Conspiracy theory, Espresso and Bailey's Irish Cream

The creation of currency let poor people, the lower class, into the upper echelons of society. Now they (in the generalized conspiratorial meaning of "they") want to get rid of cash. By doing this, they can track every fucking last dollar from "earned' to "spent" in your entire life time. It's true that being able to track every dollar spent could be used for the good of society. But it's also true that power corrupts, and the power to track every dollar is so totalitarian, that it will be abused.

Cheers!

Lotsa Mana

Is Hershey's making their Chocolate Syrup thinner? ... I don't know, just a feeling.

happy holidays!

Holiday thoughts, Diet Coke, and Cuervo Black

So it's the holidays. Again. And not as many people put up lights as before.

I sometimes feel a kind of despair this time of year. I'm not exactly sure why or exactly boring enough to go into my person history ... but instead.

Can you imagine or remember, just for minute, how cold and or dark this time must have been for those who came long before?

It's Cold and dark and the sun isn't due to rise for another 16 hours, days the more arctic you are.

Can you look out upon your city and imagine it bathed in total darkness except for the light of the moon, and cold that makes you quiver, and shake?

Nearly everything is in a death like state trying to cope. Things rattle when the wind blows, and we animals congregate to try to stay warmer and dry.

The full moon makes you crazy because it tricks you into thinking that it has enough light to light the way.

Don't rely on the moon or the stars there no heat in them, but instead make your own light in the dark.

And what a light we've made.

Everywhere we can we light the dark.
When flying into or from Honolulu at night the city looks like a giant wave of pink and blue lights have crashed upon the shore.

In the evening when the sun is just set. City lights lighting up all the trees around create a post-Impressionist fantasy of pinks oranges greens and blacks that crush so heavenly against the navy blue fade of the darking sky. Walks home during this "magic hour" are some of my most favorite moments and leave me in awe. It's a great tragedy that we can't see our way to cleaner more efficient sources of energy other than polluting & exploitive fossil fuels.

So maybe you believe in some religion. And that religion says throw a party, get together, drink, eat, pray, or give gifts. Don't let anyone convince you that their religion is the proper reason for eating, drinking, praying and partying this time of year. I have all the reason I need. As do you.
We are lighting the dark.




Sentimental, but that's the holidays. Hope yours are ... happy?

Cheers!

Saucy

Hey, guy at the Taco Bell window.

The other night we ordered two 7 layers and diet pepsi.

You asked if I needed sauce.

"Yes. Hot sauce."

It turns out you gave us 11 hot sauce packets for 2 burritos.

You rock.

Cheers!

No. It's not an illusion.

This is an image I made from using the Gimp to auto-white balance each disc in the image to show that in fact the color of the middle squares would be the color you mistakenly identify them as. Green and orange. Here is the original.
In fact there is a lot of incorrect usage of terms in these illusions. Especially the forms section. The examples talk about the lengths and angles of the objects pictures. But the are talking specifically about the image's lengths and angles. Cheers

Where my Blog title comes from...

Hello. I am too busy with major freakin' deadlines right now. but I thought I would post something old in the place of some thing new. This is not an old post but rather a small bit of writing that shows where I got my Blog title from. Although no one has EVER asked, here it is for you ponder-ation.

~
By looking into X- ray diffraction of metals-crystals and other solids it would be possible to look at the space of certain compounds and crystals. Of importance, and my suspicion is there are links to not only the structure of the particles of matter, but also, the vacuum between them. Consider this, electrons around a nucleus aren't particles until they leave the atom. And in crystals and metals you have atoms lined up in a certain structure sharing valences. Although in smaller atoms we tend to think of electron clouds, as a sort of atmosphere or shell around the nucleus, but as the atomic number gets higher, the outer shells, are not really shell like and there is the possibility that congruous vacuum spaces could line up, or order in different structures, causing different kinds of resonances. In this way, seemingly dull but large molecules, like proteins, enzymes, and other organic molecules could do mysterious things. Consider the brain. So dull, gray and squishy, but does incredible feats of processing, regulation, and information handling. Two out of ten points for style but 9 out of 10 for results.
~

Cheers!

