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Protected: You can’t get love, only give it.
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fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Okay so I’m feeling more human today.
I know if I push it down hard enough I will forget most of the time, again.
And it isn’t a case of stopping myself from saying ‘if only I had’,
because although I missed one huge opportunity to prevent some euphemistic evil ie. ’horrific fucking crime’
there is still nothing stopping me from saying ‘fuck it, I will’,
taking the plunge.
I don’t even believe in ‘evil’ and I’m willing to trade my life for this guy’s,
Otherwise I have to deal with this all again in 6 to 8 years. 5 with parole.
…Except for everyone I love telling me it is not worth my sanity,
to move on,
to not let him dominate my life.
HE HAS CHILDREN
Maybe they are misunderstanding what dominates my life.
I know my friends thought they were doing the right thing, ‘protecting me’ until the court case was over.
That was not the right thing.
Instead it means that every interaction I have had with them for the past 6 months was a non-genuine. Steeped only in the huge negative space caused by their omission.
This does not help my case for reality as I perceive it being worthwhile.
My love is a million miles away in his own world right now.
My love wants to be so much closer but I know I will hurt her.
Now I just don’t know what to think.
By the time I got there you were already bored
I grew up a long way away from the world.
By the time I got there you were already bored.
So we spent 10 years with broken limbs,
Teased by the void, listening for trains,
Watched our past blow up in a hospital ward,
Now all our hard work leaves us perfect remains:
We go to our jobs,
Pretend to be sane.
So everything was going pretty good,
A testament to my hard work,
slowly behavioural changes become easier
and it’s a relief being me – a new feeling.
I’m doing good -
even though 90% is stoic existentialist calm,
I still get lashings of wild crazy overwhelming thoughts,
but they don’t take very much time
and after a little emotional thrashing I’m fine again.
But then today the name came up on the county court criminal listings.
sfdjhfdsghghjhhdshjsdfiwaeloaqewr[‘ok
Happy in finery
At odds with a healing friend,
in the most delightful way,
He thinks I can be saved,
but I have realised no one will save me,
and that’s just fine.
He sends me nothing but love and nature,
but I keep chatting about atheism,
He introduces me to his friendly, warm housemates,
but I am afraid of new obligations,
my brain, churning, to save everyone’s face.
This isn’t from depression,
it is from ‘growing up’ and letting go - I am not required to save anyone either,
it is from accepting myself,
which might be code for giving up,
but that’s just fine.
Lonely,
but fine.
Reasonable FTW!!
Ms x,
Congratulations, your submission Towards the quantification of water
quantity and quality impacts of rainwater tanks in South East Queensland has
been accepted for presentation at MxDSxM 2011 which is being held 2011-12-12
at Perth.Thank you and looking forward to your participation in this event.
Mr y
————————
Reviewer B:
A good paper, reasonably well written and will make a good contribution to
the presentations at MXDSXM——————————
___________________
MXDSXM 2011 Perth
redacted from facebook due to emo-ness
arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh disease isn’t fair, my friends are too fast, I hate hospitals, I’m hopeless at my job. If it wasn’t for this weather I would have been emo-ing it up to a painful degree over the past two weeks. Lying in the sunshine each day is the only thing keeping me going.
Quivverful
Last fortnight I fell into a terrifying internet-hole about the ‘Quivverful’ movement. Passionate blogs by defiant ‘stay at home daughters’. Heart-rending blogs by patriarchy movement trauma survivors. It has taken me weeks to get it off my mind.
Mundane Magic
A wonderful post on a topic I bore my friends with quite a lot when I am manic, and guilt myself with when I am depressed:
There’s an old trick for combating dukkha where you make a list of things you’re grateful for, like a roof over your head.
So why not make a list of abilities you have that would be amazingly cool if they were magic, or if only a few chosen individuals had them?
For example, suppose that instead of one eye, you possessed a magical second eye embedded in your forehead. And this second eye enabled you to see into the third dimension - so that you could somehow tell how far away things were – where an ordinary eye would see only a two-dimensional shadow of the true world. Only the possessors of this ability can accurately aim the legendary distance-weapons that kill at ranges far beyond a sword, or use to their fullest potential the shells of ultrafast machinery called “cars”.
“Binocular vision” would be too light a term for this ability. We’ll only appreciate it once it has a properly impressive name, like Mystic Eyes of Depth Perception.
So here’s a list of some of my favorite magical powers:
- Vibratory Telepathy. By transmitting invisible vibrations through the very air itself, two users of this ability canshare thoughts. As a result, Vibratory Telepaths can form emotional bonds much deeper than those possible to other primates.
- Psychometric Tracery. By tracing small fine lines on a surface, the Psychometric Tracer can leave impressions of emotions, history, knowledge, even the structure of other spells. This is a higher level than Vibratory Telepathy as a Psychometric Tracer can share the thoughts of long-dead Tracers who lived thousands of years earlier. By reading one Tracery and inscribing another simultaneously, Tracers can duplicate Tracings; and these replicated Tracings can even contain the detailed pattern of other spells and magics. Thus, the Tracers wield almost unimaginable power as magicians; but Tracers can get in trouble trying to use complicated Traceries that they could not have Traced themselves.
- Multidimensional Kinesis. With simple, almost unthinking acts of will, the Kinetics can cause extraordinarily complex forces to flow through small tentacles and into any physical object within touching range – not just pushes, but combinations of pushes at many points that can effectively apply torques and twists. The Kinetic ability is far subtler than it first appears: they use it not only to wield existing objects with martial precision, but also to apply forces that sculpt objects into forms more suitable for Kinetic wielding. They even create tools that extend the power of their Kinesis and enable them to sculpt ever-finer and ever-more-complicated tools, a positive feedback loop fully as impressive as it sounds.
- The Eye. The user of this ability can perceive infinitesimal traveling twists in the Force that binds matter – tiny vibrations, akin to the life-giving power of the Sun that falls on leaves, but far more subtle. A bearer of the Eye can sense objects far beyond the range of touch using the tiny disturbances they make in the Force. Mountains many days travel away can be known to them as if within arm’s reach. According to the bearers of the Eye, when night falls and sunlight fails, they can sense huge fusion fires burning at unthinkable distances – though no one else has any way of verifying this. Possession of a single Eye is said to make the bearer equivalent to royalty.
So remember the Litany Against Being Transported Into An Alternate Universe:
If I’m going to be happy anywhere,
Or achieve greatness anywhere,
Or learn true secrets anywhere,
Or save the world anywhere,
Or feel strongly anywhere,
Or help people anywhere,
I may as well do it in reality.
- from “If You Demand Magic, Magic Won’t Help” by Eliezer_Yudkowsky on LessWrong:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ou/if_you_demand_magic_magic_wont_help/
Music keeps me breathing
It is my self-medication,
My rock,
A means by which I can pass from one moment of living to the next,
It seems to be the only sustainable way to change my chemical composition,
Help me out here.
Got through.
Let’s see how long it lasts this time.
I hope I can forgive myself by the time it destroys me.
“All addicts share a consistent and obvious symptom: they’re not quite present when you talk to them”
All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.
From ‘For Amy’, By Russel Brand: http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/07/for-amy/
la la la la!
Who’s up for a great weekend? Only you can make your day great! Make sure it is! Yeah!
So it seems to get easier each time you do it. And I’m not just saying that because right now I feel alright – I’m gazing down the muzzle as we speak, and have not yet felt the fear. Perhaps I’ve won?
Heavy
Sometimes things can get very heavy. Sometimes it’s not depression, sometimes it’s guilt. the best way is to move forward, move past the feeling.
1. Identify small step to take
2. Identify reward
3. Take step
4. Take reward.
5. Repeat.
Keep breathing.
It’s okay to cry.
Self harm seems extreme; try requesting an extension.
It’s pretty pathetic how linked my entire emotional being is to my career.
Was granted an extension on the conference paper, and I can breathe again.
It’s actually quite worrying.
I need more than my job to validate my life [apparently]. Science-ing fulfills me more than most any human favour. But I’ve heard this is not a healthy way to live.
Can you tell me a healthy way to live? One that improves on my current hedonistic but straight-A death-wish lifestyle?
But right now, I feel great. Thank you Mdsm.
Protected: It is nice living with others again, if only to show that they’re as fucked as me
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And as much as I wish I got along better with these people,
Don’t you think that there’s a reason why?
- ‘Celepram’, Horrorshow
Aww, I love Horrorshow, it’s like Emo Aussie Hip Hop. What’s there not to like!?
Atheism and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things
(in response to an article condemning pseudo science)
I’m an atheist and a skeptic but I believe ‘talking’ to plants illustrates a natural connection which we just haven’t quantified yet. Probably something to do with vibrations from sound waves, or perhaps some quantum link caused by bodily actions, conscious or unconscious. I am hesitant to include ‘brainwaves’ or ‘intent’ and draw a line from this to ‘the secret’ or the ‘we create our own reality’ brigade, but ignoring the interconnectedness of some things is just naivety.
Once science explains it, it won’t be ‘supernatural’ any more.
Hypatia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia
(Hy-pay-sha)
Science is awesome
John Tawell
In 1845, he became the first person to be arrested as the result of telecommunications technology (wikipedia)
Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tawell
Full story (plus, learn about how cool telegraphs were!): http://www.cntr.salford.ac.uk/comms/johntawell.php
This really tickles my steampunk-type fancy.
I think I may begin a short story…
Text messages are unobtrusive telepathy
(in response to: Diagnosing the Digital Revolution” http://www.slate.com//id/2283467#jsid-1297727870-600 )
THANKYOU! Gawd I was getting so sick of reading article after article bemoaning technology, which, as a ‘digital native’ I would feel guilty about, and wonder if I really was sacrificing my critical analysis skills for quantity of & instant access to information. I like the description of texting as ‘telegraphing with our thumbs’, and I view mobile phones as a marvel which practically enable telepathy: anywhere, anytime, instantly. Text messages are unobtrusive telepathy. I could not have imagined such a thing so widespread an inexpensive as a child in the 80s, and I was someone who has always been obsessed with portable computing. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy seemed a utopian, impossible device, yet now we have smart phones which far out-pace even the HHG2G.
Posthumanism
influence as ‘netizen’ (ugh) on internet as we know it -> really good blogs, reviews, forum posts, social networking = influence, experience = immortality -> would you get bored? -> research, publish papers -> could you publish papers forever? -> how does organic healthy brain work? forget old memories, learn new things = rather than going insane over time, an immortal healthy human brain would simply act as normal: forget de-prioritised memories and become interested in new things, forever regenerating. You might not write papers forever but rather than going insane you would just get interested in something else -> but an AI-you isn’t organic. So how would ‘uploaded to the internet’ you act? -> Uploading would create a snapshot of yourself, as you are. Since you’re not organic, you don’t have the limitations that make us human, you can perfectly remember every new wikipedia article you read, but you are missing the failings that make us human by making us change as ‘people’: our attitudes, beliefs etc. You would never develop a mental illness and could write scientific papers forever, since you would be an eternally functioning snapshot of yourself. -> but if you could create new memories (eg encyclopedias, following the latest bands, gutenburg project etc) could you reprogram yourself if you decided a different attitude might be more beneficial? Isn’t all memory deciding that it’s more beneficial to retain a fact than retain nothing? If you learn a historical date, could you not learn an enlightening method, new habit, new attitude, self-talk, point of focus? Wouldn’t this be painless and utterly unfettered by nostalgic hangups since we could bypass them by intellectually understanding it is more beneficial to ignore them?
Would we be forever in effective, active/contributing stasis; or could we build the perfect mind?
Another good word: Arrant
arrant: Utter; complete
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arrant
arrant(a): without qualification; used informally as (often pejorative) intensifiers; “an arrant fool”; “a complete coward”; “a consummate fool”; “a double-dyed villain”; “gross negligence”; “a perfect idiot”; “pure folly”; “what a sodding mess”; “stark staring mad”; “a thoroughgoing villain …
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Good word: Sedulity
sedulity: the quality of being constantly diligent and attentive
Protected: Warning: Angst ahead ” I have a vague grasp of the emotional importance of fulfilling our biological imperative. But I could always fake an accident.”
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Gender and toys
My response to: “Why Do Boys Like Sticks?” http://www.slate.com//id/2280989#jsid-1294970911-34
Stupid question. I am a girl and I loved sticks. Sticks are an instant materialistic toy, which I can own but then replace right away if it breaks. I grew up in the bush – it all comes down to what you are exposed to and none of this gender-born-with-preferences nonsense.
The REAL introduction for the Journal paper I’m writing
So, Rainater tanks are very important. All this drought, middle class guilt over environmental destruction, terror at realising we are all alone and our comfortable western existence can be completely destroyed; and we won’t even get a chance to use our clever manipulative debate and weapons to any effect. I’ve got static in my head….the reflected sound of everything…it didn’t lead to anything.
I feel sorry for the meterorologists or whoever is meant to predict the end to a 10 year drought (BoM? Us?) which still had unbelievers. Now Queensland is flooding, yet our project marches on, since it is on paper rather than in a crisis room. But HH, I hear you say, hasn’t there been recent literature suggesting that rainwater tanks don’t deliver the befefits expected from yield and centralised water savings, and now, you’re saying, they don’t even reduce pollution to stormwater as much as we thought? I would reply: Yep. Hell yep. Pity huh? It’s also a shame that there are no apocalypse-management or even soft science to judge the effect of having your own rainwater tank, or solar panels, or whatever. And anyway, must be good for the economy right, all those rainwater tanks being built? Hopefully they were built in Australia. Used a lot of resources, yes, but even the rationalist and environmentalist in me is placated by the warm fuzzy feelings that apocalypse-esther exudes (see above).
So yeah, here is a paper telling you that the rainwater tanks are not really a viable option anymore, and they dont even improve stormwater quality. Enjoy.
My Dad, Hagrid.
There is a certain type of man for which I have abiding love.
I had a university lecturer who, when a student came into a lecture late, would not glare or pause in a critical way; instead he would apologise for (himself) interrupting the class then politely, gingerly even, open and close the door behind the tardy student. Once he misjudged and the ensuing awkward footwork and ‘no, after you’ gestures filled my entire ribcage with a warm fuzzy glow. I have a brilliant mathematician colleague who upon meeting someone new, acts like a shy, terrified schoolboy – years of social practise come to the fore to cover it up, but actual comfort is paralysed. He fidgets more than I do. I adore him.
The trope is the ‘gentle giant’, but these are any kind, introverted men. Yet you know they can squash if they want to. Sometimes they have a tall or bulky build which serves to highlight their tentative interaction with people around them. That slight anxiousness, the uncertain hovering, the adorable care they take, occasionally a sense of ungainliness when, from an evolutionary standpoint, and in most cultures, such a build is respected.
But best of all is the witty, intimate, sense of humour, intelligence and love which reveals itself when comfortable. Hagrid, my poster-man of such types, is the simple cuddly illustration: Huge, warm, kindly, with an initial shyness which makes me want to hug him. Apologising profusely for breaking a chair or knocking over a lamp. The largest wall-flower ever. But, when he needs, will crush his enemy like a bug.
This has nothing to do with my partner whom I also love dearly – he’s actually quite the opposite: energetic and talkative. No, but I am talking about my father. My Dad is a man who I have boundless love for, and I know for certain that he has the same unconditional love of me. Along with my brother – a similarly reserved, tall, kind man – my sentiment retracts from the brink of ‘man-hating’ (bleh) after a nasty break up, an extended study of male power struggles, and depressing politicians and business men. ‘If there are men like my father and brother in the world,’ I think, ‘then things really do have a chance.’ (Then I kick myself for indulging in stupid psychological gender division.)
Call me biased, call me a stereotype or pigeonholer. I don’t mind because nothing but love comes out of this attachment. Every time I meet a burly man with a beard, who seems desperate not to offend, a man carefully making a cup of tea, reading a fantasy book, or see anyone at all riding a classic motorcycle, or hear that Harley roar, I am filled with this love. Besides these familiar things that will always remind me of my father, there are also drunken friendly sea-shanties, men who shyly hold a door open for you and actually respond with relief when you smile thank-you, meeting a colleague who doesn’t know what to do with his hands and seems more uncomfortable in a group situation than you, self-effacing, slightly aspy specialists who open up gloriously when their topic comes to light and you want to talk for hours, the shaggy friend with the most wicked sense of humour who causes the thought ‘this is the type of guy who should be running the world’ to occur; when I feel this character in another person, I cannot repress my urge to give them a great big loving smile and hope I am not imagining their ensuing sense of relaxation, because that’s how they make me feel too.
In every way I believe I would be only a better person if these qualities were enhanced in me. Myself: hungry, angsty, over-analytical, detached, riddled with cognitive dissonance, swinging from reticent to way-too-over-enthusiastic – I worry I can be a grating person.
All the cached thoughts and carefully observed social behaviours I manufacture and nurture seem so flimsy and time consuming.
My father is Hagrid,
and I wish I was a gentle giant.
TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM:http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/04/11/37-lessons-to-help-you-live-a-life-that-matters/
Thanks Donald!
37 Lessons to Help You Live a Life that Matters
By Donald Latumahina, April 11, 2007
I learn a lot from the book Success Built to Last. To give you the gems of what I learn, I have summarized the book into 37 lessons. If you apply these lessons consistently, I’m sure you will live a life that matters.
I suggest that you use these lessons as your personal checklist. Check them periodically to see the items you need to improve, and make personal commitment to apply them. Over time, you can measure your progress in applying these lessons and, consequently, in living a life that matters.
So here are the 37 lessons to help you live a life that matters:
- Discover what matters to you
Success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organizational structure, or business model, than with discovering what matters to you as individuals.- Have the courage to do what matters
You create enduring success not because you are perfect or lucky but because you have the courage to do what matters to you.- Don’t rely on others’ approval
Successful people don’t rely on the approval of others to pursue their cause or calling. They are more emotionally committed to doing what they love than being loved by others.- Redefine success
The real definition of success is a life and work that bring personal fulfillment and lasting relationships and makes a difference in the world in which they live.- Don’t chase money and recognition
Money and recognition are just outcomes of passionately working often on an entirely different objective that is often a personal cause or calling.- Recognize signs of passion
Builders (the term used by the authors to refer to “enduringly successful people”) become lovers of an idea they are passionate about for years and years. They lose track of the passage of time while doing it. In a real sense, it’s something that they’d be willing to do for free, for its own sake.- Worry more about being what you love
Most of us worry more about being loved than being what we love.- Be sure you do what you love
It’s dangerous not to do what you love. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’ll lose to someone who does. Passionate people try harder, try more things, and move faster than people who only do things for a living.- Check whether you’re on the right track
You know that you are on the right track when you naturally obsess over what you love. What you love attracts you even when you’re too tired to do anything else.- Find your mission in life
To find your mission in life is to discover the intersection between your heart’s deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger (Frederick Beekner).- Find place for your multiple passions
You do need to find a place for everything that is meaningful to you (your portfolio of passions). When you exclude all other things except a single focus for your life, there is a danger that you might find it impossible to locate the real treasure.- Experiment with your other passions
Carve out a little time each week to experiment in some way with one of your other passions.- Never retire from what you love
Builders’ passions create meaning in their lives that is nothing short of lifelong obsession from which they seek no escape.- Have integrity to do what matters to you
You should have integrity to do what matters to you. Do not waste your time if it doesn’t matter.- Be yourself
You shouldn’t hijack someone else’s value system. To do so would be a violation of integrity to what matters in your life.- Listen to that little voice
Happy endings come from listening to that little voice inside your head – some call it the whisper – about what matters to you.- Plug into the cause and get the power
Whatever Builders are doing has so much meaning to them that the cause itself provides charisma and they plug into it as if it was electrical current. They are lifted up by its power.- Do what matters despite political correctness
Doing things despite the political correctness of the path is the price of admission to almost every enduring life of lasting impact.- Do what matters despite popularity
Builders cling to a personal commitment that’s so compelling to them – something so important to them that they would actually do it for free – that they must do it despite popularity.- Have passion, determination, and skill
Life takes passion, determination, and skill. You can’t skip any of those three and expect to enjoy success built to last.- Be greedy to acquire knowledge for your dream
If you should be greedy about anything, it should be about acquiring “intellectual capital” for your dream. Being your best at what you do is essential to success built to last.- Make a difference with your knowledge
When you have “earned” knowledge, you have an ethical responsibility to “invest” that capital on making a difference.- Earn opportunities through expertise
Opportunity comes from expertise, not just luck, talent, and passion.- Recognize when to move
When Builders found that striving for excellence is unreachable or joyless, they saw it as a message to move onto something else.- Have the right attitude toward difficulties
Having many difficulties perfects the being; having no difficulties ruins the being (Lao Tzu).- Make failure your friend
Many highly accomplished people described themselves as so proficient at making mistakes that, if you didn’t know better, you might think they were losers.- Harvest failure
Enduringly successful people harvest failure. They become more resolute after losing a battle they believe in because they learn from the loss. Losers call it failure; winners call it learning.- Always make new mistakes
When you make mistakes, just be sure to make new ones.- Manage your weaknesses
Builders don’t deny their flaws, nor do they allow them to paralyze action. They manage it, include it, cope with it, and don’t let it stop them.- Earn your luck through focus and knowledge
Builders earn their luck, not simply getting lucky. They earn their luck by focusing on doing work that is meaningful to them and going deep to discover relevant clues along the way. It is focus and knowledge that allows them to observe the subtleties of their path and then take advantage of serendipitous events.- Have a prepared mind
Only a prepared mind and open heart prevails.- Have clear goals
Builders use planning and goals – often big goals – to put themselves into a serendipitous position.- Have explorer mentality
Builders have explorer mentality. They have clear direction, but not the roadmap. What they seek in the long term doesn’t always turn out as expected.- Think about your relationships as long term
If you want success that lasts, then you’re better off if you think about your relationships as being built to last.- Surround yourself with “A” players
Builders spent the largest percentage of their time tracking down, surrounding themselves with, and developing the people who are “A” players.- Align your intentions, words, and actions
Always watch whether your words and actions match your intentions, and are aligned with what you are trying to do.- Get the inconsistent stuff out
Alignment requires that you get out of your life all the stuff that is inconsistent with your passions and goal. That includes people. Choose wisely.
TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM:http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/04/11/37-lessons-to-help-you-live-a-life-that-matters/
Thanks Donald!
Protected: Last.FM music list
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Good hedonistic words
A dissolute, rakish libertine.
Tautology fun!
Throw ‘picaresque’ in there and we have a Victorian-era main novel ready to go!
“There is always something to be written”
My first procrastination: am going to go to the printer & get my journal paper, do a block of the building, stretch this aching shoulder-neck.
Then 5 minutes of writing: DO IT!
Whoops no, now I have to eat my wrap…
Still eating, was too close to freezer in the office fridge: frozen tabouli = falafel fail.
Okay I also cancelled A’s health insurance (he never uses it) over the phone, photocopied my most recent dentist receipt to claim it, then looked up falafel, tabouli, and tahini on wikipedia (oh, and allspice) to see what they were made of because gee they are good.
Crap should I go to the F gig tonight? Driving home from the city very late on a weeknight is not a good idea but the company will be brilliant and it is their last gig until spring….. ahh can’t decide! The only way I can decide these things is by saying ‘No’, I’ve realised. The reason I can’t decide is that the inconvenience and anxiety seems to outweigh the goodness. The problem with doing this, and going with my gut feeling (aww I can’t be bothered going!) is that it means I rarely leave the house and do anything social on a weeknight. That’s because social things cause inconvenience and anxiety almost as a rule for me, yet are also the best, fulfilling, most entertaining times of my life.
I also put in my two cents on a discussion on the sexist implications of asking the only guy in the office to change the water cooler bottle. When it’s my turn on tea-duty, I feel ashamed if a stranger sees me carrying the shopping into our office, in case they think I’m a young secretary tea-lady who is bringing everyone’s supplies in, and will also do the dishes and bake.
I can’t find a stark DVD in stock anywhere but region zero on amazon *sigh*.
.Procrastination over.
Machines don’t want to love, but they can want humans to love.
From “Mythologist of Our Age” about Ray Bradbury at http://www.slate.com/id/2252825/pagenum/2
“Bradbury is no ideologue, however, and he is certainly not a Luddite. The collection’s most poignant speech, after all, is spoken by a robot. In “I Sing the Body Electric!” the mechanical grandmother stands before her skeptical, adopted family, and tries to win them over. “You ask what I am?” she says. “Why, a machine. But even in that answer we know, don’t we, more than a machine. I am all the people who thought of me and planned me and built me and set me running. So I am people. I am all the things they wanted to be and perhaps could not be, so they built a great child, a wondrous toy to represent those things.” It soon becomes clear that the clockwork grandmother is not trying to make this family, crippled by the death of their matriarch, love her. She is trying to make them love each other again. Deep down in their metallic hearts, Bradbury’s machines are as human as their inventors. They yearn to feel, to love. The tragedies occur when human beings start acting like machines.”
…
“Bradbury is an optimist at heart, but his head knows that hope may not be enough. He’s seen the future, and it’s not all grand pink-stoned chess cities on Mars and houses that tidy up after you. It’s also knowing that the world is about to end and that there’s nothing to do but lie under the covers and wait for oblivion to come. It’s a room full of robots telling stories about the people who made them, long after the human race has vanished from the earth. It’s a man in a space suit falling through the cosmos at 10,000 miles an hour, feeling his brain disintegrating, wondering what he can do “to make up for a terrible and empty life” in the final moments before he passes into nothingness. You read Bradbury with a growing sense of wonder and joy. It’s only on reflection, after the stories take up residence in your head and crawl deep into the dark cracks and corners, that the wonder mutates into something closer to dread.”
The bells are loud today
I have very long hair. I happen to be female. I earn more than my husband. I hate to cook. I love Starbuck & Linda Hamilton. I pluck my mono-brow for social acceptability, occasionally wear lipstick if I’m looking sick or stoned. I can’t be bothered changing the world anymore.
Most humans stress me. Especially girls/women. Isolation is comforting and wonderful but makes me feel guilty. I want to write a book and change someone’s world but no longer think there is anything important to say.
Am I a feminist? Androgynous? Slightly aspie? Just Narcissistic? Bi-sexual? Intelligent? Faking? Brain-fried & past my prime?
I love you.
Prisoner of Conscience
From (emphasis mine): http://www.vanityfair.com./politics/features/2007/02/mccain200702?currentPage=4
Indeed, in two long stints on the road in September and October, McCain kept up a punishing pace. He is mentally sharp, verbally facile, and perpetually curious. (On one of our trips, he was rereading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) But he is visibly older, thinner, balder—and, yes, frailer—than he was just six years ago. Like his friend Bob Dole, he tries to minimize his disabilities, but they are serious. He suffered severe injuries when his plane was shot down over North Vietnam 40 years ago; his right knee was broken when his seat was ejected from the cockpit, and both arms were broken in the crash. These injuries were compounded by the profound abuse he endured during five and a half years in captivity.
McCain seldom talks about the details of his torture by the North Vietnamese, but he has written about them in clinical depth. Despite the injuries he had already suffered, upon capture he was promptly bayoneted in the ankle and then beaten senseless. The North Vietnamese never set either of his broken arms. The only treatment of his broken knee involved cutting all the ligaments and cartilage, so that he never had more than 5 to 10 percent flexion during the entire time he was in prison. In 1968 he was offered early release, and when he refused, because others had been there longer, his captors went at him again; he suffered cracked ribs, teeth broken off at the gum line, and torture with ropes that lashed his arms behind his back and that were progressively tightened all through the night. Ultimately he taped a coerced confession.
McCain’s right knee still has limited flexibility. Most of the time this is not too noticeable, but McCain mounts the steps onto planes with a herky-jerky gait. A climb up dozens of steps at the New Hampshire International Speedway, in Loudon, leaves him badly winded and sweating profusely. Because his broken arms were allowed to heal without ever being properly set, to this day McCain cannot raise his arms above his shoulders. He cannot attend to his own hair. An aide is often nearby with a comb and small can of hair spray.
McCain has difficulty putting on his suit jacket unassisted. Once, as we prepared to get out of a cramped airplane cabin in Burlington, Vermont, where McCain would be greeted by the governor, I turned my back for a moment, only to find him struggling. He could sense that his collar was all bunched up, and asked me matter-of-factly to help him straighten it out. I felt the pang that those around McCain feel whenever they realize the extent of his injuries. “You comb someone’s hair once,” his 2000 communications director, Dan Schnur, says, “and you never forget it.”
Music as torture / Music as weapon (/ Music as ecstasy)
Interesting musings about CIA use of no-touch torture using deafening music, extremes of hot and cold etc – but just why can repetitive (not even too loud) music torture us? What is music vs sound?
“Theorists of battlefield use emphasize sound’s bodily effects, while theorists of the interrogation room focus on the capacity of sound and music to destroy subjectivity. There’s something here about the intersection of mind/body relationship with the distinction between private and public space, and the hierarchy of command and field operations, that I want eventually to think more about.”
…
“…the state’s interrogators share with many civilian musicians, composers and scholars the notion that listening to music can dissolve subjectivity, releasing a person into a paradoxical condition that is both highly embodied and almost disembodied in the intensity with which one forgets important elements of one’s identity, and loses track of time’s passing. The practices and ideologies of classical music listening suggest that such music-induced ecstasy is produced by intense attention to the relationships among the sounds themselves. Such listening, Fred Maus has recently written, “seeks identification with the controlling persona”. Maus goes on to quote Edward T Cone “The goal … must be identification with the complete musical persona by making its utterance one’s own” (Maus 2004: 36).
- (Emphasis mine) From “Music as torture / Music as weapon” by Suzanne G. Cusick at: http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm
Everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for…
Coveting possessions is unhealthy. Here’s how I look at it:All of the computers on Ebay are mine. In fact, everything on Ebay is already mine. All of those things are just in long term storage that I pay nothing for. Storage is free.When I want to take something out of storage, I just pay the for the storage costs for that particular thing up to that point, plus a nominal shipping fee, and my things are delivered to me so I can use them. When I am done with them, I return them to storage via Craigslist or Ebay, and I am given a fee as compensation for freeing up the storage facilities resources.This is also the case with all of my stuff that Amazon and Walmart are holding for me. I have antiques, priceless art, cars, estates, and jewels beyond the dreams of avarice.The world is my museum, displaying my collections on loan. The James Savages of the world are merely curators.As I am the curator of their things, and thus together we all share the world.posted by Pastabagel at 1:49 PM on October 4, 2007
Choose your own apocalype
Stolen directly from Slate’s nice american apocalypse piece:
This full list: http://www.slate.com/id/2223285/sidebar/2223286/
Interactive ‘Choose your own apocalype’ article: http://www.slate.com/id/2223285/ (fun!)
How Is America Going To End?
The top 144 scenarios.
1. Electromagnetic Pulse: A nuclear weapon detonated at high elevation could knock out the country’s electrical infrastructure, sending us back to the Stone Age. The congressional EMP Commission says an electromagnetic pulse “is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.”
2. Foreign Invasion: The Red Dawn scenario: A hostile alliance of foreign powers dispatches a team of elite combat troops to America. They launch a coordinated assault with thousands of paratroopers on key military and communications installations, dealing the U.S. government a fatal blow.
3. Russia Hits the Button: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg says the United States should fear “a mistaken attack on our country by the huge Russian arsenal of nuclear weapons.” As recently as 1995, a “retaliatory”nuclear strike was barely averted when Russian officials figured out at the last second that what they thought was an enemy strike was really a craft launched to monitor the Northern lights.
4. Loose Nukes: Taliban fighters wrest nuclear weapons from a destabilized Pakistan. Or al-Qaida acquires a small arsenal of nukes from a disintegrating Russia. The nonstate actors launch against the United States in an attack exponentially worse than 9/11.
5. Dirty Bombs: Terror groups armed with “radiological dispersal devices“—a cocktail of radioactive material and garden-variety explosives—launch coordinated attacks in a dozen major cities. The attacks destabilize the government and break our spirit. The terrorists win.
6. Abandonment: After a series of devastating attacks, Washington admits it can no longer protect large swaths of the nation. The United States contracts to a smaller core that’s easier to defend.
7. Suicidal Tyrant: An Ahmadinejad-like figure strikes at the heart of the Great Satan, launching nuclear weapons at major American cities and pushing the country to anarchy.
8. Internal Guerrilla Warfare: Smugglers and street gangs join forces to contest the authority of the U.S. government—first along the Mexican border and later in pockets of major cities—in order to maintain control of lucrative illicit markets.
9. Mercenary Armies: As in the seventh season of 24, a military contractor goes rogue and attacks the United States. Not even Jack Bauer can save us.
10. Space Attacks: A coalition of malevolent nations with hyper-advanced space programs strikes at the United States from the outer limits, disrupting all of our communications and rendering our conventional Army powerless.
11. Information War: A rogue state, terror organization, or group of malevolent hackers takes down America’s infrastructure by infiltrating every system that’s controlled by computers: television stations, traffic signals, telecommunications, the stock market, the power grid. As seen in Live Free or Die Hard.
12. Push-Button Warfare: Nanoscale production allows anyone to make tanks and flying drones with the press of a button. With sophisticated weaponry available to all, the nation-state ceases to be an important entity.
13. Peak Oil: Petroleum production reaches terminal decline. Oil becomes too expensive to extract, and alternative energies can’t maintain our fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle. The developed world goes kaput, with gas-happy America leading the way to the gutter.
14. Peak Water: The overpopulated, overheated Southwest runs out of H20, instigating mass migration to Canada.
15. Overpopulation: A spike in birth rates—or massive levels of immigration—increases the population of the United States to 1 billion. America doesn’t have the carrying capacity to support its new crush of citizens, and a die-off ensues.
16. Space Harvesting: China, Russia, and South Korea corral asteroids and harvest them for valuable minerals. As the rest of the developed world gets rich, the United States—whose space program is hopelessly behind—falls from its perch.
17. Oil 2.0: China, which produces more than 95 percent of the world’s rare earth metals (materials like europium and erbium), develops a major, rare-earth-fueled breakthrough in energy production. The United States, lacking the natural resources needed for this amazing new power source, becomes impoverished and insignificant.
18. Obesity: One of the fattest nations in human history keeps getting fatter. An increasingly sedentary society beset by health problems can no longer compete with the world’s fitter nations.
19. Geothermal Energy: In the post-petroleum age, we generate electricity by drilling into the Earth’s interior to extract stored heat; we drill too deeply, causing massive earthquakes.
20. Nuclear Waste: Yucca Mountain and other nuclear storage facilities begin to leak radioactive waste. Everyone gets cancer.
21. End of English: Chinese economic power combined with an influx of non-English-speaking immigrants to the United States leads to the decline of anglophone American culture worldwide.
22. Media Piracy: The American film and music industries go bankrupt as piracy becomes universal. The United States ceases to be the world’s leading exporter of culture, and the country declines in influence as images of America no longer proliferate worldwide.
23. Decadence: Rome had bread and circuses. America’s descent into a mindless stupor, historian Niall Ferguson argues, can be seen in the popularity of pornography and NASCAR. If you think ragging on porn and stock-car racing is a bit of a cliché, please substitute mixed martial arts and reality television.
24. Mass Incarceration: Rising rates of imprisonment lead the entire country to develop the social ills of America’s inner cities: Ex-offenders can’t find good jobs or marriage partners, and society slowly collapses.
25. End of Homeownership: The mortgage crisis kills off the American dream. Civic pride goes down the toilet, and the GDP shrinks as the ownership society shrivels up.
26. Math and Science: American math and science aptitude deteriorates, killing innovation in the tech sector and pushing America to the back of the line of post-industrial economies.
27. Intelligent Design: Creationists succeed in getting evolution pushed out of textbooks. Scientific illiteracy dooms America to second-class status.
28. Laziness: “Endlessly gaming, chatting, and chilling with their iPods, the next generation already has a more tenuous connection to ‘Western civilization’ than most parents appreciate,” historian Niall Ferguson writes. While everyone in France continues to take vacation in July and August, the next generation of Americans refuses to workexcept in July and August.
29. Oldocracy: As the population ages, there is growing discord between old fogeys with lots of voting power and younger people, increasingly foreign-born. The older generation seizes power and wastes all of America’s money on increased Social Security benefits.
30. Suburban Slums: Today’s McMansions will become tomorrow’s tenements, turning America’s exurban sprawl into a hellacious backwater. “About 25 years ago, Escape From New York perfectly captured the zeitgeist,” Christopher B. Leinberger writes in the Atlantic. “Two or three decades from now, the next Kurt Russell may find his breakout role inEscape From the Suburban Fringe.”
31. Christianity: Just as, per Edward Gibbon, the rise of religion killed Rome’s fighting spirit, increasing spirituality turns America into a nation of pacifists. We get attacked and don’t fight back.
32. Militant Islam: Muslims feel increasingly alienated by American society. Al-Qaida gets a much bigger toehold, giving it a staging ground for devastating domestic terror attacks that rip the nation asunder.
33. Drug Boom: Americans turn to advanced, hyper-addictive recreational drugs that are tailored to each individual user’s body chemistry. Civilization dies in a drug-induced haze.
34. Decline of Civic Spirit: As happened in Rome, excessive taxation leads citizens to lose respect for the state. The all-volunteer Army shrinks as no one cares to assume the risks of fighting for the country.
35. Gay Marriage: As the institution spreads across the country, splinter groups bemoan the practice and agitate to form their own, heterosexual-only state.
36. Wealth Gap: The divide between rich and poor grows. The nation’s lower classes, increasingly resentful of their impoverished condition, launch guerrilla attacks against the depraved, prosperous elites.
37. Complexity: Anthropologist Joseph Tainter and political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon argue that societies benefit from complexity (irrigation networks to prevent droughts, for example) up to a certain point but that too much intricacy can be a bad thing. Homer-Dixon explains: “As an expanding portion of a society’s wealth is sucked into further boosting complexity, its reserves to deal with unexpected contingencies fall.”
38. Multiculturalism: In a 2004 speech, former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm declared that America is doomed because it has gone from a melting pot to a “bilingual-bicultural country.” Diversity “stresses differences rather than commonalities,” he said. “Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other—that is, when they are not killing each other.”
39. Smallpox: A rogue scientist looses the virus from a Russian vault, and terrorists use the disease to attack and destabilize America.
40. Swine Flu: The pandemic worsens, devastating American society to a much greater extent than the 1918 flu pandemic. Mortality from the virus itself is high, but pandemic expert Dr. Michael T. Osterholm argues that the disruption of supply chains will be far worse. When countries shut their borders to quarantine themselves, we’ll be unable to import the food, energy, and acute-care drugs we need.
41. Super-AIDS: The disease evolves, and airborne transmission spreads it faster than ever. Even the world’s richest nations are unable to get it under control.
42. Synthesized Super Virus: In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman suggests one scenario for the end of humanity: “a psychotically obsessed, biochemically trained terrorist creatively splice[s] something together that evolves faster than we develop resistance—maybe by clipping genetic material into the versatile SARS virus, which could spread both sexually and via the air.”
43. Anthrax: Terrorists in crop dusters drop aerosolized anthrax across a dozen metropolitan areas, sending the nation into a panic.
44. Tropical Diseases: Global warming enables insects to spread their diseases northward. A weakened America lacks the wealth and resources to stave off malaria outbreaks.
45. Antibiotic Resistance: As a result of factory farming and spiking sales of antibacterial hand soap, superstrains of bacteria develop that are resistant to medicine. Public health officials can do nothing but throw up their hands.
46. The Rapture: Christians are instantly transported to heaven. The nonbelievers left behind in America struggle to survive as Muslim countries gain in power relative to the United States.
47. Obama as God: The president, by far the most popular in history domestically and abroad, becomes the leader of a global religious cult. If that sounds unrealistic, sub Tiger Woods for Obama.
48. Dec. 21, 2012: According to an ancient Mayan prophecy—at least as interpreted by the kind of people who believe this sort of thing—this is a likely date of the apocalypse. In the event of the apocalypse, the United States will struggle to carry on.
49. Alien Invasion: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev once discussed banding together to fight off a UFO attack. For all the happy talk about cooperation, when the tractor beams come down, it’s every country for itself.
50. Voluntary Human Extinction: A movement to end breeding rises in popularity as climate change and resource wars intensify.
51. Supercollider: Legend has it that Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider could generate “mini black holes” that devour the universe. Turns out that idea was based on faulty science. But maybe the people who discovered the faulty science were themselves using faulty science. Eh, probably not.
52. Asteroid: NASA’s Near Earth Object Program reports there’s a less than 1-in-45,000 chance the asteroid Apophis will smash into Earth on April 13, 2036. And there’s no guarantee we’ll be crater-free if we dodge this particular space rock. A scientist at the Aerospace Corporation estimates a 10 percent chance per century of “a dangerous space-object strike.” Duck!
