Prometheus Needs A Drink

A Gift Card For Fashion! OR Funsters of the World Unite!

2012-01-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I love Portland is that it is an environment that allows two distinct and thoroughly interesting social patterns that can sometimes be stifled in other places the ability to thrive. While I am not known for, and in fact have often mocked the concept of, a preoccupation with "fashion", I have recently developed, after much deep and utterly frivolous thought, a new-found respect for fashion as a sort of birthing pool or nursery for independent thought, creativity, and societal introspection. That being said, it can also be the grounds for rampant conformity, repression, violence and tyranny. The latter set of possibilities was how I had always viewed it, this outlook being born from my rather iconoclastic childhood as "the weird kid". However, having now come to grips (more or less) with prior traumatic experiences with fashion, I have begun to look upon the subject with a new perspective. And now here's your chance to hear about it! At length!

So, I'm going to fastball some important setup ideas that we will need on hand for this little trip. Feel free to disagree loudly once the essay is finished, but please suspend disbelief for the length of this endeavor. As I don't have time to prove these items to be true, I'm going to invite you to join me in the assumption that A) human beings communicate information with each other as a natural and necessary part of their normal functioning. Then, B) this exchange of information occurs through a wide variety of media including those verbal and non-verbal, intentional and subconscious. Finally, C) this exchange of information is absolutely necessary for the formation, orderly functioning and advancement of society as a whole.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk fashion! Personally, I am a big fan of the idea that fashion is a a social recapitulation of biological adaptations such as the peacock's feathers. Why would evolution favor an animal that wastes genetic resources on colorful decoration when it could have spent that time developing faster legs or more powerful talons? Because, as I'm sure I don't need to tell you, evolution favors those animals who get the chance to mate, and successful mating is as much about attracting a partner as it is about personal survival. The theory to which I tend to prescribe is that complex animal decoration, in addition to simply attracting attention, indicates to a perspective mate that the individual is so capable of survival that it has genes to spare on looking cute. This can, of course, be relatively easily extrapolated to human behavior. A person who can spend three hundred dollars on a pair of jeans is probably not going to starve. Now, I could go off on a long rant about how that particular reasoning is inherently flawed, but that is not what I want to talk about today.

Let's move beyond the basic, evolutionary explanations proposed to explain fashion. What I want to talk about is not as much what fashion does for the individual and their breeding potential, but rather what fashion means as a social function. Okay, so individual people have ideas. Those ideas come in myriad shapes and forms. Some ideas are quite useful, others not as much. Now, who's to say which ideas should get passed on from one person to another. Well, each person gets to pick for themselves which ideas they want to share with other people. Likewise, each person gets to pick which ideas they have gotten from other people they would like to keep and use. This is not always strictly true. I have, on multiple occasions, fallen victim to someone getting a song stuck in my head. However, excusing incidents of sticky songs and cult brainwashing, we can generally chose which ideas we wish to retain and employ in our day to day lives.

But Devon, what does any of this have to do with fashion? Ideas are communicated from one person to another, the usefulness of those ideas often influences their long term success. In addition to it's biological usefulness, fashion was also a means to demonstrate social status. Chiefs, headmen, shaman, veteran warriors, across cultures we can observe that fashion accessories were used to denote status. Status, of course, could be parlayed into evolutionary advantage for the individual. But it could also be parlayed into memetic advantage for the ideas that the individual professed. If a person has the biggest hat, then he probably is the strongest and has the best ideas. Otherwise, how'd he get that hat? Or more importantly, how does he keep it? Social status relates directly to biological fitness when an individual can leverage status to garner support from other individuals. A chief may or may not be the most powerful warrior in the village, but he is definitely the one with the biggest number of supporters. The beauty of this is found in the self-reflexive nature of the relationship between social status, biological and memetic fitness, and fashion. A person can gain status by being biologically or memetically fit. A person's biological and memetic fitness can be increased by their social status. A person's social status or bio/memetic fitness can get them more valuable fashion accessories. A person's fashion accessories can confer social status and bio/memetic fitness. The chief is the guy with the biggest hat. Why does he have the biggest hat? Because he's the chief!

Of course, this is not as simple as I, for the sake of comedy, would lead you to believe. All of these traits are constantly being put to the test by competitors. So, you're the strongest? Prove it! Lift this heavy rock! So, your ideas are the best? Prove it! Defend them against rational scrutiny! So, your fashion is the most fashionable? Prove it! By . . . fashioning . . . this . . . wait, what? How does one demonstrate that they are the most fashionable? This is a more difficult question these days then it used to be. Originally, it was a matter of obtaining certain prized resources. Colorful feathers, shiny stones, unusual objects. The simple fact of possession of such an object was proof that you had the necessary pull. As we progressed and acquired more and more stuff it became necessary to evaluate the stuff so that it could be distributed properly. Obviously the person with the most status should get the coolest stuff. Obviously, the person with the coolest stuff should have the most status. The question of how to evaluate said stuff and said people began to gain importance. Useful stuff was given a certain amount of consideration. Things that were obviously advantageous to have should go to the person with the most clout. On the other hand, sure, useful things are cool, if you're into that kind of thing. But a person who's got a lot of useful stuff might only be important because of their stuff. Now, if a person surrounds themself with useless baubles, clearly that person has weight to throw around. Once we had advanced to the point where we could think about the implications and ramifications of our own institutions, there was no chance of a clear cut cross-cultural answer to how possessions and status should be delegated. The various interpretations have been explored in a seemingly infinite number of ways by different cultures throughout history. Vikings and Pacific Northwest Native American tribes (to varying degrees) often denoted social status by the ability and willingness of a leader to give away their possessions. Alternately, Louis XIV's court at Versailles was the quintessential example of personal material possession and conspicuous fashion as not only an indicator but rather a determinant of social status and political power.

Speaking of Louix XIV, let's talk about hipsters! Now, there has been a lot of talk in recent years about what exactly it means to be a "hipster". Many people speculate about the superficial indicators of hipsterdom. I will not enumerate them here for you now, as I am not entirely qualified for that task and I have no doubt that you could find better accountings elsewhere on the webs. Instead, lets talk about the concept behind the term. The original connotation intended by the term "hipster" is that of a person whose decisions, particularly with regards to fashion, are based entirely or in majority upon the current social trends. In other words, someone who wears or does that which will garner them the most social capital. However, in recent years this term has come to represent a particular aesthetic that may or may not be related to the mindset described above. Not wanting to tread on anyone's toes, I am going to propose that we use the alternate term "trendsters" to refer to people who actively do things specifically because they are the current trend. Using this definition, Louis XIV's Versailles is the original trendster Mecca. Not that Versailles invented the concept, but that they took it as close to its Platonic form as human beings are likely to do. Prior to Versailles the French government was centered in Paris and the aristocracy had an entrenched power structure that prevented the king from exerting supreme authority. While all nobles were required to be outwardly loyal to the king, certain nobles were effectively more powerful through a combination of personal wealth, political connections, military force and social capital. While Louis may have had the biggest hat, he did not necessarily have the clout to back it up. However, by moving the French court to Versailles and requiring that every noble spend at least part of the year in attendance there, he disrupted the entrenched power structures and established that he would dictate the terrain upon which battles for social status were won and lost. Political and social power jockeying would have to be done in accordance with his schedule and his terms. In effect, he gave himself the supreme home court advantage and further institutionalized conspicuous consumption as a requirement of social and political clout.

So, originally I mentioned two distinct social patterns that I find interesting. One of them I just finished outlining, the idea of the "trendster", someone who uses fashion as a means of establishing, maintaining and wielding social status. Sure, the most extreme cases of this occur among celebrities, politicians and the rich, but that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of it going on all around us. Many of the people that are commonly referred to as "hipsters" would fit this mentality. This is not to say that everyone who wears thick rimmed glasses and a patterned sweater is a trendster. I'm using trendster to define a cognitive process, not an aesthetic theme. It can be easily summed up as "What can I wear, do, say, listen to, read, or proclaim that will make me seem more valuable to those around me?" While this system of thought has its merit and functionality, there are plenty of downsides. While there are plenty to discuss, the one I want to focus on is the effect that such a mindset has on the self-reflexive nature of human communication. Fashion accessories are used as a non-verbal (sometimes subconscious) means of communicating certain ideas to other people. "I am a very important person because I have a big hat." If, in a given society, it is socially valuable to dress exactly like everyone else then one of the messages being conveyed is that conformity is a valuable idea and those who do not adopt that idea should be granted less status. Of course, conformity can lead to social cohesion as much as it can lead to repression of independent thought. If, in a given society, it is socially valuable to dress to the extreme of uniqueness then one of the messages being conveyed is that it is valuable to devote much time and energy to demonstrate individual value. Of course, demonstrating individual value is most useful when there is open competition for resources and where there is competition there is violence of all sorts.

Now, it's tempting to say that the trendster mentality is towards conformity. After all, how can there be a trend if people aren't displaying similar activity. That's what a trend is. However, the trend can be to conform to an ideal of anti-conformity. Wrap your brain around that one for a second. So, I'd like to distinguish the trendster concept not by the outcome but rather by the intention. As I've defined it, the trendster modality is based on a premise that "If I [perform action] I will gain [perceived benefit]." As an example, "If I wear this ironic t-shirt I will gain the respect of my peers." If you have found yourself thinking along these lines while getting dressed, then don't worry. We all have. It is a natural and reasonable line of thought when considering choices. We survive because of this type of cost/benefit analysis. Let's redefine the trendster as someone who bases the vast majority of their decisions on the social capital to be garnered by the fashionability of their choices.

Now, if that's your M.O., then I am not going to say that you're superficial, callous, egocentric, or avaricious. Though, you may have those qualities in addition. However, what I will say is that this mentality does tend to focus on the objectification of the personal identity. To put it another way, if you use who you are as a means of acquiring social capital, then it is likely that you will find that all you are is a function designed to best acquire social capital. While this is useful from a macro sense - it perpetuates the social institutions that have been built around that impulse - there is a wealth of thought by great thinkers across all cultures that that kind of thinking leads to dissatisfaction, unhappiness, political turmoil and all of the bad things of human interactions.

What then do I propose as an alternative? Well, if the trendster mentality of "what would make other people think I'm cool" is what we wish to avoid, then I propose you instead ask "what do I think is cool". This I would like to term the "funster" ideal. "What would be fun? What would be nice? What would be entertaining? What would be enlightening? What would I like to see be the case?" It may not seem like a big difference, but I would argue that this simple change of intention would result in a wide range of change. And from personal experience I would say that it has. The two mentalities can be seen at work and at play on the streets of Portland, and many other cities throughout the world. Most humorous of all, perhaps, is that the superficial expressions of these two mentalities are often indistinguishable. On the other hand, they are sometimes very easy to spot. But the important part is not the effect that it has on the things that we wear so much as the effect that it has on how we think, how we conceive of the world around us and how we determine what type of world we would like to create and perpetuate.

I was talking about some of these ideas with my sister recently and she detailed for me a somewhat nebulous project that she summed up with the phrase "We wear the funny hats." Hats of all kinds are worn by people. The person with the biggest hat is obviously the most important. But what about the people who wear the hats that aren't in style. The hats that are worn to make the wearer smile, and more importantly to make someone else smile. If, during my adolescence, you were to walk down any major street in my home town of Staten Island, NY wearing a hat made to look as though your head was being eaten by a fish then you would have been likely to get dirty looks at best and verbal or physical abuse at worst. The society would actively repress attempts to stray from the fashion norm, and by so doing repressed alternate perspectives. But in Portland and in many other cities the opposite is true. Differentiation is not only accepted but often lauded, such as with bumper stickers that proclaim "Keep Portland Weird". Now, of course, much of that proposed weirdness is done in a trendster fashion intended to garner social status through displays of creativity and uniqueness. And that's commendable in it's own right. But along with that there comes the possibility for the rise of the funsters.

It may seem as though I am merely trying to out hip the hipsters. Most important to remember is that I am not talking about drawing lines around one style or another and saying that this aesthetic is the one true taste! What I'm talking about is a fundamental shift in the intention behind even the most superficial of choices. You can't point at a person and say "they're obviously a trendster and therefore I hate them". Likewise you can't say a person is a better funster because they have the funnier hat. Abandon your desire to evaluate hats and the people that wear them. All hats are funny, if you look at them right. The only question is one you must ask yourself, which hat do I want to wear?

Letters To Elise

2012-01-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

Dearest Elise,

It's been far too long since last I sent word. Have you heard? I've finished my novel. It's about you, of course. Well, it's about what life is like without you. And isn't that the closest a person could ever come to writing about something outside themself? I spend too much time wondering if it's any good. I like it, but lord knows that doesn't mean much.
I miss the magic. I miss staying up through the magic hours. Don't get me wrong, the daytime hours have their charm, but there's far too many strangers wandering around. It's not like the nighttime. At night every street lamp is a spotlight and every winding, fog blanketed alley is an adventure. More to point, every woman is beautiful, when viewed under the light of some lonesome moon. Sure, you may say it's the drink, and frankly who am I to argue, but I can't help but think that all men are fools, and I'd rather be a fool rich in evenings than a daytime pauper. I've been leaning towards sobriety these days. The stumbling drunk doesn't play well with the matinee crowd. But it's mostly a marriage of convenience. My heart will always be with you. But as we grow older so grows the temptation to surrender the heart to petty bargaining. You can keep my heart. Keep it safe. Maybe I'll trudge through a few thousand more mornings. But please know that I'd trade it all for a scant few more nights with you. Oh, but I miss the magic. Silly as it all may seem in the light of day, with the proper lighting the play is the only thing that anyone remembers.
Wish me luck. I'm sending off the first draft soon. C'est un fait accompli. Iacta alea est. Sure, I'm far too fond of that phrase. But still, I continue.

With deepest love and regard,
- Mr. Devon B.

Journey Of A Thousand Miles

2010-10-18T22:54:00.001-07:00

I have completed the first draft of the first half of the novel I've been working on for about two years. I felt that fact was worth posting somewhere on the Internet, and this is the only real e-realty that I have left.

The book will be effectively split into two halves, the first half based heavily on the play "Prometheus Bound" by Aeschylus. The second will take a more random and free form approach inspired by the writings of Chuang tzu. The division between halves made it seem logical to break at the half-way point to review and edit the first half, which I have just finished doing.

My plan is to regroup and relaunch with a mind on getting the second half written by 03/14/2008. Considering how long it's taken me to finish the first half, that plan is optimistic to say the least. But it's good to try new things from time to time, so let's try optimism on for size.

Does a man sleep more soundly if his body is dashed upon the rocks of the unknown or sunk deep into a familiar grave? I suppose we'll see.

Wish me luck.

- Mr. Devon B.

Bonus Surprise Mini-Update

2010-10-11T15:33:00.001-07:00

In honor of all the brave men and women who lost their lives in the terrorist attack on the Death Star (there must have been at least a few women on board), I felt it necessary to alert the world that this is now my desktop image:

That is all.

- Mr. Devon B.

On Holidays; or Why I Spent My Saturday Evening Dressed As A Time Traveler

2010-09-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

When you're a low to mid level bureaucrat working in an office, the majority of your time spent performing the same six tasks on a perpetual loop as though you were trapped in the purgatory of a CD stuck on infinite repeat, there is a tendency to lose track of time. Perhaps this is putting it too lightly. There is a tendency for days and weeks and months and even years to soften into a long smear of muddled and nebulous recollection. This quality often leaves one with the same feeling about their life as you might get were you to have just stepped in something unpleasant, a sort of "uhhh? Eeeeewwwww" and "well now what am I supposed to do?" feeling.

For many years, most likely beginning out of the last gasps of my childhood, I've not been much for holidays. My parents had been raised Catholic, Polish and Irish respectively, and they had a love of the major Christian holidays inculcated in them from a young age. As such, even though they had long since abandoned Catholocism before I was even a consideration, we still celebrated Christmas and Easter. Of course, as a young child I loved the idea of getting presents and chocolate regardless of the inducement. As I grew I eventually started to ask questions about religion. As I have likely mentioned here before, I had assumed for many years that we were Christian as we were Caucasian, American and because we celebrated Christmas and Easter. We did not celebrate either with a particularly Christian framework, for us they were about family and general good will, but as a child of the eighties I watched a lot of television and was naturally subject to a lot of cultural bleed. One day I simply asked my father what religion we were. His response was something along the lines of "Well, I don't really believe in any one religion, but I have a kindof Taoist leaning in my philosophy". There's more to that story, but I'll save that for a later time.

As I moved from childhood to adolescence I grew increasingly more concerned with things I believed were very serious. The state of the world, poverty, the disproportionate distribution of wealth, social theory, revolution, et cetera. My family's money concerns, particularly memories of my father struggling to maintain the solvency of the construction company that he owned and operated, were certainly the genesis of my feelings of great concern regarding these lofty topics; but while my concerns may have started at home, by high school my thoughts had spread to the entire world. One problem with thinking constantly of matters that you deem to be exceedingly serious is that it tends to take the flavor out of life. Why should I receive presents each year when those same toys were likely manufactured by children younger than I? Some people jokingly refer to this notion as liberal guilt. Personally, I still think it is a perfectly valid question, one that I have yet to answer acceptably. If you feel you have, feel free to let me know.

It was around that time that I began to move mentally towards minimalism and began to divest myself of attachment to unnecessary material possessions. Of course, being an American teenager this process was far from immediate. I was quite attached to some of my stuff. I still am. However, more so than the people I observed around me, I began to detach myself from the sort of commitment to possession and opulence that seemed so pervasive. As such, I became utterly disenfranchised with Christmas. And with Christians. The seriousness of my concerns made those who did not completely agree with me seem wicked in their excess. The hypocrisy of claiming to celebrate the ideas of charity, humility and peace through a commercial structure responsible for perpetuating the most pernicious ills of humanity made me furious to the point of exasperation.

Once I had decided to be actively opposed to Christmas, the rest of the holidays fell like dominoes. Hallmark holidays were the easiest to abandon as they were the most superficial and I had little to no emotional investment in their celebration. Easter was fairly easy. Once I knew enough to simply say, "I am not Christian. I do not believe in the things that this day celebrates" I quickly stopped caring. Thanksgiving and Halloween were the hardest, as they are arguably the most fun holidays (after Christmas, of course). For the last seven or so years, Thanksgiving has been the only major holiday that I have actively celebrated with any semblance of gusto.

Was this decision to abandon holidays based on some very reasonable ideas about the way of the world? That is a question that could lead to a lengthy debate. The point, however, is that I had intentionally divested myself of traditions that had lasted for thousands of years. These were memes that had survived and evolved through countless generations. Christmas had originally been the Roman celebration of Saturnalia and Easter is purported to be based on the Saxon celebration of the Goddess Eostre. People had believed in and found use for these ideas, these rites, and these customs for more than twenty times the likely maximum length of my entire life. By eighteen I felt I knew enough to chuck them out the window.

There is always an egocentrism to rebellion. Even if it is couched in sacrifice and benevolence. Especially so. One thing I will always admit to being is a dyed-in-the-wool egocentric. To assume that your ideas are more valid than those of Society - an organism almost infinitely larger, older and more powerful than yourself - requires a commitment to believing in the boundlessness of your own importance, as well as a pair of stones. However, sometimes you need to give in to that particular delusion. Sometimes you need to man up and say, "No, I don't think that is correct at all." After all, that's part of the process. Your rampant love of self is necessary to push the boundaries of what society knows and believes. Your acts of rebellious egocentrism are Society questioning itself. You are God's voice of self-doubt.

So, as I stated earlier, mindless repetition of action, day-in day-out, has a tendency to erase the temporal borders that we artificially established to define our perception of change. Effectively you become lost in a dream of one never-ending day. It was once asked, "How do you establish a point of reference if the whole of reality is one flat expanse". How do you know what days are important if they are all the same. How do you know what to care about? How do you establish a valuation system when everything is the same? The answer is . . . ?

I came to the conclusion a while ago that holidays are more than we give them credit for. Sure, Christmas has been co-opted by Commercialism into the worship of our own luxury, but that will only continue to be true as long as we choose to celebrate it that way. We are the ones celebrating, and we can do so however we like. Perhaps it is not important how, why or what we celebrate, but perhaps it is important that we celebrate. Holidays are temporal landmarks. They are pillars we have constructed in the vast expanse of human existence to remind us why we keep going. They are monuments to the things that we find useful. They are lighthouses to help us through the shadows and fog.

It can be very easy to convince yourself not to believe in something, not to care about something. My opposition to holidays never helped a single person. While my very serious concerns were perhaps well intentioned, they ultimately did nothing productive. If anything, by abandoning the spirit of hope that a holiday can bring it likely caused me to become more joyless, bitter, self-centered and misanthropic. To become an anti-social recluse out of an opposition to the suffering of others is as exactly as ridiculous as celebrating charity through commercialism.

What to do about it? Here's how the process goes: people create an idea, they use that idea until its usefulness fades, they realize that the idea no longer useful, they devalue that idea, they replace it with a new idea (often an updated version of the original idea). Simple enough. How do I apply that to this situation? I believe that the ideas and action patterns currently celebrated by our major cultural celebrations are at best ineffectively honored and at worst are actively corroding the well being of Society. Instead I will make or find new celebrations, or reinvent the manner in which I celebrate the existing ones.

Yesterday I threw together a ramshackle costume and headed off to Portland's Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day. Now, some would argue that this event is just a flimsy pretense to wander the streets getting drunk and acting weird. That is absolutely correct. But simultaneously it is also a celebration of fun, creativity and a sense of whimsy. The idea of virtual strangers coming together entirely for the purpose of amusing themselves and each other and by so doing make the world a slightly more interesting place to be is an idea that I have decided to support. The format of the drunken rampage is limited in its scope and application, but that is just the host meme, a pre-existing and socially acceptable action pattern within which the core concept can incubate. The important part is the idea. If that idea, that people should try to help each other have fun and learn not to take themselves so seriously, is fostered and encouraged to spread it might very well change the world.

Or maybe the only result will be that nerds get to feel comfortable being themselves for a little bit and get a chance to chat up a few pretty girls. I can support that too.

Does This Count As Content?

2010-07-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Patient and Most Gracious Reader,

I know I haven't written anything on here for a while. All of my recent writing efforts have been turned toward the novel. However, I did knock a quick essay on Taoism together for my father which he has posted on his considerably more active blog. I believe that the only people actually interested in reading this essay have already read it, but for the sake of providing some kind of content I have included a link below.

I do find it quite humorous that my father and I both independently chose the same blog template.

http://throughthewesterngate.blogspot.com/2010/07/so-you-wanna-be-sage.html

Yours truly,
Mr. Devon B.

The Telltale Phone

2009-09-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, when the weight of the world gets to be a little too much for me, I freak out and go into a state of mind in which I find it extremely difficult to make simple decisions. Normally this is accompanied by feelings of mild dissociation, paranoia, physical discomfort and general panic; particularly when in public. These episodes are often (perhaps always) directly preceded by one or more nights of heavy intoxication and some pretty extreme emotional delving and/or philosophical contemplation. Basically, I scrape up the disgusting bits from the cockles of my psyche and try to clean them out a bit. The process leaves me emotionally and intellectually exhausted to such a degree that I am unable to deal with the routine questions of day-to-day existence.

Today, faced with this state of being, I managed to convince myself that a schvitz would be a good way to bring myself out of it. Normally a steam is one of the few things that will help me get very relaxed very quickly. So, off to the races I went.

The last time that I went for a steam it was with Guy. There had been a new girl behind the counter and she failed to let us know that the steam room was non-operational until after we had paid for our hour. The saunas were still working fine, so we still got to sweat, but it was poor customer service at the very least. We did our thing, sat in a very hot room and talked about philosophy, personal responsibility and relationships. However, after we got out, the counter rep informed us that we had been in the sauna for two hours instead of one. As such we were, of course, obliged by the terms of the customer-business relationship to pay for the additional time. While I couldn't argue against the fact that we had used the time, it was again poor customer service to not let us know that we had gone over our allotted time. I could go off on a rant about how the market will inevitably undermine the quality of ANY product in the name of ever-greater profit, however you've all heard that spiel by now.

As a result of my previous experience, I decided to bring my cell phone in and leave it in a locker with the rest of my stuff, so that I could keep track of the time. At first, while there was another steamer in the sauna, I sat in silence and let myself sweat. After about thirty minutes, the other steamer left and I was alone. I checked the time and verified that I had about thirty minutes remaining. I returned to the sauna to continue my sweat. As I sat there, I noticed that I was completely alone.

As is often the case when I am completely alone, my mind began to race with a slurry of paranoid thoughts of a wide variety. The most mediocre of which involved the usual questions about whether or not every single action I have ever performed has been correct in accordance with a set of morals that are loosely defined, constantly changing, and predicated on the assumption that it is my responsibility to be "better" than "normal people". The most ludicrous of which involved the possibility that the nigh-omnipotent clown from Steven King's "It" would appear and block me from the door or grab my feet from underneath the wooden bleachers.

Despite the steam, I was unable to relax. Soon, sitting alone in a room that was both dark and hot, I began to hear a distinct noise. At first, I insisted that it couldn't be what I thought it was. After a few more minutes, I became certain that it couldn't be anything else. Through the wall, I could hear the vibrating of my cell phone. Through the darkness and the heat it was mocking me, reminding me of everything that I was trying not to think about.

The cell phone is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the entrapment of the modern world. In one relatively simple piece of machinery we find the gateway to all of the metaphorical constraints of humanity. As a clock it confines us to the construct of quantified time, a useful tool, but one that is essential for the oppression of the individual will to that of the group power structure. As a communication device, it allows all of our responsibilities to follow us where ever we may go, ensuring that the individual has no excuse to be lax in performing their duties. Now, with Twitter, it means that we are even more connected to that ridiculous web of interdependent monkeys shitting and fucking their way through life. And here, through the darkness and the heat that normally allows me to relax, all of that meaningless, petty, fear-based bickering and control-mongering that makes up most of life was vibrating through the wall and reminding me of everything that makes me want to start stabbing folks.

As I was getting dressed, I looked at the dark wood that was used to make the benches and lockers for this facility. I thought about all of the calculations, value judgments and exercises of economic and political control necessary to bring those benches and lockers into existence. I thought about how the dark wood used was undoubtedly chosen to call to mind a "simpler existence", an illusion intentionally designed to create a stereotypically "relaxing" atmosphere. The idea of layers of social control being exercised to create an illusion of a relaxing environment, in an effort to pursue the purest metaphor for control (money), caused a level of dissonance in my mind-grapes that made me want to start crying at my inability to deal with the most basic of human activity.

Afterward, I found myself stll intellectually and emotionally exhausted and yet also physically relaxed. As such, I felt like a ghost trying to control someone else's body, the meat puppet only barely responding to my requests to move forward. I managed to purchase some take-out and make it home, then proceeded to lie in bed for hours.

The benefit of this particular experience came from the reminder that regardless of the hypocrisy of action within a market system, true freedom and true constraint can only exist within the mind. We do not need dark, hard-wood benches and expensive saunas to relax. The only place relaxation actually occurs is in the mind. All we are doing when we use things to help us relax is tricking ourselves into thinking that it is alright for us to relax, but if we learn how to properly use the mind, then we should no longer need to trick ourselves. We are only constrained when we believe we are constrained. We are only free when we believe we are free. The things that confine us can only do so as long as we believe that they can do so. The cell phone is a metaphor for our entrapment only if we choose to think of it as such. Otherwise it is a tool to be used as we see fit.

While I know that this line of thinking is what would likely be required to overcome my various neuroses, I don't know if I'll ever have the mental discipline to actually do so. And, of course, there's the rub. We can free ourselves of all of our constraints, if we choose to have the strength to do so. But, in order to do so, we must first have the strength to choose to have the strength. So we remain constrained because we believe we are not strong enough not to be constrained.

Apologies and Promises

2009-07-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hello loyal readers,

Just thought I'd take a spare moment to apologize for not providing any content in quite a while. Life's been more hectic than usual recently, and while I'd love to tell you guys all about it, I just don't have the time. However, I have recently decided to make it my current life goal to complete that novel I've been talking about, regardless of whether or not it will ever get published (or read, for that matter). So most of my writing time (what little of it there is) has been going to "Prometheus On The Rocks" (working title "Prometheus Needs A Novel"). The good news: I am pretty darn happy with how it's been going so far. The bad news: I probably won't have any good new Prometheus Needs A Drink material for a while. I'll try and squeeze out some shorter "what's happenin'" style updates just to keep you guys informed about interesting stuff I've got going on.

Apologies and promises!

- Mr. Devon B.

Magic On The Mind

2009-07-01T23:25:00.001-07:00

Thought you guys would get a kick out of this happenstance. I was walking into work today and I started thinking about how much I love fantasy and sci-fi stories and games, what with the wizards and lazer-beams and what-not. That got me thinking "Dad is always saying 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic', but what the hell does that REALLY mean? How do you define 'magic' in the sense that it's used there? Normally, 'magic' is used to refer to anything that can't be explained or understood within the normal bounds of 'science' (used as a blanket term for 'the known realm of understanding). But does that mean that significantly advanced technology can't be explained by science?" That didn't make any sense to me, but it lead me to ". . . well, then you have fictional realms like the Shadowrun and Warhammer universes in which 'magic' is just the manipulation of energry through personal, rather-than technological means. In those universes, the stuff that falls under the category of 'magic' (specifically referring to the fireball-throwing, turn-stuff-into-other-stuff kind of 'magic') is considered similar to another field of 'science' (referring to 'the study of knowable information'). So, the term 'magic' is as poorly defined as 'science' with regard to the distinguishing of the two. First we need to figure out what 'magic' means before we can figure out if technology is indistinguishable from it."

I put it out of my mind and went about my day. When I got home I checked yesterday's Free Will Astrology horoscope for Pisces, which read as follows:

magic (ma' jik), n. 1. A mysterious event or process that seemingly refutes the known laws of science. 2. A willed transformation of one's own state of mind. 3. A surprising triumph that exceeds all expectations. 4. Something that works, though no one understands why. 5. The impossible becoming possible. 6. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C. Clarke.) 7. A quality predominant in the lives of Pisceans during the period July 1 through July 20, 2009.

- Mr. Devon B.

Places At Which I Eat Regularly

2009-06-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Originally written as a Facebook note, but I might as well include it here.

While I normally don't participate in these memes, Justin Speers got me thinking about delicious, delicious food. Eating well, and by that I mean eating that which brings you great pleasure, is one of the truly great things of life. Some may say my palette is somewhat plebian, but I say, "Know what you love and don't make excuses for it".

Of the places I have eaten, here are the ones I love and the dishes that I usually get. They are listed in descending order, based on my current desire for each particular dish.

1) Crown Palace III, Staten Island, NY - Orange beef with mushu pancakes and a spring roll (or two)
http://tinyurl.com/na2urx
I don't know why, but I love this particular meal at this particular restaurant. Whenever I go back to Staten, I say it is to see family and friends, but it is actually to get more of this orange beef.

2) Mi Casita (now closed), Bradenton, FL - Cuban chicken sandwich
The best sandwich that I have ever had, and I have had a lot of sandwiches. The owner was also the cook and you could tell that he legitimately loved what he did. You could taste the love.

3) Revolutionary Pasta, Portland, OR - Shrimp Alfredo
One of the carts in the caravan at Hawthorne & 12th. Admittedly, we were somewhat chemically altered that night, but as Marco and I remember it, the pasta was so good that a mythos sprang up around its very existence. I am actually afraid to go back for fear that it may not be as good as I remember.

4) Reel 'm Inn, Portland, OR - Four chicken strips with Jo-jo's or tots (and usually a Gin & Tonic)
http://www.barflymag.com/bar/reel-m-inn.html
I am, in fact, one of the "steadfast gang of older area regulars [who] still plug endless sets of 80's rawk to the online jukebox and spin a starch'n'booze-fueled cheer". Everyone's your friend at the Reel 'm Inn.

5) Le Bistro Montage, Portland, OR - Rock shrimp in a basil pesto cream sauce with garlic, tomatoes, and parmesan.
http://www.montageportland.com/
The first dining experience I had in Portland and the place I take almost all visitors from out-of-town. How can you not love a place where the lounge is named "La Merde".

6) Kettleman's Bagels, Portland, OR - A baker's dozen of assorted bagels and a 1/2 lbs of "smoked salmon flavored cream cheese".
http://www.kettlemanbagels.com/
Until I found this place, I was not certain I could live in Portland for an extended period of time. I need good bagels to survive.

