Isn't it wonderful that the pigs are finally getting their revenge. We take this noble beast, stick it into appalling conditions, slaughter it for meat, then have the gall to use it a symbol of our decadence. There definitely is a beautiful symmetry to nature. Some might call it God, or others karma. I call it justice.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Live from Neorome
Give me my bread and circus. But first give me my circus. Have you gotten early to a movie lately? Have you seen the ads that theaters sell during that time? There is an incredible ad by Spike Lee that is like two minutes long for Verizon. He has that signature shot with the dolly or however he does that. The product itself is incredible. It is for a phone that lets you play games and watch video. Just in case you are ever waiting somewhere five minutes and your no attention span brain cannot bear to look at its emptiness anymore, instead you can pay to be entertained. No more having to think your own thoughts and come up with your own opinions. Just watch and let your whole life slip away.
I don't blame the theaters for this. They are just trying to capitalize on any revenue stream they can find. I'd say you'd have to that in this economy, but you actually do it in any economy. It is the free market in action. No, movies aren't the enemy. Even if you just watch the stupid ones, if you are watching them in the theater it can't take up that much of your time. And if it does, you probably have some serious issues anyway. The enemy is TV.
I'm not saying there is no art on television. I know there is. I've seen some of it. Some of it even tells you to stop watching. There is an episode of Futurama where Fry makes a comment about how you don't miss TV when you are on the road. This can slip past the censors, because almost no one will actually follow that advice. That may sum up television better than anything ever said.
The only way to consume a television show is like a book. Long marathons of one show. Without commercials. Learn to love it. Then throw it away. Don't be clamoring to bring it back or make a movie version of it. Make your own movie version of it. Live life like your in a television show if you like it that much. Or better yet write it because living it can be kind of hard. Unless you are doing it right, which you're probably not. I hate to break it to you, but Larry David is funny than you.
Fellow wage slaves of the world, unite! Throw down your remotes. Smash your plasma screens! Burn your DVDs!! You have nothing to lose but the ass-print on your sofa. If someone is using a TV show to sell you something, they are trying to brainwash you into wasting your money. If someone is giving you easy access to something that allows you to know a television character better then your own family, they are giving you an easy excuse to sleepwalk through life. Don't spend your life looking at the shadows in Plato's cave. Don't let your life become watching television shows. Read a book. Cook a meal. Have a conversation. Get outside. Fly a kite. Just do something. Anything but trying to empty your Netflix Queue or your TiVo.
I don't blame the theaters for this. They are just trying to capitalize on any revenue stream they can find. I'd say you'd have to that in this economy, but you actually do it in any economy. It is the free market in action. No, movies aren't the enemy. Even if you just watch the stupid ones, if you are watching them in the theater it can't take up that much of your time. And if it does, you probably have some serious issues anyway. The enemy is TV.
I'm not saying there is no art on television. I know there is. I've seen some of it. Some of it even tells you to stop watching. There is an episode of Futurama where Fry makes a comment about how you don't miss TV when you are on the road. This can slip past the censors, because almost no one will actually follow that advice. That may sum up television better than anything ever said.
The only way to consume a television show is like a book. Long marathons of one show. Without commercials. Learn to love it. Then throw it away. Don't be clamoring to bring it back or make a movie version of it. Make your own movie version of it. Live life like your in a television show if you like it that much. Or better yet write it because living it can be kind of hard. Unless you are doing it right, which you're probably not. I hate to break it to you, but Larry David is funny than you.
Fellow wage slaves of the world, unite! Throw down your remotes. Smash your plasma screens! Burn your DVDs!! You have nothing to lose but the ass-print on your sofa. If someone is using a TV show to sell you something, they are trying to brainwash you into wasting your money. If someone is giving you easy access to something that allows you to know a television character better then your own family, they are giving you an easy excuse to sleepwalk through life. Don't spend your life looking at the shadows in Plato's cave. Don't let your life become watching television shows. Read a book. Cook a meal. Have a conversation. Get outside. Fly a kite. Just do something. Anything but trying to empty your Netflix Queue or your TiVo.
