Bootlegged Hitchiker's Guide

Watching the great Campbell...

2007-10-02T06:46:26Z

I wrote this late the other night listening to the Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell again. I figured I'd post it rather than delete it...

---------------------------

In a forest setting, mythology about life and death follows the model of death as a kind of pruning. Necessary to lend the material to the next life when you’ve gotten too big for your britches.

In the animal-based. Some sort of over-arcing animal spirit. That animal forms are reflections of the uber-animal. That the spirit, like the plant material, is recycled.

Our age, our current existence, is image-based. Which is a bit paradoxical because the question becomes what image do the image-based use?

But I think that is the horror that the older cultures see when they look at us. Here is a place where things are constantly re-defined. The speed at which mythological truths are combined and mixed and culled.

The stability to be had, mythologically, is the sum total of your blog entries, as it were. The treasures you pick up among an abundance so lush that homogeny is made absurd.

What does this do to communication?

One of the pros is that it makes explicit the fact that everyone’s on their own page. The fact that communication is always a distillation of two vastly different paradigms. That harmony is an assumption of parallel experiences impossible to verify. That language is like a silk screen through which you can touch the world, but not directly access it.

Untitled Baycon poem

2007-09-25T16:57:03Z

Sailing past the rocket parts,
We break away from hardened hearts
Into a sea
Of barest bygone heyday.

And here where breath is the biggest expense,
Here where we go to shatter;
It’s time to admit
The thing
About a spring
Is the coiling.

******************
Don't ask me what this has to do with baycon. I was at dinner, eating yummy fish. Probably I was thinking about drama, and how fiercely a lot of people were convinced of the import of their chosen piece of ephemeral pie.

Mr. Bill Hicks

2007-08-10T19:08:32Z

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question—‘Is this real, or is this just a ride?’ And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’ And we … kill those people.”

"Couched in these terms..."

2007-01-24T22:19:33Z

So I'm moving new furniture into the office today, and as I approach the door, dolly with couch in hand, a girl's kind of smiling at me and coming up the way. I think of asking the girl for help, maybe strike up a conversation. Then a woman comes from the building to the outside. I don't know which I'll get if I call out.

I imagine this:

"Miss, could you give me a hand?"

"Certainly, young man", old lady says, and opens the door.

"Thank you very much."

...

"Cockblocker."

Doh!

2007-01-09T20:35:01Z

So I interrupted a deposition today on business, and literally the only phrase I overheard was, "were they related, in any way, to the vasectomy?"

I love my job. :)

a_stoolpigeon @ 2007-01-05T15:57:00

2007-01-05T23:58:09Z

There's gonna be a ninja turtles movie.
It's all CGI.
They look badass.
Life is good. :)

The Tao of Doom

2006-12-19T03:49:11Z

It's like if you're playing a video game, right?
And you accidentally erase all your character data. Or your roomate used the slot for Dance Dance Revolution or some shit.
And you totally got to, like, level 20.
So now you gotta do it all again.
Bummer.
But you've already like, done all that shit, you know?
You know where the dude is perched up in the trees, waiting to snipe your ass.
You know about the exploding barrels under that balcony that takes out, like, three of those orc-fiends at once.
So you, like, fly past all that shit.
Till you get to 21.
Then you're like, 'whoh'.
And you go back to gettin creamed, cause this is the new shit.
You gotta work again, you know?

And that's basically reincarnation.

Thanks, Eela (Some cool thoughts)

2006-12-14T04:11:56Z

I was thinking about the child's game 'why?'
You know. When they keep asking 'why' until you give up?
The end is you giving up.
Even given infinite knowlege, all the best you could do is manage a stalemate.
You think, somehow, when it's over, that you let the child win, or that you've got the upper hand even in defeat, because they didn't understand the answer as to why the clouds are blue five questions ago.
What this demonstrates, really, is that our mind can only answer the little questions.
The intellect is something that has real and ultimate limitations.
'Your' 'center' isn't in your head.
Your head is subservient to the whole, and you can whip it into shape any time you want by repeating the question 'why'.
We mistakenly believe this is its primary task.
But all your mind can do is provide firing solutions.
All it can do is find answers to questions it made up in the first place.

