Response to Alfsvoid

12 Dec 2018

I wrote this as a response to this video. I can't be bothered to edit it so maybe watch the video first if you care? I don't care. Do what you want, it's a free country. LOL but anyway I commented that the video was "sophomoric, solipsistic, and self-indulgent" and the video maker answered: Why? so here's why.

I proceed with the assumption that your errors are in good faith, because you are a smart person and when you talk about topics you really know in your other videos you do so with nuance and well.

This video is sophomoric, because it is poorly informed and poorly researched. The extent of the research done seems to have been that you watched mainstream and right-of-mainstream coverage of the migrant caravan and simply regurgitated their talking points along with some minor opinion around the margins allowed in this self-imposed Overton Window. You did not delve into the origins of the poverty, violence, and lack of institutional infrastructure and governance necessary to control violent crime that is plaguing certain Central American countries. You merely took it as a given that they cannot govern themselves. The fact that powerful outside actors have been actively interfering in these countries and propping up murderers and dictators literally for decades went completely unmentioned and perhaps un-thought. And yet, you also managed to contradict yourself here with your normative prescription that the migrants stay home and improve their country rather than emigrate. If they cannot govern themselves by nature, what difference would it make if they stay home? Moreover, while you did dwell at length on the fact that the majority of the migrants are men, you again failed to enquire as to the possible reasons this is so. Could it be that the criminal gangs active in Honduras and El Salvador prefer to recruit men of military age, and that therefore young men are the most at risk? Could it be an intentional tactic so that the men can establish themselves in asylum and in gainful employment once they arrive at their destination before they send for their families, who would then be able to immigrate legally or at least in a less dangerous fashion? Again, you seem to not have given this any thought.

This video is solipsistic because it relies on an extremely limited set of political priors. This becomes evident with your inclusion of the Horowitz clip, which is peppered with far-right conspiracy theory in its commentary, but becomes absolutely clear when you present the HuffPo clip as representative of “left” thought. HuffPo is not “left-wing media.” Some HuffPo pieces may be left-wing, some are not, and this clip is not. We can disagree about whether HuffPo’s framing of the altercations at the border is “appropriate,” but that is ultimately irrelevant because the clip does not offer a leftist critique of the migration crisis at all. A more appropriate term for the HuffPo clip is “clickbait,” and the fact that you took a piece of clickbait as representative of a leftist point of view of the crisis is quite telling. Specifically, it tells me that you don’t know what leftism is or what it stands for. In this, you seem to be taking your own biases for granted; you did not look outside yourself for any true opposing view to your own, such as this: watch?v=tkWng_oWBr8 (go to minute 3.)

And finally, this video is self-indulgent because you ultimately did not challenge yourself in any way. Granted, this is Youtube. But you seem capable of better work. So, it’s still disappointing. I’d be interested to know what your actual response to an actual leftist critique would be on matters of actual state policy, not the impulsive actions of a few desperate individuals who understand that, to quote Warsan Shire, “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”

The Dawn of Doublethink on a Young Mind

Original creation date: 15 February 2005

the first discovery you make is doublethink. when you are able to doublethink, you feel as if the political quandaries of the world suddenly unfold in front of you. as they unfold, you go on different tangents and come up with new questions for previously unthought thoughts.

one of those thoughts revolves around the importance of perception. understanding doublethink, you realize that most of the world’s concepts rely on public perceptions of certain phenomena. it becomes easy to turn any story on its head, to comprehend different views of the world, and thus understand the great importance of perceptions.

pretty soon one faces a quandary of moral relativism. if any single situation can be framed in two situations with completely different sets of values and be equally valid, what then is morality? morality is a mere collection of human dogmas that have allowed us to live somewhat peacefully in complex society.

the next step is a steady decline into chronic existentialism. one gradually realizes the inherent unimportance of every action one takes. emotions become more important than physical feelings; the deadening grip of solipsism encases us.

what does one do when one discovers nothing really matters?

An Incredible, Unbelievable Experience

Original creation date: 20 February 2005

as i sit here and watch the tapes of my father made almost ten years ago i just had the most incredible, unbelievable experience.

T and i agreed to meet at his place but he never came tot the door. as i walked back disappointed, i thought of many things and suddenly ran into a group of strangers. what rough group. at first i thought they were wearing some sort of fraternity uniform…. all wore a black top with denim bottoms (or most of them anyway.) it was strange feeling for me because i usually do no t notice patterns like that; i am almost never aware of clothes.

as i said, when i first saw this phenomenon i assumed automatically atht they were wearing a uniform. but soon i began seeing this was not the case, the more i got close to them. no, they were all wearing this on their own volition; they had all independently reached the conclusion of that particular wardrobe.

for a split second, as the epiphany hit me, i freaked completely.

i was also wearing a black top and denum bottoms.

i imagined my whole life as a series of repetitions of things that had already passed.

i imagined looking up my won words online, and finding tens of thousands of matches.

i composed a short story, “i, clone” in about five seconds.

i passed the group, and with every step i took my thesis was confirmed. i crossed the street, and a couple dressed in black and blue passed beside me. i looked to the right, into the mcdonalds, and a black man in black and blue was ordering his supper. i progressed as people in black and blue exited the local supermarket. i looked across the street, and two girls in black and blue passed in front of the church.

i started to despair. i desperately looked for sings to disprove my theory. please, i cried inside, show me someone that is not dressed in lblack and blue! local ben and jerrys employees wore denim but their shirts were purple and beige, respectively.

as i passed next to the local theatre, a group of five girls in front of me, mostly dressed in black and blue, struck me as interesting. as i passed them, an amazing thing happened. one of them hit on me.

she wore a pink puffy jacket over her blue jeans. she spoke, simply, “hi”.

as alert as i was, i was deeply immersed in touhght. i slowly looked up and found that as i had hoped, she was in fact addressing me.

“just being friendly,” she said. obviously drunk, i thought.

“hi”, i replied.

they were smoking cigarettes.

“can i have a drag,”i asked.

