[translated from Spanish by Darren Taylor, printed in La Opinion, by Jorge Morales Almada / jorge.morales@laopinion.com http://www.laopinion.com/Exigen-que-paren-juicios-hipotecarios]
They were few, but loud. Loud enough to close down several streets and attract police intervention. They were so well organized that their demands were heard from Los Angeles to Germany. The protest, which took place yesterday, was carried out by members of Occupy LA, in opposition to mortgage foreclosures.
The activists, some who were part of an Occupy LA offshoot, Occupy Fights Foreclosures (OFF) , gathered before noon in front of the German consulate in Los Angeles.
The target of their protest was Deutsche Bank, a German bank which ordered the eviction of an East Los Angeles family who has been living in their home for 14 years.
As Carlos Marroquín, member of Occupy LA stated, this financial institution has not respected the terms of a loan modification they made with the Lucero family, and now they want to to throw them out on the street.
“We are calling attention to the practices of Deutsche Bank which act against US families and the Lucero family in particular, who received an eviction order one month ago”, said Marroquín in front of the consulate, which was guarded by LAPD officers.
A month ago, when they received notice of foreclosure, the Lucero family requested support from Occupy LA to prevent the eviction, and subsequently members of this social movement set up a barricaded encampment which they named Fort Lucero, and awaited the arrival of the sheriffs.
“We are protecting this property because we know that this bank has committed various irregularities”, said Marroquín. “We want to bring this to the attention of the German government, so they know that they do to us what they don’t do in their own country.”
In 1998, Mrs. Lucero acquired a duplex home at 4750 Hammel strreet, in East Los Angeles, a predominantly lower middle-class Latino neighborhood.
Due to the economic recession, in 2008, she began struggling with the monthly payments of $2,320 dollars and requested a loan modification, which, according to Mrs. Lucero, was granted.
However, explained Mrs. Lucero, the bank did not accept payments for several months, and on September 27 they evicted her children who were living in the front area of the duplex and also informed her that she was in foreclosure.
“I don’t want to keep this house for free, I want them to accept my payments”, said Mrs. Lucero in front of the offices of Deutsche Bank in Century City, where protesters moved to proceed with an act of civil disobedience.
A dozen protesters sat in the intersection of the Avenue of the Stars to stop traffic. The police, who were waiting for the protesters, ordered them to move back, but were ignored. Minutes later, they laid down in an intersection of Constellation street, provoking anger from those driving past in luxurious Mercedes Benz.
Employees of Deutsche Bank came out to confront the demonstrators and demanded that the police arrest them.
Efraín Cerda, laying down on the asphalt and ready to be arrested commented: “We want the banks to stop taking homes from the people, and these people (pointing at the bank employees) to wake up and realize the injustices we are fighting against.”
La Opinión contacted Deutsche Bank’s central offices in New York, but at the time of this edition were unable to obtain a comment from the company.
After about two hours of protest, a team of LAPD riot police arrested six of the protesters and retook control of the streets.
http://www.laopinion.com/Exigen-que-paren-juicios-hipotecarios
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
NON-FICTION: How We Feel About Each Other, Stop Tripping Dude!
There's always something to unpack = to really deal with SOME stuff would be too too too much, too divisive, too depressing = how much lighter we always feel when we finally unwind :) = the weight that has been suppressing us. :) = when we realize that its not that we are flawed :) = it's not hopeless = we just have problems with pinning down our problems = we confuse that with not having a plan = not knowing what to do.
But we keep at it.
Whats up with reform?
Thinking of why I feel reform is such a flat, frustratingly unambitious word...
Its because investing your time in "the system" is not any kind of investment out from your own pocket and into someone else's, its the identity, the self, that you keep believing in, thinking that's all you got, and there's nothing to be done about certain things (mostly certain powerful one-percent type things), that you know personally, or in theory.
And when those theories don't match up with what we experience, the reformist answer is to see this as an aberration of identity, just bad laws, bad politicians, bad corporations, etc. Fixed abstractions, not concrete people we know, can understand, can talk to. Politicians are actual people, and/or ideas we do in our head. Laws are concrete social relations, i.e, people, insofar as they exist only in our minds, and our minds exist only in our relationships (organic and inorganic).
Insofar as they are expressions of what we want to happen with each other, and what we don't want to happen with each other, law=people. Changing the laws, changing the people, it's all, and only, a matter of changing concrete social relations. It's all, and only, actual relationships experienced by people, and theorized over incessantly. It's people dude. :)
Reformism is a type of alienated individualism. Its like, I can have this identity of myself as alienated through virtue, and, thus, doomed by my will for positive change. I portray myself, to myself, as the person outside of the community, national or local, who is figuring out how to get people to do something. Convincing, swaying, persuading. It always comes down to who's deciding what our goals are, and how successful we are at creating cooperation.
It's always going to be right now, right now, and still, even right now...
Experience is where we are. We don't theorize to figure it out, we theorize to describe what we feel, what we do as our brains. It's the only reality we can confirm. It is what you see now, and it is economics, history, law, philosophy, and it is a hanging potted plant, seen if I look to my right, through a black net screen, and window, that slightly blur the sunlight, gleaming on a single extension, a green, soft-spiked dinosaur tale.
All of this is stuff we feel in our bodies, in our infinite interrelations and interactions. We feel it as bodies and perceive it in our head. Our blood is moving and sometimes we feel it, our brain is moving and part of that moving is knowing and feeling. That's what we are. There are no memories to keep. There's no storage for ideas, there's only some site of constant repetition of neuronal circuits, which, whatever abstractions of "willpower" we have, is us, is what we do. We don't retrieve memories, we connect neurons to neurons. That 'we' is what our neurons do too. We don't store up ideas, we separate our actions, some called memories, some called honesty. We don't unlock our unconsciousness, or suppress memories, we connect and disconnect our consciousness, our brain cells.
We feel and do Voices, Scenes, Imagination, Writing, Composing, Confessing, Charming-as part of our brain."Suppressing memories" is a form of neuronal separation. Racism is a form of neuronal separation. Sexism is too. As a masculine person, I have to place my own analysis, theories, over my actual experience of women. To make sure I know what's really up with them, I have to access what I know about their category. If that category is not based on the continued interaction I have with actual people, I don't know who anybody really is, cuz I gotta test everyone to see how their behavior is Masculine or Feminine. (My bros, we gotta get buff!).
The method of "memory suppression", for example, that I used as a child, was to think of something I wanted to forget, and then preventing it from connecting to memories, and from staying in contact with my direct consciousness. Like if I thought of some memory where I felt abandoned, rejected, or abused by someone, I would keep thinking it and then wait for it to connect with other thoughts, feelings, voices, etc, and then retrieve whatever I could from my memory, to focus on that instead, until I couldn't remember the first thing I was thinking of. In order to deny what we are seeing when we see people, we need to focus on categories, and start seeing feminine people, black people, instead of those people as they present themselves, reveal themselves, share themselves. And those are all these things that comprise another abstraction we treat as an external reality, a building, thing, or place, that thing we imagine as "society."
Pro-choice women, don't get knocked up or raped. Young Black Men, don't dress yourself into an early grave. And then there's normal people, who impregnate, rape, and kill.There is no blackness out there to throw Trayvon Martin into. He is just a dead human, not a symbol, but an actual instance of what people do, and the violence that people do to the young.
What we do with a case like this, is to try and not to be unjust, even if we get caught up in the signs of oppression, like making the murdered person into the aggressor, giving him half the blame. All that's left, for those of us still alive, is how we perceive Trayvon Martin, and what we will do or not do, say or not say, to stop this shit.
There is no blackness, no evil that can be thrown over anybody to deny that they are people. But people encourage people to try and throw that blanket of race on themselves, and on others, just as one is also, trying not to to do that. Abusers, and bullies cover themselves with abstractions that are not to be concretized, and they want you to cover the bruises and the suffering, and the horror, with the abstractions they give you. Anything to avoid the suffering their actions cause.
Zimmerman placed his own abstractions onto this kid, wanted him to conform to the role of suspect, potential thug, image from a ghetto movie. Because, getting down to the level of concrete experience, (all experience is experience, ideas are experience), means facing the fact that you're afraid of seventeen your old kids, because you haven't grown up enough to feel safe around Kids. That hurts to realize, and it hurts to think of how horrible it is to be that way.
How would you feel if you ever got to the point where you even came close to killing a seventeen year old walking down your block?
It wasn't race that killed Trayvon, and it wasn't race that made Zimmerman kill, it was the practice of Racism. The practice of separating experience from action, of covering experience with ideas, until you forget the experience you have with other people. The practice of Racism is the practice of focusing on abstractions, playing out scenes when they are not around. Not trusting when they try to act all innocent, cuz we know their category, we know what they really are. But then, that's why we need some good news.
But Zimmerman, like all of us, was trying to get safe, and trying to get free. He did that by making some people into abstract categories, with abstract enemies, and abstract victims. What resulted from his focus on those abstractions was concrete violence, and concrete law enforcement who wouldn't or who were stopped from arresting this guy and charging him with murder.
This led to more concrete humans stepping on concrete, in the millions to put a stop to the specific individuals who construct their concrete identities as rulers, and get us to go along with them taking billions from other people, and bombing, killing, killing, killing. And sustaining the system of good/bad, war/peace, top/bottom, through every trick they can come up with (aka Reverse Racism aka campaign strategies, Everybody 2012!).
This is the matter of our identities: we are constantly shaping, remaking and exchanging with each other. We are constantly altering our bodies, including every neuron in our brain. Even when we are alone in our rooms, typing on facebook, sick, stressing over missing class, we are still maintaining our identities, feeling the constant motion of our neurons (as thought, voices, relief, release, skin on skin) and making little interventions to choose to close off a thought, deny a feeling.
We manipulate our thoughts, but we lose contact to often with how our thoughts feel, we treat them as objects moving through space, than the feel of whichever areas in our brain are moving when we think. We constantly decide our actions according to many systems of symbolic value, values that we imagine to be in line or out of line with our identities, or personalities, or selves All the symbols we use to interpret each other are not who we are, but who we create.
but THE GOOD NEWS is We can begin to feel this process of real time social construction of identity. Social identity=social reality=psychology=biology=how are you feeling right now? What we learn from our different histories allows us to get to a point where we can start to unpack all the baggage of meaning, implication, law, sin, property, and the rest of our bullshit.
Unpacking the mess inside of us is something we've always been trying to do. We have all these ideas to explain things, and the last thing we're willing to admit, is that it's all about safety. We can get safe. Every time we've failed, it hasn't been freedom and community that failed, those are just abstractions. We've done things that had results we didn't like, so next time we act accordingly. We are aware of the need to unpack all the ideas we have about ourselves, and to unpack all the feelings we use to construct our identities.
And, instead of worrying about reform or revolution, giving up or going on, becoming down or selling out, etc., we can begin to step out of our roles and construct our own communities where we don't have to keep seeing every man as separated by masculinity, every women as all kinds of separated, mysterious, contradictory, refusing, or compliant.
We can see people as how we experience them and separate that from the ongoing thoughts and feelings which are our reactions to each other. We can construct each other's experiences by basing our construction of identity on our experience of each other, our experience of everything, not just our experience of fear based rules and willful passivity.
In practicing direct democracy, we begin to see our comrades and classmates, and co-workers, as the people they are, not always having to test them against the totalitarian abstractions of gender, class, race, and every other reason for dehumanizing each other. And that brings it's own sense of security, trust, and the feeling of safety. We empower each other to struggle, teach each other how to handle situations, how to listen, how to do things on our own, without legitimacy given from our symbolic betters.
If I can see anybody like I can see anybody else, than I don't have to hold on to abstractions about who my brothers in this struggle are, who my sisters in this struggle, what the right beliefs are, or who my friends are. We can start getting to know each other past all these labels. And be alone when we need to be alone, process when we need to process.
We are getting past all that baggage of history, that constant criticism, constant focus on abstractions, constant analysis rather than letting up, taking the brakes off, and breaking down the walls that close us in and keep us apart. May Day 2012!!!!!!!!
But we keep at it.
Whats up with reform?
Thinking of why I feel reform is such a flat, frustratingly unambitious word...
Its because investing your time in "the system" is not any kind of investment out from your own pocket and into someone else's, its the identity, the self, that you keep believing in, thinking that's all you got, and there's nothing to be done about certain things (mostly certain powerful one-percent type things), that you know personally, or in theory.
And when those theories don't match up with what we experience, the reformist answer is to see this as an aberration of identity, just bad laws, bad politicians, bad corporations, etc. Fixed abstractions, not concrete people we know, can understand, can talk to. Politicians are actual people, and/or ideas we do in our head. Laws are concrete social relations, i.e, people, insofar as they exist only in our minds, and our minds exist only in our relationships (organic and inorganic).
Insofar as they are expressions of what we want to happen with each other, and what we don't want to happen with each other, law=people. Changing the laws, changing the people, it's all, and only, a matter of changing concrete social relations. It's all, and only, actual relationships experienced by people, and theorized over incessantly. It's people dude. :)
Reformism is a type of alienated individualism. Its like, I can have this identity of myself as alienated through virtue, and, thus, doomed by my will for positive change. I portray myself, to myself, as the person outside of the community, national or local, who is figuring out how to get people to do something. Convincing, swaying, persuading. It always comes down to who's deciding what our goals are, and how successful we are at creating cooperation.
It's always going to be right now, right now, and still, even right now...
Experience is where we are. We don't theorize to figure it out, we theorize to describe what we feel, what we do as our brains. It's the only reality we can confirm. It is what you see now, and it is economics, history, law, philosophy, and it is a hanging potted plant, seen if I look to my right, through a black net screen, and window, that slightly blur the sunlight, gleaming on a single extension, a green, soft-spiked dinosaur tale.
All of this is stuff we feel in our bodies, in our infinite interrelations and interactions. We feel it as bodies and perceive it in our head. Our blood is moving and sometimes we feel it, our brain is moving and part of that moving is knowing and feeling. That's what we are. There are no memories to keep. There's no storage for ideas, there's only some site of constant repetition of neuronal circuits, which, whatever abstractions of "willpower" we have, is us, is what we do. We don't retrieve memories, we connect neurons to neurons. That 'we' is what our neurons do too. We don't store up ideas, we separate our actions, some called memories, some called honesty. We don't unlock our unconsciousness, or suppress memories, we connect and disconnect our consciousness, our brain cells.
We feel and do Voices, Scenes, Imagination, Writing, Composing, Confessing, Charming-as part of our brain."Suppressing memories" is a form of neuronal separation. Racism is a form of neuronal separation. Sexism is too. As a masculine person, I have to place my own analysis, theories, over my actual experience of women. To make sure I know what's really up with them, I have to access what I know about their category. If that category is not based on the continued interaction I have with actual people, I don't know who anybody really is, cuz I gotta test everyone to see how their behavior is Masculine or Feminine. (My bros, we gotta get buff!).
The method of "memory suppression", for example, that I used as a child, was to think of something I wanted to forget, and then preventing it from connecting to memories, and from staying in contact with my direct consciousness. Like if I thought of some memory where I felt abandoned, rejected, or abused by someone, I would keep thinking it and then wait for it to connect with other thoughts, feelings, voices, etc, and then retrieve whatever I could from my memory, to focus on that instead, until I couldn't remember the first thing I was thinking of. In order to deny what we are seeing when we see people, we need to focus on categories, and start seeing feminine people, black people, instead of those people as they present themselves, reveal themselves, share themselves. And those are all these things that comprise another abstraction we treat as an external reality, a building, thing, or place, that thing we imagine as "society."
Pro-choice women, don't get knocked up or raped. Young Black Men, don't dress yourself into an early grave. And then there's normal people, who impregnate, rape, and kill.There is no blackness out there to throw Trayvon Martin into. He is just a dead human, not a symbol, but an actual instance of what people do, and the violence that people do to the young.
What we do with a case like this, is to try and not to be unjust, even if we get caught up in the signs of oppression, like making the murdered person into the aggressor, giving him half the blame. All that's left, for those of us still alive, is how we perceive Trayvon Martin, and what we will do or not do, say or not say, to stop this shit.
There is no blackness, no evil that can be thrown over anybody to deny that they are people. But people encourage people to try and throw that blanket of race on themselves, and on others, just as one is also, trying not to to do that. Abusers, and bullies cover themselves with abstractions that are not to be concretized, and they want you to cover the bruises and the suffering, and the horror, with the abstractions they give you. Anything to avoid the suffering their actions cause.
Zimmerman placed his own abstractions onto this kid, wanted him to conform to the role of suspect, potential thug, image from a ghetto movie. Because, getting down to the level of concrete experience, (all experience is experience, ideas are experience), means facing the fact that you're afraid of seventeen your old kids, because you haven't grown up enough to feel safe around Kids. That hurts to realize, and it hurts to think of how horrible it is to be that way.
How would you feel if you ever got to the point where you even came close to killing a seventeen year old walking down your block?
