revolution for fun and profit

Save the Internet

2006-05-01T16:02:00.002-07:00

AT&T want's to control what you think.
Stop them.

Save the Internet

2006-05-01T16:02:00.001-07:00

AT&T want's to control what you think.
Stop them.

Save the Internet

2006-05-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

AT&T want's to control what you think.
Stop them.

Do talking heads...

2006-03-11T23:03:00.000-08:00

...even TRY to do research into what they are talking about?

i'm currently listening (while I'm typing) to an idiot. his name is michael groff. He has a talk radio show on the internet.

now, far be it from me to call anyone an idiot. well, maybe not so far. actually, i think everyone's an idiot. but i especially think this guy is an idiot.

why?

well, first off, i disagree with him on way too many things. don't get me wrong, i realize that i'm not an MIT canidate. i failed the test to get into mensa. i can't solve a rubik's cube without the help on an online guide, and i'm a horrible speller. however, i'm not that dumb. i have to have gotten one right, at least, but i didn't agree with anything he said. not one thing. either i'm an idiot or he is, and i'm more inclined to think that he is. here is my evidence:

he asked why the democrats should be allowed to respond to the state of the union address. "When did that start?" he asked. The implication seamed to be that the liberal media, you know, those huge corporations that own almost everything we hear, see, and read, including him, the liberal media only let them have a response because they are democrats. "when did this start?" i asked myself. unlike groff, though, i tool the 14.5 seconds to type in the words "state of the union response history" into the google search bar. first response: wikipedia entry. when did they start the responses to the state of the union? 1966. Johnson was president. yeah. a democrat.

then he made fun of black people. not just any black person, but Ray Nagin. (He's the mayor of new orleans.) well, he was giving a speech, calling on the black community to work together to rebuild new orleans. groff, over Nagin's speech, started making "uhhn, yeah, yeah" noises, like a rapper, you know, before they rap and can't think of anything else to say. i must confess, the pure retched idiocy and obviously inapropriateness made me laught my ass off. however, i still feel that this qualifies me as being much more intelligent than he is. i realize that intelligence is subjective, and any test for intelligence is completely arbitrary. (at least i like to think that ever since i failed the test to get into mensa), but he failed the first stupid test, imnsho.

let's see, what else did he say? He said that things are so bad now that he could get sued by a listener if he said that he ate chinese food and didnt' actually eat it that day.

then he made insulted john stewart. he said he just "didnt' get it". he doesn't understand john stewart's humor. what a moron. i can understand having a different sense of humor, but just not getting it?

he said that he never saw the daily show because it was on during the day (dayly show, i shit you not) when nobody's home. jesus christ, dude, how much crack did your mother need to smoke?

other gems that came out of his mouth:
"only women and homosexuals watch the oscars"
"...when terrorists attack the U.S.S Cole" (in case you missed that, a terrorist is defined as someone who attacks a civilian target, not a military one")
"i'm not stupid"

cognitive dissonance...

2006-02-13T17:31:00.000-08:00

...however it's spelled, can be an ugly thing that drives people apart, segregates you from those who would otherwise be your friend, and punishes those that are simply trying to be honest in a world filled with bullshit.

"yes, but... i don't know what you mean, exactly", you may say. Well, what I mean is this: cognitive dissonence, however it's spelled, does something more sinister than simply dividing us with others, it separates us from reality itself by imposing a world view that not only goes unchallenged, but defends itself. it is a virus. it is the manifestation of pure ignorance.

"no," you may say, "i just don't know what the hell 'cognitive dis-oh-nance' is".

that's because it's kind of a pompous, psuedo-intellectual thing to say. (me being a pompous psuedo-intellectual, i figured people expect this from me, but i digress...)

what it means is this: you believe something so strongly, that nothing, not even pure, blinding truth, acts right in front of your eyes defying your belief, can convince you otherwise. you are locked into an ideology. a framework for thought. margins. limits. you are enslaved. cognitive dissonence is the process of denying that reality, and we are all guilty of it.

...even me.

ironically, our strongest beleifs are usually the ones that hold up best against truth. that, in a sense, is what makes them strong.

in another sense, it's what makes us strong.

for example, i think the war in iraq is a crock of shit and i hate the fact that we went in there. i think that our government, your government, lies up it's ass about the motivations for this war. i think that the real reasons for the war aren't even mentioned in the news or in newspapers, who serve as mouthpeices, more or less, for the powers that be. these are beliefs that i have. i hold them pretty strongly, despite the fact that there is a lot of "evidence" that goes against what i'm saying.

after all, how could the media really be controlled by the government? it just logistically impossible. there's no way it can be done. there can't possibly be that much collusion involved, at every level, in ever media district. besides, the media outlets that cover the "real" story are clearly biased in many ways. so why do i still believe it?

saddam hussien was a brutal tyrant. he was an asshole. he gassed his own people, tortured his political enemies and their families. he forced everybody to live in fear of him. he thought very little of human life when compared to his power. its a good thing that he's gone. so why do i still think we shouldn't have gone to war?

i think i know why i feal the way i feal. it's my perspective. i have this need to see more. i have a need to see things from different perspectives. while most people are satisfied with seeing one part of the whole, and having the rest explained to them, i'm not. i need to see all the angles. i ask "what if this wasn't true?". i ask "where is this information coming from?". i ask "why?".

if you listen to the president, watch the news, talk to your patriotic buddies and properly ignor anyone who disagrees with you (it helps to call them "ignorant", "uninformed", and "stupid") and catagorize everyone into "us" and "them" (polorization), then it's easy to see why the war must be fought, why we did the right thing, and why we should stay the course and "support our troops" and leave our flags out an tie yellow ribbons around our trees and leave magnetic ribbons on our cars.

it's easy, because we are avoiding the considerations of the other side of the equation. we justify our own misdeads and exagerate our enemies. we exagerate our own benevolence and call any attempts to portray our enemies as human anti-american propaganda. we devide information into two camps: one that supports our perceptions, and one that attacts them. we learn how to defend our beliefs by attacking the information that contradicts them, and we learn to accept things that we wouldn't normally accept if it's laced with things we agree with. this means that cognitive dissonance, however it's spelled, makes it easier to control us.

so, i ask myself why i believe the things i believe. am i sure? can i defend my beliefs? can i honestly say that i am more informed than everybody else that disagrees with me? do i honestly believe that i know more about investigative journalism than, say, investigative journalists?

of course not. however, somebody has to have the perspective that i do.

hell, you never know: i might even be right.

I love my job...

2006-02-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

...for the first time.

most other jobs i've had have been jobs that i did to earn a paycheck. however, about 4 years ago, i decided to turn a hobby (computers/programming/web design/graphic design, put them all together and you got "web development") into a more time-consuming hobby.

then, i turned it into a failing part-time business.

then, i turned it into a mediocre, still failing part-time business.

then, i turned it into a potential job.

