I have it. The terrorist solution to health care.
Take all the terminal cases who, for whatever reason, have found a distaste with the health insurance industry. Teach them how to make bombs. Provide them with information on where the executives and decisions makers within this industry live and work. Have them walk into these establishments and detonate.
Simple solution.
While the average American isn't whipped into religious fanaticism, I think their potential is overlooked. One just needs to frame their concerns, their identity, and their discontent in a way that drives them to action, one last fiery action.
I spent a summer working for a rich couple, landscaping their back yard. The man was too cheap to hire the professionals, so he would show me a picture that he saw in a magazine and have me recreate it. Then he'd take back the magazines for a refund. What a fucking cheapskate. Besides spending a lot of time thinking while I shoveled rock and dirt, I seared an image in my mind. I imagined myself setting up a sniper post and awaiting one of the area's most destructive and influential developers to leave his house. I just wanted to kill him.
You kill the person, but you don't kill the ideology. To mangle a quote by Kenneth Burke on this issue: "ideology sets up in a body and it goes about dancing to the ideology's tune."
Sure, my call to arms is ineffectual in that it enlists terminal cases to do the bidding of another ideology, an anti-capitalist ideology. Let's keep in mind that ideology and body are co-extensive in the realization of ideology. Words, ideas, systems of thought mean nothing sitting in a dusty book on an forgotten shelf in a dilapidated section of the library. They need bodies to house them and do their bidding. If you scare the bodies that house the other ideology you might be able to send their ideology back to some dusty book on a forgotten shelf in a dilapidated section of the library.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
does a blog collect dust?
I sit here and I watch my small electronic devices break. They click, whirr, then abruptly shut down. I'm not sure what's going on. I have all my music on this device. After synchronizing the music the device's progress bar hangs and the device begins to click. I hit the reset button and now it hangs as it recompiles the library then shuts off. Sometimes the interface for these devices can be so unnerving. It's like you're Kirk and you watch as Spock, having stepped into a chamber filled with radiation to save the crew--"logical transaction Jim, one life for many"--lies down on the floor and dies. Being Kirk, you fog up the translucent protective barrier with your usual ship captain's histrionics but it's all an ineffectual gesture as you load Spock's irradiated remains into a torpedo casing and launch him into a genesis planet.
The interface for this device is unnerving. You mash buttons as the machine goes about ignoring everything you do. When it's working, it's like you've touched your soon-to-be girlfriend after about the 4th date. Everyone is electric with anticipation, closeness is an aphrodisiac. Each of you have your little psychic antenna wrapped around each other. Not now. Nothing. This device is treating me like she's gone and saw some greener grass and is giving me the cold shoulder as she sips her drink and looks off in another direction. That's fine. I'll take this device apart using the web's repository of pages dedicated to the Asperger's engineers who do this very thing. I'm sure I'll at least take it apart to see if I can reclaim some of its responsiveness.
I digress ...
Do blogs collect dust? I don't think so. I went to a friend's blog and noticed that his last post came about two weeks into January of 2008. He first linked his blog two weeks into December 2007. It was a short lived experiment for him. Mine? Well, I've fancied myself to have an audience. Do I though? Sometimes I do. I generally think I have to drag them back to this place every so often. And now that I've decided to force serious change upon my life, I'm not sure what or who is my friend. I don't want my current friends. The local variety that I knew and left when I moved to Colorado, the ones to whom I returned just two years ago. They don't know about this blog. Even though my name is plastered on it and my location will give me away for sure. I talk ill of them sometimes in here. I don't want these friends anymore. I've realized that I cannot run away from my problems. I can't even confront them that well. My personality, my behavior has no soft reset. I've always pined after a Ctrl+Alt+Del for the mind. The CIA believed to have found it through a cocktail of ECT and LSD. I think all they did was short circuit enough of the mind to disrupt some of its long term memories. That sounds like organic damage to me. What I need to do is to muster some neuronal networks to overthrow the ones that have my emotions and attention hard wired to the names, faces, sounds, and smells of this group of friends.
Can that be so hard?
It probably is. I am trying very hard to be productive. I spend a lot of time moving around web pages seeing nothing worth my while. I deleted some e-mails today. It's odd to see a part of your life and the messages you received from your friends the ones you want so badly to erase. I am trying to erase myself.
How do I plan to do this?
I need a job, a job that can bankroll my move. I'll get to that once I start moving some of the shitty merchandise I have collecting around my house. I just ended my run at social networking via MMORPGs. That was a rather narcotic but ultimately sugared approach to finding sustenance in virtual human contact. I analogize that I was in search of a steak and it was serving me Peeps, those shitty little marshmallow chicks dusted in colored sugar. Most dry into chalky statues. Some become microwave experiments. When I was a kid. I actually liked those damn things.
What's next after finding a job?
