A Preface to Transgression

Movin' on up.

2005-11-22T01:11:00.000-08:00

Well I have been meaning to post this for a while but I have moved blogs. My new address is:

http://www.xanga.com/A_Preface_to_Transgression

take care,

Daniel

In the new house and the new life-style.

2005-08-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

So I am in my new house with one full week under my belt and I like this.
I live in a house with 6 other people and I love it. There are moments when one can be bythemselves in a house that is as crazy as this one and that can be good and that can be bad.
I am always doing something:cleaning, tidying, working on Marx/GRE/Gradschool stuff. One thing after another. I went shopping today with $50 and I squeezed so much shit out of that little amount of money it was crazy! I loved it. I walked out with a ton of healthy food and some new self-respect unlike any I had ever had: I was taking care of myself with my own money and driving my car back to my house. This may cause some to roll their eyes and either a) they have never done it or b) they merely forget how it used to be for them when they tried it. It is a kind of satisfaction that could surmount many things in my life (barring getting elected president or the incredible stunt I pulled off in LR about 7 weeks ago-I am still pretty satisfied with that one).
A few other things: Dogs are great. I am taking care of this little mutt thing right now and I love it. I take it for walks and talk to it. I miss dogs. My dog is for sure coming to visit this weekend.
I miss somethings in LR. And I think about them all of the time. All of the visits could not possibly equal being there all of the time. But we will see how that works out.
Talked to my Mentor/Advisor Dr. Schmidt and I am finally ready to try for grad school. Academe..............bring it mother fucker!

Here and there in my head but at home on my feet.

Random thoughts on this day.............

2005-08-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

1. My mom got a new job in the neurosurgery clinic. I think she likes it. I hope so, she works to hard.

2.I like spam. I had a fried ham sandwich for lunch and while that might sound disgusting, I promise that it is quite tasty!

3.Feelings are somehthing that we cannot control, especially the feelings of those around us, so why try. We can just be ourselves and hope that it is enought to get our point across. This is the same for me. My feelings are mine and mine alone. And not me or anyone else is in control of those fucked up things. They just are.

4.Blogs are a funnny thing. Where else can you read something that anyone with a computer can read and find a refrence or two to yourself. And this thought is wierd because the medium of blogs can be self-referential. Crazy!

5. I like my dogs. They are the best dogs on the face of the planet. (Despite! How lazy they are.)

Feeling a little lost today.

2005-07-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am still home for the summer and I am feeling a little lost. I am moving out this weekend and that should be a new begining, but, alas. Still so much old baggage still in transit.
Well there is still the necter of the gods to get us through these days!

The state of the world.............

2005-07-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

Well I suppose that it is time for me to examine the world. I have been leary to really think about the world I live in but NPR assails me with bad news.
So here is my assesment:
1.CAFTA-Bad idea. Lets keep jobs in America where we can assure ourselves (to some degree) that there will be safe working conditions and equitable pay.
2.The agreement to sell nuclear fuel and technology to India. I take issue with this for a few reasons. The United States is attempting to form allies who have boarders or are in close proximity to China, real politik and the balance of power for those that can harken back to the day's of Mr Brown. Selling nuclear technology (even if it is just civilian technology) is a blow to stabilizing this region. I realize the importance of nuclear technology (to a certain extent) to any nation, but it should not be the foundation for an alliance. My reasoning is that it sends the wrong message to the world, that nuclear technology is the medium of negotiations (in either directions). I feel that India must not only agree to international standards concerning the use of nuclear technology but that it must ratify the NPT. I also feel that the sale of this technology could have been a strong bargaining chip to use to encourage India to disarm what nuclear arsenal it is has. But we blew that and still India/Pakistan/China contentiously pointing missles/bombs at each other. Oh well. What do I know about foreign policy. Detente is better than peace right?
3. John Roberts. Ok, a stroke of brilliance by the Bush administration I must admit. An intellectual (summa cum laude from Harvard, editor of Harvard law review, clerked for the Chief Justice), seemingly unpolitical-a civil servent through and through, a limited record to examine. Kudos to you W.. But I am not completly convinced. His previous jobs have had him towing lines are being neutral and as an appelate judge it is his job to enforce the constitution. But! What if he is freed from political restraints? What kind of man will we be dealing with then.
I remain on my guard with this guy, I am worried. Things which seem to good to be true almost always are.
4. The new Harry Potter book is out and I have read it. My reaction are shock and sadness in case anyone was asking, which I doubt you were.
5. London. Who ever did this today, not funny.

So it has been a while and a lot has happened.............

