Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Bit About The Government
Everyone is born with a certain measure of personal power. Most people, cowed with fear of death (which comes anyway) opt to give up their power to the nearest armed and charismatic "leader." Enough people do this and something like "government" seems to emerge.
Every Story Is Not A Love Story
I hate how Hollywood always seems to add a stupid love angle to every single movie they make, as if every event that happens in someone's life that's memorable or worth telling has to revolve around some mating rituals. Like that's the only story there is. I mean, I appreciate pair-bonding as much as the next domesticated primate, but come on. Every story is not a love story. That's ridiculous.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
The Gluurg Conjectures
It's like this. Every time some true believer makes a statement about God, replace "God" with "Gluurg" and see if it still sounds reasonable or if it sounds nuts:
- Gluurg is the uncaused cause.
- Gluurg moves in mysterious ways.
- Gluurg is love.
- Gluurg knows all, and sees all.
- Gluurg is infinitely merciful and infinitely just.
- Gluurg created the heavens and the earth in six days.
- Gluurg exists outside of time and space.
- Gluurg is transcendent and immanent in all things.
- It's in the Bible, Gluurg said it, that settles it.
This was the whole point of Gluurg. "Gluurg" is a syllable the same way "god" is. It is an accident of history and culture that the single syllable we use to express the concept of deity is "god" rather than "gluurg." So why would one syllable make for statements that sound credible to most of the populace, and the other one take on a completely different connotation?
(pictured: "Gluurg" by the author, 2002)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Random Drug Memories
So I ate an entire bag of mushrooms, and I spent hours seeing paisley patterns emerging apparent from the background. And it made me realize, this is why the hippies were putting paisley on everything in the 60s, they must have been seeing these same patterns when THEY were tripping. Oh god, they know, they know, I don't want to die, I'm not ready, oh god I'm going to die... So then what IS that pattern and why would it emerge independently under the same chemical stimulus?
Took DXM in pill form. Robo-tripping without having to actually down any cough syrup. Just remember sobbing. Passion by Peter Gabriel was playing. I was sobbing. I don't remember vomiting but I remember that I did.
One time I smoked some PCP and I watched A Fistful Of Dollars. Or was it For A Few Dollars More? Every time I tell this story the movie changes. Anyway, the thing I found most interesting about PCP was how overrated it was. Every time you hear the story about PCP it's like, "Man on PCP kills ENTIRE FAMILY!" "He tore out their eyes with a plastic spork!" "The cops kept pumping bullets into him and he just kept coming at them!" And when I smoked PCP? It changed my thought patterns a little. Or a lot. Hard to say. I just remember this one time, watching the movie, and I was thinking of these lizards, emerging from the mud like a Claymation version of Escher, emerging from the mud and building cities.
Two words: Seroquel. Dreams.
I was getting teeth pulled. Wisdom teeth, maybe? No, couldn't have been, that was years earlier. Doesn't matter. Anyway, they knocked me out for it and when I woke up, the first thing I said was, "I've figured everything out!" The worst thing is, I'm sure that I had.
The first time I really got high, I mean REALLY got high, was pretty late in life. I'd just gone through some pretty traumatic, life-altering times and all of a sudden there's drugs right there in front of me. Call it cliche, but call it cliche while you're blowing me. And so I was really high, and I was TERRIFIED. Nothing made sense, and I couldn't connect one moment to the next. Things were happening and I couldn't narratize them or place them in context. Maybe I'm still there now.
Took DXM in pill form. Robo-tripping without having to actually down any cough syrup. Just remember sobbing. Passion by Peter Gabriel was playing. I was sobbing. I don't remember vomiting but I remember that I did.
One time I smoked some PCP and I watched A Fistful Of Dollars. Or was it For A Few Dollars More? Every time I tell this story the movie changes. Anyway, the thing I found most interesting about PCP was how overrated it was. Every time you hear the story about PCP it's like, "Man on PCP kills ENTIRE FAMILY!" "He tore out their eyes with a plastic spork!" "The cops kept pumping bullets into him and he just kept coming at them!" And when I smoked PCP? It changed my thought patterns a little. Or a lot. Hard to say. I just remember this one time, watching the movie, and I was thinking of these lizards, emerging from the mud like a Claymation version of Escher, emerging from the mud and building cities.
Two words: Seroquel. Dreams.
I was getting teeth pulled. Wisdom teeth, maybe? No, couldn't have been, that was years earlier. Doesn't matter. Anyway, they knocked me out for it and when I woke up, the first thing I said was, "I've figured everything out!" The worst thing is, I'm sure that I had.
The first time I really got high, I mean REALLY got high, was pretty late in life. I'd just gone through some pretty traumatic, life-altering times and all of a sudden there's drugs right there in front of me. Call it cliche, but call it cliche while you're blowing me. And so I was really high, and I was TERRIFIED. Nothing made sense, and I couldn't connect one moment to the next. Things were happening and I couldn't narratize them or place them in context. Maybe I'm still there now.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The Bit About Cyber Monday
"Cyber Monday" has got to seriously be like the dumbest fucking name ever. I mean, at least Black Friday SOUNDS cool. And why? Because EVERYTHING sounds cool if you put "black" in front of it. Black sun. Black hole. Black lung. Black death. Black plague. Black magic. Black cloud. Whereas NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING sounds cool with "cyber" in front of it. Was I the only one paying attention during the 1990s?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Com'st' Thou To Beard Me In Denmark?: Facial Hair And The Tragedy Of Hamlet
Continuing in the mission of shining the light of day on EVERY half passable piece I ever wrote, here's one I did for an English class all the way back in 1998:
Insanity is a very hard label to pin on someone; no two people can totally agree on what its parameters are. Moreover, someone can be insane in one aspect yet totally sane in others -- what than is this person, mad or not? Thus, it is of course impossible to with any certainty decide whether or not Hamlet, the main character of William Shakespeare’s famous The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is mad. A character as complex as Hamlet’s would be difficult to correctly diagnose in a person-to-person analysis, let alone through the filter of a play written about him.
However, impossible to ascertain or not, it is my contention that Hamlet did indeed go mad, or at least delusional, for a short period of time, as the result of sudden and extreme psychological stress in his life. Why do I feel that this is the case? For numerous reasons, as all supported throughout the text.
For one, Hamlet’s mood changes abruptly throughout the course of the play. His behavior throughout the play, especially towards Ophelia, is exceptionally erratic. He claims to be the only one who truly loved Ophelia, during the fight with Laertes in her grave (I.ii.216-218), but he tells Ophelia herself that he never loved her, when she returns his letters (II.iii.116). Also, on the subject of the fight with Laertes in the grave, Hamlet instigates the fight because Laertes said none loved Ophelia more than he, which Hamlet disagreed with. As quantitative love is a purely subjective matter, this is hardly grounds for a quarrel, at least not in the judgment of a sane person. But in my opinion the strongest evidence of Hamlet’s growing insanity is in Act III, scene iv. First, in what he later admits to be a state of madness, (V.ii.197) he kills Polonius, thinking him to be the King Claudius, and when he discovers his mistake, shows little remorse. Even worse, while conversing with his mother, he sees again the vision of his father’s ghost. Now, every other time the ghost has appeared, others have seen it as well (I.i, I.iv). However, in his mother’s room, he is the only one to see it. Is it possible that Hamlet is by this point mad, and is merely hallucinating the apparition? In of itself, this instance could be interpreted numerous ways. But when weighed with other evidence, this is indeed clear proof of Hamlet’s derangement.
So, Hamlet is insane, if only temporarily. Why than is he insane? Numerous reasons can be cited as possible cause. The sudden death of his beloved father, King Hamlet, followed soon after by the marriage of his mother to his uncle. This makes Hamlet uncomfortable, and his only escape, his school at Wittenberg, is denied him. Which is followed soon after by the appearance of his father’s ghost, who tells Hamlet of the treachery surrounding the King’s death, and sets Hamlet on his course of vengeance, which makes Hamlet paranoid and trusting of no one. This in turn makes Hamlet decide to pretend to be mad, in an effort to properly exercise his revenge; and when one acts mad, one often finds themselves becoming that which they pretend to be. Hamlet’s girlfriend Ophelia suddenly spurning and ignoring him must have been another blow to his psyche as well. Finally, on top of all of this, there is the threat of war with Norway.
I believe these elements all were indeed factors in Hamlet’s temporary loss of reason. However, I do not believe that even this series of traumatic events could have felled the mind of a man as grounded as Hamlet were it not for some other, deeper factor. And that factor is this: facial hair. I believe that Hamlet the play is infused with the subtext of Hamlet’s desire for a better beard.
That Hamlet thinks beards are an important aspect of a man’s character is undeniable. In his soliloquy in Act II, scene ii, lines 474-533, in which he berates himself for his inability to express his emotion, he says "Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? … Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? (lines 497-499)" The implication here is that his beard is being plucked, metaphorically, because his cowardice makes him unworthy of having a beard. Plus, when Polonius demonstrates cretinous behavior by complaining about they player’s speech in the same scene (line 434), Hamlet responds by saying "It shall to the barber's, with your beard." In other words, cretins such as Polonius aren’t worthy of their beards.
Looking closer, we see Hamlet as a man obsessed with beards. When told of his father’s ghost’s appearance, practically the first question he asks about the ghost is "His beard was grizzled- no? (I.ii.240)" He obviously had great veneration for his father, and the good king’s beard, surely a majestic and regal one. When King Hamlet died, there was an immense beard gap in Elsinore, one hardly filled by the loathsome Claudius or the youthful Hamlet. Thus, the greatest beard in Elsinore now unfortunately goes to the King’s counselor, Polonius, a "tedious old fool" in Hamlet’s estimation (II.ii.211). When the ghost appears to him, it only reminds Hamlet that a great beard is gone, and the present King’s is no match, nor is Hamlet’s. This unsettles Hamlet to the point where all he can think about is beards. He thinks that Ophelia is spurning him because of his beard’s inferiority to her father Polonius’s, in of itself an upsetting notion. Also, in his talk with his mother (III.iv), Hamlet shows his mother pictures of the brothers Hamlet and Claudius. Why else but to compare King Hamlet’s regal beard, "A sable silver'd (I.ii.241)," with Claudius’s lesser one, "..like a mildewed ear… (III.iv.64)."
Amid all the other stress in his life to this date, the pressure to have a good beard and live up to his father’s is great. He cracks under the stress. Why would he pretend to be insane to find his father’s killer? How would that help? No, he tells Horatio that he is going to feign an "antic disposition, (I.iv.172)" and convinces himself that he is merely pretending to be mad, to cover up for the fact that he obviously is going insane from the stress to grow a better beard than he is currently able to. Horatio notices it early on, referring to Hamlet as speaking "wild and whirling words (I.v.133)." In pretending to be mad, Hamlet slowly does go mad, culminating in the murder of Polonius. However, Hamlet becomes more or less totally sane again after his return from England — it follows that with Polonius dead, Hamlet has the best beard in Elsinore, thus making him able to live up to his father’s bearded legacy. The stress to have the best beard has been lifted off of Hamlet’s over-burdened shoulders, and his reason returns.
