Perception Is Reality

That was the only lasting thing I got from listening to the John Ziegler Show. No, perceiving that the sky is green does not in and of itself make it green, but if that really is how you perceive the sky to be colored then you're going to act as if that were a part of reality because...why would you act any different? Now if you perceive that the sky is green but should be blue, or something similar, then that's another story and a part of the reality within which you operate.

I perceive reading a book at a bus stop to be preferable to staring at the cars that go by the bus stop; this perception doesn't change or affect whether reading a book really is better than staring at the street, but I operate as if it were, and for myself that's what matters and is what I can affect.

Apparentfuckingly, other people at the bus stop perceive leaving me alone to read, to be not as preferable as talking to me, por exemplo yesterday

dude: uuuuuuh you know what time it is?

me: ...uh, 530. *turn back to my book*

dude: ohkay. *a minute later* hey, are you in college?

me: *try ignoring*

dude: hey

me: huh?

dude: you in college? I see you're reading.

me: no. Not in college.

dude: ooooooooh. yeah, you got a book I thought you were. So you're in high school then?

me: No. No motherfucker I'm not in high school I'm in the parking lot of a Target waiting for a bus reading a fucking book, and not waiting for you to come up to me and ask me stupid shit like .... 'Are you reading a book?' Really do you think I have some magical mystical powers related to the books? Think maybe somewhere in my book if I read reeeeeeeeeeaally hard I can find out when the bus is gonna get here? Dude is that why you're asking me this crap 'cause that would actually make a lot more sense than what I think you're asking me for.

dude: What do you think I'm asking you for?

me: really I think you're asking me because you don't read. I don't know if you can and choose not to, but whatever the reason, you do not. aaaaand it's just really weird for you to see someone reading...someone with tits no less! I REALLY don't have to read 'cause I can just suck a dick, can't I? Be a lot harder to have a conversation but hey what's there to say?

dude: ....Wait, what?

me: maaaaan I don't know. I don't know why you and everyone else asks me...not even, what I'm reading, 'cause that I've been asked and it's like, that's like whatever, but are you reading....like, no shit? You don't see a book? Whence comes the spark of inquiry for this? You see me reading and then ask me if that's what I'm doing. And it's not like I can really just answer "no. No I'm not reading" because this is Riverside and I don't know how fucking crazy you are and don't care to find out from having somehow insulted you.

dude: ...did you just say all that?

me: No. No I didn't. In for serials I just said no I'm not in high school and went back to reading my book.

dude: So what was your point? Bitch about people annoying you during the day and then bitch about being a loner at night?

me: ... hmm. Well aren't you an interesting fellow.

The way to not get rid of the massive amount of books you own is to go to a place that takes used books when they're not open so you can't get rid of any books and then when you're at a Goodwill, not only do you have to completely forget that you can there get rid of the books, but also buy another book. Such as Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. For only 99 cents.

The commonest sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps suspected...from weakness that may lie hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a lifetime, not one of us is safe. We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive...and there are things--they look small enough sometimes too--by which some of us are totally and completely undone.

and we have a winner.

The Best Part

about going to the car dealership Saturday (didn't actually get anything thank God, but have a much clearer idea of what I'm gonna be saving up towards in terms of numbers) was dundunduuuhn

So at the end of the "test drive" I put it back in the parking area it was first in. Salesman next to me "oh can you back it up and park it more slightly to the left?"

Me: "Suuuuuure." *which I do and am just about finished*

Sales: "See, it's like pulling into the parking lot at a shopping center."

Me: ...uuuuuuh. hahahahhaha, yeah 'cause women like to go buy things, huh?"

Sales: "yeah it's nice, huh."

I mean, yeah I hate bitchy whiny feminism when it's not in its natural habitat of a university-fostered intellectual circle jerk, and I was more genuinely amused than insulted--I would really hate to have to sell anything to someone like me--but gosh I can see how people er the womYns get all antsied over "real people stuff."