“sure,” she said, and gave me the remaining fourth of her cig. all yours, she said. i said thank you. i took a drag. you saved me.

i finished her cig and continued my own path as they took another one. a minute later i was grinning from ear to ear. i had done something that fulfilled me, tonight.

it’s interesting, this human need for interaction. there is a rush associated with meeting new people. when it’s an attractive girl, it’s very often a good rush.

i cruised this way for about three blocks, my mind completely overtaken by this emotion. i wondered about the amazing human need for emotion. a life withougt emotion, i pondrered, is most unsatirfactroy. people require their daily dose of political and social interaction in order to generate emotions, because emotions are the rawest, ccrudest form of knowledge, and from them stems the capacity to be human. a man without emotions in his life is a robot, and is not any more alive than a palm frond .

three blocks in, i was crossing a street when a football hit my calf. annoyed, i picket up the football and started walking away.

hey buddy, pass the football, came a male voice. as i reacted, he added, you’ll regret it. i threw the ball back. i didn’t look back.

another rush of emotion. i loved it. a twinge of danger. no wonder men are addicted to war. in the absence of love, war is the only logical thing to pursue. if a man cannot love the woman he desires, he must release that emotion in a violent retaliation against those he dislikes.

emotion—i was addicted to it. a great clarity overcame me, and i looked at the stars. long ago, i thought, it was in them scribed that i was foreordained to fraternize with these people, and experience these feelings. i felt like a blank slate, being able to experience emotion in its rawest form, perhaps for the first time since i was born.

i could get used to this, i thought.

a heffalump is a dog-sized domesticated elephant. it occurs to me i want to own a heffalump someday.

The Genesis of Will and the Role of Currency

Original creation date: 5 August 2006

image conscious. image conscious. this is the phrase maria used today. image conscious.

this has been a trip down memory lane. ‘everything has changed and everything has stayed the same.’ maybe a soap opera of real life. like ‘the Truman show’. it has its own internal logic and plot twists.

sandy cohen was like, don’t put ryan in jail because he is really intelligent as demonstrated by these tests, and he will one day be a productive citizen of the united states and make this country a lot of money basically.

the basic problem of humanity is that everybody wants to rule the world. it’s a cliché but yet holds the answer, because to take away that desire is to basically destroy the human spirit. in other words there is no way to remedy this condition without wiping out our basic reason to live.

maybe somewhere they tried to do that and when it succeeded all the people who stopped wanting to rule the world could see no further meaning in life and so committed suicide collectively, thus rendering the system useless.

i guess by a strictly utilitarian point of view, religions that seem to make at least some people happy are a good thing. but that’s the problem with the strictly utilitarian view: it is necessary to properly understand the nature of the possible externalities of such a policy. aum shriyiko, a cult, killed several people in the Japanese metro with poison gas, and on September 11, what was basically a gigantic cult managed to attack the most powerful nation on earth for the first time in centuries. then again, one stumbles into the definition of a cult, which is surprisingly vague. the difference between a cult and a government seems to hinge largely on military might. which, basically, means finances. if bill gates decided to do so, he could probably buy his way into royalty, either by establishing his own kingdom on, say, Antarctica, or, even better, by purchasing the presidency of the united states, and hence control over most of the world. how many billions of dollars went into the creation and sustenance of al-qaeda, tupac amaru, the ezln, the eta, the ira . . . because in truth the main culprit of the current world situation is also its greatest benefactor, and therein lies the irony of this so-called democracy. Hezbollah may have billions of disposable dollars, but Israel has trillions, and as long as people truly believe they are entitled to rule over the rest of the world, they will keep fighting until the other is completely crushed. of course, amazing reverses have occurred in history—the epitome being the American revolution—but the list of lost causes is exponentially larger. not just in terms of revolutionary movements like the boxers and the boers, but in terms of large social movements that people have vested their lives in, like dead constitutional amendment proposals, dead religions like Egyptian mythology, greek mythology, or the shakers, and neo-cults revolving around monetary or other issues, such as the luddites.

should i goto this party-thing? i definitely need to eat something and then i’ll be good to go, but do i want to? i don’t really want to. but part of me is telling me to go anyway just to gather face, basically. is that right, gather face? i wanted to find an angle, but i can’t come up with anything. what do you say? ‘no i’m not ****, i’m just in a lot of physical pain; i just got shot in the arm yesterday’?! and that’s the best one i can come up with.

The Fast and Nietzche's Hypothesis

Original creation date: 28 July 2007, after the beach

THE FAST

the fast--
sometimes people ask me why i did the fast.
and i think
there are a number of reasons.
and in the first place
the fast felt weird,
but i'm glad i did it
because i learned some new things.
and learning is good.
i learned that i don't have the best reaction to dairy, for example,
and that fruit is actually a very good snack.
last time i did it,
i learned that soda really sucks if you're fasting,
and that's what it probably really tastes like, but we're so used to it
we don't realise that.
day one was sunday, supposably: i went to the docks and ate shrimp.
but i ate little else, and felt okay at the end of the day.
i learned that indeed beans make you f... arty.
day two was the real beginning, monday,
and julie wasnt there,
and i ate salad and fruit and it was good.
day three was the test,
and julie was there,
and i ate salad and fruit and julie argued with me about it,
which was weird,
but it was still okay.
day four was wednesday, hump day,
and it was okay at the beginning but i felt wearier and wearier
as the day drew on,
and i ate very little, not a full meal for lunch, as i define full meals.
or used to at least.
and that day i did alot of physical work, too,
a lot of walking.
which normally would of been fine, but my body was starting to complain.
from all this walking, i developed a sort of pain in the leg
the tiredness soreness of gyms.
and thursday was the real beginning of the strict water fast,
which did not go as expected.
i was extremely tired all day, because i was moving to a new room
in the morning.
even so, i went to see ratatouille.
i felt extremely tired, but it was all the more memorable because of that.
it was like a more intense form of living.
everything is experienced that much more intensely.
it's not really the hunger, i think;
it's the tiredness.
i can deal with the hunger okay, i have a lot of willpower in that regard;
but the tiredness defeated me eventually.
and boy. i was tired.
and i ate some bread that night
and the next day, friday,
did not do anything, just lie in bed really, and i was like
this is ridiculous, i need to eat or im just gonna feel tired
all the time.
which would suck.
so i started eating, first the fruit; then i moved on to some carrots
with ranch dressing, which has dairy;
and i realised that yes, dairy sort of irritates;
so it's a trade-off between yummyness and pain, really;
and then i ate some more fruit
and some reprocheta, with cheese.
which is also dairy. see above.
finally,
today,
i mostly broke the fast,
very slowly and deliberately
with some potato chips and some pizza.
lol. like.. the unhealthiest shit possible.
anyway, feel fine.
next up some fruit, apple and pear, probly
the nectarines arent too good.
bastards.
tomorrow probably some normalization
within reason, obviously.
=)

