pet peeve.

i hate it

when, in entertainment news or on music channels, hosts/interviewers/the non-artists say things to/about the famous person of the moment like,

"wow, so you write your own songs?"
"wow, so you sing live?"
"wow, so you play your own instruments?"
"wow, so your song lyrics are about personal experience?"

meanwhile there are and have been thousands of artists who do these things and have dones these things for years. it's the experience that we call "being an artist."


the music industry/community and the entertainment industry are so intertwined that all of the other talent that exists under the radar of the general public and major media is lost.


there are not only ten "artists" who deserve to walk red carpets and recieve nominations and awards. and there are people who audiences recognize as talented without back up dancers and autotuned vocal tracks.


/rant.

i'm not sure why the twenty-four hour news cycle even exists anymore.




the political news on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, NBC and CBS, etc., has not been news for quite some time.




it's always the same.


democrats try to pass legislation.
republicans filibuster; republicans demand tax cuts for the richest two percent of americans; republicans say things that are not true on camera.

republicans try to pass legislation.
democrats and minorities freak out; people are confused; republicans say things that are not true on camera.



democrats whine, bluff, back down, argue, make speeches. republicans say things that are not true on camera.

...

i hate that something
in not-paragraph-form is
suddenly not prose.

if someone would invent some piece of technology that could produce silence,
i would be euphoric.

observation.

sometimes,


writer of beautifully abstract poetry and/or lyrics = difficult to read and digest prose.
writer of well written prose = simpler, visceral poetic language.

Do you think my personality is written in stone?
Are you positively certain that you know what you've been shown?
I'm a snapshot of the person that you think I ought to be.

--kate miller-heidke

why the fuck would you want me back?

maybe that's because
you don't know me at all.

--ben folds

mother,
i made it up from
a bruise on the floor of this prison.

mother,
i lost it all in
the fear of the lord i was given.

the paradox that i find to be my existence continually astounds me.

if i can't mess up with open eyes, i might have it all,
but it won't be mine. i thank you all for the wealth of advice,
but i'm driving alone tonight.


--sarah bettens

dear president obama: end DADT,
or please stop promising that you will.

--rachel maddow

why was the road
made of yellow brick?
why shiny red flats,
why were they called slippers,
those can't have been rubies,
why a ridiculous dog with a ridiculous name.

no words.

so excellent.
www.fckh8.com

i found out:

i can only be who i am.
i can only do what i can.






i won't try to describe the relief.

borrow, beg, or steal: everything is real.






one day,
i might feel all right again.

don't be different for the
sake of being thus, don't
try to understand,
there is no such thing.
don't trust. whateverthefuck that means.
we're all free falling on a
rotating sphere
through nothingness.
we're pieces of dust. the stars laugh at our
claims of grandeur.

finally the news is focusing on the fact that tyler clemeti’s recent tragic death was in fact a hate crime.



they’re finally talking about the trevor project.
about the hetrick-martin institute.
about the statistics for LGBT youth.

"this would not have happened if he had been in a situation with a woman. this was far more than an invasion of privacy. this was a hate crime."

--representative from the trevor project's new york headquarters, news channel 4 new york, 30th september

the Hetrick-Martin Institute
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Ellen Degeneres speaks out.
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

it should be treated as a hate crime; he was targeted via a social networking site because of his percieved sexual orientation. he ended his own life as a result.



there needs to be perspective.

my dreams did not come true the way i wanted them to.
it's okay with me; is that okay with you?


--the rescues

"full disclosure"
is not in their vocabularies.

you should be aware

that you were
wrong. and
i have not
forgotten.

assumptions:


relativity
does not equal
subjectivity

reason
does not equal
meaning

one in ten.

that entire organizatons need to be dedicated to the prevention of all of the potential deaths that could result for just being born and existing honestly,


that makes me so sad.

"gender is performative. there is no prediscursive reality, there is no prior truth. the ways that we perform gender create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality."

"you don't get to sit around for the rest of my life and decide what i have to be like. you weren't inside of my head when i was fucked up; you're certainly not there now. you have no idea how i feel."

