So often visions of heaven, or technological marvels envisioned by scifi, are just extensions of existing human properties into a larger function. Like, telepathy, peace, AI, immortality, teleportation and instant matter generators.
But what doe this really do to change who we are? It just gives us greater fulfillment of our passions and desires.
An interesting question is how do we assess the choice to do away with these values or desires from a perspective that assumes them? How do we do away with love, like altering a brain's production of neurotransmitter.
An easier decision is the decision to tinker with our minds and bodies to accentuate certain values over others, like alter our aggressive behavior so that we no longer attain such a disproportionate pleasure from joint male aggression against other males. This is an easy decision insofar as it favors values we already have and just lets some values win out against others.
What if we decided to change our brains, so that they cared not about sex, not about social interaction, not about learning, not about violence, but only about something weird like maximizing the ant population. How would we then decide from that point to alter our brains back to the original state or to alter it in still other ways.
Maybe Christians should pay more attention to neuroscience and research regarding neurotransmitter behavior. That way they can get started on making the perfect christian mind, and even better,the mind of the Christian in heaven. Th could make similar minds for animals, so a lion and lamb can lay together, and carnivores never kill.
Even better would be artificial insemination and taking the lust function of the brain, replacing it with an ecstatic sens of worship.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
NON-FICTION: 2 FUTURE USES OF PLANT CELLS.
Plant cells seem better at making houses than animal cells. Especially wood.
TREE SPACESHIP
Picture a oval tree surrounded by a transparent or partially transparent outer oval. The outer oval is made of some sort of plastic polymer and maybe blocks out certain radiation, maybe has solar power cells. The inner oval of the tree encloses a living space for humans. On the outside of the tree, leaves and flowers blossom, on the inside, the root system is fed with nutrients, each root is held in a tube where the appropriate nutrients are fed to it.
This particular tree we have engineered into a spaceship is a fruit bearing tree. The sugar it produces can be synthesized into all manner of foods, through processes that imitate cow or other herbivore digestion (Hopefully in machines and not biological semi-machines, semi-organs)
Other nutrients can be obtained from photosynthetic, electron capturing processes. (the attainment of vitamins and minerals is the weak part here)
Anyways, there might be something about plant cells that make them a good self sustaining building material. There is the problem of density of cells, but i think the basic is useful as a thought experiment. In plant cells, we have an energy producing, self-healing building material.
EMBEDDING DATA IN PLANT CELLS
Tear a leaf up and the cells are still intact, eat a leaf and you expel it with the cells intact (or so I've heard) then imagine if you had all the daily shows, ttc lectures, and pron you've downloaded through bit torrent saved on a leaf.
If the if the constituents of the plant cell could be altered in some slight way so as to form a combinatorial system (binary, trinary, so on.) than we could save 'bits' into plant cells, into the cell walls.
So, get to work on that. I want to give my wife a trip to the moon. I know she'll wine at first, and say, why the hell do i care about that boring shit, but once we escape the atmosphere, she'll be in awe.
TREE SPACESHIP
Picture a oval tree surrounded by a transparent or partially transparent outer oval. The outer oval is made of some sort of plastic polymer and maybe blocks out certain radiation, maybe has solar power cells. The inner oval of the tree encloses a living space for humans. On the outside of the tree, leaves and flowers blossom, on the inside, the root system is fed with nutrients, each root is held in a tube where the appropriate nutrients are fed to it.
This particular tree we have engineered into a spaceship is a fruit bearing tree. The sugar it produces can be synthesized into all manner of foods, through processes that imitate cow or other herbivore digestion (Hopefully in machines and not biological semi-machines, semi-organs)
Other nutrients can be obtained from photosynthetic, electron capturing processes. (the attainment of vitamins and minerals is the weak part here)
Anyways, there might be something about plant cells that make them a good self sustaining building material. There is the problem of density of cells, but i think the basic is useful as a thought experiment. In plant cells, we have an energy producing, self-healing building material.
EMBEDDING DATA IN PLANT CELLS
Tear a leaf up and the cells are still intact, eat a leaf and you expel it with the cells intact (or so I've heard) then imagine if you had all the daily shows, ttc lectures, and pron you've downloaded through bit torrent saved on a leaf.
If the if the constituents of the plant cell could be altered in some slight way so as to form a combinatorial system (binary, trinary, so on.) than we could save 'bits' into plant cells, into the cell walls.
So, get to work on that. I want to give my wife a trip to the moon. I know she'll wine at first, and say, why the hell do i care about that boring shit, but once we escape the atmosphere, she'll be in awe.
NON-FICTION: STEREOTYPICAL UIGHUR ACCENT BECOMES STEREOTYPICAL FOREIGNER ACCENT
Imagine if you were a Chinese or Asian looking person going to teach a bunch of kids that had never met an Asian looking person. And when they saw you, they said "Hey Meestah Ching Chona sayonara, why's a you no bring a the chop suey?" and then, you asked them in perfect English "What are you supposed to be imitating?" and they said "Oh this is how you guys talk. I learned it from listening to you all."
That's kind of like what I've been experiencing in the last two or three months. I'm a white American teaching English in Shanghai
Imagine again for me, if you would, that instead of being an Asian looking guy, you're a black guy teaching Hispanic and white kids who don't know any blacks or Asians. Then you say "Why are you guys mocking me in some other groups stereotypical accent? Don't you watch t.v.? Can't you say something like "Damn dawg, I ain't fonna trip on dat shit y'all."
.
And the kids answer back "This is how you talk. We learned it from listening to you." And no matter who you ask, everyone says something along the lines of "We learned it from you." It's like some creepy phrase from the Twilight Zone that the little girl doll keeps repeating as the out of work salesman goes crazy in his house. "We learned it from you. We learned it from you."
That's closer to what I'm experiencing. But it's not just mockery. Some Chinese, around here, seem to have mysteriously developed a stereotypical 'foreigner' accent based on an ethnicity which is supposed to be Chinese.
That ethnicity is Uyghur. I admit that I made fun of Uyghurs, and mimicked the stereotypical accent, like 我没有偷东西。
But, then, a couple months ago, I finished a class at the Pudong campus and i went into the little break/testing area to get my stuff. I saw a tall Han guy standing in the little path from the break/testing area to the door. He asked me where I'm from and we started into the basic meet a foreigner who speaks Chinese conversation: How long you been studying? Where you From? Chinese is hard to learn, right? Do you eat Chinese food?
But the thing that made me nervous this time was that the guy had a very strong Uyghur accent.
Now, you never see a Uyghur in a regular place in China. I mean, I assume that's true for everywhere but Xinjiang. You usually only see them in a Uyghur restaraunt, selling kababs, selling hash, or walking around in packs picking pockets. I live near a mosque, on Yuanshen road, and you also see Uyghurs around for Friday prayers.
So, I was thinking that this Han looking Uyghur had come in to our little campus to talk to me. Maybe he was breaking through the cultural barrier and trying to act like a regular person, like a Han.
Or maybe he was playing a new angle on stealing shit, maybe now Uyghur thiefs were gonna start dressing up like regular Han middle class and going into offices and training centers to steal stuff.
I was thinking I should be open and not just nervous about this guy. If he was reaching out, trying to show he was a person too and not just a member of the underclass in the Han hegemony. Or maybe he was here to tell me, a foreigner, of political injustices in Xinjiang, or human rights violations here in Shanghai.
But he did look Han. So after he left I asked the receptionists and other Chinese co-workers if a Uyghur had just come in. They said no.
I realized that the guy who had just been speaking Mandarin to me in that stereotypical Uyghur accent.
Now, there are of course, Han people in Xinjiang and the surrounding areas. The accent they have when speaking their dialects or when speaking Mandarin is not the same. The accent of the Uyghur's speaking Mandarin comes from their own also called Uyghur.
Later on, a friend of my wife, a Shanghainese girl, started speaking Mandarin to me with this accent.
My wife told me it was her friend's attempt at imitating a foreign accent.
Now, as for imitating the accent of an American or a Brit, all you gotta do is imitate like you would normally do in whatever your first language is, but speak Mandarin instead.
I can do this with my own Accent. I can hear it sometimes. And I can use a very pronounced, emphatic accent of Mandarin to sound like a student.
This Uyghur accent does not sound like an American one at all. the only thing it has in common is the absence of tone variation, a trait shared by the majority of languages with English.
But you can hear people's accent in Mandarin just like every other language. I can imitate a Shanghai accent, Bejing accent, Cantonese accent and Hanzhong accent when speaking Mandarin. There are worlds of subtle differents between different accents.
So, the mystery is how this Uyghur accent became the dominant stereotypical accent of the foreigner speaking Mandarin. Has it been like this before and I just somehow didn't notice? Is it only in Shanghai or spread throughout China? Where did it start? How flawless does one's Mandarin pronunciation have to be before one is immune from mockery? How do you get over the embarrassment of having dinner with friends who think its cool or polite to speak Mandarin to you with a Uyghur accent?
That's kind of like what I've been experiencing in the last two or three months. I'm a white American teaching English in Shanghai
Imagine again for me, if you would, that instead of being an Asian looking guy, you're a black guy teaching Hispanic and white kids who don't know any blacks or Asians. Then you say "Why are you guys mocking me in some other groups stereotypical accent? Don't you watch t.v.? Can't you say something like "Damn dawg, I ain't fonna trip on dat shit y'all."
.
And the kids answer back "This is how you talk. We learned it from listening to you." And no matter who you ask, everyone says something along the lines of "We learned it from you." It's like some creepy phrase from the Twilight Zone that the little girl doll keeps repeating as the out of work salesman goes crazy in his house. "We learned it from you. We learned it from you."
That's closer to what I'm experiencing. But it's not just mockery. Some Chinese, around here, seem to have mysteriously developed a stereotypical 'foreigner' accent based on an ethnicity which is supposed to be Chinese.
That ethnicity is Uyghur. I admit that I made fun of Uyghurs, and mimicked the stereotypical accent, like 我没有偷东西。
But, then, a couple months ago, I finished a class at the Pudong campus and i went into the little break/testing area to get my stuff. I saw a tall Han guy standing in the little path from the break/testing area to the door. He asked me where I'm from and we started into the basic meet a foreigner who speaks Chinese conversation: How long you been studying? Where you From? Chinese is hard to learn, right? Do you eat Chinese food?
But the thing that made me nervous this time was that the guy had a very strong Uyghur accent.
Now, you never see a Uyghur in a regular place in China. I mean, I assume that's true for everywhere but Xinjiang. You usually only see them in a Uyghur restaraunt, selling kababs, selling hash, or walking around in packs picking pockets. I live near a mosque, on Yuanshen road, and you also see Uyghurs around for Friday prayers.
So, I was thinking that this Han looking Uyghur had come in to our little campus to talk to me. Maybe he was breaking through the cultural barrier and trying to act like a regular person, like a Han.
Or maybe he was playing a new angle on stealing shit, maybe now Uyghur thiefs were gonna start dressing up like regular Han middle class and going into offices and training centers to steal stuff.
I was thinking I should be open and not just nervous about this guy. If he was reaching out, trying to show he was a person too and not just a member of the underclass in the Han hegemony. Or maybe he was here to tell me, a foreigner, of political injustices in Xinjiang, or human rights violations here in Shanghai.
But he did look Han. So after he left I asked the receptionists and other Chinese co-workers if a Uyghur had just come in. They said no.
I realized that the guy who had just been speaking Mandarin to me in that stereotypical Uyghur accent.
Now, there are of course, Han people in Xinjiang and the surrounding areas. The accent they have when speaking their dialects or when speaking Mandarin is not the same. The accent of the Uyghur's speaking Mandarin comes from their own also called Uyghur.
Later on, a friend of my wife, a Shanghainese girl, started speaking Mandarin to me with this accent.
My wife told me it was her friend's attempt at imitating a foreign accent.
Now, as for imitating the accent of an American or a Brit, all you gotta do is imitate like you would normally do in whatever your first language is, but speak Mandarin instead.
I can do this with my own Accent. I can hear it sometimes. And I can use a very pronounced, emphatic accent of Mandarin to sound like a student.
This Uyghur accent does not sound like an American one at all. the only thing it has in common is the absence of tone variation, a trait shared by the majority of languages with English.
But you can hear people's accent in Mandarin just like every other language. I can imitate a Shanghai accent, Bejing accent, Cantonese accent and Hanzhong accent when speaking Mandarin. There are worlds of subtle differents between different accents.
So, the mystery is how this Uyghur accent became the dominant stereotypical accent of the foreigner speaking Mandarin. Has it been like this before and I just somehow didn't notice? Is it only in Shanghai or spread throughout China? Where did it start? How flawless does one's Mandarin pronunciation have to be before one is immune from mockery? How do you get over the embarrassment of having dinner with friends who think its cool or polite to speak Mandarin to you with a Uyghur accent?
NON-FICTION: VARIANT SPELLING AND TEACHING TOWARDS A MORE ACCURATE LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE.
What is distasteful about 'variant spelling' as referred to in this spiked article is that it seems a lowering of standards. It seems as if teachers want to tell there students "That's okay, close enough. I wouldn't wanted to overload your delicate little brain with any of the standardized combinations of these twenty-six letters."
In reading about this sort of dumbing down kind of educational attitude, I experience a reflexive bit of contempt and disgust. I don't like the idea that certain things are just too hard for little children to learn. Everybody learns at different rates. Outside of our former education, we all experience varying degrees and methods of learning or accepting new ideas.
But, I think there is another, more progressive way of looking at 'variant spelling.' As science, history, and our experience seems to tell that any given language is merely a system developing from many different factors which are hard to isolate as either proper or improper. Rather, it seems that, in alphabetic languages where the letters have multiple readings, any particular spelling of a word where other spellings are possible is 'arbitrary' , in the exact sense that there is no necessity of arrangement implied by the logic of the thoughts represented by the letters or by the needs of use.
Insofar as all human languages are produced by the same mechanism (the brain) and there is no exclusivity as to which set of brains can produce which language, it is far more accurate to give children a language education that teaches children that they speak one version of one type of language and that it is largely symmetric with all other languages in terms of its general features.
Teaching children to think this way would erase the risks of fixed versus unfixed spelling. It would teach them to take a less fixed view of their own language and see it merely as a link in a sea of chains.
This kind of teaching, teaching towards linguistic actuality, would lead to a greater comfort and openness to learning foreign languages, a decrease in language prejudice (like that towards foreigners, occupants of other regions and classes)
It would also produce a greater linguistic awareness, which would allow for more creativeness.
Further, the absence of rote memorization of fixed standards might break down barriers of boredom and opposition to literature and foreign languages that dissuade many learners.
