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Erecting walls of floppy-headed laughter
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| Greetings, Sentients |
[05 Nov 2011|03:33am] |
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Welcome to my apartments in the World above the Words. Please make yourself at home. Refreshments are available as per your wonts (and wanton wonts I am sure they are). Feel free to make use of the wandering waitrcritters and remember, when the waitcritters toll, the waitcritters toll for thee -:)
All I ask in return is that if you wish to Friend me or use one of my posts please, ask me first?
As I have stated in my LJ's front page my LJ, except where I state otherwise, is published under a Creative Commons License. Please read the link. If you include all of one of my posts that falls under the license, please include the Creative Commons License link I just showed you along with my name -:)
I thank you.
Also, I would be overjoyed if you could spin a tale, tell me what brings you my way, stitch a yarn. I find it fascinating the tales that others bring -:)
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| A Duo of Moments |
[28 Mar 2009|02:52pm] |
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music |
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Mediaeval Baebes |
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Doing the Nietzsche
There are no deodands, only pornography.
Something Happened
is the tale of a man who never sees past his own boredom.
That is all, sentients.
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| Unleashed at the Transonieric Festival and Circus |
[10 Feb 2009|11:14pm] |
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mood |
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Transpirationed |
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music |
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A Sleeping Cat |
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Come one, come all, gentlebeings!
Over there you can see rover, looking for his lost love, No. 1 .
Up above, through the far-seeing-eye, see where kipple comes from.
Over here, you can talk with our PR manager, who has, through Agent Martinhesselius, asked you to:
We all create mental images of the authors that we read. Put this in your own journal to find out who your readers see when they read you. Picture is optional; it doesn't have to be representational.
After years of painstaking research, sweaty travels, and inner journeys, I have discovered The Secret to the Human Condition.
But I won't tell it to you.
For those of you who dare, underneath the skirts of the podium over there, in the dark, lies the Secret to the Human Condition. So far, no-one has ventured in. Is it None Dare Enter, None Dare Leave? Or...?
As always, folks, remember, you are never alone, where you are is where you are, and do remember that cats, while smart, do not have opposable thumbs.
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| in the throes of an epiphany |
[09 Feb 2009|12:20am] |
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i think i grok more with fullness about atheism now.
it is about: all of us, mankind, sink or swim because of US and what WE do and not because of some G_d out there telling us what and what not to do. we *all* are atheists about something.
it is like a koan. or a simple poem. or an elegant theorem.
christ this whole "learning" thing can take a while (and be fun).
(i guess it helps that i haven't been speaking for around a full day now. it helps me become more aware and mindful)
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| It Seems Like Only Yesterday |
[01 Feb 2009|10:32pm] |
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mood |
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Retuning |
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music |
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Brady Bunchin |
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This is the story, aboot a handsome guy,
Who is oh so very very witty,
He can hang out with the best of 'em
(even the ones in curls)
This is the story, aboot a fellow discordian,
A more generous kind man I could never meet,
Who was so helpful to me in a club that could be very very scary,
All of his thoughts are of gold mixed with the right amount of melancholy,
And he makes me think of this: 
Glas Durboraw! Glas Durboraw!
Let's remember the name of Glas Durboraw!
The Man with the Encyclopaedic Existence!
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| In illumination |
[28 Jan 2009|02:12pm] |
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mood |
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Prorated |
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music |
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Everybody, Everywhere |
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In an earlier post, I notion that G_d wasn't necessary.
The following is more of what I was trying to get at.
DR: I'm looking at Judaism as something that brings you half way across the great existential abyss. In order to make it the rest of the way, you've got to let go of it. Judaism is a very tricky religion that way. I think Judaism is much more like Buddhism than we give it credit for -- which is why we lose so many Jews to Buddhism, most likely. Judaism, too, is a process. It's a scary process -- it's a dark one, sometimes.
SC: What's scary about it?