It wasn't race that killed Trayvon, and it wasn't race that made Zimmerman kill, it was the practice of Racism. The practice of separating experience from action, of covering experience with ideas, until you forget the experience you have with other people. The practice of Racism is the practice of focusing on abstractions, playing out scenes when they are not around. Not trusting when they try to act all innocent, cuz we know their category, we know what they really are. But then, that's why we need some good news.
But Zimmerman, like all of us, was trying to get safe, and trying to get free. He did that by making some people into abstract categories, with abstract enemies, and abstract victims. What resulted from his focus on those abstractions was concrete violence, and concrete law enforcement who wouldn't or who were stopped from arresting this guy and charging him with murder.
This led to more concrete humans stepping on concrete, in the millions to put a stop to the specific individuals who construct their concrete identities as rulers, and get us to go along with them taking billions from other people, and bombing, killing, killing, killing. And sustaining the system of good/bad, war/peace, top/bottom, through every trick they can come up with (aka Reverse Racism aka campaign strategies, Everybody 2012!).
This is the matter of our identities: we are constantly shaping, remaking and exchanging with each other. We are constantly altering our bodies, including every neuron in our brain. Even when we are alone in our rooms, typing on facebook, sick, stressing over missing class, we are still maintaining our identities, feeling the constant motion of our neurons (as thought, voices, relief, release, skin on skin) and making little interventions to choose to close off a thought, deny a feeling.
We manipulate our thoughts, but we lose contact to often with how our thoughts feel, we treat them as objects moving through space, than the feel of whichever areas in our brain are moving when we think. We constantly decide our actions according to many systems of symbolic value, values that we imagine to be in line or out of line with our identities, or personalities, or selves All the symbols we use to interpret each other are not who we are, but who we create.
but THE GOOD NEWS is We can begin to feel this process of real time social construction of identity. Social identity=social reality=psychology=biology=how are you feeling right now? What we learn from our different histories allows us to get to a point where we can start to unpack all the baggage of meaning, implication, law, sin, property, and the rest of our bullshit.
Unpacking the mess inside of us is something we've always been trying to do. We have all these ideas to explain things, and the last thing we're willing to admit, is that it's all about safety. We can get safe. Every time we've failed, it hasn't been freedom and community that failed, those are just abstractions. We've done things that had results we didn't like, so next time we act accordingly. We are aware of the need to unpack all the ideas we have about ourselves, and to unpack all the feelings we use to construct our identities.
And, instead of worrying about reform or revolution, giving up or going on, becoming down or selling out, etc., we can begin to step out of our roles and construct our own communities where we don't have to keep seeing every man as separated by masculinity, every women as all kinds of separated, mysterious, contradictory, refusing, or compliant.
We can see people as how we experience them and separate that from the ongoing thoughts and feelings which are our reactions to each other. We can construct each other's experiences by basing our construction of identity on our experience of each other, our experience of everything, not just our experience of fear based rules and willful passivity.
In practicing direct democracy, we begin to see our comrades and classmates, and co-workers, as the people they are, not always having to test them against the totalitarian abstractions of gender, class, race, and every other reason for dehumanizing each other. And that brings it's own sense of security, trust, and the feeling of safety. We empower each other to struggle, teach each other how to handle situations, how to listen, how to do things on our own, without legitimacy given from our symbolic betters.
If I can see anybody like I can see anybody else, than I don't have to hold on to abstractions about who my brothers in this struggle are, who my sisters in this struggle, what the right beliefs are, or who my friends are. We can start getting to know each other past all these labels. And be alone when we need to be alone, process when we need to process.
We are getting past all that baggage of history, that constant criticism, constant focus on abstractions, constant analysis rather than letting up, taking the brakes off, and breaking down the walls that close us in and keep us apart. May Day 2012!!!!!!!!
Saturday, March 10, 2012
3 AA/ AC Members Talking About the Meeting, in a TV Show.
AA, Capitalism, and struggle: transcribed from the show Flash Forward, where every single human on earth blacks out, and has visions of the same future. Few days later, a guy at AA whos had a vision of himself going back to the bottle, interrupts a guy in group. Familiar anyone?
Imagine this in Hoover 205, Tuesdays at 430.
Struggling person 1: "I've been struggling ever since I had the visions. They say we're supposed to live our lives one day at a time. But how'm I supposed to do that with the future breathing down my neck? Every day just brings us closer to what I saw, and it seems like I can't avoid it. And there you are just staring at me! Do you have any answers? No, you dont! Because this programs a joke!"
Struggling person 2: "I got an answer for you: I'm'a take a walk, cool down a little. And spare us the rest of your pent up anger."
Now, imagine they are walking from Hoover to the Spot:
Struggling person 3: "Look I hated seeing that as much as you, but you never interrupt another persons share."
Struggling person 2: "I'm sorry, but loaded and sharing. That guy was pushing my buttons. I've been going through a lot of stuff you know?"
Struggling person 3: "So is he. I know you're worried about Olivia. You're worried you're gonna fall off the wagon in the future. He's [SP 3] gone and done it now. What's the difference? You're both struggling? Look at all these people. Everyone of them is dealing with the same thing we are. The future. The only difference is: Most of them don't have a support group to help them cope with what they saw."
--------
What else are we planning for if not the future? What else do we have to worry about if not the future? We need support to cope, and we need organization to sustain the trust that allows us to sit with other people and say what you feel, even when we are afraid, and listen to other people, even when you feel its so wrong, or that they need your advice.
The idea of trying this with students, with other activists- It scares me. I'm afraid of the pain that can come out.... But more, I'm just afraid of feeling that vulnerability that comes with collective trust.
It's not a theory that we believe in, its an experience that we need, and that we are all already hurting from not having. Part of recovery is knowing that when I say I don't want to get angry, I gotta know that theres a feeling there, there is experience. And thats what I am: ideas and thoughts are of the past, experience is here, and the future is what we need to work on.
I think we have a good chance at creating collective trust in a group, and we can always remind ourselves: We're learning. We're equal. We can forgive, and we can be angry, and we can get to the point: what are we after, and what are we doing to achieve it? Do we have people who have been in AA, or other groups on campus who could help out?
Imagine this in Hoover 205, Tuesdays at 430.
Struggling person 1: "I've been struggling ever since I had the visions. They say we're supposed to live our lives one day at a time. But how'm I supposed to do that with the future breathing down my neck? Every day just brings us closer to what I saw, and it seems like I can't avoid it. And there you are just staring at me! Do you have any answers? No, you dont! Because this programs a joke!"
Struggling person 2: "I got an answer for you: I'm'a take a walk, cool down a little. And spare us the rest of your pent up anger."
Now, imagine they are walking from Hoover to the Spot:
Struggling person 3: "Look I hated seeing that as much as you, but you never interrupt another persons share."
Struggling person 2: "I'm sorry, but loaded and sharing. That guy was pushing my buttons. I've been going through a lot of stuff you know?"
Struggling person 3: "So is he. I know you're worried about Olivia. You're worried you're gonna fall off the wagon in the future. He's [SP 3] gone and done it now. What's the difference? You're both struggling? Look at all these people. Everyone of them is dealing with the same thing we are. The future. The only difference is: Most of them don't have a support group to help them cope with what they saw."
--------
What else are we planning for if not the future? What else do we have to worry about if not the future? We need support to cope, and we need organization to sustain the trust that allows us to sit with other people and say what you feel, even when we are afraid, and listen to other people, even when you feel its so wrong, or that they need your advice.
The idea of trying this with students, with other activists- It scares me. I'm afraid of the pain that can come out.... But more, I'm just afraid of feeling that vulnerability that comes with collective trust.
It's not a theory that we believe in, its an experience that we need, and that we are all already hurting from not having. Part of recovery is knowing that when I say I don't want to get angry, I gotta know that theres a feeling there, there is experience. And thats what I am: ideas and thoughts are of the past, experience is here, and the future is what we need to work on.
I think we have a good chance at creating collective trust in a group, and we can always remind ourselves: We're learning. We're equal. We can forgive, and we can be angry, and we can get to the point: what are we after, and what are we doing to achieve it? Do we have people who have been in AA, or other groups on campus who could help out?
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
NON-FICTION: Loyalty to a Higher Power - Get Down From There!
I'm listening to The Book of Mormon, which is a joyous musical, and thinking about how Mormon missions are chosen for particular missionaries. I see a a stage or ampitheatre where the stout, snubbed nose white guy feels all proud of himself as he looks over a standing crowd of scrubbed young man, all with no hint of facial hair.
When I thought about what authority these guys use to choose missions, like maybe they have different departments, each devoted to a region, and when the team over at the Southern Caucasus bureau sends out emails all over the place, and whoever answers the first gets more god cred.
However they choose to do it, they always got to be appealing to the authority of their god. And how are you going to know if you should give a fuck what it says?
Two ways, obviously. One, you get loyal to him just because you feel it's the thing to do. Two, you realize you better freaking trust him, cause he can mess you the hell up.
But what if Jesus and all the other gods can't take us.
What if they're all bullshitters?
It's a real dilemma. You don't want to get your ass kicked, but you don't want to risk having to suppress your self for this guy. Anybody like that, they're gonna go off on you anyways, sooner or later. You gotta answer the question, when this relationship threatens my safety or the safety of others, how is this guy going to be stopped?
You don't want to suppress that feeling that says that this is right, because its a real feeling, and it makes you feel safe, loved, and accountable.
But how are you going to trust anyone if they don't tolerate criticism?
At some point in our domestic life, he's standing there in the kitchen in a faded sweater with a picture of some mountain he went to on vacation silk, screened and cracking. And he's holding his hand up, waving it as he explains all the shit your doing wrong. "You need to stop the free bread they give you at Italian restaurants. That's really why you've been gaining all that weight in your face." But does he take your advice?
Or he/it/she is telling us what we gotta think. They tell us to get the hell out of the kitchen.
But if you even questioned one damn thing they were doing, they would just stop and slowly glare at you.
Can you even imagine what they'd do if you told them to get the hell out, that they were getting fat in the face?
So god is up there, being perfect, and he can't have a conversation with me. He can't hear me say "I love you god, but I cannot believe you would say anything as nonsensical as that shit about you making all the universe. Do you know even know what gravity is?"
The Mormon guy who reads out the mission assignments, in the auditorium I have imagined, shouldn't be handing anything out. He should be receiving, at least. At least receiving the thoughts and preferences of all those pure young men. (stop perving on Missionary Fantasies!)
But if you were to walk up to that man when he was sitting at his desk, and put your hand on his shoulder, squeeze it, and say "Hey. Are you okay? You look tired, man. Take a break.," he would get his blood up worrying that you were trying to take his power.
He'd have to go take a piss, meditating on the best strategy for any future takeover attempts.
Why didn't Jesus go around listening to people, instead of just cracking jokes, moralizing, and boasting his greatness?
And if god came down today, and demanded that we all have faith, that we all feel that he is everything he's supposed be, feel that we have to believe it, and believe that it has to be true, then we'd have be able to have an actual conversation with him.
We'd have to tell him that if he was going to act like someone with special power privilege, than we wouldn't want to work with him.
And if god said "Okay. I'm sorry. I'll come down and just talk about what I feel for awhile." then we'd be better off just listening, and giving god the option of being weak, being stupid, being petty, and being arrogant.
That's love.
And if we don't give it to him, than how can he give it to us. Love goes both ways, and so does obedience. The man who feels his wife controls him, is denying her the right to be nuanced, to do things that have unintended consequences, and denying her the right to be equal.
God wants to deny it's equality with us. Some of us want to be equal with it, some of us want it to be greater than us. So, lets let it be both.
Let god come down once in awhile and explain itself. Hang out, so we can all get to know each other.
On the other hand, any asshole that claims to represent our interests without our input or control over his or her decisions needs to be stopped.
When someone is throwing bottles at you, you don't need to decide whether or not they are essentially good or bad, whether or not they have the right reasons for what they're doing.
You just need to stop them from hurting you, and from hurting other people. Later on, when they're settled down, or maybe way after that, they can come on down with the rest of us, and stop acting like a tough guy.
When I thought about what authority these guys use to choose missions, like maybe they have different departments, each devoted to a region, and when the team over at the Southern Caucasus bureau sends out emails all over the place, and whoever answers the first gets more god cred.
However they choose to do it, they always got to be appealing to the authority of their god. And how are you going to know if you should give a fuck what it says?
Two ways, obviously. One, you get loyal to him just because you feel it's the thing to do. Two, you realize you better freaking trust him, cause he can mess you the hell up.
But what if Jesus and all the other gods can't take us.
What if they're all bullshitters?
It's a real dilemma. You don't want to get your ass kicked, but you don't want to risk having to suppress your self for this guy. Anybody like that, they're gonna go off on you anyways, sooner or later. You gotta answer the question, when this relationship threatens my safety or the safety of others, how is this guy going to be stopped?
You don't want to suppress that feeling that says that this is right, because its a real feeling, and it makes you feel safe, loved, and accountable.
But how are you going to trust anyone if they don't tolerate criticism?
At some point in our domestic life, he's standing there in the kitchen in a faded sweater with a picture of some mountain he went to on vacation silk, screened and cracking. And he's holding his hand up, waving it as he explains all the shit your doing wrong. "You need to stop the free bread they give you at Italian restaurants. That's really why you've been gaining all that weight in your face." But does he take your advice?
Or he/it/she is telling us what we gotta think. They tell us to get the hell out of the kitchen.
But if you even questioned one damn thing they were doing, they would just stop and slowly glare at you.
Can you even imagine what they'd do if you told them to get the hell out, that they were getting fat in the face?
So god is up there, being perfect, and he can't have a conversation with me. He can't hear me say "I love you god, but I cannot believe you would say anything as nonsensical as that shit about you making all the universe. Do you know even know what gravity is?"
The Mormon guy who reads out the mission assignments, in the auditorium I have imagined, shouldn't be handing anything out. He should be receiving, at least. At least receiving the thoughts and preferences of all those pure young men. (stop perving on Missionary Fantasies!)
But if you were to walk up to that man when he was sitting at his desk, and put your hand on his shoulder, squeeze it, and say "Hey. Are you okay? You look tired, man. Take a break.," he would get his blood up worrying that you were trying to take his power.
He'd have to go take a piss, meditating on the best strategy for any future takeover attempts.
Why didn't Jesus go around listening to people, instead of just cracking jokes, moralizing, and boasting his greatness?
And if god came down today, and demanded that we all have faith, that we all feel that he is everything he's supposed be, feel that we have to believe it, and believe that it has to be true, then we'd have be able to have an actual conversation with him.
We'd have to tell him that if he was going to act like someone with special power privilege, than we wouldn't want to work with him.
And if god said "Okay. I'm sorry. I'll come down and just talk about what I feel for awhile." then we'd be better off just listening, and giving god the option of being weak, being stupid, being petty, and being arrogant.
That's love.
And if we don't give it to him, than how can he give it to us. Love goes both ways, and so does obedience. The man who feels his wife controls him, is denying her the right to be nuanced, to do things that have unintended consequences, and denying her the right to be equal.
God wants to deny it's equality with us. Some of us want to be equal with it, some of us want it to be greater than us. So, lets let it be both.
Let god come down once in awhile and explain itself. Hang out, so we can all get to know each other.
On the other hand, any asshole that claims to represent our interests without our input or control over his or her decisions needs to be stopped.
When someone is throwing bottles at you, you don't need to decide whether or not they are essentially good or bad, whether or not they have the right reasons for what they're doing.
You just need to stop them from hurting you, and from hurting other people. Later on, when they're settled down, or maybe way after that, they can come on down with the rest of us, and stop acting like a tough guy.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Stay Out of Vegas
What the problem is is that just now I was walking back across campus and past a dormitory and I saw a sign welcoming back students with the slogan: "What happens at Whittier, stays at Whittier."
Though I always love slogans and aphorisms when they're employed in a way that enhances the general curriculum of a school, like stuff from Shakespeare and some of the more intellectual-type celebrities, like Mr. Rogers, this particular form of slogan makes me want to vomit.
It's all covered up in the filth of Bourgois/Christian culture, where lust is an ephemeral substance that can be unleashed and closed off. When it's unleashed, this usually occurs in wicked and permissive dens of iniquity, cut off from the good part of the world, in order to conceal the filthy behavior of it's inhabitants. Why do they want the filth inside these evil places? One, you gotta keep the evil in cause if it gets out it will jack people up, so if you're gonna release it, do so in an appropriately closed-off area. Two, the good thing about sin and filth is that, even though your rulers say it's evil, they've also made sure that you want it desperately.
If what happens in Vegas really does stay there, than why not live there? You wouldn't want to, because sin must be indulged in moderately, with bourgouis restraint.
Gambling, prostitution, adultery, abnormal sexual inclinations are all products of evil, which is also a substance moving around in the world. Rather than evil, many people now prefer the substance of 'good/bad choices' and 'appropriateness.'
Living in this world of different forces pulling, pushing and embracing you. Even though when you step aside you can only feel the wind, which rarely gets strong enough to do anything to you but make you feel a little fresh or cold.
Though I always love slogans and aphorisms when they're employed in a way that enhances the general curriculum of a school, like stuff from Shakespeare and some of the more intellectual-type celebrities, like Mr. Rogers, this particular form of slogan makes me want to vomit.