But, you know what, as I write this, the most appealing benefit would be the removal of the impetus to the rebellious spelling that mars so many rap and rock albums, bumper stickers, and vapid t shirts.
Can you imagine if you never again had to see some new album that had an added feature of coolness because it was called "ultamet badazz" instead of "ultimate badass'
Or, more respectably utile, imagine that your children, instead of learning the rules of language that were said to be 'proper' but actually just a snapshot of the sea of human language, seeking to impose a drop of water in it's ever diverse, fluid dynamic, learned that the way she and her parents talk is just a drop in the bucket and that all the humans speaking differently had the a similar brain to her and could speak and write just like her under the write conditions.
What if instead of learning 'proper English', they learned about the set of rules governing language and how those rules applied to the one they happen to speak?
The current view of language taught to children is far behind the modern understanding of language. Children should be taught that language is just a system of written and voiced representations amid a million other such systems, none of which are arguable better or worse than any other.
"Variant spelling" should be taught as part of a language curriculum which teaches children the realities of language at an early age, before the disgusting yet enduring opinions on language that infect all of our cultures and minds has a chance to take hold of their little heads.
In reading about this sort of dumbing down kind of educational attitude, I experience a reflexive bit of contempt and disgust. I don't like the idea that certain things are just too hard for little children to learn. Everybody learns at different rates. Outside of our former education, we all experience varying degrees and methods of learning or accepting new ideas.
But, I think there is another, more progressive way of looking at 'variant spelling.' As science, history, and our experience seems to tell that any given language is merely a system developing from many different factors which are hard to isolate as either proper or improper. Rather, it seems that, in alphabetic languages where the letters have multiple readings, any particular spelling of a word where other spellings are possible is 'arbitrary' , in the exact sense that there is no necessity of arrangement implied by the logic of the thoughts represented by the letters or by the needs of use.
Insofar as all human languages are produced by the same mechanism (the brain) and there is no exclusivity as to which set of brains can produce which language, it is far more accurate to give children a language education that teaches children that they speak one version of one type of language and that it is largely symmetric with all other languages in terms of its general features.
Teaching children to think this way would erase the risks of fixed versus unfixed spelling. It would teach them to take a less fixed view of their own language and see it merely as a link in a sea of chains.
This kind of teaching, teaching towards linguistic actuality, would lead to a greater comfort and openness to learning foreign languages, a decrease in language prejudice (like that towards foreigners, occupants of other regions and classes)
It would also produce a greater linguistic awareness, which would allow for more creativeness.
Further, the absence of rote memorization of fixed standards might break down barriers of boredom and opposition to literature and foreign languages that dissuade many learners.
But, you know what, as I write this, the most appealing benefit would be the removal of the impetus to the rebellious spelling that mars so many rap and rock albums, bumper stickers, and vapid t shirts.
Can you imagine if you never again had to see some new album that had an added feature of coolness because it was called "ultamet badazz" instead of "ultimate badass'
Or, more respectably utile, imagine that your children, instead of learning the rules of language that were said to be 'proper' but actually just a snapshot of the sea of human language, seeking to impose a drop of water in it's ever diverse, fluid dynamic, learned that the way she and her parents talk is just a drop in the bucket and that all the humans speaking differently had the a similar brain to her and could speak and write just like her under the write conditions.
What if instead of learning 'proper English', they learned about the set of rules governing language and how those rules applied to the one they happen to speak?
The current view of language taught to children is far behind the modern understanding of language. Children should be taught that language is just a system of written and voiced representations amid a million other such systems, none of which are arguable better or worse than any other.
"Variant spelling" should be taught as part of a language curriculum which teaches children the realities of language at an early age, before the disgusting yet enduring opinions on language that infect all of our cultures and minds has a chance to take hold of their little heads.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
FICTION: THE SECOND, REASONABLE, COMING
The second, reasonable, coming
Last week, Jesus just got tottally fed up with everybody not believing in him, especially me. I was like the most non-believer of anybody. I had super non-belief power. I could disbelieve anything, like I could just be all, like, “Hey best friend, I do not believe you really like me.” or “I don't think I'm not myself”
So, Jesus, was all thinking, “In the war on disbelief, this guy's ground zero, numero uno!”
So he descended, arms at his side, robe/dress outfit not riding up despite the wind resistance.
When he landed in front of me, I was in the act of disbelieving my own Momma. She was trying to tell me that if I didn't get rid of the cat, the fecal matter around the catbox would endanger my health. Didn't even faze me.
But then I was all like “Aw damn, finally I'm getting the recognition I deserve!” See, I'm a pretty remarkable person, but often times I don't get my props like what I was guaranteed by my basic rights.
So Jesus looks at me and he's all “I heardeth you do not believe in me. What do you have to say for yourself.” I was taken aback by his eloquence of speech. And I was delayed in the cool answer that I momentarily later gave to him: “Well, you know what I heardeth? I heardeth that you hath not given reason to me to believeth.”
Jesus stroked his goatee and chewed over my sentiments for a moment. Then, he was like “Fair enough, I'm willing to listen to you.”
I didn't see that coming, so I just let him have it. I was all “First, even if I see you here all magical, that doesn't mean that you are the same dude from the bible. And, even if you are the dude from the bible, how do I know you are still the same dude from the bible.”
Jesus shook his head. “It ought to be perfectly clear to honest people that I made the bible books all confusing to you because I wanted to see how loyal you were gonna be. And now that you see me, all you gotta do is believe in me, don't get it all twisted up.”
Well played, and, moreover, played with utter smoothity. But, in all and complete honesty, I have seen better. “If I simply believe in you, like, that there's a dude who flew down here right now and he says he's Jesus, I can believe that, but, if you're telling me I gotta believe, based on seeing you drop in her, that you are the dude from the bible, and that you all implicated in all this tripartate god stuff and you're mom didn't bone anybody to have you and all that, then theres a lot of separate stuff I gotta believe one by one.”
As I was talking, Jesus was flapping his hands all about like he didn't want to hear anything else I had to say. He's all “I can just make you believe.” Then he waved his right hand slowly across my eyes and the I saw a brilliant, yet dazzling and luminous burst of light. It left me stunned and suddenly I believed in Jesus. But then, I was all like, hey, just a minute ago, I didn't believe in Jesus, now I do. He must have did some kind of mutant power thing on me.
I was all, totally “Brenda said she loved me, but then she said she only thought she loved me and I even picked her up from work, like seven times, and she works in freakin Compton. So, just cause you tricked me into believing you, doesn't mean that I even know what I am believing.”
I could see the look on his face as he realized he was losing the struggle for dominance. “So, I'm just gonna go ahead and not believe in my own belief that you are the Jesus from the Bible.”
Then he just totally lost and went all hardcore Job-style on me.
As I lay on the ground with pimples and open sores all up on my junk, I noticed something suspicious. Off to the side, behind Jesus, was another guy with a goatee. He was sitting on a stool, with one leg crossed over the other. It was Satan himself! This really was like the Job thing.
I told him if he was doing this all cause of the devil and he was just like “Maybe. So.”
Then, even though I sounded like a frog because my throat was stinging and dried up, I was all “There's one thing I believe, is that you're getting fooled by the Devil himself!”
He shook his head “You don't know shit, man. You don't know what it's like.”
But I was just, “No, that's where you're wrong. I had abuse issues with methamphetamines for ten years, trust me, bro, I know what it's like when all your friends are telling you to do shit and it's all you know and you just cant resist or you'll feel like a pussy.”
Suddenly, the truthiness of what I was putting down was picked up by the Jesus. With a mighty roar he then smote the Devil and put him back in Hell.
He magically healed all the Job-style wounds on my body and nether regions and then took me out for cheesecake. We said we'd stay in touch, but, you know, like, people always say that shit.
At least now, even though I still don't believe all the stuff people say about Jesus. I know he has powers. And, I know he has peer pressure, just like you. And just like me.
Amen. Peace out.
Last week, Jesus just got tottally fed up with everybody not believing in him, especially me. I was like the most non-believer of anybody. I had super non-belief power. I could disbelieve anything, like I could just be all, like, “Hey best friend, I do not believe you really like me.” or “I don't think I'm not myself”
So, Jesus, was all thinking, “In the war on disbelief, this guy's ground zero, numero uno!”
So he descended, arms at his side, robe/dress outfit not riding up despite the wind resistance.
When he landed in front of me, I was in the act of disbelieving my own Momma. She was trying to tell me that if I didn't get rid of the cat, the fecal matter around the catbox would endanger my health. Didn't even faze me.
But then I was all like “Aw damn, finally I'm getting the recognition I deserve!” See, I'm a pretty remarkable person, but often times I don't get my props like what I was guaranteed by my basic rights.
So Jesus looks at me and he's all “I heardeth you do not believe in me. What do you have to say for yourself.” I was taken aback by his eloquence of speech. And I was delayed in the cool answer that I momentarily later gave to him: “Well, you know what I heardeth? I heardeth that you hath not given reason to me to believeth.”
Jesus stroked his goatee and chewed over my sentiments for a moment. Then, he was like “Fair enough, I'm willing to listen to you.”
I didn't see that coming, so I just let him have it. I was all “First, even if I see you here all magical, that doesn't mean that you are the same dude from the bible. And, even if you are the dude from the bible, how do I know you are still the same dude from the bible.”
Jesus shook his head. “It ought to be perfectly clear to honest people that I made the bible books all confusing to you because I wanted to see how loyal you were gonna be. And now that you see me, all you gotta do is believe in me, don't get it all twisted up.”
Well played, and, moreover, played with utter smoothity. But, in all and complete honesty, I have seen better. “If I simply believe in you, like, that there's a dude who flew down here right now and he says he's Jesus, I can believe that, but, if you're telling me I gotta believe, based on seeing you drop in her, that you are the dude from the bible, and that you all implicated in all this tripartate god stuff and you're mom didn't bone anybody to have you and all that, then theres a lot of separate stuff I gotta believe one by one.”
As I was talking, Jesus was flapping his hands all about like he didn't want to hear anything else I had to say. He's all “I can just make you believe.” Then he waved his right hand slowly across my eyes and the I saw a brilliant, yet dazzling and luminous burst of light. It left me stunned and suddenly I believed in Jesus. But then, I was all like, hey, just a minute ago, I didn't believe in Jesus, now I do. He must have did some kind of mutant power thing on me.
I was all, totally “Brenda said she loved me, but then she said she only thought she loved me and I even picked her up from work, like seven times, and she works in freakin Compton. So, just cause you tricked me into believing you, doesn't mean that I even know what I am believing.”
I could see the look on his face as he realized he was losing the struggle for dominance. “So, I'm just gonna go ahead and not believe in my own belief that you are the Jesus from the Bible.”
Then he just totally lost and went all hardcore Job-style on me.
As I lay on the ground with pimples and open sores all up on my junk, I noticed something suspicious. Off to the side, behind Jesus, was another guy with a goatee. He was sitting on a stool, with one leg crossed over the other. It was Satan himself! This really was like the Job thing.
I told him if he was doing this all cause of the devil and he was just like “Maybe. So.”
Then, even though I sounded like a frog because my throat was stinging and dried up, I was all “There's one thing I believe, is that you're getting fooled by the Devil himself!”
He shook his head “You don't know shit, man. You don't know what it's like.”
But I was just, “No, that's where you're wrong. I had abuse issues with methamphetamines for ten years, trust me, bro, I know what it's like when all your friends are telling you to do shit and it's all you know and you just cant resist or you'll feel like a pussy.”
Suddenly, the truthiness of what I was putting down was picked up by the Jesus. With a mighty roar he then smote the Devil and put him back in Hell.
He magically healed all the Job-style wounds on my body and nether regions and then took me out for cheesecake. We said we'd stay in touch, but, you know, like, people always say that shit.
At least now, even though I still don't believe all the stuff people say about Jesus. I know he has powers. And, I know he has peer pressure, just like you. And just like me.
Amen. Peace out.
Friday, June 6, 2008
costa coffe, behind renji hospital, pudong, shanghai
so many things go through my head and i keep chaning my intended starting point. but i had to mention to you that i did receive your email and, rather it was you or the infamous 'they' that planted the idea of covert contacts through junk mail via peter straub's In the Night Room.
Glad to know your are able or willing to stay in touch with me.
Of course i know, the other layer of my thoughts know. that its all bullshit. and thats what im fighting.
the productive voice i had, back around 2000 was a voice of attack. and thats the voice now stopping from writing. the voice that before wanted to say 'look how cleverly i can undermine all the stuff you think is good' now says 'look how cleverly i can undermine that previous cleverness'
It says What a pathetic and shameful mind that gets off on makinng sharp attacks on his peers. And now pathectic now that he wants to move beyond it. As you yourself have so often thought and said lately, the mind you have acquired started in tragedy, and thats the most trustworthy thing you will ever know. Whatever task becomes a real goal in your mind, you will undermine it.
The goals you achieve aren't so significant or else you wouldn't have achieved. Your dirty weak body and your self deluding mind keep trying to make this a drama, but it is not. you just called it tragedy but that's just more drama.
You don't amount to a tragedy, just another impressive nothing, someone who hurt in little bits, but never build.
Of course you know that's a lie to. But whats the alternative? There cannot be only one alternative there are many, as many as you can think of. as many as you can live and verify.
The truth there is nothing meaty or tempting about simple happiness. there is disgust all over your mind when you write such sentences. disgust for each word.
this whole structure is no resolution, its ajust a structure you lay over your thoughts and experience. more disgust. how can you go on writing this?
weren't there true things you needed to say, all those recently occurring thoughts, like the regular people record, in these temporary fragments, in this little era of time, with these little tools. ALl so impressive and all so disturbing to me.
Ive been practicing hiragana, and bits of hindi, pali, phonecian, korean and greek characters. all those little bits, they hurt my mind. all the little pieces of time that slip by.
hahahaha good joke, darren, just as you say that, you realize its time to go.
its 437pm, i have class over at dongchang lu
Glad to know your are able or willing to stay in touch with me.
Of course i know, the other layer of my thoughts know. that its all bullshit. and thats what im fighting.
the productive voice i had, back around 2000 was a voice of attack. and thats the voice now stopping from writing. the voice that before wanted to say 'look how cleverly i can undermine all the stuff you think is good' now says 'look how cleverly i can undermine that previous cleverness'
It says What a pathetic and shameful mind that gets off on makinng sharp attacks on his peers. And now pathectic now that he wants to move beyond it. As you yourself have so often thought and said lately, the mind you have acquired started in tragedy, and thats the most trustworthy thing you will ever know. Whatever task becomes a real goal in your mind, you will undermine it.