"The less I seek my source for some definitive, closer I am to fine."
-Indigo Girls

Just gotta remember to think of thinking as... trees blowing.
Agency is not a relevant question.

thanksgiving! With Ham! and Blowing things up!

2006-11-24T03:39:40Z

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Just that. Nothing else.

Coolest thing...

2006-11-03T22:30:18Z

"But you can't wait around, you've gotta do something. But the thing is" - his voice takes on a slightly conspiratorial tone - "if you have lunch, you can't do it. You've got to do it instead of having lunch. If you say, let's have lunch, you'll talk about it and you'll never do it. " He takes aslurp of his bloody mary. "We used to just do it." A brief silence is broken by a laconic voice. "Mick," says Simonon softly, "we couldn't afford lunch."

-Mick Jones, The Clash

Gungan Manifesto

2006-10-31T21:19:23Z

Boss Nass waddles past me. I busy myself studying frolicking guber fish beyond the pane. He notices me anyway.
"Meeeesa thinks you taken betten care of da tings usn tells you."
Yessir.
"Payin muchin time to your tasks."
Yessir.
"Lessen time watchen fish."
He's gone. I huff at the glass and it fogs up for a second.
I know I'm coming up fast in the ranks. My family will be so dissapointed in me. But consider the ranks. Jar Jar Binks is a General in this Gungan's army.

I slip past a couple and a carriage whirring past. There's so much to protect here. The humans, magicians from another galaxy if you believe it, killed the mekaniks from space. Killed their minds somehow. We don't have their ships or their magic. We Gungans. The Naboo don't share. And now that the Trade Federation ships have left our sky, and somebody's getting their pressed-acharite-crystal shipments again, they've gone forever. These Jedi, whatever you have heard, they don't fix things when they come. They re-establish what was. We are left with one day of celebration in the pristine human streets. And then back to the eighteen day work cycle. I heard it was beautiful, the celebration. A real Naboo sceptersphere, made entirely of acharite. I didn't see it. I was burying our dead in the Greenplanes where they fell. The Naboo were not similarly burdened, as it turned out.

I don't mind defending my planet from invaders. I'm lucky to have that chance in my lifetime. But we declared victory that day, and when we came home, our prize was the status quo.
Our prize was a return to tilling the fields in the sweating heat.

Something needed to be done. I took to poetry. An ancient form seldom used by my people these days. But it is being read. It is being shared. It is time for the Naboo to share. It's time they stop placating our leaders with baubles and give us some of the spoils of our own labor; in the mines, in the fields. I have seen many a wretched Gungan suffering through an ill-deserved forced retirement. A back too bent, or a useless arm sending him away from the only work to be had. And those crops and those crystals, offworld, fetch ten times the price we are paid, if only we had the ships to bring them there. Our families live in the swamps in little huts of mud. The lowliest Naboo sleeps on paved ground. A symbiotic relationship, the Jedi said. It is time to share the palace.

And so I try to put these sights into words. Words I hope will ignite my companions into fury. So far, I am met with failure. I admit that they are weak. Or ignorant. Perhaps both, I don't know. They will not fight. I understand, because of my uprbinging, my education, that it is up to me to awaken their anger. They only know that things are bad. They don't see that they need not be. Very soon now, they will.

Yesterday, my words were rewarded. I was visited by an angel from the offworld. The woman- she tells me she is from the city- she came to see the poet. She said she sensed the conviction behind my words. I know we are seen from the outside as foolish and gullible, and sometimes I feel embarassed when I see the Naboo look at us sideways. My feet suddenly don't fit in my shoes. But today, it suited me, and I played at being... provincial. She asked me inane questions, and I responded in kind. But as she spoke, I paid close attention to her, and I saw her disguise, her masque, melt for a second when she thought I wasn't looking. The eyes don't lie, and hers, her real eyes, glistened like a watery void. The disdain, too, wasn't very well hidden. But despite tripping and falling all over myself like a fool, I met her gaze with the requisite conviction, and she decided she had found what she was looking for. A dumb revolutionary.