--rachel getting married

my scream got lost in a paper cup.
you think there's a heaven
where some screams show up?


years go by:

will i still be waiting
for somebody else to understand
if I'm stripped of my beauty
and the orange clouds
raining in my head?

i've got no patience for slow moving pedestrians
on streets of insomniac metropolis.

when your bones turn to whispers,
they will bury you under a stone
that did not ask to be a stone

we do not ask to be
what we are,
and to live.

--marty mcconnell.

"at a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes, and see yourself for what you are, especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. and you will say to yourself,

but i am this person.






and in that statement, that correction,
there will be a kind of love.

hard hearted, don't worry,
i'm ready for a fight.

unnerved, the nerve,
you're nervous.

nervous that i'm right.

it's always interesting being around people
who don't know what to do with you.


walking on eggshells made of glass
as if one wrong rapid eye movement would
ignite some fierce conflict.

in the past six-ish days, i've been working on covers of:

title and registration, misguided ghosts, sleeping sickness, i am not a robot, divided, feel it in my bones, dancing in the dark, and upward over the mountain, amongst others.


and repeat. and repeat again.
this is what i've accomplished.
callused fingers and some intricate strumming patterns.



no essays organized,
no ramblings edited,
no books read in full.



but my barre chords don't suck.


somehow i think that perspective can't save me on this one.
here's to escapism and acoustic sounds.

...with my hood pulled up
in the light of the night
i was smoke in the bed
like a ghost white light
on the turnpike

you didn't lift my world off me
but you said to let it go
so I did, now I see
that friends are gonna leave me
if they don't believe that they can save me.

you don't have to live like that.

...i'm waking up tired
no god has appeared
i never ever really
felt real faith in your fear

"And when at last you...pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”

—Sylvia Plath

“I’ll say that insanity is just the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there. We’ve all felt that and all of us, one way or another, are insane.”

— Zedka (Paulo Coelho)

'The unexamined life is not worth living,' Plato says, in line 38a of the Apology. How do you examine yourself? What happens when you interrogate yourself? What happens when you begin to call into question your tested assumptions and unarticulated presuppositions, and begin then, to become a different kind of person?

See, I put it this way that for me, philosophy is fundamentally about our finite situation. You can define that in terms of, we're beings toward death; featherless, two-legged, linguistically concious creatures...whose bodies will one day be the delight of terrestrial worms.

That's us.

--Cornel West, Examined Life

fences

the debut album from Fences (Christopher Mansfield) drops at the end of September. produced by Sara Quin. photo in the video by Lindsey Byrnes, i believe.


been loving this track and a few others. can't wait for new music.


http://www.spin.com/articles/exclusive-sara-quin-produced-song-fences
http://www.myspace.com/fencesvswolf
http://www.lindseybyrnes.com/
http://www.teganandsara.com

you are not useless
we are just

misguided ghosts
traveling endlessly
the ones we trusted the most
pushed us far away
and there's no one road
we should not be the same
but I'm just a ghost
and still they echo me

they echo me in circles

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
— friedrich nietzsche.

interviewer: do you like animals?

freja: i do, i love puppies. and snakes. no? you prefer those as belts and shoes? i quite like them still alive.


interviewer: do you have any tattoos?

freja: sixteen.

they like to talk about
their bruises.
compare hurt like some
strange competition;
winner is owner of the
most depressing story.

An op-ed in the August 16th issue of Newsweek, written by Sharon Begley discusses The Limits of Reason: Why evolution may favor irrationality.



According to the article, studies have shown that people are assholes.



Or, more accurately, that people have apparently become evolutionarily poor at reasoning in favor of using skewed arguments to win debates.


That is, humans have adapted in such a way that compromises their reasoning skills in order to get what they want out of others.

The reason we succumb to confirmation bias, why we are blind to counterexamples, and why we fall short of Cartesian logic in so many other ways is that these lapses have a purpose: they help us "devise and evaluate arguments that are intended to persuade other people," says psychologist hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania. Failures of logic, he and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber of the Institut Jean Nicod of Paris propose, are in fact effective ploys to win arguments.

That puts poor reasoning in a completely different light. Arguring, after all, is less about seeking truth than about over-coming opposing views.