2005-07-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

.....and it has been a general trend in the lives around me that there is in fact a light at the end of the tunnel. Things are apparently looking up for most people and to a certain extent for me. I am the happiest I have been in years right now (and for a lot of reasons), but I still feel the shadow over my shoulder.
These few years have been hard, ones wrought from experiences which for many people (and myself in a way) have not been the best. I look back to where I was a year ago and I am lost about the time that has elapsed in between here and there. A lot of it is clouded over (either by drink or repression). A lot of it is just plain gone.
The state of the world outside of my safe world with my tiny problems has on the other hand not brightened. I am not sure where this convergence of my feelings about my life and those around me with my feelings about the world at large, dark and horrible.
I feel a tad lost. Not like I felt over the last year. This is new, different and in a few ways more unsettling.
But we will see.

Random thoughts on a spring day.

2005-04-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

"Even a teen-age crack dealer can tell you that there is no way to cut revenues and triple expenditures without getting into the kind of problems that croaked Billy Sol Estes and the Franklin National Bank, along with the utterly bankrupt governments of Brazil, Argentina and Haiti." -The Late and Great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

These are days of directed Anarchy on the political scene.
First the national scene. Look at the Teri Schaivo case. I am not going to get into the ethical implications of the situation but the religous fanatacism that has this nation in the throws of some epiliptic seizure have finally seen to a degradation of the constitution beyond the usual flaying of the first amendment within an inch of its life. Republicans have finally lost sight of their own party. The idea of the seperation of powers and states rights have been razed to the ground in the name of scoring cheap political points. When the congress went into session for the sole purpose of forcing the judicial branch to hear the Schiavo case all I can think of is the invasion of poland. Except this time it was not Nazis but white guys in suites waving the bible in one hand, a bottle of scoth in the other, bleeding from the nose and driving into the peaceful judiciary with the intent of enslaving them! The situation on the hill in Washington has reached critical mass.
Furthermore, look at the state of the economy. The dollar is down and I don't mean taken a dip that son of a bitch is down like Kennedy outside of Martha's Vineyard. It is not complelty unplausable that the U.S. will default on all of its loans forcing a global collapse of the market system the likes of which have nevere been seen. So if I were you I would start buying gold or euros because the dollar will eventually only be useful for wiping your ass or letting Ashley Simpson sign an autograph on it.
The president is also attempting to get CAFTA pushed through congress. CAFTA or Central American Free Trade Agreement or way to screw more poor people in both the U.S. and Central America. Free trade is not free. Its effects are evil in so many ways I get sick thinking about them so I will say no more.

Now to my own home of Arkansas:
The used to be fat governor is orchestrating his bid for the presidency in 2008. Only a god can save us now folks. If you keep up with Arkansas politics then look for a lot more photo ops about the governors health! Unless you are a school child in this state in which case the governor could give a flip about your health. No more P.E.! Huckabee also refuses to remove soda and candy machines from public schools because his buddies in the vending industry who are also major contributors by the way would not feel keen on supporting old used to be fat ass if he cut of there ability to screw little kids out of good health and a couple of bucks. Welcome to the world of the free market.
Next, someone should launch the Arkansas Capitol into space with the legislature locked inside. Those crazy bastards have lost it. Well they may have never had it to begin with. Along with letting our schools continue fail in favor of giving kick backs to their buddies they have also reached a new form of religous fanaticism the likes of which have not been seen since the second crusade. A statement from the house reaffirming the legislatures belief in the seperation of church and state has failed. School prayer (as long as it is student led) was institutionalized.

Amuck. Amuck. Amuck.

I have taken up the quest for truth again.

2005-03-22T09:38:00.001-08:00

I have abandoned post-modernity. I can no longer believe in the lack of truth or the lack of a center. There is truth not because I hope that life has meaning or that I believe that language "works" but I feel deeply that there has to be. The problems that post-modernity has brought to light have to be confronted there are problems but they are ones that humanity can and must work beyond. This is also not say that I believe in the traditional understanding of things. The thinking of the past has gotten us no where but recklessly abandoning the quest for truth in favor of fighting over semantics will not get us any where either. I doubt that my life is endowed with meaning because of god or the existence of platonic forms and fuck Kant by the way. We may not be here for the reasons that people think we are but there is no way that humanity could have persisted for so long without "something" else out there. We are NOT merely a clever race of parasites.
If you were to ask me why I have wandered the path of the post-modern for the past years the only reason that I could give you is cynacism. But it is this same cynacism that has brought me full circle. The events of this past year have forced me to realize that I have been running away from something, exactly what I am not sure but it is there and I hope that I will find it.
So here I am.
Life may be absurd but I am not.

There are things like love, truth and meaning and I am going to find them. There is no reason not to.

"Questioning builds a way." -Martin Heidegger

I wish I knew how to skate.

