My surroundings have become somewhat of an issue for me lately. Not so much the 'who' I'm with, but 'what' I'm around. I'm specifically referring to the clutter that plaiges my existance. I've always been a messy person, I'm not sure if there's anything that I can do to change that. What I do need to change though, however, is how much ammunition I give my habit. I get a lot more done when things aren't as cluttered, I think more clearly, and just plain feel better about everything. I'll write more later....

Bill Murray, Why?

What a boring uneventful week it has been. It has gotten much colder, as it usually does this time of year. I already tire of it. Especially since I have deliver pizzas in it. I really don't mind the pizza delivery, I make enough money to survive.

I've been in a creative slump lately, all of my work spaces are a mess, which usually adds that. I can't concentrate when there's just shit every-which-where. I started writing this story. Problem is my idea for this story keeps changing. I need to devide these ideas into seperate stories I think. Or maybe start a blog writing just one chapter at a time. That might be cool.

The Garfield movie really is some kind of horrible peice of shit. Bill Murray should be ashamed of himself. He did pretty well with Lost in Translation, so I can't imagine he needed the paycheck. Shame on you Bill...after What About Bob, a comedic masterpeice, you lower yourself to playing a cheeply animated talking cat. I wonder if big movie stars even read scripts before they sign contracts anymore.

I just read this article that said some Greek Lawyers are mad that part of the Alexander movie suggests that he may have been bisexual. They're trying to block the release in in Greece. I find it terribly amusing that they're so upset about it. I wonder if anyone would be upset if they made a move where christopher colombus was gay. On that thought, why are they so upset that a war-mongering tyrant may have been bisexual? Alexander the "Great"? He slaughtered hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in is quest to conquer the globe. Oh well, those lawyers are probably closet homosexuals themselves.

Fucked

Lucky me. Lucky lucky lucky me. Open enrollement for my insurence at work was up again. And again, just like my first tour of duty at Mountain Jacks, I was rejected for it on the grounds that I don't work enough hours. This got me thinking; there's probably only 2 or 3 people in that place that aren't managers that qualify for it, so why did they even bother making an announcement? They purposely shave hours, pay like shit, and then deny basic health benefits. Come very soon, I will be completely without any kind of health benefits. In the United States more than 43 million people (as of 2002) had no health insurance, that's roughly 15 percent of the population. ( source: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-154.html ) People who cannot afford insurance in this country are left to die. I will soon not be able to afford my perscriptions. I am currently taking Zoloft to treat depression/anxiety/paranoia. Granted, the shit has it's certain..eh hem, side-effects, but I WILL NOT go back to feeling like I did before I started taking it.

Dara's "The Antidote"

Normally I am bad at music reviews, but I really liked this disc. "The Antidote" is DJ Dara's latest mix release on Breakbeat Science Recordings (the spawn of the Breakbeat Science store in NYC & online) The mix covers a wide range of the drum&bass spectrum from techstep (Gridlok), to breaky edits (Breakage), to funky rollers (mathematics, MIST). Unlinke his "Further" release on moonshine, this mix offers more compatability from track to track, yet progresses and moves from one region to another.

Another recommended Dara mix CD = From Here to There
And if you can manage to find it on the internet, the mix tape = Live @ Fuck the Syst3m

Waffles and Paint Buckets

I just woke up from what was about an hour nap. I shouldn't sleep during the day as it usually leaves me waking up with a headache, but I'm ok right now for some reason. I still keep dreaming about highschool. It's usually however not my own highschool. And the people in the shcool are not those that I went to school with. They seem to be completely fictional. I don't even recongnize any of them. I had a dream the other night that it was present day, but I was telling everyone that my girlfriend from highschool was dead; that she died in a car accident or something, but she really didn't. What a shame. Did I say that last part out loud?

