“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
- Steven Weinberg

Not too long ago I started the conversation about faith. From the comments and conversations that followed we came to the same fork on the road. Religion.

I actually don’t talk about religion as much as I would like to in here because I don’t truly like to alienate people based on my views of it. If you have never met me I will give you a little bit of my background with religion.

I grew up in a Catholic household with both parents being churchgoers at different times in their lives. Church was not a family affair. I also went to a Catholic high school which kind of gave me a different view on going to church and religion. Religion IS a subject down in Colombia for even non parochial schools. I have never been married in the Catholic church even though I would not mind it. I identify with the cultural aspect of Catholicism because it is very familiar to me. I have also explored other faiths specially in the protestant side of things.

I have attended protestant or “Born Again christian” churches for months with various degrees of creepiness at the end. They have always ended up the same way. First is the push for me to take more of an outreach position when they see that I can speak in front of people without much issue. Then when I decline and want to be just a member it seems like I become “one of those that doesn’t want to spread the message.” The moment I started to ask too many questions that challenged leadership in any way steps are taken to make me either follow in line or be labeled as an “outsider.” The chronology is different depending on the church but it has happened twice now.

I have always ended up in a protestant church thanks to a friend that thinks it will be good for me. I love the singing and bible studies. I love talking ideas, good, bad, salvation, sin. I love the volunteer work. The problem is that I was brought up by Franciscans and some of them taught me that religion is not what is important, that true understanding comes from questioning things. Faith is not something that you can give to others, they have to feel it themselves… its like trying to make someone happy, you can only “try” for so long. It has to come from within.

(Well known mathematician Freeman Dyson has criticized Weinberg’s remark: “And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion.”)

A Franciscan monk is the one that pointed out that our history books in school left a lot of stuff out.

The problem with taking advice about religion from others is that for people like me it is a journey. If you would have asked me 10 years ago, I would have one answer. If you would have asked me during the Bears vs Broncos game, I would have another. If you ask me 10 years from now, I might have another one.

I don’t think I lack faith. I just don’t like to rely on intangibles for things to happen. That said, I have leaned on praying before to get me through tough times. Probably the reason that I could not become a full atheist because when the ship was sinking I would be asking for God. My brain, my debates with others, the books I read, all make me question the validity of both faith and religion. I don’t need it to get through my daily life, but faith is a powerful thing… like love.

The bible is a cool book, Jesus was a cool man… but there are other books and there are other great men.

A lot of horrible things have been done in the name of religion. Also a lot of good is done in the same name. I think in the end everything with an arterial motive goes back to human weakness. All tools can be used for good or evil, it depends a lot on who’s hands is holding them.

Things get a lot more complicated when you are the “Godfather” to 3 kids!

I love the honor that comes with the title. I also want to make sure that if I am ever called to answer questions about it I will have good answers. Note I did not say the “right” answer, but a good one.

I don’t talk about WoW here anymore since I split my talk of WoW to its own space. Today I bumped into a great blog where a writer actually split their blog and then joined them all up again. I don’t think I want to merge the WoW content back here, but I do think I need to talk about my geek badges a little more. (at least on this post.)

I keep my professional life off the blog for the most part. I don’t want to get fired for saying something about what happens at work. I have had dragons on my desk, but currently I am not displaying as much geek stuff… well, I am not displaying much at all really. I do think that I need to wear some more geek related clothing on casual days.

While my proudest geek badge of honor is being married to a woman that not only loves me but has been infected with my geekery. She plays WoW, made a page for her lock, has watched and loved anime, read manga and considers herself a geek now. She has her own google shirt!

But hey, this is about my geekdom so lets start.

Anime

The first geek hobbie I ever had before video games was anime. I have watched it for a long time and still indulge in a weekly watch of subbed Naruto as soon as it has been translated. You can now watch the current Naruto in Hulu. Shippuden is quite the story… and they are done with fillers and the story is moving along.

Harry Potter

I love that series, it really captured my imagination. I have read the books several more than once and think they are excellent. I love the world as well, I like the movies and would not mind visiting the theme part.

StarTrek>StarWars

I eventually picked sides and blame Mr Lucas for making the later movies horrible. I do want to watch Red Tails.

Computers

I know how to write code, I know how to build my own computer… I could go on, but I think most of you know how that one goes.

