tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77432480933225361702011-10-11T07:46:52.584-07:00Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.comBlogger241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-6836938785187939272011-01-28T07:59:00.000-08:002011-04-10T07:52:08.853-07:00

Even when you aren’t, what you aren’t is determined by the way in which you aren’t.  An English Atheist (apathetic) is not a Cuban Atheist (dialectical materialist) is not an American Atheist (ill-tempered and reactionary).  Of course I am drawn to the latter.  We Americans–I do not speak as an anthropologist, or as any kind of scientist, so don’t come back saying, ah, but that is just your

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-40306606688763604432011-01-11T20:27:00.000-08:002011-01-19T16:05:43.248-08:00

Calvin & Hobbes was my favorite cartoon strip growing up.  Or rather, I was actually too young to appreciate it while it ran in the papers, but I discovered Calvin & Hobbes later, in the book-anthologies, which I eventually assembled a complete collection of.  Any American who will have any sympathy for what I am going to say in this post is probably already familiar enough with the cartoon that

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-36003714417440389472011-01-05T17:56:00.000-08:002011-01-19T16:09:43.642-08:00

Oh the things we do.  I read the other day that a key to happiness is avoiding dwelling on your past failures; people who do so aren't very happy.  I wonder if writers must be counseled the same way.  But then they wouldn't have very good books, would they?  I was reading some old posts today, and it seemed that all my failures were glaring in front of me, either failures that I was giving words

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-62256123182746880052010-08-19T15:16:00.000-07:002010-10-07T21:37:46.568-07:00

I really cannot stand Facebook.  Every few months or so, the programmers decide that they need to continue to justify their existences, so they tweak some feature of the site and everyone originally hates the change but eventually adjusts and that's that, until something changes again.   At first we railed against the changes, but then philosophically accepting that progress is inevitable, we

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You know those times when the light hits the trees at just the right angle and the breeze is blowing at just the right velocity and the music just fits your mood and suddenly everything doesn't seem so overwhelming and all those fairy tales Disney fed you suddenly seem so close that you could just reach out and grab them and it doesn't matter that she's been asleep for 1000 years or that you're

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-20673433998078758102010-05-30T17:53:00.000-07:002010-05-31T08:15:47.913-07:00

the morning prayer rings a sinister taunt to sore, sleepless eyelids million bits of ugly dust lie like ash in the tray on a windy day with every breeze a stale aroma stirs, beckons one hiding, shuddering gust God why won't my fluttering heart calm itself cool my hot will-o'-wisp blood and release me

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-80836222471173653492010-05-30T11:20:00.000-07:002010-05-31T06:28:20.561-07:00

Does anyone else bristle when he hears that Indiana Jones truism?  I suppose he studied a lot of Aristotle to be able to assert such a tenuous teleology with such certainty.  Whose museum exactly does it belong in?  Because I certainly doubt that after Indie beats the Nazi's butts once again, he donates the artifacts to the governments of the nations in which they were found.  Not to say that

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-51761472904966858802010-05-28T02:45:00.000-07:002010-05-31T06:07:09.249-07:00

i would call my day surreal if only i didn't hate using the word surreal.  after a rousing argument with my girlfriend, i stepped out the door to find the sky completely obscured by a dirty haze.  it was nice, in a change of pace kind of way.  sunshine gets old, and i'm always a fan of meteorological anomalies.  i trudged up the shallow incline of the alley towards the main road and after

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/may/20/language-usa My british girlfriend recently sent me this link which, in my current state of mind, was not a wise thing to do.  I do love David Mitchell and his comedy and I honestly found the video entertaining.  But if we want to look at this subjectively, I've got to say that he is dead wrong. I don't even know where to start with you

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-52903575458521270852010-05-23T06:44:00.000-07:002010-05-23T07:07:33.430-07:00

no major religion that i know of considers belief in a certain orthodoxical structure to be a core tenet to salvation.  the jews worked out their salvation as a holy nation.  the muslims have normative orthopraxy but their metaphysics are relegated to obscure mystics and lay philosophers.  i am not nearly as qualified to comment on buddhism or hinduism, but from what i understand neither accord

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-63379978050404695612010-05-20T05:20:00.000-07:002010-05-20T05:47:56.089-07:00

I'm sure that all but (the) one person who follows my blog is acquainted with that other, slightly more popular blog, known as stuffwhitepeoplelike.  White people love stuffwhitepeoplelike, because it removes that unsettling feeling white people get from the oppressive individuality they thought they had, while all the time thinking that they are making fun of other white people for their lack of

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-60062590725027181462010-05-20T02:45:00.000-07:002010-05-20T04:17:19.089-07:00

For a time my sleep was troubled, every thought tied too tight to idle memories, weighed down as my mind wriggled and squirmed in past's cage.  And I could not even escape to Louisville.  I could not range on smoothly paved roads through neighborhood and Bard's town and Cherokee glens.  I could not even roll down that first pitch and cross my own street.  For one phrase she said as we laid

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-36028373130844391832010-05-19T04:09:00.000-07:002010-05-20T02:28:30.032-07:00

