentences (I do not not exist) and certain M.C. Escher drawings.

Go East, Young Man

A week and a half ago, I took a long road trip with my wife out to Indiana.  I got to see all of my siblings in a span of three days.  I went further away from home that I had ever been.  Err--I guess that's not true.  Here is a recap:

Day One

Vancouver, WA to Eagle, ID.
400ish miles, 6 and a half hours.

This is a trek I have been on often.  Not much to say.  I tried not to notice how beautiful it was.  We stopped in Arlington, as is mandatory.  Lunchables.  Gazebo.  Wasps.  I learned on NPR the other day that the bee-like looking things that bother you when you picnic are not bees.  Bees wouldn't do that.  They are probably wasps.  I hadn't had Lunchables for a long time, but I guess nothing really stops me from picking them up at the store.

We met up with Adam at Kyler's football practice.  Then we had pizza.  Then we left the next morning.

Day Two

 

Eagle, ID to Salt Lake City, UT
350ish miles, 5 and a half hours.

More of Idaho, and again, already-trodden land.  Much as Alyssa was dreading heading into Utah, we had to do it.  We did avoid Provo though.  We stayed in a swanky Bed-and-Breakfast in downtown SLC that Alyssa's aunt put up for us.  We went to the temple, LIVE!  Then we saw Jessica (it was not accidental).  We ate the Lion House.  I had pot roast.  Yummers.  Then we played pool.  

Day Three

 

Salt Lake City, UT to Omaha, NE

930ish miles.  13 and half hours.

 

Epic day.  We awoke at the crack of dawn, too early for our complimentary breakfast.  Headed out over the Rockies, with the blazing rising sun in our eyes. Wyoming was mostly signs for Little America, a truck stop.  Once we passed Cheyenne, it was untrodden territory for me.  By the time we reached Nebraska, we were already scouring the atlas feverishly for the next interesting thing to come up.  "Look, we are about to pass into a new county!" or my favorite, "Only 7 miles until we pass the unpaved road."  

At the first rest area in Nebraska, a nice lady told us it was still like 9 hours until Omaha.  With our heads hung, we drove and watched as cornfields filled our view--cornfields that fill up Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana--in fact, now that I think about it, we are still in the midst of cornfields.  

We passed glorious Lincoln in the evening dark and finally made it to Omaha.  We stayed with my mission bud Randy.  Talked about the mish.  Alyssa sat there patiently, probably dead tired as we laughed about the silly things we did.  

Day Four

 
 

Omaha, NE to Bloomington, IN

630ish miles  10 and a half hours

We had to get up super early so we could get to Bloomington (I want to shorten Bloomington to 'The Ming', you know in the style of Vancouver> 'The Couv') by 6 so we could meet our landlord and get into our house.  After the previous day's marathon, 600 miles seemed like nothing.  We first crossed over the Missouri River into Council Bluffs, Iowa.  As the sun rose over us, we were greeted by the rolling hills of Iowa.  In all, the Midwest as I have seen it has been more rolling than flat.  I was expecting flat, and I'm getting more curves, to be honest. 

In Des Moines, we had the closest thing to a crisis.  I mean, the odds are, on such a long trip, there has to be something, right?  Alyssa was napping as I was stunned by the booming metropolis of Des Moines, and all of its confusing freeways.  Right before my eyes I saw myself veering off onto another freeway when all my mind was thinking, "80.  80.  Stay on 80."  I mean, we had to stay on I-80 for over 1000 miles--it was the bulk of our trip.  Not too hard, huh?  But I started to take another freeway, and then realized my error and tried to pull over onto 80, but I took it a bit too late and the car went off the roadway, hit a pothole, bottomed out and woke Alyssa up.  In hindsight, it wouldn't have mattered if I had taken the other freeway, but I had visions of us ending up in South Dakota.

At the Quad Cities (for the uninformed, that's Davenport, IA; Bettendorf, IA; Rock Island, IL; and Moline, IL) we crossed over the great Mississippi into Illinois, the Land of Lincoln.  All of the states in this whole area try to claim Lincoln--we had seen a statue in Wyoming, there's Lincoln, NE, of course Illinois has a lot, Indiana says it was his boyhood home, Kentucky says he was born there.  I say, what's the big deal?  I was more excited to pass the Presidential Library of Herbert Hoover!

I thought the highlight of Illinois was Peoria (pictured above).  It was pretty.  We passed Bloomington, IL (ooh--so close) before we finally got into Indiana.  Once in Indiana, we had to take back roads into Bloomington.  We saw a bit of the countryside.  It's pretty here--there's forests and hills.  And, yes, corn. 

"Forget about the crowds, the size of the school, their fancy uniforms and remember what got you here "

• My own wedding
• A savory honeymoon
  
• Housesitting;
• with its subsequent lack of Internet access (a contributing source to the famine)
• the taking of the GRE
• selling my car
• packing all of my possessions (twice)
• disposing of many of my possessions
• giving a talk
• an exodus to Indiana
• a new home
  
• a new phone (that doesn't accidentally call people)

all of which could have their own separate post. Instead of gorging you on all of it at once, I will divvy it out piecemeal, in an easy-to-swallow daily dose. Of course, you could wait a few weeks and then read all of the entries at the same time, if that's how you roll.

A new link has been forged in the fires of Blogger-- a new family website curated by my spouse: Joelyssa. This site that you are reading now will not be unmade, for this site is MINE!

OK, now a random Hoosiers clip. I found this first, and it's really the only thing I knew I wanted in this post, but I haven't really worked it in. But we are in Indiana, so you know.

Pretty Mediocre Photographic Fakery

This is alternate version of myself riding a roller coaster.  If you observe closely, you can see him popping in and out of existence.  Note you can also see his pseudo-world through rips in the space-time continuum.  

This is What Happens When You Kiss Yourself...

My Latest Work of Art

Joel Feik's 10,021st Day of Life

Stardate 10021:

I guess it would have been a little bit cooler if I had posted on my 10,000th day, but my tally system--scratching on my wall with a sharp stick--makes it hard to pinpoint these milestones.

I snagged a coupon for SportClips, a new "barbershop" on 192nd, and got not only a haircut, but a steaming towel on my face, a scalp massage, and all while I watched SportsCenter! For free! I am a witness.

Then my mom and I went down to Clackamack and I got a humdinger of a wedding suit, plus they threw in another suit on account of good behavior.

We then traversed across the Promenade to a Sushi joint, for much Wasabi-laden goodness.

Later in the day, I mowed not one but two lawns, which is a personal record. I still feel like I am inhaling chlorophyll.

Still later, my fiance and I came one step closer towards our lifelong goal of getting married to each other by having a temple recommend interview.

To cap off the day, I won a fun game of Settlers of Cataan.

Bring on Day 10022!