Tell me all your thoughts on God

After my last post here, I received lots of different responses. Phone calls, facebook messages, in-person "how are you doing"s. The one thing they all had in common, though, was that they focused on one particular line in that post: "I don't believe in God." The first thing I want to make clear is that I didn't mean that I believe that God/gods/god doesn't/don't exist. I have no idea, and that's the whole point of the post. I'm looking for answers. Despite the fact that it has a nice, lyrical ring to it, I can no longer accept "for the bible tells me so" as a foundation for a world view. But that's not what I want to focus on. I want to know why that line was singled out from everything I said in that post. I suppose it's because for most people I know, the belief in a higher power informs all their decisions. Is that the right way to look at the world? Clearly, if the Christian God exists, it's a great world view. But what if he doesn't? Is it still a good thing? The case could be made that, right or wrong, living a Christian life is better than nihilism. Maybe I should just stick with the Christianity thing and hope heaven is real. That seems like an awfully ignorant way to go through life, though. I'm not satisfied with accepting things based on faith or tradition or upbringing; I have to know how things work. "God works in mysterious ways" is not anything resembling an answer.

Out of everyone that responded to "Adult Life" only one person asked me about the relationship I alluded to. Talking to him about her was much more cathartic than I could have imagined. Why did everyone else focus on the spiritual side of things when it was clear that I was/am having much more tangible issues? I certainly don't mean to insult the people who wrote me about my belief in God, because I really do appreciate those discussions. But, again, why focus on that? Would I have avoided that relationship or those problems with a firm belief in God? Would a stronger faith have prevented me from being in that situation? I really don't know.

This post is rambling and incoherent, but it mirrors my thoughts in that way. Like I said last time, I have a lot of questions. I honestly appreciate everyone who has talked to me about these things, and I hope to continue those discussions. I know that no one has all the answers I need (or no one can give them to me, at least), but I want to hear how you answers these questions for yourself.

Adult Life

I've lived in Houston for more than a year now. I've done lots of adult things, like buying a car, figuring out how insurance works, renting an apartment, doing my taxes. I've dated a lot, too. A woman 6 years older, a girl 3 years younger. I said "I love you" for the first time in years. I heard it repeated back to me for the first time in even longer. I've said, done, written, and thought things that I'm not proud of. Things I would take back given half a chance. I've missed opportunities and blown second chances. My phone number has been blocked. I've been slapped across the face. I stopped going to church. I don't know how to tell my parents that I don't believe in God. I've lost friends. I've gained new ones. I've shouted and cried and begged and fought but never for the right people or at the right time.

I don't know how to be an adult. I don't know how to sustain relationships. I'd like to think that I act with the best of intentions but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm actually incredibly selfish. On the other hand, I seem to need someone to be infatuated with. How do I reconcile those things? How do I get what I want? How do I know that what I want is what I need?

These questions pile and pile on, and I just don't have any answers for them.

Technology and the Modern Road Trip

I spent this past weekend driving around the state of Louisiana, collect counties (or "parishes" as The Bayou State calls them) for Carey's collection of intangible things he's done or places he's been to. Before you get all huffy and say that you're sick of these "trip report" posts, let me just say that what we did and saw is not the point. The pictures can be found here if you're interested in that sort of thing. What I want to talk about is how technology has changed the way we travel. This was my first long car trip since the advent cellphones with internet access, and it made for a very different experience.

The three of us (Erick came too) set out Friday afternoon, packing 2 laptops, 2 cameras, 3 GPS-and-internet-enabled phones, an AC adapter, and a powerstrip to plug it all into. With the exception of the occasional cellular dead zone, we were never without immediate access to the all the incredible resources the internet has to offer. Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, maps, news, traffic reports, or the answer to any question was just quick dig into a pocket away. When someone said "I wonder...", we didn't have to discuss or argue the issue in question, we just looked it up. Getting lost is completely impossible when you have a device that tells you where you are. When we were hungry, our phones told us not only what restaurants were nearby, but how good they were according to other travelers' reviews. At one point, while we were at an ancient Native American settlement, I pulled out my phone and showed Erick and Carey a satellite view of field we were walking in. Read that sentence again. A satellite view. I looked at a display that I held in my hand and saw myself represented as a glowing blue dot on a picture from outer space. That is just incredible.

