Good morning. I went swimming today. It was fun, but I ate too much pizza last night so I felt kind of ill afterward. Woah hold on. I just saw a commercial for a scooter with a swivel wheel. Woah. Man. Woah, here’s a commercial about reading the serving size on the food you eat.
What the fuck? Being a kid these days is weird.
But this super hero super squad show is great! It’s condensing all of those complex and horrible plotlines in the comics to a sort of nice summary. They’ve got all sorts of stuff just in this episode. Skrulls, the super-skrull, hulk and things weird animosity, fucking thanos and his infinity gauntlet, which appears not to be as great as it usually is. “zounds! My symbolic tool of righteous aggression!” Out of thor losing his hammer (which is also symbolic for a penis, aww yeah)
Oh hey check it out. The same commercial for zoobooks they had on like fucking 12 years ago when I was a kid. I remember zoobooks. I had a ton.
Oh god. The skrull invasion plan was on a facebook page.
Oh god.
I think I’m in love.
Oh, I see. Thanos was really a skrull. Explains the lack of ULTIMATE UNIVERSE DESTROYING POWER. “it makes string cheese. For all their advances, the skrulls were never able to make string cheese. String theorists would make a fortune from this tube.”
Oh man. That was so great.
Anyway, yeah being a kid is hella weird these days. Like there are so many things that companies are expected to push on you to keep you healthy. Responsibility for this thing has shifted largely from parents to the entertainment companies that sell things to parents for their kids. Why? Cause parents have money. also corporations are evil. Evil like taxes. Anyway so you grow up being told on the tv “go outside and jump around and do stuff. Stop watching tv” and you end up largely ignoring it cause what the fuck, you’re watching tv. God damn. If I wanted to be outside I would be outside.
Though, I guess it’s not really new. The spinach industry totally ran the popeye comic. If you learn nothing from it, you learn that hamburgers hake you fat and worthless and that spinach makes you beat up dudes you don’t like. Maybe I’m just being silly. I just get kind of annoyed when videogames ask me to take a break like once an hour. God damn, what happened to free enjoyment of the media I’m consuming? By George, I am going to write a book one of these days that between every chapter says “Get up and go outside and meet people, you horrible shut-in. This book will do nothing to help your life.” That way irate readers can’t sue me when they realize they’ve wasted their life reading a series of cheap starcrafty knockoffs (I’ll call them “Spacewar: the final war in space.” The first novel will be subtitled “the obscure threat” or “fighting advanced”) and become horrible neckbeards who spend their lives fapping to ships of the hot three titted alien bimbo chick and the shy nerdy girl with the glasses that maintains the space library.
Man, the other day I was at a borders wandering around and not buying things (pfft, paying for books. That’s what libraries are for. I have been not paying for things long before napster or any of that shiz) and I wandered into their study section. So that got me to thinking. There are absolutely hundreds of books in this section, right? There are all these books on. Passing all manner of tests: GREs, LSATS, AP courses, and so on. It got me to thinking how weird this was, that there’s an entire cottage industry of helping people pass these tests that are supposed to be indicative of how much a person has learned or exactly how smart they really are. So instead these tests become not about how smart a person is, but how much money they spent on study books, or how well they absorb these study books. What the hell is up with that? AP courses especially. They’re supposed to be something for students who find their regular classes mindlessly dull (*cough*) to look forward to, because they’re all college and at a higher level. Then the AP tests started counting for college credit (or maybe they always did. Dunno) and it became an important part of an achiever’s job to get a 5 on the tests so that they can secure an early start for their future college careers. Fuck the achievers man. They don’t give a shit about the material. Seriously, you talk to them. They have no passion beyond scoring that A. They treat school like a job.
And school is a job these days. Kids go to school to learn valuable knowledge for their future careers. It says so right on the mission statements of most high schools. That’s also fucked up. Why does a high school have a mission statement? No wonder everyone hates it. You don’t go to school to learn about the world around you. You go to school to pass a test and get a job that pays you money so you can afford to have kids and pass on your genes. School is just a means to an end, and that end is your inevitable death. If you’re lucky, your kids will have done well in their schools so they can afford to support you on top of their families and you die comfortably in a nice rest home.
“oh no, that is not me” you think. “I am destined for something much more fascinating and also I never want kids or to get married.” Ha. Ha. Ha. You don’t think that millions of other people don’t also think the exact same way? Simple economics and statistics dictate that your dream is foolish and irresponsible and simply not likely. What’s all the worse to me, is that these delusions are inevitable in an environment like this. You spend your childhood growing up and watching cool kids and cool people on tv and in movies doing awesome things and you decide that you also want to be cool and awesome and that eventually through sheer moxie or something, you too will obtain the coolness of these tv and movie people. Yes.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
I used the word “I” 158 times in this document, not counting that one. Man I am so self-centered.
Woah man. I just watched an entire episode of aqua teen hunger force. I didn’t laugh once. What is this thing on tv for. And yet like a sucker I sat through the entire thing. I was thinking about making this into a rant about tv, but I thought “naw, no one actually watches tv any more.” At least hardly anyone I know does. Which is good. Good for you guys. Tv is awful and terrible and just awful.
It’s kind of fascinating to me how very ocular we are as a species. We evolved this vision essentially to help us avoid running into branches and to see fruits from afar and we’ve taken it to the point where we’ve got devices that are pretty much standard in pretty much everything that show us all manner of abstract information. It’s totally fascinating to me and probably inevitable for a species like –
You know what they say “if there’s snow on the fields, plow it from both ends”
Sorry, still watching tv.
Anyway, a species like us.
Wow that was the weirdest show. Titan maximum or something. It was sort of like a high speed webcomic.
By the way have I mentioned that I love webcomics? They’re so great. They’re a visually appealing way to get a nice story and some good characterization across. And since they’re pretty much self-published, censorship is non-existent. Like for serious, ever since I found “kong: the gay barbarian” I have not needed porn.
Huh. “drinky crow and gabby” (or something) was pretty interesting. It’s basically just “draw blood, guts, use bizarre 3d cell shading techniques.” But it had some fascinating writing. The show was a snappy commentary on the purpose and concept of god and religion, delivered entirely too quickly. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t very funny, but it was contemplative.
Anyway webcomics. Yeah man. I read them. I spent the last couple of days being absurdly depressed and reading the entirety of shortpacked and finally getting around to reading questionable content. I am so full of weird transformers references and witty indie band quoting I’m ready to burst. Man. I love the character work on both of them. They’re interesting people. Genuinely fascinating and pretty well developed. No blank and obvious stereotypes here. That’s what you get when you (let your heart win) get your stories raw. The less middlemen in the way of art, the closer it can hit home. That’s cool. I love it when people do things just for the hell of it, not because it will sell. And the internet is totally the best platform for this. Space on the internet is essentially unlimited, as it can grow by exactly the amount your thing needs. On tv space is limited by literally time (if time were infinite would space be infinite too? Is this equation correct: t/∞+s/∞=2?) That’s neat.
Er, sorry, totally not focused here. In the newspaper you only have so many pages to print. In film, only so much money to spend on making them. In life itself, there is only so much room for so many foodstuffs and for so much housing. It’s a bit crazy that the internet destroys all that. Granted, the internet will run out when we run out of oil, just like everything else. But that will never happen. Not in my lifetime, anyway. Discussion for another time.
I don’t really understand the obsession with comedy, though it is entirely probable that I am just a cranky son of a bitch ((no, really) the bitch part, I mean) right around this hour of night. I like things, and I find some things very funny. For example the daily show earlier had on a muppet version of perennial whackjob micheal steele saying the outrageous things he says. It was fucking hilarious. Also steve carrel is much more likable when he isn’t acting. Also Colbert made a joke about the muslims and jews having to quit smoking and how that might make them a little edgy. I laughed absurdly hard. But comedy itself I just don’t really appreciate. Well, that’s not it. It’s comedy that adds something else. Or something else that adds comedy. Like, I dunno, that titan maximum cartoon. It was some sort of comedy/action mashup. And it entirely failed to amuse me. It’s like trying to have a serious moment in a dungeons and dragons game and having a dude start yelling “the eyes demand sacrifice” or “blood for the blood god.” It’s like trying to have a conversation with someone who bursts out in song every couple of minutes.
I dunno, maybe I am being grouchy. I like humor, I do. Some people seem to think I’m a reasonably witty guy (I SO am) and it really bugs me how often a joke I make in passing I hear told back to me a few dozen times as some sort of meme.
Speaking of memes –
Actually, look, if I say something that doesn’t make sense to you, please do me a favor and google it. You’re already here on the internet. google is literally in a box straight up the screen there. You have no excuses for not educating yourself about what I’m talking about. Google has rendered all oblique references opaque. You know the first time I read the word opaque was in an animorphs book when I was twelve. I remember looking it up later in an actual physical dictionary, rather than ignoring it and just assuming that the author was smarte—another discussion for later.
Speaking of memes, I hate them. You all have figured out by now that I browse 4chan, right. 4chan.org, once a haven for creepy japan-o-philes now a hipster hang out, because like, it’s so edgy dude. Seriously, it has totally lost the reputation it never deserved in the first place. And I don’t care, cause I’m a hipster who is so edgy. Anyway, memes come from 4chan, supposedly. It’s not actually true, memes come from all over the internet, but the entire internet eventually ends up on 4chan anyway. So they go there to breed, more or less. Like salmon. They’re awful, because they’re essentially a crutch for people who are incapable (it can’t be done!) of making jokes. They’re the hip and edgy equivalent of a 13 year old girl (or Amanda Frescas (:p (eh, who am I kidding, you’re not even reading this))) yelling “spork!” for no reason. It’s pretty uncool. I, with my superior wit, do not need such a crutch to generate spontaneous laughter. I simply do.
Fake superiority complex aside, my real superiority complex dictates that if you make a joke, don’t make it more than once (unless the opportunity comes up more than once and you’ve hit the point where making that joke again would invite a sense of recognition and camaderie rather than simple spite or boredom). Make a new joke every time. Because the world is made of jokes. So many jokes that there are two fake news shows on back to back more or less every night (I think) that do nothing but make fun of the same day’s news. It’s great.
I dunno, maybe I’m just really bugged by it because I hate hearing my own joke thrown back at me with no real addition in humor. Plus I hate to see jokes run ragged.
