People, our personalities, are not monads. This parallels Trait centered psychology. Perhaps personalities arise from the combination of neuroticism, openness, ect. Some express more agreeableness than others who are conscientious without being agreeable. Yet, Behaviorists rightly note that people may adopt somewhat different personas in different environments. The exact metaphysical ratio of permanant to dyamic traits doesn’t interest me. I believe that we have a variety of Aspects – perhaps even all aspects – that tamp one another down or fall from center stage. This is the complexity we expect in fictional characters. And real people, too I guess. Geekdom chafes the uninitiated because its adherents proclaim they are satisfied with mostly one Aspect. Zealots, political or religious, strive to be Good all the time. Mind, I am not saying that they should not, so much as can not. You aren’t a DEMOCRAT. You are a Social Liberal, though sympathetic to the anti-abortion movement, and often a Fiscal Conservative, except on the issue of Education which deserves as much as possible. And so on.

We certainly don’t look to understand the tremendous Syncretic compromise of our relatives’ personalities. Understanding that shhe is religious is enough solace for most days or enough to excuse ourselves from the conversation. So, it may seem a contradiction for me to simultaneously deny a “spiritual” aspect to reality (ex: Heaven) while still feeling a fascination with magic or fear in familiar, yet dark spaces. These are simply two aspects of my personality and Empiricism hasn’t managed to grind Animism into dust yet. The trick to Pascal’s Wager, though, isn’t that I can’t believe that there are “things we can’t explain;” the problem is the insistence that those elements are more important than what we can explain.

My mother does not share the anxiety of these Aspects conflicting. She remains largely comfortable accepting modified Astrological influences and spirits. Mind, she is an intelligent woman. That doesn’t mean that all other occultists are fools. I strive to emphasize that she believes without compromising her rational flexibility, as must a fanatic of any persuasion. She and my godmother especially favor a medium who lives in Miami. I have heard the anecdotes of her consultation but won’t repeat them here. Outside of our family the significance is lost and would require unneccessary background. Let it suffice that the advice was evocative and convinced my mother. Still, she primarily consults her on the auspicious nature of important decisons (like when she transferred between city governments). Last week marked a stark change, to my knowledge.

Thursday, I sat before my computer in a mildly unchaste moment when my mother shoved open my door. Shoved because my sister brought a cat into our household and I won’t countenance its distraction, certainly not while in a compromising position. Earlier in the year, I closed my door but that reduces air circulation. Luckily, putting a shoe at the base allows me to leave a crack thinner than its head. This is what she shoved aside.

She came in searching the floor for something. She chose my shorts and asked if they were dirty. I affirmed, mystified. She left without commenting about the rest of my room, a common point of contention. I quickly made myself presentable and went to ask what was up.

She had gotten one of Rick’s, her husband, clothes and draped it over a chair in the kitchen where my sister sat watching soccer, perhaps. I joked about the request, asking if it was for genetic material. My mother looked pained and decided she wouldn’t tell me what was up. I swallowed my curiosity and told her that was alright, assuming that she would tell me later. My eye passed over a box, on the table, that had come in the mail earlier that day. I headed up.

Troubled, I decided to table my earlier objective. Within a minute, my mother came into my room again, this time muttering and gesturing with a small plant in her hand. I stood up as she made her way around my bed, though she couldn’t make the full circuit since, I don’t like using the four pillows she insists I have, I had thrown them on the ground on the far side. I exited into the hall and heard her clearly.

In spanish, she was saying “you can not stay here” over and over whilst waving the plant in a circle as she walked the whole second story. The plant was a four inch vine in a small, uncapped jar. In a moment, she came out and passed it in front of me and then behind before continuing into her room. I kept my face as neutral as possible. I wasn’t laughing and neither was my sister when I went down, though she seemed to take the ritual more lightly. She explained that my godmother had mailed the plant at my mother’s request from the medium. She did mention that she was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Yet, I’m not sure if Monica joked when she said, “Don’t be skeptical, otherwise the spirit could attatch to you.” I countered that I could well roleplay for my mother and tried to keep from judging the episode.

She and I silently faced the kitchen television while waiting for my mother to finish. She came down and made another pass over me and Monica. Finished, she placed the plant outside our front door. She claimed success and the harrowing experience of cold as she recited over her target, Rick. Appearantly, he had recent trouble sleeping and would wake in the middle of the night, just thinking about work. She said the waking was a sign that a spirit was dogging him and the plant would leech it away. Further, my godmother, a woman of nearly the same age as my mother, had exorcised her own house – perhaps more than once – and even given a tip on interpreting the medium’s advice about how to dispose of the plant safely.

Traditionally, she would leave it in a seldom visited “meadow.” My mother was set to go to Belize the next day, so my godmother had okayed leaving the plant in the trunk of her car while it had its front fender replaced. She drove around with hers for a few days with no ill effects. She has emailed from her hotel but didn’t mention whether he feels better. If I ended here, the punchline was a couple sentences ago: “hur, hur my mother is crazy.” But, I can’t. Obviously, the experience deserves a mention in my journal (if I were using regularly). But that’s not the end of the story.

I went up to take a shower and fought to think of anything else. Monica’s wretched advice stuck with me. I had no problem adopting a solemn expression, my mother wore her own while chanting, a sign of seriousness. The internal logic of the ritual is simple enough as well. My mother had asked for some used clothing because she wasn’t sure if I would go along with the whole thing and dirty clothing can substitute for an absent member. If I were totally skeptical, you wouldn’t be reading this. If I attracted some fallout, I would ascribe it as a coincidence, if that.

No, the punchline to this story is since then, I have had interrupted sleep. I may actively stay off-beat of any circadian rhythm, but I don’t wake well before I should. (I go to bed in the middle of the night, so I’ve been woken at the crack of dawn instead.) And yet, I’m not waking in a cold sweat. On Friday, my sister drove them to LAX an hour before I had to wake for work at 4,30. My mother probably looked in, but left my door open. Some time later, but ahead of my alarm, my sister’s cat came in to nuisance me. I spent the weekend at my father’s house but don’t remember if the pattern held then. On Monday, my phone woke me with its continual, plaintive whine that it was running out of power. Yesterday and today, my stomach insisted it was digesting a breakfast well before I habitually eat and certainly before I should have been out of bed, given my sleep time.

There’s not a lot to say beyond that. I see that there is a temporal correlation only. My stomach has jumped the gun before, though not woken me so effectively. (Normally I just turn on my side to forestall an eventual ulcer on the back of the lining. That way it only burns through each wall a third as fast.) My phone is terribly bothersome when it realizes it is close to expiration and the timing is about right. My problem, it seems, isn’t that I doubted too much but that I doubt and believe simultaneously, each castigting the other for disturbing me.

I buy lots of foolish crap. It is a popular habit. Perhaps that is too harsh. I plan to buy foolish crap and sticking to a luxury budget generally saves me from sealing the deal. Plus, waiting for my budget to build up to an appreciable amount allows me to forget about buying stuff in general for long stretches.

However, that means that when I look at my lists of desired stuff, it looks pretty weird in retrospect. For example, I listed surgical paper masks. Those, annoyingly, only come in packs of fifty (for six dollars), so I didn’t buy any. Have I become overly asthmatic? No, but it was winter and sinning cold. I felt it deepest in the dark during the earliest hours I work, on my lips and face. A scarf is the traditional answer, but why go overkill with something that doesn’t fit comfortably in my pocket? Surgical masks satisfy that exact need perfectly. However, Orange County’s winter is almost over and they would sit unused until December or so.

Further, in one month and one week, Daylight Savings Time stomps on our biological clocks yet again. If I recall correctly, this one introduces more light into my morning so the temperature will seem to have risen. I could be wrong though. I remember ‘spring forward, fall back’ but spring isn’t a numerical operation, fool rhymer. In one week, I can give the dubious advice to start adding two minutes to each day so that when everyone else claws at their alarms with government mandated jetlag, you are totally ready. Sure, it requires increasing mental gymnastics but I already keep my watch five minutes ahead of most clocks, so it shouldn’t be too different.

Obviously, I have no intention of tricking myself so badly, but it reminds me of a pet idea to eliminate leap days entirely. Yes, leap days and Daylight Savings aren’t the same but both deal with trying to constantly adjust to the Earth’s varying daylight. Daylight savings supposedly matches our mornings to sunrise better. Leap days account for the accumulation of seconds outside the 24 hours on our watches. There are tons of calendar reforms, tons.

I admire most radical variants but recognize that I could never privately transition to Symmetry454 or the French Revolutionary calendar any more than I could learn Esperanto: for lack of partners. Most diverge from our (revised) Gregorian system to trumpet the import of the week. Presently, despite the boozy celebrations, New Years is just a day. It could be Friday, with a nice hangover Saturday. Or, it could be Tuesday and screw your hangover, the economy isn’t going to recover without hard work. Calender reforms usually have ‘intercalendar’ days. That means they exist, not only outside of every month (to keep them uniform) but aren’t any Day of the week either.

