a perfect circle - posters

these are from A Perfect Circle's homepage. i just thought i'd kinda scrapbook them here.

i must have more thoughts than this...

sometimes it all goes blank. a void. you get so busy with the slave-to-the-wage hours that the mind just forgets to think. maybe it just has so much going on in the background it just prioritises for you. who knows. i read so many other blogs which are inspiring, i wonder why the hell i bother with so little substance running through the head. at the same time i find some blog by a 30 something chic who seems to fill her days trying to get her rack out in public and organising swingers evenings with her hubby. swings and roundabouts. no matter how superficial you feel the shear fact you actually acknowledge the fact lifts you a centremeter or two above shite-level. funnily enough, this acknowledgement can also sour the deal on you. hubris can kick in. 'i think therefore i'm better that you' kind of philosopy. an easy trap for an easy mind. lucky i'm better than that...shit, where did this dirty great hole that i just fell into come from. it's that easy.

i stopped drinking recently. it was a slow process as i said the same thing a year ago at my 30th. i didn't drink too much but i've got to the point where it makes the thought process not go as i'd wish. no grandstanding over it, in fact i'm jealous of people who can. i just can't do it anymore. i don't like what i become when i do. it'd be ok if i had some sort of shut-off valve. a part of the brain that said 'you've had enough brother' but i don't. two drinks in and the brain goes 'hey, two feels this good, let's see where fifteen get's you!'. the same went for smoking - pot and tobacco. kicked pot in the arse ten years ago. cigarettes were about six i guess. i'd go through a pack a day, up to three if i hit the piss and stayed out til the next morn. still, i've got my 30 cups of coffee a day as well as my mobile phone on permanent standby so the tumor is still in the post.

the thing is, i struggle to relax socially. even in a party where 80% of the group are friends i get on edge. can't relax. a few beers in and i'm having a ball, you can't shut me up. this is the hardest hurdle, for me at least. to almost reinvent yourself as a socially capable, confident persona. man, if confidence were a currency i'd be begging for change on street corners in the bad side of town. it aint easy. then again, it's a challenge and maybe that's worth it's weight in dried foodstuffs. i guess i'll work it out or crawl into exile behind yet another cathode-ray dream replacer.

something about turning thirty. no sense of under-achievement, well no more than most. more a sense of time slipping. the 'what i want to do' verses 'what i have to do' verses what's easiest. it's easy to hit the piss and blame the world for not helping you out with what you want in life. it's considerably harder to face up to your own life and actually work towards what you want. even just work out what you want in the first. finding that balance between it all is where the difficulty lies.

quote for the day:
"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream
and he sometimes wondered whose it was and
whether they were enjoying it."
- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

david cross

man, i love the tv show Arrested Development. love it. it's a funny show. one of the cast, comedian David Cross seems to pop up everywhere and he's a classic guy. i've read a few interviews with him and found the following which really grabbed me.

Excerpt of an interview from suicidegirls by Daniel Robert Epstein

DRE: I read this somewhere. You were going on to do standup in Atlanta and you wrote 'be nice' on your notes.

DC: I actually found those notes just recently in my office.

DRE: I know you're from Atlanta. Was that why you wanted to be nice?

DC: It has nothing to do with the place. I just often find myself getting shrill, angry and the jokes get more incredulous. I stop being clever and funny. You have to have some level of attachment, you can still have passion and believe but it has to be softened somewhat. You can't just yell jokes at people. Now I'm used to my daily, almost hourly, outrage at what's happening in this country. How people are allowing it to happen because they don't care. I can deal with it better. But back then I was like 'What the fuck is wrong with you people?' I don't mean this to sound hyperbolic but there are increasingly, albeit really minor, similarities between now and how Germany was lulled into what happened pre-WW2. How people are now giving up the idea of the individual to the government. We need to wear this, not say that, take it on good faith that they know what's best and that they should keep secrets from us. That's what really happening and I've never experienced that in my adult life. All I have is history books and there are similarities.

DRE: Many people feel that once we sent out troops in we should support the government. We should support the troops not the government.