53. Supervolcano: The last volcanic “super-eruption” near Yellowstone happened 640,000 years ago. If we’re unlucky enough to be alive during the next blowup, the U.S. Geological Survey reports that “[t]hick ash deposits would bury vast areas of the United States.”
54. Hurricanes: Six of the 11 most-intense Atlantic hurricanes have come since 1998. Scientists have yet to come to a consensus on whether warmer waters generate more and bigger hurricanes, but if coastal-city-destroying megastorms become a yearly occurrence, the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard could be destroyed and abandoned.
55. New Madrid Earthquake: An earthquake of 8.0 magnitude or higher has a 7 percent to 10 percent chance of cracking up the New Madrid Seismic Zone—a region that covers parts of Missouri, Illinois, and three other states—in the next 50 years. (Walter Jon Williams’ novel The Rift imagines a ginormous New Madrid quake destroying Chicago and New Orleans and hurling the mighty Mississippi off course.)
56. Floods: As temperatures rise, more of the country is at risk of massive, regular flooding. Particularly flood-prone areas—New Orleans, Miami, Houston—must be abandoned.
57. Food Supply: An engineered wheat virus devastates America’s staple crop. We all starve.
58. The Matrix: The futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that by 2045 “technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it.” When we have “full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system”—essentially, a merger with our computers—nations won’t much matter anymore.
59. Outer Space Emigration: America runs out of arable land and breathable air. Everyone moves to the space station.
60. Gray Goo: The nanotechnology nightmare scenario: Out-of-control self-replicating robots keep making more of themselves until they consume all of the matter on Earth. “Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth,” Bill Joy wrote in Wired, “far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident. Oops.”
61. Robot Overlords: Superintelligent robots supplant humankind as the planet’s dominant beings. Flesh-and-blood people die out, unable to compete with the superior androids.
62. Neo-Humans: Life extension becomes attainable for the superrich, creating a long-lived aristocracy. Resentment builds up in the poor, leading to class warfare between the living gods and the earthly peons.
63. Space Debris: Missile tests generate a huge quantity of detritus, which starts blowing up satellites and threatening our security and communications.
64. Diet: An extremely popular new diet scheme turns out to be unhealthy in the long term. We all develop heart disease and die.
65. Cloning: We put aside our ethical concerns and become obsessed with designing perfect offspring. Everyone has the same bum genes, and the population plummets.
66. Big Brother: A supercomputer with hyperadvanced artificial intelligence takes over the government. See Eagle Eyeand Colossus: The Forbin Project.
67. Money Virus: Hackers take down the American financial system with malicious code that destroys all digital bank records.
68. Cell Phones: Our mobile devices really do give us brain cancer.
69. Vermont Independence: A majority of the Green Mountain State’s residents vote to form the Second Vermont Republic. The successful secessionist movement inspires other separatist groups, and the United States splinters.
70. Texas Secession: Gov. Rick Perry or a like-minded successor makes good on his sensationalist rhetoric and turns the Lone Star State into its own nation.
71. “The Bubba Effect”: Glenn Beck’s end-of-America scenario: Survivalists on the border take the law into their own hands, shooting illegal immigrants on sight. The federal government cracks down, and the put-upon “Bubbas” revolt.
72. Cascadia and Novacadia: Quebec secedes and Canada breaks into pieces. On the West Coast, British Columbiamerges with Washington and Oregon. To the east, the four Atlantic provinces join Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.
73. Alaska and Hawaii: Nativist movements win favor, pushing the American flag back to 48 stars.
74. Geographical Sorting: “Communities of sameness” form as like-minded individuals cluster together and refuse to live alongside those they disagree with.
75. La República del Norte: Professor Charles Truxillo argues that a growing Latino population in the Southwest will eventually reclaim the territory that Mexico lost to the United States in the 1800s.
76. Red vs. Blue: Philosophical and cultural divisions grow deeper, leading to a civil war between the red states and blue states and a national schism.
77. State Sovereignty Movements: Legislatures in states like New Hampshire pass bills to limit federal power. Built-in escape clauses allow states to secede when they perceive that the feds are infringing on their rights.
78. Transition Cities: Huge groups of survivalists abandon major cities to live as locavores in small, agrarian communities.
79. Nine Nations: North America abandons its arbitrary borders and splits into regions with cultural and economic similarities, such as the ones laid out in Joel Garreau’s Nine Nations of North America.
80. Racial Warfare: James Howard Kunstler suggests that increased poverty will spark violence in America’s urban ghettos, leading to riots that “will likely resolve into a more generalized and protracted guerrilla warfare of the kind that has been going on in third-world countries for decades.”
81. Emigration: Unemployment reaches record numbers, and Americans leave the country in search of the next land of opportunity. The more people leave, the worse the economy gets, which encourages still more people to leave.
82. Tribalism: The nation-state declines in importance, and people begin to see themselves more as members of international religious and ethnic groups: Jews, Mormons, Han Chinese, etc.
83. Transnationalism: Upper-class people around the world abandon national affiliations, identifying more with one another than with any particular state.
84. World Government: America is subsumed into a global body—a souped-up United Nations, for example—that governs all world affairs.
85. North American Union: Canada, the United States, and Mexico merge into a single country. Conspiracy theoristslike Jerome Corsi believe secret plans for the NAU have already been hatched. Coming soon: a single North American currency called the amero.
86. Globalization: Everyone else rises and America falls in relative terms—the Fareed Zakaria thesis.
87. Opt-In Government: Governance becomes divorced from geography. People who live in the United States can choose to be governed by the laws of Sweden and vice-versa.
88. Axis of Evil: North Korea and Iran team up and wreak havoc on their mutual Western enemies.
89. Al-Qaida: Global recruitment efforts pick up, and the terror network attacks America with greater frequency and effectiveness.
90. India and Pakistan: The Asian adversaries nuke each other, leading to World War III. America gets pulled in and is permanently weakened by a long, costly war far from home.
91. Neo-Colonialism: Countries such as South Korea and Saudi Arabia have begun buying arable land abroad—essentially, buying portions of foreign countries—and shipping the crops they grow back home. If portions of the United States get bought by a foreign company, America could become part of someone else’s mercantile empire.
92. Socialist Revolution: The global economic crisis discredits capitalism. Angry workers revolt, and communism replaces representative democracy.
93. Israel-Arab War: All-out mayhem in the Middle East as Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and more go to war. The United States moves to protect Israel and gets sucked into a generation-long conflict that saps the national will and treasury.
94. Canada Fails: Climate change is more extreme in northern latitudes, and Canadians try to stream south into the United States, destabilizing the entire continent.
95. Mexico Fails: Our southern neighbor collapses and becomes a narco-state. Warlords take over, pushing millions of Mexicans to seek refuge in the United States.
96. Europe Fails: A failure to assimilate immigrants pushes the continent into anarchy. A pan-European war spills over to the rest of the world, sucking in the United States and eventually destroying the economic and cultural power of the entire West.
97. Pax Sinica: China replaces the United States as the world’s hegemon. A weakened America pulls back from world affairs.
98. Pax Indica: India replaces the United States as the world’s hegemon. A weakened America pulls back from world affairs.
99. Pax Europa: The European Union replaces the United States as the world’s hegemon. A weakened America pulls back from world affairs.
100. Space Race: China or Russia or Singapore leads colonization and technological development in outer space. We get left behind on an increasingly crummy planet.
101. Unilateralism: America refuses to compromise on climate change and pursues its own foreign policy, making enemies of the entire world.
102. Isolationism: America pulls back from world affairs, getting left out of a newly forming global community of cooperation.
103. Wildfires: Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice. For those who favor fire, consider the 2006Science report that “longer, warmer summers have resulted in a fourfold increase of major [U.S.] wildfires and a sixfold increase in the area of forest burned, compared to the period from 1970 to 1986.”
104. Megadrought: According to Mark Lynas’ Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, if the world gets one degree warmer, the Great Plains are at risk of turning into an expanse of sand dunes. Bad news for American agriculture (and everyone who lives in Nebraska).
105. Climate Migration: Refugees from Mexico, the Southwest, and coastal cities flee the devastation wrought by climate change, overwhelming the American cities that remain healthy.
106. Pesticides: Overuse makes the soil barren and/or gives us all cancer.
107. Climate Wars: Individual countries or “climate pirates” conduct experiments to try to halt global warming. War breaks out over uncertainty regarding the cause of freak weather events.
108. Geoengineering: A non-American nation or group of nations succeeds in using technology to turn off climate change. The United States loses power and prestige. An even worse case: The nation that turned off climate change charges us rent to live on Earth.
109. Bottled Water: We continue to drink the stuff in prodigious amounts, and all the phthalates in the bottles cause massive health problems, including infertility.
110. Modified Organisms: A superhearty plant engineered to be resistant to pesticides and drought grows out of control and chokes out other life-forms.
111. Alien Species: The American equivalent of the cane toad—the Burmese python, perhaps—eats everyone and everything in its path.
112. Ice Age: As in The Day After Tomorrow, circulation of water in the North Atlantic slows down, bringing on a new ice age. The northern United States gets buried under a glacier.
113. Rising Sea Levels: As Miami, New Orleans, and the California coast disappear, migrants swarm to the center of the country and overwhelm the nation’s dwindling resources.
114. Heat Shock: In hotter growing seasons, staple crops succumb to withering temperatures, imperiling the national food supply.
115. Ocean Acidification: Increased absorption of carbon dioxide causes the pH of the oceans to decrease continually, leading to mass extinctions.
116. Gerrymandering: The lack of competitive congressional races creates de facto permanent elected offices. Districts are designed to reinforce tenure and identity politics, delegitimizing American democracy.
117. Social Security: The Treasury runs out of money to pay entitlements. The elderly stop getting their checks, and everyone loses faith in the federal government.
118. Cars: Suburbanization and investment in the Interstate Highway System force the United States to maintain gas-guzzling, polluting automobiles long after the rest of the world has moved to more sensible transportation systems. Our refusal to wean ourselves off fossil fuels hastens the country’s decline.
119. One-Party Rule: The Republican (or Democratic) Party becomes marginalized to the extent that it barely exists as a political entity. With no checks and balances, the Democrats (or Republicans) abuse their unprecedented power, becoming unimaginably corrupt.
120. Military Overstretch: The American equivalent of the overreaching that many historians say doomed the Romans. The shorthanded U.S. military fights multiple wars on multiple fronts, and our overextended troops get divided and conquered.
121. Patriot Act: A series of 9/11-style attacks leads to an expansion of the Patriot Act. The state puts cameras on every street corner, listens in on every cell phone call, and compels citizens to take loyalty oaths.
122. Unitary Executive: A Dick Cheney acolyte assumes the presidency and renders Congress powerless with a stream of executive orders and signing statements that give him total control over the country.
123. Declining Military Standards: The U.S. Army has continually lowered the bar for incoming recruits to reach recruitment goals—the Army reports that a mere 44.6 percent of its 2007 recruits were “high-quality.” As Slate‘s Fred Kaplan says, “a dumber army is a weaker army.”
124. Food Contamination: Terrorists add a chemical agent to food at a distribution center where tons of consumables are processed daily. Everyone who eats the tainted vittles dies.
125. The End of History: American values propagate throughout the world as representative democracy and capitalism reign. America loses its distinctiveness and identity as the world becomes one happy nation.
126. Corporate Takeover: In Are We Rome?, Cullen Murphy lays out a scenario whereby international corporations “grow in relative power, untethered to any one sliver of national geography” and become “indisputable lords of the world’s water, its food, its information, its health, its energy, its transportation, its software, its music, its security, its violence.” People identify more with their companies than their countries; your nation becomes more akin to your favorite soccer team.
127. Cronyism: A succession of corrupt administrations fills government posts with duds like former FEMA head Michael Brown. Incompetence reigns.
128. Tax Revolts: Tea parties turn into tea guerrilla movements as citizens rebel against excessive taxation.
129. Military Coup: In 1992, an Air Force officer named Scott Dunlap wrote an essay called “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” In Dunlap’s fictional future, the military takes over the country when the public loses faith in democratically elected leaders’ ability to deal with national security threats. The armed forces—the only institution that anyone believes can keep the country the safe—tosses the politicos aside and takes the wheel.
130. Isolation of Elites: Jared Diamond says that in civilizations that collapse, the “elite are particularly likely to do things that profit them but hurt everybody else.” The rich decision-makers hide out in gated communities playing golf and drinking bottled water, failing to recognize or care that America is collapsing around them.
131. Theocracy: The Christian right rises to political power, doing away with the separation of church and state. Constitution: out. Ten Commandments: in.
132. Illegal Immigration: Refugees from failed states swarm into the United States at historic rates, leading to violent conflicts with American citizens and battles over limited resources.
133. Privatization: In Are We Rome?, Cullen Murphy theorizes that we could be undone by our “privatization binge … putting into private hands all manner of activities once thought to be public tasks: collecting the nation’s taxes, patrolling its streets, defending its borders.”
134. Bureaucracy: American government grows so large and unwieldy that it’s unable to respond swiftly to impending crises. We all drown in a sea of red tape.
135. Hyperinflation: The federal government prints too much money, and it takes a wheelbarrow full of dollars to buy a loaf of bread. Individuals lose their life savings, and the American economy becomes a permanent weakling.
136. FDIC Fails: After a series of catastrophic bank failures, the FDIC runs out of money to insure individuals’ bank accounts. Millions head to the poorhouse and stage a revolt against the ineffectual state.
137. World Currency: Central banks around the world dump the dollar in favor of a new international reserve currency. America instantly loses its economic primacy.
138. Wall Street Cleverness: The nongeniuses who brought us the credit-default swap create a new set of poorly understood (and poorly regulated) financial instruments that completely finish off the economy.
139. State Bankruptcies: Kansas, California, and more states can’t make payroll or provide unemployment benefits. The cash-strapped federal government is unable to bail them out and chaos reigns from coast to coast.
140. Rods From God: America’s enemies besiege the United States with bundled tungsten rods dropped from outer space—weapons of the future described by Popular Science as “space-launched darts that strike like meteors.” Some critics argue that the rods would vaporize before they hit the ground. Nevertheless, Rods From God were mentioned ina 2003 Air Force document that details potential new space weaponry.
141. China Unloads U.S. Treasurys: Unwilling to finance any more of America’s debt, China dumps its investment in American Treasury securities and buys up gold. With America a lousy investment, there aren’t any other buyers out there. The country goes bankrupt.
142. Nationalized Industries: The government bails out the airlines, telecommunications firms, department stores, and chain restaurants. State-run businesses aren’t nimble enough to complete globally, and the economy sinks.
143. Default on Debt: America misses its debt payments, and the United States turns into a northern extension of Latin America. In January, the U.S. economics editor of the Economist wrote default “is no longer unthinkable.”
144. Deficit Spending: Enormous federal outlays increase the deficit by trillions upon trillions, forcing tax rates to absurd levels. Taxpayers revolt.
Human isolation: communication = connection
Maybe once you can get over the fact that we are all alone, you can focus on making whatever connection you can.
Is that why artists are revered? Not about self expression, but explicit self communication to others.
I know when I am at my darkest hour I am most afraid of being misunderstood rather than ignored.
“In fact, Dune represents a likely scenario for the Earth in its far future”
“In fact, Dune represents a likely scenario for the Earth in its far future”, predicts Zahnle. “In some two billion years time the Sun will have grown so bright as to dry up the oceans, but our planet may escape runaway greenhouse and remain partly habitable for another two billion years as a hot desert world.”
[... also ...]
“The raw material for our oceans and atmosphere was later delivered by a barrage of asteroid and comet impacts during the early history of the Solar System.”
- From “Weird Worlds” article from Cosmos magazine website
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/2914/full
lololol United Nations Spam Scam Repayment Spam Scam!
This is possibly the most hilarious scam email I have been sent. Enjoy:
ZENITH BANK COMPENSATION UNIT, IN AFFILIATION WITH THE UNITED NATIONS.
ATTN:Sir/Madam,
How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?,You may not understand why this mail came to you.
We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS.
This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 250,000.00
(Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States
Dollars)This includes every foriegn contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to
Government problems etc.
Your name and email was in the list submitted by our Monitoring Team of Economic and Financial Crime Commission observers and this is why we are contacting you, this have been agreed upon and have been signed.
You are advised to contact Mr. Jim Ovia of ZENITH BANK NIGERIA PLC, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your Cheque/ International Bank Draft of USD$ 250,000.00 (Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) This funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose ok? so he will send it to you and you can clear it in any bank of your choice.
Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send the Draft to you.
Contact Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your Cheque:
Person to Contact Mr. Jim OviaGoodluck and kind regards,
Making the world a better place
Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary (UNITED NATIONS).http://www.un.org/sg/
My heart is nothing more than an engine forged from the remnants of a dead star
Kimiko:
My heart is nothing more than an engine forged from the remnants of a dead star. You know that.
—Dresden Codak
“Sons” lyrics by Flowers (Icehouse)
[I went and looked this up after reading it described as 'science fiction oriented']
We don’t know this place
this wasted stretch of land
and these steaming horizons
it’s locked in our past
it’s stragely so familiar
like a scar on our memory
no sign of the ancient heroes
who gave us this one last hour
it’s so still, there’s so few of us here
there’s no sound here at all
the last light disappears
with the Sons of decay
the ones left to stayFor years we were lost
we slept as systems stored us
they sealed in our orders
we woke up alone
in this silence and this space
as if nothing happened
no sign of the ancient heroes
who left us this one long hour
it’s so still, there’s so few of us here
love, I’m feeling so small, all night
just waiting here
with the Sons of decay
the ones left to stay
“Choose the harder choice every time”
“Here, as so often, the best defense is a good offense. If you can develop technology that’s simply too hard for competitors to duplicate, you don’t need to rely on other defenses. Start by picking a hard problem, and then at every decision point, take the harder choice.
->
This is a good plan for life in general. If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you’re trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you’re even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what’s the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it.”
- From “How to make wealth” http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
I really like this guy’s page. He writes very clearly about interesting topics in an uncomplicated manner without being repetitive or boring.
Self binding and libertarian paternalism
“…Drawing on the research of the psychiatrist George Ainslie, we can make sense of the interaction of these selves by plotting their relative strengths over time, starting with one (the cake eater) being weaker than the other (the dieter). For most of the day, the dieter hums along at his regular power (a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, say), motivated by the long-term goal of weight loss, and is stronger than the cake eater (a 2). Your consciousness tracks whichever self is winning, so you are deciding not to eat the cake. But as you get closer and closer to the cake, the power of the cake eater rises (3 … 4 …), the lines cross, the cake eater takes over (6), and that becomes the conscious you; at this point, you decide to eat the cake. It’s as if a baton is passed from one self to another.
Sometimes one self can predict that it will later be dominated by another self, and it can act to block the crossing—an act known as self-binding, which Thomas Schelling and the philosopher Jon Elster have explored in detail. Self-binding means that the dominant self schemes against the person it might potentially become—the 5 acts to keep the 2 from becoming a 6. Ulysses wanted to hear the song of the sirens, but he knew it would compel him to walk off the boat and into the sea. So he had his sailors tie him to the mast. Dieters buy food in small portions so they won’t overeat later on; smokers trying to quit tell their friends never to give them cigarettes, no matter how much they may later beg. In her book on gluttony, Francine Prose tells of women who phone hotels where they are going to stay to demand a room with an empty minibar. An alarm clock now for sale rolls away as it sounds the alarm; to shut it off, you have to get up out of bed and find the damn thing….”
…”But even though young children don’t understand self-binding, they are capable of doing it. In a classic study from the 1970s, psychologists offered children a marshmallow and told them they could either have it right away, or get more if they waited for a few minutes. As you would expect, waiting proved difficult (and performance on this task is a good predictor, much later on, of such things as SAT scores and drug problems), but some children managed it by self-binding—averting their eyes or covering the marshmallow so as to subvert their temptation-prone self for the greater pleasure of the long-term self.”…
…”For adult humans, though, the problem is that the self you are trying to bind has resources of its own. Fighting your Bad Self is serious business; whole sections of bookstores are devoted to it. We bribe and threaten and cajole, just as if we were dealing with an addicted friend. Vague commitments like “I promise to drink only on special occasions” often fail, because the Bad Self can weasel out of them, rationalizing that it’s always a special occasion. Bright-line rules like “I will never play video games again” are also vulnerable, because the Bad Self can argue that these are unreasonable—and, worse, once you slip, it can argue that the plan is unworkable. For every argument made by the dieting self—“This diet is really working” or “I really need to lose weight”—the cake eater can respond with another—“This will never work” or “I’m too vain” or “You only live once.” Your long-term self reads voraciously about the benefits of regular exercise and healthy eating; the cake eater prefers articles showing that obesity isn’t really such a problem. It’s not that the flesh is weak; sometimes the flesh is pretty damn smart.”…
- from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/multiple-personalities/2
Read the whole article, quite interesting. Always nice to see something I thought of as obvious, but could never describe, being illustrated articulately.
