Blog. Last blog.

Ideas. None at the moment.

Inspirations: Watched a show about meat today. Meat from around the country. Beef mostly. Steaks specifically. Learned about the origin of the Philly cheese steak. Didn't really need that information, considering im a vegetarian and will never attempt to taste the difference between the two warring cheese steak stands. Saw men eating five pound steaks in under an hour. Disgusted

Read bit of “the Filth” but almost started to cry. Not because of content but of allergies. Fucking plants having sex in my nose.

Could be the end of the quarter or just a general lack of inspiration but I cant for the life of me write, can only say what im thinking.

Learned disturbing fact about NASA , specifically Casini space probe. Probe has 73 pounds of plutonium on board and was launched on a rocket that has a 1/12 rate of failure. If the rocket blew up before leaving earths atmosphere the destruction would be twice that of Chernobyl. If it disintegrated in the atmosphere it would spread plutonium over 99% of the planet. Didn't even have to use plutonium, forced to by military wanting to experiment with nuclear war head viability in space. Good to know our safety comes first.

Cant think. Too congested. Fuck plants. Hooray plutonium. Infect it all.

On second thought radiation sickness worse then allergies. Retracting previous statement.

Im afraid of medication for allergies. Afraid of medication in general. Realized long ago the problem with a for profit medical system No money in actually healing people, only making them dependent on various medications. Make medications with symptoms worse then the problem. Require more medications to take care of extra symptoms. Reaffirm peoples belief they need original medication, need all kinds of medication, keep them hooked with fear. A nation of hypochondriacs. A nation of valid hypochondriacs. Best customers you can hope for.

Need medication. Head swimming with mucus or whatever the hell it is. Need head clear for finals. Need head clear for final thought experiment. How to top sixteen page evaluation of the continuity of my own existence.

Ideas: Context. Already talked about context. Both papers about context. Something about context or the concept of it intrigues me on a philosophical level. All things seem contextual and the context of those things are cause and effect.

Thought: If all things are based on a system of cause and effect couldn't system be predicted? If system can be predicted is their logic to fate? Could we make a map back to the beginning of known history and establish a chain of events or would it be tainted by our desire to find such connections

Wish I lived I had my prime around 1900. Time of crime lords. Could have been Don of the world. Only if I had the knowledge that I have today. Not naturally a crime person. Just have romanticized version based on movies.

Ideas for blog: none. What I have written will do. Interesting chain of thoughts. A lot of fear. That's natural though. Who isn’t afraid these days?

World is a dark place, getting darker. Cant just ride the tide but lack facilities to inact change. Lack clout. Clout is everything.

Blog done.

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Fear of failure. Something I have been thinking about a great deal because of this class. Its so unusual to have a teacher work without a prompt, without a system designed to intentionally and unfairly challenge students just for the sake of making them work harder for a grade. I have always hated that, teachers making a test confusing to make it more difficult for some arbitrary reason. The subject matter is what is important, not the way in which you present it on a test. If the subject matter doesn't produce problems that are difficult then that is the nature of the subject and it shouldn't be altered. I guess what is bringing this on is a test I took in my Journalism class recently on which I got a C. Side one was conceptual application of the subject and side B was all matching problems. Side A I didn't miss any points, perfect score. Side B I missed almost 100 points out of the total 315 points available. Why? Because it was intentionally designed to trick. It didn't require any knowledge, just memorization of where information came from in the continuity of the class. Even that wasn't enough because there is a false answer in each section thrown in to confuse the students. Why? I don't understand the point of intentionally deceiving students, especially when so much rides on passing the test, getting that high letter grade.

We are so conditioned to focus on those little letters, so afraid of their impact. Since before I can remember I was told that getting good grades would mean success (money) and bad grades meant sucking cock in a back ally for crack. What a terrible system, making so many children absolutely afraid of failing that it now seems almost impossible to try new things, to experiment, for fear that we may fail.