In a secluded grove, a few hand-spans away from the blaster-scorching left behind by the cannons that had felled so many of my people, she handed me a cloth-swaddled bundle. I pressed it to my breast and felt... sacred.

Should I have judged the gift for the giver? Why should her intention have mattered to me? She gave me a gift.

It goes secured now in the hold of the big silver ship, as the now-Senator Amidala flies to a place called Coruscant. The capital of the universe, I'm told. The place where the Jedi live.

Her death may awaken the Jedi to the signifigance of their selective interference here. It may awaken other worlds to the oppression levied by one of their fellow Republic constituents. My concern is for my people, who will see a Gungan strike back know that their lives need not be wasted in toil or in war for another foreign power. Even one on our own planet.

Once Sly delivers a line, it's eternally his...

2006-10-23T18:18:55Z

Take this job and shovel it.
So my boss is terrible with money.
He often leaves the money-handling to other people also terrible with money.
I'm terrible with my own money.
But I've been really fastidious with the accounts here.
And I'm really strong on ethics.
And I know that when you're a middleman, and someone pays you for work you subcontracted out...
... and then you use that money for your own bills (however dire your straits)...
... that's basically stealing.

The thing is, he's a great guy.
And if it weren't for the wolves at the door (who actually deserve their pound of flesh),
It'd be a great job.
I'm in charge.
I get to create the systems by which we run our business (everything except the money)
It's a private business, so no corporate bullshit.
Pays fairly well.

But I fear that this place is going under.
And I cannot accept responsibility, nor participate in, the money end of things anymore.
Because I do not have the power to reform.
It's kind of like working for a compulsive gambler.
I'm preparing a resume in case I'm not paid one of these weeks.
He's offered me health insurance, but I don't think he can afford it.

Subject Change!!!!!

Talked to mom.
She said that she learned that ADD is linked to depression.
It's a defective brain chemistry thing.
Doctors are having a lot of success with this drug that is part methamphetiamine.
Doctors have very little success with psychotherapy.
God, if I could feel unburdened by depression, well...
I'd jump for joy. :)
And who know what I could accomplish?

That's all for now.

Greaaaaaaaat.

2006-09-14T17:49:39Z

"MONTREAL - A man with a black trench coat whose shooting rampage in a Montreal college killed one person and wounded 19 others before he was slain by police said on a blog in his name that he liked to play a role-playing Internet game about the Columbine shootings."

Here it comes. Hopefully not, but...

Brainstorm for later review.

2006-09-11T07:27:33Z

Tommorow, I embark on the next section of my semi-cash-cow career. I intend to perform as many of my tasks automatically as possible, using the software available, and to set up systems for organizing our accounts that will be a primary memory for me. It would be really cool if I could access TimeMatters from home, and I am going to use Microsoft Money for my personal finances from now on. Get bank info from both banks. And set up automatic deposit. I think I should already have those forms mailed to me, but who knows if it got lost? Anyway, I need to go through that again.

I have rearranged my room such that I won't have to sit on the floor to chant. (Mage effort). I hope this will make the prospect not as shaky as before. The... cluasterphobia, I guess I would have to say, made the prospect kind of creepy. I also need to use my laptop with more frequency at the kitchen table, because, as Mom said it would, having it in my room all the time makes it too tempting to just do that automatically. It bombards my thoughts. Also, now that I have room, get a bookshelf. And I need speakers for my laptop.

I need to subscribe to that magazine that has that Bay Area theater gigs in it. Tommorrow, I should go shopping for my new work menu, and try to come up with a diet plan I can live with. Also, I need to find another place to work out. That 24 hour fitness is depressing. Also, where's my g-darn card?

Bike to school.

Merge Outlook with Time Matters. That's how TM emails things. Find out how to use 'FAX' to fax things without its own cover sheet. Because I want the cover sheet to be generated by TM. Also the enclosed are... letters. Also, get a big map of the bay area. I need to be able to reference cities just by glancing up. But if it's pretty, perhaps I can get it framed.

Girls, man. Fucking girls.

2006-09-05T18:53:43Z

I had a couple of really neat experiences at SGI meetings this weekend.

