Michael Braun's Blog

It seems that lately, I’ve been making some pretty snap decisions.

For example, I just went out and bought a Nikon D50 digital camera. I’ve been waiting to buy this camera for some time, so maybe snap isn’t quite the right word for the decision, but when I woke up this morning, I realized that it was time to buy a new camera. My old camera is having some trouble. There’s a bug in the camera’s software that causes an error when you try to take a picture after having zoomed in and using macro focus. I’ve been able to end the error in the past, but it seems to be persisting longer this time. And my bank account was flush with funds, so I said, let’s do it! Now, I’m just disappointed that things around my apartment aren’t lending themselves to my photographic eye.

But perhaps a good subject would be… my new cat! That’s right, after months of debating and trying to figure out if/how/when I should get a cat, I found out that my grandparents’ eldery neighbor was soon to be going into assisted living and needed to get rid of her 6 year old, female, non-shedding, declawed cat. I said, I’ll take her. I picked her up on the morning of the 26th. She was quite shy at first, hiding constantly. But she’s warmed up quite a bit over these past few days, though she has picked as her favorite sleeping spot a high up landing above my breakfast bar (expect photos later). It’s hard to get her down from there, so I can’t play with her as much as I’d like. My mom and company came over to my apartment on Thursday and scared the cat quite a bit. I was concerned that the cat was anti-social. But when Lauren came over a couple hours later, after we snagged the cat off the landing, she was quite friendly.

I don’t think I’ve made any other rash decisions, but two in a span of seven days is certainly enough. Now, you ask, why didn’t I write about that cat earlier? Well, I’ve been busy seeing family. I was in Milwaukee the 24th-26th. Then the evenings of the 26th and 27th I was at my grandparents’ house for Christmas there. Friday night, I was at their house again with my cousins and uncle. All in all, it’s reminded me how much I miss seeing my mom’s side of the family. I wish that we could all get together more like my dad’s side does.

It’s New Year’s Eve weekend this weekend, which means I have Monday off from work. I’ve got a New Year’s party to go to, hosted by my co-worker Mike. That should be a fun time. But other than that, I’m hoping to have a less busy weekend than the last several. It’s nice to actually have some time to write in here, without having to run all over the place.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year!

What would you call someone who claims to predict the future? A prophet or a psycho? And what would you call a man who claims to fulfill a prophecy? How about someone who comes to you and says that he is the son of god and has been sent to teach the people of earth the right way to live. Later, when he starts to get in trouble with local authorities, he claims he has been sent to die for the sins of all mankind.

Whoa, you say, I heard this story before. Jesus is the one true savior! Stop being such a psycho. Get the fuck out my face! 2000 years later, you’re long dead, and the Christians are blamed for rejecting Jesus 2! Didn’t they know that he was the savior, the second son of god?! How could they have been so ignorant to reject his rightous teaching?! Alas, alas.

If the Christmas story had been made up 10 years ago, instead of 2000+, anyone who believed it would be called insane by even the most devout today. Yet when something was made up so long ago, we seldom think to question it.

If a Christian had never heard the story of Christ before, and then were told it, what do you think their reaction would be? It sounds like a bunch of lies. A virgin gives birth and claims she was impregnanted by an angel sent from god? I’ve heard that shit before. And her baby is the son of god, sent down to earth to save all mankind? Then, he disappears from age 12 to age 30. After that stretch of time, someone appears again, claiming to fulfill the prophecy and manages to find 12 followers. He attrachs a few more people along the way, but eventually runs crooked with the local authorities and is put to death when the crowd demands it. Such ends his saga.

Now, rather than being able to laugh at this ridiculous fairy tale, this man becomes the founder of one of the biggest cults on earth.

So on this Christmas Eve, I ask you – please stop for a second and question your own beliefs. I don’t care what they are. But pause and say, WHY do I believe what I believe? Why am I a Christian/Jew/Muslim/Buddist/Hindu/Atheist/Agnostic/Apatheist? And then share that with someone else.

Here’s mine – why do I not care if there is a god? I don’t care because I’m cool with me, and I believe I’m living a good life. When I look at religion and spirituality, I see mysticism in full force, devoid of logic and reason. I see a mental illness when I look at those people who seek something outside of themself to find order in the universe. If you need order and you can’t find it in yourself, you need a psychologist, not a god.

Christianity just doesn’t make sense, y’all! Happy Christmas!

Tonight, I’m driving up to Mishicot, which may result in a bit of a silence from posting for a little while. Although, last time I was at my dad’s, there was an unsecured wireless network that I was able to connect to. So maybe I’ll be lucky enough to have that happen again. When I arrive down in Milwaukee, however, my aunt and uncle have wireless, so stay glued to your computer screens for an update. I recommend hitting refresh every 10 seconds just to be safe.

