Toujours et hier

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 05:24:50 GMT

I haven't touched this in a while. I wasn't really planning on it, but I was bouncing around the web and ended up on Architecture in Helsinki's livejournal. "Quoi?," j'ai dis. "Je rappelle ce site Web!" And I got French all over its face, and it got my mono.

That's right. My mono. And all these people are trying to steal it.

I don't know how I got it, but it wasn't that exciting. It would be exciting if...

I had been on an airplane. I had been in an Antarctic snowforest. I stole it from the muskovites. I got it that night when I was...
indisposed.

But I don't think it had anything to do with that, for no matter how much I expressed my indisposition to feeling like shit, it was unrelenting. But not, thankfully, exciting. It was light, and like all lighweights, it passed out quickly.

I've had an interesting last couple of months, but not the kind of interesting that interests other people. I've been wasting a lot of time I could have been learning, or writing, doing inane things like this, or bumming rides on the facebook bus, which leads me to my real point.

I'm nervous. The bus isn't fun when your the only one on it. Now the facebook bus has opened the college doors to high schoool? I'd like to say bad things about the move, but the only people likely to read this are in high school. The thing is, I love being in touch with all these people again. It's just, facebook is so fake. It's for tricking oneself into thinking that by little wall posts you're virtually closing the immense distance beween you and whoever's profile you're on. It's a necessary trick, because in reality those distances grow each time the sun shines down on them. Every day, I'm getting further from the people who left with me. I just wanted to think, maybe, that the people at home weren't going anywhere yet. I guess it's all turd-farts anyway, and onward I mumble into *oublie*.
It doesn't look like I can italicize words here. Haphazardly dropping French words loses so much of its pretentiousness when you can't flag them as outstanding displays of your superior knowledge. Why did German never feel pretentious? Why does understanding those little droplettes of haughty French make the classiness run out of them like cheap mascara in a sweaty club?

Tu ne devrais pas te maquiller.

German never seemed pretentious. Neither did the architecture in Helsinki, for all I knew of it.

This has been both a useless and unenlightening regression. You and me both.

Take this advice:

addresses

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 20:20:48 GMT

I've been a livejournal whore this past week.
This one has a purpose.
I got a new computer for college, with a whole new address book, so if you're tearing up uncontrollably that you haven't heard from me, it's likely because I don't have your address. Or you forgot to wear deodorant the last time I saw you. The two are kind of the same.

Either way, if you give me your house digits I'll probably cough up the dollar to send you the letter I'll write while my intellect is sufficiently clouded by lack of sleep or liquor or the cloud of pot that drifts into my room from across the hall (I guess it saves me money, anyway) that the Chinese characters start looking like Arabic script and miraculously, become wholly intelligible, only strangely, the Arabic is a transliteration of archaic German, which I can't understand at all, i.e. when I'm done with work for the night.

(SAMPLE)
my address is
Dan Ruppel
Rm. 502 New Residence Hall
3625 Ave du Parc
Montreal, QC
H2X 3P8

I haven't been online, and I am a mediocre responder to emails. As Mary Topper said, "It's strange that our fastest way to communicate is snail male (sic)" I'm sure it was a Freudian slip, cause she couldn't get over my beaucoup de masculinity. Ok, it was my slip, and I'm trying to play it off because I eat babies. You know what? Shut up. I'm gonna sell your toenails to strippers on eBay.

Fuck it. I just turned in my final. I got 45 minutes of sleep last night, and my average for the week is way under 4 hours. Yeah, I'm bragging. And sick. I don't have to take this anymore. I have to buy ouzo and drown the 11 cantos of Dante that are my hell. tell your sister I said hi. Yeah, the flowers really were for her.

It's sunny anyway, for now.

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:04:08 GMT

I want whoever reads this to go out for halloween in a bikini, because you can.

Sunday the dire little picture of rain I've become so used to seeing on my weather widget has got dandruff.

little white flakes seem far off when

now it's a balmy 9C (double and add 32...)
tomorrow its a balmy 9C
Sunday the pretty fleurs get frostbite and die.

c'est la mort.

