I guess this is becoming my usual: wake up some time between 3am and 7am (I went to bed at 8:30 pm yesterday evening) and blog until general mobilization happens. Today, "general mobilization" will consist of marmar and myself going to see a movie: "Young Adult" (then to lunch at delicious veggie Indian place). Moovee eez spose 2 b gud. I have my iPod behind me playing some eletronica internet radio. I can get into the sound of its tiny onboard speakers -- listening makes me feel cozy and self-contained and efficient, as if I were on a camping trip. Little portable radios are good at producing this sort of feeling.
I just removed the password on my mom's computer account, on her new PC that I am now using and blogging on. Really, I don't see how it's necessary -- the likelihood of someone breaking into the house here to access her email seems low. But there's a general instinct pointing towards password protection that comes up as a matter of reflex in the computer world. I'm not convinced the drive is all about security -- I think of the password obsession as some kind of general replacement for potency, like a jailer's keyring. Of course, just because people get emotionally involved in something doesn't mean there aren't good logical reasons for it to exist.
I can barely see the characters on the screen, even with my glasses. This monitor really isn't that great. But, me mum is famous for not noticing things like this, or just accepting broken/nonfunctional objects as part of the general course of reality. Her estimation of her own power to alter the universe around her is low, a world-view with which I can empathize.
I have all of today and then half of tomorrow -- one more night asleep in this bed -- and then it's back home with me. Then I decide what to do next. I was thinking of dressing nice, continuing to lose weight, and speaking in a suave way, thereby implicity fooling single women into thinking that I'm some kind of high-earning professional. Then after they've been bedded down I'll say "LOL I WORK AT BURGER KING" and show them my nametag. I think this might be generally what single men do, come to think of it: some display that correpsonds to wealth and general alpha male'ism, intended to trick women into estimating his status to be higher than it actually is. Such is life, such is the world, such is the mating game...don't like it? Don't play. More for me :::)))) HAW. The mating game taken to its logical extreme would be killing or castrating as many men as possible while impregnating as many women as possible. It seems this would be easier to accomplish with a robot army, which is of course what I really wanted for Christmas. That's become my one wish: control of a robot army (supplanting a combo of superpowers: invisibility, super strength, and teleportation). And I'll take some cyborg enhancements so I can more easily control them -- basically I want to be General Grievous (my mom can never remember his name and calls him "Captain Fishy") from Star Wars, Jamaican accent optional.
Oh yeah -- since I'm writing about my mom so much in today's entry, I'll mention something else. My mother names her purses: the big one is called "Trigger," because it's large and Western and floppy and sort of reminds her of a cowboy horse, and she recently acquired two smaller ones for times when carrying Trigger around is too much: their names are "Peewee" and "Eduardo." The interesting thing about Peewee and Eduardo is that one is put inside the other, and both are carried around as a unit (for some reason). Logically, one would guess Eduardo to be the bigger one, and Peewee to be the smaller one since "Peewee" implies smallness, but in fact Peewee is bigger than Eduardo -- Eduardo goes inside Peewee. And that's all I have to say about that.
I sorta have too much stuff, and would like to get rid of some of it. Perhaps that can be a project for when I return to the home base. Mostly, I'm thinking of my second desk that serves no purpose other than to store things that are never used; the desk exists to store the stuff, and the stuff exists to live in the desk. This seems like an easily solvable problem (get rid of both stuff and desk). Here are my main possessions: dishes, clothes, a bed, two desks, a computer, two guitars, and a bicycle. I guess I have a chair too, but the chair is major suck, as in "it smells bad and is uncomfortable and sorta half broken." I considered getting a new fancy one, but I didn't know if it was worth it to get something that I'd have to schlepp around during possible near-future moving adventures. I'd like to be able to move in just a car or station wagon, rather than having to rent a box truck. There's something totally ludicrous about needing a truck to move yourself from place to place.
