wheels within wheels au naturel

 i'm thinking there's a difference in everything between any 2 ppl - including their sensitivity to (= ability to withstand the experience of) violence (within parameters acceptable to the wellbeing of the individual) - including simply viewing it. i guess individuals within the media have been able to find and probably unconsciously "push" the outer threshold of that sensitivity in a large enough "market", or simply percentage of population. for no apparent reason than profit, or some other unfortunate concept. i guess a percentage of the pop. gets some sort of guaranteed repeat gratification out of "thrill", and what more bankable sources of thrill are there than fear, revulsion, something adrenaline charged - and if we can connect some vague feeling of curiosity, as for example why would anyone do that, then u got a 2 pronged approach. how many more prongs are there? out of control memes and evolutionary processes... if a process is good enough - it will survive another day. it will be refined, join the ranks of those already there, and later be joined, and likely extinguished at a later date, by others. maybe not processes run amok, just temporary tangles and twists in energies, processes, whatever else you may have.

depending how much you zoom in or out, and/or really where in the scheme of things you fit, and how much you feel where you fit, is how much matters to you. things change all the time everywhere - some may matter to you, some to others, but i dont see how, or maybe just why, the objective - the whole picture, would matter to any ONE. maybe feeling is just a function, and maybe its only purpose is something like preservation of the group, the hive, the "school". now that it has a purpose, at any rate. it was probably another one of the immensity of possible expressions of the DNA "package". under these particular circumstances, at any rate. dormant and insignificant until enough individuals having this "pesky" set, when in a tight spot, found it to be a strength by turning out to be a way to increase the number of survivors when faced with adversity. might not help the individual, might even be a hindrance  but to the group, it meant survival in bigger numbers. and the next twist is the evolution of individuals who can "work the system", use this "feature" to better their own chances. u'd think they'd flourish after a while. but that would mean, and likely has meant - their doom. the only way these politicians and other possible "system workers" would be able to survive is as part of the organism, in the correct proportion. too many politicians, and there would be nobody left to do the actual work. adversity to a population is practically in a "politician"'s best interest, especially if he can make the populace believe that he knows the way out, and support him. i know i'm using the masculine. also, if the groups of ppl werent afraid of a situation, they wouldn't need to have someone know the way out as badly. i'm kinda stuck in a world view that at this point ppl are not that able, not that manipulative, as to actually cause these adversities, from the "danger" of the rise of a certain drug, to 9/11. i really hope i'm not just naive. how to verify that?

also, even if you have a plan, that may already be part of somebody else's plan.

just started wondering if ppl would live happier lives if they didnt fight against their own natures. but would that work? if each of us was trying to do whatever we wanted, some of those wants would surely conflict with others' wants. out of conflict, the losing, or potentially losing party would probably come out with some kinda compromise with themselves = this is not important enough to me to get hurt over. enter the conflicting parties' friends and families. finally now the deciding factor might be how well liked each of the 2 original individuals was by whom they knew - enough to get their support in a risky situation? did one of the "originals" actually not even know nearly as many people as the other? the socio-political factor.

so back to an individual's freedom to do one's own will - i guess depending on the degree to which one's will conflicts with the wills of others in the environment, one whose natural desires dont encroach on others' should be able to expect to live a fairly happy life. or at least relatively conflict-free. would the absence of conflict actually lead to a happier life?

but how many of us have desires that would never seriously be in conflict with the desires of others? also, do we curb our desires more than strictly necessary to avoid undue danger?

i feel like we should all do what we like a little more. we just got to figure out how to free ourselves of some of these mental restraints. our self-restraint mechanisms are probably governed more by fears of social unacceptance rather than fear of physical harm. but how much acceptance do we really need? maybe if we find ourselves surrounded by ppl with values very different than our own, we should not persist in such an oppressive setup but rather leave and find others like ourselves? guess thats where the fear of the unknown might come in - leaving the relative safety of a known situation for an unknown, possibly worse reality. an individual would have to cross a threshold past which the risk is worth it. its a tangled web. still - i think one should try. even if just a little. at first. even realizing the possibility of doing something different is a start. then knowing that others have gone down that path is reassuring. having a support system, group, or even just a person to lean on during a transition would definitely help. and with the advent of the intrawebs, "finding the others" just got easier.

