Last night i went out to dinner. got drunk off of wine. came back, sobered up. faced a joint. went back to a bar like 2 seconds away from where i was at dinner. this is with different people though. then proceeded to drink many guiness and dance with many women.
this morning. slept through my first 2 classes. played call of duty through the third. lit another joint. and now i'm in class for variety.
so the only class i went to today i went to high. this year needs to end soon. before i completely bomb out of school.
i had an interview yesterday before the ensuing madness. i think it went pretty well
i just erased this website link from facebook so that my interviews dont find it and read the above
and if they do then
...hi beth.
yea so life is good.
party tonight. our friend jinhee with whom we went to the bar with last night. your all invited.
and bring your friends.
fill up my cup
mazel tov
look at her dancing
just t-take it ... off
we'll shut it down
let's burn the roof
and then we'll do it again.
hurray!
also please look at all the pictures on this page.
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/dinosonic/popular-interesting/
professor is here now and i should probably pay attention
though i think i will probably keep listening to music.
miss you all
PEACE
10.30.2009
10.28.2009
Abstraction
I had a realization today in class. I've spent my last 3 years give or take learning (and struggling) to make a bunch of lights display a bunch of different lights. I think I am going insane. I mean really thats all computing is. Making a bunch of lights arrange themselves in the desired configuration. This would be a much better name than computer programmer. Master of lights. or the Lightbringer. I quit. I never want to think again. Let's move to the forest or to a small island somewhere. Follow me. Follow me to freedom.
9.11.2009
Art is Hard
I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.
.
..
...
That is really all that need be said, but I suppose for lack of anything else to do in this hotel room, I'll pontificate. Briefly.
The matrix it turns out was right about everything as the quote above would seem to indicate. Also matrices are bad as is clearly indicated by a) the movies and b) mo-mor-puggers.
Sigh, I feel so damn emo right now. I really don't want to turn this into a rant. I do want to shape my feelings into arguments, mold my convictions into unwavering logic that would solve all the problems before me, and convert the non-believers to my manifest conclusions ( also possibly converting them into radioactive vapor).
Maybe I just deal poorly with change. I had this naive theory that we would all live together at some point. This theory is clearly flawed in its assumptions that this would be plausible. I don't know.
Coherence. I crave the ability to extract from my imagination the wisp of an idea and brand it into form. A form like prose. This would be most useful. If only I was an artist.
.
..
...
That is really all that need be said, but I suppose for lack of anything else to do in this hotel room, I'll pontificate. Briefly.
The matrix it turns out was right about everything as the quote above would seem to indicate. Also matrices are bad as is clearly indicated by a) the movies and b) mo-mor-puggers.
Sigh, I feel so damn emo right now. I really don't want to turn this into a rant. I do want to shape my feelings into arguments, mold my convictions into unwavering logic that would solve all the problems before me, and convert the non-believers to my manifest conclusions ( also possibly converting them into radioactive vapor).
Maybe I just deal poorly with change. I had this naive theory that we would all live together at some point. This theory is clearly flawed in its assumptions that this would be plausible. I don't know.
Coherence. I crave the ability to extract from my imagination the wisp of an idea and brand it into form. A form like prose. This would be most useful. If only I was an artist.
9.09.2009
O Happy Times
From Greg Easterbrook @ Espn.com
Sand Trap on Obama's Fairway: Federal borrowing during the final two years of the George W. Bush administration, and now the first year of the Barack Obama administration, has reached the level of shocking. World War II cost about $4 trillion in today's dollars -- the Congressional Budget Office figures show the decade starting with Bush's final two budgets until fiscal 2017 will add $11 trillion in federal borrowing, at current rates. That's more than the entire national debt was in early 2008. This furious, irresponsible borrowing -- gleefully endorsed by both political parties, since the money is being lavished on the special interest groups who ensure the re-elections of members of Congress by donating to their campaigns -- is especially disturbing because there is no national emergency. The United States is tapping out its ability to borrow, leaving nothing in reserve, so that irresponsible members of Congress of both parties can lavish subsidies and tax favors on interest groups. Why aren't the young shocked? Almost all the honey is going to people from middle age on up, with the bill being handed to the young, who will pay and pay and pay all their lives for the favors the Baby Boomers running the country are so cynically awarding to themselves and their financial backers.
