I know astrology's bullshit, but just consider the following similarities and see if you can't, at least, see the value it offers us in regards to analyzing personality components.
This old buddy of mine has alot in common with me, though our astrology doesn't have much in common.
We both have chronic paranoia, a tendency to think in terms of deceptive strategies to guarantee our security in relationship with others. We both are highly analytical and prefer directness when dealing with problems. We both have a sense of victimization sustained in childhood which causes us at times to forget that we are now formidable and intimidating, and this in turn causes us to come off as monsters.
But this friend of mine, Jar Jar, has a sun in taurus and a moon in leo. And he always somethings in common with famous taurus's like Hitler, cromwell, saddam, hussein, tony blair, lenin, and marx.
The goals of my life revolve around encompassing the world through understanding, resolving erroneous thinking and theoretical excessiveness, and creating harmonious relationships.
Jar Jar, on the otherhand, is always struggling between creativity and the quest for power.
Like Hitler and lenin, he posesses a highly calculating and austere attitude to his role in society, he sees himself as singled out by destiny for power. He does not openly second guess himself too much, 0r admit weakness. He is personally cynical of ideology, but nonetheless feels an excitement at the sight of uniforms and crowds of humans organized under the same banner, with one mind and one leader. He admires the hegemony of communist china and the soviet union, even if he hasnt ever conscioulsy thought so.
He thinks the key to power over others is the form of the organization, and the proper influencing of the organizations methods.
Like all the aforementioned, he is unlikely to understand or dwell on whats really going on in his psyche, rather, he constantly reinterprets other peoples ideas and ideology into justifications for his own will to power.
Like cromwell and the rest, he values loyalty and therefore sees betrayal everywhere imminent, except when committed by himself.
The other day I saw Tony Blair on the daily Show, and I was reminded of Jar Jar. Particularly, in the way that Blair resisted openly disagreeing with John Stewart, trying instead to charm by being reasonable and calm, while at the same time showing no admission of error or regret, and sneaking in the implication that the invasion of Iraq was justified by the current prescence of terrorists there, which showed that the war on terror was a pan middle east epidemic which we should engage on that scale.
Jar Jar is also constantly worried about sanitation and his own health, like Hitler. Another commonality is a lack of sexuality. It's nice to have a friend who doesn't constantly make dirty comments, not that i have many friends who do. But, beyond that, Jar Jar has never exhibited a typical male obsessions with sex, never showed any interest in porn, never commented on a girls boobs or ass, and never showed any interest in men. In this regards, he reminds me of Morrissey.
Well, this is not comprehensive, but we do see paranoia, interpretation of relationships in terms of strategic plays for power, a lack of self awareness, a disinclination toward regret and expression of apology, and a single will and determination to achieve organizational power.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
NON-FICTION: COMMENTARIES ON TWO EXCERPTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Nietzsche's excerpt: The greatest weight. What, if some day or night a demon were to steal you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing more new in it, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?"
This is a great case for the futility of time machines. Further, if i were to know this recurrence but have no chance to alter, thus becoming a ghost in my own conscious, that would be both trippy and frustrating.
As for an actual corollary to this eternal recurrence, I have been present to it many times. Feeling my body begin to hit someone, feeling my thoughts work themselves up into provoking an argument, feeling myself go back on my prohibition of cigarettes and food.
At this times I am a consciousness trapped in a time loop, and at times I do feel apart from myself, alienated. I don't think this is existential however, but neurological. I have endured sufficient trauma to give my consciousness an reason to distant itself from its own process and those of my body.
And to regard the eternal recurrences of history as inevitable would be just as justified as to regard the personal type as inevitable, and for all the wars and massacres that are happening even now as 'we' think of 'ourselves' as beyond our primitive past, and for all the resignation that the brilliant and the ignorant both throw up at the disgusting things that permeate our societies, I can only reply with the sort of thing I often tell myself and my wife: It's good to know our problems and complain about them when we need to alleviate pressure, but if we are to acknowledge that it is in fact a problem, we must eventually come to the question of what to do about it.