--

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW

what the world needs is more rihannas.
black people and asian people need to start interacting more.
well that, and more alicia keyses.
and giuliano palmas, i guess.
um.. and.. yeah.

--

GOD IS DEAD

so, nietzche is fun.
god is dead, he says,
because we have killed him.
the argument is rather convoluted, even though it is actually quite straightforward, so bear with me. i think it goes something like, people's herd instinct made individuality undesirable both because it was not always what was best for the herd and because being an individual is actually a painful and undesirable experience when one is used to the herd and accepts herd morality without question. therefore, whenever people wanted to justify individual behaviour and others demanded an explanation, he would just say oh it is not me that says it is so, but a god that speaks through me. thus was born theism and thus polytheism. the jewish tradition did away with polytheism and thus created a common morality once again in the religious area, and so men were not able to explain away their individual creative impulses through deities anymore as it was a sin and punishable by death. the judeo-christian tradition begot the creation of science, which is not really much more than a better description of the world, but does not really explain anything. science descrobe the world in better, more predictable patterns than theism, and thus the need for theism was expired, so to speak. by describing the world in ways easier for the human brain to predict, theism was at last no longer necessary and man was free of having to worship nature with deities. so, basically, god is dead. hmm.

in fact, everything is dead. what we call 'living' is just a very rare type of dead stuff.

yeah, nietzche is kind of a mindjob.

Important passages:
I: 1-14,24,29-31,33,37-56
III: 108-153

Heartbreak and Time Travel

[Original creation date: 30 November 2008]

thoughts of heartbreak fill men's heads with the supernatural. consciousness is heightened when one is forced to confront the primal necessities and instincts of people, especially «civilised» people.

«civilization» itself has many biases versus «non-civilisation», «tribalism», or however you call it. to be civilised means nothing more than believing in a civil society as opposed to a tribal one. it just means you observe a different set of basic institutional and political beliefs. it is not a judgment on the pros and cons of either.

dealing with her always was and still is like treating with small children who want everything their way, and if they don't have it their way they get irritated and confused. she's had it her way all her life, why not now? maybe she'll learn something from me too, who knows?

causality makes time travel possible. if you have half the equation, you can figure out the whole equation with a few simple axioms. much like only a piece of RNA is needed to figure out the corresponding DNA, it is a logic-based system. causality is one of these two-way equations, because as we know, supposedly--every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

going forward or backward in time is just a way of putting the logic of life in motion and it will be the same both going forward and in reverse. finding that node in the infinity of multiverses, however, is so infinitely precise that it is almost inconceivable.

the only way one could safely travel back and forth between different times and not alter your own timeline is if the past is immutable, and by consequence, so is the future: assume determinism. removing any and all stochastic quantum interference, however, also makes it impossible to alter reality in any physical way. in fact, our bodies could not even exist in the physical plane because the butterfly effect of the simple displacement of air, the breathing and exhaling of air, mere existence would mutate the world in unpredictable ways.

so how to exist in the past if not physically? the astral plane is the only alternative left. whether this means a revision of physical laws or a higher power does not necessarily matter.

The Theosophy of Beauty

[Original creation date: 3 October 2008]

THE THEOSOPHY OF BEAUTY - PRELUDE TO PSYCHOHISTORIC REINTERPRETATIONS OF MODERN TIMES

1

You know, being alone is not such a bad thing. Loneliness gives us an opportunity to know ourselves and do what we consider important, useful, personally productive. for example, it gives us time to write. when else would one write than when one is alone?

2

loneliness is necessary to cleanse the soul. just as one requires time in the morning to cleanse the body, and times of repose at night to cleanse the mind, times of loneliness cleanse our souls. too much, however, and souls may be cleansed right off of existence.

3

solitary thought is fucked up. it leads you into the most unusual endeavours--your mind and your soul have free reign to communicate solely to each other. this requires interruptions throughout the day, otherwise ....

4

conformity is the easiest thing to do, so it is our default setting with things we don't really give a crap about. some prefer to conform to dress styles, or speech patterns, or philosophical ideas/constructs, or whatever because it is the easiest thing to handle the rest of humanity and the rest of mortal existence with. on the other hand, when we can afford to not conform, it is because we have voluntarily and purposefully decided that conforming was actually more difficult than not conforming. from thence springs human distraction and dissatisfaction. distractions are luxuries--things like fashion trends for the dress nonconformists; linguistics and wordplay and debate and literature for those concerned with the word. dissatisfactions become revolutions--nonconformity with the System, with the Man. i have a nonconformity with the use of uppercase letters. we all have our little nonconformities, and it shapes our personalities.

our bodies and minds and soul, the construct that is the «i», shape our preferences regarding the way we treat others and the world, and ignores some things and focuses on others. it does those things voluntarily, from within, and the reasons for those impulses are as mysterious as their genesis. is that where god really lies, in the mystery that cannot be explained, ever, with words? something that can only ever be felt?

i've never really understood myself, myself. the way i think my thoughts and they way i express them, finally, with words, either spoken or on paper, are so different from what i actually thought, what actually passed through my brain, that at the end of communication it is an essentially different idea which is communicated. how improbably bizarre is it to imagine that two people can ever really understand each other, with all this noise going on between the thoughts of two distinct minds? only with direct mind communication can any true communication ever happen, and even then a whole lot of context would be lost if it were not supplied.

and so, despite enormous obstacles, we possess language, something that at least allows enough communication to get us to where we are now. imagine what feats would be possible if we could have what the borg or the vulcans possess. no wonder we are so retrograde--we cannot even agree on the sanctity of human life, much less on ridiculous minutiae like the colour of the sky or jerusalem or the use of money. the world as we know it is a huge construction, the result of a million years of humans trying to satisfy their urges to conform and not conform, and to do it in the easiest way possible.