I think the best answer would adopt the same solution for the light itself. The buildup of ‘twenty four’ hours difference over four years is miniscule over any given day, but even that is out of step enough that – every seventy years or so – we need a double leap year. Prior to the invention of atomic clocks and digital clocks in general, rounding up was the best option. Frankly, it was the only option. As I noted, a ‘day’ is ever so slightly more than 24 sixty minute periods. An analog watchmaker would have a terrible time creating some mechanism for pocket and wrist watches that skipped enough second’s hand gear teeth to represent the particular day’s extra tenths of a second.

A digital watch hasn’t that problem. Despite all the Millenialist cowering over Y2K, digital clocks can easily adopt whatever time you like. With a little programming experience under my belt, I know it isn’t quite that easy. Nevertheless, you could have the clock program sense 24:00 and then pause (or not count the quartz crystal’s vibration or whatever). That duration is a const variable that we can update accurately. Has Greenland’s ice sheet melted? (That would shorten days by dispersing the mass and increase Earth’s angular velocity.) We decrease the leap microsecond. Are we importing minerals from the Apollo asteroids? We increase the break.

Of course, as with all communist fantasies, it requires a supermajority of the planet agree to switch to all digital clocks or see the buildup of a chronological differential. It would be annoying to fly to Tokyo and not only change the hour but the minutes too. Error creeps in.

Time zone differences remind me of another youthful daydream: an absolute GPS watch. Time zones are a useful fiction that timepiece would take to its ultimate implication. Imagine a watch that not only adjusted when you travelled across the country, it adjusted as you drove around. Time zones would be divided into 60 smaller slices each (or six at higher latitudes). That way, if you imitate the car commercial where the man drives forward to see the sun set again, the watch would adjust its minutes backwards automatically. Time travel for the proles.

Obviously, both are just nice thought experiments and terribly impractical. The latter makes coordination confusing unless in a future environment where even phone conversations can go through filters that alter the time I say into one that makes sense to my compatriot in San Fransisco.

I’m having a dandy vacation from school for about one more week. It has stopped raining, so I can see North Tustin from my window, which is pretty cool. I must remember to check in a month because I have no idea whether that is normal. The clarity of the houses struck me more than anything else.

I complained on the Third of contracting the flu. I suffered a runny nose and coughing for perhaps ten days, when it subsided. Unfortunately, a few days later, my sinuses started leaking into my throat again and I have been coughing non-stop until this morning. I only have these opportunities to confront my Luddite aspect. I refuse all medicine for the flu because it is viral. Plus, if I take medicines to suppress my symptoms, how do I know when I don’t have any sinning symptoms to suppress any more? In the case of antihistamines, it is when my mucus becomes a cement that I cough out in pellets. This has happened before and I refuse to repeat the experience. I sympathize that my family had to listen to the grating discharge, but I am more comfortable coughing than feeling as though crusts are building up in my throat. Body horror is my weakness. Luckily, it’s probably over, so I won’t avoid certain activites that take longer than the twenty minutes between the bathroom breaks from drinking liters of water.

As noted in my last post, I have generally ignored my commitments with this pleasant unstructured day. While I am keeping daily notes, if I forget to for a while, the quality suffers. Nevertheless, I am working. Earlier this month, E2 announced a Science Fiction Quest. Serendipitously, I had been wondering about the relations a post-apocalyptic community might have with a nanotechnology-using repopulation effort. Haiti’s tectonic plate broke in half soon after and I saw a ‘contradiction’ to my favored answer. Because (certain types) of nanotechnology obviate labor in general, survivalists would have no place in the Singularity’s economy. They could try to be artists but how many of us read the Spartan poems about their horses and wives? The attitude obviously doesn’t carry presently because our social incentives encourage us to sympathize with the Haitians.

Perhaps it is unwise to offer my opinion as I am more antisocial than the clamor about me. Nevertheless, I am not the only one to regard continued aid with skepticism. Surely, you have heard the caution to restrict impulse charity to approved NGOs, for fear of scams and Haitian corruption. Specifically, I mean the money that the administration will inevitably offer to, essentially, rebuild the whole city of Port-Au-Prince. Just giving them truckloads of money ensures it won’t be done organically, though those in the green city movement salivate at the potential of Radical Change otherwise impossible for major cities. (Which, of course, are those that need it the most.)

One of the opinion pieces that I would have cited, if the Wall Street Journal hadn’t hid it behind its subscription wall, treated the physiological future of the Haitians. One of the Doctors without borders whose vlogs CNN airs noted that an inordinate number of victims are receiving amputations or diagnoses of spinal injury. Like as not, the ill lit corner of my mind adopts the mask of Eugenist and warns of endless demands for aid otherwise. Inevitably, in shouldering the burden of rebuilding, American diplomats may feel some responsibility to subsidize the disabled population as well. Yes, I am uncouth for pointing this out, but we should not. America doesn’t have the money to satisfy its self-image as world’s savior in arms or alms. Utopian egalitarianism will always fail until that Star Trek era of infinite matter & energy for all.

Despite the taste of my sneaker and the nice transition back to the story I should be writing instead of this, I must lament the lack of a Utilitarian Catalog. You recall that the Utilitarian will want to devote his\er efforts (after self-maintenance) to the greatest good for the greatest number within a reasonable future without incurring unreasonable suffering. To do that effectively, sh\he would need a catalog of all the world’s ills and victims, ranked. Sure, you could give to Unicef and be reasonably certain it will be spent on deserving suffering. However, a utilitarian ought not feel comfortable relying on Unicef’s limited scope. If you and I took its beneficiaries list, and then rhapsodized for an hour looking for the gaps (cleft lips, non-NAFTA South American farmers, Mongolian towns with a median age of sixty, child sex slaves in America, Afghani farmers below subsistence despite growing wheat, manatees carved up by speed boats, ect), we wouldn’t have scarped out a majority of Need’s iceberg. When the Starbucks barista asks for their pet heart-tugger, you should turn to the Catalog and see what it rates. When every website and newspaper and television show turned into a Haiti peddler, I knew that other charities would feel a level of impoverishment.

I like to think of myself as an Egoist, so I have no business telling people of other ethical faiths how to act more sincerely. Nevertheless, I would like it for my own use. At the moment, only one charity meets my standard of desert: Wikipedia. Still, it would be nice to know the objectively most efficient target should I expand to a second.

As far as the Catalog itself, obviously it couldn’t be a book. As utilitarians donate to number one, it would drop as diminishing returns set in and two came to the fore. Only a website has the flexibility needed but I haven’t found it out there yet. Perhaps the UN has something similar, but like UNICEF (oh, duh), it will not exhaustively document every need. While I see the objection that you needn’t get every poor person, actually, you do. The undocumented sufferer is likely the worst off. Further, the UN hasn’t the political luxury of ruthlessly rating the need of various supplicants with the rigor a utilitarian ought demand. I don’t think that the Haitians are going to stop working forever in fake traction beds. I just don’t think they have been number 1 in the Catalog for a while now. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Anyway, for the quest I am writing a short story about a couple inconvenienced by the neighboring Transhumanists. I will also node about Cortex Command. The trick is finishing within the next six days.

Historiography is the study of the discipline of history, or how people record and come to understand history. It is pertinent to note that newspapers and others have taken to making decade retrospectives these past few weeks. They are justified in doing so, but their limits reveal their selection. Obviously, George W Bush’s administration dominates the American decade and how it is reported reveals volumes about the author in question. Similarly, a primary focus on American events (again acknowledging space limitations) speaks to a limited view. Any representative memoir for the Ones would need to at least touch on more of the dynamic events that occurred.

In that vein, I will avoid the format my host favors: a chronology. I am incapable of producing one because I have stopped making useful notes. This suggests an existential query, how will anyone know I was alive this year at all? From here, I will chide myself with the scant evidence I have produced in this ninth year of the second millennium in Anno Domini.

The candidates I most wanted to rely on are ‘newsworthy’ text files that, ideally, I take notes during the entire week on. When I first began the practice last year, I made the lazy error of only recording the week number. This year, I had only a short reprieve because at week fourteen, year nine and eight would only be distinguished by internal context and Microsoft’s valuable metadata. I opted for ‘9 week 5,’ so the whole year comes in sequence. I confront the annoyance of a more complex naming scheme in another type of record that should be ‘9 12 29’ but I only thought of that just now. Otherwise, I have been using my favored notation – European, 29 12 9 – which causes all sorts of problems with Sorts. As much as I cringe at all the retyping this involves, I can not shirk the superior organization.

The weekly notes feature some different styles of organization as well. Each mostly indicates the amount of time devoted. Sometimes, though, I wrote them on Sunday so it became a struggle to remember what happened on Monday and if it was actually during the other weekend. The task was harder when I didn’t have an externally enforced schedule to segment my days. The current vacation feels like the eternal present, although I have exacerbated it with sleep arrhythmia.