-Newsweek, 16th August 2010, page 24

The fact that this conclusion is so completely correct almost makes me angry. And the alarm that I feel over Begley's summation of these findings is palpable within entire communities, and is a serious factor, I think, in humanity's inability to, bluntly, get its shit together.


Take any number of issues, including poverty, fair trade, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, racism, sexism, homophobia, the economic crisis. Apply logic;

along with a Utopian society, we'd have fewer assholes running around.

you won't get better till you're worse.

arriving at one's own conclusions > listening to anyone. ever.

stumbling around in the metaphorical dark.

know that i wrote to you.

"More broadly: for years now I’ve been fretting about how feminist philosophy can make itself pertinent in the real world. I’m dead set against philosophers’ making pronouncements about how people should and shouldn’t live their lives. We shouldn’t be in the business of telling people whether the human race ought to condone cloning or eat meat or banish pornography.


What we ought to aspire to do, I think, is interest people in the project of continually reflecting on their settled views on such subjects.


(Any good philosopher knows from personal experience that reflection often reveals that one’s own views are horribly muddled or arrogant or self-contradictory.)


But it’s a whole lot more fun to watch TV or surf the net or go to a bar than it is to engage in serious self-reflection. So for anyone who believes that self-reflection is critical to our ability to make wise decisions, exhibit genuine empathy, or care for ourselves at the deepest level, the challenge is to figure out the best, most honest way to try to attract people to the enterprise."

--Nancy Bauer

Bauer's editorial on Lady Gaga and feminism:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/lady-power/

Interview:
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/07/is-lady-gaga-a-feminist-5-questions-for-philosopher-nancy-bauer/

There is now such an enormous gap between me and the rest of the world that sometimes I am amazed to hear people say the simplest and most natural things. The most commonplace remark sometimes holds me rapt with admiration. There are gestures and tones of voice which utterly undo me, and stupidities which almost make me dizzy. Have you ever listened attentively to people talking a foreign language which you did not understand?

--Gustave Flaubert

one of my favorites.

it's okay to say you've got a weak spot.
you don't always have to be on top.
better to be hated than
loved, loved, loved for what you're not.


you're vulnerable; you are not a robot.
you're lovable, but you're just troubled.


you've been hanging with the unloved kids
who you never really liked, and you never trusted.

but you are so magnetic; you pick up all the pins.



don't be so pathetic.
just open up and sing:

"i'm vulnerable. i am not a robot."

i love it when the title doesn't make sense. when the work is scoured for reason, for explanation, as if the author owes anyone an explanation. that when a reader can't find it, s/he is left in the dark, ignorant to some piece of meaning created only for the writer.




even better when the author has yet to interpret what has been created. rather, it's all stream of conciousness, carefully crafted, full of malapropism and freudian slips.

let them say what they will; they will anyhow.

credit my weak heart and strong mind to that
bad circumstance of that terrible time.

...eggshells are not easy to hold.

i fought with a stranger and i met myself
i opened my mouth and i heard myself
it can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
guess i could have made it easier on myself

maybe understanding just doesn't exist.


technically,
it can't really.


nothing is certain.



the ideas of
trust
or
understanding
or
dependability


are almost fictional.













because conciousness is solitary.

love is so foreign.

true or false?

hatred is taught, while
love is inherent.








or else


neither is instinctual
but rather
one or the other is
an indirect result of surroundings.

I ask this… If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door And that’s all.


I ask for the movement to continue.


Because it’s not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power… it’s about the “us’s” out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s. Without hope, the us’s give up -


I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living.


So you, and you, and you… You gotta give em’ hope… you gotta give em’ hope.

proposition hate ruled unconstitutional.

SCOTUS is next.

myq kaplan.

whatever your religion is, that’s great. [i’m jewish. i’m not uber jewish, like, i will use german to describe how jewish i am.] just don’t use your religion to antagonize other people for their beliefs, like:



“you guys don’t eat pork? that’s weird. we drink the blood of our savior. we call it Jes-oozy-juice.”

and they get so religiously extreme that they deny reality, like:
“gay doesn’t exist! you don’t see gay in the natural world!”

you know what i don’t see a lot of in the natural world? angels. those are half-human-half-bird creatures. the devil is half-man-half-goat, i’ve seen gays more, is all i’m saying.

