Nature as Metaphor for Spirit

A week ago a friend of mine proposed the idea that our physical appearance is an enactment of our spiritual natures. Our physicality is a sort of metaphor or representation of our real spiritual selves. At the time I could not develop my idea of what that would mean for me. I have since done some more thinking and talking about it and have begun to form a possible connection between my appearance and my spiritual nature.

To be blunt, I am gaunt...and pale almost anemic, with reddish hair and perminantly chewed fingernails. I have the appearance of a person who has been locked in a coffin for 3 days and has given up scratching the box and is now proceeding to survive by chewing his own leathern belt. I have tense and toned, albeit minimal, muscles. I appear therefore to be weak, but I am rather more wirey and dexterous. I guess you could say that I look quite a bit like Gollum. I have the wired and jittery movements of a chain-smoking, coffee drinking insomniotic air-traffic controller. My eiree eyes have large black bags under them from lack of sleep. My indented cheeks are further ecsentuated by my satyr-like red goatie. Value Village clothing with excentric hats, canes and a pocket watch add to the "slightly off" image. My slightly crooked and elongated nose add to the Jewish comedian look. Hair usually trailing up into some sort of unorderly peak. I am incredibly gangly and flexible, my fingers are stubby yet remain spidery. I look like a character from a Charles Dicken's novel or a Lewis Carroll hallucination. This is a partial description of my physical appearance. What could these features possibly mean for my spiritual nature?

My most influential feature which affects most of my appearance is anxiety. I am a restless spirit. I am not satisfied with anything. I am constantly in motion, trying to stay ahead of the wave of existence which is pushing me forward and trying to suck me back. I am wasted by life; tired out by the constant movement. I am like a marathon runner who cannot stop running for fear of being overtaken. I am a wandering spirit...but I am driven. I would rather outrun a problem than face it, I view escape as a victory just as overpowering an adversary is usually thought of as victory. I am skin and bones yet still as hard as a rock from incredible tension. My compact and tired physical body is therein explained by my inability to be still.

Sometimes this anxiety comes out in a more furious desperation or manic movement. My wild eyes, chewed finger nails and kramer-like hair are indicative of this. My restlessness taken to its tiring and fathomless insanity leaves by body wild looking. I am also a freak. My spirit is just not normal! I have glimpsed more fully in recent days that I am truly and utterly socially insane. This explains the way I dress and also my comedic hair and "tv ugly" nose. Red hair is also usually a symbol of deviance. My eyes which have been described as "always laughing" are very deceptive, they are just seething green pools full of angry leeches. I'm not a people person, I am not an extrovert, I am a comedian because I am mortally terrified of being laughed at by other people. I try to assert myself as an outgoing comedian because I am terrified of allowing other people to see who I really am...a man trapped in a coffin, desperately clawing at the lid whilst I sup on my leather belt. G'ah! I would be a preppy if I wasn't so damn insane.

Sometimes the tension and restless wandering is too much for my spirit to endure so I get into depressive slumps, which is probably why I don't change much physically. I haven't really grown much since grade 11. Despite my constant movement I am in a state of static frustration. My body therefore remains 5'10" 130 lbs. (This seemingly fruitless cycle of futility can actually be seen in a more positive light, but that is another topic).

I pride myself on my flexibility, or "limberness". I like to think that my spirit is open to any direction that it may wander, just as my body stretches easily. Oddly enough both my spiritual and physical flexibility come from the imposition of external repressive forces. Interesting.

I really have no more to say on this. I am quite contented reading Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. I shall have to soon write a post defending the position that I am Not a Zen Buddhist, although the evidence would say otherwise...

an Example of my Logic

The "other" can only be defined in the negative, it is, that which it is not. The "other" is not the self, or subject. B does not exist outside of the equation (A is not = to B), but neither does A exist independent of the equation. We see then that nothing arises independently, A and B are codependent and gain their being, or existence only in contrast, contradiction, dialogue, or relationship with one another. Other than that, they are nothing, yet let us look at this more closely.

What is nothing? It is the absence of substance. Since nothingness is only negatively defined then nothing and everything are necessarily linked in the same codependent relationship which we found A and B to be in. Oblivion and Eternity are therefore the same thing, in that they are binary "others". Let us think now what this means for theology and religion.

Instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, why not prove or even accept that God does not exist. If opposites are linked so essentially then one can begin to see how God existing and God not existing means precisely the same thing. What then is the lesson learned from Nihilism? Why, God does exist of course, but only because God does not and cannot exist. By destroying God the Nihilist creates a more powerful God than could ever be imagined! A God that has become nothing and therefore becomes everything! A God that cannot be ignored!

I am not going to get dogmatic now...for this God is much too Godly to confine. This God cannot be limited to an ethical law, a "relationship" or even to philosophical speculation. This God truly is God, unlimited, unconfined and eternal. Sure I don't have the assurance that I can "talk with my bestest pal Jesus", or be assured that I have lived or believed properly so that I can "go to heaven", but I have the understanding, the peace, the stillness to simply BE. I can become free by dieing myself, "crucifying" my mind if you will, doing what Christ did, doing what he saw the "father" do. God Is, and that is all I need to know, which ironically yet perfectly is nothing at all...

To Sleep To Dream To Fall

And again I began to dream-
I dreamt I was falling,
rapidly, boundless from interminable heights,
falling forever in the dark.

And yet, I wasn't falling downwards-
I was simply falling.
See, when you are falling in the dark,
you don't know that you are falling down.
You just are-
suspended in that darkness- infinity.
Entirely still, yet moving at an unimaginably fast pace.
To be moving as quickly as possible with the sensation of stillness is-
simply unimaginable, inconcievable, unutterable-
Infinity.

When you are falling in a dream and suddenly waken-
why do you feel afraid?
Is it because you have just narrowly averted hitting "the bottum" in your dream-land?

This may be the generally assumed answer, but I have another idea.
Perhaps we are in the aforedescribed suspencion, limbo when we dream.
Maybe we are true spirit suspended in infinity when we sleep, unconfined by our bodies.
Our spirit free to roam the universe and find peace within the infinite speed of One.
When we are about to wake up, when we return to our bodies, we are suddenly jolted back into feeling. We are no longer obliviously suspended. We are jerked back into consciousness and the minute we wake up we feel fear. Fear at being jammed back into our bodies, fear of mortality.
This is why we long for sleep.
to sleep, perchance to dream-
and there truly is the rub-
to fall
to be suspended
in darkness
infinity.

He Who Burns

I am a black lump of coal
And you all have need to fear
For I have within my soul
enough to consume anyone near.

Enough fule
Enough potential
To level a mountain to shale.

Sometimes I sit, a dark and cold coal
Then I begin to smoulder-
I come to life!
A fire ignites!
Within me resides the need to grow-
hotter-brighter-larger.

It takes naught but a slight breeze to rouse me into flames,
scourching those around me - remembering all God's names.

I long to burn entirely,

to be consumed by heat,

to evaporate into smoke,
to be entirely anihilated into light,
to join with One in the sky,
to be free from my cold and black carbon shell.

This is where the fear comes in. When I am roused, having imbibed a breath of the eternal-I am powerful. I speak with a voice that is not my own. I stare with eyes that are lost in mist. I issue forth a fire, a heat, a light which consumes those who would oppose eternity. I do not have within my soul anything, I am naught but black coal, but in union with One, I am a mighty fire. An unforgettable flame. Not often does this happen. These moments of rapture. These ecstatic glimpses of understanding. These moments of tangable spirituality which form true images from the white void of oblivion.

Perhaps this is why I like to smoke. I like to taste, smell and see raw physical material transform into something else. To be apotheosized into smoke and heat. To break down, yet rise up; elusive and ephemeral in the sky. It has occured to me again, this is my name. Andrew- Greek for "man". Gerbrandt- German for "he who burns". I am the man who burns. I am the burning man. I burn with desire. I burn with longing. I burn with love longing. I'm not talking about lust, sexual or sensual urges. Although, it is a lot like that. I seek to know the eternal. I find nothing but darkness. Can I know anything of the eternal while still in this cold and black body of carbon? Can coal understand the pure essence of heat and light? Damn-it, I sound like Plato...

unpretentious

Nattering to herself,
-portly, she awkwardly stands.
The graying hair frays, & a whistle
dangles from her neck.
The idea with you lands
- a little gone - out of her head,
as her teeth -
crooked, gaping, norm off centr'd

Yet seemingly captured is something beneath
the crazy - through the eyes -
There is a sparkle.
Her annoying rambles hold a smile
as though she almost knows something
- a secret I could never bare.
Joy encompasses her every glance
peacefully in mind's storm.
Like reality is enclosed within,
seeking to escape

- and conquer

Selfish-Altruism

In my experience, it is often glibbly and triumphantly claimed by academics that human beings are motivated out of intrinsically selfish and utilitarian purposes. Not only the Hobbesian philosopher, but the secular humanist(characterized by utilitarianism and materialism perhaps) would claim that ethics is not dictated by an "ultimate law", but rather are socially and historically developed conventions. This is an entirely pessimistic view of humanity and results in a belief that altruism or love is impossible. This seems wrong to me.

The Christian, or religious person, conversely posits a belief in an ultimate ethical code. God, or a higher power, dictates laws in which the person is entreated to do "right actions" towards the distinctly "other" being as well as the self(and God for that matter). Any action counter to these laws is deemed to be sin and therefore outside of God's will. Altruism and love are defined as adherence to the law. I am immensily repulsed by this idea as well.