2005-03-02T06:12:00.001-08:00

Well Kids,
Hell has frozen over here on campus. I was elected by a pretty comfortable margin to be president of my school's student senate. This is equivalent to being president of the student body for any of you who need some context for the insanity that unfolded here yesterday!
Well it is my birthday and it is 8 in the morning so I am going to have a beer and go back to bed.

The Coolest Thing I Have Ever Seen!!!!!!

2005-02-27T21:26:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to explain this one at all but it is pretty funny!

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/numa.php

No More Fear and Loathing.

2005-02-24T16:29:00.001-08:00

It has taken me a few days to digest the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson.
I first encountered HST unknowingly in The Doonesbury cartoon strip. But, I admit that my first real engagement with him was via Fear and Loathing in Lost Vegas, the movie. I watched the movie and while I thought that the drugs were funny I felt that there was more to it than that. I was right. I realized that society, especially in that god awful year of our lord nineteen hundred and seventy two, was something worth insulating yourself from. But running right along with this was a love of life that I do not think will ever be out done by anyone. I noticed while I was reading Thompson's other works that life is something that sometimes you just walk right up to and spit in the face. Whether he was covering politics, sports or the general depravity of this, the American century, Hunter S. Thompson was right there getting the real story, getting his hands dirty or his face broken.
Thompson's suicide was (I believe) the ultimate manifestation of this love of life. The fact that one can be such a master of his own destiny and such a lover of experience that he can in good faith decide when his own life would reach its totality is exactly what I would expect Dr. Thompson. He was always in control even in the face of the imense power of the world. Never compromise!
I never met Hunter S. Thompson. I have only seen his pictures in books and magazine and read his thoughts that he had committed to paper. But I think that if people could look past the drugs and debauchery they would find a man that was smarter than the rest of us. I think they would find a man that was closer to figuring it all out then any of us will ever be. I do know that as far as I am concerned he has shown me a great many things and made me think about infinetly more.

He knew the edge because he had been over it.

Carry on.

2005-02-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

I believe that no matter what way you look at it, to some degree, in some way, we are all products of our experiences. I am fortunate that in my life I have experienced few bad things. But I am surrounded by those who have come up against great evils, terrible events and have fought great battles some of which they have lost.
It is to these people that my thoughts drift to these days. I love these people. They are my real heros.

And now a stupid quote..........

2005-02-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

I have always wondered if my major was a worth while effort. Well that question is now answered forever. I was reading my Metaphysics reading about the existence of universals. David Lewis says that universals do not exist that things can sometimes coincidentally be the same way but that two trees are not green. Yeah.........stupid nominalists.
But anywho, I found this quote today:
"Why call them properties as well as classes- Just to underline the fact that they need not be classes of actual things. The property of being a donkey, for instance, is the class of all donkeys. This property belongs to-this class contains-not only the actual donkeys of this world we live in, but also all unactualized, otherworldly donkeys."

This is academia at its dumbest.
I need a new major.

A Damn Fine Quote..........

2005-02-07T11:40:00.000-08:00

"If you're not spending every waking moment of your life radically rethinking the nature of the world-if you're not plotting every moment boiling the carcass of the old order-then you're wasting your day."

-Douglas Coupland
"Girlfriend in a Coma"

Meaning, where?

2005-02-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

So I was watching a little TV this morning when I came across something on Nicole Kidman. There was this pudgy guy with a goatee and he was discussing how much he loved Nicole Kidman, her style and her presence. I never caught his name but underneath his name at the bottom of the screen it gave his job title: Fashion Writer, or something to that extent.
What the hell does that mean? I think it means that this rather unattractive guy gets paid to comment on what people wear. And then it struck me, this dude was worthless. While my eventual job, teaching philosophy (I am guessing that this is what I will be doing) is not the most useful or practical I can see myself using my job to better the situation of others and hopefully forging new ideas and encouraging others do so. But what does this guy do? What do most people do with there lives. Most jobs upon reflection are pretty worthless! Why do we spend our lives getting paid to do work that will never make the world a better place.
I am lost on this.

The Good and the Bad`

2005-02-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

So it has been a rough last couple of days. Between weirdness, sadness, a little anger and having to break up a fight and then figure out the next day why my hand was so bloody have been feeling just a tad off. But never fear my ol'd Buddy James Sz-Dog had the prescription for my fever:
http://www.stanford.edu/~scodary/tkam.htm
You should all check it out and then maybe build a shrine to this link's contents.

From the periphery.

?

2005-01-30T23:43:00.000-08:00

Not like a paper knife...........

