Rollercoaster

Back when I was young and foolish, the red hot chili peppers song by that name was my favorite thing. So young, so sheltered.

Wait, I had a thought. It is always surprising to me how much mood fluctuates over the course of a week. I mean, yes I operate in a general state of eeyore-like despondency and cynicism, but even so there's quite a bit of change from one end of the week to the next. Last week, after two days on oxycodone and not having to think about work I was quite light-hearted. And then fell off a cliff and spent two days being weepy. Which was in turn followed by two more optimistic days, followed by a day or two of weeping at the happy endings of stargate sg-1 episodes, followed by a renewed sense of optimism. Just interesting I guess.

I still have few ideas about what I want out of local friends and what I want to pursue (at all). But I at least understand that my bad days are transitory.

#surgerydosuck

I've been kinda quiet this week because I've been recovering from surgery and throwing myself a pity party. I love neither post-op pain nor oxycodone, and did not have a fabulous party. I DID watch about 60 episodes of stargate sg-1 which basically got me through the last part of the week. I had forgotten how much that show hits my happy spot.

#awfulnogoodweek

So, forest park hiking is on hold while I recover from surgery. Saw bone doc last Thursday, and he recommended immediate surgery to correct persistent bone clicking in right elbow joint. Had surgery Friday because I thought it least bad choice out of several bad possibilities. Been recovering since then. Post-surgery pain super awful Saturday and Sunday. Threw up Friday night due to general anesthetic. Been grumpy and whiny since then. I may have more to say on this later, or maybe on my super secret alternate blog that no one knows about. On top of that had super horrifying dream about my horrible ex from reno tracking me down and worming her way back into my life and attempting to kill me that lasted seemingly forever.

On the bright side, the stargate SG-1 and stargate Universe marathons have been fun. SGU is fun, but so clearly a rip-off of BSG, attempting to ride the coattails of that show's success. Which doesn't bother me really because I like the end result in some ways a lot. And the SF element is much more to my liking, really fun, old-fashioned classic SF ideas. Any show that uses gravity wells a lot to speed up and slow down ships is A-OK in my book. I can't say my two favorite things out of respect for spoilers. Besides the BSG rip-off (DR. Rush is a really obvious rip-off of Gaius Baltar), my biggest nitpick is that very few of the characters are genuinely likeable. They're all very human, but in ways that make it hard to like them. Eli is the obvious everyman, but I have mixed feelings. He's your stereotypical gaming nerd, who dropped out of MIT, and joined the mission by beating a math puzzle in an MMO. I have MUCH more to say about this when my arm comes back, but I am only able to enjoy the character because he is clearly regarded as the least capable character on the show.

Anyway, I am now more tired and dizzy than when I started, so I'm going to go lie down. I shouldn't be, but I'm kinda surprised skateboarding led to this much drama.

Forest parking

On the assumption that my emotional life is more or less . . . contained, I have started tackling the thing that seems best right now, my sleep schedule. In the past, my spoiled prince sleep schedule has been the subject of much self loathing, and recrimination, which while satisfying to the conservative voice of judgement in my brain, isn't of much practical value. This time it proceeds more from a system of wants. I want to get up early enough to exercise or hike. When I get up late I feel the day is wasted and lost all drive to do anything. I want to get off of work to socialize when non-vampires want to (if they can overlook my thirst for human blood, I can overlook the tendency to go to bed at night).

Also, it has helped to kind of name why I don't like to go to bed. It's a greater symptom of my other mental problems, an inability to deal with the present moment, or to let go of moments that are past. I don't go to bed because I'm not ready to face tomorrow, or I'm not ready to let go of the fact that I've wasted another day. So I do nothing in a mental haze basically as a form of putting off uncomfortable situations that tomorrow will bring.