Alas, it is too late for Hamlet. By the time his much-vaunted bearded status comes, he is already soon to be a victim of the plot machinery his madness helped set in motion. He dies, and in his dying breath tells Horatio that the crown is to go to the Norwegian Prince Fortinbras. Thus, Fortinbras must have had a pretty impressive beard as well, which Fortinbras himself remarks upon, citing it as his right to the throne of Denmark. "I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me (V.ii.354-355)."
The beard has long been associated with masculinity; as only the males of a species can achieve one. The pressure in a male-dominated society to prove one’s manhood is great indeed. However, besides Hamlet I can think of no great works of literature in which the fatal flaw of weak facial hair plays so central of a role.
Insanity is a very hard label to pin on someone; no two people can totally agree on what its parameters are. Moreover, someone can be insane in one aspect yet totally sane in others -- what than is this person, mad or not? Thus, it is of course impossible to with any certainty decide whether or not Hamlet, the main character of William Shakespeare’s famous The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is mad. A character as complex as Hamlet’s would be difficult to correctly diagnose in a person-to-person analysis, let alone through the filter of a play written about him.
However, impossible to ascertain or not, it is my contention that Hamlet did indeed go mad, or at least delusional, for a short period of time, as the result of sudden and extreme psychological stress in his life. Why do I feel that this is the case? For numerous reasons, as all supported throughout the text.
For one, Hamlet’s mood changes abruptly throughout the course of the play. His behavior throughout the play, especially towards Ophelia, is exceptionally erratic. He claims to be the only one who truly loved Ophelia, during the fight with Laertes in her grave (I.ii.216-218), but he tells Ophelia herself that he never loved her, when she returns his letters (II.iii.116). Also, on the subject of the fight with Laertes in the grave, Hamlet instigates the fight because Laertes said none loved Ophelia more than he, which Hamlet disagreed with. As quantitative love is a purely subjective matter, this is hardly grounds for a quarrel, at least not in the judgment of a sane person. But in my opinion the strongest evidence of Hamlet’s growing insanity is in Act III, scene iv. First, in what he later admits to be a state of madness, (V.ii.197) he kills Polonius, thinking him to be the King Claudius, and when he discovers his mistake, shows little remorse. Even worse, while conversing with his mother, he sees again the vision of his father’s ghost. Now, every other time the ghost has appeared, others have seen it as well (I.i, I.iv). However, in his mother’s room, he is the only one to see it. Is it possible that Hamlet is by this point mad, and is merely hallucinating the apparition? In of itself, this instance could be interpreted numerous ways. But when weighed with other evidence, this is indeed clear proof of Hamlet’s derangement.
So, Hamlet is insane, if only temporarily. Why than is he insane? Numerous reasons can be cited as possible cause. The sudden death of his beloved father, King Hamlet, followed soon after by the marriage of his mother to his uncle. This makes Hamlet uncomfortable, and his only escape, his school at Wittenberg, is denied him. Which is followed soon after by the appearance of his father’s ghost, who tells Hamlet of the treachery surrounding the King’s death, and sets Hamlet on his course of vengeance, which makes Hamlet paranoid and trusting of no one. This in turn makes Hamlet decide to pretend to be mad, in an effort to properly exercise his revenge; and when one acts mad, one often finds themselves becoming that which they pretend to be. Hamlet’s girlfriend Ophelia suddenly spurning and ignoring him must have been another blow to his psyche as well. Finally, on top of all of this, there is the threat of war with Norway.
I believe these elements all were indeed factors in Hamlet’s temporary loss of reason. However, I do not believe that even this series of traumatic events could have felled the mind of a man as grounded as Hamlet were it not for some other, deeper factor. And that factor is this: facial hair. I believe that Hamlet the play is infused with the subtext of Hamlet’s desire for a better beard.
That Hamlet thinks beards are an important aspect of a man’s character is undeniable. In his soliloquy in Act II, scene ii, lines 474-533, in which he berates himself for his inability to express his emotion, he says "Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? … Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face? (lines 497-499)" The implication here is that his beard is being plucked, metaphorically, because his cowardice makes him unworthy of having a beard. Plus, when Polonius demonstrates cretinous behavior by complaining about they player’s speech in the same scene (line 434), Hamlet responds by saying "It shall to the barber's, with your beard." In other words, cretins such as Polonius aren’t worthy of their beards.
Looking closer, we see Hamlet as a man obsessed with beards. When told of his father’s ghost’s appearance, practically the first question he asks about the ghost is "His beard was grizzled- no? (I.ii.240)" He obviously had great veneration for his father, and the good king’s beard, surely a majestic and regal one. When King Hamlet died, there was an immense beard gap in Elsinore, one hardly filled by the loathsome Claudius or the youthful Hamlet. Thus, the greatest beard in Elsinore now unfortunately goes to the King’s counselor, Polonius, a "tedious old fool" in Hamlet’s estimation (II.ii.211). When the ghost appears to him, it only reminds Hamlet that a great beard is gone, and the present King’s is no match, nor is Hamlet’s. This unsettles Hamlet to the point where all he can think about is beards. He thinks that Ophelia is spurning him because of his beard’s inferiority to her father Polonius’s, in of itself an upsetting notion. Also, in his talk with his mother (III.iv), Hamlet shows his mother pictures of the brothers Hamlet and Claudius. Why else but to compare King Hamlet’s regal beard, "A sable silver'd (I.ii.241)," with Claudius’s lesser one, "..like a mildewed ear… (III.iv.64)."
Amid all the other stress in his life to this date, the pressure to have a good beard and live up to his father’s is great. He cracks under the stress. Why would he pretend to be insane to find his father’s killer? How would that help? No, he tells Horatio that he is going to feign an "antic disposition, (I.iv.172)" and convinces himself that he is merely pretending to be mad, to cover up for the fact that he obviously is going insane from the stress to grow a better beard than he is currently able to. Horatio notices it early on, referring to Hamlet as speaking "wild and whirling words (I.v.133)." In pretending to be mad, Hamlet slowly does go mad, culminating in the murder of Polonius. However, Hamlet becomes more or less totally sane again after his return from England — it follows that with Polonius dead, Hamlet has the best beard in Elsinore, thus making him able to live up to his father’s bearded legacy. The stress to have the best beard has been lifted off of Hamlet’s over-burdened shoulders, and his reason returns.
Alas, it is too late for Hamlet. By the time his much-vaunted bearded status comes, he is already soon to be a victim of the plot machinery his madness helped set in motion. He dies, and in his dying breath tells Horatio that the crown is to go to the Norwegian Prince Fortinbras. Thus, Fortinbras must have had a pretty impressive beard as well, which Fortinbras himself remarks upon, citing it as his right to the throne of Denmark. "I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me (V.ii.354-355)."
The beard has long been associated with masculinity; as only the males of a species can achieve one. The pressure in a male-dominated society to prove one’s manhood is great indeed. However, besides Hamlet I can think of no great works of literature in which the fatal flaw of weak facial hair plays so central of a role.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Peterpanarchy
I am still in this phase where I look like I am still in my 20s, passably, and I can most easily relate to people in their 20s or late teens over the boring compromising hypocrites my age with their sad little hobbies and their domestic "bliss." And it's like one of those movies -- if I ever get out of that phase I will all of a sudden age those decades INSTANTLY -- and you'll be like, the revolution is happening, Noel, and I'll be like, oh no, what will that do to my 401k? Or, oh, I can't come to the communal melding of minds into one godlike being, guys, the wife says it's romantic movie night. But would you like to see some pictures of my kids while I drone on about every thing they do like it is seriously the most fascinating event in human history? I would hope someone would have the decency to put me down. I have done everything I could while I was younger to sabotage that future before it could happen by accident. Dropped out of college. Burned bridges. Drove away anyone dumb enough to want to mate with me. Drifted from shitty job to shitty job. No stability. No comfort. Which is what happens: they get comfortable and their minds shut off. And they get old.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Everyone Is Out To Get Me (a charming ditty)
everyone is out to get me
and i don't know what to do
everyone is out to get me
for what i've got no clue
everyone is out to get me
don't deny it's true
so are you
so are you
everyone is out to get me
and i don't know why
everyone is out to get me
'till the day i die
everyone is out to get me
and it ain't no lie
so am i
so am i
and i don't know what to do
everyone is out to get me
for what i've got no clue
everyone is out to get me
don't deny it's true
so are you
so are you
everyone is out to get me
and i don't know why
everyone is out to get me
'till the day i die
everyone is out to get me
and it ain't no lie
so am i
so am i
Friday, November 12, 2010
Outlier Blues, Now With 100% More Line Breaks
i have so many things only happen to me
that sometimes i think
the reason i am here
is for statistics
so all those things that have to happen to someone
will happen to me
weird, outlying stuff
that only happens to me
like somehow i am balancing the cosmic books
DAMN IT
other times i think everyone has weird shit that only happens to them
and i am the only one that talks about it
that sometimes i think
the reason i am here
is for statistics
so all those things that have to happen to someone
will happen to me
weird, outlying stuff
that only happens to me
like somehow i am balancing the cosmic books
DAMN IT
other times i think everyone has weird shit that only happens to them
and i am the only one that talks about it
Monday, November 8, 2010
A Leg For A Leg Leaves Everyone Lame (an expansion on a theme that needs no expansion)
See, it's like this. Someone kills you. So I kill them. So then their brother kills me. So then Attila kills that guy. And his son grows up and kills Attila. So the MOB pound that kid out and dump his body somewhere. And his peeps come looking for the MOB. So now Kidd-Dogg and T-Owl are out looking for those guys. Pretty soon everyone is in a state of perpetual vendetta, a pyramid scheme that can end only when everyone is dead. Study the first five minutes of The Godfather Part II or the last five minutes of Hamlet. It's a flawed philosophy.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
I Don't Vote
I get so mad when I see people say ignorant things like "If you don't vote, you can't complain" and other similar bumper-sticker slogans. By my thinking, it is exactly the other way around. If you DO vote, if you pull the lever that signifies your endorsement of a corrupt, rigged system --
-- and let me stop right there for some expounding. Exposition. Whatever. When I say the system is corrupt and it is rigged, I am not speaking (only) about the current United States political landscape. I'm not talking about how this isn't a true democracy but an elitist republic. I'm not talking about particular individuals running for particular offices, or whatever particular parties they belong to. I am beyond all that shit. Waiting at the finish line, chirp chirp. When I say the system is corrupt and rigged I mean literally, the SYSTEM is corrupt and rigged. The very concept of government is FLAWED AT ITS CORE. I have made this argument so many times in so many places that you can go look it up and stop bugging me. Made sense thousands of years ago, sure, now it's time for something new. Don't know what that something new is. Just trying to remind people there's options.