I think

That getting in Robert Remini's books and becoming mentally uppity because of the ah, poetic devices he uses in his books, which are more the telling of a story than straight historiography, would after awhile seem like asking a snake why it bit you. It just...is what it is. Who care for uno menudo and for doso minoso, if you really want historiography and all that, get out of Remini.

But the one that actually made me put his book down I'm not even sure if I read it right or not, 'cause if I did, then the problem with it seems so obvious that I really couldn't have read it right.

But that's for the next time I come here, anyway. whenever that will be, it's really dusty and all.

hmm.

I guess if I really cared about consistency I'd buy a milkshake.

Dammit Twice

A year ago I was really weirded out by how much my religious views had changed.

Changed? No not changed, more like came unhinged. Nothing I believe means anything to me anymore. I almost always am surprised when I don't spontaneously burst into flames upon entering into any church, think Luther was a crazy sumbitch, but the people against him were crazier, but if certain few circumstances remain as they are currently I'll be attending at least the first class to learn about joining the *********. (And no the number of asterisks don't stand for the number of letters in the noun phrase.)

How that'll work, I don't have the .... I have no idea. I think if you took all of my ideas about God and Christianity and mashed them into words and statements usually attributed to beliefs, I'd probably show up looking like a really angry agnostic.

But, an angry agnostic soon to be on happy fun time allergy meds now. whooooot whooooot.

Because This Ain't God Stuff

Having to uno, give a thought to something I've posited. Doso, reconcile that to someone's response and then tresay actually rethink the original idea. That's like, oppression or something.

That or I just need practice. And being lazy being as en-raptor ing as is...



This is a model I drew of my room after I've rearranged the stuff in it. Or how I plan to rearrange my room. The lines being a bed, computer desk, bookcase, and the blue are representational of the windows. the opening being the door.


This is a bad model for how to rearrange my room, of where to put stuff, because I don't have a round room. For my model to work I'd have to draw an actual rectangle...I'd have to portray my room as it actually is. This model does not work, and saying well it's just a model of how I would arrange my room doesn't make it work even within the scheme of being models.

Proponents of LTV are drawing up the room model with a circular room. Hard-core Ron Paul supporters (the ones who go way beyond writing him in in November) also draw the room model with a circular room. NIMBY's who want people to "serve their time" and then chase them off the earth afterwards by the power of the state do too. Neither work, not even "in theory." They don't even have their internal stories straight; the theories themselves are inconsistent.

So Instead

I don't know how long I've had Bible Gateway linked on any blog I have but I just realized that the name I had for it was an inside joke between me and Catholic. Not only is he "one of those people nudge nudge say no more" but he also would never Ever see it. He doesn't even read blogs. He hates the word, hates the democracy aspect of it and sure as hell probably would not ever want to read any of my pseudo-libertarian tangents, now with that spicy anarchist flavor, at least until my tongue starts burning from it.

Well dammit. My problem isn't even really that it's not all that not funny 'cause it really isn't even for inside jokes, but like...my whole freaking sense of humor has to readjust. I make inside jokes to people who aren't inside. But then when I explain that they're inside jokes am I doing that to keep them out? Am I trying to shove other people out? Where will they go, if out of my sight? Aren't I really just letting myself out by doing that anyway?

It's cold outside.

But it's cold inside, too.

Oppression

In what ways, for instance, does the profoundly “public” character of the resolves serve to further underscore the privateness of these letters?

DUDE I DON'T FREAKIN' KNOW.

The public nature of the resolves drags Hutchinson's private thoughts into the spotlight.

"ah well I'm the Massachusetts House of Representatives and as the HR I say that these letters totally show Hutchinson to be doubleplusungood and scheming to make everyone here look bad even though we're totally upsetting apple carts with awesomely clever shit-eating grins on our faces the whole time BUT!

