Part of what's so great about cats is that they don't speak, thus there is an unknown, a mystery, a something that we can fill with good things, I think. But maybe not. But anyway, this is to say that love of cats is tied into love of magic. Because that's what the unknown is, the benevolent unknown anyway, which a cuddly cat is, cuddly thus benevolent, mostly mute and thus forever unknown. It's the suggestion of magic.
Never use the word 'magic' or 'mystery' in fantasy fiction. In general don't spell things out so clearly. Realizing that you're baldly contemplating magic can ruin the enjoyment of such contemplations.
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I hate dialogue. But worse I hate when characters first meet. There is virtually no realistic real life correlary. Read world first meetings are virtually always (99.99%) way too boring to ever read about. The alternative is that it just can't be realistic. So then, usually, characters have already met. And such first meeting is not written about.
...And if it's a story of a person going to another world where he doesn't know anyone....? Then what, he just forever wanders in isolation?
First meetings just can't be very realistic, I guess. Although this is problematic, I want a sort of extreme realism with regards to piercing the obscurity of the minute processes of human life, yet still want it to be entertaining and... bearable. Realistic first meetings... don't bother with the dialogue... just sum up what's actually going on perhaps...
Finally, to be realistic: We go through life almost completely alone. In decades we accumulate a few real friends and otherwise have temporary convenient aquaintances.
...so it must be convenient aquaintances, if one actually wanted to adhere to the idea of piercing the obscurity of the minute processes of human life. If one could stand to... No other way to be real and not boring I think.
Perhaps instead mess with being unreal here and there.
Additional problem with one person alone in another world, when first meeting people is if one is being realistic, he has absolutely no clue what the social norms are in said world and would mainly just be hesitant and again mired in boring stuff if one were to be realistic.
The escapist man-traveling-to-another-world-idea just doesn't work so well with realism, of course. (Well, it could.) Best solution is he is from the other world. And does at least know the customs somewhat.
He's from the other world, just in a new area, finally on his own. Next needs to have some common goal which causes temporary convenient aquaintances. The best thing to bring people together is some common enemy. (Invented here much like the women at work are constantly inventing enemies to slander in order to bring theirselves together.)
Slight variant on the same story told over and over. Common enemy brings people together.
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
One more time, but with feeling!
I listen with microphones and a 20 pound mini puma from thighs to ear adding his loud purrs to the music.
Holding a cat is like holding a sophisticated amoeba. It's like holding a piece of our roots; remembering the animals that to a large extent we still are. This one acts as if he's got siamese in him. But I bred him because his dad was so smart. (Yes, I know the proper vegan stance on breeding but among other things (don't entirely agree with it) I wasn't vegan back then.) I picked out his dad from a litter because he sat there looking so intelligent. It is an ability we have from an evolutionary standpoint to be able to see to some extent what people are and this cat looked so smart. And most certainly one can (or at least I can) look at an animal and tell about how smart they are. I guess (apparently) not everyone is as good at this. I love to do it. Seeing and contemplating the intelligence in the eyes of animals gives me a strange thrill. Why? (The mystery? Love of intelligence. Love of our animal roots, etc.)
This one (Loki) is so talkative and loving. Loki loves his cat tv (bird feeders) and tries to talk to the birds just like his dad did. He loves hard and then leaves you alone.
I love how he and his mom and sister remind me of our distant roots. But I hate that they're carnivores. Vegan cat food just isn't perfected yet. As of now cats do need meat to survive.
I've chased chickens around a coop to be slaughtered. They know to run. I remember clearly looking a caught chicken in the eyes. It was afraid. That's enough to know. Cows and pigs much more so than chickens. They have personalities. They feel pain.
I think about what I'm doing when I eat. The less you think, the less you exist. I ate meat for 30 years ridiculously thinking it was necessary for good health and that whole time I felt a little disgusted with myself. I know full well what it is to be a meat eater. It's about not thinking. The key to it is to be oblivious, to be stupid, to simply have a big blank spot where your understanding would be. And that blank spot is more disgusting and revolting than the corpses touching your lips. When I realized I didn't need to eat meat or boob juice or chicken periods I was so happy. There was no, "Gee, this might be hard, better make it a gradual process." The process was instant and permanent. (Well except for a bit of boob juice here and there in chocolate etc as being 'pure' would be a pain in the ass where I live.)
It is still the most happiest thing in my life. I don't have to kill anyone (well OK bugs here and there incidentally, etc) in order to continue living myself. How wonderful. How awful when I thought otherwise. I literally had the anguish as in the Anne Rice vampire books.
But still I must turn a piece of my mind off too; as I don't know a single vegan in my real world. So focusing on just how empty people's minds are would just be torturous; especially when they see me, when they see that not only do I not look like I'm about to keel over but that I most likely could kick their ass with one arm tied behind my back. Like politics, it is ultimately beyond the pale.
