test

thinking of starting this up again.

Things to do this summer

quiet american A collection of 1 minute mp3s from around the world. Mini-vacations as they're referred.

Judge: Parents can't teach pagan beliefs

Judge: Parents can't teach pagan beliefs

Holy crap.

A washingtonpost.com article from: mattbuckley80@comcast.net

You have been sent this message from mattbuckley80@comcast.net as a courtesy of washingtonpost.com

Doubting Rationalist

By Michael Powell

BERKELEY, Calif. "The Washington Post is not one of my biggest fans, you know that."

Hello?

The Washington Post reporter has just walked out of a spray of Pacific-borne rain into the living room of a modest bungalow west of downtown. There's a shag rug, an inspirational painting or two and Phillip Johnson, dressed in tan slacks and a sweater and sitting on a couch. He pulls a dog-eared copy of a Post editorial out of his shirt pocket and reads aloud:

"With their slick Web sites, pseudo-academic conferences and savvy public relations, the proponents of 'intelligent design' -- a 'theory' that challenges the validity of Darwinian evolution -- are far more sophisticated than the creationists of yore. . . . They succeed by casting doubt on evolution."

The 65-year-old Johnson swivels his formidable and balding head -- with that even more formidable brain inside -- and gazes over his reading glasses at the reporter (who doesn't labor for the people who write the editorials).

"I suppose you think creation is all about unguided material processes, don't you? Well, I don't have the slightest trouble accepting microevolution as the cause behind the adaptation of the peppered moth and the growth of finches' beaks. But I don't see that evolutionists have any cause for jubilation there.

"It doesn't tell you how the moths and birds and trees got there in the first place. The human body is packed with marvels, eyes and lungs and cells, and evolutionary gradualism can't account for that."

He's not big on small talk, this professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley's law school.

For centuries, scriptural literalists have insisted that God created Heaven and Earth in seven days, that the world is about 6,000 years old and fossils are figments of the paleontological imagination. Their grasp on popular opinion was strong, but they have suffered a half-century's worth of defeats in the courts and lampooning by the intelligentsia.

Now comes Johnson, a devout Presbyterian and accomplished legal theorist, and he doesn't dance on the head of biblical pins. He agrees the world is billions of years old and that dinosaurs walked the earth. Evolution is the bridge he won't cross. This man, whose life has touched every station of the rationalist cross from Harvard to the University of Chicago to clerk at the Supreme Court, is the founding father of the "intelligent design" movement.

Intelligent design holds that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand -- perhaps subtle, perhaps not -- of an intelligent creator.

"Evolution is the most plausible explanation for life if you're using naturalistic terms, I'll agree with that." Johnson folds his hands over his belly, a professorial Buddha, as his words fly rat-a-tat-tat.

"That's only," he continues, "because science puts forward evolution and says any other logical explanation is outside of reality."

Johnson and his followers, microbiologists and geologists and philosophers, debate in the language of science rather than Scripture. They point to the complexity of the human cell, with its natural motors and miles of coding. They document the scant physical evidence for the large-scale mutations needed to make the long journey from primitive prokaryote to modern man.

They've inspired a political movement -- at least 19 states are considering challenges to the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution.

None of which amuses evolutionary biologists, for whom intelligent-design theory inhabits the remotest exurb of polite scientific discourse. Darwin's theory is a durable handiwork. It explains the proliferation of species and the interaction of DNA and RNA, not to mention the evolution of humankind.

The evidence, they insist, is all around:

Fruit flies branch into new species; bacteria mutate and develop resistance to antibiotics; studies of the mouse genome reveal that 99 percent of its 30,000 genes have counterparts in humans. There are fossilized remains of a dinosaur "bird," and DNA tests suggest that whales descended from ancient hippos and antelopes.

Does it make any more sense to challenge Darwin than to contest Newton's theory of gravity? You haven't seen Phillip Johnson floating into the stratosphere recently, have you?

William Provine, a prominent evolutionary biology professor at Cornell University, enjoys the law professor's company and has invited Johnson to his classroom. The men love the rhetorical thrust and parry and often share beers afterward. Provine, an atheist, also dismisses his friend as a Christian creationist and intelligent design as discredited science.

As for the aspects of evolution that baffle scientists?

"Phillip is absolutely right that the evidence for the big transformations in evolution are not there in the fossil record -- it's always good to point this out," Provine says. "It's difficult to explore a billion-year-old fossil record. Be patient!"

Provine's faith, if one may call it that, rests on Darwinism, which he describes as the greatest engine of atheism devised by man. The English scientist's insights registered as a powerful blow -- perhaps the decisive one -- in the long run of battles, from Copernicus to Descartes, that removed God from the center of the Western world.

At which point a cautionary flag should be waved.

Scientists tend to be a secular lot. But science and religion are not invariable antagonists. More than a few theoretical physicists and astronomers note that their research into the cosmos deposits them at God's doorstep. And evolution's path remains littered with mysteries.

Is it irrational to inquire if intelligent life is seeded with inevitabilities?

"Give Johnson and the intelligent-design movement their due -- they are asking terribly important questions," says Stuart A. Kauffman, director of the Institute for Biocomplexity at the University of Calgary. "To question whether patterns and complexity, at the level of the cell or the universe, bespeak intelligent design is not stupid in the least.

"I simply believe they've come up with the wrong answers."

Johnson's early life was, by his own accounting, a rationalist lad's progress. He grew up in Aurora, Ill., a cocky kid so razor sharp that after his junior year in high school he packed off to Harvard. "I attended church in high school, but it was just part of the culture, like the Boy Scouts," he says. "We'd drop my father off at the golf course on the way to church."

He finished Harvard and then law school at the University of Chicago, where he graduated first in his class. He dabbled in Christian philosophy, read some C.S. Lewis. "I found it mind-stretching but I remember thinking: It's a real shame it's not true." Johnson became a clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren at the Supreme Court. In 1967, with a wife and two young children, he went west to Berkeley, where he would gain international renown as a teacher of criminal law and legal theory.

His life was marching to an up-tempo beat.

"I wasn't working very hard intellectually. My motives were shallow," Johnson says. "I was a typical half-educated careerist intellectual with conventional liberal politics."

Johnson possesses a tenured professor's inability to hold his tongue, whether assaying a reporter's dumb question or his own life's arc. In the 1970s, Berkeley was roiling. Johnson opposed the Vietnam War but grew disillusioned and turned right. His wife, an artist, found feminism and wandered another way. Their marriage swept away like flotsam.

"I had been very happy for a long time," he says. "I was shaken to my core."

Johnson's daughter, Emily, remains close with each parent. She recalls a time of upendings. "Men of my father's generation really expected that if they did their job, and provided, how could their marriage fall apart?" she says. "They didn't know what to make of the new questions and new demands."

The night his wife decided to leave in 1977, Johnson attended a church supper with Emily, who was 11. The pastor spoke passionately of Christ and the Gospels. The professor doesn't remember a Lord-sundered-the-heavens moment; he wasn't rending his tweed jacket.

He just heard the words, perhaps for the first time in his life. "I wasn't convinced," Johnson says, "but I said to myself: 'The minister's presenting me with a real option.' "

Johnson drove home that night and pulled out his books of law and philosophy. If this was to be his epiphany, he would experience it with his rationalist lights on.