I move out. I move away. I don't even have to move far. I just need to leave, not give out my new address and then change my phone number and not give that out. In this electronic world, how fucking easy can you get. A dead battery or a shorted memory card can kill one's whole social network. All the contacts, all the numbers, and your way of contacting them, all gone. How strange it is that these little electronic devices become the prerequisite for staying in touch, for sustaining ties that are continually flung all over the map.
So, to sever my ties I need to get a job to afford my move, make my move, and dump my old phone number. That's easy enough. All I need to do is share this number with a few family members and leave it at that. Done!
That's too easy. That's easier than canceling my subscription to the World of Warcraft and severing my ties with about 30 people whose character names and voices over the internet became very familiar to me. Oh well. I tell myself I do these things to force change on myself. I won't hate on the game like the last time I quit, but I need to find projects in earnest to fill the voids in my life. Putting up a few auctions, and moving some old product out the door might help in freeing me of this historical residue. I don't want all these computers. I don't need all those jackets. I don't want this clutter.
What is this thing we call friendship? It feels like a series of obligations some of which seem more pressing than others, some of which hail you into subjectivities with which you're comfortable, others that you'd rather avoid. Is that the pure basis of friendship? A time existed when we needed others in order to sustain life. Friendship was epiphenomenal to a real need for help in building a shelter, hunting an animal, in raising a family. Now, we have all these wonderful technological relationships that can sustain our life. This leaves us tugged along by a relationship that is a literate construct, an idealized fiction, much like marriage and romance. In living up to the ideals penned within this construct we brush against its obligations, the obligations to see it through to its narrative synthesis. This I need to erase.
This is an experiment. I believe that much of our personality is tied to the behaviors that we engage in on a daily basis. I had this notion that most of our gadget fiddling ties us, like a marionette, to some obsessive compulsive desire to check mail, send short messages, check mail, refresh page, check mail, send short messages, check mail, refresh page, check mail, read news, send links of the news, check mail to see if the addressed person received and commented back, check mail, refresh page, send short messages, check mail, check mail, check television times for shows we've watched for the past two-to-three years, check mail, go home, eat fast food, watch television, check mail, go to bed, wake up, check mail, etc.
That could be my caricature of our technogadgetry habits. I don't think it's too inaccurate a picture for some, including myself. I read my sent messages for Christ's sake! So my experiment is to sever much of what makes these device disorders so damn obsessive, and see if I see a similar change in my behavior and personality. I'm taking on a lot of changes, but this is only a culmination of several critical views I've held for some time. It's time to act on them.
Will it change much? I have my doubts, but I'm doing a good job alienating friends. I didn't join my neighbors in their celebration of one of their birthdays. I didn't miss much, just a chance meeting with several friends and what looked like some alcohol-induced drama--nothing new. The same damn thing year after year. The same damn promises year after year. The same disappointment, the same anxieties, the same dreams, the same deferment.
Fuck
That
Shit
I want no more of it. I want to be an overman--time to get over it man.
I will cure my device disorders. I will stop refreshing the page. I will stop reading sent mail. I will stop marveling at records of my past. I will stop searching aimlessly. I will stop checking the fucking mail.
I will rid myself of the silly neologisms that are endemic to text-based communication: the lols the brbs the omgs.
W
T
F
I don't need all that shit in my life. What happened to writing simply? What happened to conversation, the memory of which decayed over time? Why do we think we can have a shot at publicity and fame by posting our likeness on the web? Why do we think people will watch our videos if we aren't pretty or can't dance or sing or aren't funny? Why do so many people fail continuously at being present before an audience? Why do so many people absorb hours of their lives as audience members?
I return to my small electronic device, the one that could potentially collect all the pages housed in the Library of Congress, the battery was low. It's working now.
Checking mail.
The interface for this device is unnerving. You mash buttons as the machine goes about ignoring everything you do. When it's working, it's like you've touched your soon-to-be girlfriend after about the 4th date. Everyone is electric with anticipation, closeness is an aphrodisiac. Each of you have your little psychic antenna wrapped around each other. Not now. Nothing. This device is treating me like she's gone and saw some greener grass and is giving me the cold shoulder as she sips her drink and looks off in another direction. That's fine. I'll take this device apart using the web's repository of pages dedicated to the Asperger's engineers who do this very thing. I'm sure I'll at least take it apart to see if I can reclaim some of its responsiveness.
I digress ...
Do blogs collect dust? I don't think so. I went to a friend's blog and noticed that his last post came about two weeks into January of 2008. He first linked his blog two weeks into December 2007. It was a short lived experiment for him. Mine? Well, I've fancied myself to have an audience. Do I though? Sometimes I do. I generally think I have to drag them back to this place every so often. And now that I've decided to force serious change upon my life, I'm not sure what or who is my friend. I don't want my current friends. The local variety that I knew and left when I moved to Colorado, the ones to whom I returned just two years ago. They don't know about this blog. Even though my name is plastered on it and my location will give me away for sure. I talk ill of them sometimes in here. I don't want these friends anymore. I've realized that I cannot run away from my problems. I can't even confront them that well. My personality, my behavior has no soft reset. I've always pined after a Ctrl+Alt+Del for the mind. The CIA believed to have found it through a cocktail of ECT and LSD. I think all they did was short circuit enough of the mind to disrupt some of its long term memories. That sounds like organic damage to me. What I need to do is to muster some neuronal networks to overthrow the ones that have my emotions and attention hard wired to the names, faces, sounds, and smells of this group of friends.