I see that I blogged about being sick yesterday. There's a small story there: I decided that I was sick enough to go to a walk-in clinic. As it turned out, I was there all day, from about 1:30pm to about 5:30pm, just to get a prescription for some drugs to help my sinus infection. Doesn't it seem like this is a lot of wasted time, not to mention a lot of wasted expense? Imagine if I could just walk up to the pharmacist and tell them my symptoms and my own interpretation of them, have him confirm a diagnosis, and get some drugs? It would take 15 minutes as opposed to 4 hours. Because really, the PA at the clinic was going mostly on my self-report when she diagnosed, and only asked me one question ("Do you feel pressure and pain when you lean forward? Yes? You definitely have a sinus infection").
So now I have pharmacalogical treats in my arsenal: an antibiotic, some painkillers, and some nasal spray. The painkillers are for the plane ride on Tuesday. I sometimes get something called aerosinusitis when I fly, and it's one of the worst pains, if not the worst pain, I've ever experienced. So, I'm going to be doping up on redneck heroin before my descent on Tuesday. It's the descent that gets me; it's bad enough that I'm clutching my face and gritting my teeth and sweating -- pain just short of causing me to involuntarily yell out loud. I guess it's not as bad as a cluster headache, though. Those are scary. If I had that condition I would be totally justified in killing myself. I'd like to experience it once, though, for a few seconds, just to see what everyone is on about. The first time I had aerosinusitis pain, it was so intense that it was actually interesting; I thought "hmm, I didn't know pain could be that severe." Aerosinusitis pain comes in waves and flashes, which makes it more tolerable; if it were a solid block of uniformly intense pain I don't think I'd make it through a flight without flipping out. I flipped out a little bit in the clinic waiting room yesterday, but that was because I was sick of sitting around.
I wasn't going to blog today but I figured since it was the first day of the new year that it would be nice to make a record of "01 jan 12." Now I'm on my mom's new computer, which I acquired and set up for her yesterday. This is my first experience with Windows 7. The best part about it was the cost: $350, for a new Dell tower with decent, modern specs (3.2 GHz dual core CPU, 4 GB RAM, 64 bit architecture, I think a 750 GB hard drive). She's still using her old CRT monitor she got in 1999 -- the previous millenium -- and which works fine other than taking up a lot of space and weighing probably 30 pounds. It's especially functional after my having Windexed it. My mom wins the award for most cost-effective computer purchase. She got a Dell tower in 1999, and used it for her entire career. I think the RAM got upgraded once, maybe. But other than that, the 900 MHz system lasted over 12 years. I think people replace their computers every 5 years, on average; if tech consumers all behaved like my mom the industry would die out.
Of course, if any problems or issues come up my mom is going to have difficulty dealing with them (she was reaching out to touch icons on her CRT monitor after having been brainwashed for a year by her iPad), so I'm trying to get her to play around with her new computer in these next few days and fix anything that comes up. Already I'm regretting creating a user account for myself -- instead I should be signing in under her username and using the machine in due course, fixing and tweaking little things as they come up.
The biggest issue for me at the moment is my sinus headache. I think this is all part of the same cold that I've had for about two weeks now. It keeps getting better, then getting worse, then changing, etc. Last night I felt feverish and now my sinuses are stuffed and painful. I'm sure there's going to be murderous pain on the plane on Tuesday as it descends and air pressure changes wreak havoc. Right now I am googling sinus surgery.
I tried to write something yesterday about politics and only got so far before realizing that I was rambling and babbling and contradicting myself, and furthermore that I had revealed to myself that I actually did not agree with my own original proposition, so I stopped. I don't have a lot of respect for the political instinct, or for people who say they are "very political." I don't really even like people who vote. Well, that's perhaps going too far. But I see a concern with politics as a desire to control the behavior of others -- politics is defined, to me, as the manners by which people attempt to assert power and dominance over other humans. As such, it's sort of evil, and having even an interest in politics makes me suspect that person of being power hungry at their core.