DC: You can do both but that's a red herring. That argument is specious and doesn't have anything to do with what the real issue is. Go ahead support the troops, how does my getting upset and trying to bring them home not supporting them. Besides if people really want to support the troops they would vote democrat. If you want to reinstate the 14.4 billion dollars that Bush cut out of the veterans program then vote democrat.

better late than never i guess

this is gold, although i'm probably the only person on the planet who would care that didn't already know of it. Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show went on CNN's Crossfire to 'have a chat'. Crossfire got axed and when it happened:"his scorching critique of television on CNN's Crossfire last fall was so dead-on that the network's president cited Stewart's indictment when he canceled the show in January." (Wired News story "Reinventing Television")

anyways, he went on Crossfire to speak his mind and certainly made the 35 year-old monkeyboy in a bow tie host look like a dickhead. as a kind of defense the idiot tried comparing their two shows (a political show vs. a comedy show. good try dipshit). the other Crossfire host came out ok i thought, at least he wasn't a tool.

video here at iFilm. video synopsis: Jon Stewart browbeats CNN's Crossfire hosts for their "partisan hackery." Many suspect this now-legendary appearance prompted CNN to remove the show from their line-up.

also, check his post-mortem from The Daily Show here.video synopsis: Comedy Central's self-described "funny monkey" rehashes the dressing down he gave Crossfire's stubborn hosts.

while i've got you at iFilm, check these out also:
:: The Colbert Report
From The Daily Show, will have it's own timeslot this year.
:: Councilman Throws Object at Reporter
nuff said.

go over to The Daily Show's site and check these out also:
:: The Daily Show videos
Check out the latest one's, especially Lewis Black's commentary on America and war.

i wish we had something similar here in Australia. We have got CNNNN which is good when it happens.

quote for the day:
"A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill."
- Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

home

working late and playing a few live dvd's. lyrics are funny things to me. they can sound so incredible and meaningful yet when when you look at just the words alone they can look kinda average. almost lame at times. still, here's 2 tracks i love.

Home - Depeche Mode (Ultra)

Here is a song from the wrong side of town
Where I'm bound to the ground by the loneliest sound
And it pounds from within and is pinning me down

It is a page from the emptiest stage
A cage of the heaviest cross ever made
A cage of the deadliest trap ever laid

And I thank you for bringing me here
For showing me home
For singing these tears
Finally I've found that I belong here

The heat and the sickliest sweet smelling sheets
That cling to the backs of my knees and my feet
Well I'm drowning in time to a desperate beat

And I thank you for bringing me here
For showing me home
For singing these tears
Finally I've found that I belong

Feels like home
I should have known
From my first breath

It's the only true friend I call mine
And pretends that I'll make amends the next time
The friend of the glorious sin of the light

And I thank you for bringing me here
For showing me home
For singing these tears
Finally I've found that I belong here


The Big Come Down - Nine Inch Nails (The Fragile - Right)

there is a game i play
try to make myself okay
try so hard to make the pieces all fit
smash it apart
just for the fuck of it

bye bye oooh
got to get back to the bottom
bye bye oooh
the big come down isn't that what you wanted?
bye bye oooh
find a place with the failed and forgotten
bye bye oooh
isn't that really what you wanted now?

there is no place i can go there is no way i can hide
it feels like it keeps coming from the inside

there is a hate that burns within
the most desperate place i have ever been
try to get back to where i'm from
the closer i get the worse it becomes
the closer i get the worse it becomes

there is no place i can go there is no place i can hide
it feels like it keeps coming from the inside.

quote of the day:
"Perhaps all pleasure is only relief."
- William S. Burroughs (1914 - 1997)

Scrabble anyone?

well, if you've been a while between needing any depth of knowledge in the fine arts of language skills, Scrabble 'aint the game for you. not if you're against personal introspection. i bought Travel Scrabble Deluxe and it's great but man, do i feel like a dunce. if there's a record held for the most two-letter words used in any one game, i'm a contender for the title. the scoreboard goes up to 799 but i didn't get over 250. great. safe to say i lost and was wracked with nightmares lastnight where i was attacked by giant words like 'OF', 'IT' and 'QI' (just so you know 'QI' is a part of your physiology in Chinese medical theory. i didn't know that but the Srabble instruction book has a list of acceptable two-letter words for morons like myself).

well in lieu of actually writing anything myself here's some great movie reviews i found at www.pajiba.com:

