No Intelligence Allowed

I just saw Expelled, out of pure morbid curiosity. I like to sit on it for a bit, whenever I am confronted with an argument contrary to a position I hold, so I can be sure I'm actually considering it.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow, we Fly

Except I probably shouldn't eat anything crazy, I definitely shouldn't drink, and "crew rest" fairly prohibits me from being merry with anything more than what's already in my apartment - which, don't get me wrong, aint bad.

I'm fairly nervous, as I always am when going into something new or very different. Every time I go to a new place or start a new class or a new activity I get somewhat nervous the day or so before, so I guess this is expected. Thinking back in recent memory, I think the only things I was really justifiably nervous about were Survival School, and Basic Training. Everything else has been no big deal. This also, I'm sure, will be no big deal, and might end up being actually kind of cool.

There's some kind of psychological therapy that focuses on just thinking about things rationally. An example of this would be something like if your significant other was an hour or two late from work. Instead of automatically assuming the worst, it would have you stop, and think about all the more realistic possibilities (their phone died and they had to stay late, they had car trouble on the way home, they had some other appointment you forgot about or maybe they forgot to tell you) and realize the reality of your worst fear being true is pretty slim. In this situation, even though my worst fear isn't very solidified, the flight will probably, nevertheless, go by with a minimum of incident. I know the stuff I'm supposed to know, and I've never come across much of anything that I couldn't handle with relative ease - at least as far as these standardized things go.

I look at some of the people that have gone before me, and I figure they might as well skip the five flights and just graduate me after this one. Sorry if this post isn't exciting, it's more to myself. By 1630 tomorrow, hopefully, it'll all be done. And in three months or so it'll just be a dim memory.

Embracing the Absurd

There is no purpose. Imagine we're floating through this ether, oblivious to earth and sky. Imagine this utter absurdity, such that even rationality is a farce - a manifestation of our fear in the face of complete intellectual incoherence.

Imagine also, how this frees us. When we became conscious we stepped out of the prison of this world, and we became limitless.

This is existentialism.

Arbitrary Gestures

Today's Adventures:

Hair cut - Same as always, but my dyed, then bleached hair looked very strange as it was getting swept up off the floor. Like the mane of a baby lion.

Change Cell Phone plan - The year was up, I went in, got unlimited texting, and got me a chocolate. It's definitely the coolest phone I've ever had, and the one with the most appetizing name (way better than VX6895, blegh).

Shopping - Needed a few things. Dishwasher detergent, paper towels, cat food. What a difference some Jet Dry in the dishwasher makes, too. Oh and I picked up I Am America and So Can You as a book on CD, so that'll be good to keep the trend after Death in the Afternoon.

Writing - Dear readers, I stumbled in my pursuit. Friday I consciously decided to "take a day off," and then last night I just planned poorly and was too tired when I got home to really get out anything good. Both of these were mistakes. So today I'm doing a 3000 word marathon. I'm about half way thru and I like the results so far.

Discovery - Adventure Alaska or Alaska week or something starts at 9 on the Discovery channel and I love Alaska and want to watch it, so we'll see if I can't get the writing done before then.

Birds - April showers bring floods, and what do floods do? Kill birds. To help combat that, I've refilled the bird feeder I hung outside my window last spring. The Professor is enjoying crackelingly meowing at the patrons.

Tomorrow - Grind grind grind the pieces of my soul away. My first of five flights is on Thursday. I'm anxious to get out of that place.

Cheerio.

Discovery.com

The world is just awesome.

I love how the discovery channel has really come into it's own in the last few years, or maybe I just didn't watch it much before that. It's my default channel whenever the TV turns on in my house.

Juneau

I just watched Juno tonight too. I got teary eyed there at the end.

I liked how it took a more ambivalent approach to the moral issues in the movie. I like movies that deal with the time we live in in a more real kind of way, instead of trying to bring back the "golden age" of the past.

These Voices In My Head

Ernest Hemingway, again. Apparently he liked bull fighting. As immoral as it was considered, even in his own time, he found he liked it.

He wrote he has an interest in suicide. He compared something like the nobility of the bull, and the tragedy of their death even as a sure thing, with suicide. I think that's what the comparison was. Books on CD tend to wash over me, giving the continuum of the colors rather than solidifications of facts and events.

Where was I?

He has a voice, on this book on tape - literally, and in the more Euclidean sense. His writing has "a voice." This isn't new. I've even understood this before, but I never identified it with myself.

These emergent properties in this experiment. Not the right use of "emergent properties," really, but they're emerging the more I write, and their properties of my writing, and writing in general.

Last night I finished a story. About 6 thousand words (we've been going about 6 days). Apparently we found out some time ago that in the middle of every story, whether the story is told by a character, a picture hanging on a wall, or an invisible narrator, there is always always a persona, telling the story. Apparently when this sort of philosophical revelation came about writers experimented and tried to write stories without this voice. I'm not sure, but I think they were unsuccessful. We can't separate the is from the who, no matter how we try. We want to personalize things.