Bad as current borrowing is, more demands for special giveaways are looming in Obama's path. As soon as the dust settles on the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler, the United Auto Workers may demand that its concessions be restored, at taxpayer expense. (More on that in a coming TMQ.) The states, showered with $135 billion in borrowed money during the first Obama stimulus package, already are agitating for another giveaway. (More on that coming too.) The monster problem looming is this: For the first time in the history of the Social Security system, recipients will not receive a cost-of-living increase when the new year begins. The Social Security checks that arrive in January 2010 won't be any bigger than previous checks. (Owing to details of the prescription-drug benefit, some checks may be a little bit smaller -- by two or three dollars per month -- than at the same time last year.) Senior citizen lobbies are likely to go ballistic.
There's a good reason why Social Security checks won't be bigger -- no inflation. The Social Security cost of living adjustment system is designed to compensate for rising costs, and the cost of living is not rising. Indeed, in the past 12 months, the Consumer Price Index has declined 2.1 percent. The enabling statutes of the Social Security program say that if prices don't rise, no COLA, which makes perfectly good sense. It's just that prices have never gone an entire year without rising, so there's never been a no-COLA January. To a retiree on a fixed income, rising costs are awful, while declining costs are a godsend. Because the CPI has gone down, seniors as a group are slightly better off financially in 2009 than they were in 2008. (Obviously, there are some individuals with financial problems.) So there's no need for a Social Security benefits increase, and no common sense justification for one. That will not prevent the senior citizens' lobby, more potent than the oil lobby or farm lobby, from howling.
TMQ fears that whenever it sinks in on seniors that no COLA increase is coming in 2010, they will barrage congressional delegations and the White House with demands for a special giveaway. Illogical appeals will be used and repeated in the media, such as, "We need extra money because of the crisis!" In politics, everything's a crisis -- a bright sunny day is a crisis if the interest group in your district sells flashlights. Or, "Our housing values are down, it's a crisis!" Housing prices are indeed down from their 2006 peak, but the typical American dwelling is still worth nearly 50 percent more than in 2000. That's no crisis. If anything, the recession has slightly aided seniors, who enjoy the deflationary benefits of falling prices but in most cases are not harmed by employment trends because they are retired anyway.
Senior lobbies demanding a special handout will skip over the fact that senior households have the highest median net worth of any age group, much higher than the net worth of the under-35 age group that would be compelled to fund any special Social Security increase; or that seniors have a lower poverty rate than the nation as a whole. They'll skip over the complication that the typical current Social Security recipient will receive about three times as much as he or she paid into the system, plus interest, while people now under the age of 35 will be lucky to get back half what they will pay into Social Security, plus interest. (That Social Security is a "savings" program is total fiction -- it is an income-transfer program, from today's workers to today's pensioners.) They'll skip over the fact that owing to a quirk in Social Security rules, recipients received an unusually high 5.8 percent COLA in January 2009, even though there was essentially zero inflation in the previous year. (The calculation formula for Social Security COLAs drastically overstated the temporary 2008 spike in gasoline prices.) One reason federal borrowing has shot up is that Social Security recipients got a 2009 bonus they shouldn't have received. This may not stop them from demanding an extra giveaway in January 2010 -- a giveaway that could only be financed by still more borrowing. Obama must show resolve and not give in to another multibillion-dollar borrowing-based handout. If he gives in, all semblance of fiscal discipline in Washington may collapse -- and liberal government may be discredited for a generation, which is not in the interest of senior citizens.
7.15.2009
The Owl God Demands Sacrifice
I don't know if I should put this in writing lest my current or future employers track this down, but I just spent the better part of the last 3 days watching all the zero punctuations to date. It is through this venture that I learned that the Internet is a very clever tool. A tool to separate idiots from their money. With this in mind, I think it's high time that I came up with a clever idea to cause people to give my massive amounts of currency (preferably via the internet, so that I could work from home). Here are the tentative steps of this play:
(1) increase the traffic on this website
(2) begin exploitation of traffikers
The brilliance of this plan is in the phrasing since no one will care if you exploit a traffiker because hey they're traffiking something (in this case themselves). Please list any exploitative ideas here so that I might steal them and deftly implement them.
(1) increase the traffic on this website
(2) begin exploitation of traffikers
The brilliance of this plan is in the phrasing since no one will care if you exploit a traffiker because hey they're traffiking something (in this case themselves). Please list any exploitative ideas here so that I might steal them and deftly implement them.
6.29.2009
Delta W Over Delta T
Mondays are like the paparazzi if you're famous. You know they're there and you know they are coming, but you would never guess they would come so fast, so effectively, and so ruthlessly.
