Any of These

I long...

2009-02-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

...to be this caliber of actor. This is why I never hit it big - sunglasses.

So I thought this was Awesome

2009-02-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

Bus

2009-01-06T13:01:00.001-08:00

Afghan

2008-12-30T18:36:00.000-08:00

This is blog.
This is to appease the teeming masses.
Yes I'm saving the world. You'd be dead by now without me.

Religulous

2008-10-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

So, I saw it, in a cool little theater in Raleigh. HA! If you'd seen it you'd understand why that's funny. Anyone else seen it? I imagine it won't get as much serious discussion as Expelled since this movie wasn't trying to appear scientific or having some definite aim. But if anyone wants to talk about it I've got a fickle internet connection.

In Desperation

2008-09-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

Everything so far has fallen through. Here's the deal. On October 1 I'm deploying until sometime next June, when I'm getting out of the military. I have this cat, The Professor. He's totally awesome. He's friendly and handsome and he fetches and sleeps under covers and is front declawed/spayed (or neutered. I forget which it is for a guy).

I'm trying to find someone that can keep him until probably Julyish next year, when I move to wherever I'm gonna be for at least a little while. If at all possible, I don't want to get rid of him. He's the coolest cat I've had. If you can take him for that time, or if you know someone that can, please let me know. I'd pay for all his food and cat litter and then some on top. If I can, I'd like him to go somewhere where there's no other animals, just so there's no drama, but if that can't happen, no big deal. He's been fine with every animal I've seen him with after the initial cattiness.

I can ship him anywhere if the person I find to take care of him isn't here in Nebraska.

He's a couple more pictures of him looking cute.

Since When Did Saruman Start Reasoning With Madness?!

2008-09-01T22:09:00.001-07:00

I just needed to do one more. And there are some gems on the extended edition too.

Sweded

2008-08-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

To anyone that's seen Be Kind Rewind, it apparently has taken off in the real world. Here's a couple pretty sweet examples.

Star Wars

Jurassic Park

The Princess Bride

The Desolation of...

2008-08-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

Alright man, here's the freakin deal.

I'm thinking of getting a tattoo. I told some friend's this and one of my friends said, "Oh yeah, death eaters, you and me buddy!" He meant something like this, I'm assuming. Sans the binary.

That's a little too geeky for me. Or let me correct. A little too obviously geeky.

So I've spent a good few hours checking out online what people have. And my god there are some really dumb tattoos. Here are my ideas, really, 2. One is to have something in Gaelic. You know, to honor my Irish heritage and give grandma Irish something to gloat about at the next book-cover-ripper's convention.

But then, there's this:
It's actually a sketch by JRR Tolkien for a possible cover or image on the cover of The Hobbit. It's Smaug.

So this means something to me. Tolkien was kind of a big part of my life growing up. Plus since I'm sort of Chinesey, I could probably pass it off as something along those lines...but...really...it's pretty freaking nerdy. I just don't know man.

I'm looking to get it on the inside of a forearm.

The Slope

2008-08-06T01:04:00.000-07:00

There are two things on my mind. One's good, and one's sad. Both are about life.

The first is a movie I watched called Cash Back. It's British and has Oliver Wood from Harry Potter as the main character.

There's a lot of nudity in it. It's about beauty though, and claiming the moment. It's pretty Bohemian, but it's definitely an inspiring movie - inspiring in the way I like it to be. Not in the Seabiscuit or Radio way, where they might as well put it in the "inspiring" genre, but something that lulls you in and makes you care about the characters, and then tells a human story.

I had to put that one first, because the second makes it seem trite. Someone that was a good friend of mine in high school, I just found out, was diagnosed with colon cancer in June. Apparently he has a fairly high chance of survival, but it's just so strange. Anyone past some certain point in life, I would think, would sympathize with this sentiment - but it is not quite scary and not quite sad to me...but just an altogether wordless feeling, to be confronted with death in such a real and immediate way.

I don't know if I've written this before, I may have, but it's worth repeating. It's both horribly tragic and terribly interesting that we should grow to know that we are - and to build relationships with people, to have love, and to have things we build, and accomplish, and overcome - and die. If we live long enough we will see everyone we love die, and die ourselves. And this is certain. That we would pass thru life like a blip on a radar screen, like a vapor, and we know, we know that everything will end. That we could understand this, and still slip toward it completely unable to stop it. Humanity is actually a tragedy.

To Embellish

2008-08-02T23:38:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's high time for a post about my life, mainly for my mother and my sister - my mother, who I haven't called in a while, and my sister likewise. The thing about this job is you can only say so much, and then that sort of bleeds in to the rest of your life, like mud spreads. And all of the sudden your life is a gray mesh of classified information.

This is where I am.

I moved to a new squadron. So far I've been made to go on to a shift that's nights...which is awesome...but that includes a 4 hour shift on Saturday - which is decidedly not so. And I was volentold to do some duty at 6 am on a saturday. And I took part in a squadron-wide piss test in order to root our columbian drug lords or some other such nonsense. Welcome!

I hate it.

I'm trying to not be so negative. I remembered, from some previous "I can't talk about this" sort of training, that I had a nervous smile. I don't think I have that anymore. I have a nervous frown, and a calm frown, and a happy frown. Let's not go that far, but we're getting there. I tend to complain. I tend to whine. I should stop that, but then I'm looking for something really good - really good in my life. There are plenty of things I just have to grab hold of and shake and squirm like one of those tube blob things you can't really get a hold of. I'd rather not explain.

Otherwise...not much.