The goals you achieve aren't so significant or else you wouldn't have achieved. Your dirty weak body and your self deluding mind keep trying to make this a drama, but it is not. you just called it tragedy but that's just more drama.
You don't amount to a tragedy, just another impressive nothing, someone who hurt in little bits, but never build.
Of course you know that's a lie to. But whats the alternative? There cannot be only one alternative there are many, as many as you can think of. as many as you can live and verify.
The truth there is nothing meaty or tempting about simple happiness. there is disgust all over your mind when you write such sentences. disgust for each word.
this whole structure is no resolution, its ajust a structure you lay over your thoughts and experience. more disgust. how can you go on writing this?
weren't there true things you needed to say, all those recently occurring thoughts, like the regular people record, in these temporary fragments, in this little era of time, with these little tools. ALl so impressive and all so disturbing to me.
Ive been practicing hiragana, and bits of hindi, pali, phonecian, korean and greek characters. all those little bits, they hurt my mind. all the little pieces of time that slip by.
hahahaha good joke, darren, just as you say that, you realize its time to go.
its 437pm, i have class over at dongchang lu
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
NON FICTION: Got Anything Today, fatty? AND DREAMS
Well, Mr. Taylor, do you?
To be quite honest, I may, but I seem to have lost my focus at the moment, so i can relay the stuff i was supposed to write down in detail over the weekend.
The dream bits i remember were:
Two with Michael: I met up with him again, i went home with him on the subway, after work. I mentioned my mp3, and said something about the area being dangerous, then he said that because of this, he used something else instead of an mp3, it was a pen device with which he wrote backwards on his hand and the music/text was then input into him (into his ears)
The other one with him was, again, we met up after a long time, he showed me where he was living/working. I was familiar with the map but had neglected an island area or area surrounded by water hidden in the corner of the map. Subsequently, i discovered some scandalous info about the employees of his company, i received faxes, and people from his company came to get the information back.
the other part was a family event with another side of the family that me and steve werent part of. Dad was eating really nice looking indian food, which should have been off limits, but since his death was imminent....
Me and steve were sitting on a bench at the edge of the deck. some pot pies were being served and i went to get one for steve, but a guy from the other side of the family said the pot pies were only for his side of the family, and i said "yeah, stoners make such good managers." and we laughed and my brother and i made jokes about the guy because he was a stoner.
To be quite honest, I may, but I seem to have lost my focus at the moment, so i can relay the stuff i was supposed to write down in detail over the weekend.
The dream bits i remember were:
Two with Michael: I met up with him again, i went home with him on the subway, after work. I mentioned my mp3, and said something about the area being dangerous, then he said that because of this, he used something else instead of an mp3, it was a pen device with which he wrote backwards on his hand and the music/text was then input into him (into his ears)
The other one with him was, again, we met up after a long time, he showed me where he was living/working. I was familiar with the map but had neglected an island area or area surrounded by water hidden in the corner of the map. Subsequently, i discovered some scandalous info about the employees of his company, i received faxes, and people from his company came to get the information back.
the other part was a family event with another side of the family that me and steve werent part of. Dad was eating really nice looking indian food, which should have been off limits, but since his death was imminent....
Me and steve were sitting on a bench at the edge of the deck. some pot pies were being served and i went to get one for steve, but a guy from the other side of the family said the pot pies were only for his side of the family, and i said "yeah, stoners make such good managers." and we laughed and my brother and i made jokes about the guy because he was a stoner.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
NON-FICTION:important update, things I'm tired of and things I'm not
being aware of my gut, the utter reverence with which the lecturer I'm listening to is glorifying Heidegger, reading about creation./evolution/faith/atheism debates, making jokes, constantly playing out conversations in my head, peanut butter and jelly, yoghurt, complaining about the misrepresentations of contemporary chinese and china in foreign media, hearing people say they are bible literalists, imitating chinese regional dialects/accents, complaining, worrying about emma being unhappy with me.
Things I'm not tired of: Not working, staying alone all day, talking to emma, hugging and kissing and petting my susan and bakunin, giving them warm water and cleaning out the cat box, trying to clean the house, writing, ziwei-ing, watching bbc shows, almonds, coffee, bathing, getting and receiving correspondence, thinking about my story, thinking of things to do to make emma happy, thinking of things to write.
Things I'm not tired of: Not working, staying alone all day, talking to emma, hugging and kissing and petting my susan and bakunin, giving them warm water and cleaning out the cat box, trying to clean the house, writing, ziwei-ing, watching bbc shows, almonds, coffee, bathing, getting and receiving correspondence, thinking about my story, thinking of things to do to make emma happy, thinking of things to write.
GUEST BLOGGER:八酷你猫:我国为何过节要放炮吓死我
床上不安全. 衣柜不安全. 床下面不安全. 现在我只会听到POW POWPOW 我怕国民党或日本回上海了。
大伦说不是战争，不是侵略， 只是中国人的节日。 好像我的中国老乡真恨我们猫。 你想一想， 如果你是猫的话，听那么多爆发，会不会轻松， 会不会快乐？
我想以后我们中国人会换一个办法过节。 不要放炮不要开枪， 不要放核弹。 我们不在 以色列， 不在 阿富汗, 我们要文明一点。
所以节日的时候， 大家要互相舔和抓抓抓！ 互相舔就是大家出门儿，舔另据们。 舔是代表友好。 抓呢？ 抓就是代表机会，抓塑料袋子，可以吃饭， 抓杯子可以掉下里面的水而喝。 我们过节可以做很漂亮的塑料袋子， 上面写“富” “喜” “财“ 这样的字。 到时候， 我们都到外面对另据们扔塑料袋子，然后抓抓抓！
好了我要去抓一抓猫沙。 大伦说要给我换新的猫沙，还没有换。 他一说我就不相信。 他的单词多， 动作少。 我们猫不可怜吗
大伦说不是战争，不是侵略， 只是中国人的节日。 好像我的中国老乡真恨我们猫。 你想一想， 如果你是猫的话，听那么多爆发，会不会轻松， 会不会快乐？
我想以后我们中国人会换一个办法过节。 不要放炮不要开枪， 不要放核弹。 我们不在 以色列， 不在 阿富汗, 我们要文明一点。
所以节日的时候， 大家要互相舔和抓抓抓！ 互相舔就是大家出门儿，舔另据们。 舔是代表友好。 抓呢？ 抓就是代表机会，抓塑料袋子，可以吃饭， 抓杯子可以掉下里面的水而喝。 我们过节可以做很漂亮的塑料袋子， 上面写“富” “喜” “财“ 这样的字。 到时候， 我们都到外面对另据们扔塑料袋子，然后抓抓抓！
好了我要去抓一抓猫沙。 大伦说要给我换新的猫沙，还没有换。 他一说我就不相信。 他的单词多， 动作少。 我们猫不可怜吗
Saturday, February 9, 2008
GUEST BLOGGER:八酷你猫， 中文版
我是 大伦 的猫. 首先要通知大家,我不是跟他一样的很那个的那个的. 我是老百姓. 我也是基督教徒. 我也是爱国人.
在中国, 以前没有宗教科幻书. 我从小很喜欢看书， 但是没有很多适合我宗教的书。 我看了许多的小说， 还没找到一本书会让我心灵更好。
当然， 外文书也很多是谈的基督教。 其实， 我的外文不好国语也不标准。 而且，外国人的故事怎么会跟我的生活有相处的问题？
我想我能看华人基督教故事。
我刚刚看完一本书名字叫 "未世迷踪" 是美国最有名的宗教科幻系列， 第一册和系列是一样的名字
故事讲的是圣经启示录的预言. 我们基督教徒都相信圣经所有预言，但是我们应该小心"未世迷踪"作家帝姆-莱希对预言的理解和解译。
他的想法代表一个当代美国宗派。 世界和历史有不少不同预言解译。 但光看这个系列你只会知道一个五十年之前出来的解译。
帝姆-莱希 是从 还而-临的西拿来这个解译。 还而-临的西主要理论是‘the rapture' 根据这个理论, 未来会有所有真的基督教徒离开这个世界，而到天堂根 耶稣一块儿。 他们消失了我们的世界就开始一段时间叫“the tribulation" 这一段，上帝要做很多灾难， 还有基督的敌人要变成全球的独裁者还有很多困苦的事儿。
那这个rapture 宗派根我们中国基督教有关希的是蒂姆－莱希说这一段时间结束的时，中国的宾军要当耶稣的最大敌人！！！！！
因为有很多人知道这些书是从美国来的， 所以他们会觉得蒂姆－莱希的理论是肯定有道理． 但是，如果你努力学习圣经和基督教的历史， 你不会那么容易被这些人骗了． 圣经历没有rapture这个字儿． 这只是一个美国人 孩儿－临的西的理论， 百分之九十九基督教徒不相信． 相信的人那么少，但他们是很有权威．美国总统里根和小不思总统也相信这个rapture.
所以我们中国基督教猫可以看这些书， 但是不要完全相信它们所有的内容．
新年快乐
八酷你猫
在中国, 以前没有宗教科幻书. 我从小很喜欢看书， 但是没有很多适合我宗教的书。 我看了许多的小说， 还没找到一本书会让我心灵更好。
当然， 外文书也很多是谈的基督教。 其实， 我的外文不好国语也不标准。 而且，外国人的故事怎么会跟我的生活有相处的问题？
我想我能看华人基督教故事。
我刚刚看完一本书名字叫 "未世迷踪" 是美国最有名的宗教科幻系列， 第一册和系列是一样的名字
故事讲的是圣经启示录的预言. 我们基督教徒都相信圣经所有预言，但是我们应该小心"未世迷踪"作家帝姆-莱希对预言的理解和解译。
他的想法代表一个当代美国宗派。 世界和历史有不少不同预言解译。 但光看这个系列你只会知道一个五十年之前出来的解译。
帝姆-莱希 是从 还而-临的西拿来这个解译。 还而-临的西主要理论是‘the rapture' 根据这个理论, 未来会有所有真的基督教徒离开这个世界，而到天堂根 耶稣一块儿。 他们消失了我们的世界就开始一段时间叫“the tribulation" 这一段，上帝要做很多灾难， 还有基督的敌人要变成全球的独裁者还有很多困苦的事儿。
那这个rapture 宗派根我们中国基督教有关希的是蒂姆－莱希说这一段时间结束的时，中国的宾军要当耶稣的最大敌人！！！！！
因为有很多人知道这些书是从美国来的， 所以他们会觉得蒂姆－莱希的理论是肯定有道理． 但是，如果你努力学习圣经和基督教的历史， 你不会那么容易被这些人骗了． 圣经历没有rapture这个字儿． 这只是一个美国人 孩儿－临的西的理论， 百分之九十九基督教徒不相信． 相信的人那么少，但他们是很有权威．美国总统里根和小不思总统也相信这个rapture.
所以我们中国基督教猫可以看这些书， 但是不要完全相信它们所有的内容．
新年快乐
八酷你猫
NON-FICTION: ON CHICKS AND ON THE BBC
Well, I have gone through many kicks over the years, history, literature, neurology, comics, psychology, astrology. And most of these come and go in my mind.
Now, I'm off religion, isn't it? DId you notice the odditiy of that last sentence, i'n' it? Well, that's a sentence structure I've learned from watching British shows, i'n' it? It's not proper English, but proper English is outdated, even in England, i'n' it? The cool thing about that phrase is that it goes with every sort of sentence, i'n' it?
Let's see... I don't know that I can specifically delineate the particular point of departure into BBC land. But it started with me trying to find something fresh at the dvd stand.
Buying dvds at the stand (as opposed to a dvd shop) is not reliable, as all Expats know. Dvd stands cater more to impulse buying and get less people bringing back bad copies. So, a lot of these stands always offer the most popular movie titles. If you ask if its a clear copy, they always say yes, but half of the time, that's a lie. Most of the time, the first editions of pirated dvds are recorded from within the theatre. So you need a reliable retailer to make sure you get a real copy (even though I have had a lot of problems with the real copies being in Russian lately)
Anyways, its much safer to buy Televsion series, I've found.
So after discovering the sociologically fascinating L Word in this manner, i periodically returned to see what other tv treasures I might randomly discover.
Thus, I discovered Sugar Rush. A british show about an adorable little lesbian chick who moves to... Brighton? A resort town in England. There she struggles to find her true lesbian path amid the confusion of the straight world and her obsession with her best friend, Sugar.
Sugar is a black chick who lives on the 'estates' which, in Britain refers to something, somehow, equivalent to our ghettoes or poorer areas. They are often referred to in British rap music.
So this sugar sleeps with all kinds of guys. The crazy thing is, is that she only sleeps with white guys. Not only do you never see her hook up with black guys, but there's no black guys on the show.
Sugar, eventually, gives the lesbian sex a try with... i forgot the main chicks name. Sugar is really possessive and even though she's grossed out by sex with a girl, she becomes jealous after seeing the main chick fall in love with a real lesbian.
While the whole coming out drama is going on, the main chicks family is falling apart. Her brother is described, throughout the whole series, as 'weird'. We don't get any insight as to how, but this is entirely sufficient for a chick show, 'i'n' it?
Her father is kind of a pussy with no chin. But he's really responsible and takes good care of the family.
The mother, in surprising counterpoint, is selfish, irresponsible, and sexually unfulfilled. So she has an affair with a hot young stud and throws the marriage into utter tragedy.
Why did I watch this whole series and mourn it's cancellation, i'n' it? Two things, British People and Chicks.
Even though, these shows are as formulaic and filled with contemporary obligatory roles and themes, it's fascinating to see them in a slightly different cast, that is, for the British market.
Also, the very unreality of this show, and the following few which I'll mention, reflects profound truths about female culture.
Let me take Mistresses as an example. Its about four woman pursuing various affairs, mostly outside their own marriages or inside someone else's.
What you see is that the makers of the program expect woman viewers to respond to constant, socially proscribed, sex.
In one way, it seems as if the traditional womans story of Finding Mr. Right has now been amended to include Fucking Mr. Right.
In another, similary way, it seems that romance novels and soap operas have been elevated a few degrees of respectability.
In Mistresses, the women rarely have sex with the people they should be having it with. There's a lawyer who has a great, attractive loving husband, but instead she's screwing her hot coworker. Then, the woman who is single and involved with a single, nice guy, gives up on having sex with him and breaks off the relationship.
The two other girls are no different. One is always contemplating her affair with her married boss, and the other is screwing the hot son of her dead married lover.