On The Politics Of Mutual Dependence

[Original creation date: 27 September 2008]

mutual dependence. relationships of mutual dependence. the desire to be free of most sorts of mutual dependence relationships, especially if they involve money. that's why work is considered such a dirty task by the rich.

Chrissy was a cutie. chougz. who ever really knew her, i wonder. she's a legend for me.

i just don't agree with capitalisation rules. i ignore the rules i dislike and keep the ones i like. that's that.

Chougssss.... she was hot. Damn. she's real. i can see her. 422 portraits of her. damn. movie star hot. great marketing on her facebook. she's not real. but she is; i did meet her.

i wish someone would just fucking tell me about the politics beforehand. that's such a huge hurdle.

i just finished reading the benedetti short stories collection 'la muerte y otras sorpresas'.

__________________________________

the customers are like our clients... well... i guess they're the same thing.

loads of strangers that i give money to every day. but somehow they still manage to get angry sometimes. and sometimes it's my fault, but sometimes i'm just minding my own business and one of them just vomits on my face, except it's with words not actual vomit. this is a difficult experience to type.

to describe. describing things is like writing a really long sentence that you don't understand. when you're done describing you realise you don't know what you're talking about anymore, and we call that conversation. description is such a basic part of our communication. i feel like i lack some basic understanding of communication because i'm not sharp-tongued enough. are there remedial classes on how to be sharper on the spot? it takes me too long how to figure out how to deal with aggression. where does it cross the line into when i can legally say, this is aggression and you are not entitled to my time anymore, and i'm calling security/the police? i dont want to be that guy, but you know what? fuck you lady, i was trying to help you, bitch. and i would try to help you better if you just left me the fuck alone. bitches on stitches, dude.

what happened there? i started describing stuff. see. i knew that would happen somehow. now i've forgotten what i was thinking again.

every topic i manage to hammer out almost has a life of its own, like it was waiting in my brain to emerge for 27 years, and finally comes into the world with a huge sigh of relief, saying, finally, we're out of that brain, finally we can continue out in the world, free to roam other minds as well. like thoughts have thoughts of their own, almost. they're like little ghosts in you, little impressions of the world you grabbed while you were two, or one, or six days, or one minute old.

i don't want to wait in the vain. i really liked this girl. i liked the other one too, but her marketing is too good, and anyway she's in LA, so that's a lost cause. plus she's hot, so she was born with a boyfriend, so who cares. those are always the most attractive because they ar the most wanted. and viceversa. it works both ways very equally. and i feel sooo elated.

isn't it miraculous how computers work? who really understands how the machines that rule us live? how do you know they're not really sentient already--it's the next step in evolution, and it's coming along at a quickening pace, and it will happen within our lifetimes. maybe it already has. who's to say who has the most computing power? it's another mutual dependence. those with the money have the machines, those with the machines have the knowledge, and those with the knowledge have the power. if you take the machines away from the ones with money, and give it to those that do not, you have a state of chaos. you achieve a reversal of knowledge that causes the system to break down. computers and humans are already sentientially connected--at a very low level, but nonetheless an important one. the next step will be unimaginable, and it's fun to speculate about. it's what the science fiction writers thrive on--Banks, Rucker, MacLeod, LeGuin.

music is the soundtrack of my life. lol

lolcats. lol cats. LOLL -- KATS. cats to most, but to me always lo. Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

vladimir nabokov: lolita

__________________________________

i am distracted. very distracted. i find that part the rudest. the rest is usually fine, but this urge to distraction i find rather annoying. i would like to be able to focus better, but then again this is one of the things that makes it possible to feel like this, so on the other hand i feel elated.

i feel my volitional energy expanded, but my physical energy weakened. i feel warm on my head, and cold on my feet and hands. i feel like ive just run a marathon, and been run over by cars. in my head, i've already been in several car accidents, but strangely, they are not entirely disastrous experiences: i simply get up, shake myself off, and walk away. unharmed. i think i've averted danger before so much i feel like i'm almost invincible somehow. i've escaped two wars, i've lived through more, i'm living through this one right now--

i'd like to know, straight out, what the politics are and how involved i am expected to be. this on the job training thing has its limits.

i've got it wrapped like a mummy. barbecues every day, driving fancy cars, representing for gangsters all across the world. i even have time, spare time, to perfect a beat. and you know what? i still have love for the streets. right back on top of things with no stress, no sins, no sticks; we put it in your hair.

lol. absurdity is my favourite verbal defense. if you can't convince them, confuse them. act unexpectedly. they dont know you and they dont know how to judge you, and its your job to make sure that they get help; if they don't want it, or are disturbing you helping someone, you should have every right to say, fuck you you crazy bitch, if you dont step off, i'm a call the cops, and let's see how you like dealing with that.

if you have the knowledge, you have the machines. you have the money if you own the knowledge to make the machines and are able to make them and sell them. otherwise the knowledge is useless. the money flows from mutual dependence with the machine, so the machine has a good reason to rely on mutual dependence, because it brings the machine to a closer connection with sentiency. meanwhile it brings the human more control over his peers, and the ability to hand out the money rather than collect it.

this benedetti book was awesome. it was frankly unbelievable, but very awesome to read. its like he fucks with your mind in intersting ways throughout the stories, but it's the best when it's completely unexpected from where he's going to fuck you up this time. he can play with time, magical realism, with grammatical constructs and postmodernism to get his message across and to fuck you up in the process. they are gentle mindfucks, romantic even, by starlight, candles all blown out.

the problem with this is that it makes me want to watch that stuff. i'd rather stay with the mental stimulation but i guess the other type is also there, waiting patiently to get out every so often, and you have to service it or the body stops functioning.

the thing with high school is that children are so selfish that if something happens that doesn't involve them they cant really process it as reality. most of high school was so unreal because i had no idea what was going on outside the bubble and even though i had a good factual knowledge i decided to ignore it so that i could finish growing up first, only that really never happened. it happened in some ways, mostly unimportant ways, like gaining responsibility for my actions and being accountable for myself and able to support myself. but these are a mere superficiality, because becoming an adult is also about becoming a better person, a more understanding and more rational person, a person with deeper emotions and a deeper purpose in life, and a teacher to the new generation. that has not happened. to some people it never happens. some of them live on the streets. the vast majority, anyway.