2005-01-27T02:17:00.000-08:00

I think that to some degree I am an existentialist. I may not be quite as ethically grounded here as say Sartre but I have come to believe that our essence does in fact precede our essence. Humans have the capability (for better and/or worse) to change themselves. I feel myself changing these days and in a way that I have never experienced before. It is odd. I don't usually write about myself in my blogs but I think that I have to work this idea out in some kind of tangible way and here it is!
I could easily see how I could come off as a misanthropist to most. I feel like I have become a prophet of doom amongst my friends, a cynic or some one with a down right bad attitude. I do not think that this is a fair assumption. I am very Nietzschean in the sense that right now man (I mean people in general here, don't accuse me of being a chauvinist either) is stuck, wallowing in its own decadence, ignorance or just poor judgment. And I condemn this and I also condemn the facets of this existence that reside in me. Most people believe that this is the end of Nietzsche's philosophy but it is not. There is a touch melancholy mixed in with all of that rage. Because for Nietzsche, we are beings of possibility. We can take our existence to that next level. Now while I may disagree with Nietzsche over what this next level might look like I think that he is right, we can change, we are not defined beings (well, there is that whole will to power thing that he claims grounds his metaphysics but all we need to see from this is that we are beings that can better ourselves).
So now to bring this full circle and it is kind of late. I have decided that I can change and that I will and that this change does not have to be gradual. We all can do it and there is seldom a good reason not to as best I can tell. I look towards a brighter future with better things those around me and myself. I will redefine my essence as I see fit! I am not a paper knife.

Halo! Ich bin Der Ubermensch.

A Stranger in a Strange Land

2005-01-14T07:02:00.000-08:00

I got back from a weeklong trip to Canada just this past week, and while I have crossed in and out of this country a great many times this re-entering was different. This time something was wrong. I experienced a lot of things when I was in Vancouver that made me think about my own my country. Where things probably all began was when I was having a discussion about the U.S. with my Canadian and newly acquired French friends. I was having to defend the U.S. (as I usually in some way or another have to do when I am with non-Americans) when everything started to change. At first I readied my normal response: The U.S. (in theory) is a wonderful place that at its heart believes in freedom, responsibility, and good will towards the rest of the world. In essence, it is a good place with good ideas that has been hijacked by crazies. But that started some thoughts going in my head. They were things that had never crossed my mind before and I as crossed the U.S./Canadian boarder it struck me: I am in no way nor have ever been a lover of my country. Now this may sound inflammatory even treasonous; but I assure that it was not a happy or malicious realization. It made me very sad actually.
I still hold by my original “Pro U.S.” argument, about this wonderful ideal that is supposed to encompass the people that live here. I believe whole-heartedly that this idea of unimpeded freedom, universal suffrage and thoughtful responsibility. It is an incredible idea that there could be a nation that embodies all of these things and brings its people regardless of sex, race, religion, sexual orientation and political leanings together and provide them with a space where they can work out their differences, solve problems and build a better place for themselves and their children, but it is just that, an idea. I began reviewing my American History and found that I was right; it had never been that way. I live in a nation that pretends to embody this ideal while proactively suppressing others because of their race, sex, religion, etc. and greedily imposing itself on the have-nots of the world for its own ends. And this is not just a symptom of the few or the powerful. The apathy and inherently hateful attitude that I used to believe was only found in a few Americans is actually found in the majority of them. Even liberals are content with what they have and benefit from the system which, when they are at parties, they say they hate. They still buy brand-America. They still have no problems guzzling gas. Many of them don’t even believe in equality with homosexuals. They do so little, the never fight the fights worth fighting, just the ones that they think they can look good fighting.
There is no magnificent ideology moving America forward in history, just a thirst for more and power that is unquenchable. We hate paying the lowest tax rates of any first world country because it helps people who have not had the pleasure of being able to fuck as many people over to make as much money as we have. We have always fought the expansion of rights. The poor, non-whites, women, homosexuals, non-Christians have never just been handed any political freedom. If this is the greatest democracy in the world, fueled by the wonder of freedom why where these groups not just given the same rights that are endowed to all of us who were “created equally.” The answer is because we are not a country founded on freedom, we never were. If we were this nation that we claim to be our history books would be a lot thinner and there would be fewer dead strewn across the road to liberty. All of these things came to me in an airport in Bellingham, WA. Just 20 miles south of the boarder at 8 in the morning, in a country where someone is hungry, where another species just became extinct, where another person is hopelessly stuck in the chains of poverty, where someone is cold, where someone is sick and doesn’t have access to healthcare, where someone doesn’t have access to a good education, where someone cannot speak their mind for fear of being arrested, and across the globe where another guy my age just got blown up wearing the flag of America on his sleeve.
I am not American, not because I hate anything (or anybody) or out of any kind of affinity for “terrorism”, but because the country I love doesn’t exist and never has. But it was a good idea.

