Viva Las Vegas?

I put a question mark here because I'm not sure any city like that should be Viva'd (Look I invented a word!). I'm going with my sister and a bunch of her army cohorts. We'll be there for three nights and three days. Should be fun. I'm religiously obliged to not gamble...I think. I've never asked because I just assumed it was forbidden. I'll avoid doing it totally unless it's part of a group activity and saying no would be...well, if it would be to snub the entire group. I also don't know anything about it, and I honestly think (at least at the moment) that I wouldn't like it very much. ::shrug:: who knows though. My experience with it is limited to a few games of ad hoc craps in junior high and one quarter in a slot machine in the LV airport during a two hour layover on my way back home from a ski trip in New York....wow. I didn't realize just how cosmopolitan my life actually was untill I wrote that just now. Which is retarded because I'm realizing it while staring at a brand new 19 inch flatscreen computer monitor that I got from my parents for Christmas.

Though, to my credit, I do live in a crappy apartment, eat primarially noodles (or fast food en rout to or from work), and pretty much have to ask for money to do anything major, like car repairs. So I am legitimately poor, but I'm also taken care of...kinda. I'm expected to work my ass off for as much money as I can make to support myself, and as long as I'm doing that, the parental units tacitly agree to pick up the other expenses I can't handle alone.

Anyway, back to the discussion (writ: monolouge) at hand. The primary entertainment will be just bumming around the town for a few days. We'll probably catch one big show (Cirque de Solei or perhaps Blue Man Group) and try our hands at a few gaming tables just for kicks. In all seriousness, none of us have money to burn at gambling, so the activity is strictly for amusement. That being said, I think I'll be done being amused by losing money for litterally no return after the first couple of games. And I'm not allowed to do it anyway. It's really nice being Orthodox, because all the stupid (stupid, stupid, stuipid) stuff that other people do as social expectations (strip clubs/strippers at bachelor partys for example) is stuff that you've got direct instructions not to do, and ergo not only do you avoid (we hope) getting your soul dirty, you also don't stupidly waste money, time, dignity, etc... on pointless crap. Video games are my one indulgance in that area. I don't buy many of them, but the ones I do buy I use extensively. Hey, don't knock it, I live alone, and I have no friends that keep the same hours I do, it keeps me out of trouble.

Anyhoo, Lemony Snickett's: A Series of Unfortunate Events lived up to my movie expectations and even went beyond. Jim Carey is not a perfect Count Olaf, but nobody else in the world could even hope to do it as well as he does. And the kids cast as the Baudeliere orphans are exactly perfect. Blade: Trinity sucked. No pun intended, it just wasn't good. The first two were good, this one was hammy. Although...the scenes (most of them) where the arch-villan (no less than the origional Dracula) was ABSENT, were mostly very entertaining. The actor couldn't act. Which you woud think would preclude him from acting, but aparently this is not a requisite talent.


Alexey the Sinner.

Whew...

Just read in the news that the TSA (Transportation Saftey Administration) is halting the practice of having their female security guards feel between the breasts of women who get selected for random pat downs. Thank God. Seriously. This had me really ticked off. My initial thought wasn't even about the invasiveness (not really). My thought was, if terrorists can force us to visit this indignity on our women, then havn't they already won? They've forced us to change our ways by visiting death and violence on us. Ergo, is not the best way to fight them to not respond to them? Both Eamon De Valera and Gandhi both held the opinion that simply ignoring the british was the best way to defy them. That the dictatorial british rule of their lands could best be fought by refusing to aknowledge it as a legitimate force. Eventually they would see that they simply cannot force you to change who you are, and quit. Now this does not work perfectly in the real world, but suppose we limited our responses to military ones? If we retaliated when wounded, to the extend required to crush the military power of those involved, but effected no social changes on ourselves, then certianly they would observe that the only reaction gotten by violence was an ass kicking. They can make us fight perhaps (a nation must defend itself, even the Orthodox empire of Byzantium did so as did Russia), but if they are made to know that they cannot force us to change who we are, then they might think to themselves "This is futile. We kill them but nothing we do changes their foregin or domestic policy, and it only gets us hurt, and makes us look worse in the public eye." Wouldn't this just be an extention of the immutable rule "Do not negotiate with terrorists" ?