I think I'm becoming more libertarian, but in a very general way -- I just tend to think that political categories like "right" and "left" are less meaningful than the degree to which a society consists of a small group of people controlling a larger group. That said, I can see problems arising if there were no governments: powerful people would rise up and start small empires and raise private armies -- warlordism, essentially. At the core of the ongoing "political problem" is the fact that people are nothing more than power-hungry primates. This is not a resolvable problem without some major genetic reprogramming.
I have an ongoing fantasy of power being taken away from all humans, permanently, and administration and leadership duties going to digital minds instead of human hormones.
I'm sick. I need to go lie down. Tired of blogging.
Here I am on a proper keyboard, as you can see by my usage of grammatical capitalization conventions. It's 7 in the morning, and I don't have anything scheduled for today...not sure what I'm going to do. I like blogging in the morning here before everyone wakes up. I'm on a Windows machine now, and in some ways I miss it. It's not as manicured as a Mac, and I feel a little less like I'm in a beauty salon or driving a Jaguar -- instead I'm in a high school caffeteria or driving a Toyota Tacoma pickup with a covered bed, and just getting things done without worrying about how good they look. This is said assuming virus and the root-level-by-default issues to be notwithstanding, which of course they are not (they are, indeed, withstanding). I b digressin
It's this damned full sized button keyboard -- suddenly I can think and type with some fluency, instead of blogging with my iPod's tiny touchscreen keyboard. I downloaded Filezilla and Crimson Editor, the file transfer and text editor programs I became accustomed to on Windows (both are open source). There is already Firefox happening here. So, I pretty much have what I need. I'm almost tempted to buy a Windows machine for my next computer, except I really did get burned pretty bad with that virus situation a year ago. It's sort of embarrassing -- don't only stupid people who basically don't know how to use computers get malware? Is that me? I don't know precisely how I got it, but I think it was from a malicious website that tricked me into clicking something that looked exactly like a legitimate Flash update. I'm sure it was my fault in some way, and if I had not been operating so instinctively I could have seen through the trap.
At some point I wanted to map out some things I believe and observe about contemporary politics, but maybe I'll wait til I get back home to do that. I hope I don't find everything to have been stolen out of my apartment when I return, but in a sense it would be a good thing to have to start over, identity theft considerations notwithstanding. Everyone ends up beholden to their "stuff" -- the cliché is that "the things you own actually own you," and it's pretty much true.
But everyone knows this, and harping on it is boring. What's slightly more interesting is speculation on why humans almost universally behave this way, or at least almost universally want to behave this way (although they can of course stop themselves and go ascetic, like a Buddhist monk). My inclination is to think that the same instinct that produces technology and toolmaking also gives rise to our attachment to "stuff" and tendency to hoard; the need to manipulate the world around us, basically, to control and shape our environment either as art or as science, or just interior decorating. This "technological stuff" instinct seems to be one of the defining characteristics of being human as importantly different from other animals, along with complex grammatical language use and a reliance on cooked food (more energy content --> less time required to sit around chewing and eating/more time to develop culture and technology, and easier to chew --> weaker, smaller jaws --> more room for hugely oversized brains, the same ones that cause problems in childbirth).
In fact, now that I mention those three things, I see that two can be compressed into the other: language is sort of a technology, and cooked food is definitely a technology. Maybe this is just my own unique psychological and sociological perspective and bias talking, but humans seem to be technological creatures almost above all else. It's really a shame I'm not better at technology, but it's possible I'm better than I think. My big weakness is really reading -- if I have to plough through some mess of documentation before doing something then I tend to make a low estimate of my natural abilitites. But if I can just jump right into software and start using it, then I do all right. UNIX is problematic for me, for this reason -- who likes reading man pages?