I sometimes get the feeling that Nietzsche liked the excuse provided, by the awesome tragedy he created out of his brilliant words and ideas, not to deal with the petty problems of his common tragedies, such as poor health, rejection and shame.
For these he would have had to write a self help book, without any oppurtunity to describe things as tragic, fearsome, awesome, trembling, etc. You know Nietzsche, I too live in the land of high plateaus and caves, but, at the same time, somehow, and with fearful inexplicability, i live in a little apartment which I cannot organize, and in a body that is not tall enough, and has surplus stores of fat. I also have often feared my sexual and romantic inadequacy. I also have suffered migraines and have asthma. These are problems that do not go away with the comprehension of idolatry, the dawning of psychological genealogies, or getting at the heart of rationalism. Is it left to the future man, the being free of the chains put upon him by the apollonian moralists, to solve the very last of our problems, and has the overcoming of man in the spirit not yet surpassed the utility of cardio vascular exercise and a lesbians tips on oral sex? Whoa onto me.
Hayden White's Excerpt:
In my view, a historiographical style represents a particular combination of modes of emplotment, argument, and idelogical implication. [He then goes to describe that the elements of these categories have exclusive bondings and are imcompatible with other sets Like Romantic Mode of Emplotment implies the Formist mode of argument, and the Anarchist mode of idelogical implementation.
I like this categorical, abstract mode of theorizing, because I too have employed it. But, I think his mode of exclusion leads to an embarassing mode of consequence.
Another thing that is interesting in White's chart is that he associates comic, with organicist, and conservative. The organicist and conservative we can see in conservatives of the edmund burke or hayek variety. As for the comic, we can see it's accuracy when contrasted with what he posits for liberal, that is, contextualist and satirical. The four mode of emplotments are romantic, tragic, comic and satirical.
As a test of this, lets look at shows that are only incidentally historical.
What are the best expamples of satire in America? Real Americans know that they are the daily show, the Colbert Report, the Simpsons, and South Park.
South Park is more Libertarian, but tries to be apolitical. The Daily show and colbert report are liberal, and the Simpsons.
But why no good Conservative satire? I guess its because White's conception of Historical styel holds true for t.v. Did you see the Fox news parody of the Daily show, the half hour news hour or something, it was so sad. It made me feel shame, even though I'm an anarchist.
As for historical style, lets look at some people I'm familiar with: Vidal, Zinn, and Bakunin. Zinn and Bakunin are anarchists. Zinn I can see as Romantic, as White maintains is implied by the Anarchist Mode of Ideological Impication. Bakunin, though, seems more tragic, at least in God and the State. He doesnt spend a lot of time building dreams, and he employs a dialectical or Hegelian style of reasoning. Vidal is a liberal, and, at the same time, a Conservative. But he is rather formist in his Mode of Argument, constantly referencing the inconsistency of American history with it's original principles, but he's also supposed to be socialist. His mode of emplotment, in his historical novels, is comic, if a little satirical.
Well, the more I think about these categories, the more interesting they are to me, as possibilities of actual tendencies of correlation. But as for the general necessary combination of these forms, you will find that many will use whatever mode of emplotment they can to advocate their cause. It's often called branding or marketing today. And it is not outside historical narrative.
I have to say though that, while most contemporary anarchists are overly romantic, they are less likely to be romantic about anarchist history, and there approach is definitely organic. I think we will find that as anarchists develop more stable approaches to history, they will and (and do) find the formist mode of argument less compelling.
This is a great case for the futility of time machines. Further, if i were to know this recurrence but have no chance to alter, thus becoming a ghost in my own conscious, that would be both trippy and frustrating.
As for an actual corollary to this eternal recurrence, I have been present to it many times. Feeling my body begin to hit someone, feeling my thoughts work themselves up into provoking an argument, feeling myself go back on my prohibition of cigarettes and food.
At this times I am a consciousness trapped in a time loop, and at times I do feel apart from myself, alienated. I don't think this is existential however, but neurological. I have endured sufficient trauma to give my consciousness an reason to distant itself from its own process and those of my body.
