Saturday, December 18, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Hot, fresh monkey: It's a conspiracy, plain and simple
"Okay, how about a haiku?" you ask? Maybe one about my experiences taking a dump at work, then? Okay, here goes:
Ants in the bathroom
What is it they want in there?
Them ants is perverts
Monday, December 13, 2004
Monday, November 22, 2004
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Monday, September 13, 2004
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Monday, August 16, 2004
Friday, August 13, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Ridge Raises Terror Level After Watching Cujo
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge authorized the elevation of the terror alert level to "high" Monday morning after watching Cujo on NBC's Fright Nite Theater. "Mr. Ridge contacted the President at 4:05 AM and said he was 'pretty freaked out,'" confirmed White House spokesman Scott McClellan in a press conference yesterday. "He couldn't provide specifics about an impending attack, but asked that we go to code orange and send some secret service guys to his house to spend the night." Speaking with reporters earlier today, Ridge admitted to being "jumpy" after watching the edited-for-television version of Stephen King's 1983 thriller, but nonetheless defended his decision as "completely justified." He urged Americans to remain vigilant and be on the lookout for suspicious activities or St. Bernards.http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000939.html
Friday, August 06, 2004
LOW MORALE: CREEP. possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen in Flash. Also check out the other low morale movies and the stuff at monkeehub by deadtroll.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
remix of arguments from Loving v. Virginia (a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned an anti-interracial marriage law in Virginia) The real-life contemporary replay of the same arguments is readily apparent.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Monday, July 05, 2004
The New York Times > Business > Social Issues Tug Wal-Mart in Differing Directions The culture, to be sure, is powerful. Mr. Peterson, who initially found it a bit much, says it remains part of his life even though he no longer works at the company. "The very first time I did the Wal-Mart cheer, I felt a little foolish," he said. "But now, every so often, on a day when I am feeling blue, I stand up and say, 'Give me a W.' "
Thursday, July 01, 2004
The Way of the Master
"If you are a Christian, please click 'yes.' If you are not a Christian, please click 'no.' There is an important part of the site I want you to see."
"If you are a Christian, please click 'yes.' If you are not a Christian, please click 'no.' There is an important part of the site I want you to see."
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Calgary Herald - canada.com network eh. so the guy's got some crazy fetishes. the real crime here in the eyes of the republicans is that the pretence was shed. can't be honest. nope. gotta have that pretense.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Waiting for the Barbarians:
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are to arrive today.
Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.
Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.
Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.
Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.
Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?
Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.
And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.
Constantine P. Cavafy (1904) "
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are to arrive today.
Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.
Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.
Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.
Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.
Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?
Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.
And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.
Constantine P. Cavafy (1904) "
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Friday, June 18, 2004
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Harper's Magazine: The depressed person - short story by David Foster Wallace: "The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.
Despairing, then, of describing the emotional pain itself, the depressed person hoped at least to be able to express something of its context -- its shape and texture, as it were -- by recounting circumstances related to its etiology. The depressed person's parents, for example, who had divorced when she was a child, had used her as a pawn in the sick games they played, as in when the depressed person had required orthodonture and each parent had claimed -- not without some cause, the depressed person always inserted, given the Medicean legal ambiguities of the divorce settlement -- that the other should pay for it. Both parents were well-off, and each had privately expressed to the depressed person a willingness, if push came to shove, to bite the bullet and pay, explaining that it was a matter not of money or dentition but of 'principle.' And the depressed person always took care, when as an adult she attempted to describe to a supportive friend the venomous struggle over the cost of her orthodonture and that struggle's legacy of emotional pain for her, to concede that it may well truly have appeared to each parent to have been, in fact, a matter of 'principle,' though unfortunately not a 'principle' that took into account their daughter's feelings at receiving the emotional message that scoring petty points off each other was more important to her parents than her own maxillofacial health and thus constituted, if considered from a certain perspective, a form of neglect or abandonment or even outright abuse, an abuse clearly connected -- here she nearly always inserted that her therapist concurred with this assessment -- to the bottomless, chronic adult despair she suffered every day and felt hopelessly trapped in...."
also also: the only way to deal with it is to build a wall at midnight and not look over it.
