October 2008

There will be several thousand Sarah Palins tomorrow. There will be about seven times as many cops in the world, although many of the females will be way more suggestive than I hope any cop actually is. There will be approximately 40% more skin shown tomorrow. There will be several hundred current events people who show up as Joe the Plumber. The Mario Bros will probably get some face time.

There will be at least one extra punctuation mark in the world. I am holding down the fort; I’m going as a question mark. I made the costume and everything. There will be pictures. Oh yes, there will be pictures.

I like English that much.

So this week is so insane that I couldn’t possibly get everything done. I decided against reading the novel Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. I went and read a plot synopsis to try and be at least somewhat informed on what we will be talking about. Instead, I’m glad I don’t have time to read the novel. It’s about (apparently) graphic sexual abuse (probably my least favorite thing in the world).

God works in odd ways. But I like it.

As an “emotional guy,” I’m incredibly satisfied that our nation’s fortunes depend on nothing more than pure emotion. If we pull back the sheets and look at the facts, it’s all speculation that has caused the downturn in the economy: speculation that the return on the sub-prime mortgages will be less than expected, speculation that theis will affect everything else, speculation on the part of other countries as to the effect on their economy. When the speculations are bad, people get in a bad mood and sell. We’re not even basing these opinions off of facts; speculation means this might occur.

It’s like breaking up with someone because you’re afraid things might go south. Most people would tell the person who broke it off that they’re a moron. But if we apply the same principle to economics, emotion-based sell-offs are completely normal and rational. I sense hypocrisy.

Basically, emotions determine whether or not your financial system is going to do well or not. Because today, some numbers came in that house sales are up (read: actual statistics, not speculation). Subsequently, the market is going up. The dollar is strong (like, really strong, in comparison to previous months). Gas prices are low. Interest rate is low.

After like two weeks of people being in a bad mood, people are generally in a good mood again on Wall Street. This translates to market going up.  At least when I’m emotional, I don’t bring an entire nation crashing down around me. I look like Keanu Reeves next to those guys.

And we thought teenage girls were fickle.

Some days just crawl. Some weekends just crawl. Some weeks just crawl.

I’m in a day that’s part of a weekend that’s part of a week that moved slower than a pre-dawn wake-up call. I can’t think of enough things to kill the time.

It’s an odd-numbered Thursday, which means one of my opinions is in the Oklahoma Daily.

In other news, this man is crazy. I’m never, ever giving up my iPod. Ever. Period. This kinda like the paperless society that the internet was supposed to bring about. Above my desk, I have a 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper that has “Stephen Carradini welcomes the Paperless Society!” written on it. I laugh every time I try to clean up my desk of all the paper that accumulates on it.

So while “The Cloud” may exist, I’m definitely not going to stop using my iPod for it. Way too inconvenient.

Some days it seems like every single thing I do ends up being about romantic relationships (or, even worse, sex). I’m having a day of the latter variety. From classes to facebook to the blogs and comics I read, it seems that everything is about sex today. The mindset that everyone (married or no) is doing it makes me feel very impatient.

Because I’m not, and I wish I were. It’s at these points that Christian morality becomes very difficult. I know that if I were to hit up onlinebootycall.com (I’m not kidding, this is real), I would feel bad afterwards. I also know that my future wife would be very upset that onlinebootycall.com was a significant part of my pre-marriage existence. But at the moment, it doesn’t make much sense to deprive myself. It feels masochistic, really. Disciplined is a more Christian-ese word for it, but regardless of what it’s called, it’s frustrating.

And I know why we are called to married monogamy. God didn’t create sex for random hookups, nor did he invent it to combat loneliness. He created it as a way for the married couple to be in union physically, just as they are (should be) emotionally, mentally, and all other ways. Awesome. Great. Totally on board with that. Unfortunately, I’m 0% married.

Married people tell me all the time to stay single as long as I can, because those are the best days ever. I challenge that these people must have forgotten what being single was actually like. Idealization of the best parts of something is easy to do, especially retrospectively.

I never want to get into a relationship just for the physical aspect of it. That’s a bad plan. But still, the absence of the physical aspect in my life is more marked than the absence of the emotional aspect. I get emotional intimacy from my friends and family. I don’t get physical intimacy from my friends, because as my friend Sarah Mitchell is so quick to point out, make-out buddies are like communism: perfect on paper, but a total failure in practice.

So, I remain. God is good, and I know that his design for this whole scheme is better than my own. I just really, really want to get there. srsly.

Josh Ritter – To the Dogs or Whoever