Wednesday, September 27, 2006
I discovered a major problem with my social modus operandi today. Most simply put, observationally studying people gives a wildly inaccurate result. The mind almost inevitably objectifies the person and so they inherit all of the properties of an object. As we rationalize about them, we use object axioms. And this is just the cognitive component. I have reason to believe there is an emotional/spiritual component too.
So, there is this girl in my russian class who I think is rather attractive. She comes off as smart and kind of aloof. So, today, I got assigned to work with her on one of the class exercises. So, instead of from my far vantage point, I went down and sat in the chair next to her. Despite the fact that our interaction had no substantial content (most of it was the classwork), my perceptions of her and how my brain interpreted them differed completely. She looked different, she looked younger, her voice sounded different and more accented, and I felt different when talking to her.
Nothing in my relationship to her will change, but it was interesting to see how different my experience of her was between observational and interactional learning. I do have to wonder whether that has implications on other kinds of learning besides just about people (or other conscious entities).
So I had a really bizarre dream last night. It was weird in a lot of ways. The only thing that was stable was the plot itself. Nothing else was stable at all... people's looks and ages, the environment and time era, and distance could change instantly without impacting the flow of the plot at all. Even the plot itself was weird though and leaves me wondering about the disturbing emotional states that the main character has to deal with.
It's also interesting the way normal life gets woven into dreams in small ways. In this case I can only think of one specific, but significant connection. The book that I'm reading starts off with a frame story and the rest of the story is a movie script that they are reading. You get drawn into the story and forget that what you are reading is the script not the "reality." Kenneth was telling me about a movie the other day but not quite in the same style as the book.
So, the dream begins with Kenneth telling me about a movie that he saw. It then immediately launches into the story itself and we are so immersed that it doesn't come off as a description but as if we are seeing the movie itself.
In what appears to be 1800's New York City, a young girl is kidnapped and taken to her captor's apartment where she is bound. The captor is a normal, clean cut businessman who you'd never suspect of a crime like this. We then hear the radio describing the case and the captor gets worried that they are narrowing in on him. We now see that the girl is a teenager although no more than a few hours have passed.
So, he unbinds the girl, flattens her and folds her up like cardboard until she fits into his satchel. He then loads her onto his motorcycle (obviously we had another time shift) and tries to drive to Mexico. When he nears the border, he sees that it is very sharply divided between the US and Mexico. The US side is just a clean desert, but just over the line into Mexico, it is almost like a junkyard with trash and deserted vans laying on their sides and such. Amongst this debris is a band of ruffians, some of them on motorcycles and others just chilling. He stops about 100 feet short of them unsure of what to do. They begin to approach him and then we have another reality shift. Without breaking stride, the ruffians have become law enforcement officers in starch pressed uniforms and the area across the border is perfectly clean. The only vehicles are a police blockade with flashing lights. The officer that was walking toward him takes the satchel off of the motorcycle and takes the girl out. As he is unfolding her, he wonders how she was able to psychologically deal with being folded up and completely immobile for an hour (another reality shift since you can't really get to Mexico from NYC in an hour).
Suddenly there is another shift and the area across the border is somewhat messy again (but not as bad as before). This is the only case where there is any disruption as the law enforcement officer is confused by the sudden change of setting and the captor manages to escape into a ditch (that wasn't there before) by the road and get away.
It then cuts to a new scene in a heavy canvas tent presumably sometime not too long after the rescue. The girl is laying on her back while one of the young aid workers is having sex with her. She seems to be doing it only because she doesn't know that she doesn't have do and she doesn't seem to be enjoying it at all. Another worker opens the flap door and sees her laying there with her long blue dress hiked up and the worker having sex with her and without any reaction, strikes up conversation with the girl. The conversation is unemotional almost to the point of being detached and monotone. She finds out that the girl was a virgin prior to this act of basically rape that is going on at the moment. While she can see that it isn't really consensual, she says nothing about it and leaves without another word.
It then cuts to another scene where another reality shift has taken place. Now the scene is a town in the old west. The girl has been having trouble sleeping and is obsessed with practicing with a gun all of the time. One day the captor shows up, but now his look is disheveled and his hair is long. In fact, he looks so different that the actor playing him is different than before. Upon seeing him, she points the gun at him and fires almost instinctively. Despite all of her practice, the bullet barely skims his forehead. He walks calmly up to her and carries her off.