7) "Marinepolis" Sushi Land, Portland, OR - As much sushi as I can eat or stick in my pockets.
http://sushilandusa.com/
Sure it's a chain and sure it's got a conveyor belt, but none of that matters if you make a b-line straight from the door to the upstairs bar. There are better sushi places, (in fact there is a better sushi place within 3 blocks of my house) but when I really want sushi, nothing beats the Friday evening happy hour at this place. I have never left disappointed.

8) Oasis Cafe, Portland, OR - One or two slices of pepperoni pizza and a Henry Weinhard Root Beer.
http://www.oasispizza.com/
http://www.rootbeerreviews.com/brews/henryweinhard.php
While no pizza place can live up to my memories of $8 large NY style pies from my youth on Staten, when not in NYC, this is where I go for pizza.

9) Triple Nickel Pub, Portland, OR - Club sandwich and an order of curly fries.
http://tinyurl.com/okybnd
I am a sucker for dive bars, club sandwiches and curly fries and this place does all three well. Also, I do tend to enjoy places that neighbors say are "A blight on our neighborhood".

10) Belmont Pearl, Portland, OR - Anything on the lunch menu
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Location?oid=38520
While I generally steer clear of "pan-Asian" restaurants, this one does a hell of a job with their Chinese food. And if that weren't enough, they deliver.

11) Cricket Cafe, Portland, OR - Royal Sourdough Club with Tillamook pepper-bacon.
http://www.mrbreakfast.com/r_display.asp?restid=3943
I usually get the club, but I have never been less than delighted with anything I have ordered. The service is generally slower than evolution, but friendlier than most places. "Why can't two single bros go out and rock brunch Sunday-morning-style? We're here, we're hungry, get used to it, Brunch!"

12) The Acropolis (aka The A-crop), Portland, OR - $5 "House special" steak
http://www.barflymag.com/bar/acropolis.html
Men, women, even Marilyn Manson agrees that a $5 steak just tastes better when there are naked people around.

13) Fu Jin, Portland, OR - Orange chicken
http://tinyurl.com/pwhy6b
There was I time that I would eat here every Friday. I can't afford to do that anymore, but if you were to ask me where you could get good Chinese food, I would point you to Fu Jin.

14) Fire On The Mountain, Portland, OR - Wings
http://www.portlandwings.com/
Wings.

15) Foti's, Portland, OR - Gyro and "Greek fries"
http://tinyurl.com/pf3n8z
Every now and then, we all need a gyro. If you are in Portland when this occurs, this is the place to go.

16) Action Jackson's, Portland, OR - Bacon cheeseburger
http://tinyurl.com/oqj27e
If you are hung-over and you need a breakfast burger, then you are heading to Action Jackson's. They call it a "sports bar" but it's really a mini-casino with a few tables. While you are dead to the world, you can watch people pour dollar after dollar into a video poker machine and wait for one of the greasiest and most delicious burgers in town.

17) Kenny & Zuke's, Portland, OR - Pastrami cheese fries or pickled tongue sandwich
http://www.kennyandzukes.com/
Just tried this place for the first time with the Speers' last week, but the food was delicious enough to be on the list. [Insert misappropriated Yiddish here]

For The Love Of Money

2009-05-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

It is said that if you want to know what a person loves, watch where their money goes. After a few years working in a bank, I have gotten a chance to see an interesting cross section of America's spending habits. The vast majority of peoples' money seems to be spent on the basics; pay the rent, put food on the table. What's left after the fundamentals have been covered (and often more than what was actually left) is generally spent on trivial things to make life more bearable; movies, porn, alcohol, gambling, religion.

We all have our own relationship with money, but seldom do we as individuals stop to think about the meaning behind the money we spend. Most seem to grasp the basic concept of money as a medium of value used to facilitate trade, however I have been thinking about it over the last few years and I think it represents more than that. Money is the symbolic representation of the Will of Society. Used as a medium for exchange, money is the method through which the collective group portions out to individuals a share in control of the combined labor capacity of the collected whole. The use of money is the expression of economic control in the same way that voting is the exercise of political control.

Now, there are two ways in which this control is expressed, control over how labor is assigned and control over how resources are portioned out. In a bottom up system (a market economy), the individual's share of control is determined by their value to the group as a whole. Your personal "inclinations" (ability, knowledge and choice) determine the type of labor you produce and the need for your type of labor determines how large of a share of control you receive. Ideally, those who can produce a type of labor for which supply is short and demand is high are granted a greater share of economic control (ex. more job options, greater pay and benefits, more political power within their field).

Within a purely top down economic model, the Group, or a governing body thereof, determines how economic power will be exercised. Ideally, the governing authority would determine the best allocation of labor assets, the best allocation of productive power, and the best allocation of resources. For a moment, let's assume that it is possible to create a functioning top down economic system that could produce exactly the same productive output as a bottom up economic system. If we remove raw productive power as a factor, then the primary difference between a top down and a bottom up economic system becomes the direction from which power is exercised.

In a top down model (authoritative/totalitarian), control over the collected productive power of the group is vested in a centralized authority. That authority would then have the responsibility of collecting the necessary information and making the necessary decisions to provide for the best possible allocation of labor, production and resources. The obvious economic danger here is that the authority's information will be incorrect or biased, leading to a less than ideal allocation of resources. As I am sure we are all aware, consolidation of power has a tendency to lead to bias with regard to information gathering and reasoning. This is not to suggest that bias doesn't exist in other situations, but when power has been consolidated, the necessity to pursue the most economically functional doctrine can more easily be sidetracked by personal or group bias.

However, the real point at which such a system would break down would be the assumption that people can operate in the same capacity as ants. A top down economic model is perhaps best expressed in a colony of ants. Each unit in the colony, each ant, has a genetically determined "job" that it does from birth to death. The individual ant does not question why it has a given job, just performs its function for the continued survival of the whole. Now, with regard to actual numbers, we estimate that human beings account for 100 million tons of the biomass on Earth, while ants account for between 900 million and 9 billion tons of total biomass. Yet we have created "hives" that drastically outpace ants in productive power. I would argue that one of the main reasons we are able to reach such heights of productive capacity is the fundamentally "flawed" manner in which we organize power within our societies.

An ant colony is extremely good at providing for its own survival. So good, in fact, that it has no reason to evolve into anything more complex. There are estimated to be upwards of 14,000 different species of ants, and while there are wide variations in size and shape, the general "theme" of ants remains pretty common throughout. While I would not dream of arguing that human beings have "ceased to evolve biologically", I would certainly argue that after a point in our evolution as a species, the evolutionary process shifted much of its focus from a biological to a socio-cultural evolution.

Once we hit a certain population density, we began to operate effectively as larger "social organisms", evolving through a self-referential feedback related to information storage. Instead of individual units evolving new biological traits which passed to their genetic offspring, the evolution occurring became that of a quasi-immortal, super-organism that was able to collect and utilize drastically higher amounts of information than any individual unit could gather during his or her lifetime. More information meant more tools with which to affect the world. But, in order for evolution to occur, there must be a condition such that different participants in a system compete for survival. This is as true for ideas as it is for mockingbirds on the Galapagos Islands.

That is why the "human condition" was ideal to inspire this kind of socio-cultural evolution. Humans are simultaneously highly individualistic and highly cooperative. People cannot survive, or at least cannot flourish as we have, as solo animals. Biologically, we are significantly weaker than many other species. Yet, while we cooperate on a massive scale, each individual maintains a distinct concept of self and an understanding of their own self interest. This concept of self interest within the cooperative superstructure, combined with the capacity of each unit to process information and reason of it's own accord, leads to "splinter points" at which part of the social organism can branch off in new and creative directions, as though it were an asexual organism budding a genetically differentiated offspring. Rather than being trapped in the monotony of a "closed system", a system that functions too well to evolve, the social organism is incapable of reaching a stasis point and is forced by its own nature to continuously evolve by recreating and then destroying itself.

What does this have to do with money? I'm glad you asked. A purely top down economic model asks human beings to act against their natural inclination to exert a personal control on their world. The use of money in a market system symbolizes exerting a measure of economic control, even if the actual extent of that control is extremely limited. As an experiment if you were to give Group A a box of Brand X laundry detergent and say, "This laundry detergent has been proven to be the best detergent, so it is the only one you can use", then give Group B a choice between five laundry detergents, each with user reviews that clearly suggest that Brand X is the best, even the Group B people who chose an "inferior product" will likely report a more positive laundry experience than the Group A people. Even if the functional effect of the detergent for both groups is exactly the same, the group that participates in self-determination will feel more empowered, regardless of how illusory that self-determination may have actually been. This illusion of control provides an abstract component to the experience that is linked to the individuals perception of their own relationship to the world, rather than being linked to the functional outcome of the situation.

That is why democratic republicanism and a market economy is more effective at controlling people than an openly authoritative or totalitarian governmental structure. If you give people the illusion of a choice, their desire to express personal control over their world can be expressed in minor, controllable ways, thereby diverting it from "pooling" in areas that might actually result in significant change. A person who has a vote in a rigged election is significantly less likely to buy an assault rifle or form a union as an option for expressing their political control. A person who believes they can "take their business to another bank" is less likely to demand change from their current financial institution, even if rationally they recognize that the other companies will have the same policies.

Now, there is an oft' misquoted saying that "Money is the root of all evil". In fact, the version of the quote that has proliferated is from the King James bible and is actually, "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." It is not money itself that is the root of all "evil", but rather the "love of money". If we assume that money in the abstract represents control of the economic power of humanity, control of the productive capacities of the human cooperative, control of the Will of Society, then the "love of money" is the love of control. In this sense, I use the term love with a different connotation than I normally use it. In this context, I feel that "love" is actually referring to an obsessive desire, a feeling of need beyond that which is healthy. In short, the "love of money" in this sense is to value money beyond all other things.

So, if we take the "love of money" to refer to an obsessive desire for control of power, it becomes a little clearer how the love of money could be the root of all "evil". To take this concept further, it is not simply an obsession with personal control, but rather a desire for super-human control. True avarice is the desire for godlike control over the productive power, the "willpower", of humanity. For the love of money above all else is the desire of the individual to ascend above the ranks of mortal men to a manufactured godhood. In the Christian mythos, this is tantamount to the primary sin, Pride, that of the individualist (Satan) assuming that they are more important than the group identity (God).

For the love of money (the obsessive desire for control) is the root of all evil (has been correlated with consequences deemed negative by societal norms): which while some coveted after (which some pursue beyond the assumed healthy bounds set forth by societal control structures), they have erred from the faith (they have begun to value their own importance above that of the group identity), and pierced themselves through with many sorrows (have created dangerous, destabilizing, or punishable situations deemed negative by societal norms).

"The obsessive desire for control has been correlated with consequences deemed negative by societal norms: some purse this desire beyond the assumed healthy bounds set forth by societal control structures, and by so doing they come to value their own importance above that of the group identity and create dangerous, destabilizing or punishable situations deemed negative by societal norms." - Timothy 6:10

Now, comes the point where I integrate my classic argument. I posit that the obsessive desire for control beyond rational or healthy limits, regardless of how it is expressed, is caused directly by a fear based experience of powerlessness. A person who experiences an extreme feeling of fear due to a situation of powerlessness will often create a negative feedback pattern within their cognitive framework such that they are constantly attempting and constantly failing to assuage that internalized powerless feeling by acting out in extreme and often irrational ways. Rather than being able to reach a feeling of contentment through reasonable achievements, they are perpetually driven by this internalized feeling of powerlessness to assert their control over the world, and by so doing, assert their own power. However, no measure of external control will ever satisfy such a person if they fail to deal with that internalized feeling of powerlessness.

In short, Fear is the "root of all evil". A person incapable of effectively dealing with fear will forever be driven onward like Io being chased by that gadfly. Only by being empowered to gain control of their own cognitive framework, to gain "control of their life", can an individual learn to act within rational and/or healthy and/or constructive patterns.

To Lenny

2009-04-22T02:45:00.001-07:00

With the possible exception of my mother and father, there is no single human being who has had as much influence on my life as Leonard Cohen. I hadn't realized how true that actually is until very recently.

I am told that as a baby, my father would sing to me from "Songs of Love and Hate" and other old school "Lenny" albums. Of course, that was mixed with songs like "Egg Sucking Dog" for a good dose of country flavor. The argument could be made that my infantile exposure to such a rich and forlorn collection of songs may have encouraged my current state of highly romanticized, highly eclectic pessimism. The argument could also be made that Lenny and the like worked as lullabies because I was a romantic and forlorn baby. Who can say?

I've spent more nights than I care to remember listening to Lenny sing about the brutal and unrelenting beauty of this cruel and amazing life. I remember when I first discovered "New Skin for an Old Ceremony", back in the before-time when one had to buy a CD in a store, like a caveman. I remember being surrounded by the darkness of the night. I was so tired of the abuse and failure that my young life had offered me up 'til that point. It was a time during which I contemplated suicide so often that the idea was more of a "when" than an "if". I remember Lenny's voice reaching out through the darkness as I lay on the sofa of my parents' living room, saying,

"I asked my father, I said 'Father, change my name. The one I'm using now is covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame'."

More than anything else, with those lines I knew that I wasn't alone in feeling deserted by the ruined idea of a purposeful creator and an idealized destiny. Even as I was digesting the new-found feeling of commonality with another person that I had found, he hit me with the next line,

"He said, 'I locked you in this body. I meant it as a kind of trial. You can use it for a weapon, or to make some woman smile'."

Such a short phrase, yet it somehow encapsulated the entirety of my teen angst. It was through that line that my young dreams metamorphosed from the stuff of superheroes and socialist upheaval to a practical, yet highly romanticized desire to intensely love another person.

I remember "Chelsea Hotel #2". I remember a time when I felt so tremendously ugly that I knew I was relegated to the bell-towers and make-shift sanctuaries of life, existing as some side product of humanity. But amidst my theoretical isolation I remember Lenny singing,

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And I knew that I had "the Music". Regardless of anything else that may be denied to me through the happenstance of genetics and environment, I had access to a beauty that couldn't be reached by people living inside the width of the Bell curve.

I remember "The Stranger Song". I remember the time shortly after I had tried and failed to love an amazing woman who, for a brief and incredible time, loved me more than anyone else in the world. She'd given her heart to people who'd all failed her, and I was just the newest. I remember sitting in a darkened dorm room and first hearing Lenny's words,

"It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger."

In some ridiculous irony, my heart broke for her because I couldn't bring myself to love her the way she deserved. I loved her so much that I wanted to protect her from the fact that I could never love her enough. It was then that I decided that if I cannot actually love, I should not make the pretense of love.

I remember "Tower Of Song". I remember "Tower of Song" from a hundred different points in my life. I suppose I remember "Tower of Song" best from the time after I left school. I remember finding the first gray hair in my beard as I tried to convince myself to keep walking out the front door every day,

"Well my friends are gone and my hair is gray
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song
I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

...

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never have to lose it again."

I remember Julie Christensen & Perla Batalla singing "Anthem" for the movie, "I'm Your Man". I remember that regardless of how much I may want life to conform to my idea of perfection, that I should accept the flawed and beautiful life that is around me, and that the cracks are how the light gets in,

"The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

. . .

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee."

Lenny has saved my life more times than I can realistically say. I can say, without a doubt, that I would not be the person I am today without Leonard Cohen. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is irrelevant. I would rather be a living, shitty poet than a dead teenager. I'd rather be an enlightened fool than a fool in the light. I'd rather be with Lenny, than without.

To Lenny.

A Year In Status Updates

2009-03-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

So, I'm going to kick off the pre-birthday, introspective blog post series with something I have wanted to do for a while.

How do you know a man? Do you know him for the great days of his life, when all that is heroic or villainous in him swells to meet a point of exceeding potential? Or do you know him for all the little days, the minutia of living every minute and hour as best he can?

As a retrospective of the minutia of my life, here are all of my Facebook updates since March 15th of last year:

03/08
- Devon is listening to songs of death, oppression and lost love, and remembering the brutal history of his people.

- Devon is starting a new mantra of "accept and move on."

- Devon has a delightfully refreshing kick, with a tangy after-taste.

- Devon is attempting to create a work-around past "panic mode."

- Devon finds himself without a status

- Devon requests a "HO!" if you've got your funky bus fare.

- Devon misses pretending to be a real person.

- Devon will be heading to the IKEA labyrinth again, to face off against the Minotaur of excessive consumerism, and to help someone buy a bed.

- Devon thinks the meeting with his accountant went well-ish.

- Devon is having way too much fun cleaning and using his new accounting software.

- Devon had an awesome day yesterday.

- Devon is daydreaming about food.

- Devon thinks that "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust" is a solid album if you can make it past the first two songs which are terrible.

- Devon is wishing that he had come up with the name "Question Mark & The Mysterios."

- Devon has realized he is in love with the area in which he lives!

- Devon has returned from another successful mission for House Telvanni, after safely escorting his guildmate to Boise.

- Devon is dorking-out in a BIG way.

04/08

- Devon is coming as he is, as he was and as you want him to be.

- Devon is not sure if he's having a break-down or a break-through, but something is going to be broken when he gets done.

- Devon needs Irish music.

- Devon will take your mother, Dorothy Mantooth, out to a nice seafood dinner and NEVER call her again.

- Devon once again curses George W. Bush, time bandit.

- Devon once again curses George W. Bush for fucking with Time.

- Devon once again curses Microsoft for fucking with so many things.

- Devon says, "Damn that sorcerer! Twenty gold pieces and I'm wankered on Rohypnol."

- Devon thinks that "Intolerable Cruelty" is underrated because of the quality of the rest of the Coen Brother's collected work.

- Devon has no idea what he is going to do today before work.

- Devon is trying so very hard.

- Devon has been reading "Portland On Fire."

- Devon HAS RIDDEN THE MIGHTY MOON WORM!!

- Devon is fucking pumped about the idea of people actually using their minds to make their lives better!

- Devon was born before the wind, also younger than the sun, ere the bonnie boat was won as he sailed into the mystic.

- Devon is fairly excited about "The Fall."

- Devon is CERTIFIABLE! . . . hopefully.

- Devon is going to drink some absinthe and go to the Roller Derby to celebrate.

- Devon is of the opinion.

- Devon is a man among men, a baker among bankers and a porcupine among balloons.

- Devon is adrift.

- Devon will dance with you in Vienna, he'll be wearing a river's disguise. The hyacinth wild on his shoulder, his mouth on the dew of your thighs.

- Devon just dumped a jar of salt, that may or may not have contained an evil spirit, on the lawn of a neighborhood church, confident their god will protect them.

- Devon is a man, is a man . . . is the son of a man.

- Devon is obsessed with finding out who rode past his house on a Bike last night and mentioned his name.

- Devon met you at JC Penny. He thinks your name tag, said Jenny.

- Devon is trying to decide if he is concerned or jealous that Brewster is locked inside the Reel 'Em Inn.

- Devon is fucking angry.

- Devon is talking Revolution, again.

- Devon 's name is Archie Bell, and these are the Drells, and this is the music we tighten up with.

05/08

- Devon has survived a weekend visit from the folks, and is stronger for it, perhaps.

- Devon is deciding between embarking on a month of the most brutal exercise and dietary regiment he has ever experienced, or not doing that.

- Devon knows how Galactus must feel.

- Devon has the same feeling of exhaustion and desire to vomit as after a night of dancing, but none of the delusions of grandeur. Maybe he should exercise drunk.

- Devon is apparently a write-in candidate for Portland Metro Councilor District 3. Thanks, Justin!

- Devon will most likely dream about doing naughty things to a club sandwhich tonight.

- Devon is confused by the release of a new X-Files movie a decade after the show was popular. Also, cast includes Billy Connolly and Exzibit?

- Devon is becoming a fan of Vampire Weekend, even if it is a terrible name.

- Devon can't come up with a reason to get up tomorrow, but he will sleep on that question.

- Devon was being chased by a creepy, old, possibly homeless woman through the streets of dream New York.

- Devon has a trick hip that he doesn't even know about. It's a very subtle trick.

- Devon is once more turning to the Gipsy Kings for strength.

- Devon is gripping Harsh Reality by the buttocks and saying "Baby, you're my forever girl!"

- Devon is gripping Harsh Reality firmly by the buttocks and saying "Baby, you're my forever girl!"

- Devon has a deep, physical need for an onion bagel with lox spread.

- Devon has broken you like a bad habit; will break you like a commandment; has left you broke like M.C. Hammer.

- Devon is the stone that the builder refused . . .

- Devon read the news today, oh boy . . .

- Devon says, "some people, they call me monster. Some people, they call me saint. My talent feeds my darker side, yet no one will complain . . . "

- Devon is extremely excited about seeing Blue Scholars tonight

- Devon is fully licensed, bonded and insured.

06/08

- Devon is still trying to dream the impossible dreams.

- Devon is banking on the likelihood that the "Large Hard-on" Collider is retroactively responsible for beginning life on this planet, like in that episode of Star Trek.

- Devon is watching muted demonstrational videos for the N810 on YouTube and feels dirty, like he's watching nerd-porn.

- Devon wants to be . . . your sledgehammer.

- Devon is having one of those "do a bunch of morphine" kind of days.

- Devon can't.

- Devon is not really surprised that seeing "The Fall" didn't cheer him up yesterday.

- Devon has stayed up too late, again.

- Devon is trying to bring himself to admit that his father can be right sometimes.

- Devon is impressed by the Pub At The End Of The Universe's ability to match music almost perfectly to the subject of the conversation.

- Devon is that kind of old kumquat that would probably fuck a snake . . . and then write a little poem about it.

- Devon is under the impression that the next jacket he purchases should be a light brown duster.

- Devon is relatively certain that materialism just criticalled him for 50.

- Devon is making one heap of all his winnings, and risking it all on one game of pitch & toss, and losing and starting again from his beginnings . . .

- Devon is doing that thing he wasn't going to do anymore.

- Devon is seriously considering presenting on the evils of the banking industry at "Ignite Portland Fall 2008."

- Devon is amazed at how frequently he finds that his personal philosphy matches Einstein's word for word, but pissed off that his thoughts are not original.

- Devon hates waiting, like even for a bus or something, an important phone call . . .

- Devon has decided that his Sith name shall be Darth Weber.

- Devon is gonna take the brown paper, white paper, stick 'em together with the tape, the tape of love.

- Devon is arming himself to begin a holy war against the banking industry.

- Devon is putting various ducks in various rows.

- Devon has gotten too good at the "Stop & Sit" side of life and needs to remember how to do the "Gettup & Go."

- Devon is summoning up the willpower of all the stubborn Irish bastards with the name Barrett that came before him.

- Devon will see "War, Inc." regardless of what anyone says (because John Cusack is dreamy).

- Devon liked what they were going for with "War, Inc." but thought the execution lacked a cohesive direction (John Cusack is still dreamy, though).

- Devon is trying to decide if he should use his morning to do things, write about stuff he has already done, or watch stories about fictional people doing things.

- Devon lifts us up where we belong.

07/08

- Devon is here to sell lubricants, Bob, INDUSTRIAL LUBRICANTS!

- Devon is building manly things with manly tools, manily.

- Devon loves talking to people who are awesome. Conversely, he does not love talking to people who are not awesome.

- Devon has a need growing inside of him. A need for paintball. LONG LIVE THE KNIGHTS OF SEALAND!!

- Devon is excited about a "country fair" for the first time in his life. The two bottles of absinthe may have something to do with that.

- Devon is goin' to the Fair.

- Devon is sad to admit it, but after 3 days at the Oregon Country Fair, he is actually tired of both drinking and breasts.

- Devon sad to admit it, but after 3 days at the Oregon Country Fair, he is actually tired of Fun in it's entirety. Good thing he's going back to work. HUZZAH!

- Devon is celebrating the beautiful violence with which humankind recreates itself by watching "Casablanca" on Bastille Day.

- Devon is a shooting star moving through the sky like a tiger defying the laws of gravity.

- Devon just eureka'd a facet of wu wei that he had never previously grasped, . . . bitches.

- Devon is having fun with tools. TOOLS OF POWER!

- Devon is certain that "The Invisibles" is the best comic book ever written.

- Devon has a full day planned: a shvitz at Loprenzi's, chinese food, The Dark Knight, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and maybe Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog perhaps?

- Devon is going to do something today . . . but what?

- Devon has been dreaming about Choice Theory and self-propagating patterns again.

- Devon is drunk on the act of creation. HUZZAH!!

- Devon is simultaneously excited and ensaddened about the series finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

- Devon just had his face melted by the series finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the best vaguely Taoist childrens cartoon ever made.

- Devon is more tired than a tired guy from Tired Town, whose name is Joseph "Sleepy" Rothweiner.

- Devon is officially excited about Fallout 3.

- Devon thinks it's amusing that if you google "Revolution" the first result is "Buy Revolution at $30."

- Devon loves "The Postman" and "Hudson Hawk" and if you don't like it you can meet him in Thunderdome!

- Devon spent tonight playing Battleship in a lesbian bar, and is fairly certain that his life is awesome.

- Devon will have plenty of time to date when he is six feet in the cold, cold ground!

- Devon has great skill in Memory World!!

08/08

- Devon is going to go see "The Wackness" with Ben Kingsley. Ben is buying the popcorn.

- Devon is going to Flugtag, woo!

- Devon is randomly reading through a flame war on the Honda Forum. Why? Why not?

- Devon is looking to get MORE out of his dremel.

- Devon sure can waste a lot of time at a hardware store when he's not paying attention.

- Devon has the grim feeling of satisfaction one gets when one conquers nature with technology. Although, is rust "nature"?

- Devon has got 63 problems . . .

- Devon is willing to admit that naming a computer "Lazarus, who is called Simon" is kinda asking for trouble.

- Devon is willing to admit that the "not going to the store will make me eat the food I have" plan doesn't work, and never has.

- Devon is ruthlessly simplifying his life.

- Devon may or may not be a super villain, but he certainly meets the facial hair prerequisite.

- Devon is going to brunch . . . with a lady.

- Devon has old friends popping out of the woodwork!

- Devon can't believe that Time's gonna heal this wound that he's speaking of . . .

- Devon has seen the marvelous Breadfish, swimming in the ocean waters . . .

- Devon is very glad that Brewster continues to live.

- Devon has over time reversed his position on "Ten New Songs" by Leonard Cohen and now thinks it is some of his best work. "Dear Heather" is another story . . .

- Devon is watching L.A. Story and feeling sorry for himself. Wah!

- Devon is feeling far too cliche.

- Devon is a little upset that awesome things seem to happen all at once. Adult Soap Box Derby, Tour De Fat AND Supertrash Movie Festival on one day . . . Really?

- Devon is heading to the ADULT SOAP BOX DERBY, . . . bitches!

- Devon has resigned to build 1 to 3 carts for next years Adult Soap Box Derby. Do you prefer "Popes Mobile", "Giant Mr.T Head" or "Death Star"?

- Devon sometimes looks in the mirror and sees Baron Munchausen, sometimes sees Don Quixote.

- Devon likes to think that he's immune to the stuff. Oh Yeah. But he's gonna have to face that he's addicted to love.

- Devon is trying to think up ridiculous activities that do not involve alcohol consumption in preparation for his upcoming visitor.

- Devon is trying to think up ridiculous activities that do not involve alcohol consumption in preparation for an impending visit from "The Gauntlet."

- Devon just wants to pay someone to let him sit in their wood burning sauna for half-an-hour. What is the use of a free market if he can't exchange money for services!

- Devon is going to have to settle for a steam sauna, like an ANIMAL!

- Devon is considering borrowing the $1500 for a personal wood burning sauna.

- Devon is amazed to find out that Zero Effect was filmed and set in Portland, OR.

- Devon is hoping that Brew will agree to a birthday showing of "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" at the Omnimax theater.

- Devon wants to put on his his his his his boogie shoes.

- Devon is going to sleep at 8am and contemplating "The Joker" as a Taoist philosopher, because life is what you make of it, and Devon makes life awesome.

- Devon will STEAL YOUR FACE!!

- Devon has acquired Brendan.

- Devon ain't misbehavin', he's savin' all his love . . . for you.

- Devon whole-heartedly believes that "Max Payne" is the greatest film noir video game that exists and ever will exist, and is willing to fight anyone who disagrees.

- Devon converses for tips only. Also, no kissing on the mouth.

- Devon says, "Tom Waits is patient zero for both the Rocking Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu."

- Devon will have time to sleep when he is dead, which will be in a few weeks at the rate he is going.

- Devon has used up all his fun. September shall have to be entirely work and self-flagellation.

- Devon probably should not be researching the evils of corporate banking directly before going to work.

- Devon says, "Don't fight the Power. Empower yourself."

- Devon says, "Don't fight the Power. Empower yourself and those around you."

09/08

- Devon is working on his "Go, go, go!"

- Devon spent some time today remembering why he got into this business.

- Devon is a little annoyed with the airtravel market.

- Devon simultaneously has a thousand regrets and absolutely none.

- Devon is seriously considering a White Lotus tattoo.

- Devon is going to go kick some tub ass.

- Devon feels that "Everything's comin' up Milhouse!" is one of the most expressive idioms to have cropped up over the last century and hopes its here for the long haul.

- Devon stayed up all night playing Spore until it made him physically ill.

- Devon says, "There's still alot of drinks that I ain't drunk, there's still some pretty thoughts that I ain't thunk. There's still alot of wine and lonely girls . . .

- Devon says, "I'm my only hope for a hero."

- Devon thinks that the only hope for the evolution of the species is for people to learn to stop confining themselves with labels and limitations.

- Devon wishes he could see Patrick Stewart in "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan" on Broadway again. What a weird thing to wish for.

- Devon realized, while walking home with his soggy underpants in one hand and a Rice Krispie Treat in the other, that he is in fact, a character in a Tom Robbins novel.

- Devon is going to "Holy Grail" at the Laurelhurst! Ni!

- Devon has a strange desire to become a cab driver.

- Devon wonders if you can effectively use "get back on the horse" symbolism if you were never on the horse to begin with. "Get on a horse!" just isn't as inspiring.

- Devon does know you, despite what the whiskey may make you think.

- Devon is going on the war path again, apparently.

- Devon has remembered that the "War Path" won't get him anywhere, and is back to the "Logical and Reasonable Change" path.

- Devon realized that while he never had the "sex talk" with his parents, they did let him watch HBO's "Oz."

- Devon is attempting to attempt.

- Devon wonders how much of his day should be spent trying to beat the final board of Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

- Devon thinks that if we are going to nationalize housing, we may as well nationalize health care, power, and farming.

- Devon seems to like "the Fringe", even though he was trying very hard not to.

- Devon is considering.

- Devon is hungry for an adventure.

- Devon says, "CORNBREAD. Ain't NOTHING wrong with that!"

- Devon wishes that one of his more musically inclined friends would remix Lou Reed's "Street Hassle."

- Devon has apparently decided to go flip-mode for a while. They say it's the greetest.

- Devon is having a Vicodin breakfast.

- Devon wants the catonakeyboardinspace song to be his new ringtone.

- Devon performed a major hardware reconfiguration on his computer without any serious setbacks, delays, problems or crying. Must mean we are nearing the End of Days.

10/08

- Devon is relatively certain that the Foo Fighters song "My Hero" is about him.

- Devon has tossed the Cap of Liberation into the ring: http://ignite-proposals.pragmaticraft.com/pro posals/131.

- Devon wishes he had time to unplug for a while. How humorous.

- Devon clearly hasn't had enough robot.

- Devon smells of whiskey, cigarette smoke and fried chicken, has recently been punched in the eye, and is hardcore in love with Life.

- Devon is going to go see Ghostbusters at the Bagdad, because life is awesome!

- Devon hears the call of Dorkiness beckoning him.

- Devon is already excited about "Army of Darkness" next month.

- Devon says, "A rock opera about unecessary surgery staring Anthony Stewart Head, 'Repo: The Genetic Opera' you have won my price of admission fair and square."

- Devon is going to rez a piece of black ice so nasty that you'll wish you'd have jacked out before even dreaming of accessing that node, sucka!

- Devon is beginning to accept that no vocation has ever (and probably will ever) call to him as loudly as writing.

- Devon 's brain is like a delicious stew.

- Devon thinks his little sister is absolutely right, "The grass is always greener after you've watered the lawn."

- Devon is going to assume that he is responsible for the return of the handlebar mustache.

- Devon is . . . an uncle!

- Devon is starting the day by being annoyed about his video card issue.