Hmm. I complain about a lot of things, I think. I’m not really doing it out of any legitimate resentment, but I think I’m discontent. And the only way to fix discontentment is to change something in yourself or your environment. This is part of that to be honest. I complain because I want to get my complaints down on something and I want to enunciate them and have them disputed or understood. I think I’m mistaking that (and I think a lot of people will probably mistake that) with complaining for the sake of complaining. I’m trying to make changes in my life. I’m working on this issue, because it’s a pressing one that bugs me with annoyingly suicidal thoughts from time to time. (note to people who care too much about me, please don’t take this as a sign for intervention. This is something that I need to do, otherwise I may as well have died.)
I just need my life to go somewhere. I was hoping college would help me do that, but so far college has sounded like high school, and I’ve largely treated it like I treated high school: by avoiding everyone around me because I am too damn scared to talk to them. I need to change this. I am already flailing about blindly through life. I need to flail harder. I need to learn to take risks. I need to learn to get up from a fall. Most importantly, I need to stop rejecting myself before I even feel rejected.
So I’ve decided to be gay.
I’ll make housecalls.
No, I’m kidding. Actually I will make housecalls. To play scrabble or something. Actually monopoly. I kick ass at collecting money from hapless tenants.
Ugh, now I’m trying to change the subject, because I am not really sure where to go from here. When I write, I write very seriously. Everything I put into a work that I write has some reason for being in it, mostly because I delete the stuff that shouldn’t be in it. I am hoping that when I am dead and my lesbian bondage fiasco novels have made me world famous, historians will look back on my early writing and write critical essays determining through divination just exactly how gay I was anyway. Nobody with any actual balls writes about his feelings. A lot of the time, I wish I were dumb. I wish that I could pick just one retarded hobby and stick with it. I wish I could just say “oh, hey, transformers, that’s my shtick” or “oh hey, guitars and various rock trivia” or “oh hey, I’m ridiculously flamboyantly queer” or “yeah, man, I love the shit out of recreational drugs.” It’s funny, because the typical response is something like “oh yeah well real people aren’t like that.” I beg to differ. Like for serious. People telegraph what their main interests are, and boy do they enjoy them. Me? I dress sorta-kinda hipsterish but I look kinda intimidating (all 150 pounds of me) and then I talk to people about videogames, then I turn around and discuss philosophy or fucking sci-fi novels, and then I go on about religion or current events, or then I start talking about 4chan or something. I dunno. I don’t have anything that defines me, really.
When I was thirteen, I really really wanted to be a video game developer. I even downloaded rm2k and had something of an epiphany as to how games actually work. Along with the epiphany was the realization that, shit, this shit is a lot of work. So then I decided I wanted to be a journalist at some point, because I really like reading the newspaper. Then I realized that I really enjoyed reading the newspaper much more than I enjoyed writing it. For a while, I wanted to be dead, because everything sucked. Now I kinda want to be a prophet, but I’m finding it really hard to convert people because I can’t fucking talk to them one on one. Like, seriously, I am the only person I know who gets shy and nervous when a waitress tries to make small talk. I am a shitty-ass prophet.
It probably doesn’t help that I spend so much time trying to get away from things or from people. I go outside walking wearing reflective dark sunglasses and huge, loud headphones so that I don’t need to see or hear anything when I walk around. I call my outdoorsy stuff my “sensory deprivation apparatus” because I am a huge dork. It’s really bad. It really worries me when I go about telling things to people over the internet that I don’t tell to people I actually know, based wholly on the assumption that people on the internet can hurt me less. Man, I’m messed up.
Maybe the problem is that I’m not embracing the right things. Maybe tv is a good thing, because it helps me avoid my problems like everything else. I have a pet theory that if I ever actually bother to get drunk, I’m going to end up an alcoholic, because it’s a vastly more efficient means of escape than lying in bed in the middle of the night and imagining I gain the ability to fly or being at home alone and doing silly stances and pretending I’m an earthbender (((toph is so hot) I don’t care that she’s twelve, she’s a fictional character) my name’s toph, which sounds like tough, which is what I am).
I read QC and stuff to live vicariously a life where people care about what I say or what I think about, and those people happen to be in the same apartment building as I am. Same with shortpacked. And it’s retarded. I’m trying to pretend to be someone I’m not without actually changing myself into that person. It’s like a super-lazy version of escapism.
I really hate it. I hate being smart enough to know that that won’t work. I wish I was autistic and could truly believe in the idea of having a virtual furry girlfriend who I photoshop into all of my photos, or believe that a licensed character re-color rip-off is actually my best friend. Instead I get to spend all my time sitting here thinking “gee, Jake, you got problems. You should, like, go fix them or something” and replying “eh, too lazy. I don’t know how to use photoshop anyway.”
It’s kind of fascinating to me how very ocular we are as a species. We evolved this vision essentially to help us avoid running into branches and to see fruits from afar and we’ve taken it to the point where we’ve got devices that are pretty much standard in pretty much everything that show us all manner of abstract information. It’s totally fascinating to me and probably inevitable for a species like –
You know what they say “if there’s snow on the fields, plow it from both ends”
Sorry, still watching tv.
Anyway, a species like us.
Wow that was the weirdest show. Titan maximum or something. It was sort of like a high speed webcomic.
By the way have I mentioned that I love webcomics? They’re so great. They’re a visually appealing way to get a nice story and some good characterization across. And since they’re pretty much self-published, censorship is non-existent. Like for serious, ever since I found “kong: the gay barbarian” I have not needed porn.
Huh. “drinky crow and gabby” (or something) was pretty interesting. It’s basically just “draw blood, guts, use bizarre 3d cell shading techniques.” But it had some fascinating writing. The show was a snappy commentary on the purpose and concept of god and religion, delivered entirely too quickly. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t very funny, but it was contemplative.
Anyway webcomics. Yeah man. I read them. I spent the last couple of days being absurdly depressed and reading the entirety of shortpacked and finally getting around to reading questionable content. I am so full of weird transformers references and witty indie band quoting I’m ready to burst. Man. I love the character work on both of them. They’re interesting people. Genuinely fascinating and pretty well developed. No blank and obvious stereotypes here. That’s what you get when you (let your heart win) get your stories raw. The less middlemen in the way of art, the closer it can hit home. That’s cool. I love it when people do things just for the hell of it, not because it will sell. And the internet is totally the best platform for this. Space on the internet is essentially unlimited, as it can grow by exactly the amount your thing needs. On tv space is limited by literally time (if time were infinite would space be infinite too? Is this equation correct: t/∞+s/∞=2?) That’s neat.
Er, sorry, totally not focused here. In the newspaper you only have so many pages to print. In film, only so much money to spend on making them. In life itself, there is only so much room for so many foodstuffs and for so much housing. It’s a bit crazy that the internet destroys all that. Granted, the internet will run out when we run out of oil, just like everything else. But that will never happen. Not in my lifetime, anyway. Discussion for another time.
I don’t really understand the obsession with comedy, though it is entirely probable that I am just a cranky son of a bitch ((no, really) the bitch part, I mean) right around this hour of night. I like things, and I find some things very funny. For example the daily show earlier had on a muppet version of perennial whackjob micheal steele saying the outrageous things he says. It was fucking hilarious. Also steve carrel is much more likable when he isn’t acting. Also Colbert made a joke about the muslims and jews having to quit smoking and how that might make them a little edgy. I laughed absurdly hard. But comedy itself I just don’t really appreciate. Well, that’s not it. It’s comedy that adds something else. Or something else that adds comedy. Like, I dunno, that titan maximum cartoon. It was some sort of comedy/action mashup. And it entirely failed to amuse me. It’s like trying to have a serious moment in a dungeons and dragons game and having a dude start yelling “the eyes demand sacrifice” or “blood for the blood god.” It’s like trying to have a conversation with someone who bursts out in song every couple of minutes.
I dunno, maybe I am being grouchy. I like humor, I do. Some people seem to think I’m a reasonably witty guy (I SO am) and it really bugs me how often a joke I make in passing I hear told back to me a few dozen times as some sort of meme.
Speaking of memes –
Actually, look, if I say something that doesn’t make sense to you, please do me a favor and google it. You’re already here on the internet. google is literally in a box straight up the screen there. You have no excuses for not educating yourself about what I’m talking about. Google has rendered all oblique references opaque. You know the first time I read the word opaque was in an animorphs book when I was twelve. I remember looking it up later in an actual physical dictionary, rather than ignoring it and just assuming that the author was smarte—another discussion for later.
Speaking of memes, I hate them. You all have figured out by now that I browse 4chan, right. 4chan.org, once a haven for creepy japan-o-philes now a hipster hang out, because like, it’s so edgy dude. Seriously, it has totally lost the reputation it never deserved in the first place. And I don’t care, cause I’m a hipster who is so edgy. Anyway, memes come from 4chan, supposedly. It’s not actually true, memes come from all over the internet, but the entire internet eventually ends up on 4chan anyway. So they go there to breed, more or less. Like salmon. They’re awful, because they’re essentially a crutch for people who are incapable (it can’t be done!) of making jokes. They’re the hip and edgy equivalent of a 13 year old girl (or Amanda Frescas (:p (eh, who am I kidding, you’re not even reading this))) yelling “spork!” for no reason. It’s pretty uncool. I, with my superior wit, do not need such a crutch to generate spontaneous laughter. I simply do.
Fake superiority complex aside, my real superiority complex dictates that if you make a joke, don’t make it more than once (unless the opportunity comes up more than once and you’ve hit the point where making that joke again would invite a sense of recognition and camaderie rather than simple spite or boredom). Make a new joke every time. Because the world is made of jokes. So many jokes that there are two fake news shows on back to back more or less every night (I think) that do nothing but make fun of the same day’s news. It’s great.
I dunno, maybe I’m just really bugged by it because I hate hearing my own joke thrown back at me with no real addition in humor. Plus I hate to see jokes run ragged.
Hmm. I complain about a lot of things, I think. I’m not really doing it out of any legitimate resentment, but I think I’m discontent. And the only way to fix discontentment is to change something in yourself or your environment. This is part of that to be honest. I complain because I want to get my complaints down on something and I want to enunciate them and have them disputed or understood. I think I’m mistaking that (and I think a lot of people will probably mistake that) with complaining for the sake of complaining. I’m trying to make changes in my life. I’m working on this issue, because it’s a pressing one that bugs me with annoyingly suicidal thoughts from time to time. (note to people who care too much about me, please don’t take this as a sign for intervention. This is something that I need to do, otherwise I may as well have died.)