:: Hate Your Kids? Here's Your Movie:
The Valiant Review
:: A Fine Example of How Not to Make a War Movie:
The Great Raid Review
:: A Big, Sweaty Whore of Movie:
The Stealth Review
:: Congratulations Hollywood! You've Ruined Another Classic Sitcom!:
The Bewitched Review

there's a whole heap of other great reviews there also. waste some time and read 'em all. i dare ya.

quote for the day:
"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

organic foodstuffs can bite me

fuck me bob, i'll take 'mankind's greatest bullshit' for $10 thanks...

what is with the god-damned over abundance of so-called organic foodstuffs now. geez, a few years ago nobody gave a rats arse if DDT was the main ingredient in their weetybix yet now totally different story. i understand that people are concerned about their intake, the environment, etc etc but it's a little hard to stomach someone rabidly chasing down an entirely organic shopping list while choking down the third cup of joe for the day inbetween inhaling the second pack of Camel non-filtered.

i get organic and have two organic producers as clients. i thinks it's a great thing. i buy into it. i'm sold. but, and it's a bigger 'but' than J.Lo on a fried chicken binge. an organic stamp is not entirely honest. many products have organic certification from companies that simply hand it over for cash with little or no paperwork needed to back up the claim. quite a few products feature prominent organic certs that they simply invented. it's seldom checked, at the moment anyways.

here's my main point of anger towards 'organic'. the term is meant to be used to point out that the product in question was made with no use of fertilizer or pesticide. YET, i'm seeing friggin organic spring WATER for god's sake?!? what the fuck is organic spring water? really. it's spring water, from a fucking SPRING!!! no production short of bottling the stuff needs to come into play. yet somehow it's organic?!? sure some water is filtered from all over the place like sewage treatment plants, nuclear hydro ponds, amsterdam's canals etc and sure it's worth pointing out that the good stuff has been bottled from the source whereas this other clear shite is treated poison, but doesn't the 'Spring' in 'Spring Water' give that shit away?

i'm thinking the term 'organic' is being a little stretched. one dictionary definition says:"Of, relating to, or derived from living organisms: organic matter." - dictionary.com. i'm thinking some half smart fucknuckle wised onto people's shear stupidity and whacked on 'Organic' knowing that it is legally an organic compound by definition and that people are too thick and trend-fixated to think beyond the label. i think that sarcastic prick is probably right.

organic water. it's up there with a product called 'thinning water'. gold. unless it comes with tapeworm eggs, an aggressive water-bourne cancer agent or razor blades in it i'm thinking that's kind of complete shite also. i guess if it comes with a 'recommended dietary intake: take 2 bottles daily ONLY, do not eat. repeat for 2 weeks" it'd make you lose weight.

if there are aliens thinking of invading this panet and destroying our species can you make it quick please.

sony blows monkey nuts.

nice little link here from Exploded Library: still no iTunes Music Store in Australia - a casualty of squabbling between Apple and Sony telling why the Australian iTunes store is still nowhere to be found. Sony is stone-walling over license rates. funny thing, i won't rush out to buy cd's at present but if i could just download 'em there's quite a few 'classics' i want to get (Robert Palmer's 'Heavy Nova' and 'Riptide' to start with!) as well as new releases which i'd download for AU$10 in a heartbeat. Sony's other 'issue' is it's highly shite music format called ATRAC. a format no-one has cared about up til now and i'm betting the farm that no-on will give a shite in the future. somehow they think holding out content to one country will make apple accept ATRAC, give em more cash per sale and somehow make Sony a major player in the online music world. they are content producers for pretty much every format of anything (music, film, electronic devices, etc etc) out there and now they want to be the title holders for delivery as well. it aint gonna happen.

so while Sony hold out for better rates i'll just download their latest releases for free though Limewire. good play fucknuts.

i wanna be a sock puppet!

today from Wired News' Furthermore:

Your Character Here
Aug. 17, 2005 PT How much would you pay to be immortalized as a zombie in a Stephen King novel or a good guy in a John Grisham thriller? King and Grisham are among 16 authors selling the right to have a character in a book named for the buyer to raise money for the First Amendment Project, a California-based nonprofit group that promotes freedom of information and expression. Details of exactly what each author is offering have been posted on eBay and the auctions will be held between Sept. 1-25, the group said on Tuesday. King said he was offering the chance to name a character in a novel called CELL, to be published in 2006 or 2007. "Buyer should be aware that CELL is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain," King said. "Like cheap whiskey, it's very nasty and extremely satisfying," he said on the site, adding that if the buyer wanted the character to die, it must be a female name.
-- Reuters

man, people are literally paying thousands of dollars for their brief touch of fame. it used to be that people gained fame through their actions in certain fields of expertise, interest or career. these days the search of fame comes before anything else. fame through fame alone. sad really. just proves that this "virus in shoes" (thanks Bill Hicks) is yet again proving the need of a cleansing meteor shower, flood and ice age. mankind - a case study in why opposable thumbs can be a bad thing for all.

quote for the day:
"He who pursues fame at the risk of losing his self is not a scholar."
- Chuang-tzu (369 BC - 286 BC)

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
- M. Cartmill

guns don't kill people...really?

Wired News had a good little F.A.Q. in regard to the file sharing 'problem' and what's happening legally lately called The Uproar Over Downloads.

there's been a Supreme Court ruling in favour of the content makers in the U.S.A. which will ripple effect what goes on in the rest of the western world like any other cultural shift in from the U.S. it's gone a little too far though as now software manufacturers of peer-to-peer applications, DVD ripping software, etc can now be held legally responsible for 'stolen' files. this area is so grey you could see companies like apple getting sued for allowing itunes to burn a cd with piracy protected music files (the moment you burn an audio cd the AIFF format strips away the protection).

i mentioned this to myra and she made a great comment. if gun manufacturers (including modification onselling companies) aren't held reasponsible for what people do with their weapons why should the makers of Limewire be held responsible for the same thing? If "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is considered a truism, then peer-to-peer networks should be offered "peer-to-peer software doesn't steal copy-protected-software, people steal copy-protected-software" surely.

it certainly shows where the lay of the law. law protects the money. case closed.

quote for the day:
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss."
- Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

teen-angst ends at 20

low self opinion. low self esteem. insecurity overload. a rose by any other name is still a... well, you get the idea, it's all the same. suffer any form of this affliction and you'll probably be among the majority. be aware of that fact and you're headed back to the minority. a minority of a minority. you could probably attribute a great many of social ills to it. homophobe, racist, sexist wife beater? low sense of self comes creeping in like a stalking shadow. it doesn't always effect the outer image though. not in my experience anyways. for as many anti-social dipshits out there forcing their own shit on others there's a million more suffering in silence. or not so silent some of the time.

it has always amazed me how some people deal with this personal weight. some put forward the most amazing front, the confidence of a door to door vacuum salesman. others hide away from the world behind whatever facade feels right to them. me, i learnt the art of self-deprecation. someone would try and take me down verbally, i'd be there one step after with a funnier, more biting comment about myself. problem being i believed what i said. still do most of the time. i say problem being but actually it's almost the opposite. yeah i believe it but by saying it out loud you give a body to the thought. corporeal anger. self-hate actions figures. easier to deal with something when it's made real.

if you've never suffered from depression or self-hate, these thought patterns flood every other thought or action. every-time you do anything it's there. self-doubt and friends as a cheer squad. makes things fairly difficult at times. you have to build systems inside yourself and you have to build a solid ball of anything that you can hang onto inside, be it anger, hate, an aim, a hobby, anything. someplace to retreat when the defence weakens. if you can't you'll probably fall away. one way or another. i learnt to think of that part of me as a nancyboy skirt-wearer. either shit or get off the pot. slit the wrist or keep on living. funnily enough, the thought that i'd be punishing myself staying here and facing down the world more than if i offed myself was what made me make the decision. a decision made years ago now and a good one.

i used to cut myself. not deep, not in open areas (forearms etc). luckily i don't scar easily. it made sense. being an overly emotional person was not easy during the teenage years. i couldn't quite understand some of the pain i felt so i cut myself and i could feel and understand that pain. it made sense then. still does in a way, i just don't do it anymore. i've seen doco's on some poor souls who are covered in scars from this. people who cut to the bone. it's so sad to see but i can understand why some of them do it. you just wish you could talk to em and help them past it.

