I am continually amazed

okgo has cranked out consistently awesome music videos. There's the immortal treadmill video for here it goes again, one of the first great youtube videos and the epic fight montage of million ways to be cruel. I'm not sure if they stopped making videos at that point or if I just stopped watching them. In any case, their new one is on the tube right now, and it's awesome. The song is called this too shall pass.

I can't embed it so go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY

Still not convinced? Picture this: Notre Dame Fighting Irish marching band. An accordion. In a field. In Gilley suits. Oh yeah.

I need to work up to this ...

So I haven't posted on Flabbergasted in so long I can hardly even be called a contributor. Yes, you say, I know, what gives? To which I would hem, haw, and give you much of what elsewhere is called nugarum about time and my lack thereof. In any case, I figured the best thing to give you in the short time I have until Natural History would be an obituary I wrote recently. For myself. For declamations. Things you should know about this particular item: it's not serious. Not even hardly. Also, look on YouTube for "Most Interesting Man in the World." These are some of the greatest commercials of all time. Period.

Kaleb A. Trotter: Jan 2 1990 – Sep. 25, 2080.

Kaleb Trotter, explorer, art critic, Presidential candidate, and wealthy eccentric, was found on his private yacht today off the coast of Tasmania, south of Australia. His wife found him lying in bed, his favorite Irish wolfhound lying at his feet. Doctors have been unable to determine the cause of death, and when his widow was asked if she believed it was a heart attack, she replied, “his heart wouldn’t nearly be foolish enough to attack him.”

It is unknown where Trotter acquired his fortune, but black market deals in ancient artifacts were suspected ever since his expedition into Ethiopia in the early 2040’s. Before 2020, Trotter was unheard of, growing up in relative obscurity in the southern part of the United States. He became a household name almost overnight after discovering the Maasacani, a primitive tribe living near the mouth of the Congo River in West Africa. Out of supplies and having lost his entire safari due to malaria, quicksand, and the previously unknown ratus africanus, the African Swamp Rat (a rodent of rather unusual size), Trotter reportedly happened upon a tyrannosaurus rex, most likely the last of its species, which he famously claimed to have killed, “with one disarming look and a broken pocket-knife.”

After returning to America, Trotter ran for President on the Independent ticket in 2036. Though caucuses were promising, he withdrew in September of 2035, allegedly because he couldn’t stand a third interview with the aging Bill O’Reilly. Said Trotter, “you’d think the man would realize that sometimes all it takes are roguish good looks.” When asked about what an Independent candidate thought of the two party system, Trotter immediately replied, “the after-party is the one you want to attend.”

Trotter turned his attention to art next, acquiring and donating hundreds of pieces of Ancient and Neoclassical art to museums in America. Most famously, he convinced the President of Greece, Alina Nicasopolis, to allow him to break the Acropolis down and send it to the British Museum, so that he “could see the completed artwork without having to go to Greece. I don’t prefer long plane rides.” When asked how he could possibly have effected this astounding event, Trotter said, “well, I didn’t the pocket-knife. Just the look.”

Trotter faded into relative obscurity afterwards, purchasing an island in the Caribbean, formerly one of the Bahamas. Once a year he hosted the world’s elite at a legendary private New Years Eve party. Said one attendee, “things got fuzzy after I jumped into the Jack Daniels fountain, but I distinctly remember Trotter commenting on how drunk I was. Things got very quiet, and then he laughed loudly and said, ‘so that’s how an awkward moment feels. I’ve always wondered.’”

Trotter’s family could not be reached for comment, although a nephew said that the millionaire was circumnavigating the globe to make sure he hadn’t missed anything of importance. 


Another update on my movements

Hello people,

If you are from Moscow, ID please know that I'm already missing you people. If you are from Pensacola, Fl I hope that we can hang on the beach. And if you aren't from either of those places move as soon as possible, because those places are the bomb-diggity.

Guess what? I now have a job on the beach. Faced with an option of being:

1. Unemployed in Greenland

2. Got a job on the friggin' beach

. . . I choose the latter option. You can drool if you want but it's not really as good as it sounds. It isn't that great being on the beach if you are stuck in a hot kitchen. It's a job, is what it is. A job is a job (even if it's on the beach). Anyway, it's a lovely place called "DJ's Beach Cafe." If you are ever there stop by and give me a shout.