DR: Because I suspect that Judaism is actually the process by which one gets over the belief in God. That's really what I think it might be. Judaism is the process by which we move from child sacrifice to global cooperation -- from fear of God, to worship of God, to expression of God. We are moving into what could be called a "virtual" stage where you realize God is in everything or not at all. Evolution moves us from the concrete -- idols -- to the words and ideas and, eventually, to pure love.
Moses himself was denied entrance to Canaan because he couldn't make the evolutionary leap. He was of the wrong generation. It's all explained in that moment when God tells Moses to bring forth water from a rock by using his words. Instead of doing this, Moses bangs the rock with a stick -- a technique that had worked for him earlier. In short, the reason why Moses couldn't go into Canaan was because he wouldn't stop banging a rock with a stick. He couldn't even get from the stick stage to the word stage.
Likewise, we Jews used to have a God who could actually smell the sacrifice: "that's good, thanks for the goat." We moved past that, and it's time to move again. Just look at the way God changes throughout the Torah. That's an indication of the direction we are to go.
--Excerpt from "Why We Listen to What They Say", an interview with Douglas Rushkoff by Jon Lebkowski.
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| universe I'm a fool and I wanna petcha |
[28 Jan 2009|09:49am] |
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mood |
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Philic |
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music |
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"Here we go again" by Godel and the Strange Loops |
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EUREKA!!!.
Gawds, I hope I'm still around to see when we can fiddle around with the Fine Structure Constant, change the colour of stars to suit our whims, dive deep to cavort within our DNA, and exist as iterated copies of ourselves seeded over the Oort cloud...
The Bible is right: we are gods and goddesses.
All of Creation is here for us to explore and to tend.
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| "They know not what they do: you can lead them to wter, but you can't make them drink" |
[26 Jan 2009|11:53am] |
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mood |
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Rememiniscing |
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music |
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Juke Box Hero |
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So there we go, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Word, the Lamb, saying "I'll be back", just like Arnold Schwartznegger. He'll be back in the listeners' lifepan. So what does that mean? Perhaps it means simply: He taught those who would listen to the Way, so that the Way could act upon the world. In order for a house to be built, there has to be people to build it. A dictionary is a bunch of meaningless symbols without a person to understand them. Therefore, He did come back. Through His believers. Passing on His message, His means, His Way. So take heart, Christians. Through your beliefs and acts, He is alive and able to act on the world. He needs you as much as you need Him. Through you, He has action on the world. (perhaps He allowed himself to be killed to free you from a human tendency to worship idols -- mistaking the finger pointing to the moon for the moon -- to make it harder for us to foist off our responsibilities to something outside ourselves)
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| A Ward Against Literalism |
[23 Jan 2009|10:33pm] |
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mood |
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Reconnecting |
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music |
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Memories of "Building a Mystery" |
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Spraying reality against the spoor of Greyface that says "My Code of Conduct is the only Way", wether they call that atheism or theism or girl-scoutism or environmentalism or PCism or Conservativism or Buddhism OR OR!
Courtesy of Chrissmassy moments spent with Agent Paraselene and the movie version of Hogfather. An excerpt:
Death: HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO *BE* HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: YES. AS PRACTICE, YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: YES. JUSTICE, MERCY, DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER, AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE, AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET, YOU TRY TO ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD. AS IF THERE IS SOME, SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE, BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
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| The Great Human Experiment Continues |
[04 Nov 2008|10:18pm] |
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Pronoiac |
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music |
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Where You Are Right Now |
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I can hear the passionate cries (and somebunall sobs as well) from a people whom I admire greatly.
Remember, it is ok to be humble but it is also ok to let your passion rip and continue to be a candle, inspiring others.
You may not be perfect, and I may not understand you all at times (maddening, simply maddening), but I am envious of all that has gone on before. To live in a country of such passions, such innovations, who don't do things by half-measures, who, for the Cosmic Muffin's sake, protects abstract concepts, is a heady thing.
Give yourselves a pat on the back. Who would have guessed that the USA would ever have a woman and a black man vying for their King.
As always, art imitates life imitates art in an endless iterative relationship.
Be proud of yourselves.
The future is here.
