Went to EDC yesterday. we parked waaay far from the event grounds in long beach, and had to walk back across the bridge at night. the lights reflecting off of the water far below reminded me in a strange way of venice....or the pier at the end of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. I was silent most of the time, wondering how many more moonlit bridges lay in my future... and noticing that parts of the water seemed to carry a different surface tension, thereby causing the ripples made by the breeze to be slightly smoother in some areas. what causes this? temperature? depth? prevailing wind conditions?

in some ways, this edc was really really cool, but i still think it's a bit of a bastardization of the whole supposedly underground scene...ending at midngiht and all. spent the night (as always) talking among friends old and new...spurred on by an aritficial moment that creates a very real sensation of closeness and causes a breaking down of the fundamental borders of learned social interaction--so that for one short night, everyone gets along the way they're supposed to. people whom i've barely met, and who know only an inkling of who i am, seem suddenly like i've known them forever. ah, the blissful artificiality of it all. still searching for the realization that has not come to me yet--about what the hell it is i want to do with my life, and when i'm going to stop partying on weekends like a madwoman. i met BT and he gave me a hug!!!!!!

"Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody is watching."

still though, i keep telling myself that these are the last years i will ever be able to discover my boundaries on my own...and learn to live life, and not just simply exist. but at what price freedom? at what cost enlightenment?

a dark way to end a good weekend, but i will add that i had an astoundingly immense amount of fun.

Not to harp too much on Bush's speech, BUT this is a great article enunciating much better than i could how damaging this speech was. you'd think that with people like Colin Powell giving him advice to the contrary, Bush would actually listen. I'd be interested to find out who's controlling our president. An'd i'm worried about the upcoming G-8 summit (this saturday, i think) and whether Bush will selfishly direct the focus away form helping Africa (which is what the summit is supposed to be about) and instead spew out more bullshit about our righteous crusade against terrorism.

igotacarigotacarigotacar! vroom vroom clicka-clicka cccchhhhhhhcchhhhROAR! it's adorable, but i cannot think of a name yet. fluffy? actually, i'm more proud of the fact that this is the first major purchase i've ever made on my own credit, with my own money. also very saddening to realize that now i have a car payment for the next four years and can no longer abandon everything to travel around the world as i had earlier hoped. but at least i won't have to worry about car trouble for awhile, which is SUCH a relief since i've had nothing but car trouble since i started driving.

i hope my stepmother turns green with envy, vomits, and then chokes on it. i know, it's a horrible thought, but those who have known me long enough to see the evil which has been wrought by her hypocritical, despicable, sinister, selfish hands will rejoice when they hear that she's gonna be gone for at least another month! and when she gets back, $100 says she will attempt to pilfer my car or somehow make me feel guilty for borrowing her car when i crashed my old one. greedy little bitch. i'm getting mad in advance.

G. Dubya in his speech earlier today:

"When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East."

First of all,
New Leaders:
"The Arab world will not sleep tonight...he practically demanded the removal of Arafat, the symbol of Palestinian unity...The Palestinians have elected Arafat and they will elect him again. If the Palestinians re-elect Arafat, are they going to be punished?" -- Mohamed el-Sayed Said, Washington bureau chief for the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram

Second:
New Institutions

The following are excerpts from AlterNet -- Indecent Proposal:

"Interim independence and partial sovereignty make as much sense politically as a woman being somewhat pregnant. Independence and sovereignty are either fully realized or meaningless.

Much the same may be said about the president's repeated calls for the Palestinian Authority to become democratic. While Palestinian reforms are clearly needed, it is absurd to speak of creating a democracy among noncitizens of a nonstate under a foreign military occupation and without meaningful sovereignty.


The intensity, viciousness and frequency of Palestinian suicide attacks against Israeli civilians have only increased as a result of Israel's recent rampages and the sacking of many West Bank cities. Israel's plan, announced Wednesday, to reoccupy Palestinian-ruled areas is not a change of policy; it's a continuation of Israeli behavior over the last five months. More of the same will meet with just as little success.

And Israel's new "security fence" is another chimera offered up by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who continues to feed his people the illusion that the Palestinian uprising can be crushed and the occupation then continued in peace and security.