And to regard the eternal recurrences of history as inevitable would be just as justified as to regard the personal type as inevitable, and for all the wars and massacres that are happening even now as 'we' think of 'ourselves' as beyond our primitive past, and for all the resignation that the brilliant and the ignorant both throw up at the disgusting things that permeate our societies, I can only reply with the sort of thing I often tell myself and my wife: It's good to know our problems and complain about them when we need to alleviate pressure, but if we are to acknowledge that it is in fact a problem, we must eventually come to the question of what to do about it.
I sometimes get the feeling that Nietzsche liked the excuse provided, by the awesome tragedy he created out of his brilliant words and ideas, not to deal with the petty problems of his common tragedies, such as poor health, rejection and shame.
For these he would have had to write a self help book, without any oppurtunity to describe things as tragic, fearsome, awesome, trembling, etc. You know Nietzsche, I too live in the land of high plateaus and caves, but, at the same time, somehow, and with fearful inexplicability, i live in a little apartment which I cannot organize, and in a body that is not tall enough, and has surplus stores of fat. I also have often feared my sexual and romantic inadequacy. I also have suffered migraines and have asthma. These are problems that do not go away with the comprehension of idolatry, the dawning of psychological genealogies, or getting at the heart of rationalism. Is it left to the future man, the being free of the chains put upon him by the apollonian moralists, to solve the very last of our problems, and has the overcoming of man in the spirit not yet surpassed the utility of cardio vascular exercise and a lesbians tips on oral sex? Whoa onto me.
Hayden White's Excerpt:
In my view, a historiographical style represents a particular combination of modes of emplotment, argument, and idelogical implication. [He then goes to describe that the elements of these categories have exclusive bondings and are imcompatible with other sets Like Romantic Mode of Emplotment implies the Formist mode of argument, and the Anarchist mode of idelogical implementation.
I like this categorical, abstract mode of theorizing, because I too have employed it. But, I think his mode of exclusion leads to an embarassing mode of consequence.
Another thing that is interesting in White's chart is that he associates comic, with organicist, and conservative. The organicist and conservative we can see in conservatives of the edmund burke or hayek variety. As for the comic, we can see it's accuracy when contrasted with what he posits for liberal, that is, contextualist and satirical. The four mode of emplotments are romantic, tragic, comic and satirical.
As a test of this, lets look at shows that are only incidentally historical.
What are the best expamples of satire in America? Real Americans know that they are the daily show, the Colbert Report, the Simpsons, and South Park.
South Park is more Libertarian, but tries to be apolitical. The Daily show and colbert report are liberal, and the Simpsons.
But why no good Conservative satire? I guess its because White's conception of Historical styel holds true for t.v. Did you see the Fox news parody of the Daily show, the half hour news hour or something, it was so sad. It made me feel shame, even though I'm an anarchist.
As for historical style, lets look at some people I'm familiar with: Vidal, Zinn, and Bakunin. Zinn and Bakunin are anarchists. Zinn I can see as Romantic, as White maintains is implied by the Anarchist Mode of Ideological Impication. Bakunin, though, seems more tragic, at least in God and the State. He doesnt spend a lot of time building dreams, and he employs a dialectical or Hegelian style of reasoning. Vidal is a liberal, and, at the same time, a Conservative. But he is rather formist in his Mode of Argument, constantly referencing the inconsistency of American history with it's original principles, but he's also supposed to be socialist. His mode of emplotment, in his historical novels, is comic, if a little satirical.
Well, the more I think about these categories, the more interesting they are to me, as possibilities of actual tendencies of correlation. But as for the general necessary combination of these forms, you will find that many will use whatever mode of emplotment they can to advocate their cause. It's often called branding or marketing today. And it is not outside historical narrative.