I read less, I write less. Here is a hilight. I'm taking drum lessons and practicing a lot. I've wanted to do this since I was young, but then, we always had guitars around. I play my electronic set and I do drills and etc. It's not ideal, but it's a light, for sure.

Side note. I remember when I used to go to church, in high school, in youth group...we were trying to come up with a new name for the youth group, rather that YOTM - Youth on the Move. My suggestion was B.U.T.T.E.R - Bound Undeniably To The Everlasting Rock. The one that ended up getting voted in to power was Luce or Luchay. The Italian word for light. Pronounced Loo-chay. It wasn't universally accepted. So a few of us painted the podium to say stuff about butter, and had verses about butter, etc. I really enjoyed that time.

Butter.

I'm trying to spend time with people, and I'm getting back in to creativity - being interesting - transcending. There are definitely bright points in my world.

Two Videos

2008-07-30T17:27:00.001-07:00

They Find Me, Whisper Things. I assume from the lack of comments no one watched this before it was removed...but you should. Trust me.

And this other one, that I, as an expert in chinese culture and tactics, can confirm is 100% true.

In My Deepest Hour

2008-07-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

I was looking thru old blogs on myspace, deleting them, and I landed back on one where I linked to this trailer. I know I talke about movies a lot on this, I don't really feel much like talking about much of anything right now...much...but I keep writing cause of the therapy in it. Cause it's easier to blog than to skywrite, and better than yelling.

The guys that are involved in these movies, including sin city, the spirit, and watchmen, which is coming out, are really doing something interesting with movies. They're doing what salvador dali did with painting.

We don't care anymore about what the world is, we care about what we can make it. That's interesting when it starts going in to colors, and we start making people look like people never could, and make places this world could never have. I wonder how far we can take the surrealizing of existence and still be able to relate to us humans.

Yeah

Mr. Mostafolese

2008-07-20T11:28:00.001-07:00

Before I go see Dark Knight again

This is a cool website that was on www.digg.com . This guy strapped a camera to his cat that takes periodic pictures. It's actually pretty cool.

Why So Serious?

2008-07-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

Two views from the midnight show last night:

The second shirt was made for lindsey - the girl you can see in the right of the screen there, but she thought it was too douchey or something. I had no such qualms and wouldn't let something of that caliber go to waste.

My analysis: It's a long movie. Longer than I expected, and longer, I think, than whoever wrote the climax expected. I may need to see it during the day because at some point it started making me feel tired. That was probably at about the 2 am point, so I need to separate the time fatigue from that of the movie. Nevertheless, I've seen this hinted at by some critics as well, that the plot is rather convoluted. It's concerned with one thing for most of the movie, and then some other things for the epilogue, so that I think you have a difficulty feeling a sense of resolution.

Heath's performance was by far the best part of the movie, I thought. That and the writing for the joker was very clever. I found myself waiting for him to be back on screen when he wasn't. The schemes they involved him in are very clever, and his character is very interesting, and well portrayed. Oscar worthy? I'm not sure. It's hard for me to separate the hype from the performance at this point. I wanted him and the movie to succeed, both of which happened, I think, but I also think I don't go in to most movies with the movie already so far ahead.

All in all a very different movie from Batman Begins. In some ways much more real.

Oh No!

2008-07-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

The Undesigned

2008-07-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

This is the post. This is the reckoning. When the children of men dance beneath the timid starlight, then the true feelings emerge. This is the photo dump. This is the unknown rejection. If you design a skyscraper, it will fall. And paints slowly slurp into the gutter. This is as far as I'll go. This is the fire water. This is that digital talking. 00010100 10100100 01110 01111000. Picture and color. Design and randomness. This is the head.

There is no design. Only order.

If I look repeated, deal with it. Lastly

WHAT!?

2008-07-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

Here is #1 of the Six Worst Thing Harry Potter's Success Has Wrought, which is not all that interesting of an article. I'll write about my own life one of these days, but in the meantime, read what came out as number one below. What the hell!? -

General fan wankery amongst hardcore Harry Potter devotees is the stuff of legend. Harry Potter has, as of this writing, 360,039 entires on Fanfiction.net alone. For comparison, every single Final Fantasy game combined has only 48,977 entries. Harry Potter fan wankery also has earned the distinct award of being by far the gayest of any fandom out there that isn't related in any way to furries or something, which is quite a feat considering how much Yaoi is out there.

If there's any one thing to nail down how specifically and completely fucked up a lot of the hardcore, sexually frustrated Harry Potter fans are, it's MPREG. For those (luckily) uninitiated, MPREG stands for Male Impregnation. Or maybe not, since I refuse to look too specifically into the matter, but the gist of it is that there is a large contingent of grown men and women writing, drawing, and fantasizing about Severus Snape getting a large, distended belly that is filled with the seed of Harry or Draco or Ron or even all three, utterly defying any sense of logic and human decency with the simple theory that Harry Potter has magic, anything can happen!

I leave you now with an excerpt from Bleudiablo's MPREG Harry/Snape fanfic, "Someone Else's Father":

She blinked then moved her gaze from Harry's abdomen to Severus, "He's aborting."

"But there is no blood," Severus replied, not arguing about the fact that his mate was -had been- pregnant, many male wizards, especially powerful ones could get pregnant.

"It's a magical abortion, his body is reabsorbing everything, I doubt he even knew he was pregnant but he no longer is. I think the shock of finding out about you and father made something in his subconscious abort." Severus shivered and grabbed his mate's hand, he was sorry that they wouldn't be having a child soon but Harry was more important, "Will he be okay?"

"Yes, he should wake up in about an hour but will be weak for about a week, he shouldn't do any unnecessary or strong spells but there is no real danger with magical abortions. I'll contact Albus tell him he'll need someone to teach both of your classes tomorrow."

