enforced fun

...and mandatory relaxation.
when will i learn to chill out?

mandatory audience participation

What's yellow and dangerous?
...which is to say, how does the interaction of mind and space create reality?

Tip For The Day

get some biofeedback equipment. get a brainwave-synchronizer tape thingy. sit on a pillow.
listen to the tape - delta waves. practice your biofeedback control - 55 heartbeats/minute.
set yourself on fire.

when the hell are the baby boomers gonna die?

once, when i was little, i ate a whole bag of marshmallows while everyone else was making gingerbread grahamcracker houses. by 'a whole bag' i mean 'about a pound and a half.' i've never liked marshmallows since then, which isn't suprising since i never actually liked them much in the first place.

when people flip switches which, they believe, electrocute someone in the next room, they often laugh nervously.

this blog is a living celebration of the bold principle: "you don't have to have anything interesting to say just to have a webpage."

tips for the day are not the same as daily tips.

orangutangs can unscrew lugnuts with their fingers.

i know all this and more, but i do not know when the hell the baby boomers are going to die.

Tip For The Day.

If you always have a Sharpie, you can always tell the world how you feel.

Tip For The Day

The world is beautiful and cruel.

guns don't kill people, pigs do.

i've decided we should disarm the police, like in England.
there's alot of reasons this makes sense, and the more i think about it the more i'm surprised it didn't occur to me earlier. first, the simple and obvious line of thought: your average idiot is not qualified to make decisions about who lives and who dies on an everyday basis, and when we're talking about the types of idiots who are attracted to a cop's job description, the situation's even worse. it can usually be assumed that if these people had any redeeming qualities at all, they'd have something better to do with their lives than take orders and push people around and lock them in cages. there's a few exceptions: some cops are deluded enough to think they're helping people, even though cops never stop crime, they just fill out paperwork on it. these people would be EMTs if they had a brain, but they don't so they shouldn't have a gun.
(anyone offended by the above logic can kindly fuck themselves.)
to my thinking, this is convincing enough, but i thought about it some more anyway.
people's thinking is highly effected by guns. this has been shown in studies, and anyone who's been around guns has experienced it. it's perfectly natural: a gun is a really powerful device capable of blowing big holes in most things, and everyone knows this. when you look at a gun, this occurs to you. when someone points one at you, this occurs to you. when you're holding one, this occurs to you and makes you think about pointing it at stuff. this wears off, of course, like everything does: after awhile you get used to it. i doubt most cops walk around imagining shooting holes in everything; they're used to carrying a gun around and they've gotten over it, but it's still there in the back of their mind somewhere. on some level, they know they are carrying a weapon and can kill basically anyone they can see, if they want. imagine what that must do to your personality after a few years, or a few decades. day after day, interacting with civilians that your subconscious recognizes at prey.
not that i'm hating on the guns. guns are just like that, because people are people. cops shouldn't have guns, because they want them, and citizens should have guns, because they need them. and we should all have more sense than to want to shoot each other.
but we don't. and that's why i'm pro-abortion.

...and on a more pointlessly self-centered note:

i can't relate to my name. we're on uneasy terms for the moment, mainly avoiding each other in a polite sort of way, but i've always kind of known in the back of my head that eventually one of us is going to leave for good.
i'm serious. this isn't normally much of a problem, being a recluse and all, but with the semester starting it's suddenly been brought to my attention. people keep getting my name involved in things, and it's weird. when people ask me what my name is, i have to think for a second, and 'Chris' doesn't seem like the right answer.
no one ever gives me a nickname, though. instead i'm just almost never called by name. usually it doesn't occur to people to wonder what it is, anyway, come to think of it. i have alot of acquaintances whom i don't think actually know me by name.

and so my question to you, dear reader, is What the fuck's up with that?

cry your eyes out, stupidface

go on.


everytime i think i'm going to write something here, my brain starts prattling on about sociology and human potential and cynicism and the flexibility to see things from a new angle. i start to type
and i laugh at the onionskin irony of my vision conveyed to the wrong audience via the wrong medium, blogging on about the goofy pointless sad things people do instead of all the worthwhile goofy pointless things that could be making people happier, a crystal case for my ego, like thinking about a zen koan.

and i wonder if people would be happier living in jungle trees or on the moon. and if there's any difference.
i think i believe in fate, but i don't believe it's predetermined. busy busy busy

that politics thing again

the things people seem to forget about personal freedom is that it's personal. you can't blow some crap up declare someone free. you can't give birth to them on a specific landmass and thus ensure their freedom. you can't vote everyone free, or talk about it and decide to be free.
you already are free. everyone. you live in your environment and you make your choices. no one's going to feel very free until everyone realizes that they are free, but it's fundamentally a case-by-case basis, and the only case that matters is your own.

meanwhile, large portions of the world are not worried about whether or not they have truly accepted responsibility for their lives and decided to live it for what it is. they're more worried about eating, and having somewhere to sleep, and not dying of horrible diseases. i don't know, but it appears from here than mainly only Americans spend much time talking about how free they are.
and the human condition remains only human.

