Stay Out of Vegas

What the problem is is that just now I was walking back across campus and past a dormitory and I saw a sign welcoming back students with the slogan: "What happens at Whittier, stays at Whittier."

Though I always love slogans and aphorisms when they're employed in a way that enhances the general curriculum of a school, like stuff from Shakespeare and some of the more intellectual-type celebrities, like Mr. Rogers, this particular form of slogan makes me want to vomit.

It's all covered up in the filth of Bourgois/Christian culture, where lust is an ephemeral substance that can be unleashed and closed off.  When it's unleashed, this usually occurs in wicked and permissive dens of iniquity, cut off from the good part of the world, in order to conceal the filthy behavior of it's inhabitants.   Why do they want the filth inside these evil places?  One, you gotta keep the evil in cause if it gets out it will jack people up, so if you're gonna release it, do so in an appropriately closed-off area.  Two, the good thing about sin and filth is that, even though your rulers say it's evil, they've also made sure that you want it desperately.

 If what happens in Vegas really does stay there, than why not live there?  You wouldn't want to, because sin must be indulged in moderately, with bourgouis restraint. 
 
Gambling, prostitution, adultery, abnormal sexual inclinations are all products of evil, which is also a substance moving around in the world.  Rather than evil, many people now prefer the substance of 'good/bad choices' and 'appropriateness.'

Living in this world of different forces pulling, pushing and embracing you.  Even though when you step aside you can only feel the wind, which rarely gets strong enough to do anything to you but make you feel a little fresh or cold.

NON-FICTION: A Mystery of Eternal Revulsion

In keeping with fair standards of conversation, I can tell you that Cartoon Yourself websites allow the users to experiment with their self understanding and their perception of other people.

But this just creeps the shit out of me, no matter how many times I see it:



Look at the faces, one by one.  What I feel is revulsion, physical, my heart rate and blood pressure seem to elevate, preparing for battle against this moral threat.

I remember going to the carnivals, or beachside boardwalks and piers, and seeing those guys who would cartoon you for a couple bucks.  It was disturbing then as well, and I was just strongly afraid that someone I was with would want to do one, or that the 'artist' would look at me and talk to me.

Why is this?  How can something so seemingly popular be absolutely vile, evil, and generally repugnant to me?



Is it a projection of my own insecurities?  Is it that I would like to be able to recreate myself but am stuck on emphasizing the negative aspects of myself, as an antidote to the possibility of self-delusion?

Is it just that a certain percentage of the population has sensory perception that makes this yuckiness more visually appealing?  Something about the way they perceive color?



It just seems like people want to escape their mundane or common character, simply by covering up reality.

You know, as I type this, I keep looking back at these pictures to try and find the secret key to my revulsion, but I can't.

Please give me your explanation.  Look at the top row of cartoons, the lady from 30 Rock, or is that Sarah Palin?, and Bill Murray, and Whoopi Goldberg are so disturbing!!!!

Please give me your view on this.

IDEA: The Message They Left for Us

I thought I had left a mess on the floor, nudged the cats' bowl with my foot while hurrying out of the house.  But the message was there.  I just didn't want to see it.

We've all gotten so used to seeing things in the world as it is presently, on levels 6 through lobby and parking garage.

What I found on the floor was no mess.  It was a word spelled out in cat food.

Think about it, the roads we traveled home on tonight, the theater we watched the 'movie' in.  All made by ideas, ideas.   Why is it that we happen to have people among us whose expertise is fiction?  And why is Jaime an architect?   He certainly has built no buildings.  So, just what has he built?

The cat food on my kitchen floor spelled this:  Catbox

That's where my secret subconscious safe box was.  And inside was the message that would unravel everything for me: Pool.  Obviously it meant that I had to get to Jaime's safe, hidden at the bottom of his childhood pool, his first den of safety.  I confirmed the message with Bakunin, and noticed something strange about the word spelled out in cat food: it was cc'ed to .... none other than....

Luka!!!!

I had Bakunin sprout magic dream wings and fly to Cerritos where Luka, pipe in mouth, waited patiently.

And what did I retrieve from the safety box underneath the chlorine suffused waters?

Our original mission.  The mission we've all forgotten  The mission we still have to finish.

Angela Dickinson, code named Mercy, was recruited by Jack Stockingsworth, codename Jaimen.

Jaimen had one last job to do, and he needed some extra help.  That's when he broke me, Garreth Hydelberg, out of the nuthouse.

Jaimen, the world's most wanted dream architect, built this place, inspired by a movie he had just seen, starring Johnny Depp as a man who dies and goes to heaven only to find out that Heaven is his childhood, and his childhood has become full of vampires and zombies, who he has to fight.

Stockingsworth, AKA Jaimen, constructed this world in order to infiltrate the mind of Leonardo Dicaprio, a drug crazed actor-turned-politician who now threatens war with Chile, back in the really real world, where nothing spins forever. We need to inceive the idea in Dicaprio's mind that All You Need is Love.

Click to Kick

Jaimen knew it would be hard, so he built in reminders, and had us all start a book club, to keep us in touch with the real world.  That's why all the books we've read for our book club are actually events from the really real world, that Stockingsworth instructed Gareth Hydelberg, me, and Angela Dickinson, Mercy, to put in novel form.

I know this answers so many precious questions for us.  But there's one more:  Who is the dreamer of this world that Jaimen has led us in constructing?  Of course, that's why Bakunin left me the message, because.....

dun dun dun!  We're really all projections of Bakunin's subconscious, and Luka is his security guard extractor guy.

Or is it?  One things for sure, the architect of this world, Jaimen, has built in a kick that will bring us back up to the really real world, where dogs and cats may or may not rule humanity.

The kick is complicated, but it involves something approximating a circle jerk onto a two headed lamb (in the dreamworld, the female members of our task force can just magic out the necessary apparatus to co-jerk with us.)

And that's the other secret.  Who is the other female?  The Emma character, someone who just happens to have the mind of a rapacious, business obsessed tycoon.   Why, she's the one who hired us.. oh should I say.  dun dun dun!  HE!!!

Emma is none other than Donald Trump, who originally blackmailed the architect, Stockingsworth, into designing this strip mall, sprawling world.


The pre-kick kick should be embedded in this post, if not, I've been dunking my head in the toilet and I really feel that it's working.

soon....

NON-FICTION: Obama's Ignorant Education

Every teacher I know says the problem with their classes is not enough resources, too much focus on teaching to tests, and too many students per class.

And I heard Obama on the radio today talking about his Race to the Top plan, where schools compete to show their compliance with standards to get money from the federal government.  Obama said we need accountability from teachers. His plan amounts to a test, with a list of requirements and a total score possible for each item.  Making education funding a priority gets ten points at the most, sufficiently focusing on private and charter schools is worth forty points.  There's all kinds of crap to get scored on.  This is what they call stimulating improvement, about four billion dollars to stimulate education by top down standards. 

We do want accountability.  We need it from our spouses, our police officers, our employers, our employees, our landlords, and our neighbors.

And with accountability there is one who does the accounting, and that which is accounted for.

Race to the Top, aside from bringing to mind the undignified scramble to a single, coveted position, by desperate and grasping teachers, also brings to mind the pyramidal, top down nature of our school system, which is precisely what's jacking it up.

Back in good old Red China, I was able to give my students a competitive edge in learning English by working equally with the parent and education administrators.  Everyone had slightly divergent interests, but we all had a common goal, getting these children to speak the best English possible.

This is what I focused on.  I had seen other teachers always blaming the students, or the culture, or anyone else beside themselves.  And I knew that I couldn't do this.  I also knew that the people hiring me didn't know how to get Chinese students speaking fluently, since this was the biggest problem in English education at the time, and still is.

So rather than looking for people to blame, I took responsibility for my own students' success.  They were not responsible for their success, for they had not chosen to be there, and had no choice in how they spent most of their time.  The parents were not responsible, because their English levels were inferior to my own.  The school administrators were interested in general parent and student satisfaction.

But, in order to help my students, I also had to be free to change what I needed to change and learn what I needed to learn.

I would have had a much more painful time of things if I had been teaching in an American public school.  The teachers I work with now are hindered by paperwork, overloaded with students who blend into a vague crowd control issue, and isolated form the people making the decisions on how their classrooms are run.  When new research catches the administration's or principal's interest, new rules get laid down over the teachers.


Before stressing accountability for teachers, Obama also made kind remarks about our Nations teachers.  But this appreciation didn't extend as far as granting more power to educators in determining educational policy.  Instead, he's lumped teachers into a big pile called "schools", and said that if the "schools" fail, it's the teachers fault.

Thus, teachers will continue to suffer for things they can't control, and be blamed for it, not just by ignorant politicians and right wing blame-the-lowest-first windbags, but by the president himself.

The accounting Obama wants with his new policy is accounting for standardized tests, which themselves are unaccountable to teachers and students.  What Obama wants is for bureaucrats to do the accounting, and these bureaucrats are unaccountable to the teachers and students.  Teachers and students can make no demands on their superiors, the students cannot direct their own education, and the teachers cannot direct the educational policy they work under.  Whatever methods currently claimed to allow such direction are invalidated by Obama's ignorant policy.  If he had asked public schools teacher vote on it, or asked a wide spectrum, they would have said no way.  