...it was a "potential" job for a long time.

i studied, made some sites, read some books, did a little of this and a little of that, learned the buzzwords, kept up on new developments, got to know the standards, found out who's who and what's what, and got fairly good, i guess. (though, i admit that this blog isn't much to look at).

...it remained a "potential" job for a little while longer.

then, something pushed me over the edge: an asshole. there was an asshole i worked with. he knew he was an asshole. he was proud of being an asshole, and, as an asshole, he was pretty good at it. almost admirable, the amount of prick this guy could be. it was quite an achievement.

he refused to talk about anything other than making money. money this, money that. any time you mentioned anything that didn't directly translate to greed, he got pissed. (and, if you were of the democratic pursuation rather than the republican pursuation, he was doubly an asshole).

well, one day he said a few things that really got on my nerves. he started talking about how i was unsuccessful and i was "like a 14 year old kid with no sense of direction". now, bear in mind that he was saying this because he was intimidated by my intelligence. i'm not THAT smart, but i could see him get annoyed whenever i used a word that had more than 2 sylables in it. also, i was always telling everybody about my ideas, that i never do anything with. he one of those guys that wanted to be the big dick in the group, the alpha male, and i don't believe in heirarchy, so we didn't get along. eventually, i made nice with him to shut him up. it's amazing how much the "alpha male" can act like a little bitch whenever he doesn't get his own way.

however, there was some truth to what he was saying. i definately wasn't living up to my full potential, mostly because i hadn't decided what i wanted to do with my life yet. i figured "hey, i haven't decided what i want to do, but i have plenty of time to decide. i don't have kids, and i'm not married, so fuck it". i was right, but i was looking at it the wrong way.

i should have started deciding what i didn't want. i should have started eliminating possibilities that just didn't fit into my ideals. it's not about adding on to your life, it's about taking away. one thing that i didn't want was to work for some big corporation. another thing i didn't want was some asshole like him thinking that he was above me. i figured i could be more successful than he was in 5 years (he owns a lot of real estate).

so, i worked 2 jobs, saved a shitload of money, etc, etc, but it still wasn't enough. i knew i wanted to be successful, but i wanted to be successful on my own terms. i didn't want to waste my life like he did, driving a truck for 70 hours a week, alienating everyone, removing myself from human contact until everyone thinks i'm a prick because i don't know how to treat people.

i wanted something more, but what i wanted wasn't success in the traditional sense. i can't get myself to care too much about money or property, because it's not important. think about what the purpose of money and property is: power and comfort.

however, the world is changing. people think that property is power, but that's not going to be the way it is: we're moving away from a a property-based society through a knowledge-based society, into an idea-based society. people think that investing in real estate is a sure bet, but is it? a single idea can make the cost of property drop faster than you can say "i'll suck your dick for $20". for instance:

the process of building a house involves several things: planning, legal considerations, gathering materials, organizing labor, and actual construction.

Right now, EVERY ONE OF THESE THINGS except construction can be automated by somebody who knows how to program a computer and knows a little bit about marketing and networing. hell, all you need is ONE plan thats already legally approved in the district you're in and you can duplicate it any number of times. you can even modularize the design for customization. why not? it's just information, and information can be manipulated, generated, obfuscated, and many other "ateds".

The only x-factor is the construction. enter robotics.

with the combination of genetical algorithms, physics engines, and rapid prototyping, we're on the verge of revolution in robotics similar to the revolution in computing in the 70s. sure, they had computers before then, but they didn't have accessible computers. they didn't have a bunch of hackers trying to make something different. they didn't have a popular movement of hobbiests learning about this shit for the sake of learning about this shit.

one by one, dreams were dreamed, plans were attacked, and problems were solved. ordinary guys sketched ugly drawings on scraps of paper to have them become reality in under a year. as one layer of abstraction was mastered, another layer was being created. more questions were being asked: questions about what was possible, or more to the point, what was no longer impossible. with new questions came new answers, with new answers came new questions, and new possibilities.

we went from vacuum tubes to microprocessors. we went from punch cards to wysiwygs and IDEs. we went from dumb terminals to AJAX applications (which, ironically, aren't all thet much different---hmmm... ajax-based ssh terminal, anyone?). we went from telnet to firefox. bash to kde. switches and knobs to keyboards and a mouse(which, ironcially, are just a bunch of switches and two knobs, but i dirgress). the point is, if you take just a minute to reflect on what advancements are DESTINED to happen within the next few years and what will happen to society when they do, you can't help but notice how utterly obsolete our entire lifestyle is.

what the hell was i talking about again? oh, yeah, that asshole guy. yeah, he was an asshole and i didn't want to work with him anymore, so i got another job, where i get to play with some of the technology that i was just talking about.

i love my job.

Democracy in the middle east...

2006-02-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

...is the reason why we're there, isn't it?

well, that's not the reason why we were told to go. we were told to go because there was a very evil man who wanted to poison our children with toxic gas and have terrorists put a nukyooler bomb inside a small can of beer and put it in your local 7-11.

but if he didn't have the ability to do that, why did we go?

well, we didn't know he didn't have the capability of doing that. our intelligence agencies told us that he did. we had reports of him plotting to attack us.

the CIA never said he was a threat. the intelligence agencies we are talking about were foriegn inteligence agencies, the most important of which was the famous "brittish dossier" which we later found out was written by an American: a 19 year old America, over 10 years ago.

he lied to us, and had been lying for 12 years.

Well, that's a good reason to go in and check all his sites to make sure he's not lying to us. unfortunately, even though the Iraqis were completely complying with inspections leading up to the war, they didn't obey the final altimatum that "caused" the war: Saddam and his sons didn't turn themselves in.

he gassed his own people.

Yes, he did, in 1988. we supported him at the time, and said nothing. so did england.

he tortures his own people.