Tip For The Day

Don't be that guy.

when life imitates art

i must say, there's something inherently gratifying about being able to pontificate like a pompous ass with a poetical disorder and actually have people (well, Rob) read it and demand explanations of my nonsense and stuff.
huzzah!

a psychoanalyst would probably tell me that stating my ideas in as ambiguous and inflammatory a way possible is some kind of defense mechanism.
and that is why i'm pro-abortion.

it's 4 am

do you know where your mind is?

Tip For The Day

Don't date circus freaks.

the encephalization of emotion and metaphysics

one of my favorite topics. if you're not up to speed, you'll get it from context, check it out.

okay, so anyone who's spent any time around neurotics, chilly intellectuals or the relatively jaded is familiar with the problems caused by encephalization of emotion. the more that pesky forebrain is involved in feeling, the less we seem to actually feel. this is basically the essence of intellectual detachment, and it's more pervasive than is immediately apparent. its inverse is, of course, stupid emotional people who can't control themselves because they stop thinking as soon as anything happens. consider the violent drunk for example.

anyway, think about infants (if you're comfortable with that). when they're happy, its the coolest thing in the world to them, and when something's wrong it's never ever been so bad. listen to those buggers scream: that must really suck. the point is, that lack of a developed forebrain means there's less blunting of emotional impact. think about how happy a happy dog is.

on to the metaphysics. a common claim among mystics and hippies is that the universe is constructed of joy and/or love. they talk about the ecstasy of unity with creation and stuff, reminding some of the 'God is love, becoming one with God is joy' thing the more respectable portions of society go on about. we'll get back to that.
anyone who's pulled it off knows that when things are going all right, it feels good to simply be yourself and do what you do. normals call this a hobby, i think. the point is that we can assume without the filtering effect of our frontal lobes, it would feel even better (incidentally, those who have never enjoyed being themselves may assume that you will not really relate to this stuff, and may be advised to spend your time more productively than continuing).
so if we assume that everything in existence is actually sentient on some level (and you'll just have to trust me on this one if you personally haven't ever related to an object), and that our complicated form of consciousness inhibits us from fully enjoying being ourselves, and that things like rocks and nebulae wouldn't really have that problem so much, we can see exactly how one would cobble together something resembling an explanation for the much more convincing experience of trippers and religious-revelation-havers alike.

informative?

why politics are stupid

in case you were wondering.
people talk about politics alot. they say stuff like 'Bush is running the country like a drunken 14-year-old on a turbo-charged riding lawn mower' and 'all the unpatriotic liberal terrorist sympathizers should be shot and their bodies dumped in the Canadian wilderness, somewhere there's no oil.' they talk about job rates and deficits and whether or not gay people are corrosive by nature. they talk about alot of stupid shit.

the problem is that everyone basically is addressing the question 'what shall The Man do?' rather than the much better question 'how can we get rid of The Man and make things work better?' it's the difference between working for the advancement and enlightenment of humanity or working for the proper maintenance of the status quo.
honestly, which sounds like more fun to you?

"well there ain't no use in crying / 'cause it will only only drive ya mad."

Tip For The Day

When every phrase you encounter immediately produces a vivid mental image and/or all-over body sensation (eg. "ground chuck") that means things are going well.
I promise.

It's dying...

...to get better.

i'm the enchanting wizard of rhythm, and i've come here to tell you about the rhythms of the universe.
they're mostly on the bongo.
more later.

Tip For The Day

Laugh. It's better than the alternative.

Tip For The Day

When in doubt, make like a chimp and pummel.

varying levels of unreality

cloudy/disconnected. breathing through open mouth - lips crack - head feels like a bowlingball sponge full of jello. eyes don't focus. shadowman and faces in the carpet. can't remember what i'm doing, vaguely aware of time flowing backwards past me. lodging on debris. pondering relativity and reincarnation as i put little metal objects in a cardboard box, feeling feverish. japanese man screaming at me. tunnel vision.

i fucking hate allergies.