I succumbed to my baser urges and am updating and tweaking things on Jim's computer. The last time I did this some hardware thing ended up breaking on my watch and I was overwhelmed with humiliation and guilt. Did I learn anything? No. Right now I'm installing Open Office 3.whatever, and already there seem to be hitches. I wish computers would Just Work (tm). Problem is, with open source hobby development there's little incentive to make things Just Work (tm). It's also in the culture there that things should be complicated and hard to use because only smart people should be allowed to use computers -- there's almost what I'd call an anti-usability ethos pervasive in Linux, Unix, Open Source, etc. This is not to say that some good software doesn't come out of it -- it does. But I wish I didn't get things like "page not found" on Firefox when the Open Office installer tries to open some update page. Apple Inc. Would never stand for crap like that.
Lately I haven't been so good about blogging every day; "every other day" is more like it. the day before yesterday james and shoko came over for dinner, and brought their 3 year old daughter. Twas fun. We played with jenga blocks. I probably did something else earlier that day other than stare at the wall, but maybe not.
Yesterday was museum day, and that took up the entire day, especially considering that I went to bed quite early at around 8 pm. Two warhol exhibits were up at the national gallery and the hirschhorn. I was happy to see the national gallery's impressive permanent collection again. I didn't look at the hirschhorn's permanent collection because I've seen it many times, and also because I felt sick and exhausted by then. It might be this same cold I caught around the 20th holding on, or it might be a new thing.
There seems to be an anti-warhol feeling in the art world, and I think I know why: first of all, he was a capitalist, and created a vehicle for mass production that he called "the factory;" he wanted to make a product that people wanted, and then deliver it to them. A lot of artisits are uncomfortable with this, perhaps because they are uncomfortable with the power structures that tend to be born out of product markets, but I think also because they're jealous; few things demonstrate so starkly that people do or don't like some piece of art than their willingness or unwillingness to trade their bread for it.
Artists prefer to decide what to make rather than be forced to make things according to popular taste. This is totally understandable, and of course anyone in a reasonably free society (not north korea or nazi germany) can make whatever they want. But there's a weird notion that artists should be able to earn a living without being beholden to a marketplace.
There are problems with the marketplace as it affects art. I see two main ones: 1) making art that will sell to as many people as possible amounts to a "lowest common demominator" problem: the market-bound artist must make a product that appeals to a wide range of consumers, but that no one person gets really excited about; some visual analog to fast food. It's basically an optimization problem: find the sweet spot between so bland that no one cares about it, and so flamboyant and "spicy" that 5 or so people will enthusiastically trade for it but your inventory remains overstocked. This problem can be solved somewhat by pursuing and accepting the profit limitations of niche markets, but it's still an inherent problem of any market.
2) relatedly, in a market there is little place for innovation and experimentation. Of course, this doesn't mean someone can't experiment and then bring only the successful experiments to the market. But there is a certain implied conformity with the pressure to make work that will sell that I think makes artists uncomfortable.
It's funny how art to me has become a sociology project: in what ways is the art world doing it wrong? I ask questions like these rather than make art. Of course, I don't have any paints with me.
Anyway, back to warhol and the second reason the art world doesn't like him: warhol seems dissmissive of or even outright hostile to conceptualism and "the art world" itself. He says things like "my work isn't art -- it's just decorations for a disco party." his work itself is richly conceptual, but he's not interested in talking about it.
I am actually not terribly excited by warhol's artwork itself -- I think it's a bit like the mona lisa: historically important, but does not stand the test of time that well. It's certainly more impressive up close, where you can look at classical techniques like oil paint brush moving and silkscreening being used to create things that look like magazine print, a bit like donald judd's staggeringly precision handywork used to achieve something that looks like industrial fabrication.
However, I like that warhol sold work and that commodification was part of his project, and I like that he distanced himself from intellectualism. In fact he's sort of one of my art heroes in that sense. But his work itself? Eh...i prefer twombly or miro.
I took some pics of paintings. Not sure if it was allowed or not. Soon I get sued under SOPA:
6am, up and bloggin. I got a full 7-8 hours last night, and so made up for the only 4 hours I got the previous night. My cold is hanging on, and I've given it to my mom and stepdad.
