Year: 2007
Measures of Love
Posted on June 10, 2007 in Partnership
Do you avoid talking about it lest you become as a pharisee standing in the temple letting all the world know that he is a great lover of God or do you pull away the bushel basket? In this and in similar matters, it is hard to decide.
Our society wants to package everything. Divide it up, measure it, put it in a package for consumption by other people. Everything must be tested, checked, put on the block to be oggled by others to verify its veracity, purity, and common sense. Emotion’s just a product and you must submit it to a secret bureaucracy that emits public results. It’s not just “tell us how you feel”, it’s “tell us how much you feel”. And we end up shivering in the cold sunlight, worrying about claim to humanity.
The title of James’ answer to this week’s Philosophical Friday question and the question itself goaded me into this tirade. One thing about the blogging world that I have come to dislike is this use of it as a proving ground for emotion. You don’t describe your happiness, you defend it. Love — that ineffable blossom falling from a cherry tree — means nothing if it does not go clang on the scale of obviousness. You have to show it to others these days like a bad porno flick run over and over again. Or so the writers of such questions would have us believe.
In my nineteenth year of marriage and fidelity, I satisfy myself and my wife with a single fact: I am here, day after day, as surely as the atmosphere. You do not need great acts to prove your love because for most of us these are not asked of us. “What if” replaces “what is”. And What Is is a matter between only my wife and me as it should be.
Sometimes I brag about my many years, but then I realize that those many years are their own fact and do not need my embellishment. That Lynn and I see is enough. Keep it succinct, mind our business as something more than the kitsch of a diamond ring in every nuptial. It’s not the symbols or the wild acts, but the living together in patience and respect — and living together when the patience wears thin and the respect becomes tarnished in the hope that they will rebalance themselves if you just stop worrying and return to the friendship.
People can love at great distances or skin to skin. Love is not a pile of sugar cubes or a heap of meringues. Just live it. Just love.
[tags]love, partnership[/tags]
And shut up about it. (Especially you, Joel.)
Ogres and Monsters
Posted on June 7, 2007 in Myths & Mysticism Reflections Uncertainty
So Maggs wants to know how I am….
The hero’s journey, we are told by [[Joseph Campbell]] and others, involves a place where one encounters monsters. By monsters, I mean creatures which do not eat the person. I’d love to meet some monsters in my life, but all I run into on this line are ogres. Ogres grind your bones for their bread. They pose no special challenges other than dodging their clubs. They are boring in the extreme if sometimes histrionic. You win no special prizes for meeting up with ogres because they are banal and all around us.
A few months past my life was filled with ogres who told me that I shouldn’t use my blog for exploring my feelings. I was put on trial, told that I was insane. The strange part is that my therapist seems to feel that I am in better command of my feelings than many. (If she only knew?) My writing, she feels, is a way out of the box canyon where the ogres reside. Ogres don’t want to know about feelings other than drunkenness and control.
I wish I had a [[Scylla]] or a [[Sphinx]] to challenge me instead of mediocre spirit bruisers.
[tags]uncertainty,frustration,myth,mythic creatures,self-knowledge,identity[/tags]
You can always check here.
Panorama Trail, Kodachrome Basin SP
Posted on June 6, 2007 in Hikes and Trails
Click here to read my first published hike report since my 2005 lockup.
Dream
Posted on June 4, 2007 in Dreams
I possess a small, seamless, clear cube which contains a tiny fish that looks like a hummingbird.
For Lovers of My Photos
Posted on June 3, 2007 in Photos
Here are my latest uploads.
Here are the highest rated photos on the site. You can rate any photo without registering. Look for the bar of stars beneath the photo and its descriptive information.
Here is where you register. When you register, you can comment. I love comments and even talk back.
Here is the top rated photo as of this posting:
I am getting close to being able to afford the camera I want. So close. Prepare for an explosion when it arrives. In the meantime, engage me with your comments/observations.
