Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Partch

The others (the Partch stuff with vocals) at this link sounds awful but Delusion of the Fury is really refreshing.
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=199

Monday, December 28, 2009

Scenario: A huge volcano has erupted and lava is fast approaching. You see a hill you can run to and run up away from the lava. But you also see that the lava will quickly overflow the top of the hill. The last rescue helicopter has already left totally full of passengers. From radio communications you know that no one else is left to rescue you. Logically you know that you're going to die.

Do you bother to run up the hill away from the lava? Or since you see that the action is futile and will only prolong your life a minute or two, do you just stand there and let the lava kill you now?

Of course you take off up the hill. And it turns out the going is quite tough. It's muddy. You keep sliding and falling. You're getting out of breath. The going is really quite tough indeed. By the way, why exactly are you going up this hill anyway?

You realize you're hoping that another helicopter will appear and rescue you. In fact, running up this hill is so tough and you've wanted to stop so many times, that in order to continue running you've gone beyond hoping and into believing in the existence of this helicopter.

Whoa! That's illogical! That's ridiculous crap worthy only of derision.

So... how is running up the hill in the first place not illogical?

Such is life. This is the predicament we're all in. There is no logical action to be taken. The fact that we're going up that hill at all is illogical. It is the belief that the helicopter is coming. It is a futile action much like all of life which just has nonexistence waiting at the finish life. And if you do anything other than just stand there, no matter what you say, by what you do, you are showing quite clearly that you believe in the existence of that helicopter.

And so atheism is a contradiction.

It's maybe a very small point. And contradictory atheism certainly appears better than organized religion. Certainly the belief in the helicopter doesn't mean you have to be against evolution, intolerant of homosexuals, etc. And you certainly don't have to run up that hill chanting praises to the great helicopter god and persecuting anyone else running along whom you notice isn't singing.

But this contradiction of atheism. The problem is that in the attempt to know one's self. In the attempt to understand our own subconscious and unconscious, pretending that there is no contradiction in atheism really makes such knowledge impossible. It keeps us instead just floating on the top of our minds, ignoring what is in the depths.

Because so much of what actually makes us happy from day to day is tied into subconscious symbolizations which aren't logical.

But what would happen if these things are uncovered?

Would that not just destroy them?

Is it perhaps better to pretend they're not there in order to keep them there than it is to instead see them, and see how illogical they are and thus destroy them?

Maybe. Perhaps it's more that I just wish my fellow atheists would at least give a bit of respect to the nihilism which is inherent in atheism instead of pretending it's not there....

Why do they pretend it's not there?

I think because they feel locked in a battle with an adversary. Admitting the nihilism would be giving a point, a very big point, to the competition. And, unfortunately the competition, in attempting to combat nihilism is also doing incredible harm. They are against science. Which is a horrifying thing.

Is it actually possible to stand on the fence between the two?

The one trying to combat nihilism but turning earth into a dystopia along the way. The other simply turning a blind eye to their own subconscious, in other words kind of not truly being scientific. The one wants to believe a fantasy. The other wants to ignore crucial data...

36 TET


















36 tone equal temperment. Was somewhat difficult. Seemed to take a while. Fought the understanding of the randomness a bit more than usual. To make it longer/better would have taken a long time and not been very much fun. Prefer to start over and this isn't quite so bad to just throw away. I do like having more notes to work with. And 36 was a multiple of the standard 12 note scale thus not quite so foreign... Could potentially just write normal music in it. Near the end I think I came close. Not that that's the goal of course. But ending the song that way felt like having a nuanced resolution of the conflict.

Want to do much more. Slowed down by the fact I don't really like homegrown piano. Really not a very good sounding VST, in my subjective opinion. Just haven't gotten around to buying something else.

I did buy 135 dollar Bose headphones. They're amazing. Although I suspect they'll quickly just become the way music is supposed to sound and everything other than them will just sound like crap.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Another Wonderful Christmas

Eating breakfast at sister's house on christmas morning. It's me, my mother, my wife, my stepfather, my sister, her husband R, her seven year old son T, her one year old son, her mother-in-law, her father-in-law, and her brother-in-law.

I brought a couple of cans of curried lentils and am eating one with a biscuit while everyone else eats bacon, sausage, chili, etc.

7 year old T says, "Why are you eating that?"

I reply, "What do you mean?"

"Why are you eating that?" he repeats.

I respond, "What do you mean? I'm eating it because I'm human and humans have to eat food."

T continues, "But why are you eating something different than everyone else?"

"Because I don't eat meat."

T asks, "Why not?"

"Because I don't want to take part in the killing of animals."

T replies, "But they're already dead so it doesn't matter, right?"

I reply, "When you buy meat it ensures the continued demand for the killing of more animals."

T asks, "Do you wish that everyone would be a vegetarian?"

"Yes I do wish that everyone would be a vegetarian."

T asks, "But why isn't everyone else then?"

"uhh... you'd have to ask them." I respond evasively. I know exactly why but I'm sure his rightwing father doesn't want me to talk to him about all this. This whole conversation has been really awkward for me. T is just now getting old enough to ask intelligent questions.

Later I'm in the kitchen finishing breakfast with my stepfather. My sister's rightwing husband, R, comes in and with a threatening look says to me, "Don't you ever talk about politics with my son again! I don't want you indoctrinating my son to any of your politics!"

It is his son. It may take a village to raise a child in theory. But in practice the parents own that child and no one else is allowed to take part in the raising whatsoever unless they consent.

So I start to say, "I'm sorry..."

And am cut off from anything futher with a very threatening, "That's your last warning!" as he points a finger at me.

I calmly finish my food and then go to the front room and very quietly try to inform my wife and mother that R has again threatened me, thus I don't feel very welcome here and will go ahead and go home now. In truth I really don't respond so well to force. Not well at all. It's seriously in everyone's best interest if I just leave and do so quickly.

My mother exclaims, "What?! Oh come on can't everyone just get along for christmas. R?! R?! What's going on?"

I say quietly to her, "Mom just let it go. Please."

Mom continues loudly, "R? What's going on? T was asking about him being a vegetarianism, isn't he allowed to answer?"

R comes out of kitchen and says, "Well if he'd just keep his mouth shut about politics!"

And suddenly I decide it's time to make it clear that this rightwing dick is not going to force me to shut up. I point at him and with a raised voice say, "You don't fucking tell me to shut up buddy!"

I say it in a scary way. Hard to explain this with words. It's hard to really give the real flavor for all of this I think. Hard to explain how this person tries to control people. Anyway, I don't get angry often. But when I do it's scary. Not to mention I'm a big guy. A former boxer. Six foot four and half, 235 pounds. Very wide shoulders. R is 6'2" 260 but just a big marshmellow. I say it as I sharply backhand punch the door with my right hand as I stalk toward him. R's mom grabs the youngest child and runs out of the room. R stands there looking scared yet idiotically trying to raise a false bravado, the dumbass is acting as if he's preparing to actually get it on with me.

My mom and wife yell, "Emphryio! No!!!"

And he's too stupid to even know how to turn away from a fight. One he'd have no absolutely no chance in. Instead he thinks he's somehow impressing someone with a display of bravado...

And so I quickly turn to pity for this scared idiot. I shake my head and walk out.

With some people it would be possible to reach this point and then civily go back to talking. Talking is equally impossible with him at this point as it's always been from any point. Very generally speaking the Leftist talks things out, explores all options, tries to learn all the facts. While the Rightwinger wants to shield his child from anything that might make him become anything other than a rightwinger. And when unwanted information is spoken, that person must be made to shut up by a show of force. It's essentially just like the O'Reilly Show.

So he tries to do to me, and when I respond by saying, "I'm sorry...", he mistakenly thinks that's the time to be that much more forceful. But the dumbass is a marshmellow for one thing. And way too dumb to understand that although I'm smart enough to get away from such people before I end up in jail, I don't actually just sit there and take crap from them.