Xmas was a busy day: I had had enough of church so didn't go that morning, and spent most of the day over at my dad's place with that family branch. Basically it was centered around eating, watching kids unwrap presents, and playing on my ipod.
I've decided that I hate church. I was made to go every Sunday for 16 years -- that's about 800 hour-long sessions of boring mental torment. I should stress that I enjoyed and got a lot out of my church youth group (camp, softball, picnics, general horsing around), but I always hated services, and still do.
I think I mostly don't like being made to move (stand up/sit down) and make noise (pray/recite/sing) in unison with a group of others; it makes me feel cajoled or bullied, which is to say nothing of the whole "why are we paying homage to bronze age mythology and laws and trying to extract a modern spiritual system from this?" issue. I guess I don't need to mention that I never experienced or felt anything, that could be even remotely described as spiritual or uplifting or even just fun or enjoyable, attending a church service. In recent years I thought I would give it another shot, but I'm finding I can't even stand it once a year.
Church isn't intrinsically bad or evil unless it gets into fundamentalism that directs a congregation to behave in ways that are harmful to others (teaching creationism or "intelligent design" in schools, for instance). I remember a song I used to sing in Sunday school: "a church is not a resting place, a church is not a steeple; a church is not a (something), a church is a people...I AM THE CHURCH, YOU ARE THE CHURCH, WE ARE THE CHURCH TOGETHERRRR etc".
The point being, of course, that the most important value a church provides is as a community service and social club. I totally agree, and in this sense we need more churches. However, I'd do away both with the bronze age mythology and the pew-hymn-sermon-prayer stand up/sit down ritualization; it's not necessary and it's detrimental.
Unitarians have done the first and not the second, and this is why unitarian services aren't any more tolerable to me than christian services; I ignore both of them in a kind of trance, following along in my bulletin so I can track how close we are to the end.
I'm not suggesting ornate ritual and aesthetics be totally disassembled in favor of an academic lecture or roundtable symposium structure (although these would be improvements), but just that "the church service" had grown rather stale over hundreds of years and needs to be switched up a bit; maybe incorporate games or physical activity, or something more like performance art: one Sunday everyone could be required to go to church with their face painted blue and holding a honey glazed ham. I think I need to design my own religion.
I just bought a photo rotating app that displays the true orientation of photos, and can change it; I wonder what it does to file size. I'll post a pic of xmas, even though these ipod pics are kinda low res and crummy. It'll be nice to get back on my mac when I return home. my clean apartment too...I've been looking forward to that.
Doesn't that look norman rockwell chrismassy? To undo in this text editor you have to shake your ipod violently; it's not the paragon of usability, I don't think.
Later on xmas day I spent some time with james and his family...mostly just sat there and made small talk while people were largely occupied with some activity (electronic device, child, tv, cooking, etc).
I'm starting to get officially tired of blowing my nose, not to mention hacking up big gobs. I'm in the snot production phase of "getting over a cold." it was a doozy, too: sore throat, runny nose, sinus congestion, bronchitis, slight fever and low energy. The worst was probably the plane ride on the 21st: there I had awful tickling uncontrollable nose drip, and more seriously suffered agonizing headaches when the plane descended and the increase in air pressure squashed my sinuses, which were blocked and unable to equalize. My stepsis has had these, and agrees that they amount to some of the most intense pain ever experienced.
Yesterday I saw the new "mission impossible" with my stepdad (mom was feeling too sick for a movie). He really liked it, and I enjoyed his enjoyment. It was a little too much action for me, but it was better than some action flicks. Man, tom cruise is gettin' old. I prefer chick flicks, with a focus on characters and relationships and dialog, rather than action. On Monday I will see a movie like that with my mom: "young adult," if it's still playing.