The most common form is a mass of keywords representing events, what I finished reading, what I have watched, and only occasionally some thoughts about events. The better formed files have two more lines. One notes the books I am currently reading, even if only distractedly. The other notes significant websites I visited. All too often, I only noted the newgrounds games and movies I liked. An example, 9 week 31:

The March, another sleep fouling morning and afternoon, Marta’s last ruination, Monica’s friend watches Who Framed then Big Fish, I started 1919 from wikipedia, I officially give up on the Everyman schedule for two months now, Uumpect, cat jumped on my face at night, I admitted I’m a potential bug eater, credit card finds monica at our forward base, NOD32 upgrade, I missed the Colony but Sat 8am, cd testing again, papi gave me Tata’s opener at last, car inner light dimmer switch, finally replied on mafia boring, I need to sinning register, W and rejected commentary, Miriam, Celi beat back her lymph cancer, Fables: Storybook Love, downloaded itunes podcasts, yank, I bought it all finally, she put my registration in my glove compartment, dvr means colony ep 2, carwash, bike ride & carlos offers ticket, genius bar & sears, IRA vs Taliban, Brad arrives, colony and californication finally, Sun Quincineiera 5,00pm past la palma?

So what does any of that mean?

I finished reading E L Doctorow’s The March.

I had decided to practice the ‘Everyman’ sleep schedule but kept it poorly. I didn’t take my naps at the same time every day, making the transition increasingly difficult. As noted four later, I decided to give up. Unfortunately, the author I consulted suggested two months of dutiful, normal sleep before trying again. By the time the opportunity came, school made it neigh impossible to have breaks that also jived with workdays. (I fully intend to document my experience, yet twenty weeks have elapsed.)

Some friend of Monica, name unknown and now gender unknown, came and watched movies.

I took notes about what occurred during 1919, intending to make an Everything2 article about it.

On Facebook’s D&D Tiny Adventures, I created Uumpect, a genasai warrior whose name parodies the font Impact.

I hadn’t started sleeping (and spending virtually the whole day) with my door closed yet, so Monica’s cat jumped on my face.

I published “The other, other right meat.” I’d link to it, but it’s a few posts below, so you can find my radical liberal environmentalist sentiment.

Papi confided to me (or I heard through secondhand gossip) that someone had spent … I am not at all sure how that went at all, actually. It seems as though Monica bought something in Costa Mesa (our forward base, my father’s home) that prompted either a call from MasterCard or Papi turned it up in the bills he scours. While I relish some comeuppance, really, it impacts me when their negative mood shortens their patience with my habits or situation.

The rest continues on and wastes your patience. These are meant to be mnemonics for a post that I should write the week following. Obviously, this is foolhardy as I have only done it twice. The better weekly form involves noting what happened each day, as it happens or at night before sleep. I only did so once, and only partly, for 9 week 41:

Fri – - – work; papi installed the fan but I had to vacuum

Sat – - – y—ing all day; The Surrogates; bought my first woot shirt, a sequoia; finally tripped on the sinning paint cover and scraped my elbow

Sun – - – papi finally read the water purification article and related an anecdote about the foolish shooting range lawsuit, writing more on mafia wars, papi cleaned house,

Unfortunately, I only noted fifteen weeks: 1-5, 25-33 except 27 and 32, and week 41. However, I did experiment with a more demanding beast, daily notes during the year’s first week and three closing April. But only the twenty-second and third match what you imagine they should look like.

I plan to leave at 2:00 to a bus station to reserve it for Araceli for Friday or whatever, at 3:30 we need to arrive at physical therapy; if there is a big gap, I may go to recycle our bottles and so on. I need to finally store all my clothes, I just ran out of shirts on the rack.

It turns out she meant she would call the bus station so I ended up annotating more (African) events during 1846 and eating lunch concurrently, Monica came to eat as well and watched a rerun of project runway; we left to phy therapy a tad late (so I could finish my sandwich). I read more from the most recent issue of the Economist and we returned.

I parked in front of Gloria’s house; I sent Coryr out again; no one has spoken on Mafia; I just finished reading all the webcomics; it seems appropriate to do some pushups and situps when I finish watching the Zero Punctuation episode in a few seconds. The reason I ought to do it now, as opposed to more annotation (Miriam is downstairs), is because I am somewhat committed to watching three more hours of television content today: Mythbusters at 6,00 (it is currently 5:30), Lost at 9:00, and the Unusuals right after.

While these qualify as posts unpublished, they are only a shadow of my full day. I tried that foolishness for a few days following February second. Unfortunately, I was still on Everyman time and neglected to take down dates or even put AM and PM. I conceived of this as a challenge to see whether I could emulate Buckminster Fuller’s full life documentation. Annoyingly, I took this as an opportunity to try out a tiny notebook that my mother foolishly gifted me. ‘Foolishly’ because it measures 3” x 5.” I like to open bound books and notebooks only 90°, to preserve the binding. Spiral wires are more forgiving, except to their first and last pages. Seeing someone bend magazines or sinning books so the covers meet is like seeing someone’s arm twisted or hearing someone grind a car’s manual transmission. I witness the abuse of a valuable object. So, the small size becomes smaller as I decide to hold the book awkwardly and I confronted that dread foe of the exhibitionist, a sense of (affronted) privacy. So I stopped. Before turning to the next though, let’s look at a representative sample:

12 finished cereal, bring back my car, abuela returned. 12,06 eating again. 12,17 cooking Canadian Bacon, peanut butter banana sandwich tomorrow. [[earlier, I noted that I should carry a highlighter to distinguish between events, commands, and musings.]] 12,36 I didn’t cook it long enough to melt the fat like on normal bacon; I added little bits of Monterey Jack. 12,42 finished eating, going to call therapy now and play it by ear. 12,54 appointment at 2,00, on computer now. 1,56 we left late because of (one?)

It was just as thrilling to interrupt my thoughts and activities to ‘confess’ what I was doing as it is to read it. As I am on the subject of this Twittimitation, I created an actual twitter account during early December. With these harrowing confrontations of my reticence, I only plan to update it with pithy observations. As of late, these come less quickly than I like, but that stems from the fact that I am barely writing anything at all.

I’ll admit, I overstated my case above. The point of this tremendous list of how I failed to record what I did on my summer vacation isn’t about that foolish plea for Posterity to notice me. I referenced the problem when complaining about rebuilding my week from just a few days later. I look back on a year with my fleshy memory cells, but primarily with these external annotations. I inwardly scoff when people say “where did the time go?” You spent every second just as fast as I (unless you are an astronaut). The trick is keeping perspective of all that happened in between those visits by maturing youngsters.

I’ll admit it is exceedingly difficult to keep that sort of stuff in mind. When I was younger enough that I didn’t drive, I would daydream during stretches on the freeway, mostly about what was passing by. Often that would take the form of hyper-destructive ‘I have telekinesis and throw SUV’s through buildings et cetera.’ Another, relevant, daydream involved trying to visualize the distance we travelled. Not the total distance, but just a smaller amount like a mile or two. You have seen the helpful signs that list the miles to the next exit. So, I would note one and start ‘laying tape.’ I could see the sign receding behind us for a time, but we might go over a rise or turn and I would still have to project its hypothetical location moving back at the same speed as the car. I could never keep it for farther than, perhaps, half a mile. The ‘tape’ would seem to reach a limit where lengthening it more would seem to have no effect: I lost perspective. The same glass ceiling blocks attempts to visualize a billion dollars, or the cells on the back of my hand. Arguably, walking two miles could make it clearer than sitting in a vehicle travelling at seventy miles per hour. Still, when I walked (briskly, of course) four times around the track for a mile in middle and high school, the linear distance still felt occult and unwieldy. So too with the passing days.

I’ll admit, I felt some of that foolish shock this Christmas in noticing that my (female) cousin’s voices had changed, probably deepened. Partly, I’m missing the point because it has to do with updating my representation of them. I treated this in an older post here, so I’ll be brief. We would remember every day if we had really emotional experiences through the whole time. (And those would mash together too unless they engaged different emotions each time. “Yeah, I went to Paris for a week, but had to swim back until the pirates captured me and I was afraid they would go from ransom to killing, then I broke out and landed in Bolivia, where I won the lottery, and then Tarzan and Batman fought to seduce me, but I ignored them because I only just started to read the whole Harry Potter series, and then I nearly died in an auto accident driving back home and saw Jesus and all the Mormon angels, and then, and then, and then.” I had fun stringing that together.) I’m inclined to say that pulp adventurer would have a better chance of resisting the “golly you are sure big,” because change is such a predominant part of hiser life. The rest of us deal with a great amount of routine. We wake in the same bed, take one of two paths to work – at most, and eat one of the classic livestock cuts (“Turdunken again? When are we going to have emu, mom?”). Soooo, that is why noting down what happened is so important. I may not feel the miles under my feet any longer, but I can look at miles of ink spilt or one megabyte of text and fake that sense.

Before I turn to another device, I should clip a loose thread. I stated that the latter daily notes were blow by blow reflections. The first few reflected an altogether different approach. One of my ‘oft referenced’ files is called ‘immediate use,’ but I treat it more like an immediate deposit. I use it to place notes I intend to use somewhat later, but seldom do. The result is a mishmash that indirectly shows the evolution of my interests, albeit defunct or idle forms. In an attempt to circumvent this unmeaningful stockpile and instill a more aware attitude, I opted to use each day to document which sites I visited and copied in the more eloquent paragraphs of whatever I read. Sure, I could go through my browser history – and sometimes do if the memory and site was distinct enough – but a fair number are spammy, like deviantart, which classes each user as a separate site. I gave up, but with the right organizational strategy I may incorporate it eventually.