I have long been searching for a third way or perhaps a synthesis of these two opposite, yet equally revolting opinions of the world. It dawned on me today as I was speaking with a friend of mine that an answer has been lying under my nose all this time. I was asked to do something by my friend which could have negative consequences for him. I flat out said no. My reason was that I did not want to see him get hurt. I then admitted that I also didn't want to live with the guilt of that. It struck me that it wasn't purely my care, affection or love for my friend which was stopping me from potentially helping him hurt himself, but my own self interest. I did not want to feel loss or pain at my friends potential pain. The materialists seem to be right, but my thought took another unexpected turn.

With all of the writing I have been doing about "self" and my tentative conclusions that there is no central "I", but rather the individual finds definition through interaction with the "other", I have found a solution to the imminent problem of this post. That is, can I act out of real altruistic love outside of the Christian/religious ethical code? I would like to invert the conclusion from my conversation with my friend.

If I reason from the assumption that nothing exists independant from other things, i.e. that the self is found through dialogue with the "other" then even if I act out of self interest I am actually acting out of altruistic love for the "other" simultaeously. Just as my motivation for denying my friend's request was both to protect him for his sake and my own, so also do I behave with altruistic love both for my own sake, but in the broader sense. If part of who I am is "the other" then my motivation for altruism is to benefit both myself and the other, but both at the same time as well. It is the broader "we" whom I seek to benefit. It is not even the collective good that I would be seeking, but self and other edification at the same time. It is only in the ridiculously individualistic and materialistic west, which I find myself in, that this concept of connectivity between "different" beings is entirely misunderstood. It is called maladaptive and naive and is often connected with Christianity. This claim could not be further from the truth.

It is fundamental to Christian ethics that there be a distinct "other". Christianity outright rejects the notion that the connectivity of selves preceeds ethics. At most, a Christian would accept that by living in "loving harmony" with one another we can become united. My argument is inherently different from Christian theology because the connectivity of selves necessarily preceeds ethics. Without this connectivity there is, as a good Hobbesian, moral positivist, utilitarian or materialist would say, no motivation for human beings to act ethically beyond the conventions of society which regulate their actions.

I will support and clarify these claims later, this is but a skeletal framework...

Abyss- 1

Balance. To walk a tight-rope. To cross an abyss. To live. Life is a balance. Avoid hell, gain heaven. Minimize pain, maximize pleasure. It seems to me that every time I find some sort of contentment, understanding or happiness in life it is always balanced out with an equal or relatively worse event or feeling of shittiness. It is not merely an emotional low, but a period of intense confusion, darkness, numbness, hopelessness and motionlessness. Does this feeling of shittiness merely come from the relatively less pleasurable "norm" experienced after coming down from a point of ecstatic revelry? Or, is it that the universe will not allow for any concentration of contentment lest it should explode or implode due to an unbalance? Could there be a law of the universe which tends back to stability? I know, I know, scientists have many laws about such things. I am not expert enough to name them though. I am speaking in a psychological, or more precisely, a spiritual, ephemeral, mystical or esoteric sense, but who really knows?

Maybe I am just bipolar...but then again I believe that all "psychological abnormalities" are just more distilled manifestations of the human experience. Am I "maladaptively" endowed with a fluctuating psychie which takes me to the top of mountain-tops and then plunges me to the depths of the cold ocean floor. Worse still, a psychie which takes me to both places at once and leaves me in a completely and miserably insane world of grey.

I hate psychiatrists.

They are worse than church...I love saying that, as if church were a basis for guaging something's level of pestilense to my soul.

And I've slipt, so there is nothing more to write.

Abyss...

Writer's Block

I would be really happy if "writer's block" was merely a delicious salt lick. Does anyone remember that Simpsons episode in which the doctor explains to Mr. Burns that the only thing keeping him alive is a perfect balance of every imaginable disease? This is the state of the ideas in my mind. They are all trying to get through the door at once, so I cannot get any of them out. That and I'm feeling lazy and contemplating further academic suicide. Perhaps something will condence in a little while. To anyone who reads this thing, keep checking around here every once in a while because some good stuff may surface without any warning. Like the bloated corpse of a long dead goose released from the cement shoes given it by the violent duck mafia...How's that for an alternate vision of the mighty Phoenix arising from the ashes...

Twilight

Fire is glass
- encircling the calm mystique-
Reflection enhancing
casting shadows of th'above's unique.

The dimmonds glimmer -
vivid from beneath.
Light eclipsed -
yields a dazzling, muddled wreath.

Depth is unknown,
as the wind stirs the still
- amiable ripples intrigue;
the dusky colors fulfill.

Reinterpreting the Darkness

In Latin the word for black is niger. “Nigger” is also a pejorative term used to degrade people with a “black” skin tone. The word black is also associated with evil. The Latin for white however; is candidus. It derives from the white togas worn by highly respected senators. It also carries a positive meaning. Juxtaposed to the evil meaning of black, white is often associated with good. Even to describe people with non-white skin as black therefore seems to carry with it a degrading meaning. I am not saying that all white people are racist(I myself am a Mic-Mac-Limey-Crout), but I think that our interchangeable use of the words black and white to describe skin tone as well as our conceptions of evil and good is telling of a fundamental danger in the development of human language. It is little wonder that fear and loathing towards non-white people has been so prevalent throughout western history. I would like to clarify that I do not believe that racism is a white problem alone, but my argument is concerned with the effects of language of thought; this is not a discussion about racism.

I will not here get into a nature/nurture debate because the result is always a compromise. I must assume however; that thoughts are imbibed by children as they encode meaning using symbolic systems known as languages. Thought does not entirely precede language. Bias and discrimination are learned, they are not inherent. This is nowhere more blatantly shown than in the early aversion to the dark by children. What? This seems to be a contradiction! It may appear to be, however; it may seem natural to say that children are afraid of the dark and therefore the dark is necessarily evil. I propose that while black/dark is frightening it is not necessarily correct to associate that fear with negativity. I propose an alternate meaning to the word black. Instead of thinking of black as the physical embodiment of evil think of what white looks like in relation to black. Is black not much more full than white? Does it not have more depth and mystery? In a completely illuminated room nothing is hidden. That is why it is not scary to sit in a well-lit room. To sit in the dark however; is frightening because there is an element of the unknown. If a light could illuminate the entire universe would it not make it so that one could see through everything and therefore see nothing? Is white not the absence of everything? Whiteness therefore becomes the embodiment of oblivion, not black. In blackness, in the dark, there is matter, there is form, there is substance, there is life. We cannot see or understand it, but it is something nonetheless.

This is why I believe that ignorance, ignoramus, is better than knowledge. To reside in your total lack of knowledge is to truly embrace reality, but that does not mean that you are embracing a depressing and “black” reality, a reality fit for suicidal nihilists. It is when you reside in a world which is entirely illuminated by your false sense of knowledge that you are truly residing in oblivion. To know something is truly a futile and depressing thing. Think now how devoid of substance the white person is compared to the “evil black person”. It is the white person who is a hole in reality, a white hole, a void. It is fitting how western culture, dominated by white people, has itself mimicked the skin tone of its lost makers. Our culture has reached oblivion with a form, the outline of distinction surrounding the white body. Perhaps my use of Oprah as an example of “Oblivion’s Torso” was wrong? I retract my statement about Oprah, Martha Stewart is the embodiment of oblivion, but then again, in all seriousness, maybe it is I…

At Least I Don't Live in Somalia

too livid to live
too terrified to die
i linger like a spectre
a fleeting whisp of smoke
haunting myself
haunted by life
a prisoner of my own existence

The State of Affairs

I have just stumbled onto an idea which will take me a considerably long time to write on decently. Something about history, myth and of course, ME. I may post bits of it from time to time, but at the moment I am just so excited at coming up with a way to articulate myself that I have no way which direction it will go. My egocentric searching may be silent for some time. It is time for that Irishman or perhaps that Penguin to keep things alive here. Poetry Helianthis, Poetry! Bring this abominable silence to an end!

Oblivion's Torso

I have found that quite frequently I will encounter the same topic of an idea in the different venues of my life at the same time. This could be that I am merely looking for a certain thread and therefore find it everywhere, but it pleases me to think that there is a sort of progressive unfolding of understanding in my development. My most recent example of such an occurance happened earlier today.

My last post was ultimately concerned with, what in my view seems to be, the lack of definition for our current era. Today I attended a lecture from one of my first year profs, a man who has done much to free my mind from the slavery of dogmatism. He was lecturing on Hegel today and quite fittingly he began to talk about the ideas that I had been discussing in my last post. He was talking about the concept of Zeitgeist. I have been familiar with this term before, but it did not occur to me that Zeitgiest was the topic of my last post. In German Zeit roughly translates age/era. Geist has three meanings, mind, spirit and ghost. I do not know German, but it doned on my also that the Latin word animus also mean mind, spirit and ghost. The word Zeitgeist therefore means spirit of the age. It is the ethos of a generation, it defined the age, but it also haunts it like a ghost. Hegel believed that the Zeitgeist of his time was that truth was progressively unfolding through rational inquest. I have not actually read any Hegel, so please someone correct or expand on this assertion. Hegel lived in the 19th century when modernity and rationalism reigned supreme. Although those terms themselves are elusive and complicated I will not get into a discussion on them. I have always had a strong repugnance for the 19th century and the "enlightened" smuggness of modernity, so I am perturbed. I began this post by claiming that I think of my life as something that unfolds rationally. I will leave this idea for now because I don't know enough about Hegel to continue.