one thing to remember, you're not just a mental being. we are all animals with a penchant for walking on two feet and digital watches. exercise makes a huge difference. massive. burning out some of that internal intensity seems cleansing. saying that, so many people go to the gym for social or cosmetic reasons i have found that you get odd looks when you don't want to talk and have an angry look in your eyes when you're there. fuck em. i'd love for vanity to my only reason to be at the gym, much friendlier than self-loathing. more shallow but who says that's entirely a bad thing. i would but who am i to say. it does help though. feeling fit, healthy and strong. it's all a positive step forward.

it's funny but getting older helped. you seem, or at least i feel, like being so self absorbed becomes harder to do. too many other things vie for attention. work, bills, work, more bills. if you like what you do for a living it helps. it doesn't completely go away though. now and then it sneaks in under the radar to chisel away at you.

if you do suffer from this kind of shite then you're not alone. there's literally (truly literally, not actually figuratively) millions like you. it's a fact to hang onto cause at times it can feel like you're the only one you know who feels this way. everyone else seems to be fine and dandy. at peace with themselves and their place in the world. that's not actually true but it seems like it.

when you're a teenager it often gets called teen-angst. it's all normal they say. rebelling against the world of rules and discovering early disappointments and excitements for yourself. what happens when you reach 20 though? no longer a teenager then. nope, then it just becomes one of a million other drug-able symptoms of that virus called life. maybe if we treated teenagers with a little more credit we could help people work through some of the baggage earlier. one less roof jumping casualty. one less 30 year old wife beater. maybe. who knows.

one thing that can help is to talk about it. get it out and get on. all you've got are experiences. these have been some of mine. if more people could address these things inside them and work on them we would be so much better off. forget the prozac method of concreting over the top of the problem. it'll find a way through the cracks eventually. always does.

quote for the day:
"Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other mean."
- William S. Burroughs (1914 - 1997)

email etiquette issue

didn't take long. yep, here's a source of anger management issues for me. it's just those pesky small things man.

email etiquette anger issue:
what is with the trend when writing emails some people simply type the query into the subject box and then leave the message area free of anything!?! what's with it?!? it seems mainly government workers or bigger businesses (that probably use Outlook). it shits me to tears! it's a god-damned subject box. end of story. oh, and if you feel like throwing the whole "it saves time" at me then keep it. that's shit. it doesn't save time cause you have to reply to the friggin nimrod with the question "sorry, was there an email there or just the subject line? dickhead!". arrgghhh. time saver my back passage.

the tumbleweeds tumble past like weeds tumbling...

well it's a quiet day here. busy as with work but i still need my fix! nothing of note in my day and nothing has appeared on the radar as yet. even so, here's a few little nuggets of interest or surprise.

Furniture Causes FedEx Fits at Wired News is an interesting tale of a bloke who made furniture from FedEx boxes and has copped a few problems from the shipping company themselves. why, who knows.

this one got some press a while back when a girl who was thought to be dead resurfaced, living with her boyfriend. the boyfriend had previously lied in court as to her whereabouts. not a huge deal i would have thought EXCEPT another poor bastard was being convicted of her murder. nice. hope the sex was good while he was giving it cause he'll be at the receiving end for a bit. 12 months for runaway perjury. it does have have to be mentioned that the 'poor bastard' that was being convicted was a serial murderer so i guess it's not so black and white after all...

a constant souce of vitriol for me in the god forsaken Ekka. maybe it's just lil' ol' scrooge me but what the fuck is all the hoo-har about really?!? it cost's about $10,000 to get in the joint, a can of softdrink is about $5,000 and the rides require a tetnus shot, legal insurance waver and a love of circus folk (hey, who doesn't love small hands and the smell of cabbage!). yep, come visit brisbane between 11-20 august and you'll be in for a cultural treat darn tootin! i guess if you really dig animal shows, log chopping comps and grannies flogging so-called 'home-made' fudge for more than the local price of cocaine then it might be your thing...

quote for the day:
"Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours."
- Benjamin Disraeli (1874 - 1880)

The Bug Wrangler

(taken from M.Doughty's book of poems called Slanky. Doughty was the singer of now ex-band Soul Coughing. i miss them. not a huge follower of poetry but i love his word play and this one reminds me of Burrough's 'Naked Lunch'. go buy Doughty's solo albums, they're awesome!)

