November 7, 2008

October 15, 2008

October 13, 2008

  • Density & Camping

    Welp, we’re going camping this weekend at Raystown Lake in honor of Ben, and anyone is invited. If you need details, let me know. It looks like tents and food will be plentiful. Just bring clothes, a sleeping bag, and a pillow, and you should be fine. A little cash wouldn’t hurt.

    My less-diaryish blog is going well. I’m getting lots of views and a good stream of comments. In my job, I listen to a lot of people weigh in on a lot of interesting issues, but I’m generally in a role of listener/recorder, so it’s nice to have a place to express some of my opinions, observations, and interpretations. Earlier this evening I put together an entry about a new map that shows population density in PA. (Exciting stuff! Right?)

    We’re thinking seriously about hosting Lancsgiving again this year. Anyone think they’re up for it? It will not be for the faint of appetite.

October 2, 2008

  • The economy and me

    As a young, indebted professional, I have to wonder how selfish I should be in this current economic situation. I think that if I was truly motivated by my own interests, I’d be cheering as our current economic structure tumbles. Or am I missing something? I wrote more over on my other blog: http://danielklotz.com/2008/10/02/will-it-float-me/. I’d love your thoughts, you smart friends of mine.

September 19, 2008

  • Things are finally calming back to (close to) normal for me. The past two weeks have been incredibly busy with work. Last Thursday and Friday were spent in Philadelphia for our annual board retreat. It was productive and exciting, but it took a lot of work to prepare (it’s one of the events I’m responsible for organizing), and then there was the work afterward of wrapping up and catching up (including on sleep!).

    I’ve had more and more opportunities to work on social networking stuff at work… including presenting to our small business group (actually about 80% of our member organizations are small ones) about Twitter, in the context of a program on technology in the workplace.

    Our piggies are good… Amanda recently added to their chronicles with a hilarious post on GuineaLynx..

    I’ve started a more serious blog that I think we actually develop a readership this time, at danielklotz.com. I intend to give it a local focus, with the key categories being arts, civic life, data & trends, innovations & ideas, local social, news analysis, and news tips (rumors and bits of info). If you’re interested.

August 13, 2008

  • The Word on My Street

    Well Amanda is yacking away on the phone with some grossly overweight chick from New York. I had to share an apartment with her once. I think her laundry situation made mine look good.

    Speaking of, I found a dried Shadow crap in my pile of clean clothes this morning. I guess I have some laundry to do, after I finish this cat skinning.

    I think I believe in Jesus again. The religious pilgrimage I’ve been on the past five years has been good for me, but it was always my hope to reach some sort of destination. I will always be seeking, but I’d like to do seeking on the side, with enjoying and honoring God as the main thing.

    In short, two reasons for where I wound up. First, personal development. I am really surprised by how big of a piece this was. I figured the key was to figure things out, roughly. I didn’t realize how hard that would be with my psyche all wacked out. The biggest example is that I’ve come to realize how much I expect from myself. (I pretty much always let myself down in the face of those expectations.) It has been easy for most of my life to confuse those expectations with God’s expectations, or with religious imperatives. That definitely got in the way for me. Every mistake or minor failure was a sin. I think there was a lot of Christianity that I misunderstood.

    The second thing is the intellectual stuff. Here’s the nutshell of the nutshell, oversimplifications galore: I have never stopped believing in a loving creator-God. I believe that such a God would make him/her/it/themselves known to most of its creation, with natural revelation not being enough. I believe that Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible blows out of the water any other ancient characterizations of a supreme being. He’s incredibly compelling; better (as Harold Bloom writes) than anyone in Shakespeare (he says Lear comes closest). I love Zen and I love the Tao, but I find them to be much more of a close reading of the natural world than an instance of special revelation. Hinduism and Shintoism just aren’t for me, for a variety of reasons. So that leaves us with the great so-called “Western” religions. To start at the beginning, I think it is very hard to believe, within a Jewish framework, that Yahweh has kept his covenant with his people, particularly in the face of the Hollocaust. “Yahweh” has become, for many Jews, “I will be where I will be,” a sad alternate reading of “I am that I am.” To skip to the end, I find it very hard to agree with Baha’u'llah that we currently live in the kingdom of heaven fully come. If this is the kingdom of God in its fullness, I’m underwhelmed. To drop back a religion (chronologically), I believe (and this is really the whole center) that Islam gets Jesus, and his predecessors, wrong. I do not see a level line connecting the prophets; I see a progression that reaches a tipping point; and Jesus, rather than being a letdown, is a screaming success at the pinnacle of that progression. I also find N.T. Wright’s reading of history very believable–that is, that this whole notion of Jesus’ bodily resurrection–is both very hard to explain (if it didn’t actually happen) and very hard to dismiss (given the actions and thoughts of his immediate and early disciples). So, Jesus wins. Put a fish on my car and call me an Xian again.