However; the idea that a Zeitgeist haunts every age is interesting. For, with the claims of my last post, it seems that I am discontented by the lack of ghosts to haunt me. Perhaps what holds true of horror films hold true here as well. The most terrrifying element of a horror film (a quality one at least) is not what is seen, but that which is obfuscated and enigmatic. A chimera is more frightening than a crazy texan with a chainsaw, or a Punk Rocker with a Norse Broadsword for that matter. Likewise the Zeitgeist of our present age is more terrifying than those which haunted previous generations because we have no idea what it is. My fear of Zeitgeist is not unlike my spiritual fears. The only thing I fear more than a malevolent god is no god at all.

So I am terrified, terrified because our age isn't even defined by decadence or waste anymore. We are haunted by nothing and nothing has therefore become material. It is not that our age is actually defined by nothing which terrifies me, it is that nothingness has taken a shape and now haunts us. We are haunted by a very real and powerful nothingness, rather than a benign and apathetic nihilism.

And now for something vecetious for a change...and that shape is Oprah, beware her gaping maw of nothingness...

Deadening Silence in the Midst of Calamatous Noise

I am a historian. Some of my professors would spit blood at this claim, but it is true nonetheless. I am a historian because I constantly think of things in temporal terms. I do not simply evaluate ideas, situations, people or objects in an isolated moment, but take into account both the past and the future. I believe that it is vital to human existence to be able to do this. Since the present is ever fleeting the human condition is to be caught up in the act of memorizing, remembering and projecting those rememories into the future, so as to make appropriate choices and actions in what we commonly think of as "the present". Confused? I am! If nothing else, take from that an understanding that the study of history is not merely the memorization of facts. It is vital to human existence and I am therefore compelled to study it.

That last paragraph was more of a rabbit trail from what I actually want to discuss in this post. As a historian I am constantly evaluating the past, both my past and the past of the world as I see it. I read many different works, I watch films, I talk with people and I observe the world around me. I look back at different times in history and build pictures of what it must have been like to exist in that moment. For example, to be a teenager in the 90's was to be depressed and disillusioned. This is a vast oversimplification, but the job of the historian is to simplify the eternally complicated past. Needless to say, and this is essentially the reason why some of my professors hate me, all of history is a myth, which the historian recreates and tells in order to understand the past, present and future. There is no such thing as an objective historian. History is not written by the victor, rather it is written by historians. If such is the case then we must also realise that accounts of history are therefore entirely informed by the historian's own personal experience. Still I have not arrived at what I intended to write about today.

I have been reflecting lately about this first decade of the third millenium AD/CE. I have been wondering, by what characteristics will it be remembered. Has anything happened of note? Sure we have the Iraq War, but people merely call that "Vietnam", which is grossely historically false. Although the war is similiarly motivated by American Exceptionalism and Imperialism, to call Iraq Vietnam would be like calling chapter twelve of a novel chapter three. Our decade has also seen an increase in incredibly feel-good humanism both secular and Christian. In my view, people just seem to be saying nothing, and a hell of a lot of nothing. Take blogging for instance. I believe that the Introspective Irishman has been writing a post on this topic for quite some time. As far as deconstruction and disillusionment is concerned western culture seems to have hit a pinnacle. We can't get more beat than the beatnics. We can't get much more nihilistic than Death Metal and Punk Rock unless bands begin hacking their audiences to death with Norse Broadswords in teenage antiestablishment fueled rages. We can't get more hypocritical in the west in regards to "the environment-global warming-climate change", "poverty", "AIDS", etc etc...

We have really reached a nothingness in society and culture. Nothing is moving. There is no where to move...except Mars...or the ocean floor. Nothing is controversial. All the lines have been crossed...except perhaps the aforementioned Norse Broadsword idea. We have worked ourselves into such a stew of acceptance that reaction is coming. Christianity, hardly monolithic, is moving to become either completely the same as secular humanism or reaching back to strict dogma after terrying in the land of humanistic acceptance of diversity. Islamic countries are getting right pissed off at "The Great Satan-the US". East and South-East Asia are becoming economic powerhouses which threaten all sorts of global conflict. Africa is still in a bloody mess from the rape and pillage of the past 300 years. And here we sit in North America, in our urban yuppie apartments, our comfortable suburban ranchers, and we feel sick. We are so sick that we go faster, work more, play our Ipod a bit louder to block out the deadening silence in the midst of calamatous noise. There is no up and there is no down and nothing really matters, everything has been said before. There is no point in doing anything except to prolong our physical existence.

But, what is man if his chief good is to but sleep and feed? The words of the sage come back to me..."eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die...fear God and obey God's commandments". I refuse to attach some sort of imagined religious/relational purpose on the physical acts of life. That is what the likes of Rick Warren (the author of The Purpose Driven Life) would have me do. I saw a book last month which acclaimed Warren as the most influential pastor of our time. This is true. He has acknowledged the meaninglessness of everything and written copious amounts of drivel to insert an imagined purpose into human existence.

I'm still waiting for something to truly happen in this decade, but perhaps my problem is that I think that other eras have had purpose. Perhaps it is only the historical rememory of the past which leads me to believe that the past was any different from this era. See, for good or ill, I am a historian, in every sense of the word...

I Reside In Sanity

I have never found any substantial evidence which would lead me to believe that the universe is an ordered and rational conglomerate. Neither have I been convinced that observable functions within the universe have the capacity to be operationalized, systematized and generalized. I have never heard a rational or logical argument which could convince me that an event or idea is absolutely true. By the nature of these very assertions I cannot ever prove that they are true. Does this mean that I am wrong? Do I contradict myself? Certainly, I am entirely incorrect, but only if I am incorrect. If I am correct though, I am also incorrect by the virtue of my being correct. Are my assertions therefore self-destructive? I will explore the opposite belief, that there is order in the universe and that truth is absolute, to deduce whether my beliefs ring true or are simply the ravings of a mad-man.

Some may argue that I cannot see order and symmetry in the universe because I cannot see all of it. In other words, they would argue that I am not God and therefore cannot see the "big picture". This perspective shares the same superficial contradiction which problematizes my own view. To claim that I cannot see "truth" because I have a limited perspective of reality is in itself a relativistic argument. This is much more a contradiction, hypocrisy and cop-out than my assertion that truth is essentially unknowable. To claim that there is a black and white truth which is God, while simultaneously saying that humans cannot "fully know" that truth is a cop-out. It is like having one's cake and eating it too. To use the more palatable aspect of relative truth while ultimately claiming that one can find the absolute truth upon submission and death is hypocritical and contradictory. This is the basis for the "relationship with Jesus" paradigm so deeply embedded in contemporary evangelical Christianity. It takes the harsh absolutist claims of Christian dogma and softens it by integrating the less problematic aspects of relativity. The core of institutionalized Christian dogma has not changed in 2000 years. The different social articulations of the dogma continue to change and flow with the rest of society, but the central tenet that man is unworthy and must submit to God remains the same. (don't get me wrong, I have fear of God, I just don't think that the God of black and white is God at all, but a devil concocted by power hungry and ignorant people) I have gone down a rabbit hole and must get back on track with my initial thought. My claim that the evangelical Christian articulation of dogma has not change anything from the "turn-or-burn" and physically violent manifestations of Christianity in the past is vital to my argument.

I have been told in numerous arguments and discussions that the Bible says that God is a God of order not of chaos. It is somewhere in the Old Testament, but I don't know the exact reference. My first criticism of that verse is that it is being interpreted shallowly. From a Jewish interpretation it might even say the opposite. I am not an expert of Jewish theology, but I am under the impression that it is permeated with contradictions, paradoxes and reversals. It is only the rational exegetical interpretation of Christian theologians which leaves no room for ambiguity. In the Gospel of John 8:32, Christ is said to have claimed that "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". How could something that is fixed and ultimately knowable set one free? I realize that I could now divert into an entire discussion on which sort of freedom I am referring to. I shall summarize. When I say freedom I do not mean the freedom to do anything, a state commonly and incorrectly referred to as Anarchy, or the much maligned concept of Anarchism. Neither Anarchy/chaos not Anarchism have anything to do with the Hobbesian concept of the violent state of nature. Freedom is a freedom of being bound to everything else, a freedom to coexist peacefully. It is this kind of freedom which sets you free, not the freedom of a sovereign and absolutist God who in His unending mercy will allow us to exist free in his Kingdom. What then does the freedom I am advocating look like?

To be honest I am not sure. I think that it might look an awful lot like the "Kingdom" which Christ refers to. Unfortunately western or perhaps human thought and action is marching further and further away from this Kingdom and freedom. Institutionalized Christianity is perhaps the most advanced in its drive towards a completely materialistic and ungodly articulation of truth. (I mean materialistic in the marxian/fauerbachian sense, not consumerism, although that is a symptom of the denial of a metaphysical reality) A Christian reading this may agree with this last statement, but I assure you, I am here claiming that the assumption of absolute truth is the most materialistic and ungodly perspective that a person can hold. The petty and shallow arguments and sermons which permeate churches are not the things of God, they are worldly things. The things of God are mysterious and can only be grasped by exploring those mysteries, not giving up, leaving it to an unmoving faith in certainty. Uncertainty breeds hunger, it compels motion, it is real faith, real understanding, real Unity with the eternal!

To bring this to a close, what does this exploration tell me about my initial assertions? The more "sane" belief that truth is absolute and is merely incomprehensible to humans leads to nothing but dead, materialistic and religious dogma and tradition, no matter how it is articulated. My "raving nonsense" is advantageous on many fronts. Practically, in interactions with other people, to enter a conflict with the assumption that no one is right leaves people more open to other perspectives. Spiritually, I am not creating any idols of God. I am not claiming any knowledge of God. That does not mean that I do not seek, it merely means that the eternal is not something to be grasped by mortal man. "The assumption of infallibility is the elimination of dialogue" -JS Mill. Certainty necessarily leads to destructive behavior. History shows this! Sociology shows this! Psychology and Philosophy show this! My claim that the only thing I am correct about is that I am incorrect is not a new idea. It's Socratic to the core. It has issued from the lips of every heretic and dissident in history. My assertion that truth is unknowable therefore rings true, but it is also very much like the ravings of a mad-man, for they are one in the same...

Unequivocal Light from Every Direction

Eternity and oblivion
Everything and nothing
All directions and One Direction
they are all one in the same
paradoxos

The human being, the artist to be more precise, and the writer/speaker still more distilled, does not own the ideas that he expresses.
He is a conduit through which the realm of ideas, thoughts, the eternal expresses itself in a knowable form. An utterance of the unknowable. A clearing of the obfuscated.

The thinker must never assume to own these thoughts or even his particular articulation of them any more than Strauss' violin should claim to own the Blue Danube.

There is no reason to feel as it one's ideas have been stolen. This sight is copyright protected.
why?
Will I ever gain anything from what I write?
What is money?
What is fame?
They are all just dust in the wind.
Plagerism is not wrong because it is stealing from the person, but because it makes profane the sacred temple of art. It sullies the holy act of channelling the eternal.

The true artist lives in obscurity and dies unknown to the world with only the hope that their articulation may some day touch other hurt and lonely mortals.
To have the capacity to grasp the infinite to such an extent that one can create a piece of art reflecting it, is reward enough.

I am not arrogant about the learning I have done. I am not proud of the ways I have and continue to express the ideas I see floating in eternity.
I do not believe that I am right and other people are wrong.
I only protest when someone refuses to acknowledge this ignorance.

I hate dogmatism, people creating rocks out of sand.
I hate opinion, I have belief.
Against opinion, beyond belief---paradoxos!

I appear aloof and academic, but on the contrary, I deny ownership of knowledge. I find myself here again...I know nothing. I begin another chapter of my life back at this spiraling beginning and terminus.

May the thoughts, shapes, tones, textures, temperatures, sounds and hues of the eternal decend on me. Transform me into a glowing light, so that I can radiate its wondrous light. Illuminate the dark and ignorant world around me.

Save us all from this world of mirrors and illusions.

Through our art, let us express something truly and unequivocally real.

This cannot be reached through human means, our greatest art is equivocal, dark and obfuscated. We are but dull reflections of the radiant light. It is only through Unity with All That Is, that we truly become.

Our expressions and experiences of Art are but hints to the glory and ecstatic joy which we can achieve once we are free of our mortal trapings, our pride, ambition, anger, laziness, excess and small-mindedness...

I once said that all articulations of the eternal is idolatry. But, if done reverently(not to be confused with religious reverence mind you) they can help us achieve enlightenment. When we are enlightened we will have no need for art because we will be One with That which we attempt to mimic...

(with that the writer exploded into billions of miniscule light particles and vanished from human perception)

and the mystic within me breaks forth once again...

Admission of a Obsessive Compulsive Perfectionist

I try to control the mundane details of life in order to create a facade which can mask the infinite chaos that is my life. I long to bring order and perfection to myself when all I am is laziness and inadequecy. Instead of dealing with the root of the problems in my life I busy myself putting everything into straight rows, placing everything just so, hoping to avoid cracks with my toes, making sure that all the doors are closed. I dot my i's and cross my t's, periods at the .beginning and end.

New Years resolution- bring order to something meaningful and allow the rest to go to shit...right after I uniformly scrape all the enamyle off of my teeth...

No Escape

I realised last night that my answer, given in response to a question posed by a friend of mine, was false. I was asked what my fears are. I answered quickly that I fear being "unknown" more than anything else. This is a lie; a complicated lie granted, but a lie nonetheless. Where in one sense I do fear the fragmentation, isolation and solitude of the existence I see around me, I also dear the opposite of this. I fear being known. I construct arguments and theories which support my flight away from "the other". I latch onto the extreme of knowablity and claim triumphantly that because I cannot be known fully by a single person that it is futile to try to interact with and know "the others" who surround me. What does this extreme look like in more detail I wonder.

I am thoroughly convinced that human beings are not finite beings. This point ultimately brings me back to a point where one can be known, but I will return to it at the end of this piece. I shall begin my argument from the opposite of what I deem to be true. All human beings are finite. This should necessarily narrow the scope of aspects that a human can possess, making them effectively knowable. Yet, let us look at the different ways in which a person must be known in order to be known fully. This shall prove to be an infinite list, contrary to my starting point.

1. People can be known emotionally.
2. People can be known physically or carnally.
3. People can be known intellectually.

A scientist would look at these categories and collect data from numerous sources to create a centralized and agreed apon individual. They would ignore outliers from the data and create a very convenient and simple, albiet quantitatively vast, picture of an individual. This way of investigating an individual is inherently misguided and flawed. There are underlying complxities to these categories which force open the picture of the individual to an infinite spectrum.

The first is the difficulty of the perspective of the observer or interacter. Every person interacts in these three ways differently. For example, John Doe's wife and son know him in very different carnal ways. The notable difference is that his wife knows him sexually, but the son is a part of John's flesh and has a different physical relationship with him. Even John Doe's office affair partner knows him differently than does his wife because the physical sensations are different. The relationship is different. This is an example of the perspective difficulty in the physical sense, but also applies to the other two categories as well.

The second difficulty is the different tones and tinctures within even one observer. Emotions are not all the same. There are different intensities, durations and initiations of emotions which make an emotional experience different every single time. It is not the same thing to get angry at a dog for pissing on the carpet as it is to get angry at a person who has just shot your wife. Even the emotional response to the same person changes due to different circumstances.

I have some other thoughts of the differences. They involve remembering/history, reputation, the interaction between the three ways of knowing someone and irrationality. I do not have time to elaborate on them now, but I may get to it. I feel confident that the difficulties hitherto described are enough to support my claim that human beings are not as finite as they seem. All of the different ways of knowing a person makes it impossible to finitely nail down a definition. Perhaps to be known is to be known in relation to everything else in existence. Buddhists call this dependant origination. In sum, that everything arises in relation to other things and do not exist on their own, but in connection to one another. That is not to say that the self does not exist, but the falsely imagined lone sense of self does not exist. This brings me back to my musing on knowability.

Do I fear being known or unknown? Take for granted that we cannot be fully known by a single being. Yet, we can be known by the infinite fully. Perhaps this is what God is. I do fear being unknown, I fear oblivion, an existence without God, an existence without the connection. I also fear being known on a more primal level. I do not want people to know me deep down, because I, like everyone, have deep dark spots. I do not want those places to be found by people. But, can I escape the infinite, can I escape God. NO! To be known is to be fully exposed, something my mortality will not allow me to do.

I have to stop for length, sleep and sanity. I leave the question as open as it was when I began writing tonight, and I pose it to you my reader. What are your fears? My fears are simultateously to be unknown and known, a frightening paradox which threatens to tear me apart, from which there is no escape...

Epitaph For a Friend

A man is a mosaic of all the different relationships that he has had in his life. Throughout life he makes inumerable utterances of who he is to all the people whom he comes into contact with. The mosaic of all these utterances is who that man is.

When a man dies all those people, carrying with them their piece of the mosaic, come together to sort out who that man was.

Is it possible for a Eulogy to do a man justice? Even if the speaker takes into account some surface differences of that man's relationships with different people, brother, son, friend, teacher etc, it is impossible, for no one person can understand let alone explain who that man was.

Can their be a person in a man's life who holds the guidelines to put all those pieces together?

I don't think so, and that is the loss, not only the physical death, but the fragmentation of the mosaic. The fragmenation of the person's memories, impressions, relationships, dialogue---self.

Those left behind are left with only the piece that they had. Some have small pieces, others large. All incomplete, broken, hurt.

It is the wish of all men to be known fully. This cannot happen in life, and it does not happen upon death, perhaps it can happen beyond death. Perhaps man has 100 senses and upon death we are awakened to the 95 senses that have lain dormant since childhood, only retained in the heart of the poet and the comedian. This is why the idea of heaven has been man's desire for countless aeons. We long for a place where we can know and be known perfectly.

We want someone who can read a dramatic epilogue in a sad film while the music reaches its climax and the shot slowly fades up into the clouds, until everything becomes light. This cannot be.

It's been 4 months, and I'll always remember the piece of Garreth that I knew while he was alive. To my most joyful friend who always smiled, especially when life was kicking him around...

hmmmm.....

And today I wonder as to what this has become
whence we shallowly sit, awaiting to succumb
- to incolence and lack of minds -
wandering wearily in a dreary time.

I bring a plea to end all this,
for there is more to life than infatuated bliss.
To return and ponder the greater expanse;
that dim and dreadful may no more hold stance.

Clothed in Skin

I am going to say something which very few people will believe. Ready? Wait for it...
My consciousness once spontaneously drifted out of my physical body and I lost all conception that, whatever I may be, I was not my body, but was something much more connected with the rest of reality, something more ephemeral, but at the same time much more than the tiny physical body which I so often mistake for myself.

I told you that you wouldn't believe it.

I tell this story because I have recently come up against some rather frightening medical problems involving my heart. It probably isn't anything, but nevertheless I have been gripped by fear for my mortal body. To quote South Park, "You know, I learned something today". Well actually I have known it for a long time and am reminded of it every time my physical body is in pain. I am afraid of death.