I wrote a joke. It goes like this...

Knock. Knock.
Who's there?
Chicken Butt.
Chicken Butt who?
To get to the other side.

Not too funny, I know, but try it on someone. It might work a little.

How come I can go to bed at 11:30 PM, wake up at 4~5 AM , and be completely awake and wide eyed. But if I go back to bed and get say 2~3 more hours sleep I wake up in a knuckle dragging stupor? This morning I got up instead of going back to bed because I have a angry sore throat that was in need some hot ginger tea. It's amazing how awake I am compared to most mornings during the last few months.

It's also a possibility that because I took a Vicodin a few hours before I went to bed, that I somehow slept deeper than I usually do. I'm in need of a root canal, and the Vicodin is to manage the pain until I get that worked out. Funny thing is though I know hydrocodone is a narcotic pain reliever and naturally a sedative, it doesn't make me tired just more little slower and more calm, which makes me feel I can concentrate more on doing something. Like this morning, I totally feel like getting up and getting shit done, early. Which, is what I'm doing now.

And so yeah, while I know being addicted to painkillers is the hip thing do now a days, I don't want to & can't keep taking Vicodin after my root canal. But it's got me thinking that I should go to the doctor (since I have insurance, but really going to the doctor is always the last thing I think of...) to ask about possible diagnosis and medication for adult ADD.

Because I think I have become exhausted with trying to find things interesting and with trying remember what I was doing 5 minutes ago. And it creates this ever present dissatisfaction with whatever is happening at the moment, which then gets translated into a list of questions...

Maybe I....
am hungry?
need a drink?
need a cigarette?
need something from the store.
I just need to go outside.
a cup of coffee?
just need to paint.
actually I could go to the library, more research.
should take a nap/ clear my mind.

And one of these things might work 1 in 5 times to settle me down to work some more, that is if I can get my mind back on track to what I was doing. Who knows? Does anybody else feel this way.

Cheers!

p.s. I recently downed the Rev. Horton Heat album Lucky 7 because I am looking into trying playing a surf / rock-a-billy sound in my band. It is high energy, back woods, hot rod, goodness. Highly recommended.

No more A.A.

I've pinned a red A to the sidebar of my blog. It's part of a campaign by RichardDawkins.net to get people to "come out" as it were, as Atheists. Please click on it to find more. And so there it is. I am an "Atheist" by most definitions, because I don't believe there exists a (or many) God(s).

However. If you were to ask me to explain further, if I believe in anything... Well yes I do.

I believe in morality. That is to say, I believe people act in some accord to what they think is 'right' or 'wrong'. Although I think right/wrong are in many cases a matter of perspective, I think if statistically analyzed, the strategies associated with ethical & compassionate behaviors, while often difficult and illogical at times (public service, turning the other cheek, etc.) are actually more socially effective than those associated with unethical-unempathetic behaviors (aggression, greed, etc.). And it has absolutely nothing to do with any super-natural system of post-death reward & punishment.

I believe that the thing we call "our life" is historically unique. That is to say. There are no second lives. Everyone's and every thing's life is unique. There is no second chance for redemption. For instance, I am also a vegetarian. I don't believe eating meat is bad for my karma, or a more righteous than eating meat. I hold my life dearly. I don't want to be killed for food. And so I don't want to intentionally suffer that upon other animals, because they had the unfortunate luck to be tasty and un-cute. You (like every thing else) are here for a short time, why add to the amount of suffering in the world?

I believe in reason. And there is more than one kind of logic just as there is more than one kind of spatial geometry. And so yes. I believe much of science is right about many of the things civilization has studied so far. But, I also am not a strict positivist, and believe science is not seeing the full picture on many things cosmological. There is so much mystery and wonder left in the universe to examine and ponder. If you disagree, and think everything is practically known (that should or could be known) then you are asleep/blind. Wake the fuck up, and take the afternoon off to go the park and just watch the clouds overhead for a few hours.