I have to say though that, while most contemporary anarchists are overly romantic, they are less likely to be romantic about anarchist history, and there approach is definitely organic. I think we will find that as anarchists develop more stable approaches to history, they will and (and do) find the formist mode of argument less compelling.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
NON-FICTION: FOUNDING FATHERS AND BENEFIT OF "NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO PARTIES"
I was listening to a series of lectures on American party history put out by what might be becoming the largest provider of secondary education, thanks to public spirited websites like BTjunkie and mininova: The Teaching Company.
The thing that caught my attention was a discussion of the problems of factions in the plans and thinking of the founding fathers. I remembered hearing about this in reading standard us history and gore vidal. But i hadn't thought of the fact that the constant complaint of third party, non-mainstream and many other Americans is that the two parties accentuate their differences but end up advocating equivalent systems of government.
From the point of the view of some of the founding fathers, this is exactly the thing we want.
When we look at the understanding of Rome and Greece that Europeans have formed in recent centuries, we see that factions are quite dangerous to Republics. They forfeit and oppose the general interests of liberty and the good of the citizen in favor of power struggles with other cliques.
On the other hand, Obama and Mccain need to get a majority of voters to accept them, and, more importantly, they need a broad coalition of support from industry and all levels of government. Thus, they cannot alienate themselves by advocating ideas or proposals which are too extreme, or of interest to small cliques (unless those cliques make up for their lack of people with a surplus of dollars.)
So, the two party system that must use individuals with more ideologically consistent strains of political nonsense to mask their fundamental kinship as massive organizations of control, or stewardship, as Bakunin might say, is actually close to what some of our founding fathers had in mind.
Perhaps the main difference would be that some of them, like Jefferson and Clinton, presumed to dissaprove of the massive, plutocratic Empire that the United States has become.
But, then, I like the idea that Hamilton was the plebeian in fact, and Jefferson the plebeian in theory, and both men's love of their opposites led to their ideologies.
In line with this reasoning, perhaps Obama will outlaw interracial mingling and successfully reshape the middle east into secular democracies through bomb therapy.
The thing that caught my attention was a discussion of the problems of factions in the plans and thinking of the founding fathers. I remembered hearing about this in reading standard us history and gore vidal. But i hadn't thought of the fact that the constant complaint of third party, non-mainstream and many other Americans is that the two parties accentuate their differences but end up advocating equivalent systems of government.
From the point of the view of some of the founding fathers, this is exactly the thing we want.
When we look at the understanding of Rome and Greece that Europeans have formed in recent centuries, we see that factions are quite dangerous to Republics. They forfeit and oppose the general interests of liberty and the good of the citizen in favor of power struggles with other cliques.
On the other hand, Obama and Mccain need to get a majority of voters to accept them, and, more importantly, they need a broad coalition of support from industry and all levels of government. Thus, they cannot alienate themselves by advocating ideas or proposals which are too extreme, or of interest to small cliques (unless those cliques make up for their lack of people with a surplus of dollars.)
So, the two party system that must use individuals with more ideologically consistent strains of political nonsense to mask their fundamental kinship as massive organizations of control, or stewardship, as Bakunin might say, is actually close to what some of our founding fathers had in mind.
Perhaps the main difference would be that some of them, like Jefferson and Clinton, presumed to dissaprove of the massive, plutocratic Empire that the United States has become.
But, then, I like the idea that Hamilton was the plebeian in fact, and Jefferson the plebeian in theory, and both men's love of their opposites led to their ideologies.
In line with this reasoning, perhaps Obama will outlaw interracial mingling and successfully reshape the middle east into secular democracies through bomb therapy.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
NON-FICTION: AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE 'FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUENT' NOTION OF THE UNIVERSE
What if the universe is like a two headed cone, with disparate phenomena on the micro and macro scale and cohesion and uniformity mainly at some middle point?
Humans are up in the macro, and, perhaps the particle zoo is down in the micro.
How has the standard model, or string theory, escaped the infinite regress?
NON-FICTION: IS BIG AN ILLUSION?
Why humans see solidity
According to the contemporary scientific consensus, we see solidity because our eyes have evolved among organisms of a certain size, a range between whales and fleas.