When I was a kid, I read a lot sci-fi; specifically the Star Wars expanded universe stuff. The books would describe things similar to ipods and laptop computers, things that seemed so far-fetched and impossible at the time. If I could travel back in time and give my 10 year-old self my iPhone, his head would explode. Maybe we accept things like that today because the change has been so gradual. Maybe the iPhone isn't mind-blowing because we had car-phones first and worked our way up, but I think it's important to step back every once in a while and try to get some perspective on the role that technology plays in our lives. I belong to the last generation that grew up not having the internet, but my kids will have all the world's information at their fingertips just as soon as they can operate a phone or computer. Will the next generation even want to go on road trips or will they be satisfied with the YouTube version?

Houston, as seen through a cellphone camera

I've lived in Houston for 4 whole months now! Can you believe it? I, for one, cannot. Time has been going by really quickly now that I have a normal, 9-5 job. This comes in really handy when waiting for new movies or games to be released: "When is that Wolverine movie coming out? Oh, Today?"

I've got some thoughts bouncing around in my head that I will be committing to this page soon, but for now I thought I'd just post a few pictures of what I've been doing the last 4 months.


We're out of space at our current location, so I share my "office" with the test lab.



My desk, and some test models of the equipment we make



Sometimes they let me touch the insides



This thing will kill you in a variety of ways



The Southwest Petroleum Conference in Lubbock. It was about as exciting as it looks.



The Dogfish Head Film Festival at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. Great weekend.



This picture was taken just seconds before they were surrounded by black SUV's, never to be seen again


Stay tuned for actual content!

OwlCon 2009

The last few weeks, I've been having a great time hanging out with some people that I met through the Something Awful forums. Having seen so many PSA's on the subject, I was understandably nervous about meeting up with strangers from the internet, but most of them have turned out to be (relatively) normal and a lot of fun. Last weekend, I went with Carey, one of the guys I met the first night with the goons, to OwlCon, a board gaming convention hosted annually by Rice University. I only attended 1 out of 3 days, but really enjoyed being there and playing games with people. Between (and during) games, I walked around a took a few pictures to show the rest of the world what a board game convention looks like. Click for the large versions!


These guys were playing something really generic-sounding and forgettable, like "Witchmage" or "Dragonspire" or something like that.


Note the tape measures


Probably the nerdiest thing I have ever seen in my life: Playing World of Warcraft while sitting inside a MechWarrior simulator while also attending a board gaming convention


Some sort of large D&D style game


DM at work


This is one of the games Carey ran that weekend, Order of the Stick


I'm the one with the beard


It took about 4 hours to play, and that was using the Quick Game rules


This was a critical battle toward the end of the game. Carey, the one in the glasses, ended up winning it all.

Aaaand We're Back...

It's been so long since I've posted that I'm having trouble figuring out how to start. I typed and deleted about 4 different sentences before settling on that one, and I'm still not happy with it. I haven't written anything here since August, and I have a lot to tell you about, so I'm just going to hit the highlights for now, and (hopefully) elaborate later.

August through November was pretty uneventful. Since it was my last semester at Harding, I only took 7 hours of classes, which meant that I spent most of my time watching movies and playing video games. I went to a few parties with my roommate, but that whole scene didn't really appeal to me. The only major event that comes to mind out of that whole period of time was finally getting back down to a reasonable weight after months of running and dieting and lifting weights and saying "no" to taco bell (170 lbs, down from 220 at the first of the year). Oh, and I can't forget "sailing" with Grant...that was fun.