According to numerous reports, Sharon told a closed meeting of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that there would be no peace deal for at least 10 years; that Israel was prepared for a 100-year struggle; that a Palestinian state was out of the question any time soon; and that the key to Israel's security was 1 million new Jewish immigrants."

And third:
New security arrangements with their neighbors
Arafat is currently holed up in his HQ in Ramallah, the roads are blocked off, and as Time magazine so fittingly put it a few months ago, he is "all boxed in." How the hell can he negotiate security issues when he's being held a virtual prisoner in his own compound?

The following from BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Analysis: Israel's new tactics:

"Israel has a new policy - land for peace.

It is not the old land for peace approach, the grand vision under which Israel would withdraw from most Palestinian territory in exchange for recognition and acceptance.

This time, in response to the latest bus bombing in Jerusalem, the process goes into reverse. Israel will occupy some Palestinian land, which probably means major towns and cities, and hold it until the bombings stop.

In effect, the Israelis are saying, if we have no peace, we take a piece of your land. And if there are more bombings, then more land will be taken. And on and on.

The logical outcome is that Israel will eventually re-occupy the whole of the West Bank. Gaza remains, for now, relatively quiet. But its turn could come if bombers emerge from there as well."

I'm educated in the wiles of media indoctrination and propaganda. I wouldn't let a hilarious HBO show dictate my misadventures. Would I??? Life's certainly been more.....interesting lately. More shocking and definitely more strange. But defintely worth the experience.

This poem came to me (or rather, i came across it---but i'd like to think it came to me) at such a relevant time:

Not Love Perhaps

This is not love perhaps--Love that lays down
Its life, that many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown--
But something written in a lighter ink, said in a lower tone;
Something perhaps especially our own:
A need at times to be together and talk--
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark and narrow places
And meet more easily nightmare faces:
A need to reach out sometimes hand to hand--
And then find Earth less like an alien land:
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street:
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas, halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked and notes compared:
A need at times of each for each
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.

--A.S.J. Tessimond
(19 July 1902 - 13 May 1962)

Started group therapy...er, blog... with sherry and janet at Joint Ascension!


Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and caudron bubble

it's Juneteenth today, (actually, technically it was yesterday, june 19th) --the day that the news of lincoln's emancipation proclamation reached the slaves in galveston, texas. A holiday of sorts... the commemoration of the last group of slaves to be (legally) freed.

such a sobering thought that although i wish i lived in the 60's, i'd probably be discriminated against if i had actually tried to fit in then.

today is also $1 per 24-ounce draft night!

Why I write (explained by smarter people):

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." --Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)

Doesn't the very idea of being able to manipulate the way in which people conceive reality just turn you on???? (that's from me... not philip k. dick)

---

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause.

Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.

---Aristotle, Poetics

---

The very act of writing is an imitation of life...an execution of an idea, the metamorphosis of something intangible into action. maybe i write because the very process of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is therapeutic... being able to create something shows me that i can come to rational conclusions, when oftentimes in the real world conclusions seem forced upon me. Aristotle brings up such a great point with his "Ah, that is he." The pleasure we find in reading stems from the recognition of our own face in the mirror of literature (in Aristotle's point, poetry). It is the realization of a commonality--the moment when we discern within a piece of writing that part which is familiar because it relates. writing (and reading) keeps us in touch with our own facilities for higher knowledge--brings to the forefront an a priori recognition of our own sentience. "Ah, that is HE"--- not "that is IT."

---

"So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past."

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

hahaha, everyone at work seems alienated by my gargantuan headphones. but you know what? i don't give a flying fuck! and i'm sure that in a few days or weeks they'll notice that i enjoy my headphones, so they'll tell me to stop. but until then, i'm gonna keep listening, tyrannical office managers be damned. better yet, i hope i get another job by then. right now my lunch hour consists of doing thingslike looking up kobe bryant's wife on the internet and joining my co-workers in shouting "hoodrat!" at the computer screen. riveting.

sherry might go to see paul oakenfold tonight. but since i need to work tomorrow, the closest i can come to that experience is shouting "ready! steady! GO!" very loudly in the shower. or i can make weird techno-noises at my cat....but i think he's still mad at me for painting his paws green yesterday. muahahaha.

vicoria's secret had their clearance sale today. so i went and sifted through piles of bras and underwear and tried on a silky lacy thing...then cracked up at myself when i realized that i'd much rather...get ridiculously large headphones to connect to my computer at work....and the eminem cd, and the blackalicious cd. so here i am, no new underwear but a lot of good music and some dope-ass headphones that will allow me to shut everyone at work off.

no more listening to music at respectable levels!

