Invalid

It was all going pretty well. This weekend was generally pretty relaxing. I even went out Saturday night - but there was no dancing, no yelling, no chewing contests. The percocet was a nice perk. Until maybe...5 am today. The pain woke me up. Just over in the bottom right (the one they were jacking with when I woke up during the surgery). So I took some more percocet, and sat there and moaned and held my face till I could sleep. About 6 hours later, it woke me up again. I'm to the point, I think, where unless I'm NOT taking it, I can't really function. This is not a positive step.


Oh, but this was a fun find by my friend John Yniguez.


I'm the epileptic one with the tie.

On the same note, if you go Here, it's the channel for my friend John, and has almost all the movies we ever did in high school. We were so strange. "The Good Soul" and "The Paperboy" are 2 I was involved in. They really are pretty thin on acting, and dialogue, and plot...

If Any of You Lack Wisdom...

Tomorrow. 730 am. Wisdom teeth. Farewell dear friends. Don't try to hold on too tight, you'll just end up hurting us both. Let's just go our separate ways, and remember what we had. You had the inside of my gums...and I had, a sort of nagging soreness every once in a while.



Oh, and I changed my blog colors.

Update:

The deed is done. It took like an hour and a half I think, which is sort of a while. I slept, drooled blood on some stuff, and it could be the opiates I've got in my system, but I don't feel too bad right now. Let's hope it stays that way.

"Lower" Beings

"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love"

-Pythagorus

I usually have to turn off articles like this, and videos like this, immediately, when I recognize what they are - and the thought of it usually sits on me for the rest of the day and several days after.

They may be fakes, it doesn't matter. I think that they're the extension on kids shooting birds with BB guns or running over squirrels with cars. At what point in our development do we learn that the suffering of something else is entertainment?

Maybe it's a relic of our carnivorous past, and since the size of our prefrontal lobe still isn't large enough in comparison to our adrenal gland. Because gladiator battles and their modern day U.S. equivalent - violent movies, are no doubt descendants on the same vein. And I'm not condemning violent movies or UFC. The difference there is that all participants are willingly subjecting themselves to such treatment. I'm also not saying that given a choice to save a dog or a baby, you should choose the dog. The capacity for suffering has to be taken into account.

It's when another being that has no capacity to give consent is subjected to suffering for our enjoyment that it becomes sick, and barbaric, and warped. And those that haven't yet, need to reprogram themselves to see it as it is - cruelty in the purest sense of the word.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

On death and dying. That was a class at the community college I went to, I think - where they looked at writing about death, and death as a subject.

Because he is gone. The only tiny idea most people have of this guy is that he wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. What are you doing Dave? That Buuuh...buuuh....buuuuh....NA NA!! Song is from that too.

But he was so much MORE than that, to me. A couple weeks ago I went to the Half Priced Books, in West Omaha, and bought I think like 6 or 7 of his books. The birthday present Amy gave me was one of his books also.

He was born in England and knighted there, but he hated it. So at some point he moved to Sri Lanka, and he said he never intended to return to Britain. If you read that article you can see he was one of those authors, like H.G. Wells, that wrote about concepts before they happened.

I have little doubt that some of his other books will be made into movies. The sci-fi he wrote never had aliens in the intergalactic war sense, never had star-wars esk lazer fights, or warp drives. That's why I appreciate him. For the most part, he write's sci-fi for the world he's in, and not the next one to come - even when talking about hundreds of years in the future.

Rendezvous with Rama, for example, is about we human beings here encountering the first aliens as a huge cylinder - this vehicle wandering through our solar system - programmed literally thousands of years ago by some intelligent species - and on it's way from somewhere we don't know to somewhere we don't know, probably completely oblivious to us.

Because, if evolution is true, which nearly all scientists think it is, the possibility that we're the only life forms in the universe is getting smaller and smaller, the more earth-like planets we discover. And it's very possible that these life forms could predate us by millions of years and hence be far more advanced technologically, than us. This idea returns in The Fountains of Paradise, where what's basically a huge computer database comes sailing through our solar system, it's soul purpose being an information exchange with intelligent civilizations. We send it our encyclopedias and it tells us what else is out there in the universe, then sends that back it it's home planet - itself many light years away.

But I'm sure I've filled my geek quota for the next week, so I'll end and say that even if you're not a sci-fi fan, check out one of his books - 2001 if nothing else, cause I know I'd have no chance of understanding the movie if I hadn't read it.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future" (Clarke's second law)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
Arthur C. Clarke, 1983

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.
Arthur C. Clarke, First on the Moon, 1970

Your Picture Frame is Cracked, I get one per year

I've been obsessed with these guys, and especially this song lately.





The Sound of Animals Fighting - You Don't Need A Witness

Give it a couple listens, it'll grow on you. They figure out the drum line first, then write the rest of the song around it.

My guitar got gotten out a few days ago (note the gregarious passive voice) and I've been playing it a lot. I think it'd be fun to just put together some cover songs and perform at like an open mic around here. It's just a fledgling idea right now, and my voice aint what it used to be, so we'll see. This idea, you can only whisper it, anything more and it would vanish, it's so fragile.

The Simple Mind of the Dog

For the Sake of the Alcoholics

The Patty's Day has been moved to Saturday.

More than anything else I'm Irish, I think. Something like 2/15ths at least. So this St. Patrick's day the hair's gone red, I'm sportin' the green slippers (which double as ninja turtle attire), and I get to spend the night defending the honor of my homeland in barfights and pugilist matches.

