Sunday, October 22, 2006

And a Very Happy Un-Birthday to You

This year's presents included an old VW bug purring for me after a small blood sacrifice and a promised road trip to the beach. She then proceeded to give me a fireworks display of flaming balls of carbon from the tail pipes.

It was a good day.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

I love space news headlines

Probe peers into Venusian secrets

What drives its "super-rotation"?

That's what inquiring minds want to know!

So this is creative non fiction, yes?

Is Cheap Energy on the Horizon? - Special Edition - Yahoo! Finance

hrmmm

lessee...

yep. After 2 mins of thinking it through, the article is a bunch of pooh, designed to get us to vote for republicans.

Here's some of the good bits; we have miraculous oil supply recovery, then a scapegoat, a sword brandishing hero who takes out a "freak", but his meds don't make him crazy! And a bit of "humor" to wrap up this rosey outlook. All this in way to fecking long of an article padded with FLUFFY human interest shit. oh and there were some numbers in there.. but we all know that me and numbers have an interesting relationship. (read, I'll do it for the 4.0, IF i have too)


Lynch argues that the threat of disruptions--nuclear brinkmanship, war, terrorism, hurricanes, pipeline corrosion--has larded oil prices with a $20-a-barrel risk premium. As these perils recede, oil prices will fall.


So countries that test the Nuclear bomb (pronounced Nuk E LER)against the will of the "other countries" do not pose a threat? mmmkay. Class, mmkay, huh, Pyongyang, he's, well class, he's not right in the head. mmm kay?

...the 2002 strike by Venezuelan oil workers has kept 1 million or so barrels per day off that country's output of 3.25 million bpd. The subsequent application of socialist economics to the Venezuelan fields has done little to bring that volume back.

Yep- it's all those damn socialist workers in Venezuela to blame for high prices.

And this is, well...bad reporting? WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF OIL IN CHINA?!?! (or any where else?)

Stabbed in the chest, knocked unconscious with a bottle of triple sec from his liquor cabinet, Lynch woke to find one of the culprits still on the scene. So he grabbed a sword he kept behind his bedroom door and--still wrapped in his plaid bathrobe--whacked the guy. In the hospital, he identified the assailant by the tattoos on his arms. The incident triggered a mild form of posttraumatic stress that he keeps in check with low doses of antidepressants. The pills, he insists, do not affect his outlook on the long-term health of the world oil supply.

Damn those tattooed freaks! Is it just me or does getting knocked out by a bottle of Triple Sec, seem just a little embarrassing? I guess he likes margaritias. If I were the reporter, I would definitely reconsider my word choice. mmmmm diction. I now know that if I plan on breaking into someone's house to stab them in the heart, I should bring some good whiskey along to bash over the victim's head. At least then the reporter will know that this tattooed freak at least has some taste.

In Texas these days you still see bumper stickers on the backs of old pickup trucks that read, "Lord, just give me one more oil boom and I promise not to piss it away this time." Lynch says, "Now's the time to go long on bumper stickers and short on oil."

What the hell? Did you not just spend several paragraphs telling me how this sword waving guy says we're going to have cheap oil again? And that we don't need to worry about it?

This article, (if I must call it something) was a huge waste of an hour of my life. I have spent that long responding to it in the most Un-schorlarly way possible. Fine, I did try to use puncuation and keep an I out for weird uses off hear and where, and their boing summer salts by the sea horse

*wicked grin*

But the reason I latched onto this is because it seems so formulaic and terribly dramatic for a piece that should be fairly straight forward. I would go as far to say that it is fantastic, in a wholly unbelievable fashion. The "real numbers" are hidden between weird tales and broad generalizations. Finding the factual evidence seems to be discouraged by the writer as he tries to keep you reading by throwing in mythic elements of good and bad. Which is why I can't believe that A) prices are going down because the world is a friendlier place and;
B) this story isn't written as propaganda or spin, if you will, meant to encourage a sense of content amongest people who don't think for themselves and have become disgruntled enough to not vote republican this fall, if they do at all.

The other reason is that I plan on taking a Creative Non-Fiction class in the winter and this type of writing is my worst nightmare. I honestly thought I was reading an Onion article, and I checked everywhere on the page to make sure it wasn't.

And one last thing. I know one other person who thought the same thing as I as we watched gas prices drop 30-40 cents in the last 2-3 weeks.

Elections coming up?

yep, kinda creepy ain't it?

but bush doesn't have ties to the oil industry.

nope...

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Falsely True Meaninglessness

Synchronicity #2327
I posted to Mick's Site around 11pm PST last night and was awoken at 4am by Jake yelling Sri Syadasti in his sleep.

And it's STILL not weird enough, yet.

I was productive

And here it is for your reading pleasure. Constructive Criticism is ok- just remember this IS a 101 class.

Homos Despairus or Why me?

A man walks into a bar and ends up with a goose egg on his forehead. He cries out in vain to a guy relaxing on a pearly throne in the clouds and the events of the day scroll through his memories as having been just as painful. The dog died, he lost his job and he received a parking ticket. These events make for a good soap opera and set an example to examine the assertions of Karen Armstrong’s theory in A Short History of Myth; that humankind seeks meaning and value out of life. However, if we look at the nature of these and similar situations, the question of why seems invoked in times of duress. It is seldom that such questions arise when people are content.
“But human beings fall easily into despair,” (K. Armstrong). In this passage Armstrong seems to focus on a negative aspect of human behavior, an emotion that is not a joyful experience, rather quite an unpleasant one. She suggests that humans “agonize” over the “plight” of themselves and others, comparing mankind to their favorite companion, Canis lupus familiaris, who doesn’t seem to care about such matters. The author uses other negative sounding diction, such as “depressing” and “chaotic” to express man’s need for answers.
The Egyptians and Mesopotamians repeatedly reacted quite strongly to stormy weather and the hard times that followed it (Humanistic Tradition, Vol.1, Ch. 1 & 2). Their world seemed chaotic during these periods and people scrambled to explain “why” to themselves by entreating such matters to the gods. In Egypt however, the social order was turned on its head and every individual became responsible through his deeds (Humanistic Traditions, Vol. 1, Ch.1). These deeds consisted of doing good by thy neighbor, by not doing anything bad to them. The Book of the Dead hints at adverseness in the use of negative grammar, “I have not…” Whereas they could have written phrases akin to “I helped elderly ladies cross the street.” This injurious conceptualization of deeds not only impedes a person’s will to act by generalizing behavior into good and bad but, the person who complies with this code of conduct is still vulnerable to the elements of nature that cannot be predicted. His dog may die in a freak accident with a large brick even if he (the owner) did not steal the brick in the first place. The despairing master of the beloved pet might now question why and run through his laundry list of “things he didn’t do” and still find no reason for the dogs untimely demise.
These dramatic events that shape everyday life play a large part in humankind’s perceptions of the universe and the individual. However, negative concepts dot the social fabric enough to color man’s views of random situations to blind him to the beautiful and tranquil aspects of our world. The sacred and divine are found throughout the forests and homes of civilization, yet no one asks why such wonderful things exist. They do not fret over how lucky they are to have beautiful partners and mountains of gold. They only question in their darkest hour, when they need positive affirmation and beauty the most, when they cannot properly assess their own value.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

groan...

It's a bad night when I have a one page response paper regarding myth to write and I can't get the spanish and gametes out of my head long enough to spit out something coherent.

Yes, I am avoiding my homework. Well part of it, I've already been at it for 3 hours.