Anyway, between figuring out the cause, and wanting to get up badly enough, I've managed to keep a reasonable sleep schedule for the last 3 days. Not quite a personal best, but close enough (if you consider the last ten years or so). I've done this before, but haven't usually managed to keep it up for more than 2 weeks or so. We'll see how it goes. But for now, feeling good about getting up early. Actually made it out for a 3-mile, one hour hike/jog today too. Although I'd like to roll back the sleep schedule a little earlier so I can take longer hikes. I think ideally I'd like a 11pm bed time and a 7am wake-up, out the door by 8 to hike. Which seems ridiculous to the vampire in me, but eh, he's kind of a putz. All fake blood and counting.

#quirk

There's a certain level of closeness I can't handle right now. I can't manage really liking someone. End up being a prick to them. Kind of unfortunate.

State of the H

1). Fell offa my skateboard last Thursday. Find out Monday morning there are small compression fractures in the right elbow. Only today can I bend it far enough to feed myself. Hurts like hell. Pain management has been the prom them this week. Mostly irritated that the pain gets in the way of working and exercising. Still: FRAK.

2). Sleep schedule is completely out of control. Tangentially related to item 3. Bedtime last two mornings has been 6am+. It's like the better one part of my life gets, the more another has to deteriorate to maintain trainwreck status.

3). Playing WoW again. Mixed feelings. For the moment, it helps me forget about my confused head, and forget my arm hurts like hell. But it also delays dealing with the head stuff. Long term, it makes me feel like abandoning all my games, or 90% of them. Which is good, but dramatic. I'm sure it will surprise many of you that I can be dramatic.

4). Been socializing a bit more. That's good I guess. Still kind of unsure what I want out of a social life though. Like I'm completely indecisive about what "my crowd" is. Not so much because I want to fit in with them, more I just don't really understand what kind of person fits in with me.

5). The depression is moderately better. Still by no means resolved though. Still fuzzy about some crucial life issues I would dearly love to resolve. I don't know. Shrinking my world a bit until I can figure it out.

Just because I'm paranoid . . . .

yes, the four period ellipsis. Fear it.

Ahem.

Actual blog content aside (I generally assume I have never posted before this moment to save us all from the cognitive dissonance inherent in contradictions from previous posts, should they exist [you know what's fun about parenthetical digression? EVERYTHING]), I try not to actually buy into conspiracy theories. Even when it comes to rich bastards. But you know, it's hard not to see mysterious powers at be at work sometimes even when just perusing web sites. For instance, last week when the folk hero "take this job and shove it" stories were released (one of which turned out to be a fake, granted), CNN wasted almost no time in putting up a front page article about how the best way for everyone to quit is politely with a minimum of fuss, if you must quit at all. That's not nefarious, Doctor Doom level behavior obviously, but the timing, especially considering how popular those stories seemed to be with the general populace just gave me the distinct feeling someone was consciously trying to soothe the sheep lest anyone else get any more ideas about making waves.

Conform minions! Your liberation costs your overlords money! If you must cast off our shackles, have the decency to hang your head in shame and shuffle quietly out the door!

You know, sometimes when I write my thoughts down, they sound CRAZY.

We are very, very stupid

This whole "mosque 2 blocks from the trade center" "controversy" is just about the stupidest thing ever. The fact that people who know better are so able to rile so many americans (stupid, stupid and ignorant americans), is very depressing. There aren't two reasonable sides to this. Here is why it's obviously stupid:

1) The group in charge is a very moderate, pro-america muslim group with jews and christians on it's board. If we are actually serious about reducing terrorism, we want to make friends with muslims like this, and spread good will towards america by fostering good relations with moderate muslims who love living in this country.

2) We were not attacked by all of islam. We were attacked by the islamic version of our right-wing militias (roughly). Crazy people who do not speak for islam as a whole. Telling muslims they cannot live and worship near the trade center site is to conflate them with terrorists. Why does it hurt anyone's feelings that muslims exist close to the trade center? They had nothing to do with the attack. Tarring peaceful, moderate, fully american muslim community members with the deeds of fanatics who had nothing to do with them is frankly a little bigoted and fearful and kinda racist. The only thing they have in common is their religion and skin color. We didn't tell christians they can't build churches close to the Oklahoma federal building site for obvious reasons. If you can't see why it's equally wrong to prohibit muslims from building anything near the trade center site, then you have issues with arabs and muslims that are getting in the way of your good judgement.