You would be right to ascribe all this to the mere love of conflict on the part of audiences, but the key is not merely that there is conflict, but in the type of conflict.
Another example is Honest, which is not exclusively a chick show, because it also caters strongly to male sexual fantasy. But, for the female main characters, there is little sexual satisfaction coming from normal relationships. The mother has to take care of and provide for the family while her criminal husband is in prison. She's a really tough, strong female role model. But, her husband's in jail and she's got so much on her mind, so how can she be in the mood?
Her two daughters aren't having much satisfaction either. One is a really sharp business minded teenager. The other is a really sexy bimbo. The sharp one has a crush on a guy, but how can he notice her with the hot sister around, i'n' it?
The bimbo sister can't enjoy sex because she can only use it as a tool to manipulate men.
The twin brothers, on on the other hand get to screw hot chicks enjoy it. The dumb one screws his Cantonese Mafia Boss employer's wife, and, i think the super hot daughter.
The smart brother definitely screws the daughter and they both enjoy it.
Now, this daughter and mother are enjoying their sex, but in both cases, it's improper, especially for the mother.
Less so for the daughter. Now here's another point about these British shows i so enjoy, i;n; it?
That is, the white British male still maintains his sexual preeminence.
The wife of the Cantonese Mafia Boss is white, but the daugther is Chinese, so, even though she's single and its okay for her to be having sex, she's a exotic oriental vixen and it is natural that she is ready to get it on with any young white guy.
On Mistresses, the South Asian-looking woman is sleeping with her unattractive boss, then strays to the female side, than tries to rebound with a good looking black guy, but then all you see is her saying "There's your cab, let yourself out."
On that show, there's another non-anglo-saxon. He looks a little arabic. He's really nice, but he's infertile! And his lawyer wife is the one screwing the tall, square jawed, green eyed Briton.
The other British show I liked was Meadowlands. And in that one there's two non-whites. A black woman and a black guy. But they don't get it on with anyone. The black guy is officially with a white chick, but then we find out that they're undercover and just pretending.
Meadowlands (called Cape Wrath in the UK, i'n' it?) was pretty cool. It was a bit of toned down take on the Twin Peaks feel, with a straightforward mystery plot.
The story was a bunch of people in the Witness Protection program get sent to this mysterious small town in the middle of a vast desert. But the residents don't know anything about where they are.
It turns out that the whole town is actually a social experiment that's being monitored by some secret group.
Anyways, back to the profound truths I've learned from chick shows. I should also include The L Word and Desperate Houswives, because I've seen all seasons of these shows too.
The modern point about woman that is being repeated over and over again is that sex, for woman, is sooo complicated, but that they must be respected fully as sexual beings every bit as men are. You have to be sensitive and deal sensitively with all the sensitive issues in woman's life. And lesbian sex is not just something you can jump into. That is, if you're a male fantasizing about it (which is absurd). On the other hand, if you're on the L Word than it is quire common for straight women to suddenly moisten at the approach of a hot lesbian.
So, it seems that modern woman's television is not so profound after all. Well, in that case, perhaps I need another excuse to keep watching... I guess I'm still just fascinated by women. I would much more eagerly welcome real stories about women. Stories that accurately reflect the way they deal with daily life and important issues in their lives.
But, in absent of that I'll stick what I've got it, i'n' it?
Now, I'm off religion, isn't it? DId you notice the odditiy of that last sentence, i'n' it? Well, that's a sentence structure I've learned from watching British shows, i'n' it? It's not proper English, but proper English is outdated, even in England, i'n' it? The cool thing about that phrase is that it goes with every sort of sentence, i'n' it?
Let's see... I don't know that I can specifically delineate the particular point of departure into BBC land. But it started with me trying to find something fresh at the dvd stand.
Buying dvds at the stand (as opposed to a dvd shop) is not reliable, as all Expats know. Dvd stands cater more to impulse buying and get less people bringing back bad copies. So, a lot of these stands always offer the most popular movie titles. If you ask if its a clear copy, they always say yes, but half of the time, that's a lie. Most of the time, the first editions of pirated dvds are recorded from within the theatre. So you need a reliable retailer to make sure you get a real copy (even though I have had a lot of problems with the real copies being in Russian lately)
Anyways, its much safer to buy Televsion series, I've found.
So after discovering the sociologically fascinating L Word in this manner, i periodically returned to see what other tv treasures I might randomly discover.
Thus, I discovered Sugar Rush. A british show about an adorable little lesbian chick who moves to... Brighton? A resort town in England. There she struggles to find her true lesbian path amid the confusion of the straight world and her obsession with her best friend, Sugar.
Sugar is a black chick who lives on the 'estates' which, in Britain refers to something, somehow, equivalent to our ghettoes or poorer areas. They are often referred to in British rap music.
So this sugar sleeps with all kinds of guys. The crazy thing is, is that she only sleeps with white guys. Not only do you never see her hook up with black guys, but there's no black guys on the show.
Sugar, eventually, gives the lesbian sex a try with... i forgot the main chicks name. Sugar is really possessive and even though she's grossed out by sex with a girl, she becomes jealous after seeing the main chick fall in love with a real lesbian.
While the whole coming out drama is going on, the main chicks family is falling apart. Her brother is described, throughout the whole series, as 'weird'. We don't get any insight as to how, but this is entirely sufficient for a chick show, 'i'n' it?
Her father is kind of a pussy with no chin. But he's really responsible and takes good care of the family.
The mother, in surprising counterpoint, is selfish, irresponsible, and sexually unfulfilled. So she has an affair with a hot young stud and throws the marriage into utter tragedy.
Why did I watch this whole series and mourn it's cancellation, i'n' it? Two things, British People and Chicks.
Even though, these shows are as formulaic and filled with contemporary obligatory roles and themes, it's fascinating to see them in a slightly different cast, that is, for the British market.
Also, the very unreality of this show, and the following few which I'll mention, reflects profound truths about female culture.
Let me take Mistresses as an example. Its about four woman pursuing various affairs, mostly outside their own marriages or inside someone else's.
What you see is that the makers of the program expect woman viewers to respond to constant, socially proscribed, sex.
In one way, it seems as if the traditional womans story of Finding Mr. Right has now been amended to include Fucking Mr. Right.
In another, similary way, it seems that romance novels and soap operas have been elevated a few degrees of respectability.
In Mistresses, the women rarely have sex with the people they should be having it with. There's a lawyer who has a great, attractive loving husband, but instead she's screwing her hot coworker. Then, the woman who is single and involved with a single, nice guy, gives up on having sex with him and breaks off the relationship.
The two other girls are no different. One is always contemplating her affair with her married boss, and the other is screwing the hot son of her dead married lover.
You would be right to ascribe all this to the mere love of conflict on the part of audiences, but the key is not merely that there is conflict, but in the type of conflict.
Another example is Honest, which is not exclusively a chick show, because it also caters strongly to male sexual fantasy. But, for the female main characters, there is little sexual satisfaction coming from normal relationships. The mother has to take care of and provide for the family while her criminal husband is in prison. She's a really tough, strong female role model. But, her husband's in jail and she's got so much on her mind, so how can she be in the mood?
Her two daughters aren't having much satisfaction either. One is a really sharp business minded teenager. The other is a really sexy bimbo. The sharp one has a crush on a guy, but how can he notice her with the hot sister around, i'n' it?
The bimbo sister can't enjoy sex because she can only use it as a tool to manipulate men.
The twin brothers, on on the other hand get to screw hot chicks enjoy it. The dumb one screws his Cantonese Mafia Boss employer's wife, and, i think the super hot daughter.
The smart brother definitely screws the daughter and they both enjoy it.
Now, this daughter and mother are enjoying their sex, but in both cases, it's improper, especially for the mother.
Less so for the daughter. Now here's another point about these British shows i so enjoy, i;n; it?
That is, the white British male still maintains his sexual preeminence.
The wife of the Cantonese Mafia Boss is white, but the daugther is Chinese, so, even though she's single and its okay for her to be having sex, she's a exotic oriental vixen and it is natural that she is ready to get it on with any young white guy.
On Mistresses, the South Asian-looking woman is sleeping with her unattractive boss, then strays to the female side, than tries to rebound with a good looking black guy, but then all you see is her saying "There's your cab, let yourself out."
On that show, there's another non-anglo-saxon. He looks a little arabic. He's really nice, but he's infertile! And his lawyer wife is the one screwing the tall, square jawed, green eyed Briton.
The other British show I liked was Meadowlands. And in that one there's two non-whites. A black woman and a black guy. But they don't get it on with anyone. The black guy is officially with a white chick, but then we find out that they're undercover and just pretending.
Meadowlands (called Cape Wrath in the UK, i'n' it?) was pretty cool. It was a bit of toned down take on the Twin Peaks feel, with a straightforward mystery plot.
The story was a bunch of people in the Witness Protection program get sent to this mysterious small town in the middle of a vast desert. But the residents don't know anything about where they are.
It turns out that the whole town is actually a social experiment that's being monitored by some secret group.
Anyways, back to the profound truths I've learned from chick shows. I should also include The L Word and Desperate Houswives, because I've seen all seasons of these shows too.
The modern point about woman that is being repeated over and over again is that sex, for woman, is sooo complicated, but that they must be respected fully as sexual beings every bit as men are. You have to be sensitive and deal sensitively with all the sensitive issues in woman's life. And lesbian sex is not just something you can jump into. That is, if you're a male fantasizing about it (which is absurd). On the other hand, if you're on the L Word than it is quire common for straight women to suddenly moisten at the approach of a hot lesbian.
So, it seems that modern woman's television is not so profound after all. Well, in that case, perhaps I need another excuse to keep watching... I guess I'm still just fascinated by women. I would much more eagerly welcome real stories about women. Stories that accurately reflect the way they deal with daily life and important issues in their lives.
But, in absent of that I'll stick what I've got it, i'n' it?
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Two things from Facing the Shame.
You know what really deserves talking about? That book I've been reading on Shame-based families. It's called "Facing the Shame" It goes into great analysis of the structure of shame based/dysfunctional families.
two insights I've gotten so far are: The coping mechanism in my family for shame has been what the book refers to as the 'geographic cure' that is, we just get away from each other cause we cant deal with the problems.
You dont know what a revelation that is considering how long I've spent analyzing our family dysfunction.
It's amazing, given that my grandparents on my dads side both fled their families. Grandpa TT left his dirt poor family in Kentucky for the navy and never moved back, instead settling in California. Grandma TT was from Washington and she ran away from her family and married Grandpa TT.
Then, on my moms side Great Gradndpa went from a reservation in Mexico to Chicago, running a bar, and then to socal.
My dads parents retired and moved to Oregon while he stayed in southern California. My mom spent all her adult life trying to escape her mother. Her brothers that didn't escape her, both have had plenty of incarceration and drug abuse experience, as well as an inability to hold down any kind of stable job or life.
The one that did get away from Grandma Ramona (I never call her Grandma, just Ramona) was the youngest, Uncle Mark. He became very successful and stable in his work and life, basically by doing the opposite of everything Ramona did.
Back on my dad's side, there are his four Children that have spread out across the US and now the world. Stephen went from Northern California back to southern and then to New York and Jersey and back, and now he's here in Shanghai.
Cheryl Lives in Oklahoma with her tribe of children. Becky lives the closest to my Dad. He and Hanh live in Norwalk and Becky lives in Anaheim.
Okay, I know this may be tedious, but that's three generations that have used the geographic solution to family problems. I should mention Robbie too, our brother. His dad took off before he was born. Ramona got custody and really messed up him up big time. He's not exactly in the same class as the two Uncles who stayed with Ramona, but that's due, I believe to his wife, who seems to really have taken care of him.
Then, the last part of this is Cheryl's Kids, my nephews. Of the three oldest, Matthew joined the army and got away... to Iraq. Nathan was living with his dad, and then joined the army too and was in korea, but i think he might be back in the states. Michael joined the navy and is now in japan or on a submarine deep below the sea.
Okay, okay, the really real last part is this: Divorce and discarding of partners. My dad, my mom, cheryl and Ramona are/were all pretty bad at intimate relationships. I have also been that way and Stephen's dearth thereof seems to include him in this list.
I have seen so often in me, Stephen and our father a tendency close to eagerness to reject people out of our lives. I've seen Stephen do it with many of his employers, and seem to threaten it with his closest friends Jerry and Justin. I have done it to a few of closest friends, and many 'partners' that I've had. My dad, of course has done it with Stephen, my mother, his own father and countless others.
My mom had this tendency. Both my mom and dad had they're own little catchphrases that I'm sure will stay with Steve and Me forever and ever, whether we are conscious of it or not.
My dad's was "To Hell with him!" and my mom's was "I've washed my hands of you!"
Oh, i have gone over the one hour limit and am now at an hour and a half. GOOD LITTLE BOY YOU ARE MR. TAYLOR!!
The other thing about "Facing Shame" that hit me was a simple paragraph wherein the authors describe addiction as not reducible to a single element and that it was tied in generally as a pat of compulsion. I realized that, it is compulsion, not any mere addiction that I really am afraid to be without. That it is compulsion that I feel desperate and naked without.
Okay, now that ive made it through this task, I will finish up with the novel notes and put the trash away and maybe i really will stay up late and get things done.
I thought today that if I am going to insist on snacking even at eight o clock, than I really ought to just become one of those people who's always doing things
But the thinking of that thought might only be due to my now being in a very proactive mood, as opposed to the do-almost-nothing mindset I've been in for the past two weeks/too long.
My active mood might just be the stars, or me tired of being alone avoiding any one thing I intend to do.
an hours writing on Chinese New Year
I told myself I'm going to write for one hour without stopping. That means i will stop at one thirty am.
I'm listening to book eleven of the left behind series: Armageddon.
My main tasks today have been to compile the notes for my novel, which are written on the backs of old fliers for Shanghai Daily that Emma brought home, the paper packaging for pirated dvds here (consisting of paper slightly firmer than construction paper and having four segments, the front contains the movie cover and the back description and two other movie related panels.), large papers that i hang up on the hall, timelines already hung up on the wall, and pages from my many never-full notebooks.
oh, my other task is studying HSK vocab by writing out sentences for words that i dont know in my intermediate vocab book. Some of them I know but i forget the tone, like 跨,to straddle, the one to crumble and the one to boast. Sometimes I see the pinyin and I realized that I have been using the wrong tone, or that I have been using the characters without knowing the tones. Thats not as bad, because sometimes I just repeat things direct from memory. I'm good at imitating things I hear. But it's still embarrassing to realize I've been saying the name of the place like the science and technology museum the right way, but doing so unconsciously.