They just announced the lineup for the Movement festival this year. I am happy to report that it doesn't suck. But of course, per usual, there aren't any drum&bass acts on the lineup. The powers that be in the techno underworld in detroit have been trying to deny the existance of drum&bass for years it seems (for some reason that isn't clear to me) Hopefully I will have the cd I want to pass out ready in time. I've got everything nearly ready for it. I still need to buy the discs and order the labels for them. As a further reminder to myself, order the labels by no latter than the 19th. I have taken most of that week (of the festival) off of work. It is going to be a much needed vacation. I'm sick of looking all those bastards I work with.

I must say it feels really freaking good to be in a mature, non-stupid, uncomplicated relationship for a change. We got breakfast this morning. I had a waffle and she had potato pancakes I think. I never thought just going to breakfast, or to a hardware store with another person could have such a satisifying and calming feeling. Course I just have to remember not to worry so much.

Un-American

This whole prison abuse thing lately is just killing me. I'm not so much surprised at what happened. Hell, I even kinda half expected it. What I'm more surprised at is American reaction. Mind you, the politicians and the media are hyping it as much as possible, because well, that's what they do. But are they hyping because they really disagree with it? I'm starting to think no. Any time there's some kind of political scandal politicians and the media always dramatize it, so really, their opinions on the matter really have no bearing on reality. They don't care about the prisoners, they care about the scandal.

What I'm really reading off of are the locals. Also, I've been noticing the reactions of the Christian right. The locals seem to be under the opinion that "they had it coming" and "they deserve it for what they did". I'm not exactly sure what they did except defend their country from invasion. Hell, when Jessica lynch was taken prisoner, afterward she reported no mistreatment nor sexual abuse. The Americans want to call themselves the good guys? They're the invaders, the tyrants in this situation. Mind you, I have no desire to see the world taken over by Islamic extremists either.

Several times I've heard people say "Lets just Nuke the whole goddamn country". If you are an American reading this, I want you to consider that these people are trying to speak for you. They are trying to be your voice. I would like you to consider that the US government is trying to speak for you. I would like you to consider that there are people trying to commit mass genocide in your name.

What's the 700 club (my mortal enemy) have to say about this? Good Ole' Pat's opinion on the matter is that we're focusing too much attention on the mistreatment of the prisoners and not enough attention on the war. My response to that is this: Times of War and distress are the EXACT time we need to be focusing on such matters. These are the times that it truly counts. These are the times that the world is watching. These are the times when we have to decide how we are going to be defined. If we have enough energy and resources to fight a war on two fronts, we have enough time and resources to look into how US troops are behaving in the names of those who support the war, but especial how they are behaving in the names of those who do not.

In political ad news, the latest round of bush anti-Kerry ads are out. These ones have quotes of politians saying that Kerry is "the most liberal democrat" working today. My advice GW, stop running the ads. You're wasting your own money. All these ads accomplish is to re-enforce the liberal views of liberals and conservative views of conservatives. There's no room in swinging undecided votes. Also, you know you've got a solid candidate when the worst thing his opponent has to say about him is that he has doubts whether or not a war is the best course of action. Or for that matter, he's "liberal". More advice, and this relates to how you run your entire administrations. You think having balls and acting tough gets you what you want, but it doesn't. All pounding your chest does is inspire your opponents to lash out against you. This includes your political opponents, objecting citizens, and your war enemies abroad.

USA, you make me sick. Fuck this awful scum infested self rightous place. Wolf down your goddamn burgers and fries until you all die of heart disease.

Why are poeple so suprised when expected things happen? Why are people angry when their 3 year old misbehaves, or when there's long lines at the grocery store? Why do we trouble ourselves with the natural expected outcome of events?

My work is always a shining example of this. Holidays, of course are the worst. Mother's Day we experienced the busiest day we've had in some years apparently, yet there were managers screaming at the top of their lungs about food not being cooked fast enough. Also screaming about servers not picking up the food fast enough. Most days I have no sympathy for the servers, but on a holiday, I would hate to be them. The yelling unsued, with a tone of suprise or unexpectedness. They booked the house solid for three hours, and during those three hours expected things to go as smoothly as they would if there were only ten people in the house.