3) Osama Bin Laden wants a clash of civilizations. Islam versus America. If he really is out to "destroy our freedoms" the stupidest, stupidest possible reaction to 9-11 is to take away the religious freedom of muslims in this country and pursue a clash of civilizations policy against muslims. Because that's explicitly what he said he wanted. I don't know about the mouth-breathing right in this country, but when a terrorist tells me to jump, I don't say "how high." The obvious high road, the obvious way to deny bin laden what he wants, is to continue to embrace moderate muslims at home and abroad. Indulging bin laden in his clash of civilizations fantasy is to sink to his level. We're better than that. Or we can be.

4) It's the first fucking amendment. Number one. Created specifically so mob rule couldn't bully minority religions or push them out of public life. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." You goddamn idiots.

It boggles the mind that democrats aren't winning on this issue. Because the other side are raving lunatics who are so lost in their hatred of democrats and the president that they've lost sight of higher american values. You think Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich really think this is a wrong thing? Of course they don't. They're whipping up the mob by playing on their fears and prejudices for crass political gain. That democrats don't even have the spine to stand up for what's right on a 1st amendment issue is profoundly depressing. That the major news outlets treat raving anti-muslim hysteria as a reasonable opinion is reason to get angry.

Okay, no rants, starting . . .

NOW.

Interlude

Okay, after that last rant I clearly need to do more deep breathing.

Breathe in . . . . Breath out.

Bad energy in . . . . good energy out.

There, better.

They control the horizontal and the vertical

Join me as we take a journey in the darkest inner mind and . . . the outer limits.

So, I've been without a phone for a few weeks since I lost my iphone on the plane. While I secretly enjoyed being off the grid, off all the technological shackles I encumber myself with, the phone was arguably the most practical, and people were starting to complain it was impossible to reach me. So, impulsive consumer that I am, I decided to buy a new one.

I had publicly hemmed and hawed over the iphone 4 or the HTC evo 4g for a couple weeks, and when the moment finally came where I was irritated enough to just go get a phone, and decide on the evo, I find that it's sold out everywhere. And because I have OCD and have already been without a phone for a few weeks, I decide I can't wait until they have more in stock. Thus begins 24 hours (3 days ago) of OCD smartphone research. I literally could not do anything else outside of basic survival except figure out which phone I wanted, because I needed one now. But I've had bad phones before and refused to settle for a lemon. The iphone lost early on, because while the new iphone is probably the best overall piece of hardware on the market right now, I'm absolutely irritated with the iOS and the lack of basic functionality because steve jobs doesn't think it's ready yet.

So: to android! But which android phone? There are approximately a million. Luckily, there are approximately a million reviews of each of them. The lead contenders of course right now were the Droid incredible, the HTC evo (which we already know I can't find), and the Samsung Galaxy S series. I really, really like the HTC Sense UI, so I focused on that initially. But sprint doesn't have another HTC phone near as good as the evo, and I'll be damned if I sign up for the "death by a thousand micro-charges" model of verizon, so the incredible was out too. The samsung phones are actually pretty sharp, but I hate the UI and didn't want to have to spend days fiddling to get an HTC rip-off that I probably wouldn't be satisfied with. And then I stumbled across a review for the AT&T HTC Aria. I wouldn't have to change carriers and it's reviewed very well. Yes, the hardware specs pale in comparison to the evo, incredible and galaxy, but every single review went out of their way to point out how fast and smooth everything ran on the 600Mhz processor. Quibbles with AT&T bloatware aside, I decided on the Aria, about 22 hours after I had initially started researching it. After much more hemming and hawing and last minute guffawing and fondling of demo phones at Radio Shack (I had to have it NOW remember, so no mail order) I walked out (2 hours after I went in, it took half an hour just to ring me up. Thanks RAdio Shack!) with an HTC Aria and with 2 years more servitude to AT&T in my future.