Today I will spend some time with another old friend, going to lunch at a veggie indian place per our now-established tradition and maybe hanging out in the state park, even though it's goddamn raining. Xmas holiday time is kinda weird in that way: you re-enter this simulated dioramic environment where you see the same people and go to the same places you did when you were little, or in high school, or whatever. I might not get to see a few people this year due to limited time and slow responses, but that's ok. I am also wary of overplanning holiday vacations. I did that one year and felt a bit like a travelling circus. I think it's better to play it by ear and take what comes.
Weight loss and eating habits has been a mixed bag; yesterday I was mostly good but finished my waking hours with 5 or 6 peppermint brownies. I guess some deviation and rapacious, profligate gluttony is to be expected around holiday time.
To celebrate, here are three exceedingly uninteresting photos of my mom's neighborhood, taken just now in the xmas morning frost.
At least they're all properly sized and oriented.
It feels good to start a new blog page, replacing the old fat one with a new normal one. Again, I have randy to thank for my automatically updated archives -- it's so easy to create new pages now that I may just do it all the time! There's no reason to put several entries on the same page, really, except for some don't-have-to-click convenience. I might exceed my 10,000 page limit before I die though, in which case I'd need to add an order of magnitude to my filename format (00121.html rather than 0121.html).
I just got a sense of how trivial this is. I think I need to go volunteer at an AIDS clinic. That would be one way to get the girls, at least. One particularly cynical way of looking at existence recently occurred to me: the whole point of doing anything -- of ambitiously attempting success or status or salary of any kind -- is to win at the mating game.
More precisely, alpha aaron goes to med school and works on his pecs so he can earn more and be sexier than manly mike, and pretty pricilla will then choose alpha aaron over manly mike. Plain jane, of course, is out of the equation unless weak wilson the burger flipper notices her and buys her a plastic decoder ring with his $5/hour. If pj and ww are genuinely happy then they've beaten the system and have my congratulations, admiration, and envy. But mostly, weak wilson is focused on pretty pricilla because she looks like the internet porn he masturbates to -- he just can't compete with manly mike, much less alpha aaron.
Men achieve so they can exceed and defeat other men, and the pretty women will choose them, the winner, for a sexual relationship. If you're a male human, the point of life is to be better -- smarter, richer, more interesting, more full of creative energy and joi du vivre, taller, thinner, more muscular -- than the other men so your "commodity value" matches up with some top-ranking female.
If you are a female, the way to be top-ranking is mostly a matter of physical correspondence to pictures of underwear models in magazines, but it would be tough even for anne hathaway if she were exceedingly mean and stupid. That said, it's amazing how flexible our definitions of "smart" and "nice" become when someone is shaped like kristanna loken (the terminatrix).
If you don't like this or think it seems exclusive, mean, or unfair, then you're welcome not to play. I don't play. But if you want a top-ranking partner you have to take steps to be one yourself, or adjust your appetites.
I think sexual unavailability is a bigger dealbreaker than not looking like kristanna loken; staring at your pretty, frigid wife all the time would get tiresome fast. In a sense, being physically unattractive is a kind of sexual unavailability -- it's difficult to have sex if one is unaroused. Kristanna loken is mostly into chicks, it seems.
This discussion mostly concerns rules for initial attraction, and might not be so important when you've been married for 30 years. As I said, it's a particularly cynical way of looking at human pair bonding, and doesn't take into account any depth of experience beyond evolutionary biology. I think -- I hope at least -- that some potential for more than this crass chimpanzee numbers game exists in the realm of the sexual.
Most people quietly and instinctively follow the rules, pairing up with a partner on their "commodity level" -- bust-waist-hip measurements corresponding numerically and precisely to gross salary -- while spinning some denial mythology of "i just happened to find that special someone, the person I happened to be dating when I hit 29 years old." it's mostly too painful, especially in our abrahamic culture, to think of ourselves as primates, as animals, as eating and fucking machines whose only function in the universe is to make more of ourselves for no real reason.
But maybe it's possible to accept our animal nature and retain a spirituality at the same time. Perhaps this is what some of the "new age" spiritual systems are on about. Merry xmas!