Philosophy aside, I had another counter-argument to the validity of feeling up the breasts of random female passangers. It wen't something like this:

If a bomb detector can spot a bomb underneath someones clothing, then this absurd practice is totally unnesecary.

If a bomb detector cannot spot a bomb underneath someones clothing, then it definitly can't spot a bomb lodged in a body cavity (use your imagination).

Since any airline bomber is going to die by definition, they wouldn't care about physically stuffing the bomb inside themselves. And sine we can't detect that short of a full body cavity search, which we don't do, and it would therfore not be detected, why bother violating a womans private areas? You can't blow up plastic explosives without a deatonator, and I've never seen or heard of one of those which contained zero metal parts.

My theory, which I have yet to really research, is that the Chechen women who bombed the plane (if that is, indeed what happened, we won't ever actually know) didn't undergo a thourough screening. Probably didn't get metal detected at all. And if they did, they probably didn't go through a bomb detector. And if they did, then they had special explosives that don't give off any ionized gas (the detection of which is how bomb dogs and machines detect explosives). And if they had that, we won't find it anyway. So why bother?

Public immage probably. If I were a betting man I'd say that there are some explosives guys and girls up at the FBI accademy at Quantico laughing their butts off at what the FAA is wiling to say in public to quell fears about the uncontrolable things in life.

Heres one way to fight terrorism. Accept it as a fact of life (and possibly death). The Isralies deal with it all the time, they don't even flinch anymore when it happens on a large scale. They bury their dead, do their best to nail whoever did it, and they go back to living their lives like they did before. If they didn't, then the terrorists would win wouldn't they?

But then if we did things the Isralie way we would have had armoured cockpit doors and four armed guards on every airborn plane, and 9/11 probably wouldn't have happened.

OK, It's late and I've rambled enough.

Alexey the Sinner.

A few things

First off, wow, my connection is really smooth tonight. Secondly, I'm lonley. It really hit me today, I'm genuinely lonely. I want to get married. I'm going to pray that God direct me down that path, assuming of course that it is in His will. If not, I'm also going to pray for peace about that, because it's something I've really wanted for a long time.

I passed a sore test (of my own making, as so many are) over a year ago. I was very, very in love with a girl. The only problem was that she was an Atheist. The one kind of person I unquestionably could not marry. We were very in love, and breaking up hurt worse, and was more difficult to do than anything else. But from my mindset, there simply wasn't any other choice. God, or the girl. That is no choice. Not when Hell is on the one hand and the possibility of Salvation is on the other. No, there was no choice (really) but it still was amazingly difficult to do. Like trying to break out of a gravity well with a weak rocket engine, it is arduous.

Anyway, I'm tired of being alone (and I admit I'd like to not be celibate either), but the being with someone is the biggest thing by far. I'm a romantic soul, I admit it, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have it.

Problem is that not only do I live in a city with virtually no Orthodox, I'm also moving soon (relatively), going to graduate school (God willing) at the beginning of next school year. I'm hoping that wherever I go, there will be a nice Orthodox church, with some nice Orthodox girls. One my age, with hopefully some of my interests, and some good looks would not hurt either. Although truth be told, I honestly don't think I'd care to much as long as she was at least average looking. Is that shallow of me? I'm asking honestly. There are only so many girls I find physically attractive, just like everyone else, but is that intrinsically wrong? I can't generate feelings where none exist (this can provide some unhappily akward moments of having to explain that you're just-not-interested, it hasn't happend a lot, but a few times is more than enough...) ::shrug:: Either you feel it or you don't, we don't live in an age where blind arranged marrages happen anymore (for all practicality).

Well shucks, now I'm all sentimental. I broke the fast big time today, maybe that's why. There was a feast offered for the employees at the Barnes and Noble where I work. It's an anual thing and I figured one day off the fast wouldn't hurt. And I know perfeclty well I can get emotionally worked up over something without the help of non-fasting food to get my blood heated up, but still... ::shrug:: it's beyond my ken, part of my many spiritual weaknesses. Purer thoughts and minds come from fasting and I voulentarially didn't do it today, a mistake I guess, but an honest one.

God forgive me all my many faults.

Alexey the Sinner.