Fish Geek

I have not only kept fish before, I actually got into breeding them for a bit. I’ve had mostly cichlids but love the aquarium world. Mostly fresh water I think I will eventually work on some salt water… it just bothers me that you cannot get them to breed, it feels wrong to keep an animal captive that cannot “get it on.”

I don’t yet LARP… but have a friend that is constantly telling me I am missing out. I also never done the whole dressing up for anything yet, but I might do a renfest some day.

So what about you, do you wear your geek with pride?

I am the default person in the house to deal with telemarketers or customer service representatives. Working in conjunction with a third party collection agency gave me a glimpse at how some of those places work. People will say whatever they think it will get them a result, and in the end they end up lying.

We might not realize it, but every time we see someone else lie our trust for that person starts to diminish. What I never realized before reading this short essay by Sam Harris is that it goes well beyond that. It seems that from a psychological stand point, the person lying starts to get hostile towards the person that they lie to.

There is a saying we use back in Colombia “El ladron juzga por su condicion.” This can be losely translated without losing all its meaning to “A thief believes everyone else steals.”

People that routinely lie to themselves or others also think others are also liars. Furthermore, people that routinely lie start to dislike the people that they lie to,

In fact, suspicion often grown on both sides of a lie: Research indicates that liars trust those they deceive less than they otherwise might-and the more damaging their lies, the less they trus, or even like, their victims. It seems that in protecting their egos, and interpreting their own behavior as justified, liars ten to deprecate the people they lie to.

Sam Harris then cites the research “Deceiver’s Distrust: Denigration as a Consequence of Undiscovered Deception.”

I grew up with the notion that you should always tell the truth, but it was accentuated by the saying. “Traigame un herido, no un muerto.” That was a saying from my Grandfather, passed down to my Dad and then to me. Be honest about anything you face, if you “Bring me an injured person, don’t bring me a dead one.” That has always stayed in my head, not only to make sure that I ask for help before a problem escalates, but also to always tell the truth.

I trust people easily. I know this can be a bad thing. However, I always feel that the more you give to people the more you will get in return. People know I am blunt, trying to make that more about honesty than lack of tact. I have in recent years just told people I am not interested rather than just hanging up on them. I don’t like to lie or hypocrisy, but I think it shows more trough action than through words.

The more you build trust with people, the more powerful your words become. The consequences of what you say have a profound effect. The more you lose trust on someone, the less their words weight. I chose to see the positive in situations and people, and I have been accused by those that don’t know me of flattery. It could not be further from the truth, I honestly believe in the potential of those around me to succeed and be awesome. All my friends keep proving me right by just being amazing people, so it is not flattery if they really are that freaking cool.

The essay was an easy read, and it made me think a lot. It is good to make a commitment to yourself to always tell the truth… and also learn a little tact. There will always be someone asking you if their puppy is the cutest of them all.

Deguia and I were just having a conversation this morning as he deals with some parenting stuff. One if his kids is bored! only a book and iPod to keep them entertained. After laughing at how old we are already I started to remember what entertained me in those preteen years.

I knew better than to tell my Mom I was bored because she was quick to find a shore around the house that would occupy my time. I did spend a lot of time outside playing soccer with balls for grass on pavement. I was also part of the first generations that grew up with video games, and while I thought the first one I owned was the Atari 2600 that I eventually (Mission Impossibled) broke. The first was actually a form of entertainment called “Game and Watch.”

I did not even know until today that it was actually just called Egg. It basically required that you catch eggs before the crack. This simple device kept me entertained for not just hours, but I think months! I think I even had to replace batteries on it more than once. If I remember correctly, I think it was gifted to someone eventually still in working condition.

Most kids today even real young ones are great at handling gadgets like the iPhone and iPads. It is almost second nature to them to handle those user interfaces. They also seem to be falling pray of the short attention spans and burst of entertainment. It seems like the kids of today are getting bored quite easily. To the point that I don’t think any of them would have the patience to watch Dragon Ball Z with fights between bad guys that used to last several episodes.

I wish I still had my Egg game to see if it would keep a kid entertained at all. I could talk about imagination and how entertainment now could be hurting it… but I do have a niece that is an avid reader and think she has an awesome imagination. This does make me thing about what kept me entertained.