December was when things got real. I realized that I would be graduating at the end of the month without a job, so I kicked the job search into high gear. I had been applying for various positions online, but that turned out to be an incredible waste of time. Do people really get hired from sites like Monster or CareerBuilder? I started asking around, trying to make real life contacts instead of firing my resume into the black hole that is internet job-searching. One of my professors had sent around an email with names of people who were interested in hiring Harding students, so I found one on the list that looked interesting ("Houston? Payton lives in Houston!") and sent him my resume. The next day I had a phone interview, and the next week they were flying me to Houston to interview in person. After two nervous weeks of waiting, they offered me the job! This is where things get crazy. I accepted the job on December 19. They wanted me to start on January 5. Between those two dates, I finished my final finals, packed up my apartment, graduated, went to Zach and Beth's wedding, moved all my stuff to Oklahoma with my grandparents, had Christmas there, moved my stuff to Lubbock, had Christmas there, flew to Houston to find an apartment, celebrated the New Year in Lubbock, celebrated the New Year in Dallas, moved all my stuff to Houston, unpacked into my new apartment and started work. It was, uh, hectic, to say the least.

But now I'm in Houston and absolutely loving it. I'll write a longer post soon about how incredibly rad Houston is, but for now just take my word for it.

I broke down and got a twitter account, which I have really been enjoying. Follow me at www.twitter.com/AustinPettyjohn

Finally, here are some things that I've been enjoying lately that I think you might enjoy as well:

Music:
-Blitzen Trapper
-Delta Spirit
-Electric President
-Janelle Monae
-MF Doom
-MGMT
-Old Crow Medicine Show
-Ra Ra Riot
-Sister Nancy
-The Walkmen
-Titus Andronicus
-Wolf Parade
-Why?

TV:
-Battlefrigginstar Galactica
-8 out of 10 Cats
-Lost (yeah, I know...)
-The Big Bang Theory
-Flight of the Conchords
-30 Rock (seriously, you should be watching this)

Artificial Intelligence Review

Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, William Hurt

I'm a sucker for intelligent science fiction, but I'm not a huge fan of Spielberg's takes on the genre, so I had avoided AI until I learned that Stanley Kubrick (one of my all-time favorite directors) was involved in its pre-production before his death in 1999. I popped this in last night without much knowledge of or preconceptions about its story or themes, hoping to see his hand at work.

AI is the story of an android or "Mecha" child named David (Osment) who, unlike all other Mecha, is built with the ability to love. He is adopted by a family whose only child is stuck in a cryogenic freezer until medical science catches up with whatever ails him. Soon after David's acceptance into the family, his formerly-frozen step brother is cured and returns to find a slightly larger family unit. Sibling rivalry ensues, and David, who is seen as a threat to the safety of the home's humans, is unceremoniously dumped in the woods. He then embarks on a journey to find Pinocchio's Blue Fairy, whom he believes can turn him into a real boy.

I just don't even know where to start with this mess. I'll grant you that science has progressed to the point where they can create a completely life-like android and that they can even create one who can love. Fine, disbelief suspended. The rest of the movie's plot contrivances are so ridiculous that they destroy any belief or emotional investment in this particular future. Why is David, the pinnacle of human technological achievement, so incredibly stupid? Why does he not know when he is putting himself or others in danger, even though the first 5 minutes of the film establishes the fact that this behavior is common in androids? Why can David jump in a pool and come out just fine, but eating something means a total meltdown and a trip to the robo-emergency room? Why does David believe that someone from a fairy tale is real? Why does he think she can turn him into a real boy? How can he operate for thousands of years at the bottom of the ocean without any power source? WHY ARE THERE ALIENS IN THIS MOVIE? How can they magically regenerate a dead person from DNA at any point in their life, and with only their plot-convenient memories intact? Why do these reanimated humans cease to exist when they fall asleep? I'm sorry, that's just way too much disbelief to suspend. There are plenty of other non-plot-related problems with this movie, but I think these alone should be enough to keep you away.