So I guess what I'm saying is, lead yourself. If you pick someone else to make decisions for you -- and this is what government is, make no mistake. Look up "social contract" theory sometime. I don't agree with the social contract either but even there it is implicit that the individual cedes their individual liberties and their individual responsibilities to the government. Made sense thousands of years ago. And sure, democracy (or whatever this is) at least allows you to CHOOSE the person you allow to be lorded over you. But still. If you choose someone to lord over you, and it doesn't work out, THAT'S YOUR FAULT. Shoulda done for delf. Burned the whole thing down and started over. The system is rigged and corrupt and everything it does it does to benefit the system and never you. But hey, at least you contributed with your vote, right? Wrong. If you pick someone else to make decisions for you, you have no right to complain when they make decisions you don't approve of. And before you say "But I voted for the UDDER guy!" remember this is more complex then simple political parties and empty campaign promises. If, with your vote, you buy into a system that allows some people to be lorded over some other people, it doesn't matter whether it's "your" guy or "their" guy that gets in. Someone's gonna be doing some lording. If you accept this, you are part of the problem and have no right to complain. Period.
-- and let me stop right there for some expounding. Exposition. Whatever. When I say the system is corrupt and it is rigged, I am not speaking (only) about the current United States political landscape. I'm not talking about how this isn't a true democracy but an elitist republic. I'm not talking about particular individuals running for particular offices, or whatever particular parties they belong to. I am beyond all that shit. Waiting at the finish line, chirp chirp. When I say the system is corrupt and rigged I mean literally, the SYSTEM is corrupt and rigged. The very concept of government is FLAWED AT ITS CORE. I have made this argument so many times in so many places that you can go look it up and stop bugging me. Made sense thousands of years ago, sure, now it's time for something new. Don't know what that something new is. Just trying to remind people there's options.
So I guess what I'm saying is, lead yourself. If you pick someone else to make decisions for you -- and this is what government is, make no mistake. Look up "social contract" theory sometime. I don't agree with the social contract either but even there it is implicit that the individual cedes their individual liberties and their individual responsibilities to the government. Made sense thousands of years ago. And sure, democracy (or whatever this is) at least allows you to CHOOSE the person you allow to be lorded over you. But still. If you choose someone to lord over you, and it doesn't work out, THAT'S YOUR FAULT. Shoulda done for delf. Burned the whole thing down and started over. The system is rigged and corrupt and everything it does it does to benefit the system and never you. But hey, at least you contributed with your vote, right? Wrong. If you pick someone else to make decisions for you, you have no right to complain when they make decisions you don't approve of. And before you say "But I voted for the UDDER guy!" remember this is more complex then simple political parties and empty campaign promises. If, with your vote, you buy into a system that allows some people to be lorded over some other people, it doesn't matter whether it's "your" guy or "their" guy that gets in. Someone's gonna be doing some lording. If you accept this, you are part of the problem and have no right to complain. Period.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
One for you, one for me, one for the kids (3 things I wrote today)
My Scandal In Bohemia
She's my scandal in Bohemia.
Doomed, damned and beautiful.
And I, her guilty secret.
She loves me.
A Terrible Liberation
I don't know if I hate the world because I don't belong, or if I don't belong because I hate the world. Either way, I hate the world, and either way, I don't belong. It's a terrible liberation. But at least it's mine.
These Things Called Seasons
See kids, when I was a little boy, we had these things called "seasons." There were four of them. And each one had a specific temperature range and weather pattern. Like, you know how it goes from 70 degrees one day to 40 degrees the next day and then 60 degrees a day later? It was sort of like that... except it took MONTHS.
She's my scandal in Bohemia.
Doomed, damned and beautiful.
And I, her guilty secret.
She loves me.
A Terrible Liberation
I don't know if I hate the world because I don't belong, or if I don't belong because I hate the world. Either way, I hate the world, and either way, I don't belong. It's a terrible liberation. But at least it's mine.
These Things Called Seasons
See kids, when I was a little boy, we had these things called "seasons." There were four of them. And each one had a specific temperature range and weather pattern. Like, you know how it goes from 70 degrees one day to 40 degrees the next day and then 60 degrees a day later? It was sort of like that... except it took MONTHS.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Restaurant Bit
Another good piece that I cut loose:
HART
How was work?
PAULIE
It was crap. Jehovah's Witnesses are the cheapest people ever.
HART
Please not this again.
PAULIE
No, no, let me finish. Everyone says Jews are cheap, and that Indians are cheap, and, okay, yeah, sure, you know what? They are. But Jehovah's Witnesses? Make them all seem as frugal as Paris Hilton!
HART
I can't take you anywhere.
PAULIE
I'm serious! The cheap bastards don't want to pay for room service, and they don't want to pay the tip at the restaurant, so they all come down at once and line up to order their meals to go. All at once. The kitchen was total chaos!
SKIP
Paulie, you are like the klutziest person I ever met. How do you even work in a kitchen without falling onto the knife rack or landing face first in a burner or something?
PAULIE
In the kitchen I am as graceful as the majestic swan.
(He attempts a pirouette and knocks something else over.)
HART
How was work?
PAULIE
It was crap. Jehovah's Witnesses are the cheapest people ever.
HART
Please not this again.
PAULIE
No, no, let me finish. Everyone says Jews are cheap, and that Indians are cheap, and, okay, yeah, sure, you know what? They are. But Jehovah's Witnesses? Make them all seem as frugal as Paris Hilton!
HART
I can't take you anywhere.
PAULIE
I'm serious! The cheap bastards don't want to pay for room service, and they don't want to pay the tip at the restaurant, so they all come down at once and line up to order their meals to go. All at once. The kitchen was total chaos!
SKIP
Paulie, you are like the klutziest person I ever met. How do you even work in a kitchen without falling onto the knife rack or landing face first in a burner or something?
PAULIE
In the kitchen I am as graceful as the majestic swan.
(He attempts a pirouette and knocks something else over.)
Friday, October 15, 2010
Shaggy Doggerel
I'm filled with trepidation
My soul brims with dread
I need it like trepanation
Get it? A hole in the head.
My soul brims with dread
I need it like trepanation
Get it? A hole in the head.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Time To Hate On Breast Cancer Awareness...
I feel like being inflammatory, so let's go to a topic that everyone seems to love this time of year: breast cancer. Why the fuck is breast cancer so important? Name another cancer that gets an "Awareness Month". Name another cancer that gets its own color.
And before you come in and tell me, Noel, did you forget that July is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, or, certainly you must know that chartreuse is the official color of Brain Tumor Awareness, or some other dumb facts you may pull out to back your argument up, allow me to make it clear that I could give a flying fig about the facts. All I'm saying is, if another cancer is as big-time and hoopledy-hoopla'd as breast cancer I must have missed it, because I never heard of it and I can't AVOID breast cancer awareness. The stupid Facebook memes about the bra colors. The special pink version of products. The pink ribbons. The entire fucking month of October. Just saying.
And why breast cancer? The most cynical hypothesis would of course be because it's the cancer that WOMEN get, angled just right to stimulate the save-the-princess section of the primate brain -- and then the reason why it's breast cancer and not ovarian cancer or the-gift-of-life cancer or always-right cancer is because men like breasts, breasts get their attention. Makes sense, in a cynical and awful way.
Except.
Because believe me, I already hear you revving up to dump a whole lot of boring facts and percentages on me. Lame! But I already KNOW that it's not just women that can get breast cancer. Men do too -- and not just fat guys with big floppy moobs, either, so you know it's real. But then... why is breast cancer singled out to be so fucking important?
Look, all I'm saying, because really I know breast cancer is a serious thing and right now I am in perilous danger of some breast cancer survivor chiming in with a creakily boring story of hope and inspiration who will make me look like I'm Darth Hitler for daring to doubt the serious nature of breast cancer -- all I'm saying is, lung cancer. Melanoma. Leukemia. Bad shit. They kill people too. Heart cancer. Did you even know heart cancer is real? Says here that it's rare -- but rare STILL HAPPENS. Bad shit. Where's Heart Cancer Awareness Month?
And then what about salivary gland cancer?
Colon cancer?
Retinoblastoma? I have no idea what that even is but it sounds pretty fucking hardcore. I wouldn't want to fuck around with some retinoblastoma, s'all I'm saying.
And before you come in and tell me, Noel, did you forget that July is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, or, certainly you must know that chartreuse is the official color of Brain Tumor Awareness, or some other dumb facts you may pull out to back your argument up, allow me to make it clear that I could give a flying fig about the facts. All I'm saying is, if another cancer is as big-time and hoopledy-hoopla'd as breast cancer I must have missed it, because I never heard of it and I can't AVOID breast cancer awareness. The stupid Facebook memes about the bra colors. The special pink version of products. The pink ribbons. The entire fucking month of October. Just saying.
And why breast cancer? The most cynical hypothesis would of course be because it's the cancer that WOMEN get, angled just right to stimulate the save-the-princess section of the primate brain -- and then the reason why it's breast cancer and not ovarian cancer or the-gift-of-life cancer or always-right cancer is because men like breasts, breasts get their attention. Makes sense, in a cynical and awful way.
Except.
Because believe me, I already hear you revving up to dump a whole lot of boring facts and percentages on me. Lame! But I already KNOW that it's not just women that can get breast cancer. Men do too -- and not just fat guys with big floppy moobs, either, so you know it's real. But then... why is breast cancer singled out to be so fucking important?
Look, all I'm saying, because really I know breast cancer is a serious thing and right now I am in perilous danger of some breast cancer survivor chiming in with a creakily boring story of hope and inspiration who will make me look like I'm Darth Hitler for daring to doubt the serious nature of breast cancer -- all I'm saying is, lung cancer. Melanoma. Leukemia. Bad shit. They kill people too. Heart cancer. Did you even know heart cancer is real? Says here that it's rare -- but rare STILL HAPPENS. Bad shit. Where's Heart Cancer Awareness Month?
And then what about salivary gland cancer?
Colon cancer?
Retinoblastoma? I have no idea what that even is but it sounds pretty fucking hardcore. I wouldn't want to fuck around with some retinoblastoma, s'all I'm saying.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Cosmic Conscious Crackpot
There may well be a universal consciousness, but my hunch is that regardless the universe is not conscious per se. We are the universal consciousness, or at least the part of it that is awake. The universe is still waking up, but until the conscious entities it has created and become leave behind their individual egos, the process of awakening will not continue. This sense of separation from the rest of universe was a necessary illusion at a point in our evolutionary past, but it is an illusion nonetheless and the time will come when that must be confronted. That time is almost upon us.
This could of course only be half-right, because I am operating under the assumption that we are the only consciousnesses in the universe. I have yet to be convinced that anything weird happening on Earth cannot be explained in terms of the activities of the human brain, which is surely the most amazing and untapped tool we have. There had to be a point in time where consciousness only existed at one point in space. Somebody had to be first, and since I see it existing here and do not see it existing anywhere else I have no reason to assume that it’s not us.
This could of course only be half-right, because I am operating under the assumption that we are the only consciousnesses in the universe. I have yet to be convinced that anything weird happening on Earth cannot be explained in terms of the activities of the human brain, which is surely the most amazing and untapped tool we have. There had to be a point in time where consciousness only existed at one point in space. Somebody had to be first, and since I see it existing here and do not see it existing anywhere else I have no reason to assume that it’s not us.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Mall
A scrap on the cutting room floor, from this project I'm working on:
(JOHN and THEO sitting on a bench in the mall. One is eating a pretzel, the other is drinking a smoothie.)