One of the innocent but annoyingly repetitive questions I can rely on my Chinese comrades asking me is whether or not studying Chinese hard. Aside from its frustrating recurrence hundreds of time every year, I am annoyed by the implied simplicity and the insincerity of the question.
I don't think any real student of any language should think in such acontextual terms as hard or easy. Like, I Consider Latin really hard because of all the cases, but its also easy in its sentence struecture and vocabulary (because I know so many latin word descendants in Spanish and English)
So people ask me if Chinese is hard, rhetorically, because they want to sympathize and establish a tentative bond between themselves and a foreigner. But I, in my rigorously analytic, everyones bothering me state of mind, explain clearly and briefly that the hard aspect of learning Chinese is really just the reading and writing. The pronunciation is much simpler than English and the grammar is too.
(It's Chinese New Years, so its so fucking loud right now with all the fireworks. I havent been out of the house all day. I cannot hear much of the Left Behind book that just finished and many a car alarm is chiming in unison with the armageddon like explosions 'round my cave.)
The thing about Chinese is that you cant just read through something and store away all the words you dont know for later. Like, I still dont know what 'eorundem' means in Latin. But see, it has letters and I remember it. However. If you see 甚 with a place/land radical next to it, you have to look up it up in the dictionary before you no how its pronounced. You might get lucky by guessing that, since without the radical it's 'shen', therefore with the radical it might be something close, like 'shen' in a different tone, or chen, or zhen. But that's no guarantee.
(I've now reached the point, as many of us do every chinese new year, when the noise from the fireworks is so loud and so persistent that my instincts have overridden my conscious and I'm quite tense and nervous and looking for somewhere to hide from the noise and gundpowder scent seeping in through my closed windows.)
I see now that it is tweve a clock, so thats why there making all that damn noise.
Well, well, well, I saw the movie "the Ten" which is a very fresh comedy cut up into ten stories, one for each commandment. As I watched, I realized I was seeing the generational shift in comedy formalized.
The trend in comedy that started with Airplane and Police Story, and continuing on to the Simpons, MST3K, Kids in the Hall, The Ben stiller Show and South Park is now becoming perhaps more intensified with this younger generation (actually it is my generation)
Imitation of Pop culture in order to mock, along with intricate absurdity is still the paradigm, but the form is changing. As of yet, I haven't worked out the details, but its good to see that it, at least hasnt degenerated.
Anyways, Speaking of the kids in the hall, I recently rewatched the first three seasons and I was amazed at how advanced they were, both in topic and imagination. The sketch telling everyone to "stand in the new style" , the one where Dave foley goes to ask his boss for a raise and his boss says he doesnt deserve it, since Dave wrote this present Sketch which uses such a cliched premise (a guy asking for a raise)... and "Screw you Taxpayer" which talks about how the whole show is payed for by public funds and flaunts their contempt of the public.
(The fireworks quieted for a second, i felt hope stirring.... wait. there not starting back up, at least nearby, just bottle rockets and distant rumbling and alarms. oh shit, there we go, they're back)
I bought some new under wears, or long johns or whatever they're called at the carrefour when me and steve went to thumb plaza to eat at punjabis.
I am curious to see how long I will wear these new p.j.'s long john's before i actually wash the clothing i wore for the last two months, so that i might change clothes yet again.
The day that we saw The Ten, I also purchased and previewed the new Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp, what an insult!
I think Depp was good in twenty one jump street and the one where he played the flaming, alcoholic pirate. But Sweeney Todd is a fucking musical!! If you cannot sing with a deep enough voice than you are not fit for the fucking part!!!!
Why does he have to be so arrogant as to ruin a cool musical just because his pseudo artistic goth buddy Tim Burton is too in love to find someone who suits the fucking role???
Are they supposed to be an item? Any self respecting, successful gay man should know better than to go after a straight guy just because he is hot. That's so trite!
Oh shucky shucks, I'm almost done with the hour!!!! Hurray, Ive actually got something done.
Sadly, I feel not much better for the effort, although perhaps i will be able to concentrate on either of the tasks that I have set for myself. I really 渴望很久to出版my 书 any 书都可以。
its been eighteen years since I wanted to be a writer. And to date I have only published/sold six articles. thats not very good Mr. Taylor. But, We've been over this ground to many times before and so has every other failure and successful person.
I think I will finish my notes for Matthews last post regarding his video game. That will get one of the many put-off-in-favor-of-putting-off-something-else-tasks out of the way.
Well, I have been alone for the past ten or twelve days. Here in the apartment, Emma went back to Shaanxi. I want her to get pictures of the food there 扯面，麻辣炒面，and 凉皮儿. Also I want her to make a video of her grandma, who I really like and feel bad about not seeing this time.
I'm going to seperate this into two posts, i'll cut it off at the beginning of the 'Facing Shame' portion. good night and happy new years and 看春着晚，多发点短信。发财，发财， 不要花财on dorritos and punjabis!!!
I'm listening to book eleven of the left behind series: Armageddon.
My main tasks today have been to compile the notes for my novel, which are written on the backs of old fliers for Shanghai Daily that Emma brought home, the paper packaging for pirated dvds here (consisting of paper slightly firmer than construction paper and having four segments, the front contains the movie cover and the back description and two other movie related panels.), large papers that i hang up on the hall, timelines already hung up on the wall, and pages from my many never-full notebooks.
oh, my other task is studying HSK vocab by writing out sentences for words that i dont know in my intermediate vocab book. Some of them I know but i forget the tone, like 跨,to straddle, the one to crumble and the one to boast. Sometimes I see the pinyin and I realized that I have been using the wrong tone, or that I have been using the characters without knowing the tones. Thats not as bad, because sometimes I just repeat things direct from memory. I'm good at imitating things I hear. But it's still embarrassing to realize I've been saying the name of the place like the science and technology museum the right way, but doing so unconsciously.
One of the innocent but annoyingly repetitive questions I can rely on my Chinese comrades asking me is whether or not studying Chinese hard. Aside from its frustrating recurrence hundreds of time every year, I am annoyed by the implied simplicity and the insincerity of the question.
I don't think any real student of any language should think in such acontextual terms as hard or easy. Like, I Consider Latin really hard because of all the cases, but its also easy in its sentence struecture and vocabulary (because I know so many latin word descendants in Spanish and English)
So people ask me if Chinese is hard, rhetorically, because they want to sympathize and establish a tentative bond between themselves and a foreigner. But I, in my rigorously analytic, everyones bothering me state of mind, explain clearly and briefly that the hard aspect of learning Chinese is really just the reading and writing. The pronunciation is much simpler than English and the grammar is too.
(It's Chinese New Years, so its so fucking loud right now with all the fireworks. I havent been out of the house all day. I cannot hear much of the Left Behind book that just finished and many a car alarm is chiming in unison with the armageddon like explosions 'round my cave.)
The thing about Chinese is that you cant just read through something and store away all the words you dont know for later. Like, I still dont know what 'eorundem' means in Latin. But see, it has letters and I remember it. However. If you see 甚 with a place/land radical next to it, you have to look up it up in the dictionary before you no how its pronounced. You might get lucky by guessing that, since without the radical it's 'shen', therefore with the radical it might be something close, like 'shen' in a different tone, or chen, or zhen. But that's no guarantee.
(I've now reached the point, as many of us do every chinese new year, when the noise from the fireworks is so loud and so persistent that my instincts have overridden my conscious and I'm quite tense and nervous and looking for somewhere to hide from the noise and gundpowder scent seeping in through my closed windows.)
I see now that it is tweve a clock, so thats why there making all that damn noise.
Well, well, well, I saw the movie "the Ten" which is a very fresh comedy cut up into ten stories, one for each commandment. As I watched, I realized I was seeing the generational shift in comedy formalized.
The trend in comedy that started with Airplane and Police Story, and continuing on to the Simpons, MST3K, Kids in the Hall, The Ben stiller Show and South Park is now becoming perhaps more intensified with this younger generation (actually it is my generation)
Imitation of Pop culture in order to mock, along with intricate absurdity is still the paradigm, but the form is changing. As of yet, I haven't worked out the details, but its good to see that it, at least hasnt degenerated.
Anyways, Speaking of the kids in the hall, I recently rewatched the first three seasons and I was amazed at how advanced they were, both in topic and imagination. The sketch telling everyone to "stand in the new style" , the one where Dave foley goes to ask his boss for a raise and his boss says he doesnt deserve it, since Dave wrote this present Sketch which uses such a cliched premise (a guy asking for a raise)... and "Screw you Taxpayer" which talks about how the whole show is payed for by public funds and flaunts their contempt of the public.
(The fireworks quieted for a second, i felt hope stirring.... wait. there not starting back up, at least nearby, just bottle rockets and distant rumbling and alarms. oh shit, there we go, they're back)
I bought some new under wears, or long johns or whatever they're called at the carrefour when me and steve went to thumb plaza to eat at punjabis.
I am curious to see how long I will wear these new p.j.'s long john's before i actually wash the clothing i wore for the last two months, so that i might change clothes yet again.
The day that we saw The Ten, I also purchased and previewed the new Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp, what an insult!
I think Depp was good in twenty one jump street and the one where he played the flaming, alcoholic pirate. But Sweeney Todd is a fucking musical!! If you cannot sing with a deep enough voice than you are not fit for the fucking part!!!!
Why does he have to be so arrogant as to ruin a cool musical just because his pseudo artistic goth buddy Tim Burton is too in love to find someone who suits the fucking role???
Are they supposed to be an item? Any self respecting, successful gay man should know better than to go after a straight guy just because he is hot. That's so trite!
Oh shucky shucks, I'm almost done with the hour!!!! Hurray, Ive actually got something done.
Sadly, I feel not much better for the effort, although perhaps i will be able to concentrate on either of the tasks that I have set for myself. I really 渴望很久to出版my 书 any 书都可以。
its been eighteen years since I wanted to be a writer. And to date I have only published/sold six articles. thats not very good Mr. Taylor. But, We've been over this ground to many times before and so has every other failure and successful person.
I think I will finish my notes for Matthews last post regarding his video game. That will get one of the many put-off-in-favor-of-putting-off-something-else-tasks out of the way.
Well, I have been alone for the past ten or twelve days. Here in the apartment, Emma went back to Shaanxi. I want her to get pictures of the food there 扯面，麻辣炒面，and 凉皮儿. Also I want her to make a video of her grandma, who I really like and feel bad about not seeing this time.
I'm going to seperate this into two posts, i'll cut it off at the beginning of the 'Facing Shame' portion. good night and happy new years and 看春着晚，多发点短信。发财，发财， 不要花财on dorritos and punjabis!!!
Friday, February 1, 2008
Kerouac, long after Schopenhauer
Thanks Mercy for giving me something to write about.
Seeing the beats through modern eyes:
I can see why you would not be hooked by chilling with hobos and having no fixed residence. I didn't read the whole thing, but it looks like guys escaping the waspish middle class culture by disobeying its conventions. I think the lack of dialogue and sentence breaks is probably what made it special back in 57.
In history
before
But i wonder how aware he was of previous bohemian generations? I think Jacques Barzun in Dawn to Decadence makes a great point of how many twentieth century causes, particularly counter culture, free love, drug use as transcendental, and a fascination with eastern religion were taken up in the late 1800's and early 1900's
That time was also the time of great labor unrest, the Red Menace, and the assassination of Mckinley by an avowed anarchist.
Also, whats the difference in style between Kerouac and Ulysses/Finnegans Wake?
I think the beat generation were part of a resurfacing of the counter cultural trend that was probably suppressed through war-induced patriotism and the Great Depression.
But the main elements, that is the bohemian lifestyle, transcendence of conventional reality and disregard for literary conventions were nothing new, but merely a recurring theme throughout western civilization.
History
aftter
Two good things I can ascribe to their lineage: One is the poetry or lyrics of Saul Williams. Although he is in the genre of spoken word, I have downloaded three of his albums and they are fucking brilliant.
The other is a renewed emphasis on the illusory nature of conventional social reality. The transcendence of ego and the importance of the infinite/god.
One bad thing that the beat movement inseminated was the lineage of anti-convention which , via the hippies and post-modern bullshit led to the complete and utter lack of any criteria with which young people might be able to evaluate the assemblage of language into something having the properties of good and/or bad. That is to say, my self indulgent bullshit is just as good as yours.
Remember in the Nineties how all those lower class black and white guests on Jerry Springer (or equivalent) would say "You cain't judge me!" and in the r&b songs they would say they "There's only one judge, yo, and that's God."???????
One ugly thing they played a causal role in was the glorification of substance abuse. (I forogot to mention that Rimbaud abandoned poetic form and civilization, in favor of drugs, several decades earlier and proclaimed the universal primacy of love before becoming a nihilist.) I recognize that drugs/alcohol really do help one to escape from their current state of mind. But there is no connection between talent and alcohol. Being a pathetic junkie or drunk who happens to be gifted, doesn't excuse one's destructive behavior.
I do believe that weed and hallucinogenics really do open your mind in the sense that they alter your perception, so that you might not forever be a slave to the features of awareness that dominate you merely through their persistence.
But it disgusts me how many times I've seen these movies about artists/junkies or lushes wherein nobody ever points out that there addiction is not the tragedy of a great artist, but the common tragedy of any 'average' person unable to escape their destructive behavior, like a child molester or someone who beats their wife and kids.
Wait, I forgot blacks, blacks, blacks!
How and the fuck can you listen to those beats without talking about how much of their style comes from black people? Syncopated diction, love of Jazz, unconventional, wild lifestyles, drugs and living on the edge. Dude, that's white kids looking at the black side of town. That's black people through white eyes. Think about how they would have seen them in the forties and fifties: No work ethic, no place in society, love to sing and dance, fond of getting their smoke and drink on, sexually amoral. Jack Kerouac mentions this relation in "The early history of Bop"
So, I don't want to sound down on old Jack, but if I was there around 1960 or so, I'd say "I think you're doing good work in showing another way to live and write, but, don't bullshit yourself, there's still a long way to go. You say there's no world, the infinite is love and all that. Go for it. But, if you want to escape some new shit, escape your own bullshit. Escape the pretenses that you've been keeping inside of you. Escape your addictions. You say there's no real, we're all insane,but your self-destruction is real. The pain and fragmentation around you is real. There's still a long way to go to freedom, so don't stop."
As I write this, I'm listening to various readings by Kerouac. Not bad..
Seeing the beats through modern eyes:
I can see why you would not be hooked by chilling with hobos and having no fixed residence. I didn't read the whole thing, but it looks like guys escaping the waspish middle class culture by disobeying its conventions. I think the lack of dialogue and sentence breaks is probably what made it special back in 57.