It's all covered up in the filth of Bourgois/Christian culture, where lust is an ephemeral substance that can be unleashed and closed off. When it's unleashed, this usually occurs in wicked and permissive dens of iniquity, cut off from the good part of the world, in order to conceal the filthy behavior of it's inhabitants. Why do they want the filth inside these evil places? One, you gotta keep the evil in cause if it gets out it will jack people up, so if you're gonna release it, do so in an appropriately closed-off area. Two, the good thing about sin and filth is that, even though your rulers say it's evil, they've also made sure that you want it desperately.
If what happens in Vegas really does stay there, than why not live there? You wouldn't want to, because sin must be indulged in moderately, with bourgouis restraint.
Gambling, prostitution, adultery, abnormal sexual inclinations are all products of evil, which is also a substance moving around in the world. Rather than evil, many people now prefer the substance of 'good/bad choices' and 'appropriateness.'
Living in this world of different forces pulling, pushing and embracing you. Even though when you step aside you can only feel the wind, which rarely gets strong enough to do anything to you but make you feel a little fresh or cold.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
NON-FICTION: A Mystery of Eternal Revulsion
In keeping with fair standards of conversation, I can tell you that Cartoon Yourself websites allow the users to experiment with their self understanding and their perception of other people.
But this just creeps the shit out of me, no matter how many times I see it:
Look at the faces, one by one. What I feel is revulsion, physical, my heart rate and blood pressure seem to elevate, preparing for battle against this moral threat.
I remember going to the carnivals, or beachside boardwalks and piers, and seeing those guys who would cartoon you for a couple bucks. It was disturbing then as well, and I was just strongly afraid that someone I was with would want to do one, or that the 'artist' would look at me and talk to me.
Why is this? How can something so seemingly popular be absolutely vile, evil, and generally repugnant to me?
Is it a projection of my own insecurities? Is it that I would like to be able to recreate myself but am stuck on emphasizing the negative aspects of myself, as an antidote to the possibility of self-delusion?
Is it just that a certain percentage of the population has sensory perception that makes this yuckiness more visually appealing? Something about the way they perceive color?
It just seems like people want to escape their mundane or common character, simply by covering up reality.
You know, as I type this, I keep looking back at these pictures to try and find the secret key to my revulsion, but I can't.
Please give me your explanation. Look at the top row of cartoons, the lady from 30 Rock, or is that Sarah Palin?, and Bill Murray, and Whoopi Goldberg are so disturbing!!!!
Please give me your view on this.
But this just creeps the shit out of me, no matter how many times I see it:
Look at the faces, one by one. What I feel is revulsion, physical, my heart rate and blood pressure seem to elevate, preparing for battle against this moral threat.
I remember going to the carnivals, or beachside boardwalks and piers, and seeing those guys who would cartoon you for a couple bucks. It was disturbing then as well, and I was just strongly afraid that someone I was with would want to do one, or that the 'artist' would look at me and talk to me.
Why is this? How can something so seemingly popular be absolutely vile, evil, and generally repugnant to me?
Is it a projection of my own insecurities? Is it that I would like to be able to recreate myself but am stuck on emphasizing the negative aspects of myself, as an antidote to the possibility of self-delusion?
Is it just that a certain percentage of the population has sensory perception that makes this yuckiness more visually appealing? Something about the way they perceive color?
It just seems like people want to escape their mundane or common character, simply by covering up reality.
You know, as I type this, I keep looking back at these pictures to try and find the secret key to my revulsion, but I can't.
Please give me your explanation. Look at the top row of cartoons, the lady from 30 Rock, or is that Sarah Palin?, and Bill Murray, and Whoopi Goldberg are so disturbing!!!!
Please give me your view on this.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
IDEA: The Message They Left for Us
I thought I had left a mess on the floor, nudged the cats' bowl with my foot while hurrying out of the house. But the message was there. I just didn't want to see it.
We've all gotten so used to seeing things in the world as it is presently, on levels 6 through lobby and parking garage.
What I found on the floor was no mess. It was a word spelled out in cat food.
Think about it, the roads we traveled home on tonight, the theater we watched the 'movie' in. All made by ideas, ideas. Why is it that we happen to have people among us whose expertise is fiction? And why is Jaime an architect? He certainly has built no buildings. So, just what has he built?
The cat food on my kitchen floor spelled this: Catbox
That's where my secret subconscious safe box was. And inside was the message that would unravel everything for me: Pool. Obviously it meant that I had to get to Jaime's safe, hidden at the bottom of his childhood pool, his first den of safety. I confirmed the message with Bakunin, and noticed something strange about the word spelled out in cat food: it was cc'ed to .... none other than....
Luka!!!!
I had Bakunin sprout magic dream wings and fly to Cerritos where Luka, pipe in mouth, waited patiently.
And what did I retrieve from the safety box underneath the chlorine suffused waters?
Our original mission. The mission we've all forgotten The mission we still have to finish.
Angela Dickinson, code named Mercy, was recruited by Jack Stockingsworth, codename Jaimen.
Jaimen had one last job to do, and he needed some extra help. That's when he broke me, Garreth Hydelberg, out of the nuthouse.
Jaimen, the world's most wanted dream architect, built this place, inspired by a movie he had just seen, starring Johnny Depp as a man who dies and goes to heaven only to find out that Heaven is his childhood, and his childhood has become full of vampires and zombies, who he has to fight.
Stockingsworth, AKA Jaimen, constructed this world in order to infiltrate the mind of Leonardo Dicaprio, a drug crazed actor-turned-politician who now threatens war with Chile, back in the really real world, where nothing spins forever. We need to inceive the idea in Dicaprio's mind that All You Need is Love.
Click to Kick
Jaimen knew it would be hard, so he built in reminders, and had us all start a book club, to keep us in touch with the real world. That's why all the books we've read for our book club are actually events from the really real world, that Stockingsworth instructed Gareth Hydelberg, me, and Angela Dickinson, Mercy, to put in novel form.
I know this answers so many precious questions for us. But there's one more: Who is the dreamer of this world that Jaimen has led us in constructing? Of course, that's why Bakunin left me the message, because.....
dun dun dun! We're really all projections of Bakunin's subconscious, and Luka is his security guard extractor guy.
Or is it? One things for sure, the architect of this world, Jaimen, has built in a kick that will bring us back up to the really real world, where dogs and cats may or may not rule humanity.
The kick is complicated, but it involves something approximating a circle jerk onto a two headed lamb (in the dreamworld, the female members of our task force can just magic out the necessary apparatus to co-jerk with us.)
And that's the other secret. Who is the other female? The Emma character, someone who just happens to have the mind of a rapacious, business obsessed tycoon. Why, she's the one who hired us.. oh should I say. dun dun dun! HE!!!
Emma is none other than Donald Trump, who originally blackmailed the architect, Stockingsworth, into designing this strip mall, sprawling world.
The pre-kick kick should be embedded in this post, if not, I've been dunking my head in the toilet and I really feel that it's working.
soon....
We've all gotten so used to seeing things in the world as it is presently, on levels 6 through lobby and parking garage.
What I found on the floor was no mess. It was a word spelled out in cat food.
The cat food on my kitchen floor spelled this: Catbox
That's where my secret subconscious safe box was. And inside was the message that would unravel everything for me: Pool. Obviously it meant that I had to get to Jaime's safe, hidden at the bottom of his childhood pool, his first den of safety. I confirmed the message with Bakunin, and noticed something strange about the word spelled out in cat food: it was cc'ed to .... none other than....
Luka!!!!
I had Bakunin sprout magic dream wings and fly to Cerritos where Luka, pipe in mouth, waited patiently.
And what did I retrieve from the safety box underneath the chlorine suffused waters?
Our original mission. The mission we've all forgotten The mission we still have to finish.
Angela Dickinson, code named Mercy, was recruited by Jack Stockingsworth, codename Jaimen.
Jaimen had one last job to do, and he needed some extra help. That's when he broke me, Garreth Hydelberg, out of the nuthouse.
Jaimen, the world's most wanted dream architect, built this place, inspired by a movie he had just seen, starring Johnny Depp as a man who dies and goes to heaven only to find out that Heaven is his childhood, and his childhood has become full of vampires and zombies, who he has to fight.
Stockingsworth, AKA Jaimen, constructed this world in order to infiltrate the mind of Leonardo Dicaprio, a drug crazed actor-turned-politician who now threatens war with Chile, back in the really real world, where nothing spins forever. We need to inceive the idea in Dicaprio's mind that All You Need is Love.
Click to Kick
Jaimen knew it would be hard, so he built in reminders, and had us all start a book club, to keep us in touch with the real world. That's why all the books we've read for our book club are actually events from the really real world, that Stockingsworth instructed Gareth Hydelberg, me, and Angela Dickinson, Mercy, to put in novel form.
I know this answers so many precious questions for us. But there's one more: Who is the dreamer of this world that Jaimen has led us in constructing? Of course, that's why Bakunin left me the message, because.....
dun dun dun! We're really all projections of Bakunin's subconscious, and Luka is his security guard extractor guy.
Or is it? One things for sure, the architect of this world, Jaimen, has built in a kick that will bring us back up to the really real world, where dogs and cats may or may not rule humanity.
The kick is complicated, but it involves something approximating a circle jerk onto a two headed lamb (in the dreamworld, the female members of our task force can just magic out the necessary apparatus to co-jerk with us.)
And that's the other secret. Who is the other female? The Emma character, someone who just happens to have the mind of a rapacious, business obsessed tycoon. Why, she's the one who hired us.. oh should I say. dun dun dun! HE!!!
Emma is none other than Donald Trump, who originally blackmailed the architect, Stockingsworth, into designing this strip mall, sprawling world.
The pre-kick kick should be embedded in this post, if not, I've been dunking my head in the toilet and I really feel that it's working.
soon....
Friday, July 30, 2010
NON-FICTION: Obama's Ignorant Education
Every teacher I know says the problem with their classes is not enough resources, too much focus on teaching to tests, and too many students per class.
And I heard Obama on the radio today talking about his Race to the Top plan, where schools compete to show their compliance with standards to get money from the federal government. Obama said we need accountability from teachers. His plan amounts to a test, with a list of requirements and a total score possible for each item. Making education funding a priority gets ten points at the most, sufficiently focusing on private and charter schools is worth forty points. There's all kinds of crap to get scored on. This is what they call stimulating improvement, about four billion dollars to stimulate education by top down standards.
We do want accountability. We need it from our spouses, our police officers, our employers, our employees, our landlords, and our neighbors.
And with accountability there is one who does the accounting, and that which is accounted for.
Race to the Top, aside from bringing to mind the undignified scramble to a single, coveted position, by desperate and grasping teachers, also brings to mind the pyramidal, top down nature of our school system, which is precisely what's jacking it up.
Back in good old Red China, I was able to give my students a competitive edge in learning English by working equally with the parent and education administrators. Everyone had slightly divergent interests, but we all had a common goal, getting these children to speak the best English possible.
This is what I focused on. I had seen other teachers always blaming the students, or the culture, or anyone else beside themselves. And I knew that I couldn't do this. I also knew that the people hiring me didn't know how to get Chinese students speaking fluently, since this was the biggest problem in English education at the time, and still is.
So rather than looking for people to blame, I took responsibility for my own students' success. They were not responsible for their success, for they had not chosen to be there, and had no choice in how they spent most of their time. The parents were not responsible, because their English levels were inferior to my own. The school administrators were interested in general parent and student satisfaction.
But, in order to help my students, I also had to be free to change what I needed to change and learn what I needed to learn.
I would have had a much more painful time of things if I had been teaching in an American public school. The teachers I work with now are hindered by paperwork, overloaded with students who blend into a vague crowd control issue, and isolated form the people making the decisions on how their classrooms are run. When new research catches the administration's or principal's interest, new rules get laid down over the teachers.
Before stressing accountability for teachers, Obama also made kind remarks about our Nations teachers. But this appreciation didn't extend as far as granting more power to educators in determining educational policy. Instead, he's lumped teachers into a big pile called "schools", and said that if the "schools" fail, it's the teachers fault.
Thus, teachers will continue to suffer for things they can't control, and be blamed for it, not just by ignorant politicians and right wing blame-the-lowest-first windbags, but by the president himself.
The accounting Obama wants with his new policy is accounting for standardized tests, which themselves are unaccountable to teachers and students. What Obama wants is for bureaucrats to do the accounting, and these bureaucrats are unaccountable to the teachers and students. Teachers and students can make no demands on their superiors, the students cannot direct their own education, and the teachers cannot direct the educational policy they work under. Whatever methods currently claimed to allow such direction are invalidated by Obama's ignorant policy. If he had asked public schools teacher vote on it, or asked a wide spectrum, they would have said no way.
Obama of course, is quite educated, as was his mother. I doubt if his education is comparable to that of middle and lower middle class American children, herded in and out of underfunded classrooms, and ignored and dehumanized in favor of abstract standards developed by administrators who ignore and dehumanize teachers. And as for the input of parents, where I work, among preschool children, many parents are unable to speak much English and likely disadvantaged when it comes to shaping educational policy.
The pain and suffering, dreams and hopes, personalities and talents, of America's students and teachers, will continue to be ignored.
And I heard Obama on the radio today talking about his Race to the Top plan, where schools compete to show their compliance with standards to get money from the federal government. Obama said we need accountability from teachers. His plan amounts to a test, with a list of requirements and a total score possible for each item. Making education funding a priority gets ten points at the most, sufficiently focusing on private and charter schools is worth forty points. There's all kinds of crap to get scored on. This is what they call stimulating improvement, about four billion dollars to stimulate education by top down standards.
We do want accountability. We need it from our spouses, our police officers, our employers, our employees, our landlords, and our neighbors.
And with accountability there is one who does the accounting, and that which is accounted for.
Race to the Top, aside from bringing to mind the undignified scramble to a single, coveted position, by desperate and grasping teachers, also brings to mind the pyramidal, top down nature of our school system, which is precisely what's jacking it up.
Back in good old Red China, I was able to give my students a competitive edge in learning English by working equally with the parent and education administrators. Everyone had slightly divergent interests, but we all had a common goal, getting these children to speak the best English possible.
This is what I focused on. I had seen other teachers always blaming the students, or the culture, or anyone else beside themselves. And I knew that I couldn't do this. I also knew that the people hiring me didn't know how to get Chinese students speaking fluently, since this was the biggest problem in English education at the time, and still is.
So rather than looking for people to blame, I took responsibility for my own students' success. They were not responsible for their success, for they had not chosen to be there, and had no choice in how they spent most of their time. The parents were not responsible, because their English levels were inferior to my own. The school administrators were interested in general parent and student satisfaction.
But, in order to help my students, I also had to be free to change what I needed to change and learn what I needed to learn.
I would have had a much more painful time of things if I had been teaching in an American public school. The teachers I work with now are hindered by paperwork, overloaded with students who blend into a vague crowd control issue, and isolated form the people making the decisions on how their classrooms are run. When new research catches the administration's or principal's interest, new rules get laid down over the teachers.
Before stressing accountability for teachers, Obama also made kind remarks about our Nations teachers. But this appreciation didn't extend as far as granting more power to educators in determining educational policy. Instead, he's lumped teachers into a big pile called "schools", and said that if the "schools" fail, it's the teachers fault.
Thus, teachers will continue to suffer for things they can't control, and be blamed for it, not just by ignorant politicians and right wing blame-the-lowest-first windbags, but by the president himself.
The accounting Obama wants with his new policy is accounting for standardized tests, which themselves are unaccountable to teachers and students. What Obama wants is for bureaucrats to do the accounting, and these bureaucrats are unaccountable to the teachers and students. Teachers and students can make no demands on their superiors, the students cannot direct their own education, and the teachers cannot direct the educational policy they work under. Whatever methods currently claimed to allow such direction are invalidated by Obama's ignorant policy. If he had asked public schools teacher vote on it, or asked a wide spectrum, they would have said no way.
Obama of course, is quite educated, as was his mother. I doubt if his education is comparable to that of middle and lower middle class American children, herded in and out of underfunded classrooms, and ignored and dehumanized in favor of abstract standards developed by administrators who ignore and dehumanize teachers. And as for the input of parents, where I work, among preschool children, many parents are unable to speak much English and likely disadvantaged when it comes to shaping educational policy.
The pain and suffering, dreams and hopes, personalities and talents, of America's students and teachers, will continue to be ignored.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
NEXT DIMENSION EDITORIAL: Is the Radical Left's Attack on Lynching Rights Anti-American?
What you are not likely to hear from Carey Mcwilliams is an outcry against the murder of white men carried out by radical Mexican insurgents.
He spends an awful lot of time laying out a tale of infamy in which the starring villain role is played by none other than Anglo-Saxons. He refers to the God given plan of Anglo-Saxon domination of this continent as empire, but says nothing of the corrupt, excessively demotic Mexican radicals from whom we rescued these lands.
Would Mr. Mcwilliams (who writes for the radically Marxist The Nation) prefer that we had left the free white Americans who lawfully inhabited the lands west of Oklahoma at the mercy of the mestizo hordes?