Live from Not Berlin
John McCain and George Bush need to realize something. They may be short, but they are not Napoleon. Even if they were, why would we want Napoleon? Sure, the French got to worship a God for a few years, but look at all the trouble he got them into. We are surprisingly good at making up our own Gods here for a bunch of people who watch television all the time. We don't need a Sun King. We have Batman.
We do not want to be the French Empire. We want to be the Roman Empire. When I am not elected President, I will start making us act like the Roman Empire again. Think back to World War II. Half of Europe was ours. We had an atomic weapon. We were facing an enemy that was easy to hate. We could have tried to take over the world. But we didn't. Instead, we rebuilt Europe, gave Britain and France a seat on the UN Security Council so they could pretend they were relevant, and proceeded to plunder the rest of the world. This is how the Roman Empire acted. You bring the important people, or in this case countries, in with you and make them "equal" citizens. Then you steal from the less important people.
So, what is my plan? Why should you not make me Commander in Chief? Here is what I propose. Instead of invading countries with leaders that are hard to deal with, we play coup d'etat roulette. Sometimes you mess up and get an Iran. Sometimes you get lucky and get a Chile. We don't really know. But we do know what happens when we are too eager to get between groups of people who hate each other. They just end up hating us because we are in the way of their own personal struggles. Instead of trying to make democracy, we should just try to see that the repression isn't too horrible.
To this end, I will not train an army of James Bonds. You may think this army will be made up of extremely handsome men, but it won't. They stick out too much. Besides, who really is James Bond? Anyone can read lines, look cool with a gun, and make out with beautiful women. James Bond is really the stuntman. He does crazy things the actor would never do. So we will not recruit an army of stuntmen, not train them in the arts of seduction, and not set them loose in beautiful foreign locales. Because, my fellow Americans, life isn't a movie.
I am Not Barack Obama and I approve this message.
Paid for by Not Barack Obama for America
We do not want to be the French Empire. We want to be the Roman Empire. When I am not elected President, I will start making us act like the Roman Empire again. Think back to World War II. Half of Europe was ours. We had an atomic weapon. We were facing an enemy that was easy to hate. We could have tried to take over the world. But we didn't. Instead, we rebuilt Europe, gave Britain and France a seat on the UN Security Council so they could pretend they were relevant, and proceeded to plunder the rest of the world. This is how the Roman Empire acted. You bring the important people, or in this case countries, in with you and make them "equal" citizens. Then you steal from the less important people.
So, what is my plan? Why should you not make me Commander in Chief? Here is what I propose. Instead of invading countries with leaders that are hard to deal with, we play coup d'etat roulette. Sometimes you mess up and get an Iran. Sometimes you get lucky and get a Chile. We don't really know. But we do know what happens when we are too eager to get between groups of people who hate each other. They just end up hating us because we are in the way of their own personal struggles. Instead of trying to make democracy, we should just try to see that the repression isn't too horrible.
To this end, I will not train an army of James Bonds. You may think this army will be made up of extremely handsome men, but it won't. They stick out too much. Besides, who really is James Bond? Anyone can read lines, look cool with a gun, and make out with beautiful women. James Bond is really the stuntman. He does crazy things the actor would never do. So we will not recruit an army of stuntmen, not train them in the arts of seduction, and not set them loose in beautiful foreign locales. Because, my fellow Americans, life isn't a movie.
I am Not Barack Obama and I approve this message.
Paid for by Not Barack Obama for America
Monday, July 21, 2008
Life Scripts
In nearly all self-help literature there is a concept I find useful that I like to call a life script. Think Shakespeare: "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players". The idea boils down to trying to see yourself in a certain way so eventually you will act that way. There are different techniques such as changing your vocabulary or being grateful for your circumstances. Maybe the most famous technique of all comes from Jesus: "Love your neighbor as yourself"*.