what if humanity evolved enough over time, to the point that each of us would be as a lord unto himself - owning whole galaxies populated by beings who would "farm" other, "lesser" beings themselves, which in turn would have parasites, which would in turn have smaller parasites living on them - all an absurdly gigantic pyramid scheme to produce or distill some sort of energy or even diversity or novelty, whether useful, or as a form of art or even a collectible. or a battery. what if we were not just the beings at the tops of our pyramids, but only small parts of some other ultimate being's mega pyramid or polyhedron or what have you. how many individual "gods" would tell their farm animals what they're actually a part of, were the animals able to comprehend the situation to any meaningful degree? how many might concoct a story to tell their livestock, if they found such a story gave better yield, like a mental steroid, or vaccine or just a supplement? a story or even an idea that would polarize a species, or at least a sub-section of it, in just the desired manner, like the concept of good and evil, a struggle between them, god and satan, good cop vs. bad cop, the carrot and the stick?

or love.

some people scoff at being immersed in stories and say ppl should go out more and experience life for themselves.
some people say reading is where it's at, and surely watching the tube does not lead to anything good. does anybody complain saying others should sit in front of the TV and not go on the computer/intraweb so much? will they complain in the future against more immersive media?
its just a medium. but i suppose each medium is its own message too. marshall mcluhan was cool. cool like fonzi. man i'm brainwashed.
maybe not everything you see on a screen should be measured on the same scale? educational programs versus commercials? but even the edu programs - whose points of view are they representing? who prepped content for you to perceive it in just that specific way? what was their idea of what's right and wrong? did they care if they misrepresented something to some degree if they made some money off it? are they just proliferating some false ideas that they bought at an age when they didnt have the logic faculties to process these ideas as they would now? are they reinforcing ideas that were handed down to them from authoritative sources, without actually experiencing or investigating these themselves? i figure the best lies are the ones closest to the truth.
truth - an ideal. maybe truth should be viewed more relatively - an IF-THEN relationship. under some circumstances, something may be so. under other circumstances, things might be otherwise.
we need better tools to understand the world around us. and inside us. we need to be taught these in school. we need tool-making tools - for new situations. i suppose this might be taking place somewhere already. just want to show support and help spread the meme, if it's out there. it probably is.
drugs - substances that affect our bodies to effect "abnormal" functioning. heroin, pot, alcohol, coffee, tylenol... spicy food? most people probably mean illegal drugs. legality is fickle. throughout times and cultures, things have been both legal and illegal like pot, alcohol in general, gin, opium, coffee... i suppose everything used to be legal when there was no one imposing their will on others as to what they can and cant ingest. gasoline is legal and obviously necessary in our world, but there's some communities where it's also the main intoxicant. what about fasting? Sun Dancing?
people need to be truthfully informed about the risks and benefits of things. people need to be informed about social pressures. people could use help learning about their own psychology - what makes them tick. people need to re-learn to experience and judge for themselves. but also people need to be allowed to make their own decisions, learn through their own mistakes. sometimes people need to be helped, not directed and punished. well, i'm sure some people love being directed and punished, too.

a piece by one of my fave talkers set to some awesome art

was i right, once upon a time, when i thought it would be cruel to thrust a child into this life i seem to hate so often? maybe they should have a test to verify that one is ready to have a child, and then 2, and so on. maybe they do. i guess it wouldnt turn out too cruel if the child ends up dealing with it all quite well. it's been a while since i first heard terence mckenna utter the phrase "culture is not your friend". but it's been seeping in slowly. its hard to practice thinking and verifying for myself while immersed in it all. but my mind and body are my own. "dont knock it until you try it" is redneck wisdom. i'm gonna have a fucking headache tomorrow morning again. i should substitute alcohol with pot completely.