Like many advocates of mob rule, negro emancipation, and every other sundry cause that hinders the free development of the American spirit, Mr. Mcwilliams regards lynching as a tool best kept out of the hands of White Christians.
And this is where the democratic hypocrisy of people like Mcwilliams reveals itself quite plainly: While appealing to populist, mob-rule rhetoric, he also seeks to disarm white folk of the one tool they have against crazed Mexicans and other unchristian races: Lynching.
Lynching is a process of communal justice, in keeping with the laws of our republic, and the spirit of law bequeathed to us by those great patricians that sloughed off the yolk of mad King George.
And now mob-rule supporters, like Michael Moore and Sean Penn, deny the right of self defense to white, free men, while supporting the anarchy of the Mexican race, whose incessant attacks on white settlers are second in vehemence only to those perpetrated by the red savage.
Is this charitable populism? Is this the demotic spirit that our republic needs?
And what is lynching? They will tell you it's racist, but, in fact, free white men are lynched too. And this is utterly flawed reasoning, since the greater likelihood of vice and evil is with those races who are in fact more often lynched.
Do not blame lynching of Mexican greasers, who have attacked and raped, on the white men who enact justice.
And the ultimate irony is that lovers of the mob like Mcwilliams are really after government intervention into the western territories. What they really want is for the Hamiltonians to have their day and the continent to be subdued by those distant powers of the capitol.
All across our Republic, northern libertines and other radicals are proposing the dissolution of our way of life. Negro emancipation to destroy the southern economy and right to property, women's suffrage to allow easily misguided women (who are perfectly happy as it is) the power to tyrannize their fathers and husbands, and now they want to take our right to execute justice in defense of our communities.
They want federal judges, controlled by the president and congress, to be sent out into the western territories to interfere with the liberty and free development of sovereign Americans.
We cannot let this stand. We cannot sit by, as our liberties are ripped from our hands, as the lesser sex and lesser races our given the whip over us.
We know what becomes of causes initiated in the name of lesser peoples: the tyranny of the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks.
If you, Americans, let them wrest the lynching rope from your hands, than you might as well give them the rest of your belongings, and your very life, for if they can take away the communal justice of lynching, than there is, truly, no stopping them.
He spends an awful lot of time laying out a tale of infamy in which the starring villain role is played by none other than Anglo-Saxons. He refers to the God given plan of Anglo-Saxon domination of this continent as empire, but says nothing of the corrupt, excessively demotic Mexican radicals from whom we rescued these lands.
Would Mr. Mcwilliams (who writes for the radically Marxist The Nation) prefer that we had left the free white Americans who lawfully inhabited the lands west of Oklahoma at the mercy of the mestizo hordes?
Like many advocates of mob rule, negro emancipation, and every other sundry cause that hinders the free development of the American spirit, Mr. Mcwilliams regards lynching as a tool best kept out of the hands of White Christians.
And this is where the democratic hypocrisy of people like Mcwilliams reveals itself quite plainly: While appealing to populist, mob-rule rhetoric, he also seeks to disarm white folk of the one tool they have against crazed Mexicans and other unchristian races: Lynching.
Lynching is a process of communal justice, in keeping with the laws of our republic, and the spirit of law bequeathed to us by those great patricians that sloughed off the yolk of mad King George.
And now mob-rule supporters, like Michael Moore and Sean Penn, deny the right of self defense to white, free men, while supporting the anarchy of the Mexican race, whose incessant attacks on white settlers are second in vehemence only to those perpetrated by the red savage.
Is this charitable populism? Is this the demotic spirit that our republic needs?
And what is lynching? They will tell you it's racist, but, in fact, free white men are lynched too. And this is utterly flawed reasoning, since the greater likelihood of vice and evil is with those races who are in fact more often lynched.
Do not blame lynching of Mexican greasers, who have attacked and raped, on the white men who enact justice.
And the ultimate irony is that lovers of the mob like Mcwilliams are really after government intervention into the western territories. What they really want is for the Hamiltonians to have their day and the continent to be subdued by those distant powers of the capitol.
All across our Republic, northern libertines and other radicals are proposing the dissolution of our way of life. Negro emancipation to destroy the southern economy and right to property, women's suffrage to allow easily misguided women (who are perfectly happy as it is) the power to tyrannize their fathers and husbands, and now they want to take our right to execute justice in defense of our communities.
They want federal judges, controlled by the president and congress, to be sent out into the western territories to interfere with the liberty and free development of sovereign Americans.
We cannot let this stand. We cannot sit by, as our liberties are ripped from our hands, as the lesser sex and lesser races our given the whip over us.
We know what becomes of causes initiated in the name of lesser peoples: the tyranny of the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks.
If you, Americans, let them wrest the lynching rope from your hands, than you might as well give them the rest of your belongings, and your very life, for if they can take away the communal justice of lynching, than there is, truly, no stopping them.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Fiction: Darrens Perilous Journey Page 586 I Feel Me Up
Even though this chick was some kind of fascist, and her face was kind of mannish, she was still a woman, and she was pretty thin. Plus, I hadn't been laid since I was like, well like a long time ago.
So I went at it, got all up on me, rubbing and kneading and poking. After a few minutes, I was naked and glistening, rolling all over the floor. My eyes were closed to the world, heedless of what might happen when I wasn't looking.
As in keeping with my heedlessness, induced by my misguided ecstatic indulgence, I was unawares of what the deal was as the crashing of the door shook me into opening my eyes to see what had made the sound.
Arthur stood there, with his sword out, straight pointing at me. He looked all mad, like he was all like "I'm a kill you!" I threw my hands from this borrowed body and was all "It's me, your liege, don't stab me!"
When I heard my voice, I realize that I totally sounded like a bitch! How would he know it was me? I had to rack my brains thinking about that.
I had to tell him things that he would know it was me. But then, all suddenly, he was clear about what the deal was. He had gotten the big picture. Seeing the note on the table next to him, he read and said "This fascist wench has taketh thy form and figure! Then you must be, indeed, my chosen hagriographer."
Oh what a relief. I got some tissues from that chicks purse, and wiped all the stuff off myself. Then, I said "Check it out, my bro. Here's what she was like putting out there about whats like happening and what not"
As Arthur listened, he looked really pissed. He took his sword and stabbed through the scientific-ish equipment all around the room, frenzying around in fury.
When all the stuff in the room was bashed beyond recognitions, he sheathed his sword in its holder, and wearily shook his head, from side to side. "Them that broughteth me thusly hath ever been struggling to desodomize my soul."
I felt so sorry, cause I had been all getting it twisted, in regards to the plot and like you know.
He forgave me and said "We must be off from here. At last, the time has come to begin your hagriophical mission, foretold in times past by men bold in rooms grand!"
Finally, I thought. But then I was all, Am I ready? I mean, I'm like, not really good at essays. But it was finally time to do the do, be I ready or not.
"Rand Coultier wants your body to take to the fair and wondrous, yet thoroughly corrupt with corporate gold, Freedom Peoples Congress of Common Folk, sequestered on the Zarcon planet, and now contesting the august issue of Gay Space Exploration."
Uh-oh, I thought. I wasn't a homophobe or nothing, but wasn't that gonna change the definition of Space Exploration, which was for straight people and aliens only?
But, then, I thought, maybe I've had enough of all this. My family taught me to stay out of politics. But then, on the other hand, I knew a lot about politics from games, like the massive multi-players they used to have when I was but a lad, whiling away the innocence of my childhood days, games like "Parley Mount", and "You Knighted States". I still had a cent a mental attachment to these games of yore.
Athur was looking at me, intensely, and that was freaky, cause he was like six feet four and all mythically buff looking. "And what lies still unbeknownst to those minted, gilded parishoners of that church whose sole edifice is the cross of corruption, is the persistence, the utter, dogged persistence of mine own heroism, ever recurrent amid the tremulation of history, to arise against the tide of injustice, in the name of the people, yearning in their huddled masses for that salvation which I bringeth unto them."
I felt the tears running down my cheeks. It was such a powerful message! And I looked down and - Oh no, I was still naked, I looked at this pale naked body and felt a little sickened, it was totally time to get back to my own body, although I liked the idea of being thinner, since a lot of chicks didn't like me cause of my little sum'in sum'in i had going on round my waist.
The only clothes I had to wear was the red dress she had left on her body before jacking mine. "Sir," I said, keeping my spitting it in appropriateness to his majesty. "Doth ye think that hereabouts might be sequestered garments and/or rainments befitting this ghastly form which I doth inhabit presently?"
He went out the room and briefly came back with a folded bundle of sweats and t-shirts. Thanks a million, I thought, now at least I can get a little comfy going on. I got dressed while he went and got me some socks and shoes, equally comfy.
Then I was all like, thinking how we gon' get out here if ain't got Merlyn to bust us out magical style?"
He winked at me, "The email hath already been loosed and replied to."
Just then, a burst of magic exploded beside me, while at the same time, the little jelly roll figure rolled up behind Arthur, with a gun, a 67-fenmeister zeppelin to be exact. "We tried to help you, you damn faggot."
But Merlyn instantly zapped him. Rushbo screamed, jiggling all over and flapping his hands around, as the drool continued to flow out of his mouth.
As he collapsed to the ground, he managed to be all like "The kids body is toast, I mean, like to the max! Rand Coultier is gonna chop his thing off if you guys try to interfere your homonazi crap on the space congress hearings."
Merlyn zapped him again, and he shut up. He was all "Me thinks thou has had too much of commotion for the nonce, be it suitable to my liege, I should want you to divert your attentions for the while."
Oh what? They gonna let me rest for awhile with all this stuff going on? We gotta get my body back, and I gotta get the hagriography written like quick like.
Page 23232 I go to rest, and feel up me again.
Page 42 I take a break and just chill
Page 5343 No, let's get out of here!
So I went at it, got all up on me, rubbing and kneading and poking. After a few minutes, I was naked and glistening, rolling all over the floor. My eyes were closed to the world, heedless of what might happen when I wasn't looking.
As in keeping with my heedlessness, induced by my misguided ecstatic indulgence, I was unawares of what the deal was as the crashing of the door shook me into opening my eyes to see what had made the sound.
Arthur stood there, with his sword out, straight pointing at me. He looked all mad, like he was all like "I'm a kill you!" I threw my hands from this borrowed body and was all "It's me, your liege, don't stab me!"
When I heard my voice, I realize that I totally sounded like a bitch! How would he know it was me? I had to rack my brains thinking about that.
I had to tell him things that he would know it was me. But then, all suddenly, he was clear about what the deal was. He had gotten the big picture. Seeing the note on the table next to him, he read and said "This fascist wench has taketh thy form and figure! Then you must be, indeed, my chosen hagriographer."
Oh what a relief. I got some tissues from that chicks purse, and wiped all the stuff off myself. Then, I said "Check it out, my bro. Here's what she was like putting out there about whats like happening and what not"
As Arthur listened, he looked really pissed. He took his sword and stabbed through the scientific-ish equipment all around the room, frenzying around in fury.
When all the stuff in the room was bashed beyond recognitions, he sheathed his sword in its holder, and wearily shook his head, from side to side. "Them that broughteth me thusly hath ever been struggling to desodomize my soul."
I felt so sorry, cause I had been all getting it twisted, in regards to the plot and like you know.
He forgave me and said "We must be off from here. At last, the time has come to begin your hagriophical mission, foretold in times past by men bold in rooms grand!"
Finally, I thought. But then I was all, Am I ready? I mean, I'm like, not really good at essays. But it was finally time to do the do, be I ready or not.
"Rand Coultier wants your body to take to the fair and wondrous, yet thoroughly corrupt with corporate gold, Freedom Peoples Congress of Common Folk, sequestered on the Zarcon planet, and now contesting the august issue of Gay Space Exploration."
Uh-oh, I thought. I wasn't a homophobe or nothing, but wasn't that gonna change the definition of Space Exploration, which was for straight people and aliens only?
But, then, I thought, maybe I've had enough of all this. My family taught me to stay out of politics. But then, on the other hand, I knew a lot about politics from games, like the massive multi-players they used to have when I was but a lad, whiling away the innocence of my childhood days, games like "Parley Mount", and "You Knighted States". I still had a cent a mental attachment to these games of yore.
Athur was looking at me, intensely, and that was freaky, cause he was like six feet four and all mythically buff looking. "And what lies still unbeknownst to those minted, gilded parishoners of that church whose sole edifice is the cross of corruption, is the persistence, the utter, dogged persistence of mine own heroism, ever recurrent amid the tremulation of history, to arise against the tide of injustice, in the name of the people, yearning in their huddled masses for that salvation which I bringeth unto them."
I felt the tears running down my cheeks. It was such a powerful message! And I looked down and - Oh no, I was still naked, I looked at this pale naked body and felt a little sickened, it was totally time to get back to my own body, although I liked the idea of being thinner, since a lot of chicks didn't like me cause of my little sum'in sum'in i had going on round my waist.
The only clothes I had to wear was the red dress she had left on her body before jacking mine. "Sir," I said, keeping my spitting it in appropriateness to his majesty. "Doth ye think that hereabouts might be sequestered garments and/or rainments befitting this ghastly form which I doth inhabit presently?"
He went out the room and briefly came back with a folded bundle of sweats and t-shirts. Thanks a million, I thought, now at least I can get a little comfy going on. I got dressed while he went and got me some socks and shoes, equally comfy.
Then I was all like, thinking how we gon' get out here if ain't got Merlyn to bust us out magical style?"
He winked at me, "The email hath already been loosed and replied to."
Just then, a burst of magic exploded beside me, while at the same time, the little jelly roll figure rolled up behind Arthur, with a gun, a 67-fenmeister zeppelin to be exact. "We tried to help you, you damn faggot."
But Merlyn instantly zapped him. Rushbo screamed, jiggling all over and flapping his hands around, as the drool continued to flow out of his mouth.
As he collapsed to the ground, he managed to be all like "The kids body is toast, I mean, like to the max! Rand Coultier is gonna chop his thing off if you guys try to interfere your homonazi crap on the space congress hearings."
Merlyn zapped him again, and he shut up. He was all "Me thinks thou has had too much of commotion for the nonce, be it suitable to my liege, I should want you to divert your attentions for the while."
Oh what? They gonna let me rest for awhile with all this stuff going on? We gotta get my body back, and I gotta get the hagriography written like quick like.
Page 23232 I go to rest, and feel up me again.
Page 42 I take a break and just chill
Page 5343 No, let's get out of here!
Monday, June 28, 2010
FICTION:Darren's Perilous Journey: page 365 I pull the gun on Merlyn.
Like, I had been up in this game for barely a minute and already the life and death decisions had been thrust upon me. I looked up at the swirling black, maroon and green clouds overhead, flashing with balls of electricity. Could I really be about to kill the most hated fascist in the solar system? Did I have the right? Was the right to kill one I possessed, after all, since I was frail?
Then I was struck by a sudden, unexpected and jolting realization about the state of affairs as they had played out since, five days ago, I had been walking down the docks, listening to that Messican music, and expecting the purchase of my dream boat. What I realized was that, Merlyn was the one consistent theme throughout the adventure, he had been there from start to progression. He had been pushing me on, luring me on, seducing me into danger at every turn. Was it him? Was he the secret. Could I afford to risk the death of this fool who was all like hating on everyone, even the blacks?
Or did i have it twisted? Was I blind to the righteousness of Merlyn?
El Rushbo was sitting behind his desk, chewing on a slobbery cigar, pills mushed and mixed into the slobber. "What's it gonna be? You think you got the juice?"
"Act with haste!" We must rescue Arthur before the teeming minions of this puss filled monstrosity are allowed to acquire sciencia of our movements!"
I turned, slowly, pausing for effect in mid-turn, as a wisp of hair folded over my eye, which was itself emitting a star shaped shine, "Naw dog, I don't even trip on that! All this time, you been stringing me along, like a two bits of money, as if I was the dumbest fool in the hood!"
"And that's what trips me out the most", I said, keeping it real, "It's like, you totally know what the deal was, you totally know where I was coming from, and what I've been through, but you just, like, totally disregarded, like, my whole emotions." I shook my head, in disappointment rather than involuntary tic.
The grand old wizard slowly shook his own head, but not like me, in disappointment, but rather in amazement. "You've been beguiled." As he said this, i felt something moist and slimy on my chin. I touched the fingers of my not holding a gun hand to my chin and pulled it away, to within the sight of my eyes. What i beheld practically caused me to stumble loosely, shocked in amazement. It was the same sort of slobber emanating from el Rushbo's mouth.
I really had been poisoned, duped, flummoxed. They had gotten to me faster than a Tijuana whore on a blue-light special!
I exhaled a squeak, like as if I was all like some kind of all jacked up, freaky, like monster from Freddy or something.
Then, unsaranmoniously, I fainted.
The first think I saw on my awakening were the coldest pair of blue yes I'd ever seen. The second thing was the frame of blond hair that enclosed the area of my face. The eyes came closer to me. "You know what, you little punk? You're so totally lucky about what's about to happen!"