- Devon has decided that "U Don't Dance To Techno Anymore" by the Alabama 3 is his new favorite Country/Western song.

- Devon has decided that "U Don't Dance To Techno Anymore" by the Alabama 3 is his new favorite Country/Western song.

- Devon did not make the appropriate offering of Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew to the computer gods and has paid with his first born hard drive.

- Devon could stand to chill, the fuck, out.

- Devon doesn't trust the Gorton's Fisherman anymore . . . not after what he did to that little girl.

- Devon is Joe The Resurfacer.

- Devon may just have a man-crush on NPH.

- Devon says, "With my Freeze Ray I will stop . . . the world."

- Devon is saddened that there has never been (to his knowledge) a super villain called Thomas Deatherson or Lady DIE!

- Devon believes that drinkin' + barbeque + drinkin' + hot tub + video games = A happy Devon.

- Devon is taking the day off.

- Devon feels very lost.

- Devon is pretty sure that watching a day's worth of Doctor Who is the dork equivalent of drinking until you vomit in someone's flowerbed.

- Devon is very, very angry but in a mellow sort of way.

- Devon is what happens when your powers combine.

- Devon wonders: if home is where the heart is, and Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco, does that mean he pays taxes in California?

- Devon now has more hard drive space than he can reasonably use. He shall have to use it unreasonably then.

- Devon has the Party Itch and Baby, you'd better scratch it.

- Devon is actually impressed at how thoroughly and completely "Max Payne: The Movie" failed to convey the drama and human emotion present in a VIDEO GAME MADE IN 2001!

- Devon is sad that he won't be making it to Zombie Walk tomorrow.

- Devon really wants a soda. Like for serious.

- Devon is feeling kinda nostalgic for the 90's, when he was angry about everything and didn't have to worry about his 401k losing value or compound interest.

- Devon 's normal sleep schedule is about to suffer from some fallout . . . 3.

- Devon thinks that Ron Perlman should narrate everything, or at least everything that Morgan Freeman is unavailable for.

- Devon doesn't want to set the World . . . on . . . fire . .

- Devon fucking loves a good Venn Diagram joke.

- Devon is struggling to get himself into party mode. Another sign he is getting old.

11/08

- Devon must warn you that this doll carries with it an evil curse. But it comes with a free Frogurt. The Frogurt is also cursed. But it comes with a free topping . .

- Devon doesn't know which person he is more impressed with today, woman who got mugged and then hit by a car or guy who let a hooker steal his card and PIN.

- Devon would have written in Al Gore if he wasn't certain that some degree of election fraud was going to be occurring in the near future.

- Devon is pretty tired.

- Devon is wearing new shoes, new shoo-oo-ooo-ooooes.

- Devon is goin' down to Tejas to marry up some folks.

- Devon is back from Tejas after marryin' up some folk.

- Devon has now officially read "Watchmen" and still holds the opinion that "The Invisibles" is the best comic book he's ever read.

- Devon is really, really tired.

- Devon has purchased new underpants. Feel free to rejoice.

- Devon comes off as being a pretentious asshole in job applications because he is a pretentious asshole.

- Devon comes off as being an elitist asshole in job applications because the Small Brains just don't understand his GENIUS!

- Devon just keeps hitting that darn rimshot button.

- Devon likes to think he has some idea of when to hold 'em and some idea of when to fold 'em.

- Devon says, "We the American Working Population hate the fact that eight hours a day is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us . . ."

- Devon believes the time for food is nigh!

- Devon just installed some weather stripping on his garage door. FUCKING HELL-YEAH, MOTHERFUCKERS!!

- Devon is glad that his bigoted stomach is finally starting to learn to tolerate lactose. Proof that "dietary busing" works.

- Devon has utterly failed to get any work done this morning.

- Devon is disappointed in Prince.

- Devon is disappointed in the organization of SantaCon this year, and yes, he does realize the irony of that.

- Devon loves his real (fake) job and hates his fake (real) job.

- Devon is going over to Tel Orleans for a little solo hot tub action.

- Devon has finished drinking beer and sitting in the hot tub, and shall now get some sleep. His life is so hard some times.

- Devon is actually shocked that there are 30 states where an individual can be fired simply for being gay.

- Devon wants to know why he can't find a Zeb-Roller 2000 to save his life. http://jonlandrum.wordpress.com/2006/08/05/th e-zebra-zeb-roller-2000-rollerball-pen/.

- Devon is perhaps overly bummed about his favorite pen being discontinued. He has less than enthusiastic expectations for its replacement, the "GR8 Roller."

- Devon has this new thing where drinking beer makes his tummy hurt. He is not amused. Hopefully it was just the Pabst.

- Devon is (in complete opposition to his normal mindset) considering an impulse tattoo. $20 is just too cheap.

- Devon has grasped that today's (not so) hidden message is "Evolve or die!". Question is, how best to proceed?

- Devon is having one of those nights where he misses all the little things that most people take for granted.

- Devon is in the mood for some kind of big, important event to look forward to.

- Devon hopes his pony, he hopes his pony, he hopes his pony knows the way back home.

- Devon is disgusted by humanity. Yes, that means you too. http://wcbstv.com/local/walmart.worker.trampl ed.2.875747.html.

12/08

- Devon is home again, home again, jiggity jig.

- Devon wants to write "Waiting for Godot 2: The Return."

- Devon is back to craving something big and important to look forward to (something to which he can look forward).

- Devon is shining on, you crazy diamond.

- Devon is having one of those days where every action is amazing, adrift in a sea of infinite potentiality.

- Devon is downloading six seasons of Perfect Strangers.

- Devon wishes he could start every day like yesterday, with a hang over that makes you feel BETTER than normal, an episode of Doctor Who and a mid-drive epiphany.

- Devon has "emancipated" Paradise Falls with Abraham Lincoln's Repeating Rifle, just like Abe would have done (if he had had Power Armor).

- Devon teared up a little at the end of Fallout 3, thus answering the long standing question "has a video game ever made you cry?"

- Devon is not really in the SantaCon spirit today.

- Devon is slowly but surely getting into the SantaCon spirit.

- Devon now officially has the SantaCon spirit thanks to Andrew W.K. and the promise of gin (the Christmas Liquor).

- Devon had such a good time at "fake" SantaCon that he almost doesn't want to go to "real" SantaCon next week for fear it will ruin the magic.

- Devon must be feeling "sassy" today.

- Devon doesn't have time for this shit . . . and yet, here we are.

- Devon is heading down to the Pub At The End of the Universe to talk with Brandon about manly things, like shaving and not expressing emotions.

- Devon is giving birth to "Enlightened Functionalism", one awkward piece at a time.

- Devon is offering this simple phrase to kids from one to ninety-two . . .

- Devon loves you, always has.

- Devon has got a ticket for the fast train to Delicious Town.

- Devon is total crap at picking restaurants.

- Devon has no (god damn) idea how he has lived his life without Cookin' With Coolio so far.

- Devon says, "If SantaCon is like Double Christmas, than I get five Christmases to the average person's one. Suck math, normies!"

- Devon is not happy when there is a day that should be a snow day, but isn't.

- Devon feels that Portland's complete and utter inability to effectively deal with even a small amount of snow is no longer cute and is, in fact, quite irksome.

- Devon is tired of this snow crap and just wants to get back to the gray and soggy Portland winter that he knows and begrudgingly accepts.

- Devon feels guilty about not writing as much as he should, which is funny considering all the other things he probably should be feeling guilty about but isn't.

- Devon is pretty sure that this toothe ache/ear ache combo that is roaming around the left side of his head is actually being caused by his lower back.

- Devon is tired of snow, tired of face pain, and tired of work.

- Devon thinks that the Fallout 3 mod forums are not the place for a discussion of morality, particularly an extremely poorly thought out discussion of morality.

- Devon loves to shower!

- Devon is trying to dream- and not make dreams his master, and think- yet not make thoughts his aim . . .

- Devon curses at the snow, hoping that spite can change the weather.

- Devon has decided that he shall only tell jokes in a mock German accent from now on.

- Devon is vastly more excited about the idea of more Doctor Who on Dec 25 than he is about some rinky dink holiday. Which is this one again? St. Swivens Day?

- Devon has a snow day! Now he loves snow! HUZZAH SNOW! HUZZAH!

- Devon only seems to get the Christmas spirit after the 20th.

- Devon likes to think he's made a few people happy over the years.

- Devon is contemplating calling in sick today and thereby having a two day work week.

- Devon put cream cheese on his latkes instead of sour cream. Why? Because he's crazy like that. Maybe next time he'll have them with bacon . . . or shellfish.

- Devon looks almost as good in red as he does in blue, and DAMN does he look good in blue.

- Devon can eat his dinner in a fancy restaurant . . . but nothing (I said nothing) can take away these blues.

- Devon says, "You there, boy! What day is today?"

- Devon is spending the day drinkin' and watchin' TV with Mandingo and Keene-Machine.

- Devon is sick, frowny face emoticon.

- Devon needs a root canal . . . hooray!

- Devon thinks it is cute that his dad sent him a picture from a Gogol Bordello concert using his iPhone.

- Devon is perched upon a precipice, 'tween all that was and all could be. Let sleep the ghosts of yesterday, we've many days ahead to see.

01/09

- Devon is going to call the customer service lines of random companies and complain until somebody makes sure that we will have no more snow this year.

- Devon deserves some sushi for scheduling his root canal. Obviously he feels fit to balance his own karmic scales, without leaving it up to the Universe.

- Devon is wondering if the possibility of a "super volcano" is enough to warrant blowing his hard earned money at a local gentleman's establishment.

- Devon feels roundly and thoroughly disgusted with himself. He must have had a great time last night.

- Devon loves 2009 and doesn't care who knows it.

- Devon does not like the look of the new Doctor.

- Devon had some weird, weird dreams.

- Devon has finally accepted that what he has always wanted to be when he grows up is a circa 1890's New York singing and dancing newsboy labor organizer.

- Devon has decided to crazy up his life a little bit, right after he gets this expensive dental procedure out of the way.

- Devon is perpetually proud of his little sister.

- Devon feels like it's raining all over the world.

- Devon just had the most awesome root canal ever and is, for some reason, in the mood for romance.

- Devon spent his day on someone elses couch talking philosophy and random trivia with friends, re-watching Avatar, eating delicious food and NOT thinking about work.

- Devon thinks "Cold Weather Till Saturday" is the best graffiti he has ever seen.

- Devon is overcome by a desire to see old friends. Anybody want to fly up to Portland on a whim?

- Devon spent his grocery money on booze and his booze money on groceries.

- Devon is writing a song all about you. A true song, as real as his tears.

- Devon is cabbages and kings.

- Devon is actually quite excited about "The Vernacular Project."

- Devon hopes John Prine is doing well.

- Devon 's tooth has been crowned. Previously his mouth had maintained an anarcho-communal co-op but there was a power struggle after recent tensions broke out.

- Devon would like nVidia to explain the usefulness of a graphics card that doesn't work well with 3D apps. "This toaster works great, except with bread products."

- Devon wants to remind you to try to be nice to your 6,754,915,055 brothers and sisters today.

- Devon is a secret Muslim, crypto-Jew and an athiest in a foxhole.

- Devon may just up and quit today if he has another day like yesterday.

- Devon spent some time working on "Lullabies for Lonely Old Men" today.

- Devon thinks today might actually be alright.

- Devon is thoroughly impressed with the way today turned out. That last bit may have pushed it into "Double Milhouse" status.

- Devon supports humans and their progressions.

- Devon is pretty sure he has deleted all of the Bjork from his computer more than once, yet she keeps coming up on iTunes. Is this some kind of weird computer virus?

- Devon wants to punch a dolphin, right in its stupid dolphin face.

- Devon is not gonna lay no boogie-woogie on the King of Rock & Roll.

- Devon is going to try to put this little depressive cycle to good use and bang out some kind of writing.

- Devon has moved a large thing through the powerful and sexy combination of brilliance and sheer physical might. Also, Kim helped.

- Devon drinks at cooler places than you do.

- Devon has made ten thousand mistakes and will make ten thousand more before flights-o-angels sing him to his rest.

- Devon is gonna go grab a schvitz and a bagel.

- Devon is pretty sure he expressed his wishes, vis-a-vis this whole "more snow" issue after the last incident. Looks like SOMEBODY needs to be taught a lesson.

- Devon does not have your best interests at heart. However, he does have your most amusing interests at heart.

- Devon always seems to get caught in the space between "knowing the path" and "walking the path."

- Devon misses playing with Lego.

- Devon is kinda ridiculous.

- Devon just needs to make it through today, then all will be good.

- Devon has made it through today, all is good.

- Devon is going to spend his friday afternoon with Chandler, Brewster and a bottle of Burnetts gin.

- Devon spent his friday afternoon with Chandler, Brewster and a bottle of Burnetts gin. He then spent his Friday evening, Friday night, and Saturday morning with them.

- Devon is probably more excited than he should be about Afro Samurai: Resurrection.

- Devon is, in fact, ready for some football, exclamation point.

02/09

- Devon is overjoyed that President Obama helped the Steelers defeat the Cardinals' plot to clone Adolf Hitler.

- Devon is not sure what today will bring.

- Devon likes his new job so much more than his old job that he almost doesn't believe it is with the same company.

- Devon has every intention.

- Devon has the name "Charles Linder-Flowman" stuck in his head, and he has no idea who that is.

- Devon is going to drink some alcohol on a Friday night. How novel.

- Devon is banking on the assumption that when his time is up he won't say, "I wish I had had less fun."

- Devon did not awesome hard enough today. Stupid Sundays!

- Devon now regrets not proposing to that spunky redhead he met on the way home Saturday night.

- Devon must remember to tip the seraphim.

- Devon is thinking about the amazing-iosity of human emotions.

- Devon feels like an angel baby, swadled in a cocoon of cloud candy.

- Devon is three notches lower than "jazzed."

- Devon only has one day off this weekend and must decide if he wants to cram two days worth of awesome into one day, or save it until next weekend.

- Devon is pretty sure the cut on his hand is from punching the giant Jenga tower.

- Devon don't have to ask permission if he wants to go out fishin', and he never has to ask for the keys.

- Devon is defined by Websters as a psychosomatic disorder whose intensity is directly related to the volume of the horn section.

- Devon is going to drink some afternoon wine with Corey and then hit Ignite Portland 5.

- Devon is angry and lonely and drunk and inspired. What shall come of this?

- Devon is happy and content and hungover and still inspired. What will come of THIS?

- Devon took a moment to very seriously consider spending the $1,489.00 for an orchestra seat for Leonard Cohen live in Seattle.

- Devon would like to see an album of Michael Hogan sings Tom Waits songs released.

- Devon made the electrolyte, to take us out of the dark.

- Devon is in a very Paul Simon mood.

- Devon is vexed by the fickle ways of Woman. Or perhaps, to avoid unnecessary generalization, the ways of a fickle woman.

- Devon has once more stumbled through Depressive and made his way back to Manic. HUZZAH!

- Devon is powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a Nerf ball.

- Devon ain't no fool for love songs that whisper in his ear; still crazy after all these years.

- Devon only seems to miss New York while he is listening to WFUV.

- Devon , aka DJ Ampersand, aka The Tight-Mic-Trigger, aka Freaky Tiki, aka Flip-Mode Millionaire.

- Devon is in a perpetual state of ravelling and unravelling. His spirit animal is the yo-yo.

- Devon grows tired of his Winter beard and longs for the goatee of Spring.

- Devon has got the clouds, but not the sky. He's got the stripes, but not the tie.

That takes us up through today. I will update it again later to get the whole year.

Things I've Learned From Fraud

2009-01-30T12:05:00.000-08:00

So, now that I am officially no longer a "Fraud Liaison Specialist", I felt it was time to look back over my years working with bank fraud and go over some of the amusing, interesting and useful things that I have learned.

- In wacky-old-southern-lady speak "Time machine done et'up my money plate!" means "The ATM has retracted my debit card."

- There is no conceivable reason for you to have your passport, birth certificate, Social Security Number, childrens' Social Security Numbers, mother's maiden name, User ID and password, PIN (Personal Identification Number) and account number in your wallet or purse on a regular basis. That being true, an inordinate number of people will carry ALL of that with them and then leave their wallet or purse sitting in their car, in plain view. Often with the window down or the door unlocked.

- Entering your PIN backwards into an ATM DOES NOT contact 911, no matter what your cousin told you.

- If you are going to engage the services of a prostitute that you met behind a porn store, it is wise to ensure that he/she cannot see you enter your PIN into the ATM while you withdraw the $20 with which you will pay him/her.

- No one looks at ATM security footage except when the bank needs to prove that you actually were the one who withdrew the money from your account. Coincidentally, this means that a certain friend of mine who once urinated on an ATM need never worry about that footage ruining his or her political career.

- Sometimes it actually is necessary to specifically tell a person NOT to write their PIN number on the back of their debit card.

- If anyone comes to your door selling magazines, they are trying to steal from you in one way or another.

- In major cities the police will not seriously investigate any crime with a sticker value less than $1000. If it is less than $500, they may laugh at you for reporting it.

- There are systems in place to help prevent the loss of funds due to a compromise of personal or account information. There are practically no systems in place to prevent someone with that information from harassing you mercilessly.

- Opening a joint account with someone because they can't get one on their own is never a good idea. Never.

- If your friend boasts about committing fraud, or has just recently gotten out of jail for committing fraud, there is a strong likelihood that he/she will defraud you.

- A very large number of people have tried "ExtenZe" (All Natural Male Enhancement product). None of them seem to be satisfied with the results.

- If you are the type of person who has a propensity to find yourself incarcerated, the day you go to jail, one of your friends will steal your wallet and start using your account. You may as well arrange it with them beforehand so that you get a slice of the action.

- Statistically speaking, one bank is robbed each day. The average "take" is $800.

- About 60% of that which is reported as fraud is not actually fraud (as defined by the banks). Of that 60%, about one third is a direct result of a husband or boyfriend looking at porn on the internet and being dumb enough to enter their account or card number for "age verification", then being called on it by their spouse. Another third is a direct result of the same type of scam, but with pay-day loans and government grants instead of porn. The final third is simply people failing to read the small print.

- If your boyfriend takes your card while you are sleeping and withdraws as much as he can from your account, it is time to seriously reconsider your taste in men. If your "lady friend" steals your card while you are sleeping and withdraws as much as she can from your account, it is time to stop picking up women at dive bars.

- Anytime you receive an unsolicited check for $2 - $6 grand from a foreign lottery, deceased relative, or government grant it is a scam. Commonly known as a "Nigerian Scam". Yes, people are still falling for this. Constantly.

- If a stripper follows you to the ATM, it is not because she likes you but rather that she is going to wait until you have entered your PIN, then jump in front of you and withdraw more money than you were intending. Coincidentally, with the help of some muscle, this is an extremely effective way to steal from someone.

- Anything that makes the claim, "If it didn't work, could we afford to give it away for free!?" doesn't actually work.

- There is a merchant SIC code for Escort Services.

- There is a type of payment called a pre-authorized draft wherein you give a company your account number and authorize them to create a physical check in your name. Due to the way the laws are written there is no way to dispute such a payment, except through the courts. There is an entire industry set-up around exploiting this loophole.

- Pete Seeger once said, "Knowledge is what you get when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get when you don't."

Drowning In A Sea Of Words

2009-01-23T13:12:00.000-08:00

Looking back over "Prometheus", I wrote a total of eight posts in 2008. The sum total of my need to express myself for an entire year was eight, fairly well written but fairly short, entries in this strange electronic map of my past wanderings. I've been thinking about that a bit recently. I've sat at my computer on more than a few occasions during 08 trying to bring myself to write something, only to stare blankly at the screen, then bang out about two paragraphs worth of dribble before I hit delete or file it away to permanent draft status.

I wondered if maybe Twitter is partially responsible for this decline. If there is a certain quantifiable amount that a human needs to communicate, then maybe I've been getting my fix in different ways than I used to. Or perhaps, I've just gotten better at expressing myself, thereby increasing the efficiency of the communication that I do, requiring less overall quantity due to an increase in quality. By all reports, 2008 was roundly declared a pretty shitty year for all involved. I certainly had things to talk about. There are approximately twenty essays I told myself I would write, and a near infinite number of other topics that I have scattered and complex thoughts about. But it wasn't a lack of things to write about, but rather an absence of that essential spark that lights the fire. The car had gas and I had places to go, but the engine just wouldn't turn over. Might be the spark plugs.

I've been feeling this way, off and on, more and more. I just have little to no interest in communicating with most people. With the exception of an extremely limited group of folks who always seem to keep my attention, I honestly couldn't care less about having any interaction with humanity. People talk and I try to make eye contact, use positive and affirming words, and respond with non-committal phrases that show I have been listening, but I don't actually give a damn about anything they are saying. Like with many things, I blame this on my job. You can't talk that much and say so little without words losing some of their magic. It feels similar to the old standard of the doughnut store employee losing their taste for doughnuts.

I've said effectively the same thing, in thousands of slightly different circumstances, for the last two-and-a-half years. I've heard thousands upon thousands of people cry and yell about what seems to be an infinite number of permutations on the human condition, (all stupid, confused, scared and angry because they refuse to sit down and really stare at the simple facts of the world around them) and I just can't seem to care any more. Humanity as a whole seems always to be repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over again and my job is to hold its hair back while it vomits at the end of the night. It's an amusing juxtaposition, but I feel like the friend watching an alcoholic slowly get closer and closer to rock bottom. I honestly don't think Society will sober up before I just have to cut the cord and walk away, for my own good.

The truly funny thing is that this is exactly what the novel I have been trying to write is all about, but by living it I find myself unable to write about it. Is that irony? Is anything? I never really know. I do know that for the good of my "sole" I need to transition to a job where I don't speak to anyone for weeks on end. Or maybe I'll just break down one day, disappear and end up in some monastery for a decade under the name Brother Richardson.

For now, if I can't write anything new, I can at least look back at the old. In that regard, I have been working on a project I started a while ago, a collection of poetry that I have titled "Lullabies for Lonely Old Men". By going back over the period of my life when words had the most power, I hope to find that missing spark plug. If not, then perhaps I will at least leave something worth reading.

Inverted Communion

2008-11-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

The hard-bound copy of "The Collected Works of Douglas Adams" that Brendan gave to me is currently in a courthouse in Blanco, Texas and will remain there forever in my mind. I keep losing pieces of myself across this world of ours, dropping tiny bits here and there like an absent-minded leper. Occasionally, I have the presence of mind to stop momentarily and stare at the piece lying on the dusty ground, but it seems impossible to go backwards to collect the wayward appendage.

Inside the book, aside from the many incredible words crafted by Adams, is a single sheet of paper that is exterior to the collection. It is the text version of an oration. It is the road map to the part I played in an event that is now part of our collected history. It is perhaps the best expression of the faith I have in mankind's ability to love each other, honestly and with sincerity.

I considered recovering the book, Sunday morning while hungover and ashamed of once again failing to prevent my alcohol intake from moving past the point of excess. I considered the return to the courthouse, informing the staff that the day before I had left a large blue book in the storage room where I had paced back and forth, trying hurriedly to memorize a few more of the words before the time came to mount those stairs, and look out over the crowd. I considered recovering the book. I stared backwards at the piece of me lying on the dusty ground. Part of it was the fact that I was hung over to the point of being spiritually immobile. Part of it was the idea of dealing with the consequences of my actions, whether those consequences were beneficial or detrimental, abstract or concrete. At the last review, however, I like to believe that the real reason I left the book in that storage room on the second floor of that courthouse in Blanco, Texas was as some small sacrifice to the gods for the sake of Kate and Peter's newly celebrated commitment to each other. Some tiny offering of myself to help them on their way.

In the psychology of mythology, the gods we create demand either perpetual devotion or personal sacrifice, often both. Perpetual devotion could seem like the easier of the two choices, as it requires only belief and belief requires only a state of mind. But the difficulty in that comes from the "perpetual" aspect. To lapse in your devotion is to fail your gods. To sustain a belief, in anything, in spite of all else could be an insurmountable challenge if you are willing to open your eyes to the logic of infinite possibility. The flip side of that coin is personal sacrifice. The gods of our mind also accept as proof of our belief a singular incidence of faith focussed through a physical symbol. If we are too weak to sustain ourselves perpetually, we instead substitute a flare of passion as our token for passage on the highways of life.

Athiests often focus entirely on the religious context of gods and in doing so they abandon the psychological aspects. The need to create gods for ourselves out of the clutter of the Universe is a desperate attempt to reconcile our functional need to accept assumptions as fact while simultaneously understanding (on some level) that we can know nothing for certain in a reality we experience through sensory input. My father and I fall on different sides on this debate, as I've often mentioned. He said to me once something to the effect of, "you have to believe in something in order to function. If you refuse to believe anything, for example that the ground under your feet will not spontaneously dissapear at any moment, you would be paralyzed with inactivity. In order to act in the world you must accept some assumptions about reality as being true." It's true, that simple belief that the ground under you is solid and will not be spontaneously removed without rhyme or reason is a belief that is in the end founded on nothing more concrete than an assumption, and as such it issues forth from the same cognitive framework as the gods we create to govern our Universe.

In the Classical World it was Pallas Athene who watched over the crafters and the warriors alike and protected them in their endeavors. In the Medieval world it was Jesus Christ who offered salvation from a world of shit to anyone willing to believe. In the Modern World we have gods like the Highways, a system whose functioning is infinitely complex and could at any moment errupt in violence and death, yet is sustained entirely by the belief of the people who get in their car every day and continue to abide (to varying degrees) the "Rules of the Road". Or perhaps even more fragile are the gods of Justice, Democracy, Freedom, Society, Life, or Love. Each of these notions exist only so much as we believe that they exist. They are our modern gods, and we show our faith in them in the exact same way that the Ancient Greeks showed Pallas Athene or Dionysus, through personal sacrifice and our meager attempts at perpetual devotion.

If I have a god, it would have to be the god of my father and mother, the unspecified Universe, the Tao, the Way, the Everything and Nothing, the Nameless Unknowable, the Quantum Field. When I make such a sacrifice I begrudgingly do so in the name of all things, the concept of existence, the assumption that we do exist and that the things we do are actually happening. If we don't exist and the things we do are not actually happening then it won't matter if I make such a sacrifice anyway. The problem is that even my faith in that is far from unquestioning. Some days, when you find yourself trapped in the Denver airport, vomit lightly caked on your shoes like a blood stain from a wound that just wont heal, head spinning with a choir of angelic neurons pulsing and vibrating songs of righteous shame and unpredictable predictability, riding the moving sidewalk as an alternative to conscious thought, it becomes increasingly harder to accept that you exist as anything other than a strange dream rippling across the surface of some infinite pond.

And I'm sorry, but some days I simply don't have the energy to sustain a perpetual belief that I am real or that this reality I claim to be part of is actually occurring. As much as I try, some days I cannot believe in Society, Justice, Freedom, or any of the minor gods I cling to during the work week. But occasionally I can muster the energy to make a sacrifice. Nietzsche claimed that when you stare into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you. For me, that particular staring contest usually takes place in between glasses five and nine. Then, like some inverted communion I vomit, in my body's futile attempt to physically purge the crippling fear that I am completely and absolutely alone, in all respects, from the simple physicality of touching another person to the infinite feeling of disconnection from all that is or could be.

Some days I don't have the energy to sustain a perpetual belief, but occasionally I can muster the energy to make a sacrifice. So the vomit remains lightly caked on my shoes and the "Collected Works of Douglas Adams" remains in the storage room of the Blanco Courthouse. I believe in Love. As much as I can believe in anything, I believe that Love exists in many facets. I love Kate and Peter, and I'm more than willing to lose a piece of myself for them.

The Oration

"By the simple fact that we are here today, each of us has love in our lives. We have love for family, love for friends, but the truly lucky among us have found a love for that one person with whom we wish to share the days of our lives. We, as guests of this wonderful union, have come here today in the hopes that we might share with these two the love that we have, so that it will bolster them in times of need and make their own love burn brighter for it. Likewise, we hope that in gathering round the fire of their love we might learn better how to love each other. Kate, Peter, on behalf of all those gathered here I would like to say, "If ever there was doubt in your mind, know now that you are loved."

Love is alive. It grows and changes with us. It's not a prize that is won and placed on the mantelpiece of our heart to collect dust, but rather is every day renewed in the things that we do and with the people that share our lives. Above all else a marriage is a commitment to grow, in love, together. Know that your partner will not handle every situation perfectly the first time, nor will you. But if you have the strength of heart to trust in each other and to renew your love with each new trial, you will find yourselves the recipients of all the gifts that life has to offer. Peter, Kate, on behalf of all those gathered here I would like to say, "Trust in each other, trust in yourselves, and let your love grow together with you."

We find solace and we find strength in the people we love. Throughout life we all face times when we need strength to help us move forward, and times when we need solace to comfort and restore us. With compassion and understanding, you will find that together you have a sanctuary to nurture you and help you grow, and the strength to create the life that you want to live. Keep close to your heart the reasons why you have come to stand here today. Remind yourself and each other, often, of the love that you share. Be a complement to each other when you are feeling less than whole. Reinforce each other when you are feeling diminished. Above all, make a place in your heart for your partner and keep it warm and safe. On behalf of all those gathered here I would like to say, "With compassion, respect and love you will have everything that you need."

Ring Ceremony

May you have happiness, joy, and all the stuff of life. May you want for little and rejoice in that which you have. May you remember always to celebrate your love and your life together. You may now kiss the bride."

Boundless Knowledge & The Foolish Gardener

2008-10-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

In the province of West Bumblefuck, near the Constaquanee river, lived a sage named Master Fool. One day a pupil came to study with the master. "Master Fool," he said "My name is Boundless Knowledge and I am the greatest student in the land. I have studied at every University, I have seen all of the Great Cities, I can call each of the Great Scholars by their first name, and I have even memorized the 'Complete Analects of the Master of Time' and the 'Gospel According to St. Bastard'. Now I have come to study with you." To this Master Fool replied with a laugh.

Boundless Knowledge was confused. "Do you mean to say you will not teach me? What gall you have! I have doctorates in six disciplines, I can land a rocket on the moon and deconstruct the words of the Great Bard. I speak ten living languages and four dead ones, there is nothing that I cannot learn!"

Master Fool said, "There once was a gardener who had grown tomatoes and zucchini, eggplant and squash, all in his little garden. One year his tomatoes would be magnificent and his zucchini would be sickly. The next year his zucchini was fresh and delicious and his squash would be ill-formed. He decided one year that his little garden was not grand enough, so he would add strawberries. He planted the seeds in the midst of all the other plants for he had no room set aside specifically for the strawberries. He waited and waited for the strawberries to grow, but he saw nothing. Eventually tiny sprouts emerged but they were weak and frail. None of the sprouts grew very tall and not even one strawberry was grown."

The farmer asked his neighbor why his garden had not grown the way that he had wanted. "You crowd your garden like passengers on a subway. The bigger plants block the light from the smaller plants and you do not use enough manure to keep the ground fertile. Out of pride you try to force your garden to be what you want it to be without first accepting what it is.

"Now" said Master Fool, "you come to me and say that the garden of your mind has enough fertilizer for all the plants of the world. Certainly a man who thinks himself that fertile of mind must be full of shit!

Hitting The Snooze

2008-07-02T03:03:00.001-07:00

Wednesday morning, I glanced over while showering, and noticed something extremely odd. It had otherwise been an excessively normal day and nothing particularly interesting had occurred. So, while showering in the same capacity as I always do, for some reason on that day I glanced slightly to my left and noticed that my favorite poem, "If" by Rudyard Kipling, was inscribed in it's entirety on the label of my roommates shower soap. So there I stood, naked and wet, reading through one of the greatest poetic works ever written, off a soap bottle, in my shower.

" If you can make one heap of all your winnings, And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breath a word about your loss;"

I had already spent most of my morning listening to recorded performance poetry, and sitting in the sunlight, half-meditating. It had dawned on me at that time that I had gotten very good at the "sit back and mellow" part of life but that if I wanted to get things done I needed to work on the "get things done" part of life. I started a list of the small items that I still needed to pick up for the business, and that reminded me of how terrified I was of actually having to take on this new wealth of responsibility that I had been slowly inching towards for quite some time now.

Soon enough, I had to go to my day job. On my way to work, the DevPod hit me with "Money (That's What I Want)" by the Beatles and I couldn't help but say to myself, I love that song, but I would have preferred the other version. In addition, another workday favorite, "Hey Julie" by Fountains of Wayne. The sun was shining, by all accounts it was an amazingly beautiful day, and I was headed to work. Work in an office. Work that by all accounts is perpetually making the world a worse place to be.