I think the anger I showed was the proper response. It's all well and good to talk about reason instead of force. But when someone believes in force, they just use it if they can. Why would you give them the impression that using force works by acting meek in the face of it? Why reinforce that such displays work?

I didn't just scare him though. I'm sure everyone was scared. It's not like a normal person getting angry. I've learned to be extremely careful about ever showing anger. It's possible R's mom will be afraid to ever be near me again just on the basis of that one sentence and those few steps.

Was I right to show anger? I think so.

After I leave my mother continues to slowly go through the roof at R. Turns out that a big part of his problem is he's mad about the health care reform bill passing. Claims I was rubbing his face in it when actually I think the bill's a disaster. But he's far too big a dumbass to comprehend that actually the Left is appalled by this "reform". My mom goes on and on with him until eventually she also gets so mad she decides to leave. But my father-in-law has left to drop off someone. So my 60 year old mom stumbles off through the snow. Till he finally picks her up a mile down the road.

The night before we went to another christmas party where an 86 year old man left in anger because he said someone wouldn't let him sit down. He's hard of hearing and gets confused so nobody is too sure it even happened or who it even was. His daughter left in anger also after yelling the f word a few times.

Just one more christmas party to go.
But there was already a wide gap between his practice and his theory, between the simple painted canvas and the load of ambitious meanings it was expected to shoulder. What a picture was and what it was supposed to be were increasingly proving to be two distinct and irreconcilable things.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

As I worked on building a perpetual motion machine I did of course reflect upon the absurdity of what I was doing and what it meant.
Here I was with a BS in mechanical engineering and working on a MS. And I spent some of my free time building these wheels which would hopefully have gravity, the earth's magnetic field, and centrifugal force working against each other like gravity and evaporation work against each other with dams. Absurdity I knew. I knew it well. But still, to effing dream. Even if it didn't work, so what? The wheels were kind of marvelous to look at. And I like making things.

And what did it say though about me? It said that my opinion of humankind was incredibly low. And... at least somewhat justifiably so. Humans are incredibly stupid. But, the thing is, the stupidity really shows when they get together. Working alone, they manage to be pretty intelligent at science. And surely back then, when experiments didn't require millions in funding, if it were possible, many people would have done it. But again, my opinion of mankind was incredibly low. And it was somewhat justifiable.

But I used the same thinking to invent the kokopelli later. A third type of aerosol impactor (first invented 130 and 60 years ago) which worked so well they stole it from me.

What if I today did successfully make a Bessler wheel?

I wouldn't share it. I wouldn't try to tell the world. I'd use it to make a bit of extra electricity for myself. Otherwise... I really don't see any point on giving it to mankind. They wouldn't use it wisely.

not only is it tremendously time consuming but perhaps not all that fulfilling....
In her coming book, "Alone Together"....
wasn't merely a distraction, but it was really confusing him about who he was....

"Alone Together". Post-industrial living. Awful. But people do still desire some aspects of how they once lived. A world where there was far more face to face interaction. Where your house wasn't a fortress and you didn't even know your neighbors. Where instead there was some meaningful connection and you interacted on a daily basis with the people whom live around you. A world where you felt connected to both nature and other people. Facebook and some other things online reveal this desire in people to have such a connection with others. But trying to get it there is like already being dead.

But, it's a good way to keep in touch with all the people that don't live close?

Industrialized society again. Always moving. And walled away in your fortress. TV, internet, car, no one you work with even lives anywhere near you.

What reason is there for me to speak to anyone ever?

Go to work. Slap on a smile. Go home. I don't exist.

...Van Gogh's unoccupired chairs pay respect to a tendency to avoid represtentation of the human figure. Gauguin is there, seated in his armchair, even if we cannot see him - according to this formula.

The breat in the two artists' friendship had become inevitable. When Gauguin decided to leave, he left the ruins of van Gogh's dreams of an artists' community in the South behind. "As you know, I have always considered it idiotic that painters live alone. It is always a loss if one is left to one's own devices", van Gogh had written to his brother, describing his longing for solidarity amongst painters.


"....sooner there will be nothing left... but empty chairs."

"In the 19th century there was an altogether new type of suffering artist: the lonely, lost, despairing artist on the brink of insanity...

"The 19th century was the inhuman century par excellence; the triumph of technology mechanized our lives totally, rendering us stupid; the worship of Mammon has irredemably impoverished mankind, without exception; and a world without God is not only the least moral but als othe least comfortable that can be conceived. As he enters the Present, modern man reaches the inmost circle of hell along his absurd and necessary path of suffering."- Egon Friedell

Sunday, December 20, 2009


















Best reverb I've found although CPU heavy:
http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html

But I've got a new laptop which for half the price seems a lot more powerful than the desktop I got 3 years ago. Still neat to me that except for the computer this song cost nothing at all to write.

Monday, December 14, 2009

What is it about S anyway?

Is it that she's somewhat androgynous? Like the character from Clive Barker's Imagica or Hobb's Fool? They both though seemed essentially male but just barely. She is definitely female. Anyway the important thing being this androgyness(sp) quality symbolizes the universal. Such a powerful symbol to me. Like being The Chosen One or something...

There are other such people. She has a ton of lesbian (manly) friends. But she is such a unique person it seems. Is that it? Why does she seem unique? Is she actually? It does seem a lot of people like her. Well, a lot of women. And they can't believe she's straight.

I can believe she's basically straight. Is it that she's almost 30 and practically never been kissed and this arouses my pity?

Is it just that she so clearly likes me? Without saying so. But in the way she moves, her expressions, etc....

Is it solely that I've got a blackhole of nihilism in me, inherited from my biological three times married father and a typical solution is to search for meaning in loving additional people? And if not her, just the next most likely suspect?

Is it that our mothers look so much alike... And in turn we also somewhat are simply alike? Both mothers look strong. Big boned, long faces, potentially very stern German look. Although my mother is like a unicorn. Her mom is sterner. My father is like a snake. Definitely would have been a Slithering. Looks just like it turns out he was. Comically so. My mom would have been a Griffendor. Not necessarily the brightest. But idealistically courageous. Cried every day for a year when snakeman left her. Her father... more like my wife. Her father and her mother looking like me and my wife. She probably looks like...

..the child I'll probably never have. Perhaps that's it?

Hopefully I'll get over it soon. It's one thing to recognize that everyone is beautiful... and some a bit more so than others. But I'm downright lusting a bit now though. I don't want to be like my father. Ridiculous as strict monogamy seems to me, surely this is no answer. It's as if I've forgotten something quite important. But it seems all I've forgotten is how to avoid being human.

I wonder if my attraction to the angrogynous speaks of something similar within me? Do I appear androgynous to others? No one has ever said so. But would anyone honestly admit to such a thing? The women I've slept with have said I'm like an uber man raging with testostorone. But, they're a bit biased perhaps. And more likely to lie. And there's not really that many of them. I ask my wife and say is this like you asking me if you look fat in those jeans and she says it definitely isn't.

S is absurdly honest. Goes on about how her ass was bleeding from hemmorhoids. I'll have to ask her if she thinks I'm effeminate. Maybe after a bottle of wine this Saturday... It would actually make me happy if she said I was. Being in a work environment that's 85% female and more than half the men being effeminate maybe it's rubbed off.

The person who trained me to be a nurse, I knew him for three years previously and clearly remember him being effeminate. And my social conditioning kicking in, feeling that ugly disgust albeit just slightly, what a sick feeling although it never controlled me and I must say I seem to not have it in me anymore... Now, he doesn't seem that way at all to me. If anything he seems like he's trying too hard to be a caricature of stereotypical pigheaded manliness. No one really arouses that feeling in me anymore. Instead I see effeminate men and think, "well he's sort of cute for a man." For this one guy though, it doesn't even seem to be that I'm doing that. He just truly doesn't seem even the least bit effeminate anymore. He's in his late 30's. Surely he wouldn't suddenly decide to start putting on a manly show? But who knows, his wife recently left him. Maybe it triggered something in him... Maybe he thought she left him for not being manly enough and now he's got to prove her wrong in his mind...