It seems to me that the intellectualization and aestheticizing of principles and values in this country is one of the things that's gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me, like "It's really important not to lie." OK, check, got it. I nod at that but I really don't feel it. Until I get to be about 30 and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can't trust you. I feel that I'm in pain, I'm nervous, I'm lonely and I can't figure out why. Then I realize, "Oh, perhaps the way to deal with this is really not to lie." The idea that something so simple and, really, so aesthetically uninteresting -- which for me meant you pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff -- can actually be nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can't, that seems to me to be important. That seems to me like something our generation needs to feel.
The project that's worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it's also pleasurable to read. The reader feels like someone is talking to him rather than striking a number of poses.
there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way. But that's just the first level, because the idea of mental or emotional intimacy with a character is a delusion or a contrivance that's set up through art by the writer. There's another level that a piece of fiction is a conversation. There's a relationship set up between the reader and the writer that's very strange and very complicated and hard to talk about. A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely.
There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone -- intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.
I like to teach freshman lit because ISB gets a lot of rural students who aren't very well educated and don't like to read. They've grown up thinking that literature means dry, irrelevant, unfun stuff, like cod liver oil. Getting to show them some more contemporary stuff -- the one we always do the second week is a story called "A Real Doll," by A.M. Homes, from "The Safety of Objects," about a boy's affair with a Barbie doll. It's very smart, but on the surface, it's very twisted and sick and riveting and real relevant to people who are 18 and five or six years ago were either playing with dolls or being sadistic to their sisters. To watch these kids realize that reading literary stuff is sometimes hard work, but it's sometimes worth it and that reading literary stuff can give you things that you can't get otherwise, to see them wake up to that is extremely cool.
and
Despairing, then, of describing the emotional pain itself, the depressed person hoped at least to be able to express something of its context -- its shape and texture, as it were -- by recounting circumstances related to its etiology. The depressed person's parents, for example, who had divorced when she was a child, had used her as a pawn in the sick games they played, as in when the depressed person had required orthodonture and each parent had claimed -- not without some cause, the depressed person always inserted, given the Medicean legal ambiguities of the divorce settlement -- that the other should pay for it. Both parents were well-off, and each had privately expressed to the depressed person a willingness, if push came to shove, to bite the bullet and pay, explaining that it was a matter not of money or dentition but of 'principle.' And the depressed person always took care, when as an adult she attempted to describe to a supportive friend the venomous struggle over the cost of her orthodonture and that struggle's legacy of emotional pain for her, to concede that it may well truly have appeared to each parent to have been, in fact, a matter of 'principle,' though unfortunately not a 'principle' that took into account their daughter's feelings at receiving the emotional message that scoring petty points off each other was more important to her parents than her own maxillofacial health and thus constituted, if considered from a certain perspective, a form of neglect or abandonment or even outright abuse, an abuse clearly connected -- here she nearly always inserted that her therapist concurred with this assessment -- to the bottomless, chronic adult despair she suffered every day and felt hopelessly trapped in...."
also also: the only way to deal with it is to build a wall at midnight and not look over it.
It seems to me that the intellectualization and aestheticizing of principles and values in this country is one of the things that's gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me, like "It's really important not to lie." OK, check, got it. I nod at that but I really don't feel it. Until I get to be about 30 and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can't trust you. I feel that I'm in pain, I'm nervous, I'm lonely and I can't figure out why. Then I realize, "Oh, perhaps the way to deal with this is really not to lie." The idea that something so simple and, really, so aesthetically uninteresting -- which for me meant you pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff -- can actually be nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can't, that seems to me to be important. That seems to me like something our generation needs to feel.
The project that's worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it's also pleasurable to read. The reader feels like someone is talking to him rather than striking a number of poses.
there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way. But that's just the first level, because the idea of mental or emotional intimacy with a character is a delusion or a contrivance that's set up through art by the writer. There's another level that a piece of fiction is a conversation. There's a relationship set up between the reader and the writer that's very strange and very complicated and hard to talk about. A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely.
There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone -- intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.
