All About Me

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A Brief History of Me

I was born in Gainesville and grew up in West Palm Beach. I came back to Gainesville in 1989 to go to UF, and have pretty much lived here ever since. At UF, I majored in Criminology, all the while planning to go to law school. I was accepted into UF's law school; but I finally got dragged down by the depression I had been living with for years, and I ended up withdrawing from what should have been my final undergraduate semester. I spent the next 3 years as a part-time student, working in the UF computer labs and dealing with my depression. I finally graduated with my Criminology degree in 1996, and soon came to realize there weren't a whole lot of jobs in that field that I especially wanted to do. I ultimately took a job as a probation officer, mostly because I needed the money. It wasn't a bad job, but it wasn't particularly life-affirming either. I finally got fed up with the beauracracy of it all and the fact that most of the people in charge were idiots whose only concern was covering their own ass. So, I quit that job after 2 1/2 years, which was one the bravest and best decisions I've ever made. I took some time off, wrote my first play, did some more battling with depression, and finally figured out that--whether or not I ever become commercially succesful--writing is what I was meant to do, and I won't be happy doing anything else. In the past year, I wrote another play and started substitute teaching to pay the bills. The pay is absurdly low, and I barely get by...but now I have time to write, and I'm happier than I've ever been.

My Philosophies

Well, they aren't so much philosophies as they are random musings on whatever I happened to be thinking of at the moment. Just remember no one's forcing you to read it. :)

• They say Alaska changes you. I don't know if that's true for everyone, but when I went there in the summer of 2001, it changed me. It wasn't the mountains or the scenery or the wildlife; it was the unspoiled, almost primeval, state of the land. There are so many places in Alaska where no human has ever set foot. Standing on a glacier that had existed for thousands, I felt so much a part of the Earth. It's a feeling I never get inside a mall, or grocery store, or a church. My goal is to get back there one day soon and hike through Denali National Park. My dream is to live there every summer.

• I worked as a probation officer for 2 1/2 years. It was mostly an office job, 8am-5pm, 40 hours a week, and it sucked all the life right out of me. I'd get home at night and not want to so anything but play mindless computer games or watch tv until it was time to go to bed. A few times, I tried to write; but I had no energy left for creativity. Later, when I read Walden, I understood exactly some of the things Thoreau wrote about work. When a man contracts to work--to give up a portion of his life in exchange for money--that man isn't getting the better part of the bargain. Don't get me wrong; I know most people need to do some work in order for society to continue functioning. But would the world suddenly stop spinning if everybody decided to do a little less work and take a little more time for themselves and their families? That's why I'm a big fan of the Green Party's call for a standard 30-hour work week.

• If you're wondering why society seems to keep spiraling downward, I've figured it out: Any idiot with a functioning penis or intact womb is allowed to bear and raise children. I shudder to think about how many people out there are raising their own biological children, when those same people would never have passed the screening process to adopt those same children. As long as your kid isn't starving and you don't beat the hell out of him, you're considered fit to continue parenting that child. That seems like a pretty low standard to me.

  The real problem is that our society looks at having children as the "normal" thing to do, and people in general hate to be abnormal. That means a lot of people are having children without thinking about whether they really want to or not.

• I don't know if there really are such things as Good and Evil. As far as I can tell, what we perceive as "Evil" and "Good" in humanity seems to follow right along the lines of selfish vs. unselfish behavior. I agree with most people that Hitler was evil, but it seems to me that the horrible things he did were motivated by a desire to shore up his own power. It was selfishness taken to an unfathomable extreme. Now, look at Mother Teresa. Most people would agree she was a fine example of Goodness, because she dedicated her life to helping others, a most unselfish pursuit.

  The point is this: Humans are born selfish; our natural instinct is to do whatever we have to do to survive, regardless of how it affects anyone else. Only through many years of socialization do most of us learn to control that selfishness, and a lot of people never get that far. If good and evil do indeed correspond to selfish vs. unselfish behavior, then the real question is not Why is there so much evil in the world? The question is Why isn't there more?

• Obesity and starvation are now ranked pretty close together on the list of global health problems. And we wonder why most of the rest of the world hates America...

• I don't know who came up with the concept that people magically become "adults" when they reach age 18. Personally, I don't think I became an "adult" until my mid-to-late 20's. I think we should modify the system so that you don't automatically become an adult until age 21. You would be eligible to become an adult anytime after age 18, but you'd have to pass a test. The test would include things like budgeting, balancing a checkbook, etc. Prospective adults would also have to write a short essay, choosing from the following topics: "Why I Personally Will Never Win the Lottery," "Why Traffic Laws Apply To Everyone, Including Me," or "Why Blind Allegiance to Anything is a Bad Idea."

• I have a strange attraction to beautiful women wearing overalls. I think it's because no one can possibly look pretentious in overalls; and I can't resist a woman who's beautiful and unpretentious.

• Baseball was meant to be played on natural grass, in stadiums that are not named after corporations or rich people.

• I've never subscribed to the theory that women with large breasts are somehow more attractive. In fact, women with extremely large breasts are actually less attractive to me. I don't know why; they just are.

• Capital punishment has no place in civilized society. Numerous studies have demonstrated that states with the death penalty have similar murder rates to states with no death penalty. I think they could have figured that out using common sense: How many people would kill someone if it meant spending the rest of their life in prison, but not kill someone if it meant receiving a death sentence? And besides, people who commit murder are usually not in the most rational state of mind to begin with.

  But even if the death penalty were more of a deterrent than life imprisonment, it still has no place in a civilized society, and this is why: When the state executes a criminal, it sends a message to society. The most benign interpretation of that message is that it's okay to kill someone if you have a good reason. Let me say that again: IT'S OKAY TO KILL SOMEONE IF YOU HAVE A GOOD REASON. As long as you're very careful to make sure the person deserves death, the act of killing them is not evil. Does anyone want to live in a society where that is the prevailing attitude?

• Maybe one of you religious people out there can explain this to me: I think we all agree that terrorism is wrong; we all condemn things such as the intentional targeting of civilians, especially children. And obviously, genocide is completely intolerable. Except, according to the Bible, God committed all of those acts. So why was it okay when He did it?