But I want my very own Fool to love. The universal person. A KD Lang or that Men At Work lead singer. They do symbolize to me exactly what Hobb's Fool is supposed to be. The Prophet who comes and tries to change the world. Set it back on it's course. Avert The Fall.

But perhaps I am a Fool myself just looking for another me.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Corn is a rare C-4 plant which means that it takes more carbon from the air than other plants which are generally C-3 plants. This means it grows more efficient. A smaller area is needed to grow more calories. Corn though also then needs more fertilizer then the usual.

Fritz Haber invented the process by which nitrogen is taken from it's gaseous form N2 and split and combined with hydrogen whereby it can be used for bombs and also for fertilizer. Along with making bombs Haber made poisonous gases to be used in WWI for Germany. Haber's wife committed suicide apparently in horror at what he was doing but he continued to be quite proud of the contribution he had made to the war effort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

His process takes nitrogen gas and hydrogen and puts the two together using very high heat and pressure which is produced using electricity. The hydrogen is taken from fossil fuels. Oil, coal and most usually natural gas. Before Haber's process fertilizer only came naturally from bacteria feeding off the roots of legumes and from lightning. (Surely not just legumes??) Thanks to Haber's process produce yields have exploded. And the population of the world has exploded. How will we continue to feed all the people when we run out of fossil fuels?

The crop which has benefited the most from Haber's synthetic nitrogen is corn. Along with using more carbon corn also uses more nitrogen and as a result of synthetic nitrogen, corn is now an extremely cheap crop. Made even cheaper by government subsidies.

Without government subsidies, corn simply costs more than can be made selling it, despite how cheap it is. Why exactly is this? It's not entirely clear to me. It seems that the farms which grow corn are just stuck. It's the only thing they know how to grow anymore (they had to grow only it in massive quantities in order to survive) and so instead of growing something else that could sell better, they try to grow more and more corn in order to make enough money to now continue surviving. And some continue to survive (or they don't and the land gets bought up into fewer and fewer and larger and larger farms) because they receive just enough government subsidies to do so.

Why the subsidy?

It does make sense to buy up and store excess food for emergency. Much better than seeing periodic famine hitting your country. This was the main original reason. But things have twisted now. Now the incredibly cheap subsidized corn is ultimately bought by Cargill, one of the most powerful corporations in the world. And because the corn is now so incredibly cheap, it's used for a ton of things it otherwise wouldn't be used for. Again, though, it's the subsidies in part which made it so cheap in the first place... But still it would probably be the cheapest thing all the same... And the idea of the subsidies was originally related to an emergency store in times of famine, etc.

But now it's being used for factory farming. Cows are fed a diet that is 75% corn for 5 months to very quickly fatten them. If instead they were left to eat grass it would take 3 to 5 years. Instead they eat this corn which their bodies can't really handle. Their guts become too acidic and so they receive a constant supply of antibiotics as otherwise they'll simply die before they can get suffciently fattened.

Using antibiotics in such a manner causes bugs to develop resistance to antibiotics.

The cows are also feed cow fat and cow blood. Before 1997 they were fed basically everything from other diseased cows. This led to mad cow disease. Still today cows are fed cow fat and cow blood. Still today other animals (chickens, pigs, etc) are fed whole rendered cows.

Does all of this make meat cheaper for Americans?

Yes, definitely. By subsidizing corn, (60% of which is fed to animals) meat is made cheaper for Americans. There are actually people who (mistakenly) think being vegan is more expensive than eating meat thanks in large part to such subsidies.

Just how sick is the system when such ideas are common?

So meat is cheaper. So we're developing bugs that are resistant to antibiotics.

On the old traditional farm, the manure from the live stock was used to fertilize future crops. Now in the animal factory farm you have shit everywhere. In fact if you drive through the towns near where these places are in the midwest, you can smell the shit for miles and miles. (I've have personally done so. It's beyond me to live like that.) It's disgusting and all that shit isn't used for anything now. Not used for fertilizer (we just use synthetic fertilizer instead which requires fossil fuels). This animal shit is filled with antibiotics anyway. And it pollutes everything. The run off goes everywhere. Asthma in children continues to rise. And it runs down into the Mississippi and then out into the Gulf of Mexico where there's a 8000 square mile zone so starved of oxygen nothing but algae can live in it.

The average factory cow consumes/uses 35 gallows of oil in it's lifetime.

One of the problems which happens to cows fed corn is excessive gas. To the point it presses on their lungs and they suffocate. The solution is forcing a tube down their throats to get out the gas.

The only reason we feed corn to our animals we're planning on murdering and eating, is that it's basically the cheapest food per calorie that we've got. We also then of course have looked for as many other uses for it as possible and so it's everywhere else in our foods.

The reason it's not the "war machine food' is that it was only developed to this level (the massive size it now is) just in the last couple of thousand years, while grain and rice were well developed 10,000 years ago. The extra 5000+ years meant that those lucky humans had a lot more time to develop their bureacracies and invent guns, etc with which to kill Native Americans and Africans, etc.

...what else? In 1975, the amount of corn and soy fed just to America's cows, was enough to have fed the population of both India and China.

Trying to summarize this in my head a bit:

Originally a cow on a farm eating grass. It's manure is used to fertilize the other crops being grown there.

Now, instead, that cow is fed corn. Because the corn is incredibly cheap in large part thanks to synthetic fertilizer made from fossil fuels which we're running out of. The corn makes the cows sick and antibiotics (along with hormones, etc) are put in the feed. Super-resistant bugs are bred. Not even to begin to mention corn fed cows are apparently far less healthy to eat, lower levels of omega 3's, etc.

And instead of that cow out grazing in a pasture. It's crowded in a shit infested hellhole basically. The shit that previously was used as fertilizer now just polluting the environment.

And thus meat is cheaper.
--
Mostly unrelated I accidentally ate a potato chip that contained chicken fat in it last night. I ate one single chip and immediately noticed it tasted... funny. Funny in a bad way. A real bad way. And right there on the list of ingredients: chicken fat. Effing disgusting. And you see, I can taste chicken. I wonder how much is just in my head... I could never eat eggs because... they always tasted just like chickens to me... I asked other people if they noticed this. No one, it seems, did.
I can't explain it really. It is like the essence of the creature somehow is there. And it's awful. It's not my overwhelming love for chickens. It's just an awful thing to be putting into my body. Making my body into.

Once a roomate gave me a bag of meat jerky, long before I was vegan. I took a bite and immediately thought... it tastes very strange indeed. Cobweb like. Some creature that hides in shadows... My friend had just gotten back from Mexico and it was indeed tarantula jerky, which is certainly no more disgusting than chicken fat in a potato chip.

I gave the bag of chips to my work colleagues who all later reported stomach aches. Ugh. How can anyone eat chicken.

Michael Pollan says that 'eating industrial meat takes an almost herioc act of not knowing, or, now, forgetting.'

I'm reading this book for a book group. This book isn't actually advocating even vegetarianism by the way. Will be interested what the reaction will be of the meat eaters in the group. A herioc act of forgetting. Pretty much all of life is already exactly that.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

I had to delete that last post as there's a limit to what even I can stand. Here's a song though:















Thursday, December 3, 2009

So then Vancouver...

Best place I've ever been.
So here's some meaningless pictures. They don't explain at all why it's the best place I've ever been. No picture could.

Just a typical looking city on a dreary day.



This was this strange halfway in halfway outside area of the downtown library that had some coffee, etc shops. Great parking for a downtown. Not an impressive selection at the library really.


Redrum.

As per previous post, not a fan of pictures of any people.


Meh.



I guess that's grass growing on that roof. This is taken from the window of an expensive hotel (wife's work paid for it). (Grass isn't normal on a roof here.) The nickel and diming of the expensive hotel was funny I thought. Breakfast was 30 dollars each. Parking was 30 dollars a night, etc.