There was this girl at the one last night. She was really cute, and I totally did the whole shy, wallflower!-don't-talk-to-me thing. God damnnit I hate that I still do that. I mean, I'm not in high school anymore!!!!

Fuck.

And then this morning, my co-worker, who was out with my ex and one of her friends, tells me that the friend said that I had hit on her during this party we both attended.

So okay. I have always been attracted to this girl. And I was staring at her lustfully off and on that night. But I didn't make a move! Like, at all. She just blurted out, 'whatever you're thinking, don't'. From across the room, I might add. It's like Bush's pre-emptive-strike excuse has infected even the most banal situations. And it was just as silly then as when it was used on the international-warfare front!!!

And I'm reduced to saying 'did not! did not!', which I'm not even actually saying, cause the accusation wasn't levelled to my face. Barghhhh! When will the childish nonsense end?!!!

Girls, man. Fucking girls.

K'pla!!!!!!!! Klingon Tennis.

2006-08-31T16:02:12Z

Victory is mine!

Well, a very near victoy. That was technically a defeat. But still! I won 6 games of tennis yesterday against my roomate, in our second match. That's like, the tennis equivelent of extra innings! Unprecedented thus far. The breakthrough was the mantra of 'keep low and advance into the ball'. I'm a tall drink of water, and it's important for me to keep low. I don't know why, exactly, but it is.

Final score of our second match was 6 games to 8 games. And I won three games in the other one. Up till now, it's been, usually, 1-6. (You need at least 6 games to win, and you have to win by two.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh. And I just got a raise to $15 per hour. I have to come in at 8:30 now, which sucks. Means getting up at 6:30. But oh, well. Money!

"Noodle"

2006-08-29T21:21:06Z

Noodle, for the record, is the best name for a pet... rodent, ever.

That is all.

Jesus answers questions

2006-01-27T06:13:31Z

"...I would ask Jesus,
why one leper?
why not leprosy?"

"And he would say,
'you didn't even get up today
before noon.'"

a_stoolpigeon @ 2005-10-28T00:18:00

2005-10-28T07:20:34Z

Seeing my baby tommorrow. Can't believe I have to do a show first! I'll be so tempted to be like,.. 'yeah, that's great. Look, the judge did it. Can we go now?' Anyway. I'm excited! Good flight, baby!

Oh, and my last day of work is tommorrow. I wonder what I'll do for a month and a half. Hmmmm... Right now, don't care!!!!

a_stoolpigeon @ 2005-10-23T13:00:00

2005-10-23T20:18:12Z

My performance last night kicked soooo much more ass than my previous 2 flops, it was unbelievable. I felt calm, and except for awkward blocking in a scene that we're gonna fix on the pick-up on Tuesday, everything went swimmingly. People were so engaged! All the oohs and ahhhs. It was awesome. And someone told me they thought I did it. Yaaaay! First successful red herring! I should have icons made to paint on the side of my bi-plane.

Only like 5 more days till I see my Shawna. God, that's gonna be great. I really miss her, folks. I think we're gonna get together and explode. I hope my performance is really good on Saturday, partially so we can maintain that fantasy of the future star and his travelling PDA (read both versions of the acronym into that one. ;) )

And last and probably least but the most recent.... and I think only my dad will be jazzed by this if he reads it (and therefore has to take me when it opens), but the next Underworld movie (I know, cringe, right?) will star... Derek Jacobi!!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you not up on your BBC, Derek Jacobi is the star of the Cadfael mysteries. He's a former crusader in the Holy Lands turned cloistered monk in his twilight years whose keen mind and uncommonly (for a monk) worldly experience makes him the best candidate to investigate when murder is afoot near the abbey of Shrewsbury. And he rocks ass!!!

Okay, okay. Not floating your boat? Did you see Gladiator? Remember the 'good' senator, who helps Maximus at great peril to himself? "I do not claim to be a man OF the people, Senator, but I try to be a man FOR the people."

So yeah. That guy. He's got this purring voice, shock blonde hair, and piercing blue eyes. I know he's probably like fifty, but as my friend Albert is fond of saying, "I want his man-babies."