Goes on to talk about libertarian paternalism etc
“We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once”
“Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.””
-from ‘Happiness Theories I Reject’ on http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/secrets-of-adulthood.html
Stoic Eudaimonia
…Aristotle takes virtue and its exercise to be the most important constituent in eudaimonia but does acknowledge the importance of external goods such as health, wealth, and beauty. By contrast, the Stoics make virtue necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia and thus deny the necessity of external goods….
- From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia
Chuck Palahniuk: The moment you can conceive of something, you’re burdened by that possibility until that thing happens
“Q. Do you consider what your audience will tolerate in terms of violence? Is it something that you are intentionally pushing or is it a natural part of the story?
A. In my half-understanding of Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, there was a concept – I don’t know if it was dread or angst – where at the moment you can conceive of something, you’re burdened by that possibility until that thing happens or you do that thing. So the moment I think of something I would never write about, it becomes a burden until I find some way to make that horrible thing work in fiction. I swore that I would never have an animal killed gratuitously in anything I ever wrote, and then I got the idea for dropping the rat down the garbage disposal, that hideous scene, and how that could be used to show Pygmy in emotional conflict and make him a very sympathetic character in that moment. It’s not really about what the reader can tolerate, but rather about finding some way to exorcise my demons and to put them on the page in a useful way so that they’re not gratuitous and actually accomplish something in the story.”
- Interview excerpt with Chuck from “Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Pygmy’ is Huge” http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/05/11/chuck-palahniuk-s-pygmy-is-huge.aspx
‘Delicately glum’
“Elena is an orphan, and she grieves as deeply as a network teen soap can allow her too. That is, she is delicately glum, merely this and nothing more. In trying to disguise her grief, she is equivalent to every other high-school girl anxious about being normal. “
- from “The Vampire Diaries”
http://www.slate.com/id/2227802?wpisrc=newsletter
“The truth about lying: who does it, and why”
“But why lie to appear competent or likable? Why not just be yourself? In fact, “just being yourself”, if we examine it closely, takes creative effort. Our expression of who we are involves choices that reflect social and interpersonal context, our mood, our personality, our need to maintain our self-image and so on. If we consider self-presentation as a creative process, we can see how it can easily slide into deception. Every interaction involves decisions about which attributes to emphasise and which to minimise, which impulses to follow and which to ignore. At some point, we may not be choosing among our actual traits and our sincere reactions. We may simply fabricate the traits and reactions the social situation calls for, or that we think it calls for. In other words, we might lie.”
- a paragraph from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/08/truth-about-lying
Current Myers-Briggs results
Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving
I reckon this is more accurate – seems to be more similar moodiness to what I have
INTP result: http://similarminds.com/cgi-bin/pairmbword.pl
Introverted (I) 66.67% Extroverted (E) 33.33%
Intuitive (N) 58.33% Sensing (S) 41.67%
Thinking (T) 54.17% Feeling (F) 45.83%
Perceiving (P) 50% Judging (J) 50% ->THIS IS A TIE, could be INTJ instead
INTP descriptions: http://typelogic.com/intp.html
‘Architect’ (INTJ is ‘Mastermind’/'Scientist’)
————
Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving
INFP result: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes3.asp
| Introverted | Intuitive | Feeling | Perceiving |
| Strength of the preferences % | |||
| 33 | 62 | 50 | 11 |
This says ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’ are a tie – which could make me INTP as above.
You are:
- moderately expressed introvert
- distinctively expressed intuitive personality
- moderately expressed feeling personality
- slightly expressed perceiving personality
‘Healer’ or ‘Questor’
————
Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging
INFJ Result: http://www.personalitytest.net/cgi-bin/a.pl
‘Author’
————
All three (INTP, INTJ, INFP, INFJ) interestingly are a very low percentage of population.
Looks like I’m certainly an Introverted intuitive.
Although this is pretty dumb – I just did another one and got a totally different result and nearly all the values were 50/50% or 45/55%!
Derr – I’m smart but indecisive. I’m impatient but prefer time to research options. I think love is the most important thing in the world but sometimes doubt it’s existence and think that people are only driven by animal and conditioned logic. Etc etc.
Sator – finally, I knew it!
Sator = LATIN sower| planter; founder| progenitor (usu. divine); originator
(also found: planter, father, creator)
(also: Pavilion-Stall-Tabernacle-Tent-Booth in croatian/serbian – also in mountain name)
(also: a type of lizard)
(See Sator square: Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas )
Protected: My response to ‘Gen Y need to stop being job snobs’
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Gesamtkunstwerk
A gesamtkunstwerk (often translated as universal artwork, synthesis of the arts, comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art form, total work of art, or total artwork [1]) is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so.
- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkunstwerk
‘New Media’ / multimedia works are by definition gesamtkunstwerk. Discuss!
Turmoil = fantasy = woo!
Impulse-control is an especially resonant theme in the current era of conflicts and cutbacks.
“Periods of war, economic downturns and cultural turmoil all give rise to the production of vampire and fantasy fiction,”
said Thomas Garza, chair of the department of Slavic and Eurasian studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and a specialist in vampire lore.
“With a recession and war, the conflict has indeed seemed to turn inward, as we question our fiscal, political and moral status. ‘Have we been too excessive? Do we need to be more restrained?’ We seem once again to be questioning these very fundamental values.”
- From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/fashion/02VAMPIRES.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
So, still in with a chance then.
Also – read today a half-joking article asking why we don’t have more Gen Y writers crashing on about blow jobs and drugs.
Thoughts:
-They are blogging & uninterested in anything their friends don’t read.
-Old media is run by baby boomers.
-Whatever they write will follow them on the internet forever and they know it so going Gonzo is harder to justify.
-Good point – where is *our* Chuck Paulaniuk? Our Easton-Ellis?? I judge them as mine but they are really Gen X’s. So hmm. Maybe in with a chance there still too…
Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around
Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around
I love this paradigm. Makes me want to hug everything. 
Biocentrism – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31393080/ns/technology_and_science-science//
Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around
Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around
I love this paradigm. Makes me want to hug everything.
Biocentrism – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31393080/ns/technology_and_science-science//
Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around
Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around
I love this paradigm. Makes me want to hug everything.
Biocentrism – http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31393080/ns/technology_and_science-science//
XKCD OSs vs. Hitler
“Only on Xkcd can you start a topic involving Hitler and people spend the better part of half a dozen pages arguing about the quality of Operating Systems.”
- this is a comment by cephalopod9, used in the signature of “Steve the Pocket” on the XKCD forums
You’re not trying hard enough…Deus Angst Machina
Remember… any writer who thinks happy people are boring, isn’t trying hard enough.
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeusAngstMachina
Attention / Distraction
From New York mag:
http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/index2.html
“In Defense of Distraction – The benefits of distraction and overstimulation”
…” Gallagher became obsessed with the problem of attention five years ago, when she was diagnosed with advanced and aggressive breast cancer. She was devastated, naturally, but then realized, on her way out of the hospital, that even the cancer could be seen largely as a problem of focus—a terrifying, deadly, internal jackhammer. It made her realize, she says, that attention was “not just a latent ability, it was something you could marshal and use as a tool.” By the time she reached her subway station, Gallagher had come up with a strategy: She would make all the big pressing cancer-related decisions as quickly as possible, then, in order to maximize whatever time she had left, consciously shift her attention to more positive, productive things.”
Altruism
The ultimate source of peace in the family, the country, and the world is altruism.
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Meaning of Life
Not all those who wander are lost
‘Not all those who wander are lost’
- JR Tolkein.
Socrates and Tyrant Children
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
- attrib. (possibly incorrectly)to Socrates c.410 BC
Bildungsroman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman
A bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]; German: “novel of education”) is a novelistic genre that arose during the German Enlightenment, in which the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a (usually young) protagonist. An example of this would be Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
000 Calls during bushfires were given recorded message
Perhaps I’m naive but I grew up in the bush, half a kilometre from our nearest neighbour. As a little girl I went through a phase of being worried someone would break in. I always knew at least I had 000 to back me up. I knew what number to call if aliens came over the hill or a murderer through the window. Now we know that we cannot rely on 000 for emergency calls that safety blanket I still had in my mind has been ripped away. Time to start storing batteries and water for the Mad Max world to come.
[This is further to my as yet unwritten grief-stricken account of my loss of trust of the bush. Where am I going to build my wonderful house now? What is the point of life? etc.]
Failing hilariously
“Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they’re frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.”
- XKCD mouseover text http://www.xkcd.com/580/
Polysyndeton
Ripped directly from wikip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysyndeton
Polysyndeton is the use of several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted (as in “he ran and jumped and laughed for joy”). It is a stylistic scheme used to achieve a variety of effects: it can increase the rhythm of prose, speed or slow its pace, convey solemnity or even ecstatic, childlike exuberance. In grammar, a polysyndetic coordination is a coordination in which all conjuncts are linked by coordinating conjunctions (usually and, but, or or in English).
Polysyndeton is used extensively in the King James Version of the Bible. For example:
- And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. Genesis 7:22-24
- Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or a carcase of unclean cattle, or the carcase of unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him; he also shall be unclean, and guilty. Leviticus 5:1-3
Writers of modern times have also used the scheme:
- “I said, ‘Who killed him?’ and he said ‘I don’t know who killed him, but he’s dead all right,’ and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights or windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was right only she was full of water.” Ernest Hemingway, After the Storm
It can be contrasted with asyndeton, which is a coordination containing no conjunctions, and syndeton, with one conjunction.
Fujitsu Overlords
The buy-out is through: Today we officially became Fujitsu.
This morning we were each given a Fujitsu notepad, and a gourmet cookie.
We also received an email with a new letterhead from the director containing information which was then contradicted by a second email. Then corrected.
Also, there is a sign in the kitchen that says “Fujitsu 2009!” and “1+1= 3″
I think it’s meant to represent the synergy of our two companies.
But as overheard in the tearoom: “I don’t like the look of their accounting practices”
5 minutes of Alan Rickman fandom
Alan Rickman facts:
- Failed his California driving test at one point for “driving too cautiously through a green light”
- Aww too cute - Auditioned for Chris Barrie‘s character Rimmer in “Red Dwarf” (1988)
- I could definitely see that! - When he was a child, he had a speech disability: his lower jaw was very tight, causing his words to be indistinctive and muffled. He still has a slight speech impediment, it is the tight lower jaw which gives him his distinctive drawl.
- This makes me feel a lot better about the ‘do you have an accent?’ questions I get from new people I meet. No, I don’t have an accent, (other than ‘my mother was an English teacher’ regular Australian), I’m just secretly incredibly shy and since I was a child I speak with marbles in my mouth whilst trying to appear cheery.
/ end Alan Rickman facts
Miles to go before I sleep
…
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
But really……are my promises *that* binding? Really? Surely they’d all get over it, right?
Full poem after the cut:
movies in which Jason Statham takes off his shirt and kicks people
It’s like when Defrag occasionally watches live theatre instead of movies in which Jason Statham takes off his shirt and kicks people: you need the bad to appreciate the good.
- Defrag, Australian IT
Fun with context & irony
“If you don’t appreciate the irony, the irony appreciates”
- Seen in a signature on a Snopes discussion board
Unrehearsed
The world is a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
—Sean O’Casey, Playwright
NeverEnoughNeverEnough
No matter how hard I think about it,
I keep on breaking my arm
Every night.
Stuck with a valuable friend,
What else can we do?
I decorate my body with delicate rules,
Which are broken like waves.
All I can do is wait for the current to take them up,
And forcibly protect me from what I want.
But after I drown,
hatefully, thankfully,
after I stay alive,
A hunger always creeps back in:
The Sysiphean hunt.
Never anything but ashes in my mouth.
Now I just have
The dream-mares that hypnotise me every night:
guerrilla warfare, abandoned department stores,
fill me with adrenaline,
for my day at the office.
Vague evangelion happy rant
Hmm. Getting to the point where this journal is probably emo enough to merge with my anon live journal…
We went on a huge completely deliciously remastered Neon Genesis Evangelion binge this weekend. And I mean pretty huge – episodes 1 to 18. This is the first lazy weekend we have had in a while, and the last we will get until the next school holidays…
Now I’m 100% ‘It’s about the gameplay, not the graphics’. Az remarked ‘my GOD how gorgeous is that colouring! Look at that animation! How beautiful does it look!’ every 10 seconds which was strangely annoying because all I could think about was how affecting the series was to me on SBS on my tiny telly all those years ago, and of our shelves of Eva VHS set videos, plus the DVD set, plus the remastered set, plus the re-birth movies, plus the manga – but eventually I got sick of saying ‘Gameplay! Not Graphics!’ and admitted it is truly gorgeous.
Only because I know Az loves the series as much as I did, could I enjoy someone making comments like that at all without any kicking taking place!
I’m always in it for the gameplay, not the graphics, and I’m always in Media for the angst, not the giant-Mecha-robot fights.
Although they *are* good…
Death Note
I am missing L.
*sigh*
We finished all of Death Note, and watched the two live action movies on Monday and Tuesday.
Which cheered me up in a bittersweet kind of way.
I am trolling Minotaur for merchandise.
Az and I have had many discussions, due to him rooting for Light and me loving L – he believes in capital punishment and I don’t. However in the past few days people have been remarking about similarities with the pre-Deathnote trait of Az’s, how he crouches on his chair during all his classes so he can jump up to write something on the board or move around the room all the time. I have L’s eyes. (lol – Hunt eyes as Az calls them, or – more visually and genealogically accurately - Grey eyes – haha – since Grey was my nana’s maiden name)
We’re also super smart.
lol
sigh
Okay, so I’m ADDICTED to this trope site
A comment from the ‘World Half Empty’ definition page:
The depiction of the world in Se7en is pretty half empty, but I think the last lines of the film say it best:
Somerset: Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part.- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WorldHalfEmpty
A quote from the ‘Creator Breakdown’ definition page:
“There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” —H. L. Mencken- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorBreakdown
Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism
It should be noted that some people contend that an overly negative worldview is actually just as unrealistic as an overly positive one. For what it’s worth, some serious research on the matter indicates that pessimism is more likely to be accurate, and optimism is more likely to be healthy; in other words, pessimists are probably right, but optimists will probably live longer.
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism
Should probably pick one of these too.
Edit: Wait, look:
“Earn your happy ending”
Some series don’t stick to one spot on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism; rather, they end up somewhere in the middle by drawing from both extremes of the scale. Humans may act like bastards and the world may seem like it’s half empty, but that doesn’t mean that that the worst villain is beyond redemption, or that things can’t be improved with hard work or even The Power Of Love. The forces of Good may have to go through Hell, but in the end they will Earn Their Happy Ending. May overlap with a Bittersweet Ending. (By its Golden Mean sort of nature, this is a rather Subjective Trope.)
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarnYourHappyEnding
High- and Low-Fantasy
From wikipedia:
Low fantasy is an umbrella term, describing various works within different sub-genres of fantasy, to contrast specific works with high fantasy. Though a vague term, some features that may indicate low fantasy are: downplaying of epic or dramatic aspects, de-emphasising magic, real-world settings, realism, cynical storytelling and dark fantasy. An archetypal example of low fantasy might take place in a quasi-historical setting where the protagonists lack a clear moral initiative, are haunted by dark pasts or character flaws and where conventional fantasy elements (such as magic, elves, or dwarves) are lacking or absent.
There are many arguments about what constitutes the line between Low and High fantasy, but invariably in High Fantasy there is a moral dichotomy of altruistic good and irredeemable evil, and in low fantasy there are many shades of gray, where the “main character” is often an anti-hero.
The Lord of the Rings is seen as the quintessential high fantasy tale that all others either emulate or studiously avoid, and so elves and dwarves and a commonality of magic are seen as the hallmarks of High Fantasy, but in truth it is the stark black and white separation of good and evil that locks it into the “High Fantasy” realm.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy
Hmm. I certainly like reading both – High for escapism and Low for philosophy but maybe I need to pick one to write in rather than trying to straddle both?
Lawliet – name of the moment
Lawliet (‘L’ from Death Note)
Pronnounced: LOW-light
“Means determind, stoic.”
- http://www.behindthename.com/submit/view.php?name=lawliet
Not sure if the writer of that definition is making it up, but having scoured hundreds of google pages I can’t find any other definitions of the name. Could have just been invented for the Manga.
I have seen the LOW-light pronunciation around a bit, but not sure of the source of that, either. Interview maybe?
Edit: Oh, here we go:
The Death Note names also suffer from the creator romanizing them himself. This means that ‘aw’ is pronounced like a long ‘o’ and ‘ie’ is pronounced like the letter ‘i’ – with no exceptions. Which makes L’s name pronounced like “Lowlight.”
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForeignSoundingGibberish
*sigh*
I miss L.
Charles Kettering
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.
- Charles Kettering
Dreaming of the Dead
“What studies actually say is that I’ll begin to “accept” my mother’s death more quickly than I would have in the case of a sudden loss—possibly because I experienced what researchers call “anticipatory grief” while she was still alive. In the meantime, it sucks as much as any other death. You still feel like you’re pacing in the chilly dark outside a house with lit-up windows, wishing you could go inside. You feel clueless about the rules of shelter and solace in this new environment you’ve been exiled to.“
From “Dreaming of the Dead” (Same author as the hamlet one)
http://www.slate.com/id/2211257/entry/2213007/
There is also an interesting discussion on finding a metaphor for your dead loved one. The author of the article feels her mother very strongly in the wind. I have friends who are connected to their loved ones through the sea. Most people will recognise the idea immediately and say – oh yes – that’s the moment I heard the ocean/trees in the wind and realised they were still with me.
Jess was in the rain for me.
Aleatoricism
Aleatoricism is the creation of art by chance, exploiting the principle of randomness. The word derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling of dice. It should not be confused with improvisation.
Eg: Dice Man, Music with built in choices, all Movie decisions made by flipping coins etc, An example of aleatory writing is the automatic writing of the French Surrealists involving dreams, et cetera
see wikipedia for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatory
Some more good names. Maybe not for kids….if I’m not cruel
- Beowulf (Can you imagine: Beowulf Hunter Offman = Wolf Hunter Offman!)
- Sirius! (continues the star theme)
MANY more cringe-worthy hippie sci fi names I love after the jump:
truism
Nice word.
My preferred usage:
anti-truism.
Never accept the status quo because it is the status quo!
Born with lonliness
“Yeah, sorry…” The werewolf sighed again, “I think sometimes…like people…some are born with magic…and some aren’t…maybe…some people are born with loneliness, you know? Like…some people are just destined to be alone, that it’s in their blood and it’s in the heads and it’s in their souls and hearts…maybe…those people exist…”
From fanfic “Hurt” by xXDark.Lord.MeloniousXx
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4478075/1/
Protected: Darker side…
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Protected: quizzes…lol
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‘I know dead people’
From “Why the Grieving should read Hamlet”
http://www.slate.com/id/2211257/entry/2211820/
At times I simply feel she’s just on a long trip—and am jolted to realize it’s one she’s not coming back from. I’m reminded of an untitled poem I love by Franz Wright, a contemporary American poet, which has new meaning. It reads, in full:
I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn’t prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren’t dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)Sometimes I recite this to myself as I walk around.
Amanda Palmer is God…in tights & with piano & ukelele
The girl with the loft is Az’s ex student/mentee M. and her sister is B.. Amanda also gave her a shout out at the end of the concerts at the corner.