We do it in public. And there's the rub and no you can't rub it for me. We break stuff, we taunt people with guns and then call them thugs when they start shooting. We start shootouts with soldiers and then hold near religious funeral processions for little German kids who held stray bullets for us, with their stomachs. We bitch and whine about not being represented in Parliament but still getting taxed, and then when offered Parliamentary seats we say we don't want them. But this jackass does it behind our backs."

Now all I need to do is to say that without cussing or sexual innuendo (though why I have to excise that while they didn't have to is beyond me) and then explain what they were really saying again without cussing or sexual innuendo or making fun of them for being just as statist as the next ... as the... as the next statist, duh. and about...four pages of that and I'd have one of the many questions from the comments on the first draft of my thesis answered.

Oh and I love that line in the first link: As a result, Ben's reputation in England suffered. Yeah, being a jackass no one can trust will kinda do that.

Whar Credit's Due

Those Crazy Conversations.

What do people expect?

What people?

Idunno those people.

Oh them.

The ones who are so. Soooooo.....

They're soso? Why do you care then?

I don't.

You say that a lot from what I've seen.

Okay well on the radio on uh, KFI, the uber-conservative but not really they just are entertaining, the John and Ken Show...one of their shticks is like, "bad people need to go to jail." Right?

Bad people go to jail.

And this is a good thing 'cause...because they're bad.

If you start getting too fast for me I'll let you know.

Awesome okay so....and one of their really like, they can rally all the common folk and such like, ummmmm they held like huge rallies to have the "Recall Governor Davis" petitions signed back in late 2002 and in that same way they tend to get everyone

Everyone.

Well everyone, quote-quote everyone. Everyone listening to them and they're a highly rated show. So a huge enough chunk and I'm sure everyone who listens to them probably like to think of themselves as normal.

How dare they.

Yeah. But like, normal people common sense based rationality

uh oh.

Uh oh indeed matey.

*raises eyebrows*...matey?

...okay okay okay so one of the rallying concepts on the show related to "bad people need to go to jail and they should" is "child molesters are bad people and should not be paroled or released lightly."

*folds arms* ...and does this idea account for-

Yes as ...I'm pretty certain it does, they ... I'm pretty sure they've said like oh well a 17 year old and an 18 year old who cares type of stuff. But the real bad people...yeah.

So what?

Sooooo so another big deal they've uh...voiced is the controversy over the fact that these umm they get paroled or they get out of jail and then they live like in these certain areas and then the neighbors around don't like it and they have a bunch of rah rah bullshit to 'cause a stir and then the offenders end up unable to live there or the lisence for the home itself is revoked or something like that.

Isn't that good? Do you want them to live in your neighborhood? You live within a mile of two elementary schools. You sure as hell know what it's like to have the angst of if only I lived in a different area 'cause of this.

One thing I've noticed maybe it's from the work I do and seeing all the descriptions of houses saying "near schools" and such is that...schools are everywhere. Parks are everywhere. As far as uh, zoning agencies are institutionally capable of being either rational or market-oriented or uh, sensitive to the demands by citizens, there sure as shit seems to be a lot of schools and other places for kids to get picked up at.

Yeah well

and ....oh fuck that like ... even accounting for actual abductions and such of just blatant right out off the sidewalk or whatever, so much of that stuff happens to people who are left alone with a kid, so they've already manipulated their way past the sposedly responsible but hopefully just stupid adult....

You're pissed off.

Well what do they want? The people with the "NIMBY" attitude.

They...don't want them living near them. Even in the ideal of homeschooling or whatever, those kids socialize so there's a risk.

Yes and I get that. But it's like...society won't kill them, but apparently doesn't want them to live, either.

...uh. Society won't kill them? I think you've been raised around too many women. Society definitely would kill them to the detriment of society.