Unless you haven't read the news, you'll realize that we torture his people, too. we have made some of his people disapear, and we have sent his people to other countries where they are much more effective torturers.

he had supported terrorists, including members of al-quaeda.

he gave money to the families of palestinian suicide bombers. i realize that many people sympathize with isreal. after all, nobody can justify people who kill innocent poeple, unless of course, they're isreal or the united states. they can kill as many innocent people as they want. it's really funny how difficult it is to really, clearly separate what we call "terrorism", to what we actually do and lable "counter-terrorism". as far as al-quaeda goes, if by "supporting" members of al-quaeda, you mean a few guys who are associated with al-quaeda went to a your city once, well, then, you're right. i guess they did support members of al-quaeda. even if they were your sworn enemies and were most likely in town plotting your death. hey they're all sand people, right? they must be in cahoots.

well, why we got into the war is not important anymore. we need to focus on getting the iraqi people a functioning democracy.

you do realize that we "change course" a lot. we focus, not on what our leaders got away with yesterday, but on what bullshit our leaders are currently getting us to swallow, for instance, the idiotic idea that our glorious leaders want a functioning democracy in iraq.

first off, just step back for a second and ask yourself: what, exactly, would a functioning democracy in iraq look like? well, like my favorite right-wing libertarian wacko Jay Severin would say, it would look like Shiite.

a democratic iraq would be a prominantly shiite controlled iraq, which would mean stronger ties with iran, which would mean, at the very least, an economic aliance, which would control the 2nd largest oil reserves on the planet.

hey, don't give me that. we didn't go into iraq because of the oil.

uh, yeah we did. if you actually believe that we would give two shits about iraq if it didn't have any oil, you're an idiot. if iraq was just one of the many countries out there with cruel, heartless dictators, policies of torture, ties to terrorism, and NO OIL, most americans would think "iraq" was what the kids were listening to nowadays.

lets take this logic a step further, though, shall we? if the us and it's allies really wanted a democratic iraq, they would do something: leave. the old power structure is gone, the people are taking control (or, at least, attempting to), and the overwhealming majority of iraqis think we should leave.

the thing about democracy is: you have to let the people decide. i'm pretty sure that's what the "demo" means in latin, or greek, or spanish or whatever. let them get their own shit together. let's pull out.

hey, there buddy, just one gosh darn minute! we can't pull out of there! if we did, why, then, it would be unstable, and then there wouldn't be any stability, and, uhh, without stability, there would be no democracy!

right, numbnuts, "democracy" and "stability" are, like, almost the same thing, right? listen, a real, functioning "democracy", is, ipso-facto, unstable. "stability" means "controlable", and "democracy" means "controlled by the people". Therefor, YOU CAN NOT CONTROL PEOPLE AND STILL HAVE A DEMOCRACY!

saying that we have to maintain this level of draconian control over iraq in order to safeguard democracy is like saying that you need to stuff big shards of glass up your ass in order to safeguard your anus.

I'm delusional...

2006-02-09T05:15:00.000-08:00

...and it's fun.

but then again, aren't we all? every thought that comes up into our heads isn't real, but yet reality, as we know it is made up of the cumulation of all those little thoughts, reflecting on the world around us, which is made up of, not only solid objects taking up physical space, but behavior, messages, media, in short, the manifestation of the delusions of others.

so, who's to say what's a delusion and what isn't? it's the ones that do the best job of convincing us of the reality of thier delusions. in short, we live in a world where majicians rule.

there are 7 things that cause confusion...

2006-02-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

...to the human race as a species.

and i'm talking about the "meta-confusion". the big ones. sure, you be confused why your dog has a bigger dick than you do (or your husband does) in the evolutionary scheme of things. I often wonder the same thing about my cat. After all, why did god need to make my penis larger than my cat?

yeah, that's right, baby. no " 's ".

seriously, i'm talking about, on an evolutionary scale( or at least the scale of cultural evolution (c. 4000 BCE-- present.)

After all, something had to make us confused. why would we try to figure anything out if we weren't confused about it?

what were the first things that we started asking questions about? my guess, based purely on introspection, (read: "pulling this out of my ass") are the following 7 things, in no particular order:

sex
number 2:
religion
number 3:
natural disasters
number 4:
ideology
number 5:
technology
number 6:
murder
number 7:
suicide

Every one of these things produced questions in our ancestors' minds:
how does one understand sex? why is it there? what happens? why do all the babies look like the guys with the biggest dicks? why are our dicks bigger than a monkey's? (notice this time i included the apostrophe.) it might have led to rules, maybe the realization that the tribes with statues of naked chicks in them survived? maybe we should have one, we'll call it a "god" and call the rules a "religion".

But if there's a god, how did he get here? where is he? what kind of person is he. then, you hear about a flood, a volcano, a tornado, maybe you experience one. why did god do that? they must have been doing something that made god angry.

angry? more confusion, more thought. more fear.

and as the master yoda says:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

well, maybe not in that order. I would say that fear leads to violence, violence leads to hate, hate, to ideology, which is basically saying "you are wrong and i don't care if you're right". and anyone who has ever watched bill o' reily or rush limbaugh know all about suffering.

this led to greed, which lead to technology, which confused the hell out of everyone. we're still paying for this. this will lead to nothing but bad things, say a "weapon", which makes people die faster, for instance. die, commie, die! (of course, at this point, they were just people who wanted to share the food supply instead of by the God's insistance that the man with the largest dick have 50% of the food and the food supply would be divided regressively based solely on dick size. We called this "economics". (now, of course, social evolution has reversed this preference, with the people most driven having the most, shall we say "need for compensation".

all this led to the realization that mr. horse-dick kept getting very fat compared to the rest of the population, and this happened in more than one land. Some lands were more sucessful than others. maybe it's because this, we'll call him a "king", had more of an influence over the tribe than others, or a better influence. if he was important, then what does he think about things? maybe he want's more milk. if you have people who listen to and obey you, and you want some milk, what do you do? enter murder.

(now, by "murder", I'm not talking about bouts of anger in sexual contest or in a fight over the food supply. I'm talking about a special kind of murdery: a planned killing.

damn I'm tired. I'm gonna leave it at that. maybe i'll talk to you about the first sucide later. You might have heard of him: Jesus Christ.

fear

toys, toys, toys....

2006-01-12T17:52:00.000-08:00

...every time i look around, there's a new toy to play with. for a while now, i've been playing with javascript toys. they're fun. for instance, did you know that you can change the value of something on a page by typing in javascript into the title bar? i call it "javascript injection".

for instance, type this into the title bar:
javascript:alert('hello');

ok, so you can use javascript. How far can you go?
javascript:m='';for(i in document){m+=i+'\n'}alert(m);

ooh, complete access to the dom. nice. why do we want this?
well, how about looping through all of the hidden form elements on a page?
so what? you may say.
how about changing the value of a form field?
so what? you may callously say again.
well, what if that form field was, say, the price of something to be purchased?
depending on how they determined the price on the other end...

Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams

2006-01-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced that hackers will be the next revolutionaries.
Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams: "Wired is running an article looking at the little ways in which Austrian technology users are striking back against surveillance. From the article: 'Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape. The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices. And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded.'

"

what if I fail...

2005-12-30T06:59:00.000-08:00

in my mission in life? what if i fail at the jobs i'm supposed to be doing? what if i fail to act? what if i fail to decide? what if i fail to sacrafice that which must be sacraficed? what if i...