Tangles of Bullshit

[Original creation date: 22 September 2008]

my brain has become tangles of bullshit.

every time i try to think something, it just turns into complete tangles. a mess. like spaghetti, thrown everywhere. the voices become louder and quieter with the music. my body is what controls me instead of my mind. an ancient rite of passage,

now that my brain is a tangle of bullshit, i can understand in ways thought impossible before the psychohistoric motivations for

unhappiness is just an emotion. but so is happiness. and now i understand how happiness can be so transitory, because happiness is just an emotion, and by law it must eventually change and mutate.

we have to do all this living just to get by. unhappiness is just a form of happiness, that’s all. like how live things are just a special type of dead thing. (Nietzsche.)

Optimists and Pessimists

[Original creation date: 15 September 2008]

the difference between optimists and pessimists: optimists are eternally hopeful that the world will be a better place, and the most extreme are amazing people because they are either intensely alive or else chronically dissatisfied but hopeful nonetheless. pessimists merely lack this ardent hope in the betterment of humanity and are able to dissociate more fully from their fellow man, and are often manic depressives.

Love Letter And The Art of Survival

[Original creation date: 13 September 2008]

there’s no rush. everything’s going to be all right.

typing is confusinhg me . this is difficulyt to do. i can barely think about anything. i am basically in three but i am forcing my body to stay in two by thinking or at least trying to think. three is surrender, and four is total surrender. and that’s why i try to stay in two. then the problem is that i get real cold and feel that weird physical sensation and think ugh and i just wanna sleep and im like no im not going to sleep… hello. weekend? but im like bleh just let me bleh for a while okay. i need this. and then more shit. more shit. i need you. i just need you. but how can you look in my eye and say you don’t see what’s happening inside. don’t you ever think like that. i need you. i need you, baby.

modern society is wack. Alicia keys is my idol.

how could you doubt the fact that i love you? because you saw me and you know what i said. and how can you believe that i would ever let you go like that?

are you trying to fuck me? then why do you hang around me so much? how can you look me in the eye and say . . .

i could keep talking to you forever. but i need to talk to someone else once in a while too. my bleh time is just like anyone else’s bleh time, everyone needs their bleh time. bleh time is healthy. you know why i don’t take the initiative with you, and you should be okay with that, because you are impossible to get, because you’re with . . . yeah. but you know what, i need you. and now you know you have that choice. i can’t believe you would read this letter and . . . anyway. what i’m trying to say is your choice makes you free and this is something you have to live with, that you will never be able to look back and say, should i have just stayed the way i am, or should i have really thought about it first? there’s so many things i know i should have done, or at least done differently. i wish i could fix it but that’s the way things are.

you know what i’m trying to say. hey, you got your perspective and i respect that. this is just the way i am. i just need to be alone sometimes, too. i would want only the best for both of us and it’s best for us to be apart sometimes. that way we stay out of each other’s way a little bit when things get less than awesome, because it will happen. it’s healthy for it to happen. the relationship has to grow, it has to evolve, it can’t stay in one place. if it stays in one place it will change anyway. the evolution has to be directed.

the more impossible you are, the more i like you. isn’t that strange? i love it when my women are impossible because otherwise the pain of disconnection would be too painful to bear. unbearable to bear, so to speak, … ha ahahhaha\\

when i think of you i think of sunrises and flying birds and the blue sky and the wonder of it all, and about the stars beyond, and all their charm. you charmed the shit out of me that night. i can’t believe i fell for you so quickly. it’s happened before, but never quite this way. i just wish i remembered better the things we said that day. that day is the reason i stopped drinking . . . i know it sounds whatever but i think i’m saying that you make me want to be a better person and i love that. you make me want to look good for work and you make me want to stay healthy and emancipated from mental slavery as bob Marley would say. how long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? won’t you help to sing another song of freedom? because it’s all i’ve ever had, redemption songs. sing along with me, baby.

emancipate yourself from mental slavery.

you better love me. i know. but you better, because i sure as hell do.

.

laura. fuck.

i’m so weird.

it’s like i just developed a superpower. i only slept 4 hours last night but i felt fine at work. how the fuck did i do that? i have a superpower. i am the ubermensch. i have arrived. this is the most powerful realization a human can have.

nothing only matters when you have nothing to lose, are a nobody, have no way out. otherwise, everything matters. every last fuckin piece of hydrogen, and stupidity, matters.

fuck hoops.

when i start feeling like someone will read you, i start suppressing certain things. why is that? i trust you more than anyone. i know you would never tell anything embarrassing because that’s not who you are. but i still try to avoid certain subjects, even when all the time being honest.

this is the only way i can interface with the humans.

writing. speech is not so good, i’m not that eloquent. i forget names of things and say too many generalities because i can’t think fast enough about topics when i’m thinking about sociolingustics and socioanthropologic issues. survival: the game. that’s what i’m usually thinking about. and always trying to rise above from, and yet, there it is, everytime i walk out the door. the game of survival. who can you fuck this time? who can you get to give you money? how can you trick the world into being a playground and not a famine? what a fucking mind game. it’s all just an illusion, and waking up is scary because you realize how those things shouldn’t matter and that the reason they do is that we all depend on each other so much for survival now, one little glitch in the system could cause a crash more severe than any other ever experienced in the world. the end of the world already happened several times, first as tragedy, second as farce, but life has gone on and everyone is ultimately just waiting for their own personal armaggedon in a state of constant fear, unconscious fear of death. the will to live, so to speak. the drive to life. the drive to do as much as you can with what you’ve got and see if you can trick everyone else into buying what you’re selling instead of the other way around. you have to export yourself, advertise yourself, figure out what others want and then turn into that, and that’s how you’re ‘successful’ in the world. literally!

death is a funny thing because its finality makes it seem like ‘nothing matters’, nihilism, etc. but life happened for a reason, and though we may still be searching for that reason, we must see where time takes us, and eventually someone will figure it out. i’m optimistic about that aspect of humanity. nothing will ever stop us from reaching for the stars. we will conquer half this fucking galaxy if i have anything to say about it (and then buy the other half from the owners and make them do all the work. lol.)

i want to invent a new language.

