Lawyering for Life

Even a caveman could do it: Life Good, Killing Bad.

I have to say that my morality might be stricter than the bible's. How's that, you ask? Well, I think war is always morally wrong. Not one person should become a soldier. Militaries should not exist. If you sign on, for any country, you are giving up your rights just as if you were signing up to be a slave fighting in an arena as a gladiator. Trust me, some people think war is entertainment. Chess is war, and chess is the sport of kings, right? I personally believe that even the president can be a pawn. A lot of the overpopulation crowd I imagine couldn't care less if a bunch of soldiers kill each other off. Anyway, killing anyone is always bad, in my view. Not an accidental mistake. I mean murder. And becoming a pawn of your government is not something I respect. I am coming from Einstein's quote, without the hypocrisy of having contributed to creating a fricking nuclear bomb. Am I saying killers shouldn't be killed? YES, that is exactly what I am saying. They could be shot with a tranquilizer gun and kept in prison maybe, but not killed. End war. Increase the peace.

I know I said abortion, to me, is grounds for a civil war, but I rescind that as an emotional and unthinking statement, in which I imagined pro-choice advocates as, well, evil murdering bastards who should not be allowed anywhere near our children, and whose depraved immorality should not be legally sanctioned and incorporated in a nation that purports to call itself good. (and therefore they should have their own country, which I imagine would only come through conflict).

I differ from my wife and some of my family on this, and I'm fairly hardcore on the topic, but babies are defenseless, innocent victims and it's disgusting that a baby's own mother can be persuaded to kill her child, and that society isn't everyone and everywhere offering to communally help raise children right, and instead wants to cut them up and vacuum them out of the uterus, because it's too much bother or something. People are cynical and retarded about the possibility for successful adoption. That's all I have to say. Yes we can.

Hatin' Satan and Hod God

words. what the dealy-o.

God is love, so satan is hatin'. Makes sense.

But is God hod? I looked up the word, and sure 'nuf, it's a jewish kabbalah thang.
And is Satan Latin? geez. It's seems I've stumbled onto something.

LINK

Hod has something to do with the left foot, it says.
My left foot, by the way, doesn't bend at the ankle. btw, born that way.
That's the title of a movie. Movies and e-motions... and mlf

I plugged in GSLH (for God, Satan, Love, Hate) and got
God's Special Little Hearts, and a link to Godtube.com.
God, I love the internet.

You realize, of course, everyone, that you have the right to say, and believe, that God is hate, and Satan is love. People would disagree with you, but it would still be the same thing, with different words attached to the realities. Words, turds. Another sidenote: If satan loves to hate, that's just another form of love, so it's all God, I would say, then. That's kind of a puzzle I haven't figured out to my own satisfaction, yet. Everybody says hatred is bad, and God is good, but I'm not so sure of the absoluteness of either. You can do one action, and it is good for one person, but bad for another. So yeah, whatever, nevermind. Maybe God does nothing, and that's the most good one can do. In that case, sorry for writing this blog. The bible even says somewhere, better had I not been born.. I'd like to believe the world is a better place with me in it, that I am good, and therefore God.

Homelessness and Housing

This should not be a problem.

100-200M "homeless" in the world. Link

From the economist:
"IN THE past three years, the total value of residential property in developed economies has increased by an estimated $20 trillion, to over $60 trillion. Granted, that increase is partly explained by the decline in the dollar; still, it is double the $10 trillion by which global share values climbed in the three years to 1999. Is this the biggest financial bubble in history? "

from another site:
Part of the reason for the bubble is there's too much inventory.

"A minority chorus has long argued that the Fed should reverse the easy policy that successively fueled a dot-com boom, a consumer spree and an unprecedented surge in the housing market.”

"Easy Policy"?? This is a bit confusing. As opposed to a difficult policy? Not hard to enforce, you mean?

“‘We borrowed trillions of dollars to remodel our kitchens, buy SUVs and plasma TVs, and there are consequences,’ said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. ‘We are in serious trouble. The piper has to be paid.’” “The Fed cut…will only delay the inevitable, ‘It will be terribly painful, but it’s therapeutic. It’s like a drug addict going through withdrawal from heroin. It is awful, but it’s what will get us better,’ Schiff argued.”

Sounds right to me.

But seriously, people.
Housing is not a problem, or it sure as the words in front of you shouldn't be.
There's FEMA trailers, extra motor homes and whatnot, and unused and empty properties everywhere... Heck, even cars can somewhat be considered as shelter. Can't cities give out tents and have tent cities or something where there is high homelessness? Just some thoughts from yours truly.

Can't we, globally, figure out a way to put the 200 MILLION human beings without homes inside our Excess Inventory? I admit I have no idea what I'm talking about. It just sounds right. Can you fill bubbles with people?

If people are like bubbles, am I full of hot air, and is someone going to pop me? I'd rather pop of old age. Is everything my fault? My former "friend" who said he was a vampire once said so. Egads. But I don't own a house, car, OR plasma tv. My roommate does.

p.s. that's Britney Spears' malibu mansion, pictured above.

Lawyers

I once saw a t-shirt that said, "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
I disagree. God's law says thou shalt not kill*. Certainly not all of them, anyway.
I say thou shalt not kill. I also say, simply, Don't kill. Or, killing-bad.

More lawyerly put,
kill murder assassinate homicide- wrong, immoral, bad, unethical, illegal, criminal, sinful.
To kill all the lawyers, so to speak, you could simply outlaw the law or something...
why be bloody about it.
And that's what I think the law is, in a nutshell...civilized combat. Warfare of words. Often (and always) a clash of egos, but most purely a clash of well-reasoned wills.

Lawyers become legislators who make the law, they interpret the law as judges, and argue the law as defenders and advocates and prosecutors. They can enforce the law, too. That's not official; that's my (uneducated) understanding.

I asked a lawyer once what the difference was between 'criminal' and 'illegal'. I got a long pause, a long strange answer (that I forget), and an impression that the law is a strange animal.

LINK to some power lawyers.

Anyway, the bible -God's word, they say- also says All is absurdity, and God believes all things. It's a big mess. Maybe God believes he doesn't exist. I don't think, therefore I am not. So, anyway, in regards to not killing, in addition to respecting your fellow man, don't kill bugs, or plants, or eat meat, or commit suicide. Plants are alive. You usually kill them when you eat them. I wouldn't say that we should just cut off the legs of cows, and have a bunch of savagely brutalized legless cows running around (not funny, I know), either, so what to do? (F- it? Do whatever you want?) People just do what they think will have the biggest reward, say, if they don't believe in karma, or feel no guilt, or think they can get away with it, or enjoy being "bad" (or all of the above).

I want to say: It's wrong if you're guilty and it's right if it makes you feel happy. Then again, feelings maybe can be deceptive. What do all you other Supreme Beings say about this?

Try and respect people.

*The Roman Catholic Church uses the translation 'kill' (less specific) instead of 'murder'.[4] (wikipedia) But what Wikipedia says also is "In the fullness of the Old Testament Exodus 20:13 is abundantly evidenced as prohibiting unjust killing, rather than a universal injunction against all killing, as retzach is never used in reference to the slaying of animals, nor the taking of life in war, while its most frequent use is in reference to involuntary manslaughter and secondarily for murderers." There's obviously a lot of killing in the OT.

p.s. what got me on this today was I had a dream where I saw who I thought was Ralph Nader on some dreamland campus and he was running with his dog, and I was chasing him through a path in some foliage carrying 3 fairly large chunkrocks of cement, and I caught up with him, him sitting in a beat up car, and asked him how I could become a Nader's raider this day in age, and he said go to makemoney.com or something, and I woke up, and plugged in the (correct, and fresh in my memory, but not that though) web address and got a page that wasn't up. I went to ask.com, asked the question again, and got a link to the power lawyers above. Thus, this. In my dream, I also saw a picture of an actress, a pretty starlet, -Natalie Portman, be warned- with a bashed in face.