B - U - L - L - - S - H - I - T

what if spend my life asking stupid "what if" questions? what if THAT is what MAKES me "fail"? If we are really going to reduce life to a series of pass/fail grades about this or that meaningless little challenge, why not ask a better question?

what do we DO WHEN we succeed?

ahh, much better! you're asking the same thing, but in a different question. and no, don't give this "positive thinking" crap, this isn't "positive thinking", this is "success thinking". this is "honesty thinking" this is "independance thinking".

You need to go the other way, too. fuck "positive". you need to ask yourself other questions, too, like:

what HAPPENS if we don't succeed?

power. choice. you're in control if you succeed. that's how you succeed. you demonstrate your ability to be in control of your own life. nothing is worse than not being in control of your own life. if you don't succeed, that's because you're not in control. when you're not in control, you are not responsible. you escape from your reality with food or alchohol, or other forms of escapism. watchin tv or movies. reading books. reading blogs. you just spend your time asking "why me", "what's wrong with me", "why can't i...". maybe your a conservative type and spend your time blaming the government and taxes. maybe your just lazy and blame it on the ones that aren't.

fuck you! you can't because you WON'T. you can't because you CHOOSE NOT TO. after all, if you tried and failed, maybe it's some part of you that you have no control over! "something's wrong with me". maybe it's the world "Things are unfair". maybe it's becaue x happend when you were a child "I can't because when..."

uh, maybe its, uhh...you? "I know it's me, but i don't know how to change." Well, here's the secret. you ready?


change your definition of who you are.

who are you? To answer that question, you have to ask yourself "who do you want to be"? Then, just be that person. don't think this has anything to do with being "honest" with yourself. if you were "honest" with yourself, you would allready BE the person you WANT to be, but something's holding you back. guess what, dipshit? that thing that's holding you back is your DIS-honesty about who you WANT TO BE.

the question is "who do you want to BE"? However, what we stupid little human beings define as "be-ing" usually consist of what we own, what our occupation is, what our level of education is, how much we weight. what we look like, who we're married to, who our kids our, who are parents are, what tv shows we watch, what books we read, what clothes we wear, etc... BULLSHIT!

who we ARE depends on what we DO. not our "occupation", but our behavior. our behaivior depends on us. that is the only thing we can change right now.

how do we change our behavior, though?

we do it by changing our perception of that behavior. how do we change our perception? we have to force ourselves to look at things in a different way? how do we do that? we analize it from different perspectives. how do we analize?


we ask questions

let's start asking some questions.

Oh, by the way...

2005-12-25T00:07:00.000-08:00

I posted more photos on che's site. Check them out.

what's most important to me?

2005-12-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

the music or the words?
the solution or the code?
the occupation or the paycheck?
the sex or the orgasm?
the image or the description?
the number of friends or the connection between each?

...the love or the logic?

we all ask these question, whether we're aware of them or not, all the time. every choice you make is a selection of what is the most important thing to you at that time. every time that choice is made, there is something that goes on in your brain, something that asks your spiritual core what to do. your spiritual cores answers, and your decision is made. however, it all comes down to two very important archetypical concepts: dynamic or static. you could go with the jungian division, too, of male and female on top of that, but I think that the concept of male and female, as archetipycal models, can be better understood as having degrees, and the dynamic and static archetypical concepts provide a marginalization of those degrees.
(note: just remember, that, at any time, if you feal as if you don't understand what i'm talking about, just rest assured that i don't know what i'm talking about, either.)

if we need logic, structure, discipline, rigor, etc, we are static. the good part? once you have a framework for your life that works, it can take you far. the bad part? isolation, as the more you develope your own unchanging framework, the less you can adapt to the needs of other people.

if we need love, music, passion, drama, excitement, we are dynamic. The good part? living life like this IS the good part. this IS life. this is why we live. do you really want to admit that you live for you car? your house? no, of course not. if we have no passion, we have nothing. why bother living at all? The bad part? chaos. disorder. your life becomes a mess. too much drama. the idea of having "nothing to show for it" with the years of your life.

now, everyone needs a little structure and a little passion, a little love and a little money. The question that our deepest of deepests soul wants answered is not "which is important and which is not". The question is "which is MOST important?". There come's a point, however, when you have to choose: Elvis or the Beatles? red or blue? starsky or hutch? the cookie monster or Oscar the grouch? steak tips or buffalo wings?

the love or the logic?

me, i love love, but i'm in love with logic.

I'm trying to be...

2005-12-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

...somebody I'm not. I'm kidding myself. The person who I want to be is definately not me. I'm somebody else. two different people: ego and superego. facticity and transendance. Anyone who is not dead is tryingt be somebody they are not. Now, we have different ways of going about it, but we're all trying to be somebody we're not.

why wouldn't we? if we were just going to be ourselves, what fun is that? after all, if you're completely content, why bother? is that what life is about? being content? fuck contentment. i want adventure, passion, seduction, and other buzzwords to sell movies, except maybe horror movies. i don't want my life to be "disturbing"...

...well, maybe a little.

picture yourself as your imaginary hero. imaging someone who doesn't exist: a legend. a luke skywalker or indiana jones. a neo. hey, maybe a real person: noam chomsky. che guavara. benjamin franklin. henry david thoreau.

what is it about these people that make us admire them? it wasn't their abilities. there are a lot of people who have the same abilities (except maybe neo, i guess, but i digress). it was there drive, the carisma, the identity. it was who they were not what they could do. their accomplishments had to do with a greater picture of who they were. their identity. now, their identity has to do with their behavior, so what they did was important, but we need to differential their accomplishments with their behavior. ok, sorry if i've taken you into semantics hell. i didn't mean it.

what i mean to say is that a person's identity has more to do with his day to day behavior: his drive. how he looks at the world. how he treats other people. his sense of himself. (forgive me for not saying "him/herself" but I don't want to take anybody to pronoun hell, either). the accomplishments he may have made are direct descendants of his identity. the accomplishments, while important, serve to identify the more important questions of who they were. accomplishments serve the soul as well, as re-enforcements of our believe about ourself. "We are what we do", we think. in a sense (the existentialist view that we are, at least in part, what other people think we are, as that is just as much a part of reality as our own perception).

but we're all here to do what we're all here to do: to be somebody we're not. Me, I'm fighting the world, one abstraction at a time. I'm finding new ways of lying to myself, or fighting for the truth, depending on your perspective. I want to be someone I'm not: I want to be God. And so do you.

Hackers and Musicians

2005-12-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, a problem is solved using a simple design pattern or a slightly more complex series of simple patterns, an amalgamation of a few. However, all paterns are created by someone. Learning to use the pattern is simply intellectual footwork. The truely creative programmer can do just about anything without writing a single line of code: he solves the problem with the definition of the problem. He thinks on a higher level.

