As you have no doubt noticed, the publishing schedule around here has gotten a bit less dependable. Thus far, all that has been affected has been the afternoon article. But this may just be the beginning. I’m trying to be solid with the anniversary and music posts. I’ve managed to get the last couple of 11:05 publications up just because I happened to be able to. They weren’t done the day before as used to be the case. Now everything just gets jammed into the little bit of time that I manage between other things I’m working on.
Currently, I’m managing writers, writing my own freelance stuff, rewriting a book for publication, and taking frequent breaks to scream into a pillow. It’s madness. I don’t deal well with this level of stress. And I do believe that some day soon they are going to have to take me away to a quiet place where the most upsetting thing will be sparrows chirping in the morning. And even that may be a bit too much to take.
So I’m thinking I’ll let the days float. What is there to talk about anyway? Doing the anniversary posts are interesting because they constantly remind me that nothing much has changed. And the morning music posts remind me that perhaps not everything in the world is terrible.
God and Ice Cream
It reminds me of some philosopher I was reading who was talking about the nature of God. Like a lot of people, he was interested in theodicy and why God allows evil in the world. But he was quick to note that there isn’t just evil in the world. He specifically mentioned ice cream. If God were evil, would it actually allow anything as wonderful as ice cream? I forget where he came down on the issue.
To me it is clear enough. The way I see God is a given. God is just a word that explains why things exist. The Bible claims, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It does show how God is just a linguistic trick that allows us to talk about the ineffable. But whatever you want to think about God, you can’t possibly think that it is something that cares about us in the same way that a mother cares about her child. If there is such a thing as God’s love, it is only in the sense that to exist is a favor. Regardless of how horrible we may perceive existence, at least we get to perceive it. Most things don’t get that gift.
Personally, I don’t buy that. There is life and there is not life. Life is nothing but a chemical process. Our consciousness nothing but trick. And as much as we like to think of ourselves as independent organisms — universes in ourselves — it sucks to perceive ourselves in such a way that we find painful. And in that context, God is an utterly useless concept. There is good and evil in the world simply because there is good and evil in our conception of the universe.
William Lane Craig is one of the people who has decided that my way of thinking is wrong: God defines good. And that means that Craig has defined good and evil out of existence in the context of our consciousness. But I think Craig is a huge liar. He’s lying to himself in his zeal to believe a truly ridiculous dogma. He must know, once you peel back the barriers he’s built to protect God, that we are all alone and that we have no clue why some things give us pain and others give us joy. There is no reason that humans will ever be able to understand why they can be licking a delicious ice cream cone just as someone stabs us through the kidney.
So we go from the ontological “Why does anything exist?!” to the Schopenhauerian “Why continue on within our own little universes?!” And the answer to both questions is the same: we don’t know. So we muddle on. And that is what I will continue to do: muddle on with Frankly Curious. At this point, it is the closest thing I have to a social life, so I hope that I can keep you all interested enough to keep stopping by. Hopefully, for the regular readers, it comes down more on the ice cream side of the universe than the knife through the kidney side of things.
What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
I like stuff with chocolate and caramel. And milk.
In a waffle cone, I like vanilla. I don’t need much. Just pure deliciousness.
I know what your favorite ice cream is so if we put it in a waffle cone, you might die from happiness. So when I go shopping tonight for food to combine with chicken I will get some dulce de leche and waffle cones.
I’m not sure that works. It may be too much of a good thing.
It is never too much of a good thing.
Coffee ice cream, in all of its varieties. (Also the concoction known variously as “black cherry” or “Burgundy cherry”, but that’s mostly based on childhood nostalgia – it never tastes as good as I remember it tasting, but coffee ice cream is a fairly reliable pleasure.)
I’m a bit puzzled by my love of coffee ice cream, though – although I am a coffee fiend, I abhor _sweet_ coffee. Add vanilla ice cream to my coffee – which I understand is A Thing that people do – and I will throw it at you. Add coffee, or Kahlua, to vanilla ice cream, and I love it. Go figure.
Best I’ve had, by the way: Mashti Malone’s in Hollywood. They’re famous for their more-exotic flavors (lots of rosewater, for example) but their coffee ice cream is amazing. And _strong_.
Interesting. I like ice cream in its more pure forms. Ben&Jerry’s used to have a seasonable blueberry that was fantastic. But then, I’m very fond of blueberries anyway.
My wife makes wonderful ice cream. There is a banana one that has such a silky texture. There is a stout one that is flavored with Guinness beer boiled down to a syrup. We made cherry and peach last summer. Pumpkin in November and peppermint in December. Or egg nogg. She uses a vanilla custard base for everything. It’s my favorite desert so she always makes it for my birthday. We have a recipe for avocado ice cream that tastes very good, but always freezes too hard the couple of times we tried it. Surprising because avocados are so rich.
A wife that makes ice cream is a keeper. Ice cream that is too hard is a real problem. I can’t much imagine avocado ice cream though.
It’s never a good idea to go any crazier than absolutely necessary. But whenever the blog schedule changes on this site, the quality stays high. And even if it has to be downgraded a bit, I think we’ve all gotten more for free than anyone could have asked for. Good luck!
We should write and submit moar articles so he can ignore the afternoon posts.
Moar?! I’ll try to get up one of James’ tomorrow.
It is internet speak…I do that at times.
It’s one of the few Internet bits I get; one spells “more” “Moar” to mock one’s own unforgivable sincerity. The Internet is not a bastion of honest feelings. Unfocused rage and apologetic semi-honesty are more its speed.
I find myself being semi-honest all the time (rather than full honest, which I think is the only point of writing), and I only participate in two blogs. To Twit adherents, keeping up with the latest sarcasm must be a full-time gig.
I play way more on twitter than I should. But it was letting me avoid cleaning.
Thank you. I’ll still do it. I’m just going a little crazy.
Stress is a killer. It feeds itself, that’s the worst part. Being busy as hell if you don’t need to worry about it (say, if you have free time to burn by watchindg a stressful movie, or enjoying a challenging task which requires quick responses like playing Pong) doesn’t alter your brain. You can turn off the stress-coping brain-chemicals immediately.
When you feel as though stress is the new norm, that causes more stress. We’re social animals, not paramecium. We rely on our communication skills and problem-solving DNA to reduce stress, so it only comes up rarely (the jaguar in “2001” is gonna eat us.)
Constant stress is not helpful. Even those who claim they thrive on it usually have a breakdown. I fear that in those situations our evolutionary programming breaks down (we should either solve the source of stress or get eaten.)
Some stress can be invigorating. Too much breaks our CPUs.
That’s right. I’m having a good time managing the writers. They have all been great. What’s really screwed me up is this fight I went through.
Stress in a structure is easier anyway.