I've got a wife who once said, "f--k 'em or fight 'em", and the sexual impulse has aggression and powerplay in it, and my beautiful sister was killed in my single-car crash, and now I read that the commandment against murder/killing was in reference to INvoluntary manslaughter? I could really get paranoid about all this. It was womanslaughter, or girlslaughter, but...ugh.

Just now I saw a license plate frame on a PT cruiser that says Calistoga: Gateway to hell, and a sticker on a scion (which means descendant, root or twig for grafting) that said New Mecca Cafe, Pittsburgh. What the heck is going on? I know what's going on. I forgot to take my med this morning, lol. In between them is a red muddy V6 toyota truck. Wow, deep. :-)

Credit Crunch

Mm, crunchy.

I don't like doing crunches (the exercise), but I do like crunchy (and chewy) granola bars. Basically, why do they call it a crunch? A contraction. We can all relate to chewing compressions, exercise crunches, and birth contraction. Economic language is a funny thing.
Anyway, here's a paragraph from the Economist:

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once remarked that he knew of only six people in the world who had followed his daunting book “Principia Mathematica” to the end. There sometimes seem to be almost as few people in Britain who truly understand the credit crunch and its recessionary consequences. The public is scared and uncertain; the politicians are panicky and confused. They are leading each other around and down a worrying spiral of ignorance.

To read the article, click on this link.

You don't want to spiral like a downed pilot, a shot bird, or a kite without wind (!)
Here's what I think of with the word "spiral."

I should be thinking of seashells, pasta shapes, staircases, and all kinds of good stuff.

I quote from the Huffington Post:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union. He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system. "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system," Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. "It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

Look, there's no need to freak out, people. All we need to do, globally, is ensure everyone has food and shelter and security. This should be done on a volunteer basis. We're not all motivated by little slips of green paper. We're motivated by being comfortable and happy in a community of people who care for one another. Education can be effectively provided online and on tv, so that's a revolution. And farming and housing for everyone is a matter of putting seeds in the soil and people in buildings. Pretty simple. Economics shmeconomics. Relax. It's only the world economy giving birth to a new world order. (lol. I love to push your buttons).

Crime Shows blow

If you watch crime shows, you're either:

a) bored
b) want to solve crimes
c) want to get away with crime

I feel sorry for people that watch crime shows without an active angle, either cop or criminal, on the whole thing. How utterly boring.

People who want to solve crimes could do far, far, far, far, far, far, far, FAR better than watching the tripe on tv, designed for -what- kids? morons? criminals? old people that can't find the remote?

And, frankly, if you want to get away with crime, well -whatever works, dude.

I think the world would be more interesting, as Hannibal Lecter said, if everybody in it committing crimes and solving them did it professionally. Not that I want every robber to be a professional jewel thief or killer to be an assassin, but people should take pride in their work, and know what they're up against. People should be good at what they do. The more masters, the merrier. And frankly, tv is only interesting insofar as it has been expressly designed by masterful strokes of mind control to produce certain responses in whatever targeted demographics the program is addressing and attempting to influence.

I think the way, the truth, and the light -for criminals- is going to criminology and forensics textbooks, and the law, and police procedure, and the whole 9 yards (mysteries and movies and shows) so as to immerse yourself in the culture and lifestyle, to perfect your craft. Remember, though, as the OT said of Moses' killing, "surely this thing is known." Ha. Pointlessness. Vanity of vanities (absurdity of absurdities?).

Cops, likewise...well, that doesn't sound nearly as fun. See, even though I'm God, I'm not on a power trip. I don't need to prove dominance. I actually like it when people point out how I'm wrong about something. I'm not captivated by the concept of justice, law, order, and the notion of "bad guys." I think everybody's good, even the meanest, baddest, hardest of criminals. They're just doing what comes naturally, and natural is good. There is no unnatural. I have my opinions and preferences, and they have theirs. If we differ, I don't therefore think they are bad. I think they are wrong, misinformed, illogical, confused, irrational, or stupid -but not bad. The baddest of criminals is basically a theoretical. No ACTUAL criminal tortures anything it can get its hands on. The law of karma is too firmly entrenched for that to be a reality, I believe. Evilness has it's mirror, it's consequences, it's effect on it's perpetrators, it's karmic response.

Speaking of power, the concept of God needs revising. No one is Almighty. Well, maybe some physicist could kill all of us, or worse, but that doesn't make said higher power Omnipotent. God is good, God is I am, Being is good, nothingness/oblivion/death is bad (despite it being the extinction of suffering), and for God to be omnipotent he would have to make Being extinct of suffering, which is a pretty tall order, so I'll just say I'll do what I can, because even God can't just snap his fingers and make all the pain go away. Or can I? For the record, I snapped my fingers at 10:27pm PST on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009, with the intent of removing all suffering permanently from the universe, while not killing anything. Write me back, y'all, if you feel me.

Warhol, YSL, and American art

Today I went to San Francisco's De Young Museum
An otherworldly experience.

omg, omg, omg. lol.
No, seriously. It was cool. Definitely a trip.

Andy Warhol I don't believe I can do justice to in a blog post, but perhaps he made himself a superficially plastic enough piece of art to be encapsulated in a few tasty soundbites, like the campbell soup cans and silkscreened faces he's known for.. He designed the 'sticky-fingers' album cover for the Stones, and I've heard two Velvet Underground albums, and the mirrorball with projected patterns on the walls, the idea of destroying people by making them just stare into a camera, the idea of repetition becoming unrepetitive, and his grand dream to both integrate and revolutionize all the arts, was a pretty heady experience, for a kid born in 1971 to a hippy. He did an album cover mocking cannibalism. The dance, though, I've got to say, was pretty cool, too. I'm totally into that. I could have spent a lot more time delving into details. It was like a drug for me. I'm fairly certain that was a part of the Andy Warhol experience, too. I was struck a bit by the horror of it, as well. Imminent Plastic Explosion? Lou Reed and heroin? Brillo pads as art and garish posters of superficial appearances....he was a spooky dude. His quote on death also revealed to me that he was completely confused. He was Byzantine Catholic or something. Anyway, Andy Warhol wikipedia link.

The second installment of today's drug-free trip (for only 20 bucks/adult) was the Yves St. Laurent retrospective collection, which was way more fun than I thought it would be. I have a newfound respect for the fashion industry, but, coming from Warhol, I had to think to myself, ugh, it's all superficial creation of an image, anyway, and some of the more outlandish pieces were reminders that the whole world is just a giant stage -and gallery- where people make themselves into pieces of art: their appearance, their personalities, their homes, the lifestyles, everything. It's all superficial. But some of these appearances are pretty damned impressive. Not everything is a silkscreened soupcan. Some art is an amazing dress, perhaps even revolutionary, if that word has any meaning, that is ornately crafted, visually arresting, truly unique, etc. Coming off of Warhol, though, it struck me as perhaps just another way for plastic people to divert attention away from vacuousness, such as maybe a simple and slavish pursuit of economic "superiority," onto appearances.

I felt slightly invigorated in my perspective that true meaning comes from making people's lives better in a real way: a)reduced suffering, b)basic needs and c)greater happiness, and not from a greedy keeping up with the Jones' or surpassing them. Anyone can "make a difference" by, say, killing people or painting your house. True meaning, though, is doing something substantive, not superficial. Even altruism can be superficial, though. That's a trap for the Bill Gates's and the Al Gores of the world, I would say. Jesus had some good points.