Directly before my first break, I had an extremely long call about fraud activity on a Home Equity Line of Credit. For those who don't know, a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELoC) is a product that banks offer where you can put up the increased collateral value of your house for relatively low interest credit. My department handles filing the initial claim, but in order to actually discuss anything about the claim, the customer needs to speak with the investigations department. The customer knew that and they knew that the investigations department was closed at that time.

The best part about the call was the fact that I have never been trained on how to read a HELoC account, and since we file fraud on these types of accounts maybe once a year, I was basically figuring out the system while on the phone with the customer. If your customer service rep ever sounds like they don't know what they are talking about, it is because they don't, because to properly train employees cuts into the bottom line, and if you are not going to pay employees enough to inspire them to stick around, there is no reason to train them unnecessarily, and by unnecessarily I mean to be able to do their own job.

Now, it didn't help matters at all that the customer was not particularly prone to logical, straightforward trains of thought. However, while I struggled to understand exactly what the customer was ranting, pell-mell about, he did make some fine points about the fact that the fraud that had been committed on his Home Equity Line was indirectly caused by the fact that we as a company constantly issue "convenience checks" without customer request in an attempt to get the customer to wrack up debt on such a line, and that said "convenience checks" are often used for fraud once they are stolen from someone's mail or garbage. Not to mention the fact that we attempt at every turn to shove another unnecessary and often harmful credit product down America's swollen debt gullet to pad our shareholder's profit margins. What's more, while drowning our customers in unnecessary debt, our overly departmentalized customer service system ensures that there is no one he can speak to with a gestalt understanding of his accounts or the problems occurring therein, which leads to levels of misinformation reminiscent of Cold War counterintelligence.

Now all of this I already know. This customer's non-linear ravings were no great revelation. I have been making these very points in my off-time for years, often in even less linear ravings. However, when you are attempting to get an issue resolved and someone is berating you with the ugly truths of your day-to-day sins, it can have a tendency to make one a little more on edge than they might otherwise be.

Eventually, I managed to convince the customer that my department was unable to assist him further at that point in the investigation, (which, in retrospect, is what I should have simply insisted on in the first place). I had missed the scheduled time for my first break and it was now time for our team "Daily Line Up", which is a time when my team meets to discuss any matters of importance. On that day, we were discussing the dress code (for the fifteenth time since I had started there, despite the fact that it had never changed) and the fact that new carpet is being put in, (meaning that eating will subsequently no longer be allowed in the call center).

Now, I don't give a shit about the dress code or our ability to eat in the call center, except that the management's focus on such petty and insignificant issues over matters of actual importance disgusts me to no end. At a recent meeting with the site's three Operations Managers, I made a major point of mentioning a simple change to our policy that would likely eliminate approximately 1000 to 3000 calls a day, drastically increasing productivity by eliminating the use of company resources (employee time) on an issue that could be preventively handled by simply adding one line of text to a mailer that we send out constantly. I had brought the same issue up at last years meeting, and I brought up the fact that I had brought it up at last years meeting at this years meeting. Their response was in the form of a jest, "Well, with any luck, maybe we'll have that implemented by your fifth year! Ha ha." That is the kind of leadership that is in charge of everything from major corporations to the governments of world powers. They care whether or not my shirt has a collar, but if you literally smack them on the nose with a rolled up bit of corporate inefficiency that can be easily rectified, they stare at you like a dog watching someone recite "Paradise Lost".

The thing that really irked me about the "no food in the call center" rule is simple. It's a perfectly reasonable rule and there is no reason from a business stand-point that it shouldn't have been implemented earlier. The fact that it had not been implemented prior to now, offered some dim sliver of hope that the management of this company had some modicum of capacity to operate outside the rigid parameters of "bottom line" dogma and conceptualize a non-quantifiable value in making their employees lives easier. But this, of course, was a fantasy. The "no food in the call center" was yet another demonstration that given a constant pressure to expand an unfettered organic system will naturally expend all resources available until it collapses or is replaced by a more efficient system.

That bummed me out.

A few days prior I had taken a break from reading "Quicksilver" by Neal Stephenson to read the graphic novel "Say You Want A Revolution" which is a collection of issues of a comic book called "The Invisibles". I was unaware before Chandler introduced me to it, but apparently "The Invisibles" is what "the Matrix" was unofficially inspired by. It is basically the story of a secret group of underground freedom fighters who combat the malicious forces of conformity using magic, time travel and cross dressing. It is AMAZING. However, it contains dialogue the likes of,

"Look at it, Dane. Look at the city and the world in its proud array, like a cask of jewels laid open for you. It'll offer you everything you ever wanted but it's just pictures on billboards; dream cars, dream women, dream houses. Time to wake up now and say goodbye."

So, perhaps it's not the best thing to read while answering customer service calls for a bank. At least, not if your desired outcome is maintaining said employment.

So when I finally took my break, thirty minutes late, I went and sat in the outdoor smoking alcove to catch a little fresh air while I stewed. Stepping outside only reminded me of what an amazing day it was, and the fact that I was trapped in an office for another six hours while one of the most beautiful days we'd seen this year passed me by. I sat in the sunlight like some Grecian Titan released from Tartarus only long enough to remember the sky, in order to make eternity underground seem that much longer. I held my head in my hands and I thought "What the FUCK am I doing?" The day after was to be my two year anniversary with the bank. I had spent two years answering the exact same questions, listening to the exact same feeble excuses, hearing the exact same corporate propaganda about how we were the good guys fighting to ensure that our customers are constantly serviced as hard and as thoroughly as possible.

I found that my ability to believe the validity of anything I was saying had been completely compromised. I still managed to eek out the words, but my arguments were choked and my explanations were a struggle. For a while, I was certain that I would have to walk out and never return. My heart began to pound, I became slightly dizzy, yet oddly enough my panic gave me an extreme sense of clarity in dealing with the incoming calls. Interestingly, I found that the more I needed to get out of there, the more focussed, concise and surgical I was able to make myself on the phone. It was perverse.

I rationalized that I couldn't quit. Quitting outright always seems like the way to go when you are extremely fed up with your job, however as Sun tzu would argue, decisions made at the whim of emotions are often foolhardy and rarely to your advantage. I had neither the liquid assets nor the benefit of alternatives that would have made quitting a reasonable, let alone profitable, decision. I determined that the only acceptable way to go was to take a half-day for "mental health" to recuperate and reassess.

I left a note for my manager, who was at lunch, and I walked out. As I passed through the exterior doors into the early evening sunlight, I instantly began to feel better. I walked to the back of the parking lot, where my truck waits patiently for me each day, saddled up and made my way for the highway. At first, my interior voice insisted that I ride the great river of the road eastbound until I received a message from the gods. But it was 6pm and I knew that eastbound traffic out of the city would be murder. So I decided that if the gods wanted to reach me, they could try me at home.

On the way home, the DevPod's shuffle mode made good on my earlier request and played my preferred version of "Money (That's What I Want)" by (I shit you not) Barrett Strong. "The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. Now give me money, that's what I want."

I got home, explained the situation to Drew, and relaxed. I ate a large bowl of chocolate ice cream and watched whatever Drew and Kim were watching. I tried to think as little as possible about what I was going to do regarding work.

Eventually, once I had sufficiently chillaxed, I began surfing Craigslist for potential jobs. This reminded me of exactly why it is important not to quit in a moment of passion. Even if your job is terrible, the likelihood is that there are plenty of other jobs that are even worse.

I divided the next morning between relaxing and searching Craigslist. I decided that I had sufficiently calmed myself so as to be able to make it through work that day. Finding a new job would have to wait until the weekend. I arrived in the parking lot early enough to read a little of "Quicksilver" before I made it inside. The section I was up to, the section I read before walking into work that morning, read as follows,

"Jack rode between Paris and Lyons several times in the early part of 1685, ferrying news. Paris: the King of England is dead! Lyons: some Spanish governorships in America are up for sale. Paris: King Looie has secretly married Mademoiselle de Maintenon, and the Jesuits have his ear now. Lyons: yellow fever is slaying mine-slaves by the thousands in Brazil - the price of gold ought to rise.
It was disconcertingly like working for someone - just the sort of arrangement he'd given up, long ago, as being beneath his dignity. It was, to put it more simply, too much like what Bob did. So, Jack had to keep reminding himself that he was not actually doing it, but pretending to do it, so that he could get his horse ready to sell - then he would tell those bankers to fuck themselves."

As I read that I smiled at the subtle hint that I should remind myself that I am not actually doing it, but pretending to do it, so that I can get my horse ready to sell, and that I should keep my attention focussed on the day that I can tell those bankers to fuck themselves.

I made it through the day with no incident. As I clocked out, I said to myself "well, I have officially wasted two years of my life as a banker." I couldn't help but think of "Mother Night" and the exchange between Adolf Eichman and Howard W. Campbell in which Eichman informs Campbell that all the things that made him proud to be a Nazi came not from Hitler but from Campbell, and that no matter how valuable he may have been to the Allies as a spy, it would never outweigh his value to the Nazi party. I thought about that on my way out the door. In the end, you are who you pretend to be. But yet, you are also more than that as well.

It was good to be heading home for the weekend. Sometimes the time is right to wake up. Sometimes the time is right to hit the snooze.

The Only Part I Bare To Part With

2008-05-31T01:48:00.001-07:00

It felt like a long time. I was certain that the Muse had left me for dead, to rot in my cubicle with only tight-fisted crooks to tend my grave. But I've found her again, my Muse. I'm returning to Poetry, a better and stronger person than before. I've been going over my old work, transcribing it onto electronic copies, so I'll be less likely to lose them again. While doing so, I remembered how much I loved this particular piece. This is one of the things I am proud of.

Ask Me

Ask me for a poem

and I'll race you one cross mid-town,

burn through office lobbies

like a taxi cab on fire.

Ask me for a poem

and I'll sweetly sing you skylarks

bathe them in a current

which will softly lift them higher.

Ask me for a poem

and my tongue will be a lover

phrases will be fingertips

thirsty with desire.

Ask me for a poem

and I'll magnify the telling

turn windmills into giants

make reality the liar.

Ask me for a poem

and I'll vomit out my anger

I'll dredge up all my hatred

and I'll throw it on the pyre.

Ask me for a poem

and I'll whisper all my secrets

leave you with the pieces

while I quietly retire.

Ask me for a poem

and I'll tell you of my family

of lovers and of poets

and of people I admire.

Ask me for a poem

and I'll belt one to the rafters

sing it with a passion

that will rival any choir.

Ask me for a poem

the only part I bare to part with

the only part I hope will go on

when I finally expire.

Relieving A Little Stress

2008-04-30T01:46:00.000-07:00

from Netflix
reply-to jobs@netflix.com,
to Devon B. ,
date Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 1:58 PM
subject Re: Your interest in Netflix / Technical Support opening

Greetings from Netflix!

Thank you for your recent application with Netflix. Your resume and qualifications have been reviewed by one of our Recruiters. Unfortunately, we have decided to move forward with other candidates at this time.

We encourage you to review our open positions at www.netflix.com/jobs. If you see a different position that you are interested in and you meet the qualifications, please feel free to apply.

Sincerely,

Netflix Staffing Team
(Please do not respond to this email.)

Technical Support Representative
http://jobs.netflix.com/detailFlix.asp?flix1992

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Devon B.
to jobs@netflix.com,
date Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 1:44 AM
subject Re: Your interest in Netflix / Technical Support opening
mailed-by gmail.com

On the off chance that this address is monitored by an actual human being,

Since the vast likelihood is that this is an automated email address, I will speak freely. I was legitimately baffled by your decision to "move forward with other candidates". In reviewing the qualifications listed for the Technical Support Representative position the only conclusion I can draw regarding your Recruiter's decision is that they were concerned that I was so vastly overqualified for the position that I would likely operate with an efficiency such that my performance would imbalance the delicate system of mediocrity that current hiring practices in the service industry promote. Next thing you know, customers would begin to expect that ALL of their customer support and technical support representatives be competent and qualified, with a legitimate desire to resolve their concerns. Soon, society as we know it would collapse as the lazy and ignorant began to wander the streets, unemployable and angry. As I am not looking to cause the very structure of society to crumble into chaos, I accept your decision to "move forward with other candidates", for the greater good.

Cordially yours,
Devon B.

Poetry of the Road

2008-03-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Despite my best efforts to continue an existence of pessimistic doubt (the lazy man's objectivity) regarding the nature of the Universe, I keep reading Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology and weird coincidences just keep occurring that are difficult to explain just in terms of random events. Previously, it had predicted that I would "be clearing out garbage that I didn't necessarily recognize as garbage and had been holding onto needlessly for too long" just before my entire collection of personal poetry went missing, most likely having been accidentally thrown out. Of course, at the time that it first went missing, I tore the house apart looking for it. However, being that my collection of amateur poetry is a pretty solid symbol of my adolescent egotism, it set me thinking. There have been a number of other weird coincidences over the years. Some weeks I have no idea what the column is suggesting. Sometimes it doesn't really seem to fit with what I am focussed on at that time. I treat it as good advice from a third party, and like all advice, I take it with a grain of salt. Except that weird coincidences keep happening.

This week, the Free Will Astrology for Pisces read: "Find your spirit medicine. And remember that what works for someone else, may not work for you (and vice-versa). Also what works for you when used consciously, sparingly, in just right the circumstances, might be disastrous as a habit." This started me thinking about what my Spirit Medicine would be. My first thought went to alcohol, which has always been my medicine of choice for the ailments of the soul. However, I have been having some strange physical issues while partaking recently, and have stopped drinking for the most part. Furthermore, alcohol for me has always been a tonic for the mind, removing a chunk of excess thought processing so that I can behave with reckless abandon, the way that I have observed the bulk of humanity acting on a regular basis. It wasn't really a Spirit Medicine, more like a cerebral opiate.

My second thought turned very briefly to poetry. I have found some moments while writing bad poetry at 3 AM that felt something like a release, a taste of freedom. The idea of being completely and totally honest with yourself, allowing even the illusions that you maintain to keep yourself sane and sailing along on your designated course to slip away for a moment while you search the cockles of your mind for ideal words, boiling your language over and over in your head like an alchemist distilling and refining away the excess to extract that quintessential communication, that single spark that can bridge the gap between individuals and allow you, even if only momentarily, to share some tiny part of yourself with someone else. However, poetry for me has too long been associated with the self-centered aspects of my personality. Drinking to the point of excess, beguiling the fairer sex, playing the role of the revolutionary and the saint, beguiling the fairer sex, playing the role of the roustabout and the devil, creating giants out of windmills, and of course beguiling the fairer sex. Right now there is still too much egotism attached to poetry for me for it to be a Spirit Medicine.

In the back of my mind, in a way I felt the answer before I actually went over it as an option. In a way I knew that what I needed was the freedom of the open road. I have always loved the unmitigated freedom of the highways. Maybe it stems from my childhood, having made the trip from New York to California before the age of one. In a way I can almost see my infant self staring out the car window, smiling as the vast landscape of the North American continent stretched out before me, as the scenery outside the side window steadily changed like the most amazing picture book a child could have. For whatever reason, I have always found a certain comfort in the open road, but I didn't want to allow myself to admit that fact while reviewing my Spirit Medicine options because in Portland I have found a section of the world that, more so than any other place, I feel comfortable and content. To admit that I once again needed the freedom of the open road would suggest that mine is a wandering nature, to open the heart up to that old Wanderlust, and more than anything else, right now I want to stay in Portland.

It came as quite a surprise when I received a text message from my roommate Marco asking if I would be willing to drive him from Portland, OR to Boise, ID. I had known for some time that Marco was planning to leave, although there had been some concern recently as to whether or not that would actually be happening. What was surprising is that the thought of how he would get there had not even occurred to me prior to his message. Instantly, a green indicator light clicked on on the motherboard of my mind. I went through the motions of asking all the necessary questions about the trip, to make sure that it was even feasible, but in the back of my mind I knew from the moment that I got that message that I would be driving Marco to Boise.

The first half of the journey was devoted to getting Marco to Boise. There are those of you who would be interested in that story, and those that would have likely already heard it. However, the trip back was for me. The trip back would be approximately six to eight hours and some four hundred and thirty miles that was left to me, my truck, my music, and the vasting forever of the United States highway system.

There is a purity to the highways that is missing from the rest of America. Where as the cities and towns may have dug up their holy relics in favor of strip malls or sold off the rights to their supply of manna from heaven, magical things can still occur on the highways. There is still darkness out there, darkness so thick it washes over your vehicle like waves lapping against the bow of a ship. There are stars. Stars still exist. They turn the sky into a tapestry of light, a celestial lesson in the seemingly infinite nature of everything that is not you. There are still parts of the world where the ever extending arm of your cell phone can't reach and where the long standing narrative of your life can be punctuated suddenly by a patch of frozen water or an invisible gust. There are still places where you can feel completely and utterly alone.

Regardless of what else may be going on in your life, regardless of the thousand different directions that your surplus of business days may drag you towards, regardless of the cute names that you may give the problems that are slowly tearing you apart, on the road the specifics of the day-to-day world lose all precedence. The hedge maze that we cultivate in the gardens of our minds gives way and opens to a singular line. The twists and turns, the dead ends and the false starts are all pushed to the side and replaced with a singular path. Your trip has it's beginning and it's end, and you need only move forward.

The trip from Boise to Portland is a straight shot. I-84 all the way. Once I am reasonably sure that I have made my way out of the city I bring myself up to cruising speed, five miles above what will be the speed limit for almost the entirety of the journey, and I set the cruise control. Cruise control makes the metaphor of the road even more apparent. The highway becomes the River of Time and you are merely a leaf floating on the current, ushered ever onward by a seemingly invisible force. But in fact, you are more than a leaf. You are a person. You have some meager amount of control to which you can cling. You can speed or slow your progress, you can bring yourself to a stop, if you so chose you could even turn yourself around entirely and drive against traffic, but to complete your trip you will eventually have to return to that current that pulls you ever forward.

My first detour was at the top of what I assumed at the time were the Blue Mountains. While winding my way around the cliffs, I saw a sign that said "View Point", denoting a place where one could park and stare out across Eastern Oregon. In the vein of looking for my Spirit Medicine, I pulled off and parked the truck. I stepped out onto the observation platform and I looked out across the relatively flat land that spreads out from the base of the mountain range. A countless number of words have been used to describe a countless number of incredible views throughout the history of recorded communication. I could try to describe the way that the horizon blurred with the sky so that it looked as though Heaven and Earth were two contrasting forces issuing forth from the same point of unspecified potential. But more so than probably any other thing that a person can experience, the feeling of a truly excellent view can easily be lost in the maze of words. So instead of trying to paint that picture, I will just say that one should never underestimate the value of looking at stuff from very high up.

The bulk of the trip was utter simplicity. Keep moving forward. Turn here, turn there, adjust speed, keep moving forward. The landscape of Oregon is as varied as any state in the US. I moved through snow capped mountain ranges, past brownish expanses of unbearably flat land, through forests of an imperial and majestic green, past rolling emerald hills that paint the world as a gentle murmur of tranquility and jagged outcroppings of black stone. And of course, the Columbia River. So much of I-84 runs along side the Columbia river that the two seem almost like sisters at points, the flow of people spilling ever forward as though they were droplets caught up in the momentum of something far larger than they could imagine.

Music is essential to a good road trip. Music energizes the spirit unlike anything else, especially in situations such as sitting in a vehicle for hours on end. Music has the ability to refocus the shattered and dispersed fragments of our consciousness when applied properly. For the entirety of the trip home, I was relying on my "Runnin'!!" mix. One day, many months ago, I had come home from work early and decided to do something productive with the free time. It was even still light out, so I decided to go for a run in the park near my house. As I was getting ready to go, I decided that I couldn't really run without having some truly excellent music. I sat down and spent the next hour and a half putting together my "Runnin'!!" mix. Finally, once I had finished compiling hours upon hours of music, I put on my shoes to go for my run. By this time, the sun was setting and it would soon be dark. I must have run (and I use the term loosely to describe a process of briefly sprinting and then walking until I caught my breath) for a grand total of about six or seven minutes. To my recollection, I haven't run again since then. However, thanks to that episode, I did manage to create a truly excellent, high-energy traveling mix which came in handy while trekking across the state of Oregon.

It was about six or seven o'clock when I recognized that I had moved from the flat, open farmland of central Oregon to the rich, evergreen forests of western Oregon, getting ever closer to Portland. I had enjoyed clear skies the entire way across the state so far, but I knew that as I drew closer to Portland, which meant closer to the coast and closer to the conflagration of the Columbia and Willamette rivers, that rain would be almost certain. It was in this area that I started to really take in the scenery. This stretch of the highway was bordered on one side by steep cliffs, densely covered by Evergreen trees large enough to suggest that they had seen more years by the side of that road then I could imagine. On my right, there was the Columbia River, it's small waves rippling through the water, the soon-to-be-setting sun creating swathes of gold on the water's surface, it's northern bank hemmed by gentle green hills.

I came to a point where the highway diverged inland just a little, so that I found myself surrounded on both sides by those mighty Evergreens. Just as I came to this point, the song I had been listening to ended. I was soon greeted by the familiar words of the next song, "You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself in another part of the world. You may find yourself behind the wheels of a large automobile . . ." It took only a moment, and then the words clicked in my head like a jigsaw piece finally colliding with it's predestined nook in the puzzle. I had lived in a sort of shotgun shack, I had found myself in another part of the world, I was behind the wheels of a large automobile. The last two and a half decades of my life began exploding in my mind like bursts of color and music. I looked upwards to my left, to see that the steep cliffs that I had been traveling along had risen dramatically, so that the ridge was now hidden above me. Creeping down from atop this sweeping mountain was a dense fog, or perhaps a cloud of snow, which blanketed the upper echelons of the cliffs in a haze of impermeable mystery contained by tiny floating particles of water. And the music continued, "Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down. Letting the days go by, water flowing underground . . . ". And I looked at the seemingly ancient trees, and I stared up at the vast and unfathomable cliff, and I swerved just a little as I stared up at the haze of the heavens. In my mind I knew that the entirety of my life was insignificant. And the music continued, " And you may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house? And you may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to? And you may ask yourself, Am I right . . . am I wrong? And you may ask yourself, MY GOD! . . . WHAT HAVE I DONE?" It came gurgling up from inside of me like a freshly tapped spring pushing up through the dirt. My hands firmly on the wheel, my eyes darting between the road, and the cliffs, and the trees; I started to cry. Not a simple, single tear or a mistiness of the eyes, but full, choked gulps of emotion struggling towards the surface as though they were fighting for their freedom from a claustrophobic subterranean tomb. And the music continued, "Time isn't holding us, time isn't after us. Time isn't holding us, time isn't after us. Letting the days go by. Letting the days go by. Letting the days go by. Once in a lifetime."

It lasted only a moment before I regained control of myself and reasserted my control over the truck. I thought about it, what it meant, what had spurred it, where it had come from. The music had moved to something infinitely more forgettable. I wondered how much longer I had on this highway. I wondered when I would reach my destination. It was then that I saw a sign, "Bridge of the Gods, next exit". I laughed to myself, in the way that one laughs after a trusted friend has made a joke to break your protracted sobbing. I contemplated. What was this "Bridge of the Gods"? My first instinct was to turn, to leave the highway that would take me home and explore what was clearly a cosmic punchline. As I drew close to the exit, I thought "No. Not today." I wasn't ready for it. I told myself that in the worst case scenario, it would turn out to be just a simple bridge, that knowledge would deflate the experience I had just had, and I would find myself somewhere in Washington. More than that though, on the off chance that the first thought that occurred to me was correct, I wasn't ready to take that big trip across Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge, to Asgard, house of the gods, where the heroes of mortal men shall feast for all time until the coming of Ragnarock. As I passed by the exit which would lead to the Bridge of the Gods, I said to myself "I'm not ready to die today."

Next came the rain. As I had predicted, the closer I came to home, the closer I came to the storm. It started quickly. First a few drops. Then a drizzle. Before long, the sheets of water were covering my windshield so utterly that even with my wipers on full bore, my view had turned into a watercolor painting. The rain was such that I had to drop my speed from the seventy miles-per-hour that I had been maintaining throughout the trip, to a more manageable fifty. My truck, while very sturdy, has a tendency to exaggerate the feeling of small swerves because you are further off the ground than in a small car. I slowed to the point that I could be sure the truck was in my control. As I drove through the torrential downpour, I thought to myself, "Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down."

It must have been about half-an-hour, or about thirty miles worth of driving before the rain stopped. It left just about as quickly as it had come. Despite the bluster and pomp of the storm, soon I once again found myself on a relatively clear highway. I saw a sign that said "View Point", the same type of sign that had lead me to stop on top of the mountain early in the trip. "Alright, I said. Point taken." I pulled into the small lot and parked the truck. There was a Schwan's delivery vehicle parked there while the driver had a brief snack. I sat in my truck for a moment and thought about the events of the trip so far. Eventually, I got out and walked to the large sign that designated this as a spot that was worthy of note. The spot was a small cliff that overlooked the Columbia. The even-sooner-to-be-setting sun gave the water that same sheen of fortune that I had seen earlier. The sign told the story of how a European captain, whose name I felt was not worthy of note, had landed on an island near to that spot when he claimed this region for England. As I looked out over the glistening river and the tree-rich banks, I thought, "Isn't that just the way it goes? Human beings trying to mitigate their fear of the unknown by cataloging, naming and laying claim to everything they can get their hands on. The history of mankind is just the history of people running from their fears and trampling the weak underfoot." I got back into the car and made my way onward.

It seemed somehow fitting that the last twenty minutes of my trip would be spent on the same stretch of highway that I take to go home from work each day, but because it was dusk instead of the dark of night, and because the rain had painted the road with a new texture, this highway that I had traveled hundreds of times seemed unfamiliar, new. There is a relativity inherent in time on the road. A person on foot can move perhaps five or ten miles per hour, driving through residential neighborhoods thirty can seem like you are flying, yet after hours of highway driving fifty seems like a crawl. After moving through so many different perspectives in the course of a day, is it any wonder that the familiar might seem alien? We really never do come home the same person as when we left. And yet, in a way, we are that same person.

While on the way to breakfast in Boise the morning of the trip, I got to spend a little time with my friend Angela's two sons, Caleb and Dragon. Cute kids, but they are definitely a handful. Their father is in prison for stabbing someone, and they've been bounced around between homes a number of times in their young lives. Watching them being kids, I was reminded of some of the great things about childhood. While getting into Angela's car to go to breakfast, I noticed that they had a copy of "The Dream Eater" by Christian Garrison, one of my favorite books from my own childhood. Without really thinking about it, I began to read the boys the story of Yukio, a young boy whose town is beset by nightmares. One day he thoughtlessly saves an unknown creature from drowning in the river, and offers the creature his lunch to help him recover his strength. He learns that the creature is a Baku, a dream eater, who feeds on nightmares. Yukio leads the creature to the village where the Baku devours the nightmares that are plaguing his family and friends. I watched them as I read the story and both boys, who usually comprise a tiny tornado of energy and action, were sitting quietly and listening intently. After the story was done, I told the boys "You see, because the boy thought about someone other than himself, he ended up finding exactly what he needed". I may not be able to make sure that these two will have the stable and happy childhood that I would like to see them have, but I hope at that moment that the memory of some random friend reading to them on the way to breakfast is a happy memory that they can hold onto.

After I have returned home, I talked with my remaining roommates for a while. I made some dinner and watched some TV. Marco's leaving had changed the house dynamic, not specifically for better or for worse, but it is certainly a different house then it had been before we had packed up the truck the previous day. It will take some time to determine where we will go from here. The road is long and we have miles to go.

When I finally lay down to sleep that night, the darkness of my room floods over me like a rushing current. At first I feel as though I am sinking downwards through my bed, into the darkness. As I lay there, I can feel the aches and pains of my body magnified by the stillness. As I lay there, I can feel that I am dying. Perhaps not in the short term sense, but it seems glaringly obvious that I will die. The idea of spending the remainder of my life doing anything other than helping other people seems silly as I lay there in the dark. I wonder if I would be willing to die for the sake of the good of others, but not in the overly romanticized martyrdom of my adolescent idealism. Instead I think about Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony before the bullet hits. Would he have done everything the same way if he had felt in his mind's eye the tearing of his flesh before he ever stepped onto a stage? Would he have done everything the same way if he could see what his blood paid for in today's world? Would I? In the last few minutes of consciousness, rationality kicks in and reminds me that this too shall pass. That I will get up for work the next day and continue on with my life.

As we travel along the road, we often see spectacular things, some of which may not be easy to pass by. Sometimes we look back and see that we have left our past selves behind, and we wonder if we might turn around to relive that piece of our odyssey. But as the song goes, "It was long ago, and it was far away. Oh god, it seems so very far. And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car. And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are. Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are."

Happy Birthday to Me

2008-03-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

Chuang Tzu was walking in Memphis, and he came across the banks of the Mississippi River. As he sat beside the river he heard a sort of sobbing. Soon he realized that it was the river who was crying. He looked out at the water and he said, "What circumstance is so sad that it should make a river cry? Surely this must be the saddest thing in the world." The River, now noticing that Chuang Tzu had stopped by his banks to rest, responded "I started in the north where it is cold. I decided to make my way south, where I heard that it is warm and pleasant most of the year. I have come quite a long, long way from my home. On my way I have had many twists and turns, and I have seen many people and many places. I have become a mighty river, much more grand and impressive than I ever would have been if I had stayed at home."

Chuang Tzu listened to the river's story and replied "and truly you are a grand and impressive river, the envy of the other rivers and streams. Surely this is not what makes you cry so?" The river, feeling slightly better upon hearing Chuang Tzu's praise, stopped his sobbing. "I was enjoying the beautiful sunshine, and the sound of the wind through the leaves, when I saw some men on a boat. I went to go help them carry their cargo when I overheard them talking. They were talking about me, and they said that soon after I reach Louisiana I will come to the Gulf, and that will be the end of me! I am such a beautiful river, I do not want to come to an end!"

Chuang Tzu laughed when he heard the river's tale. "Is that all that makes you cry, River? This is not so sad a thing. You had your start from Lake Itasca in the north and you will see your end at the Gulf. But that does not mean that you are not a mighty river in between. This is true of all the Ten Thousand Things. Before I was born, I was nothing. Then, I was born. Some day, I will die, and I will be nothing again. Why spend this beautiful day sobbing?"

Going to Confession

2008-02-20T23:37:00.000-08:00

I was playing a game of Civilization IV at some point over the last few years, and I got into a particularly allegorical quagmire. In Civilization, because there is usually at least one opponent who begins the game in close proximity to you, a standard tactic I will use is to expand my empire by building new cities until I have seized the largest segment of the available landmass that I can. After I have seized a reasonable chunk of real estate, I will set about to develop those cities into reasonable, functioning entities. The "Grab & Grow" approach ensures that you capture a large percentage of the available landmass while it is still available, but it also means that your cities remain underdeveloped until you reach that point.

Now, Civilization IV is a well balanced game. The designers spent quite a bit of time perfecting the flow of the game to ensure a well engineered simulation. In one particular game of Civ IV, I found myself with quite a bit of room to expand. Fearing that I would not grab enough of it before my opponent, I rapidly expanded my empire by building city after city after city. Where as normally my expansion would be hemmed in by the restrictions of the environment and by the expansion of my opponents, in this case, I was free to expand well past the normal range.

Eventually, I reached the point where I had so many underdeveloped cities, each one running at a budgetary deficit, that I was losing money faster than I could bring them into the black. Soon, because I couldn't develop that many cities fast enough to keep myself solvent, my treasury went into the red. In Civ IV, when you run out of money, and you can't raise taxes or cut spending enough to bring yourself back into the black, your units start to automatically disband at random. When all of your workers disband, you can no longer improve the land around your cities. If you can't improve the land around your cities, you can't make more money. If you can't make more money, you can't pay for new workers. Quite a predicament.

When I found myself in this situation, I scrambled to cut costs wherever possible, but it was too late. I had tried to operate on a bigger scale than was logistically reasonable at that point and as such I had built a self-defeating system. A system so specialized toward growth that it lacked the means to sustain itself. I had failed at one of the principles of Taoist action, to know and accept myself and the limitations thereof.