I also think it is relevant to consider the size of the composite organisms and molecules that make up our sensory organism.
Could a complex nervous system have evolved on a sub-cellular scale?
What we 'really' see?
It's an old oddity by now that what we see as solid is 'actually' just the aggregate effect of billions of atoms whose fields are in contact with each other.
Everything you are looking at now, these words, are just aggregates of molecules that cannot be said to be physically touching.
The new age cliche about how everything is 'really just' energy is based on this idea. The difference is that the new age conception uses the outdated conception of energy, which existed contrast to solidity, which is outmoded by modern physics. So, to say that everything is energy means that the solidity we normally perceive is also energy, and therefore not so permeable and mutable as the new age wish-fulfillment conception would have it.
But the energy that comprises everything is said to be comprised of still smaller, ultimately uniform constituents. So that, according to the general idea of strings, the universe proceeds from tiny uniformity to larger and larger disparity.
So, what we perceive as objects are actually aggregations of molecules, and those molecules are composed of elements, and those elements are 'really' atoms, and those atoms are really all kinds of different sub-atomic particle, and those particles are really just strings, than we are really dealing with an ultimate, irreducible reality. Imagine having these strings, and they are somehow observable by super super imaging devices, and we can render them as solid-like objects, but we can't divide them, can't identify them as composed of different sections.
That is incomprehensible. Every thing is divisible, every thing science has ever verified as existing is divisible. Can you imagine these little rings or strings being observable but not having a top or bottom? If they had a top or bottom, or left side or right side, than we could break them up, if only analytically, and it would therefore be a composite entity.
As a composite entity, we would then have to break it down to it's constituent parts, and what would they be?
The problem seems to be with the very phenomena of 'object.'
Anytime we can perceive an object, we can then cut it up, again, even if only analytically.
According to the contemporary scientific consensus, we see solidity because our eyes have evolved among organisms of a certain size, a range between whales and fleas.
I also think it is relevant to consider the size of the composite organisms and molecules that make up our sensory organism.
Could a complex nervous system have evolved on a sub-cellular scale?
What we 'really' see?
It's an old oddity by now that what we see as solid is 'actually' just the aggregate effect of billions of atoms whose fields are in contact with each other.
Everything you are looking at now, these words, are just aggregates of molecules that cannot be said to be physically touching.
The new age cliche about how everything is 'really just' energy is based on this idea. The difference is that the new age conception uses the outdated conception of energy, which existed contrast to solidity, which is outmoded by modern physics. So, to say that everything is energy means that the solidity we normally perceive is also energy, and therefore not so permeable and mutable as the new age wish-fulfillment conception would have it.
But the energy that comprises everything is said to be comprised of still smaller, ultimately uniform constituents. So that, according to the general idea of strings, the universe proceeds from tiny uniformity to larger and larger disparity.
So, what we perceive as objects are actually aggregations of molecules, and those molecules are composed of elements, and those elements are 'really' atoms, and those atoms are really all kinds of different sub-atomic particle, and those particles are really just strings, than we are really dealing with an ultimate, irreducible reality. Imagine having these strings, and they are somehow observable by super super imaging devices, and we can render them as solid-like objects, but we can't divide them, can't identify them as composed of different sections.
That is incomprehensible. Every thing is divisible, every thing science has ever verified as existing is divisible. Can you imagine these little rings or strings being observable but not having a top or bottom? If they had a top or bottom, or left side or right side, than we could break them up, if only analytically, and it would therefore be a composite entity.
As a composite entity, we would then have to break it down to it's constituent parts, and what would they be?
The problem seems to be with the very phenomena of 'object.'
Anytime we can perceive an object, we can then cut it up, again, even if only analytically.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
NON-FICTION: MCDONALDS ON THE ROAD TO ANARCHISM
One might tell Alexander, Patton, Sunzi, and the CIA, Mcdonald's conquers too. They conquer by enticing people, meeting their needs and shaping their needs through propaganda/marketing.