I like to teach freshman lit because ISB gets a lot of rural students who aren't very well educated and don't like to read. They've grown up thinking that literature means dry, irrelevant, unfun stuff, like cod liver oil. Getting to show them some more contemporary stuff -- the one we always do the second week is a story called "A Real Doll," by A.M. Homes, from "The Safety of Objects," about a boy's affair with a Barbie doll. It's very smart, but on the surface, it's very twisted and sick and riveting and real relevant to people who are 18 and five or six years ago were either playing with dolls or being sadistic to their sisters. To watch these kids realize that reading literary stuff is sometimes hard work, but it's sometimes worth it and that reading literary stuff can give you things that you can't get otherwise, to see them wake up to that is extremely cool.
and
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Sunday, June 06, 2004
E! Online News - J.Lo & Marc Anthony: They Do!: J.Lo & Marc Anthony: They Do!
by Marcus Errico
Jun 5, 2004, 9:35 PM PT
Bennifer, shmennifer. Better get used to Mennifer, or J.Ant.
Setting all kinds of land-speed records, Jennifer Lopez married Marc Anthony Saturday evening in a hush-hush backyard ceremony at her Los Angeles mansion, according to Us Weekly.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
The nuptials went down just five months after the made-for-the-tabs romance of J.Lo and Ben Affleck imploded following a scuttled wedding, and just five days after a judge in the Dominican Republic signed off on Anthony's divorce.
Publicists for the two entertainers were not immediately available for comment, though previously their reps fiercely denied the two were even romantically involved ('just friends' was the standard-issue refrain)--even after Lopez started sporting a huge rock on her finger that looked suspiciously like an engagement ring.
Unlike the actress-singer's aborted wedding to Affleck--which drew a legion of press to Santa Barbara in anticipation--Saturday's ceremony was kept under serious wraps, Us Weekly says. Only a few dozen guests were in attendance, described by the glossy as the couple's 'closest friends and family'...and Ricky Martin....
dooce says Oh, the sanctity of heterosexual marriage!
by Marcus Errico
Jun 5, 2004, 9:35 PM PT
Bennifer, shmennifer. Better get used to Mennifer, or J.Ant.
Setting all kinds of land-speed records, Jennifer Lopez married Marc Anthony Saturday evening in a hush-hush backyard ceremony at her Los Angeles mansion, according to Us Weekly.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
The nuptials went down just five months after the made-for-the-tabs romance of J.Lo and Ben Affleck imploded following a scuttled wedding, and just five days after a judge in the Dominican Republic signed off on Anthony's divorce.
Publicists for the two entertainers were not immediately available for comment, though previously their reps fiercely denied the two were even romantically involved ('just friends' was the standard-issue refrain)--even after Lopez started sporting a huge rock on her finger that looked suspiciously like an engagement ring.
Unlike the actress-singer's aborted wedding to Affleck--which drew a legion of press to Santa Barbara in anticipation--Saturday's ceremony was kept under serious wraps, Us Weekly says. Only a few dozen guests were in attendance, described by the glossy as the couple's 'closest friends and family'...and Ricky Martin....
dooce says Oh, the sanctity of heterosexual marriage!
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Wednesday, August 27, I tried to commit suicide.
My wife was out with her lover at the time. We had just gotten back home after a vacation. As soon as we set foot inside the door she made a phone call, took a shower, put on her best clothes, and left. I didn’t know they were lovers at the time. I didn’t even know who he was.
I tried to visit my friends, but all of them were busy. I wonder which ones knew what was going on but wouldn’t tell me. But I knew anyway. I knew but for rationally. Rationally I had no idea. But the other ninety percent of me knew.
I decided to work, but the power went out. That’s when I turned to the drink.
About an hour later I was holding a butcher knife in my hands, laying on my back, wondering what the best method for getting it into my heart was.
Funny, when there’s already a knife in your heart, the best thing it seems to do is get a real one in there as well.
I decided to call her. I didn’t know where she was, but I had a good idea. Turns out I was wrong. She couldn’t be at her usual haunts. She couldn’t get caught.
It was instinct to call her. She was always the one there for me, even when nobody else was.
She told me to go out and drink a beer.
I lied on the floor with a butcher knife suspended above my chest. Lightly swinging it between my index finger and thumb.
I crawled under the desk for a while and cried. It was like I couldn’t adequately cry. I couldn’t flood the streets with the amount of tears it would have taken.
I called her again. Desperate.
She was thoroughly pissed off at this point. Surely, I was interrupting her good time. His tongue down her throat. She told me, “Get a grip.”
I threw the phone against the wall and destroyed a few things around me. I wanted to tear every belonging, every piece of work I had created, I wanted to tear it all up into a million pieces.