The Desert of the Real.

2004-12-04T23:30:00.000-08:00

I am of the mind that reality is no longer real. The world we live in has been reduced from its marvelous scale and size down to wires and satellite signals that can transmit data instantaneously. This is the media. While some would see this as a positive thing I am skeptical.
As events unfold around the world it is up to the mass media to tell us the truth to show us the real as it happens around the world. But what happens when there are only a few outlets for this news and they all have their own agendas and marketing? The truth as we know it disappears. For instance, take the election of 2000: Fox news announces that Bush wins Florida and all of the sudden this becomes the fact. But as the non-ignorant of us know this is not the truth but it has become the truth and still to this day it is the truth. Nobody acts like it was any other way, Bush stole the presidency and now is running this country for another 4 years. The fact that Florida went Bush is not a lie, it is now the truth, fact, infallible.
The real has been replaced by something else, a hyperreal which in no way corresponds to the facts but is taken to be the real. Florida is merely an example of the power of mass media. As the war rages, as people starve and as electrons are bounced at the speed of light around the globe the truth is being constructed to fit the needs of the few and the powerful. The real has the distinct possibility of disappearing all together, lost to the desert of the real.

And they will drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

2004-11-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

I am sad about the outcome of last tuesday. With more people without insurance, more people out of work and more innocent people being murdered now then there were 4 years ago there was hope in me that things would begin to brighten and that I would soon be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But then reality took hold and shook me pretty fuckin' hard by the scruff of my neck. Tuesday didn't surprise me one but. But, I do not believe that the events of tuesday had anything to do with the skill of Karl Rove or the what ever it is that people say that Bush has. No, this runs much deeper than that. America is out of control. A new form of religous terrorism has swept the nation: I was listening to NPR the other day and they reported that it is likely that 3 in 10 Americans identify themselves as Evangelical Christians, and they came out and they voted in droves.
With the desperate situation at home and abroad, America has been hijacked by a group of people whose judgement has been clouded by hate under the guise of rightousness and ignorance shrouded by the call faith. What can we expect in the next for years other than more deficit spending, the widening of the gap between rich and poor and more inocent people being killed for the benefit of a few? I shrink from the horror. A president with a mandate and no accountability can only run this country further into the ground and be hailed the prince of greatness by his unhigned base. These are the people that showed up and voted. These are the people that picked our president. These are the people that believe that the right to life is unimpeachable unless you worship a different god. That believe that national security is so important that they will give up their privacy. These are the people that only support the kind of marriage that you can have done in a drive through chapel in Las Vegas when you are drunk. These people are Americans and they are the ones that overwhelmingly showed up and voted while the rest of you sat at home and hoped for the best.
Well enjoy your tax cuts and having your sons and daughters shipped abroad to be shot in some sandy shit hole for oil. You earned it.

Just a little while longer.

2004-10-30T20:46:00.001-07:00

So election day is looming right on the horizon. I know who I am going to vote for and why. I just implore everyone else to do the same (on both counts).

There are lies, damn lies and then statistics.

2004-10-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

I think that polls might be one of the worst things to have ever been advanced by modern technology. While in the old days it seemed that polls guaged the reaction of voters to the political climate it seems now that polls have entered into a vicous circle where it is in fact the polls that influence voter behavior. While this is probably part of the larger problem of "group think," I do think that as a solitary componet of the election landscape it is one of the most influential. I can look at poll and see that people think that Bush is clever guy. Well if 54% of the populace believes that then it must be true so now I can believe it without even educating myself about what is really going on. The American populace is bombarded with polls. Eveyone takes them and the media takes every chance to report on them as if they were real news (which they are not). I am one of those people that does not believe in statistics as a solid, objective science. The questions can be skewed to get the responses you want and I hardly believe that calling a little over a 1,000 people can give you a true gauge of what is really going on. Even your best polls can only give you a margin of error of +/- 3%. That isn't good enough to pass as fact.
I believe that all polls should be treated as suspect at best. I believe that the only poll that really counts is the one on election day. I will get educated about the issues and the candidates from getting the truth, not from polls.

Election day count down: 15 days.

Derrida is Dead.