Obama of course, is quite educated, as was his mother.  I doubt if his education is comparable to that of middle and lower middle class American children, herded in and out of underfunded classrooms, and ignored and dehumanized in favor of abstract standards developed by administrators who ignore and dehumanize teachers.  And as for the input of parents, where I work, among preschool children, many parents are unable to speak much English and likely disadvantaged when it comes to shaping educational policy.

The pain and suffering, dreams and hopes, personalities and talents, of America's students and teachers, will continue to be ignored.

NEXT DIMENSION EDITORIAL: Is the Radical Left's Attack on Lynching Rights Anti-American?

What you are not likely to hear from Carey Mcwilliams is an outcry against the murder of white men carried out by radical Mexican insurgents.  

He spends an awful lot of time laying out a tale of infamy in which the starring villain role is played by none other than Anglo-Saxons.  He refers to the God given plan of Anglo-Saxon domination of this continent as empire, but says nothing of the corrupt, excessively demotic Mexican radicals from whom we rescued these lands.

Would Mr. Mcwilliams (who writes for the radically Marxist The Nation) prefer that we had left the free white Americans who lawfully inhabited the lands west of Oklahoma at the mercy of the mestizo hordes?

Like many advocates of mob rule, negro emancipation, and every other sundry cause that hinders the free development of the American spirit, Mr.  Mcwilliams regards lynching as a tool best kept out of the hands of White Christians.

And this is where the democratic hypocrisy of people like Mcwilliams reveals itself quite plainly: While appealing to populist, mob-rule rhetoric, he also seeks to disarm white folk of the one tool they have against crazed Mexicans and other unchristian races: Lynching.

Lynching is a process of communal justice, in keeping with the laws of our republic, and the spirit of law bequeathed to us by those great patricians that sloughed off the yolk of mad King George.

And now mob-rule supporters, like Michael Moore and Sean Penn, deny the right of self defense to white, free men, while supporting the anarchy of the Mexican race, whose incessant attacks on white settlers are second in vehemence only to those perpetrated by the red savage.

Is this charitable populism?  Is this the demotic spirit that our republic needs?

And what is lynching?  They will tell you it's racist, but, in fact, free white men are lynched too.  And this is utterly flawed reasoning, since the greater likelihood of vice and evil is with those races who are in fact more often lynched.

Do not blame lynching of Mexican greasers, who have attacked and raped, on the white men who enact justice.

And the ultimate irony is that lovers of the mob like Mcwilliams are really after government intervention into the western territories.  What they really want is for the Hamiltonians to have their day and the continent to be subdued by those distant powers of the capitol.

All across our Republic, northern libertines and other radicals are proposing the dissolution of our way of life.  Negro emancipation to destroy the southern economy and right to property, women's suffrage to allow easily misguided women (who are perfectly happy as it is) the power to tyrannize their fathers and husbands, and now they want to take our right to execute justice in defense of our communities.

They want federal judges, controlled by the president and congress, to be sent out into the western territories to interfere with the liberty and free development of sovereign Americans.

We cannot let this stand.  We cannot sit by, as our liberties are ripped from our hands, as the lesser sex and lesser races our given the whip over us.

We know what becomes of causes initiated in the name of lesser peoples: the tyranny of the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks.

If you, Americans, let them wrest the lynching rope from your hands, than you might as well give them the rest of your belongings, and your very life, for if they can take away the communal justice of lynching, than there is, truly, no stopping them.

Fiction: Darrens Perilous Journey Page 586 I Feel Me Up

Even though this chick was some kind of fascist, and her face was kind of mannish, she was still a woman, and she was pretty thin.  Plus, I hadn't been laid since I was like, well like a long time ago.

So I went at it, got all up on me, rubbing and kneading and poking.  After a few minutes, I was naked and glistening, rolling all over the floor.  My eyes were closed to the world, heedless of what might happen when I wasn't looking.

As in keeping with my heedlessness, induced by my misguided ecstatic indulgence, I was unawares of what the deal was as the  crashing of the door shook me into opening my eyes to see what had made the sound.


Arthur stood there, with his sword out, straight pointing at me.  He looked all mad, like he was all like "I'm a kill you!"  I threw my hands from this borrowed body and was all "It's me, your liege, don't stab me!"

When I heard my voice,  I realize that I totally sounded like a bitch!  How would he know it was me?  I had to rack my brains thinking about that.

I had to tell him things that he would know it was me.  But then, all suddenly, he was clear about what the deal was.  He had gotten the big picture.  Seeing the note on the table next to him, he read and said "This fascist wench has taketh thy form and figure!  Then you must be, indeed, my chosen hagriographer."

Oh what a relief.  I got some tissues from that chicks purse, and wiped all the stuff off myself.  Then, I said "Check it out, my bro.  Here's what she was like putting out there about whats like happening and what not"

As Arthur listened, he looked really pissed.  He took his sword and stabbed through the scientific-ish equipment all around the room, frenzying around in fury.

When all the stuff in the room was bashed beyond recognitions, he sheathed his sword in its holder, and wearily shook his head, from side to side.  "Them that broughteth me thusly hath ever been struggling to desodomize my soul." 

I felt so sorry, cause I had been all getting it twisted, in regards to the plot and like you know. 

He forgave me and said "We must be off from here.  At last, the time has come to begin your hagriophical mission, foretold in times past by men bold in rooms grand!"

Finally, I thought.  But then I was all, Am I ready?   I mean, I'm like, not really good at essays.  But it was finally time to do the do, be I ready or not. 

"Rand Coultier wants your body to take to the fair and wondrous, yet thoroughly corrupt with corporate gold, Freedom Peoples Congress of Common Folk, sequestered on the Zarcon planet, and now contesting the august issue of Gay Space Exploration."

Uh-oh, I thought.  I wasn't a homophobe or nothing, but wasn't that gonna change the definition of Space Exploration, which was for straight people and aliens only?

But, then, I thought, maybe I've had enough of all this.  My family taught me to stay out of politics.  But then, on the other hand, I knew a lot about politics from games, like the massive multi-players they used to have when I was but a lad, whiling away the innocence of my childhood days, games like "Parley Mount", and "You Knighted States".  I still had a cent a mental attachment to these games of yore. 

Athur was looking at me, intensely, and that was freaky, cause he was like six feet four and all mythically buff looking.  "And what lies still unbeknownst to those minted, gilded parishoners of that church whose sole edifice is the cross of corruption, is the persistence, the utter, dogged persistence of mine own heroism, ever recurrent amid the tremulation of history, to arise against the tide of injustice, in the name of the people, yearning in their huddled masses for that salvation which I bringeth unto them." 

I felt the tears running down my cheeks.  It was such a powerful message!  And I looked down and  -  Oh no, I was still naked, I looked at this pale naked body and felt a little sickened, it was totally time to get back to my own body, although I liked the idea of being thinner, since a lot of chicks didn't like me cause of my little sum'in sum'in i had going on round my waist.

The only clothes I had to wear was the red dress she had left on her body before jacking mine.  "Sir," I said, keeping my spitting it in appropriateness to his majesty.  "Doth ye think that hereabouts might be sequestered garments and/or rainments befitting this ghastly form which I doth inhabit presently?"

He went out the room and briefly came back with a folded bundle of sweats and t-shirts.  Thanks a million, I thought, now at least I can get a little comfy going on.  I got dressed while he went and got me some socks and shoes, equally comfy. 

Then I was all like, thinking how we gon' get out here if ain't got Merlyn to bust us out magical style?" 

He winked at me, "The email hath already been loosed and replied to."

Just then, a burst of magic exploded beside me, while at the same time, the little jelly roll figure rolled up behind Arthur, with a gun, a 67-fenmeister zeppelin to be exact.  "We tried to help you, you damn faggot." 

But Merlyn instantly zapped him.  Rushbo screamed, jiggling all over and flapping his hands around, as the drool continued to flow out of his mouth.  

As he collapsed to the ground, he managed to be all like "The kids body is toast, I mean, like to the max!  Rand Coultier is gonna chop his thing off if you guys try to interfere your homonazi crap on the space congress hearings." 

Merlyn zapped him again, and he shut up.  He was all "Me thinks thou has had too much of commotion for the nonce, be it suitable to my liege, I should want you to divert your attentions for the while."

Oh what?  They gonna let me rest for awhile with all this stuff going on?  We gotta get my body back, and I gotta get the hagriography written like quick like. 

Page 23232  I go to rest, and feel up me again.
Page 42  I take a break and just chill
Page 5343 No, let's get out of here!

FICTION:Darren's Perilous Journey: page 365 I pull the gun on Merlyn.

Like, I had been up in this game for barely a minute and already the life and death decisions had been thrust upon me. I looked up at the swirling black, maroon and green clouds overhead, flashing with balls of electricity. Could I really be about to kill the most hated fascist in the solar system? Did I have the right? Was the right to kill one I possessed, after all, since I was frail?


Then I was struck by a sudden, unexpected and jolting realization about the state of affairs as they had played out since, five days ago, I had been walking down the docks, listening to that Messican music, and expecting the purchase of my dream boat. What I realized was that, Merlyn was the one consistent theme throughout the adventure, he had been there from start to progression. He had been pushing me on, luring me on, seducing me into danger at every turn. Was it him? Was he the secret. Could I afford to risk the death of this fool who was all like hating on everyone, even the blacks?

Or did i have it twisted? Was I blind to the righteousness of Merlyn?


El Rushbo was sitting behind his desk, chewing on a slobbery cigar, pills mushed and mixed into the slobber. "What's it gonna be? You think you got the juice?"


