Here's an email I wrote to esr, asking about the 2nd amendment, which I struggle with.
Eric,
Your writing has been really influential and helpful for me, as I try to carve a cogent weltanschauung. I think I'm coming closer to supporting the second amendment, but I'm confused about something.
Maybe this is a RTFM question, but I digress ;)
What about sociopaths and mass-murderers who want to arm themselves, and unload their ammo at a toys-r-us?
Do the benefits of arming the good guys outweigh the inevitable psycho who is going to get a gun if encouraged to do so by a lack of restrictions? I can see that most potential psychos would be discouraged from going on a spree if they knew that 99% of people were armed to the teeth, but even that fact wouldn't deter the really, really far-gone madman. Would he go on his spree, promptly be gunned down in self-defense, and the damage he did get written up as acceptable losses for a free society?
This is a libertarian FAQ, I'm sure -- but I'm not familiar with the answer.
Thanks.
Here is his response:
do the benefits of arming the good guys outweigh the inevitable psycho who is going to get a gun if encouraged to do so by a lack of restrictions?
Psychos get guns -- or bombs, or whatever -- whether there are restrictions or not.
i can see that most potential psychos would be discouraged from going on a spree if they knew that 99% of people were armed to the teeth, but even that fact wouldn't deter the really, really far-gone madman. Would he go on his spree, promptly be gunned down in self-defense, and the damage he did get written up as acceptable losses for a free society?
Yes. In fact, one of the most robust statistical effects of permitting civilians to carry concealed is a drop in spree killings. It also has a substantial suppressive effect on rape and hot burglary.
I also discussed this issue some with friends, who are sort of on the fence about it, as I am. One question, that I forgot to ask esr, is what about littleton and the kids that kill themselves with found guns? Maybe the libertarian response in this case would be that responsible education and treatment of guns is an inevitable result of a more open gun culture -- households where guns are uncovered and played with by youngsters have clearly not been educated in proper gun safety. As far as littleton goes, the massacre would have been smartly cut short if even a few people at the colorado school had been armed. And, as esr tells me, sociopaths are going to find ways to do their dirty work regardless of regulations. But, my father says, regulations would have made it more difficult for the littleton killers to get guns. But, esr says, the absence of regulations would have enabled the victims of littleton to arm and protect themselves. Furthermore, esr continues, the littleton killers would have gotten their hands on guns regardless of regulations. But, my father says, how can you prove this? Then esr pulls out some statistics. Then my dad uses some big words. Etc.
Ana wisely told me last night that I shouldn't force the issue, that it was ok to be on the fence about it. This, of course, is one of my root personality disorders: the inability to compromise, and the tendency to see the world in black or white. We either obliterate the government and permit private nuclear weapons, or confiscate all guns and paint everyone's house the same color.
today's blog will be in really big letters.
Well, at least part of it. That's the thing -- you have to combine content with presentation; it can't be strictly one or the other. Last night, in a bizarre episode of madness, I gathered $9 in quarters from my backpack and went to magruder's (another grocery store) where I bought three tubes of chocolate chip cookie dough. Once I got back into my car, I peeled back the plastic from one and ate it like a popsicle as I drove back home with one hand on the wheel. I later looked at the discarded wrapper, and ascertained that I had eaten 2,400 calories of sweet, taupe, fudge-like paste, undissolved granules of pure sugar crumbling audibly between my teeth. I felt mildly sick afterwards for a few minutes, but nothing too bad. However, I basically didn't sleep the whole night, and could feel my heart pounding as I lay there in bed. I think I entered a pseudo-REM state a couple of times, but I was right on the cusp of wakefulness for 6 hours of lying down with my eyes closed. I still don't feel 100% normal. That much sugar is really poisonous to one's system; I don't want to know how much insulin I produced to deal with the onslaught. So, there are two tubes of dough left in my fridge, and I'm not sure what to do with them. I guess I will bake cookies, and then maybe give them to people.
I think if anyone has ever had an eating disorder, I do. If I deprive myself in the slightest, then I go absolutely berserk.