I just need my life to go somewhere. I was hoping college would help me do that, but so far college has sounded like high school, and I’ve largely treated it like I treated high school: by avoiding everyone around me because I am too damn scared to talk to them. I need to change this. I am already flailing about blindly through life. I need to flail harder. I need to learn to take risks. I need to learn to get up from a fall. Most importantly, I need to stop rejecting myself before I even feel rejected.
So I’ve decided to be gay.
I’ll make housecalls.
No, I’m kidding. Actually I will make housecalls. To play scrabble or something. Actually monopoly. I kick ass at collecting money from hapless tenants.
Ugh, now I’m trying to change the subject, because I am not really sure where to go from here. When I write, I write very seriously. Everything I put into a work that I write has some reason for being in it, mostly because I delete the stuff that shouldn’t be in it. I am hoping that when I am dead and my lesbian bondage fiasco novels have made me world famous, historians will look back on my early writing and write critical essays determining through divination just exactly how gay I was anyway. Nobody with any actual balls writes about his feelings. A lot of the time, I wish I were dumb. I wish that I could pick just one retarded hobby and stick with it. I wish I could just say “oh, hey, transformers, that’s my shtick” or “oh hey, guitars and various rock trivia” or “oh hey, I’m ridiculously flamboyantly queer” or “yeah, man, I love the shit out of recreational drugs.” It’s funny, because the typical response is something like “oh yeah well real people aren’t like that.” I beg to differ. Like for serious. People telegraph what their main interests are, and boy do they enjoy them. Me? I dress sorta-kinda hipsterish but I look kinda intimidating (all 150 pounds of me) and then I talk to people about videogames, then I turn around and discuss philosophy or fucking sci-fi novels, and then I go on about religion or current events, or then I start talking about 4chan or something. I dunno. I don’t have anything that defines me, really.
When I was thirteen, I really really wanted to be a video game developer. I even downloaded rm2k and had something of an epiphany as to how games actually work. Along with the epiphany was the realization that, shit, this shit is a lot of work. So then I decided I wanted to be a journalist at some point, because I really like reading the newspaper. Then I realized that I really enjoyed reading the newspaper much more than I enjoyed writing it. For a while, I wanted to be dead, because everything sucked. Now I kinda want to be a prophet, but I’m finding it really hard to convert people because I can’t fucking talk to them one on one. Like, seriously, I am the only person I know who gets shy and nervous when a waitress tries to make small talk. I am a shitty-ass prophet.
It probably doesn’t help that I spend so much time trying to get away from things or from people. I go outside walking wearing reflective dark sunglasses and huge, loud headphones so that I don’t need to see or hear anything when I walk around. I call my outdoorsy stuff my “sensory deprivation apparatus” because I am a huge dork. It’s really bad. It really worries me when I go about telling things to people over the internet that I don’t tell to people I actually know, based wholly on the assumption that people on the internet can hurt me less. Man, I’m messed up.
Maybe the problem is that I’m not embracing the right things. Maybe tv is a good thing, because it helps me avoid my problems like everything else. I have a pet theory that if I ever actually bother to get drunk, I’m going to end up an alcoholic, because it’s a vastly more efficient means of escape than lying in bed in the middle of the night and imagining I gain the ability to fly or being at home alone and doing silly stances and pretending I’m an earthbender (((toph is so hot) I don’t care that she’s twelve, she’s a fictional character) my name’s toph, which sounds like tough, which is what I am).
I read QC and stuff to live vicariously a life where people care about what I say or what I think about, and those people happen to be in the same apartment building as I am. Same with shortpacked. And it’s retarded. I’m trying to pretend to be someone I’m not without actually changing myself into that person. It’s like a super-lazy version of escapism.
I really hate it. I hate being smart enough to know that that won’t work. I wish I was autistic and could truly believe in the idea of having a virtual furry girlfriend who I photoshop into all of my photos, or believe that a licensed character re-color rip-off is actually my best friend. Instead I get to spend all my time sitting here thinking “gee, Jake, you got problems. You should, like, go fix them or something” and replying “eh, too lazy. I don’t know how to use photoshop anyway.”
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Truth and Happiness 3/3
You know the drill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64liF2VuLxI
I hate people, right. I hate parts of people anyway. I would be hard-pressed to find anyone I actually hate all the way through. I was in a music class the other day, and this dude who sits like three seats to the left was totally bs’ing the instructor, even though he was texting openly, right in front of her in the first row. He was joking with her and otherwise trying to play “oh look at me I am a funny guy” shit. I don’t know what I hate more, the dude for pulling that shit or the instructor for putting up with it. I was very annoyed by it, but I know that it’s just the same sort of thing I do myself to some people. I hate it anyway, though, cause I hate it when I do it, and I hate it when it works. But hate is not all I do. I like a great many things. I was writing the last couple of things I wrote, and I thought “gee, I am a downer” and I decided I should try and finish with something that didn’t make me sound like such a sorry sack of shit.
Things that make me happy in no real order and not really complete
Mern makes me happy. She is so cool. When I die and become one with the great spirit and then decide what I want to come back to earth as so that I can continue my education for the next world (it’s a complicated theology my grandmother has) I would totally pick her so I can learn how to be cool. She is like the icy half of that Icyhot stuff. She is like chewing ice and wintergreen gum while jumping out of an airplane with a snowboard to go down K2. In boxers.
Gavin and Emily make me happy. They’re such a cute couple and such cool people individually. I love seeing other people happy like that.
Music makes me happy. Everything about music. I love playing it, I love listening to it, I love pretending I can dance. If I weren’t so awful and hadn’t started so late, I would love to be a musician for the rest of my life.
Protesters make me happy. Anyone who gets angry, goes outside and masses together to wave signs and yell is damn cool in my book. People who do protests like this make me even happier. I love people with their heads on straight. Even if they have some kooky mysticism behind their movement. I would be the Judas from Jesus Christ Superstar, supporting the movement because it helps people, not because it becomes centered on a single ego, like Jesus. Anyway you should watch the movie, it’s really good.
Dnd makes me happy. I like playing pretend, and it’s even more fun playing pretend when I play pretend with other people. I get kind of grouchy about it sometimes because it turns into not being about playing pretend as much as rolling dice or arguing, but on the whole I enjoy it.
Ms. Keturi makes me happy, though I am less clear on why. If I had to say, I would say something dumb like “because she is so real.” It’s just, I met her and man if nothing else she is someone I feel like I can trust with anything forever. Also she is six kinds of hot.
I like walking. It makes me happy just to wander around and listen to music and look at people who walk past me. I like that. I like wearing a warm coat on a cold night and listening to some horrible techno bullshit and staring at the stars. I like the stars too.
Space exploration makes me happy. I want to be in space. Earth is so dull. I want to be alone in a entirely silent vessel hurtling towards nowhere at the speed of sound. I want to die majestically when a star goes nova and rips apart my very flesh at the molecular level.
Shopping for stupid shit online makes me happy. It’s also bankrupting me, so I really need to stop, but when I find a website that sells brothel tokens for three bucks each, I just have to buy a bunch. Same with these stupid glasses. And that dumb hat. Chris was right when he said when I’m old the front of my house is going to be a museum of curios collected over the years.
Grant makes me happy. He’s such a cool dude. I still think he’s going to burn out in drug fueled blaze of glory, but that will be pretty awesome too.
Comics make me happy. I've been reading them forever. Not the convoluted and confusing comic books, but the short and snappy comic strips from the newspaper. Squeezing a message into a few boxes and some words always seemed like the best way to go. I still read comics, though now they are on the web and have transcended the limitations of print in both censorship and format. It's pretty great. Here's some classic peanuts, back when it was new and exciting.
Sleeping makes me happy. I over-indulge in sleep whenever I can. It's just what I do. It's an awful habit, but damn do I enjoy the fuck out of my dreams more than I enjoy being awake.
I started out writing these as a response to two different questions, “who are you to tell them that?” and “what the hell?” which were asked by two different people in two different contexts, which got me to thinking, which got me to writing, etc. Thanks for reading all of them, or skipping to the last one cause you’re a jerk. Jerk.
I’m trying to express myself, I guess. It’s hard because I am not a cat. If I were a cat I would just pee all over everything. Instead I am a person, and because I am a busy person I do not have the time to go around and yell statements about myself at the top of my lungs to no one at all. Writing at least offers some form of permanency of self. There is a person in these essays. He’s there. He isn’t me, but I made him and he reflects how I think right now. Does that make sense? It’s philosophical nonsense, I guess, but useful philosophical nonsense. This, I suppose, is how I handle journal-writing. By squeezing my massive and malformed ego into chunks of poorly chosen words with only a loose connection to their author.
In the long run, the question I am asking myself and asking you is, “is that true?”
Truth is all I really want to write, all I feel is worth writing.
last song= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
I hate people, right. I hate parts of people anyway. I would be hard-pressed to find anyone I actually hate all the way through. I was in a music class the other day, and this dude who sits like three seats to the left was totally bs’ing the instructor, even though he was texting openly, right in front of her in the first row. He was joking with her and otherwise trying to play “oh look at me I am a funny guy” shit. I don’t know what I hate more, the dude for pulling that shit or the instructor for putting up with it. I was very annoyed by it, but I know that it’s just the same sort of thing I do myself to some people. I hate it anyway, though, cause I hate it when I do it, and I hate it when it works. But hate is not all I do. I like a great many things. I was writing the last couple of things I wrote, and I thought “gee, I am a downer” and I decided I should try and finish with something that didn’t make me sound like such a sorry sack of shit.
Things that make me happy in no real order and not really complete
Mern makes me happy. She is so cool. When I die and become one with the great spirit and then decide what I want to come back to earth as so that I can continue my education for the next world (it’s a complicated theology my grandmother has) I would totally pick her so I can learn how to be cool. She is like the icy half of that Icyhot stuff. She is like chewing ice and wintergreen gum while jumping out of an airplane with a snowboard to go down K2. In boxers.
Gavin and Emily make me happy. They’re such a cute couple and such cool people individually. I love seeing other people happy like that.
Music makes me happy. Everything about music. I love playing it, I love listening to it, I love pretending I can dance. If I weren’t so awful and hadn’t started so late, I would love to be a musician for the rest of my life.
Protesters make me happy. Anyone who gets angry, goes outside and masses together to wave signs and yell is damn cool in my book. People who do protests like this make me even happier. I love people with their heads on straight. Even if they have some kooky mysticism behind their movement. I would be the Judas from Jesus Christ Superstar, supporting the movement because it helps people, not because it becomes centered on a single ego, like Jesus. Anyway you should watch the movie, it’s really good.