I believe Atheism is NOT a religion. Religion is another term for spiritual fascism. Everything that you do is spiritual. The way you move, tie you shoes, how fast you chew your food, do you use pens or pencils, basically everything. Especially music. Anything that makes you think or feel or imagine, is mind altering and spiritual. There isn't one kind of music that's spiritual and one thats not (how absurd). Religions (most anyway) demand that you interpret the world you encounter, one way. One metaphysical truth, one ontology, one grand narrative, one interpretation, one meaning, one answer, and no questions.

I believe freedom isn't a passive activity. You are personally responsible for who you are, and who you become, period. Your religion will never free you. Neither will your government - which should always stay secular. The U.S. government cannot free other nations. Freedom only comes from self-realization (stress on the real). Don't be a passively agnostic Charlie Brown who just ends up going along with crowd because it's Christmas, and you don't want to upset anybody during the holidays. You were born an atheist, and having the courage to tell your family with confidence (when or if it comes up) that actually, you are an atheist (while it may not be pretty) will be liberating.

To sum up...

I am an atheist.
Atheists are NOT nihilists.
I believe in Morals, Compassion, Reason, and Freedom.

If you are an atheist... please, step up and Stand Out.

Cheers!

Lost and Found

So a few days ago my "Word of the day" from m-w.com was this...

objet trouvé \AWB-zhay-troo-VAY\ noun
: a natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value

I have found several of these these exciting objects, recently. So I wanted to tell the world wide blog-o-drome about these albeit not so much aesthetic, as funny finds.

First. While on vacation I found the burnt remains of a book in a cave on Kauai. Strangely (or not, depending on you personal quotient of strangeness) it was the bottom third of the last seven pages of Stephen King's Different Seasons. I say strange because I didn't recognize it as first. But also because some of King's best writing is in Different Seasons, most of his other work is too long and well... not very good - or scary. Three of the stories from Different Seasons have been made into movies. The third movie "Apt Pupil" which shares its title with the story by King stars a child actor that grew up near where I did. I remember his mom coming into the convenience store where I worked, bragging about her child the actor (who has since vanished from whatever notoriety he had, or maybe I just never really cared). I figured out it what book it was by Google searching the phrase:

an anarchy-ridden literary banana republic called the "novella"




Second. I found one of those Jesus freak comic tracts last weekend called "Party Girl." I took a few photos of it, but if you want, you can read the entire thing at Chick.com. Let me start by saying "party girl" is hilarious and disturbing, much like looking at a picture of Karl Rove. What I love about it is that Satan is a corporeal being out to actually murder people. Jill is singled out to be personally murdered by Satan himself because God warned her grandmother Rita Jones, about the devils plans to murder Jill (way to go God). Well some how Rita Jones makes the 3000 mile journey to the Hotel Orleans where Jill is at, just in time to stop her from drinking a toast to long life (does that qualify as irony or just reallllyyy bad writing?) which was poisoned by the bartender with several pills (pills? in a drink, are we sure he was going to "murder" her). And the best part is no one at the party knew that Satan was actually a bartender trying to kill them all because he was wearing a costume, disguised as ... you guessed it! Satan! I mean how clever is Satan to go around killing people wearing a clownish satan disguise?


Pretty damned clever.

But what's weird is that these Christian writers can take all sorts of licence with "Satan" who they claim is real. Depicting him doing whatever the most evil thing you can think of is. But Jesus, and God well thats a different story, actually a very old very boring story. That they don't seem to be able to break from, because it would destroy their faith, because it's so full of nonsense, that without an "ancient" text as referent the whole illusion / story would be even more suspect. So, no, we can't make up our own stories about Jesus (unless your Joseph Smith).

Third. I found two Tarot decks and Tarot books in the free store. One of them is the 1980 printing of the The Hermetic Tarot: based on the Esoteric workings of the secret order of the Golden Dawn version by Godfrey Dawson, which is entertaining to play with and scare people who distribute bible tracts (very demonic). Which reminds me of a book by Aleister Crowley (Mr. 666 himself) which I bought recently at a used book store while on vaction. Now the book is rare. And when I went to buy it they (the owners?)looked at me with smiles, and talking about how "special I must be for recognizing this rare book", and "Crowley was such a genius", and "we'll just give you that other book for free, and yeah you can have that really rare mint condition 80's video game for twenty dollars"... with a oh you believe in Magick with a 'k' just like we do undertone. After which I spoil all their fun by letting slip that "I find Crowley interesting because he and a hand full of people pretty much authored everything we think of as new age/occult/earth religion during the first half of the 20th century."