"Hey ginger." They'll say.
I don't respond.
"Hey you *@%!!& potato."
Still no response.
"The Irish guy in Braveheart was a fairy."
*Bam* a stunning right cross to his jaw. "Yeah? Why don't you go eat some spam!" I'll say, if he's a pacific islander. I haven't gotten it quite figured out as to what I'll say if he/she is any other ethinicity. If he's german I'll probably spout the words of some Rammstein and hope there are swear words in there.

Faithless Relativity

Deciding that I have alienated the majority of people that ever peruse this blog, I'm going to continue on that vein because - I'm not really writing this for some particular audience. If that were the case I'd be doing entertainment pieces and cushy photo journals.

The issue is, I think, that I've become bereft of the small amount of people that read this, as far as I can tell, ideologically speaking. Still, I consider this a medium of self expression and personal enjoyment, so I'm going to soldier on.

If you're interested, read this.

The writer of the article does a fine job of expressing the sentiment I'm going to express, but this is my blog and I can go further if I want.

What...the hell.

"...may not discriminate against the student based on a religious viewpoint expressed by the student on an otherwise permissible subject."

We're going to need a clearer definition of "permissible subject" before we can decide whether or not to throw out all of public schooling, not just the sciences. If the educators MUST say, "you're right" because of what you say are your religious beliefs, education becomes nothing. You're not being educated about anything. You're coming with your prejudices, unfounded opinions, and feelings, and leaving with...your prejudices, unfounded opinions, and feelings.

I'm a pagan, and we believe that the earth is the center of the universe, followed by the planets, which are actually gods, traversing the skies as they will (this including Helios, the god of the sun of course (or Apollo, that fiery chariot seems appealing), and then the sphere of the stars, which revolves around the earth like an orange peel around it's seeds.

I'm a mormon, and excuse me, the Americas were not peopled by North East Asians, but rather Jews, sailing over from Israel in 400BC. When they got here they brought silk, steel, and found horses to ride around on.

I'm Shinto, and no, Japan was not created by continental drift, but when one of our gods dipped his sword into the ocean and drops fell, creating our islands. They also blessed us, making us intrinsically superior to Chinese.

And your History, Astronomy, Physics, Earth Science, Humanities teacher has to put on your paper, "Great Job! You got it all right!" Gold star, gold star, gold star.

If we cease to have a standard of what is factual and what is not, we cease to learn. Reality is determined by evidence, not fiat.

I Break This Peace

Maybe truth is too broad, perspective would be a better word. Just the truth of our situation. I don't know why it works, but when our place in this world can be distilled - and all our lives shrunk down and given perspective, it makes it so much more bearable.

All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

The end of Eclipse on the dark side of the moon album by Pink Floyd. Full lyrics in that link.

5 For the living know that they will die;
But the dead know nothing,
And they have no more reward,
For the memory of them is forgotten.
6 Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished;
Nevermore will they have a share
In anything done under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 9:5-8

You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

It is no evil for things to undergo change, and no good for things to come into being as a consequence of change.

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

There is only a kind of comfort in this. This isn't a friend telling you, "It's going to be okay." It's a funeral saying, "You're going to die." It's Indian ruins saying, "What seems so large and so important will be gone one day." It's a worn gravestone saying, "A life can be forgotten." And then you yourself realize that you'll be forgotten, and one day your grave will be worn down so it's unreadable. The United States will dissolve. And all these relationships and companies and wars and pain will blow away.

for dust you are and to dust you will return

For some reason, there's comfort in this.

Schism

"Amherst, New York (March 3, 2008)—The most detailed estimates to date of Americans' religious affiliations reports that a significant portion of U.S. citizens claim "none of the above," placing the unaffiliated second only to Roman Catholics in number. Monday's release of the 35,000-respondent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that 16.1 percent of Americans have no particular religion at all, while 23.9 percent identify themselves as Catholic. The next largest "belief group" is Evangelical Baptist at 10.8 percent. All other denominational groupings show in the single digits or less."

Here's my question to anyone that might be reading this, and I'm not trying to spark a debate on this topic, just want to see what your reaction is. I won't even respond to any comments left unless you ask me to. But what do you think of this result? Is is surprising? Where do you think the country is going and what do you think about that? Is America really a Christian nation? Are faith and religiosity necessary for a moral or free society, as Mitt Romney would have us believe?

Full article here.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

When I went out this morning, at 10am, the sky was clear and it was 60 degrees, blue, and bright. After a few hours, clouds had moved in and made everything a still gray. Then the rain began, running off the packs of leftover snow - and just a bit ago, snow began to fall in mix with the rain. Soon the twig snaps of falling rain will stop as it gives way to nothing but the silent snow, spreading over the ground.

You can really see the change in seasons here. It's not an ambiguous slide from below freezing nights until, in august, you realize there are lines of heat seeping out of the asphalt, and you're drinking two gallons of water a day and yet your pee is still the color of autumn leaves (hopefully not the red ones). Spring as pushing against winter here and it's a change you can see and feel and watch as it plays out in front of you.

I see now why the ancient Greeks had stories like Persephone and her pomegranate. Even in a world now that we can understand through science, we see ourselves - our own stories and emotions - mirrored in the world in which we humans are wrapped. And so it's no wonder we see characters all around us, and can feel happy when the sun comes out from behind a cloud, or feel tranquil at the image of a snowy night in the woods.

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.