"Wha- What-?" I asked, barely able to make a sentence. I was scared out of my league. The old wizard had told me that the guys here were into Aryans, and then I had seen the Rushbo, who was all KKK times ten, and now this other one, total white chick. I was like, damn what's up with the scenario going down for real!
"Where's Merlyn?", I befuddedly asked. She shook her head and leaned back, her hair flinging over her shoulder. "Un, okay, you really need to realized something here. Umm, you've been rescued! And you must be really be brainwashed if you don't deeply appreciate the way I put my life on the line to protect you're freedom back there!" Unh-hunh! And I thought Blondes just wanna have fun, okay!
Then, she explained all the plot information that I had previously been unaware of, seeing as I hadn't known about it.
She said that actually, Arthur had wanted to come to this place, to get help, to get counseling for him being a gay. They said that the people in power back on Earth, AKA, the System, was trying to stop Arthur from getting cured, cause if he was gay, than that would destroy the historical mythos of Anglo-Saxon heroic leadership and complete the domination of the gays and minorities. Wuh wuh? That was about me? Didn't she know that I was a minority too. So, instead of just thinking it out like that, I asked her straight up front.
She's all "That's why you'll make the perfect vessel! For when I infiltrate the system to free the Aryans from the death grip of that foreigner controlling America!"
Oh, so that was it, they were gonna pretend to be me, but she was taller than me, and thinner, and she was a chick. Then I saw what she was getting at, she started doing that face off thing, like in the movie: "Face.... off!" Was she gonna take my face off and give me hers?
"No.", she excacerbated, "I just mean that I'm gonna look like you and you're gonna look like me. Moron!"
"Wait a sec." A thought came to me, unbidden by my conscious mind, almost bubbling up from my unconsciousness, where who knew what bubbly broths stewed. "Where's Merlyn?"
"He cut and run, like the typical radical liberal Marxist elitist that he is would do. After we rescued Merlyn."
Then she walked over to a wall full of little levers, not like light switches, but more like the toggles on old machines, the kind that they have in movies from the good old days.
Then I felt woozy, and the glimmer of hope I had had that this freaky lady was going to lead me to the Authur, the object of hagriophyical interest to me, was further dashed, dashed out of my mind and thoughts, and dashed against the rocks of my infamy, as I swooned into unconsciousness, hearing the words: "Face.......off!"
I woke up feeling really good, like I'd just had a long sleep. As usual upon waking, I reach down to rub my junk, some of which was usually engorged. But my junk, all three of them, wasn't there!!!
I looked around. I was in the same room, but nobody was there. On a table near the door was a red, leather purse, the straps were entwined with a gold chain. I looked inside and pulled out a wallet. Inside was a driver's license with the white chick's picture on it.
Then, I pulled out a silver round thing with a little button on it. I pushed the button and the thing opened. It was a mirror. And in the mirror, to my horror, and not quite astonishment, I saw the white chick!
I put my hand back in the purse, looking for some more information that would tell me that this was some sort of trick. But all I found was some lipstick, a switchblade, mascara, and a small envelope, with a lace bow on the front. I opened it and took out the card, which had a picture of a fat bulldog, raising his paw. Written over this was the message: They're switching off Arthur's gay gene. He should be straight in about an hour or so. Enjoy this superior body. Don't get mad and abuse it, or masturbate, or I will retaliate on your body.
God Bless, Rand Coultier.
Well, I'll be damned!!!! What was I gonna do now, just sit here and wait? Was it right to ungay Arthur, what about the ethical implications that would arise from such a procedure? And, how was she gonna know what touching I did to her body with her hands? Was there hidden cameras in here?
page 586, feel me up
page 6791, Find Arthur
page 8, look for Merlyn
Then I was struck by a sudden, unexpected and jolting realization about the state of affairs as they had played out since, five days ago, I had been walking down the docks, listening to that Messican music, and expecting the purchase of my dream boat. What I realized was that, Merlyn was the one consistent theme throughout the adventure, he had been there from start to progression. He had been pushing me on, luring me on, seducing me into danger at every turn. Was it him? Was he the secret. Could I afford to risk the death of this fool who was all like hating on everyone, even the blacks?
Or did i have it twisted? Was I blind to the righteousness of Merlyn?
El Rushbo was sitting behind his desk, chewing on a slobbery cigar, pills mushed and mixed into the slobber. "What's it gonna be? You think you got the juice?"
"Act with haste!" We must rescue Arthur before the teeming minions of this puss filled monstrosity are allowed to acquire sciencia of our movements!"
I turned, slowly, pausing for effect in mid-turn, as a wisp of hair folded over my eye, which was itself emitting a star shaped shine, "Naw dog, I don't even trip on that! All this time, you been stringing me along, like a two bits of money, as if I was the dumbest fool in the hood!"
"And that's what trips me out the most", I said, keeping it real, "It's like, you totally know what the deal was, you totally know where I was coming from, and what I've been through, but you just, like, totally disregarded, like, my whole emotions." I shook my head, in disappointment rather than involuntary tic.
The grand old wizard slowly shook his own head, but not like me, in disappointment, but rather in amazement. "You've been beguiled." As he said this, i felt something moist and slimy on my chin. I touched the fingers of my not holding a gun hand to my chin and pulled it away, to within the sight of my eyes. What i beheld practically caused me to stumble loosely, shocked in amazement. It was the same sort of slobber emanating from el Rushbo's mouth.
I really had been poisoned, duped, flummoxed. They had gotten to me faster than a Tijuana whore on a blue-light special!
I exhaled a squeak, like as if I was all like some kind of all jacked up, freaky, like monster from Freddy or something.
Then, unsaranmoniously, I fainted.
The first think I saw on my awakening were the coldest pair of blue yes I'd ever seen. The second thing was the frame of blond hair that enclosed the area of my face. The eyes came closer to me. "You know what, you little punk? You're so totally lucky about what's about to happen!"
"Wha- What-?" I asked, barely able to make a sentence. I was scared out of my league. The old wizard had told me that the guys here were into Aryans, and then I had seen the Rushbo, who was all KKK times ten, and now this other one, total white chick. I was like, damn what's up with the scenario going down for real!
"Where's Merlyn?", I befuddedly asked. She shook her head and leaned back, her hair flinging over her shoulder. "Un, okay, you really need to realized something here. Umm, you've been rescued! And you must be really be brainwashed if you don't deeply appreciate the way I put my life on the line to protect you're freedom back there!" Unh-hunh! And I thought Blondes just wanna have fun, okay!
Then, she explained all the plot information that I had previously been unaware of, seeing as I hadn't known about it.
She said that actually, Arthur had wanted to come to this place, to get help, to get counseling for him being a gay. They said that the people in power back on Earth, AKA, the System, was trying to stop Arthur from getting cured, cause if he was gay, than that would destroy the historical mythos of Anglo-Saxon heroic leadership and complete the domination of the gays and minorities. Wuh wuh? That was about me? Didn't she know that I was a minority too. So, instead of just thinking it out like that, I asked her straight up front.
She's all "That's why you'll make the perfect vessel! For when I infiltrate the system to free the Aryans from the death grip of that foreigner controlling America!"
Oh, so that was it, they were gonna pretend to be me, but she was taller than me, and thinner, and she was a chick. Then I saw what she was getting at, she started doing that face off thing, like in the movie: "Face.... off!" Was she gonna take my face off and give me hers?
"No.", she excacerbated, "I just mean that I'm gonna look like you and you're gonna look like me. Moron!"
"Wait a sec." A thought came to me, unbidden by my conscious mind, almost bubbling up from my unconsciousness, where who knew what bubbly broths stewed. "Where's Merlyn?"
"He cut and run, like the typical radical liberal Marxist elitist that he is would do. After we rescued Merlyn."
Then she walked over to a wall full of little levers, not like light switches, but more like the toggles on old machines, the kind that they have in movies from the good old days.
Then I felt woozy, and the glimmer of hope I had had that this freaky lady was going to lead me to the Authur, the object of hagriophyical interest to me, was further dashed, dashed out of my mind and thoughts, and dashed against the rocks of my infamy, as I swooned into unconsciousness, hearing the words: "Face.......off!"
I woke up feeling really good, like I'd just had a long sleep. As usual upon waking, I reach down to rub my junk, some of which was usually engorged. But my junk, all three of them, wasn't there!!!
I looked around. I was in the same room, but nobody was there. On a table near the door was a red, leather purse, the straps were entwined with a gold chain. I looked inside and pulled out a wallet. Inside was a driver's license with the white chick's picture on it.
Then, I pulled out a silver round thing with a little button on it. I pushed the button and the thing opened. It was a mirror. And in the mirror, to my horror, and not quite astonishment, I saw the white chick!
I put my hand back in the purse, looking for some more information that would tell me that this was some sort of trick. But all I found was some lipstick, a switchblade, mascara, and a small envelope, with a lace bow on the front. I opened it and took out the card, which had a picture of a fat bulldog, raising his paw. Written over this was the message: They're switching off Arthur's gay gene. He should be straight in about an hour or so. Enjoy this superior body. Don't get mad and abuse it, or masturbate, or I will retaliate on your body.
God Bless, Rand Coultier.
Well, I'll be damned!!!! What was I gonna do now, just sit here and wait? Was it right to ungay Arthur, what about the ethical implications that would arise from such a procedure? And, how was she gonna know what touching I did to her body with her hands? Was there hidden cameras in here?
page 586, feel me up
page 6791, Find Arthur
page 8, look for Merlyn
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
NON-FICTION: Two Stupid Arguments: Faith is like belief, God=Argument for Morality
George Michael was the only guy who could make me believe in it
Faith is either a distinct faculty of experience, or a special term for a certain type of belief.
The reason people want to say it is a kind of belief, or equivalent to some kinds of belief, is because there are in fact many things we believe without actually knowing why we believe them, or being able to prove them with utter certainty.
A common sort of reasoning goes like this: I've never seen Australia, but I believe it's there, therefore I can believe in god without seeing it.
Of course, like the stupid man-made watch implies man made design, therefore tree implies design argument, this sort of reasoning ignores the definition of god. I learned this from Ayn Rand years ago, and it is about the only useful bit of philosophy I still have from her.
Australia is proposed as an observable phenomena, it is a country like other countries, a place like other places, on the same planet as us, known through other people by empirical evidence.
What the theist will do is obfuscate this by referring to direct experience, and something like degrees of trust: People have direct experience of Australia, people have direct experience of god.
But direct experience is also what people have of their delusions. I have had direct experience of delusions, or beliefs that completely contradicted what I understood about reality, and they would have remained if I had not rigorously analyzed and critique them.
Empirical evidence, however, is what we can demonstrate to each other. I can take you to Australia, I can show you pictures, or I can just tell you that I saw it.
God, on the other hand, is not strictly delineated. You can't photograph god, you can't falsify god, you can't smell god.
This is where faith comes in! You have to just trust that there is something there.
And what are you trusting? That there is something that you can't see, can't demonstrate, can't point at, can't catch, can't go to, and can't touch. And if you can't do any of that, than where did you get the information to have the belief, and how did you come to believe it?
The answer is you got the idea from someone else. And that faith/trust/belief is really trust that someone else had a good reason to believe, and then you develop your own reasons to believe.
Since god is all belief, it has nothing to hold itself out of the grip of human will. This is why it is not surprising to find that faith in god resolves nothing unless you already prescribe to the same beliefs (which you arrived at through some reasoning in a limited social context.) If we are the same kind of Christian, than we have a framework within which to get along.
If your faith is too different from mine, than you and I, at best, can agree to disagree, at worst, we can dehumanize each other for not recognizing the through god, and at most tiresome, we can just argue about evidence, history, and all the other things we expect to sway others with, even though are faith renders us immune to them.
When we get to the point of trying to pretend that god is a universally agreed upon concept, we near the sad reasoning of modern believers like William Lane Craig, and Rabbi Wolpe, who both debated Christopher Hitchens.
God they say, or Religion, which they conflate, because it all comes down to knowing other religions through viewing them as versions of their own religion, is the only basis for objective moral values.
They love to quote Smerdyakov (I think it was him because he was the jerk) in The Brothers Karamazov: If there's no god, anything goes.
Dear god what nonsense, as Hithcens pointed out, If there is a god, anything goes.
If there is a god, than people can rape pre-pubescent girls, massacre aborigines, stab pregnant women and rip out their fetuses with bayonets, send young men to their deaths, organize genocide, and drop a couple nukes on Japan after they surrendered. .
If there is a god, than that's what goes in it's/their world.
As for objective moral values, this is where they confuse their own insulated world with all the others that seem close enough to their own, as long as they don't understand these other religions from an insider perspective. So of course they can be made to seem equivalent.
Religions don't share any more objective values than religious people do with non-religious people.
Both Craig and Wolpe think that if you don't have a just universe!!! than you cannot just base your morality on expedient context-based guidelines.
Imagine a just universe, where moral codes for humans were built into the universe That's the language Wolpe used!
Physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers have all failed to find these moral laws. And that's where faith comes in.
And this is what distinguishes faith as a distinct experience. No matter what fails to verify your belief, or no matter what contradicts your belief, you still know it's true.
And this is the objectivity of the theists, the totality of the absolute monarch and dictatorship. Amongst other theologians and theists, they talk about mutual appreciation, but in their godly hearts, they know that there way is the only way, and those who don't share their faith, are doomed to suffer.
This is their certainty. And to sustain it, they use faith.
Faith is either a distinct faculty of experience, or a special term for a certain type of belief.
The reason people want to say it is a kind of belief, or equivalent to some kinds of belief, is because there are in fact many things we believe without actually knowing why we believe them, or being able to prove them with utter certainty.
A common sort of reasoning goes like this: I've never seen Australia, but I believe it's there, therefore I can believe in god without seeing it.
Of course, like the stupid man-made watch implies man made design, therefore tree implies design argument, this sort of reasoning ignores the definition of god. I learned this from Ayn Rand years ago, and it is about the only useful bit of philosophy I still have from her.
Australia is proposed as an observable phenomena, it is a country like other countries, a place like other places, on the same planet as us, known through other people by empirical evidence.
What the theist will do is obfuscate this by referring to direct experience, and something like degrees of trust: People have direct experience of Australia, people have direct experience of god.
But direct experience is also what people have of their delusions. I have had direct experience of delusions, or beliefs that completely contradicted what I understood about reality, and they would have remained if I had not rigorously analyzed and critique them.
Empirical evidence, however, is what we can demonstrate to each other. I can take you to Australia, I can show you pictures, or I can just tell you that I saw it.
God, on the other hand, is not strictly delineated. You can't photograph god, you can't falsify god, you can't smell god.
This is where faith comes in! You have to just trust that there is something there.
And what are you trusting? That there is something that you can't see, can't demonstrate, can't point at, can't catch, can't go to, and can't touch. And if you can't do any of that, than where did you get the information to have the belief, and how did you come to believe it?
The answer is you got the idea from someone else. And that faith/trust/belief is really trust that someone else had a good reason to believe, and then you develop your own reasons to believe.
Since god is all belief, it has nothing to hold itself out of the grip of human will. This is why it is not surprising to find that faith in god resolves nothing unless you already prescribe to the same beliefs (which you arrived at through some reasoning in a limited social context.) If we are the same kind of Christian, than we have a framework within which to get along.
If your faith is too different from mine, than you and I, at best, can agree to disagree, at worst, we can dehumanize each other for not recognizing the through god, and at most tiresome, we can just argue about evidence, history, and all the other things we expect to sway others with, even though are faith renders us immune to them.
When we get to the point of trying to pretend that god is a universally agreed upon concept, we near the sad reasoning of modern believers like William Lane Craig, and Rabbi Wolpe, who both debated Christopher Hitchens.
God they say, or Religion, which they conflate, because it all comes down to knowing other religions through viewing them as versions of their own religion, is the only basis for objective moral values.
They love to quote Smerdyakov (I think it was him because he was the jerk) in The Brothers Karamazov: If there's no god, anything goes.
Dear god what nonsense, as Hithcens pointed out, If there is a god, anything goes.
If there is a god, than people can rape pre-pubescent girls, massacre aborigines, stab pregnant women and rip out their fetuses with bayonets, send young men to their deaths, organize genocide, and drop a couple nukes on Japan after they surrendered. .
If there is a god, than that's what goes in it's/their world.
As for objective moral values, this is where they confuse their own insulated world with all the others that seem close enough to their own, as long as they don't understand these other religions from an insider perspective. So of course they can be made to seem equivalent.
Religions don't share any more objective values than religious people do with non-religious people.
Both Craig and Wolpe think that if you don't have a just universe!!! than you cannot just base your morality on expedient context-based guidelines.
Imagine a just universe, where moral codes for humans were built into the universe That's the language Wolpe used!
Physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers have all failed to find these moral laws. And that's where faith comes in.
And this is what distinguishes faith as a distinct experience. No matter what fails to verify your belief, or no matter what contradicts your belief, you still know it's true.
And this is the objectivity of the theists, the totality of the absolute monarch and dictatorship. Amongst other theologians and theists, they talk about mutual appreciation, but in their godly hearts, they know that there way is the only way, and those who don't share their faith, are doomed to suffer.