It's like a musician. What makes a musician a musician is not his brilliance. It's his love of making music. Love. He realizes that music is more important than other things. Music is the highest level of abstraction. It is the layer of abstraction that is above ourselves. It is something that we create because it must be.

spiritual programming...

2005-11-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

...is my goal.

i love to code. i love to write down expressions that make up information. i love to type an elite language of expressions and functions and object-oriented poetry. i love to code.

i love to read code. i read code more than i read novels or poetry or news. i read code for the same reasons: enjoyment, education, to be informed, to expand myself.

i love to think, as i'm reading "


for(int i =0;i<lables.getLength();i++){
out.print("< tr><td><%= lable.getname() =%></td><td><%= lable.getid() =%></td></tr>}" that i'm speaking a secret language that only a handful of people know. i'm in a club.

note:I probably made a mistake here. I just did it quick and didn't debug. It doesn't actually do anything anyway.

maybe i'm being an elitist, but i love it. i love so many different languages, it's hard to pick a favorite. because it is, i only get so good an any one language. good enough to do 80% of what needs to be done, but not good enough to do the 20% that earns the real money. but i do it all:
CSS, HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, JSP, Java, Python, XML, XSL, XSLT, and even little bit of Perl. i love it.

it really is a passion. i'm starting to spend way too much time with code. i think it's becoming an escape.

...of course, it's nice to have an escape that can pay $80k/year. I'm sure that's why drug dealers do it.

I censored myself...

2005-11-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

...a minute ago.

I wrote a post about a week ago. It was about pornography. The point of the post was to show that the non-acceptance and demonization of sex in our culture has caused us to associate the unnaccaptable with sex. However, I withdrew my comment... like a coward, for the reasons a coward would.

I'm turning 30 today...

2005-11-10T05:20:00.000-08:00

...but i don't feel any different. i don't know. in my mind, i guess i thought that 30 was one of those numbers that meant a turning point. there were people under 30, in one group, and people over 30 in another. well, i guess i should have thrown that out the window when i found people that were 26,27 in the "other" catatory and people who were 40 and even 50 in the "young" one.

so what is it that makes some people seam "young" and some people seam "old"? i think its a lot of things, the most important of which is how uptight you are and how to you treat other people.

for instance, most "old" people i know aren't really old, they're assholes. they treat people like shit because they think they have a right to, because they are "better" than them, "better" being defined, by them, in their own heads, as being more "grown up" or "responsible": shorter hair. suit/tie. home ownership. stock portfolio. married. kids. SUV.

hold on a second. these people really think that driving around a gas-guzzling SUV, popping out kids in an era where the world's population is about to explode, and dressing like an enron exec makes them "better"? add to that the fact that those portfolios probably contain investments in the arms industry, and obsolete energy sources, and you have the makings of genuine, bonifide peice of shit.

seriously, i'm not trying to judge. i'm trying to project myself into their life.

me, i wouldn't be able to live with myself. i'm more responsible than that.

Are we growing up too fast...

2005-11-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

...or too slow? time magazine in january had a cover article about how our generation (late 20s- I turn 30 tomorow, but I guess that still means me) aren't "growing up". we are "delaying adulthood". i tend to agree. i don't think I'm "grown up", even though I'm 30. no, I don't spend all day playing video games, or watching cartoons. i'm just not "growing up" because, well, i guess i don't know what that means, or, at least, i do know what it means, and don't think that's a very good way to live ones life.

i find myself more mature, in the ways that are most important to me, than most of the 40, 50, and 60 year old people i know. in fact, i find some people in those generations ignorant about a lot of things. i find some downright juvenile. i find that there are some in their generation that are very mature. some are very smart. some very dumb. some turn away from responsibility, some take on more than their share. in short, their generation is just like mine. the only difference? this idea of commitment.

commitment is a concept close to that of integrity. its something that means honor and duty. unfortunately, it's obsolete. the world is changing more rapidly than at any other time in history. entire paradigms of thought rise and fall every few month as apposed to every few years. if you don't know this, you aren't paying attention. we are. we can't "choose" what to "be" when we are talking about a career because that choice is likely to be outdated by them time we get anywhere. we can only choose what to "be" when it comes to who we are as a person, and what skillset we choose to have, who we choose to associate with, what kind of personality we display, and more prominantly in the age of massive information: what media we choose to consume.

the issue is dedication. what am i truely dedicated to? i don't know and neither do a lot of people. i was dedicated to the idea of being a rich, conservative real estate investor when i was 12. i was dedicated to the concept of socialism when i was 24. thing change. however, there are things that i enjoy: philosophy, programming, music, good conversation. are all these things "taking me" anywhere? will i be able to "make a living" having conversations about the philosophy of programming? maybe, maybe not, but this is who i am, and has nothing to do with who i am "going to be". what if i didn't care about "my future"? what if i cared about my life?

now, i'm not talking about having a house, mortage, building equity, saving for your 401k, having kids, or even marriage. i'm talking about the idea of a "career".

when you "choose" a career, you are locking yourself into something. in this economy, people my age can't afford to be locked into anything. we need to be mobile. we need an evolving skillset. we need to continually diversify while making money. we need gainful unemployment. why? because there is nothing more deadening to the spirit of mankind than to be stuck in a 40 hour a week, mind-numbing, ulcer-producing, time-sucking pain in the ass we call "work". we would be better off without it.

take a look at all the wonderful things that have been dreamed up in our history book. who invented them? men working tirelessly at their jobs, or, rather, people who didn't have that problem: royalty, the rich, the idle. idleness is good. fuck what they say about the devil's playground. idle hands are god's workshop.

if adulthood isn't about enjoying life, then i would say that, we are, in fact, growing up too fast. in fact, i hope one day that none of us will "grow up" at all. of course, the population would be too difficult to control if they weren't forced to slave away at a meaningless job every day. we couldn't have that, now, could we?

faith and nuclear power....

2005-10-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

...can only amount to one thing. faith is, by definition, not fact. It is "things hoped for...yet not beheld". It is, basically, believing something because you hope it's true. rather than follow the labor-intensive process of hypothesising, researching, testing, observing, re-evaluating, and finally, concluding something to be true, you start with the idea that it's true, and, if it "feel's right" to you, you accept it as true. the problem with this is that we live in an age of nuclear power. let's explore this idea:

nuclear power is very dangerous, and potentially dangerous enough to wipe out all life on planet earth, or the human race, or, at the very least, civilization as we know it.

the people who control these weapons are self-proclaimed "christians", who believe, to variable extents, that there is a God, that he has a son, jesus (or god himself IS jesus), and that, at some point in the future, armegeddon will come, destroying the earth.

if that is the case, what moral obligations do these people have to those of us who do not share their faith? if thier faith is correct, which, of course, is what they believe, their obligations are to have faith and uphold god's law. this adds a further level of subjectivity to the situation. what is god's law? if there are so many that are obviously doomed to die, and perhaps go to hell, in this slaughter at armegeddon, what, exactly, does this say about god's law pertaining to those that don't have faith?

and now the most important question:

how does a human being fit in, where he sees this law, and has faith, and has the power to enact it? whose authority is a man of faith really under? what would a good person vs a bad person do under this law, in different circumstances?

at what point does morality become dangerous?

responsibility...