How would that

blood fueds. You heard of it in a divorce settlement, the so called wife would tell CPS that her daughter was being abused all the time by her father. She was making so many obviously bullshit claims to try to prolong custody hearings and all that that the social worker and her supervisor both rolled their eyes at seeing the names again. Now the fact that their common sense has been regulated into a chokehold is another matter entirely but. If there was no legal framework or institution by which this, what is basically a blood-fued, could be channeled without violence, there would be violence against this poor dumbass who really did nothing to his daughter and just wants to raise her right without the living contradiction that his selfish whore of a wife turned out or revealed herself to be. But all she'd have to do is tell some guy about it and boom he's dead. No, society would kill them. And then some. The law that keeps them alive for what you and many others understandably call "no reason" is in fact a very good reason. To protect the innocent; not the victims of actual abuse

ah ha!

Well once the victims of the abuse are assaulted it's kinda over and after the fact isn't it? Even if it isn't realized as "in the past" until years later. No in this case, by the innocent I mean someone wrongly accused.

Yeah but these guys are already convicted.

So....the legal system can totally get family/divorce courts totally batshit bassakwards, and dumbass potheads get thrown in jail and death row inmates can get vindicated on new evidence and all that...but when it comes to child molesters a very emotionally charged ... charge...when it comes to them oh yeah the system totally gets that perfect. Is that it.

Hmmm. Well that's my problem, not theirs. It's a lot simpler in the view of these NIMBYs.

How so.

Well the assumption that convicted = guilty, giving them the benefit of the doubt about the 18/17 relationship. Like, "rah he's guilty go to jail" and then "rah he's served his time NIMBY rah" ... if they're that adamant about it why not just openly advocate putting these people...who served their time, the time allotted by the government and legal structure that they put up with by virtue of continuing to be mouth-breathing dumbasses who think "jury nullification" means "a not guilty verdict"...they assent to this crap by not raising the hue and cry...why not just advocate them being dumped into a desert somewhere. But when that same legal institution, on the "innocent until proven guilty" acid trip for the past three hundred years or so that it's been on, does something basically consistent with the "innocent until proven guilty"...who are they to open their peasant mouths.

...What do you advocate then? Do you advocate dumping them all into a desert somewhere?

I can't say I do. Even though I'm sure I get a free pass to do so, it's not ideal because. Because I don't know. I can't think of any reason not to, but I still don't. Even if there was no question of their guilt. Them living in or within a society which if knew/when it knows of their presence, wants them gone though, is problematic too. The ones who are genuinely repentful of what they did do, they're not innocent of that thing in the past but are found innocent in the future afterwards, and all that, do not exist to these NIMBYs.

So let them live then?

I don't know. I don't pretend to know.

You don't pretend to know.

And I think that's what bothers me about the people who are nimbys about it, or who have "I'll sign this line of the Magna Carta here, but not this line there" inconsistent attitude.

This Is That One Song

If I don't laugh cruelly at this song I'll just break down crying 'cause. It's something I shouldn't listen to. Pickin scabs is nasty, yo. Anyway when I first posted this song somewhere else I didn't...I don't know if there even was youtube back then, I at least didn't know about it.



Oh and don't like, actually watch the video. I didn't really watch it so it has not my endorsement.

Idunno Why

I remember this stuff as it has nothing to do with me. Like the guy with the bumper sticker. But the phrase "if it's not a baby then you're not pregnant." Like...no abortion no babykillin blahblah. But then if someone is saying it's not a baby and then someone else says "if it's not a baby then you're not pregnant" then it's not an abortion so mind your own fucking business.

See? I don't care about that topic; I don't get myself preggers, and of course my situation being what it is right now--of course-- all I can think about is how I don't ever wanna be such not because aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah little people things ewww but like.

Hmm.

It sounds trite to say "ah well I don't know if I want to take on that responsibility." It's not really so much that (really? no not really but really) there's a threshold of responsibility that I don't want to cross but this conceit that I think I already have Things I Need To Do which a "normal" life would keep me from, which need to be done. Moreso than any enjoyment to be had from what I consider "normal."