I shouldn’t, but often blame that habit of filtering depositories. I maintain a normal notebook as a journal. But it is too big to take to work, for those occasions when I operate the elevator, so I have a smaller work journal. When I have forgotten the work journal, I often resort to writing on a napkin (they stock a kind well suited to my needs). Should I copy what I wrote verbatim back into my normal journal; would that bore me? I maintain the aforementioned text files about weekly events. So, even if I made a comprehensive file for stream of consciousness, events, and what I’m looking at, I would feel divided about whether and how much to trade with my physical journals. Of course, more writing is better, but the anxiety I created forestalled most writing in general and doomed that experiment in particular.

I use a 180 sheet spiral bound notebook that I began the fourth day of last year and haven’t yet picked up this year (oh, ho those are timeless puns). I could list the sort of entries I most often relied on, but that isn’t entirely the point. Revealing patterns in my writing may entertain, but involves more history than historiography. Instead, I’ll illuminate via a ruthless mathematical device: statistics.

The vertical values are plain by the legend: days elapsed in between journal entries. The numbers on the bottom indicate the month and its frequency indicates the number of posts made during that month. From the outset, I admit a major compromise in the way I compiled the data. If you add all the days elapsed, it should miss 365 by the number of posts. Where ever you see a data point but no column, that indicates I wrote another post the very next day. I could have made that ‘one day elapsed,’ but that would seem to punish me. A week where I wrote every day would show seven days elapsed, even though I didn’t miss an opportunity. So, to keep it consistent, I always subtracted one day, even when I didn’t write the next day. Perhaps, a more honest legend would have been ‘consecutive days without writing.’ In the end though, the graph is exactly the same but just shifted one up for all data points.

Nevertheless, the graph does reveal an important seasonal trend. I wrote least during periods of least responsibility. The lowest month was June, which correlates with when the rest of my family went on vacation. I even forgot about my birthday until they came back and reminded me. I can’t tell you what I did because, appropriately, I didn’t write anything down. Very likely, I surfed the net and whomped on Cortex Command’s AI. My best month was September. Unsurprisingly I was in school and using my journal to plan out homework, both essays and programs. However, school (and elevator duty) incentivize journaling because they are the most entertaining thing to do during lulls in activity. At work I can get a tremendous amount of reading done because I have nothing to do for eight hours straight (barring interruptions). At home, the offered content on the internet presents a temptation that I resist only with effort or boredom.

I decided against checking the frequency for my work journal. The option of manning the elevator only comes up once a week and isn’t always offered, so its delays are unrepresentative to my overall writing effort and more reflect my work schedule.

One entry, the second, in my journal deserves mention. I read through the journal I had just finished and made a brief index for it. While cool, putting it in a totally different book makes no sense if they aren’t kept in sequence and the conceit isn’t known ahead of time. So, I conceived of an alternative to mucking up the inside back cover. I could, but haven’t yet, reserve one spiral notebook solely as an index. A table of contents would be nicer but I don’t focus that much on any given day. It might begin with a list of what I should do, then some unpleasant event to vent about, and finish with some meandering possibilities about how to handle my current project. And then, I do the same thing the next day or, possibly, copy straight text out of a library book.

I can surmount the problem of ordering my journals, but with some uncomfortable compromises. These past few years, I have used a single notebook to completion (supplemented with my work notebook). But, before then, I used to write in several at once depending upon which I found most conveniently. So a chronological path jumps between two or three sources for a few years. Less helpful is if I miss an early journal and have to index it after much newer material. There are more complaints, but I must recognize that if I include the date (which I scrupulously put) in addition to the page number, the index itself resolves all these difficulties of future reference by explicitly showing the chronological order of entries within the space of a couple sheets rather than spread across books as is the present status quo. It doesn’t make it easier to compile the index, but at least future reference is much easier. I may yet put that into practice.

The preceeding has been, as Hamlet is made to say, “words, words, words.” The most engaging references are visual. I sympathize with the injunction to take loads of pictures, of myself, my surroundings, and anything out of the ordinary. Their value is unquestionable. Pictures from our Europe trip are superb mnemenotics. And, I know the gap of forsaking pictures. We may be a couple thousand feet from where we used to live, but I have no idea what the inside of that house looks like anymore. It is a shame that it has traded again since then so I can’t use the excuse, “Remember when you bought this house (ten?) years ago? Could I look around to rekindle my memories of when I used to live here?” Of course, I don’t need to go there. My parents took plenty of pictures that I can look at for reference. Wary of forsaking change, I made a (one minute) video of my room the year before.

Unfortunately, I have ignored the more personal subject, myself. One set each month seemed like a reasonable goal last January; but, I failed to take half that many. Further, I usually only remember to charge my camera after a change, like cutting my hair.

My more favored visual media is pencil. My journals occasionally have doodle addenda. While these illuminate the passage, few are of any consequence. Only two projects received much dedication. I drew several versions of Supheter, my character embodied in D&D sessions. I noted the more engaging project in my report on Cortex Command. I do admit that most involves deciding elements of the larger story rather than drawing the next segment at all. However, close to the semester’s end, I reevaluated the climax for the first episode and gave it a much more meaningful conclusion. I let myself fuss about layouts and word balloons in abstract rather than mocking them up. Until I commit to inking a real version or using a stylus with Flash, the project bangs on the metaphoric glass.

Those, however, only represent the mandate of my muse. This semester of drawing forced me to produce even more work. That journal contains portraits, rooms, and horrid contour drawings. (Those are hand-eye coordination exercises, wherein the artist draws without referring to the page at all.) They haven’t digital copies yet. Because she asked us to use graphite layers to simplify ‘shading,’ I am concerned it may dirty the glass more than usual.

Deviantart reminded me that I did upload another collection. Way back when I still ground out turns on the Conquer Club (risk imitation), I made some potential submissions. In fact, I made a big, blank world map in anticipation of playtesting it with real pieces. When I grew bored, I used it to cover my books from dust. A couple months ago, I hung it over my laptop, so it is silly of me not to have remembered. Hidden in plain sight. I use another site to distribute forgettable creations, Flickr. Besides my stock logging, I primarily use it to show people stuff.

Chase’s album has a couple pictures of me during our D&D sessions. He also recorded an entire session on camera, but I understood it went straight into storage. (Size precludes sharing.) My sister may have caught me once or twice in family gathering photos. I admit that, as camera man, I seldom remember to take more than one of myself. I justify the absence by relying on my self-portraits. Nevertheless, unposed shots are my absolute favorite. While participants may resent it, I try to catch them before they can group hug and tooth show.

I did shoot one video myself. At Froi’s wedding, Manolo gave a speech as the best man. So he would have a copy, I taped him. Unfortunately, he compromised his computer so we had to restore it to day one. Even worse, he kept his ‘account’ password protected. We did save all the ‘my documents,’ but his is unreachable because we haven’t the ‘authority’ anymore. I don’t recall if I uploaded a copy because it was on his camera and so sinning big. I can report one novel recording. I made an audio file of me singing. One of the songs I have engraved into muscle memory is the ‘Modern Major General’ parody from the last episode of the show Reboot. It turns out, I misheard some of the words when I first learnt it, so I have multiple takes where I stumble reading the divergent lyrics.

There are more, trivial records online. I discovered (forum based) Mafia on Conquer Club and still hope to play it in a group some day. I saved the entire log of conversation for the first four or so games, to analyze who might be town or mafia or cult. I used my datarealms account, but it pines for when I finish some episodes of my Cortex Comic. Such is the difference between wanting the perks of a writer and wanting to write as a hobby or job. Earlier in the year I announced which book I had just finished, as a Facebook status. Now I pollute with their brand of ads. Soon after I joined, I cordoned it to only those who play Zynga’s games, but with the new rules, I think it has seeped out to everyone again. Perhaps I should check but it isn’t as though I don’t ignore the great majority of my ‘friend’s posts.

I sent seventy five emails this year. This semester saw fifty. Of those fifty, over half are from me to me. Actually, it would be more but I deleted some because yahoo doesn’t sense when I am sending it to myself so I end up with two copies. I resorted to this primarily when I worked on papers at school or had to print one out here. Since I moved into my room, venturing around the rest of the house is exceedingly annoying. My battery has devolved to the stage where it lasts twelve minutes. It is my fault for leaving it plugged in all day. I don’t need it’s portability for the common use; I value it for when I transition between my parent’s houses. Five years ago, during some of the LAN parties at Kevin’s house, I drug around my family’s tower and that was a major pain. When I move into my own abode, I will trade up for a desktop.