    I’ve been going to a lot of prayer services at St. James Episcopal downtown–mostly noontime and evening. I owe a special thanks to Julia and to Tebben for encouraging me back in the day to get over my fear of the “barely Protestants” (I can be an intellectual jerk) and try it out. If it hadn’t been for those experiences during college, I would not have felt comfortable going to the only mid-week services around here when I truly needed and desired it. Saturday evening and Sunday morning two weeks ago, and then again this past Sunday morning, I went to Grace Lutheran, about three blocks north of our apartment. I really like it there. I like that the focus is on Jesus, not me. I like that I don’t have to get in a car to get there.

    At work, I’m heading up the proposal of a broad, long-term social networking strategy for the chamber. It’s challenging and fulfilling as a compliment to my more typical duties. We recently added some new folks to our 40-member board of directors, so I look forward to getting to know them. On September 11 and 12, I’ll be in Philadelphia at the Loews Hotel for our annual Board retreat. Depending on what’s needed of me, there’s a possibility I may stick around in Phila for a day or so.

    Mike, my IT buddy at work, is helping me with some FroNo stuff. It continues to progress slowly and not-so-surely, but after three years at this revamping stuff, I’m in no hurry.

    Two years ago I cracked the reverse light on the back of my car. Last year it should’ve failed inspection for that (water can get in and cause the bulb to go out), but my mechanic put packaging tape over the crack and called it good. Since the inspection is due at the end of this month, I figure it’s about time I correct that. I found a replacement from a junkyard on eBay. It arrived today, and it fits, as one of my former foreman liked to say, like a finger in an asshole. We don’t talk like that at the chamber. We talk like nonprofiteers trying to sound like business people.

    If you’re on LinkedIn and not a connection yet, find me and connect to me.

    We’re eight months into our Total Money Makeover(R) and still going strong. By the end of the year we should be clear of credit card debt. By the end of next year, we hope to be out of all the other debt. In the meantime, I just hit my one-year mark at work and so my 401(k) is going to kick in. I think it’s a great time to invest.

    The Creative House of Lancaster just keeps being a better and better thing for me. I’m meeting lots of great fellow artists, and we’re having a heck of a time together. There is clearly a cultural groundswell going on in Lancaster city, made all the more evident by the presence not only of an arts scene but also of an underground, quasi-resistance arts scene. When artists switch from bitching about there not being enough galleries to there not being the right kind of galleries, that’s a great thing. I’m really happy we ended up in Lancaster, and the more I become a part of it, the more I find to genuinely love.

    Psychoanalysis continues, too. One year, eight months into it. I expect at least two more years. I’m learning a ton about myself. It makes it hard to have a life on weekday evenings, but I think without it I wouldn’t be able to function anyhow. I feel like I am getting better, mostly through understanding that my notion of what I should be like and am meant to be like is, well, impossible. And not cool. The meds still help as well. Travel for me remains the biggest stressor and barrier. Weekends have become a critical time of renewal, and travel has become a significant energy suck. That makes me feel a bit “shut in” in a way, but I have hope that there will be time for that to improve and grow easier for me.

    Thanks for all the prayers that you all have offered on my behalf. I think there was real power in them.

August 11, 2008

  • Are you sitting down? Good. I’m posting a Xanga entry.