There were, admittedly, a few things that I liked about AI. These are by no means redeeming, but I don't want to be completely negative here. Jude Law is really enjoyable to watch in his role as a robo-prostitute, and David's robo-teddybear Teddy is actually pretty funny as the voice of reason. I could identify with Teddy more than any other character, as we both seemed to know that the plot of this movie is complete bullshit. The film does raise some very interesting philosophical questions about the nature of love and companionship, as well as the role of technology in our lives. Unfortunately, these questions not only go unanswered, but are brutally sacrificed to the almighty god Plot Progression.

If you think any of this sounds interesting, please just go watch Blade Runner.

SotD - Same Old Drag

This song is super-appropriate because I'm going to see this band live and in person tonight! They're The Apples in Stereo, a light, energetic, and poppy indie group that's been around since the mid-90's. Enjoy!

The Apples in Stereo - Same Old Drag



Buy this album

Mad Men

I just finished the first 4 episodes of AMC's critically acclaimed (worshiped is probably a better word) series Mad Men. So far, it's got me pretty conflicted. As a 1960's period piece, they simply could not be doing a better job. The actors, sets, music, smoking, drinking, and chauvinism all come together in a way that makes me have to remind myself that this was filmed in 2007. My problem with it is that I hate nearly every single one of the characters, and the situations they get themselves into are just plain depressing. Watching scum-bag after scum-bag fumble through lose-lose scenarios is not my idea of a good time. I'm really hoping that in the next few episodes they start to reveal these people to be tragically flawed well-meaners as opposed to sociopaths.

SotD - Lose Big

I am absolutely loving the Americana revival that's happening right now. I knew I wanted to a put an Eef Barzelay track on SotD, but it was pretty tough to actually pick just one. The entire album is great, spanning the range from swaggering self-confidence to tortured melancholy in just 10 tracks. Also, if you like this, check out Fleet Foxes, M. Ward, or Horse Feathers.

Eef Barzelay - Lose Big



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"Peculiar Travel Suggestions...

...are dancing lessons from God." -Kurt Vonnegut

Last week, I was talking with Payton (of Top Five Records fame) about the Dark Knight premier and what our plans for seeing it were. He casually suggested "We should have made a weekend out of it" which immediately set my brain in motion. Neither of us had any pressing engagements over the weekend, so the next day I jumped in my car and drove the 9 bleak hours to Houston.

Being the incredible nerds that we are, Payton and I arrived at the midnight showing of The Dark Knight at about 9:30 (we were by no means the first people in line). I asked one of the employees how many people they were expecting to show up, and she told me that based on presale there would be at least 3000 people. As it got closer to midnight, none of us doubted that estimate. People wearing Joker-style facepaint, batman masks, or just a t-shirt emblazoned with the Bat-logo were swarming all over the enormous theater. I've been to a lot of midnight showings, but that buzzing energy we all felt while we were waiting for the lights to dim was something new and unique. Say what you will about the movie-going experience, complain about ticket or food prices, tell your stories about that one time with that one kid who wouldn't shut up, but I honestly believe that that experience is one of the greatest that our culture has to offer. Sitting in a dark room with six or seven hundred strangers and watching something you've all waited years for is simply incredible. You might think I'm being a bit melodramatic here, but I will truly miss this shared experience if and when the living room is the sole domain of film.

Regardless of whether it was a cultural touchstone or just another night at the movies, seeing The Dark Knight was a great way to kick off a fun and relaxing weekend with Payton and his friends. After a boring 2 months in searcy and a stressful 2 weeks with family, it was great to just go with the flow and hang out with some people my own age. I also really enjoyed Houston itself. The city just seems...inviting. Besides, who could complain about a city that has an amazing Mexican restaurant on every corner?


See? Doesn't it look inviting?


This is NOT the theater where we saw Batman


The highway was closed to clear a wreck, so I took a detour. Cue the banjo music.

Fourth of July, etc

Hello again! It feels like so long since we've talked! I spent the last two weeks traveling, visiting various relatives in Texas and Oklahoma, and was without internet access for a lot of that time.