i am gay friendly…i don’t like the phrase “gay friendly,” it makes me straight angry, honestly, because no other oppressed group has that sort of lingo to deal with.

nobody’s like “i’m black friendly!” because that sounds racist. nobody’s like “i’m jew friendly,” because nobody is, ever.

but bigotry is getting so confusing these days. it used to at least make logical sense. it was never ethical, but back when the issue was interracial marriage, it was like

“don’t let them marry us, don’t let the black people marry us! don’t let them marry us, make them marry each other only.”

today with gay people, they’re like:

“don’t let them marry each other!

make them marry….us? i guess…”

guess I went somewhere to hide
far behind my eyes.


and i willed you there to see,
but you never came for me.

But what are two people who love each other anyway? They are two people who hurt each other. Because you can never promise anyone that you won’t hurt them.


But you can promise them that you won’t leave.

And we hurt each other. And we hurt each other over and over again. And we stuck around. Because that’s what people who love each other do. They hurt each other because they are human. And they feel the pain because they are alive. And then they thank their lover for reminding them that it was all real. And it’s all fragile. And it will heal them. And build them. And teach them. And they won’t leave.

Because that’s what people who love each other do. They stick around.

"my entire childhood i searched my entire town of wellsville, kansas for anybody who was like me.



and i couldn't find anyone."

you just up and left and now
the dark is turning red.

i just need to know where you went.

seventh september

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel.


You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

ray lamontagne's

songs are the most fun to play.

especially plugged in; the sound feels massive, even with a lone guitar.
the man is a musical, lyrical genius.

brilliant.

i adore her.

kelly cutrone:

“it’s mainly a book to make people realize they’ve been programmed. I talk a lot in the book about how mothers, the life-bringers themselves, sing songs to their daughters like, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.” It’s excessive.

You have to be skinny, pretty, make good grades. Says who?”

i adore her.
and want her book. it's titled:

If You Have to Cry, Go Outside

brilliant.

all is fair in poetry and music.
love and war just fall in line.

leave me out with the waste.

this is not what i do.

mantra.

need a plan
need a plan
need a plan.


read:
need to not fuck everything up.
need to not fuck everything up.
need to not fuck everything up.

it's just that,

how many other nations
how many other sovereign states
ensure a citizen's right to
carry a loaded weapon?

in cuba,
"... all citizens have the right to struggle through all means, including armed struggle. ..."


and in mexico.
The inhabitants of the United Mexican States are entitled to have arms of any kind in their possession for their protection and legitimate defense.


and it's funny, 'cause apparently
we, americans, have got beef with
communism, socialism, extremism and
tyranny, but we, the democratic republic of these
United States, have more in common with
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,
which, in case you haven't done your homework,
is in the north, than we noticed.

"The State shall (...) arm the entire people and fortify the country on the basis of equipping the army and the people politically and ideologically."


and then there's the situation in the middle east;
boys grow taller and are handed guns.
men grow older and are worn down and worn out.




but somehow there are plenty of us out there,
us democracy loving
freedom fighting
capitalist living
wholesome, family oriented
americans

who seem to cling to an amendment on a bill
whose own existence contradicts what it stands for.

a government issued acknowledgement of
apparently inherent rights.

it's paradoxical, besides being outdated.
hamilton had a point. a good one.

it's all just very disconcerting to me.

so profoundly confused.
most of the time.

i don't believe in restraint
unless your toes are hugging the edge of a building's roof,

i don't respect stoicism
unless it comes from a place of emptiness,

i can't fathom disbelief
unless we're talking mysticism, theology, or vampires on television.

and i think that we're never going to truly
understand much of anything,

let alone the thoughts and intentions of
another living, breathing person.


'cause we're alone in our conciousness.


we can't ever be certain of anything, which is why
we invented the benefit of the doubt

and believing in those who we've
promised we would.

and when we don't do that,
i'm not sure what the point is.

zero.
that's the number of things that have gone right.

words
words
words
words...

...haven't got any.

wield words like weapons

perspective
perspective
perspective...

fail·ure 
–noun

1. an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success: His effort ended in failure. The campaign was a failure.

2. nonperformance of something due, required, or expected: a failure to do what one has promised; a failure to appear.