This is their certainty. And to sustain it, they use faith.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
NON-FICTION: Crap Band Shows Marketing In The Christian Soul Never Dies
Ken Macleod linked to this corny song. It's lame, but it makes me smile, because it's all about gene regulation. What a cool topic! That's what I want hear, that's what I want to dance too. Stuff that tells me something meaningful, rather than just infantile pubescent fantasies.
I keep stopping this writing to watch it again. But the point is that it contrasts well with another corny song, done without apparent irony, and produced with much more effort and, I assume, money.
This second video is by Superchick.
Dan sent it to me, to distract me from the three Child Development assignment I have to do, and the reading from David Hume, and the studying for my Chinese Quiz tomorrow.
How do you know a song is Christian when it doesn't mention Christianity. Well, there are no fullproof rules, but here are some guidelines.
-It Sucks.
-The lyrics don't say anything that Christians aren't allowed to, but still bump into the boundaries of acceptable Christian-Talk as much as possible (like talking about rebelling, but never against religion or your parents, talking about love but never physical love, talking about not conforming, but never telling you what to do instead, until they get to the God part)
This is the dominant face of the Christian-as-Shameless Salesman. As Mencken, noted, underneath every preacher lies a failed salesman.
Like the Capitalist culture industry, Christianity has gutted the soul of dissent and replicated forms of expression originally brought about by America's cultural revolution in the sixties and seventies.
Popular political music goes back farther, but it was during the whole obsession with youthful discontent that these styles became more central and exciting in American culture.
Rock and Roll became political, and then we got from that political punk and then political rap. But music doesn't have to be political or apolitical. As long as it's nice to listen to, it can attract people.
The content of music, usually the lyrics, is always important. And the content doesn't have to stick to any one style.
That's why it's so easy for the Culture Industry to completely absorb the energy of dissent and turn it into lifestyle capitalism, and why it's so easy for the Christian Culture Industry to then take the styles produced by Lifestyle Capitalism and then empty out the particular content and stuff in their own bullcrap.
The progression is as follows: Drop out of the System! Be an Individual ---> Hey Individual, you're not a part of the herd! That's why you enjoy the refreshing taste of Coca-Cola (or the feel of Levi 501's, taste of Budweiser, etc.) You're an individual, that's why you buy your individuality exclusively from PepsiCo. -----> Hey, all you guys love that Secular lifestyle, but you don't have to get out there, in The World, you can get from us, and our's is better, cause we're all part of Jesus!
But I shouldn't knock these true artists, merely expressing their sincere feelings... I can't even type that without giggling.
You cannot make good art when you have to reign in your thinking to that extent, when you're gently censored by everyone around you. The very world you live in is dangerous, in that you might think the wrong thing. You might think ungodly thoughts, or go too far in your speculation regarding other religions. Meditation can let in demons. In short, it's a dangerous world we live in, especially the mental world, full of possible deviation from Right Think.
But, let me try again with sympathy. I know they are...
Sorry... I honestly can't do it without laughing.
I'm not just religion-bashing on them. Johnny Cash did an album of hymns that I love. Outkast has that song "Church" on Speakerboxx. I love that song. It picks me up and gets me moving.
But it's just hard to make good music when you're task is ideological persuasion. Socialists have the same problem. The difference is, we have Rage Against the Machine. Those guys made good music, and they didn't have to live in a secluded, guarded world of constant ideological reinforcement. The Coup is pretty good too, as are Dilated Peoples ("If more than half the budget goes to military spending, than less than half goes to whatever it's defending.")
So ideological bias doesn't have to stifle your creativity, but check out Superchick. They're talking about being a rebel, crossing the line, standing out from the crowd! How can you be one of these born again Christian Culture Industry partisans and get that through your head and out of your mouth?
The whole thing becomes an artifice. They set out to produce music that reinforces the mental regime that is reinforced all around them, and then they produce music that reinforces conformity by imitating the music they can't listen to, and music that reinforces conformity by imitating the messages they can't listen to.
The song says: Revolutions start when someone crosses the line
They want us to lie down, give into the lie
Nothing has to change, and no one has to die
That's not the secret, but I know what is:
Everybody dies, but not everyone lives
It neglects to mention that by revolution they mean conformity to the Christian Culture Industry and a culture that has to constantly insulate itself from the world, which is to say it has to constantly concern itself with enforcing conformity, lest it's members stray into the open world, and the hell below it.
'Give into the lie' brings to mind Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster was fighting The Great Lie before little baby Jesus was born without sperm. 'Nothing has to change', reveals the most valuable message they can send to their target audience.
We ought to sympathize, even with self-blinding Christians like these guys. We all want to escape. Escape our limitations, escape death, escape loneliness. Someday, I hope they will take their places among the rest of humanity. In love, solidarity, and comfort.
Bless them all.
p.s. Here is an example of ideologically driven lyrics that are sincere, and part of a good song. This song touches me every time I hear it and gives me chills of hope and love.
(From The Coup, Heaven Tonite)
I used to think about infinity
And how my memory is finna be
Invisibly slim in that vicinity
And though the stars are magnificent
Whisky and the midnight sky can make you feel insignificant
The revolution in this tune and verse
Is a bid for my love to touch the universe
Strugglin' over wages and funds
Let the movement get contagious and run
Through the end when it's gauges and guns
And if we win in the ages to come
We'll have a chapter where the history pages are from
They won't never know our name or face
But feel our soul in free food they taste
Feel our passion when they heat they house
When they got power on the streets
And the police don't beat 'em about
Let's make health care centers on every block
Let's give everybody homes and a garden plot
Let's give all the schools books
Ten kids a class
And give 'em truth for their pencils and pads
Retail clerk - "love ballads" where you place this song
Let's make heaven right here
Just in case they wrong
I keep stopping this writing to watch it again. But the point is that it contrasts well with another corny song, done without apparent irony, and produced with much more effort and, I assume, money.
This second video is by Superchick.
Dan sent it to me, to distract me from the three Child Development assignment I have to do, and the reading from David Hume, and the studying for my Chinese Quiz tomorrow.
How do you know a song is Christian when it doesn't mention Christianity. Well, there are no fullproof rules, but here are some guidelines.
-It Sucks.
-The lyrics don't say anything that Christians aren't allowed to, but still bump into the boundaries of acceptable Christian-Talk as much as possible (like talking about rebelling, but never against religion or your parents, talking about love but never physical love, talking about not conforming, but never telling you what to do instead, until they get to the God part)
This is the dominant face of the Christian-as-Shameless Salesman. As Mencken, noted, underneath every preacher lies a failed salesman.
Like the Capitalist culture industry, Christianity has gutted the soul of dissent and replicated forms of expression originally brought about by America's cultural revolution in the sixties and seventies.
Popular political music goes back farther, but it was during the whole obsession with youthful discontent that these styles became more central and exciting in American culture.
Rock and Roll became political, and then we got from that political punk and then political rap. But music doesn't have to be political or apolitical. As long as it's nice to listen to, it can attract people.
The content of music, usually the lyrics, is always important. And the content doesn't have to stick to any one style.
That's why it's so easy for the Culture Industry to completely absorb the energy of dissent and turn it into lifestyle capitalism, and why it's so easy for the Christian Culture Industry to then take the styles produced by Lifestyle Capitalism and then empty out the particular content and stuff in their own bullcrap.
The progression is as follows: Drop out of the System! Be an Individual ---> Hey Individual, you're not a part of the herd! That's why you enjoy the refreshing taste of Coca-Cola (or the feel of Levi 501's, taste of Budweiser, etc.) You're an individual, that's why you buy your individuality exclusively from PepsiCo. -----> Hey, all you guys love that Secular lifestyle, but you don't have to get out there, in The World, you can get from us, and our's is better, cause we're all part of Jesus!
But I shouldn't knock these true artists, merely expressing their sincere feelings... I can't even type that without giggling.
You cannot make good art when you have to reign in your thinking to that extent, when you're gently censored by everyone around you. The very world you live in is dangerous, in that you might think the wrong thing. You might think ungodly thoughts, or go too far in your speculation regarding other religions. Meditation can let in demons. In short, it's a dangerous world we live in, especially the mental world, full of possible deviation from Right Think.
But, let me try again with sympathy. I know they are...
Sorry... I honestly can't do it without laughing.
I'm not just religion-bashing on them. Johnny Cash did an album of hymns that I love. Outkast has that song "Church" on Speakerboxx. I love that song. It picks me up and gets me moving.
But it's just hard to make good music when you're task is ideological persuasion. Socialists have the same problem. The difference is, we have Rage Against the Machine. Those guys made good music, and they didn't have to live in a secluded, guarded world of constant ideological reinforcement. The Coup is pretty good too, as are Dilated Peoples ("If more than half the budget goes to military spending, than less than half goes to whatever it's defending.")
So ideological bias doesn't have to stifle your creativity, but check out Superchick. They're talking about being a rebel, crossing the line, standing out from the crowd! How can you be one of these born again Christian Culture Industry partisans and get that through your head and out of your mouth?
The whole thing becomes an artifice. They set out to produce music that reinforces the mental regime that is reinforced all around them, and then they produce music that reinforces conformity by imitating the music they can't listen to, and music that reinforces conformity by imitating the messages they can't listen to.
The song says: Revolutions start when someone crosses the line
They want us to lie down, give into the lie
Nothing has to change, and no one has to die
That's not the secret, but I know what is:
Everybody dies, but not everyone lives
It neglects to mention that by revolution they mean conformity to the Christian Culture Industry and a culture that has to constantly insulate itself from the world, which is to say it has to constantly concern itself with enforcing conformity, lest it's members stray into the open world, and the hell below it.
'Give into the lie' brings to mind Zoroastrianism. Zoroaster was fighting The Great Lie before little baby Jesus was born without sperm. 'Nothing has to change', reveals the most valuable message they can send to their target audience.
We ought to sympathize, even with self-blinding Christians like these guys. We all want to escape. Escape our limitations, escape death, escape loneliness. Someday, I hope they will take their places among the rest of humanity. In love, solidarity, and comfort.
Bless them all.
p.s. Here is an example of ideologically driven lyrics that are sincere, and part of a good song. This song touches me every time I hear it and gives me chills of hope and love.
(From The Coup, Heaven Tonite)
I used to think about infinity
And how my memory is finna be
Invisibly slim in that vicinity
And though the stars are magnificent
Whisky and the midnight sky can make you feel insignificant
The revolution in this tune and verse
Is a bid for my love to touch the universe
Strugglin' over wages and funds
Let the movement get contagious and run
Through the end when it's gauges and guns
And if we win in the ages to come
We'll have a chapter where the history pages are from
They won't never know our name or face
But feel our soul in free food they taste
Feel our passion when they heat they house
When they got power on the streets
And the police don't beat 'em about
Let's make health care centers on every block
Let's give everybody homes and a garden plot
Let's give all the schools books
Ten kids a class
And give 'em truth for their pencils and pads
Retail clerk - "love ballads" where you place this song
Let's make heaven right here
Just in case they wrong
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
TRANSLATION: On The Ground, 扔在地上
English Lyrics here
在地上
我在城市里走走路
有人让我尝尝最新的运动饮料
跑快了跳高了
MAN！！！
我不会让你毒害我！
我拿着就扔在地上了。
你跟我开玩笑吧
我不会参加你这个社会！
你去给别人喝你的垃圾
我去我最喜欢的热狗店
老板说：你是长来的客户
我今天送你一个
我说 man!
你好像认为我是个乞丐呀
我拿着，
就扔在地上了。
我不需要你的慈善！
我是个成人呀
你不会请我吃热狗 man!
我在菜场陪着我所谓的女朋友
她给我她的手机
说是我爸
我说 Man 这不是我爸！
这是手机！
我扔在地上了
你觉得我是个啥子吗
我不是参加这个社会
我爸爸不是个手机
duh!
笨蛋在生日宴会中给我一块儿蛋糕
给我这个东西要干啥？吃吗？
祝地上生日快了
你不懂真实的世界， 傻瓜！
我把全蛋糕都扔了
这么多东西可以扔在地上
比如说那个和这个，和那个， 还有这个
我是个成人呀！
两个哈莱坞骗子要给我签名
地上！！
没有人要你签名
骗子！
让后骗子就起来
有一个带了泰瑟枪
就打了我的屁眼儿
我摔了下来
但他们没有停止
用抢打了我的屁眼儿
不停地打，
我叫喊了，蠕动了
烧了我的屁眼儿
这个故事的寓意是：
不要相信社会！
在地上
我在城市里走走路
有人让我尝尝最新的运动饮料
跑快了跳高了
MAN！！！
我不会让你毒害我！
我拿着就扔在地上了。
你跟我开玩笑吧
我不会参加你这个社会！
你去给别人喝你的垃圾
我去我最喜欢的热狗店
老板说：你是长来的客户
我今天送你一个
我说 man!
你好像认为我是个乞丐呀
我拿着，
就扔在地上了。
我不需要你的慈善！
我是个成人呀
你不会请我吃热狗 man!
我在菜场陪着我所谓的女朋友
她给我她的手机
说是我爸
我说 Man 这不是我爸！
这是手机！
我扔在地上了
你觉得我是个啥子吗
我不是参加这个社会
我爸爸不是个手机
duh!
笨蛋在生日宴会中给我一块儿蛋糕
给我这个东西要干啥？吃吗？
祝地上生日快了
你不懂真实的世界， 傻瓜！
我把全蛋糕都扔了
这么多东西可以扔在地上
比如说那个和这个，和那个， 还有这个
我是个成人呀！
两个哈莱坞骗子要给我签名
地上！！
没有人要你签名
骗子！
让后骗子就起来
有一个带了泰瑟枪
就打了我的屁眼儿
我摔了下来
但他们没有停止
用抢打了我的屁眼儿
不停地打，
我叫喊了，蠕动了
烧了我的屁眼儿
这个故事的寓意是：
不要相信社会！
NON-FICTION: I'm so freaked out over financial aid.
I'm supposed to hear back today from Whittier College about whether or not I can get sufficient financial aid to attend, now that I've been accepted.
I'm anticipating rejection, and I can't talk myself out of it. The only thing I can do is to tell myself to accept not getting enough financial aid, and have Emma help me to see the productive path ahead if I don't get it. I can still continue working towards my teaching credential, still focus on writing, still keep working, and still study the things I want to study.
I have ideas, but I'm not completely sure why I've regressed to this fear of rejection because nobody likes me phase.
Like Emma said, there is a lot of money involved in this, $30,000, so I shouldn't be surprised that they make it somewhat hard to get.
But I keep thinking that they should just know that I am really in need of financial aid. We're barely breaking even. I'm considering food stamps, low income auto insurance, and we're selling my car for something more fuel efficient.
I think I should make an appointment to see the school psychologist this week. One session could've already cleared this up.
Let it go, let it go, let it go. Deal with the situation. Don't let your anxieties alter your perception of reality. Be nice and understanding. Be humble. Like I've told Emma so many times, I have to put my worry energy into planning energy.
But I still feel sad.
On the other hand, all this Blank Slate/Genetic Determinism nonsense is taking up much of my other thinking energy.
I will spend an hour on each of my online classes today, and one hour writing fiction.
god bless you all
p.s. I've been working on a Chinese version of Andy Samberg's Threw It On The Ground I'm going to post the translated lyrics now.
I'm anticipating rejection, and I can't talk myself out of it. The only thing I can do is to tell myself to accept not getting enough financial aid, and have Emma help me to see the productive path ahead if I don't get it. I can still continue working towards my teaching credential, still focus on writing, still keep working, and still study the things I want to study.
I have ideas, but I'm not completely sure why I've regressed to this fear of rejection because nobody likes me phase.
Like Emma said, there is a lot of money involved in this, $30,000, so I shouldn't be surprised that they make it somewhat hard to get.
But I keep thinking that they should just know that I am really in need of financial aid. We're barely breaking even. I'm considering food stamps, low income auto insurance, and we're selling my car for something more fuel efficient.
I think I should make an appointment to see the school psychologist this week. One session could've already cleared this up.
Let it go, let it go, let it go. Deal with the situation. Don't let your anxieties alter your perception of reality. Be nice and understanding. Be humble. Like I've told Emma so many times, I have to put my worry energy into planning energy.
But I still feel sad.
On the other hand, all this Blank Slate/Genetic Determinism nonsense is taking up much of my other thinking energy.
I will spend an hour on each of my online classes today, and one hour writing fiction.
god bless you all
p.s. I've been working on a Chinese version of Andy Samberg's Threw It On The Ground I'm going to post the translated lyrics now.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
NON-FICTION: SNEAKING IN GENETIC DETERMINISM
The article is about how Caucuasians and Asians see faces differently.
The very statement reveals several analytically pathetic assumptions:
One. Caucasians have a common way of viewing the face.
Two. Caucasians are a race or group with common features.
Three. Asians have a common way of viewing the face.
Four. Asians are a race or group with common features.
Five. Asians are a group different from Caucasians.