And no I don't mean I neeeeeeeeed to like, get a doctorate in history because I have these oh so awesome ideas that no one else looks at that I yet know of (thus the not applying or looking at grad schools until I've read at least the books I own already) like ex or why or zed, or...whatever else boring crap I neeeeeeeeed to do, I don't really mean. Idunno. See I'm under the impression that right now I am being useful to others (no one you know, giggle giggle and not one I know either) already. And raise cats, giving them last names. And. And these people already exist. It's not my fault, not my doing. None of what I have to do with them is really of my doing either. None of those things would apply if I were to within the confines of any situation of varying social acceptability get preggers myself. But then if I really believed that I'd probably be spending more time actually doing my effing thesis like I'm supposed to be doing.

Anyway, that hideously uncomfortable tangent aside. I don't really care about the arguments either for or against the "oh if it ain't a baby then you ain't pregnant" type of issue. I mean well yeah my advice to someone with some sort of stake in such a thing would be rather predictable, but if the wrong choice is made well. Well it's not like they're not gonna be assloads full of guilt afterwards. And God likes babies, so...and if society wants itself to die out...can't really outlaw that, can ya.

Is This All There Is

I thought it was funny last quarter when I was in the class on colonial America oooooh not as "pre-Revolutionary America" but as "British Colonial history on the north American continent from the late 16th to late 18th century" ooooh secksay. But yeah so I got to do a paper on Bacon's Rebellion

...oh God.

I was looking for just a general link to somewhere that would just explain what Bacon's rebellion was, and then on to how all I've seen for the past three months or so from the readings related to it has been like...wow everyone really has been staring anarchy in the face this whole time but.

This was the second link right under the wikipedia entry (I won't read that 'cause I'm sure it will just piss me off.) And the money goes to:

Bacon's Rebellion demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class -- what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery.

Dudes seriously. It did not demonstrate that in the sense that it set out to do that. That's dragging the rebellion into...into I guess in this case the ideology of class warfare as understood by people today. Within the context of Nathaniel Bacon himself, he didn't give a damn about black people and he sure as hell didn't consider him or his followers to be poor people as opposed to the governor. Both he and Berekeley were keen on showing that they had the good awesome people on their side and the other side was supported only by the unwashed rabble (or the eeeevil conniving men).

Anyway.

You Have A Truck

and on the back of the truck is a nice humble little sticker that says in white text over red:

Ted Kennedy's Car Has Killed More People Than My Gun

And I know what you mean it to mean. But I just know there's someone who reads that and thinks wow. Why would someone get a sticker that says "I'm a crappy shot"?

I Don't Like Music Or A Dictionary

Irony is me getting choked up from Hank Williams' "Take These Chains From My Heart."

On Being Up Late For No Reason

There's really nothing like explaining some tangent on why you just said you believe X, and then the guy you're talking to just says "No." Double-bonus-swoon if he adds "I don't believe that because it's not in the Bible."

In other news, how odd it feels.

To have these dual feelings of both infatuation and of not giving a damn of what other people think. Or that like...I ought to feel this way.

Anyway, I've been getting Demon Hunter songs stuck in my head and well what else am I gonna do at 2 in the morning but look up lyrics online.

And was at first like woooooow this is rad stuff. Fun happy funtimes.

No day of wrath will see me break for that faithless breath of shame
When the heretics come to make that list, be true to speak my name
...
No man can bring a fatal sting and I laugh at the gallows thrall
Just line it tight around my neck so my words will break that fall


And this just stood out when I first listened to this album and still chills the back of my neck.

And those who curse the sky will face the earth

Because uh...because I'm a chick and emotional and read too much into stuff.

But then I read from this song and found it so damn funny.

Bury every sign of life in filth and hollow trend
And push against progression on the path of logic’s end
Like tears flowing upward

(Chorus)

With every waking second you front, another real life loses ground
Ten thousand arms outstretched and you have the nerve to strike them all
No reason to coexist?
No reason to exist

So yeah. The first two lyrics are from Grand Finale.