I don't think that I am alone in my fear of mortality, but I feel like a hypocrite in my fear. I must return to the inebriated blog which I deleted referred to in my last post. In describing my decietfulness I also discussed, albeit drunkenly, the fact that my blog name is thephilosopherone. I ranted drunkenly that I am a charlatan and that I do not deserve this title. I don't think that anyone really does. I have considered changing it, but that would just confuse me. I have developed this persona on the web and to change the name would be disasterous. I would like to clear up the misconceptions surrounding that name. I do not profess to have any answers. I do not profess to be intelligent. I read a lot, who gives a flying fuck! I think a lot, who doesn't! I am not trying to bring enlightenment to people, I do not possess esoteric knowledge. I strive to be free, to be free from knowledge, belief, faith...I strive to be free from mortality? So, I am a hypocrite. For all my talk, all my ideas about a loss of self, the fact that " I do not know" WHO I am, is all bullocks. When it comes down to it, I feel a strange attachment to this flesh suit which I think of as myself.

Am I merely like a new arrival to a nudist colony who is reluctant to remove his boxers? Is my attachment to my physical body something that will leave as I grow older? as it wastes away to nothing? Can I truly escape my dependance on my body in this life. The goal of the ascetic is to do just this, but prophets from Buddha to Jesus to Mohammed(don't worry no pictures) denied these practices. They stressed the importance of the physical body. I think that this is where gnosticism (the belief that the physical world is nothing but illusion) falls apart. Our physical bodies are important to our spiritual quests. To deny the body food and water entirely would make it impossible to search for some sort of enlightenment.

I have never fully understood the motivation of a martyr. I have heard many North American preachers exhorting people to praise martyrdom, but it never sat well with me. Perhaps there is something wrong with martyrdom? Could there not be as much value in uttering a few heretical words, but continuing to LIVE? Is not LIFE better than death? I am not denying that martyrdom is a noble thing, something to hold aloft as venerable, but I am just wondering why I would not be able to do it. I would not be able to choose death over life. I WANT TO LIVE! I have something to do, something to say, something to experience. I haven't finished with life. Jesus didn't die until he said that "it is finished". Jesus knew his thing to do (not that we have the faintest clue what that was), but I don't know what I have to finish. How can I ever die if I never find out what it is I am supposed to do, or be?

Perhaps I should focus on just that, on being, rather than doing, I have said this many times before, as has the Introspective Irishman, but when I try to focus on being I end up torturing myself mentally and spiritually and with this recent heart issue, physically as well. My vain struggle to find an elevated state of being leaves my physical body in ruin, which begs the question, should I just give up on seeking? Should I live a contented animal life? sleep and feed, sleep and feed. I can't do that without a lobotomy, so I can't and I must face physical ruin. Maybe then I will be able to shift off these clothes of skin and really start LIVING, finally begin BEING. To be a real living being instead of a shiftless anxiety ridden animal. For now I am caught in a cycle of compulsion to seek something beyond myself with the ironic result which makes me physically unable to seek anything but sleep and food.

I have probably been being all the time. I just want to be concious of that being which only seems to happen beyond my grasp. Oh well.

I still haven't ever seen the dusk...

Paradoxos: My Hermeneutic of Self

I composed a post a few nights ago in a smashed stupor . Naturally I deleted it first thing the next morning. I hope that no one read it, it was mainly based around the music I was listening to at the time which happened to be Blind Melon, that pretty little grunge band that made it big because the lead singer died of a drug overdose.

The central idea in the post was more concerned with me...as all my writing is. I rambled about my deceitfulness.
I am a liar!
Disingenuis!
False!
Nothing that I do, say or am is true.
All the words that I use to convey my sense of self to another person are elaborately concocted lies. How do I know this?
For one, I do it consciously, I am a deliberate liar.
Also, I have no sense of self, how could I convey an image of myself to people without actually knowing what that self is?
If I convey a personality, a concrete self to other people, it must necessarily mean that I am lying. But then again...
Am I being dogmatic? Just because I do not know myself for certain does not mean that my falsely imagined interpretations of myself are outright lies. They are simply interpretations. Again I find myself back on this topic of interpretation. What did I conclude last time? I concluded that interpretation is a dialogue, a discourse, a discussion or a relationship between two beings. We gain knowledge of ourself and "the other" through the dialogue.
The sense of self is found inbetween the two beings.
The space between the two is where everything is found.
Our falsely imagined senses of self are lies, but by interacting with others we find ourself.

I have a rather split personality. One dogmatic, the other sees only grey. Sometimes a third inbetween sees both at the same time. Another sees nothing at all. What does this have to do with what I just concluded about the relationships between people? Perhaps I can find a sense of self within myself. My different and contradictory selves are in fact in dialogue with one another. My writing, my speaking, my eating, breathing and walking are enactments of the dialogue within myself. Perhaps people with a dissosiative disorder/multiple personality disorder (commonly and incorrectly called scitzophrenics) are merely those with very distilled versions of themselves. We all have them, they are just not manifested as clearly as mentally distressed people. That is the root of mental illness anyways, extreme versions of normal behavior.

I within myself am a dialogue of opposites and compliments...I am a contradiction...I must interpret the dialogue between these parts to find a self...not a centralized sense of self, but a self created from dependant relationships between different compartments...this is the hermeneutic of self...I am a paradox...

Tear in the Curtain

give me extremes, give me excess,
to hell with temprance, sobriety and success.

fuck contentment, peace and rationality,
cleanliness, order, health and
feelgood sentimentality.

prudence, planning, straight roads, business ties, cubicles...
roooooowwsss of urinals!

why these platitudes, these reasons,
this purpose business.

no more reasons, no more excuses

stop trying to defend this divine cerebral spasm called existence!

just let it be!
raw unadulterated reality.

let it flow down like water falls
and echo with wild animal calls
let it rise like mighty snowcapped mountains
and spring up like subterrainean fountains

wrench these dreamers from their slumber
with shrieking lightning and calamitous thunder
tear this peaceful world of illusions asunder...

much too raw and teenage I know, oh well, it stays as it is...

The Twelve Smells of Christmas

The Twelve Smells of Christmas will be a progressive post if I am witty enough to develop it.

12 murdered pine-trees
11 heretical turkies
10 uncle's special egg nog
9 incontinent snowmen
8 upper class chinese ancestors
7 baked/stoned gingerbread...people (pc)
6 Great Aunt Gladys' perfume
5 holly being kissed beneath the mistletoe...let your imagination flow
4 salt in the wounds of the driveway
3 a real stable in which a woman has just given birth
2 burning wrapping paper
1 uncle's special egg nog revisited

This is just an initial impression of what Christmas smells like...

things that would make me happy right now...

1) firing purple paintballs during the meeting of a cult, quickly rolling up the windows and then shouting "whoo!" at the top of my lungs and then speeding off. yes, all in that order.
2) taking a random trip to montreal and living w/ correy for a couple weeks and talking about how depressing life and love can really be
3) quitting the olive garden
4) seeing an obese, furry, little animal outside my window. preferably lost or running into something and knocking itself out
5) gopher hunting or just finding a gopher skull to decorate my room w/ (no really, they're so intricate and cool!) actually i take that back, i *need* to shoot something living that's furry and that screws the farm over...
6) beating a table full of guys in texas holdem and spending the money on barcadi breezers, yes a drink right now would be very nice...
7) knowing the rest of, "DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD..."
8) setting a certain dutch reformed, the-only-public-Christian-school high school in edmonton on fire
9) waking up tomorrow morning in coquitlam next to john and since i'm going there, i minds' well wish that time would stand still for 2 years in that moment. there i wished it.
10) being able to hand out a decaf drink to a bitchy customer that needed their caffine fix just one last tiiiiime
11) wipping my brother's ass at family guy monopoly and then gloating about it for days about how i'm so awesome and better than him b/c i'm older. *sigh* those were days until he grew and got smarter. no really, i'm a good older sister, nathan and i are close.
12) finally finding that yellow brick road therefore making all my referrences not insane and not stupid.

that's it, i'm tired. i just downloaded, "butterfly" by crazytown and that's made me pretty joyful. oh orange county, you were such a good movie now weren't you? ahem. if any of you guys give me any of the above things you will instantly become a good friend of mine. yes, since good friendships are fucking cheap these days, i thought it appropriate to put that out there. excuse my french, i'm a little bitter right now. damn it, i so wish canada had volcanoes right now...

retail

In my experiences at The Gap, Starbucks and now The Olive Garden I keep being reminded that people generally are just stupid. And it seems like the half of those people have dedicated themselves to the growing, world-wide cult of beligerency. I'm sure under the cover of darkeness, they secretly drive off in their mini-vans to their domain where they swap stories of how they made servers cry and baristas make their drink over 6 times b/c it wasn't exactly 180 degrees before they floored it out of the drive-thru. Then i'm sure after they have their sharing time, the leader (which often times is referred to as "satan") makes his expected, courteous and seemingly caring and inspirational speech of how they can be even worse the next day. Then it's followed by rounds of rip-roaring texas holdem where customer recovery coupons are the anty and the winner gets tipped out everything that wasn't tipped to all the servers of that week. It can be pretty good money depending upon their bills and believe me, the victory and honour of winning such a holdem match would be instant glory and bragging rights all around. Even the moms who were on a tighter budget in the corner on the green, ripped sofas would nod their approval as they played a milder version of dutch blitz. They may even offer you a ride home or ask about your personal life. Yes, this is where one can build true friends. These people must be in a pact, they feed so hungrily and come in waves honking their horns, pounding their fists at the till or intentionally messing up the men's colared, striped, hard-to-freaking-fold-again long-sleeved shirts in Section 2.

