Irrelevant Cheetah

I read once (I don’t remember where) that the early Christian Church accepted and taught the idea of reincarnation. I don’t know if it’s true – I never checked my sources. According to that account, Church officials in the Dark/Middle Ages decided to stop teaching reincarnation and introduce the concept of Heaven, Hell and the afterlife because people had no incentive to be good. Apparently, they thought “If I have to do this all over again anyway, why should I behave this time?”

As a devout atheist, I have always subscribed to the notion of karma. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. Simplistic? Sure, but it felt right.

However, I realize that over the past few years, I am beginning to lose my “faith” in karma. Quite frankly, I have begun to doubt whether it even exists. I have seen too many bad things happen to people who, at least in my opinion, don’t deserve it, and I’ve seen too many mouth-breathing, wife-abusing wastes of air skate through life, winning lotteries and seeming to have no problems. Maybe I’m just getting more bitter as I get older.

I know this is a bit more somber than my usual posts, but now I’m curious: Do you believe in karma? Why or why not?

I just came across something on the Net that’s rather interesting: the Gender Genie. According to the site, if you put 500 words (or more) of text into the box, an all-powerful algorithm will be able to tell if the author is a male or a female. I probably shouldn’t read stuff like that before my second cup of coffee, but I took it as a challenge.

“Let’s try some of my stuff,” I proclaimed. “Let’s see how manly I am when I write, with all of the muchlys and methinks and all-around whining.” After all, I do mention being a secret agent on a fairly regular basis. So I proceeded to copy and paste the text of I’d better not – I’m allergic and hit the ‘submit’ button.

At this point, the Gender Genie confidently proclaimed that the author was female.

“Must be a mistake,” I muttered. I proceeded to copy Won’t you (not) be my neighbor into the text box and, with some trepidation, hit the ‘submit’ button again. Now remember, in that post I refer to my wife several times, and how I have often asked for beer. And a DeLorean.

The result? Gender Genie, once again, thought I was female, with a female score of 1023 and a male score of 723.

I’m not sure what to think about this. I’m not Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I’m not a pansy boy, either. I like beer and farting and Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue. I don’t know how to sew on a button, and the only movie I’ve cried in recently was Bridge to Terabithia, and I defy anyone to say that they didn’t tear up a bit in that one.

So the problem, obviously, is the algorithm. Apparently ‘with’ and ‘if’ and ‘not’ are ‘feminine’ keywords, while ‘around’ and ‘these’ and ‘the’ are ‘masculine’ keywords. This, of course, leaves me at a loss. I can use the word ‘the’ as many times as I like, but if I sprinkle in a few too many ‘shoulds’ or ‘ands’ then I’m going to viewed as the writerly equivalent of Boy George.

You can probably guess what my next goal is. I’m going to prove to that goddamn genie that I’m all man. I’m not going to take this lying down. I’m going to use words like ‘grunt’ and ‘sweat’ and ‘testosterone.’

First I have to freshen up my tea, though.

My motivational gland (located somewhere in the region of the hypothalamus) has been extremely under-active lately, and I find myself wishing that I could more accurately predict existential crises. It’s not very helpful, for instance, to know that the electric bill is due, you have no more clean underwear and you forgot to feed the dog, and yet be stuck thinking that you’d really rather be learning the ancient art of ninjitsu and meditating on your own nihilistic tendencies, all while searching for the Loch Ness Monster in your spare time.

I’d love to be able to schedule my “Did I shave my back for this?” moments in between hitting ‘refresh’ on my inbox and watching episodes of Mythbusters.  It’s really hard to care that a group of shareholders will be very happy that my division is right on schedule and that all of the covers are on my TPS reports. It’s not enhancing my life any, and if anything is adding to the meltdown.

Current mood: wiggling fingers in ears, mumbling “dee dee dee da da da.”

So I just got home with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I know, I’m a little behind the times, and half of the country is probably halfway through the book by now (1:00 PM Saturday.)
The problem I’m having is this: I’m this close to finishing the first rewrite of my book, and I’m afraid if I start to read Harry Potter, one of two things will happen.  I’ll either (a)give up on finishing the rewrite until I’m done with Harry, or (b)reading Deathly Hallows will influence my writing or (c)both.

I think I’m mostly afraid of (b). It’s the reason why I quit reading anything when I’m deep into writing. I’m always afraid that I’ll subconsciously start putting stuff into my writing that has no business being there because my subconscious thinks it’s cool and because it’s what I’m reading at the time. “What? Since when did Professor Snape put Seymour Snit on detention?”

There’s a solution to this dilemma, however. If I finish the first rewrite (after all, all I have left is a slight re-working of the first chapter), then I can sit down with Harry. In other words, I need to quit blogging about it and get that rewrite done so I can get through Harry Potter before I see any spoilers.

Due to a family emergency, my wife and stepson had to fly out of state this past weekend, leaving me and my six-year old to fend for ourselves all week. He’s been spending some time at work with me, and we’ve just been hanging out.

So, you’d think we’d do the bachelor thing, wouldn’t you? You know, beer cans and pizza boxes scattered throughout the domicile, half-eaten sandwiches languishing atop piles of dirty laundry while the dog faithfully chases some stray animal through the ruins. All of this would then be followed by a frantic cleaning binge during the last several hours before the return of the prodigal spouse, up to and including scrubbing the bathtub and disinfecting the pets.

Surprisingly, however, we have been remarkably well-behaved, and I’m not just saying that because she reads this thing. There are a few extra sci-fi DVDs lying around, but if you were to break into our house at this moment, you would be struck in awe by the overall cleanliness of the place. You might turn and say to your partner in crime (if you had one): “Wow! This house is obviously occupied by a conscientious, thoughtful father-and-son team, to whom hygiene and sanitation are very important.” You would marvel at the clean kitchen, the vacuumed floors, the clean cat litter box. Then you’d steal the TV and throw the ball a few times for the dog, who would be very grateful.

So I wonder: Does all of this mean I’m more responsible? Am I finally (shudder) growing up? Is it just that I don’t want to spend my entire day on Saturday cleaning up the mess that we should have kept up on during the week? Or is it that I’m suffering from a slight case of writer’s block, and the way I deal with that is by cleaning?

I’ll never tell.

There is a series of commercials on TV lately that deal with Suave shampoo. The commercials show different women (mothers, presumably) dealing with both their children and their hair. Words are flashed on the screen that describe different complaints from different women about motherhood and their hair.

One of these commercials just makes me howl every time I see it, though it’s not intended to be funny – at least not the way I’m taking it. The words on the screen read something to the effect of, “75% of women say that motherhood has flattened their hair and their breasts.”

I keep expecting the next screen to read: “We can help with your hair.”

Is that wrong?