First, I flew to scenic Lubbock, Texas, home of Buddy Holly, to stay with my immediate family for a few days. The four of us then drove to bustling Shawnee, Oklahoma, home of Brad Pitt, to visit my grandparents. My dad's dad loves to make a huge deal out of The Fourth, inviting lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins over, then spending enough money on fireworks to make them all very nervous. After staying there a couple days, we were off yet again, this time to booming Tulsa, Oklahoma, home of nothing, to spend time with yet another set of aunts/uncles/cousins. I didn't take any pictures here, since my young cousin kept us so busy with swimming, volleyball, tennis, ping-pong, laser-tag, board games, and even more fireworks that I didn't have time to pick it up. Then it was back to Lubbock for 4 more days of non-stop excitement before finally flying back.

I generally don't enjoy going home for visits. I dread school breaks, when they kick us all out of the dorms and I have to go back to Lubbock for a week or a month. I've never actually lived in Lubbock (my family moved there after I came to school), so the number of people I know there can be counted on one hand. That said, I actually had a pretty good time these past two weeks. Maybe you can chalk that up to the fact that I wasn't stuck in one place the entire time, but I actually enjoyed most of the trip. I didn't really feel that need to isolate myself from the people around me after spending too much time being social. That introverted tug was still there, sure, but it wasn't quite so debilitating this time around.

Here's a few pictures I took while I was away, click for the giant version.

Lubbock: The Giant Side of Texas (they really call it that)

SotD - Get Your Head Around It

I'd never heard of Headlights until I saw them open for Mates of State, and I was completely blown away. This is the first track off their newest album "Some Racing, Some Stopping" and I strongly recommend the rest of it. A bit of their on-stage energy is lost in the studio, but that's a fairly common complaint for any band. The best comparison I can make with them is that they sound like a more lively Rilo Kiley. Headlights - Get Your Head Around It Buy this album

"Stay a while, and listen!"

Diablo II is a game that consumed nearly my entire high school years. I played so much that at one point, if I saw something drop to the ground in real-life, my finger would twitch, trying to find the key that would show the name of the dropped item. So yeah, it was pretty bad. The sequel, appropriately named "Diablo III" was announced today, and it looks to have improved on the original formula in every way. If you feel like watching someone play it for 20 minutes, do I have a link for you! Diablo III gameplay, courtesy of Shack News

SotD - Daylight

Today's song is from the current king of independent hip-hop: Aesop Rock. His lyrics are simply on a different tier than everyone else's in the genre. They are also NSFW, so listen at your own risk.

Aesop Rock - Daylight



Buy this album

In Local News...

I haven't been able to summon up a real post, so I thought I'd just do a brief update of personally important happenings over the last couple weeks.

- Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee for the democratic party's candidate for president. This is great news for a number of reasons that I won't get into right now, but suffice it to say that I'm very excited. Also, Blogger considers both 'Barack' and 'Obama' spelling errors.

- Environmental Science is one of those classes where the material is really interesting, but it's taught in such a dry and lifeless way that makes you want to be anywhere else.

- I rented Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for my PS3, which was a lot of fun until I tried to play online. The community of players for this game have become so entrenched and perfected their tactics to such an extent that it is almost impossible to get into at this point. I don't know what happened to me, I used to be good at shooters.

- I put in some applications for gainful employment around town, but so far I haven't gotten any calls back. This means that I don't really know what to do to fill up my days. So far, the solution has been watching movies and playing video games as if it generated money.

- Going to church with Zach and Beth at Fellowship Little Rock has been a great experience for me. There haven't been very many times in my life that I actually enjoyed or looked forward to waking up on a Sunday morning, and I'm very encouraged by the knowledge that that is possible. If gas were free I'd be there every week.

- Next week, I'm flying back home to Texas, spending a few days with my family, then driving with them to Oklahoma to visit the extended family. This is the first time in a while that I've genuinely wanted to go home. I'm looking forward to spending time with my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It's a weird feeling.

- I'm a pretty decent writer, I think, at least when compared with most people my age. I mean, people have told me as much. But I'm reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut right now, and every time I sit down with it I think "Wow. I will never in a million years write like this man." I'll try to post a full review when I finish it.