Sur le monde, repose l'armoire.
Sur l'armoire, repose ma tête.
Sur ma tête, repose l'allemand.
Und dass warum ich so überrascht bin,
Wenn ich mag ihre Wörter,
Wenn sie spricht auf Französisch.
Wenn sie spricht auf Französisch,
Die Türen von meinem Armoire öffnen.
Dans mon armoire, repose mon coeur
Dans mon coeur, repose une Française.

I wouldn't take that too literally.

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 23:10:14 GMT

How can I explain that writing a letter is like kissing?

Sat, 27 Aug 2005 08:18:16 GMT

So there's the possibility this might get a little more livejournalesque, you know, where I actually talk about my life and what happens in it. Really it's just because I'm afraid I won't remember it all, and maybe you can gain some advice so you know what to look forward to for real and what's not really that hot.

Things that suck:
Bar prices
Tips
Nice girls too fucked up on vodka and sprite zero
All the men at club Jet when our Frosh wasn't there.
Seeing two of yourself in one mirror
Cheap 40s of Carling Black Label
The guy who was still drunk at
Class registration/ French placement exams.

Things that are pretty awesome:
Australian/Concordia guys who crash McGill parties and give me bourbon/VIP access
Bourbon
Montreal
Keeping your mini-fridge sub-zero
Milk (not in bags)
That Kanye West song that Nick George probably likes. (Nevah Evah!)
Mustasche
Spelling
No hangovers (knock on wood)
Four-18 AM
French
German

I don't know who reads this. Sarah Adams: I owe you a CD. If I owe anyone something, they shouldn;t be afraid to hear my harsh rejection.

Postmodernist thought seeps into constitutional thought

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 05:39:19 GMT

yeah, I said it.

I believe in Einstein, because I like his hair.
I believe Einstein disproved many presently persistent theories of God.

The basic principle of a God is his immortality. Most monotheistic religions believe that God, being one and eternal, is unborn.
(yes, Arians, the Nicenes won, that's why we say their fucking creed in Church, so shut your fourth century greek bitch-asses up.)
Not born and not dying, neither created nor destroyed, this God is. He (who must also, being infinite, be she) never was and won't be, but is eternally present.
Immutable.

And then Einstein comes along and shows us everything, time and space, is relative to the speed of light. Except for that speed, everything changes.

Therefore, God is speed. God is LIGHT. God is minuscule massless photons waving by.

So about the Constitution. It's a big deal.
- In the Enlightenment, when everything was reasonable except Optimism (fuck you, Candide), a bunch of really, really smart people sat down separately to try to think out the best form of government, including the meaning and purpose. The movement was to determine the minimum amount of government needed to protect basic (immutable) rights, which for some was a whole lot.
- Subsequently, A bunch of really smart people and George Washington sat down together in our lovely Philadelphian belltower to think out a way to actually protect basic rights (this could be argued, but eventually, I'd win, so I'll save you the reading). The resulting document divvied state and federal power to preserve the most liberties for the most white landowning men, but more importantly, the document provided an anchor (the rights) and a structure. The many compromises allowed the structure to stand.
- Times magazine writer Noah Feldman takes a novel stand in light of the new Iraqui (U after Q!) constitution. A constitution creates a building in an battle field, so that the nature of the government can be determined peaceably within its form, thus with the (tacit?) consent of the people. Function follows form.

This is a modern concept. This is constitutional genetic modification, where nurture creates nature. And as Feldman illustrates, it's not exclusive to the Iraqis.
- The recent pending amendment on flag burning changes the basic purpose of the constitution - facilitating laws to protect rights - and modifies its DNA to include patriotism.
(A crazy-ass gay marriage amendment is a different story. By infringing directly on a state's right, it is changing the frame itself)
- The frame is solid, if somewhat pliant, but beneath it, there is only
Light.