(end my note – After the jump is ripped directly from Amanda Palmer’s blog)
Notes for ‘Future Perfect’ by Robyn Williams
Go read pages 1 to 7 at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=M9g-XteR5aoC&printsec=frontcover
There were also some notes I wanted to make about the Turing book – something along the lines of the division of human/god and the division of instructions/data in computers…
Library Books: Turing, Future Perfect, Philosophy
To reborrow:
| # | Date of Loan | Date Due | Barcode | Title | Item Format |
|---|
| 1 | 9/26/2008 | 1/2/2009 | 30021002476620 | Future perfect : what next? and other impossible questions / Robyn Williams.
|
Non-fiction | |
| 2 | 9/26/2008 | 1/2/2009 | 30021000947762 | Turing and the universal machine : the making of the modern computer / Jon Agar.
|
Non-fiction | |
| 3 | 9/26/2008 | 1/2/2009 | 30021000890970 | Ten theories of human nature / Leslie Stevenson, David L. Haberman.
|
Non-fiction | |
| 4 | 9/26/2008 | 1/2/2009 | 30021001094317 | Speaking minds : interviews with twenty eminent cognitive scientists / edited by Peter Baumgartner and Sabine Payr. | Non-fiction |
Library Books: Turing, Future Perfect, Philosophy
To reborrow:
# Date of Loan Date Due Barcode Title Item Format
1 9/26/2008 1/2/2009 30021002476620 Future perfect : what next? and other impossible questions / Robyn Williams. Non-fiction
2 9/26/2008 1/2/2009 30021000947762 Turing and the universal machine : the making of the modern computer / Jon Agar. Non-fiction
3 9/26/2008 1/2/2009 30021000890970 Ten theories of human nature / Leslie Stevenson, David L. Haberman. Non-fiction
4 9/26/2008 1/2/2009 30021001094317 Speaking minds : interviews with twenty eminent cognitive scientists / edited by Peter Baumgartner and Sabine Payr. Non-fiction
“Women of 1926″ by James Laver
Mother’s advice, and Father’s fears,
Alike are voted—just a bore.
There’s Negro music in our ears,
The world’s one huge dancing floor.
We mean to tread the Primrose Path,
In spite of Mr. Joynson-Hicks.
We’re People of the Aftermath
We’re girls of 1926.In greedy haste, on pleasure bent,
We have no time to think, or feel
What need is there for sentiment
Now we’ve invented Sex Appeal?
We’ve silken legs and scarlet lips,
We’re young and hungry, wild and free,
Our waists are round about the hips
Our skirts are well above the kneeWe’ve boyish busts and Eton crops,
We quiver to the saxophone.
Come, dance before the music stops,
And who can bear to be alone?
Come drink your gin, or sniff your ‘snow’,
Since Youth is brief, and Love has wings,
And time will tarnish, ere we know,
The brightness of the Bright Young Things.
—”Women of 1926″ by James Laver
(emphasis and links mine):
- Primrose Path
- Mr. Joynson-Hicks
- People of the Aftermath
- We’re girls of 1926
- Eton crops
- or sniff your ‘snow’
From Nanowrimo pep talk by Chris Baty…
…
Okay. Jobs. Having a job is one of the greatest, trickiest things you can do as an adult. Employment brings perks like challenges and growth and (sometimes) money. But the longer you work at a job, the easier it is to confuse what you are doing with what you can do.
…
Bad feeling
Oh god I mean really,
Hmm.
I was about to bitch about work but really it’s just me. Nothing I hadn’t already predicted, and it’s not like I have anything better to do anyway.
Is it co-dependency that does it? That makes me rush home? Whether to A or my house.
When I think about the times I get glimmers of the wonderful world I think they may have all been when I was a kid/single.
I don’t know. Most of the feelings I’ve had that were worth anything were when I was a kid/single.
What can I do – what can I do to get rid of this bad feeling?
From a Nanowrimo pep talk by Piers Anthony:
From a Nanowrimo pep talk by Piers Anthony:
…
So are you going to give up this folly and focus on reality before you step off the cliff? No? Are you sure? Even though you know you are about to confirm the suspicion of your dubious relatives, several acquaintances, and fewer friends that you never are going to amount to anything more than a dank hill of beans? That you’re too damned oink-headed to rise to the level of the very lowest rung of common sense?
Sigh. You’re a lost soul. So there’s no help for it but to join the lowly company of the other aspect of The Fool. Because the fact is, that Fool is a Dreamer, and it is Dreamers who ultimately make life worthwhile for the unimaginative rest of us. Dreamers consider the wider universe. Dreamers build cathedrals, shape fine sculptures, and yes, generate literature. Dreamers are the artists who provide our rapacious species with some faint evidence of nobility.
awwww.
An Essay by Einstein: “The world as I see it”
From An Essay by Einstein: “The world as I see it”
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
Danny’s comment: I love the last paragraph.
My thoughts: Yep, he would. And Az. I get that. But still I Hunt. The last paragraph describes exactly what I struggle so hard for. I even realise I need to relax, have gratitude, enjoy; to get rid of the feeling of hunger but I am still terrified that not only will I become one of those people with empty hearts, as good as dead, but I am realising lately that maybe I already am and I just don’t know it yet… or am inexorably on that path…
He is torn out of his sleep with a silent scream on his lips. His chest rises and falls with his deep, heavy breaths, and cold sweat is on his forehead, and trickling down his back; his hands claw at the grey bed sheet, and there is a scratchy noise as his fingernails rake over the rough material, unnerving him. The window is opened wide, permits cool, fresh air to flow inside. Disgusted, Sirius contorts his face, touches the dry roof of his mouth with his tongue. It is as if his breath stank, as if his mouth was putrid: hot and furry feel his gums, and he is aware of every single of his teeth, as if they were loose, as if they were about to fall out. His eyes are stuck together with some strange fluid and he squeezes them shut tightly, one, twice, thrice. In the blackness behind his eyelids he finds refuge: calm down, it’s over, ‘t was just a dream.
-From a Harry Potter Fanfic
‘Failed’ by roterhimmel at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4432077/1/Failed
“Well I’m gonna burn in hell ’cause I do what I gotta do real well.”
-Lyrics to ‘Man’ by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
Samuel Johnson
“If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.”
George Santayana
Sig from Hazmo fanfiction forum:
Why am I fighting to live, if I’m just living to fight?
Why am I trying to see, if there ain’t nothing in sight?
Why am I trying to give, when no one gives me a try?
Why am I dying to live, if I’m just living to die?
- 2Pac
Talking to children about death
The main problem I have (and most people have, I assume) about how to discuss death with children is that I don’t have any easy way out. Neither did my mum. My parents ‘let’ me believe in heaven when I was very little (I remember believing it at one point, and being scared of hell, and that’s about when I decided a God who would invent hell didn’t sound like much of a humanist, and I lost most of my interest in organised religion. I was about six years old.) even though we weren’t Christians and didn’t go to church – although I do remember a Sunday class or two. Anyway, the answer my mum gave me was ‘real’ eg: no one know what happens. Now, I had a bit of a complex about death for a while, when I was about 6-7-8. Then I got over it. Then when I turned 12 a close school friend died which blew up my mum’s insistence “When you die you’ll be a little old lady with a lovely dog, (I loved dogs) who has lived a wonderful, long, and full life.” So I got another complex. I still wear a lot of black.
That could have been something that I felt whether or not mum had said ‘no one knows’, but I did feel very jealous of people who were bought up religious, who had faith in an afterlife. Possibly a very nice afterlife. Even if there were rules they had to follow. Do I just tell my future kids that reincarnation is the truth? Do I let them believe in heaven when they are little? It seems to close the subject satisfactorily for them. (But also seems a bit of a cop out when they’re older in a more advanced developmental stage). But what about hell? That’s kind of traumatising for a kid to believe I think. Maybe a buddhist karma kind of heaven. Or do I tell them what Arieh and I *really* believe? Our ‘Truth’: there’s nothing. We do differ on this view a little bit: Arieh think’s there’s nothing. Just extinction. I believe the same thing but HOPE SO GODDAM MUCH THAT IT’S NOT TRUE. [Post Script: Does this mean I have hope, but not faith?]
Do I tell my kids that? That ‘no one knows but I hope’? Mum didn’t say she hoped. Maybe that’s important? Or is that just sadder – then I give my kids a lifetime of uncertainty and faith in the shakiest thing. Although that’s what all faith is really I suppose. But some people take their faith for granted more than others I think – there are some people who, for most of their life, will tell you their faith is unshakeable. I mean, even I had a default faith from society and religion instruction and school: although intellectually I knew heaven and hell didn’t exist and they didn’t bother me, it was only in my early 20s that I really realised I didn’t believe in them any more – not as a ‘this doesn’t seem true’ but ‘this is definitely not true’. Probably when I got more into eastern religions and realised that growing up never hearing about christianity pretty much proves the christian hell and heaven don’t exist. But you also have to remember that the driving force behind nearly every religion is not just a code for living, but the promise of an afterlife. Maybe there is an afterlife but we have different views of it? (Like everything)
Anyway – back to the point. Here is an excerpt from a website:
“Where we have doubts, an honest, “I just don’t know the answer to that one,” may be more comforting than an explanation which we don’t quite believe. Children usually sense our doubts. White lies, no matter how well intended, can create uneasiness and distrust. Besides, sooner, or later, our children will learn that we are not all knowing, and maybe we can make that discovery easier for them if we calmly and matter-of-factly tell them we don’t have all the answers. Our non-defensive and accepting attitude may help them feel better about not knowing everything also.”
From: http://www.hospicenet.org/html/talking.html
Hmmm. You know what? Mum giving that answer just wasn’t that comforting AT ALL. Her accepting attitude drove me, an intense little thing, freaking nuts in my life. I really would have preferred for her to say oh, there’s a heaven. Or reincarnation. Or SOMETHING. Even if it’s ‘I don’t know….but I think it might be such-and-such.’ That’s a step up from ‘I don’t know’ and also ‘I don’t know but I HOPE there’s something’.
Names and Giacomo Casanova
So Arieh likes the name Ianto – but he did suffix that with ‘but when we have a girl, her name is Asuka’ as usual. So I don’t think he’d mind what we called a son!
So new names:
Ianto
Giacomo (Jackamo)
Also (i’ve been looking into Casanova’s biography since enjoying David Tennant play the part so much:
“I saw that everything in the world that is famous and beautiful, if we rely on the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it up close.” (from History of My Life, 1966-71)-Casanova
Ah so depressing and true. And a cure for itchy feet.
Scientist Dr Peter Dingle says dogs are fed better than children
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24579700-421,00.html?referrer=email
He said for breakfast or a treat his dog gets chicken or beef, corn, vegetable protein concentrate, omega 3 oils, sorghum, iodised salt, potassium chloride, slippery elm, psyllium husk, taurine, choline, chloride, lucerne meal, marigold meal, tomato powder, zinc sulphate, iron sulphate, selenium, vitamins B1, B2, B3, B12, E, C and folic acid, which is found in advanced nutrient pet food such as Advance.
In contrast, the breakfast cereal fed to our kids such as Froot Loops, Coco Pops, Nutri-Grain or even Cornflakes – includes vitamins B1, B2, B3, folate and iron – in a non-digestible form – as well as lots of sugar and salt.
“Is it any wonder why I would not feed children’s breakfast cereal to my pets?” he said.
Children should be eating breakfasts of rolled oats topped with nuts and fruit, such as unprocessed muesli, or an old-fashioned breakfast of spinach, tomato and an egg.
They should also be eating plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes and fish.
Foods to avoid includes anything highly processed, such as frankfurts and anything with additives, particularly 102, 107, 104, 110, 120, 122, 123, 124, 127, 129, 132, 133, 142, 151, 153, 155, 160b, 168, 173, 250, 251, 252, 282, 320, 321, 420, 421, 621 (MSG) 622, 624, 627,631, 635, and 951 (Nutrasweet, Aspartame).
“It’s OK to have a treat once a week such as white bread or corn flakes,” he said.
“We feed farm dogs better food because we can’t afford them to get sick.
“If humans get sick, instead of giving them plenty of good food we spend thousands of dollars on pharmaceuticals. We have got it around the wrong way.”
Beautiful realism and lighting in painting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_de_La_Tour
(listed as inspiration for animated noir film Renaissanc)
Art Spiegelman
From SLATE: Making Comics after Mauschwitz
http://www.slate.com/id/2202974/slideshow/2203174/fs/0//entry/2203177/
Art Spiegelman
Or consider “Ace Hole, Midget Detective” (1974), a sendup of a hard-boiled detective comic. Here Floogleman, a Spiegelman stand-in, is shot and, with his last breath, gasps, “W-Who killed the child within … ?” Ace Hole jumps on the case. He chases down a dame modeled after one of Picasso’s Dora Maar portraits and finds that she has shacked up with Mr. Potato Head and that together these in loco parental figures have decided to frame him for the murder of Floogleman (aka, the child within). Ace Hole wakes up in an ocean of tears and observes: “Reality wasn’t a very nice place to visit, but there was nowhere else to go!”
And so Spiegelman went.
—————————–
Also:
By David Shrigley
Tom Waits interviews Tom Waits
“Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood.”
Tom Waits: a conversation with himself
Friday, 13 June 2008
getty images
Tom Waits: The director Jim Jarmusch once told me, “Fast, Cheap, and Good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good, it won’t be cheap.” Fast, cheap and good… pick two words to live by.
The tax shelters, the public urination… I was nervous to meet the real man himself. Baggage and all. But I found him to be gentle, intelligent, open, bright, helpful, humorous, brave, audacious, loquacious, clean and reverent. A Boy Scout, really (and a giant of a man). Join me now for a rare glimpse into the heart of Tom Waits. Remove your shoes and no smoking, please…#
Q: What’s the most curious record in your collection?
A: In the Seventies, a record company in LA issued a record called The Best of Marcel Marceau. It had 40 minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.
Q: What are some unusual things that have been left behind in a cloakroom?
A: Well, Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ cloakroom and was one-sixteenth Iroquois.
Q: You’ve always enjoyed the connection between fashion and history – talk to us about that.
A: OK, let’s take the two-piece bathing suit, produced in 1947 by a French fashion designer. The sight of the first woman in the minimal two-piece was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the US at Bikini island in the Marshall Islands, hence the naming of the bikini.
Q: List some artists who have shaped your creative life.
A: OK, here are a few that just come to me for now: Kerouac, Dylan, Bukowski, Rod Serling, Don Van Vliet, Cantinflas, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf, Lead Belly, Lord Buckley, Mabel Mercer, Lee Marvin, Thelonius Monk, John Ford, Fellini, Weegee, Jagger, Richards, Willie Dixon, John McCormick, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Hoagy Carmichael, Enrico Caruso.
Watch a video of Tom performing Chocolate Jesus on Letterman
Q: List some songs that were beacons for you
A: Again, for now… but if you ask me tomorrow the list would change, of course. Gershwin’s Second Prelude, “Pathétique” sonata, “El Paso”, “You Really Got Me”, “Soldier Boy”, “Lean Back”, “Night Train”, “Come In My Kitchen”, “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, Rite of Spring, “Ode to Billy Joe”, “Louie Louie”, “Just a Fool”, “Prisoner of Love”, “Wang Dang Doodle (All Night Long)”, “Ringo”, “Ball and Chain”, “Deportee”, “Strange Fruit”, “Sophisticated Lady”, “Georgia On My Mind”, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, “Just Like a Woman”, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”, “Moon River”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Danny Boy”, “Dirty Ol’ Town”, “Waltzing Matilda”, “Train Keeps a Rollin”, “Boris the Spider”, “You Really Got a Hold On Me”, “Red Right Hand”, “All Shook Up”, “Cause Of It All”, “Shenandoah”, “China Pig”, “Summertime”, “Without a Song”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, “Crawlin’ King Snake”, “Nessun Dorma”, “Bring It On Home to Me”, “Hound Dog”, “Hello Walls”, “You Win Again”, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, “Almost Blue”, “Pump It Up”, “Greensleeves”, “Just Wanna See His Face” (The Rolling Stones), “Restless Farewell”, “Fairytale of New York”, “Bring Me a Little Water Sylvie”, “Raglan Road”, “96 Tears”, “In Dreams” (Roy Orbison), “Substitute”, “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues”, theme from Rawhide, “Same Thing”, “Walk Away Rene”, “For What It’s Worth”, theme from Once Upon a Time In America, “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”, “Oh Holy Night”, Mass in E Minor, “Harlem Shuffle”, “Trouble Man”, “Wade In the Water”, “Empty Bed Blues”, “Hava Nagila”.
Q: What’s heaven for you?
A: Me and my wife on Route 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.
Q: What’s hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.
Q: What’s wrong with the world?
A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made $12m last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.
Q: Favourite scenes in movies?
A: R De Niro in the ring in Raging Bull. Julie Christie’s face in Heaven Can Wait when she said, “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?” James Dean in East of Eden telling the nurse to get out when his dad has had a stroke and he’s sitting by his bed. Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil saying, “He was some kind of man.” Scout saying, “Hey Mr Cunningham” in the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird. Nic Cage falling apart in the drug store in Matchstick Men… and eating a cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss. The last scene in Chinatown.
Q: Can you describe a few other scenes from movies that have always stayed with you?
A: Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker explaining to the Puerto Rican all about gold. Brando in The Godfather dying in the tomatoes with scary orange teeth. Lee Marvin in Emperor of the North riding under the boxcar, Borgnine bouncing steel off his ass. Dennis Weaver at the motel, saying, “I am just the night man,” holding on to a small tree in Touch of Evil. The hanging in The Ox-Bow Incident. The speech by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner as he’s dying. Anthony Quinn dancing on the beach in Zorba. Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick covered in feathers in the church as the ladies stick needles in the voodoo doll. When Mel Gibson’s blue healer gets shot with an arrow in Mad Max 2: Road Warrior. When Rachel in The Exorcist says, “Could you help an old altar-boy, father?” The blind guy in the tavern in Treasure Island. Frankenstein’s monster after he strangles the young girl by the river.
Q: Can you tell me an odd thing that happened in an odd place? Any thoughts?
A: A Japanese freighter had been torpedoed during the Second World War, and it’s at the bottom of Tokyo harbour with a large hole in her hull. A team of engineers was called together to solve the problem of raising the wounded vessel to the surface. One of the engineers tackling this puzzle said he remembered seeing a Donald Duck cartoon when he was a boy where there was a boat at the bottom of the ocean with a hole in its hull, and they injected it with ping-pong balls and it floated up. The sceptical group laughed but one of the experts was willing to give it a try. Of course, where in the world would you find 20 million ping-pong balls but in Tokyo? It turned out to be the perfect solution. The balls were injected into the hull and it floated to the surface, the engineer was elated. Moral solutions to problems are always found at an entirely different level; also, believe in yourself in the face of impossible odds.
Q: The most interesting recording you own?
A: It’s a mysteriously beautiful recording from, I am told, Robbie Robertson’s label. It’s of crickets. That’s right, crickets. The first time I heard it, I swore that I was listening to the Vienna Boys’ Choir, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It has a four-part harmony, it is a swaying choral panorama. Then a voice comes in on the tape and says, “What you are listening to is the sound of crickets. The only thing that has been manipulated is that they slowed down the tape.” No effects have been added of any kind except that they changed the speed of the tape. The sound is so haunting. I played it for Charlie Musselwhite and he looked at me as if I pulled a leprechaun out of my pocket.
Q: You are fascinated with irony. What is irony?
A: Chevrolet were puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realised that “no va” in Spanish translates to “no go”. Not the best name for a car, anywhere… “no va”.
Q: Do you have words to live by?
A: The director Jim Jarmusch once told me, “Fast, Cheap, and Good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good, it won’t be cheap.” Fast, cheap and good… pick two words to live by.
Q: What is written on Hemingway’s gravestone?
A: “Pardon me for not getting up.”
Q: How would you compare guitarists Marc Ribot and Smokey Hormel?
A: Octopus have eight tentacles and squid have 10 tentacles, each with hundreds of suction cups, and each have the power to burst a man’s artery. They have small birdlike beaks used to inject venom into a victim. Some gigantic squid and octopus with one-hundred-foot tentacles have been reported. Squids have been known to pull down entire boats to feed on the disoriented sailors in the water. Many believe that unexplained, sunken deep-sea vessels, and entire boat disappearances, are the handiwork of giant squid.
Q: What have you learnt from parenthood?
A: “Never loan your car to anyone to whom you’ve given birth.” – Erma Bombeck.
Q: Now Tom, for the grand prize… who said, “He’s the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of”?
A: Mae West.
Q: Who said, “Half the people in America are just faking it”?
A: Robert Mitchum (who actually died in his sleep). I think he was being generous and kind when he said that.
Q: What remarkable things have you found in unexpected places?
A: 1. Real beauty: oil stains left by cars in a parking lot.