Now, my question is: why are certain people prone to this sort of behavior (eating entire tubes of cookie dough on the way home from the grocery store), while others seem to be capable of treating food quite normally? I've blogged about this before, I remember, and I think I posited that a subconscious fear of starvation, which is I guess synonymous with an irrepressible survival instinct, is responsible. In other words, eat all you can, because you don't know when the next mother-lode of food will be available. So, here is my mantra, that I will chant to myself:
i am in no danger of starving. The fact that I live in a wealthy, civilized society makes this an impossibility, as evidenced by the fact that there is a positive correlation between poverty and obesity. I am in no danger of starving. I accept the fact that evolutionary biology has fooled my body into thinking that a food shortage is a constant danger, and I thank it for its vigilance. But I gently remind it that this is no longer a proper survival mechanism, and that in fact restricting intake is a better path to health than hoarding calories. There is no way my body could have known -- civilization is only about 10,000 years old, whereas the human body has been evolving for billions. I am in no danger of starving.
Then I'll take a swig of the juice of saphoo. If I were in one of my moods, I might talk about how keeping the lower class obese is a conspiracy of the ruling elite to kill off undesirables as well as provide a red flag to avoid in hiring situations.
You know, they say that humans have very few instincts left, but I'm pretty convinced that eating as much as possible at all times is one of them.
Look at my situation: the only way I was able to regulate my intake to a reasonable amount was if there were absolutely no means to acquire any more food. I have no money in my bank account or wallet, and neither does my mother. Quite literally, I *have* to make the food I have last until next Tuesday. So, the net result of this 'crisis' is that I will actually eat healthily for a week. However, my mind started to work last night, and I remembered that I had some quarters in my backpack. So, I drove off in the night and bought 7,200 calories of food -- I probably couldn't have been any more efficient in my calories-per-dollars if I had relied on research and planning.
Clearly there are some forces at work here that are beyond our control.
Inspired and interested by mydoom stories, I recently turned off my .forward file, hoping to get a few viruses for my own entertainment. Actually, I got far fewer than I got before mydoom. But today, I got two. here's one of them, including the html email and the executable file translated into text.
A slightly different format for today.
I'm waiting for pesh to come over. In a way, I'm looking forward to my meeting with the department of voc rehab, because it will be an opportunity to vent some of my frustrations with finding a job. Of course, that is the purpose of this blog, so here we go.
Job-related frustrations:
I think that's just about it, actually. Fuck work. But it's nice to have these three things down, because they are issues that I might be able to 'work on.' the first and third problems simply requre 'getting over it,' but the second is more problematic, and might require (gasp!) understanding and compassion from an employer.
Since so much money was spent on katy's vet bills, my mom and I are in the midst of a major food budget crunch; $30 has to last me from now until next Tuesday evening. I went shopping at giant, and spent $26.14, as follows:
| a dozen eggs | $1.99 |
| i can't believe it's not butter | $1.99 |
| parmesan cheese | $3.49 |
| jar of red olive oil and garlic pasta sauce | $2.74 |
| jar of mushroom alfredo sauce | $2.74 |
| jar of marinara sauce | $2.74 |
| package of black beans and rice | $1.69 |
| package of black beans and rice | $1.69 |
| package of black beans and rice | $1.69 |
| spaghetti | $0.66 |
| spaghetti | $0.66 |
| spaghetti | $0.66 |
| 3.41 pounds of potatoes | $3.38 |
I've broken these items up into 14 medium-sized helpings of food, which are distributed at the rate of 2 meals a day for the next 6 days, with two surplus servings of pasta/sauce/parmesan.
| thu | pasta, bean |
| fri | bean, potato |
| sat | egg, bean |
| sun | potato, pasta |
| mon | pasta, egg |
| tue | bean, pasta |
The way the units of surplus pasta will be eaten is to be determined. If I'm particularly hungry on a particular day, or feel like celebrating with three meals once and a while, then I will indulge in an extra meal that day (not to exceed two extra meals in total). I now see that the luxury purchases of margarine and parmesan cheese were financially devastating, and if it weren't for them I would have had another $5.48 to allocate.
Having recently culled from it those quotes I no longer like, I now feel that my email signature quotes file represents an even more enjoyable summation of who I am, who I think I am, who I'd like to be, or who I think I'd like to be. Let's examine them, one at a time, and make some comments on why they're so cool.
This is turning out to be a bigger project than I thought, so what I'm going to do is turn this entry into an ongoing one spanning an undetermined number of days, until I'm finished expounding on all x quotes.