QoS

2008-06-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

I'm amazed that they're making this movie so quickly after these events took place in my life.

**edit - better quality video. Just ignore the black at the end, I guess it needed to be longer to make it HD

Given

2008-06-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

Shoot the wings off the fly. I think Wanted can't figure out what kind of movie it wants to be, or what sort of statement it wants to make. Apparently in the graphic novel this fraternity of assassins is a group of supervillians that decide to get together and get their revenge on anyone that ever made them feel insignificant. That takes the form of killing and raping, etc.

You can sort of see that in some parts of this movie, but it's like they took aspects of that and yet tried to make these people a little more hollywood worthy. There's some sort of half-assed tension between using their powers for selfishness or following "the code," but it's pretty artificially inserted. What ends up being the main thrust of the movie is a "twist" that I feel like you can see coming from pretty early on.

That being said, I liked it, and I'd see it again. Why? There are some pretty amazing action sequences. It's matrix-esk in that aspect. The explanation for these abilities is that some people can raise their heart rate huge amounts to pump copious amounts of adrenaline into their blood and essentially slow down time. Oddly enough, this strikes me as somehow less realistic than virtual people being jacked into a huge, world-creating computer. This lets them shoot wings off flies, block bullets with other bullets, and other sorts of things that, come on, are pretty sweet. So despite it's sometimes awkward dialogue and wandering plotline, it's does what it's really supposed to pretty damn well.

It also shows Angelina's butt.

Redeem

2008-06-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

What a scam. What are casinos exactly? They're basically like video games that if you beat the whole game, maybe you get the price you paid to play. Except way faster. So if I sit down at a blackjack table, the dealer's like "No, you didn't beat it. Okay try again? Nope, not this time either. Oh! You did really well this time! Damn, looks like I did better."

This "adult" entertainment is just like a less fun, more expensive version of the arcade. Who was the first person that learned to manipulate people so well? Probably the ancestor of Donald Trump or something. Cause I tell you what, even a crap casino like the one in Council Bluffs has gotta pull in several hundred thousand at least every night. Just get some money to start a casino and you're set. $5 Blackjack tables are like giving out free samples of heroine. What a funny species we are.

Crumpet

2008-06-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Dreary dreary. My cat puked twice the last night. I had to get up and clean it at like 1 am and 6 pm. You can hear when he starts heaving, and then I get up and grab it with some paper towels and spray it with carpet stuff.

Dear past. I have to sensor myself on my blog. I've been writing though. And some good stuff has come out. Gooooood stuff. I just write without thinking. Like splattering paint on a canvas, it just spills out. Creativity is just about making things that come to mind - and then the sensor portion afterward. But that's easy isn't it? We're all our worst critic. The hard is the creating.

Creation is an act of sheer will, said someone whose name I think was Hammond in a Michael Crichton novel. Or maybe it was just the movie Jurassic Park. I read that book in like 4th grade, and wanted to be a paleontologist like every 4th grader around that time. Then I discovered that just like Indiana Jones doesn't spend his working days running away from giant rolling stone balls, so paleontologists also don't fight real life dinosaurs.

Turpentine. Blastysis, and dearmo.

Recluse

2008-06-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

Why am I having waiter dreams? And moreover why are they in McDonalds? If you've ever been a waiter, you probably sympathize. But usually they come in the few weeks or months when you first start working someplace. Oh no, I forgot that or...I've made this table wait forever or...How am I gonna do this special order.

But last night the McDonald's customers in my head had me running around getting chocolate mousse covered pretzels and low carb fish hash browns. At one point I was putting the order in to the computer and the food just popped out of the machine - then I had to work backwards cause it didn't give me a receipt for everything. My manager was some big gangly dark looking guy that couldn't figure out what was going on and didn't seem to care.

How very strange. I spent all of yesterday shut in and maybe it's cabin fever or something. I'd better go out and gamble away some money or anything else to get me out of these three rooms.

Domino

2008-06-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

Today I evalled. I'm not going to bother explaining what it means. It is the anticlimax of my henceforth existence. This 10 hour flight and everyone is too tired to move at the end, and a little too bitter to give where credit is due. It is this landing and this long transit across the united states.

And all the souls I know are on night shift, and it's a wednesday, which means I celebrate with a bottle of smirnoff ice, alone on my couch.

I may watch the daily show, I may read something, I may go to the casino. My apartment smells like onions, like a rotting box - the life is drained out of me. I eat because I must and I let my eyes tumble out of their sockets like bowling balls in the alley down the street. The one I'm not in.

Here is the transparency, here is the melancholy, here is the roadblock. The paths of blue open before me, as does the sand. There is no more excuse.

Very Complex

2008-06-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

The Onion

You really have to check out the rest of the videos The Onion has put out. Pure genius on toast.

Shift

2008-06-10T12:04:00.000-07:00

Evolution before our eyes. It's amazing that though concepts like evolution, relativity, and quantum physics are in all of our mind - established parts of science - but we've been studying them such a short time that big discoveries are still very possible. There may even be more big discoveries in front of us than are behind us, so young are our studies of some subjects.

A case of evolution observed.

We've only been "enlightened" so long, and the world is growing and becoming more fascinating before our eyes. I was driving a few days ago and thought about how we now have paved roads that connect the upper reaches of canada with their antarctic counterpart in Argentina and yet 100 years ago, in 1908, cars were still propped up on wagon wheels. Every facet of our universe is touched by this. We move from a view based on tradition to a view based on discovery and learning, and expanding. Our definitions have changed, anthropologists even have a difficult time defining what exactly sets us apart as "humans." It used to be activity, like tool making, but gorillas were found to do that, even birds and insects have been found to do that. We're so much a part of this world and we are so lucky to be living in a time where we're beginning, at such an accelerated rate, to see what we are, and what this universe is.