2004-10-11T17:50:00.001-07:00

The 20th/early 21st century has seen some of the greatest accomplishments of man kind. The creativity of man on all fronts will always find that any other moment in our history will pale in comparison. I, myself, want to discuss the strides made in theory. Since the end of the second world war the sphere of intellectual theory has been consistently rocked and even sometimes shattered by greatminds. One of these great minds died. Jacques Derrida died of pancreatic cancer friday at the age of 74. Derrida holds a peculiar place in the history of continental thought. His method of examining the great texts of the western tradition (from Plato to Nietzsche and Marx to Levi-Strauss) have opened a space for new thinking and questioning that will forever resound through the halls of Universities and coffee houses alike (I am not sure how happy Derrida was about these coffee shop intellectuals). Derrida's shrewd eye uncovered the baselessness of the our thoughts and presuppositions and pointed not only to their inner horrors but to a new future, where we could explore new spaces of thought. "Questioning builds a way," stated Martin Heidegger and the realization of this materialized in Jacques Derrida. Even if one does not agree with him. it is almost impossible to not see what he was pointing at, a new way.

"The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -Borges

Celebrate the difference.

Osama Bin who?

2004-10-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well as election day looms ever closer I have found myself wondering when the world's best trained and armed military will find Osama bin Laden. Using my own methods of triangulation I would place Osama somewhere in a cell guarded by U.S. soldiers who are waiting for the call from the pentagon that it is time to stage his capture on TV. This election will be rigged, I can tell you that much. Either by duping the electorate in some way or another (I bet on the capture of Bin Laden) or down right fraud I will give anyone that will accept great odds. I am sure that whitehose and its minions are getting ready for the ultimate staged play of all times: Bush & Cheney, Inc. presents the "Capture of Osama the Terrible." Get out the popcorn, sometime between now and the 2nd of November we will see it replayed on CNN and Fox News. I wonder how many thumbs up Ebert and Roper will give it.

Rest In Peace.

2004-10-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

So, I have watched the debates thus far and I can come to one solid, concise, universal truth: The policy debate in this country today is dead. Ad Hominems, debate of points of view and pure rhetoric are what have dominated the debates. We can argue about the merits of the war, who lied, who is getting money out ot it, but the one thing that I have yet to see is an exit strategy or a policy. This is true across the field of things that have been debated. We can talk about ideology all we want but what I want (and what this country is in desperate need of) is action, or choices between different plans of action.
Debates these days are about who can look or sound the most "presidential" as opposed to who is going to make the better president. The candidates and networks now this. Just like a dog show we get them out there with their hair(or lack there of) sculpted, suits picked out and clean so that they can run through the motions so we can get the pictures and the sound bites that will make the news. It is all staged and set up to prey upon stupidity and apathy. Democracy?

Memorials of flowers can be made to Washington, D.C., U.S.A. in honor of the death of our dear friend Policy Debate.

The Capacity for Evil

2004-10-05T09:29:00.002-07:00

Humanity seems to be a breed that stands out from most others because we can be evil. If one were to exam the entire history of humanity we can see that it is strewn with disasters, vengence, hate and evil. I have always wondered why. While I do not believe that it is something intrinsic to our nature, I have come to believe that we are a species that can be easily predisposed to it. While I would to blame society I do not think that is where the fault lies. I think that it is a much broader problem.
What makes me think about evil is the fact that we deny its many forms. It moves quitely, unharrased under the guise of religous fanatacism, pride, duty and destiny. We today usually attack these, but they are just straw men for the underlying reality. It is an excuse. When you take it upon yourself to explain evil and the channels that it works through, that it is in a round about kind of way an attempt to excuse it or apologize for it. No where else can this be seen as clearly as in Germany. Germany and those that are histrorians of it (German or otherwise) have taken it upon themselves to explain the atrocities of a half century ago. They point to socio/economic, religous, cultural and societal factors but in the end it is an attempt to explain it and then it is forgotten. This idea plagues humanity. We wish away the horrors of our history as quickly as it flashes across the movie or TV screen. We have forgotten our own past. The destruction of the Native Americans, slavery, institutionalized bigotry, Japanse internment, the list goes on. While the ability for evil to rear its head via these channels has disappeared the fact is that evil has not gone away but moved deeper in spite of our meak attempts to rid the world of it.
All humans can be evil. Not all chose to or some unwillingly become so and the degree and consequence of evil itself differ, ebb and flow across the sands of time and space, but it is still there.
I am not sure what we can do about it. I tell anyone exactly what evil is so that we can stop it. But I do know the amnesia of society must stop because in the end there will be no more evil because there will be no one left for evil to prey upon.

Generation A.