(Awkward silence creeps in as they realize I just called the entire new age book case a highly derivative work of fiction)

Wife quickly chimes in with a, "you mean he ... uh ... put it all together?" Myself noticing the change on the store owner/clerks faces respond with, "huh? oh yeah it's not like he made all that up... he traveled all over the world." And then we made our quick getaway. Honestly though, if those two truly were magickal adepts, they'd be more amazed and inspired with Crowley's work as fiction rather than the plundering of secret knowledge of Qaballah, Acetic Buddhism, etc. and all the other macho over achiever blah of his life.

Cheers ! - Anybody else find interesting stuff in caves?

Blunt Force CSS

I got tired of seeing that damn box at the top of the "Minima" design of Blogger templates. So I spent something like 5 hours clicking back and forth, looking up bits of CSS code/hacks in order to re-do my blogger template...

Voila!

Yeah it's not super fancy or complex, but it's what I wanted. Without getting too much into the mysterious world of CSS. I basically took a photo from my vacation, screwed around with it in The GIMP, sliced it into a header and body, added my blog title, uploaded it to some server space on my school's file server, and then started editing CSS.

And by editing CSS, I mean change some thing, hit preview, change it back or differently, hit preview, study someone else's CSS, try that, get confused,hit preview, try some other things, hit preview, assure myself that there is some form of sanity behind CSS, erase that line, hit preview 100 more times, ...and repeat for several hours!

My wife actually asked me if I wanted to eat lunch after I had been bent over my laptop for 4 hours and I replied, "No! I have to figure this out."

Actually, I could not find any comprehensive on-line guide pages for CSS, but I will say www.csszengarden.com is a great place to study CSS. You can find a CSS trick you like and then study it to try to reproduce that trick in your own page.

Cheers!

"Merlin's Baggy Y-Fronts!"

Exposition:
I wear both boxers and boxer-briefs.

Conflict:
Why is there that absurd flap contraption on men briefs and boxer-briefs. Is there any man out there using this vestigial device since the invention of elastic waist bands? Does it serve some sort of padding function? Or is it there to bring attention to the fact there is something behind there with its own special door, so you know, it might just come outside and say hello.

Resolution:
I recently bought a copy of What Is Your Poo Telling You? by Josh Richman & Anish Sheth, M.D.. Let me just say, I have not giggled so much and so immaturely in a long long time. Go and buy it, and read it in private if you don't want to explain why you're hooting and snorting trying not "LOL" in the parlance of our times.

Epilogue:
No really, what's up with the flap? Hanes? FTL? BVD? Anyone care to chime in on this?

P.S. - the title is a quote from the funniest sentence in HP#7.

The shallowest iMac ever!

I have tried to be nice to Apple computers, because lots of nice people I know use and like their products. But...

It's ironic that Mac sells itself as being hip and cool, but the language used in their marketing sounds as if it is espousing a certain aesthetic and body image. For instance I got an email ( as I regularly do ) from Apple selling it's latest new thing. The ad's caption in bold print says "You can't be too thin. Or too powerful." Really...are you marketing to Paris Hilton? And while usually I might forgive this kind of thing as just marketing, the ad says "You" not computers, mp3 players, or cell phones (which would have been acceptable). The subject line read "Introducing the new iMac and iLife '08." Seeing as how much of our social being is projected in and through the technology we use as a quasi-cybernetic extension of ourselves... Apple I think you've just revealed just how plastic and loose your ideals are.

Oops.

And so Apple, while you started to look enticing for a while, your marketing reminds me of the kinds of people I can't stand to be around. Popular, over rated, overly concerned with outer appearances, with market share, unwilling to admit faults, mean spirited and ugly when it suits you, and also shallow.

Personally I'm unsure what words express how disturbed I feel that many qualities of the idyllic digital technology device / code espouses all the characteristics, I find I despise in the average citizen including myself (so just go and marinate on that).