I'm pleased with the purchase. It is indeed fast, more than fast for what I need a phone for, and it's light and sturdy and reasonably sized (it's not a brick in your pocket). And best of all it saved me $100 off of the latest and greatest thing that I don't really need because I already have an ipad for an ereader/portable movie viewer (although jailbroken because Apple refused to add crucial features or allow others to supply them). So I picked a phone that matches my needs and cost me less that I feel good about.

That was not the rant. That was just the story of shopping for a phone, with highlights on how much I need to get the OCD over things that don't really matter to me under control. The rant starts a little slowly, but goes like this:

In some versions of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he chronicles a world who's entire industry was slowly overrun by shoe stores, eventually killing them all and leaving only sedimentary layers filled with shoes for future archeologists to find and marvel over. If he'd written it a few years later, it would have been Starbucks stores, and if he wrote it today, it would be cell phone stores. In shopping for my cell phone it was really hard to escape the idea that we're batshit crazy over cell phones.

Whole and non-trivial portions of our population obsess with each new phone that's coming out, how it rates compared to the last, what the specs are, what's bad about it, what's great about it, why it proves your favorite company really IS worthy of your undying devotion, why it proves your favorite companies rival really IS satan's mechanical machine factory and just exactly how, each little pixel is going to make you sublimely happy. There are reviews from 5 to 10 major websites for each new phone that comes out, laying out the hardware in excruciating detail, how responsive the OS is, what features it has, how the benchmarks compare to other recent phones, why you should buy it, why you should hate it, how it completes you, how it will compare to the phone (quite literally) released next month that will probably be better. There's even a SEPARATE video review type for simply unboxing your phone, which I can only describe as technopornography. Is there any other reason to watch your favorite phone being unpackaged other than a perverse form of technolust? Do you really need a preview of how fucking opening your package is going to go? "Ooh yeah, slide it out. Take that wrapper off. Take it off. Oh, baby." Jesus.

It's a goddamn phone (and please keep in mind I'm yelling at me more than any of you). It will do the EXACT thing you need it to do, no matter which model you buy. It will take calls, it will get email, it will SMS, it will stream youtube. Who the fuck wants to spend their life obsessing over the phones that are out now and the phones that are on the horizon other than completely blinkered consumers? It's a labor saving device, it's supposed to free up your time so you can focus your life on more important things, not be the thing you focus your life on (which is really the whole essential sickness of consumer culture and corporate branding).

And don't even get me started on the complexity of the phone billing system. At what point does the amount of cognitive processing power needed to buy my phone and rate plan negate the gains in convenience provided by the phones features? At this point, I feel I could fairly quickly convince myself that I'd be better off not worrying about what type of phone I get at all. Next time I think I'm alotting myself ten minutes to the decision. Because it doesn't fucking matter.

And in the far future, as they dig down through the remains to our civilization and arrive at the sedimentary layers of the cell phone epoch (they will be able to tell because it will be comprised largely of petrified cell phones and shoes), they will find the remains of iphones and android phones, and write papers on what the choice of each phone must have meant for the people of the time. Just to piss me off.

On ranting

I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to rant a lot. I wouldn't call the post below this one a rant, (although we can use whiny and self-indulgent and emotional exhibitionist if you like), but I've written a few recently, and said a few verbally and out of nowhere realized that I want to stop doing it. Well, maybe not entirely, but less. It's just a very negative state to go into, akin to a political talk show host on the radio on a vengeful, irrational tirade.

Yes, I think that's what I don't like about it. It's irrational. My brain feels fuzzy when I do it, like it's incapable of processing new information clearly.

Anyway, I don't like it. I don't think I ultimately need to do it except when I really do just need to vent steam. I think it will hurt my attempt to make new friends if I'm doing it with people I meet all the time. I say that not judgementally. Things seem to go better when I'm not tirading about some trivial thing that really doesn't need to be hated on in the given moment. And I've just realized it's something my father does, so, you know, sigh.

Having said that, the next post is going to be a righteous rant. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if it makes me sound like a crazy person.