Tip For The Day

There's more to your lunch than meets the eye.

things to ponder

you're standing next to your teleporter. inside the chamber, 150 chimps are chattering and flinging shit at one another. all you have to do is power up the phase converter, set the coordinates and press GO to send your chaotic bunch of prehensile pals to any location in the universe.
where do you send them?

DESTINATION: interactive!

i spent the afternoon listening to Japanese videogame soundtracks and airbrushing my window. What's the strangest-sounding thing you've done as of late?

Answer me, you whoremongering trolls!
(yes, you.)

this is what i do in my spare time.

Fire Zombie Burn

sure, it sucks, but it's probably better than anything you taught yourself how to do in Flash instead of sleeping at night.

you could offer some constructive criticism or something, i dunno.

i may have touched on this earlier, but priorities are important. without them you burn to death while you finish brushing your teeth. in the interest of avoiding similar misfortune, and as a sort of new year's resolution for humanity, i'd like to suggest some things we should put our minds to. after all, it's already the 21st century, and things are still sucking pretty badly.

our number one priority should be making Earth a nice place to party. at a good party there's always enough snacks and tasty beverages, everyone's friendly and happy, and everyone goes about having a good time without worrying about alot of crap. jerks, nosy people, violent people, and excessive mooching all ruin parties. so quit it.

next, flying cars, or some other extremely badass form of transportation. moving around is entirely too problematic at present. we really need to put some thought into this, considering our preferred method of leaving the planet is currently strapping a giant bomb to your ass and hoping it only explodes downward.

once that's all covered, we can really buckle down and concentrate on producing some really amazing video games and animation and art and stuff, so when we find aliens we'll actually have something to show for all this time we've been spending.

step four: enjoy.

2+2=01 in accordance with the Hendrix Theorem

As Sir Hendrix elucidated on Axis:Bold as Love, 6 may in fact be 9, so long as we're not too uptight about it; thus was upside-down math finally given the theoretical validity for its acceptance into mainstream mathematics.

someday i hope to be a pioneer in the science of subjectivity.

...or some philosophy

alright, take a nanomolecular matter compiler and create an exact duplicate of me, right down to the individual atom, including my nervous system. Out pops someone exactly like me, who has all the same memories as me, who, for all intents and purposes was me until a second ago when he stepped out of a matter compiler and i didn't.
for the moment before our experiences diverge, we are exactly identical in every respect but one: I subjectively experience being me, whereas I presumably don't experience being this other me. That's the difference I'm interested in.

more amusing diversions for the inexplicably amused.

put on two musics at the same time. for example, play Beethoven's Sonata #29 in mediaplayer, then pop on winamp with, say, Men Without Hats. See how they mesh, or fail to.
try it, damn it. classical and techno go well together, cue a few songs up in a row. also try something slow and bluesy with a little reggae on top. play with the volumes.

flammable liquids are fun and beautiful.
remember fire is your painful friend.

sit around pondering what it would be like if your mind's eye went blind. try to think of an even more disturbing idea to share with your friends.

create a thrash-reggae folkrap band. do not send me a demo.
sorry, i just discovered i like typing the word reggae. heh. reggae.

drink a glass of water while peeing. ponder eternity.

never forget: suicide is always an option.

signal/noise

the ratio of predictable repetition (noise) to new information (signal).

something to think about as you go about your day.

...testing...

I dunno, why don't we talk about politics or something.

Here's a thought for everyone who complains about how it's impossible to make any kind of difference or change in the way things are: Even a tiny, virtually imperceptible, seemingly-futile action makes more of a difference than just standing around bitching all the time. So that's something.

Remember kids! A vote for anyone is a vote for the stupid fucking system. Vandalize something instead, you'll be more widely heard.

forty-two

I got an answer with no question one time. I was sitting around not being able to sleep, feeling highly spacey and gone, and allowing my thoughts to meander about in my head unsupervised, when I happened upon something in there I'd never run across before, and which I couldn't look at directly, so to speak. In the midst of prodding at whatever this was sort of sideways out of the corner of my mind's eye, I came up with my questionless answer. I also became fairly convinced I was losing my mind for awhile, but I was okay once I finally managed to sleep.
So the answer is: There's no answer. Or, somewhat more accurately, 'The trick is there is no trick.'

What that happens to be the trick to, I don't know, but I bet it's cool, whatever it is. You can also replace "trick" with "secret" or something. It didn't show up exactly in words, more of a non-verbal concept-construct. I think the most literal rendering would be something like "The mental confound that prevents you seeing through the mindfuck is the fact that you're trying to figure out how to see through the mindfuck."

Which seems fairly straightforward until you try to decide what to do about it.
Any input would be most appreciated.

It's 2005.

The year of the transformer.
Enjoy!