I suppose that's all I have to say. I am just angry about the system. Generations of kids conditioned against failure will only be a detriment to our society. We need a system that relies on adequate teacher reviews of students behavior instead of letter grades based on cumulative tests.

cooperation

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Cooperation and PVP

Our last in class discussion regarding the differences between cooperation and one on one actions, perhaps eventually leading to the discussion of the symbiotic nature of our systems or all systems made me start questioning the nature of cooperation. Is cooperation simply that, two or more beings or institutions that work together selflessly in order to achieve a common goal, or is cooperation another form self-serving contest under the guise of collaboration. What do we gain from collaboration? Why do we collaborate? Lets look at the most basic form of collaboration we see, the family. The family is the most basic collaborative system in humanity and if we look at the most simple classical model of it we have mother, father, and child. Mother and father need each other to propagate their genes. Mother, classically and in certain contemporary cases (especially late in the pregnancy) rely on the father for protection and provisions and the father needs to do these things in order to guarantee the safety of his genetic deposit. The child obviously needs the parents to survive for a very long time and the parents need to protect the child again to insure their genetic legacy. Not a selfless cooperative relationship but three individuals banding together in order to necessitate two forms of survival.

Companies and corporations are two forms of cooperation that are common in modern society but again they are, in essence, individuals vying for their own benefit. The employees work to make a wage necessary to sustain themselves, the companies promote products to drive profit to necessitate the wages of the individual workers. My point is made I believe, individuals join cooperative groups for self gain. What happens when parts of the cooperative group conflicts with other parts? Well we can see that in the corporation example; firing, layoffs etc. In the family system divorce and sometimes serious neglect and abuse of the child are the outcome of individual interests clashing in a cooperative group.

“What about groups like non profits and charity groups?” you may ask. These groups seemingly join together in the goal of selflessly helping individuals in need all around the world. Still I argue there is a base survival desire in these actions; people acting to advance and aid others in order to maintain the existence of our species as a whole. Its seems to me even the most selfless actions can eventually be construed as self serving in some fashion so I have begun to doubt the true collaborative nature of my fellow man.

AWWWW LOVE!!!

I had a profound conversation while shopping the other day. I never imagined that I would find perception changing inspiration at a Macy’s in a mall but I found it in the words of a watch sales woman. They had a pretty decent sale on watch’s at the time, considering it was the valentines/presidents day sale madness that engulfed shopping centers the country over but on a pizza drivers salary even a 20% of sale doesn’t make a decent watch affordable. I asked the helpful and rather song filled attendant if sales like this happened often on watch’s and she said “Oh im sure soon because…oh…well im sure there’s some holiday next month and then another one after that, you know how it is.” That is a profound statement.

The holiday that the sale was attributed to was president’s day, as I mentioned before. I began to think about what the watch salesperson said, and realized I don’t fully grasp the importance of the holiday. I am not aware of any traditions that surround the holiday nor do I really register it as anything more than a sale day and a day off. I can’t think of anyone that I know that does either. Presumably it has to do with honoring the former presidents of our country but when was the last time you or anyone you know spent the day somberly honoring the presidents of old? Most Americans spend it by recovering from chocolate and romance overdoes from valentines via shopping for more tangible products rather then chocolate and flowers. How many holidays do we celebrate in our nation that have become similar in tradition?

Valentines day, the day that we use to define love, is the paramount example of the commercialization of holidays. Just look at the massive amount of importance that we put on this single day in defining relationships between humans. If you have a significant other on this day, you are essentially required to do something “special” for them; not doing so can have dire consequences for your relationship. If you are single on valentines day it serves as a glaring reminder that you are not fulfilling your duties properly in regards to love and relationships and that you must do your best to find this brand of corporate defined love as soon as you can, that you may celebrate next valentines day properly instead of alone, possibly contemplating suicide as statistics show is a common pass time for this loveliest of days. This disparity is a fantastic depiction of the wedge that corporations drive into our psyche; a terrible view of just how much control they wield on our minds. January 14^th, relationship normal. You can be with your lover in any capacity, no call to be especially romantic and no call to even be with each other. Same goes for basically every other 14^th of every other month. What changes on the 14^th of February? Clearly we have a holiday but what literally changes between two people on this date. Absolutely nothing. Nothing literally changes between a couple, or rather nothing should however one day can wield so much power over the future or lack there of for a couple.