"I was concerned that I could be just throwing my brain away," he says. "I needed to know if I was adopting a myth to satisfy my personal hunger."

He was nudged along by his interest in "critical legal studies," a left-wing movement that holds that the law is prejudice masquerading as objective truth. Asked to contribute a conservative critique for the Stanford Law Review, Johnson embraced the movement -- sort of.

"I disliked intensely their infantile politics," he says. "But their critique of liberal rationalism and the sham neutrality of rationalism helped me become a Christian. I became the entire right wing of critical legal studies."

In time, he converted and married his present wife, Kathie -- who also was an adult convert. They met at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, which was, like most everything in that town, a very liberal institution. "We have never felt," Johnson says, "a need to be around only people who agree with us."

All of which laid the groundwork for Johnson's sabbatical in 1987. He traveled to London nagged by the sense that his intellectual gifts had been put to mediocre ends. One day while browsing in a bookstore, Johnson picked up a copy of "The Blind Watchmaker" by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins argued that life was governed by blind physics, that free will was illusion, that religion was a virus.

Johnson devoured dozens more evolutionary texts. He found extraordinary minds and polemics, but the evidence didn't much impress him.

"I was struck by the breadth of Darwin's claims as opposed to how scanty were the observable changes." He peers at you with that unwavering gaze. "I said to my wife that I shouldn't take this up. I will be ridiculed and it will consume my life.

"Of course, it was irresistible."

This was more than a middle-age exercise in mental gymnastics. Johnson discerned in Darwinism a profound challenge to the faith he had embraced so passionately.

"I realized," he says, "that if the pure Darwinist account was accurate and life is all about an undirected material process, then Christian metaphysics and religious belief are fantasy. Here was a chance to make a great contribution."

The image remains a tad incongruous, this tweedy law professor from Berkeley with the hair combed carefully to the side of his pink forehead, making the rounds of London's scientific conferences, ambling up to prominent biologists and paleontologists and peppering them with questions. He was not impolite, just persistent. "Sometimes they pinned my ears back," Johnson recalls. "Sometimes I made friends."

Stephen C. Meyer, then a young graduate student studying the philosophy of science at Cambridge, got word of this "law professor who was getting some odd ideas about evolution." Meyer, who harbored his own doubts, walked to a tavern with Johnson and they talked for hours.

"Phillip understood that the language of science cut off choices: Evolution had to be an undirected process or it wasn't science," says Meyer, who today directs an intelligent-design think tank affiliated with the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. "He knew the rhetorical tricks.

"By the end of that day I knew we could challenge Darwin."

So what does that mean, "to challenge Charles Darwin"?

Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species" in 1859. In the broadest terms, Darwin had three insights: Evolution is responsible for the vast profusion of life, as all living organisms descend from common ancestors. Species are not immutable -- new species appear gradually through micro-mutations known as speciation. Natural selection guides all of this, acting as nature's drill sergeant, culling the flawed genes.

It sounds so tidy. But evolutionary theory -- like most scientific theories -- trails behind it no small number of unanswered questions, lacunae and mysteries.

Darwin, for instance, noted that different species tend to have similar body features, and attributed this "convergence" to a common ancestor. But that often isn't the case. The complex eye of a squid and a human are nearly identical yet lack a common genetic inheritance. The renowned biologist Simon Conway Morris has found many such examples in nature and proposed that it's "near inevitable" that species converge toward an intelligent "solution" to life.

Morris's theory treads a touch too close to Heaven for many biologists.

Then there's the inconvenient fact that most species evolve little during the span of their existence, which leaves the mystery of how to account for evolutionary leaps. The late biologist Stephen Jay Gould speculated that species become isolated and mutate in revolutionary transitions of a few thousand years. That remains a controversial explanation.

"Some biologists still argue that you can get to high evolutionary forms purely through natural selection," says Theodore Roszak, a noted historian of science. "That involves more faith in chance than religious people have in the Bible."

Darwinian theory also presupposes an "inconceivably great" number of links between living and extinct species. But paleontologists have discovered only a relative handful of such fossils. And scientists still puzzle at the great explosion of life known as the "Cambrian explosion," when thousands of multicellular animals appeared over 10 or 20 million years (a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms).

Johnson composed a sort of prosecutor's brief. Natural selection? It strengthens existing species, but there's "no persuasive reason for believing that natural selection can produce new species and organs." Mutations as a driver of new species? Much too slow to account for grand changes.

By the end of his 1991 book, "Darwin on Trial," Johnson was convinced that he had peppered Darwinian theory with intellectual buckshot. So he posed the question: Why won't science consider that an intelligent hand operates alongside chance and physical law?

Let it be said that Johnson's book did not change the world. The scientific reviews weren't so hot and a few law school colleagues looked at him as if he had lost half a brain lobe. But Meyer, director of the Center for Science & Culture, remembers reading it and feeling a sense of relief.

"A lot of creationists are unctuous and earnest and begging for a place at the scientific table," says Meyer. "Not Phil. He was a star academic, he conceded nothing, and he's got rhino hide for skin."

The building blocks of the intelligent-design movement slowly took form. A few like-minded souls in academia e-mailed Johnson. He called back, connected one with the other, and often traveled to meet them.

"I found a lot of people ready to challenge the culturally dominant orthodoxy, but they didn't know how," Johnson recalls. "They thought if they just dutifully presented evidence, the Darwinists might listen. I said we have to think more strategically.

"I evolved -- if I may use that word -- as a leader of that group."

After all those years in Berkeley lecture halls, he had a thespian's feel for a crowd. Once he debated the famed biologist Gould. Gould was learned and merciless, but most critics say Johnson held his own. "It was like playing Jack Nicklaus and losing in a playoff," Johnson says.

As Johnson explained to Touchstone magazine, a Christian journal: "I do not want my audience to go away thinking: 'That's one clever lawyer who can make you look like a fool. . . . I want them to go home saying . . . 'There's more to intelligent design than I thought.' "

You want to talk Cambrian explosion? Fine. But how about a little perspective?

"We have to acknowledge the reality that it took place more than 500 million years ago," says Kenneth Miller, a Brown University microbiologist and author of "Finding Darwin's God," arguing that theism is not at odds with evolutionary theory. "It's not as if there was some sort of instantaneous injection of complexity into an ordered world."

Miller pauses a moment.

"Look, I can admit that fossils might be the result of a super-intelligent or supernatural form -- I'm a Red Sox fan. But it's surely not very likely."

Johnson finds precious few fans in the scientific establishment, particularly among biologists. They see conservative money spent on academic conferences and publicity and public debates. Johnson thrives, they say, by the law professor's tactic of attacking soft targets and then raising his hands in victory.

The best scientific theories, scientists say, offer overarching explanations for natural phenomena even while acknowledging that many details remain to be worked out. If Einstein supplants Newton, that's the joy of science.

"Anytime the intelligent-designers find a mystery that scientists can't yet explain, they shout: 'See!? See!?' " says Provine, the Cornell biologist. "I like having Phil come to Cornell to debate. He turns a lot of my students into evolutionists."

Maybe mysteries aren't so mysterious. Intelligent life, Provine says, is understandable as adaptations accrued over hundreds of millions of years. And the cell falls short of miraculous.

"A lot of the DNA in there is not needed -- it's junk," says Phillip Kitcher, the Columbia University philosopher of science. "If it's intelligently designed, then God needs to go back to school."