Take that, Gary Trooodeau

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 23:27:35 GMT

If you're into theatre, or if you're Lisa, and my email got returned, check this out.

http://www.thebrickplayhouse.org/program.htm#gots

and if you are Lisa, where is the tree you're still in @, because is seems aol.com is not it.

enjambment

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 05:44:33 GMT

Je suis le'gal.
Ich bin gesetzlich.
Yo tengo un moy bueno gato.

but if you try anything I'll cut you
a deal

her prehensile legs

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 07:43:38 GMT

I saw "Alfie," the remake with Jude Law. A surprisingly stunning movie, cinematographically, but the plot was like a remake of an old movie with Michael Caine.

yes, that was a "haha"

I keep meeting fabulous new people. Andrew, Kyle, Ashley, Naomi and a hundred other American-adopted names. It's strange, I almost don't want that now. Watch me find the closest friend I'll ever have, and leave him. Watch me fall madly in love.

ADMISSION DEFERRAL REQUEST

Surname: Ruppel
First Name: Daniel
Student ID: 260728304 - I can't remember the middle three numbers
-Please list the reasons for which you wish to be considered for deferral: A year of hot, hot, smoking hot sex. Followed by tea and finishing the Great Multinational Novel.

On August 21st I leave my life. I slam the door of the Subaru Forrester packed with pictures, yearbooks, ticket stubs, email addresses, phone numbers,

wait, scratch the phone numbers. 15 cents a minute?
Only if she's five-two.

Phone numbers litter my cell phone uncalled. The names read like a baby register of aborted children.

Jesus.

Let's try this again. Give me my fucking Muse of Fire, Henry V:

On August 21st I leave my life. I slam the door of the Subaru Forrester packed with pictures, yearbooks, ticket stubs, email addresses. The pages of an unkept diary flutter to the ground. Wind and rain and oppossums and Little Johnny's bubble-gum smattered sneaker all pass over them before I do again. I get new pictures, new phone numbers, new names (I'm good with names, unless the names Kora, I learned). Which pages stick around, and who's on them? Is it harder to say goodbye when you know you'll never see someone again?

These and other things plague my 3 AM mind, which is good, because otherwise I'd start thinking about which numbers to dial, and then I'd turn into fucking Alfie.

Who's my Maurice?

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 05:26:24 GMT

this one goes out to the little people

So, in light of my mom's erstwhile rant about how not inviting people to my graduation party (that is, not having a graduation party to invite them to) was rude and obnoxious and probably set a house on fire in Cambodia (my mother never hyperbolizes), and coming to grips with the fact that, far from deigning to splatter my words on the livejournal stage, I am a balls-out, full-frontal livejournal whore, I've decided to add everybody who's commented to my little list of friends. That does, of course, mean that if you're a clever putz-chen, and you comment on this, I'll probably also add you.

This means you're posh.

Maybe this means I have online tact.
Tact is very important to me.

I love the scent of her eyes. I hate people who mix metaphors to sound more artsy. Syllogism: I am a self-hating-emo tearmonger.
And a liar.

Why vegetarians suck, and how your Fish Fillet killed Flipper

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 04:08:21 GMT

Two days ago I found out one of my best friends was a vegetarian. It shouldn't have been surprising, but I always thought she was cool.

I can say outright that I am opposed to vegetarianism. For health, sure, but to shut down an industry? One of the better thinkers of the last 300 years, Jeremy Bentham, said "The question is not 'Can animals reason'...but 'Can they suffer?'

It sounds wonderful, and if you're going to be a Jain, go be a fucking Jain. I'll even buy you the mask so you can't swallow bugs. But unless you subscribe to some radical ancient Eastern religion, reevaluate the circumstances.

Take domesticated turkeys: Bred and fed to die on Thanksgiving or Christmas with as much meat on them as possible. I have great respect for the wild kind, but these birds will drown themselves in rainwater.

Cows. The babies' favorite farm animal. One might call cows "Domesticated Aurochs" - or if one was a Linnaophile, Auroch Domesticus (yeah, I hate the Swedes too) - for the now-extinct Asian mammal from which they are descended. Emphasis on the descent, however, I mean, at least there's genetic diversity - milk cows, meat cows, dead cows - but cows have had the survival bred out of them. Their docility which babies mistake for kind gentleness, is a mark of the stupidity we gave them.