Dnd makes me happy. I like playing pretend, and it’s even more fun playing pretend when I play pretend with other people. I get kind of grouchy about it sometimes because it turns into not being about playing pretend as much as rolling dice or arguing, but on the whole I enjoy it.
Ms. Keturi makes me happy, though I am less clear on why. If I had to say, I would say something dumb like “because she is so real.” It’s just, I met her and man if nothing else she is someone I feel like I can trust with anything forever. Also she is six kinds of hot.
I like walking. It makes me happy just to wander around and listen to music and look at people who walk past me. I like that. I like wearing a warm coat on a cold night and listening to some horrible techno bullshit and staring at the stars. I like the stars too.
Space exploration makes me happy. I want to be in space. Earth is so dull. I want to be alone in a entirely silent vessel hurtling towards nowhere at the speed of sound. I want to die majestically when a star goes nova and rips apart my very flesh at the molecular level.
Shopping for stupid shit online makes me happy. It’s also bankrupting me, so I really need to stop, but when I find a website that sells brothel tokens for three bucks each, I just have to buy a bunch. Same with these stupid glasses. And that dumb hat. Chris was right when he said when I’m old the front of my house is going to be a museum of curios collected over the years.
Grant makes me happy. He’s such a cool dude. I still think he’s going to burn out in drug fueled blaze of glory, but that will be pretty awesome too.
Comics make me happy. I've been reading them forever. Not the convoluted and confusing comic books, but the short and snappy comic strips from the newspaper. Squeezing a message into a few boxes and some words always seemed like the best way to go. I still read comics, though now they are on the web and have transcended the limitations of print in both censorship and format. It's pretty great. Here's some classic peanuts, back when it was new and exciting.
Sleeping makes me happy. I over-indulge in sleep whenever I can. It's just what I do. It's an awful habit, but damn do I enjoy the fuck out of my dreams more than I enjoy being awake.
I started out writing these as a response to two different questions, “who are you to tell them that?” and “what the hell?” which were asked by two different people in two different contexts, which got me to thinking, which got me to writing, etc. Thanks for reading all of them, or skipping to the last one cause you’re a jerk. Jerk.
I’m trying to express myself, I guess. It’s hard because I am not a cat. If I were a cat I would just pee all over everything. Instead I am a person, and because I am a busy person I do not have the time to go around and yell statements about myself at the top of my lungs to no one at all. Writing at least offers some form of permanency of self. There is a person in these essays. He’s there. He isn’t me, but I made him and he reflects how I think right now. Does that make sense? It’s philosophical nonsense, I guess, but useful philosophical nonsense. This, I suppose, is how I handle journal-writing. By squeezing my massive and malformed ego into chunks of poorly chosen words with only a loose connection to their author.
In the long run, the question I am asking myself and asking you is, “is that true?”
Truth is all I really want to write, all I feel is worth writing.
last song= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w
Friday, March 26, 2010
Truth and Happiness 2/3
Hey, I thought the multimedia components of that last thing were pretty cool, so I am going to do it again for this one. Here is the first song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyFmOWUQY7A
So. I wrote some stuff. Yes. It’s pretty emo, huh. Buncha weird emotional bullshit, right. Lots of cussing. I cuss cause I’m raw. I say “cuss” cause I’m southern. Check this shit out:
Nigger faggot cunt dicks shitty ass fuck chink kike damn.
Yeaaaaah. I probably just blew your mind out, right. I am just that raw and edgy. Check out my deep emotions. I feel shit, nigger. Because I’m punk, right. I say stuff no one does cause I’ve got huge cojones. Agh, this was a terrible way to start this. But I am not even going to edit it, that way it’s more original and raw.
The key idea here is raw. The fresher it is, the better. The more I shock you, the better. Ka pow ka pow. It’s a Cormac McCarthy approach to journal-writing. Blood. Guts. Impropriety. Check it out I’m dane cook, saying what shouldn’t be said. I’m George Carlin, I’m Dave Chappelle. I’m fucking Hunter S. Thompson. This is so stupid. We idolize people who have the guts or complete lack of shame to say whatever they feel like in public. We idolize people that go against the grain, regardless of their motivation or message. We idolize Sarah Palin, we idolize Glenn Beck, anyone at all who is willing to stand up and say “I’m different, and you should be too.” When I was a kid, for a short time I wanted to be like everyone else. Then I decided I wanted to be different, right about at the same time everyone else decided they wanted to be different. Nothing changed, really.
I guess what I was trying to say, I wrote all that stuff and I sound like an angsty bastard and I hate it. Cause I’m not really angsty. It’s just how I feel sometimes, you know. Maybe I sound depressed, but I am not really, I swear. I am perfectly capable of taking enjoyment in things. I do it all the time. I don’t hate the world at all. If I ever tell you I am depressed (*cough*) I am just saying that because I feel sad at the moment and I’m not good at seeing things that make me happy when I am sad. It’s not really the truth.
The truth is: I’m a person, just like any other person. The only thing I’m doing here is talking about it more than many other people do. It doesn’t make me better, it doesn’t make me unique, it just makes me a person. Why am I doing it? Well, I can tell you all the reasons I can think of right now, but I’m not sure if they’re quite right. The answer, like most answers, is probably some horrible amalgamation of all of these, plus several things that I am too embarrassed to mention, or am not actually aware of.
Reason one: to get it out of me. I need an outlet for this sort of thing. Sorry I make it public, but I feel like a part of the outlet is that someone has to read it. Thanks for doing so, by the way.
Reason two: For attention. I am a huge attention whore. I desperately seek the notice of everyone around me to validate my existence because I am vapid and shallow
Reason three: Because I am depressed and crying for help. I hate everything and I hate life, and I am saying it the only way I know how: through internet cutting by writing dumb things.
Reason four: I’m bored as fuck. I need something to do. Why not write. If I am going to write, why not write about me. It’s easier than writing about someone else, that’s for sure.
Reason five: Writing practice. I need to work on writing and mastering my “craft” as it were if I hope to ever achieve any form of success in a writing career. This also helps with other things that I write, such as essays and such. It helps me to actually put things down on paper so that they’re there and immutable. Relatively.
Here is the other song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86wru6sT6I
Reason six: I’m trying to inspire myself. Sounds a bit like masturbation, I guess, but I’m trying to jumpstart my creativity by thinking and writing this sort of thing and taking feedback and the like.
Reason seven: I’m searching for people who feel the same way sometimes. It would be cool to meet people I could honestly say are like minded. They’re pretty rare, I think, though I have met a lot of mad fresh peeps represent’n their shit up front. Anyway, only way to meet them is to advertise, yeah?
Reason eight: I’m attempting to (I wrote satisfying for some reason.) verify and rationalize my existence. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. If I can get it out of my head and take a step back, maybe I can understand myself a little better. It’s a key tenet of Taoism, you know. In order to comprehend Tao, you must first comprehend yourself.
Reason nine: I’m trying to capture a frame of reference, a state of mind, a composition of being that I am now and will likely never be again. It’s a form of memoir, an autobiography in action. Years down the road, I will be terribly embarrassed for myself, but happy to have a real record of how I actually thought back then.
Reason ten: by telling you everything, I can tell you nothing. I say all that I can about myself and the way I feel so that it seems like I’ve been entirely trustful and forthcoming but really, I have told you very little. It’s a form of hiding in plain sight. It’s like dropping smoke when you’re in a tank. Stuff like that.
None of those are true, or conversely, all of those are true. They’re all plausible at least. When people ask me why I pick one of those reasons and present them. Sometimes I change reasons when they ask me again, which makes me seem like a liar. But I’m not actually lying. All of those reasons are correct. There are even more reasons, in fact. All of this to explain one simple essay. And the kicker? This isn’t just me. This is every single person on the planet it’s me times six billion. It’s fucking crazy. It’s incomprehensible.
I’m just one of them, you know? I’m no better, no smarter, no stronger than a kid born in Africa (at least born without some awful crippling disease). There are hundreds of millions of people who have the capacity at least, to vastly outstrip me in every endeavor I ever attempt. I’m a dot on a screen of static. It’s crazy. I really am not special, and neither is anyone I am ever likely to meet. Sure, maybe I can write okay. Sure maybe I can reference all sorts of history, science or math. But I certainly couldn’t survive in the wild. I couldn’t survive on my own. I have no clue how. I need society. I need it to live. But society most certainly does not need me, nor anyone else I know.
There’s this kid in Florida. He’s fifteen, and he listens to me. He respects what I have to say. This to me is just phenomenal. He respects me and what I say solely based on what I’ve said to him over aim! It’s nuts! I didn’t really do anything to deserve it, but damn. Now I feel like I should do something to deserve that respect. He’s so cool, too. He’s like the fifteen-year-old I wish I was when I was fifteen.
This ended up being a bit short, but I have one more to go and I want to finish it today. Nigger.
So. I wrote some stuff. Yes. It’s pretty emo, huh. Buncha weird emotional bullshit, right. Lots of cussing. I cuss cause I’m raw. I say “cuss” cause I’m southern. Check this shit out:
Nigger faggot cunt dicks shitty ass fuck chink kike damn.
Yeaaaaah. I probably just blew your mind out, right. I am just that raw and edgy. Check out my deep emotions. I feel shit, nigger. Because I’m punk, right. I say stuff no one does cause I’ve got huge cojones. Agh, this was a terrible way to start this. But I am not even going to edit it, that way it’s more original and raw.
The key idea here is raw. The fresher it is, the better. The more I shock you, the better. Ka pow ka pow. It’s a Cormac McCarthy approach to journal-writing. Blood. Guts. Impropriety. Check it out I’m dane cook, saying what shouldn’t be said. I’m George Carlin, I’m Dave Chappelle. I’m fucking Hunter S. Thompson. This is so stupid. We idolize people who have the guts or complete lack of shame to say whatever they feel like in public. We idolize people that go against the grain, regardless of their motivation or message. We idolize Sarah Palin, we idolize Glenn Beck, anyone at all who is willing to stand up and say “I’m different, and you should be too.” When I was a kid, for a short time I wanted to be like everyone else. Then I decided I wanted to be different, right about at the same time everyone else decided they wanted to be different. Nothing changed, really.