The phenomena of a fast food company achieving such global eminence is not at all extraordinary, but one might compare it to the East India trading company or the merchants of the dutch empire. Domination is still tied in with nationalism and military power, but today, everywhere, those in power are ever more in the thrall of public opinion.
Very few rulers can claim divine right or succession. Everyone, especially the dictators and butcherers claim the betterment of the people, the racial, national or social interest. (the big exception is in sharia based countries)
The present trend of the world, or one trend, is to attain power based on the will of the people. Here in Red Communist China, the government also placates the public through fear and impressing everyone with their mighty economic achievemnts and glorious spectacles, like the the three gorges dam and the olympics.
We can say that the state of freedom, in asia, europe, america and south america, is all jacked up because there is no real democracy and people are still dominated inevitably by the twin tyrannies of state and market.
Bakunin said, long ago, that though Europe was progressing to an era of republics instead of monarchies, the people would be no less enslaved, for they would now be children guided along by the enlightened supervision of our parliamentarian leaders. If we replace the 'republics' with the modern usage 'democracies' we can see the relevance.
Most people in democracies and people considering democracies see government as a sstem of management, like a company you hire to take care of your landscaping.
This is not the exclusive content of the term as it is thought of now. There is still sufficient admixture of the nasty ideas of the government as an extension of the nation, but these are preexisting notions. What is new is the idea of government as manager, without any justification superseding it's responsibility of carrying out the betterment and protection of the people.
Justification of rule through the doctrine of will of the people is not too far the good of the commonwealth. The doctrine of the kin's sovereignty being necessary for the good of the realm or commonwealth was key in undermining the kings dvine right and divine succession.
Just as the good of the people superseded the divine status of kingship, so too might the management of the nation supersede the will of the people, and the will of the people supersede the management of the nation.
Contrasting countries like America, China, Burma, the case can be made for efficient management versus explicit democracy. Most people, at the current stage of historical development, can be satisfied with an adequate income, a chance for progression of social status, a chance to better their kids, and a chance watch tv and get online
Any dictator could get a long way on this basis. The problem is that most dictators cant do this, because to make a lot of people work together, you need at least the illusion of consent.
Now that we exist in a attitude that emphasizes the role of the state as manager on behalf of the people, adn expression of the will of the people, we can perhaps see that progress has been made in many countries.
For China, the end of the Qing Dynasty could have brought about a democratic, rule of law society, or a succession of petty militaristic dictatorships. Now we have a party dictatorship that has tried to use stability and economic growth to placate the masses. And, to a great extent its working. But the point is that they base their will on deomocracy, appeal to the masses, not the landed class, no the wealthy, but the popular sentiment and the common people.
This is unprecedented in Chinese History. Instead of complaining of the fact that real freedom has not arrived here, we should not the significance of the fact that now we have entered a period where democracy is the standard.
Mcdonalds depends on placating and manipulating its masses, so do the governments of most advanced nations.
For those of us enamored of a non-authoritarian future, where we can run things without starvation, coercion, acontextual authority, and mistrust, we might see this as a potentially positive change.
In the argument for greater cooperation and consent based interaction, the will of the people is much better point from which to start to justify anarchism than the spirit of the nation or the divine right of kings as granted by Adam.
Slippery slope arguments are not logically compelling, not because they are impossible, but because they are not inevitable.
Using pot is not likely to lead to other drugs. I haven't seen it do that to many people.
But, if you wanted a slippery slope, if you were trying to get someone hooked on heroin, than you might try a lot of things, and getting them high might be a good start.
So too if you want to make a fascist state, you might scare people with terrorism and then keep things getting freakier and freakier. But, this might also make people more interested in diplomacy and protecting freedom, and it might make them dislike your anti terrorist agenda.
But, if we want to promote freedom, we can point to the effectiveness in corporations and governments that have tailored their pitch to the masses and not just to some abstract authority (god race) and argue that this shows a greater expansions of the doctrine of consent.
If we see this as an historical trend, it may be a good sign.