Cuireann An Ceol Ar A Shuaimhneas é

2008-06-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

I find this solace in these little things like new songs and new arrangements of furniture, and otherwise bury my face in the sand.

Dirt

2008-06-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

Encountered on my walks around here. Captured with the camera on my cellphone.

Oh Ye of Little Faith

2008-05-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

Brilliant!

2008-05-19T03:26:00.001-07:00

Good ole Rowan Atkinson.

The Road Goes Ever On and On...

2008-05-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

I'm ready to go on to morning shift. That's 6 am to noon here, and I'll be trying to wake up at 4:30, to leave the house by 5:30, and have some room for sanity before I go.

But I was reading my sister's blog, and she was talking about hiking around Santa Clarita, and was asking about some of the places around there.

I thought back to where I would go, and what I would do, because I realize now that I used to go sort of wilderness romping quite a lot - something I haven't done nearly as much in the military. I keep talking about it but never really bother to plan to do it.

When I was in elementary school my best friend was Mike Lightner, of the lightner clan, and behind their house was a hill that was too sheer for track homes to crawl up, I guess. It was also too sheer for bikes, generally, so we used to walk up around there. I can't imagine it was very big, but we somehow found places to go. I particularly remember there was some sort of naturally enclosed, sort of "secret garden" place, that found once and couldn't find again. There was also a long, deep drain running down one part, I think it was while they were building houses on top. Mike broke his arm or sprained his wrist or something when we were climbing around in there.

During that time, and after, I'd take my bike behind...I think it was Bouquet Park. It was on the other Wellston. There was always a section in the fence that could be pushed thru to get back to the hills back behind there. I almost guarantee there are track homes there now, but it was all sort of chapparell (or however that's spelled) desert when I went. There we tons of jumps on little trails that someone or other had smashed and dug at some point before I got there.

I remember at least once I was riding or walking on this long horseshoe shaped road on top of one of the hills. It was probably a service road. I got back to the very back of it...the portion furthest from the park, probably at least a mile back (as the crow flies, if you will), and I looked out and there were these hills literally as far as I could see, without any sign of people or buildings on them. I compared it to the Lord of the Rings (in my mind), which I'm also rereading right now. I loved having those seemingly endless swathes of "wilderness" outside my door.

I do miss those places and I know of little that's comparable right here. It probably would be difficult to find a comparison to my child's memory anyway, as these places were undoubtedly far less pristine than I remember, and here everything is bound by roads or farms. Just fly over this place and look at the window. Every square mile is covered with farms...quite literally, in some areas.

But I've resolved to do at least one camping trip this summer, somewhere near here, or else I'm sure I'll regret my homebodyness while I was here. This weekend I'm going back up to duck lake, so we'll see if we can't find some buried treasure this time.

Gracious

2008-05-11T20:07:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in a while. These cruel dipthorians mount the raging rays.

Here's a short, 15 min clip of a physicist talking about what's going to be happening in the LHC (the Large Hadron Collider), where we'll hopefully be able to see what was happening billionths of a second after our universe began. Very cool stuff.

No Intelligence Allowed

2008-04-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-21T19:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-19T12:52:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

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

My Fix

2008-04-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-04-01T22:32:00.001-07:00

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."

Invalid

2008-03-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-03-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

"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.

2008-03-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

For the Sake of the Alcoholics

2008-03-15T18:35:00.001-07:00

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

2008-03-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-03T12:14:00.000-08:00

"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

2008-03-02T15:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Hey Jude

2008-02-23T00:02:00.001-08:00

I expect the new addition to the Thompson family to be able to do this within two years - max.

Australian Genius

2008-02-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Episcopal

2008-02-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

Finally finished The Island of the Day Before, but I'm going to sit on it a day or two before I "review" it.

I'm on to the Book of Mormon now, which I'm giving myself more time for, obviously. I'll probably have smaller reviews of each book within, and then an overall review, since it was all written by the same guy anyway. Oops! I mean...written by many different people...thousands of years ago...not in the mid 1800s....Yup!

Feliz Dia De Darwin

2008-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Drip Down

2008-02-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

Rumors, rumors and ill feelings. No matter who we're put together with, our own pride maybe, or expectations, or maybe the illusion of permanence, as the Buddhists think, make every kind of secret complaining or outright animosity spring out of initially stand-offish people. I've also heard that familiarity breeds contempt, which may be the case.

I think I may be cursed to apathy as well, controllable, but difficult to push back once it gets hold. It's just that once it gets going I have a damned time mustering the will to change it. All becomes bad and nothing good. If I can use the boredom and hatred, by historical figures, of their respective situations and occupations I still have to accept the revulsion of the present moment they must have experienced, and the suffering they must have endured for what we can justify in retrospect.

I'm also just tired of this shit.

The deployment was supposed to happen, then was canceled, then was supposedly pushed back a month. As of last week I found that, without being told anything, I had been replaced. Today, the verdict is, we're not sure, you might go.

I can't bring myself to be neutral about this place. Maybe malcontent would be a more accurate description. I just really hate what I'm doing. People have gone thru it with their chins up and bright prospects. That's just not me. And maybe I'm using this situation as an excuse to fan my coals of dissatisfaction. I can almost guarantee I am. I just choose not to put energy into finding the merits. Probably a poor response. I've really lost interest in determining that.

In contrast, here's a bit about the new Bond movie.