Various agencies update their records of my activity. School has its grades (and updated its host to a more convenient system, to the chagrin of the professors). SFFCU gives me all sorts of receipts, bank statements, and credit card bills that I should shred but mainly stockpile. The credit card bills are the least useful, as I tell to everyone who will listen. Because I pass the credit union on the way home, I can deposit my pay and clear my balance without using a nonperforming checking account. That is why I will never take out a line with any retail outlet for a one time benefit. Common sense suggests that the libraries I patronize should keep a record of my rental history. Since the Patriot Act scare nine years ago, most systems live like they have Anterograde Amnesia. I guess it cuts down on their storage overhead. Sigalert is another agency that absolutely should keep archives of the data stream it transmits. Sure, I want to know how traffic is right now. However, if I am going to leave some time within the next two hours, but I want to ditch rush hour traffic, their site is no good. I can’t sit there for the next two hours hitting refresh. The moment I see some reduced flow, it is too late and I will hit a bigger dam by the time I reach there. A long time ago, I managed to find a site that did host pictures of freeway traffic for several years in hourly segments. Fool that I was, I didn’t save the sinning address and don’t really expect to find it again with so many fool traffic news reports cluttering the search results. If you know of such a site I would be extremely grateful if you share the link.

We have just about reached the end. Microsoft formats this to the end of the fourteenth page. So, dead last is the worst record: those unshared. At various points during year nine – and elsewhen – I began some posts and gave up the moment I got tired. For example, I began a review that would have contrasted the reality shows True Beauty and 13: Fear is Real. I still despise the inept and largely dishonest ethical basis of the former. However, in disgust, I stopped watching it. Typing the potential article felt less urgent. It was easy to let it lie. At least it is saved, even if I don’t publish it.

That, as much as keeping up with the Lloyds, prompted this (weeklong) effort. My own posterity is undoubtedly assured. Despite the meager rate of documentation, I am perhaps average for my generation (substituting journaling for tons of vlogs or photos). In contrast, my grandmother has a bunch of pictures, but because she had to leave middle school and work the rest of her life, hers is currently an oral history. I must write her biography this year. And that of my father’s parents, but she lives with us so it is more convenient. I would like to leave it at just interviewing her, but that forsakes a lot of nuance. Some years ago, I made a tape recording of a family friend some weeks away from his death. It was obviously too late and I didn’t have posterity in mind, so I went with the strongest association I had. He was with my mother’s father as a political prisoner in Cuba. His answer left much to be desired, but in retrospect he had lived decades since then. It would have been nice to press him about his life in general and perhaps make a copy as a gift for his family. Ultimately, there was a conflict of interest.

With my own relatives, I have the opposite concern. I want to know everything, which makes the project feel unwieldy. Most advice is geared toward genealogy hobbyists, who focus on finding the whole tree and perhaps regard stories as a happy, yet incidental, surprise. The rest treats biographers’ methods which may be as impersonal as studying MLB’s journals and such or some interview techniques. They strive to make a compelling narrative, focusing on unusual anecdotes or ‘formative experiences.’ That too can underrepresent my subjexts. Should I try to get a blow by blow account; let her just tell stories about whatever she wants for an hour; or use her as a way to look at life in Cuba, Florida, and Orange County through different periods with her particulars as ‘secondary?’

I looked through a couple of historical societies’ websites but didn’t notice a mission statement declaring what is of historical value. How do I know what to preserve? Sure, it isn’t likely that I will donate these to a similar group, but it would be nice to have some suggestions about what to focus on. Likely, a text on historian’s methodologies will confirm my suspicion: everything is of value. Because of the dissertation system, new graduates must fragment out into whatever isn’t covered yet but has a good body of suggestively similar opinions. On the other hand, what would my descendants want to know about her? Regardless, the interviews are valuable in themselves. The biography serves as an index for them more than a concerted effort to memorialize her. That would take too long and I might lose other sources before I am ready.

I read the chapter for an argument class that waxes on summarizing or paraphrasing arguments and how to do so. In total contrast to its banality, the author ended with Susan Jacoby’s “First Amendment Junkie.” I encountered it elsewhere but time hasn’t blunted the editorial’s clarity. On a lark, I read the suggested exercise for the chapter. If the professor had assigned it, I would be writing 250-500 words about freedom of speech. Specifically, the author solicits opinions in regard to a hypothetical letter to the editor in a school paper that included a racist/ethnist remark (“deny Arab immigrants entry because they want to destroy America”). He even did some of the work by offering three general responses that reaction letters gave both in favor and against (favor).

For a couple seconds, I considered answering unabashedly, as practice. In my notebook, 350 words is roughly a page and three-fourths. But, I can’t let myself. Obviously, the prospective task tests neither our summarizing ability nor our conclusion. It is practice forming a reasoned argument, how cute. The likely majority of responses suffer from a general lack I sense in argument classes (and some philosophy classes): conveying a sense of a totalized context.

What would I normally write? “Our country was (somewhat) populated by religious exiles. They fled the notion that the beliefs they espoused were spiritually deviant. [Feh, argument from Authority.] We, a more enlightened populace can ignore the intellectually bankrupt rather than censor them.”

Alternately, I can argue the opposite just as easily. “The editors were chosen to ensure a level of quality within the publication that the ethnist letter subverts. Certain acts are impermissible in any society that endeavors to escape self-immolation. [Snore, slippery slope.]  Giving space to similar opinions cultivates the impression that all is encouraged and nothing is forbidden.”

These – and any artificial debate constructed between those two representatives – fails because they are ships passing in the night. Namely, they are trading premises, or selected facts supporting them, without either listening or convincing the other. The pointless exchange happens in every forum’s political/unrelated section. The atheist says “god doesn’t exist;” the theist says it does. (Oh, that is why it is so important that people take these critical thinking classes. They progress past the juvenile mud slinging.) No, not at all. Here they learn about sophist tricks to use and catch opponents invoking; but, no one pursues a totalizing view of the world so as to make lasting decisions. (Nicholas, that is outside the scope of any single class.)

Yes, that is why I pursue a major in History. I am not interested in teaching history (at least not initially). I am not interested in learning the daily routines of the third Ming empress and Charles De Gaul. History, to my mind, presents the simplest means of obtaining a totalizing education.

Consider a ‘perennial problem:’ recreational drugs. Nimrod says, “Addiction drives people to steal and impoverish their families.” Dimwit responds, “Such already happens to alcoholics, even underage alcoholics.” I want these student presentations to involve greater depth. (Presumably they encounter that depth in the books they use to write their research papers.) Fine, permit superficiality as a consequence of impacted time. But, my coworkers, my father argue or exchange complaints about the world at that same level.

I acknowledge that the level of competence I desire for myself and others demands a lifetime of study. Rigorously testing the idea of only legalizing marijuana requires searching out specialized statistics that even congressional commissions and reports summarize. That constitutes the reply to ‘read a book about it.’ Which book do I read? The great majority present facts and eloquent arguments in support of a specific thesis. Any student of history knows this bias as Historicism. To my understanding, a totalizing view can counteract, or at least indicate the level of compensation required to mitigate limited viewpoints.

I am not the only person to desire a totalizing reference. Consider the Utilitarian, who survives in the mainstream under the aegis, “do the greatest good for the greatest number.” Obviously, that is a gross simplification of the philosophy. Still, generally utilitarians should subscribe to a periodical of the sort I imply. If I am to spread the fruit of my labor to those who most benefit from it, it is imperative that I be able to compare the (universal) return of donations to surgically correcting cleft lips versus paying for African’s school supplies. Yet, previous searches returned nothing. (Perhaps, the problem is my search term.) Nevertheless, without a central (usually liberal), comparative encyclopedia, the utilitarian relies on the inefficient osmosis his social circle offers. (Hey, check out this new NGO I learned about.) For any committed Utilitarian, the philosophy represents a rejection of suboptimal charity schemes that typify factionalized altruists (communists, Christians).

This post can not end effectively. (Unfortunately?) I am self-aware enough to know I did what I discourage: declare my core belief and bid you adopt it. (Well, attitudes are rather hard to measure and correlate against ‘decadant’ societies.)

Learn all you can about an issue before forming (arguing) an opinion about it.

Oh, but I don’t have time to learn about minutia. This particular Aspect ought to shock you into agreement anyway.

Well, here is an opposing (limited) set of facts to counter-balance your own. Is this really an effective way to learn about contrasting facts? We are in an arena where one is called to integrate and respond to them with short notice. Sure, we could go home and research the other’s citations, but wouldn’t I have done that if I were interested beforehand?

Well at least more facts are aired in these situations than people otherwise encounter.

But the presentation is somewhat jarringly structured. Who are we informing, a mythical ‘undecided’ person? Those who hold – comparatively – weaker convictions will more likely hear soothing arguments to support their initial feelings than use this as an opportunity to rethink the issue entirely, especially with the hectic pace of conversation.

You short-changed my side of the argument there, reflecting your own bias, Nicholas. You haven’t transcended your position because yours isn’t neutral. Despite dismissing the ‘for or against’ positions to the question of free speech as superficial, your entire thesis revolves around examining all facts and interpretations of those facts. You can’t bootstrap yourself beyond the dualistic answers via any logocentric dialog.

I wrote about idiosyncracy, I’ll give you some more. This time shall center on restaurants.
Restaurants are a nice shot of variety in my meals but not generally worth the increased price of eating. One fashion this comes up is in the specific absences that lightly grate on the experience. Consider the time preparing our food. It is nice that they do cook our food after we arrive, it tastes better and I cook on our barbeque to know that the delays everywhere are about realistic. Obviously conversation is a good way to spend it because – unless you eat in shifts – the conversation ought run down when you are filling your pie hole. The traditional answer is a cheap appetizer: bread (or by theme, chips).