I do love being by the ocean... Although still it depends. My parents live a three minute walk from a large river but all the riverfront land has been privately bought so it means nothing where I live. And I've been many places along the ocean where the same is the case. Here, some public land, lots of people jogging. When you go to the South of the US, most redneck states, people don't do things like jog. They don't exercise. They're stupid, racist, disgusting people generally. (Not that not exercising makes a person such, lol.) And it matters even if ultimately you just go home and read the same in Alabama as in Vancouver. You've got to venture out sometimes and it matters. The knowledge of it. What kind of people are out there. Like with the internet and managing to just find a few interesting nice people scattered here and there. It's both meaningless and yet it does matter.



Somebody's car in Vancouver. Is it not a tad depressing that people so very rarely ever do artistic things with their cars? I had wanted to when I was younger and more determined to be oblivious to conformity. Wife wouldn't allow it though.


It's a cheap camera. You push the button and it takes a couple seconds before it finally clicks the picture during which you have to carefully hold the camera very still. This dog popped in the picture perfectly.


This bird was repeatedly dropping an oyster on the concrete path to break it open. I had never seen such a thing in person...


It's a city. Whoopee.



My wonderful fake fireplace back home. At first I hated it. Almost singlehandedly stopped me from buying the house. You just flip a switch and gassy flames pop up amongst fake bits of wood. Even the stone isn't real stone. Yet still, it satisfies some need in me to sit by a fire. To see flames out of the corner of my eye which are actually emanating heat.

My house and a couple neighbor's houses. All the christmas trees in the window are kind of touching to me. And actually right next door they have two large trees. One in front and one on the side (no pictures of them.) I just think my street is kind of cute that the houses are all decorated. We've even actually talked to three of our neighbors after only living here two months! And two even came right up to our door to welcome us and give us brownies and some other slightly crueler food!!!! It's like Mayberry or something. Don't they know you're not supposed to do that anymore? No where else have I been where people are still like that... (Well, Vancouver...)





What was nice about Vancouver was that the people didn't have as much fear in them. Noticed for example that young men didn't do the whole acting tough thing very much at all. People in general did less acting and more just being. It was a relaxed place. A big city where people routinely start conversations on the elevator with total strangers.

I lived in a suburb of Washington DC for a few years. It was not like this. Road rage everywhere and just very unfriendly. Also lived in California, three places in Texas, spend time in Florida, Alabama, worked as an engineer in Kentucky, Crete, visited the UK a couple times, lived in Germany for half a year... I'm forgetting places I'm sure. Anyway, Vancouver wins. Yeah I forgot New Mexico despite having lived there for 3 years. ...and I lived a year in Mineapolis, Minnesota. Also spent a decent amount of time Pittsburgh, PA. None of those places remotely compare to Vancouver.

...and a few weeks in Massachusets. A few more shorter vacations... Toronto, various place in Ohio, etc, etc. Enough that I've an idea what I'm talking about I think.

It was depressing at first. Because although I've been around a bit. I grew up in West Virginia. ...eh it's hard to explain all the details. Pointlessly time consuming anyway. Basically I couldn't help but wonder who might I have been if I had grown up in say Vancouver instead? I don't think I've touched upon the potential of who I could have been, or at least the happy life I might have lived. Such thoughts really depressed me the first couple of days in Vancouver. But then I ran through a number of different ways to overcome such thoughts. Had no idea which was the best way. Did seem like I might as well join the positivity cult somehow though on this instance. Finally settled on the obvious fact that I could be entirely wrong. Maybe things would have actually gone much worse for me. Maybe I needed shitty WV. Not much sunlight or water in order for my roots to grab hold. Who really knows.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

For each character at each moment ask the question: what is this person afraid of? Their fears are like a fire beneath them that impels them to action. I suppose it isn't entirely based on a negative? According to Schopenhaeur it is. And I think him ultimately correct...

So just stick the fear in them (and perhaps some carrots in front of them) and watch them go. Through understanding the fears of each they are all real and interesting. Not just to the reader, but to the writer of course. It is perhaps the understanding of their fears that makes the writing it's most worthwhile. Trying to understand the different ways in which we each deal with our various fears.

And so each morning as they wake, what impels them to bother getting out of bed?

And it all falls apart as soon as you have a character who's fears you don't know yet whom you still have performing actions. Then you've just got random meaningless shit going on and why bother?
--
Watched What Happened to Jack Kerouac? Totally changed my opinion of Kerouac. I did think him the main character from On The Road. He wasn't, nor was that some shining ideal to him. It was something that just interested himi (and it was only one of many many books he wrote which were wildly different from each other). Keroauc(sp) was an intensely anti-Dean Moriarity person. He was perpetually nervous and perhaps a bit aspergers, though I don't like the label. He did though have a friend like Dean Moriarity that in some way fascinated him. To me it only makes sense when I actually see in my mind the relatively young Kerouac speak.

Must say it's a bit depressing in that one can write and write and write and it just doesn't come through. Then you hear them speak for 5 minutes and bamm! it makes sense. (At least until near the end when he drank himself to death. Then him speaking imparted nothing of much use.) Makes writing seem a futile exercise. Although it's not always like that.

...and I must say you absolutely don't get it from his writing plus seeing pictures of what he looked like: http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=yfp-t-701&va=jack+kerouac&sz=all
In fact that takes you even farther away from the reality of who this guy was. The idea of some macho cool guy that we get from On The Road is only heightened by seeing pictures of Keroauc such that one assumes that was some kind of ideal he was surely trying to emulate.

Pictures (of people) generally speaking it seems to me are a lie. They do more to take us away from the truth of people than bring us closer to it. Sometimes it's best not to attempt to explain a thing, because a partial explanation is almost certain to take us further away from the truth than we are if we're just completely in the dark.

If on the other hand, you can see the way a person moves...
---
From the movie also: What a prick William Buckley is. I don't see how anyone could hear/see him speak for any of his even typical 5 seconds of pretentiousness and not feel disgusted. How did the rightwingers not see it?

I think they liked that he came across as intelligent. Which being the party of the dumbasses has probably always been a sore spot for them. Now they've no one at all who can manage it, they've just got dumbasses like O'Reilly and so they've settled on smearing the left as elitist, etc. Something that they just could not have done while having such a nauseatingly pretentious prick like Buckley on TV.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. ~Ambrose Bierce

-

The swing between boredom and pain (fear more so than pain really), from tick tock to chop chop. Now I make that swing once again. Not so much chop chop now. A lot of boredom, nihilism. Looking at this world and being beyond disappointed. We might as well just chop chop chop all night long. We don't know how to do much else really.

When the chop chop was heavy I was really into going out occasionally with S, with D. Now I'm not. Now I just think that I've really nothing in common with these people other than sexual parts that fit together. And so perhaps it would be better if I didn't go out with them. What in the world ever was I thinking before? That being gregarious was some kind of good thing? Now with the chop chop not so looming over me I can look a bit more closely and see 'hanging out' with such people a bit better for what it is: a waste of time at best.

S though works 6 days a week and is struggling to survive. The chop chop is heavier for her and also she's younger. Hasn't realized how pointless it all is. In fact she may even be a virgin despite being 28. And I think she's adopted some nauseating positivity act to try to end that. It's sad that she's not found a man yet. I do find her very attractive. All the more reasons to stay away.

Really, no reason, not even close to enough in common, to warrant me having anything to do with anyone at all that I know who lives in the same state as me.

The alternative then, at first appears quite depressing. I've no children to distract me, to focus my life on. It's me and my wife. Whom, actually also I don't really have much in common with.

And so nihistically I ask: what is life? Other than merely surviving what are we doing?

Not much of anything really.

It seems life is so short though. A mere blink of the eye and it's past. And people spend the first 25 or so years just trying to get their survival secured. And then by about 40 they're all but finished. Nothing much to live for but whatever children they've got.

For me what can I do with my free time? Meaningless stuff.

And what I've got to do, I suppose, is narrow my focus so that I don't pay quite as much attention to how meaningless it is.