The list, of course, goes on: Babe vs. the Wild Boar. Who wins? I'll give a hint, bacon's for breakfast.

A vegan friend of mine proposed (amiably, she's not stupid) that we let all the animals go. The idea isn't half bad. All the farm animals die except the horses, who become scavengers, and after a brief glut in the horse-vulture-Californian Condor population, life returns to a relative norm.

Pass me that horse burger.

I support environmentalism. In fact, every day the cows continue to wander about is another day they shit, the shit washes into the streams, and soon the oceans red with microscopic algae who, in dying, deplete the dissolved oxygen in, say, the whole Gulf of Mexico (St. Petersburg Times, FL - Jun 30, 2005), and all the fish die.

Which brings me to my last point.

Save the world. Save the Wales. Save the Welsh. The biggest issue, the real issue, on our platter is overfishing. I'm sure you've all seen food chains. Each day, increasingly efficient nets engulf increasingly deficient fish populations, and with them, crustaceans and mollusks. So even if Flipper is saved by slipping through a dolphin safe tuna net, he'll starve to death in a lifeless ocean. (and his decomposition will sap even more dissolved oxygen.)

In conclusion, the solution is not to kill fewer cows, but to kill all the cows, and barring that, to order the hamburger over the fish sticks and help out the aquatic ecosystem. Hey, maybe you'll even force some little Japanese girl to starve as her father becomes economically inviable. I love consequences. I love Existentialism.

Just another cliche line in a song by simple plan.

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 05:37:27 GMT

Whores don't disgust me - they're just responding to a market. I'm going to take a machine gun to every girl who's ever bought a Simple Plan CD.
I'm going to tell her it's very dangerous and why she shouldn't keep firearms around the house, and how the second amendment was only to ensure that we could shoot redshirts and redskins, not each other.
Take the red-eye to Baton Rouge and blow up the fucking concert hall the next time they play. Yeah, I'm ready.

Word play, mind games, fucking dilated pupils. Apparently I'm farsighted, which the eyedoctor said wouldn't be a problem for another 15 at least years as long as I don't read too much.

thank you college for buying me glasses.

I'm fucked. I even read in the shower (thank you whole foods for explaining sodium laureth sulfate) I can't really see to type, because my pupils are still kinda relaxed. I felt like a blind man stumbling about in my sunglasses.

I love Talia Lev, and would thank her for convincing me there is no hope left for a society with internet access.

There're certain people who just get to you in a good way - you're just comfortable having them around, more joyful. Joyfuller.
Maybe that's love.
Damn I'm gonna miss her.

Maybe that's snot hanging from your nostril. Wipe that shit off.

This last section is a shout-out to McManis, who I'd like to hang out with sometime this summer if he can find a stick big enough to beat the women off, but whose phone number I do not know.

Can one do "Tab" in live journal ?

monkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysthey'reafteryoumonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonkeysmonley - that's literature.

Philosophy and Rhetoric, part 2 1/2

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:07:52 GMT

A U2 surveillance plane crashes over Asia after completing reconnaissance mission as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Kinda forces you to look deep down inside yourself and remember the mortality of every spy.

What makes a spy? Is it the information, or the sunglasses - that veil of secrecy upon which rests your furtive life? Is it the treason caused by fierce loyalty or is it the background music?

Yeah, it's the background music. Dan Burd knows the guy who wrote the MI theme song. Yeah, he's really, really rich. Treason pays big. Much bigger than murder.
It's all logical: Guns are cheap; Aston Martins are furiously dear.

Oh dear. Dear is expensive. Loves are dear. Therefore, Love is expensive.

I LOVE syllogisms. and rhetoric is roxor. I still don't get that, "roxor." It's like the big joke where everybody laughs cause it's a penis, but your sitting there three hours later holding the banana and wondering why. Why?

Cause it's a dick.

the breakdown

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:43:14 GMT

Picasso - 11

Saul Williams - 7

Einstein - 5 (2, plus 3 for that T-shirt with the picture of him with his tongue out)

Motherfuckin' Barney and shit - 2.4

If you want to argue, fight me. That's you Sam. I'll bring out some fuckin' guernica on your lawn.