I appreciate this custom but it sits far off the optimal solution. Bread is rather filling and plain. The semi-exotic food (higher quality, whatever) brought me here; wasting (internal) space feels foolish. In contrast, restaurants seldom serve vegetables in a fashion I prefer. Cooks (implicitly) cater to the middle-aged populace by drizzling dressing on them or grilling them. Mind, some dishes combine them well: pasta (Italian or Chinese) with broccoli or some such legume will draw no complaints. But, salads are right out.
This probably reflects my snobbery about ease of use. Most of the leaves in a salad are terribly hard to skewer and those that aren’t would stick out my mouth without biting the offender in half. Alternately, the preparation includes nuts, cranberries, or chunks of cheese that make a flavorful impression but are very difficult to bring in with the same scoop. In the end, I just eat salads with my hands and can only do so without any sinning dressing anyway. I’ll take an uncooked carrot over a “lettuce wedge” salad or grilled zucchini every time.

That is the first admission tonight, and the only one I actually practice. When I remember, I bring a carrot, wash it in the restaurant bathroom, and enjoy it while waiting for the real meat and potatoes.

So what do I do with the useless side of cut melon or boiled asparagus? Normally, I leave it for them to throw a way, an unnecessary waste. Otherwise the answer is asking for a container. There are areas of sympathy in my understanding that perhaps others substitute with different objects. For example, bent books and magazines distress me. People effect lasting damage on so many when a small inconvenience would preserve a text they could pass on or put back on the shelf without needing to squeeze it back in. So, I’ll admit that I don’t really like asking for a Styrofoam doggie bag. (Why is Styrofoam capitalized, Microsoft word? Its brand must have been denuded with the lapsed patent. It is not a sinning proper noun any more than “spandex” or “zipper.”) They don’t like giving it, because, like the bread, they don’t charge for it. Which, like airline soda, justifies increasing the universal prices in general. Frankly, I seldom need the whole thing, just enough for half a chicken breast or whatever. Only pastas are served in overwhelming portions and are worth reheating.

So, I realized it would be easier to bring a ziplock sandwich bag and save them the cost and myself the delay.
This last does not reflect a practice I would adopt so much as a better (yet impractical) logical extension of current practice. I barely use napkins. With exceptions (hand held greasy food), I can manage with utensils ably enough to keep my hands and face clean. But, that generally isn’t the practice with restaurant napkins. Everyone I know uses them as a bib, except not. Bib fits in the sense that it protects our clothes, though pants rather than shirt. While this catches crumbs well, if a patron sits close enough to the table the chest presents the likelier target for falling excess. Granted, many slouch forward rather than sit erect so I really mean myself. Yet, years ago I felt the foolishness of draping my lap while fearing more for my shirt. A better design would be longer so as to stretch from neck to inseam. Bowing to the poor posture of most customers, I admitted such a drape would need a small tie so it wouldn’t slip off. The joke is that I didn’t imagine what this would look like on a person. Instead, I described it as solution to the particular challenges of eating and wondered if any restaurant was so kind (profligate) as to offer such an article. Only much later, I realized this would be an apron and no one is going to take an apron to a wedding reception, haute couture be damned.

Not only does the general topic of this post resemble the last, it had roughly the same inception. Both were conceived well in advance of the proximate cause, an external, revealing link to relevant material. In the news post for the last page of Automotaton on Penny Arcade, Tycho delighted in and criticized the “seduction community.” He had a little argument with his artist Gabe and ended by declaring their goal solely physical intercourse. His veiled joke noted that men only interested in that aspect of a woman had already invented a solution devoid of the rest.

That link directs to a forty minute documentary about men who have bought (and two who service) Realdolls. I encountered the concept prior to hearing of the movie (but not yet watching) Lars and the Real Girl. Without seeing that probably begrudgingly sympathetic depiction, I had mostly shared the popular conclusion about purchasing a sex mannequin, until yesterday.

Some weeks ago, I read Slaughterhouse Five and looked it up on amazon for some reason. The site suggested We – by Yevgeny Zamyatin. That book stands as a precursor to Orwell’s 1984 in theme and setting. Skimming on its page turned up We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert Johnson. He has written a series of short psychological illuminations of men, women, the shadow aspect, and so on via interpreting mythological and literary classics. (We centers on Tristian and Isolde.) While the concept intrigued, I decided to test Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness. (One more step before I loop back.)

This iteration deviates a bit by correlating three books to his (Jungian) aim rather than a single work. Johnson means to evoke the mindsets at the heart of the simple man (Don Quixote), the complex man (Hamlet), and illuminated man (Doctor Faustus). Happiness and engagement with the outer world distinguish the three. The simple man is happy ignoring his circumstances. The complex man has learned much about our world but can no longer draw peace within it (Al Gore). The “four-dimensional man” abides happily in a worldly understanding and vivacious inner life. Such, at least, is his thesis and I have only yet read the chapter about the simple man.

Under Johnson’s searchlight, Cervantes’ character suitably embodies the self-sufficient spirit. He meets whores and reimagines them as court ladies and his beloved Dulcinea. He steals a barber’s shaving basin because it is ‘actually’ the golden helmet of Mambrino. Johnson delights that Cervantes even protected him from defeat. When Don Quixote bounces off the famous windmill, he claims his sorcerous foe transformed them into such to deny him the honor of victory. The simple man, as Johnson portrays him, is unconcerned with external circumstance to derive his happiness.

This, to my surprise, was the perfect preparation for watching Guys & Dolls. The men depicted all surprised me with the amount of care they took in beautifying their ‘companions.’ This lifechoice lands them in the women’s clothing department and the makeup department as much as if they were women. Further, they treat them as though they are human to a degree. I was going to say one of the participants regarded them more ‘practically’ as “a masturbation aid,” but when given the chance, he served them dinner. One man spoke of his doll as asleep while acknowledging that he would need to exchange her face for one with open eyes later.

Johnson faults our society for encouraging and subsidizing the education to complexity to the point of distaining the simple man. Don Quixote isn’t stupid. Neither are these men who have bought simulacra. However, their pleasures and meaningful experiences spring whole cloth from their psyches. Even two days ago, understanding this difference would have largely been as beyond me as the director anticipated it for a general audience. With Johnson’s recontextualization, pity and revulsion evaporated.

Perhaps another argument helped me some too. A few months ago, I found the belligerent encyclopedia dramatica and that led to a brief defense of the fleshlight. A fleshlight is a fake vagina. The arguer took offense to the social indifference to a woman masterbating with a dildo but the ostratization of men using artificial props. I can’t despise him or [Lars] for concluding this is an easier and emotionally sufficient compromise in contrast to rejection. They are demonstrably happier for it. The alternative isn’t rape but there is no social purpose to a desperate loneliness that might have been their fate in an earlier time. But, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they would bravely fashion an imaginative companion with ruder materials anyway.

I indulge my idiosyncratic conclusions often but sometimes recognize their great disparity with the normal course of human reasoning. One recent example came from my current cursing redirection. I grew to realize that I have a very relaxed attitude toward swearing and was using “fuck” sometimes beyond the comfort of those around me. So, I decided to shift away from that particular word again. My swearing will remain constant – my earlier experiments confirmed this – but I can substitute in a different, unsused word. I explained all this before from the theory and intention standpoint in June last year. Rather than perpetuate the relation of fuck (sex) and negative situations, I now use “sin” and some variants.

Very quickly, I felt the gravity of that particular choice. The effect is largely diminished now; but, at first cursing sounded very judgmental. Muttering that the person who cut me off is a ‘fucker’ or a ‘motherfucker’ only expresses my disparagement for his action. Calling himer a ‘sinner’ felt like a more comprehensive repudiation. No one has commented on the change, but I wonder if they feel a greater sting than I intend.

But that confrontation is a straight-edge compared to the twisted nature of the next, as I currently understand it. Most Universalisms bore me. Rewarding people of value within my social circle (or who provide free services to me) will always win out over UNICEF, no matter how many cleft lips they repair. Still, I am not immune to certain appeals provided they come with a suitably wonderous solution. One such is the problem of animal meat.

The problem consists of its overwhelming demand on our resources. Frankly, there is no point in repeating an argument found a hundred other places if you should care to brave the vegetarian appeals they primarily espouse around it. I have no compunctions with factory farms and the discomforts they occasion on the sentient protein and lipid sacks grown within. Wasting the land and water bother me instead. Giving up animal protein isn’t a viable option. That stands close to choosing a diabetic diet because sugar is evil and addictive or something. The elegant solution simply substitutes another animal, a more efficient animal: insects.

If you have seen any food tourism show, you have likely seen that other countries sometimes include grasshoppers or ants and so on in their diet because they can’t afford beef. In that case, the cooks probably fry or bake them whole. Frankly, except for kids sucking Hot Lix, American’s will not ‘regress’ in that manner. Western advocates for incorporating insects into the national diet don’t seem to realize that the sympathetic magic mindset is powerful and people will just not want to eat anything that looks like bugs any more than they want to drink reclaimed sewage water no matter how sterile engineers make it. The idea taints. (Insect cookbooks are made for the converted, so they just leave the crickets and mealworms whole in the recipes.)