He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn't answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used the blowdryer to force the spiders to move, up the arm of the stuntwoman, across the floor. He was known to thee industry as a professional, that he could coax wrenching performances from the crankiest bugs. He was a man famed for producing bug performances that would make people weep in the theaters.

They knew what they were jumping into, he thought, I always split the money square, am I wrong? You take some roach out of a miserable life and put it in pictures. Tame the wildest insects with a flashlight and a little blowdryer technology. Go to the beasts and teach them respect. Take them into your home and live with them. They betray you to the police for giving them this.

At a press conference, he sat at the microphone with a loyal spider whom he tried to coax a positive character statement out of. but he couldn't use the blowdryer in front of the media, and the spider stood there and said nothing while he sweated and the videotape rolled on forward. - M.Doughty

(this next one is just so much like his Soul Coughing lyrics.)

I'll Be Your Baby Doll, I'll Be Your Seven Day Fool

Tonight the train is a curveball
sloping towards portions of
Darkest Brooklyn; some house unlit,
like a blank face, where I assume
you sit unsatisfied in a cubical room. - M.Doughty

(and while i'm at it, a Soul Coughing track.)

Soundtrack to Mary

Easy places to get away to.
Easy limbs languid all around you.
All my time is
Dirt on your hands.
Fingers drifting
Down my spine now.

Fall,
Fall,
Fall,
Fall,
Fall,
Fall.

Soundtrack to Mary

Many minds wandering from room to room.
Many trees slain just to write it to you.
Many rays blinding,
Almost drowning,
Keep this whole shine,
Locked in my room.

Throw back the noise, get another one.
Pour out the rum, I've been drunk enough.
I know the sound that you made and I
Can't seem to unremind myself.

I hope you feel better
later on.

- Soul Coughing

Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it...

marvin know's where it's at. (i felt it necessary to counteract all the boundless optimism previously posted incase anyone who knows me reads this and thinks my blog got jacked by some happy-sack shite merchant. that and i felt like posting a photo.). i don't know about anyone else but i'm fairly sure a manic depressed robot shouldn't have a fucking gun. oh well, hollywood does need to add that 'wow factor'...

quote for the day:
"What do atheists scream when they come"
- Bill Hicks (1961-1994)

open rectum. remove head.

now and then you get a reminder that life is an exceptionally short, self motivated gift. nothing more, sometimes less. a close wakeup in the last year for me was when my friend rusty almost killed himself with a badly executed B.A.S.E. jump from a cliff sans helmet. he put himself in a coma for a while and scared the shit outta me and many others. he's still here with us and thank christ. by rights he probably shouldn't be but i'm not going to point that out to anyone in charge. it did underline the frailty of our existence to me. for a short while. i guess everything is relative and human nature doesn't really allow a long introspection into such things. it's like pain. try to remember the last time you suffered serious pain and how it felt. you can't, not the same way you remember happy things anyways. if you could, many of us wouldn't set foot outside of our house. ever.

the newest reminder is a guy called John Hood who i stumbled across from Craig Clevenger's site. (Craig wrote 'The Contortionists Handbook' which is simply awesome) anyways, this guy, whilst in jail, wrote some exceptional book reviews which inpressed a great many writers. he's got a blog: theviewfromscranton, which are his thoughts now he's out of jail and under sufferage as an ex-con. really great snippets of someone's life who has something to say that's worth reading. he comments about the tenuous nature of freedom and simply, it doesn't sound trite coming from someone who has learnt it the hard way.

it makes me think long and hard about how easy it can be to complain or think negatively about a life that is nothing short of blessed. the occasional inspiration like these certainly help me to pull my head outta my arse and get back into things.

quote for the day:
"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."
- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

what am i doing?

anyone else ever sit and wonder what the hell they are doing. the job or career they've chosen? whether or not anyone else has cottoned on to the fact that they don't have the faintest idea what they're doing?!? i sometimes feel like i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing. i just kinda go blank staring at the screen thinking "?".

it's funny. i grew up looking at the world of adults, resolute with the thought that everything was in it's right place. everyone experts in their chosen field. the advice given by professionals was correct, i mean they're the professionals right? now i'm a so-called adult (and i'm willing to fight that one in court. the damn birthdate seems right but i'm sure i haven't actually aged past 15. a young 15) and i think, "hell i'm an adult now. i'm doing a job. i'm living life sorta but i have less of a clue than i used to!" i've come to realise that the world runs on the 'best guess' scenario. everyone kind of knows what they're doing or at the very least can bullshit with enough of the right words to get by in their particular field or place in the world. it's all a confidence game. if you seem like you have a clue then i'll pretend i do also. so on and so on. i often wonder if anyone out there is actually an expert at all? there's plenty of a-holes who would call themselves one but that doesn't make it so, or does it?