BTW... If you need an album to listen to try "Reconstructed... for your listening pleasure", a live recording of a 2004 concert by Art of Noise. It is unusual in that it has moments of sheer beauty and energy and humor and dynamism. Give it a listen through a quality sound system and an open mind.

Cheers!

I am a Purple Rhino.

HURUMPH!

Yesterday I all of sudden craved grape soda. I don't particularly like grape soda. I knew I just wanted some. So after running an errand I went to the closest 7 Eleven, and no grape soda. So I was willing to compromise, and saw a purple can in with the juice cans. It was guava nectar. I looked to the big ass Arizona Tea cans, no grape-ade. Huh unusual. So by this point, I'm looking at all the flavors. I found blueberry-pomegranate in a can. About 15 different flavors of canned coffee / caffeine. A few orange/citrus although the only true orange soda was a 2-liter of Sunkist. My point is, that while I don't really drink much soda (mostly brewed coffee and water fountain or tap water), it's conceivable that I might at some point crave something like grape soda, or a vanilla shake, or a plain Cherry coke. But I assure you I'm never going to be lost in thought on the bus, and have the craving for strawberry-acai anything. And in case there are any soda marketer's reading this blog. Die. But if you insist on living... why don't you try some of the more traditional flavors in your energy drinks. Because, later when I went to the grocery store and walked through the drinks aisle, the energy / health drinks were stocked full, while the grape soda, was almost gone with the exception of 1 two liter of generic brand, 2 twelve packs of Welch's grape soda, and 3-4 six packs of local brand (Diamond Head) grape soda. I bought a six pack. And while it wasn't a sophisticated mix of "natural" flavors or in anyway healthy.

It was delicious, and exactly what I craved.

The molecular structure of beeswax and clay.

The cavities of teeth, and journeys not taken to far away places I shall not name. For it does not matter. Space is the thing. They say Nature abhors a vacuum... but I've never found one, the world is full of boredom and lately I feel too tired to mourn its death. Drinking's the thing. There has to be more to this out here. Every time I stretch myself I gain valuable insight, and the rest of world becomes slightly more perplexed by my behavior, and reads one less line and changes the channel one minute earlier. And so I hate you. I try to be friendly and I'm really good at it, and I even enjoy being friendly, but if all we relate is the latest movies and yeah fuck that politician... then I'm at a loss.

I am over weight, and feel like replacing one or two my meals a day with a couple of drinks. Can I get a doctors opinion? Would this be an all together unhealthy idea. Because I don't know, while I wake up very hungry for food in the morning... the rest of the day I just feel I'm craving something. And sometimes it's just a certain song, because it won't stop playing in my head I might as well listen to it with my ears. And other times it's a cigarette or a drink. Every few days it's the company of someone who would like to talk about something deeply. I don't care what it is. As long as we feel we learned something at the end of the conversation. I eat most evenings b/c that's what you're supposed to do. I smoke one or two cigarettes every other day b/c I like it, and I feel like it. I have about a drink or two a day (some days none, some days 3 or 4). But I have what I would call real conversation, very rarely. So much for University life.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee This bunch of e's was made because I started staring at the bedroom light. Some thing I do often.

To do list: Work on thesis ideas, rethink anti-gravity field generator cavity structure, check with the entomology guitar player and see if he knows.

From the Twilight of Near Unconciousness, with Tequila, onthe rocks w/ a splash orange and cherry juices.

Ladies Gentlemen and non-local beings. I am back and in form, late at night with a drink in my hand and thoughts in my head. You know, as an artist, I some time think, "while I'm at Grad School I'm going to learn more about art and be a better artist by making better artwork..." And then you have semester where you wonder if you have learned anything new...and you start doing things like being president such & Such organization, going to faculty committee meetings, and like WoW! That just sucked the life out me in such away that it made it really hard to make art at times. I'm going to back a way a little. Someone stop this brain from talking so I can concentrate. "Thank you Mr. Beer. Very kind indeed. Don't worry Mr. Gin you'll have your turn..." And then I woke up today. And what day is it?

And while I did not drink the whole semester away into one continous black out, as I might imply, above, I did want to.

Cheers!