So then: Write. Which I seem to be getting better at. Compose. Read. Get around to playing some video games. Make stuff. Etc. Right now shall work on alphabetizing my library. (Fiction, nonfiction, odds and ends...) Then will upload my Vancouver pictures. Eat some stew. (Back to using the old crock pot.) Try to find some sleep in there before work tonight. I bet The Man Without Qualities by Musil will make me fall asleep. Etc, till I eventually die. And that's it. Other than merely surviving, that's it. That's all this life will hold for me. The main game is finding a way to continue bothering. Which, I think, consists of having a certain myopia. But at the same time I do want to not be too myopic, though it hurts me to not be so. Because I want to hold on to some extent always to the viewpoint where I've stepped back and see the bigger picture. No matter how awful it is.

Friday, November 27, 2009

War Machine Food

Throughout history when any two groups of humans have met the main factor in determining which group prevailed in the violence which almost always occured was the food that they ate. It was primarily a matter of luck in living near a food source that grew in the wild which could be domesticated and grown in such a manner that the ratio of calories to work hours was as high as possible. The main foods which accomplished this were wheat and rice. They originally grew in the wild in Asia and the Fertile Crescent. In North America corn was still tiny and not bred to be huge until relatively recently.

Wheat was able to expand to east and west, to relatively similar climates. The potatoes of South America couldn't so easily expand to the equator and then up into colder climes.

Basically there just wasn't much to work with in North America, in terms of a food that had a high ratio of calories to work hours. The best they managed was sunflowers actually.

In Africa also the options were not as good.

Same idea also held in terms of animals. African animals just weren't easily domesticated. Rhinos and cheetahs? They even tried actually to domesticate cheetahs but failed. There were no horses (zebras can't be domesticated). Now cows. Etc. Same in North America. A buffalo isn't quite as easy to work with as a cow...

Anyway, these cultures which had wheat and rice were able to specialize tasks. Fewer farmers, more beuracrats(sp), and professional soldiers.

Specialization in and of itself is a somewhat 'evil' thing. Furthermore this wheat, it's not actually all that healthy for you. The ratio of nutrients to calories in dark bread for example is roughly half that of what you get from a potato.

But so cultures like the Romans fed their peoples wheat. A crappy diet which probably lowered their life expectancy. But meant they could have a full time force of soldiers who just constantly went around attacking other peoples.

Wheat, especially, is a shitty food. Excuse me for talking about what is and isn't 'natural' but how less natural can you get than this grain which you have to grind up because it's completely impossible to otherwise digest?

One of the neat things that our wheat diet gives us, along with cancer from the resulting lack of nutrients is messed up bowels, as it sticks like glue. Hemorroids(sp), colon cancer... Hemorroids is particularly comical in that it affects a pretty sizable percentage of the population but it's largely a secret. And a primary cause is wheat products. Which are so overwhelmingly prevalent that few people have managed to remove them all and thus notice the role they play.

They also generally make people look like shit. They're fat, dumpy. And from the malnutrition their faces are pale. The food sits in their stomachs relatively like stones causing them to have less energy and generally sit around watching TV.

But they kill good. And it's efficient. Quality of life down the drain. But look who won?

All around us, it's the wheat world. Highly efficient, boring unvaried food, decreased life expectancy and feeling like shit. Other than meat, if ever there were an 'evil' food, it's wheat.

The Celts. They grew a ton of different foods. So many foods they regularly grew which are now lost to us. They had no chance against the Romans of course. Although they were more than a foot taller thanks in part to eating food that could actually properly nourish your body, they did not have a massive professional soldier class.

Joel Fuhrman advocates a diet which tries to maximize nutrient to calorie ratio. He points out that wheat has a bad ratio and starches in general do and should thus be minimized. John McDougal on the other hand (both advocate vegan diets as those are actually the healthiest(sp) way to eat) advocates far more starches. Why does he? Because everywhere he went in the real world he found only people that ate a lot of starches and in his genius he surmised that without all those starches you apparently would just sit around and starve to death or.. at least not have sufficient enery to bother reproducing.. (He actually argued this point with Fuhrman and that was why he thought Fuhrman was wrong.) Among other things he clearly hadn't read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. The reason we see only cultures that eat a ton of starches is because the growing of such 'efficient' foods meant more people could be devoted to killing. And so a more sane way of living was eventually murdered off.

In how we interact with one another and also in how we eat.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Veganism

There is an old story about Abraham Lincoln. Back when he was a lawyer and with a few fellows had to constantly travel from town to town he once came upon some baby birds. Their nest had fallen out of the tree it was in. Lincoln made the group stop and others to help him put the baby birds back into the nest and the nest back up in a tree. His fellows made fun of him for his "sentimentality". Lincoln simply said he could not have slept that night knowing he had left those baby birds to die on the ground.

His roommate at the time, a young teacher called Görlitz, later recalled that Van Gogh ate frugally, and preferred not to eat meat.[21][22]..."...he would not eat meat, only a little morsel on Sundays, and then only after being urged by our landlady for a long time. Four potatoes with a suspicion of gravy and a mouthful of vegetables constituted his whole dinner"—

"As told by Kafka's close friend Max Brod:

Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. "Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore."

Eating Meat, Jonathan Safran Foer, pg 36.

In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was "superior to [meat] in regard to both mechanical and mental performance". He also argued that animal slaughter was "wanton and cruel".[97]

Three or four ways to suffering:
1. The lack of a sufficient over I (super ego) to stand back and pay attention and judge your actions and whether or not they adhere to whatever moral laws you've made for yourself.
2. How much forethought, how far into the future you were looking when your 'I' (ego) established it's personal moral laws. Less forethought means less seemingly altruistic behavior and thus more causing harm towards others.
3. How good or bad you are at discernment. DO you demonize everyone around you?
4. Once you perceive someone is performing an action which causes 'unnecessary suffering' do you try to use force to get them to change their ways?

To me eating meat is symbolic that this world is pretty much hopeless. While there is much suffering that it is complicated to fix, eating meat is very straightforward and yet, still, people just don't care.

I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Foer this last week. It is primarily about the evils of factory farming although touches on the rest. Driving home from the airport with my wife I was thinking about how a sizable percentage of animals are skinned while still conscious and even have their legs, etc cut off while still conscious. Was thinking about this and feeling depressed and furthermore much more depressed that I live in a world where all of this is obvious enough to everyone but they just don't care.

I mentioned this fact about factory farming to my wife, about how they often don't successfully even render the animal unconscious before they start skinning, etc it.

Some of what she does in response:
Claims its awful time to bring it up. Why right now?

But no matter what time I bring it up it's an awful time. If she's in a good mood, why would I ruin it by bringing such a thing up? If she's in a bad mood, then I'd just be a sadist to bring up such a thing. So it's gone for years. It's always a bad time.

This though ties into the fact that indeed for ever thinking about such things period, yes I'm am some kind of sadist/masochist. Why would I ever think about something so negative?

This is the positivity cult. My wife is a member. Perhaps we're all members to some extent.

I try to point out how incredibly negative it actually is, to try to avoid ever thinking about anything negative. That it means you believe that nothing can ever be done about any negative thing and instead it's best just to pretend that such things don't exist.

It may be some kind of wisdom to take such an attitude to some extent. (Please lord grant me the courage to...) But going too far with such an attitude is incredibly negative. To instead at times face the horrors around us and try to be better, at least try to not contribute to them is courageous...

Then it's bad for one's health. How can she think that when her husband has been a very near vegan for 6 years and is pretty healthy? She thinks I'm a freak of nature. But still she could research the matter online very quickly. Or believe I'm being honest when I cite the literature at least....

Then, no really it's just about me trying to control people. I want to control her. I point out that this is demonizing me. Actually when two people disagree about something there's a decent chance one of them is wrong and the other is right. Why shouldn't they discuss the matter and give the reasoning, the facts behind their opinion?