I got crucified in ashes.

So tonight I went to my first Ash Wednesday service ever. Some people may wonder how this could possibly be the case. To them I say, visit a Southern Baptist church and you will begin to realize. We are really good at emptying bathwater, and especially good at the accompanying activity of baby-chucking. 

Anyhow, for you all tonight on this Ash Wednesday, I present a multivarious fare of life lessons and observations from the past weeks. 

1. I miss seeing news footage of Mardi Gras in Mobile, especially the mug shots. 

2. This shouldn't make me laugh, but oh how it does!  

3. Sir Joshua Reynolds, master British painter and President of the Royal Academy, writes the following: One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our Academy, which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to unlearn. (Discourses on Art, Discourse 1) And that makes me smirk the wise, knowing smirk of one who knows something the speaker doesn't. 

4. My favorite two commonplaces from week-before-last:

Swede: The [Lordship] quiz is so simple and my mind is just so complex!

Swede: The lordship quiz is like coming in here with all your armor on and ... well ... 

Claire: You realize it's a sumo wrestling match. 

5. Well, now, who'd have thought?  The funniest thing is that you can hear the indignation in the cracking of their voice. 

6. This may become the goriest action movie ever made.

7. I don't even believe this mess. For crying out loud.

8. You know you've been doing too much school work and too little sleeping when you start responding to people in Latin, only stopping when you realize that you don't know the word for narrative. This is, of course, a purely hypothetical situation. 

9. I found this very interesting. 

       Gen. 3:7 (ESV) Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 

      Matt. 21:18-22 (ESV) In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" And the fig tree withered at once. 

      Matt. 25:41-46 (ESV) Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food ... and these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

10. I'm just glad that the little sidebar of followers now calls itself Google Friend Connect. Otherwise, who knows how I might try to connect with them. 

11. Ladies and Gentlemen, I announce, with great trepidity and hopeful expectation, the appearance of an incredible blog. Behold the Jons.

12. A quick little free-verse I jotted down at some point during week-before-last's Disputatio. Not good but begins to get my point across:

sprinting with a leather bag

slosh-burned

two til and sprinting past waiting hatchbacks

a dollar lighter

but it's this heavy water 

gives me wings. 

Thank God for Americano Fridays. 

President Obama's first executive order

I would like to begin with a caveat. I did not vote for Obama (I didn't vote at all, as you may remember). Nor do I wish I voted for Obama (or for McCain). I am deeply upset with our new President's Pro-death voting record in the Senate. In short, I wish we had a President who supported unborn human rights. However, I have great hopes for the other human rights during his administration:

-He promises more humanitarian aid to those suffering in Darfur, and his Senate voting record supports this.

-His first executive order was to shut down Gitmo within a year.

-He signed a bill today abolishing America's use of torture.

-Basically, he just eliminated all the problems I had with the Bush administration.

None of this changes the fact that Obama supports the murder of babies. We can't just look past this. But neither can we look at this alone, and look past the good that Obama is already doing. That would be ingratitude. God has a purpose for Obama, and I do not think it's just judgment.

We who are Christians should not be humanists (in the ideological sense). But that in no way means that we can't be humanitarians.

Peace

I answer my own question

So here's my answer. Why are there poor? Well, it's my fault. And it's yours. I hope it's the fault of every single one of you. It's President Bush's fault, it seems to be Obama's fault, Clinton claims it's his fault, but I'm not so sure that we can blame it directly on bin Laden, Hussein, or even the serpent. 

The poor are the Church's fault. I come very close to believing that when I stand before the Judgment Seat, God will ask me "And how about that guy you saw under the bridge and didn't stop for on January 6, 2009? What did you do about that? Hmm. Well, what about . . . " 

Most of us have heard Mr. Doug Jones's take on the gravity of economic sins. I'd agree with that. Too many preachers use the divorce rating among Christians as a barometer for the Church (this is not at all to justify or reduce the importance of marriage as holy and sacred; divorce is horrible, but we fail to realize that poverty and hunger are equally horrible tragedies). What about the number of people below the poverty line? What about the number of deaths by starvation in the US? What about the number of thefts carried out by desperate parents?  I'm not even touching Africa yet. I'm just asking you to look at what is happening in our own backyard. 

