February 2012
36 posts
“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into...”
– Barack Obama (via hatefulatheist)
5 tags
Defending Philip Larkin
I love the once admired and then reviled people. They reveal so much about the human condition and the burden of hope that we all place in them to elevate us out of the meanest locales of spirit that our humanity dwells. Phillip Larkin is one great example, a self depreciating to the point of self-loathing, English poet who was a towering giant in the years following the Second World War. Even...
8 tags
Economic Notebook
One of the many issues with my writing is the obvious inchoate nature of my personal philosophy. This is most true regarding my attitudes and beliefs in politics and economics. I am still struggling to determine what it is that seems best to me.
To that end I have been reviewing previous blog posts and essays to see if there is any one strand of coherent thought that emerges...
5 tags
Top 10 CO2 Producing Countries →
1. China
2. United States
3. India
4. Russia
5 Japan
6. Germany
7. Iran
8. Korea
9. Canada
10. Saudia Arabia
5 tags
The Dynamic Tension of The First Amendment
The separation of church and state as provided for in the First Amendment keeps us united in freedom. It is clear that James Madison and those of our founders who voted for its ratification sought to create a secular democratic republic and not a religious one based upon Christian theology. However, their intention must not be misinterpreted to mean that they were attempting to divorce religion...
1 tag
“A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
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Dain - An American Tragedy (An Earlier and Shorter...
Young Dain makes me sad; she is beautiful and perfect in every way and despises herself with a razor sharp anger over her lovely aquiline nose, long neck and small perfect breasts – she is not a cookie cutter beauty (I tell her), which makes her all the more beautiful but, she only threatens rhinoplasty and breast augmentation believing that surgical violence will correct the very flaws that makes...
sataniste:
“About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”
-Carl Jung
10 tags
Dain - An American Tragedy
Young Dain makes me sad; she is beautiful and perfect in every way and she makes my heart ache with a desire to shave twenty years off my life. Her lovely and prominent nose (not quite aquiline, but definitely Jewish), dark almond shape eyes and soft pouty lips send torrents of arousal cascading through my body. I want her. But, I am just a big brother type (old enough to be her father really)...
7 tags
Thomas the Doubter - Explaining the Nature of my...
I am what is known in the language of the so-called New Atheism, a weak atheist. But I prefer to think of myself more as an agnostic atheist. I am an atheist because I live without gods, a-theist, and furthermore see no reason to spend my life praying, worshipping or generally seeking knowledge of potentially non-existent deities. This also includes arguing with believers about their theology...
“We live in a world of cookie cutter beauty where digital media can alter any...”
1 tag
7 tags
Time for Outrage - Stephane Hessel's Nonviolent...
Indignez-vous ! by Stéphane Hessel My rating: 5 of 5 stars Stephane Hessel is a remarkable man who has lived a remarkable life. His small and eloquent book (Pamphlet really), over half taken up by an introduction from publisher Charles Glass, is a call to a peaceful and non-violent insurrection against the status quo. M Hessel’s little book has swept France, Britain and I hope soon, the...
Ms. Maven's excellent, evocative sentence *Love...
scratch-the-maven:
Everything around me seemed to temporarily freeze as my heart skipped a beat and began thudding against my chest to make up for its loss.
7 tags
Neil Gaiman - An American and British Literary God
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman My rating: 5 of 5 stars Ten pages into American Gods I thought Neil Gaiman to be the smartest, slickest and wittiest novelist working today. By novel’s end I knew this to be true. Discovering Gaiman was like discovering hidden treasure buried beneath the flotsam of attic debris. Having never heard of him I grabbed the book from the bookshelf out of boredom. The experience...
12 tags
Breaking Up with the God of My Understanding
As a non-believer in Al-Anon I cringe each week during the group reading of the twelve steps whenever the word god appears. For example step 5. I don’t need to admit to god the exact nature of my wrongs. It is enough to admit them to myself, my sponsor and the person whom I have wronged, unless it would be harmful to make direct amends to that person. If, so there is always the group. I have...
“I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald (via nordababy)
12 tags
Notes to Myself: A Life Observed From A Greyhound...
Somewhere between Iowa City and Des Moines the bus had taken on more passengers, refugees from the brisk, dirty fall evening. Waking up from a cramped and fitful nap I found the previously empty seat next to me occupied by a scrawny, yet lovely young woman. Her baby bird demeanor, oversized brown eyes set wide on a pale face and short dark hair covered by a bandana gave an impression of middle...
5 tags
Notes to Myself: A Life Observed From A Greyhound...
Divorce was good for me. Through the frustrating and emasculating process of separating from my wife of five years I discovered who I wasn’t. During the summer of 1999 while our lawyers were divvying up the artifacts of our life together, my wife getting what little we had of value and me getting the bulk of our accumulated debt and staggering back taxes, my business failed and I found myself a...
“It’s not hard work that I disdain, but toiling without the joy of reward. An...”
January 2012
86 posts
Cringworthy: Everything Happens for a Reason
It always makes me cringe a little when people say, “Everything happens for a reason.”
Well, duh…
Every event has a circumstance or set of circumstances that precipitates its occurrence.
But, that is not exactly what these people mean. Oh, sure they talk about cause and effect. But, what they are really suggesting by their statement that “everything happens for a reason” is that your experience is...
9 tags
Dark Gnosis: Integrating Our Demons
Many try to deny the darkness within their hearts. They squelch every dark fantasy, every perverted image that flows forth from the river of their unconscious mind. But, this denial only leads to an eventual dam breaking suppression. It should be no surprise to us when some of the most tightly wound and self-righteous people find their darkness spilling into the light to their own horror and the...
Jan Brewer, Obama Face Off Over Book, Immigration...
Apparrently they are still in high school? Jan Brewer seems to have gone around the bend and Obama starts to lose grip on his characteristic cool composure.
Dying of Boredeom (Revised and Edited)
I am slowly dying of boredom.
The hours drag into days,
And days drag into weeks
And the weeks stretch and wind down the long corridors of the years.
Today I learned that my job description can be summed in this way:
Their job is to wear you down. My job is to have the stamina to last long enough to wear them down instead. The last person to throw his hands up in resignation before sitting...
scratch-the-maven:
Today I learned from experience that writing is revision.
Dying of Boredom
I am think I am slowly dying of boredom.
The hours drag into days,
And days drag into weeks
And the weeks stretch and wind down the long corridors of the years.
Today I learned that my job description can be summed in this way:
Their job is to wear you down. My job is to have the stamina to last long enough to
Wear them down instead. The last person to throw his hands up in resignation and sit...
1 tag
“The most effective revolutions are not fought with guns, bombs and sloganeering....”
– Mephistopheles
“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the...”
– A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15306
Berkeley English department staff and student protesters read this while picketing at the General Strike/Occupy movement a few weeks ago.
Occupy.
(via distae13)
1 tag
“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”
– Jack Kerouac