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| Never Forget: The Great Human Experiment Continues |
[29 Oct 2008|02:26pm] |
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mood |
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Prosplendent |
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music |
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universal aummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
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"How Do You Feel About America?" by Tom Robbins (Anthem, Avon Books, 1997):
"America is a nation of 270 million people. 100 million of them are gangsters, another 100 million are hustlers, 50 million are complete lunatics, and every single one is secretly in show business. Isn’t that fabulous? I mean, how could you fail to have a good time in a country like that?
I could live literally anywhere in the world and do what I do, so, obviously, I live in America by choice – not for any patriotic or financial reasons necessarily, but because it’s so interesting there. America may be the least boring country on earth, and this despite the fact that the dullards on the religious right and the dullards on the academic left (the two faces of Yankee patriotism) seem to be in competition to see who can do the most to promote homogenization and institutionalized mediocrity.
It won’t work. In America, the chronically wild, persistently haywire, strongly individualistic, surprisingly good-humored, flamboyant con-man hoopla is simply bigger than all of them.
(2005) NOTE: The preceding was written several years before the military-industrial complex first seized and then cemented total control of the U.S. government, a coup d’êtat that would have failed without the active assistance of a rapidly growing population of fearful, non-thinking dupes: ‘true believers’ dumbed down and almost comically manipulated by their media, their church, and their state. So be it. Freedom has long proved too heady an elixir for America’s masses, weakened and confused as they are by conflicting commitments to puritanical morality and salacious greed.
In the wake of the recent takeover, our prevailing national madness has been ratcheting steadily skyward: the pious semi-literates in the conservative camp tremble and crow, the educated martyrs in the progressive sector writhe and fume. It’s a grand show, from a cosmic perspective, though enjoyment of the spectacle is blunted by the havoc being wreaked on nature and by the developmental abuse inflicted on children.
We must bear in mind, however, that the central dynamic of our race has never been a conflict between good and evil but rather between enlightenment and ignorance. Ignorance makes the headlines, wins the medals, doles out the punishment, jingles the coin, yet in its clandestine cubbyholes (and occasionally on the public stage) enlightenment continues to quietly sparkle, its radiance outshining the entire disco ball of history. Its day may or may not come, but no matter. The world as it is! Life as it is! Enlightenment is its own reward."
Universe gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want. Because of what has been going on and what is going on, right now, policy-makers that would never before really interact with each other are engaging and being engaged in hammering out ways of working together. Where mutual trust has to occur. This I find endlessly fascinating. It will be really nifty to find out what they come up with. To be there would be a trip.
Oh, and Obama WINS!
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| Checksum Checklist? |
[15 Oct 2008|10:11pm] |
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1. I have survived moving
a. I now live with an anthro Fox (an ex-bf), a non-anthro Fennec, a non-anthro Rabbit (two of which are lovers, one kind of in an innocent ADHD way, the other in an Autistic/submissive way). My boi took only a month to adjust to the Fennec (with the adorable name of Abu and whose smell I am mostly used to by now -- though his toilet habits could use some improving) in a place I have named 'The Cabin in the Mists' due to its "cozy" (some might say cramped) nature and the fact that almost every morning the forest across the street gives off delightful mists.
i. The Cabin in the Mists is part of a TAZ (cf. Hakim Bey) of sorts, a communal experiment, owned by an East Indian, inhabited by a Cree mother with children, two Mexican young men, and another East Indian. I haven't eaten this well in a while -:)
2. I survived tanksgiving
a. I got to see my brother, who I don't see much of due to the physical distance
i. we both got to go to the Conservatory which is atop an extinct (?) volcano and I got to walk through the fountain in the FIMBULWINTER COLD WATER. It was worth it. There are pictures! And we got to walk through an old fissure that I first found as a child
b. my sister got to make her FIRST EVER TURKEY DINNER by herself. It was EXCELLENT
i. this was the first turkey dinner where the bird got DEVASTATED by the larvae that were visiting at the time. We adults didn't even have time to wipe the dust from our eyes
3. universe gives us what we need, not what we want
i. my gout is trying to come back. down, fierce beast!