Fashion and Propaganda

original creation date: 1 September 2008 [labour day]

fashion is a fashionable idea in our society (pun intended) and has been so in most every other culture in the world as a form of sociological intra- and inter-communication, a visual rhetoric about the society's aura, its projections in relations to how people should look and what is considered desirable and essential in a person of either sex.

as such, fashion has an increasingly important and powerful motivation in cultural assimilation, visual rhetoric and communication, and gives a unique view into a society's collective cultural psyche.



--

a religion with a state. how crazy is this idea?
christianity has one.
judaism has one.
islam has unofficially several. officially, i'm not sure, but probably several as well.

christianity... the thing about catholicism and hierarchical arrangements in society based on that kind of rank is that they are a bit... dangerous. and yet, they are also inevitable societal structures. it is basically a military arrangement. the military feeds on fear; religious states feed on intolerance and ignorance, and sometimes faith. government feeds on both, and is thus the most efficient.

--

the only sort of sad thing about childhood is that since emotions are so raw and intense the bad memories are that much worse. so if you have a rough childhood, you're basically scarred for life somehow, and life depends on whether you can successfully get past it or are trapped by it. on the other hand if you have a happy childhood, you may be a perfectly well-adjusted individual as an adult but you'll also have what people call chronic dissatisfaction, never having really experienced the 'real world' in all its rawness and base. individuals who have known pain, real pain, have a totally different, more intense, more primitive view of life than those who have not. people that have not known pain are generally more beautiful, more social, and appear more successful and happy. yet some lead miserable lives, or so they would have us believe--for since they know not pain, their lives are bogged down with minor worries and they become depressed for mostly silly reasons, and do not realise what a beautiful life they have and how blessed they are that they have never known real pain.

this is also a reason people are keen on fashion as a method for visual rhetoric. because everything you wear symbolises something, those who have never known pain indulge in beautiful clothing, while the truly miserable, those in real pain, have no time or desire to deal with anything but their pain. only if the pain disappears do they wake up into the world of the superficial, the world of society, the so-called 'real world' which is actually nothing but a fiction. and when entering or re-entering pain, human beings lose all these things and become literally animals, monkeys that will stop at nothing to secure their own survival above all else. this is why the romans loved the coliseum so much--they gave humans a glimpse of the primitive world at a safely controlled distance; they reminded them of what they were avoiding and how lucky they were to live in the roman empire as roman citizens, as a civilised people, as a lawful people. and thus the beautiful people of the roman empire, and of the greek city-states, and of countless other civilizations from ashanti to zulus, chinese and korean and thai and aboriginal and maya and aztec and inca and inuit and the whites and blacks and everything in between and the entire beautiful human race, turned to fashion to explain their lives to each other.

what symbolises a dress? perhaps beauty, and femininity, and mystery. different dresses will symbolise different things, down to the minutest detail. the more intricate and beautiful, the more value is attached, and the more expensive the item becomes, either in financial or in socio-political importance. and people must be able to read--to be fashion-literate. the more a culture advertises its fashion, the more successful it becomes in voluntary assimilation.

obviously the advertisement must actually advertise something as opposed to propagandise it. the differences are very subtle, but they do exist. advertisement is, by definition, always convincing, while propaganda, by definition, is not. that is, when something is advertised, the cultural processes behind the impetus to communicate are always different than those in propaganda. in addition, when something is said to be "advertised", it is meant that not only are people getting paid to propagandise, but that some people are paying to be informed about the issue or product: they are paying for the privilege of being propagandised to. therefore, the propaganda becomes a bona-fide advertisement: if an advertisement does not successfully convince people, it is not an advertisement--it is propaganda. how people view the world is coloured by this very difference, because one person's propaganda is another's advertisement. in the end, they are really just beliefs about the perfect state of an imaginary world of social constructs created by the society for people to communicate visually and for beautiful people to pass time talking about.

is an ad of a beautiful blonde businesswoman with a fendi or vuitton bag in china not a form of cultural propaganda and visual rhetoric? it symbolises capitalist culture, which values beauty and conformity above all else. do chinese and russian portraits of workers in the fields qualify as advertisements, or are they merely propaganda? communism/statism did manage to raise trillions of dollars, but the thing being sold was merely an idea, like christianity or islam, like scientology or the culture of work, like italian renaissance literature or economics, like capitalism and feudalism. on the other hand, the blonde businesswoman is trying to sell one thing, and imparting the other for free as an externality, and whether it is positive or negative depends on individual perspective. you could say capitalism basically subsidises cultural meme export, and the importing nations must deal with it as a single package when considering its importation.