I hope everyone who is off to somewhere else has safe travel. So far, no snow (’round here anyway, no so in Colorado) to slow your trips. The worst we’ve got here right now is a lot of rain. Anyway, I’ll write more when I can; until then, Season’s Greetings to all. Tonight’s the Yule!

Yes, yes, as promised, the long awaited blog post written in a hotel in Detroit, MI. I’m not actually sure if we are in Detroit or not, but it’s close by. I left Madison at 1:30 today and never looked back. We went out to dinner (there are 6 of us on the trip) and now are relaxing in our hotel rooms. I’ve got a nice king-sized bed with 4 pillows on it. There’s ethernet internet access here in the rooms. Conveniently, I brought my wireless router so that both my personal laptop (on which I am typing now) and my travel laptop for work can be online at the same time. Maybe I should set up a network between them.

Anyway, since I have been so long absent from posting, I thought it would be good to give an update of what I’ve been doing. But I was looking back on the last week and a half and I realize that I can hardly recall what I have been doing, besides being busy. So I figure I’ll just give you a recap of this weekend, most of which I can recall.

Friday night, I met up with Brittany. We didn’t really do anything, as she wasn’t feeling all that well, and neither of us were feeling particularly adventuresome. We went out to dinner at Pizzaria Uno and had a delicious spinach and broccoli pizza. After that, we sat around her apartment and played some video games. Before we knew it, it was almost midnight and we were both very tired, so I drove back home.

Saturday was the big day in Platteville. Finally, Tony was graduating from college. I left around 11, and got there around 12. I did not expect it to take such a short amount of time. That meant I got prime parking, but Tony was stuck in a luncheon with the chancellor. That meant he couldn’t answer my called. The gymnasium where the ceremony was to take place was filling quickly. I was concerned that Tony had already arrived and that his family was already seated. So I went and grabbed a seat myself. 10 minutes later, Tony called saying he was just leaving the luncheon and was rushing to get there ontime. I was concerned that his family might not find seats, but thanks to some good fortune, they all had chancellor reserved seating right up front. And they had an extra ticket! I left my seat and waited for them to arrive. We got to take our seats near the front and it was great.

The ceremony was a ceremony. The speeches weren’t as bad as they could have been and it didn’t last too long. Afterwards, we took some pictures and then Tony’s family took off, leaving us to wonder what the plan was for the night. We headed back to Tony’s apartment and eventually took off with Zach for Dubuque for some dinner. After a delicious meal at the Bricktown Brewery, we drove back to Platteville for some video games. I eventually left at around 10:30.

Sunday, I was expecting to have a quick and leisurely time at home with nothing much to do. I got up before 8, showered and was laying on my couch reading and napping when, at around 12, who should call but Krista Gibson! As it turns out she had driven back to WI from PA (where she’s working these days) for the holidays! And she wanted to have lunch with me (aren’t I lucky). So we went and had lunch, did a little shopping, and the she left on to see some other friends before driving to the Twin Cities (where her family’s at).

Later that day, I met up with Lauren. We did some shopping in the Greenway Station area, then at West Towne Mall. Overall, some reasonably productive shopping as we both found gifts for some troublesome people on our lists. After spending quite a while walking thru Barnes and Noble (ever look at a visual dictionary? They’re hilarious!) we headed downtown and had a relaxed dinner at Chin’s. It made for a very pleasant cap to a pleasant day.

And today, I’ve not done much more than fly to Detroit. It’s been pretty great. So stay tuned, you may hear more from me tomorrow. There’s not much to do at night, and being in a hotel room, I need some more entertainment than just sitting and watching TV.

Okay, yes yes, it has been a long time since I’ve written anything on here. All I have to offer are excuses, most of them having to do with being busy and with not having anything to write about. In the old fashioned tradition of previous blog posts, I suppose I could write something and fill you all in on what I’ve been up to lately, who I’ve been hanging out with, blah blah blah, but I don’t feel like doing that right now.

However… tomorrow I am flying to Detroit for work and that means I should have some evening time to sit around and waste. That is often the time that I feel most like writing in my blog. Thus, stay tuned for some posts tomorrow or Tuesday night. I believe I will definitely have something to write about.

In other news, I just heard from Amos that Steph’s (his girlfriend and friend of mine) mother passed away this morning. She had been fighting a long bout with cancer. So, to Steph, I’m thinking of you. I hope this difficult time goes as well as can be expected.

Brittany has always been better at stirring up more controversy than me via her hard-hitting posts about… the Mayan civilization as portrayed in Mel Gibson’s new film Apocaypto?! C’mon, how lame is that? :-) Anyway, check out the post she wrote here. This set off a bit of a firestorm when she criticized a shock-blogger for his post criticizing the Mayan civilization for being blood-thirsty, and thanking the blood-thirsty Spanish Conquistadors for slaughtering the Mayans. She cited his first post on the subject, and is criticized in a later post.