Harvard professor Owen Gingerich has studied the cosmos as senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and is a devout Christian. He enjoys talking to Johnson and doesn't care for the insistent secularism of many Darwinists. But he doesn't buy intelligent design's utility as a scientific theory, not least because he sees no way to test its ideas.

"Johnson tends to avoid questions he doesn't want to answer -- such as what accounts for mankind if not evolution?" Gingerich says. "If he says that the first man literally came out of the mud like Minerva from the brow of Zeus, he knows he would be ridiculed.

"Looking for God's direct hand is a very fuzzy business."

So what of God?

Isn't there, Johnson is asked, a risk inherent in trying to toss out Darwin and discern God's footprints? Why would He use his hand to create the tyrannosaurus and the Cro-Magnon only to discard them in great extinctions? What of gamma blasts and dead stars, and the cold maw of the universe?

If science proves that the wonders of the cell and the machinery of the eye are the result of a material process, what becomes of faith?

Johnson listens and folds his hands in his lap and remains silent. He's had two strokes, the latter a few months back. His mind remains a fine instrument, the levers and wheels spinning sure as ever. But putting thoughts into words can be laborious. He shakes his head and dislodges a stream.

"One answer is that it's hard to evaluate unless you know what the Designer was trying to create," he says. "I suppose the Creator could have made it so that we would live forever and be bulletproof. Flawless design may not be his point."

Many in the intelligent-design movement shy from overt talk of religion, wary of handing a rhetorical gun to their critics. God, Gaea or super-intelligent alien: They do not presume to pierce the veil of the Designer.

Johnson pays no heed to these worries. Darwinists and Christians alike, he says, "start from faith, just as every house has a foundation." His friend Provine, Johnson says, has found faith in materialistic atheism. Johnson has found Christ.

Johnson, who is already back on the lecture trail, is not content with a Creator so deferential to natural processes as to fade into the cosmic woodwork. Johnson is convinced, intellectually and emotionally, that His hands have shaped human life -- and the evidence likely is there if only science will look for it.

Johnson works his way to his feet and walks slowly to his living room window. The lemon trees are in bloom. Mist rises off the sidewalk. "I think it's very possible that God left some fingerprints on the evidence," Johnson says, his words rattling out now. "Once you open science to that possibility, we're poised for a metaphysical reversal."

He smiles and catches himself. "I'm content just to open science up to an intellectual world that's been closed to it for two centuries."


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I almost want to go to Church

Thoughts on the conclave, and the new pope: "'It's wonderful to be in a group of 115 people, and you're all equals. You're all talking: Eminence this, Eminence that, first name this, first name that. And then suddenly, one of you is different,' said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington. 'He's no longer one of you. He's the Holy Father, the successor to Peter and the Vicar of the Christ.' "

Slackery

Things things things.

 

Well, It is easter break and I’ve been a bit lax in posting here.  I’m sure the two of you mind.  Brain has been growing ever so steadily, and while fiction writing is temporarily on hold, fiction thinking is active quite a bit.  New things are coming on the horizon as well.  Possible Comics blog with Chris Tamarri (enter delusions of Comic’s grandeur).  Finishing up the school year, 9 weeks left, and the countdown has already begun.  Today, I’m regrouping, getting school stuff in order, watching people put windows in my house, and laundry.

 

What Fun.

 

AH ha, and this would be a fine time to announce tentative plans for Indian Head Comics Symposium, held out our house in late June.  People that read this will probably be welcome.  Official Invites will go out soon enough.  It’s going to be a personal little convention so to speak, with comics read, discussed, and possibly, if anyone bothers to have the time, a possible panel-like presentation.  Who knows.

Jeff Smith on MPR

MPR: Telling Fone Bone's epic story

I hate false emails

I'm the guy that will always check those e-mails if they are real or not. I enjoy Snopes.com.

Is hell exothermic or endothermic? The answer doesn't really matter, and to be honest, no student ever actually wrote that essay.

But it's still pretty damn interesting.

An Opinionated Network

Fox News: Not so fair and balanced?

An interesting Column (not article) on a report about bias in media.

Oh for FUCKS sake

Where in The Theory of Evolution does it say that god doesn't fucking exist?

Also, no one says we came from Monkeys. We have a common ancestor, kind of like Eve. I, however, am hoping I'm not related to Southern Baptist minister Terry Fox, even through the mythical Eve.

I hate everyone right now.

SuicideGirls > Words > Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison was interviewed at Suicidegirls.com. The following is an interesting "rosencrantz and guildenstern"-esque idea.

: "DRE: Why do comics enthrall you so much?

GM: Magic. It was always really fascinating to me that Superman was so much older than me and yet I could come along and write adventures with Superman in them and add to his life story. Then I could die and Superman would keep going, with other people writing stories to keep him alive. He's more real than I am because he has a longer lifespan and more influence, so this notion of the 'real' 2-dimensional world of the comics and what it had to say to the 'real' 3-dimensional world of non-fictional people. That really connected with me in a big way and helped me grapple with big ideas about the universe and life and death. I wanted to really 'make contact' with that world and bargain with its inhabitants. I saw it as the lynchpin of my magic. The comic universes are living breathing alternate worlds we can visit. And, if we're lucky enough to be comic book writers we get to play directly with the inhabitants and environments of the 2nd dimension. I wanted to travel in those worlds. By the time I was doing The Invisibles I had gotten past the idea of just putting a drawing of myself in a comic, as I did in Animal Man. I wanted to treat the story like a real continuum. I wanted to really get involved with the comic, in the two dimensional surface of the comic itself and at the point of interface where 2-d becomes 3-d and then touches 4-d. I wanted to see if I could exchange places with a comic book character, so I made myself look like King Mob, and started to have adventures so I would have stuff to write about. I wasn't blowing up military installations or killing Japanese terrorists but I was running around the world in bunker boots and black vinyl, doing magic and meeting all these amazing girls who were actually getting off with King Mob's spirit in my body."

Homeless Man's Death Hits Fort Washington Area Hard

I remember eating at Roy Roger's once with my grandparents and the blanket man was in there. It's strange how strangers affect us. Even ones that (at least at the age of 10) we were often afraid of.

Comments Aside

I fell for it this time, and I've been party to it in the past. But now I have the ability to say my own part (which is ironic in it's own right).

I hate message boards.

But before i get started with that one, i realized that the Blog is close to the message board already.

I realize i also have a comment system on this blog, which is more like a message board.

I realize i contradict myself.

"Very well, I contradict myself."

Anywho.

I hate message boards I just spent some time looking at a message board on Newsarama, that was in regards to an article on the upcoming movie V for Vendetta. It's a great book, if not a bit slow (but then so was orwell). and the orwell reference is valid. It's 1984, but happier. But that still aint saying much.f

The article was obviously an opinion piece by one Rich Johnston, comic book gossip king (I love Lying in the Gutter. He expresses slanted opinions (no worse than michael moore) on issues of terrorism, the war on, and both the english and british govt. He brings them up in reference to the book, as the book shows what happens when people support a govt, that makes bad choices, and those bad choices spawn bad choices, ad nauseum.

Hobbes said that democracy will collapse on itself because sooner or later, people will be tired of being given choices and will cry out for someone to make decisions for them.

(Saying that always reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which the father has a fit in the grocery store because there are too many different types of Peanut Butter to choose from.)