4. have you heard the news? SOMETHING outside the VISIBLE UNIVERSE is pulling stuff towards itself
i. science is darn cool
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| Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth |
[10 Oct 2008|07:46pm] |
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Hello sentients.
For your perusal, in this time of times, these days of days, this perfect moment, two bits of prose for you, one that I provide a link for you:
Lantern Bearers by Robert Louis Stevenson
The other that I heartily recommend you find. The joy is indeed in the finding.
"The Case for Human Beings" by Thomas Palmer (via The Best American Essays 1993).
You can think of this part as a meme if you want: write in your journal what of human beings makes you proud, makes it really nifty that you are among them?
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| `o/Do you hear the people sing\o` |
[29 Sep 2008|10:44am] |
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music |
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Memories of Les Mis |
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When hearing about news, try stopping your judgment, putting it aside for the nonce. How were you feeling before the moment you received the news? How are you feeling after that moment? See if you can trace where those feelings and thoughts come from.
Consider the 'source' of your information. Can your own fears and anxieties become a 'source'?
Consider what really has 'changed' when you receive that information.
And, make friends with your anxieties. Say 'Hello and well met, what can I do for you?' Get to know your anxiety, what do they like, dislike, how do they behave, can you take them to see your parents or out in public? Have a 'My Fears' party where you celebrate your Fear, show them a good time and maybe something extra after -;) Notice any changes in behaviours of Your Anxiety and Fear over time as you get to know them.
There is always time to chop wood, carry water, go on dates, go to the movies, invest in stocks and bonds (and keep them there to help others), laugh, cry, stub your toe, play with otters (I know you want to), shake your fist at the sunshine, stomp your bare feet in a rain puddle and relish the mud squooshing between your toes, fill out your taxes, vote, go to work, say hello and goodbye to people, make lame jokes, go to Worship, stand in line at Sizzler, send a poem to someone you never have before, phone your father, say words that never have been spoken before, think thoughts that never have happened before, sit still and listen to the closeby hummm that is Creation...
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| Notes from the Cabin in the Mists |
[27 Sep 2008|12:42pm] |
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music |
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Loreena McKennet's The Mask and the Mirror |
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I have, yet again, been locked in my own world view, afraid of my own hypnotized state, my projection of 'The Real World', a static and certain thing. It is amazing how powerful (and how, at the same time, how tissue-thin it can be) it is.
Thank goodness for my sweetie. By accident, she helped me get out of that Belief System. Bless her to wholes.
In related news, these are my visions of the Cosmic Muffin/Reality/universe/G_d:
driving over the bridge during sunset, while pulling into the exit it should have gotten darker. There was a heavy overcast, with the sun peeking through the crannies. But as I was rounding the curve everything LIT UP with a colour I have never seen before. Everything seemed to be glowing from both within and without. The forest to the berm to other cars to the people in the cars to the river were all glowing. It lasted for as long as it lasted. And then I moved on.
It *is* necessary but not to be taken literally. This is the challenge of my over-literalized culture. And my challenge as well.
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| As above so below: procreative iteration |
[20 Sep 2008|10:36pm] |
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All our inquiries into reality, all our statements into universe, all our experiments, all our mappings of the world we move through, whether we are looking to see the ratio of the mass of an electron to a proton, the distance to the moon, the sum of one plus one, how to do the Tango, the lifecycle of a Bonobo, what money is, all bear the indelible imprint of our minds, all are maps that say "we are here and this is who we are".
Many different cultures have already found this out and have created different technologies/traditions, using different jargon that understands this.
Perhaps that is what is involved with original sin; the recognition that we are powerful, that we are more responsible, more capable for things than we want to imagine.
Perhaps the "old religions" were there as a stage in our waking up to the realization that we are Divine and are as Goddesses and Gods?
That we don't need to be afraid. universe and us are inseparable and we will always be together. That we have a great sense of humour, have a vast capacity for play, and have hidden keys and treasures for us to find and USE to become what we can become.