Christ said that it wasn't the healthy but the sick who need the doctor. The gospel dies in upper middle class Suburbia. It explodes in the projects. While popular European Christianity (and, some argue, even American Christianity) begins to die, the faith is growing by leaps and bounds in China, Pakistan, India, Africa, and the Middle East. Could it be because the Catholic church did so little to relieve the abject poverty of the natives that South America has never been stable and prosperous? 

What I'm saying is this: the Church is to disciple all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity. We preach the Gospel and disciple the nations by living out the faith. We start living like Christians, and people will start noticing. Spurgeon once said, joy is our missionary. As Pastor Wilson said, you don't reach atheists by debating them; you get to them by having them over for dinner. Theology doesn't save people; the Gospel does. St. James applies this to giving when he says "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?" Too often Christians talk about God's love to an atheist as if it's this ethereal emotional thing that couldn't help anyone even though, deep down, it really wanted to. God's love is not a pretty, teardrop-eyed, softly-glowing-in-the-snowy-moonlight sort of thing. It's visceral, physical, and sometimes it looks like a toothless, legless, drugged up old man in a wheelchair who hasn't had a bath in a month. If an atheist looks over and sees a Christian volunteering at a soup kitchen every Thursday, when you start picking up homeless guys and buying them dinner, when he sees you sacrifice for those less fortunate, he'll be ready to hear about that love. That Love that will turn the world upside down. 

Giving to the poor is the Church's responsibility, its duty. We can't expect the government or other agencies to do it, however willing President Obama may be to do so. The poor are out there because we Christians are letting them be out there. Every family that starves to death is an indictment on Christianity; every homeless drug addict is condemnation. And who knows, perhaps the day the Church ends poverty will be last day of all? 

I catch the general public up

So it's finals week for most of the collegiate world, and we are no exception. While I have plenty of work left to do and it's pretty early, I thought I'd take a sec and update everybody on what's been going on. 

1) Not to toot my own horn, but so far I'm batting 1000 on my movie predictions. The Day The Earth Stood Still got panned so badly it made Twilight look good. 

2) I think if I nail every one of my prophecies regarding upcoming film, somebody should buy me lunch. 

3) So it was a little chilly tonight: 

4) This excites me to just short of no end. 

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

5) The word "epic" hasn't really been creeping into the general vocabulary of our class so much as violently hurling itself, leaving behind it a trail of devastation and laughter. 

6)  Rob and I will be running like madmen (at least, I will be) down the concourse of the New Orleans Airport towards nine or so frantically waving people in approximately 114 hours and 48 minutes. Not that I'm counting. 

7) I am very much looking forward to Tim Tebow running all over the OU defense and destroying that poor sap that got the Heisman. 

8) Blackberry waffles hot off the iron, topped with cold syrup, and flanked by pepper bacon and cheese scrambled eggs, is pretty much the ultimate brinner. 

I make a promise

Alright folks, it's coming up. Our blog scores the big 1000 hits mark. That's right, people have looked in on this all-too-beautiful page 1000 times. So here's the deal. You scroll to the bottom of the page. If you see a golden 1000 staring back at you (or just a gray one - whatever) take a screen shot of it and email it to me or Rob, or let us know in the comments section. But you'd better have proof! (Or be able to swear on your mother's grave and all such and sundry) 

If you are that lucky person, you have two choices. If you're in Moscow, I will buy you a cookie at Wheatberries. Or a foccacia pizza. Whichever you want. If you're in Pensacola/Milton, I will buy you a doughnut at Milton Bakery come Christmastide. If you fit in neither category: first of all who are you, and second of all, you can ask any of us you would like to write on whatever you would like. 

Should nobody catch the magic 1000 (if somebody gets it and doesn't know, or doesn't let us know) and you see 1001, grab it. The nearest person (after 1000, no 999 business) will get the prize in their stead. Alright people. Watch and wait. And keep hitting that refresh button.

I am, again, amazed

Guys, you didn't forget the Somali pirates did you? The ones who just saw a big ship and stopped it? I didn't think so. Well, there has been a lot of activity in that region recently, and despite the vigilant eyes of the U.S., Russia, a few E.U. ships, and NATO, at least one more large freighter has been seized by other Somali pirates. That being said, what of our original buddies on the good ship MS Faina? How have they lasted out the last month and a half? 