I think the reason these techniques work, if indeed they do work, comes from injecting change in your life. If you are unhappy then just thinking new thoughts gives you something novel to work over in your mind. That's why I think the best of these (at least in my experience) come from sympathizing with other people. But other things can help as well. Lately when I've been at home I've been sitting on the floor instead of in a chair. This gives me a new way to use my muscles and offers a nice contrast to when I'm in public and have to use chairs. Cleaning my apartment and moving my furniture around had the same type of effect. It gave me a new environment to move around.
You need to be careful with this life script bullshit. At a certain point it becomes its own stupid addiction, and certain scripts can overwhelm the rest. There are so many techniques out there that if you are going to get anything out of them you have to stop thinking and start doing. Most teachers won't tell you this since they want to keep coming to their seminars and buying their books. Of course, the idea "stop thinking, start doing" is itself just another life script which has to be monitored to see if it is still useful for you. At least I think you need to monitor it since my Main Problem is actually doing the work. All this thinking about why you have certain thoughts and where they come from can also be described as a life script. To me, it has been an especially seductive one for a number of reasons. It allows you to have an excuse for not ever getting anything done. Let me quote that great sage Elaine Benes: "Well! I can't spend the rest of my life coming into this stinking apartment every ten minutes to pore over the, excruciating minutia, of every, single, daily event."
That quote comes from the Seinfeld episode "The Bizarro Jerry". What a great distillation of the concept of life scripts that episode is. Essentially, the three male leads have counterparts with similar personalities with slightly different assumptions that completely change to way they act. The whole show is also a great demonstration of the reason why thinking about why people do what we do is seductive. Most human rituals look ridiculous when analyzed enough. Here is a great one about lawns. Think about a wedding. Two people stand in front of their friends and pledge not to fuck anyone else for the rest of their lives. I'm loath to give examples I've used in real life since people get so defensive about it. Comedians get away with it because they are "just" telling jokes. The defensiveness can be fairly amusing when provoked in people, but I don't recommend doing it too often since it just makes people angry at you unless you are really careful with it. And just because something is stupid doesn't mean it can't be fun.
Here comes the therapy. I think I need a new life script. I question too many things. So here are my two axioms. 1) Life scripts exists. 2) They have consequences. So that means I need to pick the ones that the person I want to become would use. I don't think my personality allows me to buy into any one script too fully. Hopefully, as long as I realize what I'm doing I can use the scripts enough to get what I want out of life. First, I need to eliminate all the destructive scripts from my mind. I've been doing the same thing lately with my pastimes and possessions. It has been working in the sense that it has made me happier so maybe by doing the same thing with my life scripts I can get a similar improvement. Although I didn't use this language (I used the language of fears), I did do this a couple weeks ago with an extremely destructive script. I think if I hadn't done that I wouldn't even be able to write this. So its time for a spring cleaning of the mind. I need to look around the recesses of my mind and throw out anything I don't want. Time to get to work.
* Why is it that so many Christians seem to ignore this? Jesus proceeds this commandment by talking about loving God so maybe that's where it comes from. God gives a lot of crazy rules that no human being could possibly follow (which even He admits). Personally, I like the theory that hate is so much fun since it allows you to feel superior to someone else with absolutely no effort. We are all just monkeys flinging shit at each other.
I think the reason these techniques work, if indeed they do work, comes from injecting change in your life. If you are unhappy then just thinking new thoughts gives you something novel to work over in your mind. That's why I think the best of these (at least in my experience) come from sympathizing with other people. But other things can help as well. Lately when I've been at home I've been sitting on the floor instead of in a chair. This gives me a new way to use my muscles and offers a nice contrast to when I'm in public and have to use chairs. Cleaning my apartment and moving my furniture around had the same type of effect. It gave me a new environment to move around.
You need to be careful with this life script bullshit. At a certain point it becomes its own stupid addiction, and certain scripts can overwhelm the rest. There are so many techniques out there that if you are going to get anything out of them you have to stop thinking and start doing. Most teachers won't tell you this since they want to keep coming to their seminars and buying their books. Of course, the idea "stop thinking, start doing" is itself just another life script which has to be monitored to see if it is still useful for you. At least I think you need to monitor it since my Main Problem is actually doing the work. All this thinking about why you have certain thoughts and where they come from can also be described as a life script. To me, it has been an especially seductive one for a number of reasons. It allows you to have an excuse for not ever getting anything done. Let me quote that great sage Elaine Benes: "Well! I can't spend the rest of my life coming into this stinking apartment every ten minutes to pore over the, excruciating minutia, of every, single, daily event."