She heard it all.
I still hadn’t managed to kill myself an hour or so later when she came home. I had called everyone I knew, my best friend, a friend across town, her parents even. Her mother called her and she cried to her, told her that I had a knife and was drunk and high. If only. Her father told her to stay in a hotel for the night. Convenient. At least she got some that night. I passed out on the floor. I should have jumped out of the goddamn window.
My wife was out with her lover at the time. We had just gotten back home after a vacation. As soon as we set foot inside the door she made a phone call, took a shower, put on her best clothes, and left. I didn’t know they were lovers at the time. I didn’t even know who he was.
I tried to visit my friends, but all of them were busy. I wonder which ones knew what was going on but wouldn’t tell me. But I knew anyway. I knew but for rationally. Rationally I had no idea. But the other ninety percent of me knew.
I decided to work, but the power went out. That’s when I turned to the drink.
About an hour later I was holding a butcher knife in my hands, laying on my back, wondering what the best method for getting it into my heart was.
Funny, when there’s already a knife in your heart, the best thing it seems to do is get a real one in there as well.
I decided to call her. I didn’t know where she was, but I had a good idea. Turns out I was wrong. She couldn’t be at her usual haunts. She couldn’t get caught.
It was instinct to call her. She was always the one there for me, even when nobody else was.
She told me to go out and drink a beer.
I lied on the floor with a butcher knife suspended above my chest. Lightly swinging it between my index finger and thumb.
I crawled under the desk for a while and cried. It was like I couldn’t adequately cry. I couldn’t flood the streets with the amount of tears it would have taken.
I called her again. Desperate.
She was thoroughly pissed off at this point. Surely, I was interrupting her good time. His tongue down her throat. She told me, “Get a grip.”
I threw the phone against the wall and destroyed a few things around me. I wanted to tear every belonging, every piece of work I had created, I wanted to tear it all up into a million pieces.
She heard it all.
I still hadn’t managed to kill myself an hour or so later when she came home. I had called everyone I knew, my best friend, a friend across town, her parents even. Her mother called her and she cried to her, told her that I had a knife and was drunk and high. If only. Her father told her to stay in a hotel for the night. Convenient. At least she got some that night. I passed out on the floor. I should have jumped out of the goddamn window.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Friday, May 21, 2004
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Saturday, May 15, 2004
for life music entertainment: misterpants!: blurred buttcracks -or- America is awesome
TV news shows grisly awful pictures of people being tortured. And when they show these pictures, they blur the buttcracks of the torture victims.
BECAUSE BUTTCRACKS ARE SO GROSS!!! OH MY GOD!
So yeah, show the guy about to be attacked by dogs, show the creepy image of the hooded man with electrical wires clamped to him, show the terrified humiliated naked men piled atop one another--but for God's sake when you do show those things, do not show their bottoms. Or their genitals! That would be an outrage.
Remember how upsetting it was for everyone to see Janet Jackson's nipple covered with electrical tape for a fraction of a second? Or when Bono said the f-word? The FCC had to tighten the rules against dirty words. And boobs.
And that really helped a lot, made America way better. Safer.
Because, unlike pictures of hateful, evil, creepy sexual prison torture--seeing a boob will totally scar a kid for life.
So I just wanted to thank America for being so awesome about its weird puritanical fear of parts of naked bodies while broadcasting images of torture everywhere.
TV news shows grisly awful pictures of people being tortured. And when they show these pictures, they blur the buttcracks of the torture victims.
BECAUSE BUTTCRACKS ARE SO GROSS!!! OH MY GOD!
So yeah, show the guy about to be attacked by dogs, show the creepy image of the hooded man with electrical wires clamped to him, show the terrified humiliated naked men piled atop one another--but for God's sake when you do show those things, do not show their bottoms. Or their genitals! That would be an outrage.
Remember how upsetting it was for everyone to see Janet Jackson's nipple covered with electrical tape for a fraction of a second? Or when Bono said the f-word? The FCC had to tighten the rules against dirty words. And boobs.
And that really helped a lot, made America way better. Safer.
Because, unlike pictures of hateful, evil, creepy sexual prison torture--seeing a boob will totally scar a kid for life.
So I just wanted to thank America for being so awesome about its weird puritanical fear of parts of naked bodies while broadcasting images of torture everywhere.