That the world that the newspapers cry out, "The world is ENDING! Society will COLLAPSE!", is the old original sin speaking out. When the pop-environmentalists cry out for population decrease, they are saying that we cannot be worthy of our works or our world. When we say, "I can't change anything," we are really saying my world intimidates me and I have no responsibility for it at all.
Everything has a cost. In other words, things interact, interplay, affecting each other. In our race's interaction with Earth, there are costs. We fumble, make mistakes, but eventually, we come across solutions. I think that now is an absolutely amazing time to be alive, thanks to things like Globalism and Capitalism, we have "uplifted" humanity like at no other time. We have the capacity to truly be, in the Christian sense, Stewards of the Earth, to help the Earth out in the bits that it is wasteful and destructive at, and it can help us with our destructions and wastes. I think that is important for people to think about, especially in my culture, where we are inundated by original sin, taking a look at every instance of pain and suffering as some sort of insurmountable problem.
We are smart, relentlessly-curious creatures who, though we can also be foolish and downright ignorant and our machinations can end up having results that we could not have predicted, we eventually figure things out.
It is truly an exciting time to be alive.
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| Musing with metaphor, smiling with simile, dancing the Harlequinade |
[11 Sep 2008|01:19pm] |
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mood |
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compossible |
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music |
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Bells for Her -- Tori Amos |
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On this day of days, in these time of times, in this perfect moment, this is your homework:
is there any part of your life right now where universe is sending planes to crash into your twin towers, changing them and freeing you to...?
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| Dining with Maslow |
[05 Sep 2008|03:38pm] |
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mood |
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Relaxitrant |
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music |
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Lissening to the Big Bright Noisy |
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"We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own."
--Sir Arthur Eddington,
On to an epiphany I had: God isn't necessary.
The term 'God' itself seem nebulous, it can mean anything I want it to mean, it contains the notion of infinity. The notion itself is made up of finite concepts. Those we can deal with. Make inferences from.
But the term 'God' itself isn't necessary.
Such terms as 'hope', 'beauty', and 'transcendence' can be worked with. They are finite terms, empirical terms.
The term 'God' itself isn't necessary.
Even if there are things like Higher Intelligences (see Aleister Crowley, Dr Andrija Puharich, Dr Timothy Leary), Secret Masters, Angels, Ghosts, say, they still aren't 'God'.
I think that there are certain things that are 'necessary' for a healthy society. These things can be talked about and discussed, without going into the notion of 'God'. Even the notion of transcendence can be talked about in finite terms, without needing the concept of 'God'. It is not 'God' that causes people to want to help others. It is something much more specific and able to be figured out.
So, I think I am religious (in the William James sense), but don't believe in God.
However, that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the concept of 'God' and fool around, see how other people think. Riff.
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| A Program |
[22 Aug 2008|11:06am] |
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mood |
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delimiting |
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Appliancing by the Romantics |
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1. a Purpose of LifeTM is to Work.
a. Work has two aspects:
i. The maintenance of the Economy
ii. The maintenance of the Self
Work requires marketing oneself. For most work, that has already been done--the whole concept of work, the 'Job Description', has already been worked out before you applied. The 'Job Description' is a Social Game, an agreed-upon series of rules to aid in communication and to aid in getting things done.
Now, since it is a Game Rule of our society that it is Taboo to be aware of our Social Games, we tend to take things like Resumes and Job Descriptions literally, as limiters to thinking instead of the guides that they are.
Thus, it is easier to try for a job that has already been created rather than create your own (I am not necessarily meaning self-employed here). This also applies to things like 'relevant skills'--part of the Social Game that certain words and phrases hold more weight than others (and where the employer can better categorize what they are experiencing instead of having to guess).
It is all about marketing. If you are the greatest thing since sliced Canadians, your potential employer won't know that if you don't indicate it somehow, and in a way that they understand (that doesn't violate their Social Game, thereby triggering their Taboo).
Thus, researching the company you are trying for beforehand can help in understanding a bit of their Social Game, how they do things.
If you're skilled enough and/or fortunate enough you can instill your own ways of doing things in your Work, essentially promoting your Game Rules so that they become more ubiquitous.
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acertaindoebear's journal