To the best of my knowledge I've never caused a single person to become vegan or vegetarian. It does depress me. I work in a hospital even, a place where you might think people would care more about the suffering of others... Even my wife is completely closeminded, simply refuses to think about the subject at all. It does symbolize to me how hopeless the human race is, as what could be more obvious? Incredible suffering to those whom can't defend themselves, while also even hurting ourselves in the process and still almost everyone does it.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Demonizers, Force, Indifference.

You see what you think is indifference and demonize the person. And think the demon can only be controlled with force. They in turn see you the same and blah de bleh. (Seeing someone as a demonizer doesn't necessarily make you in turn one. Nor does the usage of the word...)

Anyway, this worked I suppose. This blog at least, if nothing else. Just need to find the power cord to my old laptop...

New house. Beautiful. (...no... it's not a sort of panglossianism...) There's something about the one room with the fake fireplace and the slanted high ceiling. That it's slanted may even be essential. Also feel less confined. Also fire. It is real fire. Something about sitting... lounging on a massive couch in front of a fire with no ceiling so close to one's head.

It's like the perfect room, somehow. It's an L shape. Three open rooms going 37 feet to the left. 30 feet to the right. 16 feet above. The fireplace on mid left and wondows on mid right facing a massive oval couch. 12 feet in diameter.

Outside yesterday in the yard: ten deer. There is a mom and her two children here everyday. Wasn't sure they'd find the corn in the grass. They really did. There was also a massive owl sitting in the grass one day. I'd never seen an owl in this area before. Was it eating corn? I'd thought them carnivores.

Off to Vancouver in a couple days. What to do there?

Health is very good. Back to grease the groove ("synaptic facillitation"). Sleeping decent. Some variant of it was always the best.

Those three concepts (demonizers, force, indifference..) they're one way to look at it. One way to (loosely) divide it. They work well.

Looking for massive pictures to hang on a few large walls. Not happy with what I've found. The 15th century is the best so far. Bosch still, actually. And I didn't realize how damm popular The Garden of Earthly Delights was.

Finishing up shelves for room. (Staining vertical surfaces didn't work well.) Probably done tomorrow. What to build next? Maybe something musical.

Still want some VST with alternate tone capabilities that can do more/sound better than homegrown piano. Maybe Z3TA.

I want better sounds in general.

I guess I've been really busy lately.

...as I reread Robin Hobb it's clearer than ever before. I won't be stumbling blindly through the wilderness quite so bad now. Still see the potential for taking big wrong turns though. It might be best to just reread a couple of her books over and over and over again. Hopefully noticing more and more. The seeming imperfections. And the greater problems that attempting to "fix" them would cause.

This desktop is in a 7 by 7 foot room which was meant to serve as a very large closet. The main room it's off of has the massive book shelves I'm building. This little room has no window. I shall probably just use it for music usually. Laptop downstairs is the best room. I slept on the massive half oval couch today from 9AM to 5PM. I've noticed the light matters not to me at all. Windows open with sun shining in. Doesn't bother me at all.

Finally, a thing which I find it seems must remain unspoken. For to speak it seems to shatter it. But left unspoken I fear I'll forget it. But the latter worries me much less.

A giving up. A melancholy. And ultimately an overall substantial increase in happiness.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

the study found that Americans' discussion networks have shrunk by about one-third since 1985 and have become less diverse because they contain fewer non-family members.

That is a really significant fact. Absurdly though the study appears to be trying to trying to claim that:

Contrary to popular belief, technology is not leading to social isolation and Americans who use the Internet and mobile phones have larger and more diverse social networks, according to a new study.

"All the evidence points in one direction," said Keith Hampton, lead author of the report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project released Wednesday. "People's social worlds are enhanced by new communication technologies.

"It is a mistake to believe that Internet use and mobile phones plunge people into a spiral of isolation," said Hampton, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania.


The pretext for this claim being:
It found that on average, the size of people's discussion networks is 12 percent larger among mobile phone users, nine percent larger for those who share photos online, and nine percent bigger for those who use instant messaging.

The diversity of people's core networks tends to be 25 percent larger for mobile phone users, 15 percent larger for basic Internet users, and even larger for frequent Internet users, those who use instant messaging, and those who share digital photos online.


Which actually appears only to show that extroverted people are also using newer technologies to continue (to some degree) being extroverted while less extroverted people are (of course) using such technologies less so. This would appear to be basically a tautology. Extroverted people are extroverted. Not remotely proof that new technologies aren't leading to increasing isolation.

Meanwhile in the last 25 years 'discussion networks' have shrunk by one third.

All and all the article reminds me of Brawndo.

Seemingly an incredibly stupid article. But again with this one disconcerting sentence in it:
the study found that Americans' discussion networks have shrunk by about one-third since 1985 and have become less diverse because they contain fewer non-family members.

Which is surely doubleplusungood. Surely a huge change in our society. And yet barely even noticed. Instead we have a cheery article which reminds me of Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided. Where the 'negative' people are often just fired.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009



Paintings can conjure up alternate worlds maybe a little better than pictures usually manage. Want to keep this picture in mind as I make a story.



Partially cut off here (which ruins it). I like these two early pictures of his better than his famous stuff.

---

Rereading Robin Hobb's Ship of Magic. Every single good character is experiencing a considerable degree of suffering. How is it not miserable to read?

http://www.meganlindholm.com/2009/08/19/procrastination/

My previous post about my somewhat passive aggressive coworker. Her books are largely that sort of thing. With a tiny bit of magic thrown in.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Lately I've been having this new feeling of amazement. Usually it only really lasts for a few seconds. But the echoes of its memory go on for quite a while. It is about this feeling of what happiness there could be in this world. Of what happiness potentially there is in me. Of how so very easily things could be so wonderful.

But they're not.

And why? Why oh why?

Because people keep on doing ugly things to one another. Because they keep being indifferent to one another.

And I focus in on specific examples from my own life. Examples of people who've done me so wrong. Who never apologize. Just leave behind forever the ugly memory of what they've done. Never right the wrong and just leave the knife in forever. And for no good reason at all.

And so, I see a beautiful world in my mind. It's so close. And yet will never be. Because these people choose instead to act in such an ugly manner.

..And I just feel this amazement about it.

Why?

Why in the world would they choose to make the world like this?

But, don't get me wrong. It's mostly a positive feeling actually. Because I see that beautiful world. I see what could be.

And I do my part. It maybe isn't worth much. But I continue to do what I can. And try to figure out how to be more efficient in my efforts.
Think of it as a massive experiment in mind control. "Reality sucks," a computer scientist with a master's degree who can find only short-term, benefit-free contract jobs told me. But you can't change reality, at least not in any easy and obvious way. You could join a social movement working to create an adequate safety net or to bring about more humane corporate policies, but those efforts might take a lifetime. For now, you can only change your perception of reality, from negative and bitter to positive and accepting. This was the corporate world's great gift to it's laid-ff employees and the overworked survivors--positive thinking.

Companies brought in motivational speakers for an ever growing number of corporate meetings. Whatever else goes on at these meetings--the presentation of awards, the introduction of new executives--the "entertainment" is usually provided by motivational speakers. As Vicki Sullivan, who follows the market for such speakers, said, corporations are the "sugar daddies" of the motivational speaking industry. "At some point," she told me in an interview, employers realized it was not enough to expose people to familar positive-thinking nostrums like "Don't read newspapers or talk to negative people." Instead she said, "What they've learned is that you have to go beyond that, as change happens faster and faster. You have to use motivational speakers to help people hang in there."

...The burgeoning genre of business self-help books provided another way to get white-collar workers to adapt to downsizing. Of these, the classic of downsizing propaganda was Who Moved My Cheese?, which has sold ten million copies, in no small part due to companies that bought it in bulk for their employees. Perhaps in recognition of the fact that it would fall into the hands of many reluctant readers, it's a tiny volume, only ninety-four pages of large print, offering the kind of fable appropriate to a children's book. Two little maze-dwelling, cheese-eating people named Hem and Haw--for the human tendency to think and reflect--arrive at their "Cheese Station" one day to find that the cheese is gone. The "Littlepeople" waste time ranting and raving "at the injustice of it all," as the book's title suggests. But there are also two mice in the maze, who scurry off without hesitation to locate an alternative cheese source, because, being rodents, they "kept life simple. They didn't overanalyze or overcomplicate things."