In politics you can be shocked and morally outraged over and over and over again and eventually, what are you accomplishing?
What makes a Chomsky continue on?
Morals are ultimately utilitarian/consequentialist in nature. IMO they are self interest with some degree of long term forethought. We attempt to predict the future. We attempt to foresee the consequences and on that basis we decide the most moral action. But then of course it's impossible to actually predict the future. The biggest problem of all is knowing how much future there will be. Furthermore actually calculating the most moral action could be very complex from day to day so although the basis of our moral codes are consequentialist, in our day to day living we end up following what looks more like an absolute code.
And with respect to this absolute code, when we 'do the right thing' we can then feel pride with ourselves for having done so. We can feel good about ourselves. We can feel that we've played the game well.
Someone like Chomsky must feel such pride in himself. And so he just keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again. Not much has actually been accomplished but as he sees it, there's not much else he can do.
If I were prominent as political gadfly like Chomsky perhaps I'd do the same. But some of these other people with their little leftist blogs which I skim here and there. It's harder to see what keeps them going. What keeps them so shocked and all. At some point I would think they ought to stray back to consequentialism... instead of being 'deontologial'. All that being shocked isn't changing anything. People keep on treating each other with the same indifference as they do to animals.
Keeping it deontoligical I guess you can continue to feel pride for 'doing the right thing'. Step out to the bigger consequentialist picture and the only reason left I can think of is just feeling pride about being erudite and knowledgeable.
Neither does much for me. But although I'm curious why they bother and don't do so myself and thus (obviously) think it wrong (but not closemindedly), I'm still glad someone is. Personally talking about imperialism in whatever it's guise has become beyond the pale to me though, for the most part.
Beyond the pale in the sense of being a moral outrage overload I suppose. I prefer to be morally outraged about things that aren't so obvious. Because with being less obvious you can at least entertain the hope that people just haven't yet understood it, and once they do, then instead of the indifference they've shown with veganism and politics (veganism just straight up indifference for the vast majority and for politics, too indifferent to ever go beyond the TV and other media owned by the billionaires to hear a different point of view) then maybe (not!) they'd actually change.
I listen with microphones and a 20 pound mini puma from thighs to ear adding his loud purrs to the music.
Holding a cat is like holding a sophisticated amoeba. It's like holding a piece of our roots; remembering the animals that to a large extent we still are. This one acts as if he's got siamese in him. But I bred him because his dad was so smart. (Yes, I know the proper vegan stance on breeding but among other things (don't entirely agree with it) I wasn't vegan back then.) I picked out his dad from a litter because he sat there looking so intelligent. It is an ability we have from an evolutionary standpoint to be able to see to some extent what people are and this cat looked so smart. And most certainly one can (or at least I can) look at an animal and tell about how smart they are. I guess (apparently) not everyone is as good at this. I love to do it. Seeing and contemplating the intelligence in the eyes of animals gives me a strange thrill. Why? (The mystery? Love of intelligence. Love of our animal roots, etc.)
This one (Loki) is so talkative and loving. Loki loves his cat tv (bird feeders) and tries to talk to the birds just like his dad did. He loves hard and then leaves you alone.
I love how he and his mom and sister remind me of our distant roots. But I hate that they're carnivores. Vegan cat food just isn't perfected yet. As of now cats do need meat to survive.
I've chased chickens around a coop to be slaughtered. They know to run. I remember clearly looking a caught chicken in the eyes. It was afraid. That's enough to know. Cows and pigs much more so than chickens. They have personalities. They feel pain.
I think about what I'm doing when I eat. The less you think, the less you exist. I ate meat for 30 years ridiculously thinking it was necessary for good health and that whole time I felt a little disgusted with myself. I know full well what it is to be a meat eater. It's about not thinking. The key to it is to be oblivious, to be stupid, to simply have a big blank spot where your understanding would be. And that blank spot is more disgusting and revolting than the corpses touching your lips. When I realized I didn't need to eat meat or boob juice or chicken periods I was so happy. There was no, "Gee, this might be hard, better make it a gradual process." The process was instant and permanent. (Well except for a bit of boob juice here and there in chocolate etc as being 'pure' would be a pain in the ass where I live.)
It is still the most happiest thing in my life. I don't have to kill anyone (well OK bugs here and there incidentally, etc) in order to continue living myself. How wonderful. How awful when I thought otherwise. I literally had the anguish as in the Anne Rice vampire books.
But still I must turn a piece of my mind off too; as I don't know a single vegan in my real world. So focusing on just how empty people's minds are would just be torturous; especially when they see me, when they see that not only do I not look like I'm about to keel over but that I most likely could kick their ass with one arm tied behind my back. Like politics, it is ultimately beyond the pale.