That is all.

a_stoolpigeon @ 2005-10-22T12:26:00

2005-10-22T19:32:26Z

I performed the worst I have ever performed last night. Every single one of my lines began with a hesitation. They just would not come! I'll be drilling before the show tonight. A saving grace was this little cherubic angel, seven years old or so, who really was into everything. There were a couple kids in the audience and they made the whole thing very... plebian. In a good way. Like a wrestling show. And her mom said she really liked the humor of my character. I'm kind of a wiseass in this one. Anyway, I felt really crappy, but today I feel great. I chanted a bit last night.

In this novel I'm reading, set in the middle ages, they perform this ceremony upon the confirmation of a bishop. archbishop where they open the bible and lay their finger on a passage at random, and this will be the passage that... sums up their reign to come. I wonder what mine would be? Perhaps there's a way to use an online bible and a random search engine...

I hope all of you have a wonderful day.

a_stoolpigeon @ 2005-10-21T02:58:00

2005-10-21T10:08:46Z

Wow. What a rehearsal. Actually, there were people in the audience, but they didn't pay. And thank god. That was the worst work I have ever done. Well, unless you count classes. It's just so hard to play this character, a smartass/ saidst, when he's just being polite at the beginning. When the shit hits the fan and the danger is apparent, its all cool. But before that...

I have had no time to get into the character's head, you know? I'm a patch. A fix-it midway through rehearsals, and I'm barely off book myself. Hehehe. Then again, so is the guy with the most lines, and he's been there throughout. We had this genius moment where he blanked on stage today and we all made up improvised lines to jog his memory, and everybody stayed in character while doing it. It's a murder mystery so you can get away with muttering... 'something about that name...' and everything's cool.

I'm a bit drunk right now, which you would have immediately picked up on by the typos if I didn't have this wonderful medium where I can erase things and you never know the difference.

I just got off the phone with the most beautiful girl in the entire universe. She's really hot, she lets me teach her stuff about philosophy and politics and geeky interests of mine. And she makes every moment monumental.

I hope we can live up to the life we've lived previously together.

Then again, that's the great thing about the karmic cycle. All of the previous events constitute causes that interweave with the here and now.

Nam myoho renge kyo, baby.

3 days till blastoff

2005-10-18T17:36:02Z

Dear lord. The guy who has the most amount of lines in our show is still on book. Severely on book. And it's three days till our first audience. But this is just one of those things that's fun to bitch about. I'm going to be off book by then (I went through a rehearsal today and only dropped one line- bear in mind this is only week 3) so I'm excited either way. And when we're all in our suits and stuff it really felt like an English parlor mystery. This is gonna rock!

I think, somehow that next week will be the hardest wait (for me) for my girl. I don't think we're rehearsing, so at night I'll just have to... wait! Clean the house! Move the bed back into the vacant bedroom! Write that last paper.

Never mind. I've got things to do.

Sleepless in Union City

2005-10-14T08:02:36Z

Like the fourth sleepless night in a row. I can't afford not to sleep right now, but god damnnnit if it just won't come. I'm tired. It's the unconsciousness that's the trouble. What I wouldn't give for a day off. But I have to memorize lines on Saturday. Every day this week I've arrived at work shaky and panicky. Just because of physiology. I wonder how much of this is not working out (Ive been putting in 12 hour days since this play thing's started)?

Anyway, send a prayer or chant or offering my way, would you?

a_stoolpigeon @ 2005-10-10T23:53:00

2005-10-11T07:00:57Z

So I got sheets for a swanky bed I don't yet own! Well, actually, if I get my way, I'll be taking my futon bed with me. It's got this really elegant headboard. Course, it kinda creaks when... buffeted the wrong direction. Hmmm...

My secretary picked up the sheets for me. I've been thinking very naughty thoughts about her lately. I wonder if I can persuade her to stay after hours one of these nights for some intense note-taking.

Man, this is gonna be awesome. I can't wait to move back into that cozy, jail-porportioned RV teetering on the edge of a cliff. A nymph lives there.

So news! I will be dressed in a tuxedo for part of the play I'm in. I will, of course, be dashing. I'll keep you informed as I am.

Ta ta!