"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen." -- Ken Kesey, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_. even if something didn't happen in physical reality in the way that it's re-told, there's still metaphorical value in the re-telling that describes a reality no less valid than the one inclusive of 'events.' for example: if I accuse joe of stealing my cookie, then even if he didn't steal my cookie he's still the kind of person who would lead me to believe that he stole my cookie. In chief bromden's case, even though he's crazy, hallucinates and talks about things that aren't there, theres a metaphoric truth to the things he says about the orderlies swelling up and ripping at one another's undersides with broom handles -- it's his way of describing and explaining how he feels, and communicating through schizophrenic metaphor the *meaning* of the events, which supersedes the historicity of the events. I like this quote because it says to me 'what actually happened is less important than how it affects me personally.' meaning and truth are personal things, and are independent of the tyranny of objectivity -- I hold a truth that supersedes your rhetoric, and you can never take this away from me with your logic games. Basically, I like this quote because it says 'i answer to no-one.' I don't have any sort of responsibility to conform to norms or social ideals, least of all a particular memory of events in time and space. Subjectivity, isolation, madness and freedom.
"You have no privacy. Get over it." -- Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems. privacy concerns are sort of a mystery to me. I can legitimately see them as concerns over safety -- if no one has your address, for instance, then no one can stalk you and stab you while you're sleeping. But privacy concerns are something unto themselves: a desire to be free of prying eyes for no other reason than that prying eyes make one feel vaguely uncomfortable. Maybe I would feel differently if I weren't so isolated, but this quote by scott mcnealy describes privacy concerns as the abstractions that they are; there is no good reason to have all of these burning issues of privacy other than valuing the issues in and of themselves. Do you think, for one minute, that 'they' don't know everything there is to know about you? Move on with your life -- privacy is a leftover illusion of the frontier mentality.
"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." -- Jean de la Bruyere. this is a mannish one. It implies that I am so smart that I transcend petty, effeminate emotions, and am so utterly superior in my intellect that I simply snicker at things when they come up. My luggage got lost, you say? *snicker* what does it all mean, in a cosmic sense? I am so smart that everything comprises an interlocking network of abstract algorithmic games and puzzles, which I rise above and ponder with a disinterested sneer. Of course, I'm being somewhat ironic, or rather treading the line between earnestness and irony. You never can tell -- you never know when I'm secretly making fun of you. Your only option is to keep wondering, and tread lightly on your little toes. Or, you can just move on to people who aren't as adversarial in their social interactions, and maybe go get a pizza.
"I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils." -- Euripides, _Medea_. I have an intellectual awareness of how fucked up I am, but it doesn't matter because my primal beast-rage will overwhelm it, and I will eat your face. There are two parts to me: berserker rage and cold 'mr. Spock' intelligence. I have a rational awareness of my berserker rage, and the rationality doesn't attempt to coral it, but merely stands and takes minutes as faces are eaten. Haha, that's not really what I'm like. Well, sort of. But there are other sides to me, too.
"Why of course the people don't want war. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." - Hermann Goering, April 18, 1946, Nuremberg Trials. obviously, this is america under its current leadership and propaganda machine.
"Society is the natural medium of the human collectivity, regardless of contracts. It progresses slowly through the momentum imparted by individual initiatives, not through the mind and will of the legislator." -- Mikhail Bakunin. mikhail bakunin was a 19th century anarchist who basically said that the social contract is a load of crap, that governments don't have the right to govern implicitly, that people are naturally cooperative if given the chance, and that each person doing his or her part is what makes society function. I used to think I was an anarchist, but now I favor a fascist dictatorship with me as dictator. My first act would be to put everyone in suspended animation, and then go eat all the unguarded symphony bars in the grocery store. But really, I think government is dumb, and nothing gives one human the right to lord over another human. But fuck that -- I don't care about politics anymore; I support the 'the earth will be swallowed by the sun in 5 billion years so why do you care' party. 'individual initiatives, and not the mind and will of the legislator.' in other words, people just move along through life, essentially 'govern' themselves through their decisions and interactions, and don't need some kind of implanted hierarchy to ensure their survival.
