|
|
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
| |
8:47 am - Getting Nailed
|
|
At the same time explorer Samuel Wallis discovered the Tahitian islands in 1767, his crewmen discovered the native women would trade sex for iron nails. The Tahitians found many uses for iron nails, which quickly became more precious than silver or gold. The nail crisis came to a head when a Mr. Pinckney's... um, vigorous transactions led to the collapse of the mainsail.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
| |
8:11 am - The Shuttle's Final Approach
|
|
...and there she is, ready for her place at the Smithsonian. Rest on your well-earned laurels, you magnificent old bird, you cantankerous rock with wings. Thank you for your service, and the dreams you engendered.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
| |
8:47 pm - Alas.
|
|
It pains me when I have to relegate someone previously held in fairly high esteem to the "fucking idiot" column. I'm used to most people going off half-cocked and under-educated, being brainwashed and big-mouthed... even the smart ones. But when someone goes clearly and definitively off the rails who has no typical reason to... Ah, well.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Monday, February 13th, 2012
| |
2:53 pm - What could it be, what could it be?
|
On Friday, a man pled guilty to planning President Obama’s assassination. He now faces decades in prison. As predicted by so many regarding the possibility of assassination attempts (links available, if needed), predictions beginning months before Obama's successful election, the would-be perpetrator is from the south (living in Birmingham, Alabama), possessed an automatic rifle and holds deep religious beliefs.
Odds are very strong you haven't heard about this. Strange, no? As one who pays attention to such things (and has for years, now), I can assure you it isn't because it's so common as to not merit notice. Why, then, do you suppose the story is not front-page news worldwide?
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Friday, February 3rd, 2012
| |
9:13 am - Useful Markers Of "Moral Insanity"
|
From a book on evolutionary psychology, some interesting and handy ways to identify (and thus avoid) certain personality issues, based on behaviors:
...males are much more likely to become sociopaths whereas females are much more likely to develop histrionic personality disorders.
Histrionic personality disorder is characterized by exaggerated attention seeking behavior, sexually inappropriate, seductive or provocative behavior, a tendency to be easily influenced by others and to perceive relationships to be more intimate than they actually are.
...
Sociopathic males are typically charming, charismatic, promiscuous, and deceitful.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
| |
11:13 pm - Here I Stand With A Flint
|
|
| Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
| |
8:56 am - Mood Habits
|
It seems kind of obvious, now that I think about it. In a repeated place or situation, I find myself adopting a particular mood. The odd thing is that the mood or recurring topic of thought may not have anything to do with the external activity. But is that actually odd at all? A location or event could easily remind one of the previous time it were visited, and so a state of mind could just as easily become automatically summoned when it is. I might remember a song that was playing the first time I saw a particular vista. Repeated frustration with a coworker might make me mentally brace myself when I pass their office, long after they leave for a different company.
The phrase “mood habit” occurred to me recently to describe this sort of effect. Like any other kind of habit, it can be good (feeling joyous exhilaration at seeing a particular kind of cloud) or bad (reciting a litany of wrongs committed by one’s spouse while mowing). Also like other habits, it may worm its way in without being noticed.
The question is what to do about it. Obviously the good habits should be encouraged, and probably in the usual way: intentionally generate good thoughts, triggered by some repeating event. It might help to make it repeatable on command, such as playing a certain song when the need for the mood arises. Wise friends have advocated this approach to me for some time, and it absolutely works.
The bad habits are of course the sneakier kind, but can be worked with just like any other bad habit: make it conscious, and replace the negative behavior with positive. When it comes to emotion, though, it can be hard to look directly at the issue. The introspective vision kind of slides away, and the tendency is just to dodge. In this way people give up good things because of a bad memory associated with it. I say, reclaim the situation for the good! Build a good mood habit for it, or you’ll end up retreating from one thing after another, hemming yourself into emotional boxes without reason and without understanding why.