met a jewish dude named Ray the other day. asked him why he decided to come over here. he said he finally realized israel is going to collapse sooner or later, especially in light of apparently vast numbers of young ppl leaving there these days. this came as a shock to me. one way that it shocked me was the statement that so many young ppl are leaving there. the big shocker though, was a jewish guy saying he thinks israel is about to fall apart. i guess despite disagreeing with the way they occupied the land, and kept it under occupation, i'd sorta hoped they'd finally find a way to all get along, and things would start moving forward. together. i figure a nation needs a piece of real estate to belong to. and where better for jews than the israel area.
an interesting thing Ray said, was that hitler was a huge fan of the zionist movement. i guess that was before he became a fan of concentration camps.
another gem from Ray was something he was told by a non-jewish friend of his:
"Jews are like salt for the soup: a little gives it flavour, but too much spoils the soup."
i told him that i think thats how societies have felt about any visible minorities. and what really seems to sour the mix is when this visible minority is seen as having a degree of power over the rest of the society. maybe a melting pot society will safeguard against that.

write. about something. without bitching? i donno...
the new job is not how i'd hoped it'd be. at times its good. but at times its stressful. different kind of stress though, when ur working for a friend. maybe this is just not the industry for me? but at this time, with 2 kids and a mortgage - a bit late to change. its apparent to me now that a higher "IQ" is not a great match against punctuality and efficiency. i used to think IQ was the true measure of a person. i'm still kinda stuck in that kinda thinking. how to change? maybe just press on with my way of being, and maybe one day i'll shine, and it wont be weird or annoying, but original and cool. but isnt the world littered with ppl who kept on being themselves to the max, but just didnt make it, and burnt out? but maybe i'm too "sensible" to be myself to the max, or better - the sensibility is too much a part of myself to really BE different like that.
Terence McKenna's life sounds like it was cool - sure, it started out with a geeky, awkward childhood, but then he was in college, experimenting with drugs, talking to interesting people, travelling abroad, doing more drugs, studying philosophies, theologies, cultures, taking full advantage of that whole free love thing that was going around then. and then he was back, growing and selling shrooms for a living, starting to write books, going on lecture circuits, doing more drugs, achieving para-messianic dimensions... before succumbing to a brain tumour...
is it better to live (seemingly) that fully but for a bit shorter?
"Take Five" is playing thru my head. i also heard today a tango-y (tangy?) instrumental version of "white rabbit" - funky. weird, but funky.
a lot, if not all interpersonal problems would be avoided if we all really understood and felt, what others mean. but instead we try to translate to one another what we think we think we mean. we dont even understand ourselves.

its been eons since i last posted here.
i was lying on the bed, because i just felt too tired and bleah to sort thru the excess of shirts in our closet. phx and boogie came too, and we all started drifting off to sleep. and then one of our neighbours started pressure-washing the concrete pad in front of his place. and phx said: "that guy doesnt do anything but smoke pot and pressure-wash his sidewalk".
that slowly got some thoughts in me rolling. i wondered how active he would be if he didnt smoke pot. but then i remembered that i tended to get onto doing stuff i normally didnt feel like doing, after having a toke. so maybe it worked like that for this guy too. or maybe i'm just different.
then i started wondering why that would be - why something like that would affect me in that way. sometimes having a slight consistent pain or being sick just got me on working at what had to be done. all these things seem to just take some kind of edge off for me, and i dont terribly mind getting onto doing something i'd normally not want to do. how does that work?
then i started thinking that maybe our brains have a couple different centers that work independently towards their own goals, but what the body ultimately does is either some kind of average of the different agendas that these brain centers are pushing, or these stimuli get all submitted to some kind of editor, which then decides what to do out of all these choices. but maybe something happens during the editor's development that skewes his tendencies one way or another.
or maybe the process is more automated than that, and the brain centers simply submit a request together with some kind of a priority value, and then its not so much a conscious "choice", but rather a kind of an average or a sum total i mentioned earlier. and either because of nurture or nature, or a combination of both, some centers tend to output higher priority values than others.
likely it would be a combination of approaches - for simpler things, the process would be automated, and we'd be only dimly aware of it. for processes with which "conscious" mucking might jeopardize the body - the process would be completely automated and we'd not be aware of it at all. so what processes are we conscious of? is it the ones that deal with the outside world? unless they're boring, then they'd get demoted to the automated department, and awareness would be rerouted from it to more "interesting" things. awareness... attention? conscious attention. what is consciousness? being able to operate with ideas? whats an idea? something which can be described to a degree with language? hmm, phx just told boogie that i'm the next ernest hummingbird :)
but i think awareness, which is probably the same thing as consciousness, is possible without language. language just institutionalizes awareness. you can operate with ideas without language to a limited degree. but to do that you need memory. awareness probably doesnt exist if all ur doing is reacting to stimuli as they come. but if u can compare an experience to a previous experience...
this "comparing" might happen at an even deeper level of automation in the form of the evolutionary process: a mutation that gives an advantage to an organism when dealing with a situation as compared to its peers will give the organism better chances of survival and procreation. over time this type of organism should become the norm. its kind of like learning, but for a species. hardwired biological memory.
but when individual members of the species can learn to deal with situations in a better way, that catapults the learning process for the species hugely. then the members of the species learn to share this knowledge, so that mistakes dont have to be made over and over again, but the learning process can be picked up and continued by the next individual. add parallel processing by sharing information between many individuals at once and testing many new paths of progress from that point, and the species becomes a supercomputer. too bad we often think of ourselves as completely separate individuals and dont feel that connection to everybody else.