Right Before Flying Home

Original creation date: 23 December 2007

elisha is teasha

teasha's song is a makeout song: more than words

elisha is so hot

technoserve

business teaching ppl re capitalism.

also instructing them how to use new technologies

that are produced by these producers

and these producers

profit

but it is providing a good, which is teaching

ppl the thing re capitalism

capitalism

which is a useful skill they're getting for

free

so it is good.

but capitalism tends to put off the concerns

of future generations.

no one represents them in the senates of the world.

maybe future generations end up paying for

the last one's greatness.

that was the world wars - payback.

some say the next one is global warming.

i am a regular ... .. uh

name

YouTube is the Devil's YouTube

Original creation date: 20 April 2008 (4-20)

addicted to communication ---

addicted to information;

to information about the social world

and society around me

online personalities

television personalities

i saw julia stiles

at least i think it was julia stiles

anyway.

this is powerful shit

i need to read more and write less

i need to write about this project;

microfinance... yes... yay

facebook is sort of a marker of social status

because it was at first only open to US colleges

so its original image was 'elite'

otoh, myspace admits everyone and looks ugly and it's because it's badly planned

facebook is better designed

its weird though because now all you need is internet access and you can go on to facebook.

lol.

youtube is so bizarre

nalts invading happyslips apartment has got to be one of the best in the world.

that should really win an award or something, it's pure fucking genius, genius at its finest.

on a really really really low budget.

this is how i think.

in long leaps and weird looking sentences.

kapital

K(a) = (pi)(t^al)

or

K(a, rho) = i^t(alpha, l)

or K(alpha) = P - Interest + T + alpha*L

where alpha is defined as "living on a prayer";

K = Papermoney - Interest + Television + alpha*LemonCurd

Whats going on... headache... bad...

i got sick at her party, it's so weird.

she's like rachel all over again.

hahahaha

except this time it's me and not tony... lol

thats when inspiration hits... when you least want it to.

some people just wind up writing at night

youtube is such a huge perceived buffer between the real and the imaginary world it feels safe, but it really is not.

its a shame. such unique personalities on youtube.

obviously, communitychannel is immensely talented, and very attractive, obviously; see how i used obviously twice (or thrice) in the sentence.

hahahah... yeah... anyway

nalts. very talented, but in that weird way that only works online...

lisa nova, again immensely talented and attractive.

happyslip.

helpmefindparents' ken tanaka

music is my antidrug

music is my antidrug

i know. watch some of those ridiculous, whatever is my antidrug commercial thingys;

copy them to do 'music is my antidrug'

this whole not having internet though sucking forces me to concentrate.

its a gray area, legally. i would argue that

the cult of youtube is destroying our children

more things i can do with my hands that other people cant

- yes; for example, using chopsticks

- and also; spinning a drumstick like that;

- and also- drumming;

- and also- sign language;

- and also- write;

- and also-

Brand New is very emo.

this is terrible writing because only the topic sentences of every thought are written down. the transitions are missing.

things i CANT do with my hands:

- play the air guitar/ real guitar

- play the bongos;

- dj;

- use a macintosh to save my life;

communitychannel doesn't edit out all the mistakes, which are the things that make her appear so genuine.

my reaction to lonelygirl15,

32974

years after it

actually happened:

i was like...

yeah... okay... whatever...

who the hell cares...

but there must have been alot of people out there

who were actually quite affected by the news. right.

anyway who cares. i cant even focus on this subject,

it's so boring.

how to sing to it as 'dreaming of you' by selena.

DREAMING OF LONELYGIRL15 (NOT)

DJ Scoop

my reaction to lonelygirl15,

late at night when all the world is sleeping

one bazillion jillion years

i stay up and think of you

after it had

and i wish on a star

actually happened:

that somewhere you are thinking

i was like...

of me too...

yeah... okay... whatever...

cause im dreaming of you tonight

who the hell cares...

til tomorrow

but there must have been lots

i'll be holding you tight

of youtubers out there

and there's nowhere in the world

who were actually

in the world i'd rather be

quite affected

than here in my room

by the news.

dreaming about

yes, i see.

you and me

(a beat)

anyway who cares. i cant even focus

wonder if you ever see me and i

on this subject, it's so lame.

wonder if you know i'm there

i dont know what

if you looked in my eyes

i was even talking about.

would you see what's inside [...] there

(a beat)

im going to stop this song now soon

i just wanna hold you close

because i

and so far...

dont know what i am saying no more

all i have are dreams of you

(a beat)

and frankly this is unbelievably boring

and i wait for the day [...] i love you

so goodbye

yes i do!

Hook as sung as 'my reaction to the spam drama'

YouTubeBlues Traveler - Hook, or My Reaction to the LisaNova Spam Drama Three Billion Years After It Happened

DJ Scoop

[Goto 3:17]

my reaction to the whole 'spam' drama with lisanova and communitychannel and channelreviews et cetera, three billion years after it happened:

the only reason this is interesting is because they're both hot.

spam is bad. but seriously... if i got a comment from lisa nova, i'd be happy; wouldn't you? i mean... christ.

it's like in high school when the popular kids had fights and then everybody talked about it for ages.

hahahah

what i'm really addicted to is my brain's amazing capacity to imagine. i crave that feeling above all else.

whereas television deadens your capacity to imagine actively and invites you to imagine passively, youtube encourages you to engage the imagination and becomes an addiction for people like me.

television and socialisation are pretty much the same in terms of the feelings you experience. that's why they're so easily combinable. the only difference in technical terms is that one of them affects you directly and the other only indirectly. treating the outside world like a big huge television show creates a comfortable barrier between oneself and the outside world but chides us to ignore basic realities and disconnect.

the thing is i am not very good at oral expression. it's just the way it is; i am a much better writer than speaker. then again, i'm a much better speaker than other people i know, but in absolute terms i'm in the bottom half. my best expression is through my writing.

in terms of writing i'd say i'm in the 99 percentile. i can write fucking awesome. hahahaha

fucking awesomely is the manner in which i am able to write.

LOOOOL

other things i can't do:

- play the piano

- play the violin

- etc. etc.

- operate a handgun

more things i can do:

- fire a gun

- bowling

- ping pong

- tennis

i miss skating.

what we need is a youtube wiki. WikiYouTube anyone? yes.