*boom boom boom boom......boom!*

Found thisAstronomical Enigma..... I'm math-deficient so I do not understand any of the equations, but anyone out there who's good at this stuff please take a look and see if it freaks you out...or if it's just a hoax.

so sherry wrote about this male that she met, and from her description, i envisioned the following:

a white guy with dark blonde dreadlocks sitting atop a mound of cushions, smelling of patchouli, totally Goa, wearing a bright monk-orange loincloth and playing the sitar (thank you gina) while occasionally spewing forth random, half-contemplative and helf-nonsensical phrases.

see what happens when i get too bored at work? my mind goes off on all sorts of crazy tangents....i was intensely curious becuase this new mental picture was hilarious to me....but i REALLY started to want to know the true description of this guy when the imagined sitar music started floating around my head. sounded curiously like The Beatles' Within you, Without you, and drove me crazy.

so it turns out that he's just a pretty normal guy. but my little imagination-gone-rampant vignette still makes me laugh.

Went to San Diego this weekend, and learned more about Thurgood Marshall than in EVER, EVER, wanted to know. Also got a little too saturated for my own good, and now i have a sore throat. And i bit my tongue last night and it is swollen and painful.

San Diego is such a beautiful city...I want to go to the zoo! and the beach! and Tijuana!

some inspiring thoughts from a bedtime book i'm reading:

---

Have you ever marveled at how fate has drawn you to someone? Maybe you met the person of your dreams through a very interesting turn of events. Perhaps you stopped at a store you've never been in before and discovered a childhood friend working there. Or maybe you were laid off from work, and for some reason attended a meeting in a different state and met an employer looking for someone with your qualifications.

There's a lesson to be learned from each person you meet. Your contact, however brief or extended, has occurred for a reason. Sometimes when you meet someone at a particularly meaningful time, you may feel as if you're part of a play, sharing a stage with characters you know will have an important influence on your life. Although not all the lessons you learn will make you feel wonderful--some people may treat you badly, others may leave you with pain and heartache--all will have provided you with a valuable lesson.

Tonight, trust that your life is being guided not only by the decisions you make, but also by divine forces. Rather than marveling at chance meetings and interactions that have a positive impact and questioning those that have a negative influence, accept the fact that every lesson you learn is meaningful.

---

It's a rare person indeed who never feels lonely at night. Even when you're surrounded by friends, family, roommates, or are in the company of an intimate partner, you can still feel lonely.

YOu may question, "What's wrong with me? I'm not alone. I have others with me." What you may not realize is that having people around sometimes puts you in touch with just how out of touch you are with yourself. Until you're happy being with yourself, is may be hard to feel content with others.

How do you create happiness in your solitude? You accept the fact that no matter how close you are to another person or other people, you are essentially alone. You have to live within your own skin and be your own separate person. To do so takes practice. For example, instead of reaching for the telephone when you're lonely, you can listen to your faorite music. Connecting with yourself, rather than relying on connecting to others, is the best way to develop enriching experiences in your solitude.

Tonight, pay attention to your feelings of loneliness. Then be there for yourself. Learn that loneliness doesn't have to be bitter, and solitude doesn't have to be frightening.

---

and from an email i received (thanks eric)
Moving Thoughts

Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift.

When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one which has been opened for us.

The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had.

It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives.

Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile.

There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real!

Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.

Always put yourself in others' shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person, too.

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

Happiness lives for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried, for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can't go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

My weekend:

Friday: Went to sherry and janet's place and slathered on Borghese mud masks, watched Sex and the City and Absolutely Fabulous, smoked, and ate ice cream....sweetie, dahhhling!

Saturday: Went to Spundae and had so much fun my brain hurts.

Sunday: Houseparty, and was privileged to witness live (and repeatedly since they videotaped it) a three-girl makeout session.