steal this interview

the most recent installment of the viking youth power hour is a previously unreleased interview with abbie hoffman, conducted during the course of the chicago 7 trials, with a bunch of commentary by the then 16 year old aspiring journalist tommy laporte, and the viking drunks. towards the end of the show i could swear you can hear some of them snorting right at the table. again.
all i knew about abbie hoffman up until hearing this show was from "steal this movie", and like the extra features on the dvd. i've never read "steal this book". i gotta say that actually hearing the actual dude was... disappointing. he didnt sound like the leader of a concerted anti-establishment effort i thought he was - he sounded like a rebel looking for a cause, or someone who sorta felt what was going on, but didnt stop long enough to think it thru, so a lot of his thinking and acting seems to me now, was done on the fly. who knows, maybe he was bigger than that - maybe he wanted to appear more "wild" in this particular interview than he was, maybe he didnt care about how he appeared thru this interview at all, possibly also because of the trauma of being on trial, and on such a scale. but even the dude that interviewed him was confirming my present feeling about him: that the dude was more of a force of nature than a logically thought out activist.
during the course of the of the interview he argued against any notions of impartiality and objectivism - he wanted people personally involved in the situation - the political situation in the states at the time - he wanted people to feel. hmm, maybe he wasnt so much against objectivism, but against apathy. anywho - gotta go to work.

...then again, i just watched blade runner, and i'm guessing it was the first time i watched it straight, because i think i finally got it, and liked it, and found out where this sound byte from one of paul oakenfold's albums is (just before the "piledriver" i think), and it turns out the movie was based on philip k dick's "do androids dream of electric sheep?"

and in other news, i'm thinking that if humanity survives long enough, with enough ppl living at once, we'll end up having all the possible human conditions occurring somewhere around the world, at once. if its possible - it will eventually happen. no matter if its right or wrong. nature doesnt have a moral code. so we can look forward to wellbeing increasing together with suffering. there will be more crime, because there will be more people. but there will also be more people living well. but then there's economy. depleting resources. that'll tip the balances in favor of suffering.

bah, its 4:20. am. i should really get to sleep.