In history
before
But i wonder how aware he was of previous bohemian generations? I think Jacques Barzun in Dawn to Decadence makes a great point of how many twentieth century causes, particularly counter culture, free love, drug use as transcendental, and a fascination with eastern religion were taken up in the late 1800's and early 1900's
That time was also the time of great labor unrest, the Red Menace, and the assassination of Mckinley by an avowed anarchist.
Also, whats the difference in style between Kerouac and Ulysses/Finnegans Wake?
I think the beat generation were part of a resurfacing of the counter cultural trend that was probably suppressed through war-induced patriotism and the Great Depression.
But the main elements, that is the bohemian lifestyle, transcendence of conventional reality and disregard for literary conventions were nothing new, but merely a recurring theme throughout western civilization.
History
aftter
Two good things I can ascribe to their lineage: One is the poetry or lyrics of Saul Williams. Although he is in the genre of spoken word, I have downloaded three of his albums and they are fucking brilliant.
The other is a renewed emphasis on the illusory nature of conventional social reality. The transcendence of ego and the importance of the infinite/god.
One bad thing that the beat movement inseminated was the lineage of anti-convention which , via the hippies and post-modern bullshit led to the complete and utter lack of any criteria with which young people might be able to evaluate the assemblage of language into something having the properties of good and/or bad. That is to say, my self indulgent bullshit is just as good as yours.
Remember in the Nineties how all those lower class black and white guests on Jerry Springer (or equivalent) would say "You cain't judge me!" and in the r&b songs they would say they "There's only one judge, yo, and that's God."???????
One ugly thing they played a causal role in was the glorification of substance abuse. (I forogot to mention that Rimbaud abandoned poetic form and civilization, in favor of drugs, several decades earlier and proclaimed the universal primacy of love before becoming a nihilist.) I recognize that drugs/alcohol really do help one to escape from their current state of mind. But there is no connection between talent and alcohol. Being a pathetic junkie or drunk who happens to be gifted, doesn't excuse one's destructive behavior.
I do believe that weed and hallucinogenics really do open your mind in the sense that they alter your perception, so that you might not forever be a slave to the features of awareness that dominate you merely through their persistence.
But it disgusts me how many times I've seen these movies about artists/junkies or lushes wherein nobody ever points out that there addiction is not the tragedy of a great artist, but the common tragedy of any 'average' person unable to escape their destructive behavior, like a child molester or someone who beats their wife and kids.
Wait, I forgot blacks, blacks, blacks!
How and the fuck can you listen to those beats without talking about how much of their style comes from black people? Syncopated diction, love of Jazz, unconventional, wild lifestyles, drugs and living on the edge. Dude, that's white kids looking at the black side of town. That's black people through white eyes. Think about how they would have seen them in the forties and fifties: No work ethic, no place in society, love to sing and dance, fond of getting their smoke and drink on, sexually amoral. Jack Kerouac mentions this relation in "The early history of Bop"
So, I don't want to sound down on old Jack, but if I was there around 1960 or so, I'd say "I think you're doing good work in showing another way to live and write, but, don't bullshit yourself, there's still a long way to go. You say there's no world, the infinite is love and all that. Go for it. But, if you want to escape some new shit, escape your own bullshit. Escape the pretenses that you've been keeping inside of you. Escape your addictions. You say there's no real, we're all insane,but your self-destruction is real. The pain and fragmentation around you is real. There's still a long way to go to freedom, so don't stop."
As I write this, I'm listening to various readings by Kerouac. Not bad..
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Fiction大论's冒险的很journey pt.4 pg. 23
(darrens perilous journey: a choose my own adventure story. screw that trip, play it safe and investigate the submarine pg. 23)
You know what fool, when it comes down to it, I have had just about enough of this mysterious danger for one day, alright!?
Looking at the old merlyn guy, I was totally all like, ch, you know, this is just your basic case of information overload! Im going on brain freeze right now.
Merlyn, through his magic, majestic, knack for intuition, guessed all that was in my heart then, in but a single glance. He was all "You know what they say about pigeons and unicorns, right?" He gave a scholarly and hearty chuckle.
"What do they say?" I asked trepidaciously, fearing a big getting moded coming on.
He twirled his sword around and inserted it smoothly into the soft warmth of his scabber. "They say," he said teasingly, lifting the sword out of its scabber and pushing it back in unconsciously. "When the unicorn tires of this life, it is such a tragedy, but when a pigeon feels that even being the early bird is far too much to even jest, it doesnt even seem like a problem."
Aww double shnap! That was not very lol, yo! I cocked my head an raised my eyebrow, all hard and stuff. Was this guy calling me some kind of pigeon? Aww, fooey, i thought. Let his mockery come. I could bear it after all. I simply turned the cheek on him and went about spelunking this submerged vessel.
Instead of taking the bait of his demeaning commentary, i was just like, "Have fun at the Underwater Kingdom, hope you dont get jacked, dick."
He chuckled wistfully, stroking his beard and tugging at his wise gray hair with his other hand. He walked toward the hatch and opened it. Over my head, i looked up to see above me was a huge room, made of marble and china. Whoa! these guys must have been into to serious dough alright.
But, not wanting to be seduced by the temptation, i forced my eyes to tear themselves from the amazing vista above.
He climbed out and closed the hatch behind him. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and got down to checking out what was really going on around here! There was two doors behind me. I went into the second one and saw a hallway with a bunch of other doors. I went down to the third door and opened it.
I was utterly amazed and stunned at the vision before me. This must be the magic room, i thought. For inside of the room, it was all cluttered up messily with wondrous enchanting objects, suggestive of magic and the times of yore!
On the table in the middle of the room could be seen human skulls with jeweled necklaces snaking in and out of them. Hanging from the walls were black capes, and velvet ones too. Above the capes I could make out witches hats.
But, once again, fate just wouldnt let me chill. A huge rocking motion shook the boat and a loud boom made a huge sound.
We were under attack. I made my back down the hall. A guy with a black and white striped shirt and a red bandanna over his brow, stumbled out and fell down dead right in front of my own eyes, for all the world to see.
As soon as I got back to the main control room, i realized what had to be done. The shots had been called, and now I had to put my nuts on the line. I shook my head wanly, how quickly things change in a persons life!
Calling on my expert navigation skills that i had garnished from my experience, i quickly scanned the control panels, noting the function of every switch with cutthroat accuracy. Then, i saw the weapons panel. Alright, these guys wanna play dirty, then lets get it on to the break of dawn, bitch. I pressed a button on the weapons panel entitled "Tomahawk Cruisers" Lets just see what this can do about it.
There was a great sound of explosion, like the thing that attacked me was blowing up. Then i heard a beeping urgently coming from the communication panel and flicked the switch. "Mayday, mayday, Hey Merlyn, i know we just tried to take you guys prisoner, but you gotta just go ahead and let bygones and bygones, for the sake of our lives." My face grinned sadistically, grimacing in the cruel evil that i was gonna do.
You know what fool, when it comes down to it, I have had just about enough of this mysterious danger for one day, alright!?
Looking at the old merlyn guy, I was totally all like, ch, you know, this is just your basic case of information overload! Im going on brain freeze right now.
Merlyn, through his magic, majestic, knack for intuition, guessed all that was in my heart then, in but a single glance. He was all "You know what they say about pigeons and unicorns, right?" He gave a scholarly and hearty chuckle.
"What do they say?" I asked trepidaciously, fearing a big getting moded coming on.
He twirled his sword around and inserted it smoothly into the soft warmth of his scabber. "They say," he said teasingly, lifting the sword out of its scabber and pushing it back in unconsciously. "When the unicorn tires of this life, it is such a tragedy, but when a pigeon feels that even being the early bird is far too much to even jest, it doesnt even seem like a problem."
Aww double shnap! That was not very lol, yo! I cocked my head an raised my eyebrow, all hard and stuff. Was this guy calling me some kind of pigeon? Aww, fooey, i thought. Let his mockery come. I could bear it after all. I simply turned the cheek on him and went about spelunking this submerged vessel.
Instead of taking the bait of his demeaning commentary, i was just like, "Have fun at the Underwater Kingdom, hope you dont get jacked, dick."
He chuckled wistfully, stroking his beard and tugging at his wise gray hair with his other hand. He walked toward the hatch and opened it. Over my head, i looked up to see above me was a huge room, made of marble and china. Whoa! these guys must have been into to serious dough alright.
But, not wanting to be seduced by the temptation, i forced my eyes to tear themselves from the amazing vista above.
He climbed out and closed the hatch behind him. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and got down to checking out what was really going on around here! There was two doors behind me. I went into the second one and saw a hallway with a bunch of other doors. I went down to the third door and opened it.
I was utterly amazed and stunned at the vision before me. This must be the magic room, i thought. For inside of the room, it was all cluttered up messily with wondrous enchanting objects, suggestive of magic and the times of yore!
On the table in the middle of the room could be seen human skulls with jeweled necklaces snaking in and out of them. Hanging from the walls were black capes, and velvet ones too. Above the capes I could make out witches hats.
But, once again, fate just wouldnt let me chill. A huge rocking motion shook the boat and a loud boom made a huge sound.
We were under attack. I made my back down the hall. A guy with a black and white striped shirt and a red bandanna over his brow, stumbled out and fell down dead right in front of my own eyes, for all the world to see.
As soon as I got back to the main control room, i realized what had to be done. The shots had been called, and now I had to put my nuts on the line. I shook my head wanly, how quickly things change in a persons life!
Calling on my expert navigation skills that i had garnished from my experience, i quickly scanned the control panels, noting the function of every switch with cutthroat accuracy. Then, i saw the weapons panel. Alright, these guys wanna play dirty, then lets get it on to the break of dawn, bitch. I pressed a button on the weapons panel entitled "Tomahawk Cruisers" Lets just see what this can do about it.
There was a great sound of explosion, like the thing that attacked me was blowing up. Then i heard a beeping urgently coming from the communication panel and flicked the switch. "Mayday, mayday, Hey Merlyn, i know we just tried to take you guys prisoner, but you gotta just go ahead and let bygones and bygones, for the sake of our lives." My face grinned sadistically, grimacing in the cruel evil that i was gonna do.
"Damn fool" I exacerbated. "Looks like you just got your just desserts!"
Then I just all like hit the button. Suddenly, there was a noisy booming akin to explosion. I just thought like shit I gotta get outta here before this really hits the roof.
I surreptitiously looked around for the exit hatch. Then I stopped. Maybe I didn't have to bust out with the evacuation procedure quite so fast. After all, how enemies could the ole guy have after all?
Then I chuckled in a realization of humour. I was just chickening out on this! I just didn't want to go out and get ragged on by those racist Atlanteans.
Aww shucks, I been grudging this on my shoulders for far too long, time to be a man and face the sounds of music like a real man do. After all, hadn't I just proved my martial prowess by demonstrating such merciless destruction that I visited on my eneym, and just in the Nick a tie too!
I ardently climbed the ladder and pushed with arduous strength. Guess those curls and and reps paid off.
When I climbed up on out of the sub and took a gander at the spectacular scene that lay before me, I was amazed at its wondrous appearance, which was glorious in nature.
In front of me was a huge, super huge room, it looked I was inside a crystal ball, but one made from real crystal, or amethyst. It was the most beautiful side I had ever seen. I was fascinated.
But then another question pertinently occupied my old noggin. Just where in fact had old Merly got to. As i stepped off the submarine and onto the wool carpet of the crystal amethyst room, I saw before me two paths. One led to a group of stairs going up real high. The other led to a pair of doors. In front of the stairs was a sign that read אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט . Similarly, a sign in front of the double doors read Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon. Hmm... I pondered curiously.
Seemed like the signs were trying to tell me the two dissimilar paths were nothing more than two sides of the same choice-coin.
Well, since the first one was the tried and true Yiddish saying that a language is just a dialect with an army behind or what not, and the second was Welsh for 'A nation without language is a nation without a heart.
Well, well, well. Looks like they trying to flip the script on me. I came here looking for Merlyn, but now i gotta use a bit of the old fashioned
Well they had flipped it on me, and I wanted to flip it back onto them. Cause at that point in my adventure, I just completely lost the plot.
I didn't what to do, it was as if I had just been totally pwnd.
All I wanted to do was to get this hagriographing done and get my boat. To do that of course, I would have to find out King Arthur's hamartia.
Screw it I said, all of a sudden not caring which of the paths I chose. I walked to the double doors and kicked them open.
Then, suddenly, without any forewarning, I was shocked at the sight before me.
It was nothing less than an old school round table Knight grub fest. It was like all these Knight dudes in medieval armor grubbing on chicken and raw potatoes like they used to back in the way back when. I was all like what?!?
I saw Merlyn instantly and could see right away that the big guy sitting next to one that was all cut and swole up had to be none other than the badass fool that I was fonna hagriaphy.
So, I didn't even sweat, because of my expert skills and how I had proved my mettle by blowing up that other sub just now before i came here.
I just walked up to Merlyn and tapped him on the shoulder. He was so impressed that by my daring boldness that he didn't even rag on me for interrupting the meal.
King Arthur chuckled sagely and stook his giant macho hand out to shake hands with me.
I gave a firm shake, and even he was all strong, I could see him flinch a tiny bit because I put all my qi into that shake.
"So, my fair liege, you seem to be in need of a hagriographer. " I stoutly declared.
"Well, it doth seem to be the case that I beith in need of some ornate skill, be thee worthy of mine request?" He boldly inquired.
Suddenly, I looked around me to see in fact that the large throng of Knights gathered 'round the table were straight up mad dogging me.
Them one of them asked "Young Sire, be thee of the mongoloid race, or be thee of the negroid race? "
Another one of them asked "Me thinks ye be a Mohommedan!"
Then all of them stood up. Even the mighty and wise Merlyn was intimated and didn't say "jack."
So, they had found out. Of course I wasn't no arab, but then on the other hand, nor was I a Christian. How would they respond to my proud embracing of my mother's Jewish heritage. Should I deny my faith and spit on thousands of years of history? Or should I bravely and defiantly make my stand, regardless of if it ruined my chances of getting my mitts on that dope boat?
P.234 I tell them I'm a heeb.
P.324 I lie and betray my God
P.44 Run like a mutha yo!
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
FICTION: 大论's冒险的很journey pt.3 pg. 17
(Darrens perilous journery part 3 a choose my own adventure joint)go with him because he's all merlyn looking p. 17
So I was just all like: Que Sarah, do it to it! The voices on the megaphone loudly called out for us to halt and cease are activities, but, the beneficial opportunity to get my hands on this killer babe of a boat was just to irresistible that i couldn't refuse.