Well, they're still there. Their demand is now 8 million in the coldest and hardest instead of 20 million. Poor guys, it's tough being a pirate these days. People just don't have any respect any more. Sheesh. 

I almost want to pray for these guys to win just because they're so gutsy, but they're Muslims and pirates. So I suppose I'll be praying for their salvation and that they would figure out how exactly they're gonna get out of this one. 

Rob's got a confession to make. . .

I've already confessed this to several of my classmates, but I'd like to come out before everyone as a "non-voter" in this '08 election. I've got several reasons:

1) I don't mean to be fatalistic, but is this not a sinking ship? What's the use of moving a few marbles around in the hull?

b) Alas, I'm an isolated college student that doesn't even own a TV

γ) I was too lazy to register absentee

So, there you have it peoples. Please don't blame the outcome of this election on me
(*cough* MPK). My tiny little vote would have done hardly anything; you are apparently laboring under the delusion that this is a democracy.

I was very, very wrong, and will be again

And I admit it. That's all she wrote folks. No lawsuits or riots, at least not yet. Obama, like CNN predicted, lapped McCain. And yes, I am a false prophet in every sense of the word. Almost every state I named to go McCain went Obama. It makes me laugh. 

Well, it's been fun. I am actually kind of ambivalent about the whole imbroglio now. The Obamessiah has conquered, and socialism will be the order of the day, but is anything new under the sun? Doubt it. 

You can tell a person is insane by the fact that they try the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, a wise man once said. Well, here goes some insanity. I'm predicting again. Ready? Good. 

Hillary Clinton resigns her senator-ship to be Secretary of State for Obama. J-Bide then mysteriously disappears within the next 20 months. I'm gonna go with plane crash. Of course, there's always the possibility that a Klanner shoots the man J Gibbs has called the first half-white president. Or both. I can't say I'd be surprised at either. 

UPDATE: Curtis has brought up the interesting question of the stock market. He calls a collective dive. I say no such luck. We've just voted in the first democrat in 8 years, the first (half-)black president ever, and New York is a blue state. Hillary's the governor, and the Dutch Reformed guys upstate sure didn't choose her. I say the market jumps maybe 250 to 300 points tomorrow alone. It'll shallow out the next few days, but people are excited - especially Democrats with money. Worldwide we'll see repercussion climbs and also climbs of the markets on their own. Europe wants this man. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: In this post I say some pretty heavy things about democratic political figures. I have great respect for Pres-elect Obama. I honestly do. His rhetoric and his intelligence won this race. When I talk about potential assassinations, I do not want or encourage this. I'm just saying that if the man goes into the Deep South, some crazy idiot is bound to take a pot shot at the first black President. 

I play the prophet

Tomorrow, around 8 or 9 PM CST, the major news media is going to realize that this is a much closer race than anyone wants to say. States like Idaho, New York, Kansas, and Oklahoma will go exactly as polled. CNN's predictions, though, that Obiden will lap McPalin on electoral votes is just dang ridiculous. Virginia will not go to Obama, and neither will Montana or North Dakota. I'm having trouble seeing Washington going that way as well. I think Palin will swing a large portion. North Carolina is another easy shot for the Reds. We may have another state (a la New Hampshire in y2k) that's up in the Blue Northeast that ends up swinging over. The big problems will, as always, lie in the swing states. What will be interesting though, is that this election will do roughly what the 2000 election did. Ohio and Pennsylvania will be split between Dems and Reps. Ohio will again go to the Red and Pennsylvania Blue. The battle will end up in Florida, like it always seems to, and this is where Wolf Blitzer will get all shrill and flustered. 

All of a sudden he and the rest of the "best political team in the frippin universe"™ will realize that their polls were wrong. Here's the thing about Florida, Alabama, and Georgia: more than half of the people who will vote for the Republicans no matter who is running are the working class heroes that anarchist musicians love to sing about and then love to hate come November. They are the trailer-living, gun toting, beer drinking rednecks who would hang up on any pollster in the world. But they'll show up tomorrow, and Wolf Blitzer and Anderson "The Grease" Cooper will shake their heads in sadness, and swear blue streaks on and off of cats when commercial breaks come. 