At this point it cuts back to Kenneth and he hints that she dies at the end but that she could have escaped after only one cigarette. (symbolic or literal?) It then cuts back to the story but since Kenneth is no longer narrating, it is unclear how the story is coming to us.
The camera shows a beautiful, dark green grass area sticking out like a small peninsula into a small, crystal clear lake. The camera angle seems to be pointed from the girl's eye level and the captor is standing beside her so we are unable to see either of them. Because of this we have no idea of how they now appear implying perhaps that this scene is timeless.
We then learn that they have both "mellowed" and are happy and willingly staying together now. There is no more captor/victim roles and this previous power dynamic seems to have left no enmity between the two.
We see two snakes swimming in the water as the only disturbances of its perfect stillness and we learn that life there is perfect as long as they don't swim and get eaten by the snakes.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
How would you feel if you were on a spaceship alone and it was plummeting uncontrollably through the atmosphere of a foreign planet leaving trail of fire like a meteor? You'd have time to know that you were going to die, to know that you are completely and utterly alone, to look out the window and see this fascinating, completely uncharted planet, yet know that you'll never be able to tell anyone about it or get to know it. You may see beautiful rock formations and craters. You'll see the stars in the night sky and know that you are a million miles from home. You can't help but admit the beauty of this massive body about to swallow your life. Do you hate it? Do you love it? Is it a proper place to die? Are you a hero? Are you a victim? Are you ready to die? As you approach a rocky canyon reaching terminal velocity, you may even see a river on the surface. Is there life there? Will there ever be? Destruction breeds creation. Will anything be created from your destruction? Or will you just fall apart and be lost forever in space?
Imagine if astronauts could cryogenically freeze and unfreeze themselves to slow/stop aging.... they could then travel to far away places just by putting themselves on pause. Their unfrozen total time would be no longer than a normal life, but with all of the frozen periods, they would survive across many generations and the scientists on earth would receive data and send training information to these astronauts from hundreds of years ago using ancient equipment. They could travel so far off with their "extended" lifespans and culture and technology would change so much that they would be completely detached from society yet would still feel some sort of duty to all of these future people. With only their own culture and periodic pings of news information/training to know about the present (which would feel like future after a hibernation), they would feel as if they were in some sort of time flux. Would the data they could provide really be of any use to these future people? What sort of status would these ancient, but living astronauts take on in society? Would they be almost like mythic gods or heroes or would they just be seen as ancient artifacts of the past just floating around in the void, the best link to the past that the future people have?
So, thanks to some glitches at Geico, my car insurance got cancelled and I didn't figure it out until almost 2 weeks later. We've got it fixed, but I'm not totally sure whether it covered today or not.
As much as I complain about my inhibitions, sometimes they are good. On my way driving home, a car was riding my tail really closely and since I was unsure about my insurance status, it made me extra nervous to have someone that close. I just about gave them the bird.
When I turned off to pull into my apartment complex, the big label on the side of that car that happened to say "police" made me glad I restrained myself.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Here's my story for the night as narrated over IM: (and yes, I realize that "sperms" is not the plural of "sperm" but it just sounds better in the story that way)
(00:32:04) naugrimk: I just want something amazing to happen. Life will be so boring if it is just bills and taxes and endless streams of masturbation
(00:33:00) naugrimk: I'll have blown billions of half-lives all over the place and done nothing with the only full one I've got
(00:34:01) naugrimk: maybe I could make a career out of sperm donation
(00:34:17) naugrimk: just jack off into test tubes every few days or something
(00:34:42) naugrimk: but I guess they want you to store up the sperm instead of spewing it out every few waking hours so scrap that
(00:36:08) naugrimk: maybe all I need to do is find women desparate to have kids and then skip masturbating for a few days and then jack off into a test tube and give it to her. I'll have stored up so many sperms due to my ridiculously high production so of course she'll get pregnant and then can pay me tons of money for it and then I can go back to constant jacking off
(00:36:52) naugrimk: I can just lie and say I have superman DNA with no genetic problems so she'll pay premium prices for my sperms
(00:37:35) naugrimk: and then her kid will develop schizophrenia and assasinate the president, but by then I'll be relaxing on the beach in the Bahamas completely oblivious of the gang of monsters I've created in America
(00:38:47) naugrimk: and then when I'm old the world will get nuked by one of the little monsters and I'll know it and my last words will be "God damn it" and then I'll blow my last load since I'll be in the middle of jacking off of course and then the bomb will kill me
(00:39:43) naugrimk: and the radiation will modify all of the little sperms flopping around on the ground and they will develop into a species of haploid organisms and after another apocalyptic war with the roaches, the planet will become a swarming mass of evolved sperm floating around
(00:40:12) naugrimk: and then the sun will grow and bake them all and the earth will float off into cold empty space, a giant round sperm potato chip
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Grr!