The medieval guy with the beard and the owl on his shoulder could ascertain a certain assenting facial expression so he just lifted his majestic hand into the air and waved me for me to follow him.
Whoa! Seems like the merlyn man really was a force to be reckoned with, giving his knack for intuition of peoples feelings without them even saying shit, damn!
So, not even knowing where I had been mysteriously kidnapped to, except for it was a boat. (and what a boat it was!) I could do nothing but follow my abductor out of the cabin room and out onto the top part of the boat. I didnt see the guys who were yelling with the megaphones, so i guessed they had to be on the back of the ship. So when I saw the ocean and no boats, it seemed my detective skills were not so rusty after all.
Then, all my expectations were overturned as the guy produced from his pocket a remote control in his hand. He held it and pressed the red button.
From out of the depths of the ocean AKA blue lagoon, came bubbling up a shiny black submarine.
He pushed me in the back to get onto it so i got onto the submarine. He got on too and opened the hatch and we went inside. As soon as he closed the hatch, he exhaled heavily and breathed a sigh of relief. As for myself, personally, i couldnt even sigh, because i was so worked up into a sweat over the aforementioned excitement.
Finally, I calmed down enough to talk. "So, oh wise one. Whom is it I shalt be hagriographing? "
He shook his head negatingly, but i pressed on further, "What?! Hey! I think I have a right to know."
The old fool just shook his grey and shaggy head again, as if dispelling the sayings of a novice. Well, I wasn't about to be taken for some novice, after all, I had my own street creds to be reckoned with.
He then turned away from me with the keys to the sub, he keyed the ignition and gunned the subs engines. Then he shifted down and we descended abscondingly into the fathoms of the deep.
"Take the wax out of your ears and show a little respect moan cap n' tone" I barked harshly. At last, the guy payed attention to me with earnest concentration showing gravely on his lined face.
He looked at me seriously and uttered: "Since you're so anxious to know just who,
I Shall give thee an opurunity to guess the name of the one thou art to hagriahpy. Here this riddle, thee: Whot hath man fewe in the eie but more in the ere? That gret in the heved, is fewe in the bred? For man yhernes rimes forto here, yet men yernen iestes for to here."
Having said all of this, and being finished he withdrew a sword out of a scabber on his belt. The sword flashed brilliantly in the lights reflection. He beemed at its gleeming luminescence patiently.
"Pshaw!" I exclaimed. Who was this guy think he was fooling with? Like I can do all old school too, when i want to be. Obviously, his so called riddle was nothing but a pun on word plays that could be deduced for the answer at a moments notice.
"Dig on this," I told him. "First part: getting hair on your eye is a bigger problem than the hair in your ear, so the answer to that is Hair Trouble. Second, Hair on the head is not troublesome, as much as hair on your bread, so boom. Second part: Hair trouble. The last thing, you said, men want to hear rhymes. So, "here" and "ere" are "hear" and "ear" but in the olden tongue of yesteryear they soundeth much akin to rhyming with "hair."
He stroked his greying beard, and began to interject, but he before he even could, i just continued on all smoothly: "Furthermore, since you are quoting from the revered Cursor Mundi in its southern and northern versions, and therefore, the obvious trick is that you want me to find the word that rhymes with "trouble", since there's no rhyming word in your riddle itself. If I remember correctly the rhyming word from the text of the Cursor Mundi, the accurate word that rhymes is "abul", or maybe "tabul" as in the round table! I knew it! "
Suddenly it dawned me just why this guy was so convincingly medieval looking in dress and appearance and such. After all, it turned out that this guy was indeed a merlyn kind of magician like i had suspected! Kudos to me! So, it looked like I was going to be hagriaphying none other than the legendary King Arthur himself, and that was for damn sure.
Or was I, a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind tugged at my doubt strings. But before i could seek my hard earned clarification, things got all haywire on me.
From the other rooms in the big submarine, a voice unexpectedly called from afar: "Ahoy, all ye on the starboard plank, ships arrived! "
Merlyn, still stroking his beard and admiringly gazing at the sword which he held, said unto me: "Young liege of the realm, dont get all excited just yet. At least not until i tell you of my lords' hamartia. Besides, it seems like you guessed enough for now. We just arrived at the Underwater Kingdom, i gotta stop and get some stuff. If you want, you can tag a long with me, but I have to in fact warn you, they dont like black guys there. "
Aww damn, what a dis! I'm not even black, but people also misrepresent me because of my jewish and korean ancestry! But, then what if the denizens of the Underwater Kingdom didn't even give a hoot and just judged me based on my supposed racial features.
But, shoot, pass up a chance to check out this foreign and exotic local which i never could have conceived before the miraculous events of today?
go with him to check out the Underwater Kingdom pg. 64
screw that trip, play it safe and investigate the submarine pg. 23
this is getting out of control, Im gonna jack this sub and head for safety pg. 89
So I was just all like: Que Sarah, do it to it! The voices on the megaphone loudly called out for us to halt and cease are activities, but, the beneficial opportunity to get my hands on this killer babe of a boat was just to irresistible that i couldn't refuse.
The medieval guy with the beard and the owl on his shoulder could ascertain a certain assenting facial expression so he just lifted his majestic hand into the air and waved me for me to follow him.
Whoa! Seems like the merlyn man really was a force to be reckoned with, giving his knack for intuition of peoples feelings without them even saying shit, damn!
So, not even knowing where I had been mysteriously kidnapped to, except for it was a boat. (and what a boat it was!) I could do nothing but follow my abductor out of the cabin room and out onto the top part of the boat. I didnt see the guys who were yelling with the megaphones, so i guessed they had to be on the back of the ship. So when I saw the ocean and no boats, it seemed my detective skills were not so rusty after all.
Then, all my expectations were overturned as the guy produced from his pocket a remote control in his hand. He held it and pressed the red button.
From out of the depths of the ocean AKA blue lagoon, came bubbling up a shiny black submarine.
He pushed me in the back to get onto it so i got onto the submarine. He got on too and opened the hatch and we went inside. As soon as he closed the hatch, he exhaled heavily and breathed a sigh of relief. As for myself, personally, i couldnt even sigh, because i was so worked up into a sweat over the aforementioned excitement.
Finally, I calmed down enough to talk. "So, oh wise one. Whom is it I shalt be hagriographing? "
He shook his head negatingly, but i pressed on further, "What?! Hey! I think I have a right to know."
The old fool just shook his grey and shaggy head again, as if dispelling the sayings of a novice. Well, I wasn't about to be taken for some novice, after all, I had my own street creds to be reckoned with.
He then turned away from me with the keys to the sub, he keyed the ignition and gunned the subs engines. Then he shifted down and we descended abscondingly into the fathoms of the deep.
"Take the wax out of your ears and show a little respect moan cap n' tone" I barked harshly. At last, the guy payed attention to me with earnest concentration showing gravely on his lined face.
He looked at me seriously and uttered: "Since you're so anxious to know just who,
I Shall give thee an opurunity to guess the name of the one thou art to hagriahpy. Here this riddle, thee: Whot hath man fewe in the eie but more in the ere? That gret in the heved, is fewe in the bred? For man yhernes rimes forto here, yet men yernen iestes for to here."
Having said all of this, and being finished he withdrew a sword out of a scabber on his belt. The sword flashed brilliantly in the lights reflection. He beemed at its gleeming luminescence patiently.
"Pshaw!" I exclaimed. Who was this guy think he was fooling with? Like I can do all old school too, when i want to be. Obviously, his so called riddle was nothing but a pun on word plays that could be deduced for the answer at a moments notice.
"Dig on this," I told him. "First part: getting hair on your eye is a bigger problem than the hair in your ear, so the answer to that is Hair Trouble. Second, Hair on the head is not troublesome, as much as hair on your bread, so boom. Second part: Hair trouble. The last thing, you said, men want to hear rhymes. So, "here" and "ere" are "hear" and "ear" but in the olden tongue of yesteryear they soundeth much akin to rhyming with "hair."
He stroked his greying beard, and began to interject, but he before he even could, i just continued on all smoothly: "Furthermore, since you are quoting from the revered Cursor Mundi in its southern and northern versions, and therefore, the obvious trick is that you want me to find the word that rhymes with "trouble", since there's no rhyming word in your riddle itself. If I remember correctly the rhyming word from the text of the Cursor Mundi, the accurate word that rhymes is "abul", or maybe "tabul" as in the round table! I knew it! "
Suddenly it dawned me just why this guy was so convincingly medieval looking in dress and appearance and such. After all, it turned out that this guy was indeed a merlyn kind of magician like i had suspected! Kudos to me! So, it looked like I was going to be hagriaphying none other than the legendary King Arthur himself, and that was for damn sure.
Or was I, a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind tugged at my doubt strings. But before i could seek my hard earned clarification, things got all haywire on me.
From the other rooms in the big submarine, a voice unexpectedly called from afar: "Ahoy, all ye on the starboard plank, ships arrived! "
Merlyn, still stroking his beard and admiringly gazing at the sword which he held, said unto me: "Young liege of the realm, dont get all excited just yet. At least not until i tell you of my lords' hamartia. Besides, it seems like you guessed enough for now. We just arrived at the Underwater Kingdom, i gotta stop and get some stuff. If you want, you can tag a long with me, but I have to in fact warn you, they dont like black guys there. "
Aww damn, what a dis! I'm not even black, but people also misrepresent me because of my jewish and korean ancestry! But, then what if the denizens of the Underwater Kingdom didn't even give a hoot and just judged me based on my supposed racial features.
But, shoot, pass up a chance to check out this foreign and exotic local which i never could have conceived before the miraculous events of today?
go with him to check out the Underwater Kingdom pg. 64
screw that trip, play it safe and investigate the submarine pg. 23
this is getting out of control, Im gonna jack this sub and head for safety pg. 89
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Perspectivalism. a new word i dont like, but find useful
After being interested in Foucault for several years, because of his relation to Nietzche and anarchism, I'm finally seeing how his ideas pertain to my own interests. I've begun reading the Order of Things, which seeks to reconstitute commonly grouped together bodies of knowledge (science, econ, history) according to previously unknown, underlying epistemologies/meta-perspectives.
He seeks to examine the arbitrariness of conventional classifications such as biology&chemistry, Economics&Math. Breaking from all the obscure and reverent jargon of contemporary philosophy, we might say that what Foucault wants to do is show the genealogical grouping of sciences and humanities, thereby clarifying their actual status in history and taking away their seeming 'objective' and certain character. His conclusion is that the notion of man which philosophy and the sciences have grappled with is a recent invention, and, therefore, merely one phase that will go away some day. So that there will be an end to 'man' (or the concept as we know understand it.)
Taken out of the proud obscurantism of modern academia, we might see this endeavor as analogous to the 'deconstruction' of christian dogmas that have become commonplace over the last century. Instead of thinking of the books of the Christian bible as related by a continuous, and internally consistent theology, we find that the writers of various books had different theological views, and that the decision to include the books in the bible were made by still other individuals. Recently I read Misquoting Jesus, which shows the impossibility of stating that the modern version, the King James translation of the new testament, is a reliable account of the apostles and paul or that it is an intact revelation from god.
In reading The Order of Things, the payoff for me, is the experience of a totally different way of looking at familiar structures, undermining their seeming obviousness. It is an almost tactile sensation, like I can feel things breaking away and reshaping.
I guess this is something similar to what Foucault experienced in encountering a passage from Borges' regarding an imagined Chinese encyclopedia featuring an utterly absurd and contradictory taxonomy.
Inherent in the conception of said encyclopedia is that, in Alien China, why wouldn't we find classifications, or organizations of knowledge that seemed inconceivable and attacked our intellectual comfort, or the very solidity of our comprehension. Another example that comes to mind is Xerxes scourging of the Hellespont as reported by Herodotus (What kind of world view makes you whip the water to punish it?)
I want to note that Borges and Herodotus were exoticizing the orientals, and the actual unity of human nature is displayed in the Persians and Chinese' willingness to return the favor.
On the other hand, even the imagined alien perspectives of those savage and inscrutable orientals can serve to expand consciousness. The very conceiving of a perspective contrary to our own expands are minds, to the extent that we fully experience the 'reality' of such a perspective.
Studying logic and philosophy in my late teens and early twenties helped me to see the common patterns of theories in general. So, if I get stuck on the details of a book on science (I often do,) I can get the feel of where the writer is going and what conclusions he wants to bring me to. If i get lost in the numbers of an economic debate (I always do,) I can still get the general premises by looking at the apparently opposed arguments.
Philosophy helped me to expand my consciousness out over many general structures of human thinking, both prescriptive and analytic. After going from my default religious understanding to the broad patterns of philosophy, I was then able to fill in a lot of other gaps in between, such as what it meant to believe something, the classifications of belief I had gone through, the classifications of beliefs that I encountered, the many typical ways people argue for things, and the simple notion of knowledge structure and hierarchy.
In contrast, I have struggled with basic neuroscience for years now mostly because of my need to integrate things into systems with human meanings. Or to see parts of a system as features in a systemic process. But all the sections of the brain, different kinds of neurons, electrical gradiances, and neurotransmitters have to be memorized as mere elements of the brain, without a big scheme to place everything in, like with cars or science. The general function of these elements in the manifestation of mind (neural correlates of consciousness) have not been worked out in any complete way.
Another example contrary to the pattern of learning discussed above is my eternal battle with math. Every time I start to grasp principles, definitions, or formulas, i am undone instantly by the arithmetic.
Studying languages has been much more conducive to my need to for learning by systemic foreignness and systemic consistency. In learning Chinese, by immersion and repetition, has caused me to recall the bits of Vietnamese and Spanish that I learned in the States but never used. Also, it has helped me to start learning bits of other languages and some notions in subjects in linguistics. In regards to English, it has given me a much better perspective on word usage, dialectical variation, and slang.
I first heard this horribly awkward phrase last week in a lecture series called Great Minds of the West, 2nd edition。
The particular lecture was on Nietzsche. Nietzsche has generally been referred to as advocating perspectivism. But this guy was saying perspectivalism as in pur-spec-tie -valism. How come i read so much Nietzsche and never saw that word? Walter Kaufmann never used it that i can recall. But maybe I've forgotten. Anyways if everyone else gets past the awkwardness of the word, than I'm down too.
