Journal - August 13

Oh my god. Summer is over. What the hell. That took what seemed to be a week. I fear deeply that as time goes by, this effect will accelerate. Maybe I will be dead in two more weeks.

When I was young, it seemed like a year was entire epochs of time. Each precious day spent running through the grass, exploring new wonders, and breathing the rushing thrill of childhood in the woods was a full aeon unto itself. Now I can groggily study and play video games in an uninterrupted routine for an entire summer without so much as blinking. What am I coming to?

I believe that this, as many problems are, is fundamentally a product of video games. When I am habitually gaming, the easiest thing imaginable is to finish whatever minimal commitments I have placed on myself, and immediately tear off to my comatose repose in cyber-land. In such a state, as I learned in a 30-day bed stay following surgery, I am content to lull for what so has so far been empirically found to be an unlimited amount of time. It's likely that hell would freeze over, pigs would fly, Bush would apologize, July would feature a cold day, and generally unlikely things would go about occurring willy-nilly before I grew tired of gaming.

So... that leads to the awkward question. If fiending on the internets makes time vanish, and if memories and the perception of time are all that we have to live for, is it better to simply enjoy the moment goggle-eyed and drooling behind a laptop screen somewhere, or to abandon something that I love doing in favor of the better things lying all around me?

In ten years I have not satisfactorily answered this question, and it would appear that neither have many of my peers.

Having preferred the side of passive submission to date, doing what was easy, in this case gaming, in preference to exertion, I honestly cannot speak knowledgeably of the other side. For this reason, willpower allowing, the coming semester will be an experiment for me. If you have a similar problem, many of the people who occasionally read this Blog do, consider trying this with me. Here's to effort, promises, and their successful upkeep.

A question for readers?

Hello everyone,

I have a question for you. But first a point of clarification; when I say you, I assume that there exists a you. I have not neglected the possibility that I am the soul audience for these scribbles, in which case my problem is already solved, but for the sake of discussion and for having an indirect object to the sentence that is writing, let's assume that there is a you.

Would you like to hear the other things I have to say?

Every day I write to myself at reasonable length. Sometimes the things I write are private, and these I probably will never share with anyone, but other times they are just observations on the various skallywaggerings, hip-happenings, and skullduggery of my day.

Currently I do not post these things; I never really wished for this blog to turn into one of those "dear diary" type affairs, but I would consider it if there were interest.

Would that be of any intriguing? I will take no offense in either of the two negative cases, that where you say "no", and that in which I receive no reply. This blog itself, and everything else I write is for practice, and I achieve that whether or not I gain an audience.

So how about it?

Vacas Venonosas

Henry stirred awake to the slicing crows of a rooster. His blurry eyes made out the outlines of several, small dancing figures about his bed, and with a great smile he greeted his siblings good morning for what was sure to be an exciting day. Together they sprinted past the sweet smelling kitchen where their mother stood preparing breakfast, out over the rough rocks surrounding their house, through soft lanes of dirt housing newly lain seeds, and to the barn. There in the morning light stood their father, practically bouncing with pride, eyes wide open to see his young and exuberant offspring. Today, the children would learn to milk!

Looking at so many open jaws and expectant faces, the father's mind began to wander. So quickly had his little sprouts passed through infancy, and now, despite not yet having achieved full stature, the batch of them, his triplet sons, were prepared to take part in that most difficult, and most valued pursuit that his father, and his grandfather, and an entire clan before them had learned just as well. Soon they would be milking the cows together. With this thought, a cloud of doubt slank across the periphery of his consciousness. Were his little beanstalks ready yet?

Though beautiful, milking was a far cry from careless seed planting, grinding, yet predictable wheat harvests, leading mules, and all other forms of labor on the farm. Cows were unpredictable creatures, usually dormant and docile as the sweetest of dogs, at the clipping of a second they could become volatile and aggressive. If their hooves did not catch you, their nipping bite surely would, and from there it was a short trip to join his father and the rest in peaceful repose. He tremblingingly pictured his joys pail and shaking on the ground. No! They were of a good stock, they had the same wits and quick hands he possessed, and like so many before would come of age and do their part when they were good and ready, and now was that time. Mentally running over his technique and instructions as he did for each milking, he prepared this time to also share with his children, beckoning them to follow as he walked towards the sleeping herd.

A few bovines had already floundered awake with the morning sun. They hissed contentedly, and occasionally one would whisk its long graceful neck outwards, and with a slap of finality end the life of some wayward fly.