That quote comes from the Seinfeld episode "The Bizarro Jerry". What a great distillation of the concept of life scripts that episode is. Essentially, the three male leads have counterparts with similar personalities with slightly different assumptions that completely change to way they act. The whole show is also a great demonstration of the reason why thinking about why people do what we do is seductive. Most human rituals look ridiculous when analyzed enough. Here is a great one about lawns. Think about a wedding. Two people stand in front of their friends and pledge not to fuck anyone else for the rest of their lives. I'm loath to give examples I've used in real life since people get so defensive about it. Comedians get away with it because they are "just" telling jokes. The defensiveness can be fairly amusing when provoked in people, but I don't recommend doing it too often since it just makes people angry at you unless you are really careful with it. And just because something is stupid doesn't mean it can't be fun.
Here comes the therapy. I think I need a new life script. I question too many things. So here are my two axioms. 1) Life scripts exists. 2) They have consequences. So that means I need to pick the ones that the person I want to become would use. I don't think my personality allows me to buy into any one script too fully. Hopefully, as long as I realize what I'm doing I can use the scripts enough to get what I want out of life. First, I need to eliminate all the destructive scripts from my mind. I've been doing the same thing lately with my pastimes and possessions. It has been working in the sense that it has made me happier so maybe by doing the same thing with my life scripts I can get a similar improvement. Although I didn't use this language (I used the language of fears), I did do this a couple weeks ago with an extremely destructive script. I think if I hadn't done that I wouldn't even be able to write this. So its time for a spring cleaning of the mind. I need to look around the recesses of my mind and throw out anything I don't want. Time to get to work.
* Why is it that so many Christians seem to ignore this? Jesus proceeds this commandment by talking about loving God so maybe that's where it comes from. God gives a lot of crazy rules that no human being could possibly follow (which even He admits). Personally, I like the theory that hate is so much fun since it allows you to feel superior to someone else with absolutely no effort. We are all just monkeys flinging shit at each other.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Why does Gen. Robert H. McMahon hate America?
Incredible quote in this Washington Post article.
So I guess becoming the worlds first modern democracy, freeing the world from Nazis, being a symbol of hope to oppressed people around the world, and fighting to give every citizen equal rights isn't enough for the General. He needs a fucking blue leather La-Z-Boy to feel proud of his country.
Explaining his instructions to subordinates, McMahon said he used the term world class "in just about everything I discuss. . . . That represents an attitude." He said he wanted to "create an environment that whoever was riding in that would be proud of," the government would be proud of and "the people of the United States" would be proud of.
So I guess becoming the worlds first modern democracy, freeing the world from Nazis, being a symbol of hope to oppressed people around the world, and fighting to give every citizen equal rights isn't enough for the General. He needs a fucking blue leather La-Z-Boy to feel proud of his country.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Excerpts from "How Fast Can God's Computer Add?"
God made man in his image. Since Man is not great at doing math in its head (at least compared to a computer), it stands to reason that God needs a computer to do the really complicated problems. "I mean," God says, "I have all this hydrogen and oxygen, but I don't want to use it all if I don't have to." So he gets God's own computer, runs a doomsday scenario, knows just how much to mix, and saves a little for the next time he needs to destroy the Earth.* So God really needs a nice computer, although I guess he can wait if he needs to. Maybe he outsources it to another universe where they have grid computing. Either way, it is one really nice computer, and could host a huge Halo deathmatch.
* It stands to reason that it is much easier to store gasses then liquids in heaven. Which brings up the question, do angels drink steam instead of liquid water?
* It stands to reason that it is much easier to store gasses then liquids in heaven. Which brings up the question, do angels drink steam instead of liquid water?
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