I guess what I was trying to say, I wrote all that stuff and I sound like an angsty bastard and I hate it. Cause I’m not really angsty. It’s just how I feel sometimes, you know. Maybe I sound depressed, but I am not really, I swear. I am perfectly capable of taking enjoyment in things. I do it all the time. I don’t hate the world at all. If I ever tell you I am depressed (*cough*) I am just saying that because I feel sad at the moment and I’m not good at seeing things that make me happy when I am sad. It’s not really the truth.
The truth is: I’m a person, just like any other person. The only thing I’m doing here is talking about it more than many other people do. It doesn’t make me better, it doesn’t make me unique, it just makes me a person. Why am I doing it? Well, I can tell you all the reasons I can think of right now, but I’m not sure if they’re quite right. The answer, like most answers, is probably some horrible amalgamation of all of these, plus several things that I am too embarrassed to mention, or am not actually aware of.
Reason one: to get it out of me. I need an outlet for this sort of thing. Sorry I make it public, but I feel like a part of the outlet is that someone has to read it. Thanks for doing so, by the way.
Reason two: For attention. I am a huge attention whore. I desperately seek the notice of everyone around me to validate my existence because I am vapid and shallow
Reason three: Because I am depressed and crying for help. I hate everything and I hate life, and I am saying it the only way I know how: through internet cutting by writing dumb things.
Reason four: I’m bored as fuck. I need something to do. Why not write. If I am going to write, why not write about me. It’s easier than writing about someone else, that’s for sure.
Reason five: Writing practice. I need to work on writing and mastering my “craft” as it were if I hope to ever achieve any form of success in a writing career. This also helps with other things that I write, such as essays and such. It helps me to actually put things down on paper so that they’re there and immutable. Relatively.
Here is the other song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86wru6sT6I
Reason six: I’m trying to inspire myself. Sounds a bit like masturbation, I guess, but I’m trying to jumpstart my creativity by thinking and writing this sort of thing and taking feedback and the like.
Reason seven: I’m searching for people who feel the same way sometimes. It would be cool to meet people I could honestly say are like minded. They’re pretty rare, I think, though I have met a lot of mad fresh peeps represent’n their shit up front. Anyway, only way to meet them is to advertise, yeah?
Reason eight: I’m attempting to (I wrote satisfying for some reason.) verify and rationalize my existence. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. If I can get it out of my head and take a step back, maybe I can understand myself a little better. It’s a key tenet of Taoism, you know. In order to comprehend Tao, you must first comprehend yourself.
Reason nine: I’m trying to capture a frame of reference, a state of mind, a composition of being that I am now and will likely never be again. It’s a form of memoir, an autobiography in action. Years down the road, I will be terribly embarrassed for myself, but happy to have a real record of how I actually thought back then.
Reason ten: by telling you everything, I can tell you nothing. I say all that I can about myself and the way I feel so that it seems like I’ve been entirely trustful and forthcoming but really, I have told you very little. It’s a form of hiding in plain sight. It’s like dropping smoke when you’re in a tank. Stuff like that.
None of those are true, or conversely, all of those are true. They’re all plausible at least. When people ask me why I pick one of those reasons and present them. Sometimes I change reasons when they ask me again, which makes me seem like a liar. But I’m not actually lying. All of those reasons are correct. There are even more reasons, in fact. All of this to explain one simple essay. And the kicker? This isn’t just me. This is every single person on the planet it’s me times six billion. It’s fucking crazy. It’s incomprehensible.
I’m just one of them, you know? I’m no better, no smarter, no stronger than a kid born in Africa (at least born without some awful crippling disease). There are hundreds of millions of people who have the capacity at least, to vastly outstrip me in every endeavor I ever attempt. I’m a dot on a screen of static. It’s crazy. I really am not special, and neither is anyone I am ever likely to meet. Sure, maybe I can write okay. Sure maybe I can reference all sorts of history, science or math. But I certainly couldn’t survive in the wild. I couldn’t survive on my own. I have no clue how. I need society. I need it to live. But society most certainly does not need me, nor anyone else I know.
There’s this kid in Florida. He’s fifteen, and he listens to me. He respects what I have to say. This to me is just phenomenal. He respects me and what I say solely based on what I’ve said to him over aim! It’s nuts! I didn’t really do anything to deserve it, but damn. Now I feel like I should do something to deserve that respect. He’s so cool, too. He’s like the fifteen-year-old I wish I was when I was fifteen.
This ended up being a bit short, but I have one more to go and I want to finish it today. Nigger.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
It's not that
I haven't been writing, it's just that I put them all on facebook so I feel much more like people are reading them. People still visit this sometimes, though, so perhaps I need to start publishing in two places.
Truth and Happiness 1/3
Hey, I've decided to make this a multimedia note, since this is the internet and you can do anything here. Listen to these three songs when you see the links for them. I dunno how fast you read, but you should get the point by the time the next one comes up, hopefully. The first song that you should probably start with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo9VCnw35LY
okey doke? here we go.
I want to say something that’s true, for once. God, doesn’t that sound angsty and juvenile. Man. Cynicism is the devil. You can spend all day standing around and pointing out how everything is stupid, everything is petty, everything is duplicitous, everything is hypocritical, but then you’ve spent your entire day doing nothing of worth.
In the interest of continuing to write, I’m starting a new paragraph. I hate everyone. I say that all the time. Other people say that all the time. I’m not sure if we agree why, but whatevs, go misanthropy. Me? I hate everyone because they don’t care. They’re not interested. And neither am I, by my definition. People do all sorts of things that are cool and wonderful. Everywhere you go, you see examples of people caring, from the littlest cause to the largest wars. So that’s dumb. It’s not true. It’s a perception based on faulty data. But all data is faulty, all perception biased. What do we do?
I read stuff about hipsters, right (cause I totally am one lololollollolool), and when they aren’t overwhelmingly negative (get a job and cut your hair, fake hippies) they tend to say something along the lines of “they passively consume art and media in a search for genuineness” or something similar. They talk about how bands are thought to “sell out” when they become popular and such. This is a stupid philosophy. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine.
Free-form unstructured writing (*cough*) is popular with these people because of a belief that it’s a form of genuineness. Its lack of editorial oversight and proper proofreading taken as a hallmark of its apparent truthiness and relevance to the author. Independent films are treated the same way, as more “real” than Hollywood flicks and such. Indie record labels are supported because of the “rawness” of the message. Media becomes paralleled to fruits and vegetables, with “organics” being considered superior. It’s a social movement. It’s called “post-consumerism” or something.
It’s not true. None of it is. There is no reason that indie developers should be thought of as any better than large companies. If I film myself watching porn for fifteen minutes I have not made a movie that has any more meaning than “The Hurt Locker.” Organic fruits and vegetables are no better than fruits or vegetables that had Mexican laborers jizz on them (washed later, of course). It’s just not true. Buying and using reusable plastic bags has a negligible effect. For every plastic bag that you don’t use, a dick like me without a car is going to get three double bagged loads so I can carry them home. And then I’ll throw them away. In the garbage. That’s not true either.
Recycling is terrible. It’s awful. In fact environmentalism is awful. Everything is wrong. It’s all a business. I know! I went to recycling conventions for vendors and investors as a kid! My mom dragged me along. I saw all these businesses peddling their services and handing out pens and notepads and little plastic recycling bins and all manner of useless tchochke bullshit. These people don’t give two shits about the environment, and by extension no one who supports them really cares either. There are real solutions to the genuine ecological problems in the world, but they’re not what we want, so they’re not what we’re going to get. We want to feel good about our actions, not do good actions. It all sounds very heinous, but it isn’t really. It’s how our culture works. It’s the society that we were born in, that we’ll live in, and that we’ll probably die in.
It’s not true to say that they’re all wrong either. It’s good that people are in touch with their morals. It’s good that people will put forth some sort of effort into things like this. It’s nice. I usually like to offer alternatives around here or so, just so it doesn’t look like I’m just complaining, but I don’t really feel like it, because I can’t write truth either.
For example, a few minutes ago I was wondering what I looked like. Instead of turning around where a mirror happens to be, I fired up the webcam on this laptop here. What kind of truth is that?
hey, here is the next vid. If you hate it or something, just listen to the bit at about 1:05 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KtRP4J3TQk
Let me talk about something else again. I do this because I am shitty at making things flow together a lot of the time, so it’s easier if I just start over and talk about something new until I run out of that too. I met a guy the other day who asked me to help him with political science seven, intro to government. He’s a pretty strange fellow, one of those people who actually focuses on their academics and studies and stuff (crazy fuckers), and I guess is having legitimate trouble with the class. So, I agreed to and such, and we get to talking and inevitably I end up asking him what he wants to do when he grows up (I ask everyone this) and he said (like most people do) “I don’t know.” So we keep talking and I get two things out of him: “I don’t really care about money, I just want to be financially secure, not rich, really” and “I want to make a difference.” Oh, and also “I don’t want to work a 9 to 5.” Man, that just bugs the hell out of me, cause it’s what everyone thinks. They’re all idealists. Bright eyed, bushy tailed. Looking to do good in the world. In twenty years their spirits will be crushed as they find themselves trapped doing the very things they hate just to make a living. And I’m that way too. I hate it. I do want to make a difference. I want to change the world. And I probably won’t and I hate that and I want to die.
Ugh. That’s stupid. There is nothing wrong with wanting to change the world. Nothing at all. It’s a normal thing that pretty much everyone does. The problem I have is that the world doesn’t change much because of it. I guess. I dunno. And wanting to change the world is so very much a product of my culture. Wanting to be different, wanting to shake up the norms, wanting to be “unique.” Who do I sound like? Fucking sonic the fucking hedgehog. It’s not true either. Defying norms maintains the very norms you attempt to defy. No one (except bjork) is an army of themselves. It’s all a scam designed to sell you items to make you feel like you’re more individual than the next person. What a crock.
It never ends. It doesn’t matter how well you get along with society, it still sells to you. Because that’s what America is. That’s what capitalism is. That’s what western culture is. That’s what happens when you give animals big brains and the capacity to carry things and the desire to do things that aren’t simply mating and eating.
It’s like this series of comics:
But it’s not that bad. At least it exists. Monotony would be vastly worse than counter-culture. It’s just... not true.