THEO
This it it? You just sit here and watch people?
JOHN
The most entertaining thing to watch in the world. Human beings, with their endless passions and melodramas.
THEO
That's crap. People are very simple. Like robots. They're easily led. In this case, the television led them to the mall.
(pause)
Except for them.
(THEO points to a group of teenage girls, fashionable and disaffected, laughing and texting and sipping their super-sized soft drinks at a table nearby)
THEO
They're here because school lets them out too early.
JOHN
(shakes his head sadly)
I see. You seem like a smart guy, Theo, but you sure look at things funny. What's so wrong with a mall?
(THEO attempts to interject)
Let me finish. The mall is a picture of human existence in miniature.
THEO
What the hell are you talking about?
JOHN
Okay, look at those kids over there, the ones you just pointed out.
(cut to teenagers again)
JOHN
They come here to hang out because all their friends come here to hang out, and all their friends come here because all their friends come here, and so on. They buy music, hair dye, jewelry. Luxuries.
(now JOHN points to a married couple in their late twenties walking leisurely, stopping to glance in a shop window)
JOHN
In a few years they’ll be coming here on weekends with their spouses to get away from the hell of the work week and the daily grind, maybe to catch a light romantic comedy and shop for some sensible shoes.
(JOHN points to another couple, mid-thirtyish. The wife is pushing a stroller.)
JOHN
Eventually, they’ll start bringing their own children with them, a whole new generation of consumers to keep the machine going.
(Now JOHN points to an old woman with curly short white hair in jogging gear power-walking.)
JOHN
Finally, in the twilight of their lives, they’ll come here on the weekdays, early in the morning. Retired, widowed, children all grown up and shopping in their own malls somewhere else, they’ll walk the mall. No shopping, just walking, because they have nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go. The tribal village has been replaced by a mall and no one even knows.
THEO
Huh. Paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
JOHN
So they say.
(JOHN and THEO sitting on a bench in the mall. One is eating a pretzel, the other is drinking a smoothie.)
THEO
This it it? You just sit here and watch people?
JOHN
The most entertaining thing to watch in the world. Human beings, with their endless passions and melodramas.
THEO
That's crap. People are very simple. Like robots. They're easily led. In this case, the television led them to the mall.
(pause)
Except for them.
(THEO points to a group of teenage girls, fashionable and disaffected, laughing and texting and sipping their super-sized soft drinks at a table nearby)
THEO
They're here because school lets them out too early.
JOHN
(shakes his head sadly)
I see. You seem like a smart guy, Theo, but you sure look at things funny. What's so wrong with a mall?
(THEO attempts to interject)
Let me finish. The mall is a picture of human existence in miniature.
THEO
What the hell are you talking about?
JOHN
Okay, look at those kids over there, the ones you just pointed out.
(cut to teenagers again)
JOHN
They come here to hang out because all their friends come here to hang out, and all their friends come here because all their friends come here, and so on. They buy music, hair dye, jewelry. Luxuries.
(now JOHN points to a married couple in their late twenties walking leisurely, stopping to glance in a shop window)
JOHN
In a few years they’ll be coming here on weekends with their spouses to get away from the hell of the work week and the daily grind, maybe to catch a light romantic comedy and shop for some sensible shoes.
(JOHN points to another couple, mid-thirtyish. The wife is pushing a stroller.)
JOHN
Eventually, they’ll start bringing their own children with them, a whole new generation of consumers to keep the machine going.
(Now JOHN points to an old woman with curly short white hair in jogging gear power-walking.)
JOHN
Finally, in the twilight of their lives, they’ll come here on the weekdays, early in the morning. Retired, widowed, children all grown up and shopping in their own malls somewhere else, they’ll walk the mall. No shopping, just walking, because they have nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go. The tribal village has been replaced by a mall and no one even knows.
THEO
Huh. Paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
JOHN
So they say.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Damned Thing
The skeptic dismisses it as coincidence.
The mystic calls it synchronicity.
The theologian refers to it as divine will.
The paranoid sees it as enemy action.
The mystic calls it synchronicity.
The theologian refers to it as divine will.
The paranoid sees it as enemy action.
Forever Suffering (Cut-And-Paste God Knowledge)
From private correspondence, simply too good to leave for an audience of one.
If you're hoping to avoid pain and death, you're on a fool's errand. Life is pain and it ends in death. Okay, life isn't JUST pain -- but suffering certainly seems to be a key aspect to it. If you try and shelter yourself from it you wind up either completely unprepared for it when it comes anyway or so dissatisfied with your safety that like the Buddha you reject the whole concept of safety and declare all of existence to be an illusion.
I am also reminded of an old Sufi tale about this sage on a sea voyage. At some point during the trip the ship hit a really bad storm, and while the boat tipped this way and that, while the seamen were running around barking orders and unrolling sails and bailing out water, while the other passengers were terrified and whimpering and praying, the sage sat in complete serenity. When the crisis passed someone took him to task, asking "How could you stay so calm, knowing that the only thing between you and a watery grave was a thin plank of wood?" And he responded, "I was able to remain calm by reflecting that, at many times, even on the land, there has been far less between me and death." We are all of us at all times living in the shadow of the valley of death.
I knew a kid, my age, he was coming back from vacation summer after 6th grade. He unbuckled his seatbelt for a moment to turn and say something to his cousin in the backseat and at that moment someone hit them. Everyone else survived, he died in his mother's arms on the side of the road. A kid younger than me, one of my cousin's friends, out of the blue dropped dead at 15. Turns out he had some heart defect no one knew about.
I think the healthiest way to handle the idea that terrible things happen is to accept it. You can try to ignore it but still the horrors slip in like a thief through an unlocked window. You can embrace it and spread it, be a monster -- but to what end? You can despair and see that all of life is misery and give up. Or you can accept it as an aspect of life, see it for what it is, and use it to measure the rest of your time. Enjoy what you have because it could be taken at literally any moment.
It's like this: the world is a horrible place. When we came up, the last time we actually evolved, there was nowhere we were safe. There were giant animals everywhere that would catch us and eat us if we strayed from the pack, if we moved too far from the fire. Huge cats and wolves and wild hogs and giant bears and snakes -- watch the middle five hours of the Peter Jackson King Kong and you will realize that all these giant monster animals fears are almost an encoded race memory from a time when things like that almost actually existed. And, over time, we have shone the light of civilization, beat back the threat of bloody nature, "red in tooth and claw." Now when you hear about a giant animal killing a human it is probably an escaped zoo animal or the guy was some nut who tried to live with the bears. It's just not the same anymore. But somehow the state of fear and terror of the external world never left us even as we defeated most of the external world, and today we need to have just as much fear and terror, only it's almost all towards other humans and their artifacts and their actions. For better or worse we live in the world that the humans built, and maybe one day they will realize this and opt to change it into one with less need for fear and terror. This is, I believe, simply the way evolution works as we move from an animal's awareness to the awareness of whatever we will eventually become. Man is a bridge between the ape and the superman, a bridge stretched over the abyss, as Nietzsche said, and it is this abyss that you are attempting to come to terms with.
Good luck, kid, you're gonna need it.
If you're hoping to avoid pain and death, you're on a fool's errand. Life is pain and it ends in death. Okay, life isn't JUST pain -- but suffering certainly seems to be a key aspect to it. If you try and shelter yourself from it you wind up either completely unprepared for it when it comes anyway or so dissatisfied with your safety that like the Buddha you reject the whole concept of safety and declare all of existence to be an illusion.
I am also reminded of an old Sufi tale about this sage on a sea voyage. At some point during the trip the ship hit a really bad storm, and while the boat tipped this way and that, while the seamen were running around barking orders and unrolling sails and bailing out water, while the other passengers were terrified and whimpering and praying, the sage sat in complete serenity. When the crisis passed someone took him to task, asking "How could you stay so calm, knowing that the only thing between you and a watery grave was a thin plank of wood?" And he responded, "I was able to remain calm by reflecting that, at many times, even on the land, there has been far less between me and death." We are all of us at all times living in the shadow of the valley of death.
I knew a kid, my age, he was coming back from vacation summer after 6th grade. He unbuckled his seatbelt for a moment to turn and say something to his cousin in the backseat and at that moment someone hit them. Everyone else survived, he died in his mother's arms on the side of the road. A kid younger than me, one of my cousin's friends, out of the blue dropped dead at 15. Turns out he had some heart defect no one knew about.
I think the healthiest way to handle the idea that terrible things happen is to accept it. You can try to ignore it but still the horrors slip in like a thief through an unlocked window. You can embrace it and spread it, be a monster -- but to what end? You can despair and see that all of life is misery and give up. Or you can accept it as an aspect of life, see it for what it is, and use it to measure the rest of your time. Enjoy what you have because it could be taken at literally any moment.
It's like this: the world is a horrible place. When we came up, the last time we actually evolved, there was nowhere we were safe. There were giant animals everywhere that would catch us and eat us if we strayed from the pack, if we moved too far from the fire. Huge cats and wolves and wild hogs and giant bears and snakes -- watch the middle five hours of the Peter Jackson King Kong and you will realize that all these giant monster animals fears are almost an encoded race memory from a time when things like that almost actually existed. And, over time, we have shone the light of civilization, beat back the threat of bloody nature, "red in tooth and claw." Now when you hear about a giant animal killing a human it is probably an escaped zoo animal or the guy was some nut who tried to live with the bears. It's just not the same anymore. But somehow the state of fear and terror of the external world never left us even as we defeated most of the external world, and today we need to have just as much fear and terror, only it's almost all towards other humans and their artifacts and their actions. For better or worse we live in the world that the humans built, and maybe one day they will realize this and opt to change it into one with less need for fear and terror. This is, I believe, simply the way evolution works as we move from an animal's awareness to the awareness of whatever we will eventually become. Man is a bridge between the ape and the superman, a bridge stretched over the abyss, as Nietzsche said, and it is this abyss that you are attempting to come to terms with.