So I went to an amazing talk tonight and then after hearing he would be doing book signings afterwards and would stay until everyone got a chance and mentioning that he had stayed other places until 1:30am, I bought one of his books and waited in line for 4 hours. At 11:30, it was announced that anyone not in the door of the inner room yet was out of luck and those in the part of the line past the door could stay. I was probably 15 people back from that door. Most of us that got cut off were sure of his sincerity and that it was just the university trying to cut him off early so we stayed in line and just kept waiting. The workers took several waves of warnings and announcements to finally get us all out of the building. We then stood right outside the glass doors and watched the two doors that exited from the inner room knowing he had no other way out. One of the workers came to the glass door and tried to get us to leave saying that he had already left and so we were waiting for nothing. We'd been watching those two doors like hawks, however, and to further assure ourselves that there were no other doors, one of our group called a person who we knew had made it into the inner room in time and discovered that he was definitely still there, so we continued to wait. Finally, the door opened and in a huddled run with police escorts he bolted for the exit. A small portion of our group waited at the door we were at in case he tried something funny on us and the rest of us swarmed around the building and located his car. He was convinced to sign one more book (not mine) and then bid us farewell. By that time there were only about 30 of us left and so it couldn't possibly have taken that much longer if we'd been willing to settle for simple autographs instead of photos and chats, but no. The only words I got in were to ask whether we could get a signature if we write to him. His reply was a rather inconclusive "well, you could try."
I may have put off buying the book and I certainly wouldn't have waited in line for 4 hours and had to pay a bunch for a taxi to take me home because waiting that long made me miss the bus if I'd known that I was going to leave without even getting an autograph or a quick photo.
So.... anybody know where I can get Chuck Palahniuk's address to write?
Monday, September 11, 2006
So today I was talking to my bus friend about dollar coins and I mentioned that I like the golden indian dollar coin better than the old silver ones. She proceeded to go off on one of those political correctness lectures about how India is a totally separate country and to call them native americans. Note that even the US mint link I provided calls her an indian. I don't think it is really possible to give accurate racial/ethnic names due to the history. The term "native american" is only a little more accurate than "indian." My reply to her? "Why don't I just call them new siberians?"
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Sometimes I worry that if I ever went in for mental health treatment, it would go something like this:
Nurse to Doctor: Holy shit! His dopamine levels are through the roof
Doctor to Me: Son, where do you think you are?
Me to Doctor:
followed by some grand revelation that my entire life is imagined and that I am really in some alien world and have somehow been getting around in it despite the massive and total hallucination of this world
Saturday, September 09, 2006
So many of my thoughts come at the most menial times. The truest way to understand the mind is to turn it off. During these menial times when the mind is not involved in controlling the universe and perception, thoughts are permitted to leak out. It is important not to analyze and thus impede the flow. Even analysis after the fact is a destructive force as it distorts the message. You cannot try to integrate these thoughts because integration of the unformed into the formed structure of the mind loses the substance. I was simply washing dishes today and suddenly this flow of though went through my mind. I simply wrote it down as it flowed and now I present it to you:
change has nothing to do with time, but only with novelty
all times are simultaneous to one another
A "change" from A to B where both A and B have occurred before in any time, place or person
is not a change, but merely a move
but all spaces are the same as one another
thus this move is nothingness
what keeps the universe going is novelty
-- the only true way to change --
When novelty ceases
the universe stops
and it is as if we are all trapped in ice for eternity
Are we fostering the death of everything
by living normal lives in which everything we do
has been done before?
Are our simple joys in these things a delusion
created by ourselves
to justify our cosmic masochism and suicide?
Death and sex are destruction and creation
that is their intrinsic relationship
but these things are the same
the ultimate joy is the ultimate delusion
as it is death itself
The ascetic is no better
His only virtue is that he is aware
of the death he is causing
Time is Place is People is You is Me