In politics you can be shocked and morally outraged over and over and over again and eventually, what are you accomplishing?
What makes a Chomsky continue on?
Morals are ultimately utilitarian/consequentialist in nature. IMO they are self interest with some degree of long term forethought. We attempt to predict the future. We attempt to foresee the consequences and on that basis we decide the most moral action. But then of course it's impossible to actually predict the future. The biggest problem of all is knowing how much future there will be. Furthermore actually calculating the most moral action could be very complex from day to day so although the basis of our moral codes are consequentialist, in our day to day living we end up following what looks more like an absolute code.
And with respect to this absolute code, when we 'do the right thing' we can then feel pride with ourselves for having done so. We can feel good about ourselves. We can feel that we've played the game well.
Someone like Chomsky must feel such pride in himself. And so he just keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again. Not much has actually been accomplished but as he sees it, there's not much else he can do.
If I were prominent as political gadfly like Chomsky perhaps I'd do the same. But some of these other people with their little leftist blogs which I skim here and there. It's harder to see what keeps them going. What keeps them so shocked and all. At some point I would think they ought to stray back to consequentialism... instead of being 'deontologial'. All that being shocked isn't changing anything. People keep on treating each other with the same indifference as they do to animals.
Keeping it deontoligical I guess you can continue to feel pride for 'doing the right thing'. Step out to the bigger consequentialist picture and the only reason left I can think of is just feeling pride about being erudite and knowledgeable.
Neither does much for me. But although I'm curious why they bother and don't do so myself and thus (obviously) think it wrong (but not closemindedly), I'm still glad someone is. Personally talking about imperialism in whatever it's guise has become beyond the pale to me though, for the most part.
Beyond the pale in the sense of being a moral outrage overload I suppose. I prefer to be morally outraged about things that aren't so obvious. Because with being less obvious you can at least entertain the hope that people just haven't yet understood it, and once they do, then instead of the indifference they've shown with veganism and politics (veganism just straight up indifference for the vast majority and for politics, too indifferent to ever go beyond the TV and other media owned by the billionaires to hear a different point of view) then maybe (not!) they'd actually change.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Murakami's Kafka on the Shore
If someone like Steven King put in a scene with cats being tortured I'd be really annoyed at such a crude attempt to elicit an emotional response from me. Murakami has such a scene in this book but it's interesting in how it works OK. We're seeing it from the POV of a mentally retarded character, Nakata, who can't feel anger. And the perpetrator has just begged Nakata to kill him. There is this feeling of Nakata trying to grow and become something more than what he has been. Plus the dreamy feeling of the first 144 pages of this novel. All weighed against the horror of this guy slicing up cats and eating out their hearts.
Murakami manages to not just piss me off. On an emotional level the idea of cats being tortured I think bothers me more than humans would. I wouldn't pass the Blade Runner cyborg test I guess.
Murakami manages to not just piss me off. On an emotional level the idea of cats being tortured I think bothers me more than humans would. I wouldn't pass the Blade Runner cyborg test I guess.
Monday, December 8, 2008
The mystery writing gimmick taken to the ridiculous:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122489468502968839.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Not using quotes to designate that which is spoken outloud.
-----
lockedupwv.com
Unfortunately all the criminal pictures aren't online. A copy of the whole thing was at work. Such beautiful people. Their stories are almost leaping off of their mug shot photos. The pedophile page was the least interesting by far. The others would be very useful for sparking writing.
----
Got a cute picture of one of my cat shelters in use. But then he didn't eat his food at all last night and isn't around today. And it looks like big dog footprints in the snow around his shelter. Or is it just the melting snow making his feet look bigger?
I enjoy worrying about this cat. Reminds me of my old (artificial) pond at my last house. Twas so beautiful. 60 colorful large fish (reproduced over three years) that I fed two or three times a day and helped pushed me to wonderful veganism. (To just lay in the swing and read Proust...) But my one partially crippled (wobbly) cat fell in and ripped the liner thus I came out one day and the water level was a foot down! With much work I fixed it but then ever after (till we moved and the person who bought it had the beautiful pond filled in) I had endless "nightmares" about leaky ponds with fish flapping around as they die on the empty bottom. But, with each dream I created a beautiful pond. 50 level ponds with waterfalls, crazy aqueducts systems, etc. Such beautiful dreams, well worth the worry.
Had a great nightmare last night which I can't remember now... Oh yes, didn't finish some crucial school assignment and was thus ruined forever and ever. Before that a vampire nightmare due to my wife's reading that new low brow vampire series.