Sound in a Vacuum

2008-02-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

Here lies this blog, found slumped over and starved in it's cage, dead from neglect. It once filled much the same role that the marmonts at the zoo do. Nice for something between other things. Not a main attraction, but every once in a while there'd be a chase for a piece of fruit, or one of the marmonts would flip out and just be pacing back and forth for no apparent reason, and the people going from here to there would stop and go, "Huh." and move on. But the marmonts' fur started getting haggard and their health went down, and eventually there were just lying around, panting - so the viewers got less, and less, and less, until one day, one of the zoo hands was sweeping up gum and happened to look in and see...nothing.
The wind blows sand around their limp, rotting bodies.

So maybe I can start a project to fill the void. Never made a new years resolution I really thought much of.
This year I said I'd read a book a week. A book a week! Six weeks in and I'm going, more or less strong, my current book may bleed into next week, but otherwise I'm caught up.
So I can probably do something like a review each week. Nothing very comprehensive, and mostly just to help my own understanding of what I'm reading.
Last week I read the play Waiting for Godot. I think it's what Waiting for Guffman is based on name-wise. It was recommended to my be an old friend from the good ole days in the Saugus High Playmakers. She's actually pursuing an education related to the dramatic arts.
Now, I'm guessing she read this play in a playreading or writing class, and they analyzed it and maybe even acted it out. It seems to me very awkward.
It's an English translation of an originally French play, translated by the author. I did my best to read out loud and put emotion behind some of the more awkward parts, but some, I still can't imagine them being acted out without the audience feeling uncomfortable by how unnatural the dialogue is.

That's probably part of the point. The characters are probably supposed to be archetypes of some kind, and with a stretch, I can put some kind of analysis onto it. The two main characters, from the get go are in a sort of barren landscape, and what they're doing is in fact waiting for someone named Godot. Spoiler alert: He never comes. The only other two main characters are what seem to be some kind of rich man, who goes blind in the second act, and his slave "Lucky." The slave hardly speaks except when told to "think" out loud, whereby he rambles on stream of consciousness style about what comes off as high-handed white noise (successfully annoying the actors and, I'm assuming the audience).

The end is hopeless, with the two main characters deciding to hang themselves.

The first parallel that springs to mind is that of The Second Coming. These characters' lives are poor and full of suffering. Their glint of light in the distance is this Godot man, who seems to me to be somewhat of a savior character. The message would of course be shown in that in the end, he fails them.

Still, the writer, Samuel Beckett, won the nobel prize for this, so I can't imagine it having such a controversial message.
Apparently, according to Wikipedia, "Beckett tired quickly of “the endless misunderstanding. Why people,” he said – as far back as 1955 – “have to complicate a thing so simple I can’t make out."
It reminds me of "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." written at the beginning of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When I, in exasperation, quoted this back to my 10th grade honors English teacher after weeks of thematic analysis, he said, "But that's the great IRONY of Twain." If that's irony, color me rainbowy.

What are these writers playing at, if what he says is true? Is it like playing hard to get? Have they tapped the psyche of the populace to such a great degree, and do they believe their own works to be so significant as to con people into sucking meaning out of them like sucking water from sandstone? It seems like too much, to me. Too many games. This is the business of writing, not poker. It's like the Chinese guy in the prestige. Even outside his work, his whole life is an act. Somehow, I doubt it.

That said, even what Beckett saw as simple in his play, was way over my layman's head. I found it disconnected and monotonous. I know I haven't watched it and I'm no doubt not appreciating it on some level. I accept that, this is just what I've taken from it. A sense of hopelessness in present and in prospects. An inability, or unwillingness on our part as a species to take control of our own destiny, and the ultimate consequence of our impotence. That's what I took.

I'm happy I read it, though. It's a piece of our literary background, and obviously it means SOMETHING to lots of other people. But there's really not anything much deeper that I can say about it.

If you dare...

2008-02-02T23:25:00.001-08:00

Interrupted

2007-11-20T23:30:00.000-08:00

I used to live in a suburban city in Southern California. With the exception of an Uncle and Aunt and cousins dodging fires, after 19 years of life there, I have no reason to go back - not in any sort of permanent basis at least. The rest of my family and some friends live in the desert capitol of Arizona, and I was born there, but it's also not my home. No where and at no time will I return to the same high school friends up to the same old antics, and I'll probably never frequent the haunts of my childhood.

It seems romantic to be free with no ties, but it's also very strange.

Oh Snap

2007-11-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

Get a Cash Advance

What, don't they teach you how to use a toaster oven in a Masters of English program?

These Are

2007-11-13T12:23:00.001-08:00

Some pictures you've probably all seen, but they're just up here cause I'm trying to post them somewhere else so I need them to be hosted.