So without having to date your childhood too much, what things used to keep you entertained? Do you remember any single toy that kept you entertained for a long time?

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-Khalil Gibran

Notice that I did not say “do we need religion?” before you get your panties all wadded up; but I might touch on that too. So before you go any further let me explain something about faith.

Many words have tons of meanings that can be defined and interpreted differently. Take for example a color, while it is something that can be defined and classified it is a lot more than that. Blue can be your favorite t-shirt, team, car. Words carry a lot of meaning and faith, like the word love is one of the heavy ones.

How necessary is faith though? Do we need it in our lives? Is it an innate thing or something we learn?

I respect and often times admire people of faith. Some of the happiest people are those with strong faith. Then there are those that make me want to give up on faith as an idea, see “Tim Tebow” sport antics and wanting to push his agenda for Christianity and God helping him score 316 touchdowns!

Our society is losing the sense of honor and heroes. We call lots of people’s heroes, but who do we really follow or put our faith into?

Celebrity culture is yet another form of worship that some even find a mental disease associated with compulsive behavior. Yet you look at the definition for it and in some ways believing in a Kardashian (no I am not looking up if that is the correct spelling) seems no different than believing in Jesus. Same infatuation with a fabricated thing.

Yet I love Christianity in so many ways, I still feel comforted by praying “our father.”

Faith helps people get through life. It gives them energy to keep going, it gives them that sense of companionship when we feel all alone. Some would not be able to get up every day without it. So is there something wrong with those that don’t have it all?

Do we always need someone or something to worship? is it just part of the human makeup?

This topic does have more questions than answer I am afraid. One of the most important lessons I have come across in life is that to really learn you have to question. If you have faith in something, it is ok to question it… if you don’t it might not be that strong after all.

This weekend we streamed 2 movies, and I guess now I know why I did not pay full ticket price to see them at the theaters.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (**)

While this movie was entertaining, it really seemed to be missing something. It was like eating a pie that had flavor, but with mushy crust.

The acting was great. There was really nobody that was too annoying and what was supposed to be dramatic was, what was supposed to be funny also was. The CGI monkeys were mostly believable and did not interrupt the flow of the move for me. Neither did the action. Every character was compelling in some way.

It is a lot to ask for a CGI monkey to be the centerpiece of the movie, but Cesar delivered. He did not seem to want to be a bad monkey, but he was… oh wait, he is not a monkey, he is a chimp! I can already hear the cries all over the ape loving blog-sphere.

It is a little on the violent side to watch with small children, so I would not call it a family movie. It does have potential though, it does make you wonder if there are more ape movies that can be made. I would probably watch another one, but not holding my breath.

I would rent it, but I don’t think I would ever watch it again.

Moneyball (***)

Ah, Brad Pitt. While the dude is still married to a girl I had a crush on when I watched hackers, everything past Billy Bob is damaged goods, I cannot hold that against him. He is a good actor and I seriously did not see him, I saw a very crazy GM trying to run a baseball team with no money to spend. I could relate with a dude trying to accomplish the impossible with no resources… I do work in IT.

The acting was not bad, the baseball seemed like the average movie representation. The movie was more about the man than the game.

While it is kind of a “feel good” movie, it does not make you feel very good. It has flashes of awesome when it tries to make you look at the love for the game, but it reminded me that football seems to be more America’s sport now than baseball.

This one is a kid friendly movie, but maybe nostalgia makes me want to share the older movies from the 80s rather than this one.

I rank it a little better than apes because I think I like baseball better than CGI apes. Overall they are both cheap rentals that should waste a couple of hours of your day.

So what have you been streaming lately?

I tend to ramble a lot, I tend to write on run on sentences, I am no Hemingway by any stretch of the imagination but I think that he was right when he thought the audience should be smart enough to figure stuff out.

That is how I view my audience. If I use guilt, or emotion to make you feel something when I write it… I want people to say, whatever, I don’t feel that way… or I really don’t care… or that is not for me. Even if they never comment on what I write, most of the time what I want to do is to have people consider that thought for even just a second. I don’t want to change minds, I just want to kind of record and share a little of what mine goes to when I read a quote, react to an event or watch a movie.

I have started to use twitter again @logtar and some of my recent posts could have been simple tweets.

