Author Archives: Jeremiah Murphy

Metered Praise

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I’m slowly getting used to the metric system, but there are still setbacks. For example, I still feel a little weird going up to the butcher’s counter and ordering things by the gram. Today, though, was the biggest hiccup, when I tried out the compound’s treadmill for the first time, and was running at 9.0 for two minutes without gasping for breath (recall that, for the past year, I’ve had sometimes-crippling asthma), and I was thinking, “I must be Superman!” 

Until my wife reminded me of that whole kilometer-versus-mile thing … 

Civility

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I want to get something off of my chest: I don’t believe that state or the federal government should recognize gay marriage. I don’t believe that state or the federal government should recognize straight marriage either. Marriage is a religious institution and should be handled only by churches, synagogues, mosques, covens, what have you, in accordance with the First Amendment. 

What government needs to do is institute a system of civil unions, which are contracts that carry all the health, financial, housing, insurance, and child-rearing benefits of what we currently call marriage. If your church won’t marry you, find a new church. If you are repulsed by your church marrying a man and man or woman and woman, find a new church. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the president have no business defining how we the people express our love for each other. It does, however, have business in codifying secular agreements between two people, regardless of their gender. This is equality. 

This way, the State has no say in how people interpret the Bible, Torah, Koran, Big Book O’ Witchcraft, etc., and can’t be penalized for their beliefs, and, at the same time, religion can’t be used as an argument against these unions either, thus confining them to secular arguments—many of which are based on junk science. 

My idea, I realize, isn’t perfect, because I barely know what I’m talking about. 

You Auto Know

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I’ve only been behind the wheel of our beloved Stella for the past week, and I’d like to take a moment to talk to you about driving in Doha. 

Every place I’ve ever lived (except for Nebraska) has claimed to have the worst drivers on the planet. Traffic in Florida is responsible for 29 percent of Dave Barry’s entire career of a writer. The spectacular car chases on the California freeway in every Michael Bay movie are actually mini-documentaries. And the things I’ve seen on the streets of Ecuador still chill me to this day. They’re all amateurs.  

Driving in Doha is the only excuse you need to drive like an asshole. 

From what I’ve learned during my stay, nothing on the roads is illegal, and that includes vehicular homicide … well, there is one exception: red lights. Nobody runs a red lights in Doha. Nobody. Hell, if you cross an intersection on a yellow light, even the Qatari locals will call you a dick (keep in mind that the locals have been known to ram people from behind for going too slow, and too slow for them is anything less than twenty kilometers above the speed limit). 

And yet, there’s something civilized about the it all. See, back home, if someone cuts you off, you unleash a stream of expletives that would make Richard Nixon tell you to take it down a notch, even if there’s kids in the backseat. Here, if someone cuts you off, you say, “Well played!” In the States, letting someone take a turn in front of you is an act of kindness. In Doha, letting someone take a turn in front of you means you lost the battle with honor. I have seen more people use their blinkers here—even when they’re going left from the center lane.  

Long story short: the Asphalt Thunderdome of Qatar is oddly relaxing. 

Paws to Reflect

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I am dead tired now, because I didn’t sleep well last night. Partly because the cats returned home at 2:30 a.m. 

Newcastle head-butted me so hard he lost his balance. Repeatedly. 

Magik then advised Kate, through a language made up of meowing, purring, and kneading, that, if she promises never to let anything like that happen again, she may scratch his belly. Keep in mind this is a very exclusive thing—neither President George Bush nor President Barack Obama has been granted the privilege of scratching his belly. 

Andrew immediately set upon a path of exploration and destruction, like Francisco Pizarro. 

And so, even though a lot of our stuff has yet to arrive, and even though I’ve only lived in Qatar for three days, it’s officially home now. 

The Things I Have Been Doing

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So far since the tenth of this month, I left the country for the first time; got altitude sickness; saw so many volcanoes that even a Catholic country like Ecuador can’t possibly provide enough virgins to appease them; stood on the equator; flew business class for the first time; recovered from altitude sickness; rode in a Zodiac on thirty-two separate occasions; snorkeled near a shark; collided with a giant sea turtle; swam near what appeared to be the Cliffs of Insanity; got charged by an iguana; saw a coffee plant in the wild; exchanged currency for the first time; got altitude sickness; slept in a monastery, which may be the only hotel room I’ve ever been in without a King James Bible in it; walked among ancient temples of unimaginable scale; fled from an elderly photobomber; watched horses dance; climbed the steps of a still-inhabited Incan city built more or less vertically on the side of a mountain; said “sil vous plait” to a Hispanic waiter instead of “por favor”; rode on the Orient Express in South America (I am not kidding); let out a gasp after stepping through a small stone doorway to unexpectedly behold all of Macchu Picchu; encountered a Ghost Llama with a Purple Ass; danced to a Spanish cover of “Jailhouse Rock” (no one was hurt); gazed into a pit twenty-three-feet deep, fifteen of which were buried in carefully arranged skulls and femurs; is now trying to remember that the customary greetings in the US aren’t “Buenos dias,” “Buenos tardes,” or “Buenos noches”; and has had, overall, two of the busiest weeks of my life. 