Monday, April 26, 2004
My Secret Life by Walter (The Sex Diary of a Victorian Gentleman) These feelings got intensified when I thought of my aunt's backside, and the cunts of my cousins, but when I thought of the heroines, it seemed strange that such beautiful creatures should have any. The cunt which seemed to have affected my imagination was that of my aunt, which appeared more like a great parting, or division of her body, than a cunt as I then understood it; as if her buttock parting was continued round towards her belly, and as unlike the young cunts I had seen as possible. Those seemed to me but little indents. That the delicate ladies of the novels should have such divisions seemed curious, ugly, and unromantic. My sensuous temperament was developing, I saw females in all their poetry and beauty, but suppose that my physical forces had not kept pace with my brain, for I have no recollection of a cock-stand when thinking about ladies; and fucking never entered into my mind, either when I read novels or kissed women, though the pleasure I had when my lips met theirs, or touched their smooth, soft cheeks, was great. I recollect the delight it gave me perfectly. After having seen frigging, it set me reflecting, but it still seemed to me impossible, that delicate, handsome ladies, should allow pricks to be thrust up them, and nasty stuff ejected into them. I read Aristotle, tried to understand it, and thought I did, with the help of much talk with my schoolfellows; yet I only half believed it. Dogs fucking were pointed out to me; then croaks treading hens, and at last a fuller belief came.
Friday, April 23, 2004
The Depressive and the Psychopath - At last we know why the Columbine killers did it. By Dave Cullen: In popular usage, almost any crazy killer is a 'psychopath.' But in psychiatry, it's a very specific mental condition that rarely involves killing, or even psychosis. 'Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders,' writes Dr. Robert Hare, in Without Conscience, the seminal book on the condition. ...'Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised.' Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath represents neither a legal defense, nor a moral excuse. But it illuminates a great deal about the thought process that drove him to mass murder.
Diagnosing him as a psychopath was not a simple matter. Harris opened his private journal with the sentence, "I hate the f---ing world." And when the media studied Harris, they focused on his hatred—hatred that supposedly led him to revenge. It's easy to get lost in the hate, which screamed out relentlessly from Harris' Web site:
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.
A second confirmation of the diagnosis was Harris' perpetual deceitfulness. "I lie a lot," Eric wrote to his journal. "Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water..."
Diagnosing him as a psychopath was not a simple matter. Harris opened his private journal with the sentence, "I hate the f---ing world." And when the media studied Harris, they focused on his hatred—hatred that supposedly led him to revenge. It's easy to get lost in the hate, which screamed out relentlessly from Harris' Web site:
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!! . . .It rages on for page after page and is repeated in his journal and in the videos he and Klebold made. But Fuselier recognized a far more revealing emotion bursting through, both fueling and overshadowing the hate. What the boy was really expressing was contempt.
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who say that wrestling is real!! . . .
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who use the same word over and over again! . . . Read a f---in book or two, increase your vo-cab-u-lary f*ck*ng idiots."
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STUPID PEOPLE!!! Why must so many people be so stupid!!? . . . YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? When people mispronounce words! and they dont even know it to, like acrosT, or eXspreso, pacific (specific), or 2 pAck. learn to speak correctly you morons.
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STAR WARS FANS!!! GET A FaaaaaaRIGIN LIFE YOU BORING GEEEEEKS!
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.
A second confirmation of the diagnosis was Harris' perpetual deceitfulness. "I lie a lot," Eric wrote to his journal. "Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water..."
Goodness Versus Morality and the Bible - Suite101.com: So much of what is preached and publicized on behalf of Christian churches today consists of encouraging and sustaining morality as a basis of Christian theology. In fact, one might hear the proposal that morality is theology.
Morality is not theology because it consists, as Alan Watts wrote, “of telling people how to behave.” Focusing on morality - telling people how to behave - does not impact public or private thinking except as it relates to control of behavior. So long as the emphasis is on morality the emphasis is on control.
Preaching morality rather than the virtues of goodness – particularly the common good we all ought to be seeking – gives us mostly sermons and exhortations limited to issues that are defined entirely by judgmental thinking.
Judgmental thinking in a religious or spiritual context drags the positive and negative aspects of human behavior into moral areas where actions are governed out of a concern for reward or punishment.