For Your Service

2007-11-10T23:46:00.000-08:00

There was a flyer up at my work that was noticed by a few friends of mine. "Free tickets to the Nebraska - Kansas St. Game". We just had to go in uniform.
Two of my friends, Copp and Wing, saw it, and they being football fans, wanted to go. I said I'd go too, thinking it was in Omaha. It ended up being in Lincoln, 45 minutes away, but not horrible. We drove down there today and stood on the sidelines, just behind the fence where the players and media all go. I think we may have gotten on TV too. During half time we were all leaning on said fence and one of the cameras came over and we were put up on the big megatron thing, or whatever it's called - bunch of Air Force cats in flight suits.
The whole day people were going by, shaking our hands, saluting us, some 10 year old said "Thank you for your service." Why is it that when people say that I just want to say "Shut up, leave me alone."? I wonder if it's cause I joined for purely selfish reasons, or because I don't want to be in anymore. It's because I don't like the system, and don't like how I feel completely pointless where I am - going thru 2 years of language training to just be a warm body on a plane.
I'll never go to China, never really use Chinese again in my job, once I graduate from this class. I appreciate being able to learn chinese, and yeah I've had to deal with this shit, some of which the vast majority of the population can't really relate to at all and will never experience even to a small degree- but I didn't do it for anyone's service.
I did it for free credits, free college money, and free parking. It must be a kind of shame I feel. Like I should be more patriotic, should look at the kids and say, "I'm fighting for your freedom kid." Just leave me alone. I'm just another working stiff that hates his job, it's just cause I wear green and a dumb looking hat that you might think I'm special. But I never graduated from college, gave up on my dreams, took the structure over the freedom, god knows why. I'll probably never be shot at, and if I am, it's cause I'll go to jail if I refuse to run out into the line of fire - not because I believe in anything - any kind of cause. That's how most of "The Service" is, whether they admit it or not. There are the few gung ho master sergeants and wannabe pilots - but the rest of us just want to get our 20 year retirement, or 3 year GI Bill, or clearance, or alcohol, and then forget we ever -literally- signed our life away. We appreciate the appreciation, somewhere deep down, and some of us think we deserve it, but for most all of us it's a job with good benefits, crappy pay, bad hours, and low morale. So if it's a service to you to deal with that, you're welcome.
Your taxes pay my salary, but then, my own taxes do too.

Happy Anniversuree

2007-11-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

Sis and Bro in law.

this is a deftones song called "Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event" which might sound harsh, but I like the song, and it has "Anniversary" in the title.

Baaaa

2007-11-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Pen: Life after Death

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An Interesting Bit of Biology

2007-11-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Females have 2 X chromosomes and males have an X and a Y, right?

Well, those X and Y chromosomes produce "gene products." All that means is that the gene codes for something, that is, it tells the cell it's in to makes something, usually a protein.

Since females have 2 X chromosomes that are identical, their cells go thru a process called lyonization. All it does it makes one of the X chromosomes in each cell inactive, otherwise it would produce twice as much of the gene products - twice as much as males.

In placental animals (most mammals), the X gene that is inactivated is random, it can either be the one the father or the mother contributed. However, in marsupials, it's always the fraternal X chromosome.

I learned that while procrastinating in writing my paper for Biology.

So Delivered

2007-10-29T21:19:00.001-07:00

Atop Mt. Evans
At the campsite at the dunes.

Madness
Retribution.
Assertion

The Journey

Some fools in a raft

To Keep the Hope Alive

2007-10-19T15:16:00.001-07:00

I'm posting so that my blog doesn't hit some inactivity timer and delete everything.

Post

2007-09-10T21:12:00.000-07:00

I still live. Lots of math and biology and getting up early now. It's an existence of a quiet chipping away.

Renaissance Soul

2007-07-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

I think this article is talking about me. I especially reverberate with the part about being jealous of people that have only on passion. I think I can jump into things and be really into them for just a bit, and then I quickly move on to something else.

The trick is just to make whatever I'm doing productive and creative. It seems like Leonardo DaVinci might have been this kind of person - painting, anatomy, inventing. I need to be independently wealthy so I can pursue whatever I want whenever I want.

2 Funny Videos

2007-07-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Scar

2007-07-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally finished it. I'm a slow reader I guess. It's taken me most of 2 days to actually finish it, but I of course enjoyed it immensely.

It was not nearly as light hearted as the rest of the books, probably due to the subject matter - and it's quite a bit different from the other books too.

I thought it had been ruined for me by some stuff I overheard but nothing of it was significant, though when one of the things I had overheard was confirmed I was kind of stressed the other stuff would be too. But I was right in some of my predictions too - namely, which of the main characters would die. I thought that one of their deaths would be in a different manner than it was though, but oh well.

I wonder what JK Rowling's gonna do now...

Urrrghhh

2007-07-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

Piece of crap Amazon. Guaranteed deliver on Saturday my ass. Unless they come in the next 7 minutes I get a free book...I'd rather just get the book today though. I coulda gotten one for the same price at a grocery store last night and had it in my hand.

Birthday Surprises

2007-07-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

If you'll take out your copy of Half Blood Prince and turn to page 389, you'll find that Ron Weasley and I have the same birthday. Odd I never noticed before.

Crunch Time

2007-07-15T21:02:00.001-07:00

New book out next saturday.

Half way thru book 5.

Still have to do college class homework.

Plan tonight...sleep less, wake up early, get things done.

2007-07-14T01:36:00.000-07:00

Holy Crap

2007-07-11T22:09:00.001-07:00

Hazing is out of regs in the military. So all that blood pinning and stuff you hear about - technically illegal.

I don't know how it is in other jobs, but I work in a place where it's technically also illegal to talk about what happens at work. I also work in a place that shreds a lot of paper.

My car.

This picture doesn't do it justice. I wasn't about to drive home on that pile of sh*t that, if I took a picture of it, WOULD do it justice.
I'm a pretty trusting guy. I leave my car doors unlocked when I'm on base, I leave my window cracked. Well...I was a pretty trusting guy.

I walk out of work, some people are standing around their cars, whatever, I walk to mine. There's a little pile of stuff on top. What IS this pile? I say to myself. Someone put a little pile of crap on my car. Okay. I open my door.

What the...? It's like the pictures but literally piled halfway to the ceiling. Laughter breaks out all across the parking lot.