I somewhat consider this blog to be an art piece, itself. Making my identity God can be something either superficial or substantive. I'm a bit schizo on where I should go with this. It seems that the bible paints God out to be vengeance personified, a judge, etc. I don't like that angle. I'm not going to start killing people or something just to believe my own bullshit because God is defined by others that way. Hopefully I really can Be Godly, in an ever-increasing way, so that by the time I'm old, the world will be Paradisian (is that a word?).

Anyway,
The third part of today's coolness was the American art. I learned how to pronounce tromp l'oeil (fool the eye), and saw some pretty stunning pieces. Unfortunately, it got cut short because my wife Sara got thirsty and needed me to come with her while we walked all the way to the car and drove to a bar for a gin and tonic because the water fountain at the gallery wasn't good enough for her. Maybe it was actually because she was an art history major and so the art just wasn't nearly as magical for her. In fact, it seemed downright boring or something. My wife, it seems, is an art snob. Oh well, so it goes, we met Billy Bob Whitmer, a wannabe politician trying to start a Bull Moose party in San Francisco, and then went to my folks place in the city to celebrate Sara's birthday with my brother, his girlfriend, two aunts, an uncle, and the best damn chocolate cake I've had in a long while. That was my day. Just another day in Paradise.

My TV Crusade

Just to clarify, I don't want to pay for only some commercials, i.e. only the one's I watch...
(although that's not a bad idea, to my view, either, if it's possible)

I am willing to pay for ALL my commercials -to be removed-, AND be willing to watch once in awhile a COMMERCIAL STATION (i.e. commercials only) that interactively provides ONLY the commercials for products that I'm actually in the MARKET for (or entertaining commercials I might actually desire to see, for whatever reason). At least I think I would be. How much money are we talking, here, for this theoretical service? Seriously, ballpark..

The POINT here, is that I don't want to have my TIME, which is a resource I wish to have control over MYSELF, wasted in front of a tv while waiting for commercials -that I have to MUTE, incidentally- to pass. I have to do this because my WIFE (lol) doesn't mind the commercials like I do and is a tv ADDICT, unfortunately.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this predicament.

I realize it's a small thing, in the grand scheme of things, but I believe as passionately in the lives of ants as I do the lives of elephants, and our planet is a grain of sand on our universe's endless beach, and who the hell cares anyway what I think, but god damnit, I want the option to not have to suffer through commercials peddling crap I don't want to buy and that constantly remind me that I live amid a bunch of fricking morons who are actually swayed by this advertising crap. I belong to the ANNOYED demographic, alright, and I don't like tv that much anyway, but when my wife wants me to hang out with her in front of the tv, I try to occasionally oblige, cuz I catch hell every time I assert my right to avoid the shitty thing and not watch, and yeah it IS a personal problem, but I'm also pretty damned sure that it's a SOCIETAL problem as well, so I'm saying, like some politicians already have, free up America's time to be social and productive, instead of corporate automatons, by making commercials a VOLUNTARY experience, if possible. The concept is called a "Captive Audience" and it's the same thing as having a voice in your head, and it (can be) annoying as hell, and if you want to free your mind like Bob Marley told you to, or whoever started that meme, you can start by actively making a better reality that doesn't enslave it, which in my case is not just muting or turning the tv off, but lobbying for a commercial-free viewing experience, because I'm just that crazy.

Thus, my ideas in the prior post.

I believe the future will bear my vision out.
Television. Tell a vision. Yup, I just told one. See below.

Btw, the idea that people don't want to put their content out for free is absolutely ridiculous. I do. Some of us actually just want to a)get fame, b)start memes, or c) be of service and share and talk and communicate and make a better world just for the sheer joy of it.

I have to say the ideal internet, by the way, is an uncluttered internet. I like things clear and clean and pure, stylistically. I have a dream.

Speaking of being annoyed, hopefully this being God thing will put me at ease at some point with all you silly humans and your funny ways. It's the Buddhist ideal, I guess: no attachments in the sense of cravings OR aversions. Rough going, I gotta tell you.

Oh, and another thing: it doesn't have to be for everybody. It could be a service for only those that request it or pay for it. Now THAT's a deal you can't refuse, no?

Click on the comment for this post below!

God says to Mute Your TV

I've got some ideas on this whole matter of commercials.
This endless black hole of commercials...

Let's see: The average American watches x hours of tv.
x % of tv time is commercials.
The average commercial spot is x seconds.
Thus, the average American watches x commercials.
(answers below)

Seriously...I ask you, how many things have you bought because of a tv commercial?
Let me ask this another way, what percentage of tv adverts are selling something you're actually in the market for??
For me, it's virtually none.
I HATE TV COMMERCIALS.

Let me state this again: I HATE TV COMMERCIALS.

How do I hate thee?
Let me state the ways:
1) You waste my time
2) You yell at me
3) You waste my loved one's time
4) You waste x hours total of humanity's time.
5) You yell at everyone else, too.

And by "yell", I mean they clamor for your attention. Commercials are expressly designed to arrest your attention, hold it, and make you feel good about the product. They are endlessly repetitive, both within a single commercial, and in repeating the same commercial ad nauseum. They make me sick. I hate them. I don't want them forced on me. I propose a solution.

old solutions
a) I know, you'll say just don't watch tv, then. I already avoid it like the plague.
b) Mute the commercials when you do watch. I do. And I yell at my wife to mute it every goddamned (excuse me, gosh darned) time. People are not even aware that they are zombies glued to watching commercials about crappy widgets you don't need. It's annoying and stressful, and I'm fricking going crazy in my house with these stupid bullshit retarded commercials all the time. Geezus christ, already.
c) record the shows and zip through the commercials. (still annoying, but less so)
d) buy or rent the shows on dvd after the season is over (aha! maybe they're online- even better) -possibly the best idea, at present
e) there's this product called mute magic that supposedly has a fairly good success rate at identifying and muting commercials automatically, but it would probably mute parts of shows or fail to mute some commercials, I would assume. There's also a patented mute button ring.
f) Kill your tv. Just don't own one. Break it. Omg, it would feel so good if I could, jesus. I want to nuke mine, personally. Argh. Gr.

MY SOLUTIONS
What If.....
g) cable tv had a paid option to mute your commercials for you automatically for a fee. Seriously, why don't they just divide how much money they make from selling commercial air time and divide it by their number of viewers, and call it a deal.

H) NO TV COMMERCIALS. I'm going to send this bill idea to my congressperson. It's as follows:
-No commercials on any tv networks. BUT!:
-There will be an interactive (for cable users) COMMERCIAL STATION.
It would work like this:
a.You would indicate what you're in the market for (voice-command?), and
b.ALL the commercials for those products would become available for viewing.
(This could be historical as well as current, by company, by region, whatever...)
c. Finally, you could order shipping and handling, if you want to order the product at home.

Like, there could be a virtual store, with absolutely everything in it, with 3d goggles if you really want to get crazy, and professional shoppers, who save gas, or ride bikes, or take the bus, and work on commission or as independent contractors or something, who bring the world to you. That's just me getting crazy with this idea.

But seriously, a commercial station. That would rock. Some people like commercials. There could be superbowl commercials, people's favorites, award-winning commercials, worst commercials, local commercials, whatever. This is the best idea ever. Make commercials fun again.

World, MAKE IT SO! (lol)

Television Statistics
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Compiled by TV-Free America; 1322 18th Street, NW ; Washington, DC 20036 (202) 887-4036

From an individual's personal study of primetime shows, ( link), this data was collected:
1952 - 13 percent of the time was spent watching commercials (only 4 minutes out of every half hour!)
1958 - still 13 percent
1964 - 17.8 percent
1977 - 18 percent
1994 - 24 percent
2004 - 30 percent
2006 - 30 percent
2007 - 30 percent
2008 - 32 percent
These were all for main line shows aired during prime time hours.

The average length of a commercial is 15-20 seconds, some site said.