And yet there is nothing to be done about it. Well that's not entirely accurate. Every problem has a solution and if your enemy is time (or in this case dates) then just destroy the clock (or in this case calendar). Let get out of the world of time. Stop working and stop living by dates. Then mondays become sunny days which are ultimately much better. How much of their lives has the past three generations thrown away cooped up in their offices? Too much I don't doubt it. So much time lost exploring the outdoors or spending time with their families and loved ones. In the name of what exactly? Money. It's more than that though. It's power. Marx was wrong when he said religion was the opiate of the masses. It's power or the illusion thereof. Religion is just one road to it. It's power over death, over the unknown. Capitalism gives power through monetary means. Power over fellow men. Both systems give the potential for power too. Meaning in both religion and capitalism, power is promised to the people. It is achievable if only they follow a set of rules. Whether its attaining atonement or climbing the corporate latter.
Prove or disprove that point. Power is the opiate of the masses and all societal institutions are designed for the consolidation or dispersion of power. By that I mean, if people aren't in a position to wield power they are cowed by the promise of it one day (or I suppose to be more Machievellian cowed by the fear of the power). At worst this is a new way of stating some old ideas. At best its a new way of thinking about the world (at least its new to me). I mean the assertion is obvious, people crave power. My question is does motivation explain broad scale behavior at a nation-state and institutional level?
Back to small scale applications
Clearly, I'm not happy with the way I'm going about achieving power. Fueled by greed, I can't be bothered to take the long way (long working hours) of achieving power. I also can't think of any thing that would short circuit the system and propel me straight to the top. One option (and I want to say only other option left) is to redefine my worldview in such a way so that the power I have is more meaningful. Ie say fuck it leave this boring job and go do something cool and support myself through whatever means. The power that would bring is freedom, power of action. I guess it is not so much of a redefining as it is a summoning of courage to burst from the mold I've been forced into. The fear that keeps me rooted to my seat even now is the fear of failure or in these terms the fear of becoming powerless. O what a to-do.
On a final note, I just looked up the scientific definition of power because I was curious. Change in work over change in time. Meaning, scientifically, to be powerful you have to do more work over less time whereas all I want to do is less work over more time. Interesting.
and once again I am beaten to the punch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(philosophy)
One day I will have a thought and it will be truly original
And yet there is nothing to be done about it. Well that's not entirely accurate. Every problem has a solution and if your enemy is time (or in this case dates) then just destroy the clock (or in this case calendar). Let get out of the world of time. Stop working and stop living by dates. Then mondays become sunny days which are ultimately much better. How much of their lives has the past three generations thrown away cooped up in their offices? Too much I don't doubt it. So much time lost exploring the outdoors or spending time with their families and loved ones. In the name of what exactly? Money. It's more than that though. It's power. Marx was wrong when he said religion was the opiate of the masses. It's power or the illusion thereof. Religion is just one road to it. It's power over death, over the unknown. Capitalism gives power through monetary means. Power over fellow men. Both systems give the potential for power too. Meaning in both religion and capitalism, power is promised to the people. It is achievable if only they follow a set of rules. Whether its attaining atonement or climbing the corporate latter.
Prove or disprove that point. Power is the opiate of the masses and all societal institutions are designed for the consolidation or dispersion of power. By that I mean, if people aren't in a position to wield power they are cowed by the promise of it one day (or I suppose to be more Machievellian cowed by the fear of the power). At worst this is a new way of stating some old ideas. At best its a new way of thinking about the world (at least its new to me). I mean the assertion is obvious, people crave power. My question is does motivation explain broad scale behavior at a nation-state and institutional level?
Back to small scale applications
Clearly, I'm not happy with the way I'm going about achieving power. Fueled by greed, I can't be bothered to take the long way (long working hours) of achieving power. I also can't think of any thing that would short circuit the system and propel me straight to the top. One option (and I want to say only other option left) is to redefine my worldview in such a way so that the power I have is more meaningful. Ie say fuck it leave this boring job and go do something cool and support myself through whatever means. The power that would bring is freedom, power of action. I guess it is not so much of a redefining as it is a summoning of courage to burst from the mold I've been forced into. The fear that keeps me rooted to my seat even now is the fear of failure or in these terms the fear of becoming powerless. O what a to-do.
On a final note, I just looked up the scientific definition of power because I was curious. Change in work over change in time. Meaning, scientifically, to be powerful you have to do more work over less time whereas all I want to do is less work over more time. Interesting.
and once again I am beaten to the punch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(philosophy)
One day I will have a thought and it will be truly original
6.22.2009
I can do anything that I want cauz look
So like undergrads everywhere, graduation scares the hell out of me. I don't know where this sentiment came from but I feel like I've heard it expressed in different places. The one that comes to mind is fight club.