    Don’t get up yet. There’s more. I’ve gone to church two Sundays in a row.

    Welp, that’s all for now.

May 15, 2008

  • Obama is the next president

    This morning in Ohio, John McCain said that under his leadership the vast majority of American troops would be home by 2013. And with that, folks, the contest is over. Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

    Yes, I think it is that big of a deal. Here are the two options now presented to the citizens of the U.S.:

    1. Full and immediate withdraw of American troops from Iraq in 2009
    2. Make Iraq stable and peaceful in time for a withdraw of troops beginning in 2012, and then leave a limited number of troops behind to merely keep things in check and keep the peace for a hundred years or so.

    Let me put that another way:

    1. 2009
    2. 2012

    What’s the difference? If we’re going to pull out in three years, we may as well pull out now–the vast majority of Americans will agree with that.

    Or:

    1. A tough policy that makes the best of a horrible situation
    2. A fairy-tale wish that will miraculously come true in three years, after which all we have to do is keep the Iraqi people living happily ever after

    People who want us to continue to occupy Iraq believe that there is still some way that we can “win.” They don’t want a withdraw date, they want a satisfying resolution. Now that they realize McCain is not going to deliver a satisfying resolution, they will quickly realize the question is simply this: How long do you want to put off a deeply unsatisfying resolution?

    Not three years. Zero years.

    Obama is the next president. It’s over. Not just the primary; the general.

May 7, 2008

  • Stuff whose existence I will never acknowledge again

    Well folks, let me tell you… you had better brace yourselves for a literary treat. I have been digging through piles of my writings, pulling out pieces I would like to do something with in the near future (send out for publication, compile into a new chapbook… I’m not sure yet). Here I present to you a load of crap, stuff that most certainly did not make the “keeper” pile, and that never made it out of first draft (or even into first draft). Some of it is funny. Often for very different reasons. These pieces of retardation come from the period between my junior year of high school and my junior year of college. That’s all the background you’re getting.

    There are times when the only
    reason anyone gives a hoot about a subject
    is because it sounds cool.

    How much wood would a woodchuck
    chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

    That is the only time the woodchuck ever
    pops his head out in conversation.

    How much does the average male woodchuck weigh
    doesn’t have the same ring to it.

    Do woodchucks sleep underground
    is missing homophones.
    Where do they give birth, and how many are in a litter
    doesn’t alliterate at all.

    =================

    Haven’t eaten a potato chip in three years,
    never bought a gumball.

    The world knows about gumballs,
    realizes that gumballs are out to get us,
    the reason the machines are always full.

    =================

    Pig
    Food in my belly
    I’m so smelly

    Camel
    The hump on my back
    Is like a water pack

    Tiger
    Prowling through the grass
    With stripes on my @#$!

    =================

    On a scrap of a Post-It note I had scribbled down this literary gem:

    “There was a good deal of the spaniel in him.” That Hideous Strength, pg. 218

    =================

    This is pre-college, but I see it as a salute to Eric:

    I sometimes wish I was passionate
    enough to go to Russia
    and discover the extent of my
    inadequacy–
    I cannot repeal a history of
    Stalin or the reality of an alcoholic
    president (Churchill was a heavy drinker
    though, after all),
    cannot make amends for decades
    of American aggression,
    can’t offer ingenious ways to
    make life better–
    But just to think that maybe
    being there will mean something,
    even if it does nothing.
    Especially if all I got to
    do was stand along a street
    in a village and watch
    doors and windows open and close,
    faces emerging into the light and slipping quietly beyond sight.

    =================

    I lay there on the pull-out sofa bed in the beachfront
    motel room after the rest of my family had gone
    to sleep, listening to the ocean and thinking
    about this mysterious woman who had entered my life.

    That was three months ago. Now
    we’ve said goodbye; she’s gone and will
    one day make movies.