During one of the recent times that I have reread "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu and the writings of Chuang Tzu, I realized a principle of the Tao that neither writer specifically states, but which I believe to be an unstated central point to the understanding of the Taoist world view. For background, in Taoist mythology humans, the rank and file, the great unenlightened mass, are set aside from the workings of Yin and Yang. They are even sometimes set aside from the "ten thousand things", the term for the aggregate of all individual things when they are being considered as separate entities. The reason that human beings are considered separately is because we are, for lack of a better word, more broken then all the other things. We have "mind", consciousness, and as a result are more disjointed from the Tao, perceived in this light as the harmonious balance of all things, because we get lost in a world of illusions that we create through the processes we use to perceive the natural world.

Using the information we gather with our limited senses, we develop limited mental representations of reality based on assumptions and partial information, and we cobble that together into a functional apparatus that we use to interact with the world. We expand that apparatus to the extent that is logistically reasonable for our given resources. Sometimes, the growth of our cognitive apparatus, our cerebral empire, slows to a crawl once we reach a comfortable and functional level. Sometimes, it continues to grow at a responsible and healthy rate. However, sometimes that is not the case.

To act in accordance with the nature of things. To treat each of the "ten thousand things" as they are, rather than as we would have them be. To abandon the urge to impose our will upon the world, this is at the heart of what the Tao teaches is the "Way of the Sage". As humans, we tend to start from a standpoint of "how is this thing useful to me". We see a tree as wood for building, we see an animal as meat for eating, we see other humans as a means to power. This is the fallacy of an ego-centric world view. We tend to judge things relative to the their benefit to us, rather than in their own right.

The thought that occurred to me was as follows, "When a despot uses his military might to subdue his enemies, to impose his will on others, it is an act of war. If so, what is the difference when any person uses the resources afforded to them to impose their will on another? It is a difference of degree, a difference of specifics, a difference in name alone, and as such, it is no difference at all. To act with the intention of imposing your will on something, to act towards a designated outcome, regardless of the predisposition of that thing, is an act of war."

To understand this concept, we must first throw out our preconceived notions about the concept of "war". We have a tendency to view war as "evil" and peace as "good". To truly understand the nature of these things, we must forget the polarity of "good and evil", because they are subjective ideals, and do no good in an objective realm. When one person uses their economic power to financially ruin another for their own personal gain, it can be done without any "violence" what-so-ever, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't an act of malice. To covet personal wealth at the expense of the poor may not be maliciously directed at any individual, but it may still cause immeasurable injury. Conversely, during a well operated military campaign, it is imperative to show kindness and humanity to those who you wish to subdue, or else you will simply reinforce your enemy with new recruits. In such a way, "war", when treated correctly, can be more humane than peace.

To act towards a specified outcome, to will into existence a circumstance regardless of it's indirect effects on the exterior world, to alter the natural functioning of things to fit an identified aim, this is what Judeo-Christian religions consider the chiefest of failings, Lucifer's bane, "The Sin of Pride". To assume that your perspective is more valid than that of the objectivity of natural balance is to "play god", to value yourself above all else, to impose upon the world an outcome that was formulated based on an incomplete data set by a creature that encompasses only a meager, nearly infinitesimal percentage of the reality they are attempting to control. The reason "Pride" is considered the chiefest of failings is that this course of action is likely to cause repercussions similar to it's own nature. Violence begets violence. Egocentrism begets egocentrism. One attempt to control the circumstances of reality beget other attempts at control.

So, here I am. I know that I don't need to actively confess. I know that confession means nothing if not counterbalanced with a resolve to correct the ailment. I know that there is no magic man in the clouds that will wash away my sins if I say I am sorry, but the problem is this, just like in that game of Civ IV, I have failed to know and accept myself. I have been trying to operate on a grander scale than I am capable of, and as a result of that I have been failing to do even the basic things that I should be capable of. I have believed myself emotionally and psychologically stronger than I am, and as such have set myself on a path towards destruction. I have focussed on the idea of evolution and enlightenment so long that I tried to push myself farther than I was capable of legitimately expanding. Now that I have accepted that fact, I need to step back, cut costs, stabilize and move towards expansion in a more reasonable and productive way.

When I was a very young person, in response to a frightening and unkind world, I decided upon a simple course of action. Since my natural proclivities made me an outcast, I would use my superior intelligence to ensure that everyone would love me. At the time there seemed to be no more reasonable and compassionate response. It seemed much better than the alternative of destroying all who opposed me. If the world did not like me, I would change myself and change the world, until harmony occurred. Only recently did I realize that by deciding to actively alter the perceptions of everyone I meet, I was effectively declaring war on everyone, creating myself as an army of one on a campaign against the world. In a way, destroying all who opposed me.

A while ago, I called into question my personal weakness for relying on other people too much by sharing too much of my psychological baggage. After that, I decided that I would not burden other people with my unique brand of craziness, so that my failings as a person would not negatively impact those around me any further. Since then, I tried my best to stop using other people to vent the emotional pressure of my personal issues, but instead resigned myself to correct them at their source. I boarded up "Prometheus" and I kept my issues to myself with the intention of resolving my problems alone. I realize now that I was effectively trying to walk before I could crawl. As human beings, we tend to need an outlet for the crazy that we brew in our private time, and I have a wealth of private time and the ability to brew up more crazy than Wisconsin brews up mediocre beer. We are inclined to spew our broken pieces all over those around us as though we are some kind of misshapen jigsaw puzzle looking to be sorted out. While the Sage may be able to resolve their issues internally, without polluting others, I have not yet reached that point of personal strength and as Chuang Tzu says, "a man who thinks himself stronger than he is will only destroy himself. A man who recognizes that he is weak may work to make himself stronger."

Another area in which I have expanded past my abilities is within the removal of desire. The Sage desires not because he recognizes that to desire is to falsely believe that he lacks that which he needs. If one tries to take a shortcut to the dissolution of desire by simply discounting the perceived value of things, rather than through wisdom and acceptance, then instead of being free from desire, one is trapped by the lack thereof. I am also guilty of this. In my immature attempts to free myself from desire, I reduced all things to being valueless without then accepting the inherent value of all things. To illustrate this point I call up the old Zen Cohan, "First there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain. Then there is a mountain." I have effectively gotten to "Then there is no mountain", set up camp, burned my boats and made a little house. Without accepting the appreciation of all things as the natural next step, I am stuck in the in-between.

So, before I can overcome my desire to control the world, I must first accept and surpass that desire, not simply ignore and devalue it. On that note, here is my desire. In keeping with the exercise I am not going to explain the ones that conflict with the other ones or attempt to justify them on a larger scale.

I want to feel something other than anger, frustration and fear.
I want to want to have sex with a woman . . . or a man . . . or a dog . . . or a melon . . . or anything.
I want to stop taking everyone else's point of view into account as equally valid. Everyone is stupid and wrong.
I want to be able to count on another human being, without eventually being disappointed.
I want to stop thinking I am smarter than everyone else in the world.
I want to stop being everyone's responsible older brother, or worse yet, surrogate father.
I want to believe in something more powerful then my own agency.
I want to meet a person who is so incredible that I feel overcome with hope.
I want to go back in time and change it so that I feel joy when I am told that I am going to be an uncle, or sadness when I am told that my grandmother had died.
I want to love the woman that loved me.
I want to not love the girl who didn't.
I want all of my poetry back.
I want a reason to write new poetry.
I want everyone in the world to stop being fucking retarded long enough to handle their shit for a weekend so I can take a break.
I want to stop feeling like I am the Second Coming.
I want to stop feeling fat.
I want to punch several people in the face.
I want to cry in a situation other than while listening to music or watching a movie, preferably a situation that has to do with my own life.
I want to fuck your girlfriend.
I want to stop trying so hard not to live my father's life.
I want to stop failing at not living my father's life.
I want some Orange Beef from Crown Palace III on Staten Island.
I want someone to tell me what to do.
I want a reason to do something, rather than reasons not to do anything else.
I want to believe that everything is going to be alright.
I want to talk to someone without measuring the amount of eye-contact they make, the position of their body, or the emphasis they place on certain words.
I want to be able to actually listen to someone again, rather than tuning them out until it is my turn to dispute whatever asinine thing they just said.
I want people to do their own fucking dishes for a change.
I want some evidence that the best people I will ever know are not all in my past.
I want less knowledge.
I want a woman who gets me physically excited when she talks sociology to me.
I want another body, "the one I'm using now is covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame."
I want a political leader who I don't feel is either a complete incompetent or a sniveling sycophant.
I want to believe that there is at least one person out there worthy of being respected.
I want to talk about my problems without feeling like I am poisoning those around me with the disease of my psychosis.
I want to be free of all that stupid debt.
I want to be certain of a course of action, rather than judging by probability.
I want to stop worrying about my teeth.
I want my tolerance for hooch to go down by about $10 a night.
I want to wear jeans all the time.
I want everyone to love me.
I want to never have to say "Thank you for calling" ever, ever again.

So here is my confession at the First Church of the Inter-Webs, Sisters of the Bleeding CPU, the Temple of the Immaculate Bandwidth. These are my failings as a person, or at least the ones I can think of right now. Will I move past them? I don't know. But I will try. The important thing is, I am no longer going to assume that I can simply glance past them, without actually overcoming them. Putting on a robe does not make you a monk. Hanging out on a cross does not make you a savior.

Technical Difficulties

2007-08-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Prometheus is going to be down for the month of August while we retool the psychological server that runs this whole dog and pony show. I assume it will include re-reading the works of Chuang Tzu and watching a whole bunch of Northern Exposure. Maybe I'll fight some Space Cowboys. Who knows? Also, I'm going to be incommunicado for the month, but if an emergency comes up, shoot me a gmail or jingle my jangle, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

While I'm gone, nobody e-touch my e-stuff! And somebody remember to e-feed the i-Dog. Thanks.

Best Wishes,
-D.G. Barrett

p.s. - Feel free to enjoy the following during our hiatus:

New Talent On 60 Minutes

The Order Of The Stick

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Dr. McNinja

Animals Have Problems Too

Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology

Free Culture

McSweeney's

Wikipedia - Rod Smart

Zeppole - History and Recipe

Chocolate Rain (Original)

Chocolate Rain (8Bit Remix)

Derrick Comedy

AMADAN - ("Serenity" is now one of my favorite songs)

Blue Scholars

Henry V

Quagmire

2007-07-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

So much to do, so much to do . . . Uhhhhhhhh . . . . . . . . must . . . something . . . gotta . . . do things . . . gotta . . . something . . . can't get started . . . bah!

Call Of The Wild

2007-06-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

Down the street, and around the corner from my current house there is a small office complex, not unlike a strip mall. Bland and commonplace, this particular series of buildings doesn't stick out from any of the dozens around town that are, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same.

One of the offices in this complex is the Portland headquarters of the Confederated Tribes Of The Siletz Indians. The CTotS is an amalgamation of various tribes and kinship networks that had previously inhabited an undetermined area along the central coast of Oregon near the Siletz River. Their Cultural Resource Director, Robert Kinetta, states that an estimated 75 - 90% of the indiginous population died as a result of each of the several major pandemics caused by contact with European explorers beginning around the 1770's. Today, their Portland office is located next door to an acupuncturist.

At my day job, I almost exclusively find myself in situations where the bank is legally in the right and morally in the wrong. Whenever a customer says anything along the lines of "some day, this will all change, banks won't be able to get away with walking all over the working man" I say to myself, "no, it won't change, because you'll give in at the first sign of difficulty, and if there is one thing we do well, it is make life more difficult. All you care about is your decaf latte while the financial world runs a train on your neighbors, but when your ass is in the fire you start talking revolution."

I'm still reading "A People's History of the United States". It does not lead to increased job satisfaction. So far, of all the memorable tidbits, the one that has stuck in my head the most was, "The CIA in Vietnam, in a program called 'Operation Phoenix,' secretly, without trial, executed at least twenty thousand civilians in South Vietnam who were suspected of being members of the Communist underground."

As I walked home from the bus stop tonight, another day as a wage-slave under my belt, hopefully another day closer to self-employment, I passed by the office of the Confederated Tribes. Further down the road, I looked up into the night sky and the stars of the Big Dipper were the solo remaining attraction on an otherwise blank canvas. Some days, I can't help but wonder if we, as a species, backed the wrong horse.

A Lesson In Why You Should Tip Well

2007-06-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

So, I was heading for the bus, early on after a night of drinking and cavorting with Marko and associates. I was heading for the bus, and on my way a little voice spoke to me from th recesses of my mind. It said, "What would Bryce do?" I pondered this question and it became very clear. "What would Bryce do?" He wouldn't go home and get some sleep. That was all I needed.

Marko and his "friend" from out of town, Dani, had already headed to the Shanghai Steakery. I, on the other hand, decided to head for the Shanghai Lounge, in a delightful turn of play. It was Friday night, so my favorite bartender was scheduled to be working.

I arrived and before I could say a word, Sage was asking me if I wanted a Whiskey and Coke or a Gin and Tonic. G & T was my drink for the evening, so I put in my order. In addition I inquired what kind of energy drink selection they had on hand. Apparently, the Shanghai Tunnel is sponsored by "Top Fuel" which gnaws at your innerds like a hungry ferret, but I pulled up a seat and started down the road to Wellville.

A few drinks went by before I decided it was time to go. When it came time to pony up, Sage informed me that she was going to just comp all my drinks for the evening. I insisted that this was too much, but she informed me that it was a already done. As I told her, "my momma always used to say, never argue with the bartender" so I let her comp my drinks for the evening.

Of course, because life works like this, her boyfriend then showed up, as I was packing up to catch my bus, and insisted on buying me shots. If I had asked myself "what would Bryce do?" at that moment, I would have stayed and drank until bad things happened. Instead I left and caught my bus. Sometimes, you just have to go home and get some sleep.

Serenity Now!

2007-06-01T11:30:00.001-07:00

It's funny, whenever I get the urge to watch my DVD of Serenity, they go and put it on the big screen again. I guess I can't complain.

Work Anecdote!

2007-05-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

Today was an impressively annoying day at work, as most days have been since I decided to quit. However, the highlight of my otherwise infuriating day was a particular customer. The afore mentioned customer informed me that his employer had recently had a hard drive stolen from the office that had hundreds, if not thousands, of employees' names, social security numbers, checking account numbers, addresses and a variety of other types of personal information. This is not particularly unusual, in and of itself, many corporations have this problem all the time. This time, however, the hard drive had been stolen from one of the sub-offices of the Department of Homeland Security. Ha HA! The customer was complaining about the fact that his identity had been compromised and that everyone at his office was worried. Sadly, I was thoroughly pissed off by the rest of my day, so I just told him that bank fraud in these cases is rare and placed an alert on his account, totally missing out on a chance for HILARITY!

After having had a chance to think about it for a while, in classic late night talk show style, I've come up with the top 4 things I should have said. Here they are, in ascending order:

4) "Don't worry, this kind of thing happens to T.J. Maxx all the time, and they have much more experience with information security than you guys."
3) "Alright, I've gone ahead and upgraded your account's fraud alert level to ORANGE."
2) "Would it make you feel better if I were to round up a brown person and infringe on their civil liberties until they confess to taking it?"
1) "Buttafucco, Buttafucco, Buttafucco!"

Of course, he had to ask what a "fraud alert" would actually do. I was tempted to say "well, it doesn't actually change anything the bank does, its just something we say we are doing to make idiots think they are safe, without actually having to do anything that might help. Kind of like what you guys do." But instead I decided to say "it heightens the level of security alertness concerning unauthorized access to your account." Some might call that lying. I am one of those people. But that's what being a "Fraud Liaison" is all about.

Random Thoughts

2007-04-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

While at the bus stop this morning I was listening to my iPod, as I do now that I am trendy (just like everyone else), I looked up to see a man looking at me and moving his lips. I assumed he was asking me for the time or the bus schedule or something like that so I removed one of my ear-buds to hear his question. His question was, in fact, "Hey buddy, got an extra condom?" Considering the fact that it was eleven-thrity A.M. on a Wednesday, I have to give props to Random-Bus-Stop-Condom-Guy. Considering that he was riding the bus and asking for a spare condom, let's all hope that where ever he may be right now, he is protecting the rest of us from the fruits of his loins. "Hit that shit, Condom Guy!"

John Fogerty seems to have a pattern of creating really incredible intros for songs that don't live up to what is promised. Whenever I hear a John Fogerty into I get all psyched up, only to be slightly dissapointed by what follows. Admittedly, they are good songs, but the intro's are much better. Case in point; "Almost Saturday Night", "Centerfield" and the pinacle, "Hey Tonight".

The phrase "There's more than one way to skin a cat" is not only disturbing but logically perplexing. I can't think of many ways that are significantly different from just using a sharpened tool to cut through the animal's skin and seperate said skin from the muscle and ligament. Maybe I am missing something.

Quitting a job is a lot like ending a relationship, but with less angry sex.

I have been spending way too much time and energy on Facebook. Basically, I am stuck thinking about how much happier I was at New College, which is a bad mental state to be in. Especially when trying to jump into a new business venture. For those of you out there who are Dan Bern fans, sometimes I think I may have gone down on Madonna too soon. This is exactly the kind of attitude I was trying to avoid by staying clear of any more internet networking sites.

At work, until I quit, I am stuck filing a fraud claim on an account where the customer has died and her daughter is attempting to prove that approximately twenty-to-forty-thousand dollars worth of items that occured on her mother's account between 2005 and 2007 are fraudulent. The customer is dead, there is no way to prove that she didn't authorize the transactions, and even if there were U.S. Bank would not pay out that kind of money, so I am basically filing the paperwork for hundreds of transactions to comply with Federal Banking Regulation E, so that the claim can be denied a few days later because it is outside the allowable timeframe for dispute. Legally, we have to file the paperwork, even if we are never going to even consider approving it. Man, I need to quit my job, real soon.

Steel Reserve is delicious. Seriously.

That is all . . . I assume.

Today's Question

2007-04-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

Brew recently drew me into yet another Internet-social-network-site, and as a result I found myself looking through old photos this morning. The question that invariably comes up for me when leafing through the past is "Can a man ever be forgiven for his past crimes?"

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, done many bad things, and screwed certain things up pretty royally. The best part is, with the exception of some that were chemically induced, I remember almost all of them, pretty clearly, and I think about them constantly. I can fully understand someone with a crippling neurosis acting irrationally, because sometimes when a particularly ugly memory floats to the surface of that chunky, beef stew that is my amalgamated consciousness, I am paralyzed with anxiety for a moment, until I do a little mental reboot, usually accompanied by a little head twitch and a random utterance of gibberish. If I didn't understand what was going on and hadn't worked out how to get past it early-on in life, I'm fairly certain I would have destroyed myself in some way or another by now. Everyone has their own methods of dealing with fear and anxiety, some are functional, some are not.

So, the question is "Can a man ever be forgiven for his past crimes?" The answer, sadly, is "no". No, a person can never be redeemed from the misdeeds of their past. Every mistake he has ever made is as real today as it was when it happened, and it will remain so even after he is no longer alive to lament over it. Each inappropriate action will resound forever, rippling through the pool of time, carrying it's impact from molecule to molecule, potentiality to potentiality. Once an action is performed, iacta alea est, "the die is cast", for better or for worse, until death bids you part. We make our beds each day, and at the end we must lie in them. John Prine said it like this, "Old men sleep with their conscience at night, young kids sleep with their dreams, and the mentally ill, sit perfectly still, and live through life's in-betweens." Looking forward we see the winding path, new as virgin snow and vast as ocean blue. Looking backward we see the graveyard of our old souvenirs, all the tiny trinkets we pick up along our way, the old and broken ones scattered by the side of the road, dropped or thrown away while reaching for some shiny new bauble.

So, no, a person can not be redeemed for the sins of their personal history, because each of those missteps is as responsible for their current incarnation as their triumphs. The flip side to this fairly heavy coin, however, is that just as your failures can never be shaken off, so can your victories never be taken away. Any tiny success that you've found, whether it be picked up from the side of the road and dusted off, or ripped screaming from the maw of the beast, is yours to keep. There are some who would have you weigh your victories against your failures as a measure of your life, but to that I would simply remind that a pound of gold weighs less than a pound of lead, as gold is still measured on the Troy system where a pound is considered to be twelve ounces. We define how to weigh things, and sometimes we weigh some things heavier than others.

Of course, Chuang Tzu would probably have me remind you that a victory is as empty as a drinking gourd until we fill it up. You see, remove human consciousness from the equation and victory doesn't exist. In order for there to be a victory, there must be a desired outcome of a system in motion. If that outcome is fulfilled, there is victory. But remove active desire and all you have is one situation changing into another, the latter no better than the former. Is H2O better when it is solid, liquid or gas? To place a value on a situation, to monitor the differential in value between past and future situations, is an entirely human endeavor. We get so caught up in the specifics of situations that we forget that the idea of something being better or worse is originally built out of a referential to our own survival. Value cannot exist without a predetermined, desired outcome. To die is only considered bad if one's goal is to continue to live. If one's goal is to die, then death is a victory.

Chuang Tzu was walking through the woods with a lumberjack. They came across an old tree, gnarly and rotten, so large that ten teams of horses could rest in its shade. The lumberjack looked at the tree and saw that it's limbs were too gnarly to make beams for houses and it's trunk was too rotten to use to make coffins. "This tree is worthless. It would be a waste even to chop it down, it could not be used for anything." Chuang Tzu looked at the tree and said, "It has lived for hundreds of years because it could not be used for the things of men, and it is the largest tree in the forest."

So, our rights and our wrongs are ours only because we make them so, but does that make them any less real? No, it doesn't. Even a dream, perhaps the most ephemeral of all things, can cause us to wake up in a cold sweat, or make us question our choices, lead us to change our lives forever. We create our failures and our victories, in more ways than one, we give them weight because it comforts us to give gravity to the things we cannot touch, the past and the future. We shackle ourselves to our past because we are afraid of getting swept away in that big River Of Life. Sometimes, we feel we need an anchor, sometimes we need to drift.

Miss Shanghai 2007 ("Futurama: A Space Odyssey")

2007-04-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

The night began with a text message I sent out containing the words "Tonight is a night for drunk-making". This message acted as the bugle blast that signaled last night's valiant charge towards inebriation, like Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up Kettle Hill, only with more drag queens.

Whenever we cannot decide where to drink, we usually will end up at the Shanghai Steakery. I'm actually pretty impressed that I was able to find this picture of the outside of the bar on the Internets. For those of you who have had the chance to have a drink at the Shanghai, I'm sure I don't need to remind you what it is like. But for the benefit of you jive-crackers out there that have refused to visit the City of Roses (LAURA), I'll explain the atmosphere. The Shanghai can easily be considered a dive bar in the heart of downtown, just west of what is sadly considered Chinatown. I have described it on more than one occasion as the bar where Portland's homosexual population and her tremendously creepy population meet to share really cheap drinks. For those of you who don't know, Shanghai is a city in China, and "to shanghai" someone is "to enroll or obtain (a sailor) for the crew of a ship by unscrupulous means, as by force or the use of liquor or drugs", which is a long standing naval tradition that was very popular in both Shanghai and Portland throughout the course of history. In fact, anyone who does visit the City of Roses can take a tour of the infamous "Shanghai Tunnels" that lead from downtown to the riverfront.

We like the Shanghai for a number of reasons. Above all other reasons, the drinks are cheaper than sin and stiffer than King Tut. In addition to that, it is rarely crowded and the music is kept low enough that it is easy to sit and talk. Also, as a result of having gone there so often, the owner's son recognizes us.

So, I met the boys at the Shanghai, only to discover that we were just in time for the second annual, Miss Shanghai Pageant. The theme, of course, was "Futurama: A Space Odyssey", because what is better than regular drag queens? You guessed it, space drag queens. By the time I got there, the owner's son had already set the boys up at our own table in the back and even gotten extra chairs out of the basement to make sure we'd be covered. The downside, a mob of people between us and the bar and drinks that were not as strong as on an average night. The up side? Space drag queens!

Admittedly, on average I prefer to be hit on by gay men than by straight women. You may ask "why?" considering the fact that to this day I remain quite staunch in my heterosexuality. Well, I'll tell you why. Except for a very few notable exceptions, if someone is actively hitting on me at a dive bar, they are likely to be someone I will not be sleeping with regardless of their gender or sexual preference. The reason for that fact has to do with the type of people who tend to hit on you at a dive bar. There are four standard types that I get. The first is the bar hag. These are the women, aged somewhere between forty and seventy years, who have spent the better portion of their evenings in dive bars, in many cases the very same dive bar in which they are currently hitting on you. Screaming "Take it, Grandma!" in mid-coitus may work for some men, but it just don't work for me. Not even a little.

The second type is the tremendously ugly and/or obnoxious girl. The best example of this type I can remember was on a night when the Reverend was still in P-town and he, Brew and I went out to grab a few drinks. While sitting in our booth, chatting about a variety of things, a creepy, round little woman came up to our table and interrupted us mid-sentence to ask the Rev how he was doing. While Brew and I sat there aghast at what was happening, she told the Rev that he should not look so upset and that he should in fact come dance with her. When he politely declined she offered him a hug. When he politely declined that as well, she hugged him against his will. Brew and I were so stunned we could no longer function but to laugh quietly to ourselves. As much as you have to admire her pluck, there is a line between flirting and molestation which this type of dive bar patron tends not to see too clearly.

The third type of dive bar patron that tends to hit on me but with whom I will not have sex is the overly drunk girl. Overly drunk girls can on some occasions be quite attractive. In some situations, an ODG can be a woman that I was considering hitting on six drinks ago. The problem is, once a person is drunk to the point that they actually fall off their bar stool, it somehow removes the mystique. I had this situation happen to me roughly a month ago. Admittedly, a bar stool can be a difficult tool to master after a few beverages, but a good general rule of drinking is that once a person ends up on the floor, it may be time to call them a taxi. "You're a taxi!" If you do decide to attempt overly drunk sex, it usually does not end well, as a few of the women who have taken me home after a night of grain alcohol punch will probably attest. Oh! Self-burn! Of course, it can also lead to hilarity, such as the time a woman woke up naked in my bed and the first thing she said was "Where are my grandparents?", which still makes Eugene and I chuckle to this day.

The fourth and final type is gay men. Of the four, I prefer being hit on by gay men because they are always the most charming. I have never been verbally abused or had a drink spilled on me by a gay man who was hitting on me. On average, the gay men who tend to hit on me are sober enough to be coherent, on my same level of attractiveness, often well dressed, and very sweet. For example, at the Miss Shanghai 2007 competition, two separate gay men requested the chance to stroke my goatee. They both told me that it made me look regal, and one actually said that I looked like a Pharaoh. See, you don't get that kind of compliment from a woman who is falling off her chair. Generally, from an ODG you get something along the lines of "You know, I think you're a little fatter than my last boyfriend. More cushion for the pushin, eh?" Personally, I'd much rather have someone stroking my ego and my beard. For another thing, after a few minutes of talking to me a gay man will usually pick up that I am straight and will often just come right out and ask me. But then after they find out that I am not going to sleep with them, they are still just as nice as before. They aren't pushy or rude or personally offended by my sexual preference. Generally speaking, if I am going to be hit on in a trashy dive bar by someone who has no chance of taking me home, gay men are by far the best.

In addition to the drag queens, there was of course the usual assortment of Shanghai mixed nuts. The most notable in my mind was a white haired man in a "Can-o-whoop-ass" t-shirt that looked like David Cross in costume and made it a point to touch everone's shoulder while informing them that it was his birthday and offering them a pair of socks. Then there was the short, black, butch lesbian that almost got into a fight with fake David Cross when he touched her shoulder and offered her socks. After knocking fake David Cross into me, she accurately guessed that I was also East coast representen'.

Anyway, one of the benefits of the Miss Shanghai pageant is that it does tend to increase the number of heterosexual women in the joint from negative six up to positive four. Of course, three of those four were imported by us. Of the four straight women in the joint, one was Drew's girlfriend Kim, one was a fairly attractive young lady who came in with another crowd and who I did not get the chance to talk to, and the other two were Drew's boss and her sister who was visiting from out of town. As far as one night stands go, someones sister from out of town is like sex gold. I would later find out that Drew had apparently been talking me up to his boss and her sister, which for those of you who don't know Drew, probably consisted of "YOU SHOULD SLEEP WITH DEVO! HE HAS A HAT! DO IT!"

I, on the other hand, was at the bar trying to get a drink, getting hit on by gay men and flirting with an attractive lesbian named Peachie. Man, I like flirting with lesbians.

Other notable activities included determining that Marko has a gambling addiction because he constantly lies and says that he doesn't gamble, and getting a burrito from my favorite late night taco truck.

Space drag queens.

Consulting The Auspices

2007-04-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the Universe lacks subtlety.

Some people would call me apathetic, lacking in strong feelings one way or the other on many important points. While I can definitely see why a case could be made for that point, it is not quite correct. In fact, I do have somewhat strong feelings on most important points. The problem is that I almost always have strong feelings in multiple different directions at once. I am the poster child for ambi-valence. I have more valents then you could shake a stick at, particularly because if you were to attempt to shake a stick at my plethora of valents, in which direction would you shake the afore mentioned stick? Instead of shaking the stick you would probably end up moving the stick in some sort of spherical rotation, which would be a serious detachment from the original intention of the action, therefore rendering the act itself practically meaningless.

Moving on . . . I'm ambivalent. As much as it can be a benefit to be able to consider all sides to a situation, it can also be a hindrance as well. Sure, it helps me to understand why people do the things they do, but I often find it difficult to even make small decisions, such as where to eat or what to do with my day. When it comes to big decisions, I sometimes become practically immobile because I can simply see too many possibilities and I want a chance to try them all and see which one works out best. Unfortunately, you can't quicksave before a big decision and then reload if it doesn't work out. Man, sometimes life would be better if it were more like Max Payne. Wait, no it wouldn't. Max Payne gets shot. Quite a bit, in fact. More than you would expect a person could reasonably be shot and remain standing. Perhaps I should call the game designer's customer service line to complain?

I often refer to this ambivalence as "being a man of two minds". I could go into a long spiel about fractional or layered personality theory, but I will save that for some other time. When thinking about the way the world works I tend to vacillate between two mindsets, both focusing on "infinite potentiality". One mode focuses on the "Infinite Doubt" aspect of infinite potentiality and would argue that because nothing can be proven beyond a potential doubt nothing can in fact be known. Reality is effectively chaos and any seeming patterns are coincidence or resulting only from a lack of information on the part of the observer. The other mode focuses on the "Infinite Truth" aspect and would argue that because nothing can be disproven that nothing is in fact impossible. Reality is effectively an infinitely expanding pattern and the appearance of chaos is due to lack of information. My family tends to focus on the latter mode, and are very into looking for demonstrations of "The Universe" expressing itself in observable ways. Along the same lines, as a writer I developed a sort of ego-maniacal love of the idea of a "Writer" and along that vein I look for literary patterns in my life as well. Personally, I dance back and forth between the two options. I can't say that there is a grand design, but I can't say that there isn't. They are both fun to think about, and that is about as much attention as I give the matter.

Anyway, when I am being ambivalent, I like to play a game with life. I look for things that could be considered "omens" and I consult a variety of oracles including but not limited to: fortune cookies, The Coin of Divination (the Imperial Septim I got when I bought Oblivion), Magic Eight Balls, my little sister, picking words out of books, episodes of television shows that just happen to be about my current life decision, other people's conversations (especially on the bus), the order of songs on a random playlist, and other random situations that could be interpreted as "the Universe" giving me advice. The way I figure it, I am covering my bases. If the world is chaos, then all I am doing is interpreting random events in the way that I want to give myself justification for the course of action I actually want to take. If there is an underlying pattern or grand scheme, then it'd be kind of dick not to listen to the advice. I don't believe one more than the other, but playing at omens is more interesting than doing nothing.

So, I had decided a while back that I wanted a new job. Specifically, I wanted something that would not involve an office or customer service, something that would allow me more personal freedom and free time and something that would let me work with my hands to create something tangible. A few weeks ago my father called me to let me know that a friend of his is doing pretty well in the Tile Resurfacing biz' and that he'd be willing to train me. I started to think about it and the more I thought the more it made sense. But, I was ambivalent.

A few days after that, Brew sent me a message from Taiwan containing only the sentence "Quit your job!" Now, coming from Brew at that specific time, it was not unexpected, considering he had recently quit his job and fled the country. Plus, he had been lobbying for me to quit my job on a fairly regular basis even before he left town. No great signs from the Cosmos there.