"Act with haste!" We must rescue Arthur before the teeming minions of this puss filled monstrosity are allowed to acquire sciencia of our movements!"

I turned, slowly, pausing for effect in mid-turn, as a wisp of hair folded over my eye, which was itself emitting a star shaped shine, "Naw dog, I don't even trip on that! All this time, you been stringing me along, like a two bits of money, as if I was the dumbest fool in the hood!"


"And that's what trips me out the most", I said, keeping it real, "It's like, you totally know what the deal was, you totally know where I was coming from, and what I've been through, but you just, like, totally disregarded, like, my whole emotions." I shook my head, in disappointment rather than involuntary tic.

The grand old wizard slowly shook his own head, but not like me, in disappointment, but rather in amazement. "You've been beguiled." As he said this, i felt something moist and slimy on my chin. I touched the fingers of my not holding a gun hand to my chin and pulled it away, to within the sight of my eyes. What i beheld practically caused me to stumble loosely, shocked in amazement. It was the same sort of slobber emanating from el Rushbo's mouth.

I really had been poisoned, duped, flummoxed. They had gotten to me faster than a Tijuana whore on a blue-light special!

I exhaled a squeak, like as if I was all like some kind of all jacked up, freaky, like monster from Freddy or something.

Then, unsaranmoniously, I fainted.

The first think I saw on my awakening were the coldest pair of blue yes I'd ever seen. The second thing was the frame of blond hair that enclosed the area of my face. The eyes came closer to me. "You know what, you little punk? You're so totally lucky about what's about to happen!"

"Wha- What-?" I asked, barely able to make a sentence. I was scared out of my league. The old wizard had told me that the guys here were into Aryans, and then I had seen the Rushbo, who was all KKK times ten, and now this other one, total white chick. I was like, damn what's up with the scenario going down for real!

"Where's Merlyn?", I befuddedly asked. She shook her head and leaned back, her hair flinging over her shoulder. "Un, okay, you really need to realized something here. Umm, you've been rescued! And you must be really be brainwashed if you don't deeply appreciate the way I put my life on the line to protect you're freedom back there!" Unh-hunh! And I thought Blondes just wanna have fun, okay!

Then, she explained all the plot information that I had previously been unaware of, seeing as I hadn't known about it.

She said that actually, Arthur had wanted to come to this place, to get help, to get counseling for him being a gay. They said that the people in power back on Earth, AKA, the System, was trying to stop Arthur from getting cured, cause if he was gay, than that would destroy the historical mythos of Anglo-Saxon heroic leadership and complete the domination of the gays and minorities. Wuh wuh? That was about me? Didn't she know that I was a minority too. So, instead of just thinking it out like that, I asked her straight up front.

She's all "That's why you'll make the perfect vessel! For when I infiltrate the system to free the Aryans from the death grip of that foreigner controlling America!"

Oh, so that was it, they were gonna pretend to be me, but she was taller than me, and thinner, and she was a chick. Then I saw what she was getting at, she started doing that face off thing, like in the movie: "Face.... off!" Was she gonna take my face off and give me hers?

"No.", she excacerbated, "I just mean that I'm gonna look like you and you're gonna look like me. Moron!"

"Wait a sec." A thought came to me, unbidden by my conscious mind, almost bubbling up from my unconsciousness, where who knew what bubbly broths stewed. "Where's Merlyn?"

"He cut and run, like the typical radical liberal Marxist elitist that he is would do. After we rescued Merlyn."

Then she walked over to a wall full of little levers, not like light switches, but more like the toggles on old machines, the kind that they have in movies from the good old days.

Then I felt woozy, and the glimmer of hope I had had that this freaky lady was going to lead me to the Authur, the object of hagriophyical interest to me, was further dashed, dashed out of my mind and thoughts, and dashed against the rocks of my infamy, as I swooned into unconsciousness, hearing the words: "Face.......off!"

I woke up feeling really good, like I'd just had a long sleep. As usual upon waking, I reach down to rub my junk, some of which was usually engorged. But my junk, all three of them, wasn't there!!!

I looked around. I was in the same room, but nobody was there. On a table near the door was a red, leather purse, the straps were entwined with a gold chain. I looked inside and pulled out a wallet. Inside was a driver's license with the white chick's picture on it.

Then, I pulled out a silver round thing with a little button on it. I pushed the button and the thing opened. It was a mirror. And in the mirror, to my horror, and not quite astonishment, I saw the white chick!

I put my hand back in the purse, looking for some more information that would tell me that this was some sort of trick. But all I found was some lipstick, a switchblade, mascara, and a small envelope, with a lace bow on the front. I opened it and took out the card, which had a picture of a fat bulldog, raising his paw. Written over this was the message: They're switching off Arthur's gay gene. He should be straight in about an hour or so. Enjoy this superior body. Don't get mad and abuse it, or masturbate, or I will retaliate on your body.
God Bless, Rand Coultier.

Well, I'll be damned!!!! What was I gonna do now, just sit here and wait? Was it right to ungay Arthur, what about the ethical implications that would arise from such a procedure? And, how was she gonna know what touching I did to her body with her hands? Was there hidden cameras in here?

page 586, feel me up
page 6791, Find Arthur
page 8, look for Merlyn

NON-FICTION: Two Stupid Arguments: Faith is like belief, God=Argument for Morality

George Michael was the only guy who could make me believe in it

Faith is either a distinct faculty of experience, or a special term for a certain type of belief.

The reason people want to say it is a kind of belief, or equivalent to some kinds of belief, is because there are in fact many things we believe without actually knowing why we believe them, or being able to prove them with utter certainty.

A common sort of reasoning goes like this: I've never seen Australia, but I believe it's there, therefore I can believe in god without seeing it.

Of course, like the stupid man-made watch implies man made design, therefore tree implies design argument, this sort of reasoning ignores the definition of god.  I learned this from Ayn Rand years ago, and it is about the only useful bit of philosophy I still have from her.

Australia is proposed as an observable phenomena, it is a country like other countries, a place like other places, on the same planet as us, known through other people by empirical evidence.

What the theist will do is obfuscate this by referring to direct experience, and something like degrees of trust: People have direct experience of Australia, people have direct experience of god.

But direct experience is also what people have of their delusions. I have had direct experience of delusions, or beliefs that completely contradicted what I understood about reality, and they would have remained if I had not rigorously analyzed and critique them.

Empirical evidence, however, is what we can demonstrate to each other.  I can take you to Australia, I can show you pictures, or I can just tell you that I saw it.

God, on the other hand, is not strictly delineated.  You can't photograph god, you can't falsify god, you can't smell god.

This is where faith comes in!  You have to just trust that there is something there.

And what are you trusting?  That there is something that you can't see, can't demonstrate, can't point at, can't catch, can't go to, and can't touch.  And if you can't do any of that, than where did you get the information to have the belief, and how did you come to believe it?

The answer is you got the idea from someone else.  And that faith/trust/belief is really trust that someone else had a good reason to believe, and then you develop your own reasons to believe. 

Since god is all belief, it has nothing to hold itself out of the grip of human will.  This is why it is not surprising to find that faith in god resolves nothing unless you already prescribe to the same beliefs (which you arrived at through some reasoning in a limited social context.) If we are the same kind of Christian, than we have a framework within which to get along.

If your faith is too different from mine, than you and I, at best, can agree to disagree, at worst, we can dehumanize each other for not recognizing the through god, and at most tiresome, we can just argue about evidence, history, and all the other things we expect to sway others with, even though are faith renders us immune to them.

When we get to the point of trying to pretend that god is a universally agreed upon concept, we near the sad reasoning of modern believers like William Lane Craig, and Rabbi Wolpe, who both debated Christopher Hitchens.

God they say, or Religion, which they conflate, because it all comes down to knowing other religions through viewing them as versions of their own religion, is the only basis for objective moral values.

They love to quote Smerdyakov (I think it was him because he was the jerk) in The Brothers Karamazov: If there's no god, anything goes.

Dear god what nonsense, as Hithcens pointed out, If there is a god, anything goes.

If there is a god, than people can rape pre-pubescent girls, massacre aborigines, stab pregnant women and rip out their fetuses with bayonets, send young men to their deaths, organize genocide, and drop a couple nukes on Japan after they surrendered.  .

If there is a god, than that's what goes in it's/their world.

As for objective moral values, this is where they confuse their own insulated world with all the others that seem close enough to their own, as long as they don't understand these other religions from an insider perspective.  So of course they can be made to seem equivalent.

Religions don't share any more objective values than religious people do with non-religious people. 

Both Craig and Wolpe think that if you don't have a just universe!!! than you cannot just base your morality on expedient context-based guidelines. 

Imagine a just universe, where moral codes for humans were built into the universe  That's the language Wolpe used!

Physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers have all failed to find these moral laws.  And that's where faith comes in.

And this is what distinguishes faith as a distinct experience.  No matter what fails to verify your belief, or no matter what contradicts your belief, you still know it's true.

And this is the objectivity of the theists, the totality of the absolute monarch and dictatorship.  Amongst other theologians and theists, they talk about mutual appreciation, but in their godly hearts, they know that there way is the only way, and those who don't share their faith, are doomed to suffer.

This is their certainty.  And to sustain it, they use faith.  