-My sons, you know of what you will soon learn. You know the risks, you know the importance, you know the reward. As your father, I impart what I know onto you, so that one day each of you will be able to care for yourselves and your own as I do now. Pay close attention and do as I teach, and you will succeed, but miss no details and be not careless, for the slightest mistake carries with it the gravest of costs.

The children, hushed now, watched their fathers gesturing hands with complete rapture. He smiled inwardly, knowing that at least today, they would learn well.

-Cow milk. The hardest fought for, rarest, and most valuable commodity of our farm. One pail will fetch a week's worth of planting wages on the market. To claim it, you must get past our friends here. They are good animals, but jealous, and be assured that if you give them the slightest margin they will take from you more than their due return for the milk. Do not allow them to bite.

He stepped forwards clenching his pale in one hand, slowing inching his other towards the first unaware cow. Sensing his approach, the creature suddenly became tense. It coiled back its meter-long neck, resting it against a massive furry, black and white body, hissed, and bared its long syringine fangs.

-Note the gougers on our friend here. One nick from these, and you will be unconscious; a good bite and I will be lost a son. Because you will be careful, and because you are my own, they will not bite you. Do as I do.

With that, the father purposefully raised his pale towards the creature. The still dewy air hung still for moments. Sighting the hated artifact, the cow uncoiled rapidly and struck. The pale, designed specifically to absorb the fanged impact, did not scratch or break, and the cow's extension give our farmer his opening. His other hand snapped forward with purposeful severity, seizing the cow across its fist sized hide. He slide his hand back along the neck now, holding it very tightly just below the venom sacks on the back of its skull. With that, he produced a rope from his satchel, gently tying the creature's dangerous striking end to one of its frontal legs, and proceeded to mutter a brief prayer, and collect the sweet juices of sustenance from its bulging udders.

-That my sons, is how it is done. Now I have a number of calves in this nearby pen. They produce only very little milk, but likewise their venom is limited. I would like you to spend the rest of the morning practicing on our smaller herd. Now go.

With rushing glee, the children grabbed buckets and rope of their own from the pile by the barn's entrance, and sprinted off towards the pen, each trying to pass the others to seize their father's eye with their strength and exuberance. They set about emulating their forebear with zeal, and he watched on approvingly. As each did just as they were instructed, the heavy morning dampness became indistinguishable from a petite spot of water clambering down their father's face. That night he slept better than in weeks.

-Wilder

(Please forgive spelling and grammar; I wrote this during lunch-break after eating a sandwich, so there wasn't much time to append things.)

Craig's List Want Add

I thought it would be interesting to put out a Craig's List personal. Alex Kushner helped out a bit.

A Modest Proposal: 20 (Monterey)

Handsome, lost and slightly dangerous. Unintelligibly wealthy but unwilling to admit so. Confident and directive, likes long quiet walks, poetry, exercise, and listening to your feelings and lengthy stories. Will not grow tired of hearing about your buds. Expressive of my feelings, but not in a complaining way; only needs to show the torment hidden deep within spiraled eyes. Enjoys guitar, cooking elaborate meals, and saving kittens from impending disaster. Stopped a tank in Tiananmen square. Averted three international armed crises. Not afraid of bears. Unavailable. Smells like strawberries, but in a manly way. Loves children, and small furry creatures. Daily pulls a sled of orphans to a fresh source of stream water to conserve transportation and desalinization costs. Also likes orphans. Spontaneous. Aboogabooga. Working on Ulysses II. Has a nice Butt. Charismatic, sensual, persistent, caring, and loyal. Very clean pores. Modest.

A perspective on slam poetry

Meep Meep goes the darkness.
Or so it seems, as the roadrunner races across pulsating asphalt,
Enigmatic as the desert sands, he will not be caught, will not be caged,
But is he already, by the immutable walls of reality,
By a culture, extending its salty, greasy, hungry capitalist hands towards vulnerable nature;
By the choking embrace of network television;
By millions of young, relentless eyes, once boring him, transfixing him into a brightly colored screen, demanding more appearances, roaring for the risk of yet another elaborate, deadly trap.
Now they look elsewhere.
Surely this animal, this fictitious being to whom we ascribe our own filthy mannerisms of trickery, guile, wit, insolence, hubris will never rest at peace with his brethren, will never again feel the sole scraps of attention we would afford him, buried deep beneath a seething tide of gory fascination.
For we marked him, marked him irrevocably with our disease, and in so doing left that solitary Meeper astride of two incompatible ways of life, Nature and our strip-mall Hell, questioning his place in either, finding love in none.
Meep Meep goes the darkness.

Frank

/ / /

I was bored around 11:30 this evening so I sketched out and wrote the first part of a three-segmented short story. This is yet to be edited, but will likely see love soon. I hope you enjoy.