It seems kind of lame and Christmas specially to say the following (Christmas, another prime example of what this paper is about) but why do we need a defined day to express a certain breed of romance? Its because this day, though indeed having historical importance, has been taken over by entities who have realized that there is a lot of money to be made in the industry of “love.” There seems to be noting, in my mind, that carries more weight then saying “I love you” directly to your lovers face but that doesn’t matter any more. You must say it with chocolate, flowers, greeting cards and other temporary objects, nothing definite, nothing built to last so next year on valentines the process can be repeated. Perhaps this explains the push for diamonds. Some certainly have picked up on the lack of staying power of cards and chocolate so along comes a diamond conglomerate to inform us that diamonds are forever, making us pay excessive sums for a tightly controlled and generally corrupt industrial byproduct.

Why can’t we move beyond these callous materialistic ideals of our holidays, our love and celebrations of our lives? I don’t have a connection to the reading with this rant but I think it holds within the context of the class as a whole because clearly we have been infected with the parasite of consumerism, making us do things, believe things, attach to things that deserve none of these reactions. Love is our most complex and desired emotion, and its been made into a product for us to abide by. To the world it seems callous to say it but I didn’t do shit for my girlfriend on valentines day beyond the ordinary, but that’s because I take her out all the time. I don’t use a day or a collection of products to define my relationship, I simply act my best at all times, and I believe more people would find more definite relationships if they did the same.

Ghost blog.

I have been thinking about ghosts a lot recently for a number of reasons, and our conversations about interruptions have fueled my theories about their existence or non-existence. A few years ago I began seriously considering a possible explanation for the existence of the paranormal, fueled partly by my recent introduction to the study of physics but mostly from my then recent encounters with possible ghost activity. I have always been curious about ghosts and the like considering that, of all the myths and legends humans believe or argue about, paranormal encounters seem to be the most prevalent across cultures. Think about it, how many people have you met in your life who have had some form of paranormal encounter. The frequency of these encounters leads me to believe that at least a small portion are probably accurate, and with my experience now counter among them, I am even more of a believer.

I had volunteered on a film shoot that took place at Northern State Asylum, the abandoned mental institution in Sedro Wooly. The history of this place is as crazy as the people who once occupied it; fire, flood, one of the first places to experiment and perfect full frontal lobotomies, mass graves and the general mistreatment that came hand and hand with early 1900s asylums, all supporting evidence for the theory I will get to in a moment. My two months there had many strange and difficult to explain occurrences, sudden power outages, camera audio pops (a hard wired camera mic would not pop in this manner unless there was a very power wireless power signal next to it, and since no one was holding a cell phone directly next to the mic it doesn’t seem like any of the crew could have caused it), strange shadows, noises, voices, sudden temperature drops, places in the building where our walkie talkies would just go straight to static even though they worked just fine in the same locations days before. Yeah, you get the point lots of odd happenings that scared the pants off most of us. After this I really began thinking about possible reasons why such occurrences would happen, accepting the paranormal.

First, could there be a scientific explanation for why spirits or ghosts exist? Consider that, at our base, we are just a collection of atoms and, if you accept string theory, we could be considered as energy waves. When we die its not as though these atoms automatically disperse from the are or lose charge, so, given an a certain set of circumstances, is it so unlikely that your atoms may energize in a manner that may form a version of “you” or interact with objects in small amounts in rare occasions? Perhaps it would require, as it seems to be the case in most reported paranormal events, that the death of the individual would have to be a situation in which said individual was in a lightened state of alert; fear, self defense, extreme pain etc. This brings me to my consideration of our in class discussion.

The energized atom argument seems like it would be applicable to any dead thing. However, as mentioned it only seems like those who die in heightened emotional or traumatic states that reappear as sprits or general “hauntings.” The traumatic states could play a role but more importantly I believe they remain in a state open to being partially re-energized because their deaths were a particularly unexpected and unwanted interruption in the continuity of their existence. Is that not basically what we seek in life? An existence that conforms to our vision of what it should be without interruption? There are many interruptions, bad jobs, school, annoying friends, anything you can think of but ultimately, though they are interruptions, we can assimilate them into some context in which they cease to be interruptions and more stepping stones or “challenges” for us to best and as a result improve. A murder or other violent death is the last, worst interruption of an existence, and leaves the victim with no chance to put such an interruption in context. That, I think, is the ultimate reason why trace elements of what these people once were may still linger beyond their deaths.