phx and boogie went to kelowna to chill with gran and grampa, and i stayed at home. kinda weird - this appartment suddenly empty. felt lonely. but then i plunged into trying to fix whatever is wrong with the friggin' talon - battery got charged ok, car started ok, got it into the underground garage, cant say i feel like i found the source of the problem, why the abs seemed to be on, but not full on, until it drained the battery. maybe the nicked wires i found, dried and insulated? but it just doesnt feel like that was it. then by chance i discovered that the pin on which the alternator pivots has all but fallen out! i fucked around for hours, but couldnt get a new nut on there properly. i'll have to drain the oil, take off the filter, and then maybe i'll get enough space to get at it enough to just tighten it a little bit, so that i can hopefully safely get to my parents' place, where i can comfortably work on it, with the tools and good lighting there. our building's strata doesnt allow any kind of car work in the garage. i wonder if they'll slap me with a fine. it could happen, like the guy on the 2nd floor that installed laminate flooring in his suite - had to take it all off and pay a fine. our police state starts with our police strata :)
i worked until midnight last night. today i dont wanna go back there, hence this entry, but i gotta go. its felt like my life is too busy for a while now.
listening to some robert anton wilson and philip k dick - may both of whom rest in peace. the viking youth talked a bunch about them, so i wrote the names down and d/l'd what was available. ray kurzweil too - pretty sweet. watched a short bio on philip k dick last night - seems like he was just a crazy dude! there's a group of people out there who enjoy the creations of crazy people. you could probably easily extend that family to most artists. "most" - me and my weird preoccupation with always allowing for exceptions , alternatives, and exactitude. hehe - or exactness :) sometimes. to communicate as exactly as possible what i mean. or someone else. translation is like a riddle or a puzzle. i love it when i am able to use a saying or proverb, or any phrase that is not a straight-forward statement, to convey exactly the idea behind another such statement in another language, especially when the two statements use different subject matters to illustrate the point they're trying to get accross. now thats a convoluted tangent if i've ever seen one :D

just doing a little light morning reading on crowd psychology... :D
i dont know how it all pans out in the end yet, but i found it interesting how they go thru the theories that gained and lost popularity, and i started thinking about how that seems to be the case in many areas of science: they have a theory, then they find too many exceptions, so they come up with a better 'story' for it, and so it goes, until hopefully the theory is accurate enough. that may well work in some cases. but this crowd thing got me thinking - what if a hybrid theory is needed? like the backbone of a crowd are people of similar beliefs who come together to act in a certain way, together, and then the rest are followers - easily influenced 'sheeple'... :D
like in a concrete construction - you have a steel frame to provide a degree of flexibility, and the concrete encasing it to provide the rigidity - at a low cost. as much as some would like to have it, people are not all the same, there's a variety of individuals within a crowd, and perhaps thats a key strength of a mob - versatility - not just pure strength in numbers. maybe there are more kinds of people in a crowd, if no 2 people are alike, which might make a crowd even stronger, more versatile, more decentralised - i'm thinking kevlar. or the interweb. :)
i donno, maybe its too early in the morning. maybe i should just stick to wire pulling. but i like this multi-prongage idea.

feeling pretty shitty lately. i dont think that gingko shit is good for me. sometimes it makes me feel a bit dizzy, slow and stupid - kinda like a stone, but without the pleasure. i should read up on it and probably quit it. maybe my moods have been rubbing off at work, because benzino has been having some hardcore hissy fits. i can tell he's pissed off, but he just wont talk. i think he's been hanging out with girls way too much. i think he said most of his friends are girls - no benefits tho. i donno.
totally losing grip on the work situation. benzino is now de facto running the site, and i'm the helper. except i'm also like a consultant. i like that part of it. i could chalk most of it up to seasonal affective disorder or something, and the recent cold temperatures. the closing in of christmas. the crappy situation on my account. the unfinished side jobs, people calling about new ones. i dont wanna do anything but listen to my stories and watch movies. and boogie. she's so cute. but sometimes she drives us up the wall. most often me.
i just wanna be a spectator for a while. an extended while. get stoned and enjoy. go to sleep when i burn out.
looks like i'm actually gonna have to read some books. count zero and monalisa overdrive are apparently not available in audio format. it might look weird for people to see me there, just sitting at the site. maybe if i went and read it on my coffee breaks at the starbucks...
pattern recognition was really cool. now i just started listening to virtual light, but its somehow different. i think i should do some kinda course that would improve my information extraction from spoken word. i really wanted to use the word 'aural' though... :)
that and speed reading. if i could speed up my reading speed, maybe reading books would be a more plausible activity for my tight schedule. as i perceive it.
i should go. my parents are waiting for me. i said i could install an outside outlet for their christmas lights. this is gonna be interesting.