Six. The designation of Asian and Caucasian need not be differentiated as to culture and ethnicity. That is, you don't have to specify someone whose ancestry is Asian as opposed to somebody whose culture is Asian.
This study would seem to imply that all the land from Indonesia, Korea, and from India to the Phillipines is inhabited by a single group.
What does it actually mean to say Caucasians and Asians? Most likely, yellow people and white people.
The clever bit about this piece is that it fits the simplistic ideas of cultural homogeneity and exclusivity, where different cultures inhabit different realities, and it also fits the evolutionary psychology oversimplifications, wherein, Caucasians and Asians have a separate phylogeny and therefore the needs of face recognition evolved differently.
I can't help but feel that such all-inclusive talk of Asians is never far from the Confucian Culture nonsense, and, perhaps, to some explanation of how they're all conformists because of their collective emphasis in facial recognition.
Good god. Take Chinese people for example. Try to get them to collectivize in the name of Confucian values. Or just talk to one about their experience working for or with other Chinese people, and compare what you find with The Analects.
The very statement reveals several analytically pathetic assumptions:
One. Caucasians have a common way of viewing the face.
Two. Caucasians are a race or group with common features.
Three. Asians have a common way of viewing the face.
Four. Asians are a race or group with common features.
Five. Asians are a group different from Caucasians.
Six. The designation of Asian and Caucasian need not be differentiated as to culture and ethnicity. That is, you don't have to specify someone whose ancestry is Asian as opposed to somebody whose culture is Asian.
This study would seem to imply that all the land from Indonesia, Korea, and from India to the Phillipines is inhabited by a single group.
What does it actually mean to say Caucasians and Asians? Most likely, yellow people and white people.
The clever bit about this piece is that it fits the simplistic ideas of cultural homogeneity and exclusivity, where different cultures inhabit different realities, and it also fits the evolutionary psychology oversimplifications, wherein, Caucasians and Asians have a separate phylogeny and therefore the needs of face recognition evolved differently.
I can't help but feel that such all-inclusive talk of Asians is never far from the Confucian Culture nonsense, and, perhaps, to some explanation of how they're all conformists because of their collective emphasis in facial recognition.
Good god. Take Chinese people for example. Try to get them to collectivize in the name of Confucian values. Or just talk to one about their experience working for or with other Chinese people, and compare what you find with The Analects.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
NON-FICTION: Sciene: The information vs. The metaphors
The hard part of science is the information. Getting the information, retaining it, and and evaluating it.
I was tutoring a woman who had applied to Yale as some sort of post graduate something or rather. Her specialty was Microbiology-Biochemistry. She was studying all the different kinds of things that make proteins. She knew the differences between them and she explained to me the research she had doing to name identify the different protein stuff. I cannot remember it, I keep trying, even as I'm writing this, but it's gone.
What would have been easier to remember was something like: The amino acids are like letters, and the words they spell are proteins.
But I wouldn't want to know this, not before I had grasped the actual amino acids and the actual proteins.
The metaphors can help us understand the information, but they are also highly likely to warp our understanding of the information, as the metaphors excludes certain content of the targeted information and relates it more to that which it is being compared to.
How many science lectures have I heard that started with a suggestion to "Think of X as a computer". Think of the universe as giant machine. Think of the brain as a giant information system. Think of ants as soldiers.
What inevitably happens is that the analogies dominate the information. We end up arguing over mechanism and vitalism, nature and nurture, dynamism and reductionalism, nominalism and realism.
In fact, direct reference to the book of nature, that is, empirical understanding, are what allows us to transcend imposing metaphors.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can see that it, in fact is like a big chemical soup, is like a computer, is like an organ, is like a hormone factory, is like a big machine, is like a soul, etc.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can stop thinking of is like and deal just with the actual neurons, actual structures, actual astrocytes, glial cells, dendritic branches, and all that.
I recently watched a discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Rose wherein the issues of disagreement were not so much clear to either party, but there was a hint that Rose felt Dawkins and the socio-biology type scientists over simplified DNA and genes, isolating the gene as the point of everything, and excluding the emphasis on the whole biochemical environment. Dawkins response was something like "Yes it's all very complicated, but..."
Dawkins insists that the code is the one thing that goes on and that's the key to natural selection.
But, I think naked contemplation of the processes is still more valuable than such metaphors of keys.
The metaphors we develop or that occur to us, are just ways to grasp the phenomena in different schemes of organization or causaality. But, in the end, unless we are constantly referring to the phenomena without metaphors and analogies, than we run the risk of subordinating the information to the analogy.
It is at this point that we diverge from science. Each scientific paradigm grows overreaches itself, denies information and is replaced by another paradigm.
What is left is information about processes. The animalcules identified by Van Looewnhoek were real, the problems faced by early French evolutionists were real, though much of their conclusions were wrong. The practical uses of electricity were understood faster than the actual phenomena underlying it.
What piles up over the decades and centuries is information, information regarding processes. Whatever metaphor we find useful to give this information a certain structure in a given age should never be taken as more significant than the information. Metaphors, such as the selfish gene, the brain-computer, the god center in the brain, and a gay gene should understood as a way of getting fresh perspective on vast processes, not as some final conclusions that subsume those processes.
I was tutoring a woman who had applied to Yale as some sort of post graduate something or rather. Her specialty was Microbiology-Biochemistry. She was studying all the different kinds of things that make proteins. She knew the differences between them and she explained to me the research she had doing to name identify the different protein stuff. I cannot remember it, I keep trying, even as I'm writing this, but it's gone.
What would have been easier to remember was something like: The amino acids are like letters, and the words they spell are proteins.
But I wouldn't want to know this, not before I had grasped the actual amino acids and the actual proteins.
The metaphors can help us understand the information, but they are also highly likely to warp our understanding of the information, as the metaphors excludes certain content of the targeted information and relates it more to that which it is being compared to.
How many science lectures have I heard that started with a suggestion to "Think of X as a computer". Think of the universe as giant machine. Think of the brain as a giant information system. Think of ants as soldiers.
What inevitably happens is that the analogies dominate the information. We end up arguing over mechanism and vitalism, nature and nurture, dynamism and reductionalism, nominalism and realism.
In fact, direct reference to the book of nature, that is, empirical understanding, are what allows us to transcend imposing metaphors.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can see that it, in fact is like a big chemical soup, is like a computer, is like an organ, is like a hormone factory, is like a big machine, is like a soul, etc.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can stop thinking of is like and deal just with the actual neurons, actual structures, actual astrocytes, glial cells, dendritic branches, and all that.
I recently watched a discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Rose wherein the issues of disagreement were not so much clear to either party, but there was a hint that Rose felt Dawkins and the socio-biology type scientists over simplified DNA and genes, isolating the gene as the point of everything, and excluding the emphasis on the whole biochemical environment. Dawkins response was something like "Yes it's all very complicated, but..."
Dawkins insists that the code is the one thing that goes on and that's the key to natural selection.
But, I think naked contemplation of the processes is still more valuable than such metaphors of keys.
The metaphors we develop or that occur to us, are just ways to grasp the phenomena in different schemes of organization or causaality. But, in the end, unless we are constantly referring to the phenomena without metaphors and analogies, than we run the risk of subordinating the information to the analogy.
It is at this point that we diverge from science. Each scientific paradigm grows overreaches itself, denies information and is replaced by another paradigm.
What is left is information about processes. The animalcules identified by Van Looewnhoek were real, the problems faced by early French evolutionists were real, though much of their conclusions were wrong. The practical uses of electricity were understood faster than the actual phenomena underlying it.
What piles up over the decades and centuries is information, information regarding processes. Whatever metaphor we find useful to give this information a certain structure in a given age should never be taken as more significant than the information. Metaphors, such as the selfish gene, the brain-computer, the god center in the brain, and a gay gene should understood as a way of getting fresh perspective on vast processes, not as some final conclusions that subsume those processes.
PURE SCIENCE: A Genocide Gene?
For years and years we have been assaulted with dogmatic assertions that genocide is purely a cultural phenomena, that is to be blamed on super-structural features of a society, like, patriarchy, racism, slavery. Some have claimed that it is a misfiring of our natural tendency towards in-group/out-group patterns of orientation.
But the thrilling new discoveries of scientific methaphorology and statistical correlation have already shed light on how alot of stuff is really all about natural selection. Just as the rape gene is soon to be discovered, likely adjacent to the allele that causes sodomy, so too will the day come when we can realize that the critics of society who demand radical restructurings and think the world is open wide for whatever wild blueprints they devise have, all this time, really just been criticizing the genes.
First, for those of you who are not scientifically initiated, let me lay out the basics of human behavior, so that you might get a glimpse at what's really going on.
Genes evolved a long time ago. And all a gene wants to do is make more copies of itself. This is what you are for. Your genes just want to make a copy of themselves through reproduction. This also explains why so many people are interested in cloning, as your genes also want to make a perfect copy of themselves, rather than gambling for dominance with the genes of the person you have sex with.
So the genes will use any means they can to reproduce. The genes also compete against each other, so that one gene in your body wants to get rid of the other genes, so it can just reproduce itself and leave the other genes in your body behind. But this topic is too much for our present essay.
Getting back to the point, wiping out a whole gene pool, whether it be an actual gene pool or a perceived pool, is a great way for your genes to wittle down the competition.
Now, it is quite possible that our ancestor Homo Habilis was motivated by this same impulse to genocide the Neanderthals.
From the gene's point of view, getting rid of other groups of genes makes sense, since that leaves more resources for themselves. Also, they'd much rather deal with genes similar to themselves, since there is a shared interest among similar genes in assisting each other in achieving reproduction. This is called the Kinship Rule.
Now, it is quite likely that there are many more genocide genes than actual genocides. But usually, these genes are kept in check by social norms (AKA social norm genes.) In rare instances, you might get a predominance, or a certain critical mass of these genocide genes, and that's when genocidal plans start getting carried out.
So, we see that genes want to do all sorts of things that the Social Norm Gene don't want to happen. Thus we realize that human nature is everywhere bound by the Social Norms Gene, but never permanently bound.
The view that elimination of genocide is merely a matter of reorganizing societal norms or dealing with socio-economic factors, is thus found to be unnatural.
Much closer to the truth are the notions of SIN and ID. Sin is the nature that we are tempted to do things against our sense of good/god, but evil factors. This, really was early man's first intimation of the struggle of genes against other genes. More recently, Freud understood this genetic conflict in his division of the psyche into Id, Ego, Superego. The id genes want sex with out mothers, but the Social Norm Gene AKA Superego, holds back the mother-sex genes.
I have faith that some day we might isolate this genocide gene, perhaps by genetic screening among relevant populations (some in Africa, some in South Asia.)
Also, in the meantime, I think it is important that we avoid undue provocation of these genocide genes, such as ethnic solidarity or stimulation of anxiety through promoting the rights of minorities. Many groups of Americans, at present are precipitously beset by feelings that their group is threatened, by gay marriage, Hispanic immigrants, and other problem groups. If these threatened groups have a higher than average percentage of genocide genes, then it is simply irresponsible to needlessly provoke the genes in people that they didn't choose to be born with, and which we haven't developed the sufficient technology (allelle extraction) to deal with.
But the thrilling new discoveries of scientific methaphorology and statistical correlation have already shed light on how alot of stuff is really all about natural selection. Just as the rape gene is soon to be discovered, likely adjacent to the allele that causes sodomy, so too will the day come when we can realize that the critics of society who demand radical restructurings and think the world is open wide for whatever wild blueprints they devise have, all this time, really just been criticizing the genes.
First, for those of you who are not scientifically initiated, let me lay out the basics of human behavior, so that you might get a glimpse at what's really going on.
Genes evolved a long time ago. And all a gene wants to do is make more copies of itself. This is what you are for. Your genes just want to make a copy of themselves through reproduction. This also explains why so many people are interested in cloning, as your genes also want to make a perfect copy of themselves, rather than gambling for dominance with the genes of the person you have sex with.
So the genes will use any means they can to reproduce. The genes also compete against each other, so that one gene in your body wants to get rid of the other genes, so it can just reproduce itself and leave the other genes in your body behind. But this topic is too much for our present essay.
Getting back to the point, wiping out a whole gene pool, whether it be an actual gene pool or a perceived pool, is a great way for your genes to wittle down the competition.
Now, it is quite possible that our ancestor Homo Habilis was motivated by this same impulse to genocide the Neanderthals.
From the gene's point of view, getting rid of other groups of genes makes sense, since that leaves more resources for themselves. Also, they'd much rather deal with genes similar to themselves, since there is a shared interest among similar genes in assisting each other in achieving reproduction. This is called the Kinship Rule.
Now, it is quite likely that there are many more genocide genes than actual genocides. But usually, these genes are kept in check by social norms (AKA social norm genes.) In rare instances, you might get a predominance, or a certain critical mass of these genocide genes, and that's when genocidal plans start getting carried out.
So, we see that genes want to do all sorts of things that the Social Norm Gene don't want to happen. Thus we realize that human nature is everywhere bound by the Social Norms Gene, but never permanently bound.
The view that elimination of genocide is merely a matter of reorganizing societal norms or dealing with socio-economic factors, is thus found to be unnatural.
Much closer to the truth are the notions of SIN and ID. Sin is the nature that we are tempted to do things against our sense of good/god, but evil factors. This, really was early man's first intimation of the struggle of genes against other genes. More recently, Freud understood this genetic conflict in his division of the psyche into Id, Ego, Superego. The id genes want sex with out mothers, but the Social Norm Gene AKA Superego, holds back the mother-sex genes.
I have faith that some day we might isolate this genocide gene, perhaps by genetic screening among relevant populations (some in Africa, some in South Asia.)
Also, in the meantime, I think it is important that we avoid undue provocation of these genocide genes, such as ethnic solidarity or stimulation of anxiety through promoting the rights of minorities. Many groups of Americans, at present are precipitously beset by feelings that their group is threatened, by gay marriage, Hispanic immigrants, and other problem groups. If these threatened groups have a higher than average percentage of genocide genes, then it is simply irresponsible to needlessly provoke the genes in people that they didn't choose to be born with, and which we haven't developed the sufficient technology (allelle extraction) to deal with.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Lovely Bones.
I have often thought that Robert Downey Jr. was a bit too cool, a bit of a dick, who, though ever charming and witty, lacked a certain maturity or social awareness. But, I loved him in Sherlock Holmes. I gave in to his charm in the first five minutes of the film.
I didn't really want to see this film, since I thought it would be just the usual period piece fetishism, and because they had marred Jude Law's beauty with a mustache.
But, as soon as the movie started, I realized this was about debunking mystical bullshit. Sherlock Holmes has to deal with an entire society taken in by mystical, religious, nonsense, and him and Holmes have to kick ass and show how it's all based on the bastardization of science and technology.
I was shocked. This is exactly the movie that we need at this point, when we are distracted from our real living conditions by the false debate over healthcare reform, (which has, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a pay out to the rich,) distracted the false debate over gay marriage, which is theologically and culturally irrrelevant, and all the other fictional dramas presented to us as crucial to the fate of our nation.
What we need to be doing is getting past the popular illusions and seeing the real mechanisms and interests behind them.
This is what Holmes does. As London and greater England are beset by the prospect of an evil, magical villain rising from the dead and taking over the country's most powerful secret society, and then the country itself, Sherlock Holmes and Watson figure out how each miracle was faked, and how the real danger was of a power hungry murderer taking advantage of the credulity of both the masses and the nations ruling class.
In these times, the message of Holmes, aside from drug use (at least in the books), is: Get to the bottom of it. Find out the real causes and through them address the danger.
This is why Holmes should have been hanging out in The Lovely Bones. This piece of crap film has a different message for a country in the midst of all kinds of fear and danger: Fuck it, we're all going to heaven.
Got no money? Don't sit around working out what you're going to do about it. Fuck it, you're going to paradise when you die.
Did your beautiful blue eyed daughter get murdered and cut up by your neighbor? Open your eyes to the bigger picture!!! Enjoy your remaining family time. Getting trapped, murdered, and butchered like a pig was merely a minor issue in your daughter's life, after which she spends eternity in a beautiful, wheat field Heaven! Hallelujah, amen!
Suppose on the other hand, if you're an unenlightened, sad little skeptic deluding yourself into thinking that this life is all we got. Then you might start seeing the murder of fourteen year old girls, by a serial killer, as the main problem presented in this film.
If you're so thick headed as to imagine that these seventy years or so are all you're going to get, so you better cherish it, and cherish the lives of your friends and pets, suck every last bit of experience you can out of life, because that's all we got-if you're this negative about things, you might start thinking that serial killers are a real big deal, and we should be spending time figuring out how to neutralize these monsters, instead of reconciling ourselves to our impotence in this world.
But that's the sweet beauty of The Lovely Bones: even the butchered bones of a fourteen year old girl are something you just have to let go of, and cherish the remaining connections you have. And if another of them gets killed, you still have a couple more left, so give them a hug. And if some other innocent is dragged from her car, strangled, raped and slashed across the face with a razor, than don't sweat it, because there's karma to take care of everything.