You put your right brain in, you take your left brain out . . .

One of the self help books I read recently talked about left brain versus right brain dominance. I'm probably going to slaughter the recollection but that's okay. Basically the author had had patients who were more or less detached from their body and their emotional states. The conclusion was that they processed everything through the left brain. The left part of your brain is the logical problem solver, and the right controls emotions, implicit memory, bodily sensations (I think). They were living their lives more or left using only their left brain, and had a hard time processing strong emotions, and had no bio-feedback at all. They would be unaware of how tense their muscles were for instance. They just paid no attention to what type of signals their body sent and at the same time had a hard time incorporating emotional elements into their thinking and even their memories. When pressed upon things like their childhood, they would give a brief summary and say things like "Oh it was normal. Perfectly ordinary. It was fine." but with a distinct lack of detail and a tendency to leave it alone at that. Whereas right-brained people would have more stories, richer in detail, fluid in narrative and more rich with emotion. Right-brained may not be the right word. People who had integrated their right-brain into their daily experience better.

"Left-brained thinker" more or less describes me. I have a very authoritative left brain that tries to micromanage my emotions and memories. Or organize them, dismiss them, whatever. They aren't allowed to simply be. Which is probably why I have such a hard time controlling my emotional states right now; I've never really learned to integrate them into my daily experience in a fluid manner. I bring it up though, because I can kind of see it in my writing too. In much the same way the author's patients could not recall memories in detail, so too do I have trouble writing with a good narrative and emotional depth. My thoughts feel like they come too fast, and too scattered. I have a hard time writing out a memory or a story with a rich description of the place and the emotions I or a character is feeling because I don't experience my life like that. I'm never really in ANY moment myself, letting myself experience what I'm feeling, really noticing the surroundings. And even in those times when I think I'm more or less present, it feels much more like the left brain cataloging and analyzing the experience, rather than actually being in it.

In any given moment, I tend not to be experiencing it honestly, but experiencing it as my left brain tells me I should, based on what's expected of me. And the expectations my left brain is processing my experiences through are rarely MY expectations. I think the baggage I carry around with me are, in part, these expectations. And I rarely live up to these expectations because they're nothing I want. They're stuff I've passively picked up from people around me. The expectations I judge myself so harshly for not meeting are mostly from the church I grew up in, my parents, the bizarre anti-feminine expectations of masculine culture even my most sensitive friends enforce to some degree, my job, and a bunch of crap I just MADE UP because I thought it might be the expectation of someone around me (I often find myself cringing at stores or at the coffee shop. Did that joke I make go over flat? Am I being obnoxious? What do they want from me? Sigh.). I carry all of those around with me and try to live up to them and judge myself harshly for not meeting them.

I find this extremely tiring. I'm tired of it. And I'm irritated that I've never developed a better sense of my own expectations for my life and then pushed back against expectations that disagreed with that. Of all the things I'm working on, this one is probably key. Among at least 2 other key problems :). 3. 3. Key problems, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.

Anyway, I'm going to work on paying attention to what I really want, and more or less discarding any expectation that has no place in my life (because I made it up, or it's really someone else's). This will probably cause friction with some people I know, but it can't be helped. I gotta live my life, not someone else's. If I can only figure out what kind of life I want to lead that is.

This is scary to me of course. If I just go about being who I want, it will likely turn people off. I'm going to have to retrain myself to consider this the ideal response, in that if they don't like who I am we aren't going to get along very well, best to recognize that and move on separately. And then have faith that who I am will seem appealing to someone at some point. I think this is the part I don't really, deep down believe, evidence to the contrary.

God, don't you love how this blog has turned to all drama, all day? I do. I chose the Soylent Green parody theme for a reason you know.

