RKNet Blog... Thing

With all the talk of female body augmentation and supplementation, I felt it was high time somebody treat the subject with the respect it deserves… by turning it into a children’s workbook sheet and making a contest out of it.

Below are 2 PDFs and a JPG version, meant for 8.5×11 standard printing. I opted to keep it black and white so as not to disappoint those sans color printer (like myself). Photoshop and meatspace entries are welcome. Due to an alarming lack of popularity of RKNet, I’ll run this contest for 2 weeks, starting today. (This also gives me time to determine prizes. Reasonable suggestions welcome!) The last entries must be in by February 27th at noon (EST). After that, I and my esteemed colleagues will proceed to pass them around, get piss drunk, and pick one at random. Which means, gentle readers, that it doesn’t matter how “good” or “bad” you actually do at this activity, because winning isn’t so much based on merit, as it is favoritism and inebriated whimsy! Isn’t that great?

• 480k JPG version
• 1.9mb PDF
• 171k lower quality PDF

Edit: I’ve resized some of the images, and added the blog URL to the bottom. Please feel free to print copies and leave them about.

Gentle readers: Well, it’s happened. I done hit the big time. It’s only a matter of time before I’ve abandoned you to go sip expensive bottled waters on yachts and anal-retentively police my own wiki entry.

What, might you ask, has caused this sudden surge in adulation for and popularity of yours truly? Well whether you’d ask or not, I’ll tell you! I’m published!

A while back, I heard about a six word memoir contest being held by SMITH Magazine. I mulled it over and decided that sounded like a lot of fun. So I cruised by the contest site, mulling over my life and adventures and everything so far. It’s hard to write a memoir when your life is still in full swing, but I found six words that I really felt fit who I am and where I am at this point in my life, submitted them with my contact info and that was that.

Some time passed and I got an email from Rachel Fershleiser, the woman who did an awful lot of work to make this happen. The editors of SMITH mag hand selected my entry out of over 5000 that had been submitted! WOW!

Truth be told I didn’t really believe it until yesterday evening when I got my contributor copy of the book in the mail, along with a press kit to help promote this volume that I had a hand in creating.

The book that is the result of so many people’s honesty and wit is called: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. They aren’t kidding about the famous, either. They were able to get six words of to-the-bone slices of life from the likes of Stephen Colbert, Aimee Mann, and Mario Batali!

It is a privledge and an honor to have my words chosen, and put into this really interesting volume. True, I cracked it open to find my name, but wound up reading the introduction and marvelling at the process and the TLC the editors clearly put into the project. The memoirs themselves run between hilarious and heartbreaking, with about every other sentiment you can imagine in between. I wound up going through it cover to cover already, and I keep thumbing back to share with my co-workers and friends. I actually can’t say enough good things about this, and I’d say only 25% of that excitement has to do with seeing my name in print.

For anybody who lives near me, if you get a copy and want to get my signature next to my entry, I’d be positively ecstatic to do so. I actually think it would be a lot of fun to go around getting signatures from as many chosen entrants as possible. (Especially if you could get a signature like Colbert’s!)

And in truth, this isn’t exactly my big break or anything, but it is certainly a lot of fun and I got a really entertaining book for free out of the deal, so I certainly can’t complain. Check it out! Oh, and you can still submit your six word memoir at SMITH and read contributions that you won’t get in the book.

I just got done reading one of today’s Table of Malcontents blog entries in regards to a YouTube-related challenge in which people can obtain a free copy of the DVD called The God Who Wasn’t There, which is naturally about atheism. The goal of the challenge is to submit a recording of you “damning yourself to Hell”, primarily by including somewhere in your recording a distinct denial of the Holy Spirit.

This meatspace trolling crusade reminded me that I was recently asked as to whether or not I believed in the supernatural. A quick Wiki search pulled up a brief definition of “supernatural” as:

The supernatural (Latin: super- “above” + nature) refers to forces and phenomena which are not observable in nature, and therefore beyond verifiable measurement. Though supernatural refers chiefly to the cause of phenomena (an interpretation), if a phenomenon can be demonstrated, it is typically no longer considered to be supernatural.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural
I was told that there was only a binary way in which I could answer this: yes or no. The lack of admitting to a grey area has gotten me in trouble on a lot of subjects, and I dislike dealing with subjects as important as belief lightly. However, in binary I must answer no. If it cannot be proven then how can I really “believe” that such a thing exists? There isn’t enough time in the day to invest too much thought in something like that.

I suppose my more general answer is: I believe that things which are considered “supernatural”, which have not yet to date been verified, are subject to two possibilities:

• 1 - further investigation resulting in a way to move supernatural, unverified ideas into the realm of the natural

[or]

• 2 - further investigation resulting in a better understanding as to why this force or phenomena is a part of human culture.

Realistically there are many things which up until recent history fall into the realm of the supernatural which at this point are scientifically verifiable. Also, using the definition above, what becomes of theory? Especially in the areas of things like Quantum Physics and Mathematics. (Am I applying the definition incorrectly here?)

Best as I can figure, germs were supernatural until we figured out what they really were. We knew people got sick. There were any number of theoretical reasons why. For a long time we had no way to observe the actual force at work, the way it really works, just the body’s reaction. Eventually we got to the bottom of that particular mystery. It is now understood and is officially natural instead of supernatural. (And people definitely gave any number of highly superstitious reasons why people got sick, and still do.) Note the article on The Germ Theory of Disease. It took quite a lot of testing and hanging onto what were at the time unverifiable beliefs to get this idea to finally take hold until anything could be proven.

There are a number of things that are classified as supernatural in this day and age, and I do especially like the quote from that same Wiki page: “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” –Galileo

There is always a way to justify what we encounter in this world. Sometimes it is only on a purely psychological level. Speaking of psychology, I’m pretty sure we still don’t understand emotions all that well. That would make feelings an unmeasurable, unverifiable force or phenomena. Does that mean happiness is also supernatural?

I am definitely not one to counter the power of human belief, faith, and/or conviction in general. It is the source of our greatest power and our greatest weakness. While there are many things I do not believe because I cannot justify expending my faith on such things, I will never doubt the power a particular belief holds over another person, or how that belief ultimately effects me and my life. And while a thing may not actually exist in a measurable fashion, man is very attached to his symbols, and I think understanding humankind’s memes is a great way to help one’s self understand humankind itself.

There is no reason to scoff or discount what is not understood, there is only understanding or the lack there of and nothing more.