Oh yes, the LINUX Chronicles/

I bought a desktop computer yesterday. Athlon AMD 856 MHz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB harddrive... oh yeah baby! I'm getting wet just thinking about it.

Sorry.

It's raining and I neglected to close the window.

SO. I'm multitasking. Working on my spreadsheets and photo stuffs on the laptop, and my Vector SOHO iso file happily downloading to harddrive on this bad baby.

"They were lesbians -- each and every one of them!"

(Hehe, I laugh everytime I hear that on the radio at work.)

I was talking to my mom tonight. About lesbian things! Now that the gay shtick ain't what it used to be, I think I'll go back to being unhappily straight. Just to mix it up.

I was talking to my mom about other things, too. 'Mother, tell me how to live my life so that you'll be happy.' 'Doctor, Sonya. If that's what makes you happy.'

Well, fuck then -- if it makes me happy! I never knew you supported me in my medical endeavours! I always thought you wanted me to live in abject poverty or contract HIV to prove to others that life is indeed worth living after all, even when all the cards are stacked against a person! Lose a limb?! even better. Be the example. I am so happy now. I could shoot myself over and over and be joyful.

So my calling is to do what lights myself on fire. Literally, and by literally, I mean the written word. I simply write what's on my mind, which is bound to be not much, which helps keep the writing clear and concise. No, I despise writing. Sounds signifying nothing. Well, when I do it anyway. Action is where it's at. Action is what is real. That is why I hide behind words. Transparent words. Ohhh nice. I'm naked, look!

I lose interest in a topic very fastly and with vigour, and I tend to mix metaphors, going against that Stumpy guy's suggestions. See? This one was too obtuse. Nothing is sacred.

That paragraph was a riot and a half to me, but to people who are not me, that paragraph is shit.

It's hard to must know. You know?

Oh, this was supposed to be about my sexcapades with Linux. Well, Linux baby is into experimenting, so he ran off with some Vector guy. I've gone off the deepend again. I'm getting good at a whole lot of nothing. Interesting. i can tell when I've been holding things in, because on this platform, I'm letting out all the junk, unfiltered, and it ain't pretty or even coherent. Good stuff. Virtual Therapy. it is what it is. being human.

and more!

~Amber~ says:
you make me laugh cuz ur life is more fucked up than mine which makes me feel better

Sonya says:
i still think about [name of someone here]
~Amber~ says:
i still think about a lot of things that aren't important

i think i'm bitter. but better than this sounds. man, get the gun already.

Okay, so my Friday.

Dreamed allll night. Slept for 5 minutes. Looked like the walking dead and out the door at 6:22 am. I like biking early in the morning, watching the sun coming up over the buildings, dodging the occupied sleeping bags scattered across the seawall pavement.

I really love Vancouver. I came here listening to my heart song and all that shit. But, at the same time, I have no idea what the hell I am doing here. Oh yes, now I remember.

"Everything and nothing is as sacred as we want it to be."

"I like my oatmeal lumpy."

I didn't have oatmeal for breakfast. I swallowed a fly on my way out of the laneway going up the bikepath hill.

Almost every time I go out onto that path, I nearly get nailed by a westbound cyclist out of nowhere. The road is lined with cars that block my view, but I look both ways! You are always on my mind. Once, I saw you on the bus. I had a feeling I would. I knew I would see you. Sometimes I scare myself a little. Precognition. 11:11 just now.

An older guy in spandex totally kicked my ass up that hill. I watched his butt, just as a point of focus, but really I was thinking about where my life was going and if anything in this world matters at all to anyone. Let's just say low point. His shorts were also a little low, revealing a smidgen of crack. I thought of you. If it's true... Stop hurting yourself. What reminds you of the beauty in this world...

Time to change the tense.

Yes, so on my Friday morning bikeride, I am pedalling my ass up the Cambie Bridge overpass. As I run a red light (no traffic) coming off the bridge, I nearly nail a pedestrian. She's becoming a regular on my morning commute. Same place, same time, at the foot of the bridge on the opposite side of the road, smiling at me and wondering why I always nearly run her over. I should learn by now, but no, I do not learn. I wonder where she goes every morning, all smiles and high hopes for the future.

Actually I don't wonder that; instead I wonder why she doesn't move her ass over a tad to accommodate me, the cyclist on the pedestrian sidewalk.  