You are not snowflakes.
Not everyone is an astronaut when they grow up.
I keep trying to write this post and keep thinking to myself, "Fuck, Fuck fuck fuck fuck".
Really, this is coming down to the existentialist point of what is the point? Which is a very good question.
I mean you keep coming back to the same question of why why why why why?
So there i sit in an office, unhappy and for what? For what exactly? Well the short end answer is money. I need money to do cool things. I never understood people who traded away their happiness for money. All the grad students who have no free time and get no personal enjoyment out of anything. Sure some people enjoy being a lawyer or a doctor or find their studies compelling, but I feel like the large majority don't. My question is why doesn't it bother them but it bothers me. The constant work, the feeling of being a drone. i mean what exactly is the point of all of this. "Life is what you make it make it good."
The best part is many people would love to have jobs right now. If i had the choice between work and starvation or work and housing would that make it better. Would i enjoy work then and be grateful for the opportunity. Maybe it's because I still hold out the hope that there is something worth doing that I will enjoy doing. I don't know. (no one ever does)
I find interesting parallels to this situation I'm in (ie Routinely depressed to get up and go to work in the morning) and The Matrix. Free your mind, being the main point of that movie (well the first one anyway), is an excellent mantra. Once you free your mind you can do anything. The mind must be truly freed though. The mind be liberated from restriction, law, society, and morality. It must be subject to know will but its own. And then the mind can accomplish anything.
I say this because if my mind were free. Free from parents, free from money, I would be in Boston right now having a great time.
Neo is symbolic of this freedom too (well obviously). I mean it in the sense that he is only one. He is only one because so few people can accept the consequences of freedom. The abandonment of family and friends (though he has none which makes it easier). The merciless pursuit of the enforcers of the minds incarceration (agents). I mean if I tried to free myself from the American system I would face many problems. Food would be chief among them. How do u feed yourself with no job? ....Steal. Stealing is generally frowned upon thus a problem.
The opposition towards mental liberation is strong. Furthermore, most restriction to freedom enforces some kind of routine. Routine is the enemy of creativity the only weapon with which to free the mind. Basically when things go downhill they go downhill in a hurry.
The most annoying part about this whole debate is I cannot figure out if this is a legitmate concern or just something I need to get over. I seriously hope its not the latter.
You are not snowflakes.
Not everyone is an astronaut when they grow up.
I keep trying to write this post and keep thinking to myself, "Fuck, Fuck fuck fuck fuck".
Really, this is coming down to the existentialist point of what is the point? Which is a very good question.
I mean you keep coming back to the same question of why why why why why?
So there i sit in an office, unhappy and for what? For what exactly? Well the short end answer is money. I need money to do cool things. I never understood people who traded away their happiness for money. All the grad students who have no free time and get no personal enjoyment out of anything. Sure some people enjoy being a lawyer or a doctor or find their studies compelling, but I feel like the large majority don't. My question is why doesn't it bother them but it bothers me. The constant work, the feeling of being a drone. i mean what exactly is the point of all of this. "Life is what you make it make it good."
The best part is many people would love to have jobs right now. If i had the choice between work and starvation or work and housing would that make it better. Would i enjoy work then and be grateful for the opportunity. Maybe it's because I still hold out the hope that there is something worth doing that I will enjoy doing. I don't know. (no one ever does)
I find interesting parallels to this situation I'm in (ie Routinely depressed to get up and go to work in the morning) and The Matrix. Free your mind, being the main point of that movie (well the first one anyway), is an excellent mantra. Once you free your mind you can do anything. The mind must be truly freed though. The mind be liberated from restriction, law, society, and morality. It must be subject to know will but its own. And then the mind can accomplish anything.
I say this because if my mind were free. Free from parents, free from money, I would be in Boston right now having a great time.
Neo is symbolic of this freedom too (well obviously). I mean it in the sense that he is only one. He is only one because so few people can accept the consequences of freedom. The abandonment of family and friends (though he has none which makes it easier). The merciless pursuit of the enforcers of the minds incarceration (agents). I mean if I tried to free myself from the American system I would face many problems. Food would be chief among them. How do u feed yourself with no job? ....Steal. Stealing is generally frowned upon thus a problem.
The opposition towards mental liberation is strong. Furthermore, most restriction to freedom enforces some kind of routine. Routine is the enemy of creativity the only weapon with which to free the mind. Basically when things go downhill they go downhill in a hurry.
The most annoying part about this whole debate is I cannot figure out if this is a legitmate concern or just something I need to get over. I seriously hope its not the latter.
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