Understanding – I think people don’t really understand situations until they or someone close to them experience them.

Why the American dream is a lie that only Americans believe – The middle class in America is dying or already dead.

But I wanted to go further than that, not just create conversation around the topic but write what my mind came up with. Passion is just one of the things that drives me, and even though I am an engineer by trait and work a lot with computers I am still driven by emotions… a lot, for some of my friends maybe too much.

I can understand pure logic, and trying to achieve Logos (in the sense that true persuasion is more likely to be achieved by pure logic means) is one of my personal goals. Planting an idea on the ground of emotion only works for so long, people eventually wake up and realize that emotions while real can change. Hopefully most logic arguments don’t change. Now that is a discussion for another day.

I value my audience, and I also value and think all humans are capable of anything they put their mind to. I don’t think that what I write goes over peoples heads (it might end up confusing, wrong and very convoluted but I never think it will not be understood.) I list two editors here because when I write something that I think might only make sense to me, I check with them… and they help steer me a bit.

I am having a lot of fun exploring this new way direction I am taking here. I hope you guys are too.

“What I hear, I forget;
What I see, I remember;
What I do, I understand.” -Confucius. 451 BC

Ask anyone that has been a motorcycle rider about what the experience is like and you will get the same response; you cannot really explain it, you have to experience it.

There are a lot of things in life that are very hard to explain and don’t make sense until you actually experience them. Part of it is that you can hear or read about something, but until you are actually in the situation you cannot really wrap your arms around it.

I have friends that are completely against gay marriage, and therefore against a same sex couple being able to adopt children. I don’t understand why the institution of marriage is a members only club for the heterosexual folks, but I find the situation very sad. It seems that nobody understands what is like to be told what you can and cannot do until it happens to you or someone you love.

I am not sure if it is because I have the experience of being an immigrant or because I have had true friends that are in the LGBT community (and some of them have adopted kids.) but I find it hard to believe that anyone would oppose another human being in any of those issues. Sexual orientation is not something you chose like what shoes you wear in the morning. It is no different than your liking being told sweet things while making love or liking dirty talk. It’s private, it’s what you do with your significant other, it has nothing to do with anyone outside of your bedroom.

I joke around with one of my friends about the BDSM world all the time because everyone that has not experienced that world to some degree thinks that is full of “freaks.” What most people don’t realize is that those freaks might be your dentist, your lawyer or the dude fixing your computer. What they do in their private life is their business… however, it does not make them any more freaks than your secret trips to the fridge at midnight when you think nobody is watching.

I am not saying that you need to go see a dominatrix to understand the world, but that judging others or even excluding them from the rights they should have is a very narrow view of the world.

Stigma is a powerful thing and makes people feel really threatened. I play video games online and I have met several people that simply refuse to let their family and friends know that they play them. I understand that the professional world might still have some negative views about online gaming, but now that everyone is playing Angry Birds maybe the stigma will start to disappear.

Don’t wait until one of your kids or someone close to you is discriminated against to change your world view. Be open minded about everything and find the root of your “moral” stances; don’t be afraid to challenge them or change them. If they are based only in fear or what someone else says, re-evaluate them.

My blog posts used to posted to facebook, I am toying with the idea of adding them to google+; what I had never considered is that people would be interested on subscribing by e-mail.

I looked for some pluggins and there are plenty of them out there, but none that did what I really wanted to, so I settled for feedburner. (which is now done by google)

Subscribe to – Logtar’s Blog – by Email

At first I thought it was kid of going backwards to subscribe to something like a blog using kind of a newsletter model, then I saw some potential on it. Google plus already does something similar with circles. When I share something there I think of the audience and use my circles to post to them. That adds a lot of flexibility and reduces the noise produced.

A blog is a lot more passive in that respect. Once in a great while I write something that I want someone to read and I shoot them an e-mail, but for the most part this is here for people to consume on their own time. I even provide the full post via RSS so people can simply just read from there.

I want to continue to create content, but the blog format seems to be outdated in some ways. I want all conversations to be centralized and not fragmented like they are now. You get some interaction on facebook, some in g+.

Hopefully in the future we will have more centralized collaboration and participation in discussions… it seems like a pipe dream.