NON-FICTION: Crap Band Shows Marketing In The Christian Soul Never Dies

Ken Macleod linked to this corny song.  It's lame, but it makes me smile, because it's all about gene regulation.  What a cool topic!  That's what I want hear, that's what I want to dance too.  Stuff that tells me something meaningful, rather than just infantile pubescent fantasies.

I keep stopping this writing to watch it again.  But the point is that it contrasts well with another corny song, done without apparent irony, and produced with much more effort and, I assume, money.

This second video is by Superchick. 
Dan sent it to me, to distract me from the three Child Development assignment I have to do, and the reading from David Hume, and the studying for my Chinese Quiz tomorrow.


How do you know a song is Christian when it doesn't mention Christianity.  Well, there are no fullproof rules, but here are some guidelines.

-It Sucks.

-The lyrics don't say anything that Christians aren't allowed to, but still bump into the boundaries of acceptable Christian-Talk as much as possible (like talking about rebelling, but never against religion or your parents, talking about love but never physical love, talking about not conforming, but never telling you what to do instead, until they get to the God part)

This is the dominant face of the Christian-as-Shameless Salesman.  As Mencken, noted, underneath every preacher lies a failed salesman.

Like the Capitalist culture industry, Christianity has gutted the soul of dissent and replicated forms of expression originally brought about by America's cultural revolution in the sixties and seventies.

Popular political music goes back farther, but it was during the whole obsession with youthful discontent that these styles became more central and exciting in American culture.

Rock and Roll became political, and then we got from that political punk and then political rap.  But music doesn't have to be political or apolitical.  As long as it's nice to listen to, it can attract people.

The content of music, usually the lyrics, is always important.  And the content doesn't have to stick to any one style.

That's why it's so easy for the Culture Industry to completely absorb the energy of dissent and turn it into lifestyle capitalism, and why it's so easy for the Christian Culture Industry to then take the styles produced by Lifestyle Capitalism and then empty out the particular content and stuff in their own bullcrap.

The progression is as follows: Drop out of the System! Be an Individual ---> Hey Individual, you're not a part of the herd!  That's why you enjoy the refreshing taste of Coca-Cola (or the feel of Levi 501's, taste of Budweiser, etc.) You're an individual, that's why you buy your individuality exclusively from PepsiCo.   -----> Hey, all you guys love that Secular lifestyle, but you don't have to get out there, in The World, you can get from us, and our's is better, cause we're all part of Jesus!

But I shouldn't knock these true artists, merely expressing their sincere feelings... I can't even type that without giggling.

You cannot make good art when you have to reign in your thinking to that extent, when you're gently censored by everyone around you. The very world you live in is dangerous, in that you might think the wrong thing.  You might think ungodly thoughts, or go too far in your speculation regarding other religions.  Meditation can let in demons.  In short, it's a dangerous world we live in, especially the mental world, full of possible deviation from Right Think.

But, let me try again with sympathy.  I know they are...

Sorry... I honestly can't do it without laughing.

I'm not just religion-bashing on them.  Johnny Cash did an album of hymns that I love.  Outkast has that song "Church" on Speakerboxx.  I love that song.  It picks me up and gets me moving.

But it's just hard to make good music when you're task is ideological persuasion.  Socialists have the same problem.  The difference is, we have Rage Against the Machine.  Those guys made good music, and they didn't have to live in a secluded, guarded world of constant ideological reinforcement.  The Coup is pretty good too, as are Dilated Peoples ("If more than half the budget goes to military spending, than less than half goes to whatever it's defending.")

So ideological bias doesn't have to stifle your creativity, but check out Superchick.  They're talking about being a rebel, crossing the line, standing out from the crowd!  How can you be one of these born again Christian Culture Industry partisans and get that through your head and out of your mouth?

The whole thing becomes an artifice.  They set out to produce music that reinforces the mental regime that is reinforced all around them, and then they produce music that reinforces conformity by imitating the music they can't listen to, and music that reinforces conformity by imitating the messages they can't listen to.

The song says: Revolutions start when someone crosses the line
They want us to lie down, give into the lie
Nothing has to change, and no one has to die
That's not the secret, but I know what is:
Everybody dies, but not everyone lives

It neglects to mention that by revolution they mean conformity to the Christian Culture Industry and a culture that has to constantly insulate itself from the world, which is to say it has to constantly concern itself with enforcing conformity, lest it's members stray into the open world, and the hell below it.

'Give into the lie' brings to mind Zoroastrianism.  Zoroaster was fighting The Great Lie before little baby Jesus was born without sperm.  'Nothing has to change', reveals the most valuable message they can send to their target audience.

We ought to sympathize, even with self-blinding Christians like these guys.  We all want to escape.  Escape our limitations, escape death, escape loneliness.  Someday, I hope they will take their places among the rest of humanity.  In love, solidarity, and comfort.

Bless them all. 

p.s. Here is an example of ideologically driven lyrics that are sincere, and part of a good song.  This song touches me every time I hear it and gives me chills of hope and love.


(From The Coup, Heaven Tonite)
I used to think about infinity
And how my memory is finna be
Invisibly slim in that vicinity
And though the stars are magnificent
Whisky and the midnight sky can make you feel insignificant
The revolution in this tune and verse
Is a bid for my love to touch the universe
Strugglin' over wages and funds
Let the movement get contagious and run
Through the end when it's gauges and guns
And if we win in the ages to come
We'll have a chapter where the history pages are from
They won't never know our name or face
But feel our soul in free food they taste
Feel our passion when they heat they house
When they got power on the streets
And the police don't beat 'em about
Let's make health care centers on every block
Let's give everybody homes and a garden plot
Let's give all the schools books
Ten kids a class
And give 'em truth for their pencils and pads
Retail clerk - "love ballads" where you place this song
Let's make heaven right here
Just in case they wrong

TRANSLATION: On The Ground, 扔在地上

English Lyrics here

在地上

我在城市里走走路
有人让我尝尝最新的运动饮料
跑快了跳高了
MAN！！！
我不会让你毒害我！
我拿着就扔在地上了。

你跟我开玩笑吧
我不会参加你这个社会！
你去给别人喝你的垃圾

我去我最喜欢的热狗店
老板说：你是长来的客户
我今天送你一个
我说 man!
你好像认为我是个乞丐呀

我拿着，
就扔在地上了。
我不需要你的慈善！
我是个成人呀
你不会请我吃热狗 man!

我在菜场陪着我所谓的女朋友
她给我她的手机
说是我爸
我说 Man 这不是我爸！
这是手机！

我扔在地上了
你觉得我是个啥子吗
我不是参加这个社会
我爸爸不是个手机
duh!

笨蛋在生日宴会中给我一块儿蛋糕
给我这个东西要干啥？吃吗？
祝地上生日快了
你不懂真实的世界， 傻瓜！
我把全蛋糕都扔了

这么多东西可以扔在地上
比如说那个和这个，和那个， 还有这个
我是个成人呀！

两个哈莱坞骗子要给我签名
地上！！
没有人要你签名
骗子！

让后骗子就起来
有一个带了泰瑟枪
就打了我的屁眼儿
我摔了下来
但他们没有停止
用抢打了我的屁眼儿
不停地打，
我叫喊了，蠕动了
烧了我的屁眼儿
这个故事的寓意是：
不要相信社会！

NON-FICTION: I'm so freaked out over financial aid.

I'm supposed to hear back today from Whittier College about whether or not I can get sufficient financial aid to attend, now that I've been accepted.
I'm anticipating rejection, and I can't talk myself out of it.  The only thing I can do is to tell myself to accept not getting enough financial aid, and have Emma help me to see the productive path ahead if I don't get it.  I can still continue working towards my teaching credential, still focus on writing, still keep working, and still study the things I want to study. 

I have ideas, but I'm not completely sure why I've regressed to this fear of rejection because nobody likes me phase. 

Like Emma said, there is a lot of money involved in this, $30,000, so I shouldn't be surprised that they make it somewhat hard to get. 

But I keep thinking that they should just know that I am really in need of financial aid.  We're barely breaking even.  I'm considering food stamps, low income auto insurance, and we're selling my car for something more fuel efficient. 

I think I should make an appointment to see the school psychologist this week.  One session could've already cleared this up. 

Let it go, let it go, let it go.  Deal with the situation.  Don't let your anxieties alter your perception of reality.  Be nice and understanding.  Be humble.  Like I've told Emma so many times, I have to put my worry energy into planning energy. 

But I still feel sad. 

On the other hand, all this Blank Slate/Genetic Determinism nonsense is taking up much of my other thinking energy. 

I will spend an hour on each of my online classes today, and one hour writing fiction. 

god bless you all

p.s.  I've been working on a Chinese version of Andy Samberg's Threw It On The Ground  I'm going to post the translated lyrics now. 

NON-FICTION: SNEAKING IN GENETIC DETERMINISM

The article is about how Caucuasians and Asians see faces differently.

The very statement reveals several analytically pathetic assumptions:

One.  Caucasians have a common way of viewing the face.
Two.  Caucasians are a race or group with common features.
Three. Asians have a common way of viewing the face.
Four.  Asians are a race or group with common features.
Five.  Asians are a group different from Caucasians.
Six.   The designation of Asian and Caucasian need not be differentiated as to culture and ethnicity.   That is, you don't have to specify someone whose ancestry is Asian as opposed to somebody whose culture is Asian.

This study would seem to imply that all the land from Indonesia, Korea, and from India to the Phillipines is inhabited by a single group. 