Facebook, more like "talk to the hand book"

Scho, I suspended my facebook account a few days ago. I feel pretty good about it for now. I suppose there were a few people on there I enjoyed following and talking to once in a blue moon. Perhaps 6. But overall it felt too much like church. My parents were there (all of my extended relatives in fact). And unless I wanted to get into drama-generating arguments with various people because my life and lifestyle conflict with their own I had to watch what I said and the type of pictures I posted. Which is just stupid. Ideally I should just be who I am without taking crap from friend or family about it, but until that point, I'm just avoiding environments I don't feel free in. Which was facebook. And that's leaving aside the whole, massive invasion of privacy thing they have going on. Anyway, it was just time for a change and cleaner headspace and facebook wasn't helping. So it's off for a while. For now, I feel good about that.

Speaking of privacy invasion, I'm super pessimistic about giant corporations right now. The Google/Verizon net neutrality issue is disgusting, but am I really wiling to stop using google search, or gmail or any of the other google products I enjoy? No, and that's largely because there aren't really good alternatives. Alternatives certainly exist, I simply don't enjoy using them. And what are my options? The cell carriers are all equally soulless, Apple already has a logo stamped on my brain and Microsoft products are not pleasant to use (even if they are turning out to be the white knight on social/privacy issues). I suppose I could just go open source, install ubuntu and somehow put together all the functionality I get currently from my google/apple universe. My gut feeling is this will involve far more tinkering and ongoing maintenance than I care to perform. And to top it all off, I don't think my boycott of google or apple or anyone is really going to change things.

So I'm going to buy a google phone, and make the best use of it I can. Net neutrality may or may not crumble. I suspect it will, but I'm feeling pessimistic, money is power and it's not like your average joe is swimming in money right now. The balance of power shifts ever more to the enfranchised as far as I can see. In the meantime, Apple will continue to dumb down their devices to big friendly icons that make happy things when we press them. Eventually I suspect the icons will fill the whole screen and you will just smack it with your full palm to turn it on and flip through applications by swiping (pawing) at the screen. In short, all I see ahead of us is an internet finally carved up by the powerful and dumb, chubby, incurious people consuming the resulting corporate entertainment flows on devices they barely understand but are simple enough for two-year-olds to navigate (Seriously, WATCH idiocracy. All the machines essentially run an iOS). And I say this as a chubby ipad owner (projection much? I KNOW).

It's like some bizarre alternate universe where idiocracy and WALL-E were taken as guideposts for the future instead of gentle satire about places we probably don't want to go.

How the fuck is it Thursday?

Where the hell did I lose the ability to keep up with the flow of time? I think there comes a point where the baggage you accumulate completely grounds you. Or at least slows you to a glacial pace, heavy iron chains dragging the emotional weight anchors behind you (and maliciously mixes your metaphors). And you watch as people and things and events dance around you and pass on by.

Discarding my baggage so I can once again flow and dance and CHANGE is the great work of our time, dear reader.

Well, MY time.

My odd, unchanging bubble of time.

Thursday? You're fucking kidding me.

And for the moment I can only pretend the "Aug" on my calendar is a horrible mistake. How terrible. Really, what a colossal error in time-keeping.

How dare they.

I blog the argh

I'm not sure what it's going to take to shift my schedule earlier. I want to do it for work, but I stayed until 1:30 at the office last night trying to finish work, which, in turn, did not help with the wake up time this morning. So here I am, at the Spunky Monkey, fresh and ready to tackle the day at 2:18 pm. Like i have been every day for months.

Really people, I have so much conflicting drama I'm not sure which to tackle first. It's times like this I really wish freezing myself for a year were a viable option. But I suppose that's the type of thinking that led to my great stagnation in the first place innit?

Oh hypocrisy, you are me.

So, after writing the blow tirade on facebook posted more than I have in a while, and even got into a little bit of drama with my brother offline! Exciting. While I enjoyed getting opinions on what my next phone should be (currently going back and forth between iphone 4 and HTC eve 4g), I really need to let it go.

I have this weird tendency to avoid things by watching the same things over and over, and obsessing about the same people constantly. I think my desire to quit facebook is more or less an effort to break out of that cycle. I am searching for new ways of being and interacting with people and different types of people and facebook feels more or less like the things and (in some cases people) that I'm trying to get away from (not everyone on facebook, those of you who read this blog AND that my facebook page are likely not a problem for me).