Last one, here you are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZA7pn6WM4
What is truth anyway. What is something real? They way I go on it sounds like I’m searching for the elusive zahir of art. Well, I don’t know. I assume that I will know when I meet it, because I do know when I don’t. I met someone a while ago that I really really like (I would say love, but whenever I do, people tell me “oh, no, that’s lust. You haven’t felt love yet” which gets me to wondering what the hell love is anyway, which gets that stupid fucking song stuck in my head so I don’t think about it very much) because she’s amazing. I haven’t not thought about her since I met her. That feels pretty true, but it lends itself to all sorts of analysis. Do yourself a favor. Never ask yourself the question “why” because that will never get you anywhere. If you need to ask a question, ask “how.” Etic is better than emic if you don’t want to simply depress the hell out of yourself. But I don’t know how to write that. I hardly can express it in person. I can barely express it here.
In the end, I’m just a hipster, I guess. Just another jerk who thinks he’s better than everyone because he’s searching for authenticity and truth rather than… I dunno, working on a career. Doing something of value to society. I hate society. I absolutely do not intend to contribute to it until it stops sucking. So you’re not getting much out of me. Which is a total lie, as here I am talking to society and telling it that I hate it. I contribute criticism. I contribute thoughts. I contribute ideas. Just cause no one is consuming it doesn’t mean that I am not producing it. I, too, am a cog in the machine. I’m just another gear. I’m just… a gear that spends all of its time trying to figure out how to fuck the machine up. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but frankly neither does anyone else ever, so fuck you, I’ll do what I want. To hell with the rest of you.
But… that’s not true either. I care about everyone. I wouldn’t want to change society if I hated people. I want to change it because I love people. It was Che Guevara, noted hipster and teenage rebellious icon, who said “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” I want what I think is best for you, because all I can see is people hurting and people hurting each other. And I hate that. It’s not cool. What kind of ridiculous fucking world did I end up in, where we have all the fucking money, power, technology, all this crazy shit that we can do and yet we sit there and use it to hurt each other, make each other mad, to fuck everyone up from cradle to fucking grave.
Is that true? I don’t really think so. There’s truth in it somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet. Can you?
okey doke? here we go.
I want to say something that’s true, for once. God, doesn’t that sound angsty and juvenile. Man. Cynicism is the devil. You can spend all day standing around and pointing out how everything is stupid, everything is petty, everything is duplicitous, everything is hypocritical, but then you’ve spent your entire day doing nothing of worth.
In the interest of continuing to write, I’m starting a new paragraph. I hate everyone. I say that all the time. Other people say that all the time. I’m not sure if we agree why, but whatevs, go misanthropy. Me? I hate everyone because they don’t care. They’re not interested. And neither am I, by my definition. People do all sorts of things that are cool and wonderful. Everywhere you go, you see examples of people caring, from the littlest cause to the largest wars. So that’s dumb. It’s not true. It’s a perception based on faulty data. But all data is faulty, all perception biased. What do we do?
I read stuff about hipsters, right (cause I totally am one lololollollolool), and when they aren’t overwhelmingly negative (get a job and cut your hair, fake hippies) they tend to say something along the lines of “they passively consume art and media in a search for genuineness” or something similar. They talk about how bands are thought to “sell out” when they become popular and such. This is a stupid philosophy. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine.
Free-form unstructured writing (*cough*) is popular with these people because of a belief that it’s a form of genuineness. Its lack of editorial oversight and proper proofreading taken as a hallmark of its apparent truthiness and relevance to the author. Independent films are treated the same way, as more “real” than Hollywood flicks and such. Indie record labels are supported because of the “rawness” of the message. Media becomes paralleled to fruits and vegetables, with “organics” being considered superior. It’s a social movement. It’s called “post-consumerism” or something.
It’s not true. None of it is. There is no reason that indie developers should be thought of as any better than large companies. If I film myself watching porn for fifteen minutes I have not made a movie that has any more meaning than “The Hurt Locker.” Organic fruits and vegetables are no better than fruits or vegetables that had Mexican laborers jizz on them (washed later, of course). It’s just not true. Buying and using reusable plastic bags has a negligible effect. For every plastic bag that you don’t use, a dick like me without a car is going to get three double bagged loads so I can carry them home. And then I’ll throw them away. In the garbage. That’s not true either.
Recycling is terrible. It’s awful. In fact environmentalism is awful. Everything is wrong. It’s all a business. I know! I went to recycling conventions for vendors and investors as a kid! My mom dragged me along. I saw all these businesses peddling their services and handing out pens and notepads and little plastic recycling bins and all manner of useless tchochke bullshit. These people don’t give two shits about the environment, and by extension no one who supports them really cares either. There are real solutions to the genuine ecological problems in the world, but they’re not what we want, so they’re not what we’re going to get. We want to feel good about our actions, not do good actions. It all sounds very heinous, but it isn’t really. It’s how our culture works. It’s the society that we were born in, that we’ll live in, and that we’ll probably die in.
It’s not true to say that they’re all wrong either. It’s good that people are in touch with their morals. It’s good that people will put forth some sort of effort into things like this. It’s nice. I usually like to offer alternatives around here or so, just so it doesn’t look like I’m just complaining, but I don’t really feel like it, because I can’t write truth either.
For example, a few minutes ago I was wondering what I looked like. Instead of turning around where a mirror happens to be, I fired up the webcam on this laptop here. What kind of truth is that?
hey, here is the next vid. If you hate it or something, just listen to the bit at about 1:05 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KtRP4J3TQk
Let me talk about something else again. I do this because I am shitty at making things flow together a lot of the time, so it’s easier if I just start over and talk about something new until I run out of that too. I met a guy the other day who asked me to help him with political science seven, intro to government. He’s a pretty strange fellow, one of those people who actually focuses on their academics and studies and stuff (crazy fuckers), and I guess is having legitimate trouble with the class. So, I agreed to and such, and we get to talking and inevitably I end up asking him what he wants to do when he grows up (I ask everyone this) and he said (like most people do) “I don’t know.” So we keep talking and I get two things out of him: “I don’t really care about money, I just want to be financially secure, not rich, really” and “I want to make a difference.” Oh, and also “I don’t want to work a 9 to 5.” Man, that just bugs the hell out of me, cause it’s what everyone thinks. They’re all idealists. Bright eyed, bushy tailed. Looking to do good in the world. In twenty years their spirits will be crushed as they find themselves trapped doing the very things they hate just to make a living. And I’m that way too. I hate it. I do want to make a difference. I want to change the world. And I probably won’t and I hate that and I want to die.
Ugh. That’s stupid. There is nothing wrong with wanting to change the world. Nothing at all. It’s a normal thing that pretty much everyone does. The problem I have is that the world doesn’t change much because of it. I guess. I dunno. And wanting to change the world is so very much a product of my culture. Wanting to be different, wanting to shake up the norms, wanting to be “unique.” Who do I sound like? Fucking sonic the fucking hedgehog. It’s not true either. Defying norms maintains the very norms you attempt to defy. No one (except bjork) is an army of themselves. It’s all a scam designed to sell you items to make you feel like you’re more individual than the next person. What a crock.
It never ends. It doesn’t matter how well you get along with society, it still sells to you. Because that’s what America is. That’s what capitalism is. That’s what western culture is. That’s what happens when you give animals big brains and the capacity to carry things and the desire to do things that aren’t simply mating and eating.
It’s like this series of comics:
But it’s not that bad. At least it exists. Monotony would be vastly worse than counter-culture. It’s just... not true.
Last one, here you are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZA7pn6WM4
What is truth anyway. What is something real? They way I go on it sounds like I’m searching for the elusive zahir of art. Well, I don’t know. I assume that I will know when I meet it, because I do know when I don’t. I met someone a while ago that I really really like (I would say love, but whenever I do, people tell me “oh, no, that’s lust. You haven’t felt love yet” which gets me to wondering what the hell love is anyway, which gets that stupid fucking song stuck in my head so I don’t think about it very much) because she’s amazing. I haven’t not thought about her since I met her. That feels pretty true, but it lends itself to all sorts of analysis. Do yourself a favor. Never ask yourself the question “why” because that will never get you anywhere. If you need to ask a question, ask “how.” Etic is better than emic if you don’t want to simply depress the hell out of yourself. But I don’t know how to write that. I hardly can express it in person. I can barely express it here.
In the end, I’m just a hipster, I guess. Just another jerk who thinks he’s better than everyone because he’s searching for authenticity and truth rather than… I dunno, working on a career. Doing something of value to society. I hate society. I absolutely do not intend to contribute to it until it stops sucking. So you’re not getting much out of me. Which is a total lie, as here I am talking to society and telling it that I hate it. I contribute criticism. I contribute thoughts. I contribute ideas. Just cause no one is consuming it doesn’t mean that I am not producing it. I, too, am a cog in the machine. I’m just another gear. I’m just… a gear that spends all of its time trying to figure out how to fuck the machine up. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but frankly neither does anyone else ever, so fuck you, I’ll do what I want. To hell with the rest of you.
But… that’s not true either. I care about everyone. I wouldn’t want to change society if I hated people. I want to change it because I love people. It was Che Guevara, noted hipster and teenage rebellious icon, who said “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” I want what I think is best for you, because all I can see is people hurting and people hurting each other. And I hate that. It’s not cool. What kind of ridiculous fucking world did I end up in, where we have all the fucking money, power, technology, all this crazy shit that we can do and yet we sit there and use it to hurt each other, make each other mad, to fuck everyone up from cradle to fucking grave.
Is that true? I don’t really think so. There’s truth in it somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet. Can you?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Why I hate avatar
I hate avatar.
Yes. The movie. Lots of people like it. It’s made tons of money. People keep seeing it. Even I’ve seen it twice now. I went to see it cause my aunt… didn’t get it the first time. Or something. She wasn’t very clear, but she likes to see the technology. She told me that first time she kept trying to figure out what sort of costume the N’avi actors were wearing, and that she found out later that it was computer stuff. Things like that.
Anyway I am switching gears here and talking about these goldfish, here. They’re a new brand (I think) part of this “mix-up” line, called “mix-up adventures.” On the cover here there is this whitish, feminine parmesan flavor goldfish (named brooke, for reasons I cannot fathom) and an extreme orange, with extremely raised eyebrow (named xtreme) and a noticeable (manly) chin. They’re sort of colliding together in front of a green and red background, and little pictures of goldfish are flying off from the explosion that culminates in a white line in the middle (cough, cough, Italy). Anyway the actual flavor is called like “extra cheesy pizza” because parmesan plus cheese equals pizza. Actually it does, this stuff is delicious, but it’s retarded. The back has a little thing about the adventures these little anthropomorphic crackers are going on in Italy. Fantastic. I am being sold Italy in a pouch. Very cool.