Or you could burn me a cd that would prove me wrong.

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 04:22:02 GMT

It's rup's night in, so I thought I'd go for some free association.

(rup's night in apparently means he's home by 11. I feel like such a dude.)

Summertime, makes the lovin' so easy. I guess it's the humidity, cause I see couples all over. Dripping, boggy passion.

In the other room, the Phillies are losing in Seattle. I suppose, they're losing everywhere, so long as time isn't relative or any of that Einstein bullcrap.

Would you rather be Einstein or Picasso?

I'd rather be Picasso. Einstein never got any tail. Picasso got Liat and Bonnie.

I'm having a hard time convincing my mother I've already graduated, that I've graduated no matter whether I "walk" or not.

My dad asked what I wanted as a graduation present. What I want is a car, but I would never tell him that. Just like I'll never tell Talia who I meant when I wrote a "crazy emo" entry about the wispy true love who got away. If you're reading this, Tal, my dad paid for prom and that was enough. Besides, I have a hundred cars in my basement.

That's right. Hot wheels, baby. Vroom.

I don't ever want to pour my heart out or reveal secret or even rather public feelings in a livejournal. When I do, I ask for a mysterious white envelope delivered to my door containing a blank piece of paper, followed by a swift guillotining.

Read Palace Walk, and get some sleep, doll.

Fri, 27 May 2005 01:33:10 GMT

Today was an interesting day.

Not for anything that happened. In fact, almost all of my teachers were out, the subs irritable, and the periods bullshit. So nothing happened today, really.

But a certain piece of my mind turned off for a while - the part that says "If I were you, I wouldn't," and because I am me, I don't. So today, I did. I dribbled obscenities from the corner of my mouth, political correctness damned before it came up. I floated on rubber soles, I bumped into people, I farted obscenely, I held hands too long and grabbed for more. I snuffed out my entire superego like a match thrust into a spittle-filled mouth.

Still,
Nothing happened.

I think it's White Noise wearing off on me badly. I always become a bigger asshole when reading modern literature.
I think I understand why people bungee jump off suspension bridges. The police are silly to arrest them. It's what they want. It's what they're stomachs growl for. It's nothing.

Really.

Also werde ich eine Livejournaldirne.

Mon, 09 May 2005 02:25:47 GMT

Und es wuerde wunderbar sein, wenn wir sagen koennten, dass wir sind eine Teil von einem grossen Gehirn, aber ich koentte dass nicht machen.

Es ist lustig, Freund, weil solange ich aus der Ratio frage, nun glaube ich mehr dass wir nicht erschaffen werden.

That we were derived from a series of irrationalities that constitute rational system

Das Gehirn ist ueberfluessing.

Ich bin. Foglich muss ich denken.

Was sollst du sagen? Bloedsinn.

soeinmist.

Sat, 07 May 2005 02:54:27 GMT

"There's no better plot twist than lesbians. It should be written down somewhere."
-Sarah Adams

Well, Sarah, now it is.

And, for the low price of 17.99, you too can become an Unitarian.
Have you ever lost something, only to find out it's in your pocket or something? I do it all the time with my car-keys. But even if you lost it, it was always with you. Just like Jesus. But when you find it, you feel like a dope.

Well, sermonator, I've not found Jesus, and am starting to think I won't, not that I'm crying over it, but I like the community of Church, and to a certain extent, the feeling of obligation. I'm stuck in that rationalist-Enlightenment sense that I just don't believe it. I pine for it, a little. So, I'm looking for something else.

Any offers?

The problem with conversion is that you have to be serious about it. You can be born Jewish and say, your mouth full of ham-and-cheese sandwich, that you didn't ask for it - it's good of you to take what you have. But by converting you do ask for it, for all of it, and damned if I'm going to do it half-ass.

So I'm looking into Unitarianism, because as far as I understand it, there really isn't anything there to ask for, or that they ask of you. You can go and there's community.

But you're still questioning, only what are you asking for?

I'm also curious how long a livejournal entry has to be before one completely ignores it. I mean, I know I have a limit, and I read the back of toothbrush containers.