Yesterday was crazy. Scary hour drive to work through bad snow covered roads. Running in to clock in just in time and pulled to bone marrow for 4 hours, then pulled elsewhere for another 4 hours, then finally back to normal workplace for 4 hours, then boss gives yearly job evaluation, (I hate 'The Boss' just as a matter of principle... but she's so likable and kind of sexy... and knows stuff like Klinger's hometown baseball team... and likes me) then an online quiz at home all in a nice little 17 hour day. Finished off with a nightmare about my life being ruined.
And... my eye has been twitching for the last month and is just getting worse. Just staying in a permanent twitch at times now.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122489468502968839.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Not using quotes to designate that which is spoken outloud.
-----
lockedupwv.com
Unfortunately all the criminal pictures aren't online. A copy of the whole thing was at work. Such beautiful people. Their stories are almost leaping off of their mug shot photos. The pedophile page was the least interesting by far. The others would be very useful for sparking writing.
----
Got a cute picture of one of my cat shelters in use. But then he didn't eat his food at all last night and isn't around today. And it looks like big dog footprints in the snow around his shelter. Or is it just the melting snow making his feet look bigger?
I enjoy worrying about this cat. Reminds me of my old (artificial) pond at my last house. Twas so beautiful. 60 colorful large fish (reproduced over three years) that I fed two or three times a day and helped pushed me to wonderful veganism. (To just lay in the swing and read Proust...) But my one partially crippled (wobbly) cat fell in and ripped the liner thus I came out one day and the water level was a foot down! With much work I fixed it but then ever after (till we moved and the person who bought it had the beautiful pond filled in) I had endless "nightmares" about leaky ponds with fish flapping around as they die on the empty bottom. But, with each dream I created a beautiful pond. 50 level ponds with waterfalls, crazy aqueducts systems, etc. Such beautiful dreams, well worth the worry.
Had a great nightmare last night which I can't remember now... Oh yes, didn't finish some crucial school assignment and was thus ruined forever and ever. Before that a vampire nightmare due to my wife's reading that new low brow vampire series.
Yesterday was crazy. Scary hour drive to work through bad snow covered roads. Running in to clock in just in time and pulled to bone marrow for 4 hours, then pulled elsewhere for another 4 hours, then finally back to normal workplace for 4 hours, then boss gives yearly job evaluation, (I hate 'The Boss' just as a matter of principle... but she's so likable and kind of sexy... and knows stuff like Klinger's hometown baseball team... and likes me) then an online quiz at home all in a nice little 17 hour day. Finished off with a nightmare about my life being ruined.
And... my eye has been twitching for the last month and is just getting worse. Just staying in a permanent twitch at times now.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Pets. The god of the gaps. Magic = God.
Of that which we don't understand some of us say 'god did it.' Of that which we don't understand or just don't know we like to think it magic. Of that which is hidden we are free to let imagination run wild and we think about vague yet fantastic notions. (Love at first sight/infatuation.) (Clothes improving sex.) (The dark is better.)
If pets could speak well, really well express themselves, I just don't think we'd like them as much, no matter how sweet... even potentially interesting they might show themselves to be. As it is, even though they do express themselves and manage to communicate to an extent, there is an unknown element within which we put magic. That which is hidden is fascinating. My cats looks at me. There are emotions going on. But what really are they thinking at any moment? The one often looks like it's thinking 'f u'. The other that it loves me. But who totally knows what's going on within them? The unknown is magical.
We are constantly believing in and then forgetting gods/magic. Sometimes with anger, sometimes with crying, sometimes with enjoying a piece of art, especially music. Sometimes with respect to liking or finding another person attractive. Etc.
We do this without really understanding what is going on within us. We can be the most strident atheist; whom logically ridicules god/s and belief in magic while still constantly doing such things.
Of that which we don't understand some of us say 'god did it.' Of that which we don't understand or just don't know we like to think it magic. Of that which is hidden we are free to let imagination run wild and we think about vague yet fantastic notions. (Love at first sight/infatuation.) (Clothes improving sex.) (The dark is better.)
If pets could speak well, really well express themselves, I just don't think we'd like them as much, no matter how sweet... even potentially interesting they might show themselves to be. As it is, even though they do express themselves and manage to communicate to an extent, there is an unknown element within which we put magic. That which is hidden is fascinating. My cats looks at me. There are emotions going on. But what really are they thinking at any moment? The one often looks like it's thinking 'f u'. The other that it loves me. But who totally knows what's going on within them? The unknown is magical.
We are constantly believing in and then forgetting gods/magic. Sometimes with anger, sometimes with crying, sometimes with enjoying a piece of art, especially music. Sometimes with respect to liking or finding another person attractive. Etc.
We do this without really understanding what is going on within us. We can be the most strident atheist; whom logically ridicules god/s and belief in magic while still constantly doing such things.
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