Thus, 32% of 4 hours (240minutes) is about 77 minutes, or 4620 seconds, which is:
231 (20 second) commercials. An hour and 17 minutes every day of commercials.
Do commercials even work?

My God. I Hate TV SO FriCKING MUCH.
Multiply that by 365: 84,315 commercials in a year/individual.
America's population is 303,824,640 (July 2008 est.)
YOU do the math. It's overwhelming.
Okay, I will: America, all together, watches 25,616,974,521,600 commercials a year.
That's over 25 TRILLION commercials.
How many years are spent, collectively, in just this one category of wasted time?
Answer: Americans collectively watch 44,510 YEARS watching tv commercials PER DAY.
(which translates to 16,246,150 collective years per year).
What are we doing?? watching truck and dish soap commercials (for example)
Every Single Day.
Yeah, there's dvr, I know.
It's a rough estimation. Ballpark. plump when you cook 'em.

I conclude with this link. Commercials crush your soul. Grow up, people.
Commercials make me hate life, hate people, hate America, hate capitalism, and hate the companies, tv stations, and sheeple watching tv doing that do nothing to stop this goddamn nonsense that's wasting everybody's precious time. That's no way to live.

On the other hand, though, you should know I love libraries with an equal and opposite fervent passion. Amen.

UGH
Here's more info:
Education Secretary Richard Riley attributed the decline in reading and literacy to "too many students...spending too little time reading and too much time watching mind-numbing television." Most educators agree that excessive television-watching:
-Induces cognitive passivity;
-Stifles/displaces creativity, reflection and imagination;
-Displaces opportunities for play and social interaction;
-Shortens attention spans and increases hyperactivity;
-Cultivates visual processing skills incompatible with print-based skills.
Time spent reading in the U.S. fell by a third between 1965 and 1985.

"couch potato syndrome"
Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist Robert Kubey. Heavy TV viewers exhibit six dependency symptoms--two more than necessary to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse. These include using TV as a sedative; indiscriminate viewing; feeling loss of control while viewing; feeling angry with oneself for watching so much; inability to stop watching; and suffering withdrawal when forced to stop watching TV.

YEAH
1887, Arthur Balfour, speech (in print), The Benefits of Reading, LINK.

I know, I know, embrace all the world with an abiding love, yada yada. I still hate the fricking commercials.

Our society is sick. Everybody is a walking billboard. Cars, clothes, bags. People want to be like characters from movies, who are scripted by professional writers. God is a character, too. Love has to be a certain way. There's always something quirky about people, something interesting, even when it seems like everybody is part of a machine. What if everybody was original, and all the cars were custom, and everything was truly unique? Artworld. Then, something the same would be artsy, I guess.

click on the comment below!

Happy St. Valentine's Day

Mwa! (a big kiss to all)

-God

-an interesting LINK about kissing.

Notes on the course I'm taking

It's the UC Berkeley OCW (OpenCourseWare) Psych/Cognitive Science class in Consciousness
taught by prof. Kihlstrom.

-wikipedia entry on consciousness
-I am not the ghost without a soul (?),
leave your body and soul at the door(Oingo Boingo lyric)
-mind-body problem
"age, if you don't mind, it doesn't matter"
maybe the placebo affect measures the hidden power of sugar :-)
-Descartes' impasse: we perceive duality.
explained: we are not (entirely) separate from other, vibes, zatoichi the blind swordsman, energy, 6th sense, matrix, "god", spirit/soul/mind, telepathy, instinct, funny feeling, spider sense tingling, inspiration (a breathing term), reading other's mind, collective (un)conscious, pluck ideas "out of thin air," thin-k, god's spirit moved over the deep, deep thoughts, breezy ideas, light and dark, hot and cold: hot emotion, michael jordan on fire, cold intellect, topgun iceman, genesis- in the air tonight, weather or not, letters and bleeding, spells and spelling. Creativity and frank zappa and his mothers of invention, ideas strike like lightning, our breath connects us, butterfly effect, shush, says silence of the lambs, spiritual transformation, dark fledgling killers and seeing the light, enlightenment, thawts, eyedeas, open and closed mines, moth/other/mother/om. Dreams make some of us think our minds travel outside our bodies. Row, row, row your boat...stream (of consciousness).

-definitions...neural correlates... different for coma vs. pvs vs. sleep vs. spinal injury

questions
what are the weirdest things that have displayed any form of consciousness?
-plants react to led zeppelin?
-yogurt?
-water? ('what the bleep do we know' movie)
related to movement? absolute zero? atoms? smaller even? any matter? energy? plasma?

my definition (a thought)
-a state of on/off (binary) (like alive or dead)
-light switch example- consciousness is generally considered light, or on. But it could be the reverse, or off. ("kill the lights", taken literally) or (Jesus- I am the light, I am the life...therefore, light is alive).
-the shrimp that swim toward the light are conscious of where the light is coming from, no?
(could a genetic manipulation be made that reversed that?)
-reverse vision (how could you tell?)
-a folding chair conscious of being open or shut?
-"subconscious" "unconscious" (less "conscious" divisions of consciousness)
-hungry or full might be felt by a one-celled organism, without a brain, for example.

I think consciousness, for humans, is a more complex web of binary relationships.
(a consequence of being alive and having a body -including a brain)

-awake-all senses on,
-aware-having words for things, prior experience/familiarity, sports, life or death, fight or flight
(categories, heightened sensitivity)
-experiencing- dreams, 5 senses, awake or asleep (or in between), stasis- reactive to stimulus

(experiencing, awake, aware, and transcendent might be 4 ascending levels of consciousness)

abnormal psychology
someone that doesn't feel pain, has no arms or legs, deaf dumb and blind, can't see or hear or talk, an extreme strange possibility, sleeping...conscious? Locked-in syndrome and dark musical terror lyrics of having eyes and lips sewn together...using einstein's theoretical "thought experiments" to test the limits of our definitions of consciousness (and ethical considerations).

drugs and alternate forms of consciousness
-body's own drugs or introduced foreign substances, lsd, euphoria, synesthesia, visions...
human potential
-strange paradigms...jesus, believing everything to be true: believe every own thought, ideas of others, "levels", numbers and calculations and numerology and finger tapping, music and mathematical relationships... believing yourself to be "possessed", abulia, not in control of your own actions. Possessed by God or Devil. A part of something greater. "spirituality" . Servant of God, doing whatever "feels right", intuition.

-remote viewing, see through other's eyes, navigating a global visual matrix? telling lots of lies, well (power of belief, magic). natural abilities and acquired powers. frames of mind, shifting perspectives, "snap" into something/someone else, role playing, soul rotation, acting, memorization and rehearsal and costume, all the world's a stage, "my"self/identity, psychic spies, telepaths, programming..

-critical thinking, the opposite is always true, weighing all possibilities, skepticism, scientific method, probabilities of truth as basis for tentative belief, always gathering evidence, rigid and hardcore and mental, always thinking, always questioning, cynicism and everything you know is wrong and they're out to get you or control you, karma sevenfold by an unqualified hypocritical judge, stupid people everywhere, it's all bullshit, maybe even love is evil or disempowering or something, the truth hurts, bitterness, sour, sweet heart, biting wit, getting drunk, life is hell, life's a bitch then you die, reality bites, vampires (i.m.a. perv's) bite, people suck, same shit different day, goin' to hell in a bucket, f-u. fuck off. etc. etc.

-trying on for size the Being-Identity of God. Now I'm BIG. Woohoo. I love myself. I'm love. I love everybody, and so everybody should love me. Ain't love grand?

btw, zombies, if they existed, would be conscious. They see, and have the sense of balance, and are motivated to acquire sweet, delicious, nutritive BRAINS. Yum. Or are you talking about the actual zombies that those scary voodoo folks in the caribbean are reputed to make every now and then? yikes. I don't know what those are, and don't want to. Nightmarish? Therefore, conscious.