Moreoever, I don't get paid enough to concern myself. Even if I were to concern myself, they would still never pay me enough for as long as I worked there. The fact of the matter is, people who work there are pretty much dirt-poor most of the time. Point being; we're expected to bust our balls, take verbal abuse from the managers, take physical abuse from the job (burns, cuts, etc...), get the food out on time, perfect, all for less than what's considered a proper living wage. I can't even afford a cheap appartment for what they're paying me there. I should get a job doing sound design for local commercials or something. I could make the music for those cheesey Hanson's Windows commercials. Tripple eight, triple three, double two, double four...Hansens.

There are many cases against the idea of free will. Richard Dawkins described looking at a problem two ways by looking at a clear 2D cube two ways. Both are right. In this case, looking at different angles of a problem helps us see the problem in different ways that it relates to us. The existance of human predictability has always baffled me. If we have free will, than how is it that we can predict human events? IE: How many car accidents will occure, how many robberies, homocides; How much fast food we will eat in the next year, how much we will spend on popcorn at the movie theatre. Many things rest on human predictability. Marketing for instance. Snickers candy bars spend 2 million dollars (for instance) on a super-bowl ad knowing full-well there will be millions and millions of veiwers of that ad. How do they predict that? They make such predictions by looking to the past. More specifically, they make such predictions by looking at previous patterns. So why is there such a likelyhood that we will repeat these patters? The same reason that we inacted them in the first instance. What that reason is-is an argument for another day. But the fact remains, there is a reason, and it's the driving force behind our actions. Snickers' knows whats going to happen, and then it comes to pass. Often times we are suprised, by the stock market for instance. A stock unexpectedly soars through the roof. Does unexpectedness imply unpredictability? I don't think so. I think given enough information such complex predictions are possible. Given enough information, and how to use it of course. I can predict my own actions. So where does that leave me? If I can predict my own actions; that is, if I can know what I'm going to do, isn't that a case for free-will? I would say no; I would say that just the opposite is true. Knowing that you're going to eat cheerios in the morning, and than doing it, is the same as General Mills knowing that 7 million americans are going to eat cheerios in the morning, and then making enough product to reflect that. We are prisioners of our bodies, of our surroundings, and of other people. Human beings are pinballs being bounced back and forth with the inate ability to know where the next bumper is going to send them. Our own minds are one of those bumpers, and installed in that mind is predictability of itself.

Things that I want to write about keep slipping my mind, so I think I'm just going to write. I saw kill bill vol 2 the other day, and it was amazing. I knew it was going to be different than the first one but it still wasn't what I expected it to be. I can't wait for the DVD release. Apparently there's going to be an extended release of volume 1 that I am looking forward to even though I already bought the regular edition. I'm a sucker for special edition dvds.

I went to the comic book store today and bought some tastey treats to keep me entertained. My interest in comic books as of the last year has been growing. It was on a 3-4 year hiatis. I guess I just remembered what made me love them in the first place. I've sort of been really active with all of my interests as of late. Music, comics, reading, movies; I've been burying myself in all these things. It feels good. It feels good to not just want to sit around the house and sleep.

Acheiving some kind of understanding isn't easy. 2 million years of human history and only recently have we begun to understand our origins. My daydreaming drifts into these territories regularly. Not so much in a pondering sense, but in an awareness sense. Distractions take my attention away from it, but it's always there; the underlying reality. It's like when the air conditioning in your house kicks off; you didn't know it was there untill you were able to understand it wasn't there. That's what I am able to do, kick off the air conditioning that is day to day distractions and understand the true silence behind them. I am able to step outside of my body and see everyone as working ants, blowing leaves, lumbering matter. The chattering becomes inane. Words meaningless. The origin of those words is what really counts. The origin of our actions, of our being, is what counts in this view. Understanding the web of causation creates a perspective unlike any other. It undermines any fear, doubt or uncertainty. At the same time, it's very dehumanizing; very humbling. There is a way to live with it I'm learning. And that way is by simply alowing myself to. By understanding the system, I am now sometimes able to remove myself from it. The trick is to keep remembering. Keep remembering. Keep remembering. Keep remembering. Keep remembering...