Good luck, kid, you're gonna need it.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Ye Olde Book Of Nanopoetry
sometime between 1999 and 2004:
consequences
i came to the fork in the road and paused
“you’ll never take me alive,” i said
the road replied “you’re already mine”
editorial
how did i get so
damn self-conscious
counting out the syllables and
cursing all the words
the exile
i am an exile on the moon
but the sun is brighter here
fireworks
we never let the sun go down
for fear of what we have hidden in darkness
flaw
a lousy magician
I explain how my tricks work
before i perform them
footnote to the apocalypse
i'm waiting for the waters to come
but armageddon's never this quarter
the information age
inundated with stories
we expect our lives to become one
insult to injury
we're civilized now
we only slaughter dreams
instead of people
ivory tower
and i have watched
as those who have dared to love
have been crucified
the king is dead, long live the king
nothing ever changes
except the innocence
progress in the age of human mortality
inspire.
expire.
repeat.
revisionism
the past is prologue
written in stone
come down off your mountain and smash the tablets
untitled
if wishes were commas
my life would be a run-on sentence
consequences
i came to the fork in the road and paused
“you’ll never take me alive,” i said
the road replied “you’re already mine”
editorial
how did i get so
damn self-conscious
counting out the syllables and
cursing all the words
the exile
i am an exile on the moon
but the sun is brighter here
fireworks
we never let the sun go down
for fear of what we have hidden in darkness
flaw
a lousy magician
I explain how my tricks work
before i perform them
footnote to the apocalypse
i'm waiting for the waters to come
but armageddon's never this quarter
the information age
inundated with stories
we expect our lives to become one
insult to injury
we're civilized now
we only slaughter dreams
instead of people
ivory tower
and i have watched
as those who have dared to love
have been crucified
the king is dead, long live the king
nothing ever changes
except the innocence
progress in the age of human mortality
inspire.
expire.
repeat.
revisionism
the past is prologue
written in stone
come down off your mountain and smash the tablets
untitled
if wishes were commas
my life would be a run-on sentence
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The 9-11 Al-Qaeda Mixtape (A Work In Progress)
"An Experiment In Terror" by Henry Mancini
"Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller Band
"Mmm Skyscraper I Love You" by Underworld
"It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls
"Hijack" by Thunderball
"Flying High" by Country Joe And The Fish
"Pentagon Afternoon" by Frank Zappa
"Empires Collapse" by Cop Shoot Cop
...and then I ran out of ideas.
Send hate mail and death threats to ndotrogers@gmail.com
UPDATE:
"Leaving On A Jet Plane" by John Denver
courtesy of Attila, the King of Beacon!
"Cities In Dust" by Siouxsie & The Banshees
"The Horror" by RJD2
"Black Box Recording" by Firewater
courtesy of Charlie Rogers!
"911 Is A Joke" by Public Enemy
courtesy my brain, days after it would have been funny!
"Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller Band
"Mmm Skyscraper I Love You" by Underworld
"It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls
"Hijack" by Thunderball
"Flying High" by Country Joe And The Fish
"Pentagon Afternoon" by Frank Zappa
"Empires Collapse" by Cop Shoot Cop
...and then I ran out of ideas.
Send hate mail and death threats to ndotrogers@gmail.com
UPDATE:
"Leaving On A Jet Plane" by John Denver
courtesy of Attila, the King of Beacon!
"Cities In Dust" by Siouxsie & The Banshees
"The Horror" by RJD2
"Black Box Recording" by Firewater
courtesy of Charlie Rogers!
"911 Is A Joke" by Public Enemy
courtesy my brain, days after it would have been funny!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
They Still Can't Download Buildings
So if you're planning on being an artist or creator in the 21st century but don't want to have your works passed around on the internet, architecture looks like it's going to be a pretty safe bet for the time being. Music, books, movies, television, comics, software -- they can download the hell out of those. But not buildings. Not yet.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
God Grows Up: An Interpretation Of The Judeo-Christian Mystery God Based On Scripture And Armchair Psychology
When you read the Old Testament God is a whiny spoiled brat demanding that His toys give Him attention and follow His every rule, and if He's not happy with the way it turns out He will just flood it out and make new toys.
Then by the time of the New Testament, God is a teenager. He gets all angsty, comes to Earth as a dude with long hair, preaches about love and tolerance like any idealistic adolescent would, but at the same time He gets mad and starts knocking over the money-changer's tables. He curses a fig tree. Tantrums. Then his toys kill Him, acting out His teenage emo self-destructive fantasies.
Today God is an adult, all grown up, and he's finally realized that the only thing he can do with us is leave us alone and let us find our own path. That's how come God directly interfered in human affairs seemingly every five minutes in the Old Testament, then He came to Earth manifested as a human in the New Testament, and now no one has heard from him since. Except for the occasional odd-ball. Or schizophrenic.
Then by the time of the New Testament, God is a teenager. He gets all angsty, comes to Earth as a dude with long hair, preaches about love and tolerance like any idealistic adolescent would, but at the same time He gets mad and starts knocking over the money-changer's tables. He curses a fig tree. Tantrums. Then his toys kill Him, acting out His teenage emo self-destructive fantasies.
Today God is an adult, all grown up, and he's finally realized that the only thing he can do with us is leave us alone and let us find our own path. That's how come God directly interfered in human affairs seemingly every five minutes in the Old Testament, then He came to Earth manifested as a human in the New Testament, and now no one has heard from him since. Except for the occasional odd-ball. Or schizophrenic.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
A Bonus Track: Pissing In The Stream Of Consciousness
The CEBP week 9 assignment had us writing a few pages of stream of consciousness and then remixing it. My heavily remixed -- and frankly, much better -- version can be found in Heroes And Hierophants, here as a historical oddity is the original, dated 3-1-9:
PISSING IN THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Original Mix)
Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to write stream of consciousness? I type so much slower than I think and by the time I have travelled a thought to its conclusion my fingers have begun to stumble over the keys and it all comes to a screeching halt, the train of thought has slammed on its brakes so I can fix the typo and begin again and then what? Where was I? I am lost and confused and don’t know what I was writing. Reread the beginning. Any ideas? Only that this whole thing is ridiculous. I hate stream of consciousness. Pause, hit pipe. I hate stream of consciousness. This is all a fraud anyway. I am not writing everything that goes through my head. Worse, I am editing it as I go along. Some would say, screw the typos, fix ‘em at the end. I can’t. The typos, they sing to me, siren little songs of woe and despair, they are like blinking red neon dots on the screen. I must fix the typos, they are like errors in the genetic code, bringing only monstrosity and death to the table. Do you understand what I am getting at here? I am trying the best I can to get through this assignment and it is going to be really difficult. I’d rather pontificate about something profound. “In the future we will all be silver shiny bodies of intelligent nanospores, a hive-mind Godling transforming the universe into the One Mind it already was, is now, and ever shall be. World without end.” “In the future we will taste the succulent karma-free shrimp and float in the space between outer space and cyberspace.” “In the future Dippin’ Dots will be called the Ice Cream Of The Present.” I can see the future, you know. It says so on my business card. That means it’s true! I love to be profound. But instead I am writing stream of consciousness, excluding this sentence which I went back and inserted later to express a thought I had but forgot to write down. No doubt while fixing a typo. Also, I am multitasking. “No. But I thought I remembered seeing it somewhere.” I just said that in a chat with a friend. What chat? What friend? Only time will tell and if you know time you realize that since time is an abstract concept it is incapable of verbal communication. So there! Also, time is an illusion. Which means that when I go back and edit this in the future, it will really be the present I am writing of now. Which means there is no editing at all. All writing is stream of consciousness, written out four-dimensionally and looping back in over itself. Everything is happening nowhere all at one. It’s a metaphor for God, clumsy words prefiguring the transcendent deity that no words can speak of. But is behind every syllable.
Pause. Start over. I just deleted an entire line of text. Is that stream of consciousness? My stream said to edit over the last line and I followed it and did. A technicality? Of course. I love technicalities. Live my life based on them. Only live at all because of a technicality here or there. Pause. Start over. “Write a two-page story where Peter Gabriel is being tortured and murdered.” I wrote stream of consciousness once. Edited out the superfluous hyphens. This was during a period I called my Mad Poet Period. I was doing a lot of nitrous oxide at the time. I was also smoking a bit of PCP. Not nearly enough, actually. I remember this one night I had smoked dust and I was watching A Fistful Of Dollars and I was imagining these lizard-like beings rising out of the white mud and building cities. I guess you had to be there. So, weird drugs, stream of consciousness, Mad Poet Period. It’s all in my book. For sale wherever those sorts of thing are sold. And also from the trunk of my car. Shameless plug. Filler space. Edited out the superfluous hyphens. Is this what you’re hoping for? To open up the door to randomness and let God walk through? I am anti-randomness. I am editing as I type. I am crafting the sentence three from now as I type this one. I backspace over mis-steps and pull them from their space in time. Time is an illusion. I would edit the Akashic Records if I had the time. But time is an illusion. Repetition. Hypnotism. You are getting sleepy. The sound of the teakettle is pure Americana. I don’t even know why I typed that. I had a story once I started and it began with that line. Then my hard drive crashed. I lost it. It was unfinished and never had its chance to shine and now it’s as if it never was. No trace. But I remember that line. Like 9-11. Never forget.
Backspace, backspace, return. I already decided how I am going to end this piece. I have the perfect ending line. Does that mean I can’t use it? It’s not stream of consciousness. I mean, it was just now when I thought of it, but it has already stripped into the pre-manufactured as I write about it now. By the end it will be schemed, planned, pre-meditated. Hatched. So should I give up a great ending because I thought of it before the end? Half the time I come up with the ending line before I write the essay. I wrote this essay about how they’re tearing the woods down in my backyard and I came up with the last line a full day before I wrote the rest of it down. A metaphor for God, the omega point that casts shadows backwards in time and those shadows are us. I am a metaphor. What’s the point of an ending line when this is to be mixed up anyway? The point is the point of being a craftsman at all. I am writing this now. It must be able to stand up on its own. Stream of consciousness or no.
I started writing this yesterday. Not this, but an attempt at the same thing. I got interrupted, I had to put it down. By the time I picked it back up I was too far removed from that stream of consciousness – you might say I had detoured down a tributary and been dumped back in the great untamed ocean of my mind. Pause to look up the word tributary. Does it mean what I think it means? Close enough. So today I sat down, angrily, and began typing. Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to write stream of consciousness?
Period.
PISSING IN THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Original Mix)
Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to write stream of consciousness? I type so much slower than I think and by the time I have travelled a thought to its conclusion my fingers have begun to stumble over the keys and it all comes to a screeching halt, the train of thought has slammed on its brakes so I can fix the typo and begin again and then what? Where was I? I am lost and confused and don’t know what I was writing. Reread the beginning. Any ideas? Only that this whole thing is ridiculous. I hate stream of consciousness. Pause, hit pipe. I hate stream of consciousness. This is all a fraud anyway. I am not writing everything that goes through my head. Worse, I am editing it as I go along. Some would say, screw the typos, fix ‘em at the end. I can’t. The typos, they sing to me, siren little songs of woe and despair, they are like blinking red neon dots on the screen. I must fix the typos, they are like errors in the genetic code, bringing only monstrosity and death to the table. Do you understand what I am getting at here? I am trying the best I can to get through this assignment and it is going to be really difficult. I’d rather pontificate about something profound. “In the future we will all be silver shiny bodies of intelligent nanospores, a hive-mind Godling transforming the universe into the One Mind it already was, is now, and ever shall be. World without end.” “In the future we will taste the succulent karma-free shrimp and float in the space between outer space and cyberspace.” “In the future Dippin’ Dots will be called the Ice Cream Of The Present.” I can see the future, you know. It says so on my business card. That means it’s true! I love to be profound. But instead I am writing stream of consciousness, excluding this sentence which I went back and inserted later to express a thought I had but forgot to write down. No doubt while fixing a typo. Also, I am multitasking. “No. But I thought I remembered seeing it somewhere.” I just said that in a chat with a friend. What chat? What friend? Only time will tell and if you know time you realize that since time is an abstract concept it is incapable of verbal communication. So there! Also, time is an illusion. Which means that when I go back and edit this in the future, it will really be the present I am writing of now. Which means there is no editing at all. All writing is stream of consciousness, written out four-dimensionally and looping back in over itself. Everything is happening nowhere all at one. It’s a metaphor for God, clumsy words prefiguring the transcendent deity that no words can speak of. But is behind every syllable.