Song of the Day - The Re-arranger

There's no way to make this sound like I'm not a music snob, so I'm not going to try. Look, let's be honest: you listen to some pretty crappy music. Just admit it. I used to live in that darkness myself, and I'm here to tell you that there is hope! In the past, to help facilitate your musical education, I've tried to recommend bands that I love to you. I understand, though, that it's hard to just go download random songs by a band you've never heard of just because I think you should listen to them. So to make this whole process easier on both of us, I've decided to start a Song of the Day series here on Transmissions. There's not going to be a new song every day, but I'll try to update it often. My plan at the moment is to post the song here in the main blog (for archival purposes), but you'll also be able to play it with the little player thing on the right. So, without further ado, here's the first of many fine tunes, brought to you by my sense of musical elitism.

Mates of State - The Re-arranger



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Thus Spake Miyamoto

When I was 3 years old, my parents forced me to make a life-altering decision. They took me to Wal-mart and presented me with two item, between which I had to choose. The first: a black Huffy bicycle, training wheels and all. The second: a Nintendo Entertainment System, complete with Zapper. If you anything about me, you know what decision I made. The fact that I'm writing a blog post right now and not doing something active and outdoorsy should give the rest of you a clue. However, this post isn't about how I'm a giant nerd, but rather role that video games have played in our society over the years. I've been playing games for almost 20 years now, and it has been very interesting to see how public perception of them has changed during that time.

In its infancy, the videogaming industry and its efforts were relegated to the realm of arcades and hobby shops. These were by no means the "Good Old Days." Video games weren't ever persecuted in the way comic books or rock music were, but they were seen as simply a distraction for kids. A few of my friends growing up had an NES or a Genesis, but they were secluded in the back rooms of their homes, far away from the more adult forms of entertainment.

Fast forward 20 years. April's release of Grand Theft Auto IV was the largest launch in entertainment history, selling 6 million copies in the first week. A Paramount Pictures representative was even quoted complaining that the game's release would hamper ticket sales for their enormous summer title Iron Man, which opened the same week. World of Warcraft now has over 10 million subscribers, each paying $15 a month to play it. The Nintendo Wii has been on the market for over a year, but good luck finding a store that can keep them in stock. It's become clear that video games are no longer exclusively for kids. Games with adult themes are being played by adults, while the Wii has usurped the throne of the board game in family game night.

It's been great to watch my favorite pastime evolve from the realm of kid's toys into a respected medium. Video games aren't art or literature just yet, but we're getting there.

Perception as it pertains to prediction

If hindsight is 20:20, what does that make foresight? Pretty foggy, in my experience. How does one decide that a certain course of action is the right one? To make any decision, you essentially have to take all the observable, objective information, and balance that against your emotions and gut feelings on the issue. This is very rarely a fair fight. Objectivity can hold its own in only a few types of discussions, while emotion tends to rule all other spheres. Why do we trust our emotions, something known and demonstrated to be fallible, over our intelligence and ability to reason? This imbalance is particularly flagrant when it comes to our interactions with the opposite sex. I don't mean this as an indictment of you people; I'm just as bad as everyone else. I can't even tell you how many times I've had this conversation with myself:

Left Brain: "Listen, Right. She is rude, boring, and we don't even share any interests!"
Right Brain: "But I loooooove her!"

Guess which one wins? How in the world am I supposed to pick someone to spend my entire life with when my emotions are actively poisoning my decision-making process? I try my best to shut out that swooning, lovestruck side of my brain, but can I really trust myself? There have been times when I thought, honestly believed, that I was making an intelligent, informed decision, only to think the exact opposite thing a week later. I'd love to believe the things that old married couples say when questioned about this process, like "You just know!" Really? 50% of people in America "just knew" that were perfect for each other, but they got divorced anyway. That just doesn't instill a lot of confidence in the whole process.

Maybe knowing that I can't trust myself is half the battle.

My living room

Here's a picture of the incredible rasterbation that my roommate spent 3 days working on. I have the coolest living room in this apartment complex by far.