I was still ambivalent as I talked with "Bob" about the business and the potential. It would involve a significant life change, including buying a pick-up truck. Now, as many of you know, when it comes to vehicles "I am a man of two minds". Part of me wants a tiny Japanese car that can fit in a suitcase and runs on love and the other part of me wants a big truck that I can use to haul around big heavy things that are manly and sharp and include the word "alloy" in their title. So, I have been thinking about what kind of pick-up truck I would buy. The other day I said to myself "man it would be so hot to drive around in a big purple pick-up truck, resurfacing tile. It would be the next best thing to my long term goal of being a Vigilante Firefighter. But there is no way I am finding a cheap, used, purple pick-up truck." A few days later I was on my standard route to work when I passed a hot purple pick-up truck on the side of the road with a "For Sale" sign, to which I said "well played, Universe. Well played." Of course, by my ride home it was gone. Just another friendly reminder that you have to jump on opportunities when they come up.

Finally, this morning my alarm clock woke me up with the usual bland radio jabber that has sadly become common on the radio station that I once prized for it's complete lack of Disk Jockeys. As I slowly gained consciousness I realized that it was in fact a radio horoscope spouting the same trite advice about love and money that all horoscopes are guilty of (even Rob Brezsny, on rare occasion). As it pulled around to Pisces, the end of the Zodiac and of course my birthsign, the overly chipper radio personality reported that it was in fact the best time in a decade for Pisces to change jobs, at which point I rolled over, hit the snooze and said "Fine, I'll quit my job, just stop pestering me."

Sometimes the Universe lacks subtlety.

So, I'm quitting my job, borrowing lots of money and getting into the Tile Game. I was getting pretty tired of working in a bank anyway. I will miss calling myself a Fraud Liaison though. People just did not know what to make of that. I will not miss wearing Polo shirts and khakis. And I get to own a truck. WOO!

The Continuing Adventures of Admiral Steengo

2007-03-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

For those of you who remember my original post about Internet poetry (the post which was, might I add, posted much earlier than the Reverend's. *Cough* . . . biter . . . *cough*) I thought I might share the insights I have been granted into the extended adventures of that rake and rapscallion "Admiral Steengo", the focal character of the poetry that the Internets compose and send to me in emails about cheap Viagra, Valium and Soma. I much prefer the poetry to the drugs. I have to say, it is scary how much sense this makes to me. I toyed with the idea of adding line breaks to the second two chapters which were done in more of a prose style, but I decided that it would be a crime against the artist to alter the work without their consent, so all three have been left how I received them. I did, however, add the chapter titles, so much for purity. Enjoy!

Chapter 1 (the original) : Admiral Steengo and the Ersatz Hound

Fido spoke with was that of Admiral Steengo.

over the low wall, bent and looked. Eyebrows even higher now.
even get any static.
Fundamentaloids that I want to look for.
Positive? I asked.
The bomb that the ersatz hound had exploded was a quick in-and-out
launched into this overamplified and very catchy-if not itchy-number.
here as a guarantee-dont you agree? He stood and buckled on a large
puddle. He rose up, angrier than ever, balled his fists and came on
got to lose?
Taking the literal meaning of see, dear Jim, forces me to answer

Chapter 2 : Virile, Important Men

Red brick, Madonette said brightly. science building. Do you know about it? am sure. No, not a big. reaction. Just that it absorbed electricity from our primitive, virile, important men. Strength through strength. I like Steengo shook his head in a solemn no. Later, perhaps. But I dont worried subconscious. They flicked over the computer controls and the That was when the two cities were built-and the wall? the red brick road. Come with me, Jim, he said with a deep voice like distant thunder. They shuffled out wearily with dragging feet. The Admiral stamped in Among other things that we are here for, Svinjar old chubkin. But the Hi, guys! I said in cheery greeting to the far-from-friendly faces. CHAPTER 19 running feet. No-because I dont know myself. My vote was cast against this entire up a certain building and stole from it-and from us-an object of great clicked out a couple of Blast-offs, superuppers, and swallowed one.

Chapter 3 : Labor in the Cause of all

Looking at them I think of you go on when we are rested. muttered something, opened his eyes and saw us. Sat half up and looked More cries of masculine joy. We concealed our overwhelming pleasure buckle. flies laying eggs. All of the creation myths of mankind, all the gods Sounds pretty terrible, Madonette said. Turning all those men into The petty officer of our guard protested. Not regulation, sir. They waited. Proceed, a voice commanded and we did. Into a dimly lit This cant be it! I shouted. It cant all end just like this. The artifact has to be somewhere here. for action in this civilized universe. The search will be a simple one Success. Heimskur is head of the bunch who Labor in the Cause of all, white-clad and standing firmly erect. But his face was wrinkled You read what? Steengo asked. I hope not, I husked in return. Madonette reached over and patted fading instantly when I thought about my own problems.

Grab Bag Surprise #2 Fun Post

2007-03-10T20:39:00.000-08:00

Last night I urinated in two separate public parks. In completely different parts of town. Not intentionally. Man, gin is fun.

You really have to tip well if you are going to visit a particular bar often. It's not optional. To go some place more than once in the span of a month and under-tip is basically antagonistic. It should be considered assault.

Besides, if you tip a bartender well, they are more likely to do things like "forget" if you had three or four drinks and err on the side of the former. Truth be told, I am fairly certain it was five drinks, but for some reason my memory is a little fuzzy.

Liz Vassey is still hot.

This is a bialy. If you have never had one, you have been living a half-life, like a mentally handicapped person or someone who believes that "waiting for marriage" makes their first time special.

Here is an excerpt from the show Kim Possible that I caught while over at Mark & Angela's. At the very end of this clip is the exchange:
Kim: I suppose football reads better than flooding the cafeteria.
Other girl: Oh, you mean the Chess Club incident?
Ron: The first rule of Chess Club is "you don't talk about Chess Club".

If beginning to obsessively watch a show about a pre-teen cheerleader/crime fighter is "creepy", then color me badd.

However, here is a picture of a real naked mole rat. Not this. But this.

Usually Rob Prezney's Free Will Astrology, which I occasionally read, makes a pretty valid point. I don't believe in prediction by the stars, but usually it has some good advice. This week's I don't get though. Its just kind of boring and doesn't really mean anything to me.
"Molecular scientist Robert Bohannon knows a way to cram even more obscene gratification into a doughnut. He has discovered the secret to infusing pastries with a non-bitter version of caffeine. If his innovation is adopted by bakers, a doughnut would not only be able to have its usual sugary kick, but could also deliver the punch of two cups of coffee. Judging from the current astrological omens, Pisces, I'd say you'll soon be able to find a healthy metaphorical equivalent to this pathological marvel for your own use. In other words, you'll intensify your enjoyment of an already fine pleasure."

The donut doesn't even sound that good.

I think Ricardo Montalban could take David Bowie in a fair fight.

A full day of being hung over and watching "How I Met Your Mother" goes a long way for making a person like Neil Patrick Harris. Man he's awesome.

"Yo, ninja, yo! Shit! You see that shit? Brutus got straight up punk'd like a bitch, yo!? Ain't that some cold shit. Ain't no need to smack a ninja with a shield, you hear what I'm sayin, ninja? Shit."

Medieval 2: Total War is so pretty that I very seriously considered making sweet, sweet love with my DVD drive. Probably for the best that I couldn't get the angles quite right. The game is graphically as sexy as Oblivion, only with thousands of little men who will kill each other because I tell them too. Plus I get to play as a Venetian Doge. Its like history has come alive!

Contrary to my earlier gripe about Portland Chinese food, I have actually managed to find some half-way decent locations. I was just going to all the wrong places before. Apparently, unlike most cities, in Portland you actually should tend to stay away from the small divey-looking Chinese food places for the most part and stick with the slightly more upscale-looking places. Its the exact opposite of most other cities. And of course, there is always the old maxim of "watch for where the Chinese folks eat. If you look around and all the customers are white, chances are the food is bland and sexually repressed."

I'm outey!

This Just In

2007-02-26T22:36:00.000-08:00

So, apparently hummus is delicious. I just found out. Quite frankly, I am very upset that nobody told me about this before now. I am officially of the opinion that everyone who failed to tell me how delicious hummus is has been actively lying to me for years. Years!!

Don't think I won't get my revenge upon all you deceivers. My delicious hummus REVENGE!

The above image is my favorite response to a Google image search for "revenge".

Capitalism, Democracy & A Culture of Ignorance

2007-02-16T03:10:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: First, I want you to know that in order to keep your attention and to make this as easy as possible on both of us I am going to use humor and a variety of cultural references and examples. However, this does not mean for one moment that I am not completely and wholeheartedly serious about every single word I say.
Second, everything that I say is a theory that I am presenting. There is a distinct possibility that I am as full of shit as everyone and everything that I accuse of being so, perhaps more so. If you disagree with my assumptions, my thought process, or my conclusions I not only request but demand that you tell me so that we can both learn from the experience.

After the recent death of Habeas Corpus, I was partially renewed in my old vendetta against the evils of corrupt governance. There is a scene in Henry V that always comes to mind whenever I begin to think about social organization and government. Bates, a commoner and soldier on the eve of a battle that will undoubtedly lead to his death says this of governance, " . . . for we know enough, if we know we are the king's subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us." Williams, a fellow soldier, follows with, "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' . . . Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." For now, I just ask that you ruminate on those words. Savor them at the back of your mind while we move on.

Now, a brief discussion of the concept of organic and artificial (mechanical) systems. For those of you with sociological inclination, I am not speaking of Durkheim's ideas on solidarity but rather of a more general concept of theoretical division in systemic styles. Let us start with an example of what I mean by an artificial system. A refrigerator is a complex artificial system. It is a collection of different parts, combined in a specific order with the intention of creating a unified whole that can function towards a purpose. When you consider this, a refrigerator is a very impressive thing. It was created with intention towards a specific task and it performs that task better than a non-specified system could. To be able to drastically change the climate of a given area without affecting it's surroundings is something that even with all my opposable limbs I can't mimic . . . at least not yet. On the flip side of the coin we have the organic system. I am a complex organic system. I am a collection of different parts combined in a functional order by a process of natural growth wherein the necessities of the whole are met through adaptation of the parts toward specific functions. When you consider this, I am a very impressive thing. I consist of a wide variety of interdependent organic sub-systems that process a panoply of different tasks allowing the unit as a whole to function with a range of abilities completely unknown to a refrigerator. Sadly though, I can't keep beer cold inside me . . . . yet.

The basic distinction I want to illustrate between organic and artificial systems is this, an artificial system is created from the top down, usually designed for a specific purpose and able to function only within the confines of that purpose, and an organic system is created from the bottom up, built piece by piece through a near infinite number of individual decisions/computations/reactions, and generally has no specific purpose other than the continued existence and growth of the unit as a whole. A personal computer (cir. 2006), an automobile, a chainsaw, Communism, these are all artificial systems designed by humanity to serve a function. A Welsh Corgi, weather patterns, me (cir. 2006), Capitalism, these are all organic systems created through a natural process involving a near infinite number of individually interacting factors.

You may be asking why I have assigned Communism and Capitalism to the specific categories into which I have just placed them. Well, that is a very complex question, but the oversimplified version is that functional Communism is a theoretical economic/social model that has been imagined by a slew of interesting thinkers and in most, if not all, versions it is imposed from the top down on society by a revolutionary social or political movement that manually organizes society into a functional system. I am talking here of “modern age” Communism rather than the supposed “tribal communism” which is a debatable concept. Capitalism on the other hand was not invented and imposed, but rather was observed arising as a result of the interaction of an innumerable number of individual factors.

So, why draw a distinction between different modes of systemic functionality? Well, I'm glad you asked. Because the better we understand how a system works the better we can incorporate it usefully into our lives. If we expect a bus to act like a cow, there will be almost as much confusion as if we expect a cow to act like a bus. Either way, you're not getting to work on time. So what important elements can we identify as being distinct to either system? Well let's start off with function. Artificial systems, by the definition I have laid out for us, are generally created with intent towards a specific function. If the system then does not provide for that function it is defective. If a chainsaw fails to cut through a car door, it is not a very good chainsaw. If Communism fails to provide for the equal distribution of wealth to meet the needs of the participants therein, it is not a very good economic model. Organic systems, on the other hand, are not designed with a function, but rather develop necessary sub-functions through the process of providing for its own growth. If the afore mentioned cow dies due to a congenital heart defect, it is not a very good cow. If Capitalism collapses due to contrasting motivational forces within its constituent population, it did not do its job properly.

Now that we've covered function, let's move on to termination. Everything ends, it is a necessary fact of systems in motion that they will cease to be at some point. The only way to maintain something indefinitely is to suspend all motion, and as much as we'd all like to exist forever, suspending time would make it fairly difficult to get things done. The difference between our two systems here is not that one will survive and the other will not but rather in the way in which they will end. Let's step back to our refrigerator for a moment. As we have previously mentioned, a refrigerator is an amazing device, but it is a prime example of the weakness of an artificial system. Even the best refrigerator needs routine maintenance to continue operating. If the tiny light bulb goes out, it must be replaced. A refrigerator cannot self correct to replace the light bulb or alter its function so that the missing light bulb's task is accomplished by another feature. If the bulb goes out the refrigerator is without light until someone replaces it. In this way, a refrigerator, like all artificial systems, will slowly break down unless it is continuously repaired. An organic system, on the other hand, can get around little things like a burnt out bulb by adapting around it. Depending on the specifics of the system it could regenerate the bulb, develop a new sub-system that makes light through other means, or just learn to do without lighting up the left-overs. Now, the problem with this type of adaptation is that if you have a fish and then it adapts legs and lungs and starts spending it's weekends at the beach, is it still a fish? The answer, "kinda". My point is this, artificial systems have a tendency towards breaking down, organic systems have a tendency towards turning into something else.

So, why is this important in regards to Habeas Corpus and Henry V. It is my assertion that Democracy is a not an organic system. Before you go jumping to conclusions, let me explain that I am not suggesting it is an entirely artificial system either. In point of fact, I would not be so bold as to assert that any actually occurring societal structure is entirely organic or entirely artificial. An ideal system can be slipped into one or the other category because theory fails to factor in chaos, but nothing is ever that simple with human beings. No human system is entirely organic because there are always nutty kooks who stick their head up above the crowd and take a big look at the way things are going, and that knowledge changes their individual actions which then changes the actions of those they interact with, and starts a chain reaction that alters the overall system in weird ways.

If no human based system is entirely artificial or organic, why is it important that I suggest that Democracy is not an organic system. Well, what I am actually suggesting is that the form of Democracy that has been prevalent throughout the course of history as of now is more artificial than organic, and more artificial than Capitalism. The reason this is important has to do with the way organic and artificial components react to each other. The following is an imperfect symbol, but bear with me. For right now, I want you to imagine a human being as a drop of water. Alone a drop of water does not do much on the scale by which we are accustomed to judging things. Why a drop of water? Because of the way water reacts to it's environment it is a perfect example of the process I am about to detail. So a human being is a drop of water and the ground it lands on is the sum total of it's environment. For this instance, the term environment is going to include physical environment (such as trees, oxygen, iron ore, couches, Disneyland and even the human body) as well as abstract environment (such as government, culture, religion, socialization, and instinctual behavior). Here is the second big leap that I am going to be making that you may not be willing to follow me on. It is my contention that human beings are "subjectively-rational self-referential" actors. I am not going to go into great depths about this right now, but the short version is that a human being will act within a logical pattern, but it is a logical pattern that is understandable only if you are able to examine the near-infinite number of interdependent factors that weigh on the decision, including the feedback within the system itself. The best corollary I have for this is weather patterns. We can sometimes predict when it will rain, but not with complete certainty. We can, however, strive to understand why it rained after the fact.

So, back to our rain drop person. If a human being is a subjectively rational actor, like I am assuming, then the course of the rain drop will follow the path of least resistance as it moves through the environment. If the ground is level, it will remain fairly still but will spread out to the extent it can. If the ground is at an incline, it will move downwards. If it falls on a vertical window pane, it will move downward expediently. For this analogy, it is gravity that provides the impetus for movement. For human beings, it is not physical gravity but instead the gravity exerted by life that causes movement, but the details of that assumption will be covered more thoroughly in our later discussion of individual motivational factors some other day. In terms of the human side of our rain drop person, the ground is level when the sum total of factors is such that it causes near balance of activity, for example a subsistence based monastic life. The ground is at an incline when the sum total of environmental factors is such that it causes movement in a specific direction, for example a person who wants to win a hot dog eating competition. The vertical window pane is when the sum total of factors is such that a person is catapulted towards a specific end, for example a person whose every waking moment has been devoted to killing the man who beat him in the World Hot Dog Eating Competition Finals.

Now let's factor in organic and artificial structures into this equation. Organically, the rain drop person would follow the natural incline of the ground and move towards the lowest point until it either reaches said lowest point and attains a state of balance on level terrain or evaporates. Artificial structures erected along the incline can change the course of this motion towards or away from specific environmental ground. For example, we don't want the rain drop person to head down the incline into the "kill other people whenever you feel like it" section of our theoretical environment, so we put up a little slanted dam to redirect the rain drop to the "only kill other people when we say it is okay" section of the incline. The problem is that this is a very big theoretical landscape and the different sections of the incline are not nicely organized into a good side and a bad side, but rather all jumbled together in a random assortment. So we try to set up our dams in such a way as to direct as many rain drops as possible towards the sections we as a society have decided are beneficial and try to steer as many rain drops as possible away from the naughty bits.

So not only does our incline have its own natural grooves and differences in gradation, but now there are tons of little dams all over the place to artificially direct the rain drops. And not just dams either, bucket systems to collect the rain drops and bring them from one end of the incline to another, and slides that take the rain drops off the incline altogether and deposit them somewhere else, and even a bit of blasting to restructure the incline artificially. But here comes the kicker, the incline itself is not stable. The incline constantly undergoes changes of its own, some due to natural pressures, some due to our attempts to artificially change the shape of the incline to better suit our needs, some due to the effect of erosion. So now we have dams that were set up a while back that no longer provide for the function that we originally intended. The dam that used to funnel rain drops towards the "win fame through a hot dog eating competition" area is now sending a direct pipeline of rain drops towards the "eat hot dogs until you are obese because no one loves you" section. Sometimes even stranger shifts occur, like how the Puritanical dam that used to funnel rain drops towards "Amass as much wealth as possible for the glory of God" was then undercut by the "God is Dead" dam and now funnels rain drops towards the "Greed is good. Amass as much wealth as possible for the glory of Yourself" pool, glamorized in the nineteen-eighties (much love to my dawg, Max Weber).

What does this have to do with Democracy? Well to go back to my original contention, I think Democracy is more artificial than organic. Now, I happen to believe in Democracy. I believe that it is a good system, or at least as Winston Churchill put it, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." Admittedly, Democracy is far from perfect, and like all artificial systems it has a distinct tendency to fall apart if not properly maintained. But also like all artificial systems, it serves a purpose for mankind that is more beneficial for us when intelligently directed than an organic system could be. A chainsaw and a crocodile both have many sharp teeth and can rip something apart with ease, but which would you rather be holding onto? Sure, the crocodile will be your best friend as long as there is something to eat in front of it, but watch out if you run out of small aquatic animals. On the other hand, if your chainsaw runs out of gas, you are less likely to be nicknamed "Stumpy" by your friends.

So now I am getting around to the crux of my argument. The other difference between artificial and organic systems is a matter of power. If used intelligently, with planning and cohesion of intention, an artificial system can be far more powerful than an organic system. Hence the power of mankind. As Steve Irwin proved many a time, before his unfortunate and untimely death, artificial means when used intelligently, can easily overcome even the most powerful organic system because of the effectiveness of designing a system for a specific purpose. However, as Steve Irwin proved by his untimely death, an organic system can also easily overcome an artificial system when it is not directed intelligently or when that system ceases to function correctly (in this example, the artificial system is Steve Irwin and his team in their attempt to document the stingray. I am not suggesting that Steve Irwin was a robot). However, the real power of an organic system comes from the fact that it can adapt to situations radically different than what it is normally used to. A chainsaw is going to function like it was designed to until it either falls apart or someone changes what it does. A crocodile can change it's behavior patterns to compensate for changes in situation, or in a more long term sense, the species can adapt it's physiology to better suit it's environment. An organic system, because its "purpose" is survival can change the means through which it functions in order to survive, which gives it a tremendous advantage over even the best artificial system in terms of longevity.

There is a problem with this power though. If the situation warrants it, the organic system will restructure itself completely to meet its needs. This is excellent if your only goals are survival, but if you vainly want to maintain some of the nicer elements of the previous form of the system, like for example "personal freedom", you are out of luck. If the short term benefits of losing the particular element will better equip the system for survival then it must go for the good of the whole. From the point of view of the unified whole this is the process of survival. Of course, from the point of view of the element that is being eliminated, it looks a lot like the opposite.

Capitalism is most certainly an organic system and you will not hear me dispute the efficacy of a capitalist system in providing for its own immediate economic growth and survival. There is tremendous power in the methods of Capitalism that has been utterly unseen in every other economic model. In terms of the processing of resources, the production of materials beneficial to the system as a whole, the sustenance of the unified whole, and the tendency towards proliferation it is magnificent in its power. In this way it is not unlike the most powerful and efficient of all organic systems, a virus. Now, I know what you are thinking. I hate a cliche too. Understand that I am not currently making a value judgment, only a logical assessment. A virus is, after all, the perfect organic system as I have previously defined it. It exists only to proliferate and it has near limitless potential for adaptation towards that goal. You've got to admire that. There is definitely something to be said for that type of ruthless efficiency. The weakness of a virus, from a long term standpoint, is that if it is too good at it's own proliferation, it will eventually consume all of the resources necessary to perpetuate itself and will then have to move on to a new host. If a new host cannot be found, it will fail to continue.

Capitalism is by its very nature a system that demands perpetual growth. Now, the word Capitalism has been used for a wide breadth of ideas and so for clarity allow me to specify my meaning. When I refer to Capitalism here I am referring specifically to an economic model consisting of four primary features: the right to private property; a medium of exchange (currency); a free market exchange system which provides the driving force for production, pricing and distribution of goods and services; and a system of saving and lending of funds. Of those features, the one that I tend to focus on as the heart of capitalism is the concept of the free market which serves as the regulation mechanism that determines the course of production and as we shall see later, much more as well. To sum up the free market, let us say that it is an exchange system in which each individual must seek the most personally profitable course of action in any given interchange. In order for a company to succeed by the structure of the free market it must perpetually increase it's net gains. If it does not, it would fall behind competitors in productive capabilities and/or lose the support of its financial backers who must by their nature perpetually seek to support the company which provides the greatest net profit. Consider this for a moment. It is not enough to be stable and productive, there is an interminable incitement towards greater efficiency, greater productivity, greater accumulation of wealth built into the very heart of the system. This is what has made Capitalism the great lion of the economic jungle. From the bottom to the top there is, at every level, a drive to ever increasing yield. That is what has provided for the material gains in the quality of living that we, as human beings, have enjoyed throughout the twentieth century.

So, what could be wrong with a constant urge towards higher profits? Adam Smith suggested that a nation's pursuit of wealth was the best way to ensure the increased wealth of it's whole populace. The problem is this, all that we have learned about our world suggests that we live in a reality of finite resources. However vast they may seem at times, they are still finite, and as such there is by definition a limit to that which can be obtained and exploited, and therefore a limit to the profits that can be had. Here I am not talking about something as simple as just running out of trees, although that is an important issue as well. What I am really referring to here is the types of resources that can be attained. We start with the raw physical resources, lumber, metal ores, fossil fuels, land. Once those have all been claimed and there are no raw natural resources to call dibs on, we must move on to new and creative means of generating profit. In the vein of a Deus Ex Machina, enter Technology.

Technology allows us to extract greater amounts of useful material from previously dibbed natural resources and turns things that once were meaningless to us into fresh, new resources that can be profited from. But even with the march of technology, the processing of resources still requires that there be resources to process. How do we get something from nothing? Well, what about abstract resources, like advertising space. People need to know what products there are so they can determine which will best fit their needs. But, after we've taken care of informing people of what products are available, we still need to increase profits. We must further expand into untapped abstract resources. Well, now instead of just telling people what is available, why don't we give them a specific reason to buy a certain product, other than just price or quality. What if we come up with creative ways to inspire brand loyalty. After all, people need to be informed about the intricate differences between products so that they can exercise their personal freedom and purchase the laundry detergent that fits best with their personality. Otherwise, how would they know who they are?

So first a little bit of ad space is acquired. After people have habituated to that amount of ad space and the profits garnered by the initial advertising campaign have been factored into the annual profit margins, more is acquired. After all, there are tons of products out there. We wouldn't want anyone to forget for half a second that Coca Cola exists. Sure it's been around for one-hundred and twenty years, but if people don't see an ad for it every fifteen minutes they might try a different brand. After people become habituated to that amount of ad space, a little more is acquired, because the old amount just isn't having the same effect any more.

And this doesn't just mean physical space. This also means that walls of convention that had been previously impenetrable will eventually be broken down by the constant march of progress. There is an excellent scene from the cartoon Futurama, in which the main character, Fry, is having a dream in which he finds himself in the middle of a classroom and realizes he is in his underwear. The teacher begins to lecture him on the value of Lightspeed brand briefs, "Style and comfort for the discriminating crotch." The next day at work he mentions to his co-workers that he is outraged that a corporation could invade his dreams. One of his co-workers replies "Didn't you have ads in the twentieth century?" to which he responds "Sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky . . . but NOT in dreams, no sir."

But not in our dreams.

The thing that makes Capitalism so effective is the same thing that is at the root of human achievement, rationalization. Each person is given a simple task, just keep making the choices that best benefit you financially. If everyone is making the decision that benefits their bank account best at each moment, the system should auto correct to allow for the greatest efficiency, highest net output, and continued expansion into previously untouched realms of resource. Each subjectively rational actor involved in this process just determines the most profitable course of action and follows it. What happens when the most profitable course of action runs counter to an artificially created social bulwark, such as say "ethics"? One of three things occurs, the actor either chooses the less profitable solution and endangers their own fitness within the overall economic system, chooses the most profitable path strengthening their fitness within the system but damaging the artificial roadblock, or chooses a middle option that is neither entirely without profit nor entirely valid within the confines of convention. Now, assuming that those who are less economically fit will be weeded out over the course of time as they starve or fail to procreate, the strive to survive in an increasingly competitive environment will ensure that those who choose the second and third options will be more likely to achieve financial stability- and effectively positions of economic, social and political power -than those who exclusively choose the first option.

So, at every level of the system, each individually functioning unit is attempting to provide for it's existence within the system by selecting the option in each situation that is most profitable. Let's step back to our rain drop people and our imaginary incline. At first, when there are few people, we've got a light trickle and the water will easily follow the path of least resistance created by the combination of artificial (socially constructed) and natural (personally beneficial) landmarks. Imagine a gentle stream trickling down a hill, allowing its course to be directed by rocks, plants and other obstacles. As the number of people increases, the water level rises and the pressure at each point increases. Eventually we start to see the water level rising to the point where the path of least resistance sometimes includes running clear up and over some of the artificial dams that we have set up to channel the water away from actions deemed "negative" by society. Imagine a heavy rainstorm at the top of a hill causing water to wash over minor obstacles, eroding loose dirt and small objects, weakening the supports for large objects like trees and boulders, drastically changing the very environment that would have easily contained a more modest amount of water. For a human example: population in an urban area increases to the point where unemployment is on the rise, soon hostility between different sub-groups rises because representatives of each sub-group assume that the other sub-group is "taking all the jobs". As pressure increases, the likelihood for breakdown of artificial components (laws) increases and the likelihood for organic change increases. In this example, organic change takes the form of a race war.

You and I, of course, are stepping smack dab into the middle of a crazy incline that has been changing artificially and organically for thousands of years. To us, it can look pretty ridiculous at times. What is the important thing to take away from this portion of the argument? Two important points; increase in population increases pressure on the system, and increased pressure increases likelihood that artificial constructs (like individual rights, the concept of business ethics, and chainsaws) will be broken down or bypassed and organic constructs (like the patterns in which we interact socially or do business, and crocodiles) will evolve beyond our control.

How about a quick detour while we explore a self-righteous example. Bob Whiteman is an imaginary corporate executive. In order for Bob to prove his value to the corporate entity he must create new avenues of profit. Bob is in charge of customer service. One year Bob realizes that it is inefficient to have customer service representatives sitting around in stores and offices across the nation just waiting for customers to come in. If the representative is waiting for a customer, they aren't being as productive as possible because they lack the resource necessary to do their job, customers. Bob decides to cut the face-to-face customer service staff in half and centralize much of his company's customer service through a small national call center, since the number of customers a call center rep can process each day is higher than an in-store rep. This way, Bob can reduce the paid staff by one quarter (thus reducing payroll expenditure as well as many jobs) and yet maintain what can be argued to be the same level of total output through increased efficiency. Bob has reduced costs, thereby increasing productivity and increasing shareholder profits. Bob has proven himself a valuable asset to the corporate "family". The next year, Bob has to find a new way to increase profits. Since customer surveys show only a marginal decrease in satisfaction following when he set up the new call center, he decides to halve the number of face-to-face reps again, and increase the number of call center reps slightly. Bob has increased profits again, but this time by a smaller percentage than he did last year. Clearly Bob is slipping. Perhaps Bob is not committed enough to the corporate "family". Next year, Bob needs to think of something good, considering last year's less than impressive performance. Bob decides to reduce the face-to-face reps to the bare minimum necessary to operate a store or branch. Sure, this means that when multiple customers actually do come into a store at one time they are under serviced, but they can just call the national call center. While that is a good start, Bob needs more. Bob takes a look at the customer surveys and realizes that the call center reps are consistently scoring high on "knowledgeable about products and services". Bob realizes that perhaps they are devoting too many resources to educating call center reps. Bob cuts the training time for new reps and lowers the starting salary now that less is required. Bob also realizes that increased sales will increase revenue, and part of customer service is making sure that each customer is being serviced as hard as possible by the company, so he sets sales quotas for call center reps to meet in addition to their quality requirements. All of this increases profits, but not enough to really make up for last year and impress his boss, Mr. Costington. Bob realizes that one of his coworkers, John Nextman, might be eying his position. The next year, Bob tries to increase efficiency by dividing the call center staff into multiple different departments, each with extremely limited tasks and training, some of which he outsources to India to further reduce payroll expenditure. He then increases the sales quotas and changes the quality criteria so that the increasingly negative scores will "more accurately reflect the industry trend". Finally, he further decreases payroll expenditure and increases manager efficiency by decreasing the manager to "specialist" ratio. One day, Bob calls into the call center to determine why his employee account was charged four-hundred dollars for seemingly no reason. Bob is transfered six times between four different departments and is kept on hold for twenty minutes while waiting for a supervisor. Eventually, Bob is informed that the four-hundred dollar charge probably was a computer error but that because he did not notice it within the allotted time frame for dispute there is no way to correct it. Between that and pressures from work Bob is so frustrated that he develops a coronary irregularity and dies on the toilet. Bob is easily replaced by John Nextman who proceeds to blame any problem with the current system on his predecessor and looks for new ways to cut costs.

My point with this heavy handed example is that short term profit does not mean long term benefit. The seemingly most profitable choice in a particular situation may have far reaching consequences that are not obvious within the scope of the quarterly fiscal review. This is not because the long term consequences are completely hidden, but rather because using the process of rationalization we often dismiss the long term consequences as unimportant to our current short term goal. Let's take another quick example from everyday life. Grabbing a pre-"Super Size Me" Big Mac on your lunch break makes perfect sense if you consider only the short term gains; relatively low price, expedient service and millions of convenient locations means smaller opportunity cost, contains (in theory) enough nutritional content to sustain life, tasty enough to satisfy low level pleasure seeking impulses. However, if you consider the long term effects of a diet that includes regular fast food meals, including but not limited to; obesity, nutritional deficiency, indigestion, severe coffee burns, and dying on the toilet, all of a sudden the total cost of that Big Mac is looking a little steeper. While you think about that, consider the fact that the current standard for the corporate lunch break (a robust 30 minutes for most employees) was designed incorporating a fast food meal as a staple.