Finally the little humans learn from the mice that they may have to adapt to a new cheese. Haw uses what amounts to the law of attraction to find it: he starts to "paint a picture in his mind... in great realistic detail, [of himself] sitting in the middle of a pile of all his favorite cheeses--from Cheddar to Brie!" Instead of resenting the loss of his old cheese, he realizes, more positively, that "change could lead to something better" and is soon snacking on a "delicious" new cheese. Lesson for victims of layoffs: the dangerous human tendencies to "overanalyze" and complian must be overcome for a more rodentlike approach to life. When you lose a job, just shut up and scamper along to the next one.

...By and large, America's white-collar corporate workforce drank the Kool-aid, as the expression goes, and accepted positive thinking as a substitute for their former affluence and security. They did not take to the streets, shift their political allegiance in large numbers, or show up at work with automatic weapons in hand. As one laid-off executive told me with quiet pride, "I've gotten over my negative feelings, which were so dysfunctional." Positive thinking promised them a sense of control in a world where the "cheese" was always moving. They may have had less and less power to chart their own futures, but they had been given a worldview--a belief system, almost a religion--that claimed they were in fact infinitely powerful, if only they could master their own minds.


Bright-Sided, Ehrenreich. pg 116

Saturday, October 31, 2009

She walks in the large report room in the morning for a day shift: "___, I heard all you did all night was watch Tales From The Darkside!"

What response am I supposed to give? Is this supposed to be funny? Or is she accusing me of being lazy? What's funny about it? The look on my face I suppose, as I sit there baffled, annoyed and slightly fearful of how I can respond to these constant disparaging remarks. Yes, that's real funny I'm sure to her.

----

(Phone rings, I look at the caller ID. Same number that's called at least ten times tonight. They've called so many times we don't bother to introduce ourselves to each other.) I pick up and say: "1134A's in the bathroom."
"Yes, thank you."
"Thank you."

She overhears and says: "Is that how you answer the phone?" Then pantomines what I said but while sounding vaguely retarded.

Is she just being funny or should I defend myself by explaining the whole situation to this person who isn't my boss? Other than explaining what am I supposed to do? Laugh? There's nothing funny at all whatsoever. Just completely ignore her? Then am I being rude in her eyes?

----

i walk into the med room. She's in there with another nurse. With a perfectly serious look on her face she says: "I was back in Stepdown for 15 minutes and I didn't see anyone."

Then she waits expectantly for a response...

"I was in with a patient doing trach care and some other things."

Still very serious and admonishing: "____, someone needs to be back there at all times." Then looks at me with an expectant and still serious face.

"...are you trying to be funny or something?"

The other girl there looking uncomfortable finally manages a laugh and says: "JM is always trying to be funny."

The first girl smiles and says: "Trying? I am funny!" Then walks away.

----

Way back as a nurses aide this person actually took me aside for a private meeting to discuss my failings as a nurses aide. She was full of shit then. Claiming I had done things I hadn't. She was just trying to help me out she said. She was 'concerned' for me. Instead of getting annoyed with her I held my tongue and acted as if I was grateful for her kind guidance in the incredibly complex duties of wiping very sick people's asses.

Still she apparently managed to get upset based on this inappropriate private meeting she had with me. As she then bizarrely ran around talking to the air about being open with people and just getting something negative in return. Wish I remembered the exact words. Surely she was talking about me. But I was sitting right there. And I had tried to be civil with her for her private meeting. How effing bizarre. Er, what the hell am I supposed to do with such as that?

Then followed 6 months of constant jokes about how I couldn't even pull people up in bed.

---

Then two nurses years with 20 years experience apparently tried to have a 'private meeting' with her. To discuss her inappropriate behavior. Excessive flirting with doctors. Spending 50% of her time just following around some guy who worked there instead of taking care of her patients. Instead of going to the boss they attempted to talk to her. Exactly as she had earlier complained that she wished people would do with one another.

She utterly dismissed what they said and has now spent a solid year smearing them behind their back. Walking into a crowd of ten employees and going on and on about it. Basically literally making sure everyone knows how awful they are. And indeed successfully turning some people against them.

What do I do with such a person? Who is now coming to full time night shift to constantly be passive aggressive with me. She confronts me as perfectly serious as can be, constantly. Then just waits for a reaction from me. Why? She gets a kick out of me not knowing how in the hell to respond to her constant attacks. Then, usually, claims, "Oh I was just kidding." Etc. But at the same time she's clearly not joking.
It annoys me sometimes how vaguely defined is the word 'love'. The reason it is this way I think is because people want to think they feel exactly the same about one another in a relationship. At least some people do anyway. And so they can say they both 'love' each other while having very different albeit positive feelings for one another. The word is so vague because almost never do people feel exactly the same about one another.

It's an unfortunate thing. People have to hide the truth from one another. Our language in this case simply keeps things as vague as they must be. Could this be the case for language in general? Is hiding the truth always important? With the ability to communicate with one another with far greater clarity, with the resulting all around increase in clarity of thought, what would happen?

It seems to me to be the evolutionary edge. Where again, we have ways in which we must be dumb to make up for being too smart. The edge being the point at which our evolving intelligence (which we used to kill all other species) causes us to self destruct.......... And so we must pull back from what we might know.

---





Alan Watts has a beautiful voice. Otherwise not so sure I agree with a lot of what he says.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

One has to still believe in people's potential while recognizing the stupidity behind their actions. One has to somehow still believe in their potential while recognizing their willful ignorance. If you don't believe in their potential then you're basically believing that they're evil, that they must be punished in order to learn to be good, that they must have fear in them to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Must somehow believe they have potential despite their willful ignorance. Despite their closedmind.

But how do they really have any potential when such is the case? In the face of the closed mind what is left really but anger and force?

The mind is closed because of fear. Have to reduce their fear enough that it opens...
What has changed, in the last few years, is that the advice to at least act in a positive way has taken on a harsher edge. The penalty for nonconformity is going up, from the possibility of job loss and failure to social shunning and complete isolation. In his 2005 best seller, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker, found of "Peak Potentials Training," advices that negative people have to go, even, presumably, the ones that you live with: "Identify a situation or a person who is a downer in your life. Remove yourself from that situation or association. If it's family, choose to be around them less." In fact, this advice has become a staple of the self help literature, of both the secular and Christian varieties. "GET RID OF NEGATIVE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE." writes motivational speaker and coach Jeffrey Gitomer. "They waste your time and bring you down. If you can't get rid of them (like a spouse or a boss), reduce your time with them." And if that isn't clear enough, J. P. Maroney, a motivational speaker who styles himself "the Pitbull of Business," announces:

Negative People SUCK!
That may sound harsh, but the fact is that negative people do suck. They suck the energy out of positive people like you and me. They suck the energy and life out of a good company, a good team, a good relationship... Avoid them at all cost. If you have to cut ties with people you've known for a long time because they're actually a negative drain on you, then so be it. Trust me, you're better off without them.


What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the "negative people" from one's life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it's probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoyin people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank's subprime mortgage exposure or the auto excutive who questions the company's overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who "brings you down," and you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality. The challenege of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the moods of others, accomodating to their insights, and offering comfort when needed.

But in the world of positive thinking other people are not there to be nurtured or to provide unwelcome reality checks. They are there only to nourish, praise, and affirm. Harsh as this dictum sounds, many ordinary people adopt it as their creed, displaying wall plaques or bumper stickers showing the word "Whining" with a cancel sign through it. There seems to be a massive empathy deficit, which people respond to be withdrawing their own. No one has the time of patience for anyone else's problems.