i think intelligence is the ability to solve new problems. hmm, maybe its more like intelligence can be measured by the ability to solve new problems. of course an intelligence may choose not to solve problems, therefore scoring poorly on our little test. maybe intelligence is too clumped a concept. i think it should be mostly about learning and applying new knowledge. making guesses. guesses that have a good chance of being correct. i've noticed that iq tests seem to often include questions on "classical" knowledge. knowledge of facts. knowledge and understanding of the pythagorean theorem. i'd level the field by giving the test takers new rules to solve problems with.

i like the idea that the internet, being the massively interconnected network that it is, with memory, might one day just spontaneously achieve consciousness. but it must have been something mark pesce might have said, that got me thinking that it might actually never happen spontaneously.
do we know any other intelligence than human? well, animals have intelligence - which we can see by observing them as they try to solve some kind of problem - like get to food. but then you see your dog barking at his own reflection, and your illusions of ur pooch's intelligence get rudely shattered. nevertheless - there's some intelligence there. but we're looking for conscious, sentient intelligence, arent we. if we're looking to create an intelligence that we could "hang out" with, then maybe we should try following the path we took to get here. who knows how life started, but maybe we could start at some kind of "thing" that would somehow react to stimuli. i guess we might be aiming at something like having a child - something in the end autonomous, that we could co-operate with, and be proud of its achievements. autonomy would be a life of its own. it would pursue its own goals. if we're looking at the internet achieving conscious intelligence that we could relate to, it would need goals. at least something to fear, something to work away from and something to work towards, a reward, a pleasure. a fear could be the threat of ceasing to exist, and a pleasure would be something that would be a plus towards survival. and perhaps as a strategy to ensure survival in face of changing conditions of life, environments - an interest in things "different", an exploring streak. and ensure the exploring streak is different in strength in the different representatives of the species, so that if curiosity kills one cat, it wont kill them all. i guess we could wait until something we do with the web unexpectedly gives it a purpose, a vector, or construct something like that on purpose. but maybe the web itself should be viewed more like the environment rather than the entity. i mean, there are people who personify the earth, but i dont know. well, if the earth gets wired enough with the net, it will be like its nervous sytem. its kinda like terence mckenna's idea, which i think he'd developed on someone else's - that the earth is like an embryo, still evolving, and the net is its nervous sytem, made out of the raw materials of the earth. that kind of scenario i could kinda see... and when the net is configured to manage itself, and figure out for itself how to solve its problems, thats when things might start looking interesting. until it figures out that we're a pest that needs to be gotten rid of. hopefully we're viewed as at least maintenance bugs, and just our population and exploits need to be curtailed a bit. but i cant see the net itself being configured to manage itself. it would be a maintenance program. actually, probably every part of the net would get its own, proprietary kind. it would be like multiple personalities. in the end they'd probably duke it out leaving a single one. unless they're created in a "flock", to have to cooperate with one another. but over time the different individuals of the flock might become integrated parts of the flock itself as an individual, for the sake of efficiency. i guess we'll have to see. we should probably run simulations of all these scenarios in isolated sytems, that the programs inside it would think that was the world. and we'd see from the outcome which programs are worthy. hehe - an eerily familiar scenario - i knew god was testing us! but for what purpose? what are we gonna be worthy of? or not...