Pause. Start over. I just deleted an entire line of text. Is that stream of consciousness? My stream said to edit over the last line and I followed it and did. A technicality? Of course. I love technicalities. Live my life based on them. Only live at all because of a technicality here or there. Pause. Start over. “Write a two-page story where Peter Gabriel is being tortured and murdered.” I wrote stream of consciousness once. Edited out the superfluous hyphens. This was during a period I called my Mad Poet Period. I was doing a lot of nitrous oxide at the time. I was also smoking a bit of PCP. Not nearly enough, actually. I remember this one night I had smoked dust and I was watching A Fistful Of Dollars and I was imagining these lizard-like beings rising out of the white mud and building cities. I guess you had to be there. So, weird drugs, stream of consciousness, Mad Poet Period. It’s all in my book. For sale wherever those sorts of thing are sold. And also from the trunk of my car. Shameless plug. Filler space. Edited out the superfluous hyphens. Is this what you’re hoping for? To open up the door to randomness and let God walk through? I am anti-randomness. I am editing as I type. I am crafting the sentence three from now as I type this one. I backspace over mis-steps and pull them from their space in time. Time is an illusion. I would edit the Akashic Records if I had the time. But time is an illusion. Repetition. Hypnotism. You are getting sleepy. The sound of the teakettle is pure Americana. I don’t even know why I typed that. I had a story once I started and it began with that line. Then my hard drive crashed. I lost it. It was unfinished and never had its chance to shine and now it’s as if it never was. No trace. But I remember that line. Like 9-11. Never forget.
Backspace, backspace, return. I already decided how I am going to end this piece. I have the perfect ending line. Does that mean I can’t use it? It’s not stream of consciousness. I mean, it was just now when I thought of it, but it has already stripped into the pre-manufactured as I write about it now. By the end it will be schemed, planned, pre-meditated. Hatched. So should I give up a great ending because I thought of it before the end? Half the time I come up with the ending line before I write the essay. I wrote this essay about how they’re tearing the woods down in my backyard and I came up with the last line a full day before I wrote the rest of it down. A metaphor for God, the omega point that casts shadows backwards in time and those shadows are us. I am a metaphor. What’s the point of an ending line when this is to be mixed up anyway? The point is the point of being a craftsman at all. I am writing this now. It must be able to stand up on its own. Stream of consciousness or no.
I started writing this yesterday. Not this, but an attempt at the same thing. I got interrupted, I had to put it down. By the time I picked it back up I was too far removed from that stream of consciousness – you might say I had detoured down a tributary and been dumped back in the great untamed ocean of my mind. Pause to look up the word tributary. Does it mean what I think it means? Close enough. So today I sat down, angrily, and began typing. Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to write stream of consciousness?
Period.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The Ground Zero Mosque Thing, or, "Wait, No, Really?"
- Adrian Veidt
Okay. So let me make sure I understand this now. I'm a little slow on the uptake and I try not to pay attention to the news because it's a bit like being trapped in the primate house at the zoo. So bear with me as I recreate the facts here. Apparently, like ten years ago, certain elements, certain people who proclaimed to follow a specific religion, committed a devastating terrorist attack in New York City. I think maybe it happened in October or something? September? I'm a little hazy on the details. Now today, or recently rather, or whatever, some people that follow that same specific religion want to set up a place of worship two blocks away from where this attack happened. And there's some sort of controversy about this. Do I have the facts right? Good. So now we leave the world of facts and enter the world of opinions. And in my opinion this whole thing is ridiculous. No, I take that back. An elephant fucking a dachshund is ridiculous. I don't know what the fuck this is.
When I sat down to write this I was going to get all eloquent and explain in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington Jimmy Stewart style why this is the dumbest fucking controversy EVARRRR but the fact is I don't have the patience or the attention span, so instead here is another classic numbered list of bullet points.
- "Muslim" does not equal "terrorist."
Follow me through this cipher, folks. Same way "Christian" does not equal "Inquisitioner."Same way "American" does not equal "Stupid fat fuck." Yes, there have been Muslim terrorists. Bad scene. Don't approve. There have also been non-Muslim terrorists. Which brings us to number two...
- Timothy McVeigh was a Catholic
But if they were putting a cathedral a block away from the Alfred P. Murrah building, these same assholes talking about how "insensitive" and "bad taste" this mosque is wouldn't be making one fucking peep. Almost like the whole thing is a smokescreen for some stupid American fat fucks to display their racism and xenophobia without overtly branding themselves as stupid fat racist fucks.
- The First Amendment
Guarantees the right to worship. There is no asterisk after "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" that says "unless it's the same religion some terrorists claimed to follow." And do you know who wrote the First Amendment? The Founding Fathers. It is central to American values, so central to American values that you really can't have the one without the other. It'd be like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with no bread. If you do not like the First Amendment, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY COUNTRY. If you want to live somewhere where there's no state-protected freedom of worship, maybe move to Iran, you unAmerican piece of shit.
- George W Bush said that the terrorists hate our freedoms.
So if you hate our freedoms, you're a terrorist. Q.E.D.
- I don't even understand why we have to waste our time on this.
I don't. Seriously. There are people dying out there. There are people starving, people suffering from illnesses that haven't been cured yet, people suffering from illnesses that could be cured but they can't afford it. People are in prison unjustly. People are being raped. People are being robbed. ACTUAL shit that ACTUALLY causes people to ACTUALLY suffer ACTUAL loss. And we're worried about whether or not a mosque is going to be "sensitive" or not?
- History is going to mock us for this shit.
Remember when we studied the Salem witch trials, or "Irish Need Not Apply," or the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II? We look back at that kind of stuff and we shake our heads. It's hard to believe people back then could be so narrow-minded, so trapped in their own tiny flatland world-views, so constrained by their own petty prejudices and biases. THIS IS EXACTLY HOW FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL LOOK AT THIS. Me, always unfashionably ahead of my time, I already look at it that way now.
- Wait, no... seriously?
What the fuck does a mosque have to do with 9-11? Even if it IS insensitive, which I dispute, so the fuck what? Who gave you the right to go through life without having your feelings hurt or your sensibilities offended? Because believe me, if we were going to suspend Constitutional rights based on what I find offensive or insensitive, most of you would be spending the rest of your life in prison. But in a sane and just society, it takes a lot more than personal whim, even the personal whim of the majority, to upset the basic rule of law. So basically if you disagree fuck off and die.
- Newt Gingrich is a fucking moron.
I find it amazing that I should even have to point that out in this day and age. I find it amazing that Newt Gingrich is even still around or that people pay him any mind at all. But Newt Gingrich is a fucking moron. I know dude was like a college professor and he wrote some really awful novels so maybe he's not a retard but he is definitely a moron. I have an article here where he says that building a mosque by Ground Zero "would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” Except that it's actually nothing like that at all. You fucking moron. See, the Nazis were a specific group of people that specifically brought about the Holocaust. Muslims are a wide group of people, of all kinds, around the world -- some of whom specifically brought about the World Trade Center attacks. (I will avoid any Loose Change style debate on this point for the time being.) So really the proper analogy, Newt -- and seriously, what the fuck kind of name is Newt anyway? It's a lizard! -- would be like opening up a bratwurst stand next to the Holocaust Museum. Get it? You fucking moron? Because not all Germans are Nazis, and not all Muslims are terrorists. Note that I avoid the "You automatically lose the debate when you bring up the Nazis" argument, because....
- I'm Bringing Up The Nazis
Know who else didn't approve of free religious worship? I'm just saying.
- The Other Mosque
Did you know there's another mosque within spitting distance of Ground Zero? Been there since the seventies. Been there since before the World Trade Center was even put up in the first place, let alone knocked down. Now that's neither here nor there, the point is, there's been a mosque real close to the World Trade Center this whole time, and not one of you stupid fat fucks noticed or cared or worried about its "sensitivity" or whatever. So even if the argument made any sense (which it doesn't) it still wouldn't make any sense because THERE'S BEEN A MOSQUE IN THE AREA THE WHOLE TIME and no one made a big deal about it. Know why the rest of the world stereotypes Americans as a bunch of rude and ignorant fat-asses? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WE ARE. Or rather, what you are. I barely even consider myself an American at this point.
- Stop the world, I want to get off
Instead of building a mosque next to Ground Zero, let's build a big space ship instead. Actually, it doesn't need to be that big. It really only needs to carry me. I am willing to concede this world to the rest of you stupid fat fucks. I can roam around the galaxy in search of higher intelligence, and you guys can call me when the Dark Ages are over. I'll be with Bill Hicks, waiting at the finish line. Chirp, chirp.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Parents lie, teachers lie, but Uncle Noelie will never lie to you.
Kids:
Adults will tell you that lying is wrong. They will probably even chastise and/or punish you for lying if you are dumb enough to get caught at it. But, as you may already know, adults lie to you all the time. Ever hear the one about the fat man in the red suit at the North Pole? Or the giant bunny with the basket of chocolate eggs? Odds are, yes. So you might be feeling a bit confused when you realize that adults are lying all the time. You might think that they are awful hypocrites who aren't fit to be the authority figures they have imposed themselves as. The truth is, you'd be right. The truth is, lying isn't wrong. Lying is a crucial part of adult life. They lie to others and they lie to themselves. All the time. The only reason adults don't want you to lie is because allowing that would threaten their monopoly on falsehood.
Adults will tell you that lying is wrong. They will probably even chastise and/or punish you for lying if you are dumb enough to get caught at it. But, as you may already know, adults lie to you all the time. Ever hear the one about the fat man in the red suit at the North Pole? Or the giant bunny with the basket of chocolate eggs? Odds are, yes. So you might be feeling a bit confused when you realize that adults are lying all the time. You might think that they are awful hypocrites who aren't fit to be the authority figures they have imposed themselves as. The truth is, you'd be right. The truth is, lying isn't wrong. Lying is a crucial part of adult life. They lie to others and they lie to themselves. All the time. The only reason adults don't want you to lie is because allowing that would threaten their monopoly on falsehood.
Monday, July 5, 2010
The Saga Of Forgotten Space Baby
Forgotten Space-Baby was once a baby named Alex. One day his mother took him the Baby Trade Shop and traded him for another baby that was eight feet tall. This baby was also named Alex. His mom liked him because he was eight feet tall and could reach things for her. She forgot all about her original son. The now nameless baby cried and cried and cried, and nobody else wanted to trade him, so finally the Baby Trade Shop launched him into outer space. Up there he gained incredible space powers and became Forgotten Space-Baby, legend of five galaxies. Now he is on a quest to return to Earth, to get back to his family. But first he must defeat nefarious space villains such as the Skeleton Family, or the evil Dr. Trap. Will he ever make it back to Earth? Will he be able to replace the eight-foot baby Alex and regain his mother's love? Will he get assistance along the way from his long lost father, Forgotten Space-Dad?