What does it actually mean to say Caucasians and Asians?  Most likely, yellow people and white people.

The clever bit about this piece is that it fits the simplistic ideas of cultural homogeneity and exclusivity, where different cultures inhabit different realities, and it also fits the evolutionary psychology oversimplifications, wherein, Caucasians and Asians have a separate phylogeny and therefore the needs of face recognition evolved differently.

I can't help but feel that such all-inclusive talk of Asians is never far from the Confucian Culture nonsense, and, perhaps, to some explanation of how they're all conformists because of their collective emphasis in facial recognition.

Good god.  Take Chinese people for example.  Try to get them to collectivize in the name of Confucian values.  Or just talk to one about their experience working for or with other Chinese people, and compare what you find with The Analects.

NON-FICTION: Sciene: The information vs. The metaphors

The hard part of science is the information.  Getting the information, retaining it, and and evaluating it.

I was tutoring a woman who had applied to Yale as some sort of post graduate something or rather.  Her specialty was Microbiology-Biochemistry.  She was studying all the different kinds of things that make proteins.  She knew the differences between them and she explained to me the research she had doing to name identify the different protein stuff.  I cannot remember it, I keep trying, even as I'm writing this, but it's gone.

What would have been easier to remember was something like: The amino acids are like letters, and the words they spell are proteins.

But I wouldn't want to know this, not before I had grasped the actual amino acids and the actual proteins.

The metaphors can help us understand the information, but they are also highly likely to warp our understanding of the information, as the metaphors excludes certain content of the targeted information and relates it more to that which it is being compared to.

How many science lectures have I heard that started with a suggestion to "Think of X as a computer".  Think of the universe as giant machine.  Think of the brain as a giant information system.  Think of ants as soldiers.

What inevitably happens is that the analogies dominate the information.  We end up arguing over mechanism and vitalism, nature and nurture, dynamism and reductionalism, nominalism and realism.

In fact, direct reference to the book of nature, that is, empirical understanding, are what allows us to transcend imposing metaphors.

The more we know about the brain, the more we can see that it, in fact is like a big chemical soup, is like a computer, is like an organ, is like a hormone factory, is like a big machine, is like a soul, etc.

The more we know about the brain, the more we can stop thinking of is like and deal just with the actual neurons, actual structures, actual astrocytes, glial cells, dendritic branches, and all that.

I recently watched a discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Rose wherein the issues of disagreement were not so much clear to either party, but there was a hint that Rose felt Dawkins and the socio-biology type scientists over simplified DNA and genes, isolating the gene as the point of everything, and excluding the emphasis on the whole biochemical environment.  Dawkins response was something like "Yes it's all very complicated, but..."

Dawkins insists that the code is the one thing that goes on and that's the key to natural selection.

But, I think naked contemplation of the processes is still more valuable than such metaphors of keys.

The metaphors we develop or that occur to us, are just ways to grasp the phenomena in different schemes of organization or causaality.  But, in the end, unless we are constantly referring to the phenomena without metaphors and analogies, than we run the risk of subordinating the information to the analogy. 

It is at this point that we diverge from science.  Each scientific paradigm grows overreaches itself, denies information and is replaced by another paradigm.

What is left is information about processes.  The animalcules identified by Van Looewnhoek were real, the problems faced by early French evolutionists were real, though much of their conclusions were wrong.  The practical uses of electricity were understood faster than the actual phenomena underlying it. 


What piles up over the decades and centuries is information, information regarding processes.  Whatever metaphor we find useful to give this information a certain structure in a given age should never be taken as more significant than the information.  Metaphors, such as the selfish gene, the brain-computer, the god center in the brain, and a gay gene should understood as a way of getting  fresh perspective on vast processes, not as some final conclusions that subsume those processes.

PURE SCIENCE: A Genocide Gene?

For years and years we have been assaulted with dogmatic assertions that genocide is purely a cultural phenomena, that is to be blamed on super-structural features of a society, like, patriarchy, racism, slavery.  Some have claimed that it is a misfiring of our natural tendency towards in-group/out-group patterns of orientation.

But the thrilling new discoveries of scientific methaphorology and statistical correlation have already shed light on how alot of stuff is really all about natural selection.  Just as the rape gene is soon to be discovered, likely adjacent to the allele that causes sodomy, so too will the day come when we can realize that the critics of society who demand radical restructurings and think the world is open wide for whatever wild blueprints they devise have, all this time, really just been criticizing the genes.

First, for those of you who are not scientifically initiated, let me lay out the basics of human behavior, so that you might get a glimpse at what's really going on.

Genes evolved a long time ago.  And all a gene wants to do is make more copies of itself.  This is what you are for.  Your genes just want to make a copy of themselves through reproduction.  This also explains why so many people are interested in cloning, as your genes also want to make a perfect copy of themselves, rather than gambling for dominance with the genes of the person you have sex with.

So the genes will use any means they can to reproduce. The genes also compete against each other, so that one gene in your body wants to get rid of the other genes, so it can just reproduce itself and leave the other genes in your body behind.  But this topic is too much for our present essay.

Getting back to the point, wiping out a whole gene pool, whether it be an actual gene pool or a perceived pool, is a great way for your genes to wittle down the competition.

Now, it is quite possible that our ancestor Homo Habilis was motivated by this same impulse to genocide the Neanderthals.

From the gene's point of view, getting rid of other groups of genes makes sense, since that leaves more resources for themselves.  Also, they'd much rather deal with genes similar to themselves, since there is a shared interest among similar genes in assisting each other in achieving reproduction.  This is called the Kinship Rule.

Now, it is quite likely that there are many more genocide genes than actual genocides.  But usually, these genes are kept in check by social norms (AKA social norm genes.)  In rare instances, you might get a predominance, or a certain critical mass of these genocide genes, and that's when genocidal plans start getting carried out.

So, we see that genes want to do all sorts of things that the Social Norm Gene don't want to happen.  Thus we realize that human nature is everywhere bound by the Social Norms Gene, but never permanently bound.

The view that elimination of genocide is merely a matter of reorganizing societal norms or dealing with socio-economic factors, is thus found to be unnatural.

Much closer to the truth are the notions of SIN and ID.  Sin is the nature that we are tempted to do things against our sense of good/god, but evil factors.  This, really was early man's first intimation of the struggle of genes against other genes.  More recently, Freud understood this genetic conflict in his division of the psyche into Id, Ego, Superego.  The id genes want sex with out mothers, but the Social Norm Gene AKA Superego, holds back the mother-sex genes.

I have faith that some day we might isolate this genocide gene, perhaps by genetic screening among relevant populations (some in Africa, some in South Asia.)

Also, in the meantime, I think it is important that we avoid undue provocation of these genocide genes, such as ethnic solidarity or stimulation of anxiety through promoting the rights of minorities.  Many groups of Americans, at present are precipitously beset by feelings that their group is threatened, by gay marriage, Hispanic immigrants, and other problem groups.  If these threatened groups have a higher than average percentage of genocide genes, then it is simply irresponsible to needlessly provoke the genes in people that they didn't choose to be born with, and which we haven't developed the sufficient technology (allelle extraction) to deal with.

MOVIE REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Lovely Bones.

I have often thought that Robert Downey Jr. was a bit too cool, a bit of a dick, who, though ever charming and witty, lacked a certain maturity or social awareness.  But, I loved him in Sherlock Holmes.  I gave in to his charm in the first five minutes of the film. 

I didn't really want to see this film, since I thought it would be just the usual period piece fetishism, and because they had marred Jude Law's beauty with a mustache. 

But, as soon as the movie started, I realized this was about debunking mystical bullshit.  Sherlock Holmes has to deal with an entire society taken in by mystical, religious, nonsense, and him and Holmes have to kick ass and show how it's all based on the bastardization of science and technology. 

I was shocked.  This is exactly the movie that we need at this point, when we are distracted from our real living conditions by the false debate over healthcare reform, (which has, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a pay out to the rich,) distracted the false debate over gay marriage, which is theologically and culturally irrrelevant, and all the other fictional dramas presented to us as crucial to the fate of our nation.

What we need to be doing is getting past the popular illusions and seeing the real mechanisms and interests behind them. 

This is what Holmes does.  As London and greater England are beset by the prospect of an evil, magical villain rising from the dead and taking over the country's most powerful secret society, and then the country itself, Sherlock Holmes and Watson figure out how each miracle was faked, and how the real danger was of a power hungry murderer taking advantage of the credulity of both the masses and the nations ruling class. 

In these times, the message of Holmes, aside from drug use (at least in the books), is: Get to the bottom of it.  Find out the real causes and through them address the danger.

This is why Holmes should have been hanging out in The Lovely Bones.  This piece of crap film has a different message for a country in the midst of all kinds of fear and danger: Fuck it, we're all going to heaven. 

Got no money?  Don't sit around working out what you're going to do about it.  Fuck it, you're going to paradise when you die. 

Did your beautiful blue eyed daughter get murdered and cut up by your neighbor?  Open your eyes to the bigger picture!!! Enjoy your remaining family time.  Getting trapped, murdered, and butchered like a pig was merely a minor issue in your daughter's life, after which she spends eternity in a beautiful, wheat field Heaven! Hallelujah, amen!

Suppose on the other hand, if you're an unenlightened, sad little skeptic deluding yourself into thinking that this life is all we got.  Then you might start seeing the murder of fourteen year old girls, by a serial killer, as the main problem presented in this film. 