Anyway. Avatar is a movie about some bad corporate dudes who want a rock that is hilariously called unobtanium (jesus shit, is it that hard to come up with a fake rock name?) and in the interest of obtaining it, they do some bad stuff to peaceful and huge alien dudes. Very easy to follow, yeah. IT’s got a nice moral, presented beautifully using the latest technology to deliver such evocative scenes as the n’avi spiritual leader crying and asking for help in front of the giant destroyed tree and the burning space-horse—
Horses were introduced into native American society very late in the game. They only had them for about 200ish years. Seriously, fuck you james Cameron
Running through the burning space jungle. So on, so forth. Very evocative, to the point that people become all depressed cause real life isn’t that awesome. It makes me tear up, it does. But not for the reason you think, nope. It makes me tear up (with rage [no, with sorrow {fuck you I have no emotions}]) because no matter how effective these scenes are at selling this story, they will have no effect on the people watching them. Millions of people will see it, using millions of those glasses, generating millions of dollars in revenue, but no one will change. James Cameron will become even more filthily rich, and we’ll still be shooting people in other countries for no real reason. Nothing. Will. Change.
I guess what bugs me is that it’s an old story told over and over to all sorts of people (peace is good, you fuckers.) and it’s never gotten through, no matter how advanced the medium. The finest in fancy graphics and pretty explosions couldn’t even spark a minor movement, let alone cause humans to reflect on who they are and what they do.
I said all this to my aunt, you see, and she told me “It’s just entertainment. I don’t see how it’s related to Iraq or any of that.” I dunno. This depresses me. Because it is just entertainment. The movie was made to make a buck, plain and simple. The ideology of peace has been co-opted by the instruments of war. People go to this movie, they think “oh it is so sad those na’vi were killed, oh I would never do that” and they totally ameliorate any reservations they have about our operations in the middle east. They will think, on some level, “well this movie made me feel guilty enough, I must be a good person” and believe that they must be good people, so the things they do must be good.
Things like recycling have the same effect. They fulfill people’s need to feel moral and “good” for society. They’re pacifiers. They’re the methadone for this society. Recycling doesn’t really do any good. Doing real good would require giving up things. Driving less. Taking mass transit. Most people don’t do that. No, they recycle. And only when it’s made supremely easy for them. To the point that dumps (waste processing plants) hire people to stand by a conveyor belt and sort the recycling that comes by. Then the recycled stuff is processed, generating huge amounts of pollution, then sold to companies for profit so that the companies can mark up their products and label them “recycled content” so more people can buy them and feel good about saving the earth. It’s stupid.
The same with movies like avatar. They use morals as a method to sell you a product. They use your emotions to justify your purchase. I hate it. So much. What I’m really scared of, I think, is that this movie is so incredibly popular, that it will rob the legitimacy of actual peace movements, of actual conservationists. When they attempt to convey a message, it will be judged next to this movie. Did this documentary on filicide in china properly evoke enough sad feelings as avatar? Did this movie about the slow and inevitable demise of the orangutan to subsistence hunting make you feel as bad as avatar? But who cares, they’re just entertainment. Just like avatar.
I want to write, right? I like to write. I like telling people what I feel about things and that what they feel about things is wrong and they should agree with me if they want to live a happy, healthy, productive life. I am scared, though, that no one will listen to me. But even more than that I am scared that I will write and everyone will listen to me, but no one will understand me. No one will listen to what I’m trying to say, and hear only what I do say. Avatar makes me think of that. I doubt that James Cameron really wanted to convey a pro-peace, anti-corporation, pro conservation, pro-space exploration, pro-science for the sake of science and not simply profit message. I think he really wanted to win an Oscar or something. Or make a lot of money. But it frightens me that something could be made, something with all those messages, and it can be ignored.
That’s why I hate it. It’s just entertainment. It’s just an awesome trip to Italy in a bag.
Yes. The movie. Lots of people like it. It’s made tons of money. People keep seeing it. Even I’ve seen it twice now. I went to see it cause my aunt… didn’t get it the first time. Or something. She wasn’t very clear, but she likes to see the technology. She told me that first time she kept trying to figure out what sort of costume the N’avi actors were wearing, and that she found out later that it was computer stuff. Things like that.
Anyway I am switching gears here and talking about these goldfish, here. They’re a new brand (I think) part of this “mix-up” line, called “mix-up adventures.” On the cover here there is this whitish, feminine parmesan flavor goldfish (named brooke, for reasons I cannot fathom) and an extreme orange, with extremely raised eyebrow (named xtreme) and a noticeable (manly) chin. They’re sort of colliding together in front of a green and red background, and little pictures of goldfish are flying off from the explosion that culminates in a white line in the middle (cough, cough, Italy). Anyway the actual flavor is called like “
Anyway. Avatar is a movie about some bad corporate dudes who want a rock that is hilariously called unobtanium (jesus shit, is it that hard to come up with a fake rock name?) and in the interest of obtaining it, they do some bad stuff to peaceful and huge alien dudes. Very easy to follow, yeah. IT’s got a nice moral, presented beautifully using the latest technology to deliver such evocative scenes as the n’avi spiritual leader crying and asking for help in front of the giant destroyed tree and the burning space-horse—
Horses were introduced into native American society very late in the game. They only had them for about 200ish years. Seriously, fuck you james Cameron
Running through the burning space jungle. So on, so forth. Very evocative, to the point that people become all depressed cause real life isn’t that awesome. It makes me tear up, it does. But not for the reason you think, nope. It makes me tear up (with rage [no, with sorrow {fuck you I have no emotions}]) because no matter how effective these scenes are at selling this story, they will have no effect on the people watching them. Millions of people will see it, using millions of those glasses, generating millions of dollars in revenue, but no one will change. James Cameron will become even more filthily rich, and we’ll still be shooting people in other countries for no real reason. Nothing. Will. Change.
I guess what bugs me is that it’s an old story told over and over to all sorts of people (peace is good, you fuckers.) and it’s never gotten through, no matter how advanced the medium. The finest in fancy graphics and pretty explosions couldn’t even spark a minor movement, let alone cause humans to reflect on who they are and what they do.
I said all this to my aunt, you see, and she told me “It’s just entertainment. I don’t see how it’s related to Iraq or any of that.” I dunno. This depresses me. Because it is just entertainment. The movie was made to make a buck, plain and simple. The ideology of peace has been co-opted by the instruments of war. People go to this movie, they think “oh it is so sad those na’vi were killed, oh I would never do that” and they totally ameliorate any reservations they have about our operations in the middle east. They will think, on some level, “well this movie made me feel guilty enough, I must be a good person” and believe that they must be good people, so the things they do must be good.
Things like recycling have the same effect. They fulfill people’s need to feel moral and “good” for society. They’re pacifiers. They’re the methadone for this society. Recycling doesn’t really do any good. Doing real good would require giving up things. Driving less. Taking mass transit. Most people don’t do that. No, they recycle. And only when it’s made supremely easy for them. To the point that dumps (waste processing plants) hire people to stand by a conveyor belt and sort the recycling that comes by. Then the recycled stuff is processed, generating huge amounts of pollution, then sold to companies for profit so that the companies can mark up their products and label them “recycled content” so more people can buy them and feel good about saving the earth. It’s stupid.
The same with movies like avatar. They use morals as a method to sell you a product. They use your emotions to justify your purchase. I hate it. So much. What I’m really scared of, I think, is that this movie is so incredibly popular, that it will rob the legitimacy of actual peace movements, of actual conservationists. When they attempt to convey a message, it will be judged next to this movie. Did this documentary on filicide in china properly evoke enough sad feelings as avatar? Did this movie about the slow and inevitable demise of the orangutan to subsistence hunting make you feel as bad as avatar? But who cares, they’re just entertainment. Just like avatar.
I want to write, right? I like to write. I like telling people what I feel about things and that what they feel about things is wrong and they should agree with me if they want to live a happy, healthy, productive life. I am scared, though, that no one will listen to me. But even more than that I am scared that I will write and everyone will listen to me, but no one will understand me. No one will listen to what I’m trying to say, and hear only what I do say. Avatar makes me think of that. I doubt that James Cameron really wanted to convey a pro-peace, anti-corporation, pro conservation, pro-space exploration, pro-science for the sake of science and not simply profit message. I think he really wanted to win an Oscar or something. Or make a lot of money. But it frightens me that something could be made, something with all those messages, and it can be ignored.
That’s why I hate it. It’s just entertainment. It’s just an awesome trip to Italy in a bag.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Ahem. Changes ahead
I'm probably going to delete everythin on this site and leave a few very nice sounding political-ish essays. do facebook me.
Friday, June 26, 2009
No more ads :o
I wasn't making much money on them anyway. I made about 11 bucks, but google won't send them until it's reached $100.
No more ads :o
I wasn't making much money on them anyway. I made about 11 bucks, but google won't send them until it's reached $100.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
What is my talent? Do I have one? What rule demands that I do? If I have no talent, what do I have left? If I can generate no appreciable creative works for the world, what reason should I live for? People? People are transient. No one lasts forever. Myself? My self is a shell wracked by base needs and desires, prejudices and superstitions, contradictions and confusion. The higher pursuit of logic? What use is a study that doesn’t answer my own questions, only those of others who refuse to listen?
Is my talent really writing? Can I truly enthrall people as a raconteur? Am I really contributing anything new, or just adding to the endless cacophony of regurgitated tales? What is poetry? Is it really art? Or simply an excess of imagination trapped in a wooden shackle of words?
What else can I do? Reading is an act of consumption, so no amount of talent in it is appreciable to the world at large. I write songs generated loosely from other songs, sans the soul. I attempt to use the world’s trappings to define myself. Is this the Way? Should I define myself by the definitions of others? Am I meant to fit in a hole in society shaped like me?
Why this, either? Is society the same society that makes me feel in my gut that my words are worthless and contemptible, and no amount of pithy attempts to seem “deep” will ever properly express me? Or is that another society, another place? Why, then, do I surround myself with the apathetic and attempt to shield myself with a false sort of cynicism? Is this really the place I belong? Who am I?
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Demanding precision in spoken language is possibly one of the most off-putting and unsociable things one can do. I cringe every time I hear someone correct someone else for any reason other than complete misunderstanding. If one understands the message being conveyed, why does it matter how the message is conveyed? This sort of attitude is the antithesis of good communication.