Creative Genius

Some people think it comes from God. So where does mine come from?

Here are some (10) ideas of what can form our reality:

-rewards and punishments, pleasures and sufferings/torments
-repetition, positive and negative reinforcement
-books, movies, music, tv
-church, jail, gangs or groups
-workplace
-alone time, meditation, in nature, contemplation, writing
-parents, teachers, friends
-sex and relationships
-diet, exercise, drugs/pharmaceuticals (beware of self-medicating; rarely effective I'm told)
-pets

Reality is both external and internal.

external
You can be around different people in different places in different cultures, and a place around the block may feel palpably different, as either better or worse, more comfortable or less, more secure or more threatening, etc. The feng shui, color scheme, interior decorating, all that crap. You can, of course, work on yourself to be at ease in any environment. Or you can adapt the environment to your preferences. If you're fit and in love, you might be comfortable living on the sidewalk. I think I would be happy in any external environment, as long as I'm healthy and safe, and get to experience culture shock on a regular basis. I'm addicted to variety.

internal
Internal reality can be molded by books, especially. Movies can be like drugs, too. Having a job you really enjoy that is not work, in any drudgery sense of the term, can really help. Relationships take work, and while the song sings love the one you're with, it should not be drudgery, I believe, either. You're internal world is created by books, movies, jobs, relationships -things in the external world. Your imagination and dreams are affected by your life, too -perhaps, if only as an opposite reaction against it. The mind can be paranormal. But what's normal? How normal is it to talk about what our real reality is like?

And now, for something completely different, the topic at hand-
Creativity is creating a new reality, a different perspective on the same reality, or maybe even..both! It could be rediscovering/reinventing an old, but lost, reality, too.

Here's an interesting TED link on creativity, that shows how we all are crazy, or maybe SHOULD be.

If God is everything, and we all are God, then we all are everything...
and being everything, to know thyself is to know all -omniscience within grasp.
Go inward, young (wo)man.

Maybe what I'm getting at is we all COULD be gods, either as reflections of some mystical greater being, or as individuals with specific creative talents, I'm not sure it matters how you envision it/yourself. In elizabeth gilbert's sense of being in tune with it all and channeling the creative genius that lies among us all, we all have the potential to be me, lol. Sorry. Maybe you're better than God :-) I've had my moments.

Humanity is a collective, perhaps all of nature...perhaps, even, all of reality. Consciousness is an ineffable, elusive, (illusory?) thing that is a property of the human brain, or perhaps all animals with brains, or maybe just matter. Minds matter. Your skull is matter over mind. What's going on in MY mind? (Is it the same as yours?)

The Matrix
I believe I'm in a matrix.
Not the car, but an actual reality-construct, a reconstruction of reality superimposed upon the real thing, that makes my head shock when I do something unanticipated or unwanted, for example. I also think I'm being programmed, while programming reality, myself. I believe my thoughts program into space, and thus my thoughts are valuable, and tampered with, due to their power. For example, if I start riding my bike through stop signs, I might get head shocks, for whatever reason. I surmise a)to program space with a feeling of mental discomfort for anyone that rolls through that space, b)someone getting into an accident in real-time as a consequence of my action, synchronized, c)a message saying "don't break the law", or d)don't think about it, or you'll be shocked. Still, I have enough presence of mind to think getting shocked is ridiculous if I'm an aware cyclist that doesn't see any cars. Anyway, I get headshocks, chestpains, and a voice, all to various effects. Sometimes I think I'm being annoyed and bothered just to get angry, for whatever reason. Say, a)to stimulate the stock market (bulls are angry), b)to help a lawyer (if I'm angry, the collective unconscious might be as well, including the thoughts of some jury, say), c)Roy Masters said resentment is hypnotic (I don't understand this, but whatever he was talking about might be in effect), d)as inflicted misery because 1.i'm making whoever's in my head miserable somehow, or 2.whoever's in my head hates me.

So, if I get a head shock, those are 9 reasons I surmise I could have received it. I assume they're being inflicted from without by some a-hole in my head, and are not some subconscious process of self-torture. Maybe I've been programmed to torture myself. Ugh.

-with the headshocks, it's like I'm frickin' darth vader, here. jesus christ.

What's in the matrix?
Is it the same for everybody, or do we each have our own (matrices)?

some thoughts
-family (matrix originally referred to womb; 'matrix of your mother')
-proximity: the ants in your backyard, say, or just the people in your small town, or
-the action of some guru in India thousands of miles away, or morpheus, someone with the power to invade minds telepathically, or
-just your languages speakers, or
-the inherited physics, magically constructed or otherwise, of our world
-aliens? computers? government? corporations? criminals? god?
-whomever we're thinking about, or who's thinking of us (consciously or subconsciously); only?
-all of the above
-none of the above ("in your own world")

and whatever is in your mind affects the external reality we construct
external, internal.. eieiO.

f.y.i. I don't imagine this is very genius, i'm not fooling myself, it's just that I saw Elizabeth Gilbert's talk, and wanted to include it in my blog.

The Path to God

is the path to love.

Love yourself, love one another, love your partner, love the one you're with.

Love life.

Love and be loved.
Love Love.

Activists create a better world in the loving of it.
Love the haters, love the sinner, love everyone.
All we need is love. (basic needs are met through love)

What's love got to do with it?
Love is agape, eros, phila.
That's fatherly love (stern, guiding, caring), and sexual love, and friendship.
Note: friendship is a form of love.

True love is all of the above.
When both would die for the other?
You can decide the truth of that for yourself.
-friendship, lovingkindness (or just kindness; hating-kindness isn't kind), caring ("who cares?" apathy is not love. Lovers care.), intimacy, companionship, sharing, trust...

Truly love yourself.
Religion, for example, can make you think you might want to die for yourself.
Be clean, pure. (psychologically)

If all in all is all we are, and you love yourself, then you love everyone.

The bible says,
-love thy neighbor as thyself
-love one another as I have loved you
-How fair is thy love, my sister, [my] spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
-Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
-He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
-let brotherly love continue.
-Love not the world, neither the things [that are] in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
-Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love [is] the fulfilling of the law.

1 Corinthians 13
Love
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

An alternate translation of 4-7 goes as follows:
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is ot inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it doesn not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I think "believes all things" is an AMAZING statement to apply to God.

Anyway,
The path to love could be the path to your bathroom mirror, or the nearest person to you, or you can navigate your computer to a chatroom or dating site or friends online or something. Go outside and start talking to people. Like a coffee shop. Or get a dog. If you want to see me, I'm in Calistoga. God awaits.

"God is love." - 1Jo 4:8
(He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.)

"I'm in a daze 'cause I found God" -Kurt Cobain
'You find god the moment you realize you don't need to find god'

Oblation

Jesse means 'gift, oblation, one who is'
Wikipedia link for meanings of all biblical names.

Here's the meaning of oblation:

"the whole office of the Eucharist."

Origin: 1375–1425; late ME oblacion
ob·la·tion
n.
-The act of offering something, such as worship or thanks, to a deity.
-The act of offering the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
-Something offered, especially the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
-A charitable offering or gift.

I was told Jesse means 'Jehovah makes forget'.
Jehovah means 'self-sustaining'. See how this gets messy?
God is One, and I AM..
I, Jesse, am 'One who is'...
-self-sustaining makes forget
-the act of making an offering to a deity?

When I eat Eucharist, do I eat myself? I was Jesus in high school.
-(Jesus (heyzeus) and Chuy (chewy), in spanish, like the deity and his wafer)
Isai (accent on the second i) might have been better.
-I am...artificial intelligence, american idol, amnesty international, american inventor, artificial insemination, the american interest, active ingredient.
-My high school (St. Ignatius) chanted "we are..s.i.". The building is in the shape of an H.
If you want to consider me THE Jesus, I don't see any harm in that.