I'm not sure what I was saying as people were gathering around my car to watch my reaction. I had been talking about Harry Potter a lot lately,
and my Harry Potter book was set on to of the pile of refuse. I really didn't know what was going on... Had someone shredded a bunch of harry potter books and put it in my car? Was it just a ton of confetti?

I figured out, I think, after several minutes, that it was all the shredded documents from the SCIF. Probably a trashbag or two full of em.

"I had that done to me." Says Newcomer, my supervisor. "Just drive down the street with you windows down and most of that sh*t will come out."

I drive down the street at 30. Not coming out. Leave the base, drive at around 45...also not coming out. I get on the highway and am pushing 70. A few loose pieces swirl around my head, but for the most part...I'm sitting on a pile of shredded classified documents, and my copilot IS a pile of shredded classified documents.

I start throwing out handfuls, but it's not really doing much, so I get off the freeway, find some back alley, and just scoop piles of the crap out onto the street. It looks like snow. These pictures are what's left after I got home. On the way in I realized I'm still covered in the stuff, so I shake out on the grass. I get inside, and take off the flight suit, and copious amounts of it come tumbling out of the pant legs.

I'll be washing this crap out from between my toes for a few more days at least...and maybe I should just try and sell the car, cause that crap aint never coming out of the carpet.

'arry

2007-07-11T00:53:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the midnight show.

Freakin Awesome.

I'm gonna say it, best one yet. They've just each gotten progressively better. I especially noticed the music in this one was very cool. The girl that played Luna was spot on, and we get to see Dumbledore lay the smack down.

Also

2007-07-05T12:01:00.001-07:00

This was at Offutt earlier this week. Security everywhere.

Ahahaha

2007-07-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

One man's brave struggle against bees.

The 4th

2007-07-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

Took place at the base lake, near Offutt, from 1 pm till about 10. Then it took me a good 45 or an hour to get home, shower, and over to Dom's house. I didn't actually meet Dom, but I've heard good things about him. People like to go over to his house - was a nice place. Drank some nasty drinks, jammed a bit, went home.

The Reason I Only Talk About My Cat...

2007-07-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

Is because I have no life.

That said. I went out Friday night with people from my class to a bar called Double Down. It's sorta like a sports bar I guess...there's a deck outside and sand volleyball courts...but that's kinda it. Everything else is just sorta thrown in to make it sporty, it seemed to me. Wednesday was Tucker's birthday, so that's why we went. Redbull and vodka is a decent drink - cause I gotta not drink smirnoff ice - I am getting REEEMed for it.

Then yesterday I slept till about noon, woke up...took my laundry to the korean lady, went grocery shopping (it's been a good...month and a half), picked up my laundry...went home...fell asleep till 9 pm. Got up, played some video games, read some harry potter, fell asleep at about 3 am. Then I just woke up at about 2 pm cause the Professor came in, making a weird meow. It's cause his mouth had a big cricket in it he had found somewhere. I encouraged him so he'd keep killing the bastards.

The other day my friend Jason Copp came over and brought his new puppy. They're naming him Rudy, but I thought he should have been named Gyro.

Swindlers, Crooks, and Liars

2007-06-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

Check it out.

The Promised

2007-06-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to write a bit about my life right now. I just read andrew's blog where he gets to talk about what he learns at work/school. I can't really do that generally, which makes it difficult. But rest assured that this rockin classified stuff I'm learning is generally the kind of stuff you'd look at and say, "That's IT!?" You know, psychic brain probes and remote viewing.

What is the government not telling you? I know, and it's not that exciting. And no, it doesn't make Bush a better President, or make a Cheney or more honest man if you knew what was going on behind closed doors.

So now, where am I? I've started the class I'll probably be in till about Christmas time. I like the people in my class a lot - between séances we find time for sudoku and general merry-making. I had my first graded sim today and passed. I think I can say that and not be saying anything illegal. Yes, it was playing the sims and being graded. I had to add a third story to my family's house and make the husband and wife make woopee in the hot tub. I was nervous, but it was no big deal, as things tend to be when you start actually doing them.

On tuesdays, thursdays, and fridays we play ultimate frisbee for pc (physical conditioning). I'm usually picked pretty early on despite often throwing bad passes and elbowing people in the face (unintentionally of course (not really)). It's getting humid and hot here, and the base is near an Iams or Friskies or something factory where they make dog food. So sometimes you walk outside in 90+ degree weather, 70%+ humidity, and it smells like horse carcass and you just wanna puke all over the ground. You get out of the shower and feel like you wanna get right back in, but it's not that bad. I like how it feels at 5:30 in the morning when I go to work (on the 6am to 12pm shift right now). But the gym we're in for ultimate (we play in an indoor soccer field) has no exhaust and...I don't think has any air conditioning...so it's gotta be like 3000% humidity. You set your car keys down on the bench and you start pouring sweat.

I come home and I read books and read stuff online mostly, occasionally watch a movie, man vs. wild, the daily show, or the colbert report. That's about what encompasses my weekdays. I avoid loading/unloading the dishwasher as long as I can, as well as going grocery shopping. So I usually have clean dishes sitting in the dishwasher, nothing but tuna and boxed rice in the cupboard, and dried cheese/whatever I mixed it with (chips, eggs) stuck on the plates in the sink. Then I end up just drinking the last bit of the big 2 gallon jug of water straight from the container in the fridge before caving and spending my $200 on my sex-weekly (okay that sounds scandalous - what would it be? bi weekly, tri, quad...what's six?) grocery shopping trip.