just had this half-baked idea that if the 'mind' might be divided into conscious and subconscious, then maybe the subconscious tends to learn from everything it experiences, whether it be reality, movies or imagination. this somehow ties into something i heard from an ex once - she was getting pretty down after her ex and her broke up, and a doctor she went to, gave her a bunch of small round red stickers and told her to stick them in places she looks at throughout her daily routine, and every time she sees one, he told her to think of something positive. the idea was to 'force' the mind into thinking positively, give her a positive mindset. it also ties into my observation of how the ideas we seem to just 'get', seem to just pop out of nowhere, already formed. but i think i've also noticed that sometimes the conscious 'guides' the direction of these ready-made ideas - like when i'm trying to think of a solution to something, and i get an idea, but after analysing it realise that it wouldnt work perfectly, but most of it seemed to make sense, and so i keep thinking 'in that direction'. or maybe whats happening is that after getting a 'half baked' idea, i keep the part that seems to work and now focus on the smaller problem of making the rest of it work..? think, think, think, thats all i do... :)

i fucking hate bums. but i just thought - what if there's just a number of bums that are simply ruining things for people who actually might have got down on their luck and need some help, but are otherwise 'normal'. is there actually justification for these bums to live on the street and beg and steal? should i feel sorry and try to help any of them? and how? i should read up on this - there's probably been some kinda research and studies done on the matter. i wonder if anyone's done a project where they'd start from the ground up, as it were. start off with no money or anything, knowing nobody in the city. how would they do? would it be possible for them to get food, shelter, a job, an appartment, a car - move on up, like the jeffersons? how long would it take? of course it would be easier on the individual if he or she came from a 'normal' home, had no drug problems, no mental problems, their life was 'normal' up until that point. but i posit that it would still yield very valuable insight into the problem. a point to start from, a piece of the puzzle solved. then maybe the drug piece of the puzzle could be solved - how to get the bum off the drugs and into a position where the previous 'contestant' started. then follow the dude's path, hopefully learning from his mistakes. of course that might not easily apply to someone who's abusing whatever they're abusing because of a psychological problem, but that would be the next step to study, wouldnt it. i'd call it "the bum project" :)
then have an expose on the tele - so that people would know whether to give money to the bum, or the oraganisation that would help the bum better, or not to give money at all but instead form death squads and purge the streets and back alleys until they're clean. i wonder if any city has ever successfully dealt away with their bum problem... and how...

it being september 11th, i saw a piece of some kinda show or whatev on the tele about 9/11 this morning, and got slightly miffed about people missing the point yet again: if 9/11 is revealing anything about the nature of god, it surely must be that he is NOT as christianity portrays him, and in fact he probably doesnt exist at all. maybe the vengeful god of the old testament would impart on mankind all these wars, hunger, and general suffering, the least of which was 9/11. whats with this religious/spiritual impulse in people? "thank you sir, may i have another!"
fucken bullshit.

this was a comment i wrote on someone else's blog, and it was so good i had to make it a post in its own right :)