Judgmental thinking has at its core the idea of worthiness based on reward and punishment. Reward/punishment tools of fear, shame and guilt if ever used successfully, always result in the right things being done for the wrong reasons.
There is value in reward and punishment if the only goal is that of deterrence, intimidating those who would commit acts that would harm another person. In that regard deterrence is a device intended to discourage criminal activity.
This sort of spiritual construct only works if God is likewise viewed as judgmental and punitive, responding to human behavior in a manner that creates deterrence and control. Whether spiritual or civic, this control is legalistic in thinking – it is both spiritual and civic governance by the letter of the law.
It also exaggerates and escalates sin into the realm of criminal activity.
Subjugation to the letter of the law is precisely the environment into which Jesus was born and ministered, teaching the Christ Path as a divine alternative for a society totally immersed in literal and letter-of-the-law thinking. In that society, spiritual leaders had done something terrible to scripture, turning it into something primarily used as a device of control and deterrence.
Scripture had become formally canonized and was therefore primarily a tool of control. Sacred writings that inform humanity of its relationship to God lose most of their power to spiritualize individual lives when reduced to a canon of inflexible statutes, rigidity and possessed of a very narrow range of interpretation.
Because a canon is essentially a conservative document, a document that has been canonized is a document of censorship. It preserves the benefits of those already in authority at the expense of the culture itself. It lets the controllers retain control.
The Bible as we have it today was an instrument of control for that portion of early Christianity that won a victory of political survival. The Bible became a tool of those specific victorious Christian leaders and a means by which conservative manipulation of the status quo was more important than the spread of the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.
The controlling priests ignored that philosophy, building instead a monarchical vision of God that capitalized on the wrathful God of the Old Testament and blended it with the imperial power and imagery of the Caesars and Roman civil administration.
Jesus did not preach a Compassionate God in the punitive monarchical sense that pervades Christianity even today. The monarchical god as seen by fundamentalist and literal-minded Christian practitioners today is an inheritance passed on from the original Roman Priesthood augmented by the governance model of the Roman Empire...
Morality is not theology because it consists, as Alan Watts wrote, “of telling people how to behave.” Focusing on morality - telling people how to behave - does not impact public or private thinking except as it relates to control of behavior. So long as the emphasis is on morality the emphasis is on control.
Preaching morality rather than the virtues of goodness – particularly the common good we all ought to be seeking – gives us mostly sermons and exhortations limited to issues that are defined entirely by judgmental thinking.
Judgmental thinking in a religious or spiritual context drags the positive and negative aspects of human behavior into moral areas where actions are governed out of a concern for reward or punishment.
Judgmental thinking has at its core the idea of worthiness based on reward and punishment. Reward/punishment tools of fear, shame and guilt if ever used successfully, always result in the right things being done for the wrong reasons.
There is value in reward and punishment if the only goal is that of deterrence, intimidating those who would commit acts that would harm another person. In that regard deterrence is a device intended to discourage criminal activity.
This sort of spiritual construct only works if God is likewise viewed as judgmental and punitive, responding to human behavior in a manner that creates deterrence and control. Whether spiritual or civic, this control is legalistic in thinking – it is both spiritual and civic governance by the letter of the law.
It also exaggerates and escalates sin into the realm of criminal activity.
Subjugation to the letter of the law is precisely the environment into which Jesus was born and ministered, teaching the Christ Path as a divine alternative for a society totally immersed in literal and letter-of-the-law thinking. In that society, spiritual leaders had done something terrible to scripture, turning it into something primarily used as a device of control and deterrence.
Scripture had become formally canonized and was therefore primarily a tool of control. Sacred writings that inform humanity of its relationship to God lose most of their power to spiritualize individual lives when reduced to a canon of inflexible statutes, rigidity and possessed of a very narrow range of interpretation.
Because a canon is essentially a conservative document, a document that has been canonized is a document of censorship. It preserves the benefits of those already in authority at the expense of the culture itself. It lets the controllers retain control.
The Bible as we have it today was an instrument of control for that portion of early Christianity that won a victory of political survival. The Bible became a tool of those specific victorious Christian leaders and a means by which conservative manipulation of the status quo was more important than the spread of the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.
The controlling priests ignored that philosophy, building instead a monarchical vision of God that capitalized on the wrathful God of the Old Testament and blended it with the imperial power and imagery of the Caesars and Roman civil administration.