2005-10-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

...is an interesting notion. it is synonomous with power and independance. if you are responsible, you have the power to make decisions. if, on the other hand, you have the power, you are usually the one held responsable. it's funny how there are so many who want power, yet so few who want responsibility.

maybe it's not responsibiliy we're talking about maybe it's accountability. accountability is the power that others have over you. nobody wants to have to answer to anyone. so, besides power and independance, what, exactly, is responsibility?

responsibility is also a word. it is a word that is used to justify a system. in a system that favors one set of people over another, the ones that are in favor must justify why. they use the word "responsibility" for two reasons: 1), to make themsleves feal deserving of their position, and 2) as an excuse for not helping the others.

Then there are poeple who say that the human animal is nothing but a social construct, the so-called "post-modernists". to them, people are simple creations of society, so they are not responsible for what they do. this is the opposite of those that use responsibility to justify inequality. they use the fallacy of that justification to justify irresponisibility.

Obviously, all of us are responsible, not just for our own actions, and our own lives, but for the society we make up. WE are society, so we can't blame "society" on our irresponsibility. however, are we acting irresponisbly when it comes to our role in society, including the inequalities of our society, including the inequalities that add to the level of irresponsibility of others? thier irresponsibility is, to an extent, our irresponsibility.

what is intelligence...

2005-10-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

...i hope it's not the ability to spell. i can't spell and i think of myself as relatviely intelligent. i guess i just don't care about spelling. or grammar. i believe that words are abstracts of ideas and that those ideas are what is most important. i understand the need for some rules. breaking the rules can hurt communication. make people think about your error rather than your idea. some people, anyway. it doesn't make me dumb. however, that being said, what does? what makes any one person able to say that he or she is "smarter" than anyone else. we know that there is this thing called intelligence, however it's spelled, and that it's relative, and that it comes in degrees, something that can be measured, albiet arbitrarily, enough to distinguish one persons level of intelligence against anothers. but what is it? a score on an IQ test? a degree? the ability to solve a crossword puzzle or a jumble faster than someone else? the ability to make good decisions? the ability to "smell" a phony a mile a way?

whatever it is, i used to care a lot about it, and how i compared to others. i've always felt that i never really fit in with other people, and felt the need to rationalize why. i believed, perhaps because i wanted to believe, that it was simply because i was smarty than most people. so, last night, i took a test for mensa. i'm pretty sure i failed. now i'm bitter and resentful. just kidding. however, i think that failing the test has given me a new perspective. more acurately, it has forced me to re-rationalize my rationalization as to why i'm socially inept. i could always take the coward's way out: i'm so smart, the tests are too stupid to understand my level of intelligence. but i'm not a coward. i'm brutally honest with myself, or at least, i like to think i am. in fact, it's my brutal honesty, combined with a above-average, sub-genius, level of intelligence, that makes me unable to cope in noraml society. anyway, that's my story, and, until i get some information that conflicts with it, i'm sticking to.

unpopular truth....

2005-10-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

...isn't truth at all. truth is defined as what is accepted as being, not what is. it was true that the sun revoled around the earth, that the earth was flat, that milk and red meat was good for you (some people still believe cows milk is good for you, even nutritionists who don't understand that their manuals were funded,in part, by the dairy council, but I digress), that you could go blind from masturbation. Since nobody can agree on what, exactly, is the truth, then truth is subjective. since truth is subjective, beleif is truth to the one that believes it. when this believe is accepted by more than one person, the argument that it is "true" increases in credibility, at least to the one who believes it, making it more true. if enough people believe it, it becomes undeniably true. even though, to a more informed population, it might be obviously untrue.

this begs the question: what is "undeniably true" to us, but is "obviously untrue" to a more informed population? it would be more than a little arrogant to think that there are no such things. the only way out of this is to be completely agnostic in every thought that comes your way. that's not much fun. so what do we do?

we might not be able to understand truth. but what about freedom? freedom is pretty abstract as well, but, i think, more spiritually tangible than truth. well, maybe we should care more about freedom than truth? Jesus once said "know the truth, and the truth will set you free". I disagree. I think that you should be free first. free from ideology, from dogmatism, from external pressures, from the "tyronny of abstractions". only then can you fully pursue the ideal of absolute truth.

the problem with information consumption...

2005-10-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

...is that all new information has to be incorporated into your existing perception of reality, regardless of the origin, content, context, or credibility of that information. fact or fiction, news or rumor, journalistic analysis or conspiricy theory, it all has to be factored in, conciously or uncounciously. this means that our perception of reality is rapidly being altered with the massive amounts of information.

our little brains don't like this, so we come up with ways to cope: dogmatism, polorization, and ideology. This helps primarily because it forces us to choose our information sources based on what those information sources are likely to say. We don't bother thinking about things, we let michael moore, or rush limbaugh, or sean hannity, or noam chomsky, or the writers of "star trek", or britteny spears, or some other voice to think for us. We don't think anymore, we choose which media identity to identify with, and leave it at that.

After all, who wants to think for themselves? With all the information out there, that's a full-time job, and we all have to go to work, pay bills, and entertain ourselves with tv, books, radio, and movies to get our mind off of our work and bills.

god damn spammers...

2005-10-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

...must die.

what the hell is wrong with these people? I remember when I used to spam (yes, even I was young once). the fact is, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. there is spam that is effective and spam that is not effective. then, there is another catagory altogether: real-life, honest-to-goodness marketing, the most effective spam of all. really, people hate spam. if you spam, then people hate you, and whatever you're selling. once you have identified your product with spam, you will be forever shamed with a crown of shamefulness in the minds of people ashamed of you.

and you suck. seriously, stop spamming my blog or I'll go whoppix on your ass.

Does a fish need to be smart...

2005-10-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

...to evolve into a frog? I really don't think it's a matter of intelligence.

In the natural state of random variations in multiple generations, enough of an experiment domain is created to create the "freak" that is the new successful breed. The important part is the experiment domain. With lots and lots of options, lots and lots of information, lots and lots of possibilities, the one that works the best, ( provides the most attractive options via the path of least resistance) wins.