Come 12 am on Nov. 5th, we'll be no closer to a result. This one will take days, more likely weeks. The battle will start in the courts, and we'll see how it goes from there. It will be quite interesting to see how Charlie Crist (FL governor), a democrat, will react when his sponsor John McCain (they have a long track record together) and his party's nominee are both fighting over his state's votes. It'll be a very amusing couple of weeks

N.B. I have made at least two dozen controversial claims unfounded on any sort of real data except my own, limited experience. Most of this is sheer conjecture. But I do really think it's what will happen. May God, as Pastor Wilson said this Sunday, give us mercy and not justice. 

The Dane Ultimatum

This is an ultimatum to Dane (Swede), not a "Dane Ultimatum". If you are reading this (and especially if you are not), please post to the blog in one week or you will be booted off.

Effective: Friday November 7, 2008 12:01 AM PST

I dip my big toe in the dungpit that is the 2008 election

Alright people. Open poll. Put in the comments who you will try to make the most powerful person in the world come November 4 and why.*

If you feel like it, try to convince me to agree with you. I'll be voting in what is arguably the biggest swing state in the country, the Sunshine State of Florida itself. I'm also trying to figure out whether I'm going to write in "No" for President (as the right Reverend Rob Hadding is doing), or "Stephen Colbert" (for reasons that should be easily visible - namely, the sheer beauty of voting for Colbert).

Oh, and if your name is Trey (or even if it isn't), feel free to rant and rave about whom you hate the most in this election. Just attempt to avoid profanity/obscenity as much as possible.

*NB - I don't actually think that the President of the United States is the most powerful man in the world, but he's close enough. Search out your beef with me elsewhere.

I find their perseverance inspiring

The Somali pirates are, a full week later, still in possession of the Ukrainian weapons freighter. Despite the best efforts of the American and Russian navies, they're still negotiating with whomever it is that owns all of the cargo. And from what I hear, they want more than 30 million. That's right. They are getting at least 10 million big ones more than they started out at. That's called aggressive bargaining. Or they just pointed out that the dollar is worth less this week than last week. I'm telling you, you just can't make this stuff up. I dare you to even try. 

For your further amusement: 

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIJxAamZcHRiTMK-42nPDj-GO2zQ

Favorite phrase from this article: "both sides are definitely ready to talk amicably." Really? I'm no psychologist, but I'm guessing that the last thing on the minds of those Ukrainian arms dealers is amicability.

You have the thanks of a grateful blog

So, the word is out - we are awesome. That's right, we polled our vast readership and this is the result we obtained - Six people admitted that they read us because of our sheer awesomeness ("you guys are just awesome"). That really makes us feel good. True, probably about half the people polled are related to one of us, but we appreciate the feedback anyway.

Don't worry about us; we won't let it go to our heads.

First NSA Final

Well, that was my first Final exam at NSA - Rhetoric 101. I suppose that could have been more painful. I'm going to decide just how painful that was after I get the grade back. Anyway, I'm still alive; tired, but still alive. I'll keep you updated on my vital signs as I get through this week. Prayers are always appreciated.

Blessings

What my dad does when I'm away. . .

Well, last Saturday my dad went diving with Ron Smith, Al Stout, Rachel his assistant, and her dad. There's a funny story about how Mr. Smith let the boat go and my dad had to jump in after it, but I won't go into it. Here's a video he made with his new underwater camera mount:

I am amazed

This is awesome. Sheer, total awesomeness. I want you to read the next sentence with care and an open mind.

Today, off the coast of Africa, Somalian pirates hijacked a Ukranian freighter loaded with weapons.

You can't make this stuff up. This is like something out of a bad Tom Clancy novel. God has such a sense of humor. Here is the New York Times write-up on this. I think it's hysterical because the plain, old fashioned piratical talk is just put out there like it's Obama or Palin speaking.

Okay but first of all:

"Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition"

What the heck? Ukrainians? Really? This is way too good to be true.

Also: 

Mr. Sugule spoke on everything from what the pirates wanted (“just money”) to why they were doing this (“to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters”) to what they had to eat on board (rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, “you know, normal human-being food”).

"Just money," and "normal human-being food" - I laughed so hard it hurt.

And best of all, then the New York Times asked why they stopped it. This is the funniest thing I've heard in a month of Mondays.  

"'We just saw a big ship,' the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a telephone interview. 'So we stopped it.'"