(only at the dentist. two cavities. whoot.)

(That's right, Jeremiah, "whoot")

Don't say "love," it's got a funny ring to it.

Tue, 03 May 2005 01:55:42 GMT

SPECIAL-PRIZE-CONTEST-UEBERRASCHUNG! (See middle, around the webshots link)

My nephew's learning his animal sounds (apparently the poor excuses for onomatopoeia are more important than, say, the alphabet. He's going to be a creative child, anyway)

"Look, Mommy,it's a Moo!"
"No, Jonah Bean, that's a roller-coaster"
"Vrrm, click click, AAAAH!"
"Good Job, Jonah!"

And he can't seem to get down oink. Meow was like his fucking third word and the kid can't say oink. Now who's gonna bring home the bacon?

It doesn't matter. He's going to be one of those really beautiful people that has things done for him. At least, that's what the present trend is, we'll see how it pans out.

For shits, giggles, and other toilet humor, I'm making the little EST feet-matching game into a legit contest, because it was so damn hard I had to cheat.
So, something special to the person who can correctly match all the hands, feet and faces (remember, they're fucking twins) The more people enter, the more special the something becomes. You can, uh, post your guesses as comments, just so everyone else can laugh at you.
The website: http://community.webshots.com/user/chsest
beautiful

Now you all can't complain about how bored you are.
---That's a filthy lie.

It's strange, though, boredom. 5000 years of technological advancement, development of time-saving machines, of liberation from compelled labour. WHat has it given us? An acute sense of nothing to do.

I'm not sure that that's really better than hunger.

Ambrosia

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 02:10:11 GMT

NOSE!

(limited engagement)

Considering how much class I've attended this year, today's 2,3,6,8 schedule was fantastic. Now I just need to learn how to pare that down a bit.

I wrote my first speech, that is, the first one I've written. It was a little exciting.

I could be a speechwriter, if only I didn't have so many goddamn classes. I'll settle for spectacles, which are not speechwriting, but will probably be needed before I ship myself off to Qubecistan.

Running tomorrow is an entirely unpleasant prospect. Failing gym, slightly greater unpleasantry, but there's something about four laps. Jesus, "Four laps," she says. I feel like a cat.
And then he'll say that he ran it faster than me again, and I'll bite my tongue to keep from saying that he's fat, because that has nothing to do with it, but it's easier than explaining that he looks like a dope when he runs and I'm trying to achieve premature cardiac failure. Some will never understand matters of the heart.

And it is in these that I have my biggest trouble maintaining a policy of never regretting. Perhaps just because I've felt, no matter how I've tried to correct the mistakes the next time around, it doesn't seem like I've really learned from them, because it all works out the same.

I remember my other two policies that have languished - not whining and deleting these.

I was zestful when I started this. Now I tire. It's rubberly.

Now I remember why I hate this so much. I can't blow raspberries.

(limited engagement)

PICKED (and Pickel is pimple in german)

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:05:41 GMT

I type this in rhythym because it's too late to play my drums. I'm realizing that all the great names have great drummers behind them: Jimi Hendrix, Dave Matthews, Ben Folds, Dan Zygmund-Felt....ok.

It sounds like Hendrix really was an experience. I almost feel regret for not being born earlier, not that I had that much to do with it.

"Hey mom! Now!"

Lately I've found that some of the thoughts I've discounted this year might've had something to them. It's been a time of reconsideration, reevaluation, not knowing how to do umlauts on livejournal, and reaffirmation.

Then again, there are always those things I'm heinously wrong about to keep everything balanced.

So that's good.

` So's she, for that matter. She's amazing, and if I never tell her how long I've been in love with her, I'll be a huge jackwad.

I'm pretty sure you're not she, for I don't think she reads this sort of thing. It's more about the "If I don't.." part - lately I've been feeling the urgent need to prove myself to myself. Not "am I good enough" or anything like that - I am what I am, and will be for a little while yet. It's about action, or lack thereof, and its about questioning just what's keeping me on the straight white line. Is it so I don't get the DUI, to prove that I can, and if the latter, is that to smile about it later or to talk about it?

