Woah, what?

This has been very sporadic recently. I haven't had much to say to my computer. I find that other objects response to me in a much more favorable way. Don't we all just want more and more, never being truly happy with what it is that we have, until there is that one day when we lose it all? Anyways, I'll be back sometime. Enjoy?

Currently watching : Empire Records (Remix! Special Fan Edition) Release date: 01 June, 2004

8:45 PM - 5 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Presidential campaign commercials already??

Does anybody else realize that it is still 1 year and 6 months until the presidential elections and there really is no reason for there to be commercials on for presidential campaigns. Way to be Mitt Romney and John Edwards (those are the two that I've seen so far, I'm sure there are more).

7:41 AM - 3 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Like children fighting for the last cookie

What the primetime 24-hour news channels have come down to:

I can yell louder than you!! I win.

Ok, I have to edit this due to the banner ad I just saw that said, "Would you like to know the date of your death? Yes. No. I don't care. Answer and get a laptop."

Wow.

Currently listening : Cassadaga By Bright Eyes Release date: 10 April, 2007

8:07 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Trees

Here's a link to a picture of what the first trees on Earth supposedly looked like, rendered from some fossilized remains of 350 million year old trees.

Tree Image: http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070418_wattieza_02.jpg&cap=Reconstruction+line+drawing+of+Wattieza.+Credit%3A+Frank+Mannolini/New+York+State+Museum

Rest of the article: http://www.livescience.com/environment/070418_first_tree.html

I think that the trees look very similar to those from Dr. Seuss' story, The Lorax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lorax

Currently listening : Early Recordings, Chapter 2: Learning By My Morning Jacket Release date: 23 November, 2004

7:36 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Possible solution for psychologically unstable people buying weapons?

A student who attended Virginia Tech last fall provided obscenity- and violence-laced screenplays that he said Cho wrote as part of a playwriting class they both took. One was about a fight between a stepson and his stepfather, and involved throwing of hammers and attacks with a chainsaw. Another was about students fantasizing about stalking and killing a teacher who sexually molested them.

"When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of," former classmate Ian McFarlane, now an AOL employee, wrote in a blog posted on an AOL Web site. He said he and other students "were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

We'd better start watching Quintin Tarentino, Steven King, and Frank Miller, they all could be killers in the waiting. What a way to jump to conclusions, there was obviously other deeply held psychological problems with this kid and it wasn't just because of his macabre creative writing, although that could definitely be a factor.

I say that since guns are legal, any person applying to buy a firearm should have to take a psychological examination. If they are found to be questionable, they should have to see a psychitrist before receiving permission to buy a weapon, if they are even allowed to do so.

The problem with this idea? Well, the gun companies would not be able to sell as many guns as they currently do. How many gun lobbyists do you think are in Washington?

7:12 PM - 10 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Always traveling towards the horizon yet never coming any closer to the golden sun at the end.

Ok, since most people seem to have a problem when they try to explain themselves in depth, I guess it best to just sum everything up into short aphorism-like statements. Get across the point and don't let people have the ability to find "logical" issue with what you say, but also make things a little more enigmatic at times.

But here, this is simple. I think most elementary school kids could tell you this:

"Don't kill other human beings, period."

If you don't understand that, god help humanity.

6:14 PM - 15 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Us and Them

"Your class, your caste, your country, sect, your name or your tribe
There's people always dying trying to keep them alive" -Bright Eyes, 'Four Winds'-

The lines between us and them. Always drawn to give distinction to the "us" of the world and to dehumanize the "them." Otherwise, I don't think human beings, especially not those who have learned their morals from religions (regardless of the religion), would be able to consciously kill another human being. The minds of murderers have simplified their victims down to a lower class of sub-human beings. Whether it be in a war or in times of peace, a killer cannot look at their victim as being like themselves, they are of a lower class.