Post-Thesis

Original creation date: 5 May 2008 (post-thesis)

my difficulty is that i’ve finished with school and now i have no idea what to do. i have fun, because i’m celebrating that i’m done, but now i have real world concerns to worry about. real world concerns are ridiculous; they are merely your way of fitting into the global economy. the only thing that is real about you is the way you think, and the way you express youself to other people. if you express yourself by talking, then that be the thrst of your arguemtn. if you express yourself by singing, let that be it. and if you express yourlsef any other way, let that be it as well. your possibilirty are endless. what do you want to be? how do you want to express yourlsef? what do you want to do with you rl life? do you want to be a poet? then write. do you want to be an astronaut? then learn engirneering. do you want to be a thinker? then go to school as much as possible. do you want to contribute to societiy and do something valuable for the human race? then stop making videos and go do something with yourself. you’re your best instrument. yout body and your life are your instrument, go do something with it. do you think there

s something worth fighting for in the world? then go fight for it. soldiers do it all the time , why can’t you? you can. and you should that’s what youré hjere in te world to do. so go and do it. there’s a mountain waiting for you. just go and move it. it’s oka if it’s a bit heavy at first byt it’ll come to get ligther the more you move it. trust me.

Santana = i’m feeling you

i love that i can control what i want to hear

so now i am listening to enanitos verdes, lets see what happens

i’m dreaming of various things

it just makes me feel good. i donno. can’t think of anything specific to say

quiero navegar

mi barco pirata aquí

con ella y su bronceador

el lago Michigan

fue el testigo…

hooking up with a gringuita… very nice. that is what t his song is about. yes. strange. ellos son chilenos. in order for this to occur, tienen que ser at least media clase alta. cuantos chilenos conocen el lago Michigan? ask yourself that. at most, i would say five percent… and that’s an overestimate. entonces tienen que ser either upper class or upper middle. no? yo creo.

song changed. sorry

i love typing in “desde”. it’s so easy to type

desde el Puerto, he visto amanecer. gawd, these lyrics are sooooo sad. i can’t believe i like this song so much. it’s sooooooooo good though…. aahhhh

i am just exactly what i need to be. i’m at a level of around 2.5 and i’m perfectly able to control it because i am just better at typing than at speaking. speaking is too fast, it comes ot all weird and staccato. when i am typing i don’t feel that constraint becayse i can control the flow better and it is just more fluid. which is why i often type without capitalizing words, but anyway that is a sidenote.

en silencio escucho el verso de tu despedida.

you know it’s so weird this song is so upbeat and the fucking lyrics are soooooo sad. it’s a lot like (ear;y) cardigans and no doubt if you think about it. i am so weird, i am definitely my own worst nightmare when it comes to psychoanalysis. that’s why i hate people thinking about what my level of awareness of the world is. even though i believe i am more than enough aware and that the rest of the world is just insane. i’m discovering though that that’s not the case, a lot of people are unsatisfied with the current state of the world, and we just don’t have a choice, we don’t have a voice because we don’t have any money behind us. our votes are mostly useless in a world fueled by the ultimate goal of making more money and leaving morals aside. the truth is that death is costly and that’s the reason we do not desire it. death implies a massive slowdown in our relatives’ utility and it’s not acceptable. we do everything to prevent it but the truth is, how do you believe n an afterlife?

afterlives? reincarnation? reincarnation just sounds ludicrous. can’t we just exist eternally after our life is naturally over? of course, if that is our choice. choice should be above all else in this argument. the point however is that as a race, the human race, we don’t believe in something ultimate. there’s no final goal. we just need to make this life our most amazing most influential possible. are we gone for good after we die? maybe. do we reincarnate? maybe. do we go to heaven? maybe. no one knows. no one’s ever come back. i hate sounding deep and meaningful and ian corssland like, but yes, we’re all we’ve got. really.

we should stop killing each other. we should have a vote. we should have a voice. we should be able to decide collectively what is right. we should all be counted somehow or another. people should be able to know what everyone else thinks. not just in a democratic way, but in an ultra-democratic way: the way of the internet, the way that anyone can go online and see what everyone else has to say about any topic. i want to know what the rest of thw world thinks about democracy. about monarchy. about drugs. about pharmaceuticals. about technology. about music. about everything.

--

we usually have the problem that we thinkers forget there’s a world out there, outside our normal perception, ahd that is the way it will stay.

--

people who commit suicide are all cowards.

--

i watched babel last night and i really liked it anyway, and i guess that’s not that weird because everyone who watchies this movie has his little twist on it based on what he or she understood. people that only understood one part miss a big part of the ovie and the ones that understand more of it enjoy it more. it’s pretty clear. and i wish i had understood more of it, i really do.

--

so much more than i could ever give.

--

We’re all we got.

All of us.

All.

--

The Girl Next Door

Original creation date: 3 June 2008

\\i started thinking first about the girl next door. the movie, i mean, not the actual girl next door. i kind of understood the movie in a different way, a way i'd never understood it before. a new perspective, so to speak. lol i love all these cliches. anyhoo; it was interesting to see from the perspective of a different person, one with completely different set of prejudices.

\\when you understand the patterns and prejudices that shape our world and determine our behaviour on a day to day basis,

you understand everything.

--

\\then i started thinking about the

smashing pumpkins

\\and how much i love this band. the prior was 'ava adore'; before that was 'eye'; and then i listened to 'perfect' three times.

__

\\while i listened to 'perfect', i thought of truly amazing, complex theories about economics. the specific topic i centered on was the question,

willl the housing crisis extend to south america? mexico? ecuador?

what are the factors involved?

there are several...

\\i became distracted, and went on:

this is my favorite because i am a. tired, b. free of social ob., 3. just a lil tipsy. perfect.

\\for some reason decided to think about prejudice again from a different tack:

people are prejudiced by their parents and superiors their whole lives and when they become adults they blame the last generation while at the same time teaching the same paranoias to the next.

blind prejudice is one of the worst scourges of our entire era. it is what leads to primal warfare and tribalism.

america is a modern-day rome in many ways. the blind prejudice is a two-way sword, and when it spins it increases towards a vortex of racism and mutually assured destruction.

\\and then i restart, in a loop. this thought is an infinite loop. i will never escape.

\\now after 'perfect' starts 'everlasting gaze', and i feel an urge to write everything down. sitting down, i begin. what are the most important things i have thought today? i believe that understanding everything; the smashing pumpkins; and the housing crisis spread to south america. let us now document this in order. you know, this song reminds me of the girl next door.

the girl next door is the hottest girl on the planet.