Living for a Purpose
Posted on June 3, 2007 in Reflections
You hear this one a lot when someone is recounting an incident in which their life was saved. “God is saving me for a purpose.” Well, suppose Judas had nearly fallen off a cliff or drowned in the Lake of Galilee, only to be rescued by a hand clutching at his robe? Can you not hear him saying “God saved me for a purpose”? (If so, why does [[Dante]] plant him in the Ninth Circle of Hell? Since he accomplished God’s purpose, shouldn’t he be in Heaven?)
We give ourselves purpose and those purposes can keep us alive, but they are not divinely bestowed. To declare otherwise, is to succumb to egotism or religiosity.
Friday Xenartha Blogging – Armadillo Hunt
Posted on June 1, 2007 in Xenartha
Some people just deserve to get leprosy:
Random Questions Meme
Posted on May 30, 2007 in Wastes of Time
Now, first of all, understand that these questions are not “random”. I didn’t get to dip into a magic question generation and have to answer whatever came up. I am replicating the questionaire that James answered on his blog. Think it sounds bad now? It gets worse:
- WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW???
- From a materialist perspective, that Nikon D80 camera body. From a health perspective, the strength and the wisdom to ride out the manias of May and June.
- WHAT DO YOU MISS???
- A steady paycheck, though I don’t miss the jobs that go with them.
- WHAT IS YOUR MOST PRIZED POSSESSION???
- There’s a tough one. Not being terribly materialist, I don’t think in these terms. There are many things that I enjoy having, but the things that matters most are our computers.
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SMELL???
- Bollocks! What a question! It is certainly not marijuana which reminds me too much of a brush fire. I like a fresh wind and whatever it bears on it.
- DO YOU GET CLAUSTROPHOBIC???
- I think I tend more towards claustrophilia.
- DO YOU GET SCARED IN THE DARK???
- Not for some time, though my worst nightmares all involve being in the bottom of the Marianas Trench with steamers of squid flesh and bulks of strange creatures all around me.
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOGNE / PERFUME???
- I wouldn’t know.
- COFFEE OR ENERGY DRINKS???
- Hansen’s Tangerine Lime.
- IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE???
- Ginger candy.
- WHO IS THE LAST PERSON WHO MADE YOU MAD???
- A family member. Or if you want to take an extremist point of view, me, the theory being that we are responsible for our own emotions and cannot be triggered unless we cooperate.
- DO YOU SPEAK A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE???
- Why? Am I not communicating?
- WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO TELL SOMEONE HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO YOU???
- Tell ’em. What must be expressed will determine the message and the medium.
- SAY A NUMBER FROM ONE TO A HUNDRED
- A number from one to a hundred.
- BLONDES OR BRUNETTES???
- For what end?
- WHAT IS THE ONE NUMBER YOU CALL OFTEN???
- My wife’s cel phone.
- HAVE YOU BEEN TO ANOTHER COUNTRY???
- Yes.
- WHERE WERE YOU BORN???
- Inglewood, California. I don’t use this for any of my password clues, so there.
- FIRST JOB???
- Stock clerk and handyman.
- WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST???
- My supposed intelligence.
- WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF ALCOHOL BECAME ILLEGAL???
- Um, nothing much different.
- WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY???
- A party not at my own expense.
- HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT???
- Can’t have kids where I live. No place to graze them.
- WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE???
- Sure. I was named after lots of people. And lots of people were named after me.
- DO YOU WISH ON STARS???
- Hmmm. Must have been written by a teenaged New Ager.
- WHICH FINGER[S] IS YOUR FAVORITE???
- The index finger because it is most utilitarian.
- DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING???
- I am beginning to think that whoever wrote this suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
- WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT???
- Pastrami
- ANY BAD HABITS???/
- Yeah, wasting my time on stupid memes when I should be writing something original.
- WHAT IS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING CD ON THE SHELF???
- Oh come on. I don’t want to get up and look right now.
- IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU???
- I don’t know! Do I get to have the same personality, tastes, etc.?
- WHERE IS YOUR SECOND HOME???
- God, whoever wrote this had to have money, too. In addition to being a teenaged New Ager.
- DO YOU TRUST OTHERS EASILY???