"Under the Roman empire, the labour of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly employed, in the service of the rich. In their dress, their table, their houses, and their furniture, the favourites of fortune united every refinement of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour, whatever could soothe their pride or gratify their sensuality." -- Edward Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. also america, but not specifically under the bush administration. Instead, this is the status quo of conspicuous consumption and gratuitous imperialism/materialism that is the american way. The middle class is lured with symbols of wealth (SUVs, cable television, big macs, etc) into indentured servitude to keep the fat-cats fat, while being told by the media propaganda machine that *they* are rich, *they* are free, *they* are the ones who are reaping the rewards of america (in the form of super-sized fries), and not the CEO of halliburton. The middle (and lower) class has been, and will continue to be, 'incessantly employed, in the service of the rich.' and of course, this can only go on so long -- the decline and fall of the _____ empire.
"And after a while, you can work on points for style
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake
A certain look in the eye, and an easy smile
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in." -- Pink Floyd, Dogs
pink floyd intended this album, 'animals,' as a reductionist send-up of contemporary western society. They divided it thusly: sheep (the blind followers), pigs (the smug, holier-than-thou intellectuals) and dogs (the vicious capitalists, seizing food from the mouths of babes). You know me -- I love reductionist, metaphorical analyses of society, and I really like the song, too; it's something like 17 minutes long, and is very strummable. Anyway, this quote is from the song 'dogs,' about the capitalists, even though in fact I'm probably more critical of the the pigs, then the sheep, and finally least of all the dogs. But I don't like the songs 'pigs' or 'sheep' as much. I, myself, am about 55/40/5 pig/sheep/dog. What are you? I wonder, though, if most people wouldn't be inclined to analyze themselves as being mostly pig -- the designation of snide intellectual is a lot more palatable than that of blind follower or corporate pitbull. I suspect that the truth might be universally closer to 99/negligible/negligible sheep/dog/pig.
"All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security." -- The U.S. Declaration of Independence. pretty straightforward; if your government sucks, get rid of it. The founding fathers intended, by design, for america's government to live in constant fear of the governed, and never to forget that leadership is conditionally granted by citizens (for some reason). I guess the founding fathers' mistake was thinking they could somehow have a government without *really* having a government -- that all of the rules of human nature wouldn't apply to their special model. Oh well.
"You must stop thinking of yourself as naturally fat. NO ONE is naturally fat - not me, not you, not even the Pope." -- www.weight-loss-diet-i.com. I thought this was one of the most hilarious things I'd ever seen. No-one is naturally fat, not even the pope. Huh? I think what the author of this really weird sentence was trying to communicate is that being naturally fat is a supernatural feat that is not possible for anyone to achieve, not even someone of great importance or divine nature. But this idea, when expressed, came out really funny.
"Fifteen year old Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior undertake a perilous journey through time in a desperate attempt to stop the destruction of the world by the mad dictator Mad Dog Branzillo." -- Madeline L'Engle, _A Swiftly Tilting Planet_. also just very funny; it sounds like a parody of bad, pulp-comic sci-fi, which is especially funny when you consider that this was the third book in the _wrinkle in time_ series by the great, preachy, science-studies-oriented, 'tao of physics,' wannabe-interdisciplinary hack madeleine l'engle. I would like to see what would be left of ms. L'engle if alan sokal were to get his hands on her.
"You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there were names for boys who didn't like sports." -- David Sidaris, _Me Talk Pretty One Day_. sports are dumb. If you like sports, then you are dumb. Well, maybe not. But I don't understand obsessing about sports, even though if you name a city, I can map it to a basketball, football, baseball or even hockey team with nearly 100% accuracy, an ability gleaned from hearing them constantly rattled off in pairs for most of my american life. But now, I know enough to ask people the simple question, 'why do you like to watch sports on tv?' and just sort of sit back and watch the fun. I enjoy playing sports, in fact, if it's with friends and is kept casual and as un-fascist as possible. However, I have never deeply, intuitively understood watching sports on television (i write this on superbowl Sunday), and I likely never will. I can give intellectual reasons for the practice: 1) watching competition/violence supplants one's own competitive/violent drives, and prevents one from attacking co-workers with staplers. 2) sports teams provide an outlet for regionalism (not just the SCROTUMS, but the MAYBERRY SCROTUMS). 3) coveting the beauty of movement, athletic prowess, and youth, and imagining one's self as the sports hero who embodies all of these qualities. 4) homo-eroticism. I think it's principally that men (and possibly women) see troy aikman from dallas running in spandex pants to catch a pass, and imagine that it's them, from dallas, dressed in spandex pants, and running to catch a pass. However, I don't empathize, while I do empathize with david sidaris -- you are looked at strangely if you don't like sports. But I sometimes suspect that there are more men who do not like sports than will admit to it. The revolution is brewing.