2. Shoeshine stands in Brazil that looked like thrones made of scrap wood.
3. False teeth in pawnshop windows: Reno, Nevada.
4. Great acoustics: in jail.
5. Best food: airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
6. Most gift shops: Fatima, Portugal.
8. Most unlikely location for a Chicano crowd: a Morrissey concert.
9. Most poverty: Washington, DC.
10. A homeless man with a beautiful operatic voice singing the word “bacteria” in an empty dumpster in Chinatown.
11. A Chinese man with a Texan accent in Scotland.
12. Best night’s sleep: in a dry riverbed in Arizona.
13. Most people who wear red pants: St Louis.
14. Most beautiful horses: NYC.
15. A judge in Baltimore MD1890 presided over a trial where a man who was accused of murder and was guilty, and convicted by a jury of his peers… and was let go, when the judge said to him at the end of the trial, “You are guilty, sir… but I cannot put in jail an innocent man.” You see, the murderer was a Siamese twin.
16. Largest penis (in proportion to its body): the barnacle.
Q: Tom, you love words and their origins. For $2,000… what is the origin of the word “bedlam”?
A: It’s a contraction of the word “Bethlehem”. It comes from the hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem in London. The hospital began admitting mental patients in the late 14th century. In the 16th century, it became a lunatic asylum. The word “bedlam” came to be used for any madhouse – and by extension for any scene of noisy confusion.
Q: What is up with your ears?
A: I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions. I guess now they say ADD. I have a scrambler in my brain and it takes what is said and turns it into pig Latin and feeds it back to me.
Q: Most thrilling musical experience?
A: My most thrilling musical experience was in Times Square, over 30 years ago. There was a rehearsal hall around the Brill Building where all the rooms were divided into tiny spaces with just enough room to open the door. Inside was a spinet piano – cigarette burns, missing keys, old paint and no pedals. You go in and close the door, and it’s so loud from other rehearsals you can’t really work – so you stop and listen and the goulash of music was thrilling. Scales on a clarinet, tango, light opera, sour string quartet, voice lessons, someone belting out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, garage bands, and piano lessons. The floor was pulsing, the walls were thin. As if 10 radios were on at the same time, in the same room. It was a train station of music with all the sounds milling around… for me it was heavenly.
Q: What would you have liked to see but were born too late for?
A: Vaudeville. So much mashing of cultures and bizarre hybrids. Delta blues guitarists and Hawaiian artists thrown together, resulting in the adoption of the slide guitar as a language we all take for granted as African-American. But it was a cross-pollination, like most culture. Like all cultures. George Burns was a vaudeville performer I particularly loved. Dry and unflappable, curious and funny – no matter what he said. He could dance too. He said, “Too bad the only people that know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”
Q: What is a gentleman?
A: A man who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.
Q: Favourite Bucky Fuller quote?
A: “Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood.”
Q: What do you wonder about?
A: 1. Do bullets know whom they are intended for?
2. Is there a plug in the bottom of the ocean?
3. What do jockeys say to their horses?
4. How does a newspaper feel about winding up papier-mâché?
5. How does it feel to be a tree by a freeway?
6. Sometimes a violin sounds like a Siamese cat; the first violin strings were made from catgut – any connection?
7. When is the world going to rear up and scrape us off its back?
8. Will we humans eventually intermarry with robots?
9. Is a diamond just a piece of coal with patience?
10. Did Ella Fitzgerald really break that wine glass with her voice?
Q: What are some sounds you like?
A: 1. An asymmetrical airline carousel created a high-pitched haunted voice brought on by the friction of rubbing and it sounded like a big wet finger circling the rim of a gigantic wine-glass.
2. Street-corner evangelists.
3. Pile-drivers in Manhattan.
4. My wife’s singing voice.
5. Horses coming/trains coming.
6. Children when school’s out.
7. Hungry crows.
8. Orchestra tuning up.
9. Saloon pianos in old westerns.
10. Roller-coaster.
11. Headlights hit by a shotgun.
12. Ice melting.
13. Printing presses.
14. Ball game on a transistor radio.
15. Piano lessons coming from an apartment window.
16. Old cash registers – ka-ching!
17. Muscle cars.
18. Tap-dancers.19. Soccer crowds in Argentina.
20. Beatboxing.
21. Foghorns.
22. A busy restaurant kitchen.
23. Newsrooms in old movies.
24. Elephants stampeding.
25. Bacon frying.
26. Marching bands.
27. Clarinet lessons.
28. Victrola.
29. A fight bell.
30. Chinese arguments.
31. Pinball machines.
32. Children’s orchestras.
33. Trolley bell.
34. Firecrackers.
35. A Zippo lighter.
36. Calliopes.
37. Bass steel drums.
38. Tractors.
39. Stroh violin.
40. Muted trumpet.
41. Tobacco auctioneers.
42. Musical saw.
43. Theremin.
44. Pigeons.
45. Seagulls.
46. Owls.
47. Mockingbirds.
48. Doves. The world’s making music all the time.
Q: What’s scary to you?
A: 1. A dead man in the back seat of a car with a fly crawling on his eyeball.
2. Turbulence on any airline.
3. Sirens and searchlights combined.
4. Gunfire at night in bad neighbourhoods.
5. Car motor turning over but not starting, it’s getting dark and starting to rain.
6. Jail door closing.
7. Going around a sharp curve on the Pacific Coast Highway and the driver of your car has had a heart attack and died, and you’re in the back seat.
8. You are delivering mail and you are confronted with a Dobermann with rabies growling low and showing teeth… you have no dog bones and he wants to bite your ass off.
9. In a movie… which wire do you cut to stop the time bomb, the green or the blue?
10. McCain will win.
11. Germans with sub-machine guns.
12. Officers, in offices, being official.
13. You fell through the ice in the creek and it carried you downstream, and now as you surface you realise there’s a roof of ice.
Q: Tell me about working with Terry Gilliam.
A: I am the Devil in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – not a devil, the Devil. I don’t know why he thought of me. I was raised in the church. Gilliam and I met on The Fisher King. He is a giant among men and I am in awe of his films. Munchausen I’ve seen a hundred times. Brazil is a crowning achievement. The Brothers Grimm was my favourite film last year. I had most of my scenes with Christopher Plummer (he’s Doctor Parnassus). Plummer is one of the greatest actors on earth! Mostly I watch and learn. He’s a real movie star and a gentleman. Gilliam is an impresario, captain, magician, a dictator (a nice one), a genius, and a man you’d want in the boat with you at the end of the world.
Q: Give me some fresh song titles you two are working on.
A: “Ghetto Buddha”, “Waiting For My Good Luck To Come”, “I’ll Be an Oak Tree Some Day”, “In the Cage”, “Hell Broke Loose”, “Spin the Bottle”, “High and Lonesome”.
Q: You’re going on the road soon, right?
A: We’re going to PEHDTSCKJMBA (Phoenix, El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Tulsa, St Louis, Columbus, Knoxville, Jacksonville, Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta). I have a stellar band: Larry Taylor (upright bass), Patrick Warren (keyboards), Omar Torrez (guitars), Vincent Henry (woodwinds) and Casey Waits (drums and percussion). They play with racecar precision and they are all true conjurers. I’m doing songs with them I’ve never attempted outside the studio. They are all multi-instrumentalists and they polka like real men. We are the Borman Six and as Putney says, “The Borman Six have got to have soul.”
end
Rita Rudner Quotes
“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.“
“Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.“
“I know I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.“
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.“
“I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours. I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.“
“My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.“
“We’ve begun to long for the pitter-patter of little feet – so we bought a dog. Well, it’s cheaper, and you get more feet.“
(…You won’t be happy ’til the bottle’s broken…)
Nothing’s gonna drag me down
To a death that’s not worth cheating
-’Baby Britain’, Elliott smith
God it’s been a lovely day, everything’s been goin’ my way, I took out the trash today, and I’M. ON. FIRE.
-H channelling Amanda Palmer
Not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the Buddha…Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation.
-Bodhidharma
So Relax!
The unreliable narrator
Yep, that’s certainly me.
Procrastination Lit – Great novels about wasting time: http://www.slate.com/id/2191252/pagenum/all/
Reading Slate’s procrastination issue, I have discovered that literature can consist of (restrained) rants, novel length paragraphs and pages-long sentances. Hm looks like I do have a chance.
—–
ne plus ultra
Eng. nee pluhs uhl-truh
1. the highest point; acme.
2. the most intense degree of a quality or state.
——
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Problems Resulting From Perfectionism and Emotional Sensitivities
- Perfectionism can lead to fear of failure, in turn causing a gifted child to avoid failure by refusing to even try something (including doing a homework assignment!)
- Keen observation, imagination, and ability to see beyond the obvious can cause a gifted child to appear shy, holding back in new situations in order to consider all the implications.
- A gifted child may require full details before answering questions or offering help, making him or her appear socially shy.
- Intense sensitivity can cause gifted children to take criticism, or even general anger, very personally. Childhood slights do not roll off their backs.
- Sensitivity and well-developed sense of right and wrong can lead to concern over wars, starving children, pollution and other injustice and violence. If they are overloaded with images and discussions of these issues, they can become introverted and withdrawn or even suffer from “existential depression.”
One Solution: Helping Gifted Children Cope with Intense Emotions
- From http://giftedkids.about.com/od/socialemotionalissues/a/gtproblems.htm
I am only ever happy in retrospect. Goddamit.
………..
All I can expect and enjoy is a paycheck from X
……….
“Plus I’m only 26 years old
My grandma died in ’83
That’s lots of time if I don’t smoke
I think I’ll wait another year”
-’Another Year’, Amanda Palmer
…………
A morbid streak runs through
The whole of my family
But for you I could put it to rest
-’Boston’, Vampire Weekend
……….
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” – John Lennon
……….
Antidote:
Hey you, expecting results without effort! So sensitive! So long-suffering! You, in the clutches of death, acting like an immortal! Hey sufferer, you are destroying yourself!
-Santideva, Bodhicaryavatara
………….
Other theories suggest that petroglyphs were made by shamans in an altered state of consciousness[4], perhaps induced by the use of natural hallucinogens. Many of the geometric patterns (known as form constants) which recur in petroglyphs and cave paintings have been shown to be “hard-wired” into the human brain; they frequently occur in visual disturbances and hallucinations brought on by drugs, migraine and other stimuli.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph
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names…
http://www.surnamedb.com/surname.aspx?name=coultas
Surname: Coultas
This most interesting and unusual surname is of early medieval English origin, and is a topographical or occupational name for someone who lived or worked at a stables, a colt-house or colt-keeper, from the early modern English word “coulthus”, which is a compound of “co(u)lt”, an Olde English word for a young ass, or young horse, a colt, and “hus”, the Olde English word for house. The name itself is widespread in the Yorkshire region, and was first recorded there in the late 16th Century (see below). The Church Registers of Yorkshire record the following early entries of the surname: the christening of Robert, son of Robertus Cowltus, on February 26th 1575 at Hackness; the marriage of Robert Coultas and Anna Snipe on July 22nd 1576, also at Hackness; while Isabel Coultas married Richard Markson on October 26th 1621 at Wintringham. The first recording of the surname in London Church Registers is the christening of Margaritt Coltis, daughter of William Coltis, on May 11th 1576 at St. Botolph without Aldgate. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Cowthus, which was dated 1562, in the “Register of the Freemen of the City of York”, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, known as “Good Queen Bess”, 1558 – 1603. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to “develop” often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
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Name: Darko (I also like Darco)
Gender:Boy
Origin:Slavonic
Meaning:Gift
Pronunciation:(DAR ko)
Form of:Itself (Darko)
Categories: Slovenian, Slavic, Croatian, Serbian
Surname: Darco
Recorded as Darci, Darco, and in England apparently Darko, this is a French surname, or at least a surname of French origins. It is locational from the town of Arcy, and hence the fused form of D’arci or later Darcy, in the departement of La Manche, in Northern France. It is also recorded in the famous English historical record and register of lands, the Domesday Book, in 1086, with that of Norman de Arci of Lincoln. Locational surnames, wherever they are found in the world, are usually ‘from’ names. That is to say names that were given to people after they left their original homes to move somewhere else, and were best identified by being called after their former homestead, wherever that might be. Over the centuries spelling being at best erratic, and local accents and dialects very thick, often lead to the development of ‘sounds like’ spellings. In this case the surviving church registers of France, most were destroyed in the famous Revolution of 1792, includes examples such as Jean Darco and his wife Jeanne, nee Barre, at Vendresse, in the Ardennes, on May 26th 1718, and Anne Darcy who married Simon Aubert, on January 25th 1780 at Colombey-les-Belles, Meurther-et-Moselle. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to “develop” often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
Name: Devi
Gender:Girl
Origin:Indian
Meaning:God
Pronunciation:(dev ee)
Form of:Dev (male – God)
Categories: Hindu, Sanskrit, Hindi, Indian
Used in:Hindi speaking countries
Name: Devika
Gender:Girl
Origin:Sanskrit
Meaning:Like god
Pronunciation:(dey VIH ka)
Form of:
Itself (Devika)
Categories:Hindu, Sanskrit, Hindi, Indian
Used in:Hindi speaking countries
Name: Asuka
Gender:Girl
Origin:Japanese
Meaning:Smell of tomorrow
Pronunciation:(AH soo kah)
Form of:Itself (Asuka)
Categories:Asian, Japanese
Used in:Japanese speaking countries
Additional info:The Japanese female name Asuka may be written with the characters for “tomorrow” and “incense; smell; perfume”.
Name: Shigeru
Gender:Boy
Origin:Japanese
Meaning:Luxuriant
Pronunciation:(SHEE geh ru)
Form of:Itself (Shigeru)
Categories:Japanese
Used in:Japanese speaking countries
Additional info:The Japanese name Shigeru may be written with the character for “overgrown; grow thick; be luxuriant”.
Name: Shinji
Gender:Boy
Origin:Japanese
Meaning:True ruler
Pronunciation:(SHEEN jee)
Form of:Itself (Shinji)
Categories:Japanese
Used in:Japanese speaking countries
Additional info:The Japanese male name Shinji may be written with the characters for “true; reality” (shin) and “director; official; govt office; rule; administer” (ji). Other possibilities include “true; reality” (shin) and “two” (ji), as well as “new” (shin) and “director; official; govt office; rule; administer” (ji).
Name: Rei
The boy’s and girl’s name Rei \rei\ is pronounced RAY-ee.
It is of Japanese origin, and its meaning is “law, rule; strive”
Name: Éowyn
Gender:Girl
Origin:Literary
Meaning:Horse lover
Pronunciation:(AY oh win)
Form of:Itself (Éowyn)
Categories:Literary Characters, Tolkien
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:Professor J.R.R. Tolkien created the name Éowyn using elements from Old English. In his novel ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Eowyn is the niece of King Theoden of Rohan.
Éowyn is a powerful woman and a warrior in her own right.
Name: Galadriel
Gender:Girl
Origin:Literary
Meaning:Maiden crowned by a radiant garland
Pronunciation:(guh la DREE el)
Form of:Itself (Galadriel)
Categories:Literary Characters, Tolkien
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:Galadriel is a name created by J.R.R. Tolkien for ‘The Lord of the Rings’. She appears also in ‘The Silmarillion’ and other works involving the fictional land of Middle-earth.
Name: Lórien
Gender:Boy
Origin:Literary
Meaning:God of dreams
Pronunciation:(lor ee en)
Form of:Itself (Lórien)
Categories:Tolkien
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:Lórien is the name of one of the Valar in J.R.R. Tolkien’s lore of Middle-earth. He is also known as Irmo.
“Master of Visions and Dreams. Originally named Irmo, but referred to more commonly as Lórien, after his dwelling place. Lórien and Mandos are the Fëanturi, masters of spirits. Lórien the younger is the master of visions and dreams. His gardens in the land of the Valar, where he dwells with his spouse Estë, are the fairest place in the world and are filled with many spirits. All those who dwell in Valinor find rest and refreshment at the fountain of Irmo and Estë.”
Name: Theron
Gender:Boy
Origin:Greek
Meaning:Hunter
Pronunciation:(THER on); (ther ON)
Form of:Itself (Theron)
Categories:Surnames, Greek
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info: From ‘theraein’, ‘to hunt’. Theron was an ancient king of Sicily, though the name is today encountered mostly as a surname.
Name: Laith
Gender:Boy
Origin:Arabic
Meaning:Lion
Pronunciation:(LAH eeth)
Form of:Itself (Laith)
Categories:Muslim, Arabic
Used in:Arabic speaking countries
Name: Haidar/Hayder
Gender:Boy
Origin:Sanskrit
Meaning:Lion
Origin:Indian
Meaning:Lion
Origin:Arabic
Meaning:Lion
Pronunciation:(hi dar)
Form of:Haidar
Name: Asteria
Gender:Girl
Origin:Greek
Meaning:Star
Pronunciation:(ah STEH ree ah)
Form of:Aster
Categories:Saints, Greek Mythological
Additional info:In Greek mythology Asteria was a daughter of the titans, sister of Leto and mother of Hekate.
It was also the name of a martyr in the 3th-century A.D.
Name: Arielle
Gender:Girl
Origin:Hebrew
Meaning:Lion of God
Pronunciation:(ah ree EL); (AYR ee el)
Form of:Ariel
Categories:
Jewish, English
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:The name is borne by French-American actress Arielle Dombasle and American actress Arielle Kebbel.
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Name: Aster
Origin and Meaning of the Name Aster
Gender:Both
Origin:Greek
Meaning:Star
Origin:English
Meaning:Aster flower
Pronunciation:(ASS ter)
Form of:Itself (Aster)
Categories:Nature, Dutch, English, Greek
Used in:Dutch and English speaking countries
Additional info:From the ancient Greek noun. Also could be used in hommage to the aster flower.
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Name: Leandra
Gender:Girl
Origin:Greek
Meaning:Lion Man
Pronunciation:(leh AN drah)
Form of:Leander
Categories:English, Greek
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:This is the feminine form of Leander.
————–
Name: Léandre
Gender:Boy
Origin: Greek
Meaning:Lion Man
Origin:French
Meaning:Lion Man
Pronunciation:(lay AHN druh)
Form of:Leandros
Categories:Mythological, French, Greek Mythological
Used in:French speaking countries
Additional info:French form of Leander.
—————
Name: Lev
Gender:Boy
Origin:Latin
Meaning:Lion
Pronunciation:(lev); (lyehv)
Form of:Leon
Categories:Jewish, Israeli, Hebrew, Russian
Used in:Hebrew and Russian speaking countries
Additional info:Several popes have carried this name.
———————–
Name: Leander
Gender:Boy
Origin:Greek
Meaning:Lion Man
Pronunciation:(lee AN der)
Form of:Leandros
Categories:Mythological, Saints, Canadian, African American, American, English, Greek, Greek Mythological
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:The legend has Leander swimming across the Hellespont every night to visit his lover, Hero. One night a great storm came up and he drowned leading Hero to despair and throw herself into the water, also to perish.
————————
Name: Levon
Gender:Boy
Origin:Latin
Meaning:Lion
Pronunciation:(LEE von)
Form of:Leon
Categories:Armenian, Canadian, African American, American, English
Used in:English speaking countries
Additional info:This is actually an Armenian variant of Leon, now used as a given name in North America.
————
Name: Hoshi
Gender:Girl
Origin:Japanese
Meaning:Star
Pronunciation:(HO shee)
Form of:Itself (Hoshi)
Used in:
Japanese speaking countries
———–
Name: Ishtar
Gender:Girl
Origin:Persian
Meaning:Star
Origin:Assyrian
Meaning:N/A
Pronunciation:(ISH tar)
Form of:Itself (Ishtar)
Categories:Mythological, Farsi, Syrian, Persian
Additional info:Persian goddess of love, war, and fertility.
—————–
Name: Seiki
Gender:Both
Origin:Japanese
Meaning:Star and beginning
Pronunciation:(SAY kee)
Form of:Itself (Seiki)
Categories:Asian, Unisex, Japanese
Used in:Japanese speaking countries
Additional info:The Japanese name Seiki may be written with the characters for “star” (sei) and “beginning; account” (ki) – among other possibilities.
—————
Name: Seren
Gender:Girl
Origin:Welsh
Meaning:Star
Pronunciation:(SEH ren)
Form of:Itself (Seren)
Categories:Nature, Welsh
Used in:Welsh speaking countries
Additional info:Of modern coinage.
——————-
Update:
Myrtus / Hadassah: info
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…As a kid, Ianto had always had a bit of an obsession with detective novels; he loved Chandler and Mosley and Hammett because their ‘heroes’ were always dark and bitter and desperate and real…
From Fanfic.
http://community.livejournal.com/ivoryxandxgold/10707.html#cutid1
Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
“…As a kid, Ianto had always had a bit of an obsession with detective novels; he loved Chandler and Mosley and Hammett because their ‘heroes’ were always dark and bitter and desperate and real…”
From fanfic..
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Someone once said that madness is when people stop trying to understand you.