So it's about questions. I support livejournal as a forum, but I'm not looking for answers, just nods in agreement, so I know that these questions are being worked out by extremely qualified scientists, under the assumption that enough bananas will attract enough monkeys, half of whom we can auction on ebay for enough typewriters..... dot dot dot dot dot.

The sun isn't shining now, no, but I bet it's fucking beautiful in the outback.

A touch of honey for the infirm

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 02:07:48 GMT

I'll write this, and then I'll go to bed. I'll pass go, but no one will give me my $200.

We got a new washing machine, and there should be something metaphorically beautiful about that - baptism or Jamaican wine or something - but there isn't really.

There's lots that isn't really, but I believe in it, and you believe in it, so who'd believe it wasn't real.

There's something to that. It's not novel, but it's important. Like history.
. (I think that was a pun)

Diderot wanted to put all knowledge in a book, and it sorta made sense: back then "Scientist" meant you'd read the special shelve of books. Reason was cherished, and with reason came doubt.

Doubt, doubt and belief and doubt looks like doughnut if your eyes are going a little bit.

David Hume and Skepticism, the 18th Century thought for the 21st century mind. He said, basically, that you can't be sure of anything, but that you couldn't properly live a life without suspending that doubt.

(Doubt and Redoubt are sitting in a boat, Doubt falls out. Who's left?)

It's beautiful, in our liberal, secular society (I can dream, yes?), that we live in such ignorance of him. We fill this gap between the possibly non-existent and social living with solid tons of faith. Faith in our five senses and in shared experiences.

(Stage left)

We know how easily these tools are subverted, that even if they were entirely trustworthy standing alone, simple deceptions can obliterate their usefulness.

(Stage left is often right)

But we must be, as it were, Hume-an, and continue like they were definitive. We must believe, have faith, that the world is what we think it is.

(Really, I hope I'm insane. If this is sanity, what hope is there?)

So much faith, just to live.

Then why is it so hard to believe in God?

('Tisn't, unless you think about it. That's Bayle. Oh, it's a whole philosophy class tonight.)

why be constrictive? Why repress the creativity?

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 07:12:07 GMT

The last two years of cub scouts is "Weblo." You're a tiger for one year, a bobcat, a bear, but only "Weblo" for two. They want to get your self-esteem/homophobia down early, so when Scout Leader Henry comes out of the "tent," and while packing all those angry letters from parents (who molest children, but only heterosexually) into his suitcase before hitting the muddy trail, and mentions in passing that, no, he doesn't think you're hot, and no,he wouldn't sleep with you, and no, he doesn't care that your scout knife is ten inches and no, not even if you were the last two men on earth and all the sheep were cremated... So when that happens, you're prepared, cause you knew you blew from a very early age. Go get 'em tiger scout.

I was going to talk philosophy, to extend the earlier entry from the impossibly minute lapse between reality and life that exists with one's immediate surroundings, to the macroscopic but similar lapse filled in by newspapers and the like. Something is happening everywhere, and you cannot know while its happening, so be it a nanosecond or two weeks, it is the same phenomenon, with time relative to distance and attentiveness. Mark also that just as one cannot perceive the mass of events worldwide, the same is true for one's immediate surroundings. It's simply a matter of relative values of infinity.

Relative, relative, relatives. My folks and I and one four door subaru have a low specific heat. Worse yet, as we go through thousands of phases (smiling, irritable, plotting death), it decreases exponentially. Perhaps that's only me, though, for I think I'm pretty consistently more angry at my mother than she is with me. Rightfully so, I believe, if you've seen the back rooms up stairs. Yeah, neither have I, though one can almost make out the doorway behind the very important articles stacked before it (including the entire John Grisham library in paperback, hardcover, and another paperback just in case the first gets lost behind all the hardcovers). Hannah Arendt describes Totalitarianism as, among other things, possessing multiplicious redundancy, inane and inefficient, but necessary to keep the people's minds from working.

I'm not saying my mom's a Nazi - she married a Jew, but a Stalinist? She did take Russian through college.