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Independent Of The Facts
Here's something you might not know: In terms of our independence, July 4th is an almost completely meaningless date. It wasn't the day the Declaration of Independence was ratified -- that was July 2nd. It wasn't the day the Declaration of Independence was signed -- that was in August. It certainly wasn't the day this country actually became independent -- we still had to win a war to achieve that. As near as I can tell, the only thing special about July 4th is that it's the day the text of the Declaration was finalized -- which might make it a memorable day for proofreaders and editors but otherwise has little to no bearing on our actual independence.
So.. what's so special about the fourth of July? Why do we celebrate this basically meaningless day? Um. Because we always have? Geez Noel, did you need a better reason than that?
So.. what's so special about the fourth of July? Why do we celebrate this basically meaningless day? Um. Because we always have? Geez Noel, did you need a better reason than that?
Monday, June 21, 2010
Meditations On A Wound
I recently cut myself. Not in the goth emo teenager way. It was an accident. With a razor blade. An inch-long incision on the side of my thumb in an almost straight line. Oops.
Anyway. I cut myself. It was like a week ago. Since then I have watched it slowly heal, felt the skin itch as it re-knits itself together. And it made me remember something I don't often think about -- that my body is actually an intelligent colony of organic nanotechnology.
Presumably, so is yours -- except for the "intelligent" part.
Anyway. I cut myself. It was like a week ago. Since then I have watched it slowly heal, felt the skin itch as it re-knits itself together. And it made me remember something I don't often think about -- that my body is actually an intelligent colony of organic nanotechnology.
Presumably, so is yours -- except for the "intelligent" part.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The Human-Created World
In the beginning we did not live in a world of our own creation. Oh, sure, we were already the masters that made the grass green: we always lived in the world created by our own nervous systems, but the external world was not yet of human creation but the world we inherited from geological and biological development. This seems like it should be obvious but it is worth keeping in mind because today we live in a world that is almost entirely of human creation. This ranges from the obvious, like technology and infrastructure and money and domesticated animals; to the subtler such as the languages that constrain and control our thought processes. And sure, I know that there's still a lot we don't control, like the weather and microbes; and much of the ocean remains a mystery and... uh, that's basically it. For better or worse, we inhabit the world we made for ourselves.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The Realest Shit I Ever Wrote
But I don't mean to play the blues
not complaining
just explaining
how it is I paid my dues
all the years I was in pain, confused
in tears, ashamed
that life's a game
and I'm afraid to lose
so I don't need respect or sympathy
they don't mean shit to me
I'm only here to stay amused...
not complaining
just explaining
how it is I paid my dues
all the years I was in pain, confused
in tears, ashamed
that life's a game
and I'm afraid to lose
so I don't need respect or sympathy
they don't mean shit to me
I'm only here to stay amused...
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Divining The Future: The Patron Saint Of Nanomachines?
The hard part of being a futurist is in seeing angles to the future that have not already been explored. For instance, take nanomachines. Everyone by now basically knows about nanomachines. There's been all sorts of uses and mentions in popular culture, in speculative fiction, and so forth. At this point, just about every angle of nanomachines has been covered. Possible beneficial uses. Possible harmful or detrimental uses. Use in space travel. Use in medicine. Use in warfare. Use in sex. The ever-looming possibility of the Gray Goo Apocalypse. Every angle is covered.
Except... who will be the patron saint of nanomachines? Think about it. The Catholic Church has a patron saint for EVERYTHING. Not just the obvious stuff like lovers and doctors and lost causes and children and so forth, but crazy modern-era stuff as well. There's a patron saint of the automobile. A patron saint of the Internet. A patron saint of environmentalism. No, I didn't make that up. There's even a patron saint of astronauts. Seems like every time some new thing comes along, before long those kooky Catholics are making some poor dead bastard the patron saint of it. So who will be the patron saint of nanomachines? Inquiring minds want to know. Here's a few possibilities I've narrowed it down to:
Except... who will be the patron saint of nanomachines? Think about it. The Catholic Church has a patron saint for EVERYTHING. Not just the obvious stuff like lovers and doctors and lost causes and children and so forth, but crazy modern-era stuff as well. There's a patron saint of the automobile. A patron saint of the Internet. A patron saint of environmentalism. No, I didn't make that up. There's even a patron saint of astronauts. Seems like every time some new thing comes along, before long those kooky Catholics are making some poor dead bastard the patron saint of it. So who will be the patron saint of nanomachines? Inquiring minds want to know. Here's a few possibilities I've narrowed it down to:
- Saint Albertus Magnus
Albertus Magnus, or Albert The Great for those who fell asleep in Latin class, is the patron saint of science, which makes him a fairly plausible contender for patron saint of the future science of nanotechnology. He is also the patron saint of philosophers, schoolchildren, and apparently, Cincinnati, Ohio. I wish I could have rewritten that last sentence with less commas. - Saint Isidore of Seville
Isidore is the patron saint of the Internet, which is a pretty neat trick as he only died about 1300 years before Al Gore invented it. But I suppose it's just that kind of transcendent and miraculous behavior that gets you made a saint in the first place. More to the point, he is also the patron saint of technology, which is definitely the last four syllables of "nanotechnology." - Saint Thomas the Apostle
Also known as Thomas Didymus or Doubting Thomas, St. Thomas is the patron saint of building and architecture, which definitely describes the actions of nanomachines. They build stuff, on a molecular scale. It's a plausible argument, but feel free to doubt it. - Saint Patrick
Seems I can't write a piece about Catholicism without mentioning Saint Patrick. This time it's because he's the patron saint of engineers, not because of his lame holiday. Moving on... - Rebekah
This is super sketchy. First, Rebekah is one of those Old Testament characters that was ret-conned into being a saint ex post facto by the Catholic Church. Second, while Wikipedia mentions her as the patron saint of physicists, I can find absolutely zero confirmation of this. She's just on here so the list isn't another sausage fest. - Saint Luke the Evangelist
Only the second guy on this list to have a gospel named after him, Luke is the patron saint of sculptors and surgeons. Somewhere in between those two is nanotech. Also, it says here he's the patron saint of artists, bookbinders, and unmarried men as well. That has no bearing on anything, but I feel better now that I know it. - Saint Pantaleone
Pantaleone is the patron saint of physicians. I just like his name. - A saint to be announced at a later date
Obviously, nanomachines are still something that people are talking about, something that's supposed to happen some day, but not something that has happened yet. Could be the person who will eventually be made the patron saint of nanotechnology hasn't been canonized, beatified or even born yet.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Hypocrisy Is A Necessary Step
In the beginning... well, in the beginning there was no morality, of course. Right and wrong are judgments of a conscious and aware mind, and without any of those around there was no morality. But skip past that. It's not the point.
The point is, that in the beginning there was the path of right action and the path of wrong action. Right is more difficult and less immediately rewarding. Wrong has clear advantages, but it is wrong. In the beginning though we clearly didn't care about the morality of wrong action. Study human history and you will see that it is drenched in blood. Ours, mostly.
Somewhere along the way the predominance of wrong action gives way to the predominance of right action. A necessary step in this transition, this raising of hell into heaven, is the trait where one proclaims the value of right behavior while in fact engaging in wrong behavior. This is hypocrisy. That's another word for this behavior.
And I, for one, have denounced hypocrisy all my life. In me, of course, most of all, because to be a human is to be a hypocrite, so to be a hypocrite who hypocritically denounces hypocrisy is, typical of me, one meta too many. Woe unto ye hypocrites, I would often say as I got my inner Jesus on. Then I realized what I outlined in the paragraphs above. If the evils of the past world are to give way to the utopian paradise of the future, a necessary transitional phase is for most everyone to be the most shameless and awful hypocrites imaginable. Which is kinda where we are now, if you look around you'll see what I mean.
So enjoy it while you can, fuckers. The wheel turns slowly but it does turn.
The point is, that in the beginning there was the path of right action and the path of wrong action. Right is more difficult and less immediately rewarding. Wrong has clear advantages, but it is wrong. In the beginning though we clearly didn't care about the morality of wrong action. Study human history and you will see that it is drenched in blood. Ours, mostly.
Somewhere along the way the predominance of wrong action gives way to the predominance of right action. A necessary step in this transition, this raising of hell into heaven, is the trait where one proclaims the value of right behavior while in fact engaging in wrong behavior. This is hypocrisy. That's another word for this behavior.
And I, for one, have denounced hypocrisy all my life. In me, of course, most of all, because to be a human is to be a hypocrite, so to be a hypocrite who hypocritically denounces hypocrisy is, typical of me, one meta too many. Woe unto ye hypocrites, I would often say as I got my inner Jesus on. Then I realized what I outlined in the paragraphs above. If the evils of the past world are to give way to the utopian paradise of the future, a necessary transitional phase is for most everyone to be the most shameless and awful hypocrites imaginable. Which is kinda where we are now, if you look around you'll see what I mean.
So enjoy it while you can, fuckers. The wheel turns slowly but it does turn.
A Riff On Nostradamus
They say Nostradamus was such a great seer because he predicted Hitler and some other shit like that. Yeah, a warlord is going to conquer some shit... THAT's a risky prediction to make. If Nostradamus was really seeing the future he should have predicted the iPod. But he didn't. That's okay, I didn't predict the iPod either and it happened in my lifetime. I'm just saying.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Some Random Jewels
- "The thing is, and I think it is important to hold onto this thought, that humanity is so far away from its ultimate destiny that everything that is happening right now, EVERYTHING, is wholly irrelevant. Think about the trials and tribulations of the early Cro-Magnons and how much of an impact it has on your life. That's how much all the fucked-up shit happening now will matter in the post-human, post-Earth future."
- "People invent governments for the same reason they invent gods -- because they are too lazy and too chickenshit to take responsibility for their own lives and destinies."
Sunday, March 7, 2010
If I Wasn't So Lazy
People tell me that I'm lazy. I tell them that they're lucky.
If I wasn't so lazy. With this much hatred towards the world, if I ever got off my ass it would be to tear the whole damned thing down. Or die trying. I joke that I am a bomb-throwing anarchist. The reason that it is a joke, and I am not actually out there throwing bombs, is because I am too lazy. It is easier to get high and play video games, to sit in my bathrobe and catch up on 60 years of comics continuity, to invent schemes and scams I will never actually get around to setting in motion.
People are kept in line, kept from actively attempting to overturn the staus quo, by certain socially-implanted barriers. The fear of ostracism. The fear of punishment. The fear of death. These barriers mean nothing to me. I have been ostracized all my life. There's something missing inside and I ultimately don't really care what happens to me. I have already been willing to risk -- at various times -- jobs, relationships, my freedom, my life, all solely in the pursuit of making trivial and petty points. It gives me satisfaction to make a point. It's pretty easy to imagine how over-the-top I would extend that characterization if I had a cause or a belief that I gave a shit about.
If I could actualize my vision, transform my delusions of grandiosity into just plain grandiosity, I could be a great and terrible monster.
If I wasn't so lazy.
If I wasn't so lazy. With this much hatred towards the world, if I ever got off my ass it would be to tear the whole damned thing down. Or die trying. I joke that I am a bomb-throwing anarchist. The reason that it is a joke, and I am not actually out there throwing bombs, is because I am too lazy. It is easier to get high and play video games, to sit in my bathrobe and catch up on 60 years of comics continuity, to invent schemes and scams I will never actually get around to setting in motion.
