David Crowder*Band Rockumentary 4: Twitter Will Kill You

Mark warns David that Twitter will only lead to certain death. David and Jack lose their lives to the Twitter craze.

David Crowder*Band Rockumentary Episode 4: "Twitter Will Kill You." Created by Jordan Bellamy, Key Grip and 2nd DP- Kelly McTavish, Frisbee Provider- Seth Hale,

Richard Dawkins first published in 1976 The Selfish Gene, perhaps his most infamous of titles. You can now enjoy him reading this book, with Lalla Ward, in an Audible edition with all the most recent endnotes and added chapters (second edition 1989) included.

Publisher's Summary

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.

In his internationally best-selling, now classic, volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk.

You may know this author by his controversial title The God Delusion. A must read for any one who wants to hold their own among the religious herds pounding at the gate.

"...For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation...."

 From Publishers Weekly

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Another Day in Paradise...

News Junkie, virtue or addiction?

I was on holiday in Cebu, initially, intentionally avoiding my daily diet of cyber-socializing. Yet the very first solace I found was the hypnotic hum of cable-news in air-conditioned rooms. And then the final clincher, a devastating earthquake in my home nation, Japan. It was then I wish I had my own computer, and hung-tense on the remote, clicking between BBC, Singapore News, and CNN.  There was absolutely little I could do, yet still, I stared blankly fixed on the TV monitor, poolside in paradise.

Since, I have returned to my 27" iMac, Facebook, and the labyrinth of connectivity in my home. I can only question both the soothing rub of inter-connectedness, with friends and family, and the obvious futility of simply knowing what has happen, but, in fact, doing so very little.

There has been a blanket of benefits, all of us donating in a myriad of ways, yet in the end we all dangle on our own bootstraps. So, like my neighbors, I prepare for work, check on friends and family, and fall back into the routine. In our own immediate world, we are still alive, still connected, still well enough to login one more time.

John Galliano formerly of Dior

John Galliano is a British designer who has recently undermined his career, when a cellular phone recorded his racist remarks at a Paris bar. His comments, though extremely distasteful from a man who specializes in extreme tastefulness, among drunks is rather common banter, and why I do not like hanging out with heavy drinkers. He will now suffer the slings and arrows for both his political incorrectness and his inability to deal constructively with his angry inner child.

The curious variable here for me is the discovery of his website... a truly brilliant piece of online theater. Apparently brilliance does not necessarily make one consistently clever. One more celebrity has fed the hungry ghost of public pulp and will again verify the adage any publicity is good publicity. Now discover his website and confirm the adage.

The Four Horsemen

The Four Horsemen Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens

Perhaps the foremost authors in the world of new atheism, this free two part two hour discussion is a fully gratifying experience. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys brilliant minds in honest dialogue. 

Collision of Lives; Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson debate

It is always refreshing to listen to the witty genius of Christopher Hitchens and, in the case of this film, enjoy an articulate bright-minded Christian. Douglas Wilson is the perfect good brother to the evil twin Christopher. Like Steve Jobs, another brilliant mind cast in the role of villain, I dread Hitchens and Jobs passing. In their fight against terminal ailments, I'd love for them to come out winners... this one last time. The Atheistic intellectual dance, often cheerfully researched on my beloved Apple devices, remains a positive stimulant, close at hand, day long and night longer.

 I need great minds to sooth my own rocky inner voices.

Lisa Gansky

 Lisa Gansky has a mind a man could love. Her recent performance on FORA.tv sent me searching for her in Googleland where I found her interviews on TechCrunch with Andrew Keen. Her new book Mesh has her media-izing all over the internets. If you do not know her Mesh, Mesh-it-up and see what happens. Her credentials are impeccable, her talk as sharp of a whip you will ever be hit by. Sit up and listen, stand up and cheer, or simply buy her book.

Learning to be me

Being blessed with time, where I can tweak my life, my home, my relationships, but most of all spend time letting myself be... a bit terrifying... afraid I am not maxed out to fully utilizing this opportunity... yet too getting down with myself...space... quiet moments stretching out into a day, doing all those many little things around the house, making ToDo lists and actually completing all those little tasks, even coming back when the task is stymied to finally triumph over cumbersome details... Still many back brain targets festering, yet I feel these too will be faced and delegated a time and a focused assault may arise. I understand this space can be blown away when hard fact life clicks in and takes precedence, yet, for now, I am happy.

Under a blanket of powdered snow

Extraordinary quiet... White to gray as sunset downs, beyond our Western higher ground, here on snowed-in Hieidaira. Nested, I have begun the game of low-card diet... a way to highlight rituals and invigorate sacrifice. Relationship shift as Valentine's Day articulates ambiguities and unresolved tendencies. I am free between semesters. I order the training package from the Giggling Guru, Madan Kataria, on line from India. I want to laugh and make my classes even more fun in the coming academic year... thinner, more cheerful, and free. Like a single long stem rose cut for romance, destined to die in a voluptuous display of beauty eternal. The glowing retina burn of welding torch passion.