The phenomena of a fast food company achieving such global eminence is not at all extraordinary, but one might compare it to the East India trading company or the merchants of the dutch empire. Domination is still tied in with nationalism and military power, but today, everywhere, those in power are ever more in the thrall of public opinion.
Very few rulers can claim divine right or succession. Everyone, especially the dictators and butcherers claim the betterment of the people, the racial, national or social interest. (the big exception is in sharia based countries)
The present trend of the world, or one trend, is to attain power based on the will of the people. Here in Red Communist China, the government also placates the public through fear and impressing everyone with their mighty economic achievemnts and glorious spectacles, like the the three gorges dam and the olympics.
We can say that the state of freedom, in asia, europe, america and south america, is all jacked up because there is no real democracy and people are still dominated inevitably by the twin tyrannies of state and market.
Bakunin said, long ago, that though Europe was progressing to an era of republics instead of monarchies, the people would be no less enslaved, for they would now be children guided along by the enlightened supervision of our parliamentarian leaders. If we replace the 'republics' with the modern usage 'democracies' we can see the relevance.
Most people in democracies and people considering democracies see government as a sstem of management, like a company you hire to take care of your landscaping.
This is not the exclusive content of the term as it is thought of now. There is still sufficient admixture of the nasty ideas of the government as an extension of the nation, but these are preexisting notions. What is new is the idea of government as manager, without any justification superseding it's responsibility of carrying out the betterment and protection of the people.
Justification of rule through the doctrine of will of the people is not too far the good of the commonwealth. The doctrine of the kin's sovereignty being necessary for the good of the realm or commonwealth was key in undermining the kings dvine right and divine succession.
Just as the good of the people superseded the divine status of kingship, so too might the management of the nation supersede the will of the people, and the will of the people supersede the management of the nation.
Contrasting countries like America, China, Burma, the case can be made for efficient management versus explicit democracy. Most people, at the current stage of historical development, can be satisfied with an adequate income, a chance for progression of social status, a chance to better their kids, and a chance watch tv and get online
Any dictator could get a long way on this basis. The problem is that most dictators cant do this, because to make a lot of people work together, you need at least the illusion of consent.
Now that we exist in a attitude that emphasizes the role of the state as manager on behalf of the people, adn expression of the will of the people, we can perhaps see that progress has been made in many countries.
For China, the end of the Qing Dynasty could have brought about a democratic, rule of law society, or a succession of petty militaristic dictatorships. Now we have a party dictatorship that has tried to use stability and economic growth to placate the masses. And, to a great extent its working. But the point is that they base their will on deomocracy, appeal to the masses, not the landed class, no the wealthy, but the popular sentiment and the common people.
This is unprecedented in Chinese History. Instead of complaining of the fact that real freedom has not arrived here, we should not the significance of the fact that now we have entered a period where democracy is the standard.
Mcdonalds depends on placating and manipulating its masses, so do the governments of most advanced nations.
For those of us enamored of a non-authoritarian future, where we can run things without starvation, coercion, acontextual authority, and mistrust, we might see this as a potentially positive change.
In the argument for greater cooperation and consent based interaction, the will of the people is much better point from which to start to justify anarchism than the spirit of the nation or the divine right of kings as granted by Adam.
Slippery slope arguments are not logically compelling, not because they are impossible, but because they are not inevitable.
Using pot is not likely to lead to other drugs. I haven't seen it do that to many people.
But, if you wanted a slippery slope, if you were trying to get someone hooked on heroin, than you might try a lot of things, and getting them high might be a good start.
So too if you want to make a fascist state, you might scare people with terrorism and then keep things getting freakier and freakier. But, this might also make people more interested in diplomacy and protecting freedom, and it might make them dislike your anti terrorist agenda.
But, if we want to promote freedom, we can point to the effectiveness in corporations and governments that have tailored their pitch to the masses and not just to some abstract authority (god race) and argue that this shows a greater expansions of the doctrine of consent.
If we see this as an historical trend, it may be a good sign.
NON-FICTION: BECOMING NON-HUMAN AND THE END OF MAN
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.
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.
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!!!
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