In Other News I Shall Not Segue Between Paragraphs

Democrat who held a one-man, five-month long filibuster in (congress or senate, not sure) the Nixon admin to get the draft ended and some other awesome shit, joins the LP as of like, day before yesterday, but omg he says that the Democratic Party is no longer "the party of FDR" and all of a sudden he's no good and not welcome and BUHJAAAYZUS THE PARTY IS OVER. Even though it took me about...thirteen seconds to find a video of him saying in a youtube video something about FDR... where he says fdr was rad because of the ending of Prohibition, and not for all the doctrinal reasons the Lp doesn't like him.

It's like, the libertarians are at a crowded party but standing in the corner looking up at a mirror that shows everyone else and sees everyone talking. And then thinks, well shit I can see everyone talking! They must be talking to me! Fucking retards. But I guess that counts as old news.

Does the fact that he's Mike....Gravel....like...does that fact compute with any of the people getting their panties in a twist over him joining?

I could totally understand the weeping and gnashing of teeth if this were, say. Rahm Emmanuel, or Nancy Pelosi, or Jorge the Younger joining the LP.


Now yeah, on prohibition that’s unlikely to have been FDR single-handedly, in fact I bet it’s just some obscure kool-aid no one’s drinking anymore but him, but he’s still talking about the war on drugs and not specie vs. notes.

He's not talking to Rothbard, he's talking to my idiot stoner brother.

Surely there were people who joined the Lp from the Democrat/so-called "left" side who just picked up the econ stuff afterwards...now obviously we can’t have all the huge name recognition and political clout of Mike Gravel, but still.

I've yet to see any anti-Gravelites even recognize the parallel about RP, much less explain how it isn't hypocrisy. Not that I really care enough to let the issue turn into how Ron Paul is soooo awesome.

The Government We Deserve

"It's your money, but it's your war, too."

Hurtzdonuts....yummy

[I'm pretty sure this was meant for an Lp forum thread on myspace, I thiiink amn't sure, but was in response to the question of like, should a state secede today, or would you support it, something like that.]

The reason why secession was seen as treason against the country was because the dominant thought (apparently throughout the Union/North) was that the Constitution was ratified only that one time at the Constitutional Convention. (It wasn't ratified at the convention but you know what I mean.) It was never set up as a contract subject to renewal by each generation of rabble-rousers/freedom fighters.

Oh yeah yeah "governments derive their just powers from consent of the governed..." and all that...but those words aren't in the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence. There's not only a war but also another national compact between the two and the extent to which you can comprehend the change that made throws away the right of secession as a product of the Revolution. And no, the Revolution itself was not a secession movement, since the colonies were never anything but colonies. If they'd wanted seats in Parliament, they could have bitched and complained or behaved better and eventually gotten 'em.

The two major secession threats before 1860 were just that: threats. Overshadowed by destroyed political parties and denigrated, ideologically pigeonholed politicians on both sides (Jackson for his Crusade against the Bank, Calhoun for advocating slavery as a positive good by the end of his life); secession itself, as a right and valid response to perceived and real tyranny by the federal government was becoming the cry of "wolf."

By 1860 not only was secession not taken seriously because of its track record, but it was becoming a joke in the House/Senate.

'We are still just where we started six months ago, except that our Southern friends have dissolved the Union forty or fifty times since then." Congressman Schuyler Colfax, about conditions in Congress in 1859.

"There had been two overt attempts at secession already....the second upon the election of Speaker [of the House] Pennington, when the South seceded from Congress, went out, took a drink, and then came back. The third attempt would be...when Old Abe would be elected. They would then again secede and this time would take two drinks, but would come back again." -Congressman Carl Schurz, during the 1860 campaign.

[This is an old post I didn't even put in blogger, so finding where I got those quotes from will be a bitch but likely doable if called on 'em]

Even as a minarch, I refuse to recognize any morality associated with a government. If you think diLorenzo is the messiah of Civil War historiography, then you're missing out. On at least this. (it's a pdf. Skip to page 6 for the prices set by the government.)

If a state seceded today their temporal life would be guaranteed to be short and I don't mean of the state entity.