For External Use Only

Start the Fire

2012-01-31T16:43:00.001-08:00

As we rant against the system that means to turn our lives into a VISA statement, we have to all face the fact that we are the system. Change, real change, will not come through the political system, but will only come about as the outcome of some crisis: real or created. With the control of the media and all sources of communication controlled by those that benefit from the current system the odds of any change improving our lives is limited. Yes, we will have better toothpastes, and more porno options to placate our base desires, but the there will be little change that satisfies the human heart, that brings us closer together. Socializing with friends and family keeps us out of the malls, restaurants, bars, and box stores. The human family keeps us away from the consumer family: Uncle Facebook, and Aunt McDonald's. Revolution can come but it will require us to step out of our houses into the streets and demand change. The odds of that happening are zero. Those that benefit from the system will not allow change. The Tea Party, as an example, was a corporate effort to keep us isolated, to keep us afraid, to make us not see government or our higher existence as a possibility. The only possibility is consumerism and slavery to the system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. The few are millions and millions and the many are billions of people around the world some here, but most over there in place we don't care about. Starvation in Africa so we can have mobile phones is fine so long as we aren't bothered with their plight. Slave labor in China is fine so long as I can get cheap shoes and flat screen TV. Change will only come about if the city is burning. The city will not burn so long as we care more about empty, consumer happiness and care nothing about the reality of billions of other people. Start the fire!!

Purchase a Chinese Factory Worker

2012-01-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

I have decided to go direct, and purchase one or two Chinese people that will make all of the stuff I need. I am willing to pay them $5,000 per year each to make all of my shit plus the cost of materials. With this $5,000 they can work with other Chinese to develop an alternative economy based upon connections with individual consumers. This would be similar to the adoption of a child in Africa but the Chinese worker actually does something for you so that you can reach your consumer objectives.

Destroy the Machine -- Destroy the Store

2012-01-31T12:28:00.000-08:00

We have to destroy the system that enslaves us to be consumers rather than citizens: members of a community. And on the opposite side, and with the same, but worse result, we have enslaved the producers that sit "chained" to their workbenches producing the consumer goods (shit) we have come to believe we need to consume. Our economic system does not want us (consumers and producers) to be a community loyal to fellow human beings, but rather a collection of human beings loyal to a particular brand or spectacle such as the super bowl, world cup, or academy awards. We consumers are tied to goods by our psychological need to belong, to compete, based upon the goods we purchase. This is the easy side of the equation, because the producers are there because if they are not they will be beaten, imprisoned, shot if they do not conform. We consumers are not shot if we don't buy but we are removed from society. We are no longer people living together in a community, but rather economic entities with varying abilities to consume what we no longer produce. This system is unsustainable. How can we have consumption without production? How do we face the fact that millions, billions of our fellows must be enslaved, imprisoned, starved if they do not conform to our world of consumption.

Have a nice day

2012-01-31T08:39:00.000-08:00

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

2011 to 2012

2011-12-27T09:50:00.001-08:00

Another year is about to pass under the wheel and, as is the custom, it's time to reflect on what happened over the past year. A lot of people died--people close to me as well as public figures. The shocking death of a friend at age 54 and the death of my father-in-law a much admired man of 84 who was still working at his print shop. When death comes to those close to us we can't help but reflect upon what we are doing with our own lives and compare them to those that have passed. Christopher Hitchens, a writer I enjoyed very much, died at age 62. Death. Death is what waits for all of us, which is bad enough, but on top of that we don't know how much longer we have. That is one of the conditions of life: we are here for reasons that remain a mystery and then we return to the place from which we came. We are here a short time and we squander so much of that time thinking of yesterday or dreaming about tomorrow not spending enough time in the moment. Balance, that is what needs to be the focus. But what about passion? There has to be some passion in life, some passion that drives to a purpose, that fills our hearts with desire for more time, more time to finish something that has been started. What is my passion? Where is my passion?

Years ago I painted and it was something that seemed to click in me, but then I stopped because I started a few things I didn't have the skills to complete: a self-portrait and a scene from my living room. Funny. Those are the things that stopped my painting. That's me all over. If there is a challenge I just say fuck it. I need to change that "fuck it" into "do it." Who has ever gotten anywhere in life by saying "fuck it" when things got difficult? When I tried to get work at Microsoft I went through nearly 50 seperate interviews and I never gave up until I succeeded. I need to pring that same drive to something else. How about bringing it to the actual work I am now doing for Microsoft? Yes, there is that, but I need to have something outside of work that excites me, that makes me feel I am doing something meaningful even if that thing is just a painting, a poem, a short story. My life is flashing before my eyes and I haven't done anything. So much waste. So much doing nothing. What do I want to do with the, if I am extremely lucky, remaining 20 productive years of my life. I am 49 and the next 20 years will put me at 69! If I am lucky I will be reasonably sharp and able to focus during those 20 years, but if I something happens, some health issue, then those 20 years could be a nightmare. I have 20 years left and let's face it they are the 20 years at the end of my life. What the hell did I do with the time from 22 to 42? Those should have been the best years of my life, but thinking back I feel I wasted them. I need a plan to get something meaningful done over the next 20 years. I need to earn money so I can have the leisure to enjoy life and develpe some project, and then I need the energy to dedicate to something. What do I want to do with my remaining years?

Success

2011-08-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

Choose to succeed by taking the actions that will lead to positive outcomes.

Change Comes to My World

2011-06-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

After doing little for too long my payment to society is overdue. I accepted a "consulting" position with a large software company in Redmond, Washington that was described as marketing project management, but after three months of frantically running around scheduling meetings, attending meetings, taking notes, adjusting invite lists, providing various updates, and generally running in place constantly, I have decided, with some strong encouragement from my mangers, not to continue the contract. It was a sad admission that I was unable to do the work at the level they required. While this is a cause for some embarrassment as I like to think of myself as someone that can do anything if I only focus my mind, I am also relieved to be done with the work. Half of me wishes I could have done the job, but the other, greater half, is glad I am not the type of person that could superficially engage with so many things while feeling I never really did anything.

I am probably too old to still have this fantasy that I will find well compensated work that will be challenging, fulfilling, well compensated, and, and this is the killer: enjoyable. That is the fantasy. Enjoyable work? Is it even possible. Work, is like the party that is fun until someone tells you that you can't leave. Something can be fun until you realize you have to do it.

Now what? I will be out of work shortly which would not be horrible if I was single with no responsibilities, but I have a wife, mortgage, and a 19 year old in college. I am 48, and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life. My days are mingled with thoughts of literary, intellectual success, but I have never done anything to justify those fantasies. Yes, I read and try to cultivate my mind, but with little success. I am lazy and more interested in frenetic wandering from thing to thing as if my mind is a string of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are perfect for me because I have never been able to focus on one thing for any length of time. What is wrong with me? Somehow I have managed to construct a good life, but somehow, given my work ethic and dependency upon luck, it's completely undeserved. Have I, through my work, earned everything I have managed to accumulate? No, it's undeserved and based more upon luck than my actual contribution to any organization. My work history is one of working for a few months, doing well, and then destroying everything. I think I would be better off taking on a series of 3 to 4 month jobs that don't require much attention, but pay well. That's not going to happen. I am at a crucial point in my life given my age and income needs. At this point, I am feeling a little lost wondering what I can do to recover.

Is this an opportunity for something better to happen? I better start buying lotto tickets again.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Douglas Adams

Resistance to Change

2011-02-10T09:32:00.000-08:00

Life is the continual adaptation of self to the changing conditions within ones environment. The self, both consciously and unconsciously, wants to maintain its dignity in the face of the humiliating circumstances thrust upon it. The self must alter its story to meet these changes. When successful, life goes on and there are no issues, but when the self is unable to adapt, by altering itself to meet the new reality, conflict ensues with the result being depression or some other mental break. When a society as a whole, or in distinct sections, faces change and is unable to adapt resistance will occur. Members of a society facing change, seeing their relative positions diminish, seeing others advance while they sink into lower and lower positions, will become angry and resist the challenge of adaptation. Groups of people will resist change and attempt to reverse course. At its worst, this leads to a complete breakdown of society and the development of a new one such as, for example, in Nazi Germany or, on a lesser level, the 1960’s in the United States. Societies can, if functioning properly, evolve without a dramatic break with the past, but if that society is not capable of change there can be a sudden violent break that will give birth to a new order that is often more terrible than the old. Of course, the violent break can also occur when a society attempts to resist change and preserve some fantasy of the past by creating an artificial society based upon myth.

Not all change for the individual or society leads to a dramatic break with the past or conversely some destructive resistance to that change. On the individual level, most change is accepted and worked through as part of the natural process of life. Societal changes forced by economics, immigration, or government also generally occur without a major break with the past because change is gradual. Life, if lived fully, is a series of adaptions to changing conditions both externally and internally. A child experiences a revolutionary change when it is born and continues to face revolutionary changes that repeatedly break it with the past. How those changes are managed by the child and the parent set a pattern for how the developing person will deal with change in the future. Birth, separation, school, relationships starting and ending, rites of passage such as graduation from high school and college are all changes the normal individual confronts and passes through with little or no drama. The healthy individual moves through life adapting to changing circumstances by either accepting or resisting.

The Legend of Raspberry-Almond Scone

2011-02-04T08:58:00.000-08:00

Man’s attempt to create order in his life, by making security the primary measure of his daily needs, leads to a life lived in fear of change, in fear of the unknown. The greatest threat to mankind’s advancement is the mortgage and the career. No great discovery, no great art, no great endeavor was ever undertaken by a man with a mortgage and a steady job with a promotion two years away. The propertied class loves and despises the mortgage because it creates both a stable society for them to rule over, but also one that deprives them of their rents and thus greater wealth and power over the masses. The greatest profits can be made from those with little, and the least from those with much. No one with a mortgage throws a cobblestone through a shop window and demands equality, no one with a mortgage goes on a 12 day debauch. The free man, the unafraid man, does not demand bread and charity, he demands equality and cheap beer.

With those musings in mind, I have decided to start writing the children’s book I have talked about for years: The Legend of Raspberry-Almond Scone.

Wasting Time, Wasting My Life

2011-01-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

Why is it so easy to form bad habits and so difficult to form good ones, ones that add to our lives rather than take away from them. I am 24 days into the new decade and I haven't yet managed to develope a single good habit that will move me closer to achieving a goal. I am still wasting too much of my time doing things that add nothing to my life. Today I spent at least 5 hours screwing around on YouTube when I should have been looking for additional work, exercising, or doing something to improve my skills. Even writing on this blog would have been better because at least I would be thinking rather than just looking at a bunch of inane videos. I did exercise today, and I did finish another book even if it was a pure work of fiction; it's something. What I need to work at things that are going to improve my life even if they are impractical, but watching things others have done is a waste of my precious time. Wasting time is an addiction. I am addicted to wasting time as if I don't care about my life. I need to snap out of this and do something, anything to challenge my brain and accomplish something.

The New Decade and Turning 50

2011-01-19T11:49:00.000-08:00

With the start of a new year, and a new decade, I naturally turn towards establishing some goals for the new year and even for the new decade. Since this is already January 19th, I have already set a number of goals for the year and have already fallen behind on many of them. It's not easy to change from one day to the next, to point my mind and body towards the attainment of a series of goals such as exercising regularly, losing weight, reading books, writing, saving, etc.

I turn 49 this year which means in 2012 I will turn 50. I never thought much about turning 30 or 40, but turning 50 strikes me as significant. By the time I reach 50, I would like to reach a few goals that have been sitting on my shelf untouched for a long time. I would like to finally read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. (I bought a 1939 edition in the early 80's and have yet to read it). I want to write a complete personnel essay of 20 pages that I post here. I want to run another marathon which means my training needs to start this year so I can run one during the summer of 2012. I want to have a real job, with real benefits, that will allow me to work my last 8 to 10 years with some stability. I have been working around Microsoft for the past 10 years and there simply isn't any stability for someone like me at a company like Microsoft. Since I work on a contract basis as a consultant, there is one attribute I have to have, or be able to fake for a sustained period of time: caring. There was a time when I cared and that was followed by the ability to fake caring, but now my lack of caring is written in bold letters across my blank face. I have seen behind the curtain too many times and have even been the person behind the curtain. I don't know if it's age or simply the result of being spoiled. I am spoiled. I have had it too easy for too long and now the fire in me is fading. I simply can't get excited about anything unless it's something that is 100% mine. Maybe that is a sign that I need to put together my own business, develop my own way to generate income. But how? But what? What could I sell to generate $100,000 a year?

Writing? I have, as many people do, considered writing, but that is pure fantasy because after 48 years of living, at least 30 of them on my own, with plenty of time to sit down and tell a story, I have only written a dozen weak pieces, and all of those were done when I was in college taking a creative writing course. I haven't done anything since other than write in journals and write a few aimless things on this blog that only I read. Too many people have the fantasy of writing and too many of those people only produce a pile of poor writing that isn't worth reading. There is the desire to write and then there is the ability to write. They don't often reside in the same person. Too many people want to write, and with all their dedication and effort only produce mediocre prose at best and at their worst embarrassing, unreadable inanities. I am sure I fall in the latter group. I have been filling journals with my empty thoughts for years and for every 25 pages of journal writing there might be one page worth rereading. The majority of it is boring, repetitive, whining that usually discusses my inability to make progress on any goal or attempts to delve into this sad feeling that I am wasting my life. I am approaching 50 and feel I haven't done a damn thing with this precious life I am living. Too many days wasted. Too many nights sitting drinking in the pursuit of some adventure that never comes. Drink has been part of my downfall in that it's has been a massive hole in which I throw time and money. I want to accomplish something that moves ME. I don't care about anyone else, I just want to impress myself, I want to inspire myself, accomplish something of which I can feel proud.

I need to get started on this new year, on this new decade that I want to make my finest. What is the first step? What would make me proud? What would excite me the most? Damn! I guess I need to write something!

We Need a Reset Button

2010-12-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

The corporate system, our present economic system that controls the flow of goods, services and finance, wants to make it seem as if the drones, the workers, have some say in what happens within its world, but the only option presented is the level of bribery required to purchase the loyalty of individuals so they perform the tasks required, tasks which are designed to distract them from examining the system they support. Our corporate system is nothing more than legal robbery, robbery from those lacking the force of violence to topple the system they are locked into. The world needs a revolution so that life can be restored. We live within a system that worships distraction, that wants to keep everyone amused by new gadgets, new cartoons, new bands, etc. The system purchases us with gaudy theater, with a circus, and then our jaws go slack and we offer up our chuckles and ask for another beer. The rabble is kept amused and convinced they are to blame for their failure.

In our economic world their are two entities, one that produces nothing and steals the profit from those that produce useful goods. There are entities in this world, highly profitable ones, that have positioned themselves through their control of governments, through their control of media, through their control of the entities that produce ideas, at the very center of our economy. These legal entities manipulate the system so that every transaction must go through the systems they created. These systems provide little value, but are highly profitable. Those that control our financial systems have leveraged their wealth to purchase every entity from our universities to our government so that they are always in a position to profit without delivering any meaningful service. Trillions of dollars of real wealth is siphoned away and transferred to those that control this financial system. The purchase the loyalty of everyone that gets in their way. The do not kill, but they can weaken and ultimately make ineffectual any opponent.

Where is the revolution? Where are the people pouring into the streets with clubs in their hands willing to force change upon a system that robs all working people of the profits of their labor. Housing--who walked away with billions in profits while many went homeless? Unemployment--who received their billions in bonuses while millions jumped through hoops to maintain their unemployment checks. Where is the entity that will stop those that manipulate, but do not produce? Where is the force that will bring justice to those that knowingly stole, that used their system to steal from the working people? Where is the force that will rise up and end this destruction of our way of life? And of course, we need to change this way of life that was forced upon us so that we could be controlled! Where are the riots in the suburbs?

The entities that control our communications want everyone to believe we live in a world that rewards those that produce, those that add value, but we now have a system where those entities that add no value receive the greatest reward. Economic activity is measured by the adding of value to something pulled from nature or through the development of some idea that someone is willing to purchase. What value does our financial systems add to our world that that is worthy of the profit it receives? They are sophisticated, and use economic, political, ethical philosophies to make it seem as if we live in a system that rewards hard work, that provides opportunities to those that will work hard and sell their loyalty. But we are maintaining a system that only wants to uses us, that wants to manipulate our minds, our trust, our ethics. No man will protest the system that provides them with a paycheck. The system bribes those that should be speaking out. The system purchases those with the mental aptitude to bring about change. The system sucks in and alters any opposition. To change the system will require revolution. The system is so refined, so well developed, that every revolutionary becomes a part of the system.

Where are today's revolutionaries? Where are the people that will push the reset button? Where are the people that will stack up the cobble stones and shut down the system that robs them of their lives.

If we step out of line, if we raise the alarm who will they send to convince you of the right path? The police? The new job with the high salary? Where are the revolutionaries that will be able to avoid the system, the blob of meaningless work or the arms of repression?

Painting

2010-12-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about my work and the meaning it gives to my life. There are two views on this. One is that work is what you do during the day and that living is what you do outside of work. This is the don't quit your day job philosophy. The other view is that work itself is supposed to provide some meaning to life, that it is an outgrowth of who you are and should represent something meaningful. The majority of us, unfortunately, are stuck in mode one because of the very nature of work and the work that needs to be done. Toilets need to be cleaned, assembly lines need to be manned, and accounts need to be balanced. I suppose most people are able to strike a balance between work, what they do for money, and what they do for meaning? I am feeling this strong desire to combine the two by having my work be meaningful. A decade ago, for some mysterious reason, I did a dozen or so paintings, and then just stopped. Looking back, and seeing the paintings today, I see them as the best things I ever did in my life, which is depressing as hell. Do these few mediocre paintings represent the best things I have ever done after 48 years of living?

I don't know if I can go back to painting, if I can put in the hours and hours it takes to even start a particular piece, or if I can face the disappointment that comes from starting something then discovering I'm not ready to undertake it which happened in the past. Part of art is growing, and being willing to fail.

Ten years have gone by since I last completed anything, but somehow the idea of starting again is always in the back of my mind but the will to start again never conquers my laziness. I know I would have to do another 20 complete paintings before I even started to understand what I was doing. It would take me months to feel comfortable with a pallet and a few tubes of paint. I want to do it, but I know it would take a lot out of me. But then, I am not really doing much of anything with my life.

The things of which I am most proud are the things I never talk about because I am proud of them. Yes, they hang in my house and, OK I admit it, I admire them because the tell me I am capable of something that is a little better than mediocre. I know I am not a Picasso or a Manet, but I am a Bauer which is something.

And here is the thing, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks about what I am doing. I remember years ago I went out with a woman that was a painter. She lived in a studio apartment and had a mattress on one side of the room and the rest of the space was taken up by her paintings. The floor was covered by a large tarp. She had a stereo in there and some jazz albums. She was willing to dedicate her life to the production of her art, her vision of what art was. It doesn't even matter how good or bad it was, what mattered is that she was passionate about it, that she wasn't a hack, she was the artist working her day job, and painting at night. I wonder what happened to her. I wonder what happened to me.

London

2010-11-08T12:52:00.000-08:00

Samuel Johnson is quoted by Boswell as having said: "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

I would have to agree and I only scratched the surface, and a weak scratch it was, of what London has to offer. Its streets are alive with entertainments both base and high--sometimes both at the same time. I never experienced a dull moment wandering up and down its streets always only a few minutes walk from an inviting pub or a 30 minute tube ride from a world-class museum full of treasures (albeit mostly stolen). No, a man bored in London is a man incapable of pleasure.

Any great city offers visitors a world to wander through; a chance to pass down a thousand welcoming lanes where one has no memories but the fresh opportunity to form new ones.

I have been to Paris, Berlin, Prague, etc. and each has it's charms, but London offers something more than grand squares, and churches on hills. London has something that is at street level, that seems to seep out of the walls.

It was in London that I fell in love with a piece of marble.

Excuses and Lies

2009-10-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a massive cafeteria looking around the room as everyone stares into their laptops clicking away at work or perhaps also doing blog posts about the oddity of sitting here in this virtual world of emails, conference calls, and PowerPoint updates. It’s a strange experience to be here because there is so little that is alive. I envy the cafeteria workers that go about their tasks of filling the serving lines, and condiment stations in preparation for lunch, and they, likely, look back and envy me because I can sit here with my coffee and type while they have to go about their assigned tasks. But what I envy is the fact that they can see what they are doing while they manipulate real things, and complete real tasks. The only evidence of my work is the check that is electronically deposited into my account twice a month. I am disconnected from reality floating through a world of consumer desires that are there to mitigate the sadness I feel about this empty life. I produce nothing but excuses, lies, and presentations that are made up of those excuses and lies. My product is excuses and lies. Welcome to the modern world of work where I touch nothing, produce nothing. I am surrounded by thousands of other people caught up in the same spectacle of non-work.

I must break away from this situation of non-production, of non-work, of triviality.

There is a world of people out there that is hungry for something real to happen in their lives. People hungry for a human interaction that is not based upon money and the trading of commodities we don’t need or even really desire. I drive to work on Monday morning and look over into single passenger cars carrying bored workers to their non-work, to their peck buttons. We are caught in a post-industrial world designed to make sure we are ready to purchase every object that is designed to increase our lack of meaning and further disconnect us from what is of true importance: human relationships. We work at computers and then go home and perform additional tasks on computers that are often the same computers on which we work all day. Our children site and use the same devices for work, play, and socialization. We walk around with mobile phones that connect us to work, friends, information, but they also create a barrier between us and the world so that we are never connected in an emotional way to the space we are in. We are connected to the world, but disconnected from the place in which we live.

What is the solution? Perhaps we like this world because it makes us feel important, makes us feel as if we are actually accomplishing things by forever clicking away at these electronic devices that are a screen between life and virtual life. Are we really opting to live a virtual life rather than a real life of conversations with real people? Will the mark we live on the world consist of a string of zeros and ones that sit on a server in some remote town? Will our life story consist of a string of Google searches that track our interests, perversions, fears, and desires?

I want out! But how to disconnect and live a real life? Time to do a Google search.

Virtual Nothingness

2009-09-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

We have split ourselves from the world by allowing technology to mediate our experiences. We have surrounded ourselves with screens that allow us to interact with information rather than just have it pushed out to us. Access to this information is 24 hours. Through technology we can have the feeling we are connected to everything at all times while actually never being connected to anyone at any given time. We have been given the illusion of social interaction because we can say hello to our friends and provide little snippets of information about our activities, and also see the same information coming in from other electronic acquaintances. This gives us the illusion of friendship, and the illusion of society, but there can be no society without human, one-on-one interaction. We are in the realm of fantasy when we think we are informed when we read some piece of opinion from an obscure ideologue in Iowa, or that we have a relationship when someone adds us as a friend on a social network site. How many virtual friends does it take to equal one real friend that can show up on a Saturday morning to help you move to a new apartment? This is just a rant, but the use of technology has not made us more connected, just as having access to more TV programming did not make us more cultured. Life is not as easy as clicking a mouse or changing a channel.

Rise Up!

2009-09-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

In the beginning man was in nature. There was no separate nature, no line between the world man inhabited and what we, today, call the natural world. Man was one of the animals and competed with other animals. Today, we are separate from the natural world and inhabit environments of our own design and construction. Our separation from the natural world leaves us in a world that is not only artificial in its design, but also in the way we interact with it. Because of this lack of contact with the world, other than through the consumption of purchased goods and experiences, which have become the same in that we purchase everything. We experience more and more of our days through a screen whether on a computer, phone or TV. In our daily lives, we rarely encounter anything real, and when we do encounter something real it stands out like a sparkling diamond. Real things are those things we did not pay for, we cannot return, or request a refund for. We are left to interpret our real experiences. But, for the most part, we spend all of our time working to make sure nothing real ever happens: accidents, suffering, hunger, pain, etc. But in this, we also remove many of possibilities to achieve life. By building a structure of certainty, of supermarkets with perpetually available food, of TV with perpetually available entertainment, however banal, we destroy the spontaneousness that can come from living life as it occurs. It’s time to turn off everything that places a barrier between the real and the purchased, the mediated, scheduled, programmed, calendared, designed, packaged, guided, directed, produced, processed, industrialized, imported, exported, delivered, etc. It’s time to turn off the machine and throw away your credit card, phone, computer, cable, etc. Remove yourself from everything you cannot explain. It’s time to kill the machine. Stop the machine and all those that wish to turn us into simple economic entities that consume, produce, and consume. Rise up and conquer the artificial world and start living in the real!

Plan B

2009-09-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

Another year on Earth has slipped by and I am feeling the weight of all of this meaninglessness more than ever. Perhaps it is because I have everything I need: wife, daughter, love, health, money, work, etc. It’s all there; the ingredients for a happy, fulfilling life, but I feel empty, as if I am wasting my time and death looms out there in the future. What does it all mean? Do I need a crisis to give life some meaning? No, working through a crisis is too stressful. What I need to do is work on something meaningful to me, something that will allow me to express this craving I have. The problem is that I am not intelligent enough, or creative enough, to do anything meaningful. My brain is too slow, too weak to really do much of anything. Somehow it’s been strong enough for me to work for and around Microsoft for nearly 8 years. My brain is weak, but my luck is good. I have been lucky my entire life. I have counted on my luck to get into situations that require little of me, that allow me to float rather than swim. But I am tired of floating, and I don’t feel like swimming. I want out of the pool, and back onto the chaise lounge where I can order a beer and get back into my book. Simply put, I am sick of doing what I don’t want so I can accumulate more things that require me to do more things I don’t want. I am tired of work and want to do nothing, but what I want for the rest of my life. But then, that is not really an option. I have to work. I have a daughter going into college that is going to require money, money and more money. I have a mortgage that has to be paid each and every month. I have to keep up appearances even though I don’t care about how I appear. How to get out of this? We have built up a world of things so that it’s now impossible to enjoy them.

I need a plan B.

I want life!

2009-02-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

What great times are upon us. The masses are losing their shitty jobs, and my hours have been reduced to 20 per week which is enough to keep me in beer and pizza for the foreseeable future. Take our shitty jobs and send them to China and let us develop a mass of labor that refuses to do shitty jobs, that refuses to work in a bottling plant, slaughter house, car factory, food processing plant or any other type of plant that makes anything at all. Man was not meant to be bending over a machine his days filled with work a monkey could do, no offence to monkeys because they would not do it. No, it takes a strangely ignorant beast with only a concern for his stomach to get up each morning and wander into some vast cave and spend his day turning out shoddy, unimaginative consumer good, diapers, and bows for teddy bears. All useful things I am sure, but to dedicate one's days to their manufacture, distribution, marketing, purchase, and disposal is a sin against everything man could be. Is there any product worthy of my life? Yes, to be sure we need goods: books, art, art books, wine, cheese, decent food, artfully made clothing, and places to gather, but do we need gadgets that take us away from our fellows, that separate us from our neighbors? Life has become an escape from being human as we spend our days locked in our houses, cars, offices, factories, never touching the earth or feeling a part of anything that does not cost money. The economy! Fuck the economy. Burn it all down and start over. Let the weeds crack our roads and collapse our bridges if it helps me know my neighbor, helps me know the life of a person two doors down that I see once a year, but whose name I do not know. What is this life of looking at screens, this life of unmediated experiences. Would it not have been a better place if the native Americans had kept their land and their ways. Did they ever kill 100,000 in a day? Did they every pollute their own family so they could get a $1 an hour more in pay? I am getting close to refusing this life of work and empty play, this life of fools shouting their slogans. I want nothing, but what I can make or earn by honest labor. Where is the living in this life? Where is the screaming in the night, the massaging of slain deers blood into my bare chest. I want life!

A New Life

2009-02-09T15:47:00.001-08:00

Is it possible for humans to continue to exist when our entire existence is based upon violence towards others and our planet? What would happen if those that supply us with what we need to sustain our economy decided not to do business with us, wouldn’t we attack them and take what we require? Isn’t that the entire point of our military, and haven’t we done this a hundred times in the past? Our lives are not sustainable because we waste energy and resources at such an extreme level? We justify the waste by believing it is our right, and that without waste the economy cannot continue to function. Our economy is based upon waste. We are encouraged to waste, encouraged to buy what we do not need, encouraged to throw away what is still useful to buy the new thing. We are all part of system that is destroying the lives of millions so we can have cheap computers, TVs, and the rest of the detritus to which we have become accustomed. How did it come to this level of waste? We have sacrificed our lives to the accumulation of things. We define our existences by the things we have around us, but then who are we when these superficialities are what define us. We have become consumers? We define ourselves by our ability to consume the right things so we appear to be “successful” compared to those around us. Our only value is in how much we are able to stimulate the economy. I don’t want to be an economic entity whose only measure of value is his ability to turn his time, his flesh, his existence into money? But how to check out? How to stop? How to learn and understand what it means to live a meaningful life that is not based upon my participation in this empty consumer economy, and how to do that while maintaining the extravagant lifestyle to which I am accustomed?

Our Prison

2009-01-29T09:58:00.001-08:00

What is the best prison? It is a prison that we allow to be constructed around us. It is a prison that constrains our choices as if having a choice is what defines freedom. We are caught in a prison of our own design that circumscribes our lives within a narrow range of what is normal, what is good. We don't even know what a good life is because we have been pumped up with this image of a car, a house, a job, 401K, weekends, 9 to 5, 30 years of work, the annual vacation, retirement, and old age looking out over 70 years of life lived within set limits. We are prisoners caught within an illuson of what should be, rather than what could be. Should is a dangerous concept. How should I live my life? versus How could I live my life? How can I live? Where is the passion, joy, happiness, of doing the unexpected, of breaking out of the box of control we, sadly, put on ourselves. I declare my independence and stand free of this Leave it to Beaver dream world, hampster wheel running, appearance living life of Should. I stand naked on my roof screaming into the night "Give me life!" Life? Death? Growing old. Fat. Dumb. Happy. Happy? I want to chase down a deer with a club and drag it back to my four bedroom, five bathroom hut with blood caked on my chest. I want to rinse my body in a cool stream with the moon floating bright above me. I want to run into the bright light with no desire for anything but meat, water, sex and my tribe. I want to be afraid and conquer that fear. I want to feel the cold and then have it fade before a fire. I want to live with no pavement, no walls, no malls, no bottles, pans, cars, phones, schedules... At this peak moment of our so called civilization, this rape of the earth, air, seas, and humanity, I want to see the ocean. Maybe I just need to get out of the house...

Crimes Against Humanity

2008-12-29T14:19:00.001-08:00

In my mind, the latest financial crisis should be considered a crime against humanity and those that profited from it should be prosecuted as if they committed murder. Our financial leaders, those that were paid millions in exchange for their loyalty to do the right thing did the wrong thing and profited from it. If you think about the diversion of resources and energy it is easy to see that their theft of billions of dollars worth of labor and thus the working lives of tens of thousands of workers is in effect a type of murder. Anyone that steals more than the average earnings of an average worker should be put on trial for a type of murder. If you were paid a million and did committed fraud, you should be put on trial for a type of murder and punished accordingly. Did these individuals do more damage to people than a person involved in a consensual crime such as the sale of marijuana? I am sure a senior citizen that has their entire life savings wiped away would think that the perpetrator of that fraud should receive a longer sentence than someone that sold $200 worth of marijuana. Where is the justice? I say those that risked the fortunes of millions should pay with their lives.

A retroactive law needs to be passed that will allow the prosecution of those that gained from understating risk or ignoring risk. Just as someone hat builds a bridge can be prosecuted for building a flawed structure those that built investments with understated risks should be prosecuted for financial crimes. Those that knew the risks and did not state them while they profited from them should be named and prosecuted. If our justice system has to be altered by, so be it. Those that stole and profited based upon fraud--making a false statment they knew to be false--should be prosecuted. Of course people will plead they didnt' know they were lying.

Economy and Checking Out

2008-10-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on the campus of the world's largest software company in Redmond, Washington wondering what to do with my life. Is like meant to be a constant struggle for survival? I suspect yes and that the lucky few of us on this planet not having to struggle are a huge historical exception. Human existence, animal existence, is a struggle and this holds true for every creature except my cat who does not struggle in the least. I carry its poop out of the house for Christ's sake. But, what if a person is doing so well that they can turn back the dial on their forced activity and still survive with less effort, but much more freedom? What is the choice? Spend more of your life's energy working to accumulate more things, money and security, or reduce the security a little but increase the freedom. The human animal is willing to sacrifice present pain to avoid the possibility of a greater pain in the future, right? Isn't that what saving is all about. We sacrifice today avoid an unknown pain in the future that is greater than the present pain of sacrifice. How to adjust, that is the question?

I think I need to go back to Tom Hodgkinson's "Freedom Manifesto" to get a better understanding of what I am missing in this life. Of course, these thoughts have to come up when I am in the middle of a kitchen remodel that isn't going to add much to my life--it's just a room where we cook and the room we have is working fine, but it's not attractive enough. God! What crazy things do we get ourselves into. At one time the price of this kitchen remodel would have been enough to keep me totally satisfied for a year--rent, beer, food, pleasures of every kind, but now it pays for some appliances, flooring, cabinets, etc. What have I become?

If You Have to Ask, It's Torture!

2007-10-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

So this is how ignorant we have become as a society. We have to ask if something is torture. If you have to ask, it’s torture. Come on! These are intelligent people, and they are writing 50 page memos explaining the meaning of the word “severe” as in “severe pain or discomfort.” Having a prisoner stand naked in a dark, cold cell without food for days is not torture. There is no severe pain, only severe discomfort. Now if we did this to your grandmother or wife or child what would you call it? If I did not let you sleep and blared AC/DC at you 24 hours a day under bright lights for days on end, would that be torture? What if I would not let you sit down? Come on!! It’s so obvious these techniques are torture. What if I grabbed you off the street and threw a bag over your head and then flew you to Egypt where they would beat the hell out of you for six months in total darkness, with loud music and no food? I am so ashamed of this country. So ashamed because I am not on the street holding a sign that says “Torture is Wrong!” Did the Bush administration really need a memo to tell them it was okay to torture? Bush needs to be impeached and imprisoned.

Consumption and Work

2007-06-04T08:16:00.001-07:00

I have been thinking about consumption a lot lately, which makes sense since I am not working and drawing unemployment--I am work free. When my income drops down to $470 a week it's time to think about every purchase and start buying store brand shampoo and chicken when it is on sale. Consuming is a big part of our lives and many of us define who we are by the products we consume be they shampoo, lattes, cars, houses or vacations. We become the things we buy, which is itself a game of perceptions rather than reality. In this process we allow the world to define us via what are, ultimately, superficial markers. Yes, many of them define how much we earn or have but they don't say anything about who we are as in are we happy, kind, gving, capable of love. Does the purchase of a highly visible consumer product say anything about who I am? At one time in my life, I thought it was important to have a nice watch so now I have four of them and don't wear any of them. At one time I thought it was the thing to have a leather briefcase and now it sits in the back of the closet collecting dust. Buying the trappings of success don't make us successful just as not buying them doesn't make us unsuccessful. They are meaningless consumer goods that have been relentlessly marketed in such a way that we feel inadaquat if we don't buy them. "You can tell the most about a man by the watch he wears." "You can judge a man by his shoes." Craziness!

Time to Relax

2007-04-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got the word that my one year of service to corporate America will end per the policy of the unnamed, largest software company in the world located in the Seattle area. I could get more specific, but then I am afraid of reprisals. We victims of corporate greed have to be careful of insulting our masters and thus receiving a quick stomp to the back of the neck. But, I have to say I am pleased with this dismissal. The corporate policy states I must now take 100 days off without pay, of course, and without any guarantee of a position when those 100 days end. Whatever. When the 100 days are over, I will crawl back and beg for another position. I am addicted to decent pay and, due to this ridiculous policy, my total indifference to the outcome of the work I do. I mean seriously, once I make it through six months or so and that fast approaching extermination date draws near, I pretty much coast. It’s kind of like being given a diagnosis of cancer with six months to live. Paying off that credit card starts to look like a foolish thing to do. So I am a victim and an abuser. I say all the right things, shift some spreadsheets around, do some dazzling things in the first few months and then play a shell game. Of course, the Company plays a game as well. They hold out the carrot of a permanent job opportunity for months and then, a few weeks before my termination date, when they think there is little to lose, they let me know that due to a reorganization they are actually letting some people go and that hiring me is impossible. It is a funny game, but little do they know that their promises to me are meaningless, that they are all part of the game, and that my objective is to only reach the full year and not leave any money on the table. Their projects, compliments, gifts and promises mean nothing to me. I am, metaphorically, a whore and their pleasure at my gyrations mean nothing. I just want to see those bills piled on the nightstand. Sure, I feel a little dirty afterwards but nothing that a bottle of wine and a good book won’t wash away.

The Retard is out of the Bag

2006-11-28T11:31:00.000-08:00

Bush and the cumulative effects of his incompetence are finally being revealed. My one fear is that out of some twisted form of patriotism and a willingness to overlook the stupidity of our “own” that it will never be revealed what an utterly incompetent man Bush really is. Of course one only has to look at his history to discover the man has gotten everything he ever had because of one choice: he picked a powerful father. Without his old man Bush would never even be given the responsibility of crew-chief at the local Pizza Hut. People keep stepping forward to state he is a smart man but that intelligence is never revealed by anything he has ever done. And sadly, the voters put him in office, sort of… If the democrats don’t make every attempt to reveal the President as the fool he is, my already shaken confidence in our democracy will all but disappear.

End Times

2006-04-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Something is desperately wrong in America. The recent visit by the Chinese leader, Hu, is a perfect example of our failure to execute something that was months and months in the planning. If the President and his staff can't flawlessly execute a totally controllable visit by a head of state how can we possibly expect them to execute something with as many uncontrollable moving parts as a war or a hurricane recovery? While creativity and imagination are important attributes, they are attributes commonly attributed to children; however, children do not have to execute their plans. I look at the current administrative as being childlike, unable to execute the most simple of plans. Yes, they can run a smear campaign and tear an opponent to shreds but can they build something, can the move a project forward and adjust plans to face reality. The administration is great at throwing money around, our money, but is it able to gain a value for that money? At this sage, after three years in a Iraq they appear incapable of executing. can we take three more years of Bush? I suspect that or country will be in ruins in three years, that our coffers will be empty and we will be more close to third world status than first.

Dreamland

2006-01-16T11:15:00.000-08:00

We are no longer citizens of this country; we are consumers waiting to be swayed by marketers in the service of both corporations and government. We can no longer hide from the constant onslaught of their propaganda. Nearly every communication we receive is now designed to fulfill the interests of those that hold power in this country whether they represent political power or commercial interests. The enemy of these interests is the possibility that we may think for ourselves, that we may formulate our own ideas about how we should live, how our country should participate in the world. The commercial and government interests want us to consume without thinking. When people start thinking for themselves then the entire power structure is destroyed. The powerful would of course prefer that we think about the wonderful consumer products that are out there spinning before our eyes and stimulating us to create who we are through the products we purchase rather than through ideas. If some of us progress through this consumer cloud we are confronted with a barrage of messages generated by a vast machine of media organizations who try to point us to some cause that steers us away from the truth. This cause could be pro/anti-abortion; pro/anti-religion, republican, democrat, etc. It doesn’t matter what area we are focused on so long as we are focused on something other than their efforts to turn us all into mindless consumers of either their products or propaganda. It’s all the same. What matters most is that we don’t think for ourselves and act in our own interests whether as a group or as individuals. It’s all about control, power. As long as we remain sheep shuffling our over-sized asses through the malls of consumer products and pre-digested ideas we will be blind to the truth. What is this truth? What is this truth that “they” don’t want us to see? The truth is that we don’t need them. The vast bureaucracy that spoon feeds us every possible thing is a huge leach that sucks away our productivity as well as our ability to live decent lives and provide meaningful opportunities for our families. We are dazzled by this infotainment world that wants to amuse us so that we do not do the one thing that threatens all: think for ourselves. Turn off your TV, phone, computer, car, etc. Walk around your neighborhood and take an honest look at where you live and ask yourself if this is the world for which you want to take credit. Walk through your child's school and ask if this is the best, given our greate wealth, that we can do. Step out of this vapid consumer culture that teaches our children they have to have X to be Y. We have grown fat by listening to this vast machine that wants to push us into the consumer fantasy that we can become whatever we want simply by buying things to create ourselves. We have a bulging tick on our backs that doesn’t value honest, meaningful work. We are surrounded by a sea of people that do not contribute to our society in a meaningful way. And I am not talking about the unemployed and those on the government dole; they are an insignificant drain on society. The true leaches are the vast sea of corporate and governmental bureaucrats that produce this self-perpetuating propaganda. Most of them don’t even know they are a part of it because they have been sucked into their own system that produces for the sake of producing with no question about the value of that which is produced. They work 60 hours weeks producing garbage to watch, eat, read and use and throw away. These people will look back at their careers and there will be nothing there of which they can be proud. What is the solution? I am afraid that the solution will be presented by an unforeseen problem. Our sanitized world will be invaded by a force that will awaken this other possibility, this possibility that life can be meaningful, that our days don’t have to be wasted in these intertwined theaters of the absurd where we waddle from latte to burger to DVD to our inevitable death.

Christmas Shopping

2005-12-20T10:55:00.000-08:00

As Christmas nears the shopping frenzy becomes more intense. If only Christmas were only a Christian celebration and the emptiness of shopping could be removed. The retailers don’t want Christ involved in Christmas because if all Christians adhered to the teachings of Christ the last place they would be would be a shopping mall searching for some useless, advertised frippery. Retailers don’t want the teachings of Christ involved because, I believe, he would have cast everyone out of the mall and told them not to desire these mere things while they neglect their souls. Consumerism has become a religion. The constant craving for the next new thing be it the latest movie, mobile phone, clothing or electronic gadget has replaced the time that should be spent with family and friends. All of these things and the craving of them takes us away from those experiences that could make us better people capable of experiencing joy. Things, and the constant craving of them, prevent the experience of joy. Would Christ have preached to the masses encouraging them to shop and spend and waste their lives in the pursuit of empty, meaningless pleasures? I am not a Christian but even when I read the parables that Christ preached the last thing I want to do is step into a mall.

I suppose this could be viewed as self righteous and who the hell am I to judge the motivations of people I don’t know. For all I know all of this shopping could be a healthy thing. But I suspect that it is obsessive and has more to do with what others think than with what the buyer feels. The majority of purchases are a form of show and status display and are therefore empty.

Soft Minds and Bodies... The Decline of America

2005-12-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

Is it time for a new radicalism in the United States? It is my belief that the United States no longer exists as a beacon of freedom. The United Sates is now only an economic entity where it is easy to buy and own things. This is no small accomplishment, but it is not something for which we can ask others to die. The right to shop for and consume as much of the world’s goods as possible is not a freedom that inspires sacrifice. As we drift closer and closer to the idea that our country’s primary purpose is to clear away obstacles to the accumulation of wealth, we will lose our soul as a country. The selling of goods and services doesn’t inspire. When there is no goal other than making it to old age in comfort at any cost then we have also lost our moral compass. When we are willing to borrow from the future to pay for present comforts we are no longer a moral society. We are a nation of children unable to defer, or even reject, any pleasure for the sake of another. We will sacrifice our community so that we can buy cheap clothes made by slaves in a totalitarian country. We will close our eyes to the evils perpetrated by our “friends” so we can use their swimming pool. We are a nation of children unable to set aside that third bowl of ice cream. We waddle out of our houses filled with over-stuffed furniture and lift our gorged bodies into massive vehicles so we can drive to some grotesque row of box stores to stock up on processed foods and mediocre entertainment. We have become a nation not of children but of babies. Our bodies have now become as soft as our minds. Where is the sacrifice for the greater good? Where is the grand objective for our country other than the cutting of taxes and the preservation of a decadent society that seems perfectly contented to continue its slide into meaninglessness? Everything has been tainted by this ignorant laziness. We have lost the ability to think clearly about anything. We value the tawdry over anything that takes effort. We have come to believe that something can be derived from nothing; that we will all win the lottery. What we have failed to understand is that we won the lottery by being born in this great country that we have allowed to fall apart.

Perception is not Reality

2005-12-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

When business is separated from the realities of the material world it becomes more politics than business. What makes this possible is the development of multinational corporate monopolies that derive their profits by squeezing labor and cutting costs. The corporate world itself is populated by an army of marketing types that have the business world convinced their physical assets are of no value, that their employees are meaningless, that the very goods and services they produce are but air. The real value of any organization is the position they own in a customer’s mind—their brand. And worse, employees have come to believe they are their own brand and that the perception they create is of a higher value than the actual contributions they make. The elevation of the MBA to positions of leadership within both the private and the public sector has led to a decline of actual performance in favor of perceived performance. It is no longer what you actually do that matters; it’s how what you do is perceived that matters. How you market. We are all familiar with the expression: perception is reality. But, perception is perception and reality is reality. Being convinced that something is true doesn’t make it true regardless of the massive amounts of money put at the disposal of PR and marketing agencies. This idea has muddled the world of business and the world of government. Think back to Katrina when FEMA and the government were trying to manage perceptions more than they were trying to manage the reality on the ground. The same is true in Iraq. Rather than the US government focusing 100% of its energy on making the situation better, it was putting a vast amount of energy into trying to make us believe it was better. Showing the coffins of dead soldiers returning is bad image management. Dead soldiers are bad PR. A good part of this is a result of MBAs taking over positions of power. You don't market a war by focusing on death and destruction. Just like you don't market a drug by revealing facts that might cut into sales. (A side story here is pharmaceutical companies hiring large numbers of former female, college cheerleaders to be their sales representatives. For some reason, doctors are more likely to meet with them to discuss their patients' needs for better treatments than a less "spirited" representative from another company.) The problem comes from the idea that everything can be managed; that reality is open to manipulation and that the truth is this malleable thing that can be twisted into anything we desire. We can fix most any problem by simply tweaking the marketing, by changing perceptions. Not so.

I say all of this because I work in marketing and my corporate masters are letting me go. My brand has lost mind-share and the low perception of my work is, unfortunately, too closely aligned with reality.

2005-11-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

The following is from a press briefing by Ari Fleisher on May 7, 2001.

Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.

Q So Americans should go on consuming as much more energy than any other citizens in any other countries of the world, as long as they want?

MR. FLEISCHER: Terry, the President believes that the American people are very wise and that, given the right incentives, they will know how and they will make their own right determinations about how much they can conserve, just as the President announced last week that the federal government, as part of its consumership in California will reduce energy needs -- for example, the Department of Defense facilities in California, by 10 percent. He believes the American people, too, will make the right decisions about conservation and the program he will announce shortly will also include a series of conservation items.

But the President also believes that the American people's use of energy is a reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy. And he wants to make certain that a national energy policy is comprehensive, that includes conservation, includes a way of allowing the American people to continue to enjoy the way of life that has made the United States such a leading nation in the world.

What does this tell us about our country? We are afraid to face facts and would rather live in a fantasy than make the hard choices about how we should live. Is it sane that millions of us drive 10, 20, 30 mils a day to and from work and that there is no other option, that there is no other way to get to work than to drive. Live closer to work? The way the country is zoned most of us can't live close to work. There is no housing in our cities. Our cities are designed as shopping zones, office towers but not as places to live. Everything is designed for cars, not for people. If someone suggested limiting car traffic everyone would freakout because it would freeze the economy. The President needs to make a choice or the choice will be made for us. The days of cheap oil, of the ability to waste this precious resource, are over. I blieve there will be a massive economic disaster in the coming years that alter the way we live. A choice will be made for us and it will change everything about this country. Don't buy a new car! Don't move into the suburbs! Stay close in to where the action is or face the consequences of being stuck in the middle of nothing.

Faith

2005-10-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

"'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true." Nietzsche

What can be said about that quote? When we have faith in something it means we don't really want to know. Knowing takes a great deal of work and the vast majority of people are lazy or are struggling just to survive. Of course, this same majority knows so little about the world that it is frightening to think about the level of ignorance at which most people live. And when it is a choosen ignorance it is all the more sad. To have access to all of the world's knowledge but choose to waste away ones life worried about celebrities or the latest consumer product is tragic. To have a population that claims faith over knowledge is to have a population incapable of governing itself.

Higher Thought

2005-10-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

My brain is incapable of higher thought. I remain the grunting caveman staring into the fire. My thinking refuses to travel beyond the careful consideration of my bodily functions. My science focuses upon the precise calculations—wind speed, time, distance, pungency, etc.--associated with the dissipation of a fart and the imminent arrival of an approaching friend. Everything I have ever done has required a massive amount of effort and yielded results that would compare unfavorably with those of an average 7th grader. But, despite all of this I manage to sleep in a warm bed and share my meager meals with a cat that sees me as a god able to supply food with a few turns of my thick wrist. My pleasures are small and few so they are to be cherished.

Incompetence Battles Self-Inflation

2005-10-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day courtesy of Joachim C. Fest:

"Even then Hitler used not to get up till about midday; he would stroll through the park, then sit up late at night over grandiose and senseless projects in which practical incompetence fought with impatient self-inflation."

If practical incompetence and impatient self-inflation don't apply to me I don't know what does. (George Bush also comes to mind--he is so deluded that when one of his future handlers suggested he run for president he actually had the affrontry to do it and we had the stupidity to elect him! Didn't practical incompetence come to mind when you saw him trying to pound in that nail. Doesn't his self-inflation come to mind whenever he proudly reads a complex sentence and gets that look on his face that screams "Look mom, no hands!") I suspect that Hitler, if he had been born in 20th Century America, would have been a marketing manager at a software or financial services company or some other organization that also only offers opportunities to waste large chunks of precious time. One of the benefits of working in the post-industrial age is that by working hard and not actually knowing anything of value a person can make a decent living. The most important thing is to be able to convince everyone that you actually take things seriously. In fact, to make it to the top of the heap one must never see their incompetence and the extent of their self-inflation. To do so is to be out. The show can only continue if everyone believes. Once someone sees the depth of the fraud then the show must end. This extends to so many things including enterainment, food, architecture, the very way we all live in this world. To make it one must believe. To fail is to see behind the curtain and step out of the show, leave the theater and actually start living your life and not the life of a consumer of cheap imitations. The slop bucket is full of muck and we all see it as this feast of wonderful things.

Bad Choices

2005-10-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

I keep asking myself if it's possible for things to go more badly than they have been and then something inside me tells me that these are the good times. Well for me at least. But I feel this pressure bearing down on me that this life we lead in America is destined for a rough ride to ruin. We haven't been smart for years and years--well, were we ever. I drive into work with thousands of single drivers thinking that this is crazy; that this level of waste simply can't go on. I feel we are in for a rude awakening and that future generations, our children and grand children, wil curse us for our stupidity and selfishness. We have wasted a treasure, oil, that should have lasted for a 100 generations. I have no doubt that within my own lifetime there will be an energy crisis that will have us all buying bikes and abandoning the world we knew out in the suburbs.

We have made choices over the past 50 years and they have, generally, been the wrong choices. The world in which we live is an ugly one. Bad streets, buildings, people, food and culture. I get depressed walking around most any American city because there is little going on but commerce. It is a place to buy things. Everything is designed not for the betterment of people but for the betterment of commerce. Everything is of a temporary nature. Will these glass boxes last 100 years? Will these poorly made houses even make it past the payment of a single 30 year mortgage. We, as a nation, have sold our souls for a few tawdry trinkets. We have spent our lives hoping to live something called "the American dream" and it is a scam. The American dream means living in a lousy house at the end of some lonely street far away from any meaningful activity. I drive through a suburb set behind a concrete wall to seperate it from a freeway and feel the desolation, the complete emptiness of the place. Each house like the one before it. Young trees that look like sticks planted in the ground. Garage doors and little doors and the glow of a TV coming through a window. Someone in there staring at the box, a flat screen perhaps, surround sound, a lousy show blasting its inanity into their heads. Some horrible meal piled on a plate. A microwaved buirrito and a can of soda to wash it down. The kids upstairs in their own rooms playing video games or masturbating over internet porn. Stuck in traffic for 10, 15 percent of my waking hours. My stomach sagging through my T-shirt and my lost wife with a smear of lipstick on her lips and that blouse she bought on sale at the Gap. She watches me as some brutal murder is solved by a TV cop. My eyes glaze over and all I can think is that I want to sleep for a long, long time. But there is no rest, no respite fromt his America. Even in my dreams I see the ugliness of it all. The cars float past my closed eyes. Brutal killers lurking down every hall. I constanly lurch awake not knowing if its the burrito or the murder or just the realization that this is all there is, that this was my dream--The American Dream. I lay back and force myself to believe that this is the way the rest of the world wants to live. That I am so lucky to have a lousy job to work at, a gas sucking car, an attractive wife and a refrigerator full of food. Yes, I am so lucky.