Like I said, all this probably seems obvious to you. Parts of it have been in my own philosophy of living for a long time, but it took until recently for me to see that it’s simply working with habits, both good and bad, and that all tools dealing with habits apply. This knowledge in hand, I can move ahead much faster toward the person I should be.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Friday, January 20th, 2012
| |
1:52 pm - Warming up for Wrothburn
|
It sucks when you feel like you *have to* be good, you know? When you figure you might get in trouble for cheating or lying or whatever and have to behave, it’s a pain. Especially when you’ve got yourself worked up into an “I deserve!” mindset. It’s important in these cases to find loopholes and be even worse by those means than you would have been otherwise.
‘Cause doing the right thing regularly could become a habit, and that’s like abdicating your personhood. Or something.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
| |
8:32 pm - Hanging Janus
|
For many years, my policy regarding the discovery of lies has been to confront them immediately. I hate things gnawing at me, loathe the idea of having bad feelings unnecessarily (as when no offense was actually committed), and much prefer having the matter done with. However, this has turned out to more often simply give the lie a younger sibling, even when I have certain knowledge of the attempted deception.
Starting today, a new strategy: give them a reason; give them rope.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, January 1st, 2012
| |
11:00 pm - Happy New Year
|
“For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” - T.S. Eliot
This makes sense to me, but then Eliot does tend to make sense. It was a bit of a rough year for a lot of people, including many I love. I'm happy to leave that behind, even as we deal with the aftermath. A biblical scripture I often see in connection with this sort of temporal challenge is this:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” - Jesus, John 16:33
This is heartening for the believer in the long run, but one must admit that it lacks encouragement in any immediate sense. I don't mind knowing that the last page has some form of happy ending, I'd just like some kind of encouragement to get through the next chapter.
So, everyone's either thanking 2011 for its loveliness or thanking their lucky stars they survived it. I, for one, won't be missing it. Yes, some good things happened in my little sphere, but they were horribly overrun by the sheer volume of... well, I was going to list categories, but suffice to say it included a full range from pointless acrimony to senseless death. Sort of accelerated as the year went on. And yet, we slogged through, and made the best of things. Some would call it adjusting deck chairs on the Titanic, or putting lipstick on a pig; but I see it more as straight defiance of bad circumstances. We're going to come through, if only because we say so.
That, then, is my approach: I will do the best I can, do what I should do, ignore the deliberate evil directed at me, turn the whims of fate to my advantage, and in general act as though truth and love will win – as I do believe they will. Here, then, is my anthem for January, via Blues Traveler:
And if it's the fool who likes to rush in,
And if it's the angel who never does try,
And if it's me who will lose or win,
Then I'll make my best guess and I won't care why.
C'mon and get me, you twist of fate.
I'm standing right here, Mr. Destiny!
If you want to talk, well, then I'll relate;
If you don't, so what, 'cause you don't scare me.
Goodbye, 2011. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Bring it on, 2012. I'm ready.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Thursday, December 29th, 2011
| |
11:42 pm - Not quite a drunk post
|
I'm never actually drunk. My capacity is enormous. And there's this weird thing where alcohol tastes repulsive at a certain point. However, at this moment I'm as close as likely to happen any time without some bizarre inverted intervention.
It's hard. Hard to bury a beloved pet, only 11 years old, dead of a canine version of lung cancer. We buried him in the yard. The other dog doesn't quite understand, but I think she knows.
Hard to be the only person actually trying to build up a relationship instead of collecting the negative bits to drag it down, gossiping and libeling. Nothing like being lied about, hm? A great joy. Especially when... oh, forget it.
Hard to be a man in modern America, where the deck is stacked against you and you're not allowed to complain about it. Well, here's a masculine take on that: Fuck that noise. Sideways, and without foreplay. I've chosen the red pill, and it's really hard to ignore what it shows. Oh, the things I have in store to say...