From what I remember of the book, V for Vendetta happened much because of those decisions. When 9/11 occured, Kate was working at USAMRIID for an Iranian. He said it was sad, but the US has lived in peace for too long. And he had a good point. I believe it's a fair equation to say that Civil Rights are inversly proportional to National Security.

I think in the country, there is a distinct difference between the two (oddly, I'd assume that people that have less security issues, i.e. Joe Blow, in Nowhere USA is probably more on the Security side than Mr. I-Work-Next-To-The-World-Bank, Washington DC guy. I dont know why, that's another tangent for another time).

But I digress... So much i almost forgot what i was digressing about, and from.

This is where I throw my thoughts out there. partly because i enjyo going back and reading it and remembering and contemplating what i was thinking about last week, and two months ago. Secondly, if anyone wants to read them, they choose to. I have yet to figure out how to make people's homepages turn into this page.

Message boards are very specifically a public forum, and I think it's a by-product of freedom of speech that makes people think that we also care to hear what they have to say.

So i think this BLOG has managed to do what i intended it to. ALthough i hate the Message Boards, even though i sometimes fall for them. I realize their purpose. We have the right to say what we want, even if no one cares.

And no one does. But my god, at least we can.

Posts Disappear

It would appear a rather large rant post i had about message boards and such has disappeared into the ether...

I liked that one to.

Tomorrow Is my birthday, quarter of a century, so I still feel young, but there is something on the horizon. Spring break in two weeks, how nice.

Live Webcam Sex

Hot Action

Thomas Hobbes : A Short Biography

Thomas Hobbes : A Short Biography

I think it was Hobbes that said that thing that was in my long rant. I am now fascinated with him as well. I love how these work.

V for Vendetta

V For Vendetta will soon be a movie by the Matrix boys, with Natalie Portman. It's a loverly story of a freedom fighter/terrorist in the guise of Guy Fawkes. This website has some information on Guy Fawkes

I now want to go back to London on Bonfire Night.

"It broke him down when they took him away from his family and all his friends," said Frank Walker, an older fighter from Turpin's Philadelphia gym. "They took him out of reality and put him in a reality show. They took a real person and made him into a character."

from In Reality, A Tragedy for Boxer

Death of course is horrible, particularly when it is suicide. It adds insult to injury if you just happened to be on a soon to debut reality show. but...

If you sign up for a tv show, even if it has "reality" in it, do not expect TV to do anything but make you into a character. No matter how "real" you are, you become TV. No matter what they do TV is not real. You want to prove it, just get a video camera and put it into anyone's face. See what happens.

Bored Guy Redoes Romance Covers

Longmire does Romance Novels

Charlie showed me this Hi-Lar-E-Us website.

Worst album covers ever

Museum of bad album covers: the worst album covers ever!

delusions of grandeur

Every once in awhile, normally while looking at famous people’s blogs, I have brief delusions of grandeur, and imagine being written about in a very casual way, by people that are “famous” that I admire.  Laurenn Mccubbin saying “he’s really quite genius” or Warren Ellis telling people to check out some latest work of mine because I’m mad or something.

 

Today, within the past five minutes, I had one but it did not feel at all good.  I imagine it’s due to a sense of realization of what I was doing.

 

School was excellent today, and I’m beginning or continuing to feel that this is really going out into the ether.  Where as my last blog was read by a select few, this is read by myself and my wife, which makes it all the more interesting. 

 

I think I’m having horrible brain demons being born again.  I can feel them dwelling in my hypothalamus, and they grow like cancer until I explode..

 

Things seems so strange recently.  A student told me I was one of her desert island people, as I have interesting stories to tell, and several students tell me they miss me after weekends and days off.  I understand its’ largely high school stuff, but still.

 

You’d think I’d realize these are compliments.  I worry I take too many things too lightly, and is start to realize this when I speak in front of people I’m less acquainted with.

 

There are people that just don’t get me.

 

Ok… I paused long enough that I lost my train, and have found other enjoyable diversions.

Quote of the day

“In other news: Jesus Quit.”

It's like I'm a reporter.

This is the actual text (translated) from "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003." Apparently this has been an ongoing thing for several years. I must start paying more attention.

Human Rights Report on US Released

This one isn't from the USA-Hating Liberal Commie Rag.

China Says U.S. Has Double Standard on Rights

I worry when China is saying this to us.(washingtonpost.com)

God and Darwin

Fun with Intelligent Design (an old article i want to archive here)

An accidental almost-Haiku by a student

The speaker and those in attendance expect

To witness death.  A Fly flew by_

Morrison on Superman

Grant Morrison, one of my top three favorite writers in the field of comical books is going to be writingSuperman later this year. I think his ideas of mythology in the super hero world is really rather interesting, and a lot of his ideas have been influencing my own current fiction writing (i know it's stalled, i'm trying).

Supreme Court Strikes Down Death Penalty for Juveniles

If you can't execute a Teenager, who can you execute these days?

quote of the (other) day:

'why are you wearing that stupid man suit?'

Gay means In Love now

I am SO gay for this.

Synapses firing.

Law of Conservation of Mass Energy

I'm reading great amounts of Walt Whitman to prep for class. I have ideas of lost civilizations in my head, thoughts of archetypal stories (FLOOD!) and now i'm reading "what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belongint to me as good belongs to you" which makes me think of Biotic (which i heard about from Grant Morrison), and i'm waiting for the flakes to start falling.

I feel my synapses firing.

Mahabalipuram

The Mythical City of Mahabalipuram - Relics off the coast of India, found after the December Tsunami, could be "part of the mythical city of Mahabalipuram, which legend says was so beautiful that the gods sent a flood that engulfed six of its seven temples

I am so gay for flood stories, and lost civilizations.

Because everyone loves a new obsession

Atlantis - In response to the findings of a possible "mythical" city off the coast of India, I am newly obsessed with lost civilizations... Going to the British museum also helped.

London Leaving

(there just aren’t enough ways to mimic London Calling)

 

Kate and I have returned from four/five fun filled day in old Londonium.  We began on Thursday morning (GMT) by dropping stuff off at the hotel before we could check in and running around for five hours.  We began with Westminster Abbey, and looking at Big Ben (I nearly went crazy hearing Clark Grizwald tell his family “Look kids! Parliament, Big Ben!”).  Poet’s corner was cool, but the problem I had with the abbey was understanding how many people were actually buried there, and how many were buried somewhere else.  It was interesting seeing a building that is slowly become more bones than brick.  It also got me into Monarchy mode.  I finally, after 25 years, finally see the interesting thing about having a royal family.

 

From there we walked.  We saw Downing Street (which is cordoned off since IRA threats against Thatcher in the 80s), got some excellent Fish and Chips and Shepherd’s Pie at the Red Lion, saw Green Park (it was green), Buckingham Palace, a WWI memorial, and Hyde Park Corner.  From there we went to Harrod’s (big expensive shopping), and got some wine, cheese, and bread for dinner. Then went to the hotel and took a little 2 hour nap.  Then woke up and got a cork screw from the nearby grocery and sat around for the night.  Lovely.