"A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head, and called it a night." -- David Sidaris, _Me Talk Pretty One Day_. describing performance art as being more utterly ridiculous than brow-furrowing-ly meaningful. Of course, the whole point of dada is that everything is inherently ridiculous, which is pretty sad inasmuch as I have *never* seen a culture that takes itself so painfully seriously, and is so unwilling to poke fun at itself, than the contemporary academic and urban art community, with their vegetarian diets, post-structuralist vocabularies, and supposedly dada roots. It's very dada that the least dada people of all are the dadaists. For an *excellent* documentary of artist-culture, watch the scene in 'the big lebowski' involving maude lebowski, the dude, and knox harrington the video artist; I've seen artists that are indistinguishable from this parody.
"When he first started working, he was homeless, and he'd show up for work smelling bad. It wasn't up to McDonald's standards to come in smelling the way he did." -- John Krakauer, _Into the Wild_. this was a statement made by a mcdonalds manager, commenting on the protagonist of krakauer's book. I find it funny that mcdonalds apparently has a specific standard stating that employees are not to smell bad when reporting for work. When 'standards' are talked about in a place of employment, it brings to mind ethical codes, the meeting of sales quotas, decorum and protocol to be used with clients, etc, but not smelling all right. I can picture a golden plaque on the wall of mcdonalds that says 'it is our standard of utmost quality that our employees smell inoffensive,' or maybe even an 'employee of the month' list, periodically recording the best-smelling of the crew.
"...he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers..." -- Arthur Miller, _The Death of a Salesman_. just like 'pink floyd' says in the song 'dogs': 'and in the end you'll pack up, fly down south, hide your head in the sand...just another sad old man, all alone, and dying of cancer-er-errrrrrrr...' people who play the 'whoever dies with the most wins' game are in for a nasty shock on the deathbed: that the pursuit of wealth is hollow, and can easily fill a life with months and years of nothing, of utterly wasted time and meaningless goals. All of the salesman's material comfort won't stave off death, no matter how soft his velvet slippers might be. In the end, no matter how rich we are, we all die, and all of the superficiality of material accumulation will be of little comfort during our final days. If you spend your life amassing wealth and goods, then you'll likely regret on your deathbed that you didn't devote more time to more important things than SUVs, marbleized floors, health club memberships, and green velvet slippers.
"Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general." -- Marcel Duchamp. artists are the worst kind of poseurs. They are supposed to have the kind of frenetic, intense devotion to their craft that chess players (apparently) do, but they are far more concerned with appearances and social status than devotion to their craft. It should be noted that duchamp muttered 'I'm done with this' and went off to be a full-time chess player, so I think we can deduce that he was pretty disgusted with the scene he had helped create: dada-proponents running around, in the early 20th century, competing with one another to see who could do the craziest, deepest, most dada thing. They weren't concerned with art, nor were they even concerned with anti-art; they were scrambling for crumbs of recognition and ego, as humans are wont to do. Artists have forgotten how to make art, and are no longer passionate about anything beyond maintaining their status, tenure, and fashion.
"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go." -- Tennessee Williams, _Camino Real_ . sometimes, one has to instrument a life-change even if one hasn't planned every step of the process, or even any steps of the process. Just taking the first step is enough. This applies to me, obviously, but I havent been able to follow the advice yet; maybe someday.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." -- John Stuart Mill. mill's statement draws a big circle, containing the set of all conservatives, and mostly within that circle a smaller circle containing the set of all stupid people (don't worry -- the implication is not that there are more conservatives than there are stupid people, but rather necessarily the opposite). So, according to this model it's easy to be conservative without being stupid, but extremely difficult to be stupid without being conservative (you'd have to squeeze yourself into that tiny little gap there in the bottom-left).
