Perhaps

The ultimate question everyone must confront is what makes life worth living?

I for one was never keen on labeling Christians or Muslims or Jews or Democrats or Republicans for their hard line beliefs. I personally found them both to be equally absurd and shrugged it off because if believing in Jesus or Muhammad or universal health care or a balanced budget make life worth living, making getting out of bed worth the effort, then go on with your bad self. I have geared many of my intellectual undertakings toward developing rational arguments for when these types of ideas go unchecked. I am a big believer in checks and balances.

What makes life worth living for me?

I don't mean to suggest that countering religious types or being a permanent Devil's Advocate makes life fun for me. Well, that's not 100% true, but there's more and it's simple.

I miss Lincoln with all my heart.

I spent a year of my life worried I would never escape and now I'm worried I will never come back. I love Lincoln because it is what it is. A dingy college town in the dullest state since North Dakota. And that situation created a vacuum filled with an underlying need to escape that formed the people I love and the situation comedy that made life fun.

Korea has no soul. These people enter life rushing through this imaginary pissing contest to muster up some kind of racial pride. The Napoleon complex of Asia. A child is born here, instantly rushed into school. Drilled in math, science, English, music, geography, spelling, and logic then forced into a university for the most realistic of professions. Once all the work to your superiors is paid off, just when it's time to live for yourself, you join the army. Putting the average Korean at 26 before he or she can start making adult decisions.

Few of my kids know the simple joys of creativity. Only numbers and hypothesis. Music is not an expression of longing or a call to rally. It is a mechanical, orderly process which is to be completed in a timely manner. When I give my kids free reign to be creative, they opt to fill in the blanks from a previous page over inserting words like "dung" or "ass".

There is no midday drunkenness. There is no underground marijuana trade. There is no hero of the anti-establishment. Where are your Sartre's, Piccasso's, Bukowski's and Nabakov's, Korea? This is why I truly cry for you. Where are your punks, goths, hippies, ravers, mods and indie kids? Where are your idols who would be considered a menace to society if not for the ability to sum up life in a sentence?

Where is your soul?

Suggestions Welcome or How to Kill a Substantial Amount of Time

1- Develop obsessive, even pornographic, fixation on North Korea

2- Follow a baseball team with all my will

3- Escape into World of Warcraft when I am not teaching

4- Increase cigarette intake through a newfound devotion to Linux

5- Keep journal featuring the classic "I must ___________" theme

6- Invent backstory and personalities for all my furniture

7- Alcohol problem

8- Construct giant map of Lincoln using 8 x 10 sheets of paper printed on the company's dime

9- Analyze security risks to Northeast Asia and use said information to start fights in bars

10- Become competent at math

11- Watch DVD commentary to all 11 Star Trek movies

12- Rubix cube

13- Find a size 12 pair of shoes

14- Impose bizzare tricks upon my dog

15- Purchase firearm

16- Wander around city in stupor during socially unacceptable hours

17- Give self series of intricate tattoos

18- Do number seventeen to dog

19- Assume the identity of Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino

20- Break up side walk and grow weeds in cracks to alliviate homesickness

21- Concoct subtle ways to use racial slurs in everyday conversation

22- Break away from Catholic Church and form underground religious movement

23- Build structures out of random garbage strewn on street corners

24- Eat entire box of instant-coffee sleeves in one day

25- Break record for most days awake

26- Attempt 24 hours of only darkness

27- Watch all Ken Burns documentaries

28- Figure out the appeal of bright colors to the natives

29- Start religious franchise

30- Use Korea's garbage to form an underground art movement