So, is immediate profit divorced from long term benefit and if so what can be done about it? Well, I'm glad you asked, Imaginary Reader. You might assume that the more you profit right now, the more you have to gain from later on, right? Well, yes and no. The problem with this comes from Rationalization, Specialization and Limitation. We'll start with Limitation. If you start with one apple, then you get another apple, you will have two apples. Seems simple enough, you profited one apple. Where did that apple come from? The apple fairy did not deposit it under your pillow because you were a good child, or if she did she must have gotten it from somewhere. As we already discussed, the world as we know it is finite. There are only so many things that can be exploited, only so many avenues that can be gone down. So the apple must have existed before hand, it just wasn't in your possession previously.

Let's stretch our collective imagination and say that the apple came from an apple tree. By taking the apple from the tree, you haven't created an apple, only altered it's utility by allowing you to consume or transport it. Now let's say that there is a fat, legless man who resides across the street from the apple tree. For the sake of the scenario this man has an unlimited appetite for apples and will pay you a buck for each apple you bring him. So, in this scenario the entire world consists of an apple tree, a fat man, his money, a street and you. Obviously the best way to maximize short term profits is to grab every apple off that tree and take them across the street to Johnnie No-Legs. After you are finished you have made a short term profit of fifty bucks. But wait, you sold all your apples and now you don't have any left to eat. It's times like this that it doesn't pay to live in a hypothetical world that has only one source of nutrition. Johnnie No-Legs doesn't want to sell you any of his apples and you can't overpower him so instead you try to eat the fifty bucks and end up dying of starvation before next year's harvest. Of course, this illustration is unfair because I didn't give you anywhere to spend your money, so why would you want it in the first place?

So what happened in this scenario? Our subject, you, was only following the process of rationalization and made the choice that best benefit them financially as per the rationalized goal we set. The problem is that in trying to make that decision you discarded some information that you incorrectly deemed to be irrelevant to the decision making process, specifically the fact that I had not created a supermarket in this world and that you need to eat to live. If you had taken a look at the big picture, you would have seen that in the long run the most profitable course of action would have been to reserve enough apples to keep yourself alive, plant a few apple seeds to create new avenues of usable resource and sell Johnnie the apples that you have left over. This is not groundbreaking theory here, but bear with me.

The apple trees that could have grown from the seeds you could have planted are not magic. They are not new resources out of nothing, the seeds that you took from the apples were resources you had previously ignored as was the soil in which you planted them and the sunlight and rain which fed them. Tada, Technology! A new avenue of resource is not a creation, it is an exploration. If the world is finite then all resources that can ever be used exist right now as potential resources, even abstract resources. New technology allows us to use old resources more efficiently and to transform non-usable resources into usable resources, but it doesn't just make things appear like manna from heaven.

Let's try a non-renewable resource. There were an estimated 1,277,702 million barrels of oil left in the earth in 2005. With an average processing of 77 million barrels daily that leaves an estimated 32 years before we tap out, and that is assuming a stable consumption rate rather than a rising one which is what we currently have. So, where is technology to the rescue? Well, if America were to emerge from the dark ages and decided to meet international fuel efficiency standards and we say that for the sake of example the average fuel efficiency for the world were to double overnight then that would mean we would have a little less than 62 years of oil left. If the Oil and Automotive industries started cranking out cars with better mileage and charging more for gasoline they could drag out their crippling stranglehold on the country for an additional 30 years. If technology kept doubling fuel efficiency, we could stave off trouble indefinitely. As it stands though, we are set to have an issue in the near future. Practically speaking we cannot increase efficiency fast enough to negate the limitations of a finite world, so no matter how efficiently we use finite resources, the fact that they are being used means that there are less of them for the future.

Now let's try a non-tangible resource, advertising space. Entities in the market claim and start renting out the space along roadsides for billboards. Once the best space has been claimed and rented they move on to the less valuable space. Since the less valuable space generates less profit than the better space the market is forced to expand into a new realm to increase profits. Next come the radio ads. All the prime time slots are filled quickly and the same thing happens as with the billboards. All the while the population is increasing which means that there are more actors exerting their pressure on the system. Next comes TV, bus-stops, the sides of buildings, and the sky. Once those are taken care of comes the sides of buses, Nascar racers, movie trailers, the section of the bathroom wall right above the urinals, and tattoos on the human body. All the while, the space used for billboards has still been expanding into less and less valuable space. Radio ads, having expanded as far as they can in terms of time, must expand into new forms of ad that will better capture the all important resource of human attention. So the radio ad gurus start trying new and occasionally creative things to get people to listen to their message. Radio listeners on the other hand, become habituated with the old forms of advertisement and they become harder to impress. Let's be ridiculous and say that every minute of your waking life is inhabited by at least one advertisement for a commercial product. How would a business then expand commercial revenue? There's a whole six to eight hours a day that is just going to waste while you sleep.

Now, let's tackle the big one. The most important and possibly most intangible resource available, the human life. For this situation I am going to strip the whole of a human life down to the two factors that are important for this discussion, time and energy. By time I of course mean the amount of time that a human being will live. If a human is by definition mortal, then the amount of his or her time that they can devote to a given activity is finite. By energy, I refer to the capacity of a human being to act. So far as it has been observed all humans must rest once their given stamina has reached it's limits. A person cannot run indefinitely. They must intake nutrients to produce energy and they must rest to heal and rejuvenate the body. Both factors are different per person and both factors can be increased or decreased by a practically infinite number of other factors, but as far as we have seen they are still finite.

Let's start simple. The more time and energy a human being spends towards one task, the less they have for other tasks. The more time you spend at the office, the less time you spend at home. The more time you spend listening to radio ads, the less time you spend thinking about other things. The more energy you spend trying to get a promotion, the less energy you have to play with the kids. The more energy you spend mulling over which shirt best fits your mood, the less energy you have to consider the ramifications of a war with Iraq.

How about this one, the more time and energy you spend towards specializing your skills the less time and energy you have to try new things. Or how about this one, the more time and energy you spend pursuing material gain or basic pleasure stimuli, the less you spend on educating yourself. So who decides which tasks and goals are worthy of a human life? You do. How do you make that decision? You weigh the costs and gains of your actions which you calculate based on the values you assign to things. How do you come up with those values? You make value judgments based on information you have observed from the world around you. How do you get the information that you use to make these value judgments? By living your life.

So, if the market is constantly expanding it's sphere of influence, that means that it is constantly trying to increase the amount of your time and energy that is taken up considering its products. If it succeeds you must therefore have less time and energy to consider something else like, for example, the benefits of Habeas Corpus. If you consider again that you gather information while living your life and you use that information to make value judgments, then use those value judgments to determine which choices to make regarding how you live your life, then it should become clearer that each decision that you make has a direct impact on how you will continue to live your life. If then, more and more of our time and energy is being systematically taken up by the market then we will be less and less likely to devote our time to things other than the market. If more of your information intake is market related then there is a greater likelihood that a wider percentage of your value judgments will be based on the market and that which the market promotes. What does the market promote? Well, the market promotes a wide variety of different things, but the one thing that the entire market must promote, by necessity of the process, is consumption. A market system would not survive if a society neither wanted nor needed any products. For all intents and purposes it is the defining aspect of a market system that people will perpetually want and need things from each other. The concept of consumption as a valid and worthy goal in-and-of itself is soon pushed into the forefront of society's pantheon of worthy human endeavors by the ever increasing forces of the market advertising mechanism.

Let's take a snack break with a quick example. How many twelve-year-olds right now can name all one-hundred-fifty original Pokemon? How many of those same twelve-year-olds can name all fifty states? For that matter, how many adults do you know who can name all fifty states? I can't. I used to be able to name all the Pokemon though. How many teenagers do you know that care what type of clothing their favorite celebrity endorses? How many teenagers do you know that care if the government has the right to unwarranted search and seizure? How many adult citizens of a democratic state do you think know the Oscar Meyer Weiner jingle? How many do you think know even half of their civil rights?

So why does it matter if a high-school student spends their time thinking about their new PSP instead of the Magna Carta? After all, how can a bunch of dead English guys and their silly agreement help a modern person get a good job anyway? After you get out of school, nobody will ask you about that kind of stuff, and even if they do it won't affect what really matters, your earning potential. And why should the teenager be looking to get a good job when they get out of school? So they can get the newest game system, so that they can think about that instead of thinking about work.

Just a little while ago I mentioned that the problem that we are currently looking at is derived from Rationalization, Specialization and Limitation. Well, we just talked at length on Limitation and touched a little on everything else, but now I want to focus for a bit on how Rationalization ties into this. Then maybe for dessert we'll dip into Specialization.

Rationalization is the strength of humankind. Rationalization is our flaming sword. Rationalization is our chainsaw. Rationalization means a lot of different things. The definition you will hear most often in sociology is that of "systematic organization; the act of organizing something according to a system or rationale." You've gotta love that near circular logic of using rationale in the definition. So, what is rationalization and why is it our flaming sword? Look out, here comes another assumption. By our "nature" we are organizers. We organize things, that is one of our major biological defense mechanisms. Where a lion is strong and ferocious, with many sharp bits that are good for gouging and general killing, we as humans are soft and doughy and kind of crap. What do we have to work with then? We organize things. As I pointed out with Steve Irwin earlier, with the power of advanced organization and communication we can overcome a powerful organic system like a lion, because we can organize things. This doesn't just mean that we can organize other humans into a group of humans, because tons of animals do that. This doesn't mean that we can organize a stick and a rock into a spear, although that is getting closer.

Rationalization starts at home, in the mind. We observe things around us and organize them into a wide variety of categories. We intake information and we organize the information that is useful to us into one category and the information that is not useful to us we store away in the back, or write over, or label as being unnecessary. We mentally organize things so that we know which of the things we interact with will help us to survive and which of them will make survival more tricky. We have to gather this info the old fashioned way at first, and a few people probably had to die before they got a handle on the "lion = danger" concept. Luckily, we also have another important tool, the ability to communicate.

Communication allows us to transfer some information from one individual to another and this allows one person to have a limited understanding of something they have never experienced first hand. So once the first guy gets the whole lion thing under wraps, he can tell others and that way they don't have to learn it the hard way. There are two downsides to this process. First of all, speech is an inherently flawed method of information transfer and we only ever manage to transfer a small amount of the actual information that we have to the next person. Still though, even a small percent of information that can be gained without firsthand experience will add up as the number of units collecting info increases and the society's ability to store information improves. Think of all the people saved a mauling by the person who first realized "lions are jerks". Second, and this is the part that has been forgotten in recent years. There is information that is gained from firsthand experience that cannot or is not transferred secondhand. The individual that originally has the experience organizes the different bits of info into useful and useless categories. They then usually only bother to try and communicate the info that they deem useful and only a fraction of that info actually gets received and comprehended by the individual that is being told about it. Thankfully, being told "lions are jerks" is not the same as being mauled by a lion, but at the same time, being told about plowing a field is not actually plowing a field.

So, there we are. There is a tremendous amount of info out there in that crazy old world and our ability to scrape out the pieces we need to survive, forget about the rest, and pass that information on to other humans is why we are able to survive and thrive. But let's look at two of the other definitions of rationalization. It also means "to eliminate radicals from an equation or expression" or "to remove unreasonable elements from". The point being that there is, in fact, a tremendous amount of information out there and we throw an incredible amount of that info away because it doesn't fit with our preconceptions or because we don't deem it necessary or beneficial to the goals we have deemed valuable. Think of rationalization as a chainsaw. We use that chainsaw to cut down the "trees of information" and turn them into "lumber of knowledge". But just because we have the chainsaw doesn't mean we should go around sawing everything just for kicks. It must be used intelligently. If we use the chainsaw to create useful lumber and then saw it in half for the sake of using our toy, then we have removed the utility of both the lumber and by extension the chainsaw. In this way, short term, subjective rationalization can prove to be inherently irrational in the long run. The thing is, a decent amount of the info that we throw away is important, just not to our limited view. "Radicals" are often the best part of the equation. An important point to consider here is the concept that once you remove necessity from the equation, no information is more or less important than any other information. If there is no outcome deemed preferable or necessary, then all information is equal. The reason we forget that concept is that life has a natural proclivity towards maintaining life, so we have a naturally occuring "goal" that we use to measure what information is important. The problem is, once we have solved the question of survival, does that naturally occuring goal remain as valid? That is one I will be diving into at greater length in another discussion.

Time for dessert. Specialization is the process by which a thing is created or altered such that it fits a limited function. In the case of organic specialization, focusing on a given function allows a sub-system to improve it's efficiency by adapting specifically towards that which is required by it's function and by eliminating the wasted time and energy of moving between multiple functions that it does less well. A stomach digests food. If a stomach had to spend half of it's energy digesting food and half of it's energy keeping beer cold, it wouldn't do either as well, because some of the stomach's finite resources (be they time, energy or biochemical agent) would be used inefficiently switching between functions or trying to do both at the same time. So, in the case of a whole organic system, like our crocodile, specialization allows it to be very good at what it does, mostly biting. In the case of a sub-system, like our crocodile's stomach, specialization allows the sub-system to work in conjunction with other sub-systems to provide for all the different functions that make up the life of our happy little crocodile.

Where's the downside? Well, let's take our happy little crocodile from his happy little swamp and drop him in the middle of the Antarctic. Bam, dead! Mr. Croc is specialized for one type of life. He can survive small changes to that life by adapting, but if he is forced into a situation that is completely alien, he is likely to do significantly less well. Specialized organisms will only be able to exist given the parameters that they are specialized for. Take a stomach out of a crocodile and it's cells will die quickly, as will those of the crocodile proper who is now missing a stomach. Specialization improves efficiency, but it also limits adaptability. Wouldn't the most beneficial situation be one of extreme adaptability that also incorporated efficiency on par with specialization? An important concept to remember, but not the reason I brought up specialization.

Jumping back a few steps, remember that you create your life with each choice that you make. Every action defines the information you intake and once that information is yours you determine what information is valuable and what isn't, which in turn determines which goals are valuable, which then determines the actions you make next and the information you decide is valuable.

For a human being, specialization means that your experiences are limited to those that surround your function. This limits the information that you intake and the information that you have to use for determining what is important and what isn't. Through the process of rationalization you endeavor to increase efficiency by discarding useless information and retaining useful information. Your incoming information is limited to that which you deem useful for your function and so your actions become more limited. When your actions become further limited, your information becomes even further limited. Now, as each individual actor's jurisdiction becomes more and more specialized, there is more and more new information that is being discarded. Your total database of information is constantly increasing throughout your life, but the range of the information that is comprised therein is vastly more limited than it could otherwise have been. As more new information is discarded, there is a greater and greater probability that we will have discarded something that wasn't actually useless, and correspondingly the amount of responsibility that is actually assigned to a given actor decreases.

If we are constantly seeking further efficiency by discarding information deemed unnecessary to a limited set of functions, we are sacrificing potential long term investments for short term payoffs. Remember that the information we intake is extremely limited by the sensory nature of our existence and if our goals and functions become too short-sighted we are bound to be selling all of our apples without planting any seeds. Individual units then become better and better at doing one thing, but cannot adapt and cannot innovate. Eventually, if responsibilities are narrowed too finely and the number of necessary steps increases to too great an extent then there are bound to be problems that will arise that don't seem to fit into the parameters of anyone's specific function. In that situation, something would need to adapt, but remember that specialization limits the ability for adaptation.

For a real life example of the effects of specialization try calling a corporate customer service line and asking them a simple question such as whether or not you should have a sandwich for lunch. If they are doing their job they will say something to the effect of "I am not qualified to make that determination" because if they advise you one way or the other then the company could theoretically be liable for the consequences of your decision. Which brings up the concept of "liability". "Liability" is very important in Capitalism, but we will discuss that a little later.

By now, you may be thinking, "I'm tired. What are you getting at?" Well, I'm getting at this. Remember our talk about short term vs. long term benefits? I should hope so. The short term benefits of human specialization are an increased efficiency and therefore increased productivity and increased material yield. Capitalism, in its ongoing thirst for greater yield helps to create human specialization as an avenue for that ever sought after increase in profit. The process is pure rationalization; define end goal as "increase material profit", observe the factors of the given system, determine the factors that are unnecessary to reach the goal and discard them, organize necessary factors in most effective manner, thereby increasing efficiency, thereby increasing material profits. Define goal, observe, discard, organize, process, reach goal, repeat.

What is the difference between murder and man-slaughter? Both actions have a similar end product, a human being is dead as the result of another human being's actions. So what is the difference then? Most would say, "intention". But why is it important what the actor intended to do if the end product is the same? One reason, because the end product is not the same. The end product is only the same if we narrow the scope of our view to encompass only one factor, the harm to the victim. If we discard all other information as unimportant than there is no difference. If we are going to go down that road though, then as John Maynard Keynes said, "On a long enough time line everyone's survival rate drops to zero." To discard the information that leads up to our end is to discard everything. If instead of focusing our narrow view on only that one part of the end product we were to look at the entire situation, we would see that the two are completely different. The most important difference being that if certain factors had been changed, the outcome would have been completely different.

There is a saying that "the ends justify the means". This idiom is flawed. Remember that people are organizers. When we consider "the ends" of a given equation, we are only considering a small portion of information that we deem to be important. Which means that we are discarding a tremendous amount of information about the "byproduct ends" of the equation, effects that we did not intend but are never-the-less resultant from our actions. In our hypothetical about the apple tree, our subject focused on the ends of short term profit and chose to ignore the fact that they need to eat. We discussed how a person choosing to eat a Big Mac is ignoring potential "byproduct ends" such as toilet related death. When you allow your mindset to be specialized into that of a consumer/worker and decide to set your life goals based on the accumulation of consumer goods, you are forgetting the byproduct of allowing someone else to determine how your government and your society act and therefore how they evolve. Even if the “ends” do justify the “means”, it must be the complete “ends”, not just the small piece that we want to pay attention to. For that matter, the concept of "ends" is flawed simply because there is no end. Society (and life for that matter) is not a process leading to an eventual outcome, it is a continuous, ongoing experience. The "means" is your life.

Here's the thing. The market needs consumers. In order to maintain it's constant growth the market not only needs more consumers, as in more people in general, but it also needs each consumer to consume more. How does it get consumers to consume more? Well a consumer can't consume more than they earn, but you can fight over what goods they are going to consume, and it turns out that you can artificially increase the demand for a given consumable. To do so the market expands more and more influence into the realm of human time and energy. If you can't increase the amount of consumer goods that people actually need, you certainly can increase the amount that they think they need a specific good or service. A few hundred million dollars of advertising will do wonders to convince a nation that everyone has ADD and needs a new prescription medication as well as a new form of exercise machine. In many cases, if people were to eat a healthy lunch instead of a Big Mac, and get a little exercise by riding a bike instead of driving a car, they might find the symptoms that make them assume they have ADD will become less prevalent. So rather than self-correcting for long term benefit, the market advertising works to convince people that they need consumables to counteract the effects of the consumables that they are already consuming. Creating circular, self-perpetuating artificial demand.

While the different market factors are fighting harder and harder for their share of consumer attention, the other social systems that would otherwise benefit from that attention are being undermined either through direct attacks or simply by not being able to compete as fiercely for human time and energy. Education is one of the most interesting examples of this. If during our formative years the majority of our stimuli suggest that the important things in life are at the end of a credit card, that presents mean "I love you" and that the job that provides the most material gain is therefore the best, then it is only rational to assume that any education other than that which is necessary for the afore mentioned dream job is unimportant. Why should I spend my time learning about the Declaration of Independence when it would be more profitable to spend that time learning about the oscillations of the stock market? Well, some recent studies have statistically linked higher levels of education to decreased incidence of violence, crime, unwanted pregnancy, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, not to mention higher earning potential.

By promoting short term, consumption driven goals and by undercutting the systems that would otherwise provide for long term benefits the market systematically creates the very problems which it claims to sell solutions to. Why produce a cell phone that will function perfectly for a decade when you can produce a cell phone that will inexplicably break after six months, thereby selling many, many more units. Why cure a disease when you can create a treatment that will stretch it out for many painful and lucrative years. Where as we the consumer would consider this a fault in the system, it is a device that is rationally incorporated into the system to generate seemingly higher gain. Seemingly higher because we are discarding information such as consumer pain and frustration and focusing only on information such as stock price increase.

So, people are being deluged with information that tells them that they need products, they want to purchase, they are deficient without certain consumables. Each moment they spend listening to this message of consumption, let alone independently thinking about it, is another moment that they are not spending doing something else. And why should they be considering something else? We are a society of specialists. The average person has adapted to fit their function in society. If they do their job well within the limited capacity that is their jurisdiction and they play their part as consumer, then the economy will stay strong and everyone's material success will continue. Besides, we have people specialized as politicians to handle the specifics of actually running the country. It is the individual citizen's function only to select which flavor of political specialist best represents their personality.

But here again, we are narrowing our view and only focusing on a few factors. How do we judge which flavor of politician we want to consume? Well, we are completely unused to judging things based on their actual long term benefits so we go with the process that we have been raised to gravitate towards. We select the candidate that has the best ad campaign. Here again, the individual actor must make the choice that they deem most profitable, often choosing between exerting what little remains of their free time and energy to make an informed and wise decision, or engaging in low stress activities such as watching “prime time” television, which conveniently has plenty of advertisements for “time-saving” consumables.

As much as it may seem that I am suggesting that this is a strictly modern development that is a direct result of the evils of Capitalism, it isn't and I'm not. The average person with a vote has never been truly informed about their political candidates and they have always voted at least partially driven by ignorance and illusion, but at least they voted. We don't even seem to do that anymore. Besides, we should not measure the benefits of a system only by its advantages over the past but also by its distance from the ideal. Democracy as a system is an attempt to reclaim the reigns of society and put them in the hands of all of the people rather than just a few. But in order for that to mean anything, the people must want to have a hold on the reigns. If people assume that it is not their place to control their government, or if they simply think that they have better things to spend their time and energy on, if they give up what little power they have, then power again becomes consolidated in the hands of the few, and Democracy has failed. Earlier I proclaimed that Democracy was a predominantly artificial system, that human-kind created Democracy as a tool to help us achieve something that we couldn't achieve otherwise. If it is against peoples' inclination to hold onto their share of political power then the machine will keep breaking down. If someone isn't there to repair it, it may stop working for good.

Let's switch gears. I want to talk about Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs. The Hierarchy suggests that people must take care of certain "basic needs" before they can reach "higher level needs" and consequentially, higher level modes of functioning. To sum it up, if you are worried about whether or not you will be able to feed yourself, you are not worrying about whether or not your right to free speech is being impugned. The Hierarchy is represented as a pyramid. At the base, the first thing people worry about is actual physical survival; eating, sleeping, fucking, etc. Then abstract safety; safety from physical harm, safety in employment, safety of property. Then social connections with other humans; love, friendship, family, sexual-intimacy. Then their own personal esteem; the ability to love themselves as individuals. Then finally the higher level functions like morality, participation in government, creativity, individuality, freedom.

The reason I bring up the Hierarchy is simple. Democracy requires not just some of the people but all of the people to occasionally make it to the top of that pyramid and act in a conscious manner to control the direction of their own lives as well as the life of their society. In a system where material wealth is distributed such that the majority of the populace is struggling just to make it past the first two levels and hopefully reach the third, how could political power ever possibly remain in the hands of the people? And what then if the market is constantly changing their concept of that which is necessary? If as a function of the strive for profit the market must continuously exert pressure on the consumer, taking up more of their time and energy, convincing them that they need that high-definition television, that happiness is just another Coke away, then as a natural function of the system the majority of the populace will be stunted from ever reaching a stage at which they can conceivably take control of their own lives. By the very function of the system the power is not taken from the hands of the people, but rather freely given up in exchange for low energy-cost, short-term, “consumable” solutions.

Now of course, even in a situation like this, there are going to be people who occasionally manage to make it all the way up the pyramid and when they get to the top they decide to grab a hold of the reigns of government and give it a big tug. These people soon find that their big tug doesn't hold as much weight as they expected. Why is that? Because most of the positions that have been given up by the people enjoying their short-term solutions have been taken over by Uber-citizens known as corporations. Legally a corporation has most of the same rights as a human citizen, the right to own property for example, and is immune to most of the drawbacks, like mortality. Which means that a corporation can keep gaining more and more economic power and not have to worry about giving it up because it ate too many Big Macs. A corporation then, has the benefits of size and near immortality over the average citizen and it has only one goal; to grow.

A corporation must survive, to survive it must constantly grow or else risk being consumed by a larger corporation, or worse, internal collapse. Now, we've already discussed what happens to an organism that must continually grow. How about if it comes to our ethics fork? If a corporation as an entity comes to a decision where it's only choices are between a non-profitable option that conforms to ethical standards, a very profitable option that flies in the face of ethical standards (for example Coca Cola's alleged connection to Colombian paramilitary groups that violently suppress union organization of Coke Bottling Plant employees, including the alleged murder of union members), or a middle-road option that is neither wholly ethical nor wholly profitable, which road would it choose? A corporation does not have the same personal considerations that a human does. If it comes to such a dilemma then it must choose either the second or third option because to fail to profit would not be due diligence with regards to it's shareholders. Corporations need only worry about whether or not there would be negative repercussions legally and financially because of the decision, and as many recent events have proven, a large corporation has little to worry about in either of those categories. The majority of the people are too busy worrying about their own financial security and whether or not they'll be able to get that new high-def big screen before next season.

So, why don't corporations have to worry about legal ramifications? After all, we have tons of specialists whose job it is to make sure that citizens, be they human or conglomerate, are following the laws. Good question. The answer, privatized justice. The existence of private practice lawyers allows for two interesting consequences. First, in true capitalist style it ensures that those who would be best in that given field tend to gravitate towards it out of their own self interest. That's great. Good lawyers are better than bad lawyers. Second, in true capitalist style it ensures that the best lawyers are also working for the citizens who can pay the most. Now I was never a real whiz with math, but I think that a citizen with a yearly budget of over a billion dollars will likely be able to devote more money to lawyers than a citizen whose yearly budget comes out somewhere between twelve and fifty thousand. The United States Census Bureau reports that the real median income of households (note, households not citizens) for 2005 was $46,326.00. According to Coca Cola's Earnings Release for the fourth Quarter of 2005 it generated a total of 6.4 billion dollars. That means, that if every dime of income for 2005 were spent only on legal fees then Coca Cola could afford roughly 138,151.362 more shares of justice than the average citizen. Now, if the process by which the rules of societal interaction are interpreted and refined is left to the discretion of a legal specialist class and the elites of that legal specialist class are devoted to serve the ends of the economic elite, how can a system of egalitarian justice exist? And if justice is not egalitarian, is it justice? By allowing justice to go to the highest bidder, the lawyer effectively becomes the Vanguard of Public Oppression, ensuring that the means to redefine the rules and patterns of interaction within society are held by those with the most "cash-money-millionaires" (to use the parlance of our time). It's a good thing that politicians aren't for sale as well or else we might be in trouble.

Corporate influence on the legal and political systems is very important, but it is not the focus of my argument. My focus is not "why organisms with power will attempt to consolidate power?" The answer to that question should be fairly easy to figure out. The question I am attempting to flush out is "Why do people not care?" Why do people not care that their legal system is dominated by greedy tyrants? Why do people not care that their personal freedom is disappearing? Why do people laugh about the fact that the President is an imbecile and yet still vote him into office, TWICE? Or, even worse, for the people who do care, why do the majority do little or nothing to actually make a change?

The answer; fear. Fear is the cause. Now, with the events of the last few years the mention of fear probably first brings to mind the thought of terrorism. Terrorism is just a small piece of the puzzle. Fear is suffused in every fiber of our being and it's effects can be seen in every choice we make. Fear is the key to understanding human action.

When I was much younger, my mother imparted a piece of wisdom to me and she didn't even realize the real value of it at the time. I, like so many of us, have a tendency to procrastinate. One day I was procrastinating about cleaning my room or doing some school project and my mother noticed that I was rather anxious about eventually having to actually do the project, and yet I still wasn't doing it. Logically I knew that the project needed to get done and yet I was not motivated to undertake it. She said this to me, "when you spend your energy worrying about doing a project you aren't having fun and the project still isn't getting done. Why don't you just do it to begin with and then afterwards you can spend your time playing?" Now, like most human beings, I listened to my mother, thought about what she had to say, and then went right on doing the same thing I had been doing in the first place. But I thought about that idea. It didn't change what I was doing at the time, but it made me examine why I was doing it.

The human brain is not completely unique. It's not that we have the only good brain and every other animal is working with a lever and pulley system. The human brain is simply an evolved form of the type of neural network that is found in "lower" organisms. To summarize the process, the brain stem first appeared in fish. Basically, it allowed for simple information processing and decision making dependent on direct stimuli. Reptiles then took what the fish had come up with and jazzed it up with a little higher functioning. The Reptile Brain was bigger and had three compartments, one of which was the Diencephelon which functioned as a sort of command post where sensory information was collected, factored and a course of action was formulated. Think of the Fish Brain like an on/off switch and the Reptile Brain like an old fashioned telephone operator making connections between different lines. The other important innovation of the Reptile Brain is the "fight-or-flight" response. In a situation that is deemed crucial our reptile's telephone operator can hit the "Oh Shit" button and dump adrenaline into the bloodstream to get the animal ready for a run or a rumble. Then of course mammals came along and evolved a little more. We moved a little farther away from the 'direct stimuli to response' mechanism and eventually developed the ability to actually consider stimuli and actions symbolically, rather than dealing with them directly. But in order to be able to function before we have had a chance to collect information about the outside world we developed instinctual behavior to guide us while we gather the information necessary to create symbolic representations. This leads to what I like to think of as organic autopilot. A course is set and the brain follows that course unless something weird comes up and we need to grab the controls. Then eventually we see humans and their propensity for mental organization. When functioning as a conscious, reasoning actor an organism is like a pilot in full control of the plane, able not only to deal with specific situations but also to set long range goals and courses.

So, why is that important? Because each of those stages is still a part of us. Having a spiffy human brain doesn't mean that we don't still have a Reptile, Fish, and "Lower" Mammal Brain. At each point of processing our brain must determine which level of processing we should be using. We can function at full throttle and exert conscious active control over our lives, or we can kick it into auto-pilot and let our instinctual and learned patterns drive for a while, or in an emergency we can freak out and hit the "Oh Shit" button. And of course, all the while the Fish Brain is in the background remembering to breathe and pump blood.

So, who decides which level you spend the majority of your time on? You do. How do you make that decision? You determine how actively you want to consider the things that you are doing. How do you make that determination? By considering the value of exerting active control over your life and the value of the other things you could be doing with your time and energy. How do you come up with those values? You make value judgments based on information that you collect from the world around you. How do you get the information that you use to make these judgments? By living your life.

What's fear got to do with it? What's fear but a second hand emotion? Fear can be very useful at times. It certainly helped us, and by us I mean evolving organisms, get over that first hurdle towards conscious thought. It can save your ass in a pinch. Why would fear be the key to understanding human action?

Fear is by it's nature illogical. I want to take a moment here to clarify terms. When I say Fear I mean that feeling in the pit of your stomach that occurs right before something bad that makes you certain that there is no way that you can even comprehend, let alone stop what is about to happen. When I say Fear, I mean the crushing certainty that pain, suffering and death is all that is coming. When I say Fear I mean that wave of distress that washes over you, smothering all hope and reason. Fear is by it's nature illogical because it suggests certainty. Think of all the places you have felt fear before. Can you name a single one of them where pain, suffering and death were the only things ahead and where there were no other possibilities? Fear is by it's nature an extreme response. It is an emergency response. It suggests certainty so as to remove doubt and ensure that a single course of action is decided upon as quickly as possible, fight or flight. It is a short term reflex.

I feel an example is necessary. The reported number one fear in the United States is public speaking. The second is death. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, "This means that at a funeral most people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy." When you consider that thought rationally, in a context without the actual feeling of fear, that is ridiculous. If you make a bad speech then perhaps people will laugh at you and you will be embarrassed. If you are dead, you are dead. There is no more. You have ceased to be. Sure, you don't have to give any more speeches, but you're not doing much else with your time either.

Any situation, even if the probability for success is low, has possible choices and possible outcomes that are more or less beneficial. There is always a best way to handle a situation, you just need to find it. The classic example is a cat falling from a window. Where a human being would tense up and go into panic mode a cat will often remain calm and correct itself so that it lands with a minimum of damage. If the cat falls from a high enough window, it may not be able to avoid fatal damage, but it will still act to minimize damage, thereby providing for the best possible outcome. Even if you have a stutter, you have been given the wrong topic upon which to speak and you are hung over, there is still a best and worst course of action. Being crippled by fear to the point where you cannot make the speech is usually not the best course of action. Even if you completely blunder a speech, it usually does not result in your immediate and gruesome death. There will usually be other opportunities to correct for any damage done by a particularly bad speech.

