Life Without Murder

"Life without murder is like life without food."
"A first killing is like your first love. You never forget it."
- Alexander Pichushkin, Chessboard Killer, on serial killing. He was convicted yesterday on 48 counts of murder in Moscow.

Equus Pics

Great pics of Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) in Equus.

Falling Into Solipsism

gre general test and advanced psychology test and midterms two of them on one day and tons of homework and lab and people wonder why i don't have time and when will i start to work and yet i feel i am not doing as much as everybody else is somehow and i'm preparing applications to between 10 and 30 schools and i can't decide which ones and i'm feeling pressure and frustration and no right to feel pressured as my life is so damn easy and everyone else works hard and yet am i am working hard did i not do a thousand thousand different things and yet i'm a waste and i can't even write this thing legibly my writing sucks an admissions question asks for an essay about your two proudest accomplishments and i can't think of any accomplishment that a i have and b is worth being proud of. maybe i'm proud of graduating college but this is vile why be proud of that a it was easy and b is it even a good thing? to be proud of the number of times i've been laid, should i put that on my resume? or the books i've read or the movies i've watched or the blog entries i've written or the music i've heard or the opinions i have. what is me? or, more grammatically, what am i, or more accurately, what is me? to be proud of my puny vocabulary (somewhat expanded by recent studying)? to be proud of my selfishness, my total lack of empathy? to be proud of the weight i can lift or the miles i can run? what have i done? what have i done? to be proud of the length of my hair or the slogan on my t-shirt? the food that i eat or my hallucinations of ontological rationality? tell me. there is nothing when evaluated dispassionately but the people in it seem to feel something and it pushes them on. life looks like a don't think just do kind of adventure. does it make sense? no, hell no. but just do it and it works. success is the fruit of the stupidity vine. so is winning the game equal to giving in?

life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. - shakespeare in macbeth

spumy. what a word.

teacher in texas suspended for including cormac mccarthy's child of god in a ninth grade reading list. parents complained because of the necrophilia. these christian parents ought to remember their own child of god and the graphic displays of his crucifixion. why don't they censor that? and if you think it somehow is different because of some magical religious stuff, not this passage from steinke's jesus saves. "when she was younger she dreamed of christ's body. the holes in his palms and between the tendons of his feet, but not only the gross parts, the sexy parts too, his flat stomach, even his cock". there is a lot of competition in the market for "exploring the darkest limits of human degradation".

remember how my mind puts songs with boys? so "i wanna make love to ya, baby" is in one of my classes. and i met "dream boy", but last i checked he was taken. and i definitely noticed a trend where i want specifically what i can't have, but when i have something that reduces the need exponentially.

(me too)

talk to me people

Dumbledore: I'm Not Gay, Sues Rowling for $70mil

New York - In a daring move yesterday evening, lawyers for Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore filed a defamation suit against author J.K. Rowling in New York Supreme Court. The lawsuit came just hours after Rowling told a capacity crowd at Carnegie Hall that Dumbledore is gay. Rowling, author of the well known Harry Potter series and creator of Albus Dumbledore, told reporters she was shocked by the lawsuit. In later comments, Rowling said she would consider offering to pay for Dumbledore to receive conversion therapy if he is unhappy with his sexual orientation, but insisted that a gay headmaster could be a good role model for his students, "especially the cute ones," she added mischievously.

"We felt that this type of aspersion was something we had to act on immediately," said Derius Farmsworth, head of Farmsworth, Bermer & Fleur, and Dumbledore's chief legal counsel. Since Dumbledore's legal troubles with the Ministry of Magic began several years ago, the headmaster has maintained ties with the law firm. "We believe that Ms. Rowling's comments were libelous, inflammatory, and simply untrue. We hope the courts will help us undo the damage done to Dumbledore's reputation," added Tormary Bermer.