Though sometimes their comments may seem to fall on deaf ears, they're very much heard. We give them their chicken romas for free, refund their clothes over the due date and continually make them their Venti, no water, 6 pumps, soy, 180 degrees, no foam, w/ cinnamon powder on top, double-sleeved Chai Lattes. It's what we do best. I sure hope their weekly meetings go well and that their chants can be heard well into the streets of Whyte Ave. If I find this place, I will rat them out to the hippies or maybe I'll call up my friends who religiously buy everything you can think of for their paintball guns and we'll fire off a few rounds. I hope they have purple paintballs...that would make me a very happy girl. :) Yeesh, anyone want to vote that i'm starting my period soon?

LIFE

So this is what life is: a lot of disapointments and some randomly placed "good times"? I'm asking b/c part of me is wondering if this statement is generally true while the other part is trying to weigh if it's worth just giving up. A person can only go one for so long and can only invest so much of themselves until nothing's left. And you're just left w/ yourself or whatever is left of yourself that is, when "friends" and experiences are done deteriorating you. This is sounding quite hopeless isn't it? I guess it shouldn't though b/c I'm a Christian and should have all the hope in the world, right? Don't you hate it when you know one thing and believe it yet it's so contrary to you feel? And what's the deal w/ feelings and emotions controlling humanity anyways?! I don't get it, it frustrates me. Actually, the reason why it frustrates me is b/c I do get it and sometimes I just feel stuck inside myself and I can't express the ways I may want. I see myself acting and falling into things like everyone around me and sometimes, I can't seem to stop myself. We have so much potential and so much power behind us and gifts w/n us, yet we limit ourselves constantly. It's incredibly dissapointing, i can only imagine how it must make God feel Who has all these amazing plans for us and Who built us for success.

I'm semi-depressed. Maybe i shouldn't blog when i am. I like life, i think it can be very vibrant and fun and there's many times where i've stood still and soaked in all life had to offer. I value those times. And if Iwere to step completely out of the self-centered bubble that's around my mac right now, I would honestly say that I love my life too. It must just be one of those days...so how does one deal w/ these "days" and in some cases, seemingly "months"? Do they just stay busy and keep going and forget? Is it healthy to forget? Maybe I should just lower my expectations but then again, it's b/c of lack of expectation that people settle for what's around them and it soon becomes normal and there we have it, the world...The one we helped create b/c we couldn't believe for anything more. At the same time i am only 19 and maybe it's best that I don't go there until then. I think i'll just settle w/ *this* just being LIFE...mainly b/c it's easier to say that and shove it to the side. Maybe someday i'll work on all the things i've shoved to the corners of my table but right now it's what's easier. Yes i'm human and yes i'm settling for less but it seems like it hurts less to settle for less and get less than to hope and be disappointed once again.

And as far as off shore comments go, I would not reccomend long-distance relationships to anyone. I'd like the say that is most of why i feel hopeless and depressed tonight...What can i say? Life just gets hard when you can't be w/ your bestfriend and boyfriend. But that's just how life will be for the next couple years so you just gotta run w/ it and give it your best shot. I sure hope i'm still a good person and can still love and invest in people the ways i want too when the day's done. To me, that's what matters most i suppose.

Paradoxos- a Fraction of an Explanation

Don't build your house on the sandy land, don't build your house too near the shore...

These lines begin the common sunday-school song which teaches children that the desirable goal of life is certainty. I believe that most people are stuck in this mentality. They are afraid to step out of their comfortable beliefs to explore the possibility of something beyond the same rocks on which they stand. Freud calls this arrested development, clinging to the oceanic feeling in which people are trapped like infants completely dictated by their superego. Nietzsche said, balhadghdshghhjaksghfs, and that those people are weak and insignificant. Up until recently in my life I identified with those people on the rock. I was content, but then it cracked. I was forced to move on.

I did not leave my rock intending to find another more desirable rock. I have abolished the idea of certainty from my thinking. In a way...

I would like to return to the song about building one's house on the sand. It has occured to me that the rocks on which we sit, our beliefs, our perceptions, our faith, are very small rocks. In fact, if you step back from all the arguments, discussions and debates you can see that everyone is sitting on their own little rock and all those rocks are the sand. People who claim to have the rock solid truth are just sitting on pieces of sand. It is merely a problem of scope and perspective that they cannot see the fragility of their position.

The problem with what I am currently saying is that I am being entirely unoriginal. Plato being the first to mention this idea. The aforementioned Freud and Nietzsche also said this. The problem with all of those dead white guys is that after criticising peoples' knowledge they set up their own system of belief and then founded their own little rock. They sat down on the beach with everyone else. Nietzsche arguably didn't because he went nuts, which leads to my final thought...

Is the alternative to certainty, insanity?
I hope not! I am looking for some sort of order to chaos. I am looking for certainty to uncertainty. I am looking for knowledge in ignorance. I am seeking the unseekable. I am experiencing paradox. Sometimes it seems futile and it is terrifying, but sometimes I see the paradox and I become ecstatic. This bipolar experience of life is infinitely more certain than the small certainty offered by belief and whatever else people use to delude themselves. I'm not building my house on the sandy land and I am nowhere near the shore, I'm sailing away, and it turns out that the ocean is made out of kool-aid and seahorses are just ancient aquatic saxaphones cursed by Posiedon to float androgynously through the ocean.

My mind is shot from studying for exams, among other things, salute for now...

Entangled in Nightmares

Can the human imagination create something real? Something that, although delusory, has the power to act autonomously of our initial fabrication? By deciding that our perceptions of existence are real we create our world around us. This is true for the mundane details of life, but also affects the most lofty and grand ideals which control our lives.

Our notions of god are nothing more than idols.
We create god out of thoughts and words rather than the wood and bronze of ancient times.
This god is a very weak god, it is no god at all, it is a puppet whom we create and give life.
It is the antithesis of God-
The Infinite, the Beginning and the End.
The One whose name I cannot and must not utter.
But this puppet god that we create, what is it, is it the devil...

Although it is powerless and our creation, we give it power.
It is a chimera dreamt up by children who are afraid of the dark.
It is a judge concocted by those who want to control others.
We bow down and worship this god.
This is blasphemy!

This puppet god is given power by our perceptions.
All of our neurotic fear, shame, guilt, feelings of inadequacy and general puniness are a result of the power we give this dark imposter.
Our own nightmares trap us in a futile cycle of unworthiness.
Christian attempts to sanitize and humanize religion have done nothing but produce an even grimmer god, one who loves us yet is still the perpetrator of an insane existence which forces every individual into submission to those who have the power. There is no freedom from our nightmares within religion.
This is why it has often driven people mad. It is driving me mad.

I find no hope in certainty.
There is no impetus to continue seeking a captive yet enslaving god.
Vagueness does not exist in the incomprehinsible One.
There is all the reason in the universe to seek The Unattainable.

One more thought...a compass does not tell the traveller which direction to go, but rather allows the traveller to choose which way to go by clearly stating the options. Two questions remain:

1. Are up and down and every other fathomably degree alternative options aside from the x and y directions on the compass?
and
2. What will happen to our compasses when the magnetism of the poles reverse? Which way will be up and which will be down. oh no I sound like Nietzsche, I should stop...

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?

El - if - ino...

oh glory, the nectar of life yet retains some sweetness...

My Hermeneutic- genesis of my articulating an idea coherently

I thought that I would clarify my last post. Judging by the rather glib comments mostly poking at my substance abuse issues i take it that the post was too abstract and vague. On one hand I wish to leave it abstract and vague, so that the readers of the text can interpret it in thier own way. The preposterous notion that a text can mean one single thing has long ago been erradicated from most thinking peoples' minds, but it creeps back in subtle ways. People still persist in the fantasy that they can know something that is true. Perhaps this is because people are all very egocentric and are trapped in the sad idea that they even know themselves...back to hermeneutics though...I write so that the reader can read their own human experience into the text and thereby learn something about existence by engaging with the text, i.e. the expression of my human experience. The relationship between writer and reader creates a space where two beings can understand one another, in a form of conversation which has advantages over verbal conversation.

In my last post I wished to say many things:
1. I was commenting on the futility of writing. First, most of what we write in our society is meaninglessness embodied in ink and paper...memos, essays, post-it-notes, reference letters, birthday cards etc...We live in a completely mechanistic and utilitarian society in which most writing constitues the next command into a computer for an international paperclip manufacturing coorporation. Second, the depressingly full libraries of our society are enough to make any writer feel miniscule. Unless, perchance one person reads my work and engages with it in the way described above. Then maybe a scrap of meaning can be found in writing.

2. I was also commenting on a environmental/economic issue, connected to the first point about futility, that we consume huge amounts of natural resources to keep our meaningless society from collapsing in on its paper frame.

3. I was commenting on how we ignore that written text is a connection between writer and reader, described above. We stack our books away and treat them like objects when they are actually an opportunity to communicate with even the dead. To learn more about this idea read Emily Dickinson's poems "In a Library" and "A Book".

What I really want though, is that my readers would respond to the text with their own experiences. That is the written dialogue which is made possible by blogs. I don't want to know if someone liked my writing or not, I really don't care, although literary criticism is a useful exercise. I want people to be affected by the text, allow themselves to be affected, and to respond with their own utterence of their existence.