Sigh, I am still a drama factory.

To facebook or not to facebook

I am increasingly hitting the point where I'm ready to quit facebook. I'm a little impulsive, so I've had to restrain myself from canceling my facebook account altogether (I see some nominal value in having a place where people can contact me if they've lost touch). But I find myself hiding more and more feeds. And l'm less and less interested in posting updates. Twitter accomplishes the same thing and I find it feels the same to send updates screaming into a silent void (twitter) as it does to toss them into a maelstrom of daily humdrum (Facebook).

Also, there's just too much drama involved with it for me. I have a couple of past love interests I need to get past, and I can't really do that if I see them chatting with mutual friends every day. Yes, I've hidden their feeds, but facebook "helpfully" shows me their chats with mutual friends. I was actually so annoyed with it last night that I de-friended someone (although I don't think she'll notice). I think the solution is to just stop checking it every day. And, uh, maybe to stop obsessing about people I used to see potential with, because they've long since stopped thinking about me.

Stupid facebook.

Stupid obsessions.

mentat's catechism

My version of the chant the mentat says in Dune, because Lynch's version is flawed. Cheesy, I know. There's a reason this didn't go on facebook.

I set my mind in motion.
The mind is a tool, emotions are fuel, the fuel feeds the storm, the storm is a warning
Anxiety breeds fear, fear is the mind-killer.
Logic breeds detachment, detachment is the soul-killer
The soul is the core that directs the mind and feeds on the heart
The mind is adept, the heart is resilient, the soul is balance
it is not by will alone that I set my self in motion

Politics, feh,

I am increasingly paying less and less attention to the news and politics right now. Partly because I've been following politics obsessively since, well, 9-11 I suppose. So I need a break. I'm starting to get a little numb. Plus, it's just so damn depressing right now. The BP oil spill, the bizarre and inexplicable hostility to the merest idea that we could be dumping enough carbon into the atmosphere to induce a climate change . . . really I'm just feeling like there's a certain fucked-upedness that isn't going to go away. Ten years from now we're still going to have the wealthy shitting on the rest of us, we'll still have tea partyish ignorance shouting down anything that challenges their world view, and we're still going to have them (whoever THEY are) cutting corners poisoning and impoverishing the rest of us and skating away from it responsibility-free. I'll be genuinely surprised if BP isn't, in ten years, going to be basically pursuing profit with the same reckless disregard for safety it displayed up until the oil spill. The banksters who nearly toppled the economy a year ago have apparently learned nothing, and have funneled all the money they nearly lost and had the tax-payer repay into schemes of nearly identical insanity. I don't know where they will be in ten years, but I imagine still finding a way to screw the rest of us over for massive personal gain.

I just have a general pessimism about where things are going right now. This may be due to other crap going in my life but I think it's true that right now I need to focus less on the negative and more on the positive. And since politics and environmental issues seem overwhelmingly negative to me right now I should probably take a break from them. So I'm going to try. But can I make it even a single day without obsessively checking the political blogs I have been reading more or less daily for 9 years? We shall see.

H

video of the day

This is really good advice on how to talk to someone about any behavior you consider unacceptable. Focus on what happened, not what it says about them as a person. I guess I knew this but sometimes forget. Also, his video on Roman Polanski is worth watching. And yes, he focuses on what he did, not what kind of person that must make him. But this is actually a good example. I'm having a hard time not demonizing Roman Polanski for doing a very bad thing. But I think this is at the core of a lot of our muddled arguments and constant finger-pointing in this culture. There's not a lot of "you did this specific thing that I think was bad" and a lot more of "you are all bad people for doing this one thing I don't like" and there's nothing to be gained from the second conversation, as people just get defensive and the tribe forms up to defend each side. I don't know how to bust this down though, I'm just tired of the people in charge getting away with bad and immoral decisions because no one wants to say someone else is a bad person in Washington. It's not about whether they are good people, it's about whether the actions they take and the words they say are acceptable behavior.