Arrive at UBC campus. I'm one of the first people in the building. I climb 3 flights of stairs, change out of my sweaty clothes. I run down the hall pretending I'm in the Breakfast Club and that old freaky guy is after us.  

I run into Odette and she unlocks the door for me. A grad student stands uncomfortably close to me. People, stop loving me! Stop being nice. Your kindness is cruel; it ends.

That was fun! I like visiting pityville.

People to read often to combat the stupidity I have swallowed whole

William James. over and over.

HD Thoreau

Richard Feynman

Friedrich Nietzsche

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

"To me, the vow was so important and had been important for so long that breaking it would mean breaking a part of my self-concept, my view of myself as a faithful and loyal friend."

Bingo.

"It's a secret. Here it is. Always tell the truth, and, more importantly, never lie. Even to yourself. What the heck does this have to do with anything? Well, once I realized that I was defending my ego by constantly telling myself a thousand subtle lies, I was able to stop. When I did, all this stuff started boiling up out of my unconscious and out onto my website. It must have been in there all along. It just wouldn't come out and play. Maybe it was embarrassed about all the lying.

PS I strongly suspect that Richard Feynman accidentally stumbled across this same technique. It's a source of creativity like you wouldn't believe! It's a wellspring of amazing ideas which seem to arise fully formed, without you doing the work to assemble them.

This sort of extreme creativity seems to be an inbuilt human feature, but unfortunately a "normal life" is filled with millions of tiny dishonesties which acts as a "plug" that halts the creative flow almost entirely. If you stop lying to yourself totally; stop distorting reality in your efforts to have a positive self image, then you damage your own psychological defenses. Those defenses block the Monsters from the ID. They keep your personal horrors at bay. But they do far more than that: they also cut you off from the prime creative source, your subconscious, and block your flow of ideas almost entirely. If you choose the path of safety and never look deep within, then you may retain the ability to do really well on exams, and to be an expert puzzle-solver. But you'll never come up with major new ideas.

Shatter your mental plug and you're on your way to an amazing life. However, if you do remove your psychological defenses, you force yourself onto a path that leads to both genius or insanity. Do you REALLY want to see yourself as you really are? No fuzzy lens at all? Some people would rather not go there. And that's one reason why insanity is so close to genius. Removing your defense mechanisms is far more serious than taking a powerful drug that gives you honest vision. The effects of drugs eventually wear off!"

- Bill Beaty

William E. Simon on FREEEEEEDOM

"Freedom is difficult to understand because it isn't a presence but an absence -- an absence of governmental constraint. People who are unfamiliar with severe political constraints -- severe enough to make them aware that they have lost their freedom -- often don't know what freedom is and on what it depends.

"This was true of me, and it tends to be generally true of Americans, who have had the unique privilege of living in a nation that was organized, constitutionally and economically, for one purpose above all: to protect that freedom. Our Founding Fathers, for whom the knowledge of the centuries of tyranny that had preceded them was vivid and acute, were guided in the creation of our political and economic system by that knowledge; virtually every decision they made was to bind the state in chains to protect the individual's freedom of thought, choice, and action -- to protect that ephemeral thing called freedom."

[Excerpted from A Time For Truth by William E. Simon, 1979, pg. 21]

This evening Deac and I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery, ostensibly to check out Rodin's sculpture exhibit (but really to check out the ahtsy fahtsy hotties). There weren't any. We played with objects made by this Viennese Franz dude. Saw Emily Carr's stuff. She spoke the language of trees. Lovely for her.

P.O.A

The common denominator for success...is self-motivation, discipline, and rational goal-oriented action.

Love and be loved.

Exercise mental will and access resources. Financial ease.

Editing and writing; translating and studying sanskrit; photography. Education. Critical thinking.

Linux and computer communications. Knowing how and why.

Agriculture. Back to basics.

Residential design (design my own home, anyway). Equipped with PV cells, VoIP, garden; energy-efficient design principles.

Okay I need a good ass kicking right now. action action action

David Holmgren, Sept 10, 2005 in Vancouver at UBC, baby!

I want to go to this permaculture lecture.

What is permaculture?

Things to remember when designing my home:
- thermal mass
- Christopher Alexander
- Wabi-sabi
- Phi, (the Golden Ratio...)

Because I want to.

Today I went to work in the lab. I was thinking. I decided not to do anything that wasn't fun or conducive to good feeling, so I left after 2 hours. I think that that was a good, fun decision.