    Perhaps it’s fitting then that this all
    seems so much like a film. The plots
    flowed smoothly, had something captivating
    to tell. But this is the part where
    the soundtrack stops, the camera reveals
    empty or lonely landscapes and rooms: a vacant
    cafeteria with stars shining through the skylights,
    two golden retrievers with no one to pounce,
    a passenger seat in a beat-up Volkswagen piled
    with books. Then comes my voiceover, steady
    but obviously inadequate: These were the days
    we shared, a sort of gift we gave each other. Now the world
    awaits, requiring us, and our parting. That was always
    our story.

    =================

    I’m just so scared of turning out fake

    But knowing what is real is far more
    frightening, she tells me.

    A squirrel darts among branches
    above us, where chlorophyll
    counts its days.

    A new record. Something about
    global tilt and SUV exhaust.
    Bees will soon sit chattering in
    their hives–honeycombed like
    catalytic converters, taking all this
    junk and making it at least
    neutral.

    Into Drive. Straight through the
    tenth red light in a row. I’m
    in such a hurry. Things to
    do, things to do, things to do.

    Still haven’t written that note
    that I keep putting off.

    Golf tourney this weekend, odds
    against me. Evens are still
    undecided. A whole nation
    of fence sitters.

    Not sure which party I’ll find
    myself mixed up with come
    this weekend–might try to
    stay sober for once.

    Wouldn’t be hard to get me
    to swing my vote though–
    a few agreeable sentences and
    I’ll agree to a little booze.

    No booze you snooze you lose.
    Untied shoes. Too drunk to
    remember which way the string
    wraps around my wiry thumb.

    Like walking northward with just
    the clothes on my back and
    a couple bucks, hoping for
    some blessed humanist assured
    that I’m not packing heat.

    Who knows where I’ll find myself
    tomorrow.

    The squirrel grabs an acorn; she stands
    to go.

    =================

    I have taken great inspiration from a horse.

    Let me elaborate. Not too long ago, sometime last year, two years ago, I was driving to my friend’s house in Minnesota. Cow-towns don’t breed many good stories, and the ones they do are easy to tell. They all start out with, “Yeah, this one time I saw…”

    Three cows getting it on. (The only way that makes sense is if one was gay and the one in the middle was bi.)

    Two roosters pecking open each other’s necks.

    A goat run headlong into a fence.

    A dead deer slowly getting singed on an electric fence.

    So, I’m bored, and bored or not I’m keeping my eyes open as I pass farm after farm. All I saw were the calmest, least feisty beasts mankind has ever known. There is a Minnesota law against use of hormones; or something.

    Then, in a small pasture is a group of horses. A herd. Or a pod, school, flock, whatever.

    It only registers as I’m passing–my foot doesn’t hit the break, I don’t slow down.

    I think about turning around–the road’s empty–but decide against. I’ve seen it.

    All the horses were standing perfectly still, not a hoof was prancing. They weren’t even swishing their tails, though I’m not sure if horses do that, or just cows.

    And this one perfectly still horse is staring at this other horse’s ass, a death stare, a nearly psychokinetic gaze. The ass is about six inches from his nose. Muzzle. Snout. Whatever.

    And I shake my head and say out loud, “Attaboy. Atta boy.

    Now, when I say attaboy, I mean, that’s something I’d be damn proud of it I did myself. Something that takes a little guts, a little pizazz.

    When I say attaboy, someone else (if the story is being retold, not in the midst of happening) is already making a point in the air. It’s the same idea.

    Okay, so this friend I was going to see was a girl, my love interest. We’ve been together two years, and I’m still weird talking about her. My family likes her, my friends like her, and still I never call her my girlfriend right up front. I never even refer to her by her name. It’s usually just “my one friend,” or sometimes “my friend from Minnesota.”

    The thing is, I have this great job in Illinois, tech research shit, and she has a fantastic job with this broadcasting company. She has a fantastic ass, too.

    Which brings me back to the horses inspiring me. I see this girl once, twice a month. I stare at her ass like nobody’s business. I don’t grab it in public, and only in private when she’s in a good mood.

    She’s skinny, got the nearly non-existent hips going on, the long, slender legs, the tight abs.

    =================

    I also have a couple pages of journal entry from spring break 2. That will come tomorrow.