If you're so thick headed as to imagine that these seventy years or so are all you're going to get, so you better cherish it, and cherish the lives of your friends and pets, suck every last bit of experience you can out of life, because that's all we got-if you're this negative about things, you might start thinking that serial killers are a real big deal, and we should be spending time figuring out how to neutralize these monsters, instead of reconciling ourselves to our impotence in this world. 

But that's the sweet beauty of The Lovely Bones: even the butchered bones of a fourteen year old girl are something you just have to let go of, and cherish the remaining connections you have.  And if another of them gets killed, you still have a couple more left, so give them a hug.  And if some other innocent is dragged from her car, strangled, raped and slashed across the face with a razor, than don't sweat it, because there's karma to take care of everything.

And by Karma I mean the westernized idea marketed to and parroted among the lower classes and dissociated types, that imagines there's some special justice that gives good shit to good people and bad shit to bad people. 

In The Lovely Bones, this comes at the end of the movie.  After the serial killer gets away, probably killing again, and after we are left with no answers about what to do about serial killers, only then does Jesus-Karma mete out cosmic justice by having the aged serial killer slip off a hill and die. 

Sherlock Holmes would have figured out who the killer was.  And, since he doesn't exist, and serial killers often go unpunished, dying with all their cherished memories of slaughter intact, than perhaps I might offer the following responses to serial murder. 

Off the top of my head: Psychological Profiling and Analysis.  Sociological Factors found to be relevant in cases of serial murder.  Biological Factors.  Ways to teach your children to avoid and/or fight dangerous adults.  Ways to organize your neighborhood to avoid the anonymity and secrecy that serial killers avoid. 

God forbid I should ever have a child who is murdered, and, in the midst of my unending agony, give in to some kind of religious bullshit.  I could then just stay in my fantasy and pray to someone and ask them to say hello to my child, all while more murders are planned and carried out.  And when I ran into parents whose children had been murdered by the same person that killed my child, I could wisely shake my head, dismissing evidence, prevention, and joint action, and say: Golly, jeez, the good Lord sure does work in mysterious ways, butchering kids and stuff.  But, you know, think about, it, now that they're up in Heaven, they're happier and smarter than us, so, really it all worked out, and it was really a good opportunity for those kids to get all cut up and buried in a corn field. 

NON-FICTION: Excavating the mind from Depression: Hard Core inhibition as a lifestyle

That old metaphor, which I heard a couple years ago, buzzed, on a bus around xujiahui, and the huangpu river, maybe going down to the meiluo cheng, about the one part of the brain, the cortex, inhibiting the thalamus, or a simlar brain area, as the cause of, our neurological correlate to depression stays with me.  Before that, I recall some similar notion, native to my own speculations, about the roots of our depression.  I mean me and my brother's depression.  And maybe I can say me and my uncle and my brother.  And maybe this applies to the satelite of people I know who were abused, violently, and in anger.

The thing is, however, I'm depressed.  The self-pityying, unaccountable, vague connotations of that term are such as I wish to avoid.  So I'm immobile, in such a way that I think this would be described as low grade chronic depression.

I don't know where to start or which way to go in telling you this.  But let me start where I'm at where I am now.  I'm sitting in front of the kitchen window,  sitting straight up and typing.  I have earplugs in and a sleeping mask on.  the door is open and the cats are wandering in and out, after being in all day due to the rain.

The reason I need to blind myself and deafen myself is because this is the only way I can feel comfortable to type most of the time.  The only way I can block out....

Whatever I'm blocking out.  The immanent distractions, the will inside of me that is constatly veering off in any which direction, that cannot put itself into any one thing that I deem productive or necessary.

To do anything, generally speaking, I need a gimmick.  This gimmick is unsusually some audio lectures, books, music, or caffeine, anger, or lateness..

The blindfold and earplugs started last year 2009 or so in Shanghai.  In the apartment off of zhanghyang lu, with the tiny dining room.  I would blindfold myself and try to cover my ears enough, since i didn't have earplugs.  Towards the end of our stay in Shanghai, I would do this while Emma's parents were milling around the house, and often I had takien some of the little balls of hash from the small plastic gum containers that I used to store my hash in.

Bakuin and susan, my cats were with me then as now.  I often had one of my glass jars that i like to use as cups.  I would have a big glasss jar of tea or coffee, or chocolate made by melting eighty percent choclate with some water and creamer.

The blindfold and the earplugs leave me alone, allow me to be in here, free from the outrside.  It's the outside that I can't hanle, that leaves me dead.  The outside me leaves without any identity, without any being.  It leaves me at the mercy whims, the urge to gratification, pleasure , and the urge to consume.

In the middle of that sentence, i reacted to the wine i heard through my earplugs and pulled one out.  It was nothing in my immediate zone of interest, something form outside, a neighbor using some machine to cut or weld maybe.  But I decided it was an acceptable time to get up and try being in the world.  I checked the mail.  No mail.

My attention is waning now, got stuck on gimmicks, the idea of gimmicks.

I have alot of gimmicks.  The idea of god is a gimmick, sometimes i've felt a presece in my mind that I associate with god, what other people know as god.  This was a different prescence than the conversations I'm always having.  I have those too.  A typical example is the one I had last ight with my therapist.  It was in the midst of another conversation I was having in my head.  I realized I was doing it, and thought of telling my therapist.  Then I was having a conversation with him about it.  Then I was telling him that even thinking about telling him would make me have a conversation with him about it.

About the conversations.

Than I thought about how this extraordinary bent in me ought, in some conventional biography of a great man, lead to the production of some skill, some advantage.  This would work if I was some trial lawyer, or a politician, or an interviewre on tv.  Or if I was a writer, hahaha. [While editing this I notice that what I was thinking at this time, last night, was also that I couldn't utilize the conversations as a skill, and this was a difference between me and the great men in the imagined biographies.]

So is that it now?  Am I clear?

What do I want to do?  Work on the Beast book.  That's the one I want to to work on, but I don't feel it.


I guess now writing this post has become a gimmick

The other gimmicks I can think of right now are other people helping me, and schedules.  The schedules are what I have the most trust in now, as escaping the bad parts of other gimmicks.  As for other people helping me, sometimes I have sort of a daydream about a motherly figure helping me to write, setting out the implements, like notepaper and a laptop, a special laptop just for writing that I think of getting, and sitting these down on the table just so.  And it's on a special writing table, and taking my hadn and guiding me to the table.  That's embarrasing, but I think it's a clear reflection of the lack of a motherly figure in my life.

It's embarrasing but even so it's so strong, a motherly figure,a white lady would be nice, and so would a black lady, in her late thirties to fifties, maybe a little plump, and neat in appearance.  It's embarrasing, but every time I think of it, the desire is real.   

Oh yes, a life of gimmicks.  Is that what I've been trying to get around?  Whith all the Brcue Lee, Daoist, Buddhist fascination I used to have? Is that what all the self help and psychology is about?  No, it's primarliy about understanding, about extravating myself from the unseen influences that abound in my mind.  It's about making sese of the lives we lead, of the spectum of minds that make up my social world.

Where do i go from here?  I wnat to stop writing now, as if this blog served a purpose and I'm ready to move on. 
Where do I go?  Stand up.  If I stand up, this may be dissapoiting in that it leads nowehre?  I don't like the idea of finishing this blog, since I need to edit it, which requires taking off the sleeping mask and letting the light and the objects aroud me in.  I dont want anymore auditory visual stimulus going on.

I don't want to hear Phil Hendrie or Christopher Hitchens or any of that stuff I liten to all day and night.  The only thing I can think to do is bring the blaket from the couch and put it over my head and the computer, so I can limit the range of intrusion and edit this blog, publish it and.... I don't know what comes next.

I can't really say I want any of those gimmicks, or that the absence of gimmicks is the solution. For any solution is in itself a gimmick, I sense.

I have to go the bathroom.

I will get up, and them i will come back witht he blanket and edit this blog ad publish it.  I want somethig to listen to while I'm up and about.  I will lisen to soemthing.  I will take off my sleeping mask and use the other cpomputer to listen to something.  I'm using Emmas computer, and my computer is at the other end of the aprrtment, buy the door, on a chair.

I'm back, but I'm not using the blanket.  Maybe I'll go get it in a minute or so.  I'm eating strawberries.  This is a gimmick, as it gives me a sense of doing something healthy.  Eating potatoes is a gimmick, as food impulse keep me going.  I'm going to cut up a potato and fry up the pieces. I wish I had ketchup or eggs to go with it.  This is my second potato of the day.

NON-FICTION: SCIENCE, OTHER KNOWLEDGE, FAMILY THEORY OF IDEOLOGY AND PERSONALITY TYPES

1.  I just heard Ricard Dawkins on the "Late Late Show" in Ireland.  A priest mentioned that Science is not the only way to know things.  The tacit implication is that this makes believing in god without proof okay.

It makes sense that people would want to regard Science as a monolith in order to regard it as isolated and incomplete, and thus allowing for baseless belief in god.

It also makes sense to say that since all the bible or all the main doctrines of someone's Christianity have to be right in order of Christianity to be true, all claims of science have to be right or science is wrong.

What is interesting is that this discussion between Atheist Scientists and theists implies an odd spectrum of epistemology.  From Religion to science?