What is happening right now? Massive amounts of information is going everywhere. People are chatting in real-time with people across the planet in a different language through online interpreting software. There is more information out there than any one person could possibly consume, and this domain of information is growing daily. Not only that, but the technology for accessing it and catagorizing it is improving exponentially year by year. Think about how far we've come in 20 years? Comepare that to the 20 years before that. Compare that with the 20 years before that. 20 years before that? How about the years 1800-1820? What's happening to society? There is more inovation in one day than there was in the entire 20 year period of 1800-1820. What is the natural consequence of this? Easy: It is harder and harder to control the information.

This will happen if people get smarter. It will also happen if they get stupider. It has more to do with the difficulty of controlling them than their intelligence. Once it becomes impossible to control the flow of information that is used to control the masses, a natural neo-tribalism will occur. People will flock together based on ideology, and a massive movement for de-centralization (and probably anti-centralization) of anything non-critical will ensue. Call it "neo-libertarianism". This phenominom should be world-wide. With massive information, there are no secrets. In a world with no secrets, it's hard to maintain domination.

Ok, what's the natural consequence of massive decentralization? A new form of interdependance.

What will that bring? I don't know, but I think it will happen, and I think it will be good. I have to have faith in the human race. You see, I'm a member.

Of course, it's just a theory.

spirituality is....

2005-10-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

...debatable. We can argue all day about the divinity of the Bible, and, if we come to the conclusion that it is divine, we can then argue all day, and night, for years, about what, exactly, it means. The fact that there are so many religions that profess to believe in the same book, yet have radically different views about what it says exemplifies this.

So, whenever you are saying that you believe one thing, you are saying that all others are wrong, and that you, with your superior wisdom, or more righteous heart, or greater intellect, or whatever, are a better judge of spiritual matters than the rest of the world, who reads the same book, but comes away with it with different beliefs.

You are, in fact, saying "I'm smarter than 99.9% of the Bible-believing population", even though they may have studied the Bible more than you have, for a much longer period of time than you have, perhaps even in it's original languages, etc. And that's just the Bible, let alone the Koran or the Bagavad Gita, the Confusion Cannon, The Book of Mormon, or the Hindu Scriptures, not to mention the massive amounts of secular philosophical and scientific texts that none of the Bible-thumpers, obviously, have ever read (or at least, understood).

Isn't there a common factor that we can all agree on that, if God does exist, then he IS the author of? How about the Universe and the way it works? If God exists, then science is the only absolute "record" he undoutedly left us, and our "priests" and "prophets" should be scientist and science fiction writers.

How about our own bodies? Our own psyche? This is the most direct route to understanding our creator that we have. Words are a human invention, an obvious subjective translation of ideas. How dare we marginalize God by believing that he can be summed up in a book filled with a set of abstractions we call language?

How dare we say that our "hearts are treacherous". There is massive amounts of debate about the authenticity of the Bible, yet, if there really is a God, and he created us, then, ipso-facto, we are HIS creation. Anyone who tries to tell us not to listen to ourselves and our own hearts, then, is in fact telling us not to listen to God.

Do it yourself...

2005-10-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

...propaganda. the invasion of Iraq is called, in the US media, "Opperation Iraqi Freedom", which is idiotic. it's a invasion. it's aggression. to most people, reguardless of weather or not they support the war, this is just common sense. only a retarded moron would believe that we invaded Iraq in order to free it's people. we went in for WMDs, didn't find them, so had to justify it and gave it a better name. it's just a clever manipulation of language, that's all.

so, how can you become an effective propagandist? easy. just state your "cause" in words that nobody can be against. it doesn't matter what it is. you want to kill little puppies? don't call it "killing puppies". call it "saving puppies from starvation". even "support our troops" (which really means "support our policy that gets troops killed for no reason"), although idiotically simplistic, is believed, almost universally, but the american people.

doubt...

2005-09-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

...everybody has it. In a world where information is as abuntant as ours, bullshit is also abundant. however, what is not abundant is adequate systems of filtration of that information, making the bullshit mix in nicely with the rest. we know it's there, but since our references are so fragmented, we can't be certain. sure, we can filter out the obvious bullshit, but sometimes that will cause us to filter out real shit that only looks like bullshit because of ineffective marketing. then again, marketing is 2 things: one, finding people who have a need, and two, instilling a need in people who do not have a need. (more or less). see? half of marketing is all bullshit. they study our habits and culture in order to find out how we filter out the bullshit. the ones that have the resources to do this are the best at convincing us to swallow bullshit. the ones that don't have the resources to sell us bullshit as effectively, paradoxically, are the ones that will most likely appear to be bullshit.

the only thing that really saves us is doubt. doubt, however, being the primary target of all bullshitologists. of course, maybe we'd be happier if all just swallowed the bullshit and went on with our lives.

wandering....

2005-09-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

a thought floats. it's just there, existing. it doesn't change. conciousness changes, different thoughts come and go, altering the state of conciousness your are in, but a thought doesn't change. I have too many thoughts comming in and out. I don't think them, they just appear. today, a thought came up to me. it was an idea for a web service. you create an api for an e-commerce site that allows remotes sites to place orders transparently, with function calls to read db entries and even an ajax api for calling remote functions, updated by the server. you can then have somebody else, who can focus his marketing strategy on a very specific market segment that would only be interested in a small percentage of what you offer, while you focus your marketing strategy on your broader market, or even this new "meta" market. It would segment and modularize the business cycle to a large degree and provide a level of abstraction for marketers that would would marginalize their skillset, increasing the value added for their work. It would take me about a week to come up with a beta version of an open-source version of this "web service" in php.

I won't do it. because my mind wanders. because that thought floats away and a new thought floats in. a thought that somebody probably already did it. to somebody else, this thought has been done before a millions times. haven't I heard of...? no I haven't, but that's ok. another thought will come along, letting that older thought float away to somebody else.

Focus.

2005-09-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of energy expended, but not a lot of movement. There is a lot of thought, but not a lot of ideas. There is a lot of studying, but not a lot of learning. There is a lot of struggle, but not a lot of improvement. Why? No focus. when we focus, there is not a lot of energy expended, but there is a lot of movement, not a lot of thought, but lots of ideas, not a lot of studying, but lots of learning, not a lot of struggle, but lots of improvement.

. : venezuela : .

2005-09-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, the US is planning actions against venezuela. They are socialists, now with Chavez, and they have oil. Those two, in combination, equal some military action. Be prepared for lots and lots of anti-venezuela propaganda in the next few months.

burn illusions, burn...

2005-09-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

everybody has to lose sometime, now it's your turn. I know you'd never thought you'd ever see the day when your prayers would be answered so cruely. crome plated highlights on powder coated black steel, glistening with gun oil. death is sexy. crazy fire lighting up the sanity, burning up the bordom, spreading the infection. it's good to be dead.

The easier it is to communicate...