/ / /

Frank

Frank was an oddly dissatisfied man. He worked in a home services shop, smiling, directing customers, and generally facilitating the sale of wares for his employing corporate chain. More particularly his job involved the construction department. There, Frank would ensure that the entire medley of nuts, bolts, lumber, tools, and other building supplies were in proper order, and that the patrons of that section were sufficiently informed and primed to purchase goods. What killed Frank about this was not the lack of room for advancement, or the long hours spent on his feet, or even those demanding and seemingly obnoxious consumers, spittle flying from their jaws as they requested immediate data on the location of widgets, Frank in fact rather enjoyed the challenge of dealing with those odious persons. No, what made Frank perish a little the more every evening was inventorying.

You see, every night Frank's employer wished for each piece of merchandise to rest in its proper place. This would to a casual listener sound reasonable, but due to the nature of Franks work was in fact rather soul crushing. In one aisle, aisle seven, the aisle where nails and screws were kept, there were nearly a thousand individual cubbies housing every manner of possible shape, size, and orientation of fastening devices. Customers would often pour over these, selecting a healthy dozen which closely resembled what they desired, and on finding the correct bolt, dump the remainder in the nearest convenient tray. In one day Frank's section would see hundreds of customers, nearly a third of them dumping merchandise. As they did so, somewhere, Frank cried on the inside, for his lot was to correct their careless sloth before going home in the evening.

This entailed slowly digging through the stretching gray sea of nearly identical parts in aisle seven, detecting those out of place objects, and diligently returning them to their correct positions. For that one problematic lane alone, the process could take anywhere from minutes to several hours. It took hours more often than not. On finishing aisle seven, which he always did first simply because he could not bear the thought of doing it once weary from the rest of his nightly clean-up, he would proceed to sort the rest of his sovereign lanes of product, ranging aisles one-six to nine-eleven. Frank felt like Sisyphus, but with none of the tragic glory.

Sometimes his manager chanced by in the mornings, smiling hollowly at Frank after checking, just to be sure, that there were no size fifteen bolts in the place dedicated to those of fourteen. More rarely, he would find that Frank had missed some small detail. On these occasions Frank would later be called into the back office and reminded that dozens of young and eager boys were looking for work in these times, and if Frank were to continue to fail in his duties, another individual with “more initiative” could readily take his place. During the day, certain customers did that unforgivable deed, unsorting Frank's wares, but in plain view of the worn salesmen, some even looking him directly in the eyes as they condemned him to another late evening, and a delayed return to his lonely apartment existence, punctuated only by the soft flashing glow of his comforting television.

This was the life of Frank mid afternoon to deep, deep evening five days a week. He rose long after the sun, ate a sparse breakfast of oatmeal or commercially packed noodles, donned one of five sets of worn, but nonetheless well-washed company clothes, and trundled off to work on the bus again. Frank did have vacation time and weekends, as per federal mandates, but having nothing better to do and no-one better to do better things with than his black and gray calico, Samuel tended to spend these reprieves as he spent his earlier evenings, numbing the hours with his old television set, forgetting all sense of location and even of time. In short, Frank's routine was as constant as it was boring as it was disheartening.

That was of course until, as you the reader should surely expect from such a story, for what kind of a storyteller writes only of humdrummings and dullery, Frank's destiny took a decided turn towards the bizarre.

On a day like any other, seven hours into Frank's shift and approaching closing time, Frank had been carefully monitoring aisle seven, even preemptively sorting the screws and nails that shoppers displaced, in order to assure himself at least one evening of early retirement. The birdlike murmur of spring couples shopping for minor embellishments to their home had quieted, and all that remained was a few snippets of conversation and the trundling clatter of several laden shopping carts traveling about his department. Frank was at the moment considering in extreme detail a crack running through the bare marble floor of aisle seven. It spanned one side of the aisle to the other, and from it ran dozens of smaller fractures in the store's walking surface. The cracks were just small enough to be trod over without recognition by the masses of shoppers who passed them, but having nothing better to do on those evenings like this one where Frank preemptively handled closing-time duties, Frank had recently taken to noticing such things. He thought the cracks must be somehow indicative of his current state; once he had dreamed of much more than a stone floors and angry customers. He couldn't quite frame the metaphor, but what of the screws, surely they must somehow...