That's all the banter I can bant at three in the morning. I hoped it would make me sleepy, but well, at least it might have made you sleepy. I'm going to go untie Henry. He's gonna wish he never taught me the half-hitch.

I'm curious about this signing your web journal thing. Do people sign their diaries? The only diary I ever read was Anne Frank's. She got real upset, but that's her fault for not putting a one-catch lock on it.

God bless you, and if it works out, more power to you both.

Way back in the present.

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 07:54:59 GMT

So I think I figured out the kinks, and now the only thing stopping me is the immorality of the whole thing. I mean, sure, it's illegal, but the lottery is the same finch with a different beak, and that's got tv advertisements. The scary thing is, I'm pretty sure it'd work, at first. We could make a lot of money.

But, when something so real (entirely facetious) as money has got you down, it's time to start thinking about metaphysics: some ontology, epistemology certainly, but not the least bit of cosmology, because when it comes down to it, who cares about everything? I don't. But I do...

care about the immeasurably small lapse of time between existence and perception
That is, photons of light glance off your face, some absorb, some fly speedily to my eyes, telling me your color, your frown at the care I've put into this, but even as they fly, others are hitting your face, which has in the tiniest degree, moved toward the smile that will grace your face in moments. My hand, slipped in yours, has felt your gentle caress of my palm, shooting shocking axon after axon to the tiny dwarves in my brain to process. Relatively, the words I hear from you were been struck on your vocal chords ages ago. It's a wonder we were even alive back then.
I do...
believe that we must have been alive back then, because it is the only time we're living.
Posit: that there is a space of time between the present of the world and the present as you perceive it.
Conclude: That we are living always, just a tidge, in the past, and that, in accordance with our respective reaction times, that we are living at different intervals behind the present.

A space of time (pardon me, Albert, for using such a phrase) of Heisenberg-ian proportions, such that we cannot be certain how much it affects our life or how quickly it is wearing on us. What does it matter?

It matters because Now has ceased to be so definite, and that point between immutable past and uncertain future has been obliterated, and duplicated, and in any sense, been given dimension.

The future, as we know it, does not exist. There are two futures, the one that has happened, and the one that hasn't, and the latter resembles our present conception quite closely, but the former, the space in which occurrences have occurred, yet have not reached us yet, is an entirely new orangutan. This future is also the past. Instead of a breadth-less point splicing past and future, the two overlap.

Consequently, we cannot react, as by the time an event reaches us, the circumstances have changes. We act therefore independently of the world we know, resting our faith in our actions on predictions, posits, hoping that when we perceive our actions, they were suited to the situation that surrounded them.

David Hume said himself that Skepticism was no use living by. Neither is the idea that a world exists before you know it does. It does lay bare a proper understanding of the most important subject of life:

Belief.

Enjoy Good Friday. Don't get too cross.

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 05:14:26 GMT

Sometimes it's nice to trace the minds path as it wanders. Sometimes it's quicker to come here than open a word document. Anyone who reads my journal (and I'd be lying if I said I was writing it for you or that I didn't want you to read it) will undoubtely happen upon poorish blank verse. Let it take you like a virgin in Naxos.

Pop!
The weasel starts and he doesn’t even know what’s hit him.
The bullet ends his flesh and
Comes out the other end and
Makes my foot its bloody, warm hotel

My screaming comes like room service,
But cheaper
The bullet doesn’t even have to leave a tip
(though it’d be nice to have some of that blood back)

I yell and moan and everybody alive from Philadelphia
To Port Arthur
Hears it at their window.
Rapping like a burglar
Who stole their silence

Within two minutes I control myself
I staunch the blood
I manage the shock
I stop screaming
I pluck out the bullet
I give it to my fashion consultant.
I’m on my cell phone cause it’s the most ridiculous thing.
I can’t believe I got shot.

Soon everybody’s heard about it,
Long after they’d heard my scream.
It’s so loud that everyone has to yell
Just to be heard

We’re a menagerie
She’s a moo, and I’m a quack
And all anybody wants is to go back to bed
A little quiet.

But nobody can get it
Except the weasel.