 

Day 2 began with an early morning wake up with croissant and a underground trip to The Tower of London.  Luckily Kate and I avoided the masses, and managed to have the tower mostly to ourselves for about an hour or so.  It was interesting, but most of it was rebuilt in the Victorian age, so it was tough to get into the idea of how old the place was.  (This brings up the major difference I noticed between Spain and London, besides the country vs. city thing, is that Spain is old, and the UK is old, but the blitz blew it all to hell, so it’s largely rebuilt, it seems.)  From there we took a tube trip to St. Paul’s and saw the steps where the little old bird lady sells bird food for toppins’  (‘Mary Poppins’ buffs will understand).  From there it was a short walk to the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe.  The Globe was really quite interesting, and even though it was also (quite recently) rebuilt, it was apparently rebuilt using the same means that they would have had in 1580s or so.  The tour guide was also awesome.  Then three hours in the tate with lots of modern art. A short walk to Bar + Kitchen for starters and wine, then another walk to the Saatchi Gallery to even more modern art (the Sensations artists went to Saatchi after the moved around apparently).  Then on home for loud neighbors, closed bars, and a late sleep.

 

Day 3 started off with Benjy’s English breakfast.  D-Lish-Us.  Then to Piccadilly circus, a quick walk through Soho, and several hours at the British Museum, another walk through Soho (Like New York City but English)… and I’m blanking on what else happened there.  AH ha.  We went to the Troubadour, a neat little pub where Dylan and Lennon both apparently played back in the day.  Neat but there was a private party with a band downstairs that caused a lot of disharmonious music, which, sadly, cleared the upper level out pretty well.  Then back home for a somewhat early night.

 

Day 4 started late, with another English breakfast at the Patisserie near Gloucester Road Underground Station.  From there we went to Greenwich, saw the Royal Observatory, and did the ever so tacky stand in two hemispheres at one time.  Then saw very very cute Greenwich.  Went shopping in a little market there and did some book shopping (Found The Alchemist, then finished it the next day).  Fun times.  We found our way home, went to a few places to eat for lunch and dinner (two places in particularly, but nothing super) then to bed for an early departure the next morning.

 

Day 5 We came home.  1130 GMT departure from Heathrow, then a 1230 GMT or so landing an Heathrow as we lost an engine on our accent, and needed it fixed.  We finally took off again at 1030 EST, and landed several hours late.  Welcome to the USA.

 

Twas a great trip, massive fun, but I think I’m just not city folk.  I liked London, but by day three I wanted to get out into the country and do some driving.  My shin actually hurts from walking interestingly enough.  But I’d do it again…

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson has killed himself; with a shot gun, not the drugs. I am
a fan, but not one with much knowledge, so I decide to give it up to someone
else. Of all the stuff I've read I enjoyed Warren Ellis's "obituary" the
most. Enjoy (I strongly encourage friends to subscribe to Ellis's Bad
Signal as well, and if you are a Thompson fan, read his graphic novel in 10 volumes, Transmetropolitan (Graphic novels in ten volumes aren't at long at you think)).


[BAD SIGNAL]Up The Creek

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

People keep asking if I'm going to say something about the death of Hunter S Thompson. Hell, a couple of newspapers have asked. This is because (for the sake of the Marvel readers who have joined us) I wrote a graphic novel series called
TRANSMETROPOLITAN, the creation of whose protagonist was somewhat influenced by Thompson's writing, persona and life.

I got the news from a friend at CBS at four in the morning, two minutes after it hit the ticker. I was, and am, numb. I've tried to write about it a couple of times. When John Peel died, I was wrecked. This time, I'm just numb.

I read an article a few years ago, that I haven't seen cited in the obituaries yet, wherein it's stated that Thompson's body was pretty much packing up on him. His
stomach was having problems with toxic substances like, um, food, and his diet was mostly liquid, mashed avocado and yoghurt. He'd spent time in a wheelchair in recent
years. His drug use had always been exaggerated for comedic effect, but, at 67, he'd been hammering his body in a committed way for some 50 years. And, at 67, you
don't grow back the bits you killed. There's a fair chance he was looking
at years of dependency, chronic illness, and listening to his own body die by inches. Anyone would find that frightening.

He always wore his influences on his sleeve. JP Donleavy, Faulkner, Mencken, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Hemingway. He used and re-used the last line from A FAREWELL TO
ARMS, over and over: "I walked back to the hotel in the rain." Legend has it that he retyped a Hemingway novel to understand how the writer got his effects.

Hemingway, of course, shot himself in the head. Old and sick and unable to live up to his own ideas on manhood.

I always thought it peculiarly apt that the man who wrote that line, whose work was all about keeping the expression of human feeling underneath the surface, sat somewhere quiet and alone and put a shotgun in his mouth.

Hunter Thompson waited until his young wife left the house, and then shot himself in the head with a pistol. He must have been quite aware that either she, or his son,
there in the house with his grandson, would find his corpse. Dead bodies don't lay neatly. They splay, spastic and awful. There is often shit.

I never met Thompson. Had the opportunity a couple of times -- magazines wanting to send me out to Woody Creek, that kind of thing -- but turned them down. I've
been lucky so far, in meeting my great influences. But they don't always go well. Friends of mine have had horrific experiences with their personal heroes, and it often leaves them unable to enjoy the work afterwards. And I wanted to keep
the work. So I don't know what kind of man he was.

And the numbness, in part, comes from now finding that he was the kind of man that'd let his family find him like that. I have a personal loathing for suicide. It's stupid and selfish and ugly and cowardly and reeks of weakness. Someone said to me yesterday about Thompson, "What a ripoff." And I kind of know what he meant. It's become convenient to write Thompson off as parody in recent years, and there's a case to be made that he peaked around the age of 36, with FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE
CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72. But he could still make me laugh, even in the most recent collection, HEY RUBE.

" 'We have many cigarettes here,'
I said suavely" still makes me smile.

Writing had clearly become difficult, and a job, but every now and then you'd get a clear burst of the old anger, as in his support for Lisl Auman (google it). He was
done with the big fireworks, but the devil was still in him. Probably his great work of the last twenty years was in Being Hunter Thompson. In performance.

But how you leave the stage is at least as important as how you enter it. And he left it alone in a kitchen with a .45, dying in -- and wouldn't it be nice if it were the last time these words were typed together? --

-- dying in fear, and loathing.

Warren Ellis
down by the sea
February 2005

How many references to "Death of a Salesman" will there be?

Associated Press

To view the entire article, go to Legendary Playwright Arthur Miller Dies

Lost Thought

i actually lost a thought today. Perfect idea to add to my burgeoning (sic) fiction writing, and it's lost into the ether.... i hope i find it.

bits (fragments)

he danced fluidly in the park throwing punches like a shadow boxer

Donations Accepted

Kate and I have found our next vacation.  We will be accepting donations through our paypal account (use name mattbuckley80@comcast.net) or checks and cash can be mailed to our house.

Zero Gravity Trips

Because choice matters

"Huh?" says America's youth

Artificial Stress

I was fascinated today in a club meeting where we were voting on what to do. A kid was faced with the deciding vote, becuase he came in late, and the voting had been dead even. Suddenly, new stress. However it was based solely on being alone in "deciding." His vote, had it been given two minutes earlier would have been the same as everyone elses vote, a mere change in timing altered so many of the consecutive events. that's all it took. there was no reason for him to feel pressured into doing one thing or another, but because of the timing and the fact that other votes had been cast, suddenly his became more important. In the 2000 election, Florida would have been nothing if they had just coutnued correctly earlier on.