- Testing for paranoia now? I don’t trust this question.
- WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD???
- A book, specifically Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.
- HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A MOSH PIT???
- Hell no!
- DO YOU UN-TIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF???
- No, my wife unties them and she takes them off. Then she checks my feet.
- THING YOU ATE???
- An apple.
- SIBLINGS???
- No thank you, please. The one I have doesn’t like me.
- YOU LIKE SUSHI???
- Yes, as long as it is not alive or dead within the last thirty seconds.
- ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT???
- No, I am too married to ask someone out.
I tag Bipolar Guy.
[tags]memes,wastes of time,waste of time,killing time,time killing[/tags]
The Real Tragedy of the Electronic Commons
Posted on May 30, 2007 in Commons Theft Net Neutrality
[[Howard Rheingold]] may be the most overrated and undereducated commentator on the Internet. A few years ago, he wrote an article called “The Tragedy of the Electronic Commons” in which he cited a conservative fairy tale called “The Tragedy of the Commons” by [[Garrett Hardin]] which proposed that what destroyed the English Village Commons was the greed of the villagers:
For hundreds of years, herders grazed their cattle and sheep on common land. As long as no individual tried to graze too many cattle, everybody benefitted from the common resource. When too many people asserted their self-interest above the interest of the commons, overgrazing destroyed the value of the common land.
Hardin looked at history with the eyes of a [[Herbert Spencer|Spencerian]]. The import of his article and of Reingold’s was that it was important to build fences because you can’t trust the hoi polloi. The trouble with both of their theses was that history did not happen quite like they presented it. Instead, what killed the English Commons was a different kind of greed in the form of a dastardly bit of legislation called the [[Enclosure Act]].
It worked like this: you put a fence around the land you wanted. It didn’t matter if that land included a piece of the local commons. If you got there first with the fences, you owned the land for crops or for large estates on which you could stroll at your leisure even if that land was being used for pasturage. It meant the end of the village-controlled commons because the chief beneficiaries were the local nobles who, having lost or never having had their feudal privileges in the first place, put fences around land which wasn’t theirs, which by the definition of the law (because it was not planted with crops) was free for the taking. A few villages got wind of the acts and enclosed their lands before the lords could steal it, but for the most part, the economically livelihood and independence of the English peasantry was destroyed, leading to situations such as described in Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, a superior text for describing the “tragedy of the commons”. (See E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class for an account of this arrant land grab which ranks with the stealing of the American West from its native peoples.
A similar mythology is being invoked for the purpose of carving up the Net for ownership by big corporations. Conservatives point the finger at pornographers, scam artists, and others when they make public statements, but in private, they are after small businesspeople and people who have used the free speech of the net to attack their agenda. That more people read liberal blogs than conservative ones upsets them. They want to force deserted villages.
They are all talk about Big Government, but Big Government is behind their newest netspace grab just as it was behind the Enclosures Act. They are primed to drive you and me out of the Electronics Commons, claiming that they are wreaking good on our behalf.
There is no overgrazing happening on the web. What fences are needed have been created through private initiative and we, a free people, can choose among them. We can glide to whatever site pleases us without the interference of our providers or their routers. If the conservatives have their way, you will lose your power to voice dissent, to sell your product, to meet new people free of their governance and interference. There is a tragedy of the electronic commons on the horizon, but Reingold has been silent so far. What with his talk of “Amish style” interaction on the web, we have cause to wonder whether he understands what is happening right now with the campaign to abolish net neutrality and make it very, very partisan.
[tags]howard rheingold,commons theft,class,www,wild wild web[/tags]
Do This if You Blog
Posted on May 29, 2007 in Blogging Commons Theft Net Neutrality
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Speaking as a bipolar, I can say that this has meant the difference between isolation and connection. Big Corporations would prevent us from finding others with our illness, advocating for our rights, and educating others about the folly of stigma. You can do something about it: you can challenge the proposed regulations, but you must do it by June 15th. Click here to send your email. |
[tags]commons theft,internet,corporate stealing,blogging,free speech,freedom of speech,corporate theft[/tags]