Can that be so hard?
It probably is. I am trying very hard to be productive. I spend a lot of time moving around web pages seeing nothing worth my while. I deleted some e-mails today. It's odd to see a part of your life and the messages you received from your friends the ones you want so badly to erase. I am trying to erase myself.
How do I plan to do this?
I need a job, a job that can bankroll my move. I'll get to that once I start moving some of the shitty merchandise I have collecting around my house. I just ended my run at social networking via MMORPGs. That was a rather narcotic but ultimately sugared approach to finding sustenance in virtual human contact. I analogize that I was in search of a steak and it was serving me Peeps, those shitty little marshmallow chicks dusted in colored sugar. Most dry into chalky statues. Some become microwave experiments. When I was a kid. I actually liked those damn things.
What's next after finding a job?
I move out. I move away. I don't even have to move far. I just need to leave, not give out my new address and then change my phone number and not give that out. In this electronic world, how fucking easy can you get. A dead battery or a shorted memory card can kill one's whole social network. All the contacts, all the numbers, and your way of contacting them, all gone. How strange it is that these little electronic devices become the prerequisite for staying in touch, for sustaining ties that are continually flung all over the map.
So, to sever my ties I need to get a job to afford my move, make my move, and dump my old phone number. That's easy enough. All I need to do is share this number with a few family members and leave it at that. Done!
That's too easy. That's easier than canceling my subscription to the World of Warcraft and severing my ties with about 30 people whose character names and voices over the internet became very familiar to me. Oh well. I tell myself I do these things to force change on myself. I won't hate on the game like the last time I quit, but I need to find projects in earnest to fill the voids in my life. Putting up a few auctions, and moving some old product out the door might help in freeing me of this historical residue. I don't want all these computers. I don't need all those jackets. I don't want this clutter.
What is this thing we call friendship? It feels like a series of obligations some of which seem more pressing than others, some of which hail you into subjectivities with which you're comfortable, others that you'd rather avoid. Is that the pure basis of friendship? A time existed when we needed others in order to sustain life. Friendship was epiphenomenal to a real need for help in building a shelter, hunting an animal, in raising a family. Now, we have all these wonderful technological relationships that can sustain our life. This leaves us tugged along by a relationship that is a literate construct, an idealized fiction, much like marriage and romance. In living up to the ideals penned within this construct we brush against its obligations, the obligations to see it through to its narrative synthesis. This I need to erase.
This is an experiment. I believe that much of our personality is tied to the behaviors that we engage in on a daily basis. I had this notion that most of our gadget fiddling ties us, like a marionette, to some obsessive compulsive desire to check mail, send short messages, check mail, refresh page, check mail, send short messages, check mail, refresh page, check mail, read news, send links of the news, check mail to see if the addressed person received and commented back, check mail, refresh page, send short messages, check mail, check mail, check television times for shows we've watched for the past two-to-three years, check mail, go home, eat fast food, watch television, check mail, go to bed, wake up, check mail, etc.
That could be my caricature of our technogadgetry habits. I don't think it's too inaccurate a picture for some, including myself. I read my sent messages for Christ's sake! So my experiment is to sever much of what makes these device disorders so damn obsessive, and see if I see a similar change in my behavior and personality. I'm taking on a lot of changes, but this is only a culmination of several critical views I've held for some time. It's time to act on them.
Will it change much? I have my doubts, but I'm doing a good job alienating friends. I didn't join my neighbors in their celebration of one of their birthdays. I didn't miss much, just a chance meeting with several friends and what looked like some alcohol-induced drama--nothing new. The same damn thing year after year. The same damn promises year after year. The same disappointment, the same anxieties, the same dreams, the same deferment.
Fuck
That
Shit
I want no more of it. I want to be an overman--time to get over it man.
I will cure my device disorders. I will stop refreshing the page. I will stop reading sent mail. I will stop marveling at records of my past. I will stop searching aimlessly. I will stop checking the fucking mail.
I will rid myself of the silly neologisms that are endemic to text-based communication: the lols the brbs the omgs.
W
T
F
I don't need all that shit in my life. What happened to writing simply? What happened to conversation, the memory of which decayed over time? Why do we think we can have a shot at publicity and fame by posting our likeness on the web? Why do we think people will watch our videos if we aren't pretty or can't dance or sing or aren't funny? Why do so many people fail continuously at being present before an audience? Why do so many people absorb hours of their lives as audience members?
I return to my small electronic device, the one that could potentially collect all the pages housed in the Library of Congress, the battery was low. It's working now.
Checking mail.
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