On the other hand, most written forms of language should be held to a fairly high standard; if only because presumably the author had both the time and interest available to proofread the work they write.
Requiring this of spoken language is tantamount to requiring that all shirts you see be tucked in and all shoes shined. It's not going to happen, and it makes the requirer seem petty and pedantic at best, stricken with a mental illness at worst.
On the other hand, most written forms of language should be held to a fairly high standard; if only because presumably the author had both the time and interest available to proofread the work they write.
Requiring this of spoken language is tantamount to requiring that all shirts you see be tucked in and all shoes shined. It's not going to happen, and it makes the requirer seem petty and pedantic at best, stricken with a mental illness at worst.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Misfire
I started writing a long dry post and then I got a message from someone I like very much and now I can't focus on being boring and straightforward.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Kinda Late
Sorry, finals and the incessant noise of my neighbors moving in is delaying my ability to think about anything other than finals and my headache.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Pretention
For some time now, I've had a feeling that life is leading somewhere (besides my inevitable death), something major is soon to happen. Given the poor choices I've made recently, I'm not sure if this is a good event or a bad one, but it is an event regardless. Embracing determinism as a lifestyle doesn't confer you with any sort of prescience, nor grants any particular boon of hope. Knowing that what will happen is bound to happen doesn't make the future any less uncertain or scary. Possibly the only comforting thing about determinism is that you know there will be a future, whether it exists or you simply perceive one.
Some people question determinism, and rightly so. If everything were truly going to happen regardless of personal opinion or choice, why do anything? The answer to that is simply, if you did nothing, that too would be your fate. Another valid criticism: if everyone's actions are predetermined, how can we incarcerate criminals? They have no complicity in their own acts. For what reason can we justify punishing them for things they have no control over? For that is another very good answer: false perceptions of free will generated by inability to perceive past or future beyond certain point. This false belief in free will is a necessary belief, one that keeps society functioning. Demolishing the common perception of free will would only lead to mass apathy and suicides. It is for this reason also that religion was created. Not for a sinister purpose, to subvert the minds of the masses, but to keep communities together and working. Without a reason to continue the daily struggle for life, many people will invariably come to the conclusion that life isn't worth living; it being simply nasty, brutish, and short. If the common folk believe that there is a mysterious and benevolent (sometimes) force testing them for a reward in a future life, the common folk will have incentive to live.
As I've always said, religion is the cornerstone of society itself. It gives direction to those who would otherwise disperse in disgust for fellow man, or pursue ends antithetical to others. By pointing this passion towards constructive goals, religion ensures the continued survival of the human race. Modern religion, however, has fallen some distance. The "moral majority" and fundamentalist Christians have totally forgotten what the bible, what religion itself is about. But I digress. Determinism is not an idle thing, to be toyed with in the mind as a possibility, it is a genuine worldview. It's also black and white. Either you believe in free will, or you believe in determinism, because the nature of the two preclude one another.
"What?" you ask, "How do they preclude each other? God has a plan, but also people have free will because God said so."
This is precisely the problem. If one can use free will, then God has no control over the actual thoughts or choices of that person. That person then becomes more powerful than God, as he is able to deny God his plans. Say, for example, one Samuel Davis was born in the late 1700s. God intended for him to join the revolutionary army and slay a particular British army captain that would ultimately demoralize the British army and help the revolutionaries win. If Samuel truly has free will, he can simply decide never to join the army, or become a Quaker or some such. This would throw God's plan out the window, leading to a situation which God hadn't intended and therefore not also foreseen. As you can see, free will negates both of God's major powers; omnipotence, as he can't change Samuel's mind, and omniscience, he wasn't aware of smauel's future treachery. This idea transforms God from a truly all knowing, all powerful being, to a demi-god, just as trapped by existence as the rest of us. Without free will, the plan would have gone off without a hitch, though it brings about another host of issues concerning Gods omnipotence.
At any rate, the Judeo-Christian concept of God is riddled with errors, inconsistencies and inaccuracies, a fact which churches have known and been waffling around for hundreds of years. The major reason I follow Taoism instead is because Tao seems like a much more logically complete concept (or really, lack of concept) of God.
Some people question determinism, and rightly so. If everything were truly going to happen regardless of personal opinion or choice, why do anything? The answer to that is simply, if you did nothing, that too would be your fate. Another valid criticism: if everyone's actions are predetermined, how can we incarcerate criminals? They have no complicity in their own acts. For what reason can we justify punishing them for things they have no control over? For that is another very good answer: false perceptions of free will generated by inability to perceive past or future beyond certain point. This false belief in free will is a necessary belief, one that keeps society functioning. Demolishing the common perception of free will would only lead to mass apathy and suicides. It is for this reason also that religion was created. Not for a sinister purpose, to subvert the minds of the masses, but to keep communities together and working. Without a reason to continue the daily struggle for life, many people will invariably come to the conclusion that life isn't worth living; it being simply nasty, brutish, and short. If the common folk believe that there is a mysterious and benevolent (sometimes) force testing them for a reward in a future life, the common folk will have incentive to live.
As I've always said, religion is the cornerstone of society itself. It gives direction to those who would otherwise disperse in disgust for fellow man, or pursue ends antithetical to others. By pointing this passion towards constructive goals, religion ensures the continued survival of the human race. Modern religion, however, has fallen some distance. The "moral majority" and fundamentalist Christians have totally forgotten what the bible, what religion itself is about. But I digress. Determinism is not an idle thing, to be toyed with in the mind as a possibility, it is a genuine worldview. It's also black and white. Either you believe in free will, or you believe in determinism, because the nature of the two preclude one another.
"What?" you ask, "How do they preclude each other? God has a plan, but also people have free will because God said so."
This is precisely the problem. If one can use free will, then God has no control over the actual thoughts or choices of that person. That person then becomes more powerful than God, as he is able to deny God his plans. Say, for example, one Samuel Davis was born in the late 1700s. God intended for him to join the revolutionary army and slay a particular British army captain that would ultimately demoralize the British army and help the revolutionaries win. If Samuel truly has free will, he can simply decide never to join the army, or become a Quaker or some such. This would throw God's plan out the window, leading to a situation which God hadn't intended and therefore not also foreseen. As you can see, free will negates both of God's major powers; omnipotence, as he can't change Samuel's mind, and omniscience, he wasn't aware of smauel's future treachery. This idea transforms God from a truly all knowing, all powerful being, to a demi-god, just as trapped by existence as the rest of us. Without free will, the plan would have gone off without a hitch, though it brings about another host of issues concerning Gods omnipotence.
At any rate, the Judeo-Christian concept of God is riddled with errors, inconsistencies and inaccuracies, a fact which churches have known and been waffling around for hundreds of years. The major reason I follow Taoism instead is because Tao seems like a much more logically complete concept (or really, lack of concept) of God.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Quotes that I don't know the source of, so it might be paraphrasing other quotes. Or maybe I made them. It would sound better if I did. Quotes by me.
This could be an ongoing post, I should think. As a matter of fact, I do think. Therefore I am.
Life is a series of arguments for its existence.
He who works hardest, works most.
The fruits of one's labor are never eaten by the laborer.
All you really need to succeed in life is a high charisma score.
Teacher objectivity is an oxymoron.
hell, human objectivity is an oxymoron.
Life is a series of arguments for its existence.
He who works hardest, works most.
The fruits of one's labor are never eaten by the laborer.
All you really need to succeed in life is a high charisma score.
Teacher objectivity is an oxymoron.
hell, human objectivity is an oxymoron.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Gravitas of Life
Life isn't serious. I feel bad for people who take it so.
"Ha Ha," you may think.
"What a jokester, but really life is a very important thing."
No, it isn't. Sure, life may apparently be all you have, but that doesn't mean it's all there is. You eventually lose it anyway. Why frantically worry about what you're inevitably going to lose? Life is a game, except there are no winners or losers and everyone quits after 40-70 years. Like any game, life involves a great deal of luck. Where you're born, who you're born to, what lucky events happen are all completely random, or at least unknowable. and yet these things drastically affect your life. When vast swathes of your life are completely uncontrollable, why panic over the few things in life that are controllable? even these things will eventually fall out of control.
For example: You can't make people like you. Research shows that the decision happens well before you even begin to consider it. You may have the illusion of controlling others emotions or reactions, but first impressions really are the most lasting. So if you have little control, why fret about the small attempts to change things?
Of course the real problem here lies in determinism. Free will doesn't actually exist. The idea of universal causality precludes it. If you attempt to disprove universal causality, you find yourself with the conundrum of a completely random world, wherein impossible things might happen all the time. If the universe is as structured as science would have you believe, then complete randomness is an impossibility. Anyway, I feel too lazy to delve further into the proofs for determinism.
And it leads to another conundrum: why do I bother attempting to change people's minds about the seriousness of life? If free will doesn't exist, they would believe or disbelieve regardless of my exhortations. Well, the easy answer to that is because whether I like it or not, I would be exhorting.
Anyway, since you don't have any free will anyway, do what you want. Or, more specifically do what you were going to do anyway.
"Ha Ha," you may think.
"What a jokester, but really life is a very important thing."
No, it isn't. Sure, life may apparently be all you have, but that doesn't mean it's all there is. You eventually lose it anyway. Why frantically worry about what you're inevitably going to lose? Life is a game, except there are no winners or losers and everyone quits after 40-70 years. Like any game, life involves a great deal of luck. Where you're born, who you're born to, what lucky events happen are all completely random, or at least unknowable. and yet these things drastically affect your life. When vast swathes of your life are completely uncontrollable, why panic over the few things in life that are controllable? even these things will eventually fall out of control.
For example: You can't make people like you. Research shows that the decision happens well before you even begin to consider it. You may have the illusion of controlling others emotions or reactions, but first impressions really are the most lasting. So if you have little control, why fret about the small attempts to change things?
Of course the real problem here lies in determinism. Free will doesn't actually exist. The idea of universal causality precludes it. If you attempt to disprove universal causality, you find yourself with the conundrum of a completely random world, wherein impossible things might happen all the time. If the universe is as structured as science would have you believe, then complete randomness is an impossibility. Anyway, I feel too lazy to delve further into the proofs for determinism.
And it leads to another conundrum: why do I bother attempting to change people's minds about the seriousness of life? If free will doesn't exist, they would believe or disbelieve regardless of my exhortations. Well, the easy answer to that is because whether I like it or not, I would be exhorting.
Anyway, since you don't have any free will anyway, do what you want. Or, more specifically do what you were going to do anyway.
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