I think it’s interesting to level criticism towards an entire culture. It certainly raises a lot of eyebrows and gets people to pay attention. To make a sweeping generalization, sweeping generalizations often do a very good job of causing controversy.

There’s criticisms can be had of every culture on the face of the earth. But how do we measure a culture? I found this definition helpful – the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. That’s from the dictionary on my computer. Seems reasonable. We can walk back thru history breaking down societies and knocking them apart.

It’s all well and fun, until we fail to turn the camera back onto ourselves. The Vietnamese people looked at the Americans fighting in their country as killers; their own struggle was a war for their country. For Americans, we viewied the war as a fight against an idealogy going against what our country stood for; we were fighting to save Vietnam from falling into the clutches of a country we viewed as brutal. The only way to parse out who was right and who was wrong is to wait and see what the final repercussions are of the act. Right now, we view the deaths of so many Americans and Vietnamese as needless, but also view Communism as a failure and its practices as draconian. In other words, it’s a mixed bag.

We can also look to criticize the Middle East today. Differing views abound from every part of the world. But the question remains – in the future, will the war be seen as striking change in a region whose governments are frequently out of step with the rest of the world? Or will the Middle East stay the same, only growing because America removes itself from the region? I have no idea. Judging from history, it seems like we will probably see a little bit of both. The war probably wasn’t a good idea, but the Middle East did need to change.

In short, summing up an entire society with a sweeping blow is a pretty tall order. Let’s look at the Greeks and Romans, for example. Much criticism can be had of them, to be sure. For one, their sexual practices were far different from ours today. I’ve heard reports that men frequently engaged in sexual acts with young boys. This is very different from our society today, in which such behavior is regarded as criminal and deviant. These two cultures also kept slaves; today, we consider the keeping of slaves to be backward and against basic human rights.

There is much that we could criticize the Greeks and the Romans for, but we recognize that they had significant developments that lead to much greater understanding of science and reason into later societies. Therefore, we write off what differs from our societies and embrace what lives on in our lives today. We can still look back with a critical eye, but we keep our views more well-rounded, playing both sides. It sets up an interesting discussion. Broad generalizations tend not to do such a good job with that.

So how about the Mayans? Indeed, fans of killing each other, something many civilizations have gone thru. And indeed fans of their religion, which they believed dictated these killings. Thank goodness no wars fought over religion have occured since the Mayans were killed. But the question remains – noble savages or just savages?

How about neither? The blogger Brittany quotes – Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Blog (how’s that for a wham-bang of a name?!) – tries to frame his argument in these terms. Either way, you’ve got the word ‘savage’ as a central part to the argument. Definitions abound for this term, having to do with an uncivilized way of acting or a level of violence. Either way, the term remains relative. The Mayans were savage compared to what? There is no intrinsic standard. Compared to our society today, they were savage, and stupid, and backwards.

Furthermore, what do we have the Mayans to compare to? They were removed from the rest of the world, where other societies were developing. And in that remote location, they achieved a complex society, with advancements in engineering, art, architecture, and government. Three cheers for the Mayans!

At the same time, they did have a religion that dictated the killing of people as ways to appease their gods. In this way, and many others, I have no doubt they were a society we would find radically different from our own.

So what’s the point? As usual, the truth is in the middle ground. Arguing that the Mayans were a society that we should be proud to model our own after is obviously foolish. Arguing that the Mayans were sick savages who deserved to be killed makes about as much sense. So c’mon. Either be smart and back up what you’ve got to say, admit to your shock-blogging ways, or stop trying to make arguments that you know you’ll never win in any realm of logic or reason.

I like Eminem. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to his first 3 albums. I think he is very skilled and talented. However, with the release of his fourth album, notably lame sounding, and now a new mix tape, I’m starting to get sick of his desire to rhyme every single word possible.

It’s time he rhymes to die the fly way high way byway, flows my way, his style beguiles rye files my eyeballs, and lies all the time and finds the kind of lies to be mine.

And by the time he gets finished, it of course makes no sense at all to anyone and no one cares what he’s saying anymore. Rhymes are a great way to show off your abilities as an MC. They are not a great way to get your point across, unless you spend hours and hours perfecting your lines and your message. Mos Def often has a good string of rhymes, but his lines are so descriptive that when you stop hearing the rhymes and start hearing his words, you are just as blown away.

So anyway, Eminem, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to him. Oh well.

In other news, I had a busy weekend, saw lots of people, and overall, was very tired by the time it ended. On Saturday, I spent a lot of money Christmas shopping with Brittany. Then Amos was throwing a party at his house. John, Brittany, and her roommate Vicky showed up. It was nice. On Sunday, I got to watch some Curling with John, which was awesome. It’s a great sport. I also saw ‘Casino Royale’ again with Brittany. That evening I had dinner with Lauren. Busier than I’ve been in a long time.