Weekends fly by way too fast.

i'm reading Dune right now. it's completely absorbing.. one of those books that just suck you right in. i can't put it down...i bring it everywhere...even when i'm only going on a short trip and i know i won't have the chance to read any more of it. it's less than 4 inches away from me as i type right now. caught in the bliss of bibliophilia...this hasn't happened since A Hundred Years of Solitude and Tides of War.

it's summer.. and i don't have a summer vacation. this 40-hours-a-week thing is really starting to get old. i had better go to grad school soon before i wake up one day to discover that i'm 40 and living in a one-room apartment with six screaming kids and a handful of foodstamps. hmmm... but not much better is the prospect of waking up one day finding that i'm 40 with a fistful of benjamins and surrounded by material posessions that i don't have the time to enjoy because i've worked my ass off and no longer have any friends. i wonder if i'm always going to be this unsure...if life ever comes to a point where one sits back and says, "ahhh, i understand." that's probably the moment before we die.

Someone slap this guy. Please. Pretty pretty please???

Bush's United States Military Academy Graduation Speech

actually, it's an extremely well-written speech. very inspiring, poignant, etc. etc. his speech-writers are getting better and better! compare, if you will, this masterpiece of a speech to G. Dubya's vocabulary in the bush-blair debates. hmmm...do i detect a MAJOR DISCREPANCY here??

what bothers me very much about the West Point speech, so much so that I am compelled to rant about it, is it's very well-disguised and very cleverly explained message that it is now acceptable political doctrine for the US to be able to stomp on any nation that even shows a potential for harming "freedom." and who decides what freedom consists of? why, the US, of course!

Some of the more shocking excerpts:

"Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies."

"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."

"Yet the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge."

"Some nations need military training to fight terror, and we'll provide it."

"We will not leave the safety of America and the peace of the planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants." (Applause.)
hmmm...ever consider that these "mad terrorists" are angry at us for a reason?

I wonder how patronizing this sounds to other nations:
"We will lift this dark threat from our country and from the world."

"By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it."
and right after, he goes and says:
"Competition between great nations is inevitable, but armed conflict in our world is not. More and more, civilized nations find ourselves on the same side -- united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos."

A nod at hegemonic stability:
"America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge -- (applause) -- thereby, making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace."

but, immediately after, a claim at interdependency:
"When the great powers share common values, we are better able to confront serious regional conflicts together, better able to cooperate in preventing the spread of violence or economic chaos."
but wait, the disclaimer:
"America needs partners to preserve the peace, and we will work with every nation that shares this noble goal."

"America cannot impose this vision -- yet we can support and reward governments that make the right choices for their own people."
Sooo.. the contrapositive to that statement would be: "Governments that don't make the right choices can be opposed and punished by America." (I knew all that LSAT logic would come in handy).
Again, who is deciding right from wrong here? I don't buy the universal-moral-imperative line when it so happens that the obliberation of those governments deemed "evil" serve directly to improve our hegemony.

an exercise in iambs (and misplaced trochees):

lay it out:
some questions:
Why do i smile when i fell torn apart by antithetical beliefs that claw and scrape at the small strings that bind my heart and leave it tender, scarred, and raw? Would I be able to live with myself knowing that i sacrificed my pride, morals, individuality--for wealth (for after all, it'd be my heart that lied)? And, above all, do the questions i ask make any difference as to whether i will ever finish the impossible task of being somebody before i die? Another suitcase in another hall--do i progress only to fall?

break it down:

some questions:

Why do i smile when i fell torn apart
by antithetical beliefs that claw
and scrape at the small strings that bind my heart
and leave it tender, scarred, and raw?
Would I be able to live with myself
knowing that i sacrificed my pride,
morals, individuality--for wealth
(for after all, it'd be my heart that lied)?
And, above all, do the questions i ask
make any difference as to whether i
will ever finish the impossible task
of being somebody before i die?

Another suitcase in another hall--
do i progress only to fall?

I seem to not be able to get past the second line of the third couplet, although the next line is trochaic also.. but still....*sigh*

If a man speaks in the middle of the forest, where nobody is around to hear him.... is he still wrong? hahahaha