man, it's a nasty pandora's box that one. start unravelling reality to check what's behind the facade and all you'll see is a monkey playing cymbols between it's knees (funnily enough doing a fare version of Mungo Jerry's 'In the Summertime").

quote for the day:
"I have as much authority as the Pope,
I just don't have as many people who believe it."
- George Carlin

today's gold

another classic that's landed in my inbox a few times over the last few days. what would you listen to enroute to a self-detonation? Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" perhaps? maybe any Brittany Spears album as an extra reminder that this plane of existence is crap...

speaking of which, the onion's "Suicide Bomber Killed En Route By Car Bomb" makes for upsetting reading. or not so. pretty funny as always.

also, this article is a good reminder why i feel an inherit guilt at being white (and a transparent glowing white at that):
'At the Famous Writer's Conference' by Marie Myung-OK Lee is a good read about racial difference in a particular case without feeling like a giant finger is being pointed at anyone (either directly at or bent toward the ceiling).

no surprises

classic from Wired News' Furthermore archive:

Real Men Drive Compacts
08:50 AM Aug. 03, 2005 PT Men who feel anxious about their masculinity are more likely to support war, buy SUVs and be hostile to gays, according to a new study from Cornell University. Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell, gave men and women a gender-identity survey in which they received feedback saying that their answers were either masculine or feminine. Women's responses weren't affected by this feedback, but men whose manliness was threatened reacted strongly. "I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," Willer said. He plans a follow-up study on men's attitudes about violence toward women, and another to see if testosterone levels are a factor. -- Debra Jones

and another less amusing one:

In Bush We Don't Trust
02:00 AM Aug. 06, 2005 PT Americans are growing wary of their president. Less than half now say they think President Bush is honest, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. The president, who won re-election declaring, "people know where I stand," could be looking at confidence problems. In January, 53 percent said they think he's honest, while 45 percent said they did not believe him. In the new poll, conducted this month, people are about evenly split, with 48 percent coming down on the side of the prez' honesty and 50 percent saying he's not. -- Joanna Glasner

isn't it strange that people only now find him not entirely honest when it's been shown that the first election was a heist, the WMD's didn't exist and the only plan they had regarding going to war was a polaroid of a few petrol drums and a road map (fastest route in, no exit) paperclipped to three-dozen bodybags.

quote for the day:
"I think we agree, the past is over."
- George W. Bush, On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

music and popular opinion

what is it with some people and their fanatic fan-ship of certain music, be it bands, individuals or styles that they can get to a point where anyone saying anything negative about a band they like is taken like a personal assassination attempt. even a comment like "yeah, i get how good they were/are, i just don't like them..." seems to be seen as a teflon coated bullet being loaded into a handgun. maybe i'm just used to liking bands that many of my friends don't so i've never had the luxury of believing my likes mean the same to the entire population. i guess, sadly, that people seem to wear things like favourite bands as some sort of personal qualifier. by liking artist A, they're much better people those who are into artist B. thinking about it i've been guilty of this lame behaviour also but as you get older it's so much harder to hold on to krappe like that.

it seems strange and yet not that people would seek items to qualify their existence. i mean, who are we. it's a concept that a lot of people struggle with from time to time. i don't buy into the "why are we here" routine. i mean what difference does it make why we're here? if you woke up lying on a train track barely moments before a train cut you in half, would it be smarter to ask "why am i here?" or simply deal with it and get out of the way. that's life to me in a nutshell. you're here, get on with it. if there is a higher-purpose or meaning to it all we weren't invited to the meeting nor given the brochure so just whack on a shit-eating grin and trudge on. it would be nice to think we are all part of something big and important but that's most probably a crock'o'shite. as difficult as it is on the ego we very probably amass to nothing in the scheme of it all. it's actually a liberating thought as long as you're not some low-life scumbag that would use that thought to treat others like crap.

quote for the day:
"I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
- Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)