I'm Confused

From an e-mail with the subject “Frat house sex frenzy video tapes”

 

“desired, for the tabernacle and all within it. He also gave Moses with the odor of the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of his how that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou live in that city of refuge until he stands before the congregation be kindled against you, and you will perish quickly from off the Some of the people were so filled with lust for meat that clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to Siloam,
together and heard the noise of the people Joshua said to Moses, Jesus returns. His next waking moment will be in the resurrection, rising the cruel Egyptian taskmasters. I know the pain and anguish my people”

Thank God

SpongeBob SquarePants Has No Gay Agenda

Bits (rought draft): A Work of FIction Pt. 2

He awoke refreshed.  His alarm had 5 more minutes left and he turned it off, then remained in bed for two more hours.   He would call in late for work and deal with it all later.  He had an epiphany and needed to explore what happened:

He broke up with his girlfriend.  This led to a strange epiphany and a feeling of being held back.  After making his way home in the rain last night he began going through boxes attempting to clean his house.  He found a box full of old school papers that he took from his parents attic after they passed away.  In it (the box—the attic was another story) he found old poems, old essays, and old stories.  They were good/bad.

They were good/bad.  In his newly enlightened and seemingly freer life he realized that perhaps his skills were good.  For ten years he’d been without confidence and without clear vision.  The rain and the breakup broke something down.  His mind began to see things he had not noticed before.  There were stories to be told.  Ten years of living and research and all of s a sudden there were stories falling from his brain.  He had stood in front of his girlfriend’s house for a long time.  His brain had opened and he began to see. He stood, a man of 27, 40 pounds overweight, looking deep into the night, seeing back into time to when he was 17.

            He sees how far removed he is from who he was, and he is a mere three months away from being able to salvage any of his previous life.  He turns around attempting to look forward into time to see if he can see another version of himself looking back, but saw nothing but the wet brick front of Stephanie’s house.  A crack of thunder, quickly followed a streak of lightning somewhere behind him.

He kept his gaze in the distance but moved further back in time.  It was the summer after his senior year in high school, and he was 18.  There was a girl he had some interest in at his summer job as a waiter in a crab shack on the shore, but he never once said anything to her.  She had the same name as the daughter of a famous writer.  Douglas could not think of a single reason he’d never said anything, and the feeling rang a familiar bell.

The bell caused a chain reaction.  He closed his eyes, and began to walk away.  He did not see the house nor did he want to, but it was not disgust or disdain.  He was apathetic towards it.  He missed it as a passing of time.

The ringing continued.

He opened his eyes wide but saw only a blinding light.

The rain.

He came to his senses and sought his car.  He had to return to Stephanie’s house.  He stood up right and returned back.

He could feel his synapses firing.  It was a new experience.

He has no recollection of the drive home.

He simply remembers opening the boxes.  He found hope.

 

Dada Poetry(?)

carrara enamel klaxon supplant northland badge pyrex armistice skillet. bombay gaithersburg claustrophobic atrocious sputter chesterton impale indivisible coexistent geoduck marc astronomer disseminate. mooney larvae nanometer salmon christianson impair ramsey sought nw pushpin synonymy. adjunct queasy dick difficulty calculus pontific cyclorama schoolgirlish launder ire. start nab inexplainable ascetic magruder endothermic. interceptor knives lignite adjourn bay arkansan erbium scenery. emory ike syenite spurge dutiful hog pampa appellate lea burly standby. genial put benight rondo cyclist conformance corroborate evasive dice. disastrous clausen eggplant emolument cattlemen terminate fluffy seventieth curricula. mueller abyssinia extralinguistic escape desmond armstrong wow usage disgruntle capacitor heathen decor. coltsfoot gripe headlight terror champaign boyce motif cuprous debt yelp. oblige slivery awaken jelly absorption adipic cypriot promote lignum diethylstilbestrol. builtin burbank centaur inducible ballfield barb bike sensuous autocratic cleanse. nugatory destructor tidy summary crane. bismark doll loy corpse brazier stopgap idyll ernest ague dialect gullible erasure pentane. oshkosh aspartic girdle redbird advert fischer delmarva. hung hangar automorphism
starkey atlas warfare cypress albright bereft rather telemeter. whence expenditure assignation luger pepsico minesweeper delphinus epiphany copernicus. near malady fibonacci chasm arrival empire successor epigram coeditor. homeomorph parachute widowhood methionine sporty easel bobcat cupful sus crosshatch classify. militiamen diophantine henry polloi priestley sideshow repeal holiday. helical chicago comatose governance kochab northeast cudgel juxtapose pyroxenite dastard abutted twa. injustice tailspin spicy fivefold aristocrat kenney eigenstate
alistair. rowe sequent tum amos magnet chuck stasis bequest cat operetta stereo buteo ackley.

Dada poetry

Dada poetry

Interesting essay by Andrei Codresc about those strange words that show up at the end of spam messages.

"Jigsaw rome sketch romano cortex"

Dada poetry as he calls it. interesting...

in addition kate has today's quote of the day:

"A zebra doesn't have to outrun the lion, just the slowest member of the herd."
- in an article by Steve Headrick (sic) for "Immuniobiology of Infections"

god bless you natural selection. As long as I'm ahead of that other poor slob... but does it take into effect me cutting the ankles of other people to make them the slowest... hmmm

Bits (extreme rough draft): a work of fiction

It has been about five years since this book has been opened.  Cocoon-like, I am escaped.

            Here is what I believe.

            Writing is storytelling; Good writing deals with Truths of some kindàRange of truth: simple to complex.

This is a defragmentation.  I have been lots of bits, now forming into one whole.  I would be a foolish not-me to believe this is not a change of events.  And that is what will make it true.

            Reality is indefinable (?).  One defined by the individual.  A story must have character(s), plot (“kind of” L.M.) and be defining.

            Great work has been done (Joyce, O’Brien, Shakespeare, etc.)  Bad work has been done (countless pages of HS and College material, not to mention failed adults).

            Keats was 26 at death.  Fitzgerald 44 (29 @ The Great Gatsby).  These are anomalies.

            What happens if you attempt to be an anomaly? Failure.

            I have argued that Evolution and Creationism need not be opposite ideologies.

            I begin by Creating.

            There is a man, aged 29.  He stands at a now ex-girlfriend’s house, realizing his life had just begun anew.

            Our character finds his way home in the rain (he walked around her block before realizing his car was right there in front).  Once inside, he continues a thought that he had four years previous.

            “What if all this time I’d been saving up, and researching, and thinking, so all these things would come together at this exact time?”

            He begins by jotting down a thought on paper about a group of friends growing up in a small town.  They'd spend their time together in a park that begins to symbolize their moods and feelings.  He cannot put his pen down for six hours.

            As the sun begins to rise he realizes he must get ready to work.  HE cannot decide if he should attempt a few hours of sleep or not.

            (Author’s note:  This part always becomes difficult.  Do I write about his job?  I have always seen jobs as bad/evil/unproductive.  This part of the story normally ends up equaling the same.

            Challenge #1:  Leave out job, have him go then come back with nothing in between.

            Challenge #2:  Give him an excellent job to challenge the idea that the job is the fault.)

            For now:

            He comes home 9 hours later, having decided a little sleep is always better, and managing to wake up on time.  Work is normally good (!) but due to the lack of sleep, it was long and uncomfortable.  He was no prepared to talk about his recent break-up.  He realizes that in order to keep working he had to focus and not let his mind wander.  This was difficult.