The Professor's still pretty cool, but I think he's been gaining weight just sitting around all day, so I've started putting his food up while I leave. I'd love to let him out but there are 2 problems:
1) When I put a collar on him he just jacks with it till he can get it off.
2) The door to my apartment is in a hall that has another door to the outside, so when he'd want back in I don't know how I'd know unless I could train him to come to the window he escaped out of.
I'd also like to let him out cause he's starting doing this obnoxious meow, and sitting by the door - obviously trying to tell me he wants to go out. But he does it at like 2 am and wakes me up. I don't know why he keeps it up cause I haven't once actually let him out while he does it. I've started saying "Quiet!" and chasing him around a little.

Let's see...anything else to add? Taking a computer class online thru Metro Community College to fulfill what I need to get my associates degree thru DLI. I'm signed up for a biology class and a college algebra class next semester. I felt pretty proud of myself and I'll tell you why: Sophomore year in high school I took Algebra 2/Trig. After that year I took a math placement test at the comm college in So Cal and I tested into college math/statistics...like the math 140 range. Didn't actually take any classes until 2 years later after I graduated. I had to take the math placement test again and I tested into the math 070 range! Which is basically Algebra 2/Trig again. So in 2002 I took that class again. It has hence been 5 years. I had to take a math placement test again, so I bought an Algebra book and studied on my own before taking it. I got thru the book and tested into statistics...so like the math 140 range. So after 5 years of no math I managed to test into the same level as I did right after I finished the highest math I've taken. So I felt pretty good about that.

I actually like math now. I like figuring stuff out just thru logic - stuff that I don't necessarily know the real formula for. I always liked the humanities esk subjects more...but on the standardized tests in high school I always did better on the math parts.

I think that's quite long enough for now. Maybe more later. I'm sure there's more.

More: I work here.

On An Unrelated Note

2007-06-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

I have a man crush on Andy Serkis.

I think that brings it to three:
Eddie Izzard:
Paul Bettany:
Andy Serkis:
Not Gay:

The Vampire Within

2007-06-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

Over this weekend, myself and my whole class has to make the transition from 6pm to 12am class to 6am to 12pm. I can never go to bed early, I just end up laying awake in bed until I usually go to sleep (which right now is 4 am). So this is what I did:

Yesterday I woke up about noon. Instead of going to sleep at 4 am, sleeping till noon today, and then trying to go to sleep at like 9 pm today...I stayed up till about 11 am this morning, then went to bed, and I just got up, and it's about 9 pm now. So now I'm going to stay up and go to class and then probably end up falling asleep like afternoon on monday. So this way...yeah I sort of lost a night of sleep...but I'm not tired and I'm just using my tendency to stay up late to adjust my sleep schedule in a way that feels more natural. Before, half my waking free time was in the middle of the night anyway.

So we'll see how it works out.

Some Say We'll See Armageddon Soon...

2007-06-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

The Palestinian President has dissolved the government and is now ruling by presidential decree to hope to control the situation between them and Hamas...

And the crickets outside MY window won't shut up!

The First...

2007-06-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

<-- I've seen in years went ambling down the path to my apartment. I think that's the right verb for them...amble.

Let's Get Rediculous

2007-06-09T11:52:00.001-07:00

Most of this is taken from the pastor of the biggest church by where I grew up and apparently"Dr." Dobson agrees with his crackpot ideas, that not only make up statutes he implies are in his religion, which are not (It's not that part though, that's a big deal, as with the vagueries it's possible to make the texts say pretty much anything you want and be right), but he claims to "beyond a doubt" know what the Judeo Christian god thinks about people and countries today. It's such incredible nonsense that reminds me of Herbal Essences coming out with racey new commercials to keep people interested in the product, but the sad thing is, some people's faith will be bolstered by this - including, I'm sure, many people I grew up with that know John Macarthur personally.

Any HP fans out there

2007-06-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

The full artwork of the book. Dragon.

Beyond

2007-06-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

An interesting article about the limits of our knowledge and the possible limits of the knowledge of our successors, if there are any.

You Are Aware

2007-06-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

Turning

2007-05-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

Randy's response (In the comments section).

Hydrate

2007-05-29T22:33:00.001-07:00

My Gatorade Ad

Conclusion:

2007-05-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

Forget what you thought you knew.

At First

2007-05-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

A benefit to the Air Force is the time you get off. You're "on duty" 24/7, but you get out early some, and usually when there's a three day weekend, it turns into a four day weekend. The downside is getting shot at.

This past weekend was a four dayer and Eric Sward, a friend of mine from back in DLI days, invited/recruited me to drive him (and, sort of unavoidably, myself) to Minnesota and ultimately to an undisclosed location in upper Wisconsin for four days of ski, scrumptiousness, and scruples (nothing starts with "sk").

These are two pictures I took. I'll post more when I go back up there and take more pictures. I took my camera up there, then we'd go out on the boat or drive somewhere and I'd think, I should have brought my camera. These two are from backwoods tour given by the Sward grandpappy that the Sward children often fight over for their turn to go on. I doubt that sentence was grammatically correct. Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting. We checked grandpa's minnow traps, saw that big damn beaver dam in the left one, and learned about the history of the old rail lines that used to haul lumber out of there. I was also scoping out the place for where the holy grail was buried, as it was the Knights Templar Club and you know how those people are with their grails.

In the meantime, between when we got there and left, we did some hot tubbing, some tubing behind the boat, others skied and I oft considered skiing, saw pirates 3, played loads of games, and did all sorts of other things I promised not to disclose (in exchange for which I get treasure). It was much fun. The cast was myself and Eric, Stevo and Carla (the parents, we called them the fantastic 4, which doesn't really make sense), Sarah, Kristen, and Jenna (the girls, who we called the Lone Ranger(s)). It was a time of music and odd nicknames, and I didn't want to go home.