Monday, March 31, 2008

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...

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

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.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

"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.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

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

Monday, March 17, 2008

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

Saturday, March 15, 2008

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.