When reached for comment in his office at Hogwarts, Dumbledore's only response was a brusque, "I'm not gay." Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry released an official statement this morning to its parent body. The statement, signed by 27 of their 32 teachers and sent by owl mail, assured parents that they accept Dumbledore at his word but will be careful. "We are proud to stand behind the illustrious personage of Albus Dumbledore in this trying time. We have no reason to believe Ms. Rowling's disgusting insinuation of sexual misconduct, however we are taking precautionary measures to ensure that student safety is our first concern," reads an excerpt from the statement.

Our Hogwarts correspondent spoke with several teachers at the school. Professor McGonagall insisted that even if Dumbledore is gay, there is no reason to assume misconduct and she would recommend to the board that he continue in the role of Hogwarts headmaster. Professor Slughorn insisted he "knew" that Dumbledore could not be gay, and then blushed and would offer no further comment. Severus Snape insisted that he has had reasons to question Dumbledore's sexuality before Rowling outed him and that, "I'm not just talking about his obvious crush on Potter." Professor Snape refused to sign the school's statement and called for Dumbledore's resignation. "Don't think I'm homophobic, I simply believe that it is not in the best interests of our student body to have Albus as headmaster in light of the current situation," Snape added.

The Ministry of Magic could not be reached for official comment, however an unnamed source from within the ministry told us, "We are investigating." Lucius Malfoy demanded action against Dumbledore, "I'm afraid for my son. Who knows what vile acts that faggot headmaster made him do." Harry Potter has eluded the press since the incident became public. Hermione Granger of the Dept. of Magical Law Enforcement told reporters for the Daily Prophet, "It is not a crime to be gay. It is a crime to attribute homosexuality in calumny. We will be watching these developments very closely."

Jail the Jailer!

Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both aged 13, were arrested on trumped up sexual harassment charges and subjected to repeated strip searches during their 6 days in prison. The charges were finally dropped. I suggest we arrest the prison guards for child pornography. (st o ry)

Out of Context, Issue 3 (or Who's Afraid of Comparative Advantage?)

"There are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First you plant seeds, which are the raw materials from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships, and sail the ships westward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them."

Landsburg, S. (1993). The Armchair Economist. As cited by Bryan Caplan in The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters, reasononline, October 2007.

In Media Luce Erras

Will the academy ever be a phrontistery? Will academe one day become a place for thought? It certainly isn't today. It is a place of hardened dogma. Usually leftist-liberal secularist, though at one school I attended recently the slant went the other way. The biology department didn't believe in evolution (hence I dropped bio and chose chemistry instead). The political environment was right-of-center, with the administration backing the OurCollege Republicans and demeaning Democrats. And, in a contest with the dean and a certain department chair, I struggled to prove the academic credibility of a prominent department in a different university. The episode showed me how blindly Zionist these people were and how intent they are were on molding minds instead of growing them. Why is a free exchange of ideas so difficult to achieve?

Hymn in Ochre

I was sitting on the veranda taking in the autumn sun of a lazy late-morning Sunday
Contemplating the quiddity of poetry and debating how to fix the fault lines of the future
All this and more weighed upon my little mind; the world would be mine!

Then my mother came outside and stood observing the garden
And she said how sorrowful it is too see her children leave,
Her children into whom her life's effort went to raising

She reflected how they are grown and independent little men
As I was sitting on the veranda taking in the autumn sun of a lazy late-morning Sunday
And I felt it then

The future held more of the past and more of the future
Poetry could rot. What is my mood and my world, my little thoughts
To that great woman's reality, a life lived

What was earth-shattering and vital now is cheap and gaudy
A mawkish monument to the creed of ba-li individuality
Abstractions of mine contrasted her concrete feelings
And suddenly concrete was heavier than air, and yet I breathe air

Autumnal Ode and the Bad Thing

My school has these great computing kiosks in random places about the campus for those peripatetic students who need their regular cybershots. Anyway, they also censor my blog from time to time. Seems it is the s-e-x word they don't like. Convservative Republicans think that s-e-x is execrable and immoral. Do Republicans not have s-e-x? Parents are very concerned about s-e-x, they want to protect their children from its evils. Do parents not have s-e-x? Do they do it with a sense of guilt as if they think they really shouldn't?