Jesus did not preach a Compassionate God in the punitive monarchical sense that pervades Christianity even today. The monarchical god as seen by fundamentalist and literal-minded Christian practitioners today is an inheritance passed on from the original Roman Priesthood augmented by the governance model of the Roman Empire...
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
Ananova - Top doc backs picking your nose and eating it: Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor.
Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies.
He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up.
Dr Bischinger said: 'With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner.
'And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system.
'Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.
Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies.
He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up.
Dr Bischinger said: 'With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner.
'And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system.
'Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.
Ananova - Man cuts off penis and testicles: A man who cut off his penis and testicles, was found running naked down a Canadian city street screaming 'Repent, repent, fornicators.'
The man was spotted running down the street in Penticton, British Columbia, wearing only a woolly hat.
Paramedics covered him in a sheet before taking him to hospital.
His severed penis and testicles were later found in his home.
It's not known if the body parts can be re-attached.
The man was spotted running down the street in Penticton, British Columbia, wearing only a woolly hat.
Paramedics covered him in a sheet before taking him to hospital.
His severed penis and testicles were later found in his home.
It's not known if the body parts can be re-attached.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
CONTENDER MINISTRIES MAIL BAG: You asked a second question in your email, which you did not answer: 'The more complex objection is whether these books are in fact scripture and who has the athority to 'add' them.' Like the Hebrew scribes (and initially, St. Jerome), I contend that as God is not the author of error, we can not rely upon these books as being divinely inspired, and they should therefore have not been canonized. May God bless you.
Friday, April 16, 2004
Ananova - Penis explodes during sex: Penis explodes during sex
Doctors in Romania are treating a 28-year-old whose penis exploded while he was making love to his girlfriend.
Ilarie Coroiu was taken to hospital in the Transylvanian town of Cluj after his girlfriend, Magdalena, 18, "felt something strange" and noticed that the bed was covered in blood.
Dr Angela Domocos, head of the accident and emergency department at Cluj General Hospital, said: "It is very rare for this to happen. We call it an exploded penis because it happens when the blood cavities in the penis burst.
"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to make this happen."
Mr Coroiu is now recovering after an operation to stop the bleeding.
Doctors in Romania are treating a 28-year-old whose penis exploded while he was making love to his girlfriend.
Ilarie Coroiu was taken to hospital in the Transylvanian town of Cluj after his girlfriend, Magdalena, 18, "felt something strange" and noticed that the bed was covered in blood.
Dr Angela Domocos, head of the accident and emergency department at Cluj General Hospital, said: "It is very rare for this to happen. We call it an exploded penis because it happens when the blood cavities in the penis burst.
"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to make this happen."
Mr Coroiu is now recovering after an operation to stop the bleeding.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Faith No More News: Reykjav?k, Iceland
Almost a decade after a once-controversial music video gained popularity and success for now-defunct rock band Faith No More, the video (for the band's 1990 hit 'Epic') returns from MTV purgatory to reap all-new controversy, thanks to techno-pop queen Bj?rk.
'Yes, it was my fish' the spacey, brunette Icelander told CNN on Friday.
'There was a party at Roddy (Bottum, ex-Faith No More keyboardist)'s mansion in Berkeley and I was just coming from a poetry reading in San Francisco. I had been given the fish (which she admits to having named 'Linear Soul Child') from a person at that poetry reading, and brought it to Roddy's party. That's the last time I ever saw him.'
The fish, a common 3-finned goldfish, caused a media uproar from animal-rights groups the same year for supposedly being 'flopped' on the ground during the video shoot. Faith No More insisted that the fish 'flopped only once' despite allegations of animal mistreatment.
Bj?rk, despite becoming emotionally upset in our interview over the loss of her would-be pet, comes to the defense of the group. 'I know those guys, I know they wouldn't do anything to harm [him]. But I know, if I had gone home with MY fish, which was given to ME, none of this would have ever happened.' The former members of Faith No More declined to comment further on the incident.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Amazon.ca: Books: Spells
a bi-sexual, post gothic, coming-of-age revenge fantasia set in rural Canada in the 1970's, following the exploits of a fat kid who experiments with witchcraft, drugs, sex, more witchcraft and Egyptology. Bad things happen, very bad things. #
a bi-sexual, post gothic, coming-of-age revenge fantasia set in rural Canada in the 1970's, following the exploits of a fat kid who experiments with witchcraft, drugs, sex, more witchcraft and Egyptology. Bad things happen, very bad things. #
The Horse Hospital: Die Cheerleaders: 'Catastrophic cheerleading injuries' is not a title to ignore.