Blog 2: Visual parasites.

I have seen over 1000 films in my life. 1000 may even be a bit too conservative of an estimate. I own over 300 DVDs currently, purchasing roughly one new film a month, including television, feature length films and live concert captures, 20 of which are on the hip new Blu ray. This implies that I have the necessities to play this new format, HDTV, Blu ray player (mine happens to be ps3 which means I need a fancy HDMI cable) and to take full advantage of the formant a 7.1 digital surround sound system. I see an average of 3-4 movies in the theater a month. So lets do some math here:

3-4 movies on the big screen a month = $27-$36 or $324-$432 annually.

300 DVDs purchased at an average of $20 = $6000 dollars

1 new DVD a month at an average of $20 = $240 annually

1 new video game a month = $65 = $780 annually

HDTV = $1200

Ps3 = $400

HDMI cable = Market value $100 dollars (Having a friend at Best Buy apparently means you can get cables for next to nothing so I was fortunate enough to get this cable for something like $6)

7.1 digital surround sound speaker system = $400

Grand total = $9552 + $1452 per year

Average paycheck (bi-weekly)= $350 plus roughly $250 a week in tips

Annual pay = $21,400 - $5760 (rent, gas, bills etc) = $15640

So, assuming I purchased all of the items in the course of one year (which is pretty much the case) that means I have spent just over 60% of my income on visual stimulus, a depressingly large portion of my hard earned pizza money. This number gets larger if I include related items such as popcorn at the movies, merchandise from the ones I really like etc. The questions that all of this data brings to my attention are, first and foremost, why? I’m poor. Each month I barley skid by with roughly $100 in the bank if I happened to be frugal with my food and social interaction budget but if you take out all the money spent on movies and video games a month I would be left with an extra $121 dollars a month, roughly a third of a pay check! What drives me to spend money on visual stimulus like this? Building on that, could it perhaps be that such visual stimulus has a parasitic nature?

Perhaps the best way to answer both of these questions is to determine whether or not this visual stimulus benefits in a way that justifies the financial input. I would really like to be able to justify the time and money spent on visual stimulus but I cannot. With the extra money I would have per month by not indulging my visual addiction I could have such things as decent car insurance (instead of just liability), a bed that is NOT a futon (as comedian Jim Gaffigan wisely observes, futons are indeed filled with hatred) or maybe even put it into savings for some future goal, like a trip to a foreign country or more likely a weekend in Vegas to watch my savings evaporate in a matter of hours. Every movie I watch can run from ninety minutes to over three hours, every video game I play can eat up another two to four hours. During that time I could be reading to improve my knowledge about many things, exercising in order to not be so pudgy or maybe even studying for once in my life as a student. The films can provide knowledge etc but ultimately all of these stimuli are entertainment and nothing more.

So, with ultimately a negative affect on my life (not to say movies and video games are bad by any means, just in the excess that I enjoy them) it is important to look for who or what really benefits from this relationship, and that’s the easy part. Time Warner, Disney any and all of the five major corporations that own and control nearly every facet of media in America, they are the benefactors in this obviously parasitic relationship. Is that not the definition of a parasite? An entity that takes from the host without benefiting or killing it? I am not the host in this relationship, only part of it. The host is of course all of our county and our culture. The relationship is not just in regards to visual stimuli products but to products as a whole. We as a people are trapped in the parasitic relationship of materialism. Through their media control this collective corporate parasite convinces us of what we need, what we should buy, how much we should buy, how often we should buy (which is all the time in the corporate eye) but really the vast majority of these products are more detrimental then helpful, this life style as a whole is more detrimental, to the individual, then helpful. This parasite, however, is not in total control, not totally unstoppable. Like all parasites it needs a host to live and as long as we indulge its needs it will thrive. Without us, it will perish or adapt, just like any other parasite, and that is a comforting thought. Id like to say that I will lead the way and cast off my visual addictions in favor of a simpler and more frugal life…but Bioshock 2 is coming soon and the summer movie season is fast approaching so for the time being I will continue to feed this parasite. Here’s hoping someone reading this has a stronger constitution then I!