I had to just run out to the bank to get quarters for the wash. It's only about 4 blocks away so being the MASSIVE environmentalist that I am, I decided to walk. Along the way I passed a dad and his son. The kid could only have been five or six, however when he saw I was wearing a t-shirt with the Batman logo on it, it stopped him in his tracks.

He paused to think and realized, the shot off a snide "you're not Batman."

This tickled me for a multitude of reasons:

• He believes Batman exists


• He believes Batman occasionally wanders through Glen Ellyn on the weekends


• He honestly thinks Batman would wear a t-shirt with his own emblem on it.

This encounter has put me in a rather good mood. It reminds me of the days when I walked by sewer lids and wondered if I tore it up and jumped down, would I be able to find the Turtles hideout? I really miss that era of the total suspension of disbelief.

I'm not happy. Haven't been for about three weeks now. I'm not happy because of what happened with my now x-girlfriend, I'm not happy with how it's effected me. Worst of all though, I'm not happy with the pedestrian nature of this whole ordeal.

How completely common an occurrence to lose a loved one. How completely run of the mill for a relationship to fail. A break-up, when viewed objectively, is the most common affliction anyone can and must suffer.

I feel both comforted and infuriated by this acknowledgement. I am comforted because misery loves company, however I am rather annoyed at the completely mundane nature of my situation. There are no fantastic twists to my story. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy finds happiness with girl, girl leaves for new boy. And here I am, left with the same damn story as hundreds of thousands of pop songs.

Worst of all, the pop songs generally have a better story line than mine. There was no massive fight, there was no explosion of words and aggression. I did nothing wrong, in fact she acknowledged that and told me that I was the closest to a "good" person that she's ever met.

She was just both used to me, and bored of me...She wanted someone new. I am an obsolete model, last year's standard issue marked down to 9.95. I've been reduced to bargain bin status because my box has been opened and the buyer didn't like the contents and returned me.

I'm not entirely a jealous man. Sure I feel a bit of proprietary right to what I have and what I know. But, jealousy stems from insecurity. I don't feel the need to be jealous even when something is taken from me, because I know well enough that anything that is worth being jealous over losing means I would have to, in some way, give it away.

Yes, I've lost something valuable to me--rather someone. She meant a lot to me, however I'm sure in some way, perhaps more than I'm willing to disclose, I gave her away through my actions.

Be that as it may, those actions are in the past. And may we let the past stay the past. I've been consumed with the effort to move on, to evolve, to regain my unique oneness. To do so, I decided to take a bike ride.

I rode through three towns, Wheaton, Glen Ellyn and Lombard. This was the first time I dusted off my bike this year and I am well aware of how over zealous I was to attempt a ride of this length. Dammit, how I needed it though. I always forget how much I enjoy the outdoors during the winter months. I always forget how nice it is to not have to go charging straight to shelter when being outside. I always forget how being in the wilderness gives me a true sense of peace.

You see, there is a wonderful path that stretches many miles in DuPage. I could have ridden my bike to fermilab, had I desired as much. It was on that path where I encountered a wealth of wildlife and an interesting array of locals. It seemed like everyone and their little dog too were out for a stroll. I saw countless squirrels, which on the path were quite pleasingly desensitized to humans. One of the highlights of the day was seeing a baby squirrel attempting to scale a tree trunk for what very well may have been the first time. Also I encountered an incredibly inquisitive bee. He followed me for what seemed like a quarter of a mile, and luckily came nowhere near my ear, face or neck.

The whole escapade seemed like it could have been one of those inane musical numbers from a classic Disney movie. Everyone seemed happy, everyone was doing their own thing. I even saw a large pack of goth children walking along the path, all adorned a rather uncharacteristic smile as they walked past.

Needless to say, I was absolutely exhausted after the 10 mile round trip today. But, as much as my body had given up, my mind and spirit were much more at peace than before I started. I realized something that so many often forget--there's a whole world out there. Everyone, everything has it's own agenda. It makes me feel insignificant at the same time as making me feel at peace. It's a very unique sensation, none the less.