It is way to late for this and I have hardly clarified my last blog, but I am getting somewhere. I am producing, havn't found the joke yet, but I need the hermeneutical feedback of the other to get anywhere.

and I'm spent...

Black and Blue

It dawned in me a while back that the ink with which we write is black and blue.
This may seem insignificant, but now whever I look at a clean white sheet of paper-
All I can think about is that I am about to bruise its skin black and blue.
A veritable pummeling.
By transferring my thoughts onto paper I am committing an act of violence.
I don't think that I can write anymore.
Think of all those screaming pieces of paper.
In your desk.
In your binders.
Crammed into the books on your shelf.
Waiting in your printer-tray for their impending doom.
Literature is a violent hate crime.
This is a mad world.
Yet, I am comforted by my infrequent use of red-inked pens.

An Unexpected Direction

So, I had some more thoughts on the snow. I have noted before, perhaps not on this blog, that humans generally hate each other and wish to kill one another. I realised this on the bus one day when people were being especially brutish to one another. I wondered why people don't just kill each other. I concluded that people get their latent hate for one another out by focusing all of their anamocity towards prominent figures such as presidents and actors. Take for example the frequent and unrelated references towards George W. Bush everytime something bad happens. eg. "George Bush made hurricanes kill black people". Although much anger towards Dubya is also pent up sexual attraction, which I will someday expand on in my novel "Fuck George Bush: The Modern University Student's Hard-On For Dubya", my point that people release their anger for one another on prominent figures stands. Furthermore, as I watched many snowball fights and the intense facewashes which often come with them I realised something further about human nature. We play war, we have snowball fights, wrestle and often use hyperbolic phrases like "I'm going to kill you". These things, I have observed, are done for the same reason as our focused hatred of prominent people. We hold deepseated hate for each other and seek for relatively non-lethal ways of expressing this hate.

I suppose that I have entirly absorbed a Freudian way of looking at life. I havn't even read much Freud. I don't know whether I have absorbed it diffusely or whether I have thought this stuff up on my own. Probably a bit of both.

I have been feeling a lot of anger lately. I blew a gasket on an old woman who treated me with extreme disrespect and imposed herself on my individual rights and freedoms. I have spent my life being ignored and silenced. It is rather like Lord of the Flies, where the one kid who knows what to do is inevitably crushed. This world, civilization, is run by the murderers and megalomaniacs. I could jump out right now and get into this, but I have turned a post that began as a light hearted comedic observation about how humans behave and now it is treading into my darker side. We don't need to go there.

The joke of a comedian is always supposed to make you weep and laugh at the same time. All I can do is either make someone weep or laugh. I can't tell a good joke unless I can elicite both responces at the same time. I cannot find the subtle tragicomic dusk of human communication.

This post has taken a rather unexpected direction...

Of Snowmen and Timberwolves

So, it is snowing in the land of Vancouver, and I am actually enjoying life. The phenomenon of snow in Vancouver brings out many odd things. In the endless suburb of Surrey life springs from the white smoothering blanket of snow. Couples tromp through the snow as if they have an obligation to walk in the rare snowfall. Neighbors who never talk chat while they shovel their driveways. Kids and teenagers are dragged behind the family truck on sleds or snowboards. Snowmen and snowwomen, and I guess snowgendermixedbeings abound. Snowball fights are intense and joyful. I have two comments to make about snow.

1. taking a snowmsn into a hot tub is the best thing in the world, his last moments would be glorious and then he would return to the liquid from whence he formed--all snowmen are buddhists.

2. the only thing that could make snow in the suburbs better is if packs of timber wolves appeared every time that it snowed--life is only worth living if one has to battle timber wolves once in a while.

If only I could live in my imagination. Perhaps I already do...remember to fear yet respect timber wolves and snowpeople, they are our only hope to redeem the human race.

Forty-Second Street Station

Three blocks west of Forty-Second street, and about thirty feet below, there are twentythree people huddled together around three tile posts, waiting for the train. One is a short, jaunty man, with thick eyebrows and a cap, and another is an older woman, wearing a long, thin evening dress, on this otherwise cold day.

The short man is a gambler, probabally not wealthy. He's wearing a grey cap that makes him look like a Sam. Or maybe a John. His briefcase is probabally filled with apples. It's black leather, like every other suitcase, but has several suspicious bulges on each side. He's wearing two suede shoes that almost perfectly match his cap. He just strikes me as a man named Sam.

The woman's the one I can't quite figure out. She's not very attractive, but tall, and thin. She has thin eyebrows, and very dark hair. It looks almost black where she's standing. She probabally argues with her husband about the price of tinto's, or salt, or something. It's a very long dress. Her skin is very white, the mans is dark.

There's only two others sitting on the benches. A woman with a two year old daughter, and an elderly man with a beat up homburg, pretending not to notice the child pulling at his shoe laces. Everyone else is standing. It's perfectly silent, save for the little girl, and the two lovers whispering to eachother. It's so quiet. You can just hear the high wistle on down the line. Everyones head turns left. Only the two lovers remain captivated in eachother. Even the child looks up from the old mans shoelaces.
28

Chicken Pot Pie

In the Empire State building, when men conferenced for newer, more efficient, cost- effective rubber solutions, and women hurriedly scribbled memos to drop in the void- tube to nowhere, there was Helen, an old hen, living her final days in the coo-coo's nest, left of the barn, near
the farmhouse. When the time came to lay an egg, she would try and try, and yet every time still, come up at a deficiency. This happened time and time again, until at last, the other hens began to notice.

"She's just not got any left, I'm telling you," said the two little hens from accounting. "She's run out!"

"Oh hush you two," Said the Work Horse, peeking in through the door, "I bet she'll still have many."

"She's missed nearly three, horse," said one of the young hens, flauntingly.

"It's never been a problem before," Replied the Horse, " In all the years I've known her."

"Then your memory must be going before your age, horse, she's not laid an egg for near a month."

-"Yha, Yha! Forward!" Cried the farmer.

"I still DON'T REMEMBER ANY-" Neighed the work horse.

The whip finally snapped, and the horse plodded on forward. The gossiping hens heard the wagon beat on, and grow more faint.

The days rolled past, and things in the cubicle stayed much the same. The old hen had still not laid an egg, and the farmer grew more and
more impatient. By the end of the fiscal year the old hen seemed infertile, and finally the farmer came by to inspect.

"I tell you Josephine, there's only 6!"

"Well check again Robert, we need more than that!"

The farmer counted off the eggs, pointing at them dumbly, "One, Two, Three, Four-"

" -Robert, the carton is empty. I need another dozen," Josephine interrupted, standing with her hip to the door post, holding the empty carton in her left hand, above her elbow.

The farmer walked down the row of cubicles to inspect the three hens. He lifted the first, then the second, and patted each gently on the
head in the vain belief that one more should fall out. He gathered two eggs in his left hand and rolled them gently in his basket. He finally lifted old
Helen, the third, and patted her on the head. Nothing falling out, and not wanting to be wasteful, he picked her up, placed her gently on the table
outside the nest, and removed a knife from the wall. He held it against the skin above her neck, and drove it quickly through.

General madness

Am I the only one who thinks it would be great fun to go temporarily insane?
A truly mad person is in all likelihood the only person on earth who truly believes; and never doubts for a moment, their own sanity.
Wouldn't it be nice, if only for a short time, to feel such certainty about the matter?

Even if you WERE to believe that God lives in the big house across the street-
the one with the polkadot curtains, which emits the overpowering smell of potatoes.
That the ants are stealing your thoughts and selling them to the wily badger that is plotting your downfall from inside his sinister, underground den, reciting FIERY propoganda before a packed house of mice, stoats, vole, and other vermin.
To say nothing of the fact that you believe with the firmest conviction that the "advil people" are in collusion with the badger, and are trying to slow your cat like reflexes, so- BAM! the badger can get you...

It'd still be worth it...

mmmmm, mushrooms... http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com

Lyrics and Lithium

I like music. It makes me happy. Or angry depending on the tone. But it seems that some songs have no lyrics and are just noise. Yes, yes I know what you're thinking. "But oh great pretty one, should I have toast? " The answer of course lies in any Chuck Norris film. Some might say rock and its divisons are nothing but noise. Some rock songs are truly poetry. While others dwell no more deeper then an ant in pudding. Case in point Maroon 5.
The topic of this blog is, as I have stated, lyrics. THere are some songs that I'm fairly certain are completely bat-plop insane. The first being 'Louie Louie' by the Kingsmen. What the deuce are they going on about? Granted it was the 50's and rock was just stumbling onto the scene but even then songs usually had intelligable lyrics other then 'Louie louie, oh baby we gotta go'. I put it down to booze. Not that booze hinders. But it does reduce ones way of coveying a message.
Another song I'd like you all to listen to is 'Even Flow' by Pearl Jam. If one person on this wide web can give me the exact lyrics to that song, that doesn't contradict to another version I will give them all the money in my pocket. 'Even Flow' is pretty much Eddie Veder stumbling into a recording studio and cranking out a song. Not that its a bad song mind you. It just has no lyrics other the 'Even FLOOOOOOOOW'.
In todays music, lyrics are trying to be all imagery. If you read the lyrics from Green Days 'American Idiot' album you'll find alot of nuances and hidden messages. Mostly about how they hate Dubya. Going back a bit to a project band, Temple of the Dog, thier song 'Wooden Jesus' is a satire of why it costs money to purchase a religious icon and the irony behind that. Most Nirvana songs are like that. Nirvana came at the right time in history when a generation of young people were moody and searching. And lyrics from all thier albums convey a message of the same. Thats why it relates so well to people no matter where they are in life.
There are plenty of other songs that the lyrics either make little sense or none at all (IE Peaches by Presidents of the United States of America) or a combination of loud guitars and drugs. But is it better to have non-sensical lyrics or shallow ones? TOO DEEP TOO DEEP! PULL OUT! These questions will continue to be until I see fit to answer them. If there are other songs that you're pretty sure have no lyrics, by all means comment them. But if you're that pushy Rogers guy again, I will consume you in a ball of fire. Goodness gracious. Oh and before I forget, does anyone else think that the lead singer of the band Godsmack, Sully, is singing "Speak the truth, or make you're pee some other way"? Just me I guess.
Adieu
Jack White is scratching at my door.

ummmm

WE CAN USE BIGGER FONTS with different things and even colour. This is by far the coolest thing I have ever seen. BOLD FONT! sweeeeeeettttttt...