Instead, I did my laundry again, tried on my new clothes, waxed my poor body to pieces, cleaned my room, inquired about a computer, watered my plants, read some books and finished moving some of my old blog entries from blurty.com (recommended by my sister) to blogspot because everyone else I know has one here. Or on livejournal. But whatever. I was rereading my older entries from last year, and now I see that I was not as funny as I thought. I cringe a little now, reading that self-indulgent crapola. But here I am writing again, so that tells you just how much I haven't learned.

I'm thinking of using this journal thing as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends in Ontario. In which case I will have to edit. Operation ECD. Edit Censor Delete. I'm sure there are sexual innuendoes and the like that I have yet to expunge, so help me out before I give this address to my dear lovelies, thanks and please.

I think my body is eating itself. I am so very tired. Off to sleepland.

ROSICRUCIAN CRUCIFIXION

"The Solar Crucifixion - The agony of the Savior is not the agony of death, but the agony of birth. Only to him who has found his life by losing it is the mystery comprehensible." (MPH, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, PRS)

It hurts to begin. It hurts to be gin. It hurts to beg in tight tights.

open-mindedness inaction

[From Rethinking thinking By Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor]

...The bad news is that even by the time they graduate, most college students don't reach the higher levels of critical thinking involving true reflective judgment.

"They're making what we call quasi- reflective judgments," she says. "Even four years of college only brings traditional-age college students to a very low level of critical thinking and judgment," she says.

Seniors do have the ability to understand that a controversial problem can and should be approached from several perspectives, she says. But they are often unable to come to a reasoned conclusion even when all the facts to solve a problem are present.

"They're left on the fence," she says. "They say, 'Look how open-minded I am.' But when pressed to say, 'What do you think about this? What suggestions would you make and what are they based on?' - that's when the process falls apart. They are unable to reach or defend a conclusion that's most reasonable and consistent with the facts." [Oct. 15 2003]

Inviting the good

into my life. Doing the suggested "visual display of things I like in my life" to keep my focus. Actually, finding pictures that mirror good vibes is fun. Do it.
Disclaimer: Not an exhaustive study. :P I was in a country mood at the time of finding these images. Damn J R fm radio. Uh.. not that I ever.. listen. to it. ;p

All is vanity and vector linux.

Vector Linux 5.1 released

Now I shall try this out on an old computer and let you know how it goes. So excited! I like this OS more for what it aspires to be than for what it is, and what it is, is a ticket to Linux Hell for those unsuspecting newbies eager to flee the grasp of windoze et al. See, I bought the first slackware install cd for version 3.x in 2002 or 2003, loaded Vector on my 1997 PII, 233Mhz, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB harddrive packard bell desktop piece of poop (affectionate term) and set it to dual boot with WIN98SE. The computer worked fine, and, although I couldn't surf the net, print, play music, hear sound at all, or set my screen to the correct display size to see what I was typing, -- Boy, was my box a memory-efficient master.

Random stuffs and Marketing 101

Hmm... I've read this article, and I am convinced that I know tons of people proficiently versed in the effective use of the Chewbacca Defense. Yeah, myself included. That reminds me of the classic marketing technique -- to make something stick in the human memory, confusion is key. Follow logical methods for the majority of your writing but then throw in a puzzling non sequitur or something perhaps slightly offensive and non-committal to end your message for that much-coveted WTF? response. Confusing people requires the artist's casually focused attention: too many left-field references and people are lost and afraid of you, too few and people are bored.

["Early signs your kid may have a problem"]

Open wide (your eyes)

Orwellian Doublethink In London

I bought this tonight for $10. Yeah mon. I didn't even have to sacrifice my virginal purity for this earthly good. Deacon kindly offered to escort me to the place of exchange in Yaletown. But don't get me wrong -- Deacon was not my escort; he was my bitch.

The weirdest era of my life thus far, 2004.

A piece of yourself in everything you do

Soul Fix for the cyclist's soul.

What does not kill me...

"True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness" - Nietzsche.

Oh, Nietzsche is my balm. Many a night have I spent cradled in his intellect.

Yes

"...one must look very carefully to see by whom, or by what, one's language, and therefore one's thoughts and sensibilities, are being shaped."

There's no other way

"There's no other way. All that you can do is watch them play."

Join in on the fun; maybe you'll poke someone's eye out, maybe you'll discover a part of yourself in someone else, maybe you'll come away burnt to a crisp by the sun's rays. But, that's fun too. It's all fun when you know it's just a game.