Happiness on Eating Hope

I am not quite certain why, but I feel I am about to enter into a contract with the devil yet feel as high as an angel. I will resume dieting, hardcore dieting, and will lose some serious weight in a most ex·cru·ci·at·ing way...

Self-made Hells and Other Stories

Locked inside by self exile.

Soft outside fumbling flesh, 

heart disturbed by obsess...

Obese thumb fumble FALTERED

discussing disgust and discipline disfunction. 

Can I find a better way to reflect on my summer of funk behavior;

A curious bliss of consumption and nest bonding,

showered by moving cumulus clouding.

Am I moving or spinning as an unfettered bit?

Power drilling to dead-enders...

All hail Contemptuous reflectors on my Harley handbasket...

cruising to my home-made hell.

Father to Father, farther and farther

I am warmly impressed by this mythified portrayal of a saintly monk, written and read by Tony Hendra. Unfortunately this author's daughter's 'accusation' of incest-molestation, puts a damper on my enthusiasm (discussed in detail in Jessica Hendra's HOW TO COOK YOUR DAUGHTER)... So much the cliche of our times, revelations of tainted ecclesiastics, 'Is anything sacred?' The dark depth of the soul... rings out poorly, from my cracked bell of new-found atheism. All too often this summer have I tasted bitterness, when waking from my extended nightmares and tainted dreams.

My observation, this clipped-wings summer, has been layered and valuable. I am deeply pleased to have finally a chance to be with my children. We finally fortified conventional family quality-time, lost during their Junior and Senior High School years... dealing with the long distance of their international school, with hobbled home-stays and youthful misadventures. It is true, our living on university teacher-time, we did have holidays. Yet, the sweet daily contact of normalcy eluded us... at that very intensified time, when we were all desperately mentally 'accommodating' their mother's suicide. 

At least now we have the luxury of youthful purposelessness... something I had as a young buck in the wilds of summer Adirondacks. A time when all dad's worked back on Long Island, and most moms hid in screened-in cabins, as their youngsters ran and swam in near nudity, full voracity, and unbound puberty. My children's life has been tainted with the distorted luxuries of bi-culturals, slivered between uncharted domestic explorations and barely plausible plans of home life. All doing our best, as it can be said, over and over again.

Hotsy Totsy

A rotund but demean figure from Long Island. Once hotsy-totsy New York artist on pilgrimage to Zen, but now a subservient figurine on the trophy mantle of time. How to salvage an aging vulgar carcass, revitalizing a zombie into a tomorrow of vital todays?　

Sunset on a sizzling Nihon

I listen to Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist"  though I wish this recording had been read by the author. His biting wit and sarcastic Cambridge lilt compliments his enthusiastic embittered atheism. I love the depth and breath of his criticism and find him an angel of rational argumentation, an artist of divisiveness. I envy the voluminous tomes of quotable details he carries on his shoulders... And find the perfect tone of the audio artist that reads his text, Nicholas Ball, a misguided use of narrative perfection. Hitchens is best read by Hitchens.

Dame if Hitchens isn't the kind of mental athlete I wish I were. Instead I am a cerebral hooligan, a vandal spraying verbiage on dirty walls, to impress the street urchins I run with, a suburban ghetto of wannabes. A couch potato cliche of armchair quarterbacking ego-grandized causes, in a game that doesn't matter.

Nobody should care what I think, and when they do, I loath my unpracticed goal attempts at conceptual clarity. If I were captain I'd bench my mouth. Fortunately, athleticism is magically attuned to evolutionary theory. I fade now as I speak, a dinosaur of impractical ego dimensions.

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights (1939) reminds of the romantic values that cast the shape of our present. I hide in the air-conditioned cocoon, of computer, oral gratitudes, and the delusional state of constant news.

In news today, via Fareed Zakaria and Riz Khan, I am presented the economic reality, seasoned with the moral tale 'to be thankful for still owning my own home, and having a job.' Our international statistical reality is the USA, despite all its present hand-ringing, is still chief dog, among the mongrel leaders of Japan, India, and China, and I, having never appropriately established myself within the American dream, live in limbo under the Sword of Damocles. 

For Cicero this legend suggested that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life. "Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person, over whom some fear always looms?" Yet in my case, fear laughs as I cower. Fear of ill-health and inevitable death, a coward left unarmed, on the gates of my own persistence. My own insistence that this is who I am.

Begotten in the Wilderness

   Abd-ru-shin (Oskar Ernst Bernhardt) 

creator of the Grail Message.

"Things Fall Apart" the Nigerian classic by Chinua Achebe, has consumed my day. The heat is unbearable and I hide, chasing thoughts on the internet. The perpetual oil spills of Nigeria, highlighted by the BP oil sill in the Caribbean, lead me to better understand first of the geography of Nigeria, then the politics, then theology (discovering The Grail Movement in the process), and eventually to downloading Peter Francis James' narration of an African long-lasting best seller. I slip and slide through correspondence, and have solidly become a prisoner of my internet connection.  Only the kitchen can temporarily distract me from my zombie belligerence to my sublimation to a childhood addiction TV.