My answer draws from that discontinued Burger King (anti-McDonalds) commercial. Two lab coat actors poke and prod a chicken whilst the narrator declares they are looking for the ‘nugget’ on its body. Which part of a pig are sausages or bologna made from? No one knows or cares because its identity fell away in the meat grinder. You see my answer, right? Just grind the insects and treat them as crunchy meat (pretend it is corn flakes). Then it can be anything you want: meatballs, koobideh, croquetas, or part of a Sheppard’s Pie. In that way, it becomes optimific.

Still, I know it would expend lots of my social capital to try the experiment here, whilst I live with people who care for me (and regard me watchfully). The interest seized me nonetheless, so I bought an insect cookbook for a single page within it. I wanted to know where I could buy insects for that far future when I might incorporate them into my diet. I hoped that the author would treat obtaining them in a whole chapter, comparing raising them against buying them from a wholesaler. Alas, only preparation dominated her mind. She left a single page for a list of suppliers with no commentary. I delayed looking up the companies for two or so months, out of disappointment.

Some have websites, some do not. She published ten years ago, so this is no surprise. The candied insect sites are obvious and useless to this project. Still, some cricket and mealworm wholesalers conduct internet sales and within California too. Some sell live insects some do not. All struck me with a horror that called my commitment to task. I realized the insanity of the project as the superstition reassembled, unbidden, from the floor of my psyche. Grubco Inc. doesn’t sell insects for human consumption; it sells fish bait. The others similarly hype their product for feeding to snakes or birds.

I felt betrayed. The problem came from my abstracted expectations. I had hoped those companies would keep their sites impersonal, like that adult rack behind the bookstore counter. ‘We just sell bugs, use them as you like: beetles, grasshoppers, ect.’ Of course, without engaging their target market, they won’t distinguish themselves for significant sales. And yet, I want to blame them for recasting my principled conclusion into eating dog food. Reason frayed as I debated the compatibility of human and bird or fish nutrient requirements. Surely, it isn’t poisonous or anything. That contested with the image of having to clean the intestines out of unshelled shrimp. Do I have to do that?

In retrospect, my reaction shouldn’t have shocked me so much. Hiding the origin of the protein is the whole reason I want to grind them into a paste. As pioneer, though, I have to do it myself; buy, process, and cook them myself. If, say, I won the lottery and sold bug nuggets, customers would be removed from this level because they would buy it in the frozen section alongside lean cuisine. Further there is no urgency to my task. This option doesn’t open even experimentally until I move out. That will ease the transition with familiarity.

The purchase itself is ambiguous. The prices look ok, but I am not sure about the volume or the shipping. It bears a closer scrutiny. The fish bait likely sells smaller amounts than bird or lizard food, given the difference in long term demand. In the end, I will need to diminish my pride whether I am using soy all the time or mealworm fritters.

By the way, I had planned to write this and keep it hidden but the concurrent news article felt like providence. Its Universalist hope is still foolish and fails because it can only offer a Luddite solution. Say we buy less meat collectively. Initially, there will be the same amount on the shelves before the supermarket realizes the slack; they purchase supplies months in advance. Then, they will offer more meat at the same price. (I just read another article about how chips bags are bigger during the recession and smaller in boom times without changing the price. They do this because consumers hate seeing the price go up, especially on an elasitc good like snacks.) If that fails, they will put all their meat on sale and the temptation will eat into the new converts. A good, long time will pass before the (global) market reduces its supply. Still, any visionary would counter that with, “effort and delay doesn’t make the outcome any less valuable.” It would probably have been safer to hide this dissonant aspect, but it isn’t as though I expressed anything more than a flirtation with the idea. I’m neither buying nor eating insects for the forseeable future. I am not crazy.

I am waiting for my new external hard drive to finish formatting so I can put my computer to sleep. [No longer true because wrote this over the course of a week.] It is the latest in a series of accessories I long considered profligate. Realistically, this makes no sense because I paid for my laptop’s recovery twice before I had it replaced, and the desktop before shuffles under its own sickness. I backed up my current laptop at purchase, but that took eighteen cds, which is terribly wasteful. So, I waited a month (for my luxury budget) and decided to buy one.

While the poor reviews for various brands of external hard drive encouraged purchasing a Toshiba, their greatest maxes at 500GB. 400GB represents the price/size sweet spot on both Amazon and newegg (for eighty-five dollars). But, I bit the bullet and bought a Western Digital 1 terabyte device. (Or, is it bit? I know the distinction is why my computer interprets 931GB of space available, but really I can’t pretend they misrepresented the size too badly.) The brand didn’t attract complaints and one mentioned a reasonable customer service experience.

So, now I can finally ignore iTunes’ occasional reminders for me to back up my bought music. In writing this, I realized another advantage. My mother’s coworker uploaded a phenomenal amount of music to their networked memory, maybe 32GB. Likely, he downloaded the lot from some bit torrent. The biggest and most important group is a series of the Billboard Top hits from every year between 1950 and 2003. Before, I listened to several years, noting the worthy songs, and transferred them with my flashdrive. Now, I can load the whole store in one shot.

That represents a great convenience. As I have remarked occasionally, I find music a distraction often times. The best opportunities come when I am engaged in a task like driving, sorting my files, or playing muted games with bad music. Normally, listening or judging music has no urgency, other than to write some identifying lyrics when in my car. My mother’s work laptop, on the other hand, only comes at her convenience. Last month, she brought it every night so she could research for her trip. These past weeks during her vacation have been a good, yet underutilized, opportunity. Theoretically, I should have devoted a day to every year and managed fourteen thereby. But, the opportunity seems more a chore because I have to set and turn on her laptop whilst engaged in an appropriate task.

This block of silicon, in contrast, can soak the entire load. Thereafter, I have infinite time to judge which ought migrate to mipod and delete (most of) the rest. This recovers the original feeling. Listening to every song each year feels like a history of American music. It struck me that the fifties began as quartets, but in 1954 Elvis and “Rock Around the Clock” broke in and stole an increasing share. I am well familiar with the sixties and seventies, to the point where I will skip them until much later. During high school my taste fell exclusively within strong classical or oldies music.

Classical radio stations rarely play any worthy pieces because tons are soft melodies inspired by the setting sun, or from downtime in operas. The only sure time to catch strong symphonies is during their subscription months, when they pour out three minute clips of the hundred that even the uninitiated recognize. (“Just donate the equivalent of ten cents a day, and we will send a copy of blah’s blah.”) Further, of the hundred, the strongest portions often represent only ten percent of the piece. Exceptions exist (Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Liszt’s second Hungarian rhapsody) that shake the soul to their rhythm at each instant. (Rhythm has entirely too many consonants. I keep trying to put in a ‘u’ at least.) In sum, classical stations were a last resort.

During that period, and extending through my first year attending college, I primarily listened to the oldies station k earth. They share a problem with all theme stations: limited selection. I know that even indie stations suffer this, but oldies stations exaggerate the condition. I listened for so long that I came to know every song. I knew many already because their years feature the songs played at every wedding. The overstimulation killed my interest for a long time. My only saving grace was a conservative talk station that mostly came in. The host I heard most often was Michael Savage. They replaced his zealotry with Dennis Miller some years after.

Living with another person matured me in many ways. Though I curse Zack for many reasons, my current eclectivity mostly stems from his influence. He introduced me to the rag-timey Ditty Bops. He let me copy the mash-ups from the Beastles (Beatles and Beasty Boys), which I have not yet found afterward.

Monica supplied the next wave of songs. Many people like to give her iTunes cards and she collected a great many artists. While our tastes intersect with half, hip hop comprises the rest. I have come to reject my juvenile intolerance for entire musical genres (the classic targets: rap, country, and metal). However, I like some Eminem songs, and Matisyahu’s “King without a Crown” is inspired. I like some Shania Twain and others, though I didn’t realize they were country. I thought they were rock. This stems from no musical education. The distinctions interest me about the same as gauging age by sight. Without going through extensive examples and seeing direct correlation, no one can know intuitively beyond general classes.

Besides copying all American music ever, the external hard drive enables another relief. I had to buy this laptop a year and three-fourths ago because my previous developed that mysterious, maddening slowing. Shortly afterward my grandmother and her friend (and some others I have forgotten) asked for my discarded laptop. Primarily, I refused because it is almost, almost unusable. It would be unkind, really, to pretend I am not giving them (my father recently asked on behalf of another) the equivalent of a car with a broken transmission.

Of course, that isn’t the whole of my resistance. I am a sexual being without a partner. Further, I collect many digital paraphernalia. While I transferred much soon after HP mailed the replacement, the delay and caprice of the leper discouraged me soon after. Having everything I ever collected certainly isn’t essential, but it is nice, in an archival sense. At minimum, the hard drive invalidates waiting any longer (I can also use my extra mouse rather than the sinning touchpad). Then I can let my father and grandmother battle for the dubious pleasure of rewarding some poor shmuck with a comatose block of plastic.