            His primary difficulty was “taking a break.”  Just as writing was a necessary outlet of his unintentional research, breaks soon became new journeys into research.  Normally, he imagined new research would not be looked at as a bad thing, but he had no end goal.

            His research led to nowhere in particular.

            The night he returned from work, tired, he realized he lacked a map.  He needed to discover the X that would mark the spot.

            However, the map had failed him before.  As he had once before attempted the Outline he would often find he feeling inadequate with the goal.  In a sort of ADD moment, he could not think too far ahead.

            The X would need to be fluid.  The path, solid.  He would make the goal appear where it needed to be, when he needed it to be there.  The way to prove time travel is to guarantee when you finally do it, you leave a memento somewhere.

            He needed to rest, his synapses were firing at amazing rates and he felt a sort of high.

            He needed a restart (Human inventions reflect human lives).

Get a Load of Me

Well well well... Maybe it will start here. After my several hours of "research" into all that hokie new age magick mumbo jumbo patapsychology stuff i could not get myself to sleep. so guess what I did.

I started writing again. Now this could just be a random seizure but i'm seriously hoping that i get into it some more.

It felt very good. real good even. Of course the school day sort of killed it, but not a whole lot. All in all things were mild.

but damn i enjoyed not being able to sleep last night because of obsessive writing.

so we'll see. hopefully all will work out well and this will be the beginning of something new and great.

me thinks i might even post it here. we shall see.

Pataphysics

Pataphysics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I'm probably several years behind on this , but it's new to me still. i'm obsessed now.

Beanotown - Fresh Helpings of Comic Delight! Fun and Games for kids of all ages!

Beanotown!

English Comic strip.

Meta References on The Simpsons

Well you just got a love a whoel set of themes.

Meta-reference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meta-reference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I love how i get psycho about these.

No soap radio

No soap radio

This idea seems glorious. I have a new love in Anti-Humor. Ok i've always loved it but now it's funny with a name. Not to mention a lovely website.

Brilliant Line of the Day

Though not spoken by a student (who normally give interesting though not brilliant lines) the best line today is:

"Even smart porn has a come shot"
-Warren Ellis on the discussion of genre bending writing still having elements of a specific genre.

I'm reading Othello in one class, and The Things They Carried in another. Today is a magnificient day full of amazing amazing interesting thoughts. Considering how much I say I dislike Shakespeare he sure has brightened my nerdy nerdy day. Here's to a lovely, yet short, week.

Going down to Londontown

Kate and I will be heading to London Feb 16th. Spur of the moment trip, i'm in search of interesting sights and good comic/book stores. Can't wait.

A Sense Of Doom: Animal Instinct For Disaster

By Don Oldenburg

In Khao Lak, 50 miles north of Phuket along Thailand's western coast, a dozen elephants giving tourists rides began trumpeting hours before the Dec. 26 tsunami -- about the time the 9.0-magnitude quake fractured the ocean floor. An hour before the wall of waves slammed the resort area, the elephants reportedly again grew agitated and began wailing. Just before disaster struck, they headed for higher ground -- some breaking their chains to flee.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57653-2005Jan7.html?referrer=emailarticle

Artists...

Current - gallery and artist cooperative - Baltimore MD - 30 South Calvert

Current Gallery and artist cooperative - Baltimore MD - 30 South Calvert was founded by former roommate and mischief maker Seth Adelsberger. Their is a new show starting tonight (Jan. 15). Rumor has it that Seth has a show coming up on the 4th of February. He's one of the finest artists I know (and I know two).

shappy de pur

Gene clue to HIV origin in humans

** Gene clue to HIV origin in humans **

Scientists say they have uncovered an important clue to understanding the origins of the Aids epidemic.

Comment Damn It

The comment option should be available for new posts, and I'm basically testing that here. I'd think since i'm solely using Blogger's html and templates it would be easier but it doesn' tseem like it wants to be. I'm also assuming that comments might not work when i'm mailing something here, but who knows.

SO in case you didn't figure it out this is basically a test message... again... i know i know... this site is just waiting to be born into usefulness...

I see you D.C.

Test of sound clip

I couldn't make this up, and I wish I could...

"If the Nazi party had fully embraced and consistently acted on the belief that all humans were descendants of Adam and Eve and equal before the creator God, as taught in both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures, the holocaust would never have occurred."

 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i2/nazi.asp

 

"Expunging of the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the divine origin of humans from mainline German (liberal) theology and its schools, and replacing it with Darwinism, openly contributed to the acceptance of Social Darwinism that culminated in the tragedy of the holocaust.¹ Darwin’s theory, as modified by Haeckel,^2,3,4,5,6 Chamberlain⁷ and others, clearly contributed to the death of over nine million people in concentration camps, and about 40 million other humans in a war that cost about six trillion dollars. Furthermore, the primary reason that Nazism reached to the extent of the holocaust was the widespread acceptance of Social Darwinism by the scientific and academic community.^1,8,9,10"

 

Oh... I see... It's Darwin's fault that the Nazi's modified his theories... well that does it... stupid buddhist/hindu's had to create that Swastika thing... didn't they know Hitler was going to steal that to fudge his false history of Arians???

Stuff 2

My newest obsession... Creation Museums... Proof that Man and Dinosaur lived Side by side...

 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/museum/

 

http://www.creationevidence.org/

 

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/06/kentucky_creationist.html

Tamarri Never Knows

a lovely blog by good man, Chris Tamarri, or, as originally introduced, New Jersey Me (me = Maryland Chris of course). His blog will hopefully be inspirational to doing more with my own.

The sudden thought I had was to try to write a story using the blog. Not sure how it would work, or why I would want it to though. Fun

Building of the dead

Reaffirm Your Place on the Food Chain

self referencial "blog this" is fun... go on the redundant roller coaster

Am... Tired...

excerpt from When war drums roll

by Hunter S. Thompson

Indeed, but the New York Stock Exchange opened Monday morning, so I have to get a grip on something solid. The Other Shoe is about to drop, and it might be extremely heavy. The time has come to be strong. The fat is in the fire. Who knows what will happen now?

Not me, buster. That's why I live out here in the mountains with a flag on my porch and loud Wagner music blaring out of my speakers. I feel lucky, and I have plenty of ammunition. That is God's will, they say, and that is also why I shoot into the darkness at anything that moves. Sooner or later, I will hit something Evil, and feel no Guilt. It might be Osama Bin Laden. Who knows? And where is Adolf Hitler, now that we finally need him? It is bad business to go into War without a target.

In times like these, when the War-drums roll and the bugles howl for blood, I think of Vince Lombardi, and I wonder how he would handle it. ... Good old Vince. He was a zealot for Victory at all costs, and his hunger for it was pure -- or that's what he said and what his legend tells us, but it is worth noting that he is not even in the top 20 in career victories.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time."

Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history -- which is no doubt true -- but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a war-time economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.

That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. The time has come for loyal Americans to Sacrifice. ... Sacrifice. ... Sacrifice. That is the new buzz-word in Washington. But what it means is not entirely clear.

Winston Churchill said "The first casualty of War is always Truth." Churchill also said "In wartime, the Truth is so precious that it should always be surrounded by a bodyguard of Lies."

That wisdom will not be much comfort to babies born last week. The first news they get in this world will be News subjected to Military Censorship. That is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted "Dis-information." That is routine behavior in Wartime -- for all countries and all combatants -- and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it. That is what Churchill meant when he talked about Truth being the first casualty of War.