Franks reverie was broken by the shuffle of feet further along the floor in aisle seven. Bad news. He looked up and saw a peculiarly dressed man. The person stood just below Franks average height, had a clever look about him, a welcoming, confident smile strangely offset by his darting eyes, and was garbed in a neatly pressed suit. This was so peculiar, as Frank hardly ever saw moderately well dressed individuals in his section, where only small numbers of any one good were sold. Certainly businessmen frequented the offices of his branch, and sometimes the proprietors of smaller firms would come to the back where order pickups were made, but hardly ever would the well dressed find their way into his aisles. More pressingly, the man held an empty bag and was eying the products of aisle seven.

Almost as if by random, this stranger's hands brushed over the boxes of goods arrayed in front of Frank, stopping suddenly to take loose pinches of items and deposit them in his bag. This resulted in a potpourri of steel, iron, and aluminum parts that made Frank's gut turn barrel rolls. The stranger continued, filling his bag to the brim, until he reached Frank, looked deliberately at him, and slowly moved to upend his bag into a single stall. Shuddering at the horrendous game of 52 card pickup that this would surely mandate of him, Frank took an involuntary tick forwards as his distress became evident in minute facial horror.

Surprising Frank, the man stopped his up-heaving motion without having spilled a single nail, and never breaking eye contact, laughed.

He ended the silence with a precise yet comforting drawl: “You don't know me, but in a sense I know you, and you'd probably like to hear me out.”

Freedom in A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange, an acclaimed film by Kubrick, asks us what it means for man to be free. Its protagonist lives a youth of what he calls "ultra-violence" where during the night he roams around with a gang of friends savagely beating who he pleases, stealing what he can, and generally being a curmudgeon. Eventually he accidentally murders someone, gets caught, and goes to prison. He wins release by agreeing to undergo a fictional two week behavior modification program which uses classical conditioning to force him into associating intense feelings of suffering with any violent or malicious act. He cannot willingly do wrong without excruciation. The film introduces a political dialogue surrounding his treatment where one party calls his state deprived of freedom and will, and the other ignores questions of will and claims that he is a better man as a result.

The question posed by the first party's assertion that he loses human freedom when compelled to action by psychological training is an interesting one. We are inclined to wonder whether he is free when so conditioned.

Several influential philosophers actually adopted views regarding freedom similar to the fictional dissidents of Clockwork Orange who find the protagonist not to be free. Locke for one argued essentially that to be free, we must do as we choose, which consists of picking our action, and also of having the ability to preform that action. This is interesting in the context of A Clockwork Orange because the film implies that were we psychologically trained to hate one act, then we would have our freedom, a freedom that we supposedly innately possess, abridged.

When our protagonist is trained not only to detest violence, but also the music playing while violent images are broadcast to him during his treatment, we are moved to feel outraged at the loss. The doctor overseeing him even has full capability to just flip the switch on the Beethoven, and thus save his subject the loss of something beautiful, but he chooses not to.

But why are we upset? We are upset because we have this belief that innately in us is the ability to, of our own volition, like classical music, hate classical music, and live as we see fit. Our perception of classical conditioning(1) as depriving us of this core freedom should set off warning bells in the context of freedom. Conditioning hardly stops when experimenting does. In the example of the doctor altering the movie's protagonist, we have this active entity that can be faulted for the process, but what of all the other times when we are so conditioned?

As I understand it, when we play a video game, win, receive praise, and then enjoy that game as a result, we are being conditioned. When we do something society conceives of as bad, are yelled at, and then avoid that action or feel guilty about it thereafter, we are being conditioned. When someone makes a comment on our clothing, and we associate that subconsciously into our perceptions of that item, we are being conditioned. This form of input determines how we respond to much of the world, and in this way our behavior is actively shaped by everything around us?

How does the omnipresence of conditioning matter for freedom? As you may have guessed, if we are going to say that an experiment removing someone's choice also takes away their liberty, then we never really were free. It seems that none of ou decision making criteria are free of the influence of condition. In the coming years, as our understanding of the human brain grows, it will be fascinating to find out just how deeply we are conditioned, but certainly to the extent that our sensibilities are purely products of experience, our actions are as inevitably determined as a rock's fall.

(1) As a simplified version, classical conditioning theory holds that when we experience something that innately makes us respond, like a strong flavor, in conjunction with something that doesn't, like someone whistling near us, eventually we will have responses that would normally accompany the flavor from hearing a whistler.

Finals

Hello my small reading populace. I will be on a brief hiatus for term papers and finals for the next week or so.

-Wilder

You've been hosen if you don't get frozen

Philosophers have often asked that, while their ideas may be repugnant, listeners consider them for their substance before rejecting them for being repulsive. Yes, you may hate an idea; yes you may tell its author, anyone who will listen, and everyone who will not about your hatred; yes, you may even reject an idea in time for thinking it dangerous, foul, or downright stupid, but it is hardly fair to do so without hearing it out, and honestly thinking first. This tolerant consideration would suit other areas, say life choices, well, and I ask you to give the following modest proposal its due consideration. I accept all resulting blame should you at least try to see it my way first.