End-of-the-World Announcement

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Next month, Kate and I are leaving the country. Specifically, we are moving to Doha, Qatar. I have been struggling in vain this week to compose an entry full of flowery, rambling prose to describe how I feel about this, but words fail me. 

I am beyond excited; I live for adventure, and you cannot tell me this isn’t an adventure. 

I am beyond scared; I’ve never left the mainland US before. What kind of foreign-culture-language-shock is waiting for me in the Persian Gulf? 

And I’m a little sad; over the past four years, I’ve built up a life, with good in-person friends, Monkeys with Typewriters—a support group for those afflicted with active imaginations, and Nicole—our roommate who only moved in this past September, yet is someone I can’t imagine not having around. 

Since Kate and I got together for good in 2004, we’ve moved three times; but with her, I’m always home. And in a month, we’ll be physically overseas. And we’ll be home. 

A whole new world is out there for us to explore, and I, for one, can’t wait. 

On the Subject of Today’s Shooting

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I don’t want to get shot dead, at random, in a parking lot, or at a movie theater, or in church, or in a mall, or at a school, or anywhere for that matter, by someone who just wants to shoot bullets at a lot of people for reasons that have nothing at all to do with me. Off the top of my head, I can think of more than two dozen people who felt this EXACT way when they woke up this morning. 

And the funny thing is, it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m a gun owner*, or whether or not I have a concealed-carry permit** what my stance is on gun control***; if a mass shooter decides to open fire on a place where I happen to be, it means that he or she acquired a gun and used it. It doesn’t matter how it was acquired, or what the laws were. It just means that someone got a gun and fired it a lot. 

This scares the shit out of me. 

* I am. 

** I do. 

*** I’m not telling. 

Not Another Dream Movie

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I dreamed the ideal college/teen movie the other day. Well, maybe not ideal—the pretty, most popular girl in school made friends with the sensitive, nerdy boy without hiding it from her peers in order to preserve her social status. And her peers were cool with it. And the nerdy boy didn’t fall in love with the popular girl. So maybe that’s not right. 

However, all of the characters had to pool their individual, surprisingly useful talents with the cool, rebellious professor (nailed that one) to save a historic, nostalgic building that the unfeeling, corporate board of directors wanted to tear down for “progress.” So I guess the subconscious brain got that right. 

Also there was a wacky moment that involved hiding in a cupboard … I’m sure marijuana was involved in that. So I guess the subconscious brain got that right too. 

Clearly Nerdy Boy is based on me, the evidence being that he’d spent some time doing amateur IT work on Popular Girl’s computer, joked with her about blackmail, and, on his way out the door, told her, “I’ll be back with an anonymous typewritten letter and some demands.” 

Alas, my brain promptly forgot most of it upon awakening, as brains tend to do. 

A Brief Tale with Many Layers

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I was strolling along on the sidewalk, minding my own business, when, suddenly, an onion. A red onion rolled down the hill. An onion with no apparent origin, for I alone stood on the entire length of the sidewalk. 

Was this a celestial onion? An onion of the gods? Was the onion passing through my story, or was I passing through the onion’s? So many questions. So many tears (because onions make you cry, see?). 

It’s about Time

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This morning, I’d been showing my roommate a newspaper from Christmas Day, 1998, and at some point, I realized that a day that, to me, was one from just a few years back was actually her thirteenth birthday. 

My niece was two years from being born, while two of my dearest friends in the world then had a two-year-old daughter. The former spends her time making swords and fashion accessories out of duct tape, and the latter is an incredible young lady with graduation over the horizon. I’m sure to my parents, I’d left for college just a few months ago. 

This isn’t one of those “I feel old” posts, but rather just a way of reflecting how time passes differently, depending on what fraction of your life it is. For my roommate, it’s half, for my niece it’s just over 115 percent. For me, it’s only a third of it.