- From beccaelizabeth.livejournal.com re: Hamlet
I love that social porn, the honeymoon period of a friendship
I love charming.
I love those few hours after you meet someone. The smalltalk.
The joy of effortlessly leading the conversation through the normal lull when small talk runs out. The light in someone’s eyes as you forge a connection beyond the superficial politeness they’re so used to.
I love that social porn, the honeymoon period of a friendship.
Then I get tired. Bored. The more you get to know someone the more you realise they are just like everybody else – and the same distance away from you. Despite outward appearences, and favourite books, movies, politics etc. we all trudge through most of the same crap, and for some reason others manage to trudge through it whilst staying saner than me.
[Edit March 2009: This was a hidden entry. Now it's not. I'm not talking about anyone in particular, I'm just one of those people who likes socialising (well...I'm good at it, anyway) but pretty soon I need to run off and have some time to myself. Same after I've been acting in theatre.
Hmm. If that doesn't say a lot about my social persona, I don't know what does.]
Never complain.
Never explain.
*
I will sing my own songs.
*
Everybody knows
You only live a day
…but it’s brilliant anyway…………………………
*
…For someone half as smart, you’d be a work of art…
*
‘You’ll always be alive in my memories.’ That’s the only place we’re alive anyway. There is nothing after for us.
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And my self I have grown to weary to hate.
What is there to write about when romance is just chemical, habit, and eventually regret. There is nothing more than what we experience with our brains….there are only so many endorphins you can release into your brain… and I know a gnarly shortcut to get them. Where then is the point of life? It is commonly said, somewhat cheekily that the point of everything is to fuck, right? Money, power, it’s all about the fucking…but civilisation rises us above animals who fuck, to people who crave power for its own end…there are some rich old men like that yeah? Because most people I know are just out for a good time. Where we disagree is when this good time should be – now, or later? Are they right? Should good times try to be averaged out? I don’t think so, because when life is awful, it’s just awful. I’m not going to care so much about retirement funds when A. has died. I’m too selfish to even care about passing on my life’s work (life savings) to my kids because I will be leaving them…. I will be dying. This is the life view commonly held up as the best – that we should take every opportunity, have no regrets, go nuts and enjoy the time we have on this world. That’s the *best* but the *proper* way to live is to save your money, invest wisely, look after your health, pass it on to your children and the community. I’m living the ‘best’ life but always think I should be living a ‘proper’ life so I spend my whole life feeling guilty. Can I find a compromise? Or do I have to choose? Or do I just go where life takes me and say it’s fate? Hell knows fate has more to do with life than any petty thing I can do…. Even though I have my life 24 hours a day to change it. I can’t program myself.
From http://www.5rar.asn.au/notice_bd/noticebd.htm
3793286 Denis Cosgriff
Support Company 5RAR 2nd Tour
I have been advised today of the passing of the above member. The e-mail, in part, states:
Dear all,
A Vietnam veteran, Denis Cosgriff, passed away this morning at about 3am.
His last words for his friends and those who knew his humour, was ‘see
you when you get here’. He was very brave and passed to sleep at noon
yesterday and never woke. The cancer was caused by the agent orange
chemicals he was exposed to in Vietnam. He had a good life and, as we
veterans say, he is another soldier who is safe now ‘behind the wire’.
For those who keep the List, please add his name today. Thank you.
Funeral likely next Tuesday but I am not certain if it will be here in
Bendigo, I suspect it might be held in Melbourne.
kind regards,
Maryann Martinek
( Posted 5-June-2008 )
‘Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways – Chardonnay in one hand – chocolate in the other – body
thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, ‘WOO HOO, What a Ride!’
fuckin posers
So I’m probably just a bit tetchy – time of the month and all that – but at the moment the bloody posers who seem to surround me are driving me up the wall…
What a year we’ve had – A’s dad so ill, his mum on lots, Justin in a car accident and in a coma, Sam dying, Ben diagnosed with Chrones, Cal moving to Canberra, us taking lots, Ilana pregnant…
I’m just sick of the superficial CRAP that some others are obsessed with – the lens through which they see the world. Of course I have my own superficial interests but I don’t judge the world around me by them – my best friends are not my most good looking, partying every weekend is good for a bit but then you GET OVER IT, world issues are important, not everyone is as lucky as you, oh god this is pointless. why do I bother writing? am i gonna write a novel that is important enough for people to read? Does it freaking matter? should i feel guilty if I just want to spend my life being happy?
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Another gorgeous wedding (guest) photo
From:
http://www.andyradin.com/2%20-%20Galleries/Weddings/slides/112506%20161917.html
Great NIN quote
From the Echoing the Sound forums:
http://www.echoingthesound.org/phpbbx/viewtopic.php?t=13892
GeorgeBathje
Doopa Doopa Doo
Junior Member
Joined: 10 Apr 2005
Posts: 187.684
Location: Port Byron, Illinois
L :: Tue Oct 18, 2005 11:57 pm :: Profile :: Quote This Post :: PM
Geno wrote:
what about ruiner?
Yeah its been played live. I have a copy somewhere. Sounds REALLY DISTURBING live. In all I was impressed with its live sound, but some parts sounded a little too “noisy”.
It starts off with Trent saying, “This is a song about why you kill someone.”
Sign language before speaking – told ya!
Scientists look to apes for language origin clues
Hmm been a bit slack in posting, but I have found that be keeping a tiny diary, you know the pocket sized ones with 4 lines for each day, I force myself to record each day in a non-stressfull manner, then write/draw in my larger notebook when I need to elaborate.
Soon! Soon I shall own a networkable PDA so I can update from anywhere and actually get my journalling up to old standards
Go Aldous! Truly a remarkable author and thinker
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/aldous_huxley.html
Okami
This game sounds very beautiful and unique!
Why can’t there be more games like this?
http://www.theage.com.au/news/game-reviews/okami/2007/03/04/1172943265362.html
Ah, such cute houses:
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Oh god this is why I get worried about hospitals!
Woman Becomes Quadruple Amputee After Giving Birth
http://www.wftv.com/news/6253589/detail.html
And they won’t even tell her why! I am not familiar with the laws of Florida, but the Patients Right To Know act sounds pretty self-explanatory, and on what planet do you sign yourself over to a hospital to do whatever it wants to you without any explanation or conference with the patient or loved ones?? (besides psychiatric hospitals of course – then you’ve got no rights!!)
Freaking scary….
I’m worried about normal things going wrong if I have kids, but this takes the cake.
Joanna Newsom tonight….!!!!!!
Wow, can’t wait until this evening, we will be drawn in to the hidden and magical world of Joanna Newsom’s music in Melbourne.
Browsing today I came across this interpretation of Bridges and Baloons, and it’s just amazing,
Here are the all of her interpretations which make me feel if she’s not joanna newsom, (which I’m guessing she’s not) then she’s someone exactally like me. All the other interpretations I’ve read never gel completely with mine (except for some great reviews) but this writer’s interpretations do exactally!!
http://www.songmeanings.net/profile.php?action=comments&uid=17140087
Somewhere the writer Annalise mentions she is studying her HSC, and also mentions the Sydney show. It’s lovely to think she’s Australian, but amazing to think this obviously gifted writer isn’t even of University age or reading yet!
Update:
The cutest vid of Joanna ever, messing up a line in “the book of write on” and everyone cheerin’, and her being all embarrased and smiley and giggley before finishing the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yahvabf7rzs
And here are some transcriptions of the best interviews with her that I’ve read, from Arthur and also Pitchfork:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/39700/Interview_Interview_Joanna_Newsom
http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1580
After a tiring Goth wedding…
Looking up Gothic and medieval weddings on flickr, I found this lovely shot taken at a fantastic goth wedding, towards the end of the day I imagine.
No Sydney training for es… :-(
Arghh! It was roumoured that there would be some dexterra training in Sydney coming up. Well, they finally confirmed today who was paying for accom and flights (Kaz or Tesltra) but then went and booked the tickets before confirming with Brent or I that we were okay to go!
I was asked to fill out and return some forms this morning, and when I went to drop them in Jackie showed me the dates – 30th Jan to 2nd Feb!!!!!
Now, usually I would be thrilled, and I was very flattered that they were going to spend all this money on my training, even with such short notice, but Joanna Newsom (who I missed when she came out to Australia last year) is on the 30th and Roger Waters $350 ticket front-row seats is on the 1st/2nd Feb!!
They even wanted to fly me home early from the course, then I could go to my roger waters concert but I would miss out on Joanna and have been so axiously waiting for that angelic magical night!
Luckily Phuong is going to go instead, who recently joined our group and was wanting to do some training. They are trying to change the flights right now.
It’s also the first week of Az working at Rosebud, and I would like to be there to offer support and food
Yes, we were finally offered a house! Az has already driven up to sign the lease, and I will sign it tomorrow. We are also going to the Howard Arkley exhibition with Az’s father tomorrow (yay! A whole gallery of Arkley! I can’t wait to be engulfed by those fuzzy glorious paintings), and I am meeting my dad at 2pm because I won two free tickets to see Stone (the Bikey movie) at ACMI.
Then Labassa open day on Sunday! I will have to brush up for my tour guiding. We had our first ‘Friends of Labassa’ committee meeting on Tuesday, which was very lovely to see everyone (and Felicity gave me a stack of old wedding magazines, including one from 1956 which her wedding dress is in!) but the events leading up to it were interesting and very lucky!
The bushfires knocked out powerlines, dropping victoria’s energy by 20%! There were blackouts all over the place. I got out of work, stepped right onto a train (although I noticed it was meant to be the train running half an hour ago), az picked me up, we got dinner, mum called me and asked if the power was out – Marong had lost it a while and was expecting to lose it for hours. I said we were fine and just the trains were dodgy.
We got home about 6:30pm, started eating dinner, put on the news, and just as the new reader lady started talking about the blackouts and asking people to turn their air conditioners off, our power went out!! You could hear the people in the neighbourhood coming outside and asking around about the power. It was nice to think maybe they would get together and have a big street party if the power stayed off!
Lucky we had dinner and all!
I drove down to labassa anyway – the power was still on there! Some of the traffic lights on the way were out (and no police yet) but some still working. The power came back on at about 8:30pm az said.
I will miss moving away from here.
I am meeting Irene tonight, in Acland St. I was describing things she could do on the St kilda foreshore, the pier & tea house, walk down to Luna Park and across to acland and I realised how beautiful and fun it is in St Kilda and how much I will miss it. It will be nice being near the beach still though, in Chelsea.
It is lovely to lie on the bed, reading a book, hearing people come and go from their homes, music, kids laughing and playing, playing instruments, parties in the backyard on a hot summer night…
okay gotta go meet Irene!
Lotsa love!
Wow – I’m impressed, a personality test that actually seems accurate – Enneagram Test
I’m very surprised. I have a bit of interest in personality tests, both from a psychological point of view, and as self interest, and even from an artificial intelligence perspective.
But generally they are woefully polarised. Maybe other people are either one of ‘always the life of the party’ or ‘prefer to be by them selves’ but that has never worked for me.
When I looked up this test in wikipedia it had the usual critisism about being polarised like all tests, but when I took the test here:
http://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/test.php
(I was impressed by the Classical Test)
For a great description of the ‘Types’, see this Wiki article (it seems a little better than the Type descriptions linked from the test page) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram
Most of all I was impressed at how the questions were phrased. They really seemed to hit the mark, rather than me trying to imagine myself restricted to a certain thing, which is how other tests seem to go.
And the results were great too – particularly the different numbers you are like when ‘under stress’ and ‘flourishing’. Along with my main number (4) and ‘wing’ (3) these perfectly described me!
Enneagram test results
You are most likely a type 4.
Taking wings into account, you seem to be a 4w3.
No personality test is completely accurate. Although several measures were taken to make this test as accurate as possible, there’s always a chance that you are not typed correctly by it. Therefore, when deciding which Enneagram type and wing you are, you might also want to consider the types with the highest test scores on the lists below.
(Note that your lowest scores may be omitted.)
Type 4 – 13.3
Type 6 – 10.7
Type 3 – 10.3
Type 5 – 9
Type 7 – 8.3
Type 1
Wing 4w3 – 18.5
Wing 4w5 – 17.8
Wing 3w4 – 17
Wing 5w4 – 15.7
Wing 6w5 – 15.2
Wing 6w7 – 14.8
Wing 5w6 – 14.3
Wing 7w6 – 13.7
Wing 3w2 – 10.3
Wing 7w8 – 8.3
Wing 1w9 – 8
Wing 1w2 – 8———————————
My Type definition from Wikipedia:
Four: Romantic, Individualist, Artist – Driven by a desire to understand themselves and find a place in the world, they often fear that they have no identity or personal significance. Fours embrace individualism and are often profoundly creative and intuitive. However, they have a habit of withdrawing to internalize, searching desperately inside themselves for something they never find and creating a spiral of depression. The genius and self-mutilating Vincent van Gogh is a quintissential Four. The corresponding “deadly sin” of the Four is Envy, while the Four’s “holy idea” or essence is Holy Origin. Under stress, Fours express qualities of the Two (Two: Helper, Giver, Caretaker), and when flourishing, they express qualities of the One (One: Reformer, Critic, Perfectionist).
My ‘Wing’ Type definition:
Three: Achiever, Performer, Succeeder – Highly adaptable and changeable. Some walk the world with confidence and unstinting authenticity; others wear a series of public masks, acting the way they think will bring them approval and losing track of their true self. Threes are motivated by the need to succeed and to be seen as successful. The corresponding “deadly sin” of the Three is Deceit, while the Three’s “holy idea” or essence is Holy Law. Under stress, Threes express qualities of the Nine, and when flourishing, they express qualities of the Six.
And here are the accupressure points for my type!
http://www.eclecticenergies.com/acupressure/points.php?type=4#LU-1
So, I feel a bit better today. By yesterday afternoon I felt a lot better and was going to put the whole thing down to hormones triggered by the sad and stressfull situation, but then this morning I was depressed again.
So i kick it off, tell myself I’m going to do great today at work, put Joanna Newsom and then Mars Volta on, finish a task & lo and behold I’m not dragging my head on the ground any more
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Other nice things…
October
Smell of the warm summer coming in on a spring day, walking up the steps to our flat.
8 Nov
The weathered black tarp of a ute, pulled tight across luggage/a load.
The black tarp of a ute shining with rain.
9 Nov
Strolling through the centre of Melbourne and being able to lose yourself and what country you are in amongst all the different faces and clothes. The beautiful and bright clothes an Indian woman wears while pushing a baby pram; Muslim girls with a headscarf and western clothes, or in beautiful cloth. Sikh’s with their turbans so perfectly coiled and tight; young asian couples in bright harajuku fashions or sharp business suits; the goths and emos, the hippies and socialists selling badges and handing out political flyers;
But this is just funny…
Your results:
You are Timothy Dalton
| A more realistic, gritty and angry James Bond. Suave but serious. |
Click here to take the James Bond Personality Test
Your results:
You are Iron Man
| Inventor. Businessman. Genius. |
Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…
…Really? I don’t feel like an Iron Man
Awww, and I didn’t even cheat!
Your results:
You are Luke Skywalker
|
You value your friends and loved ones, but can sometimes act recklessly because of your emotions. Occasionally you resort to whining. You look ahead to great things for yourself.
|
(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)
Hilltop – Certify!
Wow! Arieh and I went to the Obese Records Block Party on Friday, with the following artists playing:
Hilltop Hoods
Bias B
Funkoars
Layla
Pegz
Muph & Plutonic
Hyjak n Torcha
Drapht
Reason
Jase
Art Of War
Brotha Black
I was looking forward to seeing the Hoods, Muph n Plutonic and Pegz, and also brotha black (he was great last time I saw him – with the Herd??) but wow! The rest were amazing! Art of War blew me away! Unfortunately I was having such a good time that each act blended into the other, and the only reference was which songs I was belting out the words to while I was dancing!
Arieh hooked up with a friend he had met in primary school & sandy, and later seen out heaps. We milled around outside for a while calming down and talking excitedly to other stangers who had loved the show, we were going to go back to Arieh’s mate’s place with his friends but we all got split up, so we then took a taxi back to our place, then onto Chapel St. at about 3am. After trying o’riellys (closing) we walked down the street and met up with young (22 – I’m so old at 23!) ‘Sparky’/Steve in a vest and his friend Joel. They were getting hassled by some idiots and Arieh and I decided to kidnap them. We all kept walking down to Revolver with no luck (members only!) so we invited them back to our place. Another taxi (so broke now!) and we hung out until 6am, drinking wine, talking about music & burning mp3 DVDs etc before Sparky had to go to work (meant to be there at 6am!). So we gave them a lift to Glen Eira (glen Huntly?) road.
Phew! Sometimes I feel like I’m getting to old for all this – or guilty but as the hoods say -
Then it’s all over, go home, go sleep
Wake up, get sober, what a great night!
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Arghhh! Cassie in a bomb blast in Egypt!
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/04/26/1145861423794.html?from=rss
More blasts rock Sinai as injured count blessings
Dahab, Egypt
April 27, 2006
An official checks the Dahab site.
Photo: AP
Two men blew themselves up in bombings in Egypt’s north Sinai yesterday, two days after a triple bombing at a Red Sea resort that killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 80, including three Australians.
A spokesman for the Multinational Force and Observers group, which supervises the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty on the Sinai Peninsula, said the first bomber appeared to target its vehicles but none of its members were injured.
The second man blew himself up next to an empty police car and there were no other casualties, security sources said.
In a third incident in the east of the Nile Delta yesterday, gunmen ambushed police, leading to an exchange of fire. Police had no immediate information on the outcome of the skirmish and it was not clear if the incidents were related.
Two of the 10 people detained in connection with Monday’s triple bombing were computer engineers, who arrived in the Red Sea resort of Dahab from Cairo the day before the blasts.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry confirmed 18 deaths, among them four foreigners: a Russian, a Swiss, a German child and a Lebanese. Earlier, the ministry had put the death toll at 23.
The bombings threaten to dent Egypt’s vital tourist industry, which employs about 10 per cent of the country’s workforce and brings in more than $US7 billion ($A9.4 billion) a year.
Police said that as well as those formally detained, about 70 local Bedouin had been questioned.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.
The family of a 27-year-old Australian woman injured in Monday’s blasts are counting their blessings that she survived. Georgina Blake, 27, of Harefield near Wagga Wagga, and a 27-year-old Queensland woman whose name has not been released, were in a stable condition in a Cairo hospital last night.
Ms Blake’s father, Peter Blake, said that Georgina was nearing the end of a year-long “trip of a lifetime”.
“Georgie rang me at 10am on the phone of the tour guide . . . she wasn’t in Dahab, but she wasn’t far away,” Mr Blake said.
“She was walking over a bridge to buy some cheap wine. A bomb went off and they ran back and another went off on the other side. She didn’t break the wine, she said, so she’s still got some sense of humour.”
Ms Blake emerged yesterday morning from surgery for multiple breaks in her shoulder and arm, and a wounded leg.
A third Australian, 22-year-old Cassandra Jackson of Lockwood, near Bendigo, witnessed the blasts and is suffering severe shock. Her father, Peter Jackson, said Cassandra was just four weeks into a year-long world trip.
“We’ve told her not to give up (and to continue the trip),” Mr Jackson said.
AGENCIES with KATE HAGAN
http://www.bgonews.com/news_local/apr06/index.shtml
Egyptian Bombing
Wedensday, April 26, 2006
Fears for the safety of a regional Victorian woman caught in the Egyptian bombing.
The parents of a regional Victorian woman caught up in an overnight bomb blast in Egypt, have spoken about their fears for their daughter’s safety. Twenty-two year old Cassandra Jackson cut short a brief call to her parents from the scene of the blast, and they haven’t been able to contact her since.
Wow. It’s amazing that overnight, you can find out a big dark family secret, that your cousin maybe going insane, that your sister-friend was hospitalised for shock after witnessing a bomb blast in Egypt… this is the kind of sudden turn of many events that I used to use as an example in psychology discussions of why suicide is a bad idea – ‘you never know what’s going to happen next’. All of a sudden it looks like a pretty crap and disempowering excuse.
My Double Decker Dream come true!
I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid – I drew so many plans, even how I’d put in the electrical wiring! Looks like I missed an entrepreneurial idea!
http://www.doubledeckerliving.com
Click on the arrows beneath the photo on the home page to see interior shots & plans etc.
Sight-bending / street art
Virtual Street Reality
Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Its peculiarity? Beever gives his drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle. It's amazing !!!