2004-09-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

So this weekend MTV's Rock the Vote will be descending upon my campus. I am told that the goal of RTV is to get people excited about voting and at the same time educate people about the issues. While I am excited about voting I am not excited about MTV coming to my campus. During the Vietnam war when America's young people were out fighting for justice and liberty they were granted the right to vote and help decide whether our nation should go to war. And they did, the voted Nixon in and to a certain extent got themselves out of Indochina. They even kept it up for a while. Then the 80's happened. So why is no one voting these days? My subsection of the electorate has the poorest voter turnout of any part of the electorate (but not that many people vote any ways). But why?
I was not sure until I actually examined my contemporaries and discovered (among many but not all of them) one constant: Apathy. In a world the world of consumption it runs rampant like a disease. My generation has been given cell phones, designer clothes, reality TV and other trivial pursuits to take our minds off our responsibilities. Further, polticians have mangled the process to such an extent that few like to look it in the eye much less take a part in it. "What does my vote count, I can't buy a congressman," they cry! I can't buy one but I can do my damndest to fire the bastards and that is what I am going to do.
So why am I not happy that MTV is coming? Because why do we need a large corporation which is part of a much larger conglomorate telling me what to do? I want to know why people need this to get them excited about what makes our country great? So don't look for me here this weekend I will have taken to the hills and left this shit to all of the rest of you.

see you on the flip side.................................

The apathetic will let the terroristic run the country.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Well maybe somewhere in between.

2004-08-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have returned to school and in the heat of classes and seeing old friends and making some new ones. But outside of the bell jar that is my campus the world continues to move and change. The current political atmosphere is still very, uhm....scary. But I have a story that might interest some and one that I think puts some things into perspective:

I was at work a few weeks ago back in the kitchen of the Little Rock coffee shop that I work at when a roach scurried past me. Now I understand the importance of these creatures in the broader scope of nature and even though this was a place of food preperation, I decided to let the little scamp go about his business. A few minutes later a lot screaming announced to me that apperently the roach had found his way out of the kitchen and into the midst of a table of 6 15 year old girls who were in the middle of there bible study. They jumped on chairs and screached and yelled a lot until my associate Joel came out of the kitchen and smoat the poor little guy with the bottom of his shoe. But the most interesting thing about all of this was something one of the girls said. "If that thing (the roach) gets on my bible (which was on the floor mind you) I am going to kill it!!!"

Thou shalt not kill.

The word of the lord, thanks be to god. Amen.

And the world continues to darken.......

2004-08-05T17:01:00.000-07:00

These are the days when I wonder if god really is a hoodwink of a concept.

And the insanity continues..............

2004-07-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

So I am at work as we speak. I am moving offices at Arkansas Children's Hospital. A few hours ago I was unpacking this box when a daily planner from 1992 fell out and at the top of the page that it fell open to was this quote:

"It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken away from you."

A great quote with a lot of meaning. Dick Cheney said it. Oh the irony!!!

Can't see the forest through the trees because they are all gone.

2004-07-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago President Bush announced through his secretary of agriculture that the Roadless Rule would be essentially done away with. Some of you may be asking what the hell the Roadless Rule is. Well it is not some reality TV show about a bunch of snotty nosed, drunk, slutty shitheads wandering around in the woods. As a matter of fact it was the name given to an executive order given by President Clinton on his way out of office in early 2001. Simply the roadless rule banned the building of new roads in 58.5 million acres of National Forest land. It is the implications of this that Bush has his in his cross-hairs.
National Forest is multi-use land. It can be used for hunting, recreation, fishing, camping, and all the other wonderful pursuits that characterize the great outdoors of my wonderful country. What it also means to be multi-use land is that it can also be used for mining and logging. What Clinton was slyly trying to do was to keep any new mining or logging from taking place thus leaving these almost 60 million acres left untouched by the hands of capitalistic exploitation. Well Bush (who has always been a friend of the environment [see Kyoto Protocol, CO2 emission Standards, etc.]) decided to sell out again to big business. nOW he can fuel his campaign to thieve the 2004 election so that he can hold the record for being the only president to have stolen 2 elections. So Bush made it to be that in 18 months states will have to decide to re-up their roadless status which if you think about it will be much easier than voting to get rid of it. 92,000 of these 58.5 million acres are here in Arkansas, being in either the Ozark or Ouachita National Forests. Governor Huckabee automatically fell to his knees praising good in all of his wonder and might and declared that this idea was "sweet!" and just the thing he needed to make money so that he could run against and try and defeat Blanche Lincoln in the next Senate election. "It must be an act of god"
But here are a few things that I don't get:
1. This is federal land, why are states getting to decide what to do with federal land. Why would the government violate the concept of states' vs federal government's rights unless there were to be copious amounts of cash involved and I am betting you there is.
2. What is the point of committing soldiers, money, and strength to protecting the country against terrorism when at this rate there is probably not going to be that much of America defend if we keep screwing the country up!!!! But than I realized that Bush was going to get huge donations for all of this and then it made sense (sort of but not really).
3. Why don't I live in Canada.

Bunch of fuckin' sell outs.

live from the periphery.........

Against all enemies, foreign and domestic................