My story has a voice. I mention Hemingway because as I listen, the voice that's emerging from there is sincere, and caring. He's talking about something he cares about. The voice that emerges from my story is witty, I hope, empassioned, I think, and often times sarcastic. I imagine a greasy old New Yorkian wearing a gristle-stained apron, sitting in the corner of a diner, smoking, and telling this story.

If I can talk about my feelings for a second (Hi, my name is Kevin, and I write sarcastically), I wonder if this isn't because I'm not quite comfortable with what I'm doing yet. I remember when I first started "acting." Yes "acting". I often times played the character angry, even when it was unnecessary. It was easy. It was masculine. And it was defensive. I wonder if I might be doing the same thing here.

Pretty Rad

Das Rad. A very creative concept for an animated short. Check it out, it's only about 9 minutes.

My Fix

Tomorrow I let this tether go and send my moon careening off into space. Really I'm more the moon, and the earth - drugs, of course - is the one sending me careening off into the unknown. This is the speech of an addict, but I'm not really.

Tomorrow I go off Duties Not to Include Flying (DNIF), which means that the pills get tucked into cupboards and toilets and places the feds won't find when they raid my apartment. It's like Samson losing his hair. I suppose I could pray for healing, but then I've found the results henceforth to be rather unconvincing, steeped in mythological lore as I am, it hasn't provided one iota the relief of a pill or an IV or a shot of rum.

So, clean an free, start my clock. I've been sober now for at least 12 hours. It'll be 24 when I sign my sanity to the gods of flying status tomorrow, and from there we'll see. I still get periodic throbbings, swellings, and juicings from Mr. Socket, Dry, but there you have it; I'm a working man and I don't think I can get disability for constant oral discomfort. Maybe I should check on that, actually.

Defibrillator

The last of the psychedelics boil in my blood. I am Sheeva the God of Death.

But really, what is percocet? Aspirin with a sprinkling of THC? I doubt it even goes that far. The lights remain lights and the music continues to enter my brain only through my ears, unfortunately.

These days, they grate by. Like the door in a horror movie. For now, though, the killer's already in the room and he's just swinging the door back and forth for effect I guess.

I'm tempted to hang all my paintings sideways. My furniture, I've keeled on the diagonal, almost all of it. It looks pretty strange in my bedroom, but at least it's interesting in a way that makes the word be able to describe itself. At least my furniture is doing something, and not just sitting there asking to be sat on. At least these rooms, they convey something. It might be just an aversion to fengshui, I'd show you the Chinese characters, but it seems I'm yet to install them on this computer, so great are my studying, maintaining, and prostrastinatory sins.

This is all an exercise, by the way. This is probably the first of the marshes a writer encounters that slogs him or her down and grabs for one's neck - writing when not particularly inspired to do so. I'm sure there were days when Beethoven didn't want to touch a piano, or when he sat down at it he just kept playing chopsticks over and over and hating that he was so un-genius-like. I refuse to believe there's truly something that sets apart Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein, and Aristotle. "Evolution, Morpheus...evolution. Like the dinosaur." We're all carved from the same wood. It's the same dust and god-breath what flows thru my veins, and if I'm naught but 2% estranged from chimps, from a genetic standpoint, some garbage about the way Da Vinci's brain might have been organized differently, I find rather unimpressive, to be frank.

But then, I'm young, and foolish, right?

I for one would rather never learn I have limitations, except for my ability to fall off a cliff on to a spike and die.

That's just good breeding.

Duty Bound

In class, somehow the subject of logical fallacies have come up - Red Herring, Ad Hominum, Slippery Slope, Straw Man, etc. I don't know who or how many people from class might read this, but if you do, or if any of my other ardent readers are interested, at about 7 minutes in this video, Peter Hitchens gives a great example, by employing the straw man. It's a straw man because he has taken it upon himself to assume that lack of religion = lack of morality, a position that his brother, Christopher Hitchens, specifically refuted in his opening statements 7 minutes before. What makes it a Straw Man is that Peter sets up this position, implying that this is the true atheist's position, and then goes, "Now can't you see this is what we don't want?"

Some work of noble note, may yet be done, - Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods

My ex-wife wrote in her blog, "IF I love Him I WILL keep His commandments." Obviously we're assuming there's something real to love here, so putting that aside - This is true. Likewise IF you truly believe something, you WILL live your life by it.

I got in a tuff with a "Mormon" in my class over this. I say "Mormon" because he's been excommunicated but he still claims to believe every word of it, he just doesn't live by it. I said this is impossible. If you truly believe you're going to be punished for your misdeeds, you won't do them. IF there's a cop walking around with you, you WON'T steal. The same as, if I really DON'T believe there's a door in front of me, I WON'T bother to open it before I try and go thru it.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about dreams, and it goes something like this. IF I really want something, I WILL pursue it.

That's where if bites though. If I really want it. If I REALLY want it. And if I REALLY want it, why the hell am I not pursueing it?