Ignorance

Teenagers have a natural rebellious behavior. We all seek to develop an opinion of our own, and often this search leads us to a conflict with the traditional beliefs of our society. Traditional society of course being Christian. This rebellious attitude against Christian beliefs has spawned such popular fads as "The DaVinci Code." Unfortunately, it also spawns irrational anti-Christian opinions, and effectually causes the public to acknowledge the average believer to be a right wing neo-fascist.

We all already recognize teenagers as being rebellious, so to a certain extent, we simply roll our eyes. But what happens when this attitude continues into adulthood? Should we continue to roll our eyes? Should we tolerate their ignorance? I recently read several reader comments in the "Vancouver Sun" newspaper about several issues, all religious, and I am ashamed to say not one well-informed person, with a logical, intelligent opinion, either replied, or had their letter printed.

I respect differing opinions, but I cannot help becoming enraged when a clearly immature child, or adult, presses upon others their irrational opinion based on little more than popular culture and misinformation. Our culture is not a Christian one. Our populace publicly denounces Christianity, and with frequency takes delight in poking fun at Jesus Christ, where Muslims, Buddhists, or any other religious group would demand a public apology.

In a nation with standards as high as ours, we respect those with differing opinions. So why must ours not be heard? Why must we be silent, and endure this onslaught of public hatred and mockery based only on ignorant opinions? With a policy of tolerance, why must we not be tolerated? Our government preaches high ideals, and our people make a farce of them.

I am no Republican. I do not agree with either the notion that all Christians must be right-wing pseudo-fascists, nor do I agree with whatever truth may be behind it.

It is time for the public to dispense with their infantile opinions, and mature into a truly intelligent, free-thinking populace, rather than an ignorant, irrational group of blind and deaf lone wolves; vicious and misinformed.

Alienation, why do I puke out words when I could say them so much better if I took the time to stop and write like someone who is worth reading...

So, I thought that I would write something worth reading as well. I was studying for an exam the other day and reading about different theories of perception, such as Direct Realism, Indirect Realism, Phenomenology, and Disjunctivism. It was all rather mind boggling, but I think that I have a grasp on what each of the positions was trying to say. As I sat there thinking, I began to realise, not for the first time, just how much of a facade our physical existence is. I thought about that one thought for so long and hard that my vision began to blur and it was as if the world was vanishing before me. Now, I don't do drugs, other than medicinal pain killers, MEDICINAL, but is this wierd? Does this happen to normal people? I was told yesterday that I am not a human, and I am inclined to agree. I really have no idea what humans are talking about and why they would do the things they do. Am I the only one, or is this alienation felt by all those who has gazed at a wall until it has disappeared? Maybe I should stop reading Emily Dickenson, she was a wacko...but so right. Ahhh, maybe if I go contemplate the colour green everything will glow with an emerald sheen. I want to climb a mountain and have a maitai kickboxing match with a blind tibetan monk. Anyone else in?

Recant

Ok, so I read the articles and take back what I said. They are very good. Please don't come to my house looking for sexual gratification Pretty One, you will find an infertile womb and an untouched glass of wine in the face. Where have you been, you've been out with that floozy again, haven't you, HAVEN'T YOU! Well that's just fine then...Hey could we seriously get sued, cause if so let's try for it. I shall be ranting about the abolition of women's suffrage later if anyone cares...p.s. Margaret Thatcher was a man.

Huzzuh, I LIVE

I cannot believe the acid trip this place has turned into in my absense! I am not even going to bother with all this reading. Can't a guy go and fight for the People's Army of the Republic of Congolese Anarchists (or PARCA for short) without the whole place going to the turkies...well I guess it was inevitable. Who are these other people who have been added to the list? They had better be hot and if not rich and if not that then incredibly good people, like the elephant man. Well, I have to get back to my propogandizing of African minorities...

Sex starved love monkeys

We live in a sex crazed society. Instead of the elaborate social gatherings of yesteryear, in which a formal dance was alive with passion; the brush of a cheek, or the touch of hands electric, we sink to the highly sexualized 'grinding' of modern "dance". Were this an isolated occurence, restricted only to dance, or even to entertainment as a whole, it would be easy to turn a blind eye to this harmless fun. However, this cultural change is symptomatic of a complete shift in society; a general numbing of our more refined senses.
Like one addicted to pornography or narcotics, our society finds itself needing stronger and stronger doses of stimuli to arrive at the same buzz. Where once romance, and it's undertones of sexual fancy was commuicated through the brush of hands, or a longing gaze, we now must resort to grinding our sexual organs together in a mute pantomime of the sexual act. An orgistic aerobics class for the sexually depraved. A sexual warm up, to the pounding beat of the latest pop hit.
As we grow ever number, we've required more and more forceful stimuli to arouse us; just as a crystal meth, or cocain addict, a porn addict or serial killer requires more and more potent doses, explicit content, or gruesome acts to satisfy their hunger.

So where does that leave us? In a darkened corner befouling ourselves, perhaps?

But what does this isolated issue speak of in relation to society as a whole? A time when both men and women are ashamed of their bodies, and strive relentlessly not to be healthy, fit and active, but to appear healthy, fit and active, to look like the supposed ideal set out by the media, models, and movie stars.
Now, the difference between these mind-sets may not be readily apparent, and although slight, make all the difference, both physically and phsychologically.
The former stresses a healthy attitude and lifestyle, without worrying about counting calories, obsessing over the scale, and purging oneself to the brink of bulemia; instead it strives to eat, live, and exercise healthily- looking fit and healthy are of course natural by-products of living a healthy lifestyle.
The latter thinks only of the final product- looking good, and tries to achieve it through extremely unhealthy means. Through purging, crash dieting, and unhealthy levels of exercise; in short, is hell bent on the illusion of healthiness, rather than living healthily itself.
It is this simple difference that leads to the epidemic level of chronic low self esteem across all demographics in western society, and beyond.

Western society as a whole is dysfunctional, unhealthy, and is quickly reaching a point of catastrophic damage from which we will have only two choices- immediate change, or a continued and irreversable slide into unimportance and obscurity.

But what, if any link is there from chronic low self esteem, to modern dance style?
Quite simply, the overwhelming majority of western youth have such poor self esteem that they have lost their respect for their bodies, and for themselves as people. For this reason, and naturally, a broad range of other factors, we find ourselves in this state of modern decay. Where once the flutter of eyelashes, or the subtle walk of a preening woman were enough to capture the affections of a suitor, young women today grind their thin, malnourished bodies against the crotch of strangers in clubs.
And for what?
To forge an immature relationship between oversized children for the purpose of mutual esteem? A young womans' feeling of sexual power or control over men driven to the brink by a woman practically laying him right on the dance floor?
Is this healthy?

Clearly this is merely a symptom of sociological downfall that effects every facet of life. A problem so far-reaching that it cannot be escaped.
So do I propose banning such acts, no. Treating the symptom is as ineffectual as putting a band-aid on an arterial hemorrhage. Instead we need to look clearly and unflinchingly at the nearly impossible mire we have trapped ourselves in, and begin to shovel ourselves out.

Oh, and the monkey, he just got off the dance floor and he's feeling very...satisfied. OOOoooh, Yeah!

A year and a Day

Huzzah! Yes, my fellow Nut Jobs. We here at the Insane Ramblings of the Decreped have reached a full year of blogging fun. It has been a hard stuggle with the FCC and the CIA and various organizations that would like to see our downfall. But like the crazy guy on the bus, we persevere because we need booze and drugs.
As creator of this blog, I feel it's my duty to thank you all for scanning over what we have written in our various states of anger and influences. So if I could I would go to each of your houses and pleasure you each one at a time. But apprently theres laws about that. But not in international waters! HA HA! Loophole!
So here we are a year later and a year...worse. Have no fear though. We aren't leaving any time soon. Theres still people who haven't heard us, still haven't read us, still haven't paid us. And what have I, the Pretty one, learned? Nothing really. I know all I need to and make up the rest.
There will be more postings by myself, the Philosopher, The Irishmen and the Canuck and maybe if we can supply her with booze and male prostitutes, a final FEMALE impression of the word. I know, it'll be like watching the Womens Television network but with more work invovled but bear with us. She has powers.
Continue to post comments, and laugh and read, people. For the revolution must begin at some point and with the state of the world today, someone needs to be proded. So be on the look out for blogs on Harper to Hamas, Iraq to IEDs, Bush to....Katrina, whoever she is. And maybe, perhaps if we don't get sued we'll have another year post. Two years I might be dead. I'm not kidding. Theres several people looking for me. Please help.
Adieu.
My spine is glued to the chair.