I've recently been dumped. It never gets easier, not at age 7 where in second grade the love of my life, Kokoro, up and vanished from my life, or when I received a letter in my mailbox with no postage from a girl whom I had a predominantly "over the phone" relationship. It doesn't get easier when you realize your being left for someone, it doesn't get easier when you realize you've fucked up. It especially doesn't get easier when you realize you haven't. For me it's never been so much the fear of the unknown, like "Where do I go from here?" or "How will I ever love again?" It's always been a matter of the regret of the loss of the known. I know that if I take her up on her plea to stay friends, which before the break we were, to use an archaically childish term--best friends, we'd still have quite a lot of work ahead of us to put aside the fact that we've both seen each other in and out of our unmentionables.

I'll say the sexual chemistry died a long time ago, I'll say I really don't care if she finds happiness in the arms of some other person, I'll say all these things and really deep down mean it. But it's not that simple on the surface. On the surface it still hurts, in the present time it hurts like hell. I know, as does everyone I talk to, that it's for the best, and it's been a long time coming. However I know better than most that everyone I've ever loved or cared for has left or became estranged. I certainly don't want this happening with my latest exploit in love. I want things to go smoothly, I want this to be a success story in the transition to friends, as so many girls have politely told me would happen after they tore out my heart and stepped on it's still somewhat functioning valves and arteries with 7 inch stilettos.

This morning I had a really disheartening dream of my newly "x'd" girlfriend becoming promiscuous. This of course resonated due to things said in real life to the extent of her wishing to revert to her more "irrational" days. On the internet I found many pages about surviving a breakup, however they've all been geared towards women surviving. I felt sad that there was no support for guys, and at the same time I felt a little uplifted that I may very well be in the minority as far as guys that actually give a damn.

It's been a few days of separation now from my post-girlfriend. To kick off my now solitary life, I needed something with enough raw sexual energy to fill an entire theatre in St. Charles with drunk thirty and forty year olds--Prince Fest. It was all that it could have been and so very much more. I made damn good use of my camera phone and when I'm able to get these pictures off the phone and onto my computer a full story will be posted.

First the core details of this event.

• It was a "View, Brew & Let's Go Crazy" event. Meaning they served liquor at the theatre.
• We watched the 1984 classic "Purple Rain" on the big screen.
• We then were treated to Milwaukee's premiere Prince tribute band "Purple Rain" Consisting of a small, androgynous Latino man as Prince, a bra and panty clad dancing woman whom he simulated sex with on stage, and my favorite--The Doctor, he played keyboards.
• The whole event lasted almost 5 hours. With the live band playing a whopping two hours and twenty minute set.
  

I will post an entire article on the event when I can write about it with the least bit of objectivity. As it stands I had never been rocked so hard before.

I began reading the Holy Bible last night. Before I get into the thematic narrative elements, first a word about this specific bible. I obtained this book around 1991 during the operation Desert Shield, also currently known as "The First Iraq War." It's a New International Version, translated in the 1960's making it much easier to read than the King James version. The entire outer cover is desert camouflage and the title is written in what appears to be stencil font. I'd always enjoyed the look of this book and I'm glad to now sit down and read it.

That being said, the narrative in Genesis is absolutely appalling. Any second grader could pump out this dribble. There is only ever a single plot line. Any coherent timeline is shot to shit by the fourth page, it jumps back and fourth purely for the effect of showing a boiled down lineage of Adam and Eve's offspring.

It begins, God is happy, God makes things, God gets happier, God makes more things to differentiate from the things he's made prior, God gets very happy. God makes Adam (which in Hebrew means "Ground"), God is quite pleased with himself and decides to take a break, during that break he decides to make that his official break day, claiming it holy because damned if he can't. Adam initially is given the task of naming all of God's creatures, mainly because God decides to lounge for that day. Adam complains that he's having trouble with the workload and asks for a secretary, claiming he has terrific micromanaging skills and creativity "just isn't his thing." God obliges, on his day off mind you, anyone at this point who feels God lacks compassion is a blind zealot. God puts Adam to sleep and removes--let me pause at this point.

The next word is one that everyone knows, well...anyone who paid attention in Sunday school. Here's the problem, the King James version is a very rigid translation, and doesn't allow for any further interpretation of the original Hebrew scripture. Luckily the New International Version gives alternate translations where applicable.

God removes Adam's rib (also could be translated as his side, or a piece of his side) and fashions him a temp worker. She is named Eve, meaning "Life" and look at God pulling double duty on this his day of rest, creating and naming for that lounge about--Adam.