First of all - oh my freaking gosh, that's amazing. Second of all - spokesman? Seriously? Can you imagine that conversation: "Can I talk to your spokesman?" "Um, yes, let me get him for you . . ." Whispers to friends with a hand over the receiver - "We have a spokesman? I don't know either but this American is asking for him!" 

I am Rob's questions of "what did I just watch"?

I watched a very interesting movie the other day. I needed to unwind after a day of studying so Kaleb and I rented and watched "Fight Club." This is, by far, the strangest movie I've ever seen and my thoughts on it are not solidified yet. As a result, I'm going to treat you to my thoughts on the matter and I simply ask you to bear with me.

I am going to summarize the movie's themes a little for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of subjecting yourselves to "Fight Club."

The movie seems to be about the shaky personal identity of modern consumers. The modern media and the ethics of consumerism have trivialized life to such a degree that no one truly knows who they are anymore. A name is not good enough, a name is simply an identifier; it's not an identity. My parents could have named me something different and it is conceivable that I would still be the same person overall. Even if I can trace my family name to two or three hundred years back, I have not truly learned anything about me. There most be something else, something more basic that defines me as a person.

It seems to me that people tend to define themselves by their religion. If someone asked me "What are you?" I could answer in a number of ways but I would probably answer with "I am a Christian. I am a child of God, born in sin but redeemed by God's grace - the blood of Christ." My identity as a Christian is the most meaningful and the most identifiable thing that I can point to illustrate to others what I am.

Consumerism is essentially a religion in disguise. For quite some time people have been inadvertently turning Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness into a very redundant list. This is, perhaps, a strange way of saying that people are slowly equating these three terms. And sadly, many people equate "the pursuit of happiness" with "getting as much stuff as we can." Therefore, these people believe that life (and the job of the government) is about being free to acquire as many possessions as possible.

Since, consumerism is a sort of religion it follows that people would tend to define themselves using its terms. However, consumerism only manifests itself in people's material possessions. So, in the same way that I identify myself as a Christian many people inadvertently identify themselves with their possessions. But because this identity is hard to illustrate to others they simply decorate their lives with a myriad of possessions and people will slowly start to figure out what kind of people they are. So the movie asks: "What if you lose everything?"

Spoiler warning: I might not be able to resist telling you the ending

The movie is a psychological drama. The film makers invite the audience to enter into the mind of a man who goes for days without sleeping. He is a recall coordinator who has to travel all over the country doing inspections. He describes himself as being a compulsive buyer of household items. He tries to solve his problems of identity with the kinds of things he uses to decorate his house. After trying to solve his problem of identity with his possessions he tries going to numerous support groups to get a high off of sympathy and crying. This fails when he realizes that there is a woman attending all of his support groups that obviously does not have the diseases the support groups are for. He ends up going four days again without sleep and this is when some part of him rebels. He begins to develop an alter-ego named "Tyler Durden" who personifies rebellion against established consumerism, radical existentialism, and charisma. Since we are seeing everthing through his eyes, the film makers very successfully make the audience think that Tyler Durden is a real person. Tyler Durden blows up our hero's condo and forces him to redefine his life. He has imaginary fights with this person (while really simply beating himself up) and sets up clubs all around the country called "Fight Club." This is where all the men who are sick and tired of their normal consumerish lives go to beat themselves up. Eventually, these clubs form into a terrorist organization called "project mayhem." Project Mayhem's main goal is to destroy everything that makes a modern consumer's life possible. Although, our hero remains involved with "Fight Club" project mayhem evolves without the knowledge of the first personality (the one who imagines Tyler Durden) and thus his alter-ego does things which he cannot control. He rigs up all the buildings of credit-card companies with demolition explosives and manages to get all civilians out of the buildings through the extensive "Project Mayhem" network.

As the story progresses, our hero becomes more and more like Tyler Durden (as personified by Brad Pitt). Even though the two characters stay separate (in a mix between Multiple-personality Disorder and schizophrenia) he begins to act more like his alter-ego, the man he wants to be. When he no longer needs his alter-ego, he shoots his alter-ego through the head (don't ask me how this works) and becomes an authentic human being, defined only through his actions - the marks he made on the world.


That's just what I think about it. This by no means exhausts the subject. I could be completely wrong and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about it (especially the part where he shoots himself in the head and he manages to survive, but Tyler Durden disappears; that was weird).