So let's be forward.

Your days are numbered. One afternoon, perhaps soon, maybe later, you will keel over, choke on a carrot, suddenly become the victim of an unthinkable tragedy, or otherwise perish. At this time, assuming no God, your time is up. Swoof, nothing more, Blackness. This is the regrettable human condition.

Or is it?

Blaise Pascal once made a famous and oft cited wager, that he would rather live his life a Christian than not, for if the atheists were right and God did not exist, he would pay only a meager cost in lost prayer time, but if the Christians were right, he would benefit from eternal salvation. Pascal's wager was both too unlikely to yield fruit, and too expensive in terms of actual-life-time commitment for my tastes.

I wish to point out two seemingly unconnected sets of facts.

#1: Modern technology is wonderful.
We are rapidly growing as a technological culture. Mere decades ago, we had no widespread access to computers and the things that came with them, and since then we have rocketed forwards in nearly all fields from medicinal practice, to chemical research, to energy production. Two particularly promising areas of study are those of brain research and alternative fuel. The MRI, among many other recently developed techniques, finally allows researchers to directly sight human brains in action, and make inferences about their function. Moreover, our ability to sequence genes, which seems to be growing at pace with the exponential expansion of digital storage and processing power, is at an all time high. Assuming that we humans don't decide to wipe each other off the face of the earth, soon, perhaps years, or decades from now, but inevitably in the next few centuries, we will have an understanding of the human brain. This may, among other things, allow us to either provide repair, or life support, to a brain, the only thing a human really needs to exist. On the note of alternative fuel, we are rapidly getting closer to effective renewable, and one day cheaper, energy sources. Energy sources are key for powering all manner of things. Industrial freezers are one fine example.

#2: Now is actually a moderately ideal time, financially speaking, to die.
In the US, the tax on your worldly assets as you cease to be worldly is, it turns out, very low right now. The democrats failed to renew it in 2010, and so at the moment it is zero, and even once we renew it, the tax will affect only moderately wealthy Americans. (Those with holdings of US$1million or more)

So how does this affect you? Well, if we are in agreement that at some point you will go kerploof, and also that nothingness, which we prefer to avoid, will follow, then perhaps you desire a way out? Given the present progression of medical technology, it is a safe wager to say that if you remain intact, and in possession of a funding mechanism until we develop more sophisticated medicine, then resuscitation is entirely possible.

How to get there though? Freeze your corpse. Yes, for a tidy sum, you can almost assuredly arrange for your corpse to be frozen once you lie deceased. To do so, create a post-tax endowment sufficient to accrue interest at a rate exceeding inflation by the annual costs of a body-sized refrigerator unit and corresponding site. (1) Attaining this, you lie only a stipulation on your endowment that your frozen effigy be revived as an un-aging robo-cyborg-person once possible away from a chance at immortal life.

You may laugh at first, or shy away over the prospect of leaving your children with nothing, or object on moral grounds, for surely the money could go to charity, or at the very least the energy use will haunt future generations, and you may even simply reject the concept at face value.

But consider that my idea is not so different than Pascal's wager. Once you are dead, your money is obviously doing you no good, so just like the wager, this plan has almost no cost; in fact it costs less because you need not attend church services to implement it. On the other hand, just like Pascal's concept, the potential benefit is immeasurable. If successful, you simply will have more of the only absolutely limited resource you must face, time, and that is worth all of the money, happiness, whatever, in the world, for with unlimited time, you may gain also whatever else you may seek.

Now as for the above objections... If you are a parent, your children have benefited by you enough already; they exist and have been brought up. Should charitable potential hold you back from spending your hard earned funds to buy yourself a chance at living in a future where medicine may provide you with delicious robotic support for your brain, just think of the good you could do with two, three, four and even greater multiples of your present life. It would be selfish not to opt for the robo-option. Have qualms about energy use? Devote some part of your life to the green movement to offset the cost. There is no real excuse for non-participation, so live life fully, meet each day as your last, breathe the fine nectar that is the running juice of the world, and also have a sweet backup plan. (2)


(1)You will have to reach the moderately wealthy bracket to do this, but if you are to kick the can soon, all is well with taxation, and if not, you are probably well off enough for such an endowment anyways.
(2)I have jokingly proposed this idea several times before, but never quite gotten around to putting it into lengthy text. Disclaimed.

Current stance on Saturday night studying