Mill's challenge is 'can you name an idiot who is not conservative?' by the way, if anyone ever asks this of you, the appropriate answer to give is 'you!' I don't know if this is true, or if it is, why it would be true. It's possible that john stewart mill is confusing deliberate closed-mindedness, which goes along with resistance to change, with stupidity. But certainly non-conservatives have a reputation for being smarter than conservatives. I believe there are three reasons for this: 1) academia is very non-conservative, and people with a lot of education are going to get indoctrinated away from conservatism, unless they're above it all and are immune to such crude marketing devices, like me. 2) as I already mentioned, people who make the accusation that conservatives are dumber than non-conservatives might be confusing closed-mindedness with outright stupidity, which is almost impossible to define anyway. 3) maybe conservatism really is how idiots are inclined to view the world: as a shortsighted free-for-all which advocates holding one's own welfare above that of others, while the more intelligent members of the species are capable of cooperation, care, and the collective maintenance of society. Not that I care about society -- I'm just saying.
"The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha...which is to demean oneself." -- Robert Pirsig, _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_. besides reminding the reader that everything is one and god is everywhere, this quote informs the spiritualist specifically that to seek the spiritual only in the temple is folly. I originally copied this quote down back when I was immersed in the art program at UMBC, and wanted to give a showing of support for art and technology, or I guess in this case god and technology; generally, to demonstrate that the gap between the 'classical' and 'romantic' worlds (to use pirsig's words) can be readily bridged. Of course, ever since the sokal hoax it's become apparent that just because it *can* be bridged doesn't mean it necessarily *should* be bridged, because you're likely to look really stupid in the process. Onward, science studies! Up, up, and away!
"Do you feel that life is worth living, that the future is bright and glorious, that all hours can be spent in peace and happiness as you press genitals with another human being? Has the world become less of a jungle and more of a sweet, sweet dream, an amusement park with X-rated rides, a place where you can unload shotguns in your own basement? Rock on!" -- Peter Miller. I guess this is the ultimate expression of joy de vivre. I found it to be very moving, and of course funny, especially the part about expressing my exuberance by unloading shotguns in my own basement. This quote was extracted from an email regarding my then-new girlfriend (#5). She was my first in a long while, and Peter was speculating that I might not be such a depressive lump now that I had acquired a mate. However, she was severely molested as a little girl, and as a result was dangerously anorexic (this is in fact a somewhat common result of childhood sexual abuse), as well as incapable of interactive conversation or physical affection. She was something of a bust as a companion, but peter's sentiment was nice anyway.
"He said that you attacked some great fish in the mine, that you perhaps detected alcohol, became related in waters (another "motor world") and so you were precipitated to assemble it, not knowing that his was the enormous circumference that could give an electrical shock to its nut-soldier of boo-boo!" -- excerpt from a web translator's rendition of an email from Peter Miller. this is the ultimate in literary dada. Miraculous things happen to a sentence if it is machine-translated it into another language, and then the results machine-translated back again. There are sites online that have automated this process with scripts, but it's pretty easy to do by hand on altavista's babel fish or a similar site. I think the original message had something to do with visiting an abandoned limestone quarry that had filled with water, and me drunkenly jumping from one of the bank cliffs directly onto a large bass that was lazily swimming around in the glassy water 15 feet below. I think there was some implication of me, a great fat beast, challenging another great fat beast for dominance of the quarry ('his was the enormous circumference'). Not every sentence, double machine-translated, yields such terrific results. Since Peter wrote it, the original sentence was pretty strange to begin with, and I made a few minor edits to the end product, just to tighten the literary flow. It's really the best sentence, ever. Just the first part -- 'he said that you attacked some great fish in the mind' -- is wonderfully evocative, and has mythological implications. Maybe joseph campbel and carl jung have something to say about attacking some great fish in the mine.
"Battle follows battle, but they are all alike. Countless heroes are always slain, rivers of blood drench the earth, the brazen throats of trumpets blare, arrows plenteous as hail fly from sharp-stringing bows, hoofs of fiery steeds spurting gory dew trample on the dead. Long before the end, the horrors have ceased to horrify." -- Virgil, _The Aeneid_. a vivid picture of doomsday war, and perhaps a metaphor for the desensitizing effects of contemporary media nihilism. But really, I just think it sounds cool. MAN APPRECIATE AESTHETICS OF WAR, MAKE PENIS GROW.