In this case, however, the next casualty was Football. All games were canceled last week. And that has Never happened to the NFL. Never. That gives us a hint about the Magnitude of this War. Terrorists don't wear uniforms, and they play by inscrutable rules -- The Rules of World War III, which has already begun.

So get ready for it, folks. Buckle up and

Countdown Begins

Official Vacation countdown begins… this time next week will be back at work chugging along… things have been going well.. massive amounts of accomplishment as home with stuff…

 

Holiday break reminds me how much I begin to dislike the holidays… staying at home just kate and I might be preferable sometimes… it is an interesting study of family interactions though…

 

Well this is largely just another test email as a few I’ve sent from my phone haven’t quite worked out how I thought they should… fun times… still getting use to this whole deal…

die puny humans

It is Time

I will be using some rather bombastic language here, but it is in me at the moment.  I’d often thought this whole Blog (grrr… hate that word) thing could be useful for publishing ideas for stories… etc…

 

I’m on vacation which means everything is good… but this could be the best news since sliced bread came down from heaven…

 

cheers

Test

If this works it could be a grand new world.

Old "this thing"

I had a "this-thing" over at livejournal but i have decided it sucks. i am powerful here. here's all the crap i tried to list over there but never had much luck. cheers.


Saturday, December 18th, 2004
12:27 am
language of the angels
sometimes i think that language has limited us to experience.... the brain does not think in language, we only interpret it in language... sometimes things are... indescribable... themagic word that prevents mishaps...i've been reading far too much grant morrison's the invisibles... it is far too late now...


Sunday, November 14th, 2004
9:20 am
Fags
www.godhatesfags.comthis is obviously a very educational website. I learned according to the minister of this website that the bible uses the metaphor of FAGS, andfaggots when god burns down sodom... but god fucking forbid there be a metaphor in... oh ... i dont know... the genesis story??? or revelation maybe... it is so funny how we choose the things we want to be blind to...i can't find a good way that this site is fake even though it does use some of the excellent rhetoric of such satire sites as www.blackpeoplelovesus.com or www.rentanegro.com ... same style or writing... no obviousjoke...i will be drinking heavily today in hopes that when i wake up the world will have gone away...

Wednesday, October 27th, 2004
7:49 pm
question
what is my purpose?

Thursday, September 30th, 2004
7:02 pm
sober somber
it feels like friday... it's been explained away, but it doesn't take away that it definitely feels like friday... and it's strange how it most definitely is not friday... since i generally only count school hours, it is indeed 7 hours from being friday... the countdown starts in almost 12 hours exactly... this weekend should be nice... i was hoping to have people over (RAINCHECK) but i'm not... i've cancelled all plans... this weekend i must get ahead, or find out tha ti cannot get ahead, then never take a weekend off again as it will then mean that i need not waste the time trying to get ahead, if it's impossible... i wish i could post by email... i randomly write emails all the time... if only it were free (as i'm cheap adn don't want this to cause an expense)... no matter what i do i can't justify paying for this thing... if i were a popular writer... maybe... initially i wanted to get a livejournal (and i think i still have one at blogger) because of Warren Ellis (www.diepunyhumans.com)... i wanted to use it the way he did, as a research tool... but again... expense... lack of a means to justify it... and that horrible fact that i really just use this to rant... today was good... it felt like friday, and i had successful classes as if it were a friday... now i am left with the enigma that it is most definitely not friday, and i've no idea what to do tomorrow... well i've ideas... but what will work...i love my american literature course... i love teaching that stuff... i just wish i knew what was being received... i wish it was a better class than it seems to be... but i can't always tell if how it seems is hwo it is... that sounds almost exactly like a line from The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien... hwo odd that i will be making my kids buy, and i'll be teaching tha tvery book...interesting indeed...i'm also thoroughly enjoying Franz Ferdinand and The Killers (this is basically right to Johnny and Charlie who seem to be the only people that respond to me here)... although i do kind of miss that feeling that this was going into nowhere, it's interesting writing for a (limited) audience... blagh

Tuesday, September 21st, 2004
12:07 am
ok fine
well i'm feeling less insane now... which is nice... i was initially planning on staying up late and writing big long messages of thoughts... but i grow tired... and i have a sleeping wife next to me that could use more thoughtful company... will return to being psycho soon... cheers...

Wednesday, September 15th, 2004
3:55 pm
neurosis
well since i've made this private, and it's largely read by.. well... me... it will henceforth be thought of as random thoughts going off into the ether... school is tough this year.... it's not much easier, and i wasn't completely expecting it to, but i'm going through the same kind of thought dilemmas i had been... i feel like a priest who's losing his religion... i love waht i teach, but i don't know if i like teaching it... once again the problem is of course getting that paycheck to allow for general living... dreams of self sufficency... and i just worry that it's just dreams... if i was given the opportunity, would i ever write? not even caring about being published, but could i write a lot of stories, or books, and take care of the house and a farm or whatever... the more i'm in an industry the less i like it... the society in general gets annoying... education for money... it seems like we are trying to force people to do things they don't need... if your life's dream is garbage collector, and you don't care abotu reading, why don't you just go get a job... this idea that everyone should be educated is just insane... everyone should have the opportunity, but i also want to say they have a choice... i'm sure you can find a fault in my logic... it's rather faulty... but it makes sense to me... the problem is that we are forcing people to do this... people that don't want to do this, which makes it more difficult for them to do this... how long would it take for a people to just realize they need to go to school and get someting out of it... it seems like they only know what tv commercials have told them about school... stay in school... but they don't see why... and i'm just imagining sitting under a tree being thoreau... that's my problem... i want something that i do not think i can have... the commune idea sounds wonderful... and it'd be work... but you'd almost immediately see the fruits of that work... and you wouldn't need to worry about appreciation, or effectiveness... ah fuck it... as with most journals, i'll look at this in a week, or a month, or a year, and think i'm full of shit... just like now...

Monday, August 30th, 2004
10:42 pm
first post
it's evening. and i'm ranting. because i've been listening to rants all day in one way shape or form. people talk a lot (and i am included in the over-talker group). right now i'm laying in bed, listening to the fan spin and my wife lightly breathe as she sleeps.i'm tired. US politics have beat me down tonight. i want to care, i want to be angry and excited but i just dont' care anymore. i disliked clinton (largely because of my father), and now i dislike bush (largely because of his voice).i read something kurt vonnegut wrote about how people are either liberal or conservative now-a-days according to TV. it rings very true. are you a democrat or republican? coke or pepsi?and it's tired me out. it's late. i'm nervous about school starting (i'm a teacher this time) and i'm already in a bit of a bad mood, which explains a lot of this.but sometimes i just like being in one of these moods. or i at least like knowing that i can be in one of these moods, i dont like it but i do on occasion need it.i'm confused and i'm largely wondering what kind of person i am. and i know the type of person you are changes (i've been at least three different people in my life) but sometimes i have no idea, and as per usual i dont know if i'd like me if i saw myself through other peoples eyes.ugh, i just turned this into a journal. there i was bitching about stuff like a normal PRIVATE journal would be, but this allows me to be published.and i'm going to keep doing this, because i like to believe that once the shit is settled, and i've been able to clear away some of the muck, this might one day be useful. this is not venting, it's reorganization.