A Long Way From Anything

Okay, a bit of a conundrum today. Let me know what you think my course of action should be considering the following circumstances: Today, while at work, T (a fellow employee of UPS) and I were standing near the front of the store being bored when a pretty girl about 20-odd years old was approaching from the parking lot. "She's coming in to ask for a job." Says T. "I don't think so" I replied. She walked in, looking first at T, saying hello to him, then looks over at me and goes "Oh....hello" I then proceed to help her with some items. All the while keeping up a friendly and somewhat flirtatious banter with me, she lingers a bit before leaving. After she's gone T turns to me and says "Man, did you notice? She was diggin' on you." I laughed and said "Not actually."

You see, the girl in question I had already asked out. I asked her out last year in fact. She initially said okay, but then after giving me her phone number appeared to recant her earlier agreement. How do I know this you ask? Well, she gave me a fake number. I got some Mexicans instead of a nice young coed. I was kind of mad and kind of happy. Please notice that this was the first time anyone has ever given me a fake phone number. It felt like some kind of rite of passage in some strange sadistic manner. On the flip side, I was annoyed because I would rather someone just say "No thanks", "Sorry, but no", or even "Hell no you ugly beast! Get thee away from me!" than lie to me. Seeing her today was the first time I had seen her since last year.

So, considering all of the above: She was flirtatious today, she seemed interested, she gave me a fake phone number last year, etc... What course of action would my loving audience suggest? I happen to have her email address. I decided not to use it last year after the whole fake number thing, but I do still possess it. So should I drop her an email and explain the whole thing (reasoning that maybe it was a mistake on her part)? Should I ignore it? Should I stay the hell away from it? Should I go with my usual philosophy of "Screw it. Many fish in the Sea"? Should I shut the hell up and stop being a whiny bitch? Let me know what you think. I'm already leaning towards a particular course of action, but I want some feedback.

Side Note: Just to appease Heather. Don't worry, she's not dumb. She speaks three languages and plays the Cello. Quite above my usual standards eh?

You know it's bad when someone mentions something that they've recently experienced to you and you reply "Aw, that's nothing. It's just a case of Aristotlean Transcendental Metaphysics." That's when I decided that maybe I love my major just a bit too much. I gotta get out more often. Sheesh.

While doing some research for an Astronomy project I'm working on, I stumbled across NASA's Visible Earth Project. It's a collection of images taken from space...very neat stuff.

Some of my favorites:
Earth Lights (534K)

Ireland

New York on Sept. 12th, 2001 (2.26MB)

Nasca lines in Peru

Also, a little something extra: The Kepler mission.

Sorry for being away for so long. All this working and schooling has killed what little time I had free for blogging. Now, however, I have learned how to fit it into my schedule.
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In the school of philosophy I tend to side with what is known as "Analytic Philosophy". While the name is certainly ambiguous, I generally take it to mean that I believe Philosophy is a branch of inquiry, similar to other sciences. It is a search for truth that just deals with a different subject matter than the natural sciences.

The other day I was feeling vaguely unhappy about my life. I felt that I had no purpose. So, I decided to be a bit philosophical about it. I examined my problem (the meaning of life) from various points of view: I was raised in a true western tradition. Born into a Catholic-Military family, my childhood was dominated with the concept that the meaning of life are abstracts. Concepts like Duty and Honor. That's what you live for. As I grew older though, I tended to break away from that strict pseudo-Deonotological Kantian-esque train of thought.

I also looked at it from the angle of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle said that the purpose to life is the eudaimonia. Which, while normally translated as "happiness", is actually closer to "human full-filledness". It means being a good human. We're then supposed to strive towards being a good human just as dogs and cats try to be good dogs and cats. Next up: Feminism.... They emphasize relationships as the end-all-be-all. Rather than abstract concepts, we should focus on our relationships with our loved ones. Or, since we're drifting onto the edges of philosophy, Existensial philosophy. Ergo, there is no point to it. We are born, we live in a miserable world, and then we die.

After going through all these and a few more, I realized none of them really solved my problem. It's not all about Duty or Honor, I don't think working on my "humanness" is going to get me what I want, I do worry about relationships, but that ain't the fucking answer, and if there's absolutely no point to life, I might just as well jump off a 50-story building or blow my head off.

Then it dawned on my that most of these systems it seems are ways to leave something behind. They are ways of making sure we'll be remembered after we're gone. Hidden beneath the veneer of a purpose is the ugly partial-truth that none of us want to die and be forgotten. We'd all like to think that someone, somewhere remembers us and cares for us. Maybe we can get that by dying heroically like the Spartans at Thermopyle, maybe we can befriend people left and right and have hundreds to mourn us when we're gone...I dunno. I think the best answer is to use a little bit from them all. I used to think I could get by on just one. I think now I've realized that's not the answer.