2005-08-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

...the more relationships become disposible. The ease of communication in the short term has made lasting relationships more difficult. We can just remove them from our buddy list. after all, the more time we spend online, the less time we spend in the real world, giving more weight to the relationships we form online. this will inevitably lead to digital tribalization and social segmentation as we more easily eliminate potential unperfects. then we will have wars. small ones. digital ones, but people will die.

for the record...

2005-08-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

...i don't support gun control, and believe in the 2nd amendment.
i believe that government is too big.
i believe that taxes should be lower.
i believe that exessive regulation hurts people.
i believe that terrorism is a terrible crime and must be stopped.
i believe that america is the greatest country in the history of the planet, and that's not just because I'm an american.

however...

I believe that the "conservatives" of today are a bunch of CORRUPT SHITHEADS, and it's this army of IGNORANT, ARROGANT ASSHOLES that make us all look like a bunch of STUPID LITTLE KIDS waving around guns and making fun of the kids that can't afford nice clothes.

...it's these dickwads that will destroy america...and i really hate them for it. i like it here.

...of course, because I dare say anything that doesn't fit in lock-step with their stated agenda, I'm a "liberal". No, shithead, I'm an AMERICAN! Not that you remember what that is.

winning isn't everything...

2005-08-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

...it's nothing. excellence is an illusion and perfection is an imposibility. mistakes are inevitable. the competition will eventually beat you. performance is transient. there is always a bigger fish. there are always smaller fish. there is always somebody who plays the game better. there is always another game you don't even know how to play. there is always another form of competition. you can't be the winner. winning is an illusion. losing is an illusion. there are only achievements. goals that you set, pursue, and reach. if you are too focused on winning, you might find yourself pursuing goals that are important only because there is competition involved. if you try to be better than other people, fine. just don't be surprised when I'm not impressed when you answer the question "better than other people at what?"

the greatest achievement....

2005-08-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

...was once and for a time, a dream. I remember hearing these words when I was young, the meaning lost with cold repetition. we end up not even saying the whole sentence. "once and for a time a dream". it could have been "once upon a time" and I wouldn't have noticed the difference. I saw a notebook, a diary, one of the expensive ones at barnes and noble, with those words on it today. I almost fell back into ignoring the meaning, but I didn't. instead, i thought about my dreams, and about how easy it is to forget that the greatest achievement i will ever make may be one of those dreams.

...speaking of dreams, i had one last night. I was in a bathroom with all these weird toilets and my penis was about 15 or 16 inches long. it was cool.

In between stagnation...

2005-08-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

and chaos is an edge. structured. fast-paced. dynamic. changing. the ultimate expression of movement. it is in this small crack that we wobble back and forth over, from stagnation to chaos, chasing this manifest perfection, this ultimate potential. everything is ordered, but nothing is static. everything is moving, but nothing is out of range. it is a place where we can stay ahead of our time while still using what has always worked in the past. where we can honor tradition through modernism. a place where the effort is minimal and the effects are amplified. a place where, once you are there, people want to follow you. I spend too much time trying to find this place. I'm begginning to think it doesn't really exist.

I talk about having the idea...

2005-07-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

...rather than the idea itself. I'm focused on the meta-idea. looking at the idea like a psuedo-intellectual looks at a peice of art, making comments about it to artificially lift himself above it, but all the time not connecting with it at all. art critics make lousy artists. still, i'm hovering above this idea, these ideas, looking down at it, seeing it slowly come into focus, keeping just enough distance so I don't lose sight of it. every step forward is a step in the wrong direction if you don't know where you're going. the only step in the right direction when you need to stop and see the big picture is a step backwards. of course, maybe i'm just affraid of the idea. maybe i'm affraid of the commitment to it, so i'm distancing myself. maybe not seeing it clearly is a given. maybe i'm human and my eyesight into eternity isn't 20/20. maybe i can only see clearly when i have made a commitment. maybe i'll see that i've made the wrong choice. maybe it's not about seeing. maybe it's about deciding to see. maybe i should start talking about the ideas i have rather than talking about the fact that i have them.

to be better than bourgeois...

2005-06-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

is to be human. bourgeois is less than human. it is giving up your sovereignty and liberty for a lifestyle that's been sold to you. Of course it makes you miserable, that's why the bourgeois drink beer, watch tv, take prosac, and do anything else that will take thier minds off of thier lives. Why spend precious time thinking about a job that has no meaning when you can just watch a game on television, drink a beer, take a prosac, and ignor your marital problems. Well, I say fuck tv, fuck sports, fuck marriage, fuck suburbia, fuck bourgeois. Better to be a failure at something you're passionate about than to be a complete success at being a miserable bore.

of course, fear makes people bourgeois, and I'm affraid. am i headed for the suburbs? sure looks that way. maybe i'm just a bourgeois hipacrit, another bourgeois cliche. then again, maybe it's not being bourgeois that makes people miserable. I'm miserable, and I'm not bourgeios. I'm miserable because I see what bourgeois really is...an empty lifestyle. A commercial. A plastic piece of crap that gets dirty, making you want a new one, but it's a lifestyle, and you can't buy a new one. The fact that I see this so clearly makes me different.

I'm post-bourgeois. I'm better than bourgeois.

we live in a world of infinite information...

2005-06-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

...and we attempt to consume much more than is possible. we attempt to remedy this by adding greater efficiency to our levels of abstraction of consuming this information. we try to make things better, ironically, by making information easier to consume. RSS feeds. podcasts. specialized searches. this is all in an effort to consume information for what greater purpose? we are trying to internalize something. we are struggling with our own identity and are searching for it online. we're shopping for a brand new karma. we see the world without us in it, and are looking for something that we want to identify with. it would seam that the rest is shit. of course, the effect is transient, so this is chasing after wind, from desire, we strive toward satisfaction, and from satisfaction, we leap to desire.

marshall mcluhan posed four questions...

2005-06-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

... for us to ask about every form of technology. Even though, I'm sure, many people have asked these four questions about the internet and sub-technologies of it, One of the questions is "what does it enhance?". ask this question about the internet... the written word? possibly. but not any more so that audio and video technologies. What the internet enhances is the human mind. it is the ultimate thinking tool. We browse the web to be "entertained", sure. However, the massive amount of information on the internet aren't just about entertainment. there is useful information. we use the internet as a vast form of memory. we retrieve information as if we are requesting it from our own heads, and sometimes get it just as fast. sometimes faster. the internet is a billion people all sharing the same memory. Now, for another of marshal mcluhan's questions...

What does it make obsolete?

I just had a great post...

2005-06-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

it was something about how our society is changing because of the availability of information. the more people are online, the more they are able to access old information, as well as new information. they can find the latest stuff, they can find stuff from 20 years ago, and they can find it sometimes on the same page. the world is changing because the way we get information is changing. time is less significant now. it was more poetic than that when I originally posted it, but my computer crashed and i lost my post.