In mid-2006, a Kansas City pastor put the growing ban on "negativity" into practice, announcing that his church would now be "complaint free." Also, there would be no criticising, gossiping, or sarcasm. To reprogram the congregation, the Reverend Will Bowen distributed purple silicone bracelets that were to be worn as reminders. The goal? Twenty-one complaint-free days, after which the complaining habit would presumably be broken. If the wearer broke down and complained about something, then the bracelet was to be transferred to the other wrist. This bold attack on negativity brought Bowen a spread in People magazine and a spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Within a few months, his church had given out 4.5 million purple bracelets to people in over eighty countries. He envisions a complaint-free world and boasts that his bracelets have been distributed within schools, prisons, and homeless shelters. There is no word yet on how successful they have been in the latter two settings.

So the claim that acting in a positive way leads to success becomes self-fulfilling, at least in the negative sense that not doing so can lead to more profound forms of failure, such as rejection by employers or even one's fellow worshipers. When the gurus advise dropping "negative" people, they are also issuing a warning: smile and be agreeable, go with the flow--or prepare to be ostracized.

It is not enough, though, to cull the negative people from one's immediate circle of contacts; information about the larger human world must be carefully censored. All the world must be carefully censored. All the motivators and gurus of positivity agree that it is a mistake to read newspapers or watch the news....

...This retreat from the real drama and tragedy of human events is suggestive of a deep helplessness at the core of positive thinking. Why not follow the news? Because, as my informant at the NSA meeting told me, "You can't do anything about it." Braley similary dismisses reports of disasters: "That's negative news that can cause you emotional sadness, but that you can't do anything about." The possibilities of contributing to relief funds, joining an antiwar movement, or lobbying for more humane government policies are not even considered. But at the very least there seems to be an acknowledgement here that no amount of attitude adjustment can make good news out of headlines beginning with "Civilian casualties mount..." or "Famine spreads..."

Of course, if the powers of the mind truly "infinite," one wholdnot have to eliminate negative people from one's life either; one could, for example, simply choose to interpret their behavior in a positive way--maybe he's critizing me for my own good, maybe she's being sullen because she likes me so much and I haven't been attentive, and so on. The advice that you must change your environment--for example, by eliminating negative people and news--is an admission that there may in fact be a "real world" out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying possibility, the only "positive" response is to withdraw into one's own carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news and smiling people.


Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided. pg 55.

Not only does this absurd "positivity" have negative results. The need to do it in the first place strongly suggests that at heart the practitioner has an incredibly negative outlook on the world. It suggests they don't believe problems can be solved and it's best to just pretend like none are present. Just smile and ignore all problems and ignore anyone who isn't doing the same, as what else could possibly be done? Making long term changes are hopeless. Just pretend everything is already fine.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1_E6pHa3hc
What happened to the good music?!!

(Puberty most likely quit happening. But the music corporation monopoly is increasing....)

--

Figured out a way to apply composing music to writing. In music instead of trying to write that perfect song that will change the world, that will make me famous. Instead of going down that kind of sick industrialized road where there's one artist for hundreds of thousands or millions I've somewhat embraced the random.

The random as opposed to this nebulous word: 'creativity'. Maybe the two can be thought of as opposities. A story, a musical track, the notes, the elements can seem relatively random or they can seem to be the perfect thing which brings it all together in such a useful way.

My music is held back because of worrying about the random. Drums especially. Why am I changing the drums here? Why not just the same repetitive beat the whole way? I'm just randomly making a change.

With the knowledge a thing is totally mindless, totally random, I hold back from bothering. The same issues arises in writing stories except worse. There are so many possibilites. It can't be helped that something random is going on to some extent.

The way forward with music has been simple curiousity. How would certain relatively random elements sound when put together?

Then of course to some extent it's not just random. Things do 'fit' together.

And this curiosity is a short term immediate reward. And there must be an immediate reward.

Same idea holds with writing. Embrace some level of the random. Just be curious about combining certain elements while looking for an immediate reward.

--

I got the swine flu vaccination and the influenza one. Very conflicted about such thiings. Modern medicine is so often just wrong. My sister got the swine flu vaccine and missed a couple days work she was so sick. My coworker also got pretty sick. I got it this morning at 8AM and then slept till now. It's affecting my hands. They're very slightly uncontrollably shaking. Hard to type. Almost like a neuropathy. Like a bad reaction... Oh well. I deserve Indian food today.

Sunday, October 25, 2009
















Saturday, October 24, 2009

Mostly finished moving. It's a beautiful house. Doesn't really feel like mine. One of my speakers blew. But it was free (a nice one too). And coincidentally someone just offered me some other really good speakers.
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...Saints would maybe have awful humor. Because that which is unexpectedly wrong is funny. So they'd think treating people badly was unexpected? Lady at work is either a saint or just very passive agressive. A year or so back I apparently didn't pull exactly on the count of three for pulling up some lady in bed (someone so light that I could pull up with one hand by myself). For an entire year she then made sure to mention that I couldn't even pull people up in bed, while making it sound like she was just joking around. Everytime I see her she makes some such disaparaging remark as if it's a joke.

Today she says, "I heard all you did all night was watch Tales From The Darkside!" (Haha!) (...How the hell is that even funny?) I worked my effing ass off. I didn't stop moving the first 6 hours I was there. But she makes it sound like she's joking, so defending myself would be inappropriate, but at the same time... like I really did just sit on my ass all night. Every single time it's something like this and I'm getting incredibly fucking tired of her.

This time though the big thing was a doctor told me something that I was afraid might kill a patient. Rather than get into a big argument with an inexperienced doctor, I asked a few experienced nurses what to do and they gave what seemed like good advice. Good advice when not taking into account that this saint/passive agressive lady was my replacement. I don't think it's because she's a saint. It would be nice if such were the case. I'm fatigued at the moment and really sick of her criticisms of the last year or so. In this case she acted as if she couldn't understand what I was asking her to do, the cooperation I was asking and instead put me in the position of potentially getting in huge trouble; acting like she was clueless that she was doing so. And as if not following a doctor's orders was no big deal. There comes a point when where after three days of sleep deprivation and 14 hour work days, when someone's been having a go at you for a year plus where I really want to just tell her off. Ask her if she understands the concept of being passive aggressive, etc.

But there's actually no way at all to even attempt to point out there's any problem with her behavior. A year ago two much more experienced nurses tried to take her aside and give some helpful criticism about her behavior. She's spent the last year smearing them behind their back as a result. And it appears management took her side. At least appears.

I think she probably is just being passive aggressive and doesn't even realize it. One has to somehow try to get along with such people. Or at the least get them to focus on going after someone else. Or you eventually get fired. Management certainly doesn't want to be bothered with the petty little fights. I guess a thing to remember is that it doesn't appear that her constant disparaging remarks have caused (hardly) anyone else to think I'm a bad worker. Although let's see what she does with this latest one. I expect her to try to ruin me. I'll spend my three days off thinking about it.

I would really like to ask her sometime, "Is that supposed to be funny or are you just trying to make it sound funny so that you can get away with constantly criticizing me?"

The other side is that of sainthood.

Say a person has some work stress, issues of being unfairly smeared as a slacker and/or as inept (such issues are in the back of probably every single worker's mind). To relieve such stress you pretend like such issues aren't really expected wrongs. You pretend like they're unexpected and constantly bring them up as if they're jokes to try to help deal with them, negate them.

Except I don't know if you're actually a saint. At times you really don't appear to be one. And more often than not you're not even remotely funny.

Was thinking the position of The Left is thinking the best of others usually. I've tried to do so. Usually I get angry, think negatively of people exactly because they clearly aren't thinking the best of others. The problem is that you leave yourself wide open to be hurt when you're always thinking good of everyone. Is this lady some kind of bizarre passive aggressive person who is trying to ruin me or is she really some kind of saint?

I'm probably just incredibly sleep deprived. Tried a new exercise program. High rep stuff which quickly gets me in better shape. But has caused insomnia. I should have taken some benedryl I guess at least. I'm dead tired. Feel as if I've had about as much as I can stand.