Now I'm not starting this post with any sense of direction, more of a general feeling of subject matter, which is more inspiration than I have had whenever I have sat down to type in the recent past. I'm tall.  Quite tall.  6 foot 4 and change or 195 cm are the numbers I provide, when I am invariably asked by people I have just met or people I haven't seen for a while, or people I saw just last

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-67050785799554021582010-05-14T09:52:00.000-07:002010-05-28T04:53:39.837-07:00

I dreamt...that we were walking together on a winding trail that we always managed to get mixed up on though we had been there a number of times.  And we're just talking, shooting the breeze, when I decide to let her in on my big secret: I have various superpowers.  Superstrength and flight, to start.  So nobody will ever bother us again, and we can just relax and enjoy the sea breeze tonight,

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-43001459336664569542010-05-10T00:19:00.000-07:002010-05-10T00:36:20.651-07:00

Yeats once said that the pub is the poor man's university. I think there should be some equally clever epigram for cafes, probably uttered by Oscar Wilde. But I do not know of any. Anyway.If you are better than everyone else, like myself, you know everything there is to know about the best and most esoteric ways to brew coffee. You might even have a big old book filled with black and white

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-51188760474814513052010-05-10T00:18:00.000-07:002010-05-10T00:19:03.511-07:00

Learn French and Spanish (optional)Use hallucinogens (also optional)Take Borges' collected fiction and Le Petit Prince, or translations if necessary, to a remote Moroccan oasis village (Algeria or Libya will also do).Read the Borges in total seclusion.Take date syrup and water into the desert, and read Le Petit Prince over the course of three days.You have now realized that you probably don't

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I find it amusing when a person tells me he bases his ethics on Darwin's theories. I think I will start going around pushing these people off cliffs to more thoroughly affirm Newton's. Darwin's theories are no more germane to the question of life than Newton's, and I even believe the latter would be the lesser of the two logical unscruples, as some people would certainly be improved by rapid

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-18646137593098746272010-05-10T00:13:00.000-07:002010-05-10T00:29:01.460-07:00

(As a Rebuttal)Morality is an inherently illogical concept. But let us back peddle just a few steps first.It started with the chess analogy, are the rules the is's or the ought's? Is it a closed system, or within a larger system? Is the implied goal of checkmating an ought or an ought, or is it just an is?Let me introduce my own chess analogy, after that we might perhaps find some assonance

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-79107836961442630412010-05-10T00:08:00.000-07:002010-05-10T00:13:34.527-07:00

Enter, Sherlock Holmes, cocaine and nicotine addict, deeply melancholic, prone to extended periods of ennui elleviated only by brooding German violin concertos and diverted only by singularly unique or morbidly spectacular criminal cases, meets his end under dubious circumstances, with only the rather daft Watson to give an account of how the fateful events unfolded.Enter, Professor Moriarty, an

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-15376050634862866682009-08-14T07:07:00.000-07:002010-05-10T01:04:19.459-07:00

I considered a number of directions to take this post on my walk back from Jaffa. I thought about calling it "why i smoke", or quoting Leonard Cohen's song Joan of Arc: "And then I understood, if I am fire then you must be wood." Or the late Reverend Ike: "the best thing you can do for poor people is to not be one of them." Or Amos Oz: "My parents always said 'you'll see, not in our lifetime

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-3437316449899082702009-08-10T13:50:00.000-07:002009-09-05T01:25:08.498-07:00

A friend of mine made it clear last night that I have not thus far expressed myself very well in my critiques of the miraculous, and that at points I had been outright contradictory. I also realized through the course of the conversation that I have not considered my own opinions very thoroughly. So let me try again. The problem that I see with most recent evangelical Christian apologists is

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-7430116121256851662009-08-09T14:39:00.000-07:002010-05-09T23:55:42.106-07:00

It is Sunday. I depart for Tel Aviv on Tuesday, a week from then I will begin Orientation at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. The last days leading up to my excursion become particularly stressful for me, as yet another impending reality shift comes to the gear tooth chipping stages. Of late, as I meet with friend after friend to say yet another round of goodbyes, I am variously simply

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-89822714357754119922009-07-28T18:35:00.001-07:002009-07-29T06:50:05.524-07:00

More and more I seem to be observing crises of faith within my friends and, most notably, myself. Some take more radical forms, some are as simple as confessions along the lines of "sometimes I don't believe, so I pray to believe, because I believe". Personally, the dilemma takes the form of a festering knot of guilt that sharpens or dulls throughout the years. I can remember spending

Samuel Gateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14888230965779637600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7743248093322536170.post-27384035560187576932009-07-25T11:59:00.000-07:002010-05-10T00:03:12.172-07:00

I slogged through Demons amidst smoke rings and beer buzz. I read rapidly, but I have no clue how much information I actually retained. The establishment I found myself in after wandering about half an hour on my bicycle through the silent Sunday evening streets was quite local, more so than the euro-brew peddling gardens that my demographic tend to mob as soon as they turn 21.First of all, the

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