I hope I can safely assume that everyone has heard the word Logic. That word comes from another one, Logos, which has many meanings through history but the one that I want to discuss today is the one that Aristotle gave it.

Before I lose you, did you know that the film The Matrix models Plato’s Allegory of the cave? Aristotle was Plato’s student, and The Republic has given a lot to pop culture, from dystopias to utopias. If you read The Hunger Games, the idea of a society divided by what their people produce or do for a living is right out of The Republic.

Rhetoric has become even a bad word in modern politics. I think a lot of the people that use the word don’t even understand where it came from.

Aristotle wrote the treatise on rhetoric. So before I am accused of using long words that I don’t understand, treatise is like an essay but more in depth; think of writing a thesis. So Aristotle is the dude who wrote the handbook on how to bullshit!

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations.

While all of this has in some ways been tainted by our negative connotation of politics, it is not just about that. You can pretty much argue about anything, and the ancient philosophers used to. We don’t do that enough. We almost sit complacent on the thought that everything has been figured out for us. But, logos is what puts humans above the other animals.

So what the heck is Logos?

Well, on his bullshit handbook, Aristotle talked about the modes of persuasion: Logos, pathos and ethos.

Every single time you are trying to convince someone of something using language you are using logos. When you tell your spouse that you should eat at closest and cheapest restaurant you are using speech laced with logic.

When you try to convince someone that you have high moral character (or know more than they do, LOL) you are using ethos. So this is kind of what preachers or a college professor. We listen to them because they should know better than us, that is how they persuade us.

Pathos is when you try to appeal to someone’s emotions. Trying to put someone in an specific state of mind. I think this one is the one that has given politics a bad name, because you can use fear to drive your point home. Any human emotion really, so even a comedian is using a form of persuasion.

I often use pathos and metaphors when talking about a subject. Being able to relate is something that makes others able to understand the message you are trying to convey. That said, nothing beats logic. I don’t think that until you have an argument and simmer it down to pure logic is it really resolved or put to rest.

A lot of my conversations with my friends lately have been all about the logos. And there is a post about faith and worship coming up thanks to one of those conversations. Hopefully this post can help frame some things to come. Maybe it just shows to my teacher that at least I was not sleeping during my entire philosophy class.

Small people talk about other people.

Average people talk about things.

Great people talk about ideas.

I found the quote above thanks to one of my latest finds, Wogan May circled me via G+ and I have been having a blast reading through his blog. While there are a lot more ideas for topics that reading him have sparked, this one has been brewing in my own head for a while. The quote just happened to be a good springboard for the post.

This blog has taken many turns over the years. I have wanted to chronicle several things, but it seems to not serve that purpose all that well. One constant is that it does see to make people think. The posts that seem to start conversations with my friends are the ones that I enjoy the most. That and the ones about Movies I watch. As much as I would love to mess with XO and say I am turning this blog into a foodie blog, I think this year I am going to move to talking about ideas a little more.

Lets go back to the quote and look at it from a psychology point of view. I have touched on maturity before and joked about my varying degrees of it. Most people get stuck on the gossip world of, lets talk about other people and let that be the subject. Others step onto talking about the things they see, what surrounds them. Only a few get to the level where they want to explore ideas and understand why it is that they think the way they do.

Again, I often regress to talking about other people, its easy because it is part of human interaction. However I enjoy conversations about ideas the most. I have been lucky enough to have lots of those lately and that is probably one of the only good side effects of the economy tanking. Once you get beyond the politics and economics you move onto talking about ideas and in the end what is really important.

I want to do that with this blog, I want to hopefully show people a different point of view. Who knows, if I am lucky enough maybe even spark an idea like others do when I read them. I have often fantasized that blogs will change the world in a very real way just because of how we are sharing thoughts. So I am going back to posting quotes and what comes to my brain when I read them.

That said, I am glad that 2012 has started. 2011 was not a year I can call one of the best… I do want to call 2012 one if them. Happy New Year!

My relationship with America as a country is a complicated one. I am an American. I have the citizenship and passport to prove it. However, I am not happy with the status quo and even angry at times for what this country does, not so much to the world but to its own people. I also long ago stopped believe that this was the best country in the world because I found the view not just inaccurate but myopic and even at times absurd. How can the best country in the world let the aftermath of Katrina happen?