2004-07-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

There are so many things that I want to write about. I have so many thoughts running through my mind that it is hard for me to think straight. My mind has been running at a 1,000 miles an hour since I saw Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and while I realize that there was nothing there that I did not know already and that it was put together for shock value it still touched me. I could only talk about my country.
I was not sure what I was supposed to do when I was done watching it. I was so furious, so angry, and so overwhelmed. While the conservatives where bombarding me with images of planes slamming into the World Trade Center, the screams of the innocents, and feelings of loss, Michael Moore took his chance to strap me in to watch other images of violence, not just the images of the death and destruction that are going on Iraq but also the despair that is to be found right here in the United States.
“Some people call you the elite…I call you my base,” said George Bush (who was looking rather smug in his tuxedo and white tie surrounded by other rich, smug white people in tuxedos and white ties). The crowd found that comment to be quite amusing by the way. They were smug and chuckling. These are the people that run their country. I hate to call it my country. A part of me is ashamed to call this my country. But I have to look at my country, to stare it in the eye to try and understand the why of so many things.
The why. Look at the problems of this country. Poverty, war, pollution, the list goes on. They are all endemic of an attitude problem that reaches into the very psyche of America, into its very fabric: apathy towards the perpetuation of the established order.
The agenda of the Bush administration (and therefore the established order, but it probably works both ways) is clear: “Rise, Kill, and Eat.” It is in the headlines, on the 24 hours news channels, and on the radio. There are no lines to read between. But for those of us who have questions we are told to sit down, shut up and get in line. There is no place for accountability in a democracy! The only things that are more infuriating to me than what Bush tries to hide is what he does out in plane sight, for everyone to see. Smug bastard. He does it because he knows that he can get away with it. And if I or anyone else stands up and says anything we are in trouble. I am not in trouble because the guys in black jump suits with fully automatic weapons are coming to get me. I am not in trouble because my phone will be tapped, or I will be searched without warrant or even because there will be a satellite looking at me while I sleep. These are not the things that I am afraid of. I am not afraid of the police, the intelligence agencies, or even the president. I am in trouble because I live with other people. It is the American public that scares me. Just as millions sat by and watched Hitler rise to power in 1933, millions now watch the established order act without honesty or humanity and my own neighbors scream that I am unpatriotic, that I hate my country and that I am a terrorist if I even breathe a word of dissent. And while it is the government (not what it means to be an American) that is doing this, it is the government that represents these people, the masses. I believe that the average American does not approve of 75% of what the Bush administration has been up to but I do believe that the average American sets all of that aside and is happy that they elected someone that can tell them to sit down, shut up, get in line, and not to worry, because someone else is doing all of their thinking for them. The established order will take care of them selves and think for us.
Some one has to let injustice happen. Who is letting all of this happen to my country?

Think about Michael Harrell.

Summer of Endings.

2004-07-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

I have seen many endings this summer. The end of childhood. The end of the finest kind man. The end of an era. The end of a dear part of my life. As things move behind us with our imprint on them our their imprint on us, I find myself trying to stand still in the flow of time and look back, to reach my hand and try to grab these endings; as if I was trying to grab water from a fast moving stream with my bare hands, frantically, pleadingly, with the fear of letting go, but yet it still slips on by. Since I got home yesterday I have been trying to reconnect to this world of new beginnings and accelerated expectations, sitting and pondering these endings (great and small) that have come to constitute the life time of experiences and memories that I have had the great honor of participating in over the last 7 weeks. The end of one man’s pain, the end one mans life. The end of one child’s ignorance and the end of another’s faith in a system that does not care. It seems as though these last 2 months have been nothing but endings, cycles closing, journeys ending and it has filled me with sadness.
The death of Morgan Hetrick (a great aviator, a gracious host, and a fine example of what I dream that humanity should be) and the near death of David Howlett (one of my greatest friends, finest mentors and some one that I call my brother) addled me the most of these successions of endings, overshadowing the joys brought about other endings. I will never be able to wrap my ignorant mind around the bravery and self-sacrifice that brought these two men to where they are now and I stand in awe of it. I feel that me writing about this ending might seem morbid (as it does even to me now), but as I have been sitting here thinking about it and other endings that I have experienced this summer I am left with only one thing, hope. Hope that where there is an end there must follow a new beginning that the great flow of the universe will always from the ashes of one bring forth the new wonder of another. As I see time march on past these endings, both tragic and joyous, I see new horizons, new doors and new opportunities springing forth. This has been my summer of endings some mine and some others, but it has also been the summer of new beginnings.

To Morgan, David, Terry, Ana, Ian, Jessica, Bryan and all the others that were here at this moment in time in this little corner of the world.