3. a subnormal quantity or quality; an insufficiency: the failure of crops.

4. a condition of being bankrupt by reason of insolvency.

5. a becoming insolvent or bankrupt: the failure of a bank.

6. a person or thing that proves unsuccessful: He is a failure in his career.

i want this.

i want this.




...and this.




and this one, too.

joan miro.

Photo: ceci est le couleur de mis reves.
Photo: this is the color of my dreams.






i want a print.
but i can't find one.


no good.

methodical.

what is the sum of it all?
we can't erase awareness.

never once
did i think to retaliate.
to scream my life into
your open eyes.

linguists have yet to translate my
intentions.
verbal
cerebral
physiological
insanity
is the diagnonsensical categorical
conscientious
consensus.

play on
off
on
off
on words
doesn't even begin
to begin covering it.

whatever that
may or may not mean to you
tomorrow.

"it's better to lose than to never have had."

"i lost something i never had."


--foer.

re
sent
ment.

i don't really know
what happens now.

it's nonsensical bullshit.

true or false?

In the context of my life, it all matters very much.

what happens now?

too big a story.

living in the time between
the things that happen.

channeling jeffrey mcdaniel.

free falling up downward spiraling
escalator; cemented sideways near
moving sidewalk inside terminal numbered
8 and one half, with view of runway
where planes only slow enough for pilots to
chinese firedrill with
crossdress(k)ing stewardesses who will be late in
dispensing soft drinks to passengers begging to be
sedated into their complimentary headphones.

not good enough.

of course the times square (non)bomber is pakistani. i was genuinely hoping it was some crazy redhead or a blonde or a guy named Joe Brown or some other non-middle eastern man or woman. it would be the stereotypical subject in a terrorist attack, proliferating those wonderful prejudices that have intensified over the past ten years.

i really wish these people had an awareness of and cared about the kind of impact they have on other regular, law abiding people who look like them and have similar last names.

(obviously the possession of this awareness would probably stifle the desire harm the masses.)

my hands are barely holding up my head.

all the salt inside my body
ruins everyone i come close to.

wondering when we stop defining what we (don't) believe, and start examining why.

city air on
bare skin is
sandstorm.

In Newsweek's April 5th issue, Jonathan Alter's political editorial of the week focuses on "persistent progressivism," and the role of current democratic legislators in pushing for and executing tangible change in the face of the filibuster-happy right wing and its "gesture politics."

Says Alter,

"The question is whether the success of President Obama's emerging governing philosophy -- what might be called persisitent-progressivism -- can be extended into realms beyond health care."

Namely, can the Democrats keep the ruckus of the right wing to a minimum, and in doing so, stay on target and create the change that Obama's campaign promised?



We've already seen the first half of this administration's time come and go.



And after having read the article, the question that remains is, (not so) simply, when did the term "progressive" become a label that holds so much weight? I don't refer to Alter's interpretation, but to the left-wing, right-wing, choose-a-side-or-be-labeled-a-centrist, landscape that has developed into the contemporary political spectrum.

Behind the definitive lines by which red and blue have been divided lay the ideals and principles that have formed and continue to shape America's major political parties. But where are they?



When did the labels placed upon political parties begin to dictate values?



When was it that being a republican began to mean taking Fox news more seriously than the RNC chairperson, while democrats pitied and were embarrassed by the right wing? When was it that voters began to choose between the united, filibustering party of "no," and the whining party of seemingly reasonable but overtly unlikable policy?

It was probably in close proximity to the time when the word bipartisanship became the biggest joke since civil rights; great in theory, but never making much measurable progress when in practice.


Looking further into the differences between progressives and conservatives also begs the question, why do people align themselves with said poles of the socio-political spectrum?



When was it that the idea that every person could be the same, that every child could be in school, that every citizen could see a doctor, and eat, and live sustainably, became so radical? Why is it "socialist" to believe that people shouldn't die, simply because we were too busy buying shit that we don't need, with money that we didn't need?

And why is it so hard to believe that by providing each person with even one meal every day wouldn't put a dent into any of our bank accounts?

When was it that giving a damn began to translate to being a progressive, gay-loving, planet-saving, tree-hugging, peace-marching, granola-eating, baby-killing monster? (And what is so offensive about love, peace, trees, and granola? Though, obviously, that's not the point.)