Today I want to talk about the American dream, and something that conversation with one of my best friends brought out this week. There is a huge disparity between what the American dream means to an immigrant and what it means to an American. While both of them are hard to achieve, one is not just unrealistic but a flat out lie.

The American dream to an immigrant is that they will be able to feed, cloth and educate their children. That they will have the opportunity to get a job and earn a good wage in an honest way. I don’t think many immigrants come to this country believing that it will require no work or that it will be astronomical.

Not everyone can be a winner. Not everyone can be Donal Trump. Not everyone can be a sports or TV start. Not everyone can be a celebrity.

I never considered this before, but it seems that a lot in America believe they can become Rockefeller. That his story is not only possible but almost guaranteed! and that could not be further from the truth. No wonder the sense of entitlement so many people feel. Even through hard work, astronomical rise to fame and fortune is not easy to attain or sustain.

If that is what American’s believe, that everyone can be in the 1%, then the American dream as presented to them is a lie.

Capitalism is very cruel because failure is very punishing. You invest, you fail, you lose. In order for there to be winners, there has to be losers.

What frightens me the most is that the middle class is being eroded, and nobody seems to be noticing the trend. You can look to your neighbors to the south, not just Mexico but all of Latin America and you can clearly see that when you do away with the middle class, the economic system breaks down. See the huge difference between Argentina and Brazil. I mean Brazil is now lending money to the IMF.

Wake up people. If you continue to think that the country is the best one in the world and don’t pay close attention to what has failed around you, this country will end up in the same situation. I guess as long as everyone is entertained and with a full belly, we will all be ok. Having celebrities is way more important than being sold a dream that is really not attainable by everyone.

1. Why did you sign up for writing your blog? Initially I thought I would better my writing by practicing, then eventually the grammar mistakes and quirky way of writing was almost like an online accent so I only improve on my way of confusing people with run on sentences. It then became online therapy for me, where it seems a lot easier to deal with things if I just write about them even in a round about way that most people don’t understand. I enjoy making others think or see another point of view.

2. Why did you choose your blog’s name? I think the blog has had a couple of names or taglines during its life, my online name has been Logtar for a long time from playing various video games made by Blizzard. I am a total fanboy of that development studio.

3. Do you own another blog? I blog about my WoW gaming, and have other outlets but none of them see consistent updating. Maybe 2012 will see me go back to a couple of them.

4. What do you do online when you’re not on your blog? Lots of WoW time for sure, also love YouTube and sure exited that you can now see videos via Xbox. It is a lot more fun to share a video there than having to hand people your headphones or connect speakers. I also stream anime from Japan about once a week and read forums.

5. How about when you’re not on the computer? The wife and I enjoy devouring series via Netflix/Hulu or DVD. When we find something we like we watch the complete series. I think we started with BSG and went from there, Dexter, Madmen, etc. Right now we are on True Blood. I also enjoy reading and now that Bea has the kindle fire, I inherited the old kindle and omg I love reading on it. Just finished the hunger games series which disappointing me, but that is for another post.

6. What do you wish people who read your blog knew about you? That the only way to get to know someone is through conversation. Assuming that just because you read an article I write you have the whole picture is absurd. I wish more people engaged in true conversation but this society seems to be all about first impressions and only reading books cover deep.

7. What is your favorite community in the blogosphere? I miss the days of blogdrive, when it seemed like a community. I think the WoW blogsphere is nice but kind of fragmented into a lot of different pieces. I still feel somewhat part of the KC blog community, but overall I think G+ is the only place that is giving me a sense of online community recently.

8. What is your philosophy on your blog layout? Simple is better… I have wanted to go back to totally minimalistic, but there are some things I like about the current layout. I change it every once in a while.

9. Tell me about your picture you use to represent you on your blog. Right now I don’t have any picture representing it. I have tired to work on a logo before with no luck there. I like the current picture on my G+ because that smile was the start of the second Chicago chapter of my life. Its a fond memory.

