Matthew Wayne Selznick

UPDATE:

Thanks to Duncan, I discovered that PayPal has shut down at least one Katrina relief fundraising effort that uses their service. They’re concerned about the potential for fraud.

That’s regrettable, and a real “one bad apple…” kind of thing.

In light of this information, I’ve taken down the MWS Media campaign drive. Instead, please donate directly to one of the suggested charities in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the page. These are all charities with confirmed direct involvement in the recovery effort.

Over at MWS Media, I’ve started a campaign to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. While I doubt there’s anyone who reads this who doesn’t also stop by MWS Media, I’m posting here as well.

Please help out. If you’d rather donate directly to the American Red Cross, select the “Hurricane 2005 Relief” menu item when you click here. And thank you, very much.

No Need to Click Here - I’m just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:eb064f21b04548e4765c15b35e5c30fe

Not sure how many of of you are aware of the Kansas School Board and their decision to hold a hearing on whether to allow Intelligent Design to be taught in public schools in that state.

Even George W. Bush has said, “I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

So, a physics graduate in his mid-twenties has followed that to it’s logical conclusion. If it’s important that people be exposed to different ideas in public school, then Bobby Henderson thinks it’s critical that the Kansas School board also consider the viable belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

In a brilliant open letter, Henderson points out that belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just as verifiable as belief in any other Intelligent Designer. Since Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM) is as well-suppported by evidence and argument as Intelligent Design, it should also be taught in the Kansas public school system.

Henderson is committed to pursuing the issue with legal action against the Kansas School Board if they do not agree to teach FSM along with ID and Evolution in their schools. It’s got to be all alternatives to Evolution, or none.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And funny as all get out, which makes FSM an even more powerful protest of the deterioration of rational thought in this country.

In a related development: The the tradition of the great James Randi, Xeni Jardin has gathered a posse of bloggers willing to pay up to one million dollars to the first person who can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Check out the latest FSM news, and be sure to spread the word!

Yeah, so it’s about two minutes to two, been a long day, good day… and I have one more. This is how I do it… no blogs forever, then, when it’s really worth it, you might get two, three in the course of twenty four. Maybe sometime soon I’ll be more prolific. Now… well. Here we go. It’s late, and I’m tired, but here we go.

Long time ago, I was pining for some closure with a situation, a relationship, a time that didn’t go so well. It was (another) one of those things where I gave as much as I could, where I dedicated all I had to someone who just wasn’t ready, then, to take it.

I always wondered why things ended up the way they did. I always wondered what I did to deserve it. I always wondered if I would have gone right back and done it again. I wondered if anything came of it.

Found out, today, for sure, that I did something right.

Understand that I’m not easy with my past. I have history that walks in front of me when I close my eyes, before I go to sleep, and at those moments when there’s nothing else to fill the screen on the inside of my forehead.

My mother, she has the same deal. Now me. I think it’s why I write, when I write.

Anyway.

So fifteen years ago or so, I was wracked with guilt and pain and I was wounded, soul-deep, from things that had been done to me and things I’d done to others. And I met her. And it was very, very important to me that what we did went right.

Of course, given who we were, there was no chance it would go anything but bad. When it ended… I had so many questions. I think I thought if I got the answers, I’d absolve myself of something. Or, at least, I’d feel less of a fool.

So today. I found out I don’t need to know anything. I spent some time with her, and her kids, and her husband.

I spent some time with them, and saw that she still struggled with the past like I do, but she’s struggling from a position of strength and hope, and surrounded by love.

I spent time with them and glimpsed their life, and saw parallels and juxtapositions, and discovered that I don’t need details to fill the holes in the past. I don’t need every motivation, every mistake hauled out and justified.

My resolution with that particular chapter of my life is embodied in the peace she seems to hold inside of her. The need for answers to questions I thought I had was washed away watching her be a mother and a wife.

Thanks for the beer and the hamburger and the conversation, CJ and Michael. I had a great time.

I have a present:
It is the present
You have to learn to find it within you
If you can learn to love it
You just might like it
You can’t live without it
There’s a million open windows
I’m passing these open windows
There is plenty to criticize
It gets so easy to narrow these eyes
But these eyes will stay wide
– Blake Schwarzenbach

So I met some real live podcasters in the flesh today… some folks whose work I’ve listened to for the last few months. Don’t think they’ve listened to me (yet) cuz I’m kind of a small fry… but based on my Feedburner stats, that may have changed after today.

It was a fun meeting. It’s interesting how quickly a group of people who haven’t really interacted can just get to work on a common task. That’s the pod/blog effect, though — we have interacted, by being each others’ listeners.

Having an agenda helped, too…

What did that agenda entail? Mostly deciding what we were going to do with our exhibition booth at the upcoming Portable Media Expo in November. Yes, I’m going to be a conventioneer. Crazy. See you there — booth 313, November 11th and 12th, Ontario, California.

It was invigorating, being around peers who do what you do. It was way worth the two hour drive “down the hill,” and a great start to a day of socializing with old friends and new!