What is it that cements the minds of the people that are, apparently, in charge of overseeing the democratic republic of the USA, from being able to change, accept, and protect the diversity that is found within this nation's borders? Votes. Money. Greed. Power.

And on both sides of party lines.

With so much partisan conflict, it's still unclear what the 2010 election season will bring about. There are several congressional and senatorial seats up for grabs; will an increasingly liberal social climate garner votes to help the left uphold the slim democratic majority, or are voters tired of waiting so long for effective change to take place? And whatever they choose, are they aware of how each candidate will behave once the race for votes wraps up?

to prove: to establish the truth or genuineness of, as by evidence or argument.

to justify: to show a satisfactory reason or excuse for something done.

satisfactory: competent, adequate, suitable, passable.




it has become unequivocally apparent that searching for more than what is presently existent is both completely inevitable and profoundly disappointing.

we are alone in our conciousness.


feeble attempts at making connections go
unfulfilled;

we seek to remedy the inherent
lonlieness that accompanies the
impermanence and fragility that is
the human condition.




or, at least, to ignore it.

stuck. sticking to sensibility separated from "happy." [whatever that is.] stuck, sticking to pragmatism and other big words relying on false gods and oppressive expectations following through with plans unsuitable. stuck, sticking to need-to-pay-the-rent-with-the-job-i-hate can't-afford-to-go-back-to-school, i-need-this-to-keep-my-insurance, will-never-feel-whole-or-content. stuck, sticking to nothing. moving nowhere. experiencing nothing. stuck with a college degree that got me nothing. a job that gets us nothing. a city that offers us nothing. stuck, let go of dreams when they told me i should. let go of plans when they told me i should. let go of me when they told me i should. wholly fully truly awesomely stuck.

society

an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members.

those with whom one has companionship, companionship; company.

benevolent

characterized by or expressing goodwill or kindly feelings.

desiring to help others; charitable.

intended for benefits rather than profit.

health

the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor.

soundness of body or mind; freedom from disease or ailment.

care

protection; charge.

to watch over; be responsible for.

to act on; deal with; attend to.

society.

more

foer. just because.

"...the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and the burning buildings,


it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, i don't know, but it's so painful to think,


and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking bring me? i think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

from el&ic, page 17

"Even though I'm not anymore, I used to be an atheist, which means I didn't believe in things that couldn't be observed...It's not that I believe in things that can't be observed now, because I don't. It's that I believe things are extremely complicated."



"I turned on the radio and found a station playing 'Hey Jude.' It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how."


--foer

***

...

direction is arbitrary,
unless you're talking time.
traveling forward is the only true endeavor
that anyone can claim to be legitimate.
because rotating on a sphere in one of an
endless possibilities of galaxies
throws off one's sense of direction.
and when traveling in an eliptical pattern,
every direction is the same as every other direction.
clockwise verses counterclockwise,
north verses south,
east, west, up, down,
it's all relative,
none of it's relative,
and we have no clue as to who we are
or where we are
or what we are.

i read it somewhere...1.26 seconds. so what happens to those seconds? will we ever make up for them? will birthday minutes change?


will the end of the world come 1.26 seconds later than planned?
and what of the beginning of the next?

crazed.

nostalgia. longing for the past. comes from greek. returning home. pain, ache. idealistic. liberation. apparently, the act or fact of gaining equal rights or full social or economic opportunities for a particular group.


insane. not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged.
artist. not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged.
insane. characteristic of that which is not artistic.
artist.


health. the overall condition of an organism at a given time. soundness, especially of body or mind. freedom from disease or abnormality. condition of optimal wellness. community. similar character; agreement; identity. sharing, participation, and fellowship.



life. the general or universal condition of human existence; a particular aspect of existence.


existence. continued state of being.


liberty. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

happiness. contentment. contentment. satisfaction; ease of mind. satisfaction. fulfillment; gratification. the state of being satisfied; contentment.

what chance have i of a miracle?

i only want one day
one lousy day, that's all
of every day that's been before
since time began

i know my prayer's in vain,
but for a second i'll pretend
that i could start today again.

today in american politics.

amendments were made. civil liberties were depleted.