Nativity Season

I wish I had a normal life. It would be nice to be caught up more in church than in anything else. I wish that the rest of my life were stable, or at least on a predictable curve (as opposed to the 'chaos-theory-demonstration' which is the grad school application process). All I'm saying is, it would be nice for the Holy Season to have an unchallenged spot in my life. Now, it ought to have this anyway. Priorities have always been a phantom problem for me. But a hundred and twenty miles seperate me from my house of worship and the task which is required for me to have a career is at hand. I hope I'm doing His will with this thing, because other wise, I'm putting the wrong foot forward getting so caught up in it, especially during the buildup to the celebration of the birth of the Savior.

Alexey the Sinner

Well aint that a B!@#$

Aparently one of my sisters in Christ at church has cancer. This is what I get for not going more than every four weeks or so. Not that I have a lot of choice in the matter, but still, being out of the info loop sucks. I really, really, really need to get up there every weekend, somehow. My brother is finally going to get Cathecised (forgive the spelling, I'm depressed and worried). This is beyond gret, but how I'll get him there ever weekend is a mystery to me. I may be forced to take someone up on their offer of gas money. The reason I didn't take it before was because I felt that A) I get up often enough for myself anyway, seeing as how I do get confession and communion every time I go. and B) There are surley people who need it worse than I do, considering how much cash our church doesnt have.

Getting ready for Grad school is hectic. I've got my letter of reccomendation materials all printed and ready to roll, beyond which most of them are in the hands of the people who need them to write the letters. Past that I have to actually sit down and fill out all the applications. Not exactly sure when I'll do that but Friday is looking good since I have it off work (that just occured to me now actually). I've got two trips coming up, and I don't want to take either of them, but I can't not do them. First, I've been invited by my sister to Las Vegas for New Years. Never mind that this is in the middle of Orthodox Nativity season and the last thing I ought to be doing is hiting Vegas for any reason, but I'm also going to be loosing probably $200 by not working those four days. I'm on the verge of telling my sister that I have to cancle on her. I REALLY don't want to do that though. We've never really had much of an opportunity to hang out, and I can tell that this is totally important to her. I'm religiously forbidden form gambling (I presume anyway, I cannot imagine Orthodoxy actually allowing it), and I can't afford tickets to any of the shows. So I'm going because I cannot turn my sister down in this case, it is too important that I do something with her. Not going would be wasting a priceless opportunity to mend fences and build a better friendship with her.

The next trip is also to God Forsaken Nevada, except Reno, and for a much more wholesome purpose. My Brother (the one begging for cathecism) has an anual Pole Vault meet there. My mother, who likes to lean on me about things I've never actually gone and done with the family, leaned on me about this. It was kind of a guilt trip thing, I like my little brother, but I'd be lying if I said I was all that interested in his pole vaulting. Why I'm not, I don't know, I think it's because I've been moved out of the house since before he started doing it, it's just never been a part of my world.

Maybe I'll cancel that. I'll have hell to pay from my mother but...I can't do everything. In fact I'll have to. If I miss that week, that will be two weeks I miss during january, and there is no way in hell I can pay rent and be gone that long. Well, one trip has to go, and I'm sorry, but I see my brother all the time, and he and I are close friends. My sister on the other hand has never liked me, and this is a sincear invitation, and she really wants me there. I've got to pick, I pick Vegas for New Years. I'll get burned for it, but I litterally cannot do both.

Also, tonight the bank ATM screwed up. I was asking for $20 so I could pay for parking at the U of A tomorow, it spit out $220. Draining my account of half the money required for the rent cheque I wrote yesterday. Thanks to the "Check 21" law that went into effect with the election, it now only takes around 24 hours for a check to clear or bounce, effectively eliminating the float time. So I had to cancle my first experiment down at the U of A so I can go put the cash back in my account. A minor annoyance, and more of one to the poor sucker who got his (probably very important) two credit experiment cancled at the absolout last second, but I can't get evicted now can I?

Things are crazy, hectic isn't a good enough word. On the plus side, I've found a computer alarm-clock program so effective that I effectively do not fear waking up late anymore. Rock on.

Thaks be to God for all His many blessings and His Son our Lord Jesus Christ whom has Given us the Victory.

Praise be to God!

Alexey the Sinner