I fantasize the greatness of evolving a personal philosophical outlook, and loom over the diverse genius who have created their own grounded outlook... thus my interest and recent investigation in the Grail Movement, my old friend the Hare Krishna mantra, and Jodo-Shin-shu's Shinran (founder of the Pure Land sect of Japanese Buddhism).

Hare Krishna Mantra in Devanagar

I believe it will all end up as a video podcast, though I fear my shadow side dominating my expression and weighing down my communication with too much angst, spoiling the soup I hope to savor in my later years.

Second Generation 'Henro'

My son, Zen, begins his pilgrimage today, to the 88 temples of Shikoku... a 'henro' like his father 25 years earlier. Zen's mother also had walked the 'henro michi' in her early thirties before meeting me, in her transition. Like many pilgrims 'on the cusp of change' a rite of passage, a superb opportunity to reflect, while rediscovering the kindness of strangers and the natural beauty abundant in Shikoku... the trail beckons.

Reiko had met and fell in love with a Buddhist priest in that journey. A priest whose mother, a typical temple parental oligarchy, rejected her as a suitable match ...and now, nearly 30 years later, our son, at 18, will bring some of her ashes, to sprinkle on each of the eighty-eight. Perhaps a piece of her will find the peace which eluded her in life.

Zen is a declared atheist, yet, being of Japanese soil, he understands the power of simple ritual, reflection, and form. He will take on the challenge, and allow life to be created around him, bringing his own dignity and effort into the mix. The dogma of religion and philosophy will scurry from behind, trying to keep up with his youthful vitality and stubborn perseverance.

I will be here, on our family mountain-top homestead, with his sister Kai. Kai will soon be 21 and also finds herself in transition. Confronted by the exorbitant cost of American private universities, we as a family have had to reevaluate our options. Study 'kanji' (advance level Japanese writing) here in Japan, apply to more affordable US schools, study in the Philippines where an education is still reasonable, or to find a job... all options I would personally enjoy for myself and excitedly support for her...

Yet none has yet to light a flaming inferno under her heat-resistant derrière. Instead, over a low flame of discontent, she simmers in indecision, a slow burn of despair for her and consternation for her father. Only time will tell what path awaits us all.

I, too, live along the way and wonder when I will step again. As an American, I know the merit of the open road and the desolate chill of a man with no sense of home. I waver between clinging to the earth of domesticated normalcy here in Japan and stepping out into the abyss of brave options... between university fail-safe and life free-fall.

Pain of Parenting

Because my children are, by far, my greatest source of fulfillment, they in turn can leave me emotionally drained. My children now live in the angst of transition, no longer kids, not quite autonomous adults. I am deeply invested in their next choices, and so feel stymied by their naiveté, and frustrated by their frustrations. The irony does not escape me. It is not difficult for me to empathize, to remember my variation of adolescent trauma, passion, and anguish. And so I feel their pain, compounded by a parent's concern.

I am brutally not naive. In fact, I am tiredly predictable in their eyes. I swing between wanting to take to wing for myself, leaving them on the branch leaning forward toward their own flight lesson or concocting some impractical tandem, tied to them as they jump. I do not have the resources to have us all in flight at the same time, as I have no financial net to catch missteps and aerobatic miscalculations. Somehow we all three need to be separate stars in flight simultaneously... the choreographic nightmare that haunts me today.

If we fall, we will fall hard. Street wisdom states 'them is the breaks' an inevitability in our 'school of hard knocks'... Yet as a single parent, I am both psychologically, nurturing mother and pragmatically pestering father. How does one play 'Good and Bad cop' simultaneously? "Nudge them out of the nest with one big push" comes one order from the left brain, "But are they ready?" squeals the right... "But how else will they know" recants Dad-side, "Can we afford to take that chance" Mom-me meekly counters. And so the sleepless night, of one head with two voices, languishing long and unresolved.

Apparently we all need to be brave, witness the limitations, and relish the challenge. A bit too flowery for someone who approaches sixty with such sweaty trepidation.

Authentic Spring

A righteous spring morning, affirming the ambitious push of my sprouts in the potted plants of my roadside garden. My walk and talk mornings with Arthur have dramatically improved my stamina. A dark mind set lingers, the futility and inevitability of my gradual demise into 'older still' has been mean.　Just too much has failed, too little manifested in full flower. How much I would appreciate a refresh, a raising from the tomb of a savior.

Being lost in researching album covers, for my massive iTunes music library, has allowed me to mentally dance through my music history. This followed my collectors lust of downloaded movies, again revisiting a history of personal images shared with film buffs everywhere. I feel grateful to the passion of strangers made accessible via the net. An intimidating army of minds and manic behavior allowing sojourns from this desktop.