People are kept in line, kept from actively attempting to overturn the staus quo, by certain socially-implanted barriers. The fear of ostracism. The fear of punishment. The fear of death. These barriers mean nothing to me. I have been ostracized all my life. There's something missing inside and I ultimately don't really care what happens to me. I have already been willing to risk -- at various times -- jobs, relationships, my freedom, my life, all solely in the pursuit of making trivial and petty points. It gives me satisfaction to make a point. It's pretty easy to imagine how over-the-top I would extend that characterization if I had a cause or a belief that I gave a shit about.
If I could actualize my vision, transform my delusions of grandiosity into just plain grandiosity, I could be a great and terrible monster.
If I wasn't so lazy.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Happy No Presidents Day!
Today is No Presidents Day. Today we commemorate the day 161 years ago that there was no President of the United States for one day.
Sunday, March 4th, 1849. That was the day that James Polk's term as President expired, and his successor Zachary Taylor refused to take the oath of office on a Sunday, the Sabbath. And yes, while you and I know that Sunday is the Lord's Day, not the Sabbath, cast your mind back to the simpler times of 1849. A time when an incoming President would be willing to throw the entire country into anarchy for a day just to be freakishly faithful to an already antiquated religion. One day we'll have a President that isn't a Christian and I will declare that a holiday too.
Anyway. March 4th, 1849. Zachary Taylor, afraid to anger the God that would strike him down a year later anyway, refused to take the oath of office. James Polk's term had expired. Millard Fillmore, his vice-president, likewise didn't take office. So who was President? The legend is that David Rice Atchison, President pro tempore of the Senate, was President for that day, since he was next in line at the time. But. His term had also expired, and he also never took any oath. So if he wasn't President, who was? I am going to argue quite simply that no one was.
For one day the country had no leader. And everything was fine. No cities burned down in mass looting and orgies. The trains still ran, or at least they would have if they had trains in 1849. Not switching over to Wikipedia to research that one, enough is enough. The point is, for one day the government had no head.
We remember this until it becomes the every day reality.
Sunday, March 4th, 1849. That was the day that James Polk's term as President expired, and his successor Zachary Taylor refused to take the oath of office on a Sunday, the Sabbath. And yes, while you and I know that Sunday is the Lord's Day, not the Sabbath, cast your mind back to the simpler times of 1849. A time when an incoming President would be willing to throw the entire country into anarchy for a day just to be freakishly faithful to an already antiquated religion. One day we'll have a President that isn't a Christian and I will declare that a holiday too.
Anyway. March 4th, 1849. Zachary Taylor, afraid to anger the God that would strike him down a year later anyway, refused to take the oath of office. James Polk's term had expired. Millard Fillmore, his vice-president, likewise didn't take office. So who was President? The legend is that David Rice Atchison, President pro tempore of the Senate, was President for that day, since he was next in line at the time. But. His term had also expired, and he also never took any oath. So if he wasn't President, who was? I am going to argue quite simply that no one was.
For one day the country had no leader. And everything was fine. No cities burned down in mass looting and orgies. The trains still ran, or at least they would have if they had trains in 1849. Not switching over to Wikipedia to research that one, enough is enough. The point is, for one day the government had no head.
We remember this until it becomes the every day reality.
Monday, February 15, 2010
We Are No Threat To The Earth
Get over yourselves. We are not harming the Earth one bit. Let me explain. By "the Earth" you can mean a few things. You might be referring to the actual planet Earth, an astronomical body in orbit around a G-type star. Or you might be referring to the biosphere, that envelops the blue planet like a tapestry of green and red. That line came to me as I was drifting to sleep last night. Regardless, we are no threat to either one.
The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. Don't be fooled by how pretty it is, study how it actually works. The biosphere has stood up to asteroid impact, terrible ice ages, biological plagues, it has taken them and laughed. AND evolved intelligent beings, some of them smug, one of them me typing right now. Yes, it's that kind of piece. The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. It's really a kind of awful game, but it was around long before us, and hopefully in time it will escape planetary confinement and spread. Hopefully in time it won't be such an awful game. But until then, we are no threat to it.
The actual planet itself is a big rock. It doesn't even know we're here. One day the Sun will have heated up to the point where all the liquid on the planet boils off and whatever life is still here will die badly. And then some time after that the Earth's orbit will decay and it will collapse into the red, giant sun. That's the only threat to the Earth. And maybe an impact with a body large enough to crack it in two. When the Earth dies it will die without having had any clue it had intelligent life on it at one point. We are no threat to it.
We will live and die on the Earth, or we will leave the Earth and live forever. Given enough time, we could conceivably develop to the point where our technology has hit the Clarke's Law threshold and we can harness unfathomable power and move planets around at whim. By this point we would definitely be a threat to the Earth, since it would finally be within our power to destroy it. But why would we? That's dumb.
I've slipped around a lot from the rant I heard in my head as I was drifting to sleep. It was in my voice and I'm pretty sure it was me, but I kept trying to sleep and not listen to it, and it kept shouting "Two spheres! There are two spheres!" So this is only the ghost of a rant, and I guess what I am trying to say is this: Screw you, hippies. The Earth is doing fine.
The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. Don't be fooled by how pretty it is, study how it actually works. The biosphere has stood up to asteroid impact, terrible ice ages, biological plagues, it has taken them and laughed. AND evolved intelligent beings, some of them smug, one of them me typing right now. Yes, it's that kind of piece. The biosphere thrives on chaos and devastation. It's really a kind of awful game, but it was around long before us, and hopefully in time it will escape planetary confinement and spread. Hopefully in time it won't be such an awful game. But until then, we are no threat to it.
The actual planet itself is a big rock. It doesn't even know we're here. One day the Sun will have heated up to the point where all the liquid on the planet boils off and whatever life is still here will die badly. And then some time after that the Earth's orbit will decay and it will collapse into the red, giant sun. That's the only threat to the Earth. And maybe an impact with a body large enough to crack it in two. When the Earth dies it will die without having had any clue it had intelligent life on it at one point. We are no threat to it.
We will live and die on the Earth, or we will leave the Earth and live forever. Given enough time, we could conceivably develop to the point where our technology has hit the Clarke's Law threshold and we can harness unfathomable power and move planets around at whim. By this point we would definitely be a threat to the Earth, since it would finally be within our power to destroy it. But why would we? That's dumb.
I've slipped around a lot from the rant I heard in my head as I was drifting to sleep. It was in my voice and I'm pretty sure it was me, but I kept trying to sleep and not listen to it, and it kept shouting "Two spheres! There are two spheres!" So this is only the ghost of a rant, and I guess what I am trying to say is this: Screw you, hippies. The Earth is doing fine.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Life Cycle Of The God-Mind (Made Simple)
The mind of the universe, and how it is experienced, can be broken down as such:
1. The Void
In the beginning there was nothing. A period of darkness and sleep. On a universal scale, this refers to the time before the universe had manifested, or at least before it had manifested consciousness. On a personal scale this refers to the time before you were born, or more accurately, the time before "I" was born.
2. Yin & Yang
The current phase, a period of alternating sleep and wake. Universally this can be interpreted as the imperfect and incomplete manifestation of conscious will over the blind and impersonal forces of random chance. Personally this can be read quite literally: your entire life is periods alternating wake and sleep.
3. The Eye
The Omega Point. The period of pure and total consciousness, the entire universe awake and aware as a single all powerful entity. Waking into this from your life is probably analogous to waking from a dream. For all intents and purposes, this is God. The personal and universal scales are the same.
Except breaking it down into a three-step process implies the existence of time. Problem is, time doesn't really exist, at least not the way we understand it. This leads to the tricky and ineffable part -- somehow step three IS step one, or leads to it, or causes it. Better prophets than I will hopefully explain further.
1. The Void
In the beginning there was nothing. A period of darkness and sleep. On a universal scale, this refers to the time before the universe had manifested, or at least before it had manifested consciousness. On a personal scale this refers to the time before you were born, or more accurately, the time before "I" was born.
2. Yin & Yang
The current phase, a period of alternating sleep and wake. Universally this can be interpreted as the imperfect and incomplete manifestation of conscious will over the blind and impersonal forces of random chance. Personally this can be read quite literally: your entire life is periods alternating wake and sleep.
3. The Eye
The Omega Point. The period of pure and total consciousness, the entire universe awake and aware as a single all powerful entity. Waking into this from your life is probably analogous to waking from a dream. For all intents and purposes, this is God. The personal and universal scales are the same.
Except breaking it down into a three-step process implies the existence of time. Problem is, time doesn't really exist, at least not the way we understand it. This leads to the tricky and ineffable part -- somehow step three IS step one, or leads to it, or causes it. Better prophets than I will hopefully explain further.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
a quick argument against intelligent design
Let's talk for a minute about the maxillary sinuses. Like the rest of the paranasal sinuses, they are hollow areas in the bones of your face. The maxillary in particular are these arrow-head looking hollows behind your cheeks on each side of the nose. These sinuses are lined with mucosa that produce mucus for whatever reason which I am too lazy to look up. The sinuses drain this mucus out of these small passages in the bone called ostia. If for some reason these ostia become inflamed, proper drainage can become blocked and the buildup leads to sinus headaches. Now the maxillary sinuses in particular don't drain right under the best of circumstances, since they only have a single ostium for each, called the "maxillary hiatus," and they are located near the top of the sinuses, as opposed to the bottom where any competent engineer would tell you is the best place to put the drainage pipe. You know, because of gravity. And so forth. So under the best of circumstances they don't drain right, under bad circumstances they don't drain at all. These holes in the cheekbones collect with mucus which in turn collects bacteria or viruses, better known as an infection, which finally leads to a really bad sinus headache. Sort of like the electric agony of a toothache mixed with getting kicked in the balls, except if your balls were behind your nose.
Intelligent design my ass. If sinuses are intelligent design, I'm Leonardo da Vinci.
post-addendum footnote disclaimer: Yes, true believers, I already understand that my scope and vision is too limited to truly understand how the crap design of the maxillary sinuses is completely crucial and consistent with blah blah blah blah blah. You don't need to tell me.
post-post-blah-blah-blah: Also I already know there are plenty of things that post-technological humans can do to alleviate this crap design, from decongestants to irrigation of the nasal canal with that weird teapot looking thing to balloon sinuplasty, and seriously look this last one up if you haven't heard of it. That's not the point.
Intelligent design my ass. If sinuses are intelligent design, I'm Leonardo da Vinci.
post-addendum footnote disclaimer: Yes, true believers, I already understand that my scope and vision is too limited to truly understand how the crap design of the maxillary sinuses is completely crucial and consistent with blah blah blah blah blah. You don't need to tell me.
post-post-blah-blah-blah: Also I already know there are plenty of things that post-technological humans can do to alleviate this crap design, from decongestants to irrigation of the nasal canal with that weird teapot looking thing to balloon sinuplasty, and seriously look this last one up if you haven't heard of it. That's not the point.
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