He seeks to examine the arbitrariness of conventional classifications such as biology&chemistry, Economics&Math. Breaking from all the obscure and reverent jargon of contemporary philosophy, we might say that what Foucault wants to do is show the genealogical grouping of sciences and humanities, thereby clarifying their actual status in history and taking away their seeming 'objective' and certain character. His conclusion is that the notion of man which philosophy and the sciences have grappled with is a recent invention, and, therefore, merely one phase that will go away some day. So that there will be an end to 'man' (or the concept as we know understand it.)
Taken out of the proud obscurantism of modern academia, we might see this endeavor as analogous to the 'deconstruction' of christian dogmas that have become commonplace over the last century. Instead of thinking of the books of the Christian bible as related by a continuous, and internally consistent theology, we find that the writers of various books had different theological views, and that the decision to include the books in the bible were made by still other individuals. Recently I read Misquoting Jesus, which shows the impossibility of stating that the modern version, the King James translation of the new testament, is a reliable account of the apostles and paul or that it is an intact revelation from god.
In reading The Order of Things, the payoff for me, is the experience of a totally different way of looking at familiar structures, undermining their seeming obviousness. It is an almost tactile sensation, like I can feel things breaking away and reshaping.
I guess this is something similar to what Foucault experienced in encountering a passage from Borges' regarding an imagined Chinese encyclopedia featuring an utterly absurd and contradictory taxonomy.
Inherent in the conception of said encyclopedia is that, in Alien China, why wouldn't we find classifications, or organizations of knowledge that seemed inconceivable and attacked our intellectual comfort, or the very solidity of our comprehension. Another example that comes to mind is Xerxes scourging of the Hellespont as reported by Herodotus (What kind of world view makes you whip the water to punish it?)
I want to note that Borges and Herodotus were exoticizing the orientals, and the actual unity of human nature is displayed in the Persians and Chinese' willingness to return the favor.
On the other hand, even the imagined alien perspectives of those savage and inscrutable orientals can serve to expand consciousness. The very conceiving of a perspective contrary to our own expands are minds, to the extent that we fully experience the 'reality' of such a perspective.
Studying logic and philosophy in my late teens and early twenties helped me to see the common patterns of theories in general. So, if I get stuck on the details of a book on science (I often do,) I can get the feel of where the writer is going and what conclusions he wants to bring me to. If i get lost in the numbers of an economic debate (I always do,) I can still get the general premises by looking at the apparently opposed arguments.
Philosophy helped me to expand my consciousness out over many general structures of human thinking, both prescriptive and analytic. After going from my default religious understanding to the broad patterns of philosophy, I was then able to fill in a lot of other gaps in between, such as what it meant to believe something, the classifications of belief I had gone through, the classifications of beliefs that I encountered, the many typical ways people argue for things, and the simple notion of knowledge structure and hierarchy.
In contrast, I have struggled with basic neuroscience for years now mostly because of my need to integrate things into systems with human meanings. Or to see parts of a system as features in a systemic process. But all the sections of the brain, different kinds of neurons, electrical gradiances, and neurotransmitters have to be memorized as mere elements of the brain, without a big scheme to place everything in, like with cars or science. The general function of these elements in the manifestation of mind (neural correlates of consciousness) have not been worked out in any complete way.
Another example contrary to the pattern of learning discussed above is my eternal battle with math. Every time I start to grasp principles, definitions, or formulas, i am undone instantly by the arithmetic.
Studying languages has been much more conducive to my need to for learning by systemic foreignness and systemic consistency. In learning Chinese, by immersion and repetition, has caused me to recall the bits of Vietnamese and Spanish that I learned in the States but never used. Also, it has helped me to start learning bits of other languages and some notions in subjects in linguistics. In regards to English, it has given me a much better perspective on word usage, dialectical variation, and slang.
I first heard this horribly awkward phrase last week in a lecture series called Great Minds of the West, 2nd edition。
The particular lecture was on Nietzsche. Nietzsche has generally been referred to as advocating perspectivism. But this guy was saying perspectivalism as in pur-spec-tie -valism. How come i read so much Nietzsche and never saw that word? Walter Kaufmann never used it that i can recall. But maybe I've forgotten. Anyways if everyone else gets past the awkwardness of the word, than I'm down too.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
NON-FICTION: What so many still ignore about ayn rand
The false dichotomy of (Christ I hate to even have to mention it again! ) selfishness vs. altruism was neatly dealt with quite a while ago, by Ayn Rand, among others. I recently started thinking about Objectivism again and checked out whats being written about her in the news. I found that, as in the past, her idea of rational self-interest is related as advocacy of mere self-interest or selfishness, a super race, as opposition to charity, as advocacy of greed.
A recent NY Times articles starts with this description:
For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed.
Here we see a successful attempt to leave the reader with a conclusion by pointing around its edges. The implication is that she or her ideas were opposed to doing "work in the service of others.", since that's what her attackers believed. The key in this statement is the meaning of serivce. "Service of duty" is different than "Customer service" or "Serving your fellow man"
It would not be as rhetorically effective to clarify that she was not opposed to doing things for other people or dedicating your energy to the benefit of other people, rather, she was merely opposed to being forced to do so against ones will, and the notion that this was moral.
Stated that way, her opposition to "service of others" is not at all shocking. Then why don't people just say Ayn Rand believed that everyone should follow their selfish interest as determined by rational thinking? I think, part of it, is the general peer-approved dismissal of certain individuals or ideas that most people engage in to varying degrees, but its also a sense that Rand, or her ideas, are bad anyways, so to resort to inaccurate description of those beliefs is justified; because she's one of the bad guys(or she's shamefully masquerading as a real intellectual/philosopher.)
In regards to including the primacy of reason in Rand's philosophy when mentioning her morality, the Conservative Voice comes closer: They use the term "rational", but only in reference to their “Rational Christian Response to Ayn Rand." Avoiding the use of her own descriptions they offer a somewhat agile (in terms of organization) refutation of her morality.
There is a difference between selfness and selfishness. The first involves proper Biblical love and care for oneself as God intends. The latter is based on ego and pride. Christianity is not against legitimate self-interest. We are created in God's image so, of course, God would want us to love ourselves as well as to love others.
Of course, then, God would want us to love others against our own interest, except that if we do what he says, we are supposed to get to go to Heaven- according to most Christians - so then it is in our interest to follow God's plan of salvation. Furthermore, God only dislikes illegitimate self-interest, and since that magic word is readily understood by all humans, instantaneously and without need of contemplation, then who would oppose Christian morality on the grounds of self-interest. Oh, I see, they might oppose Jesus's doctrine of self interest, yeah, but only if they believed in .....
illegitimate self-interest. But why would Rand do that? "Illegitimate" means its wrong!
Obviously its good etiquette to utilize clarifying clauses when employing synonyms of "right" and "wrong," this prevents one from sounding like a proponent of Orthodoxy over Heresy. Even better would be to replace such terms with words that relay the content of your evaluation or standards for judging what you are discussing.
For example, Rand's consistent emphasis of rational individualism and rational morality communicate that she holds morality to be subject to thinking and decisions of humans. These statements do not relate the content of her notions of rationality, but they do allow anyone and everyone to understand that she was not an advocate of 'just doing whatever or you want;' a phrase often repeated by heavy hearted, responsible moralists, who are offended at the idea that being good could have anything to do with selfishness. Instead, they know very well that loving our neighbors and doing whats right by our fellow man is naught but altruism.
Anyways, its been about half a century since Rands ideas (Objectivism) first started spreading. And, to this day, there is still the same tendency to dismiss her by using statements of her beliefs which are not at all accurate.
But I'm so negative that I didn't mention that other articles i read (all mentioning Rand as related to Greenspan) were pretty neutral: A Cameo for the Maestro? and
I am not an Objectivist and find their overall system stifling, but I am annoyed by the lack of clarity and simple honesty that so often has dominated in the assertions of Rand's opponents. If we are clear enough on our opponents errors, we should be able to state their beliefs in their own words, without fear that our audience will be persuaded to their side. I am passionately opposed to many ideas, such as property rights, the state, capitalism, hierarchy, heroism, etc. But I hope I am beyond the need to hide beyond slander and misrepresentations of those beliefs.
A recent NY Times articles starts with this description:
For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed.
Here we see a successful attempt to leave the reader with a conclusion by pointing around its edges. The implication is that she or her ideas were opposed to doing "work in the service of others.", since that's what her attackers believed. The key in this statement is the meaning of serivce. "Service of duty" is different than "Customer service" or "Serving your fellow man"
It would not be as rhetorically effective to clarify that she was not opposed to doing things for other people or dedicating your energy to the benefit of other people, rather, she was merely opposed to being forced to do so against ones will, and the notion that this was moral.
Stated that way, her opposition to "service of others" is not at all shocking. Then why don't people just say Ayn Rand believed that everyone should follow their selfish interest as determined by rational thinking? I think, part of it, is the general peer-approved dismissal of certain individuals or ideas that most people engage in to varying degrees, but its also a sense that Rand, or her ideas, are bad anyways, so to resort to inaccurate description of those beliefs is justified; because she's one of the bad guys(or she's shamefully masquerading as a real intellectual/philosopher.)
In regards to including the primacy of reason in Rand's philosophy when mentioning her morality, the Conservative Voice comes closer: They use the term "rational", but only in reference to their “Rational Christian Response to Ayn Rand." Avoiding the use of her own descriptions they offer a somewhat agile (in terms of organization) refutation of her morality.
There is a difference between selfness and selfishness. The first involves proper Biblical love and care for oneself as God intends. The latter is based on ego and pride. Christianity is not against legitimate self-interest. We are created in God's image so, of course, God would want us to love ourselves as well as to love others.
Of course, then, God would want us to love others against our own interest, except that if we do what he says, we are supposed to get to go to Heaven- according to most Christians - so then it is in our interest to follow God's plan of salvation. Furthermore, God only dislikes illegitimate self-interest, and since that magic word is readily understood by all humans, instantaneously and without need of contemplation, then who would oppose Christian morality on the grounds of self-interest. Oh, I see, they might oppose Jesus's doctrine of self interest, yeah, but only if they believed in .....
illegitimate self-interest. But why would Rand do that? "Illegitimate" means its wrong!
Obviously its good etiquette to utilize clarifying clauses when employing synonyms of "right" and "wrong," this prevents one from sounding like a proponent of Orthodoxy over Heresy. Even better would be to replace such terms with words that relay the content of your evaluation or standards for judging what you are discussing.
For example, Rand's consistent emphasis of rational individualism and rational morality communicate that she holds morality to be subject to thinking and decisions of humans. These statements do not relate the content of her notions of rationality, but they do allow anyone and everyone to understand that she was not an advocate of 'just doing whatever or you want;' a phrase often repeated by heavy hearted, responsible moralists, who are offended at the idea that being good could have anything to do with selfishness. Instead, they know very well that loving our neighbors and doing whats right by our fellow man is naught but altruism.
Anyways, its been about half a century since Rands ideas (Objectivism) first started spreading. And, to this day, there is still the same tendency to dismiss her by using statements of her beliefs which are not at all accurate.
But I'm so negative that I didn't mention that other articles i read (all mentioning Rand as related to Greenspan) were pretty neutral: A Cameo for the Maestro? and
A cryptic look back, and a shot for Bush
I am not an Objectivist and find their overall system stifling, but I am annoyed by the lack of clarity and simple honesty that so often has dominated in the assertions of Rand's opponents. If we are clear enough on our opponents errors, we should be able to state their beliefs in their own words, without fear that our audience will be persuaded to their side. I am passionately opposed to many ideas, such as property rights, the state, capitalism, hierarchy, heroism, etc. But I hope I am beyond the need to hide beyond slander and misrepresentations of those beliefs.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
NON-FICTION: Dream: Openly Bejing backed US candidate
Dreamt that i was on some plane/cruise (it was opposed to be a plane i think, but it had staircases, internet terminals, etc. i saw the daily show and [sam b] pissed off john stewart by deviating from the script in some way.)
Anyways, a bunch of us were watching the news, there was an ethnic chinese guy running for office, he was accused of being totally backed by beijing, and he said on the news show: Yeah, Im so and so, Im backed by Beijing and Im going to win [the office]. Then they interivewed regular people to see their opinion and one woman said " i was listening to limbaugh today and ...." another lad referred to him as Beijing [billy].
It makes sense, even if he's of foreing birth. Schwarzenegger's attempts to change the constitution to let him be pres, could lead to the usual acceptance/apathy by the general populace and media, wherein the media anounces "a new era in politics" and people debate it on their political shows (quarantines for action) . So without any of us deciding to accept it, it becomes a new part of us, like the Dept for Homeland Security.
After it becomes part of our reality, then the adapting strategists of the red motherland realize how much more you can get done when you are brazen about the objectionable things you do in the modern media world. They will have plenty of examples of their own disastrous secrecy and the combination of lies and brazenness used by US politicians (and the rest of the countries.)
They will kick off this campaign including the tactic of being open about beijing [billy's] backing. He's a young guy, probably raised in the US or equivalent, maybe he was even born in the US.
Anyways, they realize they want to install this guy in office to increase their influence, but they know that everyone is just gonna use the fact that he's supported by beijing to discredit. So, they decide just put that upfront and it will lose its power.
The one implication of my dream that disturbs me is that Mr. LImbaugh will still be on the air by the time Beijing is clever enough to use brazenness in its support of US politicians.
Anyways, a bunch of us were watching the news, there was an ethnic chinese guy running for office, he was accused of being totally backed by beijing, and he said on the news show: Yeah, Im so and so, Im backed by Beijing and Im going to win [the office]. Then they interivewed regular people to see their opinion and one woman said " i was listening to limbaugh today and ...." another lad referred to him as Beijing [billy].
It makes sense, even if he's of foreing birth. Schwarzenegger's attempts to change the constitution to let him be pres, could lead to the usual acceptance/apathy by the general populace and media, wherein the media anounces "a new era in politics" and people debate it on their political shows (quarantines for action) . So without any of us deciding to accept it, it becomes a new part of us, like the Dept for Homeland Security.
After it becomes part of our reality, then the adapting strategists of the red motherland realize how much more you can get done when you are brazen about the objectionable things you do in the modern media world. They will have plenty of examples of their own disastrous secrecy and the combination of lies and brazenness used by US politicians (and the rest of the countries.)
They will kick off this campaign including the tactic of being open about beijing [billy's] backing. He's a young guy, probably raised in the US or equivalent, maybe he was even born in the US.
Anyways, they realize they want to install this guy in office to increase their influence, but they know that everyone is just gonna use the fact that he's supported by beijing to discredit. So, they decide just put that upfront and it will lose its power.
The one implication of my dream that disturbs me is that Mr. LImbaugh will still be on the air by the time Beijing is clever enough to use brazenness in its support of US politicians.
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