So this kid wrote a note about how he hated the rich kids, blah, blah. He then proceeded to shoot many innocent people. People who he probably never even met but in passing. Certain conservatives in this country advocate the killing of what they would call "towel heads", "camel jockeys," or one of any other derogatory terms for Middle Eastern Muslims. What's the difference between the 23-year old kid from Virginia Tech and those advocating the killing of innocent people? Probably nothing more than opportunity. The kid at Virginia Tech took his opportunity, the conservatives have not yet had the ability to drop bombs on any new Middle Eastern countries for awhile.

Well, while I'm pissing off one group of people, I might as well go for another, yet again. John Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman because Chapman couldn't understand Lennon's song "Imagine" and the claim of "Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too." Chapman thought that Lennon was making blasphemous claims against his Christian faith. Now Lennon said "no religion," but I don't think he exactly meant no religion in general, but just an understanding amongst everyone of the world of their spirituality and faith. We need to move above and beyond the religions of old. If a religion can be used to incite so much hate into a man as to make them kill another human being, that religion in and of itself is at fault.

It's been thousands of years since we started civilized societies and yet we still cannot live by the one basic tenet of not killing another human being. Are we so lost? Will we ever become a species of peace?

Preach what you want, believe what you want, do what you want, but please don't stop short the lives of other human beings just trying to live.

"This great evil - where's it come from?
How'd it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who's doing this?
Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we mighta known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?"

Currently listening : Four Winds By Bright Eyes Release date: 06 March, 2007

11:16 AM - 13 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

All just a matter of perspective and location, location, location.

Today, 33 people were shot dead at Virginia Tech University. Also in Baghdad, over 50 bodies were found throughout the city, as well as a shooting of 13 people at an Iraqi university.

Commonality in the two? The victims were all human beings.

What a waste.

That is all.

Currently listening : Four Winds By Bright Eyes Release date: 06 March, 2007

7:47 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Even the wisest of the wise have no idea what wisdom means

(This was written on my other page back in December 2006.)

Why are we how we are? What makes us, us? What past events shape the way we act? The human brain is the most complex known organism in the universe. We make claims to know certain aspects of it, but we have only now begun to scratch at the surface. Socrates said he was wise in that he knew that he did not know anything. Maybe more people should stop exerting their "intelligence" and just claim to not be so sure of the facts.

The pictures hanging on the walls of our rooms; a constant reminder of how things were. Perfect times captured in a split second image forever fading away, ever so slightly. That timeless capture will itself one day be gone, such as the memories of what happened. As too will we ourselves fade away into time. Everything is moving forward into the eternal nothingness. All things are temporary blips on the radar of time. Just an anomaly in the vastness of everything. It is true that you are there, but do you really mean anything more than anything else does? Yes, things would be different were you not there, but how different? Across the vastness of time, even a little change could make a huge difference, but how could we ever see that difference were we not here to observe it? Maybe the differences would have been for the better. Maybe they wouldn't have been. Only time could ever tell. But time keeps its mouth shut.

8:17 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

"All we need to do is make sure we keep talking"

Back to originality, why is it that people in their claims to arguments seem to always use the rhetoric of influential media members, authors of modern non-fictional books about current events, or politicians? Can you just not think of anything better to say? Well all of those damn "liberals drinking their kool-aid" or those "Nazi neo-conservatives" have to be able to think of something else to say. Right? Everyone also makes claims of intelligence, when in turn they should be speaking of knowledgeability. And then we can get into where the knowledge comes from. Someone can be completely knowledgable on a subject, but only from one perspective.

When will anyone learn to take the perspective of all sides, whether that be as few as two or too many to count? Only then will we learn to understand each other. That's all that it comes down to, understanding.

Oh, and logic, what with the fallacies, deductions, etc. All that logic is is a way of interpreting our language through the way our brain forms arguments. What does that prove? Not much, if you ask me. It really only shows that our brain will "logical" put arguments together in a way so that they can be better understood by all those involved, but there is nothing inherent in logic that can prove anything to be logical. Our brains can fail us at times.


I just thought I'd add this quote by Thomas Jefferson to William Stevens Smith, dated 13 November 1787:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Currently listening : Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd By Pink Floyd Release date: 06 November, 2001

7:49 PM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment