Feb01

2-28-01 (22:51)

well it's gonna be march in about an hour now, that's good news. good to know that time still works, there are moments when i don't think it does.

the lakers suck and the kings rock.

i want to play basketball very much.

i'm going to have some steamed vegetables pretty soon.

had a good pig sandwich today.

jenna is a fruit.

have a film paper due on march 12th, but nothing between now and then. that's good.

need to watch more movies.

i like my schedule for next quarter.

ice cream is very good.

my room is a slovenly pit.

2-28-01 (16:15)

get paid today.

i want to take just about every political science course i've read the description for. wish i could double major in political science and political science, or mega major in it or something.

work from 6-10 tonight.

i updated my schedule, it's for next quarter so the one for this quarter has been deleted. no one looks at it anyway.

jehovah's witnesses were around the complex today expressing their will-to-power.

i hope that if i become a father that i can relay to my kids at an early age how chaotic and without bounds the world really is. if they ever start believing in karma or divine justice then i haven't done my job. when your parents told you that "life's not fair" they weren't being assholes, they were trying to prepare you. hopefully by doing it at a young age it won't be such a shock to them later when they start really realizing it on their own.

i probably shouldn't have kids because i think i'd screw them up.

johnny and christy broke up and that is sad.

i like dj silver more than i remember.

my back isn't ever going to be normal again. i don't know what the problem is, but it didn't used to hurt when i bent over. it only hurts more when i sit "correctly." maybe if i was rich i could solve this problem with some $300 leather chair with good lumbar support.

if kris from work grew up as ugly i think she'd be a better person. i might slap her face the next time i see her.

i don't know what to do with my life.

i don't know what to do with the next 1.5 hours of free time i have.

the thing with freedom is that we don't really have it in the large sense of the word, but we try to have as much of it as possible. it's manifested in different ways by different people. some get drunk and laid every other day. some discover a religion opposite their parents and dump their boyfriend and move to salt lake city. some don't become lawyers like their parents want. some simply move away from home. some just do anything that they've been told not to do, regardless of outcome. some go on a hitchhiking trip. some become transients. some comb their hair differently. some claim not to care about things because freedom from caring is cool to them. we all do it and we've all made mistakes trying to do it. finding a balance point is hard. you can call it the appollonian vs. the dionysian or yin vs. yang or freedom vs. order, but it's all essentially the same. everyone has to decide for themselves where the balance lies.

i like learning, but reading feels like such a chore. reading on the computer is easier because in my mind i'm not really reading, i'm just surfing the internet...as it happens kant's critique on pure reason is on the internet so it works out pretty well that way. one of these days computer screens will emit such little radiation that it'll actually be better on your eyes to read stuff on the screen than on that bleached white paper in books. in a thousand years they'll look at libraries as an extreme waste of resources. all the books will be online somewhere, more readily available (both more quickly because of the publishing process and more in terms of amount - no more searching out rare material - it'll all be available) and more powerful (for example i'll be reading something by nietzsche and he'll mention Schopenhauer and i'll just be able to click on the link and find out all about Schopenhauer). that's just the simple fact of the matter. i like picking up books and turning the pages more than i like scrolling down a toolbar, and i think most people feel the same way, but will it be worth it to have thousands of books and billions of pages worth of dead trees stacked in huge libraries when we'll be able to replace it with a few ounces of silicon? people in the future will think of it as extremely sentimental and selfish of us to demand books continue to be printed on paper. my conservative side doesn't like the idea of books being almost completely obsolete, but i can't see why it wouldn't happen. i know this idea comes as no shock to most and as abhorrent to many, but as far as i can see it, it's probably inevitable.

2-28-01 (13:55)

i've got a car that isn't suitable to drive. i've got a girlfriend i can't see. i've got potential i can't reach.

in other news, got outbid on a shot in the dark bid that i put in a long time ago on this auction. i could have won this auction quite easily if i cared to...it'a 1994, an automatic, and it's in NJ so i didn't really give it too much thought. figured i'd bid 1150 and see what happened, had i bid 1200 i would have won.

i don't know what to do with anything in my life right now.

i don't know what it takes to be a good and true person. that's mainly because there is no real good or true, only the one we create. maybe i should just accept that since it's useful to buy into the created world then it must be good.

i wish i was dumb and apathetic.

i don't know if i'm getting better or worse as i age.

2-27-01 (12:40)

finished those essays up. maybe i'll proofread them or something. who knows.

i'm going to take a shower one of these days, not today.

i'm not very tired, that'll change when i'm in film class today.

here's the latest from the gun control opponents - attempts to test guns for safety purposes is yet another way people are trying to take away your 2nd amendment rights.

i have no faith in humanity.

i have faith in certain people, but not in humanity on the whole.

updated movies list.

2-27-01 (01:40)

i think that nirvana's first album is underrated. if you want to read some wack shit then check out the lyrics to floyd the barber.

having a girlfriend would be beneficial to my health. i'd be reminded to eat, i'd keep active, and i'd get back rubs once in a while.

the first couple seconds of "in bloom" sound like the first couple seconds of "last cup of sorrow" by faith no more. don't know which came first and i'm too lazy to play the mp3 and see how similar they really are.

i'm going to get back to work now.

2-26-01 (22:02)

having to take a written test to get a handgun...opponents say it is a step towards eliminating handguns altogether. does the same go for taking a written test to become a teacher or drive a car? retards.

some home furnishing commercial - "the way i look at it nothing says more about us than our home. that's why i went to blah blah home furnishings where they have the best in selection and price..." nothing says more about us than what we consume...fuck this world.

they say that LA has had more rain this season than seattle.

rather large portfolio due tomorrow, i should start.

we had a debate in class about eminem...it turned into a "whites stealing black music" coupled with "eminem has no musical talent" debate. one guy said that the hullabaloo surrounding eminem is because it's a white guy saying those things and whites felt threatened because they feared their kids would turn out that way...as opposed to when it's a black guy saing the same things whites don't care. he's got a point, but not a very strong one. gangsta rap, from nwa to ice-t, has always been the subject of ridicule and admonishment. a) i don't know if eminem gets more of it. b) if he does get more crap than blacks then i don't know if it's only because he's white and white people fear what it means for their white kids. i do appreciate his point of view and it is correct on one level, but generalizations generally piss me off. as for eminem having no musical talent...he's the most talented contemporary pop hip-hop artist next to wyclef, as far as i can tell. as for whites stealing black music...that's pretty much old news and is just another example of those in power exploiting those who are not in power. but i think that it's sad to exclude eminem, or the beastie boys for that matter, from hip-hop just based upon the color of their skin...any time we discriminate based upon how someone was born then we're doing society a disservice. krs-one calls ghetto music the blueprint of hip-hop, not black music or african music. hip-hop is a culture, and though it mostly includes african-americans, it's not limited to them. to say it is would be going against what those in the hip-hop community believe. then there were some people comparing vanilla ice to eminem. a) eminem doesn't sample queen. b) eminem has talent. c) eminem isn't a puppet. d) eminem has talent. e) dr. dre is backing eminem. f) eminem has talent. to make such a comparison is absurd, i nearly upchucked my top ramen.

as for white people taking black music...i think music is music no matter who creates it and it's bound to be built upon. what i don't necessarily like is when those in power take black music and turn it into profits for themselves...can anyone say elvis? but i think what maybe people were really trying to say is that blacks don't get enough recognition in music, and they really should. there would be led zeppelin without muddy waters. no beatles without chuck berry. no beastie boys with out run d.m.c. no kenny g without john coltrane. er, scratch that last one.

i've got a lot of writing to do and not much to write about...that can't be good.

2-26-01 (00:17)

whiteness prevails again.

ice cream is great.

numbers are stupid. it's amazing how someone can obfuscate an argument beyond the point of comprehension when they start throwing in percentages and random statistics. it seems that liberals and conservatives, alike, use statistics to prove their point on the same issue. you really have to have a good understanding of the issue to see through all the bullshit and their misuse of percentages vs. absolute numbers, understanding the semantics and actual thing being measured helps, too. it's funny how people put so much faith in numbers - i believe this way and it's right because i can point to the numbers - "the numbers don't lie." there are some numbers we can't get around, but i hope that people look at numbers and statistics with a critical eye.

"revenge is like the sweetest joy next to getting pussy" - whoever said such a horrible thing should be shot and killed. oh, wait, he was already. nevermind.

so i'm really thinking about getting this metro. only drawback is it doesn't have any a/c. he's selling it for 3250 and 1995 is a really good year. i don't want may to roll around and not have another car like this come up, especially when it's so close and the guy seems to know his shit and to have taken good care of it. it's a manual too, and so far those have been hard to find. guess i'll have to drive on over to walnut creek and check it out.

it's funny how so much of our worth is based upon consumption. i consider myself cooler than most because i buy green forest toilet paper instead of the bleached kind that doesn't use recycled paper and i think that many people would agree, though to varying degrees. i buy a cheaper more utilitarian and environmentally sound car and i think most people will praise that decision. but all of these things are based upon what i am, or am not consuming. even being a vegetarian or vegan is about what you are consuming, though in a different way. we base our way of life on what we consume - our consumption defines our lifestyle. it's pretty obvious, yes, but thinking about it in those terms (at least to me) makes it even more depressing and just hits home harder. i honestly don't think that it's always been this way, but it certainly is that way now and it seems that it's only getting worse with time.

i'm such a conservative purveyor of morality sometimes.

here's a good idea for nike - with each pair of shoes they sell they should include a small booklet - on the cover it should say "this pair of quality nike shoes is courtesy of...." then on the inside it should have a picture of whoever made that pair of shoes and a small biography... Low Thia Khiang, 12 year old singapore worker who died of malnutrition 3 days after making this pair of shoes. hope you enjoy them!

de beers should do the same thing with every diamond engagement ring they sell, but they should have a dozen pictures of limbless Africans who are victims of the diamond wars over there. if either debeers or nike refused then i'm sure some ambitious lawyer could force their hand under the truth in advertising act or something.

the law is a truly amazing and powerful thing, too bad it's completely arbitrary and, like the bible, can be used by both sides for completely opposing purposes.

could someone please explain to me the logic behind the precedent system? is it to ensure that we keep making the same mistakes over and over again at the risk of wasting time over issues which have already been solved? okay, it doesn't really need explaining, but when it allows something like the plessy v. ferguson case to go as the law of the land for half a century then it sure does seem like a lame idea.

was reading about ayn rand while at work today. i know she was smarter than i'll ever be, but it seems exceedingly foolish to claim an objectivism based upon rationality. when i was 16 i bought into rationality, but she seems to take it too far. i'd really like to see philosophers duke it out in a debate...obviously it can't happen, but i'd like to see kant, plato, aristotle, rand, derrida, nietzsche, heidegger, etc. in a room talking about the nature of humanity, epistemology, etc. it would be great. guys like derrida and nietzsche would deny any the existence any knowledge on the a priori level, they would say that on the metaphysical level you can't really know anything - there isn't anything, actually. the others would disagree and then you'd get this great debate on whether it's possible to know anything, what that means for living one's life, etc. that's my wet dream.

the past is prologue

"At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out." - Virginia Postrel

"Nor need we fear that this [Sceptical] philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever. Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger that these reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery." - David Hume

i've gotta say in all honesty that 98% of philosophy is over my head, the more i read about it the more i realize how hard it is to get a hold of from Schopenhauer to Popper, Hegel and Mill, i'm more or less lost in all the big words and seemingly impossible to breach level of thought.

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." - Alfred North Whitehead

i'm pretty much done with all this school shit. i want to have a really smart person tell me to read a few things once in a while and then talk to me about it. an intellectual mentor, if you will.

it seems that the intellectuals, or those responsible for canonizing, really hate post-modern thought. maybe they feel threatened or maybe they just want so badly for there to be order and knowledge in the universe, or at least on this earth.

it's too late to worry about much of anything. i've got a sizable project i have to do tomorrow and i don't have any time to do it.

Rage Against The Machine (minus Zack De La Rocha) winning a grammy, and then breaking it.
from left to right: Timmy C. (aka YtimK or Tim Bob), Tom Morello, Brad Wilk.

2-25-01 (17:10)

finally got the bumper on the bug. took longer than expected and proved harder than it should have, such is everything with that car. actually fixing the sending unit was a lot easier than it could have been.

have work in 45 minutes.

the kings lost today, they really need webber back.

isn't much for me to do on the weekends.

it's nice outside today.

i have no problem hanging out by myself and watching movies by myself, but when it comes to doing active type things i can't do them on my own; it's just lame to play frisbee golf alone or go for a walk by myself. i need a girlfriend.

if it wasn't for the last minute i wouldn't get anything done.

one of these days i'm going to get organizized. ha ha.

i need to file an appeal for graduation. i wonder why they call it an appeal...it should just be a request or something less dire than an "appeal."

i don't like the lakers.

certainly isn't much to write about, there's even less happening.

2-25-01 (14:42)

pretty nice metro. the price is actually 500 bucks less than what is listed on the ad.

i knew north carolina was overrated, they lost to virginia by 20 points. losers.

woke up real late today, again. probably should get to doing some school work. might get around to working on the bug. might just end up eating, watching tv, watching city lights, going to work, and sleeping.

life is mostly on the boring side these days.

2-25-01 (01:21)

updated movies list.

i really really look forward to sleeping on the floor every night, as perverse as that is. maybe it's part of my primordial desire to obtain oneness with nature. a return to sleeping on the earth, or something.

i wonder how i did on my nietzsche midterm.

i wonder how i'm going to do on this portfolio/essay project that's due on tuesday.

i wonder how the rest of my life is going to turn out.

i wonder how the trip is going to turn out. i think about it every day and yet it seems so impossible to plan a trip of that magnitude and have it turn out okay. i just keep thinking that something about it isn't going to work out. then again i thought the same thing about the hitchhiking trip.

the past isn't important unless it was a success. it's funny how there is a hypocrisy in lots of sayings like that.

my back is mostly fine now. i'm too young for this shit.

put an ad up for our rooms to be rented out over the summer because neither vern nor i are going to be here july or august. could make the trip debt be more manageable. there will still be debt.

going to rain again tomorrow. strangely i rather have it rain on the weekends than on the weekdays.

the floor calls.

2-24-01 (19:08)

worked for three hours and it turned out to be kinda long for only three hours.

the wind was not fun today.

i plan on working on the car tomorrow...at least taking off the bumper, maybe putting the new one on. need to replace the fuel line from the carb to the fuel filter and then to the fuel pump. one of these days i'm going to adjust the valves and change the spark plugs, maybe adjust the timing, replace the points and condenser, change the oil, and adjust the carb. i need to do those things before i leave this spring break. i really hope that after i do all that the car runs fairly well and gets me to sylmar safely.

everloving is a really really good moby track.

need to talk with vern about subleasing, i've seen ads up for summer subleasing already.

the 76ers lost a heartbreaker to the hornets, that sucks. iverson continues to be the best scorer in the nba. and with shaq's resurgence i don't see kobe threatening iverson for the top scorer position any time soon.

i need to ask myself more often "what would jesus do?" i hope you're laughing.

i'm glad that the xfl ratings aren't doing well.

ucla won today, in overtime. i wish i could see some of these damn games.

had some good breakfast burrito action today.

slept too much today. sleeping on the floor is the shit.

2-24-01 (00:33)

guess vern just went to berkeley today, not santa cruz. that means he got to spend all day with his girlfriend in berkeley spending money he actually has on cds he wants. tough life.

i wonder what it is about me that has always made it tough to have more than just a few friends. that's how it's always been. i'll just have a few friends who i'm pretty close to, but i'll never have a how gang of friends to go out with or socialize with. it's not really a bad thing, as most might think, but it definitely is a fact of my life.

the last time i hung out with phil was 20 days ago, i don't think i've talked to him on the phone since then either. nietzsche would say fuck it, fuck guilt and fuck worrying about it. anton levey would probably say the same thing. i don't know what MLK would say. i don't know what i'm saying.

phil is a lot different now than he once was, and so am i. beyond that i don't know much about anything.

my movie goal has more or less stalled, i'm far less motivated this year.

updated movies list.

i feel like i'm constantly busy, but for the most part i don't do much.

the more i think about it the more i realize that my life is in disarray. i miss too many classes. i'm not motivated to even watch movies. i haven't signed up for the cbest or single subject tests. i sit around on the computer a lot, though i honestly don't do anything other than line up my icons, check the same three or four websites, check my email and update this piece. i dream a lot about the summer trip and having melanie up here one day. i don't feel like doing any reading even with stuff that interests the hell out of me. working on the car is mostly depressing because it feels like it'll never run well again.

whenever i talk to scott i feel like i'm on the defensive. we talked about my car the other day and he asked what was wrong with it and i said that one of the valves was dished. then he asked why i didn't do anything about it. i told him that i don't know how to do it, don't have the tools to do it even if i did, and don't have the money to buy the parts - and certainly not the money to have someone do it all for me. then he told me about some chick at work who replaced her own volkswagen engine. so i guess i'm inept. maybe i'm just a defensive person.

i want to say that i need to get a hold of my life, but as nietzsche so wisely points out, that would be foolish of me. a) it's impossible. b) it denies the excitement of life c) it's impossible and finally d) it's not going to happen so don't try.

i'm a lot less exciting of a person that i used to be. i think i'm more uptight than i once was. i care too much about stupid things like life, politics, injustice, etc. - things that i don't really have control over and which don't really affect me because i'm a middle class citizen who should just be happy with a modest stipend and a good looking wife. "i wish i was like you - easily amused."

run dmc is finally coming out with their new album, the one that was due 16 months ago. it'll undoubtedly, and sadly, suck ass.

as humans we try so hard to make sense of things, find out the rules of the game, and thus, try to also find the goal of the game. the truth is that there aren't any rules, except for the ones we try to make, and there isn't any goal, except those which are given to us by society. the rules come in the form of politics and social structures from norms to actual institutions (religious or otherwise). the goals come from lots of places (marx would say they come from the economic system, max weber would say they come from the political system), but either way they come from society as a whole. we all know what the goals in life are - happiness is a big one and it's usually manifested in consumerism, religious fulfillment, fitting in, looking good, seeming smart, etc.

speaking of which - why do we all call out the answer when we're watching game shows? i'll let you mull it over.

i like what nietzsche says about creating art - that the process is the point (he says this about life as well...). that is to say that the final product doesn't matter so much as the process of creating it does. before luis bunuel died he said that he would be happy to burn all his films, that's rather nietzschean of him, in this way.

"Thank God I'm an atheist"

i wish i could sleep through tomorrow, but i have work and sleeping would deny myself the chance to experience life.

had i gotten drunk tonight, like i planned, then i would have been assured a hang over and thus plenty of rest tomorrow morning. it would have been fun, i would have been the life of the party for once (something that is, and should be, very important to me), i would have considered myself loved by many, i would feel good about myself because i have friends and i'm funny when i'm drunk, i would feel alive because i didn't have the baggage of sobriety weighing me down and holding me back, i would have been far less bored, i would have felt an amazing rush throughout the night, i may have even gotten some poon. the more i think about it the less i understand why i didn't go ahead and do it. i might not be alive tomorrow, there could be an earthquake, i might get hit by a car on my way to work, i may slip in the shower and die, and i wouldn't have had that last hurrah, that last night of fun. i need to start living every moment of my life as if it is the last - thus i must have as much fun as possible. after all, life is about fun.

vern asked what i would do if i only had a few minutes left in my life, he suggested getting laid, but i knew that writing a letter to those i love would be the only thing that i could really think to do at such a time.

so in case i die tomorrow - thank you mom, dad, max, and cliff for being highlights in my life. thank you sarah for being a good and loving person despite your age. thank you melanie for giving me things no one else has. thanks vern, johnny, jon, and phil for being overall pretty nice people to me. with that said i'm going to get high and laid in my farewell to the world, there's no other way i'd like to end my life than listening to the latest limp bizkit album in an orgasmic drunken haze.

2-23-01 (22:48)

i think that life, to nietzsche, is kind of like a game and anything that makes it easier than it is meant to be (religion, drugs, etc.) is considered cheating. there is no final destination, but he who plays the game the best "wins." that's a simplification, but then most anything i say about any philosopher would have to be a simplification.

moby said that when he got to college he realized that no one has actually read kant's "critique on pure reason" all the way through, and anyone who has is insane. i agree and if you've ever tried braving it then you know why. i find reading anything by kant to be mostly impossible, i'm not afraid to admit this. and actually, i'm rather glad because if i understood what he was saying i'd probably be even more depressed than i usually am. moby is cool.

having the place all to myself is really cool because i can finally invite over my friends and not have to worry about vern's overbearing ass breaking up the festivities.

just about every day i goto rei.com and load up a shopping cart full of stuff for the trip, i get to the checkout place and then i cancel the order. i don't think i can do that for 3 more months.

i'm not very good at aimlessly wandering the internet.

2-23-01 (19:09)

the thing about artists like limp bizkit, marliyn manson, and eminem is that they are a symptom of what's happening with society. to ignore or alienate them or their fans doesn't do anything positive. it makes the rejects feel like rejects and what does that accomplish? not much to my line of thinking. this is not to say that we should praise their views on things, but to write them off as crazy or a menace to society doesn't seem to be the right way to go about things. it seems that the best way to get a teenager to listen to a certain kind of music is to tell him/her that they shouldn't.

the kings just won a game in triple overtime by one point. very cool, wish i could have seen it...uncle pete had 40 something points.

i think the way nietzsche addresses things is very useful - who cares whether there is a god or not, because we'll never know, but what does believing in god do for us? what is the value of our values? i think people should address many of life's questions like that. of course the limitation of that type of thinking is in the person's ability to answer the question honestly and as objectively as possible.

balm in gilead is a very good song.

gong to watch unforgiven now.

2-23-01 (15:58)

vern's not here so i think he left for the weekend, that would explain him wanting me to cover for him on sunday.

i was trying to reduce my mp3 collection to less than 850 songs and it's proving rather difficult. there are plenty of songs i don't listen to, but would like to keep around just for fun...stuff like ice ice baby or u can't touch this. then there's stuff that's classic, but i don't listen to - been caught stealin' and land of confusion - stuff along those lines.

wish melanie could have stayed longer.

got a bunch of bills today, including one for car insurance. whoop whoop.

breakfast burritos are still good.

i like sleeping on the floor, there is more space and it's not as uncomfortable as one might think.

when i took that war class i kept thinking to myself how simple it was. simple because the way states interact is the same as the way people interact, for the most part. playground politics get transferred into the global system, sadly, and that makes all the theories on the outbreak of war fairly straightforward.

i think that transparency is very important - both on the international and interpersonal level. that is, when x doesn't know that y has formed an alliance with z, and figures that out later, things could be bad. keeping honest and open communication is important.

i wonder what i'll be viewed as when i'm 30 or 50. actually i wonder how i'm viewed now. if you had three words to describe chris what would they be? issue-laden, fat, indolent...? not that it really matters, but it is interesting.

2-22-01 (15:25)

just took one of the most brutal midterms of my life, the other was also from dungey. i love dungey for it though.

nietzsche was a smart guy, but, as i understand him, he was wrong in some key ways. religion is life-denying and therefore bad, i agree on both counts, but i think he would say the same thing about love (although in different ways), and i can't agree with that. religion is life-denying because it claims an order to a chaotic world, it prescribes ways to live your life, it gives you a moral structure which denies that life changes and that everything comes to an end (it does this in the form of an idea about heaven). love is different because it doesn't deny that things come to an end or that things change, but it makes your "glory" (as machiavelli would refer to it) dependent upon others, and that is life-denying because it denies your existential freedom, your individuality. but balance is necessary, so maybe nietzsche wouldn't disagree with love. he would like the fact that you are so dependent upon another, but love isn't purely dionysian or appollonian so in that sense it provides a good balance. it's hard to please nietzsche, good thing i'm not trying to.

well my brain won't be working for a few more hours so i skipped class. i was 7 or so minutes away from the end of class when i got stuck on thinking of one word (of course i remember it now - existentialism). so for 5 minutes i tried to think of the word, i tried thinking about sports or music or anything to relax my brain, but i couldn't think of it. at this point i knew that i was pretty much done with the test, so i wrote a couple more lines and turned it in. this test could have easily been turned into a 15 page paper and taken 15 hours to organize thoughts, gather information and evidence, and then write. we had 1hr 20mins and no notes or books in front of us.

i'm going to watch a movie now.

2-22-01 (10:49)

it seems that in society, and in our lives really, we keep treating the symptoms of larger problems. i think this is endemic to human nature. it really is characteristic of people to try and chop off every branch of a tree of problems when it would just be, in the long run, far easier to stop watering the tree and pour some root killer on it. something like that. you get my point.

i've got a midterm in 2.5 hours, i shall begin studying for that fairly soon. maybe i'll eat and then study, who knows.

interesting new development - melanie has the car so she's driving up here, that'll be short, but sweet.

i need to get someone to cover my shift tonight.

for the most part my back has been feeling better now that i sleep on the floor every night, but it still feels tight at times. i'm afraid to stretch it because it might make the uncomfort more pronounced.

i'm very down with rahsaan roland kirk.

2-21-01 (22:35)

having knowledge is great, but it doesn't make you great. remembering that is sometimes hard for those who consider themselves smart.

knowledge, at this point, is so accessible that in simple economic terms it is less of an asset. there is less power associated with knowledge now than in the past...there is still a difference in power between those who have it (the informed/educated) and those who lack it (the ignorant). but i think that as things progress - with the internet, the possibility of something that resembles a "global consciousness," etc. - knowledge will not become as important. most anything you want to know is at your fingertips. there are potentially lots of great implications, and there are some (like columbine) which aren't so great. i know how to make a bomb, it's fairly simple and i can find out where to get the supplies as easily as i can get a copy of kubrick's "fear and desire." i'm not saying that death and destruction await the world because information is so readily available, but there are some negative consequences. i'm also not saying that ignorance is good, or even not bad, but it is far more easily overcome than before. and i think that could mean a lot for society.

people who used to pride themselves in knowing a lot about movies or music have been almost ousted by sites like imdb.com or allmusic.com... obviously these people are still useful and others will always look up to people who have a knowledge of things on the top of their head, but to me it seems a lot less impressive now that certain types of knowledge are so easy to come by. what if one day it becomes so easy to get information about certain things that all you have to do is speak the question into your cell phone and have the answer read to you in a matter of seconds. in that scenario it's far easier than actually interacting with people, or reading, or hunting it out.

what happens when information reaches the same status as cars have now...it used to be really cool to have a car, something you could be proud of because not many were fortunate enough to have one. what if knowledge becomes like any other street corner commodity? there was a time when being able to make shoes was a desirable skill, being a blacksmith was an honorable and useful trade, we have machines for that now, i can go to big 5 and get a pair of shoes quicker and easier than you can make them. i don't think that knowledge getting to that point is going to be the end of the world, but i don't like the way it sounds, maybe that's just because i'm trained to value knowledge. maybe i'm too conservative. maybe i'll be 110 years old (thanks to modern science) and complaining to my great great grandchildren about the day when it was cool to know stuff about who directed nosferatu, who he worked with, what style he employed, etc. but there is the distinct possibility that by that time my great great grandchildren pop in "nosferatu" in their little palm pilots and download more information about it than any one person has, and do this with just about anything - from music and movies to nietzsche and the russian revolution.

that's dangerous ground because learning things makes you think and thinking is invaluable. if you only learn as life necessitates, then you won't know what nosferatu is until it comes up and then you'll download the information, and know everything about it, but the information will have been handed to you...you would not have experienced the film. what will the role of college be? for many professions things won't change - doctors, politicians, etc. but being a lawyer, already, has changed drastically because of computers. researching precedents has become a piece of cake because now you can search for "4th amendment + police searches" and you'll come up with all sorts of useful information. the point is that if information ever gets that readily available for the majority of people, which it may or may not - for several reasons, then we could be in for really different times.

incidentally, this 4th amendment stuff that's going on with the police searches and the thermal detectors goes to show you how fragile and arbitrary our legal system really is.

it's dangerous to put too much faith or importance in any one things. what happens when that thing is no longer? people always bring this point up with athletes - "if you get injured what happens then?" but it applies to lots of things. this isn't to say that we should be afraid to be passionate or place importance in anything, but we must always keep in mind (and accept) that it will end one day. things coming to an end is fine, don't be shocked when it happens.

once again balance and diversifying your life proves to be important.

what happens to the christian who meets someone like nietzsche or derrida and they tear that person's entire belief system to shreds in a matter of minutes? their world is turned upside down. maybe they should have thought about things more clearly. but really they should have embraced a wider variety of views in the first place. if you embrace a wide variety of views it's impossible to be torn down. eventually someone smart enough will come along and pick apart nietzsche and all the little wannabe nietzscheans out there will be crushed, that's no different than being a christian or anything else. (as a side note - if you understand nietzsche then you'd never try to emulate his life or become "nietzschean," but i use it as an example of people buying into religion of all sorts - science, christianity, buddhism, philosophy, etc.)

listening to snoop dogg rapping over a rage against the machine instrumental is interesting, i haven't listened to this song in a long time.

i can't wait for the trip.

work was fairly quick. jenna is a freak. she walks in all sullen and down. she tells me that she doesn't like me today so i essentially ignore her. then a few minutes later she leaves and returns with carl's jr. after her first bite into the bacon western cheeseburger she has a smile on her face. i wonder if she realized what she did there. i guess it's better than drugs, but it's not far off. and from what i've gathered from her talking to herself (literally) she used to smoke pot, so that might explain a thing or two about a thing or two - or maybe everything.

vern getting a girlfriend two days before valentine's day after bitching about not having one for god knows how long, is testament to the fact that there is no justice in the world. that's not to say that it's swell, but it's certainly not just in relative terms. of course i have no illusions that the world is fair or just, so it doesn't really jilt me much.

what does freedom do for us? do we have it? what do we do with it? what should we do with it? someone probably has written a rather large book on just those questions. as we all know - we are not truly free. most would think about that and after some thought would agree on some level - there are things that we just need to do, for myriad reasons. many liberals would see that as a horrible injustice of living in this society. at the same time we all know that there are certain freedoms which are best not given. to me, the most interesting aspect of freedom is freedom from norms, or even better - yourself. sure it's a law that we can't yell fire in the theater, but there's no law that says you have to look at yourself in the mirror before you go out so that you are presentable, yet most people do. there are all sorts of "laws" that we have either placed on ourselves or which society has placed upon us. i think that this is all fairly obvious, and as such bears repeating, because that which goes without saying sometimes needs to be said the most. in order to be an artist you have to be good. in order to be free or independent you have to have economic freedom. we've been sold a bag of goods, my friends. and what's worse is that we continually buy into it, we even perpetuate it. this is why i love the parable of the camel, the lion and the child so much - we need to become that child - free from the "laws" of society. the more we live the more we become socialized, trained, and domesticated and thus go farther away from being free.

i'm not saying anything new, i'm just reminding you, because you've forgotten it and you'll forget it by the end of the day. tomorrow you'll wake up and realize that you need to make sure you have enough money to put food on the plate and you have to look a certain way and you have to act a certain way and you can't be ambitious in certain ways....

so what am i advocating? isn't it obvious? go out, right now, and get drunk, get high, walk the streets naked, yell "i am free" while tagging on walls, all to prove to yourself and the world that you are free. that's what i'm advocating. actually that's not what i'm advocating, but that sure is what people have done in the past (and the present) to prove (mostly to themselves) that they're free. i think everyone needs to find a way on their own, but i don't think that any of the ways which were classically employed by hippies (namely free love and drugs) are the right way. drugs for obvious reasons and free love for probably conservative permanently ingrained moral reasons.

the rage against the machine dvd came out yesterday. i'd like to get that and the new bs2000 album sometime.

got a pretty good lead on a 94 metro, it's on the pricey side, and it's an automatic, but other than that it's really nice. i could talk down the price, but not the transmission - obviously.

it's really funny to me when people think they know how the world works. it's even more funny studying poli sci or sociology when these intellectuals try to tell you how things work. they're really just as bad as scientists who keep revising how the universe works - it used to be thought that it was expanding, then it was contracting, then it was staying the same size, now they think it's expanding again...really they don't know what the hell it's doing or what that means. political scientists used to think that x was the best factor for determining how joe blow would vote, now they know it's really y that is the best indicator, tomorrow it'll be z.

at the library we have a billion general chemistry books, but what gets me is how there are always several different years for each book. so they'll have general chemistry by some guy named voet, and they have the 1990, 93, 95, 97 and 2001 editions. how much has science changed in the last 11 years? i really hope that general chemistry hasn't changed that much, i don't think it has. it's gotta be some scheme to fuck students out of their book money. before pastuer came around we knew that mold came from evil spirits which caused growth on organic matter. now we know it's something entirely different. of course we're above mistakes like that by now.

it's 2am and i plan on waking up early tomorrow so i should sleep.

potato is a good night time snack - cheap, filling enough, and tasty.

had top ramen the other day for breakfast - 10 cents a pack and filling enough. it's also warm which is good in the morning. i may have found the answer to all my troubles.

2-21-01 (16:28)

talked to dungey today, so we might soon be on a first name basis, that's pretty nifty. between our talk and my talk with my dad last night i think i understand nietzsche a bit better and am less affected by what he has to say, without fooling myself or conveniently overlooking facts of life. that's good on both accounts.

techno macht spass.

i need to make some phone calls and get some shit done before i go to work at 6pm tonight.

the next time you have a day to yourself drink a gallon of water, your body will thank you.

2-21-01

i think it's really great that we have an economic system that allows, and actually encourages, people to live beyond their means. i just don't agree with how people usually spend their money. i mean for an in debt old grandmother to be able buy her grandson food every month without having to sell her soul is pretty nifty. for me to go into debt so that i can take an amazingly cool trip is also pretty sweet. for me to go into debt to buy a new wardrobe is retarded.

wardrobe is a funny word.

got the window fixed. they thought i was coming tomorrow so i just walked away and he stopped me and basically just said that he'd fit me in today. if i would have left, which i intended to do, then i wouldn't have come back later. i was really angry at that point, i wonder what my face looked like when he said "we had you down for tomorrow."

the car runs quite shitily.

got home ate some chinese food that i bought.

got an email from my girlfriend. got the vw rear bumper today and the postman who delivered it asked if i had a volkswagen (the bumper came in plastic wrapping so he could see what it was). i said that i did. he said "looks like a bumper for a volkswagen." i had no reply, but a smile. nice people are good.

2-20-01 (23:16)

freedom is the most valued, yet seldom used, thing i can think of.

waking up early to get the bug window fixed, that should be annoying and suck really bad if it ends up raining at 7am. hopefully the bug will warm up well tomorrow.

cool picture of the earth at night time. i think the coolest thing about the picture is that you can see how the populations are gathered around certain areas...in egypt they're all along the nile, in russia they're all along the railroad lines, in the mediterranean they're on the coast...

the painting at the bottom of this update is called "Derrida Queries de Man" and if you know who Derrida is then you understand why this painting is so perfect. i think nietzsche would have loved this painting. actually if you read enough into it (which would probably require reading some nietzsche or derrida or probably any other notable post-modernist) then this painting is worth more than a thousand words - it really does sum up post-modernism; at least in one sense.

not to read too much into it, but i really love the color choices and the illegible typing that comprises the mountain and cliff.

updated mp3 list.

got a midterm and a short paper back today, one for sociology the other for film class.

didn't miss any class today.

called my sister and wished her a happy birthday.

talked to my dad and he actually asked me about graduation, that was pretty amazing. talked with him about nietzsche as well, he's always got something intelligent to say. i wish i was more like that.

i should sleep now since i have to wake up early tomorrow.

film teacher said he didn't like jarmusch's "dead man." i was surprised by that because for the most part he has really good taste.

to me the thing about art is that it doesn't have to be everything at once, and i'm growing to appreciate that more and more...which seems to be the opposite of what happens to most people i know who study it. most people i know have grown more and more elitist about art the more they study it, i think that is sad. for the most part i don't like elitism, though i'm guilty of it at times, just like anyone else. at any rate, art, to me, can and should be appreciated at several levels. the pop level, the respectable mid-level art, and the high art level. most simpletons discard the high art level (the avant-garde, or experimental, anything different) as annoying shit that has no point - they just can't appreciate it. most elitists discard the pop level art as simple and for the masses and thus not worthy of being labeled "art."

i used to fit into that last category, up until about 9 months ago or so when i started questioning myself (gasp!). it's nice to be able to watch a well done, but not really artistic action flick and have fun with it. it's nice to be able to listen to some pop music which doesn't have any real artistic point, doesn't revolutionize things...it just is. this is not to say that people should discriminate. there are some things which are obvious productions of the pop machine, whether it be of the hollywood or boy band variety. but there are some movies, pieces of music, etc. which can have a pop feel, look, or sound without being completely insulting to one's intelligence.

i'll use Mission Impossible 2 as an example since it was a movie which i kinda liked on the action level the first time i saw it, but was overall disappointed by. after i watched it a couple more times and was able to just suspress my educated instinct to rail on it, i found myself enjoying it. i didn't like it on the same level that i liked M or paths of glory, but i liked it nonetheless. at the same time i didn't like something like "The Man With The Movie Camera" on the same level as something like paths of glory. they're just different kinds of movies. my favorite movies are movies which, to me, are great on all of those levels. the greatest movies draw you in on the first viewing, without much effort, and keep you satisfied with every viewing thereafter.

i guess what it really comes down to is balance. i've said it before, but it bears repeating - life is about balance and art is no exception. you can jizz all over the chordal progression of some beatles tune or gawk at how they start a song with the chorus instead of the first verse, but if you can't enjoy a simple pop tune once in a while then i pity you.

i'm going to listen to some uninventive pop music and go to sleep.

2-20-01 (01:05)

the guitar introductions to "because" and "i want you (she's so heavy)" are really similar.

don't look at yourself in the mirror today. tomorrow look at yourself in the mirror for 15 minutes straight.

going to sleep on the floor again tonight.

saw scott today and he asked if i had lost weight. that's probably a bad sign on two levels - he hasn't seen me in a long time and i'm losing weight. i don't have a scale so i don't know. i'm going to buy cheese tomorrow so i can start having sandwiches.

finally updated my mp3 list...it's ridiculous now. i have over 65 hours of mp3s. 880 total.

the inside of my left ear always bugs me when i lay down to go to sleep.

i miss melanie.

it's my sister's birthday today.

i'm going to have cup o' noodles knock off for breakfast tomorrow.

2-19-01 (21:50)

the i have a dream speech should have been called the let freedom ring speech. first of all he says the phrase "let freedom ring" almost as much as "i have a dream," secondly it sounds better, and lastly it comes at the climax of the speech.

work was better today than yesterday. so was my back.

slept in my rectangular sleeping bag instead of the mummy bag, much more free to move. i like sleeping with my legs curled up and i can't do that with the mummy bag.

i just ate a candy heart that said "got love"

my watch band is kinda broken. i just need to buy a new outdoors type watch. i'm thinking about one of the ironmen timex watches. should be cheap enough.

updated movies list.

tomorrow shouldn't be so bad.

i'm going to need to set aside some serious time to study and catch up.

2-19-01 (02:22)

chris berman (espn football analyst, history major, and all around cool guy) once was talking about the two phases of football - the modern times and the old times, essentially. he dubbed the modern times as the post-montana era...joe montan, of course. and i think that pretty well summed up the impact of joe on football. although joe was more likely the perfect tool for bill walsh, so maybe it should be called the post-walsh era, but either way it marks a difference because of a particular player. in basketball maybe it would be dr. j...that's who immediately pops into my head anyway. at any rate...

for me there is the post-melanie era...after i met melanie i think a lot of my life took a change. now it was building for a while, the summer job, the dungey introduction to philosophy, the self-thought, etc, but only after melanie did things seem to really change.

i once said, and believe i'll stick by it still, that any professional athelete who gets married is probably doing his atheletic side a disservice. the notable exception would be jordan, but he's the exception to all rules. the reason being that once you have someone who's going to be there no matter what you lose the urgency of winning. for a lot of these atheletes winning is everything and if they don't win then they're failures. but i think that would change once they have someone to love. all of a sudden the urgency of victory is lessened. i'm not saying that's a bad thing, it certainly isn't bad at all.

it's almost as if love and that kind of competitive spirit inherent within so many professional atheletes are diametrically opposed...almost like democracy and capitalism. ;)

maybe i'm simplifying the situation. i'm making generalizations about atheletes and love and competitive spirit. so don't listen to me.

democracy and capitalism still don't get along. democracy - equality, compromise is key, classes are bad and breed non-participaion... capitalism - freedom to be unequal, competition is good, leads to separation of classes...

it's too late to think about this stuff.

2-18-01 (22:36)

i think that when interpreting any piece of art work the interpreter should begin their essay with the words "to me..." it just kind of annoys me when people assume they know what the artist meant to do with this symbol or that image. it's not actually that it bugs me so much that people do it, because everyone does it, but when they do it pompously or over-confidently then it bugs. the reason i got to thinking about this might explain it better...there are people out there who would guarantee they know what the beatles song "come together" is about. when the fact of the matter is that only a couple lines have any meaning (and not much at that) and the rest, according to lennon, is "gobbledygook."

so my real point seems to be that i'm annoyed by people who think they know it all, but that's pretty much a universal sentiment. i see it manifested through elitism in art the most. so that's why i mentioned it in that context.

obviously i've been listening to a lot of beatles lately.

nietzsche midterm on thursday. that'll be interesting. i have yet to talk with dungey.

need to make a list of things i need to do. talk to dungey. sign on for the CBEST, SSAT, and PRAXIS tests in april or june. need to call dad. need to call car leads.

i average 7 hits a day now...at least that's what the total average since the inception of the page is. but it's a lot like my gpa - no matter how much better it gets making it look good probably isn't going to happen. once you're in the hole you never really get all the way out. i probably averaged .2 hits a day for a year, so the fact that it's up to 7 now is pretty amazing.

someone from UCI keeps visiting my site.

six more hours of work tomorrow. i think we got our raise last monday so all these hours are pretty nice to have. the paycheck after the next is going to be pretty sweet. penultimate is second to last...is there a word for the one after the next? it's not really the second paycheck. it's the one following the following paycheck. maybe i'm forgetting something, that wouldn't be a first.

watched some depressing commercials today - i think it was gateway that butchered blur's "tender" - funny thing about that was that i noticed it before vern. that's not really funny because i have listened to that song more than anyone should have a right to. some other commercial destroyed "come together." then there is target which killed devo's "beautiful world." then there was another commercial which had a not-so-good moby rip-off which proves the point he made when he said (roughly) "i may as well let them use my music because if i don't then they'll hire someone else to make a bad copy of it. and at least this way i can sell my music to a car company, take the money they give me and give it to an environmental group which is against car companies." i don't think he's selling out in the least.

i like the way the beastie boys sampled (on paul's boutique) the beatles guitar riff from "the end."

if i could just fast forward my life by a month then things would be better. i guess i would have missed one of my finals and that would have sucked, but other than that it would be cool.

i finally ended up paying the county for that overdue ticket. those bastards.

forgot, until now, to update the rainy days counter. supposed to rain 4 out of the next 5 days.

finally updated the poll.

2-18-01 (18:24)

work was long.

nietzsche has this parable of a camel, a lion and a child in the desert. the camel is a beast of burden - burdened to carry all of things that hold us back everyday, across the desert. things that hold us back like thinking we're not good enough, we should be doing more, we're not where we should be in life, we should look better, own this or that, etc. - everything that comes with being domesticated by society. the lion , according to the parable, comes after living for a while and realizing that those values impressed upon us are largely based upon bullshit and that many of our values don't have value for us. so the lion devours the camel. the problem with the lion is that it is too wild and doesn't create anything but destruction. the child openly creative, innocent, has no baggage. if one ever gets to this point one is free from the constraints of self and society...no longer do you go to work every day for the man while suppressing your desire to create - whether through ceramics or music or any art. but being as innocent and ignorant of society's constraints which keep others down is extremely difficult.

i really like that parable because it describes fairly well what a lot of college students go through. college seems to be the place where we realize all these things and start to question the last 18 years of our life. whether we decide to dumb our boyfriends and become mormon or recreate ourselves for ourselves - without religion, self-help books, etc. - is another story.

so go outside and play in the rain because you can and because people have told you not to your entire life.

i was thinking last night what one can truly be proud of...grades? good looks? a nice car? hard work? profound thought? all of those can work to varying degrees...you have to work for a nice car, some need to work for good looks or grades, thinking is useful and seems to be rare these days, but i think that recreating yourself is something that one can be truly proud of. a pretty nietzchean principle, recreation is. and i think he was onto something. because if our society valued arm-fart musicians as highly as it does basketball players then the world would be turned upside down. i remember the first time i thought about that...i was in high school on an outrun and i thought that it was cool that i was good at running. but then i thought to myself - what if being good at running was viewed the same way as being good at cat's cradle or patty cake or something lame like that? in a way it's different, but what i'm saying is that grades, sports, and nice cars and that stuff makes one feel good about themselves because it's valued by society. i don't know why those things are valued by society - possibly because it's a sign of hard work, but that's not always true. so maybe the only thing someone can be truly proud of is freeing themselves from themselves. from devouring the camel. from recreating themselves...however you want to put it.

i don't know if i buy all that, but it's a thought.

"because" is a very good beatles song.

"bring it on home" is an equally good led zeppelin song. from now on when i think of a good beatles song i'm going to come up with an equally good led zeppelin song, starting with the same letter. "something" by the beatles "stairway to heaven" by led zeppelin. "rocky raccoon" by the beatles "rock and roll" by led zeppelin.

slept on the floor for only part of the night. i've very picky when it comes to sleeping and that sucks. i'm going to have to train myself to sleep in more arduous conditions.

this metro looks pretty phat. 4 cylinders even. 1995 is the best year.

kings lost to the jazz, that saddens me very much.

dale earnhardt died while racing at daytona.

2-18-01 (00:33)

celtics beat the blazers. the celtics have what it takes, for next year.

same deal for me tomorrow - 6 more hours of work. whoop whoop.

rented 5 movies tonight, but here's why - i borrowed "the apartment" from my dad over the break and finally got around to watching it today. 2 hours through the movie it cuts out and starts rewinding. as it turns out it was at the end of the tape - my dad didn't end up taping the whole movie. so i rented it to watch what turned out to be the last 4 minutes of the movie. luckily it was well worth it.

updated movies list. i'm definitely going to need to check out some more billy wilder - so far i've liked everything i've seen of his - stalag 17, sunset blvd., apartment, and double indemnity.

my back feels better, but still tight. it sucks. might sleep on the floor tonight.

when are the fucking beastie boys going to tour or release an album or something? dammit.

"a simple prop to occupy my time" - REM...that reminds me of my ramblings on "hallway" friends.

i'm a pretty lucky guy to have found melanie.

i'm also lucky to have been raised my my mom.

i have work in 10 hours, i shall be sleeping soon.

the beastie boys will end any bad mood ever. i think the same goes for stevie wonder.

is the art in the creation or the interpretation? both? 02:02

2-17-01 (18:21)

it's nice to be desired, by pretty much anyone.

republicans amaze me. i've given them an honest shot at redemption, but they consistently piss me off. recent reasons 1 and 2.

got another credit card in the mail. america can be great sometimes.

i'd like to get around to tuning up the bug sometime soon.

well those xfl games, judging by the scores, seem really exciting....at the half one game is tied 6-6 the other is 6-0.

the beastie boys are the shit.

vern pulled a jorgay today...i open my creamy butter container and see a about a billion bread crumbs left in the container on top of the butter - he obviously had to butter his bread. the only reason i didn't promptly take a dump on his computer was (actually there are two reasons) 1) he's hooked on the tony hawk video game so he'd probably see me pulling my pants down and stop it there. 2) i figure that since he left me enough bread crumbs to make a couple slices of bread, it's a fair trade. vern's a funny guy. i remember when jorgay did the same thing...i distinctly remember the look on his face when he came home with a pile of chris poop on his desk. it was great fun.

if i was in a frat you'd probably believe me.

2-16-01 (22:40)

it's nice to see the sacramento kings getting their due - they made the cover of SI this week. the article talks about kings basketball being fun, exciting and pure. it's good stuff, old news for me, but it's nice to know that sports illustrated has finally caught onto something those of us up here have known for the past few years - the kings are the most fun team in basketball. in my opinion the most fun team used to be the knicks, though in a different way. tonight the kings rocked the nuggets - 117-84, despite webber being out. shoulda seen that one.

my room is a sty.

tomorrow i work for 6 hours. that's 6 hours of time to read or study, let's see if i take advantage of that.

i'm not very goal oriented.

the internet is boring. boh-ring.

i bought expensive type stuff today - razors are more expensive than i would have thought, and i bought two of just about everything i got. so now i have plenty of toothpaste and shaving cream and such. for some reason all that is at the fore of my mind.

2-16-01 (20:39)

because factoids are fun:

Number of electric cars owned by Americans in 1912: 34,000

Number of electric cars owned by Americans in 1997: Roughly 2,300

Top Five U.S. Coastal Debris Items

1. CIGARETTE BUTTS

2. PLASTIC PIECES

3. FOAMED PLASTIC PIECES

4. PLASTIC FOOD BAGS/WRAPPERS

5. PLASTIC CAPS/LIDS

Forty percent of deaths worldwide are caused by pollution and other environmental factors, according to Cornell University scientists.

The equivalent of ten city blocks of rainforest is destroyed every minute, that's an area the size of Pennsylvania lost every year.

A bulldozer must remove 60 rainforest trees to reach one mahogany tree.

There are 100 different species of large trees in a single acre of rainforest.

Every week more than 500,000 trees are used to produce the two-thirds of newspapers that are never recycled.

ate some tortellini tonight with really good pasta sauce that melanie picked out. i'm still hungry.

my mom recycles more than you do, guaranteed.

i guess the point i'm trying to make is this: the earth is strained and the environment is fucked. just think about flushing the toilet every other time you take a leak or taking one less shower a week or using a cloth towel to dry your hands instead of a paper towel. then think about if half the country did that...it comes down small diffuse costs and large concentrated benefits.

2-16-01 (19:31)

if the average commuter passenger load in the u.s. were increased by just 1 person per day we would save 3 million gallons of gas each day.

what greenpeace spends in a year general motors spends in 4 hours.

in europe 50% of the cars still use leaded gas.

over 8 million tons of oil are spilled into the world's oceans every year.

5 billion gallons of water are flushed each day in the united states.

sewage treatment facilities in the u.s. discharge 5.9 trillion gallons of sewage wastewater into coastal waters every year.

1 billion animals are killed each year in experiments.

1 ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, and enough energy to heat the average home for 6 months.

enough wood and paper is thrown away each year in america to heat 1 billion houses for a year.

six times more jobs are created by recycling as by landfill operations.

the amount of money spent on trash disposal in american schools is equal to that spent on new textbooks.

americans throw away 10 million cigarette lighters every week.

500,000 people die of cigarette related diseases in the u.s. each year.

pesticides that are banned in the u.s. (such as ddt) are regularly sold to 3rd world countries.

americans spend 6 billion dollars on their lawns each year.

more money is spent in the u.s. on nuclear weaponry in one year than was spent on housing from 1980-1992.

to date, cleaning up storage facilities for nuclear debris has cost taxpayers 200 billion dollars.

in 1989 the u.s. military used 200 billion barrels of oil, enough to keep all american public transit systems running for 22 years.

1 ton of toxic waste is produced by the u.s. military every minute.

i'm going to watch seinfeld now.

turn off lights if you're not using them.

buy green forest brand toilet paper and paper towels.

2-16-01 (17:01)

today was the fifth of at least thirteen consecutive days with some work. the next three days i have 6 hours of work each day.

got a pretty good song called "rock the house" sounds like something that negativland or evolution control committee would make - spliced a bunch of bill clinton quotes so he says weird stuff like "so here's my tool, larger and harder than ever." it's pretty funny.

had a 1994 geo metro that i was looking at - only 55K miles on it, good condition, he had the maintenance records, etc. for $1750. sadly it was sold last night. i would have liked to get that one. what was even better was that it was in LA so i wouldn't have had to pay shipping costs. oh well.

"happiness is a warm gun" is a very good song, i just wish it didn't make doing heroin seem so fun. to my immediate knowledge led zeppelin didn't have any songs which glamorized drug use; and certainly not as many as the beatles. fucking beatles. led zeppelin still owns them.

i want all the beatles albums.

the u.s. and britian decided to start bombing baghdad again. whoopie.

got a bunch of food today. i'm going to go eat some.

2-16-01 (01:30)

class early tomorrow. class on friday sucks, especially when it's the earliest class of the week.

saw some extremely funny stuff on conan tonight. the insult dog (actually a hand puppet) was on and i laughed for 5 minutes straight - the kind of laughter that makes you cry and hurt and lose your breath. it was just fantastic. the last time i laughed that hard was probably while watching south park the movie. i need to own that.

i thought i had some news, but for the most part i don't remember what i've done on any given day.

jon is a bad influence on me, but while we skipped class we talked about nietzsche and so the time wasn't ill spent. i also got a free chicken quesadilla out of it.

i'm not going to miss any more classes for a while.

now that i picked up two more sub type shifts at work for this week my next paycheck will be over 200 bucks again. i think the raise kicks in after this last paycheck, too; so that's good news.

speaking of money - my checkbook register has a positive number in the balance column for the first time in over three months. it's also likely to stay that way for a while.

i've definitely got to sublet my room this summer - two full months worth of income for a room i'm not living in would be nice. naturally i'm going to have to store all my stuff, but i was going to need to do that anyway.

checked up on the dmv website how much a $2500 car would cost to get registered, it seems that i'd be able to do it for under 200 bucks. 175 in a use tax, 15 for transferring the ownership, and as long as i get the smog certificate then that should be it. that's good news.

now that i eat on somewhere around 3 bucks a day, it makes me value one hour of work a lot more. before i would think that taking a two hour shift was pretty worthless - it's only like 12 bucks, that won't even buy a cd. it does buy about 22 lbs of rice though. and it is almost a full work week's food budget. so i picked up another couple shifts tonight. the supervisor made a comment about my picking up so many shifts so i told her about the trip.

UCLA beat arizona today, in overtime. ucla should be ranked after that victory.

i still don't have a good list of non-museum or national park type sites to see for the trip...stuff like niagara falls or central park or mt. rushmore. that's me asking for suggestions.

since a few people have asked - 42 to was a reference to the douglas adams book wherein this super dooper machine spits out the meaning to life = "42." so the answer to life is 42. funny huh?

i should get some sleep. 02:02.

2-15-01 (03:01)

i wonder how i'd respond if i had a friend who wrote all the weird shit that i seem to write on this page. for the most part people don't even mention it, i don't know if that's a good thing.

you know what's annoying is when you send someone an email and you talk about all sorts of things and they reply, but it's like they didn't even read your last email. it's not even worthy of being called a "reply."

this mormon chick who went to my high school emailed me the other day. she's about as happy as they get. ignorance in the right areas will do that to a person. i hope that she never reaches the same conclusions as i have because she'd probably be a less motivated and useful person.

i really should go to sleep before 1am from now on because my brain's chemicals just fuck me up too much past midnight. serratonin? i think that's what it's called.

firesign theater are pretty great.

there are two big pieces of news everyone seems to be bringing up: the break up between nicole kidman and tom cruise and the napster ruling. i guess the thousands of darkies who died in india was last week's news.

it's a good thing everyone knows that i'm not a bastard, otherwise that line would be taken completely wrong. i probably set myself up for stuff like that too much. i wonder what people at work think of me. i wonder what peoples' impression of me is after only knowing me for a short while.

i haven't put any money in the savings since before christmas. so for three months of looking forward to the trip i haven't saved a damn cent.

it feels like i've done a lot of updating in the last couple days.

i wonder how many couples are getting laid tonight. i wonder how many couples had a fight tonight. i wonder what the sum worth of valentine's day is. it makes some people feel really special and some pretty bad. the thing is that it makes people who already have a significant other feel good (usually) and makes those who are single feel bad (for the most part). it's really a pretty worthless holiday. it does bolster the economy, but at this point everyone takes into account holidays in their budget, so rather than a holiday being a bonus, it's just built in. i think that the federal reserve should get rid of all the economy boosting holidays - from valentine's day to christmas - and use other holidays in their place. the only difference is that they should use them as and economic tool - as needed, rather than built into the calendar. because everyone knows that at the end of the year the economy is going to do better because of christmas, but the news reports are always to the effect of "the holiday boost hasn't been as significant as expected..." and it seems to me that if businesses weren't relying on holidays so much that we'd probably be better off. of course i'm not a good example - every time i make up a budget for december i add an income column for "xmas gifts." my grandma in fresno always sends me a check and my dad is almost always too lazy to actually buy anything, so i know i'm going to get some cash, and i rely on that.

in practical terms my suggestion has no real merit, but it was a nice thought exercise.

i really like the western style whistling sound that tupac uses in "ambitionz az a ridah." i don't like that he misspells just about every song title. eazy-e is even worse when it comes to spelling song titles.

it's hard to believe that just a few days ago i was in LA, with melanie, with my grandparents, with my mom and sister. seems like a really long time ago. time is lame.

charlize theron made a fool of herself on tv tonight. she was on the jay leno show and was tipsy. i'll never ever understand being tipsy or drunk, it just doesn't compute for me.

Breathe
"Breathe, breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care
Leave, but don't leave me
Look around and chose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be"

Run, run rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to start another one
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race toward an early grave.

Time
"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
And shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation in the English way
The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say"

maybe i'm just a simpleton, but that is real poetry to me.

it's almost 4am which means i should get to sleep so i don't miss class tomorrow, that would be bad news.

i'm pretty happy that i was able to fix the gas gauge on malcolm.

2-15-01 (01:11)

bdp is strangely addicting. something about their beats i think.

conan is the best of the late night shows, but that's obvious.

a faster internet connection would be nice, but then i'd get spoiled.

i'm content with modem speed connections, ugly houses, boring classes, etc. it seems like most of the time i don't complain about things in my immediate environment as much as others. but when it comes to things outside of my control it's different. kinda reminds me of the woman in "sex, lies and videotape." it's not that i don't complain about things, but it seems like i complain about things which aren't as immediate or personal. maybe i shouldn't be content with ugly carpets and annoying teachers. nevermind that, i complain plenty, just about different things.

2-14-01 (22:27)

today has been pretty shitty overall. i got stuff done, but mostly rotted away in bed until around 2:30pm and i didn't even go to sleep that late.

work was lame. jenna is an annoying person.

questioning just about everything i do or think is supposed to be good, it's supposed to make me better, but really it's just made me mad; both in the sense that i'm going insane and in the sense that i'm angry. but it's a pandora's box, i can't just stop questioning things around me, things that i think or do. it would be easier if i did, but i don't think i should. suicide is easy, but i'm not going to choose that. taking drugs is easy, i'm not going to do that. buying into other peoples' conceptions of good or right is easy, but i'm not going to choose that either.

there is a book at work entitled "life is hard." duh.

got a hit the other day for "casablanca fan"

picked up another 5 hours of work this week. saturday, sunday, and monday i work 6 hour shifts. that's no bonus at the library, but it'll give me money to spend on a trip which is getting ridiculous at this point.

if i didn't go on the trip work during the summer and make money instead of spending it. i wouldn't have to eat rice or pasta every day. i wouldn't have to hear shit about metros being bad cars. i wouldn't have to do any planing and could overall just relax.

what would be really neat is if i could just sell everything i have and just live like a bum for the rest of my life. i know that i'm romanticizing it, but you have to admit that aside from the cold nights and not knowing where you're going to sleep the next night, a life like that would be really really great. i could reinvent myself completely. i could REALLY shed the material things that control ALL people on a daily basis. i could go wherever my next ride took me. i'd live life like the world meant for it to be lived. if there is a god then i'd be watched over and if i died then it would be meant to be anyway. spending wet cold nights in the gutter would build character, while being on my own and living life for myself would make me a stronger person.

doing something like that would probably be really great overall, but would also be extremely hard to actually do. i'll wait until my life falls apart and then it'll be easier to do.

2-14-01 (17:25)

besides movies and music (because they're too general), the things that have made me cry the most:

my self-image.

my dad.

thinking about how horrible the world is.

thinking about bad things happening to melanie.

losing the ex-girlfriend.

tupac.

in other news...got out of bed quite late today and skipped class. i've got work in half an hour, i plan on going to that.

it's pretty nice outside.

ordered some more maps from AAA

set up an appt. with the bug shop to get the window fixed, that's what credit cards are for.

bought a cheap phone today.

been getting a lot fewer updates than usual in the last couple days.

filled up the bug and discovered that i did indeed fix the sending unit - the gas gauge now officially works. yay.

i've got a really strong desire to fix my problems myself. no drugs, no shrinks, no self-help books. the merits of that stance are still yet to be known.

2-13-01 (23:40)

"He was a wise man who invented God." - Plato

no one can say with any real certainty that they know what they know and that it is true or real. everything can be deconstructed and picked apart to death, or at least to serious doubt. but the saying that "absence of proof isn't proof of absence" goes both ways. on the one end you have a firm belief in x or y and on the other you have a doubt of everything - god, yourself, feelings, existence, etc. so what happens in the middle? i guess that's what you have to figure out for yourself. the truth is that you can't know anything for certain. from there it's up to you what to do...but no matter what you choose i think it's a rationalization. rationalization has a negative connotation (as it usually should), but in case i think it's just the truth of the matter - neither good nor bad. so then is it even necessary to know that the life you are living is a rationalization? ignorance, in this case, certainly is bliss...it makes rationalizing your beliefs far easier, it gives you more to latch onto.

if you don't think about things too much and if you don't seriously challenge everything around you then you won't come to the conclusion that everything you think you know or feel is real, really can't be proven. that ignorance is functional, this much is certain. why can't anything be proven to be true without a doubt, some might ask. well i'm no deconstructivist, maybe you should read some kant or nietzsche or derrida or other post-modernists, but most things i think are real i've been able to cast at least some shadow of doubt on. how do i know that love is real? there are those who would claim it is only a trick of the mind that allows for guilt free procreation, or is functional in other ways - it's not real in it's origins, other than being a means to an end. from my brief knowledge of kant he would say that anything that one perceives is only their perception of the thing and one can't be certain it is the way it is because everything is subject to interpretation - from desks to love to god. your interpretation is subject to all sorts of things - personal experience, environment, etc. it's all a great mind fuck.

so if one is really rational and looks at the function of all these things and bases their worth upon their function then what happens? belief in a higher power and many of the things that usually go with that - a belief in higher authority than that on earth, a belief that there is a right and a wrong, a belief in justice (whether this be manifested in heaven and hell or the Amish belief that those who work hardest will be the best off in their next life (or is it their afterlife?) or karma or any number of structures which religions design to give followers a sense of justice). believing in all that certainly makes life easier - you usually question less around you, you know right from wrong because it's prescribed in the koran, the bible, etc., you have a feeling that for all the piss and shit on this earth there is something greater out there - something greater to be aimed for - if you're mormon then you're aiming to one day be god of your own planet...all of those beliefs serve a definite function individually. i think they also serve a function publicly - if the preponderance of the populous believe that killing is bad, loving thy neighbor is good, etc. then norms are established, there is order. how people deal with deviance is a whole other question which is really interesting - do they claim heretics are witches and burn or drown them? do they attempt to convert them and kill those who rebel or resist? homogeneity sure is useful and functional and pleasant.

aside from religion or views on "god," what function does creating a world, which you know you can't prove to be real, serve? simply, it makes life livable. if you are constantly reminding yourself of the utter chaos and uncertainty of life and the world then surely you won't be able to live a sane life. at this point you should either kill yourself and get it over with or tell yourself a "noble lie" (as plato used in the republic) to substantiate existence. even nietzsche seems to acknowledge the necessity of some "illusion" or convenient creation of tangible truth. even though you know that nothing you "know" can ever really be known or true or real, you take a leap and make a floor to stand on - something you can base the rest of your reality on, knowing the whole time that the floor isn't really there. maybe that analogy doesn't work.

i think that a lot of theologians talk about "faith." that's pretty key because they know that nothing can be proved, and one must have faith in order to make things work. some people talk about a "leap of faith" - something that is required for any belief, whether it be the big bang, or the christian view of the world or what not. that faith is the floor i was talking about. you've got to make that floor, or take that leap in order for everything else to fall into place. what makes it interesting is what leap people choose to take - why they claim allegiance to that one as opposed to another. everyone is different, that's key, certainly, but beyond that what's interesting is how each defends their position. i don't believe in the death penalty. why do i claim that killing isn't good under all circumstances? why do i claim that there is probably a higher power out there, but it doesn't have control over my life, i'm not fated to do anything, there isn't a grand plan, etc.? i don't know. i can't back up my claim with any certainty, much of my beliefs are like that, and yet i stand by them. it's wrong to do wrong by friends or other people - why? it just is. even if they've done wrong by you? yes. why? it just is. this whole line of thought can be extrapolated throughout our lives - our thoughts on religion, politics, drugs, right vs. wrong, abortion, etc. from big to small and everything in between.

"i know that i know nothing" - socrates

absence of proof isn't proof of absence.

"get busy living or get busy dying"

language and words are really annoying at times. i don't like the word "god" because all these ideas of a christian conception of god come flooding into my mind. if someone asks me if i believe in god i always answer "i believe in a higher power." people usually say "well that's what i meant" or the like, and i can understand that, but i just want to make sure that i say it the way i really mean it - without the baggage of the word "god."

this pretty much goes for all labels. i buy into a lot of the stuff that marx says and a lot of the stuff nietzsche says, but i'd never call myself a marxist or nietzschean. this goes for politics as well - i'm not a leftist, i'm not a member of the green party (though i did register as such, though for different reasons -- i want the green party registration to be higher, i feel it sends a message, just like voting does, but i digress...), i'm not christian (though i believe that loving thy neighbor is good and killing is bad), etc. i understand that labels are easy...if i say that i'm a post-modernist nietzschean member of the green party one might get a good idea of what i think and feel...it's a lot easier to say that then to spell out my stance on all issues. i still resist labels, though, because they have lots of baggage. i consider myself a feminist because i think that women are persecuted based upon their sex, i feel that gender roles are detrimental - to both males and females, i feel that women should be treated like human beings, and i want things to change. beyond that i don't know what meaning being a "feminist" has - to some it might evoke an image of a militant hairy woman who wants women to be spelled womyn....there are numerous permutations of "feminist" thought and by calling myself a feminist i fear that i might fall into a category that i don't agree with. labels and words can be annoying and cumbersome.

this argument can be extended beyond labels regarding political or theological alignment - "car" to one person means something completely different than to another, but for the most part we have a picture of what a car is - four wheels, an engine, a basic shape, etc. language is a lot like rousseau's social contract. obviously when we're born we don't literally sign a contract saying that we will coexist in this political system with a mutual respect for each other and obey the laws of the land, yet it is assumed that we all have agreed to the social contract. the same goes for language - it's assumed that when i say car you'll be thinking of basically the same vehicle as i am. we buy into these norms for the sake of utility and for the most part they work, yet no one has actually consciously "signed" onto these norms in the sense that one would with an actual contract. we've never really agreed that from now on a car will be "a four wheeled vehicle with an engine of some sort in the general shape of this..."

got an email from my mom saying that it snowed at home, that's pretty cool. i think it was about 12 years ago (when i was in 4th grade) that it last snowed there. when we moved it they said it snowed there about every 10 years, so that would be pretty accurate. i had to go to school that day, that part sucked, but i remember there was snow on the bug the whole hour long drive into town.

going on the trip this summer is going to be very cool.

vern was a good companion on the hitchhiking trip, but i think that melanie will be an even better one on this trip. no hard feelings, vern, i'm sure you understand.

i don't talk about melanie very much on this here "journal," then again i don't talk much about anyone. i talk about my parents at times, but that usually comes out wrong and i get grilled for it. i talk about george w. bush almost as much as i talk about melanie, at least here.

basically i just wish she was here so we could hang out and talk about george w. together, or so we could watch "the mole" together and laugh at humanity's proclivity towards the outrageously retarded. i have more fun with her than i do by myself.

i'm usually fairly able to keep myself entertained, i'm not talking masturbation. i'm talking wandering around my room, coming up with plans for my life, planning the trip, working on little projects, thinking, updating this piece, listening to music, wasting my life on the computer, etc. with my friends there are limits to the entertainment i can get...maybe i can't have fun in situations a and b, but can have fun in situations x and y. or maybe there is just a finite time that i can be with certain people before we start to annoy each other. that's not the case with melanie.

vern's got a girlfriend now.

tomorrow i get paid, should be a good sized paycheck, the next paycheck won't be as big though because i took time off for the trip south.

hoping to get some things down tomorrow. going to warm malcolm up and take him for a spin. might buy a cheapo phone because cordless phones are pretty much worthless; at least mine is.

wednesdays are usually pretty good. class from noon to 130 which gets me up at a good time. then i have a big break until work which goes from 6-10.

had a lot of fun on my bike today. riding my bike is always fun, even when it's raining or windy i still beat everyone and i'm still better at bike riding than most. it's still a great source of confidence. there's no way in hell i'd be good at biking more than a couple miles and there's no way that i'd beat anyone with real bike riding talent, but being better than everyone else on the road gives me a false self-confidence which is still fun.

in trying to be less socialized i dismiss the things that lame consumerism culture purport as sources of worth - how many toys you have (from a cool minidisc player to over 500 cds), getting good grades or going to college, earning money, etc. while i dismiss those accomplishments as being culturally important, but not nearly as important to me, i forget to replace them with validly good things about myself. things like being a nice person or a good son or the like. that's where i've been failing...i've been acknowledging that society's conception of worth and goodness is largely based on bullshit, but i haven't been replacing the good feeling i once got from doing fairly well in school (without trying very much) with another good feeling which is based upon something that matters. so i was left with emptiness and negativity. this maybe tantamount to a moment of clarity.

it's probably about time for me to go to sleep.

2-13-01 (20:11)

just took my film quiz, that went well enough.

i hope to get a lot done tomorrow. saw a counselor today and i should be fine in regards to my major. i don't think i'll need to take an 8am class, so that's good news.

allen iverson is stepping it up big time lately.

so i guess valentine's day is tomorrow. i just can't seem to get it right...either i don't have a girlfriend, or i have one and she's 400 miles away. either way valentine's day is shitty.

i want school to be done. can't wait until i graduate and get to just do nothing but sleep for a few days. then go on the trip, then work off my debt by working for the man, then become a teacher or something. either way i'm going to be working for the rest of my life. that's life though.

i'm not very hungry, though i should be. maybe i'll whip something up.

2-13-01 (02:31)

rain song is easily one of the most powerful songs of all-time.

i should get to bed.

2-13-01 (00:57)

been real short on time lately.

worked out a really tentative timetable the trip tonight. it at least got me thinking about how long we should be able to spend in each place - more or less.

i miss melanie a lot already. this is going to be a long second half of school.

my schedule next quarter could suck worse than any other to date. that would just be wonderful, it being my last quarter and all.

my boss talked to me and told me that she's going to give me a second chance with that SAIII position in the spring. this time i'll be sure not to miss the interview.

it's funny how the smallest moments are the most memorable. i don't remember much about my elementary school years - except for the day i got expelled. i don't remember much about junior high - except the day i called the police and then got suspended. i don't remember much about the year 2000, but i remember everything about the four or so days i went hitchhiking. i don't remember much about december 15th except for...well you get the point. i guess it's not really "funny," as much as it is an obvious occurence which shouldn't even be commented on.

the smallest measures of time mean the most, i guess that's what i was trying to say.

updated movies list.

i'm going to have something else to eat now.

2-12-01 (23:00)

got a guide to free campgrounds around the country, that'll be useful. got it from amazon.com and they sent me 10 free 1 cent stamps. i thought that was pretty nice since i've got so many 33 cent stamps. that's the kind of thing that makes me like a company, it's also the kind of thing that gets them free advertising on my webpage.

might need to buy a new monitor because the one i'm borrowing from vern may be needed by his parents.

2-11-01 (23:18)

trip to LA was way too short.

melanie got to meet my grandparents so that was really cool. i guess the question then is: "what is cool?" my grandfather is just spectacular.

the rain can actually be very nice a) with the right state of mind b) when you don't need to go outside. it's much more enjoyable when it provides a reason to stay inside and bundle up or go outside and be silly.

here's one of the metros i've thought about buying. ha ha.

i've got a midterm tomorrow and i should probably get to studying for that.

getting out of school is going to be nice.

2-9-01 (11:23)

leaving pretty soon.

it's raining and my back still hurts. i skipped class.

it's quite possible that oppression and suffering bring out the best in people. then there's love.

i'm hungry and don't have much in the way of breakfast or lunch food.

2-8-01 (17:24)

not much has happened today. i planned on getting lots of stuff done, but didn't really get around to it.

started the day off right with a phone call from melanie, that was the shit.

went to the sociology department and tried to get things figured out, but it was busy there and i didn't feel like waiting around. i'll go on monday or something.

planned on getting my petition to graduate, but put that off as well.

planned on buying some jewel cases for cds i make, but i had two left and that's all i really needed until later anyway.

still need to pack. that consists of putting a bunch of dirty laundry in a duffle bag and that's about it.

ordered a bumper for malcolm today, that's my xmas present from grandma so that'll be pretty nice to finally have.

kinda worrying about finding a good geo metro. it seems like most of them are going for around 2500 which is fine, but most of them aren't within a reasonable area so i'd have to add shipping to that cost which would not be good. i still haven't gone to any dealers in the area so maybe i should do that and pick up a classified section from the paper before i start worrying.

working 4 more hours tonight.

it's been pretty cold outside lately, but the lack of rain has helped it be more bearable.

been meaning to call my mom and sister, but haven't gotten home before 10pm since sunday.

think i'm going to sleep on the floor tonight because my back still hurts. i don't know what i did.

"reagan is the most ignorant president since warren harding" - ralph nader.

who was the most ignorant president ever? how about the most inept? they say that buchanan was the worst (also the only bachelor...) grant was pretty horrible. jackson was illiterate. george w. bush will probably prove to be at the top of that list somewhere as well.

2-8-01 (02:26)

updated movies list.

2-8-01 (00:08)

going to watch a movie pretty soon.

apple pie is good.

"free yourself from yourself"

work was 5 hours long and felt more like 3.75 hours.

need to do kind of a lot before i leave on friday. leaving at noon so i should be home around 6pm.

was supposed to sub for someone at work (from 11a-12p) and completely forgot...boss called and told me i was supposed to be at work, i got out of bed and biked over there. didn't feel good about being late. it was the first time i was ever late to work. i missed that interview last week and then i was late today. i'm just a mess. hope she remembers that i haven't been late the whole time i've worked there. but the overriding mentality of humans seems to be "what have you done for me lately."

speaking of which...chris webber got rocked. the kings got really really spanked by the timberwolves tonight, glad i didn't get to watch it.

i work tomorrow from 6-10pm.

forgot about my rsvp (adding classes) appt. time today, so i did it while i was at work. one of the classes may have been cancelled, need to check that out tomorrow. if it was then i have to take an 8am class in order to get a minor in sociology. that would suck more than i ever thought possible.

talked to vern about the hitchhiking trip. what memories. i can't believe how lucky we were in so many ways. nietzsche would have been proud - we really just threw ourselves into the chaos of the world. i remember having an overriding feeling that there was no way anything bad was going to happen to us. maybe it was jus that teenageresque mentality, i don't know, but it was the shit.

i'm down with method man.

going to watch that movie now.

2-7-01 (14:23)

if i ever have kids i'm not going to tell them the adam and eve story. a) it's not true b) it wasn't written by anyone of real consequence c) it makes all humans out to be sinners d) it portrays women as bad. tell me the pratical point of telling my kids that story and i might consider it. i'm just fine with them being ignorant when some makes a reference to adam and eve. my kid will be like "who's adam and eve" and then someone else will say "you've never heard of adam and eve. ha ha ha. you're stupid. well here's the story..." hopefully by the time that situation arises my kid will already know that humans are born sinners (stupid - yes, sinners - no) and that women aren't bad, temptation, the reason for the downfall of humanity, etc.

so if we isolate the gene that makes people predisposed to alcoholism what effect would that have, in particular what effect would it have knowing that you have that gene? there are plenty of other effects - genetic tampering or screening, etc. but what is the effect of one person knowing that they have an alocholic gene. would it give them a self-fulfilling prophecy? would it make them more aware of their habits with alcohol? would it give them an excuse to get drunk - well i do have gene #339,384, so it's my destiny to drink...obviously it would be different for everyone. for me, although i didn't get explicit dna results saying that i had the gene, it made me accutely aware of the potential problems and so i've stayed as far away from it as possible. if only i had been told that i had a gene which makes me feel bad about myself...maybe i would have risen to that occasion in the same manner. but who is to say what the true effects of genetics is on our behavior. science has all the answers so i'll just put all my trust with it. after all, it is rational thought about what is seen in the world. what could be wrong with that?

there's one really cool thing about calculating the balance in my checkbook...every time i subtract a debit from the account the bottom line produces a larger number. nevermind that whole negative sign in front business.

2-7-01 (01:04)

updated movies list.

been pretty busy lately. i have work or class until ten monday, tuesday, and wednesday so that's not usually very fun.

i think i've settled on taking 12 units next quarter. that reminds me - i have my rsvp pass time tomorrow, hopefully i don't forget about it.

saw a piece of this documentary about german film making and in particular musicals. it made my point that people are retarded painfully clear. it's not just americans who have hoaky musicals, germans did too.

saw more stuff about reagan than i would have liked to, it being his birthday and all. on the pbs station they kept lauding him, it was a sad sight. reagan was a shit. just one big pile of dung. a paper dung at that. a paper puppet pile of dung.

"fear eats the soul" besides that being the title of a fassbinder film, it is also very insightful.

i'm tired.

2-5-01 (22:11)

"fear is your only god"

i think i figured out what my problem is/was. fear is very prevalent in all our lives, fear of losing control being probably the biggest problem. everyone wants to have control and think that their life is well-ordered or in control and not completely chaotic. when i think about how chaotic the world is it is pretty scary. i fear losing control (this assumes i had control in the first place, which in reality no one really has). what makes it worse is that i don't feel very adept at much of anything. i don't feel confident and so losing control comes even easier for me than for those who are confident in themselves. i also don't believe in religion or justice - like "everything is going to work out" or "god's got a plan" etc. so that makes me feel even less in control. nietzsche recognized this and said it was important to see it and thrive on it. it'll make you stronger. i don't feel that. i think it's true, but i don't feel it.

luckily for me the illusion of control has returned and though it is fleeting and only an illusion, i'll buy into it until i can get a grip on the fact that not having control is a reality.

i think that thinking about the roommate situation and the trip and idiot republicans and nietzsche all together made me realize how little control i have in my life. i probably listened to too much tool, too.

i'm still not a social person, probably never will be.

updated movies list.

i got a credit card in the mail today which said "chris you are going on this trip no matter what." it was a cool little safety net.

i think i need to stop worrying and love the chaos. i thank the full title of dr. strangelove for that insight.

2-5-01 (01:25)

i think that the truth of me is that i'm sad and lonely, and on occasion i'm happy and semi-social. for the most part i really feel like i'm just a loner and that my life's going to be mostly lonely.

i want to be happy and able to do all the things that i admire, but i usually don't feel like i can. so am i the sad chris who is happy sometimes and able to be a good, caring, understanding person. or am i a happy person who is strong, caring, good, and accepting who sometimes lapses into sadness?

i hate nights, they're not good anymore.

i have to wake up early and watch death of a salesman. i have to finish this paper now. tomorrow will be long and stupid.

2-4-01 (23:53)

so a racist is someone who discriminates based on race. a feminist is some who fights for equal treatment of females. a marxist is someone who buys into marx's theories on the world. english is screwy.

updated movies list.

cooked up my apple pie today, it's cooling right now. damn good.

had that pork today with a half cup of uncle ben's rice. good stuff.

i measure monetary things in terms of the amount of rice i could buy. i used to do the same thing, but with cds. so, if i work three hours at the library i'd say to myself - "i just earned one cd." but now i say to myself - "i just earned about 33 pounds of rice." since i buy more rice these days and since rice is more valuable at this point, i think it's a good choice to change to the rice standard.

crouching tiger has a 9.0 rating on the imdb.com website. there's no way it should have gotten that, especially if you consider that that rating places it at number 12, all-time. it's pretty obvious that those rankings mean absolutely nothing so i'm just over-reacting.

i love the beginning of "predator" when the guys are flying in the hellicopter and "long tall sally" is playing. what a great song. matched the mood really well.

i still stand by my belief that "die hard" is the best action flick ever. sure wild bunch is great and the opening scene is priceless and there are plenty of great john woo flicks. but from peckinpah to woo, and every thing in betwen (that i've seen) die hard remains the best.

just a few short months ago i was in a position where i felt a lot like an island. i had a couple of pretty close friends, but they could be avoided if necessary. if i was feeling down the only person who had to feel that was me, and, if i chose to write about it, possibly whoever read this webpage. it's not like that anymore and that's the kind of thing an anti-social, oft depressed person like me has to get used to.

i've got a paper to write.

they were playing 2001 in the video store while i was there.

i have no clue where i'm living next year and that's causing problems. waiting is a bitch. if i had the money i'd just live by myself.

seriously though, what the fuck is my problem? am i fucked up just because i don't think highly enough of myself? get over it you egotistical fuckwad. what a nimrod. you're never going to be as good as you want because you want too much, that's human nature.

i hereby decide not to respect the intellect of anyone who claims to be honestly religious - that is to say that they actually follow the word of their religion. independent thought, even when horribly misguided, is at the very least still independent from control.

anton lavey isn't so bad in my book because he provided a good balance to christianity. of course, people still demonize him. what he really tries to say is that satan didn't put up with being god's bitch and that's why he was sent to hell - for independent thought. this is not to say that anton lavey is some sort of genius, he obviously had some screws loose, but i like the fact that he embraces individuality and doesn't have any pretenses about humans being the greatest creatures on earth...."Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all." it seems that claiming humans as the greatest of god's creatures is primarily a western thought. hmmmm.

here's one of the nine satanic sins: "3. Solipsism—Can be very dangerous for Satanists. Projecting your reactions, responses and sensibilities onto someone who is probably far less attuned than you are. It is the mistake of expecting people to give you the same consideration, courtesy and respect that you naturally give them. They won’t. Instead, Satanists must strive to apply the dictum of “Do unto others as they do unto you.” It’s work for most of us and requires constant vigilance lest you slip into a comfortable illusion of everyone being like you. As has been said, certain utopias would be ideal in a nation of philosophers, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, from a Machiavellian standpoint) we are far from that point."

anyone who thinks a machiavellian standpoint is fortunate is, well, not exactly all there. it's really funny how machiavelli, father of the realpolitik (realist theory), is so often the basis for justification from psychos. if i'm not mistaken Mussolini was one such fellow.

tupac's nickname was Machiavelli and you can see why when you listen to his music.

at any rate, without getting into a great debate - anton levay, and thus the church of satan, make some good points which wouldn't be made by christians, but on the whole he's too realistic and reactionary for my taste. i like ganhi's view far more - be the change you want to see in the world.

all of this talk is delaying my working on the paper.

just got an email from an old high school track friend....here's an excerpt: "School is hard. But, that's life. We party hard in order to balance things out." he used to be such a naturally well-balanced fellow.

i've gotta tell you plainly - i really hold a great deal of contempt for this world. i don't like a lot of the things i see and i want it to change. i think variety is great, but must it all be concentrated on stupidity? i should be more accepting and understanding.

this is great stuff. i think bush is going to be a good president. i especially like this part: "Russia and the United States expressed clearly different views on the 1972 ABM treaty during the weekend conference. Ivanov said the importance of the treaty ``has not faded.'' By contrast, Rumsfeld, who returned to Washington Saturday, called it ``ancient history.''"

that whole "love thy neighbor" thing, in my book, is "ancient history" you fucking idiots! godfuck this world. i'm fed up.

2-4-01 (01:12)

i'm still hungry and thinking about eating something. should have done that a while ago. had rice and a tortilla for dinner, needed more butter.

is it wrong to go to rubio's, buy something and then when i'm done take a jar full of salsa? i don't think i have a jar anyway. yea, it's wrong. scratch that idea.

it really is too bad that i have so many good ways to save money and most of them are bad. i said it before - i would have made a pretty good thief. sure i was caught once or twice, but that was before i was even 13. i'm wiser now.

that's another place where we draw the line arbitrarily. is it okay to steal a computer from work? is it okay to take a candy bar from safeway - they are a huge corporation, it's almost my job as the proletariat to steal from them? is it okay to steal a pen from work? a pad of paper from work? anything under 2 bucks is okay? everyone's got their own answer and everyone rationalizes it and thinks they are right. that's what's so funny about people, they're all right in their own eyes. am i right about that? of course i am, i'm always right.

we just need to figure this all out ourselves. i think looking to religion is a cop out, just like drugs. i think nietzsche glorifies the struggle a bit too much, but he's got a point. all this struggle - figuring out what is right and wrong to you, by yourself, coping with pain, struggling through life is noble and almost glorious. on the micro level it might be compared to the single parent who makes it through college and gets a good job all without assistance from the government. he's a good parent, student, and then worker. he's proud of having made it through all that by himself. sure it sucked while he was doing it, but he made it.

men are never single parents.

car alarms are annoying.

"free yourself from yourself" - maynard james keenan

"at one point, i thought about every ideological position i'd taken over the past twenty years, and i realized that i was generally full of shit." - Moby

i think that anyone who is able to be that introspective and honest deserves big time props. but of course we're all that honest and inward looking, it just so happens that we're right too. moby was introspective and honest, but dumb. right? challenge yourself. that's all i'm saying. chances are that you're like me and you knew it all when you were 16, and then again when you were 18 and then again when you were 21. but surely by now you've got it figured out so don't worry about it.

the sarcasm seethes.

surely it's my bed time by now. well it's only 1:35, my girlfriend is fast asleep because she's on the workforce, i'm not tired, i don't have anything i'd really like to do. i could fall asleep to a movie. i could watch the 'bug me' video and relearn how to tune-up the car. i could cook me up some grub. anything i can do with a couple of avocados? there's always the breakfast burrito route, but i'm almost out of taco sauce and that really is the anchor of the meal. i could study, but that isn't appealing in the least degree right now.

the tool cd i'm listening to has 69 tracks, i think that there was an anthrax cd like that...tracks x-68 were just one second tracks of silence.

the thing about knowledge is that it's accessible, more so now than ever. so that almost makes it less of a commodity in a supply and demand sense. the access to the supply is more abundant now than ever. the invention of moveable printing press, the encyclopedia, telegraph, radio, television, the internet...all have made knowledge more abundant and thus easier to access. i mean it's really almost to the point where anything i want to know i can find out in a matter of minutes, that's almost as good as having the knowledge yourself. so if someone asks me who directed nosferatu i can say "f.w. murnau," and that's all well and good, but it's not as if that knowledge is very hard to obtain. so in that sense my knowing that bit of information doesn't make me as special as i once thought. in a way that makes me feel better about not knowing everything that i wish i did. look ma! i just rationalized ignorance!

that's bad. if ignorance is bliss then knock the smile off my face. ignorance isn't good, but it's not as horrible as people may have once thought. it can be fixed. hell look at malcolm x. he did it in prison, without the internet. that wasn't always possible. it's more possible now than it was before. but what is required is the will to learn and the curiosity to explore various fields. hope i didn't get all the ignorami out there excited about being ignorant.

being ignorant isn't bad in and of itself. being ignorant and apathetic is.

i don't know and i don't care.

2-3-01 (23:22)

would it be insanity to call love "a perpetual dissatisfaction with what you are able to do for the other?" that probably wouldn't be too great because then it begs the question of your perception to do right by the other. if you have no confidence in your ability then you'll mostly likely feel unable to do right by almost anyone you are fond of. this is also not to say that just because you feel like you can't do right by the other person that that means you're in love. and what if you only feel perpetually dissatisfied because the other makes you feel that way? overall it's a pretty crappy definition and not really a definition at all. but i bet for those who are in love and it's healthy they thought to themselves "you know, i really don't feel like i can ever do everything i want to do for that person, because i feel they deserve so much." that's the feeling i was trying to get at. have no misconceptions - i'm not trying to define love - i'm merely exploring it a bit.

the fucking clippers beat the trailblazers. that's sad, even if wallace and pippen weren't playing.

led zeppelin II is amazing.

every time i see phil i forget to give him his present. i remember before i see him and then by the time i'm on my way out, i forget.

so the xfl is official. whoop whoop.

bs2000 comes out on tuesday, don't think i have room in the budget for that cd purchase.

chris has a budget, huh huh, wow.

chris is speaking in the third person, huh huh.

i'm really craving some grub. it's late so i shouldn't eat, but waking up hungry every morning isn't good. i'll make that pork tomorrow.

"it's okay to eat fish because they don't have any feelings"

why is pork seen as such a sinful meat? i mean i understand the biblical stories, but why is that a universal thing across religions and cultures? is it really because they're seen as dirty? rats are dirty, but worshiped in india. i just don't understand it. i'll never go vegetarian, but i empathize with the cause. i figure that if more people were like me and ate meat sparingly then we'd be better off. but then we're still killing some animals and that's wrong in a sense. but where do we draw the line, becomes the question. i mean is the carrot harvest really a holocaust? is that going too far? fish are okay to eat, why? you can have fish, fowl and eggs are okay, but pork and red meat aren't. it's all arbitrary unless you have some religion guiding what you can and cannot eat. i swear that religion is just the best. it makes so many of the difficult decisions for you. as george carlin about religion i'll paraphrase - "it's mind control...so they're going to tell you some things that you ought not say, because they're sins. religion is going to suggest some things that you should say...here's something you oughta say first thing when you wake up in the morning, here's something you oughta say before you go to sleep, here's something we always say on the third wednesday in april after the first full moon in spring after the bells ring..." funny guy that george carlin, and he had it right.

obviously i'm not saying anything grand or eye-opening, but it's still stuff we take for granted. i say that i don't eat red meat and i'm not entirely sure why. i will eat it, but i prefer not to. some of it has to do with the taste, some of it is for humanitary reasons, some of it is because when it's not well cooked my stomach gets upset, but i don't really have any strong reasons for it. as jules says in pulp fiction "my girlfriend is a vegetarian, so that pretty much makes me a vegetarian" then he bites into a nice juicy big kahuna burger. what a great scene.

i'm hungry.

i don't value the life of a cow more than a pig's or a chicken's, but it does seem easier to accept the death of a chicken as opposed to a cow or a dog (if you're korean, thai, et al). i guess it makes perfect sense when you think about how arbitrary most of our lives are anyway.

i wonder why i shun superficial relationships to the extent that i do. i don't go to parties for lots of reasons, but one is because talking to people at parties is so on the surface. i think a big part is that on the surface there's nothing interesting about me. people who have a lot to show off about or feel proud of in the superficial and socially constructed way are more likely to thrive in party or social situations. the best time i had at a party was when it was at our old house. i had plenty of things to talk about on the superficial level at the time because i was a DJ and people always like that, i think i was also doing fairly well in school so when that topic came up i could talk about some paper i did well on. if i had more of those surface things going for me i might be more social, i'd still probably not go to parties, but keeping surface, or "hallway," friends (as i like to call them) would be more fulfilling. when i do talk with those hallway friends there seems to be an undercurrent of boasting. sometimes even a quick fix for some consolation - which i suppose isn't so bad so long as you can actually feel better from it; i can't.

"hey chris what you been up to?" "not much, and you?" "oh man i'm swamped, i've got three midterms in two days and a couple of my friends from out of town are coming on friday" "wow, sounds hectic" "yea it is. i've been studying for 13 hours straight and i'm kind of batty" "ha ha, that's funny. well good luck with that, bob. don't stress too much."

that's a perfectly normal conversation and i wouldn't mind too terribly having that conversation, but i can't help but think "what's the point?" so he's got lots of things going on and he wants me to feel sorry for him. great, i do, sorry bob, life sucks. i sound like someone who is bitter and probably doesn't have much of a life. "you're just jealous chris," i can hear people saying. was it hobbes or locke who said that we (humans) are not political animals, and in fact, we're not even social animals. the only time we are social is for vanity's sake. the only time we are political is to create a government. we create this government so that we don't have to be political in the future and so that we can be protected enough to pursue our own personal endeavors, and these personal endeavors are in the name of vanity and selfishness.

so maybe i'm just bitter, or maybe i'm right. either way we're both wrong because there is no right or wrong. ;)

back to the hallway relationships...i still don't know entirely why i refuse to have them. why don't i have a shitload of friends who i talk with a couple times a month and keep up appearances with just to be cordial? it's not because i'm an asshole. i'm not mean to people. i don't normally shoo people away with disdain because of their superficial concept of our friendship. rather, i just don't make an attempt to hold those types of friendships. i could, but i don't. i just know that it's not for me. maybe it's because i don't want to waste my time with something that isn't going to yield anything of much depth. though i must admit, having a shitload of friends like that might yield some useful information on occasion - "did you hear that such and such happened in the senate last night?" "why no, i didn't. do tell..."

so, is there anything wrong with those types of relationships? i'd like to have those kinds of relationships with neighbors. i don't foresee being buddy buddy with my neighbors, but at the same time i think being strangers is lame. so in that arena the surface friendship is just fine. it could be useful to have a store of friends like that because they could hook me up with a job somewhere down the line, or come up with some useful information - they say that networking is the key to success in the market economy. oh joy. it's true though, and in that sense having friends who are low maintenance and potentially high yield (assuming you choose the decent non-mooching ones) could be very advantageous. i could brag about the fact that i have a girlfriend and have to retell every success story (from hitchhiking to finding a girlfriend) about a billion times and be assured about a billion times that i'm cool for going on a hitchhiking trip or i could hear "congratulations" a billion times and i might even start to feel good about myself because there would be all this positivity when i brag to my surface friends. that's all well and good if i care what they have to say or if i want to tell those stories to people i don't really know, over and over and over again.

when i put it all into words like that it would seem like having those friends is a very selfish thing to do. they're low maintenance - so that's easy for me. they're going to console me when i bitch about having 3 midterms this week (something maybe my real friends are tired of doing). they could lead to good business, or other, opportunities. and all of that is just peaches and cream for me. i'll have to make a few appearances at some parties which maybe i don't want to attend and maybe i'll be a little late to class because i'll be stopped on my way to class by a few people i know, but overall friends like that are a wise investment. guess i'm not a very good businessman.

2-3-01 (21:47)

updated movies list.

life is hard and that's supposed to help us get stronger, but i haven't learned that yet. learned in the sense that i can accept and live with it.

johnny is right - things are complicated. i guess i'm supposed to find solace in the fact that this will make me stronger later, but it sure doesn't feel that way.

2-3-01 (18:21)

wanting to be the change you want to see in the world sucks when you see how shitty the world is and especially when you feel helpless to control your own life, much less the direction of the world.

6 more hours of work today. no one has offered to take my two shifts next weekend so that's not good news. unmoving bastards people can be. work from 3-6 tomorrow.

i'm hungry. going to have some rice and butter.

malcolm x needed to branch out beyond race. it seems like that's the case for a lot of social movements...the african-american movement has always been indicted for not including women. feminists have been indicted for not including african-americans. there are different causes for the plight of women and the cause for the plight of women, but it seems to me that more of an effort should be made to be more inclusive. MLK tried to do that. i beg for someone to come along and make a real push for equal treatment for all those affected by the disparity in economic relations. let us not forget marx. that's the biggest issue, i think, and the other stuff - gender, race, religion, etc. compound and add wrinkles to that, but the basic core remains the same. if someone were to push the core, rather than the peripheral issues, i think it would be more inclusive and more effective. we should discriminate against those who are already discriminated against because they don't have it as bad as us or it's different. victims of racism aren't any better off than victims of religious bigotry or vise versa.

in other news - UCLA beat stanford. that's amazingly huge. UCLA should be in the top 25 after a win like that. stanford is no longer undefeated, i love it.

i mixed the japanese rice and the uncle ben's rice i have and it makes the japanese rice much more palatable.

going to watch crouching tiger with phil tonight. it's supposed to be good so the money i spend shouldn't be all for naught.

it's amazing how smart guys like marx, plato, nietzsche, weber, and locke all were and yet they differed so greatly in their views. i think kant would have some interesting insight on that.

everything comes to an end.

everything must change.

rules or universal applications are extremely limited and narrow-sighted.

when trying to apply rules to, or make a science of, anything you should first start with the assumption that you don't know anything. after that you can try to make a science of that which you see, but if you truly know that you don't know anything and that any universality you try to apply is ill-equipped, then you shouldn't go any further. i think that's where nietzsche's dream world, the illusion, comes into play. what i mean is that when one tries to make some grand rules which explain the world or the way things are they should first assume that don't know anything, because, as a matter of epistemology and kantian views on experience/perception, you really don't know anything beyond yourself. after you are aware of this then your endeavor to create rules for the way the world works should become painfully and obviously futile. if you incorporated a self-created or culture-created illusion that you can know some things then, and only then, does it become possible to make true statements about the world. of course this precludes any real knowledge of any truth because your "truth" is based upon an illusion.

that type of post-modern thought can get people really depressed really fast.

i'm going to go watch a good movie and forget all about it, because that's the sane thing to do.

2-2-01 (22:27)

there aren't many things in life which are constant. some of them are that things will change, things will come to an end and that you'll always have to live with yourself. these seem to be the very things that people try to avoid the most. people don't usually want change in most aspects of their lives, they don't want things to come to an end, and often they don't want to live with themselves.

i want to go on the trip tomorrow.

most powerful moments in film?

the end of "one flew over the cuckoo's nest"

the jessie's girl scene in "boogie nights"

the end of "paths of glory"

the "the call me mr. tibbs" line in "in the heat of the night"

this list is going to be too long.

2-2-01 (16:04)

last year's movie goal stats:

longest streak watching at least one movie: 9/19 - 10/16 (28 days)

most movies in a day: 6 on 12/29/00

longest lull: 3/17 - 3/27, part of this fell during the hitchhiking trip.

monthly breakdown:

january	february	march	april	may	june	july	august	september	october	november	december
19	26	16	16	17	23	26	27	25	33	22	39

total number of movies seen: 300. total number of new movies seen: 205

most seen movie: "American Movie: The Making of Northwestern" 5 times.

if anyone cares to calculate how many points i would have gotten under my new point system, be my guest.

i think that i'm finally starting to get a grip on my financial situation, now that i have a goal. having a goal helps.

planned out my schedule for next quarter...it's really tempting to take 20 units. at the same time it's equally tempting to take 12 units. maybe i should take 16 and compromise. 20 would get in the way of making money and would be more stress than i need, especially in my last quarter here. at the same time i want to take all of 5 courses which i've got lined up and it would be nice to say that i once took 20 units. also, if i took 20 units then i would have graduated in 4 years, without the aid of any AP units. not to say that AP units are cheating or anything, but it would be kinda cool. 12 units would be nice because this is my last quarter and i would like to relax in class and get lots of work hours in. i could take 16 units and take a class pass/no pass so the grades wouldn't be such an issue of concern. don't have to worry about it until late in february when i have my second pass time.

working a six hour shift tomorrow. that'll suck, but i should be able to finish off the russian revolution and get some studying for my sociology class done. hopefully it's not too busy.

didn't feel like waking up this morning. i was having a good dream, but i don't remember what it was about.

my right eye is twitching a lot today. my body is falling apart.

had my penultimate piece of bread just now. that shit was good. one more rosemary loaf left. saving the best for last is a good idea.

i watched 19 movies in january. that's the same number as last year. 19 movies is 6.33% of the 300 i saw in that year. the 24.75 points which i garnered this month is 7.07% of the 350 pts. which i'm aiming for this year, so despite watching the same number of movies i'm actually slighty further ahead of the game, through the end of january.

there sure have been a lot of numbers in this update.

2-2-01 (14:44)

"As to the method followed by the anarchist thinker, it entirely differs from that followed by the utopists. The anarchist thinker does not resort to metaphysical conceptions (like "natural rights," the "duties of the State," and so on) to establish what are, in his opinion, the best conditions for realizing the greatest happiness of humanity. He follows, on the contrary, the course traced by the modern philosophy of evolution. He studies human society as it is now and was in the past; and without either endowing humanity as a whole, or separate individuals, with superior qualities which they do not possess, he merely considers society as an aggregation of organisms trying to find out the best ways of combining the wants of the individual with those of cooperation for the welfare of the species. He studies society and tries to discover its tendencies past and present, its growing needs, intellectual and economic, and in his ideal he merely points out in which direction evolution goes. He distinguishes between the real wants and tendencies of human aggregations and the accidents (want of knowledge, migrations, wars, conquests) which have prevented these tendencies from being satisfied. And he concludes that the two most prominent, although often unconscious, tendencies throughout our history have been: first, a tendency towards integrating labor for the production of all riches in common, so as finally to render it impossible to discriminate the part of the common production due to the separate individual; and second, a tendency towards the fullest freedom of the individual in the prosecution of all aims, beneficial both for himself and for society at large. The ideal of the anarchist is thus a mere summing up of what he considers to be the next phase of evolution. It is no longer a matter of faith; it is a matter for scientific discussion. "

went to class and work today, deposited my weak ass paycheck and then came back home.

now i'm filled with apathy. i don't care enough to do anything and i'm not much of a nap person.

my right heel hurts for no good reason.

my ear keeps bugging the shit out of me when i get in bed, only when i'm in bed - the inside itches real bad.

the geo ended up going for 1875. i knew it was worth more than what it looked like it was going to go for. those things go up so much in the last hour. so if i had gotten it for around 1200-1300 and paid the shipping then i would have paid about as much as the person who ended up buying it. all in all, i was pretty on track in my estimate.

2-2-01 (01:44)

because it's better than rice and because it's free i think i'm going to eat some lasagna tomorrow at jon's place.

i'm hungry right now. i ate completely for free today...had a few pieces of candy which i got for answering that einstein riddle at work, had a few cookies which i swiped from work, and had a bowl of rice and chicken which my co-worker said she didn't want to eat. there aren't many days when you can eat completely free for the whole day. that's not to say that i had much to eat, i didn't, but it was all free.

i have class early tomorrow so i should be asleep now.

i'm fairly tired, but think i should write about something useful. i haven't done that in a while. i don't really have anything to say and i'm tired.

everyone needs help sometimes. no one is a rock, no one is an island, despite what simon and garfunkel would have you think. asking for that help is good and should be encouraged. giving that help should feel good. seems to me that that works out pretty well. now you just need to find someone who you want to help and find a way to do that. MLK was good. i'm leaning towards adam yauch as best person alive. i'm sure there are other people who are more qualified, but he's just got the right mix of having screwed up in the past and having learned from those mistakes and making the best out of his life. he's a great guy.

heard that the local sushi place has okay sushi, but you can go in there and have all you can eat for $7 between noon and 3pm. holy shit. i'm so there.

oh yea, i'm broke.

sushi sounds good right now. i love food.

anyone have any good rice or potato recipes?

i've actually got a fat thing of pork waiting to be cooked. i think i'll hit that up on saturday night. great. now i have something to look forward to.

i don't like it when ebay is down for maintence.

i honestly can't figure out why/how people are so retarded, and i choose retarded very purposely here. how hard is it to think progressively? how about to think at all? if you think that the problem is limited to america, or americans you are sadly mistaken. people are retarded all over the place. they had 'who wants to be a media whore' (although i think under a different name) in austrailia before they had it here. they have advertisments scrolling across the ten yard marker in football in europe. big brother and survivor both came from europe. in england they still buy shit music. they're still firing 6,000 steel workers in the next 2 years in the name of profit. they're still censoring music, namely eminem, because his lyrics don't jibe with them. i pick england because everyone seems to think that they have it all figured out over there. the fact of the matter is that europe is just as nutty and retarded as the us is. i think the biggest difference is that we're a much larger and younger country with more resources. if you ask jared diamond he'd say that's (resources) the biggest difference with any culture. the japanese are more american than americans are, and it goes right on down the line. in some african nations they think it's okay to cut off a woman's clitoris in the name of tradition. we're a fucking backward species and our cultures have manifested this in different, but often equally, inane and retarded ways.

don't take that as me sticking up for the us, i'm not. rather, take it as an indictment of all of humanity. americans are, largely, capitalist pigs who think that george bush is a good and apt leader, that the church and state go hand in hand (does anyone remember the religous reformations western civilization went through hundreds of years ago?). but that kind of thinking isn't limited to americans, sadly.

i'm going to sleep.

2-1-01 (22:19)

updated archives page here.

worked for 4 hours today.

had this interview scheduled with my boss to see about the assistant III job (pays $7.00/hour) and i didn't remember about it until i woke up - 45 minutes after i was supposed to be there and 45 minutes before i was supposed to be in class, so i missed it. i said sorry and she's probably not going to bother with me at this point. so i'm a loser, even my sister says so (though she spelled it wrong in her email to me).

it's funny because the last two messages i've gotten have been from phil and my sister and both of them have told me that i'm a loser. i guess that's why i keep melanie around.

jon helped me out with my haircut today, looks pretty good, i'd say. his hair is much more difficult to cut. i didn't even bother with the top.

if i had gotten the raise at work it would have translated into somewhere around 240 more bucks over the next four months. i just kept thinking that today was going to be wednesday, so all day yesterday i didn't think about the next day being thursday and thus didn't think about the interview meeting. such is life i suppose.

the geo is up to $1325. if it were in sacramento or the bay area or such then i'd bid on it, but shipping makes it so it's probably not worth it. if 4 months from now i can't find a better deal then i'll probably kick myself, but in the meantime i'll consider it a good choice...

committee, commitment, success, and recommend, are other words i usually have trouble with, but i looked at them a long time and may have them finally figured out. anything with repeating letters is a bitch for me.

think i should get direct deposit at work, it'll come in handy later on.

the formula command on word tables is the shit.

mark borchardt continues to be the shit.

02-01-01 (00:32)

well it's a new month. whoop whoop.

so far 2001 is pretty neat.

i crave some ice cream right now.

i wish i was wiser.

i really want to bid on the geo.

listened to some metallica today.

didn't learn much in class today. i can't wait until next year when i'm going to classes just for the hell of it and not paying to go and not having to do any of the assignments. i plan on frequenting lots of history and philosophy courses to keep me sharp. history because i'll always have something to learn there and i'll constantly be forgetting that which i have learned before. philosophy because i'll need the mental stimulation and i'm not so sure that my co-workers at whatever fast food joint i'll be working at will provide me with that.

if i was a really good hooker then i could turn a couple tricks and make enough money for the trip. hmmm. that reminds me of that really awful, but hilariously funny, forward "how to be the funny guy in your office." just classic.

i should get off(line) now. har har.

this is the largest month ever, in terms of file size. that's pretty strange considered all i wrote for last march with the hitchhiking trip and all. also melanie was here for 6 days in january so i don't know how, missing 6 days of updates, i could still manage to make this such a large month. i'm probably just having more diarrhea of the mouth than usual.

word on the street is that my sister is getting in trouble. teenagers. tsk tsk.