On another topic...I try not to worry. I try to just let things happen that seem right, that seem to work. And it seems like one of those things. There is so much to fear, and yet I fear nothing from it. Nothing at all. I try to cast aside what something looks like, and focus on what it is. What it is is very simple. Very simple. No mystery or complexity about it. No ideologies, expectations, or misinterpretations. I take one day at a time, play it by ear and hope for the best. That's all I can do; create a calm peace for myself.

I keep having reoccuring dreams about highschool. They're not so much about my actual highschool days; they're about me being 22 and going back to high school. Usually I have 6 classes or so and I can't find any of them. I circle the halls all day and can't find any of my classes. The reason that I'm back there is because I flunked or something. (which I didn't) When eventually find one of my classes I sit down and have no idea whats going on because I've misses like a month of class looking for the damn room. I can never get any of the teachers to talk to me. I try to get their attention in the hallways but they ignore me and keep walking, like I'm not even there. At some point I usually realize that I'm dreaming. I wonder what on earth I'm doing back in school. I never have any dreams about being in college, but often my college proffessors will appear in these dreams as high school teachers.

Perhaps I feel I have some kind of unfinished business in high school? Perhaps I resent my old teachers. Perhaps I just always felt like I hadn't been in the class in a month as I never knew what was going on. Perhaps I'm just still incredibly immature.

I fight the feeling and I keep going. Not quite understanding why I'm doing it. I think as time goes on you wonder more and more untill you wonder how you've ended up somewhere. Work has always been a struggle for me. Just staying awake at work is a challenge.

I think all of the time. Even the busiest times at the resturaunt my mind is elsewhere, thinking about bigger things. Those things seem to slip away like a fading dream though. I ignore everything that's going on around me and drift into that dream. My body keeps moving, but I am a thousand miles away. So why do I get so upset? Why am I so tense when I come home? Why do I get so angry? It's like a bad dream you wake up screaming to. I will not let my life be defined by my part-time job.

We are all part of a larger complex. Our minds have a certain fluidity to them. Where does one mind end and another start? I no longer think that this should be defined in physical terms. The astonishing hypothosis says that the mind is the activity of the brain. I say the mind is the activity of memes. The brain is a conduit. An unsuspecting bystander. I think brains should be defined, but minds are more vauge. Minds overlap because they contain copies of the same memes. Uniqueness comes into play in the grey region where there are misinterpretations of memes. Even in these cases, those misinterpretations are part different "mindplexes" None is truely unique, only the combinations. The memes care not about us-who we are.

Upgrades. What a thing to be worried about. What does that mean anyhow. To me it implies that what you have now is never good enough because what you could have in the future is better. I don't think that's any good way to live your life. You're always thinking about what could be instead of what is. Not to mention the fact you can't ever enjoy what you have right now. It's a losing uphill battle that you can never win. Upgrade when something is broken, not when you're bored with it.

More and more I'm convinced that none of this is real. This could be related to my ever-growing distance from reality itself. I worry about things, but then I soon remember that this is all just a figment of my imagination. Even my imagination is a figment of itself. And you, reading this, whoever you are, do not exist. Sorry. I don't beleive in you any more. Though, there are certain figments of my imagination that I'm glad are around. Figments aren't always bad things... Songs in your head, pretty faces, sexual fantasies, pie, those kinds of things.

Where am I at? Am in my head? My chest? Am I right behind my eyes? We don't really get the impression that our arms and legs are our "self", but merely extensions. If you lost your arm your paraperception would be thrown off a bit, yet we don't acknowlage our arm when we have it. Maybe everything does exist. But me, I, my "self", does not. It's an elaborate illusion created by the voices in my head. These voices are not me. These voices are conspiring to further their own agenda. Sometimes I don't know what that agenda is. It's in the voices' best interest to make me beleive that these are the things that I want...that it's me wanting them in the first place. But something that doesn't exist cannot want.

I must quiet these "voices". I must admit who I am. Actually, I musn't do anything. Any sort of action I would take is only the result of the suggestion of a series of voices. Quieting the voices completely would only paralyze me. Luckily a new voice has been introduced. "Reject the selfplex" Not all of these voices are "bad"...

I have to drink so much water it's disgusting. The medicine I'm on makes my mouth incredibly dry. I've peed 12 times today I think. I'm guzzling down water right now as I'm writing this.

I hate cars. I hate driving cars. I hate looking at cars. I hate riding in cars. Most of all I hate talking about cars with other poeple. When my car breaks, I want it taken away out of my sight and fixed. I don't want to see the broken parts and talk to the mechanic. Mind you, I don't want to get ripped off either, so that's why I supose it's important to find a mechanic you can trust. I'm willing to pay almost any dollar amount that I can afford not to have to deal with it. Moreover, I'm willing to pay any dollar amount to have it fixed and have it fixed quickly. If I could simply have some kind of automatic service that detected a problem with my car, sent a crew out to pick up my car, keep it over night, bill my bank account and have it back to me by morning without me ever knowing, I would be happy. Cars are not the solution to life's problems. The solution to solving your car problems is to not beleive in your car. It doesn't exist. Sorry bucko, drive through.

Letting Go: pt 2

Motivation, causality and subsequent effect in relation to human action/reaction. This is a concept not easily understood. In the past, those who have thought they had the answers, usually suspected that these answers involved-in some form-a concept of free will.

When I was 16 in highschool, I had an advanced placement philosophy class (which I got a D in by the way). Of course, it didn't take long to get onto the concept of free will. Pretty much all of the philosophers we talked about agreed that to varying degrees, we had free will. I proposed another possibility; That our actions are merely the direct causation of all previous events in our lives. Most people don't like this concept as it implies the ability to escape responsability, which I can sympathise with. However, I came to realize that the concept I proposed several years ago is not entirely accurate and much too simplified. It fails to take into account several factors.

When I was little, I used to wonder; Why do we think in english? Do french people think in french? Of course, the answer seems obvious now; yes, of course. But why do english speaking people think in english and french speaking people think in french? Why are our thoughts occupied by, and in the form of something that is created by our vocal cords and derived from the speech centres of our brain?

to be continued...

Letting Go: pt 1

What am I doing here? Where is here? What significance does the term 'I' have? I often find myself day dreaming. I often find myself waking up time and time again from these dreams from moment to moment. Day dreaming is the wrong term for it, perhaps I should call it "reality dreaming". An hour will pass, and I will look back upon it and it will fade as if it was a dream, like it never really happened. Does this have something to do with a short attention span or an attention problem in general? I don't think so any more. I think it has to do with something I came to realize along time ago but untill recently couldn't put into words or simply didn't have the language to discribe. Deciding to name my page here "My Lucid Dream" to begin with is a bit interesting. My brain, my body, my environment, everyone and everything around me is decieving me. It is all masking an underlying reality. And that reality is, that I, as a concept of "self", do not exist. And this realization has helped me understand the self that I have come to be convinced is here. More importantly, it has thus far created a kind of peace. I have said it before; We are not who we think we are, on so many different levels.

to be continued...

There's a couple kinds of anger that I'm familiar with. The first kind, is the kind that I suffer from. It's inner anger. It's anger or frustration with one's self. This inner anger can be caused by outside forces (people, events), but some kind of rationale in the front of my mind prevents it from getting out of hand. In relation to this there are a couple kinds of paranoia. The kind I suffer from entails being paranoid about very specific things or situations.