"ah, the unmistakeable call of that bitch, nostalgia...hit me pretty good one time when i was about 12 - my parents were balding and going grey, me and my bro realised they were feeling pretty nostalgic about us growing up into adolescents too, getting hair in odd places and all, which only served to deepen the overwhelming feeling. to boot, it occurred to my lil' bro that we'll probably never see gramma again, because she was already very old and we werent expecting to go back to poland anytime soon. we had a good cry that night.
dude - are you really trying hard to be cool? (or hip, as the case may be.) i remember trying to be cool in highschool, maybe sometimes after that, but i figure most people stop trying hard to be cool before they're 20. i donno if its hormonal, or psychological as a result of a shift in social pressures, or something else, but it seems like it just happens. maybe it wasnt as much trying to be cool, as trying to fit in? maybe its trying to fit in first, and then trying to be cool, from the platform of teenage normalcy. maybe "a" platform - there's the skaters, the goth, the gangsta's (apostrophe is not to separate the "s" but is rather the last char of the word "gangsta'" (now, that doesnt make it much easier to notice, does it)), the geeks. actually, now that i think of it - the goth WERE the geeks - they were the ones playing rpg's [ :) ], etc. but i think also the more of a "computer geek" you were, the less goth you were, and viceversa. so where was i? trying to be cool. or hip, as the case may be. so were you really trying to be hip, or were you just doing what you wanted because u thought it was cool, or hip, without much regard of what it might look like to others? {i love changing tenses within one sentence :) actually, maybe i dont actually lurve it, but i do it for some reason, even when i realise i technically shouldnt. in this case i think the way i wrote it sounded more natural. or looked like it would've sounded more natural, were it actually spoken out loud, that is to say ;) }i wonder if highschool-aged kids tend to take criticism harder because of their hormones, but also tend to be harsher critics because of said hormones. i remember hearing highschool girls going on and on about hating this and hating that, but loving something else or another. no lukewarm feelings about anything at all. but thinking a little more about it all, i also remember kids who seemed innately "just cool". :))i remember this one guy in particular - chris - long mane of hair, surfer/stoner talk, loud, somewhat obnoxious, smoker, laughed loudly a lot, had a cool girlfriend, was funny - people just looked up to him in some ways, or had some kinda respect for him, even though he didnt do that great academically. he didnt seem to be affected by the whole 'trying to fit in' thing. that was junior high. he started piping down in senior high - chopped the hair, wasnt quite as loud anymore. then i saw him a year or 2 ago - he was just a plumber. (maybe the piping down was forshadowing :D) hehe, on the other hand i accidentally ran into one of the highschool geeks at a party a while back, and he'd just sold his roleplaying paraphernalia store and was going to england to blow his monies on bigger and better things. how things have changed :) but yet another twist - i asked said geek about another geek - saul - whom he knew, who was in a few of my classes. this guy was so intelligent, i thought for sure he musta by now got on some kind of UN committee, or is lecturing at some university, or works for some animation studio, since i knew he'd gotten a gov't grant to do a short animated film right after highschool. nope. he did his short film, it fell through the cracks, and that was his last achievement in that department. he now apparently works as some clerk somewhere or something. that just shocked me. he was one of the most intelligent and eloquent people i've ever seen, and i last heard him speak in grade 11, in like '94. just sad.hehe, this should be an entry on my blog, not a comment on yours. ah, whatev :)so where the fuck was i going with this..? i'm at like a tangent off a tangent off a tangent here...right - shenry said, or seemed to have implied he was trying to be hip, and also seemed to be down about it. what i think happened, is that shenry remembered all the good times he'd had at stella's, but then he started realising that those times are probably gone for good because he doesnt hang out with his peeps there like they used to, and the kind of peeps that hang out there now has changed, making even more remote the possibility of those good times ever returning, and it made him sad that he lost something that he cherished so much. people dont like to lose things. adding to those 'negative' or 'low' feelings was the realisation that the new crowd hanging out at stella's was comprised largely of these 30-something year-old yuppies - people who in shenry's subconscious were catalogued as intrinsically uncool, they werent 'real', they were suburbanites, with "real" jobs and money to blow, family people for christ's sakes, yet they were 'trying' to do, to awkwardly emulate, what was defacto reserved for people actually 'living' their lives - namely hanging out at cool spots such as stella's. they invaded it and blanded the shit out of it. then a chilling suspicion creeped into shenry's mind. he was there too, shoulder to shoulder with these, these people. some might even say he fits their demographic... shenry is kinda like, one of them... this probably got shenry into such a pit that his fight-or-flight mechanism kicked in and he bounced. will this episode cause a mid-life crisis type of reaction in shenry? or will he re-evaluate his old preconceptions about "these people" from his "seasoned" point of view, and start looking at them like people who are perhaps like himself in some ways...?
sorry about the "seasoned", dude - it was just right there, i couldnt help it :D
but i agree with ghost, dude - ur cool, and i hope u dont think u've lost something along the way, but rather built an even higher coolness off a platform that kids cant see yet ;)
unless i'm completely wrong and you were actually trying hard to be hip. and you didnt like that because trying hard is just not cool. would your near-obsessive work-out and diet routines, careful personal grooming, playing hackey-sack in public places, frequenting cafe's, bars and clubs which rate high on the rosicrucians' coolness lists, all be manifestations of the odious and repugnant drive towards ultimate hip-dom?
why does shenry do the things he does? and whatever his drives - are they evil? if he cuts, does he bleed..?
;) "

had a brilliant idea today - white rappers should be called wrappers :)
sure you cant really tell just be listening to it being said, but they'll know what you mean... :)