"George Orwell once remarked that political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters. That's true, unfortunately, and it's part of the reason that our society lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing movement." -- Noam Chomsky. We know that conservatives are stupid, but of course liberals are stupid too. And in a sense, their stupidity is almost worse because liberals *think* they're smart (education tends to have this effect), whereas conservatives know on some level that they're morons. Of course, by 'dumb' I mean short-sighted and oversimplification-prone, and am not necessarily describing defects in pattern-recognition, creativity or memory (my own tripartite definition of intelligence). This quote was also born out of my sokal hoax obsession. Sokal, along with, apparently, george orwell and noam chomsky, accuses a certain brand of liberalism of being 'a trendy segment of itself,' and remarks that these au courant 'liberals' are not concerned with helping their fellows, but instead choose to wallow in useless intellectualism. Sokal goes on to write that postmodernism has never helped house the homeless or feed the hungry, or something to that effect. I enjoy this quote because it balances out the other which criticizes conservatives for being dumb. Now, all I need is a quote that similarly criticizes libertarians and fascist dictators. Libertarians often point out that the left-right political dichotomy is a reductionist analysis of personal politics, and aim to correct it by introducing two axes: an economic y axis, and a social x axis, both ranging from utterly regimented to utterly free. This approach is reductionist as well, and to assume that a 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, or even 10-dimensional model could hope to categorize the intricacies of human political thought isn't much better than the assumption that everyone must be either a liberal or conservative. Every one person has his or her own unique view of politics that is not comparable to that of any other, nor even quantifiable in any meaningful way. I transcend everything.
"He saw businessmen trading, princes going to the hunt, mourners weeping over their dead, prostitutes offering themselves, doctors attending the sick, priests deciding the day for sowing, lovers making love, mothers soothing their children - all were not worth a passing glance, everything lied, stank of lies; they were all illusions of sense, happiness and beauty. All were doomed to decay. The world tasted bitter. Life was pain." -- Herman Hesse, _Siddhartha_. what was for siddhartha spiritual asceticism that strips away attachment to the material world, is for me a bad mood. Maybe they're one and the same -- buddha on prozac might have been even more culturally destructive than nietzsche on prozac.
"I don't need your war machines
I don't need your ghetto scenes
Coloured lights can hypnotize
Sparkle someone else's eyes
Now woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be" -- The Guess Who, "American Woman".
'the guess who' are from canada, and they sing about how they'd rather not have anything to do with american imperialism, class warfare, or media propaganda, but instead opt for canadian imperialism, class warfare and media propaganda. Haha, just kidding -- there isn't much of an argument for canadian imperialism, unless you count the inclusive hegemony of the western world in general. But I still think a canadian mounty barracks is less likely to get a 737 flown into it than, say, the sears tower or a mcdonalds manager training facility. Sure, america disgusts me, but I'm quite comfortable here (which is, of course, the danger), and in fact, a person like me who vociferously bashes america and american values at every opportunity is no less a part of the interlocking gears of the u.s. Sociopolitical machine than is pat robertson's presidential campaign -- I'm just doing my part for america here. But I'd move back to canada if I had the wherewithal to do so; I've even expounded on 23 reasons canada is better than the united states. But in fact, I don't think 'the guess who' are comparing the u.s. Unfavorably to canada, but are rather pointing out a few totally orignal, never-heard-before criticisms of the western world. Theirs is a valid point, though, which is made through the metaphor of america as seductress. It's easy to fall for the trappings of material excess and willingly join the ranks of the enslaved middle class, as so many immigrants have done, glancing lewdly up the dress of 'lady liberty' on their way to the cash machine. But it's all especially meaningful to me because 'the guess who' are a canadian band, and I'm (arguably) a canadian dude.
"Therefore when they revoltingly persisted in what they had been forbidden, We said to them: Be (as) apes, despised and hated." -- The Holy Koran, 7:166. 'be as apes, despised and hated'? What's even funnier is that this recommendation appears twice in the koran, the second time regarding the transgression of 'exceeding the limits of the sabbath.' all dada aside, people have issues with apes, because they're so close to human beings, and represent to them and their cognitive and spiritual evolution a dirtier, stupider, lower form of human. Apes remind us of our un-divine natures and that we're animals, throwing into ugly relief what middle-eastern religious tradition frantically scrambles to mask. I've remarked that the world can be divided into two groups: people who think pictures of chimpanzees dressed in human clothes are cute and funny, and people who think they are vaguely disturbing and repulsive. Like so many other things, where I fall on this dichotomy depends on my mood.