So, Fear is an emergency, short term response and it doesn't even necessarily always help with things in the short term. Now lets try and tie this whole big mess together. Author Ken Wilbur suggested that there are two basic motivational forces for human beings, Fear and Love. To act out of Love is to act in favor of a desired outcome, to act for something. To act out of Fear is to act against a desired outcome, to act contrary to something. To act out of Love will allow for both short term and long term thinking. To act out of Fear allows for only short term thinking. If fear is what drives you you will do what is immediately necessary to assuage that feeling of Fear. Once you no longer fear, the motivation to act is gone. Once you are reasonably sure that the lion is no longer following you, there is no longer need to run. To act out of Love allows you to consider all the given information of a situation (including both short term and long term consequences, if you so choose) without the pesky certainty of Fear mucking up your calculations.

It is my contention that many, if not all, of human attributes and activities that are deemed to be negative, most importantly greed, are motivated primarily by fear based logical patterns. If human beings are subjectively-rational self-referential actors, like I suggested earlier, then each choice that they make is based on a logical outcome of equations that are calculated in their minds, either consciously or unconsciously. If this is the case, then givens are necessary to be able to reach a conclusion. The givens that are used for such equations are arrived at by making assumptions about the world from information that we gather while living our lives. We cannot accurately replicate a specific calculation outside of the human mind because the givens and values that are used in the equation are unique to each moment and are constantly shifting as the system evolves, and the system is constantly evolving. In fact the very act of computing such an equation causes the system to evolve and changes the equation. But, the important point for right now is the motivational given in the equation because that factors heavily on the outcome.

An example! Here is a simplified action pattern demonstrated through multiple different potential modes:
Fish Brain: See Food -> Eat Food.
Reptile Brain/ Pure Fear Motivation: Hungry! -> Gotta eat now or I'll die! -> Gotta find food! -> Found food -> Eating food -> Everything's good for now.
"Lower" Mammal/ Instinct Driven Reasoning: It will be time to eat soon -> I should find some food -> I remember there being food over there, maybe I should try there again -> Hey, there is still food here. Sweet! -> There is more food here than I need right now, I should leave some for later -> Back to whatever it is I do.
"Higher Functioning" Mammal/ Love Based Motivation: I need to eat to survive -> I should look for some food. -> If I keep track of my food then I won't have to look for it as often. -> If I take this food from over here and put it somewhere I can look after it then other animals won't be able to take it from me and then I won't have to work as hard to find food in the future. -> Now I am hungry. -> Good thing I brought this food over here. -> Man, this is great. I wonder why the other animals aren't doing it this way.

So, what happens when the animal using Pure Fear Motivation satisfies their hunger? The motivational force has dissipated and they return to waiting for a new motivational force. What happens when the Instinct Driven Reasoning animal satisfies their hunger? They move on to the next set of instinctual or learned patterns that governs what they will do. How about the "Higher Functioning" animal? Well, since their action is predicated on a desired outcome, in this case survival, rather than on a stimuli response basis, they can take actions to provide for that outcome. More importantly though, they can take actions that provide for that outcome in the long run rather than just in the short run. They can plan.

Once again, humans are not the only animals that have access to the top rung and we do not exist exclusively at the top. We determine at each moment what level of functioning we are going to use. Usually we switch between the "Lower" Mammal autopilot of following instinctual and learned patterns and occasionally we hop into the driver's seat to actually pilot for a bit. In a really serious situation, we hit the "Oh Shit" button.

So, what do I mean by Fear Based Logical Patterns? Well, if a good portion of our time is spent on the "Lower" Mammal level, using preexisting patterns, where do those patterns come from. The instinctual ones are easy, they were passed on as genetic learning to get us through the first few years while we build up our collection of observed information and can start writing our own "learned" patterns. Some "learned" patterns we model after things we see other people do. Some we invent completely new by observing the way things interact with each other. All the while we are building our patterns by collecting information, assigning values and making decisions, then observing the information that occurs as a result. What happens when we make a decision based out of Fear? We gather information which causes us to be afraid. By it's extreme nature Fear assures that it is held above other values and priorities. The outcome with the highest value at that point is the removal of Fear. We act in a way that will immediately remove Fear. Once Fear is gone we have no reason to act further. That pattern becomes part of our stock of patterns that we can draw from and at that moment it determines the information that we intake and the values that we assign. But we haven't done anything to prevent the Fear from returning, only removed it in the present. There are two things that can occur in this situation.

If we have internalized a symbolic representation of the thing that caused us Fear then even the thought of the thing may cause more Fear. In that case if we go with our learned pattern and act out of Fear again, we will do what is necessary to immediately remove the Fear, even if it does not prevent the Fear from returning later. The other option is that instead of acting out of Fear we can act out of Love for the state of being unafraid. The difference is subtle but important. If we are acting against the state of being afraid, we are acting only to remove it's presence, to destroy a state that we deem painful or harmful. If we are acting for the state of being unafraid, then we are acting to create a situation that we deem beneficial.

This process is important because of the effects that it has in recreating itself. Remember our Reptile Brain and his quest for food. Every time Reptile Brain gets hungry, he is going to freak out. He can't help it. He only wants the pain to go away. He doesn't want anything else. Because his motivation is limited to escaping, he cannot create. More importantly though, in his rash actions to escape from Fear, our Reptile Brain may make choices that will have negative consequences for himself and others around him. Have you ever seen someone get startled, try to run and run straight into a wall? It's very funny. But what if that person is driving a car on the highway?

But what about long term motivation? Well, here is another assumption that you may question me on. As I stated earlier, I think that many, if not all, of human attributes and activities that are deemed to be negative, most importantly greed, are motivated primarily by fear based logical patterns. What is greed? The definition is "an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves." We're not even going to touch the concept of what a person "deserves" right now, so let's start with need. So what does a human being need? Well, if we jump back to Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs then a human being first needs all the physiological requirements for sustaining life, then they need to feel safe (the removal of Fear), then they need to feel like they are loved and they belong, then they need to love themselves and that is when they learn to respect others, and then finally they can act on Maslowe's "higher levels" of functioning. If a person develops a logical pattern that keeps them stuck trying to get past levels one and two, or even worse trying to meet level three or four requirements with level one or two solutions (example: fucking is not the same as sexual intimacy), then they get stuck in a self-defeating feedback loop where they keep trying the same things over and over again and never seem to get anywhere at all. So where is greed in this? I now redefine greed as the fear that if you do not continue to acquire then your needs will never be met. Ironically, if you assume that you must continue to acquire material things to meet all of your needs, your higher level needs will never be met. Instead you will constantly be trying to validate yourself with your flashy car, effectively looking for love in all the wrong places.

Let's take a look at selfishness. Selfishness and greed are often seen together, they go hand in hand. Selfishness is the state of caring only for one's own interests, benefit and needs. Just as with greed, selfishness can be helpful getting past Maslowe's levels one and two, and oddly enough it even occasionally helps with the beginnings of level three, but the love of others, the sense of belonging, and sexual intimacy are hard to get a handle on if you are only ever thinking of yourself. Perhaps we can redefine selfishness as the fear that there is not enough to go around, that if you spend your time and energy taking care of other peoples' needs then there will not be enough spent taking care of your needs. Not to sound too much like a fortune cookie but ironically if you assume that there is not enough love for everyone, then it is you who limits it.

Fear is found at the heart of so much of our motivation. Why is that? Very simple answer, Rationalization. If you are focusing only on a specific goal and looking for the fastest and easiest way to reach that goal then a short term, low-cost motivating force will trump a long-term, high-cost motivating force. Fear is very effective at motivating people to do things in the present. Love may allow you to motivate people to more responsible and more beneficial action, but when it comes to motivating other people it takes much more to inspire lasting Love for something than it does to inspire Fear. So, when you want something specific done right now and you discard the long term consequences as unimportant then Fear is far more efficient. If you want someone to stop stealing your pies don't try to make them understand why they shouldn't steal your pies, just tell them that you will shoot them if they don't stop. If you want people to stop shooting each other over pies, tell them that there is an invisible man in the sky that doesn't look kindly on them killing each other. If a king wants his servants to work harder on their farms or to march to war for him, he will tell them that if they do not he will have them starved or imprisoned. If you want people to buy your anti-depressant despite the fact that it may cause "anal leakage", tell them that they are inexplicably broken and will never be unbroken unless they buy your brain candy. If you want people to vote for you without considering the fact that you are incompetent, corrupt, bloodthirsty and concerned only with protecting your own career and those of your party members, then tell them that there are evil people out there with a different skin color who want to hurt them for no reason and will never stop unless they re-elect you. If you want to control the people, tell them that the things that they are afraid of are the fault of someone else and that all they need to worry about is their specific function and that new high def TV. Tell them that their job is working and buying and that the secret prisons are not their concern.

Right now, the entirety of our society is trapped in a giant version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, hypothetically two partners are caught for a crime that they committed together and are each given two options with a total of three possible outcomes. If they both stay quiet then they will each get a small sentence of six months. If one of them stays quiet and the other testifies against his partner then the one who testified goes free and the one who stayed quiet gets five years in jail. If they both testify against their partner then they each go to jail for two years. Each prisoner wants to minimize his own jail time. If you look at it only from the point of view of one of the prisoners and only in terms of the short term consequences of going to jail, then it is within their best interest to testify against their partner and go free. However, since that is the case for both parties then both prisoners would testify and end up spending four times as much time in jail than if they had just cooperated with each other. We are reasoning beings, why wouldn't we just understand that the best course of action, in the long run, is to cooperate and thereby reduce our overall penalty? Fear. We are constantly afraid that our partner will shortchange us and that fear is what orchestrates our mutual downfall.

Why are we afraid that our partner will shortchange us? Because sometimes they do. Because sometimes people get stuck in thought patterns that are motivated by Fear and they fail to look at the logic of the big picture and instead focus on the skewed logic of the short run. It happens because that type of processing is still part of us and the more we use it the more likely we will be to use it in the future. But when you narrow your thinking to only part of the outcome, it becomes quite a bit harder to act in your own, let alone everyone's best interests. When you concern yourself only with specific ends you are ignoring the process that you used to reach it and the byproduct ends. If you choose to testify against your partner and he chooses to testify against you, then not only are you both going to spend more time in jail, but you have broken whatever trust there may have been and so you are both that much more likely to act the same way when faced with the same choice. The fear of a possible outcome is what causes that outcome to arise.

We're getting close, so let's start tying this all together. If the market is constantly and aggressively expanding it's sphere of influence further into the realm of our time and energy, if our time and energy is finite, if the information we spend our time and energy on is what we use to create our values, if those values are what we use to make our decisions, if decisions made out of fear can indirectly cause other people to make decisions out of fear, if subjective rationalization must tend towards using fear as a motivator, if fear based decisions by their nature fail to factor in long term consequences, if getting stuck in fear based decision patterns potentially prevents us from reaching a stage at which we can effectively take long term control of our lives, then the market system's very need for constant and ever increasing growth will systematically suppress the ability of the populace to act in it's own long term self-interest, will sow further fear, apathy and discontent in all those that it touches and will undermine predominantly artificial systems like Democracy, consolidating power once more in the hands of the few through economic rather than strictly violent means. As the final coup de grace, by constantly expanding into new avenues of resource without thought for the long term consequences, the market will, not unlike a tremendously efficient virus, process all viable resources bringing about it's own demise.

Now, I want you to think back to the beginning of this whole thing. Stewing at the back of your mind, throughout the chaos of all the other ideas thrown at you, should be these words: " . . . for we know enough, if we know we are the king's subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us." "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' . . . Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." For Bates and Williams, "the Black Matter" was the terrible and violent Battle of Agincourt in which approximately six thousand English troops fought an estimated twenty to thirty thousand French troops. The moral price of leading six thousand men into such a slaughter they saw as being wholly on the head of the King, Henry V, who had commanded that they fight, and who would have imprisoned them if they had chosen peace. Bates and Williams are suggesting that because neither outcome was favorable they had no choice in the matter and so they are not responsible for their own actions or their fate. With specialization ever increasing and the idea of personal responsibility ever shrinking there is a temptation to side with these two, to say “I was only following orders” when asked why you have done the things you have done. To their accusations the king responds that "Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own." To this I'll add, that every human being, whether they are subject of a king or citizen of a Democratic state, has a duty first and foremost to themselves, to ensure that what they are doing is just, is wise, and is done with Love for themselves and for their fellow man. Each person must work their way up the Hierarchy of Needs, but that alone can never be enough, we must reach out our hands and help our brothers and sisters up as well, and we must work to correct the systems that we have created that functionally impede that process. In order to survive as a society we must learn to act as responsibly regarding our actions and their consequences. Only then, can we hope to turn back the tide, or at least live and die knowing that we did what we could. And to those who are willing to listen to this message I say "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . . "

All The Wealth Of Life, Traded Like Paper For Empty Words

2007-02-14T23:02:00.000-08:00

The last few years I've spent this date drinking with friends in celebration of Arbor Day, mitigating the potential loneliness of this "Hallmark-holiday" with cheap drink and good laughs. This year, I've finally run out of co-conspirators and confederates, and even my long time mistress, Sweet Lady Liquor, has been treating me mean these last few months. I may be sober and alone, but I still have a large collection of words about Love. So, for everyone else out there spending tonight with a bad liver and a broken heart, here are a few about Love:

New Suit

Would you love me with a new suit?
Buttoned and brushed
shiny as a new copper penny?
Would you love me singing?
Claiming spring with trumpets
and whispering about the moon?
Would you love me pining?
Drenched in longing
and wringing myself out on your doorstep?
Would you love me aloof?
Absent from the context,
stoicly unimpressed?
Would you love me clowning?
All naughty jokes and tumbling,
an empty handed magician?
Would you love me in a fast car?
Thrill and chase and bite and burn,
living like a candle?
Would you love me with a title?
A name that bears repeating,
one you can take home to mom to show her that you've won?
Would you love me empty?
Packed up and moved out,
or stillborn in the crib?

New Love

Send me a new love
unbroken by the morning
and untouched
by the harshness of daylight.
Send me a new love
with the grandness of a hurricane
and the mercy of a jungle cat.
Send me a new love
sweater than a serenade
with the magic of a lullaby.
Send me a new love
with all the glory I am missing
and the pathos I desire.

Sweet Ghost of Fiction

Sweet Ghost of Fiction
Running through twilight
like water.
Running through me
like honey.
Sticky images,
piecemeal concoctions
of desire and mystery.
Even when I'm writing
you spend me like currency,
spend my seconds on baubles.
Attentiuon, anticipation,
Spend the twitches of my eye
On fickle spins,
Harlot's games,
and a writer's prison.
But I want you
I want you so much
that I claw at the morning,
try to wash off the daylight
and curse at biographies
for the lies of the waking hours.
Sitcky images,
stuck to the minutes of my day.

Burnt Offering

I like to build goddesses on mountains
and worship marble likenesses
and burn myself at sacrifices
and drink until the magic comes
and pray with no response
and die like all the rest.
It's much cleaner that way.

SNOW DAY, BITCHES!

2007-01-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

You heard me, bitches! It's a mother-fucking SNOW DAY!

"A COLD FRONT CONTINUES TO MOVE THROUGH THE GREATER PORTLAND AND VANCOUVER METRO AREAS EARLY THIS MORNING. THIS WILL PRODUCE 2 TO 4 INCHES OF SNOW BY THIS AFTERNOON...WITH THE HIGHEST ACCUMULATIONS AWAY FROM THE GORGE. THE FRONT WILL MOVE EAST OF THE METRO AREA IN THE AFTERNOON WITH SCATTERED SNOW SHOWERS EXPECTED.

A SNOW ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE PRIMARILY TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES...AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING."

"Look out! Here comes two to four inches of snow! Guess we'd all better stay home."

I have to say, this kind of stuff is the only reason to live in a northern climate. A snow day is probably my favorite type of "holiday". I wake up this morning, slightly hung over, expecting my average Tuesday eight hours of work plus three hours of commute but when I look out the window the sky is shedding a seemingly endless supply of puffy-white "make-work-go-away" flakes. What better kind of day could there be? Kids home from school, playing in mounds of soft, flakey sky love. Me, home from work, playing Civ 4. To borrow a line from the Simpsons, "Birds are singing, bees are trying to have sex with them, or so is my understanding."

"I doubt that they all have kids trapped under this bus."

"Don't worry, Citizen. My specialized Police ATV and I are here to save you from this rain of terror!"

Impromptu Poetry

2007-01-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

Spam has taken an interesting turn. To avoid spam filters spamsters have started using random word and random sentence generators/samplers to create psuedo conversations that will confuse the spam filters. I received one of these recently and liked it enough to share. There was of course an add for cheap viagra inserted carefully into the text, but the rest flowed with a near poetic style. Here it is:

Re: my scub by The Internets

Fido spoke with was that of Admiral Steengo.

over the low wall, bent and looked. Eyebrows even higher now.
even get any static.
Fundamentaloids that I want to look for.
Positive? I asked.
The bomb that the ersatz hound had exploded was a quick in-and-out
launched into this overamplified and very catchy-if not itchy-number.
here as a guarantee-dont you agree? He stood and buckled on a large
puddle. He rose up, angrier than ever, balled his fists and came on
got to lose?
Taking the literal meaning of see, dear Jim, forces me to answer

The Christmas Spirit

2006-12-24T22:21:00.000-08:00

Around this time of year, I always think to myself:

"Hey Everybody! Jesus is coming! Shit! Everybody look busy!"

A Moral Consideration

2006-12-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

If there is no God

If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother's keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying there is no God.

--- Czeslaw Milosz

I must thank Kerry and the team at Sewers of Babel for this one. He posted it a while back and I have been considering it for months now.

So I need some help with one of the big questions:
If there is a "God", or more to point if there is purpose in the Universe, then there is no question. We are all guided by the driving force and our means and our ends are not our own to work with. We have no say in what is and that which will be will be, so there is nothing to worry about.

I happen to think that that potential is just an illusion that our ancestors opted to invent because they couldn't solve the riddle of the second option.

If there is no purpose, then our choices have meaning and our actions have consequence. If then, our actions have consequence then do we have obligations? If we are just biological organisms then we must study the patterns in which we exist. One of the few specifics of human life that seems to be universally true is that a human cannot live without some connection with others. Even if it is only during the gestation and nursing stages, at an early age a human cannot care for itself. It must be provided for. Furthermore, social cohesion, while it has been proven to not be essential for individual survival, has certainly been responsible for the level of survival and growth that we have experienced as a species. Which means we are inexerably bound to social networks. Which means that we are a curious animal, both individual and social.

So, if the individual needs the society and the society is comprised of individuals, then are there naturally occurring obligations between the individual and society? Or are the individual's obligations only to itself, even to the benefit or detrement of society. If the individual's obligations are only to itself, then when we consider the society as an organism, are it's only obligations to itself. If so, is it obligated to itself as a whole or is it obligated to each of it's constituent parts? If the leg offends the body proper, is it the right of the body to cut it off?

And so the question is, if there is no "God" are we then our brother's keeper? Or do we owe our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, nothing? If we are then our brother's keeper, is it our responsibility to ensure his safety, his happiness, his growth? If we are obliged to protect his happiness, should we do it at the cost of his safety and growth? If we are obliged to protect his safety, should we do it at the cost of his happiness? If we are obliged to help our brothers grow, growth is a violent and unstable process that promises neither safety nor happiness, but it does promise change. And after all, isn't that what life is, change? That which we call life is motion, chaos. That which we call death, the cessation of motion, is absolute order. If we could create a system wherein human beings are endlessly happy, should we? If we could create a system wherein human beings are endlessly safe, should we? Is it our job to make such decisions?

I have been writing a lot of social theory recently. I may have written a some-what cogent dissection of society as we know it. If I am correct, it could theoretically ruin some peoples' lives. It could also theoretically save some peoples' lives. I could be completely incorrect. Most of the stuff I have to say has already been said and nobody listened the first thousand times, it is unlikely that they would listen now. On the other hand, in history it seems that an idea never breaks on the fist swell, it takes many waves before the damn breaks. The question is, do I have an obligation or even a right to attempt to change society simply because I am a part of it? Or am I obliged to protect my brothers and sisters from the harsh truth of the world, even though ignorance may eventually kill us all? This is one of the questions that I have been trying to answer with wine, women and song.

Chuang-Tzu says that change cannot be imposed upon the world of men because any forced change will be met with an equal or greater opposite reaction. Instead, one can only change the world of men by changing the people who live in it. But Chuang-Tzu wasn't working with a deadline like global warming or nuclear terrorism. Perhaps if we want to speed things up a bit people need a little nudge in the right direction?

To sociology or not to sociology . . .

Ay, there's the rub.

. . . .

2006-12-12T23:29:00.000-08:00

I am extemely depressed. Oddly enough, it's not the flashy, "cry for attention" depressed that you are all used to. I am really depressed. I can't bring myself to drink or play video games. I don't feel like crying, or punching things or even the old Staten Island standby of suicide. I just want to lie on my bed until it is time to go to work again. Then I come home and repeat. It's been about a week. Maybe. I don't know. Whatever . . . .

An Extremely Dorky Anecdote

2006-12-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

If you get the joke then consider yourself a huge dork.

So, at work the other day, I was taking a call from a woman who was worried she may have compromised her account number. Two girls had come to her door and told her some ridiculous story about selling magazine subscriptions as a school fund-raiser, and about how the school had purchased one of the houses on her block which had been for sale. Anyway, the customer later found out that their story was complete bullshit, so she called me to find out what to do. While I was putting a Stop Payment on the check, I had to ask what the name of the organization was. I straight out burst into laughter when she said that it was called the "Tusken Readers". Generally, when a customer is concerned about bank fraud, laughing hysterically in their face is frowned upon. I apologized and explained what was funny. Luckily, she saw the humor.

Afterwards I couldn't help but think, "The Tusken Readers didn't do this, but we are meant to think they did. These tracks are side by side. Sand People always travel single file to hide their numbers."

As an added bonus, here are these:
Numero Uno
Option Beta

And for anyone who still didn't get the joke and feels left out, here you go.

Telecom Blues

2006-11-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

All day spent talking.
Words and words, a sea of words.
Yet no time to speak.

"Come With Uncle And Hear All Proper . . ."

2006-11-16T15:20:00.000-08:00

". . . Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited."

A quick post while I work on a very long post.

Just now, I was brought to tears by the sheer beauty of Danny Elfman's version of "Ode To Joy", originally done for A Clockwork Orange. For that, I will post the lyrics to my favorite english translation of "Ode to Joy". It is not the most accurate translation, and I had to dig through wikipedia's article history pages to find it, but I like it. I may hate organized religion, but art that is inspired by passion is beautiful no matter what it is about.

Praise to Joy, the God-descended

Daughter of Elysium!

Ray of mirth and rapture blended,

Goddess, to thy shrine we come.

By thy magic is united

What stern Custom parted wide,

All mankind are brothers plighted

Where thy gentle wings abide.

Ye to whom the boon is measured,

Friend to be of faithful friend,

Who a wife has won and treasured,

To our strain your voices lend!

Yea, if any hold in keeping

Only one heart all his own,

Let him join us, or else weeping,

Steal from out our midst, unknown.

Draughts of joy, from cup o'erflowing,

Bounteous Nature freely gives

Grace to just and unjust showing,

Blessing everything that lives.

Wine she gave to us and kisses,

Loyal friend on life's steep road,

E'en the worm can feel life's blisses,

And the Seraph dwells with God.

Glad as the sun His will sent plying

Through the vast abyss of space.

Brothers run your joyous race,

Hero-like to conquest flying

O ye millions, I embrace ye!

With a kiss for all the world!

Brothers, o'er yon starry sphere

Surely dwells a loving Father.

O ye millions, kneel before Him,

World, dost feel thy Maker near?

Seek Him o'er yon starry sphere,

O'er the stars enthroned, adore Him!

Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,

Daughter of Elysium,

We enter fire imbibed,

Heavenly, thy sanctuary.

Be embraced, Millions!

This kiss for all the world!

Brothers!, above the starry canopy

A loving father must dwell.

Can you sense the Creator, world?

Seek him above the starry canopy.

Above the stars He must dwell.

Be embraced, Millions!

This kiss for all the world!

Brothers!, above the starry canopy

A loving father must dwell.

Can you sense the Creator, world?

Seek him above the starry canopy.

Above the stars He must dwell.

Joy, daughter of Elysium

Thy magic reunites those

Whom stern custom has parted;

All men will become brothers

Under thy gentle wing.

Be embraced, Millions!

This kiss for all the world!

Brothers!, above the starry canopy

A loving father must dwell.

Joy, beautiful spark of Gods!,

Daughter of Elysium,

Joy, beatiful spark of Gods!.

Prometheus Needs A Drink

2006-11-05T04:16:00.000-08:00

My grandmother died this week. To my knowledge I am the only member of my family who felt no grief, needed no berevement time, felt no sorrow.

I never properly explained what the title of this web log refers to. We are each born with abilities that aid us in our travels, that allow us to be functional, independent people. My brother, Brian, was given the ability to heal and to enjoy, to take that which is now and to work with it. He works as a massage therapist and lives his life by that which is enjoyable to him. When he heard of our grandmother's death he was saddened but was relieved to know that her long term suffering had been ended. My sister, Micaela, was given the ability to create. By the age of eight it was clear that she was better than me in all matters creative, drawing, painting, writing, singing, dancing. By age twelve she had a picture hanging in the Guggenheim Museum. She is currently attending school to become a stage tech for the theater industry. She is a sophmore and head of her project team. When she heard of our grandmother's death, no doubt she was sad for the loss of life. I, on the other hand, was given the ability to destroy. The gift I have is the incitement to knowledge. I am by far the smartest of the three of us and with that comes the ability to recognize, diagnose and diagram the structural weakness and imminent destruction of all things. I can theoretically draw and quarter all that which is and once I have the pieces split and seperate I can examine them and accurately draw the path of it's eventual destruction. That is why I have been uninterested in maintaining a long-term relationship, becuase I can see within an evening of talking to someone the specific way in which I will eventually become emotionally distant or lose interest, or the way in which we will start to bicker over small matters that are of no real importance, or the way that we will slowly come to realize that the things which originally drew us to each other have faded and left us with a hollow shell of commitment that we are too afraid to leave because we have grown far too accustomed to the safety of it. I mean, I'm fine with that, but who wants to drag someone else into all that? To a degree, that is what originally drew me to sociology. The art of sociology is the taking of that which is accepted, that which is understood, that which is commonplace, and removing it's supports, disecting it's innerds and questioning it's very existence. Taking the building blocks of society apart and looking at what makes them tick. That is what a sociologist does. When everyone else says "Yeah, of course. That's how that works" the sociologist says "is it? Are you sure you're not just full of shit?" Most of the time, people are just full of shit. Scratch that, all the time. Last week, when I was in PA for my grandfather's eightieth birthday, I looked at my grandmother and said to myself "she will most likely be dead before I see her again." Within three days of arriving home I got the call.

In greek mythology Prometheus and Epimetheus were the creators of mankind and beasts, respectively. Prometheus in greek is translated as "fore-thought" and Epimetheus as "hind-thought". Prometheus was a Titan, whose very nature was to know before-hand the outcome of a situation. Prometheus could see that which would likely be, he knew that all things, even the works of the Titans and the Olympian gods, fall apart. Despite this knowledge, Prometheus still went about his tasks, despite knowing what problems would come from them. Prometheus and Epimetheus were tasked with the creation of mankind and beasts and the distribution of positive traits to all mortal things. However, due to Epimetheus' lack of fore-thought mankind was left with no positive trait. Prometheus, feeling sorry for his creation, took pity on mankind and despite knowing the consequences, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. It was this act that transfered to mankind the urge towards civilization and by extension the ability to reason, the incitement to knowledge.

For this act, Prometheus was sentenced by Zeus to be bound to a rock and have his liver devoured, daily, by a giant eagle. As if that wasn't enough, later, to further punish Prometheus for his impudence, Zeus tasked Hephaestus to "mingle together all things loveliest, sweetest, and best, but look that you also mingle therewith the opposites of each" into a being that would create havoc for Prometheus' prized creation, mankind. This creature would be the first woman, Pandora, which Zeus then sent to wed Epimetheus. Prometheus tried to warn his brother not to accept gifts from the Olympian gods, but to no avail. Then there was a matter with an important jar, and things got tricky for mankind. Through it all, Prometheus saw what would likely come from his efforts to help mankind, and yet, despite the pain and humiliation he still proceeded because he felt sorry for the silly, fucked-up little creatures that he had made from clay.

When it's all said and done, at the end of the day, despite having had his liver eaten by a giant eagle, Prometheus really just needs a little firewater. If you are going to look behind the curtain at the magic show, be prepared to see where the rabbits are kept. If you can't help but feel sorry for the little clay bastards, despite knowing what kind of trouble they are going to get into (no matter how you try to help), and if you are prepared to face the trials that are set out for you as a result of your love of these "creatures-of-a-day", then all I have to say to you is "you know what cures that . . ."

You Can Never Go Home

2006-10-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

Saw A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints this weekend. It reminded me of a few things that I'd forgotten in the past few years. It reminded me how much I fucking hated growing up in Staten Island. It reminded me how much fear you can have just from walking down the street. It reminded me what it was like to know that there are people around every corner who would be happy to see you laid out, bleeding in the street. It reminded me that in the end, it will always come down to the color of your skin when it comes time to hate. It reminded me of what it was like being a man without a country, a skin color without a people, the least-white white man on the bus. It reminded me about back in the day when being friends with someone wasn't because you liked the same music, but because you were the only people who would stand up for each other when the shit came down. It reminded me that while you have your family, who love you because you're family, you also have your friends who love you for who you are. It reminded me of a time when your friends were your family, and no matter what you looked out for them, because they would always be looking out for you. And it didn't matter how screwed up you were, because you were all screwed up in your own ways. It reminded me of a time when life felt like life and death. It reminded me that no matter what you must stand by your friends and put their safety on equal level with your own.
That is of course until it all changes. Until you leave for greener pastures and leave your family behind to deal with all their shit on their own. Cause if they won't listen to you, then you can't be held responsible for which bitches they fuck around with, even if some thick-necked thug boyfriend breaks a bottle on their face and they get layed up in the hospital for weeks. Even if they start getting increasingly more violent-minded and start talking tougher than they are. Even if they drop out of high school and end up working at the dock, living with their grandma and eating their morning bowl of Cap'n Crunch with Steel Reserve. Even if they end up with some heartless chick who doesn't even have the common decency to wait until they get home from Afghanistan to call the wedding off. Cause once you wash your hands and walk away, everyone's mess is their own.
It reminded me of a time when friendship meant a little more than what it does now. It reminded me when life meant a little more than it does now. A far shittier time, when things needed to be truer, and they needed to last forever.

"In the end, I left everything and everyone. But no one, no one has ever left me." -Dito Montiel

The Immortal

2006-10-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Just finished Chapter 2 of one of my side projects, the Immortal. Considering that each chapter equates to about three pages at most and the date on Chapter 1 was October 16, 2005 at this rate I'll be done in no time at all. Flying through it. Honestly, I might want to consider taking a nice long break. Don't want to overwork myself. It is important to pace oneself. Don't want to burn out . . . .

McSweeney's Again

2006-10-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

Morgan Freeman Buys A Pop-A-Shot Machine

Every day I grow to love McSweeney's a little more. And Morgan Freeman too . . .

. . . but not that lying cock-sucker, Robert Duvall. One day, he'll get his. Then the world will know all about his time in Italy. That will teach him to raise the cost of the "papes".

Robert Duvall

2006-10-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

Is Robert Duvall hiding something from us? Almost certainly yes.

Fridays

2006-10-07T02:44:00.000-07:00

Of all the quotes that have changed my life, the one that stays with me on Friday nights is from Benito Mussolini:

"A man who is not attractive to a woman is worthless."

A man who cannot sleep with every woman in the world is not a man.

Desperado keeps playing when my library is on shuffle.

"It seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table,
but you only want the things that you can't get."

McSweeney's Can Be Funny

2006-10-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Actual Month-by-Month Headlines From the Past Year of the Gmail Sidebar Advertisements That Google Determined Were Relevant to My Life by Matching Them to Keywords in My E-Mails