[updated information at the bottom]

I am rather disappointed that California’s budget crisis arises from dysfunction at all levels. The coming election promises to highlight our own culpability. Frankly, putting budgets on the ballot ensures this state will not reach solvency for many decades. It is comic that the planets could align and the legislature could pass the perfect solution, but eighteen million voters in unison can invalidate months of negotiating. The rejection puts us no closer and, in retrospect, makes the money used to run the election even more pointless.

I have no real love of California’s government. I live in a conservative bastion in a largely liberal state. On the occasions I catch the conservative talk-show hosts ‘John and Ken,’ I can hear about how the LA school district or some sheriff’s department is wasting taxpayer money. But, until I figure out a better place to live, I am stuck here. I can not pretend to extrapolate what will happen to our state as its budget continues to survive by willpower instead of money.

Likely, state employees will have to receive minimum wage again. Contractors may stop submitting bids for highways or new schools, knowing the state may not repay them at completion. The state universities will stop offering most scholarships. I really wish I knew if this has happened before – in this or another state – so I know what to expect. Still, I can imagine allowing this status quo to continue a few more years will visit problems that reach even me personally.

Annoying as it is, I am willing to prevent that. I am willing to eat a ten percent sales tax. (Finally, I can calculate it exactly in my head instead of estimating.) I am willing to abrogate program funding that subsidizes my grandmother’s medicine. Even the prospect of unsustainably borrowing against future lottery earnings does not bother me so long as this problem does not sinning continue year in and out. I fully understand that clearing California’s debt service is too great for any single solution. It requires taxing us more. It requires cutting into cherished departments: hospitals, schools, prisons, and roads because those are exactly what the budget funds.

Debt service is the operative phrase above. The problem isn’t some floating abstraction like the “national debt” that artificial inflaton can sweep under the rug. The point is that every sinning proposition in my personal memory and likely every one before my adulthood include millions in bond sales. A majority of the voters decided that more children’s hospitals and mental hospitals and a high speed railroad and stem cell research and so on sounded like good ideas, damn the cost. Two (?) years ago, the legislature sold bonds to centralize its debts. The ‘government’ will not collect enough to pay off its loans and run any services. If this were a federal organization, I know what the historical solution has been: nationalize profitable businesses and declare all debts void. (Mexico, Venezuela, and the German National Socialist Party.) As California hasn’t the option I wonder what comes next.

I didn’t bother reading the ballot booklet about the initiatives. I will simply approve initiatives A through E. They could be riddled with corrupt programs and I wouldn’t care. I admit to some extremism here, but I value a solvent government above the happiness of my fellow citizens (as they meet higher costs). A solvent government, at least, will function and provide its diminished services confidently. If the taxes are too high, I consider it better to lower them after we erase our debt rather than languish waiting for congressmen to show us some perfect solution. As I mentioned at the start, we can be part of the solution or part of the problem.

I consider it ridiculous to involve a populace in its financial fate in this manner. I know that statement treads on some of my libertarian credibility, but the essential exchange is implausible at any stage. Consider it thus; the California legislature consists of forty senators and eighty representatives. It is subject to a phenomenon even more common in European assemblies and one I experience all the time playing Risk. Majorities are nice for saber rattling and in popularity polls. However, unless the majority is really huge – and even when it is – it is useless when trying to accomplish anything. Bill passage functions much like holding a region for its bonus (say Africa in risk or “abstract art” on conquer club). Having most of Africa is useless if the Republicans (or any minority faction – including those in the same party) have even a single territory. European minority parties are often lethally powerful because they hold bills hostage for their outlier concessions.

To return to my point, horse trading between 120 people is fantastically hard. Despite the consequences (cutting DMV service days and so on), I can’t begrudge their delay in passing a budget. Some practices, like giving everyone a right to opine, lengthen the process but are psychologically critical for passage. Then the governor gets to veto or line item veto the bills, so he also feels like he had valuable input in the process (in addition to coaching Republicans into approving them). Yet, I receive a ballot in the mail, along with millions of others, and my imput falls to yes or no. How can anyone expect the collective to act really responsibly in this case? I know these bills have to do with our state’s budget, but do I really have time to read it? I heard it tremendously increases taxes / cuts school funding, so I will veto months of work by people I and others elected to learn about the problem and find a proper solution to it.

This is a crypto-elitist argument. Let’s let the learned/elected decide what is best for us. The reason for our involvement makes intellectual sense to me: if the Legislature approved some exorbitant tax, I would want to be able to deny the possibility. However, I am not so paranoid as to believe that they want to raise taxes to socialist levels. There are strong disincentives against increasing taxes even in this state, which is why all the initiative programs are paid with bonds or niche (cigarette) taxes rather than a general hike.

There are more aspects of the issue I want to treat, but I feel too depressed because I am writing this. I could convince every single person to see this and it would be trivial in the election. Also, I operate between arguing, informing, and simply expressing the elements simply for catharsis. Blending this in an organic manner feels taxing and all the more so when my material reinforces the unlikelihood that my opinion will bear out. Another person might call this feeling unimportant against cosmic-type forces. There is some truth to the analysis and I make up for it by elevating my own value in many other areas. (Insert politically incorrect sentiment here. No, it doesn’t matter which.) At the very least, Chase showed me a small way in which electoral failure would not suck. I had planned to put much of the above in response to his observation, but that would be insensitive. I felt it better to isolate my own frustrations from his confession. It would be yet another reason I am not invited to their house.

By the way, I had a shit-ton of spam comments: 327. They were so bizarre, I may write about it later. Of course, I would have to be careful so I don’t attract even more. I continually wonder how the hell they found me. I would say I have all of (four?) readers tops, but their bots probably inflate the pageviews, creating a vicious cycle of unwanted “popularity.” I can’t tell because I don’t use a tracker on my blog.

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Speak of the devil and, sure enough, he will come. I fretted all through the consequences of rejecting the propositions. I opened today’s Wall Street Journal and found Governor Swartzenegger’s predictions. The joint houses may have to cut 3.6 billion dollars from the education budget, reduce the state’s firefighting budget by 10 percent, ask local governments to lend California 2 billion, and – as previously noted – release 40,000 low-risk inmates. The state needs to rearrange or scrounge up 15 billion dollars. For the past three years we have seen the indirect evidence of rearrangements. Each year saw propositions protecting various project caches from being liquidated into the General Fund. The threat against education shows almost everything has been cordoned into inflexible preserves. We are in “Kobayashi Maru:” essential services will be brought low and few members of the current congress will return. This will silence the prior whispers about amending the Constitution to allow foreigners to the Presidency.

Solipsism offends yet remains seductive. My consciousness exists as a private, visceral fact and the rest only submits to indirect investigation. The solipsist has decided that shhe is the only real entity. The rest of creation only exists to the extent that shhe experiences it. There are several flavors of this perspective. I crafted a new criticism of a specific variation on Christmas Eve. I have no answer for the solipsist that merely denies all epistemological evidence as unreliable. I found fault with the idea that the solipsist is alone or has no evidence of (at least) another entity. Likely, the following parallels criticism offered by others but I suspect the approach is novel to myself.

Provisionally accept that the solipsist is a lone consciousness. Only shhe experiences the grass underfoot or that eerie visage in the mirror. But, here the experience demands that cliché: where did it all come from? Perhaps defensively, Descartes claims he dreams it all up. To suggest that existence exists objectively implies that she lives minorly, merely a thing amoung a multitude of other things. Better to suggest it springs internally. But, this does not solve the issue satisfactorily. If a barb hides in the grass and I step on it, does the pain suggest I hide a death impulse: an insincere commitment to my self-directed pleasure? Why does changing the shape in the mirror require a rote set of bodily movements (shaving, exercise)? Surely if the world were under my mental control, it would conform to my desires as easily as I can change a train of thought.

Two alternatives exist: I exist within a physical realm independent of my mental control or I am not a monad. Instead, I share my consciousness with another Aspect, one hidden from me. This aspect accomplishes the miraculous feats of creation that stuff my eyes with light and ears with voices. I wake up to the world; I do not have to actively imagine my room’s contents to return from sleep. Further, this Aspect possesses a far greater creativity and skill than the solipsist. The greatest painter or sculptor can not hold a candle to the entity that generated 32 species of Finch birds and all the rest. If I pin the solipsist to hiser premiss, the Aspect itself is conscious of the person’s consciousness. The novelty in the path of the hermit suggests it knew where to spend its efforts. Nevertheless, she can not access nor communicate with the world-building Aspect. It remains independent.

Here the solipsist has three options: stipulate an objective reality, class the experience creating aspect as an unassailable aspect of his personality (as the subconscious), or class the entity as external to his consciousness (perhaps as god). All the options collapse the philosophy by granting the existence of external reality or an externally created reality. The monopoly on consciousness is broken. To accept the second or third option posits the post-solipsist as a second-class mind dependent upon the unknown Other for sight. Only embracing a ‘democratically’ experienced universe recovers the post-solipsist’s sovereignty. I invoke democracy because an objective existence that produced this consciousness highly likely will spawn another under similar conditions.

I admit this version of solipsism only exists as an academic opponent rather than a ‘cult’ amongst us. The exercise though serves as preparation for an enemy I have not yet eviscerated equally. You can find it in George Orwell’s 1984 and The Matrix. How does one disarm the entity creating reality or an entity simulating reality ‘perfectly?’