The other kind of anger and paranoia is the kind that I see from my coworkers. As selfish and egocentric as my anger and paranoia seem to be, it pails in comparison to theirs. They have an anger and paranoia towards large masses of people. More specifically, they have an anger and paranoia towards large masses of people they've never met. Their anger and paranoia is often also related to people living in places they've never been, or doing perfectly reasonable things that they've never done ( or simply don't care to do ). They have anger and paranoia about gay people getting married. These same people have never seem to have met an openly gay person. Which is rather odd because in today's society where being gay isn't as much of a societal taboo, it seems like you'd have to go out of your way not to at least know one or two. They're angry about chemical weapons in bunkers that don't seem to exist. They're angry at anyone who denies the existance of the imaginary waepons bunkers. They're angry at anyone who says that killing thousands of people wasn't worth finding absolutely no threat to themselves.

They're angry at black people who want to attend a collage that might take thier societal backrounds into consideration upon admittance. These people don't even want to attend this collage. They don't even want to read a book for that matter. They're angry at 'niggers' and 'spicks' for collecting government issued releif checks, being a drain on thier own paychecks. They're angry that the government takes even a single penny out of their earnings for anything that they personally don't benefit from.

They're angry at Canadians...I'm not sure why, but they don't like em. Sure, Canada isn't perfect...but why bitch about thier healthcare system that alows poor children medical treatment that alows thier families enough money to feed them with afterwards? They're angry at Americans who don't have health insurance. They're angry because "It was there responsability to get a job that covers them" I guess it was the kids' responsability to have parents that have jobs that cover them.

They're angry at Mexicans. They're angry because Mexican immagrants are stealing jobs Americans won't do. They're angry because they don't speak english.

They're angry at anything and anyone outside of thier shell of veiw or understanding. They think the absolute worst about whatever they don't see. And they make me fucking sick.

My mom is angry at Janet Jackson for showing something on TV for 7 seconds that every human being on the planet has. She's angry at society for letting "them" push the limits. Apparently she's angry at jews too. It used to just be subtle dissrespect for anything not Christian, but a few weeks ago when I was laying on the couch she was watching something on TV and and said something to the effect of "fucking Kikes". I can only imagine that she thought I was sleeping at the time.

All of this is just venting. These people I'm talking about are the products of a long string of causes that have culminated into modern conservitavism. This issue isn't new and I havn't made some kind of breakthrough in realizing these people exist. Perhaps all this in it's own way have been a little judgemental on my part. Who knows.

I wish I could attribute it to some simple cliche' like saying it's because of ignorance. This in and of itself is evident.

I'm fucking sick. And I'm fucking sickened with myself for even wasting my time giving this encompassing issue a second thought. Broad strokes aren't my style.

I have to leave for work in about 45 minutes. I have to go there, and cook food for people I will never see. I feel like I'm working for about 38cents a day in indonesia or something. For the most part it all seems like an illusion. I'm not there most days. I'm physically there, but my mind is someplace else. I don't know how I manage to do that. I bet it could withstand tortore for a long time. Though I do scream like a girl when ever I smash my toe or something.

I havn't written anything extensive in here since I went on my medication. In retrospect it doesn't seem like that big of a deal now. Like, I didn't ever really need to be on them. But, which is probably the case is that they're working, so I don't think I need them. Maybe I should take them every other day so I can get impression that they're doing something. Bad idea probably.

Last few months all I've wanted to do was sit in my house and vedge out, but recently I've been getting restless and being more productive. I'm at least going out on the weekends and hanging out at the bar. Though not helping my liver, I don't feel as confined. I want to start going to some club events again. I keep meaning to go to this one on tuesdays that my friend spins at, but I keep forgetting.

Hunger has stricken, good day for now.

I've been in a scrap-bookish mood lately of things that catch my eye...



A chinese sculpture from the Han empire somewhere around 95b.c.e.

I havn't posted in awhile but I felt like I wanted to put this up. This was selected from pages of options I had to choose from. It is a painting from writer/artist David Mack taken from a recent Daredevil comic book. He is without question one of the best comic book artists working today and an all round accoplished artist outside of the comic book world.