Nipples are bad...

2005-10-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago during a post-work TV induced lobotomy I chanced upon a program called Dr. 90210. It's a program that follows individuals through a cosmetic surgery procedure and also goes into a bit of the "drama" around being a plastic surgeon in LA. It represented so much that is wrong with America and the decline of its culture. I should qualify that with this feeling I have that at one time we did have a more cultured world, that we were more European than we are now "American." (When I say American I am thinking about everything that we--I should say I--am ashamed of in our society: tract housing, fast food, fat, ignorance, violence and an inability to seperate what is tawdry and fake from what is valuable and real.) A woman has a breast implant because it's going to make her feel better about herself and it's going to be so much fun to go out and shop for new shirts. Can we really become more beautiful by going under the knife. Is our beauty really only measured by the effects of gravity and the natural process of aging. Or is plastic surgery similar to applying a coat of paint to a shack. Sure, it will look better, but it is still a shack.

But here is the thing that really caught my attention. Imagine the surgeon working on this woman's breasts with instruments of violence. He has cut a hole in the tops of them and is pouring a liquid into the hole. When the liquid turns "watermelon" colored the bleeding has stopped enough to insert the implant. He has cut her breast open, a perfectly fine breast, that is being mutilated. All of this is going on and they have placed a blurr over the area that would be her nipple so it can't be seen. It would be comperable to showing a mutilated body, arms ripped off, shot through the chest, a bloody mess, and there is a blurr over the man's penis because that would be shocking. What the hell? I am sitting here channel surfing and eating some crummy nachos and I come across the shot of a woman having her breast cut up, blood everywere, but they have, for my own sake, and God bless them, blurred out the woman's nipple. And by golly if they had not had the decency to do so I would have immediately dropped down and started masturbating. What the fu... Yes, this country is going down fast.

What's it all about?

2005-10-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

I consider myself, rightly or wrongly, to be somewhat intelligent. I have a well paying job with a company that is the number 1 choice of college graduates as the place they would most like to work. My income is in the top 10%--which is a surprise since I never made much money. I haven't done too badly considering the limited tools I started out with. Yes, I graduated from high school and college and then went through a series of low jobs until I got on the right track. Somehow I put myself through college by working at a cafeteria for years, stealing my meals and just barily making it but never thinking I wouldn't make it. If there is one quality that has gotten me through it is this blind optimism, this feeling that things will work out well. I could have easily given up considering how low I started but somehow I had the ability to not accept defeat and maintain this idea that I could do anything if I tried (Is that a distinctly American quality? This idea that anything is possible if one works hard enough. It's of course a false one but it sure helps keep this consumer society functioning.) For example, I had to go through over 50 interviews before I was offered a contract position with my current employer. When that ended, I went through another 30 or so interviews to get the second position. When that ended, I got the next positition in one interview. And now, after being hired and enduring five more interviews and another five when I changed positions, I have been told I have six weeks to find another position or I am out. So this past week I started the interview process again. I managed to get an informational interview on Thursday and now I am waiting to hear if there will be another interview (yes, there was a second informational interview and now I am witing for the real interviews to start). Why am I saying all of this? I think success is based upon working and failing and then continuing to work and expect more failures. Look at any successful person and their life will not be one smooth trajectory to fortune and, however you define it, success. And I am not talking about financial success, which I have not really achieved. I am talking about success that only you can define for yourself. Honorable work. Actions that can pass the red-face test and a general feeling that you are contributing and doing your best. Maybe that is the real measure of success: that you are doing your best. Trite, I know, but in my present mood I think doing your best is extremely hard. I think one of the reasons that I am losing my position is that I faltered and did not continue to do my best and as a result I am being let go. I lost sight of the hard work I had put in at the beginning and thought I could coast along and not have to continue putting out the effort. That is the difficult part of success. It's not enough to make it, there is the staying there that is the work. Success is not some gift you get to keep you have to earn it every day. I have failed to work for it each day. I got lazy and apathetic. I lost sight of how far I have come. I worked at Pizza Hut when I first got to Seattle. I cleaned carpets for nearly six months so I could pay my rent. And then, I started working as a temp doing whatever came along so I could maintain some level of dignity. I was pretty low for a long time. I lived in a horrible studio apartment with a bunch of crazy people. Screams in the night. Cockroaches. It was low. I lived that way for years until I came into the light and tried to do something different. I quit my job and actually got into a career. I started using my brain instead of just sitting and doing nothing. Sure, I still had horribly bad habits--procrastinating and drinking heavily but somehow I was moving forward. The point is that a person can't give in to their low desires. That's what I have done. I went backwards and through some miracle I have been given six weeks to pull things together. I will keep you posted.

Tsunami and death

2004-12-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

The events in Asia have effected me. I have a deepening sense of sadness. I am typically a cynical person that doesn't expect the world to be a benevolent place; there is simply too much suffering to even consider it, but this disaster, and the loss of innocent lives, has left me feeling crushed. The fact that the victims were so resource poor to begin with makes it all the more sad. The world should reach out to these victims and make every attempt to restore the lives of those still living and lessen the grief of those that have already lost so much.

I think what makes this most difficult is that it feels so utterly senseless. How can it be explained? Who can be blamed? The earth attacked us and there is no logic. An earthquake, a wave and death and destruction. No country to attack, no leader to blame, not racist attitude or political condition to point towards. A cold, unfeeling wave rushed in and took thousands of lives.

What a planet...

2004-12-28T19:53:00.000-08:00

So here we are on this planet made for us by God our father. Regardless of your religion there is the feeling that the earth was made for man but how is that possible? Wouldn't the earth be an easier place to live on if it was made for us. Wouldn't life be easier, food more plentiful, life more sweet and suffering less the norm. If I think about it it's more the case that the earth is a prison for the vast majority. Where is the pleasure for most of us? Most of the world lives in poverty. We, the first world, are living off of the toil of those in the third. How is it possible that an idiot like me could have a high paying job, a house a wife and child when so many have so little? It's just the luck of the draw. Born in Africa you are screwed. Born in Seattle, Washington, USA to a middle-class family and everything is going to be okay.

Work in the New World

2004-12-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

In First World countries we live in world of multiple classes: those that have some control over their work and those that must use regimented processes. It has yet to be determined which group is the more fortunate one. I have done both types of work and the big difference is that with one there is an end to the day and with the other the day never ends. Work is always floating there in the back of my mind so that I am never really away from work unless I have been able to gain access to a large amount of alchohol.

Christian Nation?

2004-12-27T14:45:00.000-08:00

How is it possible for the people of the US to perceive themselves as a Christian nation? Aren't some of the basic tenets of a Christian life forgiveness, charity and self-control? It seems to me that this country is completely out of control from weight to debt to sexual obsession.

If anything we are a consumer nation that jumps from one purchase to the next without any time for reflection or the development of a spiritual connection. From my experience most Americans are shallow and don't know the meaning of friendship or love. Americans value things and perception more than they value spirit and truth. They would rather look right than be right. Can anything in the description of an American be more revealing than the level of obesity and the ever increasing amount of personal debt? Isn’t a fat Christian kind of an oxymoron? Isn’t gluttony a sin we wear for everyone to see.

And how is it Christians are suddenly so obsessed with gays? What is up with that? It makes me wonder about those that protest so strongly; like what are they trying to hide? This is no Christian nation. We always proclaim the opposite of what is in our hearts. When we were the land of the free and the home of the brave we had millions of slaves.

Time for America to grow-up and put away the fries and start thinking beyond the next visit to the mall. I wish there could be a true Christian awakening in America but it will never happen because most people are too weak and too afraid of the truth.