Am I one in being with my father?
Well, I've had my dad's face "soul-rotate" into mine.
And Lawrence is my middle name..
The madness doesn't end there.
My dad is Larry. Mr. T. 2. ('Larry' and 'T' are both 2)
Larry T, like Jesse, is 4. Jesus is two.
I'm not crazy. Numerology is not crazy.
I'm just tryin' to have a little fun, in my own way.
I actually had a roommate named Four Nguyen.
Jesse, Al, David, and Four: the 4 4's.

My name also means 'God's gift' and God's gift is himself, or love.
I don't plan on dying for anyone though, just so that's clear.
You only live once.
I adopted Jesus. Does that make me his dad?

Jesse Lawrence Teshara, the anagram? : ace wrathless, sane jeer

mad crazy insane nutty goofy loco schizo mental illness:
NUTS. Nuts are chewy. Chuy is like Chewbacca. Chewbacca is crazy like El pollo loco.
Corporate madness: the band Madness. MCI, mad crazy insane. Cray computers. An inn in France, the Inn Seine. The blue diamond people drive me nuts. Disney's goofy. Amtrak's motivation: a loco- motive. Furniture assemblers have a screw loose. The porn industry: skits-O. Mentally ill: not physically ill, necessarily, just 'mental' -have you gone mental? Mental can be rearranged to signify 'lame new testament'. Or LT, amen.
UC? motto: Let there be light. you see.
Dr. Bronner says it's all-1.
How can infinity be One?

Love believes all things.
I don't see how believing in hell is loving, however (except as a form of psy-war terrorism)
Eternal damnation and suffering? Hell no!
Sure as hell, suffering exists, BUT
sure as hell, no one lives forever...the law of impermanence.
Thus,
Sure as hell, there is no hell.

Bumper sticker sayings

333 things that make you go hmm.

1) If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention
2) A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
3) According to my calculations, the problem doesn't exist.
4) All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
5) Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.
6)Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for
7) Are the voices in my head bothering you?
9)Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
10)Ban abortion, eat your young instead!
11) Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
12)Boldly Going Nowhere
13)Cancer cures smoking.
14)Cleverly Disguised As A Responsible Adult
15)Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
16)Condoms are easier to change than diapers.
17)Death to all fanatics!
18)Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
19)Don't hate yourself in the morning, sleep till noon.
20)Don't piss me off... I'm running out of places to hide the bodies.
21)Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out alive anyway.
22)Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.
23)Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway
24)End discrimination: Hate Everybody!
25)Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
26)Familiarity breeds children.
27)Forget about World Peace...Visualize using your turn signal.
28)Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
29)Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
30)Fuck me if I'm wrong, but isn't your name Gretchen?
31)God is my co-pilot, but the Devil is my bombardier.
32)God made diversity; Man made bigotry; Who do you trust?
33)Guns don't kill people, it's just the bullet tearing through their body
34)Half the people you know are below average.
35)Heart attacks... God's revenge for eating his animal friends
36)He who dies with the most toys wins.
37)He who hesitates is probably right.
38)He who laughs last thinks slowest.
39)Help wanted telepath: you know where to apply
40)I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met
41)I am NOT a NUMBER! I am a DEMOGRAPHIC!
42)I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
43)I Do Whatever My Rice Krispies Tell Me To
44) I don't have a license to kill. I have a learner's permit.
45)I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
46)If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
47)I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
48)If God had intended us to run around naked, He’d have created us that way!
49)If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
50)If ignorance is bliss, you should be orgasmic.
51)If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
52)If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?
53)If you don't like the news, go out and make some.
54)I got your honors student pregnant.
55)I Have The Body Of A God .......... Buddha
56)I have seen the truth and it makes no sense.
57)I Haven't Lost My Mind -- It's Backed Up On Disk Somewhere
58)I intend to live forever - so far, so good
59)I just took an IQ test and the results were negative.
60)I killed a 6-pack just to watch it die.
61)I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with sub-atomic particles
62)I love mankind; it's people I hate
63)Imagination is the foundation of reality.
64)I may be fat but you're ugly, and I can lose weight.
65)I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up!
66)I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.
67)I'm Pro-choice, because the last thing I need is more idiots to piss me off.
68)I need someone really bad. Are you really bad?
69)I said "no" to drugs, but they just wouldn't listen..
70)It's been lovely, but I have to scream now.
71)It's only kinky the first time
72)It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
73)I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.
74)I used to live in the real world, but I got evicted.
75)I've told you for the fifty-thousandth time, stop exaggerating.
76)I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather... not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
77)I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.
78)I wouldn't be caught dead with a necrophiliac.
79)Jesus loves you... everyone else thinks you're an asshole
80)JESUS SAVES ... They Pass It To Gretzky ... He Shoots ... He Scores!
81)Just because I'm wandering, doesn't mean I'm lost.
82)Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you!
83)Just remember...if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
84)Just say No to sex with pro-lifers.
85)Keep that sense of humor; it's critical.
86)Lead me not into temptation -- I can find the way myself.
87)Learn from your parents' mistakes -- use birth control.
88)Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
89)Life is a terminal disease!
90)Life is like a dick, long and hard
91)Life is short. Don't be a dick.
92)Lord, protect me from Your followers.
93)Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
94)Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener
95)Marijuana... Hey at least it's not crack!
96)Mind Like A Steel Trap - Rusty And Illegal In 37 States
97)Monday is a hell of a way to spend one-seventh of your life.
98)Money isn't everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch
99)Money is the root of all evil: send $30 for more info
100)My Karma just ran over your Dogma
101)My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
102)My son is an honor student at the state correctional facility.
103)Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be
104)Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
105)Nuke a gay whale for christ.
106)OK, so what's the speed of dark?
107)Oops. My brain just hit a bad sector.
108)Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
109)Preserve wildlife: throw a party
110)Procrastinate now!
111)Prosecutors will be violated!
112)Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of
113)Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs.
114)Reality? Is that where the pizza delivery guy comes from?
115)Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.
116)Save a Tree, Eat a beaver.
117)Save the animals, Eat a vegetarian.
118)Save water, shower with a friend
119)Save your breath... You'll need it to blow up your date!
120)Smith & Wesson: The original point-and-click interface.
121)Snatch a kiss, or vice versa
122)Someone who thinks logically is a nice contrast to the real world.
123)Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
124)Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have
125)Support Cannibalism-EAT ME!
126)Sure you can trust the government! Just ask an Indian!
128)Taxation WITH representation ain't much fun either.
129)Televangelists: The Pro Wrestlers of religion.
130)The face is familiar, but I can't quite remember my name
131)The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
132)The Moral Majority is neither.
133)The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.
134)The more things change, the more they remain insane.
135)The more you complain, the longer God makes you live.
136)The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
137)The proctologist called. They found your head.
138)The road to success is always under construction.
139)The sex was so good that even the neighbors had a cigarette.
140)The things that come to those that wait may be the things left by those who got there first.
141)This Would Be Really Funny If It Weren't Happening To Me
142)Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
143)Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
144)Time is the best teacher; unfortunately it kills all its students.
145)Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
146)Today is the last day of your life so far.
147)To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
148)Try not to let your mind wander...It is too small and fragile to be out by itself.
149)Very funny Scotty, now beam down my clothes.
150)Want a taste of religion? Bite a minister.
151)We're staying together for the sake of the cats.
152)What are you lookin' at?
153)When all else fails, lower your standards.
154)Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
155)Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
156)Who cares who's on board?
157)Why be normal?
158)Witches are Crafty People.
159)Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.
160)You have nothing to fear but the voices in my head
161)You! Off my planet!
162)Your ridiculous little opinion has been noted.
163)You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me!
164) coexist
165) in guns we trust
166)kill your television
167) fuck shit up
168) animal abusers should be put down
169) 3 out of 2 people have trouble with fractions
170) shit happens
171)my other ride is your mom
172) republicans for voldemort
173)question authority
174)anarchy '08
175)sarcasm society: like we need your support
176)teaching preschool is a lot like herding cats
177)lost..but happy
178)i listen to bands that don't even exist yet
179) dear god, save me from your followers
180)i don't believe in you, either
181)take my wife, she gives great headache
182)i drive naked
183)screw tibet!
184)road rage ninja
185)I'm schizophrenic and so am I
186)though it may seem unlikely, nothing is happening
187)i don't suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it
188)life is short, break some rules
189)bumper sticker
190)oh hayl no
191)everybody's crazy, some people just hide it better
192)don't believe everything you think
193)honk if you love tranquility
194) i've got a perfect body, but it's in the trunk and beginning to stink.
195) ITMFA
196) I found Jesus, now he's it
197)On the other hand, you have different fingers.
198)I've taken a vow of poverty. To annoy me, send money.
199)Help stamp out and eradicate superfluous redundancy.
200)Energizer bunny arrested, charged with battery.
201) Nobody gets out of life alive
202)I don't have a problem with willpower.It's won't power I have a problem with
203)I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.
204)What if there were no hypothetical questions?
205)You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
206)Despite the cost of living, it's still popular.
207)When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane and driving against traffic.
208)All good things in moderation ..... including moderation
209)Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain.
210)Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.
211)We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
212)I doubt. Therefore, I might be.
213)If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?
214) If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
215) Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
216)Entropy isn't what it used to be.
217)Kids in the back seat cause accidents;Accidents in the back seat cause kids.
218)Incontinence Hotline...Can you hold, please?
219) I'd rather be killing zombies
220) you are sofa king we todd did
221)dissent is the highest form of patriotism
222)try being informed instead of just opinionated
223)the best things in life are not things
224)if liberals hated america, we'd vote republican
225)which day did god make all the fossils?
226)I'll kill you
227)republican: because not everyone can be on welfare
228)what if the hokey pokey really IS what it's all about?
229)tree-hugging dirt worshipper
230)please don't breed or buy while shelter pets die
231)what do I feel after I shoot a terrorist? recoil
232)free east prussia
233)karma spares no one
234)god bless the whole world; no exceptions
235)grr argh
236)cthulhu 2008 (why vote for a lesser evil?)
237)live simply that others may simply live
238)(for cops) be kind, be courteous. but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
239) our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
240) what we think, we become
241)vegetarianism, the smart choice: for your health, for the animals, for the planet
242)you think healthcare is expensive now? just wait til it's free
243)free tibet
244)dick cheney eats kittens
245)our stories are singular but our destiny is shared-BO
246)even if the voices aren't real, they have some good ideas
247)be the change you wish to see in the world
248)speak your mind, even if your voice shakes
249) when did jesus become pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-american?
250)there will be no peace until they love their children more than they hate us
251)i don't need to be threatened with hell to be moral
252)how can you be pro-life and eat dead animals?
253)i fear government more than terrorism
254)forget a knight in shining armor, i want a vampire in a shiny volvo
255)blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism
256)solar power, no war required
257)slow down, pay attention, question everything, start now
258)obama doesn't want your children killed on the battlefield, he'd rather you took care of that before they were born.
259)satanism: be your own god
260)war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
261)fear yourself, love your enemies
262)government doesn't work, please return my taxes
263) come to the dark side, we have cookies
264)never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups
265)war is terrorism
266)barack obama: shut the fuck up
267)don't confuse dying for oil with fighting for freedom
268)love is a boston terrier
269)honk if your religion makes you intolerant
270)be careful when you hate, it might affect someone you love
271) a war budget leaves every child behind
272) got jesus? it's hell without him
273) may the embryo you save be gay and proud
274)8,855,900,000 animals killed for food in the u.s. in 2000
275)i (heart) to fart
276)if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate
277)adopt a mutt, their hearts are pure
278)good planets are hard to find
279)oh shit! it's thor!run! -God
280)end world poverty
281)400,000 dead. save darfur.
282)abortion- it is poverty to decide that a child may not live so that you may live as you wish. -Mother Theresa
283)what would the goddess do?
284)jesus was a community organizer
285)stop breed specific legislation
286)which god do you kill for?
287) beware, ninja on board
288)you will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger
289) be kind
290)gun control: breathe out, squeeze trigger
291) make love and war (bob dobbs, subgenius)
292)it's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything.
293)gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people
294)i make breastmilk. what's your superpower?
295)why do people kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?
296)religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the leaders as useful.
297)45 million people without health insurance is a moral outrage
298)the beatings will continue until morale improves
299)keep abortion safe and legal
300)play ultimate
301)we all live downstream
302)every time i hear thunder, i wonder if the vampires are playing baseball
303)i'll keep my guns and bible, you keep your change
304)just ignore the environment. it will go away.
305) one by one, the penguins steal my sanity
306)i'd love to change the world, but no one will give me the source code
307)better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion
308)sorry officer i thought you wanted to race
309)well-behaved women seldom make history
310)i'm only speeding because i really have to poop
311)democracy is not a spectator sport
312)if america has more laws than any other nation, are we really more free?
313)abortion, it's not a choice, it's an industry
314)dr. steel for world emperor
315)poodle is my co-pilot
316)i believe in life before death
317)when all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will the white man discover that you cannot eat money. -cree prophecy
318)live free or die
319)mean people suck
320)my other god is nailed to a stick
321)it may look like i'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level i'm really quite busy
322)it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men
323)i (heart) my weird family
324) art heals
325) 333: I'm only half-evil
326) support slave labor, shop at walmart
327) i can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't qualify me to be an astronaut
328))honor neurodiversity

329)
take a breath...here's a long one (in small print):
Christianity: The belief that some cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Makes perfect sense.

330)i don't have any invisible friends
331)republicans and democrats: both full of crap
332)to sit back, hoping that someday, some way, someone is going to make things right, is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last, but eat you he will.
333)god IS the pilot (I invented this one, I think)

Un post por Dios en espanol

Yo me fijo en que no tengo ningunas visitantes de lationoamerica...

Y, por eso, escribo este post para todos los hispanoparlantes!

Trato hablar espanol, a veces

Estudie la lengua en escuela secundaria, y tambien en la universidad.

Pues, mi blog aqui tiene el tesis que yo, Chuy L. Teshara, soy Dios.

El nombre de Dios es "Yo Soy", y por eso... yo soy. Muy simple!

Mi nombre (Jesse) en espanol es Jesus, tambien, o Isai. No importa. Palabras...

Puedo llamarme todas cosas. Idiota? Genio? Chiflado? Yo Soy!

Dios es todo, amor, uno, un hombre de guerra, y mucho mas.

He leido la biblia, y hago referencias, pero eso no es la unica (source) de mis ideas, claro.

Quiero mas poder cambiar el mundo en mi imagen es otro modo de decir mi motivo/accion.

Tengo ideales que quiero implementadas por todas partes.

Y asi que no puedo traducir mi blog entero, tengo un funcion de hacerlo al empezar (si quieres hacerlo, click la bandera mexicana)

Excusa mis errores de gramatica o lo que sera... estoy un poco fuera de practica.

Pues, que te gustas!

Tu amigo,

Chuy (Dios)

R. Kagen makes me screamingly insane

It's this; an op-ed article in the Washington Post.

Actually -Writingly, not screamingly, to be precise

LINK

Here's my response to every one of his 5 goddamned points in his retardedly stupid piece of crap argument for more defense spending. (!)

(This is not to say I'm not appreciative of him airing his views, thus giving me an opportunity to respond to his madness.)

His arguments
1. Defense spending will stimulate the economy. As Harvard economist Martin Feldstein recently noted, defense spending can have an immediate impact on the economy.

How 'bout food. And healthcare. And libraries. And basic needs throughout the world. Like love. And energy-efficiency and alternatives. Things that help. Militaries kill people. Fuck that. Just cause Feldstein teaches at Harvard doesn't make it the right thing to do. It's really not. By the same argument, we could be like Hitler and try and take over the world. THAT would stimulate the economy, too, I think, you jerk.
-If we DEVELOP third world economies, they will -in the long term- buy our products. Selling them (or anyone) military hardware is plain stupid. Military expenditure is a waste of (way too much) money that doesn't help anybody, but instead gives expensive toys to overgrown boys that just like to fly their loopdyloops and blow things up. It's all about opportunity cost. Military expenditure is OBSCENE. I admit I'm having a reaction to the connotation of defense spending as entailing tanks and ships and missiles and the like. If, on the other hand, we paid for equipping the world with self-defense skills for each individual, like with martial arts dojos and (hand)gun shooting ranges and educating people to be self-reliant and empowered with classes on gun maintenance and safety, for example, then I would approve of that. There are more than enough other, healthier, ways to stimulate the economy. If our economy is so dependent on defense spending, maybe it's time to restructure. Let's grow up, and move on from childish things, soldier boys.

2. It would unnerve American allies and undercut efforts to gain greater cooperation.

Fooey. Let them be "unnerved." There are more than enough weapons in the world already. Everybody knows that. Everyone is armed to the teeth, and all (military) needs are met. In fact, all this weaponry is what is actually unnerving, you crazy, silly, reverse-psychology whacko. Greater cooperation in solving the world's problems has no relation to the amount of defense spending, I'd like to believe. In fact, it can be had because of less, I would say. Obama is about change. Change your mindset, guy. The world is filled with good people, and can actually be a pleasant place. Defense spending is offensive. We're all on the same team. Buy the world a coke. Distribute viagra. Fund the peace corps, not the marine corps. Meet the massive need indicated by the demand for microloans (at kiva.com, for example).

3. It feeds the sense, felt around the world and reinforced by irresponsible pundits, that America might actually be in terminal decline, and would be taken by the world as evidence that the American retreat has begun.

Do we really care what the world thinks? Does it matter? If we're going to stay economically strong, then we'll be strong, despite people's opinions. Psychology is not reality. The subjective is not the objective. What I'm saying is the tree will still make a noise in the forest if you're not there. Let's keep our perspective here. The world would respect us more for not spending as much on our military. The world is not a bunch of Republicans.

4. If the Obama administration begins by cutting defense, it will be much harder to persuade Republicans to support foreign aid.

What does one have to do with the other? Are the Republicans mad?? I'm not buying this argument. I'll write a letter to each Republican if I have to. Can't you see this is win-win? Less defense, less death/potential for death, more international love, augmented by aid, which meets basic needs, they feel good, we feel good, we're helping, Bush legacy of american reputation in the crapper ameliorated, kumbaya, the world is a better place!

5. "Similarly, the Obama administration is right to want to begin negotiations with Russia over missile defense and arms control. But it is a poor opening gambit to announce a cut in American defense spending before negotiations even begin. If Russian leaders believe that the United States is looking for a way out of weapons systems -- missile defense in particular -- they will negotiate accordingly. They might ask why they should make a deal at all."

Just because Russians are known for playing chess, must we employ this tired old metaphor for every international interaction? There doesn't have to be a loser in this "game." We ARE looking for a way out of weapons systems -namely, we don't want to be threatened in the first place. If we don't threaten Russia, then probably -in this day in age- they won't threaten us back. SO let's just meet all of each other's demands and call it a day. Seriously, screw the military. It's so yesterday. Both countries should get rid of their nuclear weapons, (do either of us really have any intention to use them, under ANY possible scenario?? We shouldn't.) It's time to move past militarism, certainly; I say it's also time to move past maybe even militaries (except as troubleshooting multinational peacekeeping forces).

He concludes with "the nation is still at war. That being so, this is not the time to start weakening the armed forces."

Geez, what a silly argument. He's reaching. Iraq and Afghanistan can be done, and done well, on a smaller budget (especially if it's a smart budget). Look at my ticker on the right of how much money we're spending in Iraq. It's madness.

Robert Kagan's wikipedia article says, "He is listed by Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine as one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals." Ugh, for a few reasons. I think my barber is, I would have to say. And also, Robert Kagan is a neoconservative... Dubya and his gang, well, nuf said. Neoconservatism, in the US, is a political philosophy whose key distinction is in international affairs, where it espouses an interventionist approach that seeks to defend what neo-conservatives deem as national interests.

MY philosophy is one for all, all for one...where one is every individual, and all is the whole world. An internationalist approach could care less about national interests, if we all cared for the least fortunate global citizenry, and emphasized happiness and community over selfish greedy sociopathic corrupt corporate capitalism.

God's work vs. HELL

Make love not war.

Blessed are the peacemakers- Let's all be diplomats

Here's a link to an article on War, and it's civilian victims, in the Economist.

If I have any power at all, I will stop this shit.

Here's a summary of the salient points of the article:
1) hospitals bombed, with patients and people seeking refuge there, being killed, possibly by those who say they are defending them, for propaganda reasons.

2) Israel vs. Hamas? 1300 dead palestinians (about half, civilians) vs. 13 dead Israelis. (100:1) Destroyed infrastructure of an already weak and suffering society; repression.

3) Deliberate attacks on civilians have proven to be an appalling, if relatively effective, method of warfare. I.e. Congo and Rwanda and Sudan. "Widespread assaults on women in which victims are mass raped and disfigured, but not killed, seem to be a deliberate strategy to spread terror and trauma among Congolese who are seen as supporters of rival militias."

4) Ugh. "The second world war saw mass murder (in the Holocaust, notably) or wilful killing (the nuclear strike on Hiroshima, the firebombing of Dresden, the siege of Stalingrad) of tens of millions of non-combatants. Since then civilians have died in their millions in genocides (in Cambodia and Rwanda, for example) and non-combatants have been targeted as a part of “ethnic cleansing”, as in the Balkans wars of the 1990s when Serbs, Croats and Bosnians vied for territory."

Here's a link to a TED lecture, in which Chris Abani says good fights evil/ the world is saved "not through grand messianic gestures but through the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of everyday compassion." I agree. It's all God, but showing kindness is more God than walking on water or something, in my view. What else can God to do? Goodness, gracious. God, just do it.

Pastoral recessionary soothing

8 Nuggets from today's christian science monitor article.

1) T-shirt that proclaims: “My Savior Is Tougher Than Nails.”

2) Scripture is full of adversity. Even when the economy crumbles, God is in control. A triumph of God's sustaining spirit.
-There’s no ‘I told you so’ or ‘You’re getting what you deserve’ [from Old Testament prophets during tragedies]. God is with these people, God is aware of their plight, and God will see them through.”

3) Time to readjust focus.
-Courage; Be not afraid. “What I worry about most is that people who feel powerless … will find somebody else to blame,” All kinds of things happen from when you start to blame people..
-Repentance: “When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions.”

4) hundreds of archived sermons: http://www.workingpreacher.com/

5) crisis-induced window – maybe three or four months – when attentive people are ready to experience a life change, much as they were right after 9/11.

6) Pleas for church-money by preachers: "Don't put faith and church at bottom of your list. That is not faith. That is the empty religion of a fair-weather Christian who offers occasional lip service to a God who is brought in at convenient times.”

7) Isaiah on the costs of greed: “Many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.”

8) Talking about mission focus and the true spiritual life as a life of humility or poverty – there’s more listening to that.

I left a comment that God wants the MDG's met, basic needs for all met, and -the most basic need and the purpose for money- love and happiness- for all, which does not necessarily entail living in large and expensive homes (as college dorms are fun, for example).