Or does it just get choked under our obligations? Under these pressures that society, and pride, and the boogeyman put on us. "We work jobs we hate, so that we can buy shit we don't need."

So either I don't want it, or I'm letting it get choked. I'm hoping it's the second one, cause I'm just flapping in the wind if my dreams are something I really don't want. Just another check mark on the checklist the boogeyman handed to me some time in my youth. Cause he's got a stack that says "Baseball Player" and "Astronaut", and he's handing them out like candy at the park, to unsuspecting younglings that don't know yet about abortions and laziness and bipolar disorder. But for most people it must be something some best friend actually handed to them, or some TV show, or some girl that likes men in suits and fancy cars. Cause really what they wanted more was a family, or a cushy job, or some time alone on the couch.

So I'm reading The Gunslinger again, and it's one of those stay up past your bedtime books. One of those fuck-society I-don't-need-friends books. And I underlined something in the introduction. "Let it rip regardless of what anybody tells you, that's my idea; sit down and smoke that baby." He's talking about writing despite being young, about taking on big ideas when the older and wiser might shake their head and say you don't know the first thing about what you're talking about.

When did I stop thinking that? I said to myself, laying in bed, early. I used to write everything I could think of. When did I start being scared and when did I start not caring? When did I start choking and when did I start listening to the chicks that go after big cars? Since when did I let the warning labels and the has-beens tell me what to do? Since when did I stop saying my dreams are what make life worth living, and the only thing that will make me happy?

The answer is, of course, is never. I stopped believing it, and I stopped living it.

"If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned."

So I invite you, dear reader, to join me. I will give this three weeks. Three weeks. Apparently it takes 21 days to establish a pattern. For these three weeks I will write 1000 words a day, and see if I can't stop by the end of it. I have a calender on my wall and I'll check off the days, starting tonight. Today is the 9th (or a few days later for you maybe). By the end of April I'll have 21 days behind me. At the close of this month I will have chased my dream, truly and immediately, for at least three weeks. If the handwriting on your checklist is your own, and not the boogeyman's, or some ex's, I offer this opportunity for you to join me, to stop choking and come up for air. It's not too hard, it's only a blip in your life.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Two percocet, some cotton soaked in clove juice, an upset stomach, and about twenty starburst jelly beans later, and I'm writing a blog entry at one in the morning. It was dry socket, I'm out of pills, and I have no ambition.

Hemingway was the man's man of writers. He used to tie himself to his chair, get drunk, and go until he passed out I guess. I may do the same tonight. Lewis Carroll's drug of choice was LSD, why can't mine be prescription?

Today I discovered that I can feel the hole in my lower left gums, and my upper right one is starting to hurt. It may degrade into dry socket like my lower right. I suppose I can stand the pain, and it's odd, but one of the main things I take into consideration when delegating my hope is whether it will get me out of work or not. This may, so I'm crossing my fingers for it.

I don't know if it's the sitting in a room with the same people, the sense of no direction, or the knowledge that I'm forced to take part in a system I don't believe in and am not interested in, like a minaret that hate's disco forced to perform Saturday Night Fever, but on the days I don't go to work compared with those when I do I find it's the difference between trying to spot a zebra in the serengeti or in a polka-dot pillow sale. That is, I don't feel quite at home. That is, I feel like an entirely different human being that thinks he wants things, and wants to appear certain ways, that the me laying on my floral patterned couch wearing a floral patterned bath robe would never even consider. That wasn't suggesting I'm hiding something like Heath in Brokeback Mountain was, it's a throwback to the camouflage analogy.

To keep this from getting too heavy (I was told that "ism" don't make for good crowd interaction in a place that ends in .com) I'll clarify that yes, now I have gotten dry socket in one tooth. They packed it with some kind of cottony looking stuff that is supposed to act as "scaffolding" for the gums to repair themselves. Apparently the scaffolding my body provided took a long union break, then went on strike, or went to protest the damage being wreaked on the liver, or something. Except there were no scabs to bring in this time: pun intended. This cottony stuff was soaked in an oil that smells like cloves and tastes like digested and crapped out cloves, and ended up making me feel high and nauseous by the end of the night. I said, "My feet feel far away."

I'm reminded of Shawshank Redemption. "You know, the funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." I was a good high schooler, and it took me joining the military to get me tripping the light fantastic, kissing the sky, etc. Going to the square dance. That's an LSD reference.

The professor has been very sweet lately. I need to put seed in the bird feeder outside my window. My hair is even more red looking since I tried to bleach it. I still don't have a camera. Licorice tea is delicious, but somewhat hard to find. Why must emotions nearly always skew relationships for the worse? I'm very satisfied with my last round of shopping. The joy of intellectual stimulation is something akin to sex and I don't know how I get along when I'm not having it. A new office is on this Thursday, I think. Happy Birthday Amy, I'll give her a more proper post tomorrow, when I also buy her gift. Chinese is a useful skill, like when the seamstress only speaks chinese, and gives you a huge discount when you chat with her in it.

This is where I sleep, little whiskered ones.

"A cat may look at a king. I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where."