10. Pick 3 random blogs from your blogroll and tell us about them.
I met Burro through DeGuia and assume that Meesha found burro through me. It is interesting that people of such different backgrounds come together and form a weird web of mind bending proportions. Burro is always an awesome read, he talks about anime and even politics. I would like to meet him out in California some day, but I suspect he wants nothing to do with other human beings… specially those coming from the internet. Meesha makes me laugh with his strange view of the world and other people, but he is super honest and I appreciate that. He is another one with an antisocial streak, but if you have not seen his post you can get lost just on the pictures alone. Not just the ones he digs from the past, but the ones he takes of food. And what can I say about DeGuia. We talk almost daily and I think we need to start podcasting because some of our conversations are hilarious… maybe just to the two of us, but I think it will be good to record them for posterity. Like the other two, he is very honest and reveals a lot about himself on his blog. I think that is probably was made us fast friends, that we both ask a lot of questions and are honest about the answers without assuming or trying to predict what the other one is thinking. It makes it easy when you are not trying to predict things and just simply being amazed. His blog is informative and an awesome window into parenting. I am proud he calls me a friend.

11. What features do you think your blog should have that it doesn’t currently? This could take a whole week… bu the number one is comment consolidation. There should be some kind of service (not discus) that consolidates G+ – Facebook – Twitter – blog comments, into one thing that people can have a conversation on… kind of like google wave but for blogs. I know its a lot to ask for, but I think it would be great to have a topic aggregator that could be seen and used by all those services. (I am painfully aware of the technical limitations)

12. What do you consider the 10 most “telling” interests that we would infer from what you blog persona? I honestly don’t understand this question fully… maybe because I don’t disassociate my blog persona from me.

1. I don’t like religion. – I am Catholic but respect all other ways of thinking (and sometimes admire them.) I think Tim Teabow might convert me to Atheism.
2. I don’t watch movies anymore. – Truth is I just have not reviewed any lately.
3. I like everyone. – Not True, there are plenty of people out there that I find insipid.
4. I love my wife. – Very True.
5. I am a liberal. – Oh so much to say.
6. I support gay rights. – Yes I do, I have plenty of friends that should be able to get married if they want to.
7. I don’t listen to that much music. – Not True, I have spotify on almost constantly
8. I don’t love my pets. – I would love to do more cat pictures and stuff, but cleaning the litter box erases all cuteness from my brain.
9. I have battled bullies and weight loss all my life. – True
10. I have a messes up relationship with my family. – Not true, I love them and love spending time with them, I am just honest with the feelings I sometimes deal with.

13. Do you have any unique interests that you have never shared before? Have I ever told you that I love the Jersey Shore? lol maybe not. I enjoy the fine arts in small doses.

14. The best thing about blogging is all of the friends that you make. Beside from those folks, do you think your blog has fans? LOL… fans, no. An interesting fact is that I have received plenty of hatemail before. I even considered featuring some of it a while back… Writing about politics and immigration seems to be a bad topic. You can see 300+ comments to one of my articles in blogcritics that still gets spurs of activity once in a while (and hatemail here and there as well.) There was a time early on that I was also linked from an extremist white power group, and that also made for some interesting hatemail. So besides my friends, those are my “fans”.

15. What’s your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination? Vampires and the extreme anger I feel when the vampire keeps a fragile damsel in distress in human form to hang onto their own humanity! TURN HER ALREADY AND LETS HAVE A PARTY! I love vampires and the concept of immortality.

16. What are you glad you did but haven’t really had a chance to post about? Plenty of movies I wanted to review. I don’t like blogging about my trips that much, but maybe next time I go to Colombia I will actually post what I write… I have like 6 half written posts. The problem is that I get there and there are so many cool things to do.

17. How many people that first became a blog friend, have you met face to face? I think I have a list on my 100 things.

18. What don’t you talk about here, either because it’s too personal or because you don’t have the energy? My divorce. I think it would be too one sided if the other person cannot give their point of view. I am happy to say that she has remarried and has a little girl though. We are still good friends.

19. What’s a question that you’d love to answer? What was it like to (X) in Colombia.

20. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and regretted it? Nope. The ones I lost I was glad to lose. I can only take so much negativity from people… and well those of you that remember that saga know that I am not a sexist or racist.

21. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and thought, “Was that overdue!” A couple. The thing is that I try to see the best in people, but some people try to see the worst in others (including me) I am a very flawed person, but I am ok with being flawed. That seems to make people that have not dealt with their own demons very uncomfortable. It is never that I don’t see I have flaws, its that my true friends love me warts and all.