And by Karma I mean the westernized idea marketed to and parroted among the lower classes and dissociated types, that imagines there's some special justice that gives good shit to good people and bad shit to bad people.
In The Lovely Bones, this comes at the end of the movie. After the serial killer gets away, probably killing again, and after we are left with no answers about what to do about serial killers, only then does Jesus-Karma mete out cosmic justice by having the aged serial killer slip off a hill and die.
Sherlock Holmes would have figured out who the killer was. And, since he doesn't exist, and serial killers often go unpunished, dying with all their cherished memories of slaughter intact, than perhaps I might offer the following responses to serial murder.
Off the top of my head: Psychological Profiling and Analysis. Sociological Factors found to be relevant in cases of serial murder. Biological Factors. Ways to teach your children to avoid and/or fight dangerous adults. Ways to organize your neighborhood to avoid the anonymity and secrecy that serial killers avoid.
God forbid I should ever have a child who is murdered, and, in the midst of my unending agony, give in to some kind of religious bullshit. I could then just stay in my fantasy and pray to someone and ask them to say hello to my child, all while more murders are planned and carried out. And when I ran into parents whose children had been murdered by the same person that killed my child, I could wisely shake my head, dismissing evidence, prevention, and joint action, and say: Golly, jeez, the good Lord sure does work in mysterious ways, butchering kids and stuff. But, you know, think about, it, now that they're up in Heaven, they're happier and smarter than us, so, really it all worked out, and it was really a good opportunity for those kids to get all cut up and buried in a corn field.
I didn't really want to see this film, since I thought it would be just the usual period piece fetishism, and because they had marred Jude Law's beauty with a mustache.
But, as soon as the movie started, I realized this was about debunking mystical bullshit. Sherlock Holmes has to deal with an entire society taken in by mystical, religious, nonsense, and him and Holmes have to kick ass and show how it's all based on the bastardization of science and technology.
I was shocked. This is exactly the movie that we need at this point, when we are distracted from our real living conditions by the false debate over healthcare reform, (which has, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a pay out to the rich,) distracted the false debate over gay marriage, which is theologically and culturally irrrelevant, and all the other fictional dramas presented to us as crucial to the fate of our nation.
What we need to be doing is getting past the popular illusions and seeing the real mechanisms and interests behind them.
This is what Holmes does. As London and greater England are beset by the prospect of an evil, magical villain rising from the dead and taking over the country's most powerful secret society, and then the country itself, Sherlock Holmes and Watson figure out how each miracle was faked, and how the real danger was of a power hungry murderer taking advantage of the credulity of both the masses and the nations ruling class.
In these times, the message of Holmes, aside from drug use (at least in the books), is: Get to the bottom of it. Find out the real causes and through them address the danger.
This is why Holmes should have been hanging out in The Lovely Bones. This piece of crap film has a different message for a country in the midst of all kinds of fear and danger: Fuck it, we're all going to heaven.
Got no money? Don't sit around working out what you're going to do about it. Fuck it, you're going to paradise when you die.
Did your beautiful blue eyed daughter get murdered and cut up by your neighbor? Open your eyes to the bigger picture!!! Enjoy your remaining family time. Getting trapped, murdered, and butchered like a pig was merely a minor issue in your daughter's life, after which she spends eternity in a beautiful, wheat field Heaven! Hallelujah, amen!
Suppose on the other hand, if you're an unenlightened, sad little skeptic deluding yourself into thinking that this life is all we got. Then you might start seeing the murder of fourteen year old girls, by a serial killer, as the main problem presented in this film.
If you're so thick headed as to imagine that these seventy years or so are all you're going to get, so you better cherish it, and cherish the lives of your friends and pets, suck every last bit of experience you can out of life, because that's all we got-if you're this negative about things, you might start thinking that serial killers are a real big deal, and we should be spending time figuring out how to neutralize these monsters, instead of reconciling ourselves to our impotence in this world.
But that's the sweet beauty of The Lovely Bones: even the butchered bones of a fourteen year old girl are something you just have to let go of, and cherish the remaining connections you have. And if another of them gets killed, you still have a couple more left, so give them a hug. And if some other innocent is dragged from her car, strangled, raped and slashed across the face with a razor, than don't sweat it, because there's karma to take care of everything.
And by Karma I mean the westernized idea marketed to and parroted among the lower classes and dissociated types, that imagines there's some special justice that gives good shit to good people and bad shit to bad people.
In The Lovely Bones, this comes at the end of the movie. After the serial killer gets away, probably killing again, and after we are left with no answers about what to do about serial killers, only then does Jesus-Karma mete out cosmic justice by having the aged serial killer slip off a hill and die.
Sherlock Holmes would have figured out who the killer was. And, since he doesn't exist, and serial killers often go unpunished, dying with all their cherished memories of slaughter intact, than perhaps I might offer the following responses to serial murder.
Off the top of my head: Psychological Profiling and Analysis. Sociological Factors found to be relevant in cases of serial murder. Biological Factors. Ways to teach your children to avoid and/or fight dangerous adults. Ways to organize your neighborhood to avoid the anonymity and secrecy that serial killers avoid.
God forbid I should ever have a child who is murdered, and, in the midst of my unending agony, give in to some kind of religious bullshit. I could then just stay in my fantasy and pray to someone and ask them to say hello to my child, all while more murders are planned and carried out. And when I ran into parents whose children had been murdered by the same person that killed my child, I could wisely shake my head, dismissing evidence, prevention, and joint action, and say: Golly, jeez, the good Lord sure does work in mysterious ways, butchering kids and stuff. But, you know, think about, it, now that they're up in Heaven, they're happier and smarter than us, so, really it all worked out, and it was really a good opportunity for those kids to get all cut up and buried in a corn field.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
NON-FICTION: Excavating the mind from Depression: Hard Core inhibition as a lifestyle
That old metaphor, which I heard a couple years ago, buzzed, on a bus around xujiahui, and the huangpu river, maybe going down to the meiluo cheng, about the one part of the brain, the cortex, inhibiting the thalamus, or a simlar brain area, as the cause of, our neurological correlate to depression stays with me. Before that, I recall some similar notion, native to my own speculations, about the roots of our depression. I mean me and my brother's depression. And maybe I can say me and my uncle and my brother. And maybe this applies to the satelite of people I know who were abused, violently, and in anger.
The thing is, however, I'm depressed. The self-pityying, unaccountable, vague connotations of that term are such as I wish to avoid. So I'm immobile, in such a way that I think this would be described as low grade chronic depression.
I don't know where to start or which way to go in telling you this. But let me start where I'm at where I am now. I'm sitting in front of the kitchen window, sitting straight up and typing. I have earplugs in and a sleeping mask on. the door is open and the cats are wandering in and out, after being in all day due to the rain.
The reason I need to blind myself and deafen myself is because this is the only way I can feel comfortable to type most of the time. The only way I can block out....
Whatever I'm blocking out. The immanent distractions, the will inside of me that is constatly veering off in any which direction, that cannot put itself into any one thing that I deem productive or necessary.
To do anything, generally speaking, I need a gimmick. This gimmick is unsusually some audio lectures, books, music, or caffeine, anger, or lateness..
The blindfold and earplugs started last year 2009 or so in Shanghai. In the apartment off of zhanghyang lu, with the tiny dining room. I would blindfold myself and try to cover my ears enough, since i didn't have earplugs. Towards the end of our stay in Shanghai, I would do this while Emma's parents were milling around the house, and often I had takien some of the little balls of hash from the small plastic gum containers that I used to store my hash in.
Bakuin and susan, my cats were with me then as now. I often had one of my glass jars that i like to use as cups. I would have a big glasss jar of tea or coffee, or chocolate made by melting eighty percent choclate with some water and creamer.
The blindfold and the earplugs leave me alone, allow me to be in here, free from the outrside. It's the outside that I can't hanle, that leaves me dead. The outside me leaves without any identity, without any being. It leaves me at the mercy whims, the urge to gratification, pleasure , and the urge to consume.
In the middle of that sentence, i reacted to the wine i heard through my earplugs and pulled one out. It was nothing in my immediate zone of interest, something form outside, a neighbor using some machine to cut or weld maybe. But I decided it was an acceptable time to get up and try being in the world. I checked the mail. No mail.
My attention is waning now, got stuck on gimmicks, the idea of gimmicks.
I have alot of gimmicks. The idea of god is a gimmick, sometimes i've felt a presece in my mind that I associate with god, what other people know as god. This was a different prescence than the conversations I'm always having. I have those too. A typical example is the one I had last ight with my therapist. It was in the midst of another conversation I was having in my head. I realized I was doing it, and thought of telling my therapist. Then I was having a conversation with him about it. Then I was telling him that even thinking about telling him would make me have a conversation with him about it.
About the conversations.
Than I thought about how this extraordinary bent in me ought, in some conventional biography of a great man, lead to the production of some skill, some advantage. This would work if I was some trial lawyer, or a politician, or an interviewre on tv. Or if I was a writer, hahaha. [While editing this I notice that what I was thinking at this time, last night, was also that I couldn't utilize the conversations as a skill, and this was a difference between me and the great men in the imagined biographies.]
So is that it now? Am I clear?
What do I want to do? Work on the Beast book. That's the one I want to to work on, but I don't feel it.
I guess now writing this post has become a gimmick
The other gimmicks I can think of right now are other people helping me, and schedules. The schedules are what I have the most trust in now, as escaping the bad parts of other gimmicks. As for other people helping me, sometimes I have sort of a daydream about a motherly figure helping me to write, setting out the implements, like notepaper and a laptop, a special laptop just for writing that I think of getting, and sitting these down on the table just so. And it's on a special writing table, and taking my hadn and guiding me to the table. That's embarrasing, but I think it's a clear reflection of the lack of a motherly figure in my life.
It's embarrasing but even so it's so strong, a motherly figure,a white lady would be nice, and so would a black lady, in her late thirties to fifties, maybe a little plump, and neat in appearance. It's embarrasing, but every time I think of it, the desire is real.
Oh yes, a life of gimmicks. Is that what I've been trying to get around? Whith all the Brcue Lee, Daoist, Buddhist fascination I used to have? Is that what all the self help and psychology is about? No, it's primarliy about understanding, about extravating myself from the unseen influences that abound in my mind. It's about making sese of the lives we lead, of the spectum of minds that make up my social world.
Where do i go from here? I wnat to stop writing now, as if this blog served a purpose and I'm ready to move on.
Where do I go? Stand up. If I stand up, this may be dissapoiting in that it leads nowehre? I don't like the idea of finishing this blog, since I need to edit it, which requires taking off the sleeping mask and letting the light and the objects aroud me in. I dont want anymore auditory visual stimulus going on.
I don't want to hear Phil Hendrie or Christopher Hitchens or any of that stuff I liten to all day and night. The only thing I can think to do is bring the blaket from the couch and put it over my head and the computer, so I can limit the range of intrusion and edit this blog, publish it and.... I don't know what comes next.
I can't really say I want any of those gimmicks, or that the absence of gimmicks is the solution. For any solution is in itself a gimmick, I sense.
I have to go the bathroom.
I will get up, and them i will come back witht he blanket and edit this blog ad publish it. I want somethig to listen to while I'm up and about. I will lisen to soemthing. I will take off my sleeping mask and use the other cpomputer to listen to something. I'm using Emmas computer, and my computer is at the other end of the aprrtment, buy the door, on a chair.
I'm back, but I'm not using the blanket. Maybe I'll go get it in a minute or so. I'm eating strawberries. This is a gimmick, as it gives me a sense of doing something healthy. Eating potatoes is a gimmick, as food impulse keep me going. I'm going to cut up a potato and fry up the pieces. I wish I had ketchup or eggs to go with it. This is my second potato of the day.
The thing is, however, I'm depressed. The self-pityying, unaccountable, vague connotations of that term are such as I wish to avoid. So I'm immobile, in such a way that I think this would be described as low grade chronic depression.
I don't know where to start or which way to go in telling you this. But let me start where I'm at where I am now. I'm sitting in front of the kitchen window, sitting straight up and typing. I have earplugs in and a sleeping mask on. the door is open and the cats are wandering in and out, after being in all day due to the rain.
The reason I need to blind myself and deafen myself is because this is the only way I can feel comfortable to type most of the time. The only way I can block out....
Whatever I'm blocking out. The immanent distractions, the will inside of me that is constatly veering off in any which direction, that cannot put itself into any one thing that I deem productive or necessary.
To do anything, generally speaking, I need a gimmick. This gimmick is unsusually some audio lectures, books, music, or caffeine, anger, or lateness..
The blindfold and earplugs started last year 2009 or so in Shanghai. In the apartment off of zhanghyang lu, with the tiny dining room. I would blindfold myself and try to cover my ears enough, since i didn't have earplugs. Towards the end of our stay in Shanghai, I would do this while Emma's parents were milling around the house, and often I had takien some of the little balls of hash from the small plastic gum containers that I used to store my hash in.
Bakuin and susan, my cats were with me then as now. I often had one of my glass jars that i like to use as cups. I would have a big glasss jar of tea or coffee, or chocolate made by melting eighty percent choclate with some water and creamer.
The blindfold and the earplugs leave me alone, allow me to be in here, free from the outrside. It's the outside that I can't hanle, that leaves me dead. The outside me leaves without any identity, without any being. It leaves me at the mercy whims, the urge to gratification, pleasure , and the urge to consume.
In the middle of that sentence, i reacted to the wine i heard through my earplugs and pulled one out. It was nothing in my immediate zone of interest, something form outside, a neighbor using some machine to cut or weld maybe. But I decided it was an acceptable time to get up and try being in the world. I checked the mail. No mail.
My attention is waning now, got stuck on gimmicks, the idea of gimmicks.
I have alot of gimmicks. The idea of god is a gimmick, sometimes i've felt a presece in my mind that I associate with god, what other people know as god. This was a different prescence than the conversations I'm always having. I have those too. A typical example is the one I had last ight with my therapist. It was in the midst of another conversation I was having in my head. I realized I was doing it, and thought of telling my therapist. Then I was having a conversation with him about it. Then I was telling him that even thinking about telling him would make me have a conversation with him about it.
About the conversations.
Than I thought about how this extraordinary bent in me ought, in some conventional biography of a great man, lead to the production of some skill, some advantage. This would work if I was some trial lawyer, or a politician, or an interviewre on tv. Or if I was a writer, hahaha. [While editing this I notice that what I was thinking at this time, last night, was also that I couldn't utilize the conversations as a skill, and this was a difference between me and the great men in the imagined biographies.]
So is that it now? Am I clear?
What do I want to do? Work on the Beast book. That's the one I want to to work on, but I don't feel it.
I guess now writing this post has become a gimmick
The other gimmicks I can think of right now are other people helping me, and schedules. The schedules are what I have the most trust in now, as escaping the bad parts of other gimmicks. As for other people helping me, sometimes I have sort of a daydream about a motherly figure helping me to write, setting out the implements, like notepaper and a laptop, a special laptop just for writing that I think of getting, and sitting these down on the table just so. And it's on a special writing table, and taking my hadn and guiding me to the table. That's embarrasing, but I think it's a clear reflection of the lack of a motherly figure in my life.
It's embarrasing but even so it's so strong, a motherly figure,a white lady would be nice, and so would a black lady, in her late thirties to fifties, maybe a little plump, and neat in appearance. It's embarrasing, but every time I think of it, the desire is real.
Oh yes, a life of gimmicks. Is that what I've been trying to get around? Whith all the Brcue Lee, Daoist, Buddhist fascination I used to have? Is that what all the self help and psychology is about? No, it's primarliy about understanding, about extravating myself from the unseen influences that abound in my mind. It's about making sese of the lives we lead, of the spectum of minds that make up my social world.
Where do i go from here? I wnat to stop writing now, as if this blog served a purpose and I'm ready to move on.
Where do I go? Stand up. If I stand up, this may be dissapoiting in that it leads nowehre? I don't like the idea of finishing this blog, since I need to edit it, which requires taking off the sleeping mask and letting the light and the objects aroud me in. I dont want anymore auditory visual stimulus going on.
I don't want to hear Phil Hendrie or Christopher Hitchens or any of that stuff I liten to all day and night. The only thing I can think to do is bring the blaket from the couch and put it over my head and the computer, so I can limit the range of intrusion and edit this blog, publish it and.... I don't know what comes next.
I can't really say I want any of those gimmicks, or that the absence of gimmicks is the solution. For any solution is in itself a gimmick, I sense.
I have to go the bathroom.
I will get up, and them i will come back witht he blanket and edit this blog ad publish it. I want somethig to listen to while I'm up and about. I will lisen to soemthing. I will take off my sleeping mask and use the other cpomputer to listen to something. I'm using Emmas computer, and my computer is at the other end of the aprrtment, buy the door, on a chair.
I'm back, but I'm not using the blanket. Maybe I'll go get it in a minute or so. I'm eating strawberries. This is a gimmick, as it gives me a sense of doing something healthy. Eating potatoes is a gimmick, as food impulse keep me going. I'm going to cut up a potato and fry up the pieces. I wish I had ketchup or eggs to go with it. This is my second potato of the day.
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