in the new bill on credit card regulations, oklahoma senator coburn's provision to lift ninety-four year old ban on ability to bring loaded firearms into national parks has been adapted.

bill to allow loaded guns into national parks. on credit card bill. true story.



and, not to be outdone,
virginia lawmakers passed new legislation that will allow employers to discriminate against employees and job applicants who are LGBT because of their LGBT status.

passed new legislation to remove the right to equal opportunity that all virginians had yesterday...because apparently current virginia legislators aren't big on civil rights.

my favorite.

they tali bans
and censor art for sport. they
snuck into our law schools and
hijacked the supreme court. their
money makes missiles, their labs created anthrax
osama was their pawn, and
evil is their axis, they're
skilled at killing innocent civilians,
because they've had lotsof practice from
hanoi to nicaragua from
vieqes to damascus, for
agua and oil,
gold, zinc and soil
they spread their views on cable news,


they call each other
george and dick and rudy
so next time you see a terrorist,
kick 'em in his booty.
it's not only your right as an american,
it's your patriotic duty.

brilliance.

"real eyes realize real lies"

why?

because i have an affinity for quotations, especially particularly good ones, and this book is so incredibly quotable.

from EL&IC by J.S. Foer.

"we could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened."


"just because you're an athiest, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are."


"in the end, everyone loses everyone. there was no invention to get around that one. and so i felt, that night, like turtle that everything else in the universe is on top of."


"humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with the lips. so in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are."


"the books had been buried, so i hid this time behind a group of trees, i imagined their roots wrapped around the books, pulling nourishment from the pages, i imagined rings of letters in their trunks..."

here's to a grain of sand.

"What would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a grain of sand and moved it on milimeter?"

I said "I'd probably die of dehydration."

He said "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?"

I said, "I dunno, what?"

He said, "Think about it."

I thought about it. "I guess I would have moved a grain of sand."

"Which would mean?"

"Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?"

"Which would mean you changed the Sahara."

"So?"

"So? So the Sahara is a vast desert that's existed for millions of years and you changed it."

"That's true!" I said, sitting up. "I changed the Sahara!"

"Which means?"

...

"I changed the course of human history."

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
page 86, J.S. Foer

i'm making lilith 2010 a priority.

you strut your rasta wear
and your suicide poem,
and a cross from a faith that died
before jesus came.

you're building a mystery.

i don't understand why

no one seems to want to ask
"how the fuck did we let this happen?"

we should be asking this of ourselves every day.

as we focus all of our attention for a few minutes on Haiti, before the next disaster strikes, we are apparently blind to the fact that we've been wholly ignorant to the state of a nation so close to our shores. ignorant to the fact that it represents a tiny per cent of the rest of the developing world that we've steeped in poverty as a result of our seemingly infinite greed.

climate change is undoubtedly the cause for the number of natural disasters that have hit world-wide over the last decade, disasters that are off the charts in comparison to those prior in our recorded meterological history which, even before the new millenium, were seen to be of increasing intensity.


and apparently no one saw this coming.
and apparently no one will ask "why?"

still, i don't quite understand
what's so threatening.
what it is that's so easily identified,
some
red flag i'm ignorant to.
because all i know is what i know
and
that's not much of anything at all.


we are buried

in a time when at once
our television sets blare bad news
and terror is a word in the vocabularies of our children
with eyes wide open to a world that is trapped in a
haze of chaos.

and i've got a room full of memories
i'd pay to forget.
walls built of regret. and guilt.
doors with hinges that refuse to give
with handles that stick
rooms filled with misunderstandings.

so it pays to have a perspective you haven't bought.
and i'm short on insight
but i'm pushing for change
while i push through walls of
quiet.

because they've got nothing to say to me.

earthquake in Haiti

an earthquake moved through Haiti tonight, just before 5 PM eastern standard time, about 10 miles west of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, one of the poorest cities in the world.

the people who are without power, hospitals, ambulences, rescue teams, food, water, shelter, and even communication need help ASAP.


TEXT "Haiti" to (90999) for an automatic $10 donation. Keep Port-au-Prince and the Haitian people in thoughts and hearts tonight...



how to help:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34834553/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show

no on H8

the trial began today.