This has nothing to do with actual existence as we experience it, nothing to do with our lives.  The scientific method is a set of procedures for empirical discovery and verification.

Religion's special knowledge acquisition is done through faith, which is a feeling most often backed up by the threat of force, often directly.

But why have I not heard anyone mentioning the fact there are entire works dedicated to epistemology?  Why is the question of how we know limited to Science versus faith?  Am I the only one who is disgusted by the implications?

The reason that we have this incomplete, false dichotomy is because of the ignorance or inexperience of scientists and the petty stratagems of theists.

Experience and logical processes are what we all use to decide most questions.  The scientific method is no more universal or fundamental to human experience than a recipe for hummus.

The main reason why we have questions like "Does science answer everything?" or "Is science the only way to know the universe?" is because religious types fear the implications of plain old logic.  It is better to have something outside of their everyday experience and those of potential converts.  It is better to argue against a presumed monolith than the everyday logic that causes to trust somethings and not others.

Our own experience might eventually lead us to a germ theory of disease, but never to the resurrection.  It might tell us that people seem to be gone after death, but not that the people have souls inside them that fly out of them at death.

I want to write something more extensive on this subject, perhaps a review of epistemic theories and experiential perspectives of knowledge for atheists.

2.  George Lakoff believes that political affiliation has more to do with our sense of familial affiliation than doctrinal procession.  That is, when you see people who believe in gun control our also much more likely to be pro-choice, this is not because one belief suggests the other, or because both arise from a common principle, but because experience a sense of community and identify with a community of believers (this is my own interpretation of Lakoff.)

I have noticed for a long time that much communication among more orthodox believers, be they anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, liberals, or Limbaugh-types, has to do with in-group morality.

There is much less rational assessment of goals and consequences in general.  Anarchists, despite their inspirational emphasis on consensus decision making, which entails a focus on mutually determined goals whether than enforcement of dogman, still can be seen denouncing others as not being real anarchists, being statists, being leftists, etc.


So it makes sense that once we come to identify with a certain perceived community of belief, we then project the doctrines, premises, and tendencies of that community onto the rest of our world.


Fear of losing authentic group identity can be seen, usually, in some sort of slippery slope arguments, such as, if you accept such and such premise, you are on your way to become a leftist.  It is also seen in absurd definitional arguments, such as what constitutes a real anarchist, or real conservative.  It is all too common to hear someone say.  All those guys calling themselves X are not really X.


Whereas, ideologies (including the mythological embrace AKA Religion) generally have efficacious aims, such as the betterment of society, liberation, the end to capitalist oppression, it is hard not to stray to tribal business.  Thus, we have factions, splits, heretics, and dogma.


Solutions to problems.  Putting forth a common goal that transcends doctrinal differences is liberating.  It frees us from the problem of loyalty to a community of ideas and puts back in the control seat.  It also breaks down walls that keep us apart from other people.

As to personality.  Given that our ideologies have much, perhaps mostly, to do with our sense of family, our neurological structures that correspond to our social reality, it is further likely that some people are more inclined to have stronger or weaker tendencies to adhere strictly to a particular community of belief.

This is what is called the True Believer phenomena.

It seems that some people are definitely more focused on the psychology of other people and some are less focused.  This function may or may not intersect with a greater tendency to ideology.  When it does, it then may coincide with a loyalty to ones immediate social ties, a rejection of those ties in favor of the ideology, or a rejection of the ideology in favor of ones social ties.

BOOK CLUB: Book Club Spits Out Four Books

Book Club: I got a question: Why they Hatin' on me?

Book Club: The collective has consumed three novels since it's inception earlier this year.  You may have missed it.

You may have lingered, over there, in your fear of Book Club.  In your incomprehension at the intangible but binding web of lust that is Book Club.

But Book Club loves and wants you to understand what Book Club has done.  You do not know of Nethereland, by Joseph O'neill. You have not tasted of Bandits, by Elmore Leonard.  You have not yet sullied yourself with the pretense of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.  You have dreamed of but never read the words of The Road by Cormac Mccarthy

But you want Book Club.  This, Book Club knows, before you even think it, before the thought makes its way up from the bottom depths of your psyche.

So, Book Club will give you these Books as they have become inside of Book Club.

Book Club helps.  Book Club Reveals Below a story for those of you outside of Book Club.

Read it, and Read on.  Book Club Presents: The Underground Society of Darker Types Who Do the Crime in a Postmodern Nightmare, by Book Club.


                        OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Jack Skillet laughed at the empty concrete streets in front of the corporation.  The streets were manufactured by technology, but they were desolate of life.

The boy said "Those streets?"

"Yeah, I reckon."

He took the dusty old Iphone out from his frayed pocket to check the google maps app.  It made him think of Juanita, who had showed him the wild side of life, with wondrous fragrances of mate, pisco sour, and Ma Po Doufu.  Juanita, who took away the point of his existence, and replaced it with another.   

The door to the corporation's office was about several yards in the distance.  The clouds overhead had nothing to say to them, in this dark world.

The boy shuffled his feet nervously.  "They gonna rape us up somethin' awful, I 'spect."

"They ain't gon' do nothin'"

"They ain't?"

"They ain't."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

He went on up the path.  The tangles of vines along the walls of the corporation's office twisted all over the place, unable to work out a choerent message,in a world devoid of meaning.

Next to him, he moved the bicycle along the path.  His strong hands gripped the handlebars as his long, model-like body moved sinuously towards the door.

Juanita had left him and the boy, left them to keep going down the path.   It had been on a cold night, when the camp fire sent smoke up into the godless sky, that answered no prayers. 

She had come to him, in a womanly way, with her mocha brown skin fraying his nordic restraint.  And after, as they lay in a barren land, listening to the drinking songs of cannibals, as they drank the blood of their children, she had whispered to him.

"Me voy."

"Why?"

"Jewelry heist."

"Who?"

"The guy at the computer company."

"Which one?"

"The one that symolizes the dislocation of modernity."

"How?"

"Loose cannon help.  Web of contravening plots."

"Motivation?"

"For who?"

"For you, loose cannon,me."

"Hard to tell."

And that was the way it was. Things were hard to tell, when you got down to it.  Things were just hard to tell nowadays.


They proceded along the path.  He could make out more detail of the corporation's office now.


There was a click behind him and he froze.


The boy froze too.  "That a gun?"


"Uh hunh."


"Somebody hurt me?"

"Nobody hurt you."

The man with the gun asked them to to turn around.  Jack Skillet could tell by the sound of the man with the gun's voice that he was crazy and unstable.

As he turned, he thought of his life before the fall, he thought of the big city, all the crazy characters.  He was just a futures analyst back them, prioritizing amortization tables for international financiers who dabbled in the funds derivatives assets. 

He had been just another tall, stiff, blond, European type. With eyes of blue that expressed no emotion or unpleasant social truth.

Then he had met Juanita.  At the top of the empire state building, she had been so excited at her arrival in the land of dreams, as all immigrants were, that she had danced a native, festive dance.  He had seen her as she swirled her dress, hoop earrings dangling wildly, with spicy passion.

And she had shown him the other side of the city.  A world of hustlers and cheats, dreamers and womanizers. Free of the chains of morality and decency that trapped Jack.

He finished turning and faced the wild eyed man with the gun.  There was a look of desperation in his eyes.  He was drunk, and his clothes were brown with dirt, and hung in tatters over his skinny shoulders.

"Ain't gon' do it."  He told them.

"Ain't gon' what?"

"Ain't gon' steal jewelries first, 'fore Juanita does it."

"Why?"

"'Cause i 'gon' get it."

"How?"

"Point gun, not let you go."

"Who are you?"

"Erasmus Deleterius, part of secret society."

"What it do, sercret society?"

"Can't tell. Read book: Plays of Aeschylus. Go civc center, see performance."

"You gonna shoot me, mister?"

"No."

He motioned for them to move behind him.  They did.  As they moved behind him,  Jack could see the grass clippings on the side of the lawn.  Juanita had been a gardener.  The clippings lay dead on the dead concrete, cut off from their life, killed for encroaching on the man-made world.

Erasmus Deleterius ran to the door and went inside.

The boy too thought of Juanita.  "She my momma?"

"Mm."

"Momma come home?"

"Mm nnh."

Jack knew he had to get to the door and open it up.  he would do anything to keep the boy safe, and get back the mother the boy had lost.

He went on up the path and arrived at the door.

From inside there were loud yells and gunshots.  He shoved the boy to the side, yanked open the door, and rushed in.

Erasmus Deleterius lay dead.  Juanita was on the desk, shot, jibbering in her native tongue, praying to pagan gods.

He looked around the office, a bunch of desks laid out, where people spent most of their lives.

He saw the man with the jewelry.  He saw the pirate who had tried to get the jewelry, dead and hung on the wall with his own hooked hand.  He felt nothing.  He looked atJuanita.

"Get the nekclace."

"No.  Help you."

Then the man with the jewelry shot him.  The boy came in.  The man with the jewelry said "I take care of you?"

The boy said to Jack "You die now?"

"Unh."

"I go with other man?"

"Unh."

Jack skillet a man made by secular philosophy, technology and Sartre, looked up at the ceiling as the dark red pool of blood spread over his chest.  The boy had a new dad, but would he do a better job?  Was there any progress?  Or was it all just decadence.

"Hope good." he said.

"Yeah." Juanita said.

They both died.  The man with the jewelry put the necklace over the boy's head and they headed back outside, back down the path.