Something I found very interesting is the description of Eden. In the center there were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God had allowed them to eat from the tree of life, which granted immortality. However, he refused to allow them to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. His thinking was that it was okay for them to live forever, but if they fully understood the contrasting nature of behavior they would be far too godlike for him to handle. We all know they ate the wrong damn fruit. God certainly didn't want any immortal think for yourself-ers, I'm sure he got enough of that back home.

Another bizarre thing I noticed is that whenever he referred to himself it was in the plural sense. Seems odd for an almighty, all-knowing, omnipresent, omniscient being to make such a simple grammatical error, unless of course there's more than just him out there.

I've decided to read the bible. Beginning to end. The reason multi-faceted. I've always taken an interest in religion and the religious, and I've always been interested in reading things where the author has long since died, it almost feels like I can go back in time. The bible is the first step, after that I plan to read the Book of Mormon, the Torah (which holds mystical future revealing factoids not through what is written but by how it is written, or so I'm told) and I'll wrap things up with The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey.

I propose no religious siding, I've never been too gung ho to leap head first with full mind, body and spirit into any one religion. However I must say I've been baptized and confirmed a Christian. I, in no way, renounce my prior religious learning, in fact I embrace it. I wish to learn as much as I can about the human fascination with the spiritual, supernatural and unknown. Because, as we've learned, faith can never be proven, if what the faithful believe in becomes fact then it all just becomes another bit of pop culture.

I will no doubt be updating a bit more often, informing of how the reading is going and most likely I will be presenting funny, insightful or otherwise interesting passages.

Karma can't exist. I don't mean that in the figurative sense, there is absolutely no way that there are only absolute right and absolute wrong sides to every choice. I'm not talking about "Should I have a cookie?" choices that I have to make every second of every day. The only out comes are (A) I have the cookie, possibly ruining my desire for an eleven course meal, or (B) I don't have a cookie and I gorge myself on something else. These are easy choices because they deal with inanimate objects. These have no feelings you must take into account. Things get a bit trickier when the choice affects other humans.

Now the idea behind karma is do good and good will be done to you. This is quite reminiscent of Albert Einstein's theory of every action creates and equal and opposite reaction. This is a great theory for explaining trampolines or smashing watermelons, but for something as complex as "doing good" even something as complex as the word "good" its nowhere near as black and white as that.

Here is a prime example of someone who really thought they were doing good. On the expressway a lengthy truck that carries new cars wanted to merge into our lane. The person in front of me came to a complete stop and waived him in, delaying everyone behind her including me. Now clearly if we narrow our view of this situation, conveniently cropping me out of the equation there is a simple decision. This person decides if it's worth it to her to let in this truck. Is she in that much of a rush? How good will she feel helping out a fellow motorist? We know what she chose and I hope she feels damn good about it, because karma ain't doin' shit for her. As we widen our scope and include me and the hundreds of other motorists behind her, she provided a complete disservice, delaying all of us a good 20 to 30 seconds. This may seem like small tomatoes especially on an hour long commute but it raises an interesting question. How could karma exist when there are more than two people on this planet?

There is an old saying; in order to raise someone up you must put someone else down. This evokes the symbolism of a balance; a natural order to things. We're not all getting happier. We can't all win the lottery. Someone has to lose. Karma will never benefit someone by being knowingly nice to someone while ignorantly harming others. Hitler, Stalin, Bush...They all may be bad people, but they knowingly believe they are/were doing something for the greater good. So does karma benefit these people?

Say you do something evil, like kill Timothy McVeigh. You hate him, you want him dead and you kill him. You kill him 3 months before he would have bombed Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. You and no one else knew that he would get classified a domestic terrorist, because he doesn't. You've saved 168 men, women and children. And you've done it with bitter hatred in your heart.

Now this is also an example of multiple other things: hindsight, cause and effect, disruption of natural balance, fate. For our purposes, Timothy McVeigh died by your hands via hatred and a twelve gauge, not the federal government and a syringe via lethal injection at 7:00 a.m. on June 11, 2001.

You peformed an unspeakable evil act by taking another person's life. Karma by definition would have to punish you. Karma, like anyone else had no way of knowing you'd be saving 168 men, women and children. Karma has no conscious, it has no reasoning. Karma is purely a virtue with consequences. It's a manmade safeguard against anarchy. It's a children's fairy tale. It's Santa Clause. It can see you when you're sleeping. It knows when you're awake, So you better be good for goodness sake.