Of 39 incidents reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury between 1982 and 2002, the authors reviewed 29.
Twenty seven of the injured were women, and the rate of injuries among college cheerleaders was five times that among high schoolers. The most common injury provoking stunts were a 'pyramid' and a 'basket toss.' The injuries included 17 severe head injuries leading to 13 skull fractures and two deaths, eight cervical fractures, and three spinal cord contusions
( American Journal of Sports Medicine 2003 ;31:881 -8 )
Of 39 incidents reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury between 1982 and 2002, the authors reviewed 29.
Twenty seven of the injured were women, and the rate of injuries among college cheerleaders was five times that among high schoolers. The most common injury provoking stunts were a 'pyramid' and a 'basket toss.' The injuries included 17 severe head injuries leading to 13 skull fractures and two deaths, eight cervical fractures, and three spinal cord contusions
( American Journal of Sports Medicine 2003 ;31:881 -8 )
Monday, April 12, 2004
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: In Romania, pre-emptive strikes on 'vampires': MAROTINU DE SUS, Romania — Before Toma Petre's relatives pulled his body from the grave, ripped out his heart, burned it to ashes, mixed it with water and drank it, he hadn't been in the news much.
That's often the way here with vampires. Quiet lives, active deaths.
Villagers here aren't up in arms about the undead — they're pretty common — but they are outraged that the police are involved in a simple vampire slaying. After all, vampire slaying is an accepted, though hidden, bit of national heritage, even if illegal.
"What did we do?" pleaded Flora Marinescu, Petre's sister and the wife of the man accused of re-killing him. "If they're right, he was already dead. If we're right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. ... Is that so wrong?"
That's often the way here with vampires. Quiet lives, active deaths.
Villagers here aren't up in arms about the undead — they're pretty common — but they are outraged that the police are involved in a simple vampire slaying. After all, vampire slaying is an accepted, though hidden, bit of national heritage, even if illegal.
"What did we do?" pleaded Flora Marinescu, Petre's sister and the wife of the man accused of re-killing him. "If they're right, he was already dead. If we're right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. ... Is that so wrong?"
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Chocolate and Vodka :: Travis - 12 Memories: I don't know what it is about heartbreak. Maybe it's just that it's so familiar. Strangely comfortable in the way that old, ill-fitting shoes are. You know that you should get rid of them, but the constant pain is at the very least a reminder that you are alive, because you can't feel pain when you're dead and feeling pain is better than feeling nothing at all.
Take me away, take me away
You said that you were gonna stay
But you’re always lying anyway
You’re gonna suffer if you don’t start breathing now
Now that I need you
You’re going away
Every day, sinking into quicksand
Follow me down the drain
- Quicksand
Twelve Memories, last year’s offering from Travis, has taken a while to impinge on my consciousness. No surprises there - it was released just after I went through a total life meltdown, plummeting through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs like a dead seagull. I had other things on my mind back in October, like how to retain sanity, how to put back together the remnants of my life (an ongoing project), how find a way forward.
Thus it was only last week, after regaining daily access to the wonderful XFM, a London indie radio station that I used to listen to all the time back when I lived in Reading, that I was reminded of what a wonderfully beautiful voice Fran Healy has.
Take me away, take me away
You said that you were gonna stay
But you’re always lying anyway
You’re gonna suffer if you don’t start breathing now
Now that I need you
You’re going away
Every day, sinking into quicksand
Follow me down the drain
- Quicksand
Twelve Memories, last year’s offering from Travis, has taken a while to impinge on my consciousness. No surprises there - it was released just after I went through a total life meltdown, plummeting through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs like a dead seagull. I had other things on my mind back in October, like how to retain sanity, how to put back together the remnants of my life (an ongoing project), how find a way forward.
Thus it was only last week, after regaining daily access to the wonderful XFM, a London indie radio station that I used to listen to all the time back when I lived in Reading, that I was reminded of what a wonderfully beautiful voice Fran Healy has.
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