NON-FICTION: Steven Pinker and the Over Reach of the SocioBio Paradigm

I'm listening to Steven Pinker lay out his arguments from The Blank Slate on a TVO podcast, Big Ideas.

I've been thinking for awhile about the annoying but inevitable overreach of this genetics-makes-society paradigm that started with E.O. Wilson, and Chomsky, and the rest.

I think Pinker is an example of a preacher for this paradigm.  I read The Blank Slate when it first came out eight or so years ago.  I was interested due to it's rejection of the anti-human nature character that I understood to be a phenomena of the outdated academic left, as well as a flaw of socialism, and a key to the evil of twentieth century dictators.

Of course, the idea now is that since before the social sciences got to the point where many said that culture makes everything, we are now getting back to the point where human nature, now genetics, makes everything.

Pinker ties an argument by Steven Jay Gould and Lowentin that claimed that attribution of behavior/culture to genetics was used to maintain existing, and that Social Biology was a continuation of this, with the doctrine of the Blank Slate.

A little later on, he ties in racial prejudice and pogroms against successful racial minorities, whose cultures led them to greater success, with the doctrine of the Blank Slate.  The idea that everybody is the same is the idea that allowed this persecution, since it indicates that, among equally Blank Slates, those who get more are greedy.

This is odd.  Persecution against Hindu minorities, Chinese minorities, and the Igbo had to do with religion and in-group morality, not social science trends.  

As to in-group morality, Pinker paraphrases Singer, who says that this is the default switch of human nature.  Pinker goes on to explain that we have had centuries of culture to teach against this.  This is odd as well, as we can more simply say that children are taught to regard other people as either acceptable or unacceptable.  There is much ambiguity in the way that children, and the adults they become, view their groupings.  There is also a whole lot of subtlety.  As with modern Chinese, who like us, have distinct, intersecting rings of social networks, including family, in-laws, region-group, coworkers, bosses, classmates (very big for them), and friends.

Little children in these primitive tribes may or may not hate reflexively dehumanize other tribes.  And here, we get a taste of the commonality that the new Genotypic Social Sciences have with the previous excesses of culture and system: The avoidance of psychology and avoidance of the complexity of personal experience.


But when we look at those savages, regarded as our recent cultural ancestors, perhaps the way 'we' were before the Holocene, we are supposed to see a simpler version of ourselves, which reflects our true human nature (universal genetic tendency.) 


I just had a Physical Anthropology professor who's thesis showed that men's pickiness in female selection evolved because it promoted status and greater access to sexual resources.

It might also be that we just feel attracted to the most sexually viable woman in the set available to our perception, or the woman who has exaggerated examples of features that connote fertility among woman.  But this answer is not suitable to the trend now, and so seems facile, and unfruitful. 

For Pinker, growing up around all that culture makes everything excess, like rape is all about cultural patriarchy, or crime comes from racism and poverty, it is natural that his swing to the other side would be excessive.

For my Phys Anth professor, though, the situation is different.  Now that this perspective dominates, it is heading into it's phase of over application.  And, for a young academic, there is need to produce work that understands the truth of human nature as the leading minds understand it.  Respecting your professors, wanting to get their approval, wanting to succeed in that academic endeavor that you are unlikely to contemplate at a structural level, and wanting to smash the false idols of the receding generation all lead to reproducing the latest big idea that the mainstream of academia is grasped by.

Into the big idea, the universe must be crammed.  The renaissance saw a lot of new machines and tecnhology, and gave us the start of Mechanism, around the time of the disovery of electricity and modern chemistry, we got vitalism.  Then, Hegel, Marx, and Bentham started thinking about how the big thing determines the small thing, and that led, eventually, to the Blank Slate.

Now we are back to human nature again, and this time the argument is leaning towards a positive view of human nature.

I don't think we will see everyone adopting the obvious implication of evolution by natural selection: what we call good is just what was once adaptive.  The choice is only to inhibit or encourage tendencies brought about by our evolution.  There is no final morality, no safety in human nature.   Sometimes dolphins might rescue humans, but it is more common for us humans to slaughter dolphins.  That is our nature.  Charity is also human nature.  We can choose life affirming values, but we are nowhere compelled to do so. 

Biological and genetic data is useful.  Constructing our evolutionary heritage is a noble endeavor, and the results fill me with awe.  But, Pinker and the rest will not get away with merely fighting for a respect of the actual evolved tendencies of humans. They will not escape the expanding canvas of the big idea.

Our evolved society and social intelligence will not allow this.  The tendency in human nature to go too far with an idea, never realizing that it is just one way that we grasp existence, and the tendency to get caught by metaphors, rather than spreading out the data before us, and letting their implications branch out from them in all directions, is a bit hard for us.  Especially when we cannot distinguish between research, revelation of causal processes, and the paradigm we imagine to be inherent in them.

Just as the early phrenologists left behind good neurological insights, so too will the present academic fashion queens continue to produce mountains of brilliant explanations and data.

Let's hope they can get to a point where the prevalence of metaphor, it's evolution, and it's non-binding, limited character can be found in the workings of Social Biological brains. Let us get to the point where we can grab the big idea by the root and pin it down in our neurological processes, rather then just letting it morph and carry us away elsewhere. 

Further, I hope we can get to the day when we replace Sociobiology with Biological Socialism.

Sociobiology will inevitably lead to prescriptive forces, both among academics and the intermediary levels of society, ending in popular culture.  It has already done so.  But I hope that they are able to grasp the ultimately structurally prescriptive character of their endeavor.

Likely, they will just continue to teach the naturalistic fallacy and miss it's application to their metaphor hijacked minds. 

But back to my recent Physical Anthropology class, we learned of a theory that says rape is among us because it allowed some people to impregnate woman.  This coincides with the idea that behaviors are adaptations, and thus must have contributed to our survival, since we exhibit them.

It cannot be only me that automatically senses the proximity to tautology that this line of reasoning indicates.

Can you see the flaws in this?

Well, lets break down it a little:

Behaviors that are persistent among humans have persisted, therefore they must have helped in our evolution.  If they hadn't helped us reproduce, those humans that had them would have failed to pass on their genes and would have died out.   Every behavior?  What does each behavior correspond to?  A set of genetic expressions of proteins that comprise muscle, neural, glandular tissue?

Well, since we haven't quite worked all that out, we must instead rely on statistical correlation.  And statistical correlation in regards to human behavior, and it's underlying psychological manifestation, is hard to be anything other than over simplification.  There are so many factors to correlate with so many other factors, that you are better off delving into the messy, hard to access human mind.

Rape, of course, might be caused by any number of factors, but when you spend all your time discussing behavior in terms of natural selection, neglecting to account for any behavior through natural selection is likely to make you uncomfortable.

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that some behaviors were not adaptive and just results of other adaptations, or what Richard Dawkins calls 'misfires', where one tendency results in another tendency that is not adaptive.

According to the rape as adaptive idea, we want to rape people because our ancestors evolved this trait, which then made them more successive at reproducing.


But what I noticed about the authors of the rape book, and my professor, is that they seemed utterly ignorant and unaware of the issue of psycology in regards to rapists.  If you are dealing with a rapist and want to know why he did it, you have to imagine what it's like to be him.  And that's an imperfect endeavor, and it's accuracy is hard to guage.

But we can at least see that to violate someone's will in such a blatant manner requires a lack of empathy and, likely, a process of dehumanization of the victim.

When you are hurting someone, particularly when they are physically and verbally imploring you to stop, you have to justify continuing.  Moreover, in rape, you see patterns of going after victims who are perceived as weak.  The rapist, who is said in that book to be genetically predisposed as part of his drive to procreate, is likely to be full of rationalizations.

I doubt you will find anyone familiar with rapists, and rape cases who has come to the conclusion that "These men are basically normal guys with just this one abnormal disposition."

Rape coincides with some pretty messed up psychology.  And when you have guys come along, who are experts in genetics, evolution, and biology, who just happen to have come to the conclusion that there own pigeon hole is where the real answer lies, you have to wonder if they've ever really imagined what it would be like to be a rapist, or looked at profiles and case studies that show the minds of rapists.

And, this is somewhat tangential to the rape-is-in-the-genes guys.  They are primarily reacting against the rape-is-in-the-society guys.  I remember hearing the 'rape is not about sex' line when I was a teenager.  For me, it was obvious that this was some sort of rhetorical device, and that what it must really mean is that rape is mostly about violence.

It is disconcerting to find that these old people, full of knowledge and infused with the will to dominate through research, are so flat in their thinking.

Between genes and behavior there is a wide space called the mind, which is full of layers upon layers of meaning.

Between culture and behavior there is a wide space called subjective experience, which is likewise full of myriad messages, signals, leanings, and decisions.

I cannot help but suspect that these Genes/Society determinists have been divided from their own mind's by the needs of public debate, the demands of scientific-type evidence, and academic authority. 

Rather than enjoying the indefinite contemplation of their galaxies of internal being, they identify to closely with the exactness of scientific method, and imagine themselves to be simple and determined by evidence.

Nonetheless, I look forward to the future revelations of the current paradigm.  I like Pinker's The Language Instinct. I am less satisfied with The Blank Slate and what I have heard from Dennet about Breaking the Spell, but it's important to understand and process his arguments.  I love everything by Dawkins.  I really want to read The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.

Hopefully, as neurology advances, we may eventually get to psychology.