Check it out – this stuff looks great!:
http://www.rense.com/general67/street.htm
Sensors a taste of things to come
MAY 30, 2006
IN their quest to create the superwarrior of the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on muscles and hearts, they're looking at tongues.
By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to those of owls, snakes and fish.
Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition expect their work to give soldiers 360-degree unobstructed vision at night and allow navy divers to sense sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater.
Read the full article, this technology is amazing!:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19269162%5e16681%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html
Music and Language – Cave men could sing?
It could explain the universal appeal of music to humans.
I've always been interested in this:
Again, again I get myself into this dilemma, knowing from a mile off EXACTALY what will happen. but that’s enough to pull me in…..Here I am with the decision down to:
Go tonight – Cat will be hungry (unless I ask Lia to feed her, but don’t really want to do that), dangerous to drive at night, especially long weekend. Can sleep all tomorrow which E says I will need to do.
Go tomorrow morning – can enjoy it in the day time which is always less Fear than night. Don’t have to fib to parents.
Look at me! As I write about this the feeling gets worse and worse! My hands are shaking, my stomach is aching & in knots. I’m shivering! And this isn’t even dependency behaviour. I’m convinced for Lou’s sake it’s psychological because I’ve never gotten it from a Lack of it, but from the Prospect of it!!!
But the thing is it’s never been as bad (well, since I stopped doing it all the time) as I Fear it will! And the Prospect anticipation is way more crippling.
Jesus, will I be able to drive tonight feeling like this?
HIM
Wow, what an amazing gig! Seeing shows like HIM reminds me it's worth being broke from spending all my money on live shows (art, theatre, music etc). Even if they are expensive international acts… which makes me feel a lot better about spending almost $100 on Dylan Moran tickets….yay!
…..
more to come… for more HIM check out http://www.heartagram.com
Turning Vivid Dreams Into Reality
At last! Someone has addressed this!
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,41478,00.html
Turning Vivid Dreams Into Reality
by Donna Tapellini Donna Tapellini
02:00 AM Mar, 19, 2001 EST
For lucid dreamers, sleep can be even better than reality.
Researchers at Stanford University are now developing software to help people become aware that they are having a dream so that they can then live out their fantasies during REM sleep.
Oneironauts, or lucid dreamers, are conscious when they are having a dream and can control how the dream develops. During lucid dreams, people are “awake” within their dreams, and can sometimes direct what happens next in the dream.
With enough practice you can fly, visit exotic places, experience vivid colors, or eat all the ice cream you want, all without taking your head off the pillow.
Being awake during a dream may seem like a contradiction, but to those involved in lucid dream research, it’s all, well, crystal clear.
“Lucid dreaming lets you make use of the dream state that comes to you every night to have a stimulating reality,” said Dr. Stephen LaBerge, founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University, a research lab that teaches people how to have a lucid dream.
LaBerge said that controlling dreams can also have therapeutic value. Potentially, he said, people can overcome nightmares that haunt them repeatedly. It may even help a person improve in sports, enhance self-confidence or confront problems that elude being solved in waking life.
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, a book co-authored by LaBerge and Howard Rheingold, is one of many books to help wannabe lucid dreamers get started. The Lucidity Institute offers a variety of tools for people set on taking charge of their subconscious life.
The Institute’s SuperNovaDreamer kit includes a copy of LaBerge’s book, and the kit recommends reading a few chapters before getting started. The book asks that you learn to recognize “dreamsigns,” or signals within a dream that alert you to your altered state. One common dreamsign: elements within your dream are out of context. Objects are not where they belong within a room, or certain people are in locations they normally wouldn’t be — how often do your parents drop in at the office?
The NovaDreamer includes a mask that tracks eye movement to recognize when you’re in REM as well as to determine the amount of time you take to get to sleep.
Depending on how you configure NovaDreamer (a determination made partially on the basis of how light or heavy a sleeper you are), the NovaDreamer flashes a series of red lights into your (hopefully closed) eyes, providing yet another signal that you are dreaming and can now do whatever you please in the dream.
LaBerge advises novice lucid dreamers to be patient, adding it can take as long as four months or more to regularly have lucid dreams.
LaBerge’s research indicates that when a person does something in their dreams, the experience may be closer to reality than you’d think.
Early experiments show that lucid dreamers have a good comprehension of time while dreaming. Researchers that asked lucid dreamers to move their eyes in a specific pattern, and then repeat the pattern 10 seconds later, found they did so in about the correct amount of time.
LaBerge said dreaming of doing something causes the same reaction in your brain waves as actually doing it. During REM sleep, says LaBerge, “the brain is working full-tilt, yet it is disconnected from the outside world. If you dream of doing a long jump, your brain reacts the same way it would if you actually did it.”
LaBerge, who is studying the mind-body relationships of lucid dreamers, believes that controlling your dreams may also improve your health.
“It’s totally possible we’ll find a way to use it to enhance healing, because there’s a very strong mind-body connection during REM sleep,” LaBerge said. Although he admits that the ability to use dreams to cure illness is mere speculation at this point, he said there is anecdotal evidence that lucid dreamers may be able to contribute to their own healing processes.
Most applications of lucid dreaming remain in the very early research stages, LaBerge said. “We’ve been focusing on access to the state (of lucid dreaming),” he said. How practical those other applications are will depend in part on how easy it is to get people into a lucid-dream state.
For example, Tibetan Buddhists, avid practitioners of lucid dreaming for more than 1,000 years, devote years to meditative practice that helps them refine their techniques.
For the rest of us, learning to control your dreams is something like learning to play the piano — some will find it easier than others. “But it’s a lot easier than it was 20 years ago, when there weren’t any techniques,” LaBerge said.
Lucid dreams are also helping scientists understand the nature of all dreams. “By watching the signals provided (by the lucid dreamer), we can come a little closer to getting information about a dream as it occurs,” said Dr. Alfred Kaszniak, a neuropsychologist, and the director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. Monitoring a lucid dream provides more accurate information than waking a subject up since people will forget or edit their dreams.
“Lucid dreaming also gives us a very different way of asking questions about the nature of consciousness during sleep,” Kaszniak adds. “(A lucid dream state) actually satisfies certain criteria of consciousness.”
With enough effort, just about anyone can induce lucid dreaming, Kaszniak said. But some people are more predisposed to it than others, he said. Those with sensitive inner ears have a better chance of lucid dreaming. People with a greater sensitivity to the force of gravity are more likely to vividly conjure up images of flying, which in turn helps them become lucid in their dreams.
Last summer, Stanford University hosted a 10-day conference that included lectures, lucid-dreaming practice and a visit to the dream lab to watch research in action. In May, the Lucidity Institute will take enthusiasts on a seven-day trip to Hawaii for a lucid-dreaming retreat.
——-
Some more fun stuff to look up if you’re interested in this sort of thing…
Great for laughs:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ajh/dreams.htm
Wikipedia on lucid dreaming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming
Dream Yoga
http://www.spiritualtravel.org/OBE/dreamyoga.html
The Senoi people, who use lucid dreaming to improve health and everyday life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senoi
Senoi in more (but sceptical) detail:
http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/senoi.html
I’m studying Buddhism but getting distracted…
This stuff is hilarious…
Sub Genius:
Church of the SubGenius (Wikipedia)
Hehehe, but this one’s more sensible:
Universal Life Church (wikipedia)
Universal Life Church official website
Next big thing!
Ah, will we destroy the earth in a fight over the moon? Are there aliens or alternative-humans living on the dark side of the moon? Is a Star Wars shield the only way to stop the earth from being totally destroyed by crazy dictators? Will the Star Wars shield cause (or be used) the world to be totally destroyed by dictators?
Or will we all be killed by a meteor in 2102? New asteroid at top of Earth-threat list
Stay Tuned!
*Shudder*
Are Viruses the precursors to all life on earth?
Probably. I’ve always thought they were smart little buggers. Still smarter than us, too.
National ID Strangulation
Listening to today: HIM – Dark Shadows, Brilliant Highlights; The Shins – Oh, Inverted World; Bright Eyes – Lifted, Or the Story is in the soil; Bright Eyes – One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels E.P; Bright Eyes – Every Day Every Night E.P; Hilltop Hoods – The Calling; Hilltop Hoods – Left Foot, Right Foot; The Herd – The Sun Never Sets; The Killers – Hot Fuss
Argh!!!! Why can’t people see how evil a national ID card would be?? You start checking people’s ID’s at train stations to make sure they’re not wanted terrorists (because we should all trust the government to make sure that every stupid young man who wants to make a martyr of himself is entered magically into a database) then they start checking at supermarkets for the same reason (or for having a criminal record, or history as a drug user, or for owing money on your taxes), and keeping an electronic trail of your activities, then bang! No food for you if you don’t wish for big business and the government to trace every step you ever take.
Now, I’m not being overly paranoid here – this is exactally the way eastern european communist states control their people, but not with such invasive technology (because they can’t afford it). The CCP of China is well on the way to using technology to opress the people, they’re even starting their own internet because they’ve had such trouble censoring this one (see China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet and China’s Ministry of Information Industry revamps Internet domain names system.) Think of jewish people trying to escape nazi germany, the only way was to have forged papers. It’s impossible for an innocent person to forge a database-connected ID card, but you can bet your bottom dollar there will be a huge number of organised criminals getting cards with fake details right from the start. I’m a computer database programmer. I know how disgustingly bad the security is on most systems (the USA electronic voting machines have MS Access-like databases with no password protection if you open the database to ‘edit’ it like a programmer (or anyone with that knowledge) can do.)
Ugh I can’t keep ranting, I’m getting too stressed. The letters regarding a national ID card I hate the most are the “But lots of countries in europe have one, so we’re behind the times. We should keep up to date with technology…” HOW CAN YOU BE SO BLIND??
See Article: Simple path to ID card
Muslim World?
Frankly, I know what’s causing the hysteria regarding ‘What if the Muslims take over the city/country/world?’ its just the ancient territorial human feeling to protect one’s religion.
In a disgusting soundbite, Liberal (for you non-aussies, The Liberals are a actually right-wing/conservative party. The Labor Party is meant to be more left-leaning but lately have been just as conservative as the Libs) backbencher member of parliament Danna Vale said “we are aborting ourselves almost out of existence”.
See Abortion Will Lead to Muslim Nation
A double whammy, Danna managed to insult women, pro-choice activists, and promote religious and cultural discrimination. My first thought was ‘So what? As long as they don’t try to enforce laws to promote discrimination or take away womens’ rights etc. I’m sure as human beings they’d do just as good a job ‘running’ Australia. Just like Christian politicians infuriate me when they promote anti-abortion agendas because they are Christian, I don’t believe in mixing church and state, and do believe in allowing freedom of religion, but I fail to see what makes the idea of a Muslim-Australian prime minister any scarier than any other religion.
It’s the fanatical ‘conservatives’ I’m afraid of. Everyone forgets that all religions have their fanatics to give them a bad name. I’m scared of a ‘conservative’ Muslim politician the same as I’m scared of a ‘conservative’ Christian politician.
(Post Script – see Seeing it Coming for a great view of what will happen if we let the fanatics take hold)
Most people also don’t notice that it takes vigilance on the part of the people to prevent politicians introducing a catholic agenda, withdrawing abortion, contraception etc, the same vigilance it would take to prevent a muslim agenda trying to introduce Sharia Law.
‘Aborting ourselves out of existence’ what a farce. Apart from the fact that the abortion statistics are not accurate (they include miscarriages etc) do they really think all those babies would have been born without legal abortion? You’d just push the rate of women dying from illegal abortion through the roof.
My Damn Body, my damn choice. Women are not incubators for men’s or god’s children.
February Happenings
I want to re-write the entries I lost from the last month, so here are some comments to jog my memory:
29th Jan – BIG DAY OUT!!!!!
Mars Volta, White Stripes, Henry Rollins – Fantastic!
Wolfmother & Franz Ferdinand – great! But really sounded like I was listening to the album rather than a live show.
The Go! Team, Iggy Pop – I had to miss these guys because I had to make the traditional BDO decision on which acts you’re going to sacrifice for others, but from all reports they were incredible (I’ve gotten especially impassioned rants for The Go! Team in particular)
Saturday 4th Feb (?) – Lia’s birthday party – (Arieh’s cool cousin) Lia’s packed terrace house off chapel st had an amazing and entertaining party -filled with goths and artists, writers and freaks, poets and librarians and beyond. Props to Curly the soft spoken and fuzzy haired Urban Explorer, he showed me his expensive digital camera with photos on it from the latest expedition, including a huge cavern-like room that runs the entire length of the Westgate bridge. Stupid Karma to Lia’s housemate Carl (an awesome artist) who decided to instigate a ‘dead arm’ competition (whereby drunk males take turns punching each other in the upper arm as hard as they can. You are punched in the arm you punch with, thereby rendering your punch weaker and weaker as your arm is hurt. Unfortunately (fortunately if you have some sick stock in winning) as you keep drinking, your arm gets numb. Arieh had to take part because he was so surprised someone else knew what a dead-arm contest was. (why he chose to be amused rather than disgusted by this remnant of his Private School nightmare I do not know). Christian joined in after a time (which seems to defeat the purpose of each hitting each other in the same arm they punch with – he was a lot fresher than the others). About 3am when we got home Christian showed me his arm – it was mottled red, purple, black and brown, like someone had tried to whip the skin off. Arieh’s tattoo covered his so all your could see was bright red in the gaps. Intelligent. I was fascinated and repulsed. I had seen the game played before, but that was when I was in high school and guys were a lot stupider and quick to compete.
Saturday 11th Feb – To celebrate mine & my nana’s birthday’s which fall on the 14th Feb and 15th Feb respectively, my Mother came down from Bendigo & stayed with me. We, along with my brother Seth took nana to lunch in the hills near Lilydale and had a lovely day.
Saturday 11th Feb – That night I went into the city with Arieh & Lia, Andy (who kept buying drinks for us all, all night), Matt (who with Andy, accompanied me home (when Arieh piked earlier) & paid for the taxi, Jess and some other girl-friends of Lia’s. We went to the croft and had the obligatory walking around the city looking for somewhere else when it closed (3am – Melbourne is way more soft-core than Bendigo!!!!!!!!!!! My God!) including the traffic cone, fast food, and trying to walk on a glass void-ceiling incidents that all come with that brand of debauchery.
However the mood was killed pretty quickly after we got home and we realised our cat Spooky had escaped! She had never been out of the flat since we moved to Melbourne, and we realised she had jumped out of our second-floor window to the ground below. At around 5am, mum woke up (normal for her. She was staying with us for nana’s birthday remember) and helped us look. After a few hours sleep, I spent pretty much until sundown walking around the neighborhood calling for her. Arieh had been overtaken by a black and withdrawn mood, after one of his parent’s cats was squashed and died in an unfortunate accident involving his very upset father, who suffers from Parkinson’s, also the night before on the way to Lia’s a cat followed us and we saved it from getting hit by a car when it tried to cross the busy Chapel St/Alma Rd intersection after us. We ended up calling the number on its collar (its name was Chachi) to tell its owner where it was. She was in Queensland on holiday and was very glad we had called her – she called a friend to come and rescue the cat. So I guess Arieh thought he should have some good-cat-karma, or maybe it was a weird sign?
Anyway, we ended up going to bed on Sunday with no sign of her. I collapsed instantly from lack of sleep, but at midnight Arieh heard her meowing and scratching at the door
Saturday 18th Feb – Kirk & Jodi’s engagement party. We had a lovely time with Kirk (Arieh’s cousin) and Jodi’s families.
Monday 20th Feb – Arieh started his Diploma of Education at Melbourne Uni!
Wednesday 22nd Feb – Arieh and I went to the last St Kilda night market for the year, with my old and beautiful friend Danni. Before Danni arrived Arieh and I walked down Acland St for the ATM, and got gelato and cheesecake, then walked down to the beach to eat it in the starlight. The market was very busy, packed with people, lovely stalls, fire twirling, devil sticks, dancing, drumming, music, very vibrant and happy. I got an awesome Hunter S Thompson Tshirt with Ralph Steadman’s artwork from Fear and Loathing on it!
Saturday 25th Feb – Took it easy this weekend as Arieh worked all saturday & I cleaned the house. Arieh got called by Christian at work, he had rolled his car the night before, whilst under the influence/s! And he’d picked up a homeless guy from the rain and was giving him a lift home! And after rolling into a ditch, the homeless guy’s bottle of vodka soaking the interior of the car in the process, the two of them managed to push the car out of the ditch and it started on the first go! DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE KIDS! Arieh and I met the news with “You Idiot! What the fuck were you thinking??!!!! Are you okay? Yes? YOU STUPID FUCK YOU COULD HAVE DIED!” and other scathing incredulous remarks, scolding him for driving under the influence, picking up homeless guys in the middle of the night (he’s a big guy, but no match for a knife when trying to control a car. Although ironically he would have had to be towed out of the ditch otherwise) and quite frankly made him uncomfortable with horror stories of my classmates who died in an awful crash in high school, and the tragic accident of the guy in Mildura accidentally running-down and killing 6 teenagers who were waiting for a taxi after a party. So with no injury other that an aching neck from the whiplash and the body of his car trashed but running, we felt it well within moral behaviour to alternatively berate him, and fawn over him for not being dead.
People die so damn easily. I could choke to death right now.
We met up with Christian on Saturday night & we went and saw Hostel at the cinemas. It was a lot less hard-core than I had worried about. I was concerned with watching an R rated movie in a cinema (If I see something that disturbs me I get inordinately angry at the imagined reactions/lack of reaction of the people around me). But I forget that not all R Rated movies are by Takashi Miike (although he did have a cameo! More to do with Tarantino’s pull than Eli Roth’s methinks! But Eli must have been rapt.)
Diary-X is Dead. Long live….
Well, ironically enough, after leaving my diary-x blog for over a year, I started adding to my huge journal again and noticed they had a ‘download journal’ option. Being the paranoid person I am, I immediatley took a backup.
Two months later Diary-X is no more. The hard drive died, the automatic journal hard drive backups were never working in the first place, and I have been clicking on diary-x user’s new journals trying to find a blog site my work proxy doesn’t ban.
Everyone’s entries are understandably bewildered and grieving. Over the course of a few years (yes, Blogs have been around before 2004 dammit) you can spend literally weeks writing and uploading other writing to your journal. The virgin-blog entries read like cyclone survivors: ‘I just can’t comprehend….all the photos and writing from my life in the last few years are just gone!’
Frankly I’m surprised more people didn’t make a copy of their journal. Out of paranoia I labouriously clicked through every one of the hundreds of pages of my journal, printed them off and saved a file, a few years ago (before the backup feature). Because I used the backup feature when it was introduced, I myself have only lost this year’s entries. All my new, happy entries, but replaceable all the same.
If I had lost everything and had no copies, I think I would have had to go home from work, such would be the grief I was stricken with. (I’m on a fantasy reading binge at the moment. Does it show?)
So my sincere wishes to those bereaved diary-xers.
However another thread creeping through the entries is ‘I must treat this as a new beginning.’ People are taking advantage of the purge to wash themselves free of past gripes, mistakes, grudges etc. I know this is merely a way to stem the grief from losing everything, but I was thinking this same thing when I started journalling again this year.
I had such a lot of angsty, hasty writing which I was loathe to edit (except when faced with legal problems) as it really did illustrate my feelings at the time. Although this made the journal unbalanced in the anguish department, it was my vent. When I started writing again I didn’t feel right tacking on my new entries to this monster of a saga, especially because most of the people who made it a saga are now far away in space and time, from me. After meeting my fiance Arieh and then finishing Uni, my life has hit a turning point in which the little crap that does occur is my own fault, and therefore I have an enormous feeling of happiness, contentment and security which I never really had before.
But I didn’t want to start a new journal, abandoning that which I knew was my past and myself. It wasn’t a censoring thing, there was nothing I was ashamed of, I just didn’t want my now-happy entries to appear incogrous to my past entries.
Now that decision has been made for me by Diary-X. And while I start a new journal here, I am safe in the knowledge that I can always cut and paste all those old entries from my diary-x backup. (The backup format is in some incomprehensible crap format which is really only useful for ripping out what I know to be the text in notepad. If anyone knows if there’s a reader I would be appreciative) And while I will almost definitley re-post my published stuff, articles, essays etc I think I will have a bit of a break, a bit of breathing room, first.
So until you notice entries behind this one, know that I am enjoying my sabbatical from my past.
‘Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is– that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself–that comes too late–a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair’s breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up–he had judged. `The horror!’ He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth–the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best– a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things–even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps!’