So here's the deal: I have a variety of things I know I have to do. Some of them involve starting some new blogs for particular topics. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted. Erm, so to speak. There are also a certain collection of projects I need to finish. It's a prodigious collection. Makes me a little scared to think of it, but hey, what's life without challenge? Funny thing is how self-imposed these challenges appear (especially as compared with the crapola mentioned earlier) in spite of being, really, things that insist on being done. And of course there's the documenting and making public (or at least incontrovertibly on the record) of what may need use later. Hey, karma may not exist; but I do.
Here it comes.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, December 8th, 2011
| |
8:55 pm - Wakey, wakey.
|
|
| Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
| |
7:19 am - Brave New World
|
|
| Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
| |
9:35 am - But then again, maybe not.
|
You should know, right from the start, that this happens a fair bit. I'm just telling you about it this time.
On a whim I clicked a link to a blog whose name amused me. Sure enough, right there at the top was a well-written, hilarious article, insightful and heart-felt, just the kind of thing I love. "Well now," I said to myself, "I might have to spread the love a bit with this one!"
Then I noticed that the article was from last autumn, and there were only 3 or 4 entries for the entirety of 2010. Obviously, I'm not one to be casting aspersions about that sort of thing, having wandered away from this little corner of madness for so long, but it did give me pause. Still, I read on.
Descending through the reverse-chronological articles turned out to be like descending through the murk of a small lake, getting colder and muddier with amazing speed. Now, when you consider the order in which the posts were written, and over what amount of time, you have the picture of someone emerging into the light, with a bright future of excellent authorship ahead of them. But... it would only work that way if there were anything like regularly published items. As it is, it's a brief chronicle of bitter madness with a couple of very satisfying articles floating on top and disguising what lay beneath.
So this time, as with so many others, I take a pass.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
| |
2:49 pm - Nerdly Dreams
|
So I overslept a bit this morning, because my snooze button and the time between it became part of my dreams. Doing some programming, but in a real-ish world rather than on a computer, I was coercing time variables in 5-minute chunks (2 per snooze) into a physical data type, in this case some grey cubes almost a meter on a side. It took me until I was nearly late to realize what was going on.
It's been a while since I dream-programmed. It's been even longer since I programmed a dream world. Pretty sure it's the first time I've done type coercion on a physical environment, though.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 11th, 2011
| |
6:48 am - Summing It Up:
|
|
| Friday, April 1st, 2011
| |
6:46 am - Oh, look!
|
|
Friends list. I have a friends list. Even if I have nothing to say or no time to say it, I should probably come by to check that out. Sorry guys, I don't mean to be ignoring you.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
| |
7:52 am - Advice
|
"Young one, you cannot convince anyone of anything. People will convince themselves of the most absurd things, and you will not dissuade them."
But they are going down the wrong path, making fools of themselves, and worse!
"Let them do so. You are not their teacher as I am yours. Why should they listen to you? Logic and reason will return to them when it is time; or it will not."
How will I know?
"Either way, it is neither your responsibility nor your shame that they err."
It still bothers me. A lot.
"My young friend, you must let it go. You can bring peace only to yourself and to those ready for it. While you wait for them, find a better response."
And he sat back and rocked in silent laughter.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, March 21st, 2011
| |
9:27 am - Getting the engine to turn over
|
Having sort of returned to posting here, all these topics begin swarming around my skull, demanding to be made use of. But I really want to do them justice for a change. Difficult, today. Monday is being very Monday at me, and I have lethargy, a bit of a headache, a lingering cough (from a cold that just won't go away) and "Let It Be" stuck in my head. I'm snarky as the day is long, and the days are getting longer.
So stay tuned. It may be only gibberish for a bit longer, but hopefully it'll at least be amusing gibberish.
|
|
(6 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
| |
6:49 am - Blargh.
|
The first week of Daylight Saving Time feels like a week of Mondays.
What genius thinks this is still a good idea? Dyin' here...
|
|
(10 comments | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
peregrinejohn's journal