I saw a squirrel. Several of them, actually. Whole gaggles of them, scurrying about carrying acorns and preparing for winter. 'Tis the season for industrial squirrels. I saw a cat. It was yellow. It was made of glass and steel. 'Tis the seaon for industrial cats. I saw a man. She was weak and fat and smelly and stupid. 'Tis the season for industrial men.

Consulo Verus Parilitas or Crazy "Racist" Rant

So Gore won the prize, so did Arafat. Big deal. I maintain that the Peace Prize is Nobel's black sheep. And all the positive attention to Al Gore is "echad bapeh echad balev " (saying one thing and thinking another) and that is the game of the day. No one can mean what they say because no one can say what they mean for fear of censure. Fear of being censured, in fact, by people who share the sentiment but are afraid to admit to it publicly. So everyone praises Gore's efforts and that absolves them from efforts of their own, which is good because Gore's claims are indeed "inconvenient". Whether they are an "inconvenient truth" or not is a different story. A British Judge found at least ten significant errors in Gore's "Oscar winning" film, which, he ruled, make the film propaganda and unfit as educational material for use in British schools

And the noose thing at Columbia--who said that the noose was hung as a racial insult? Everyone jumps to say it was racially motivated, and there is a suddenly a righteous uproar from the APA about subconscious prejudice. If America wants to recover from racism, we have to stop considering it. The emphasis cannot be on "making the black equal to the white", but rather on treating all people well regardless of their skin color. But that is not what the progeny of the former civil rights movement wants. Today they don't want equal treatment, they want to be lauded for their differences.

Another important point is this: I have a dream, said Dr. King, that my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. What Dr. King hadn't considered was the way many African Americans today fill their character with their skin color. If Ms. Constantine wouldn't insist on being "a black professor at Columbia" and just concentrate on being a "Columbia psychology professor", she wouldn't need to become alarmed at seeing some rope at her door. She wouldn't garner the type of distaste that she does. Additionally, her copious writings on the differences between black and whites in America make her surprise at unequal treatment and her insistence that this has to do with skin color a joke. If she were white and wrote those things, she would provoke the same reaction.

There is apparently a biased writer at the NY Sun dedicated to provoking interracial misunderstanding, Sarah Garland (I hope you are reading this) who continually throws Jena, Louisiana and the nooses under the "white tree" into her articles without explaining the story and mentioning the six black students who mauled a white boy there. What is more painful: the sight of an empty noose hanging from a tree or the fright and pain of being outnumbered six to one in a dark alley and feeling the merciless blows of hate pounding into your gut? (And if your answer has to do with psychological trauma, you need more help than I thought.)

How can we hope to destroy racism if racist reminders are continually thrown in our faces? If we try to treat all people well and African Americans nevertheless use the accusation of white racism as a weapon to gain ascendancy? How can we hope for equality if white applicants are turned away from universities because a quota of blacks must be filled?

When I go to the doctor, I don't care if the doctor's skin is black or white. I just want to see a qualified physician. However, if I know that a white doctor needed an MCAT score of 30 and a black doctor (because of affirmative action admissions policies) needed an MCAT of only 26 to get in to medical school, and black residents can't be worked too hard in their training lest they complain about being mistreated because of their race, what you end up with is a breed of doctors who are on average less qualified than the overall average standard for what is expected from a doctor. Now, if I were to say I prefer a white doctor am I racist--or simply responding to realistic quality concerns? How can we equate equality with a double standard? ( p.s. My doctor is African American and she is an excellent physician.)

Pundits claim black youth are disadvantaged because they live in poor, crime-ridden communities and therefore need programs to boost them up and make them equal. Then they come from the other end and accuse white people of racism when they oppose government residential integration programs such as subsidized housing for African Americans in historically white communities. Here again, people have no problem if an African American family on a similar socioeconomic strata to them would move in to the house next door. It is not a race issue. But when the government wants to take a poor family from a bad neighborhood and install them into subsidized housing where they will be living in a place they could not normally afford and jealously watching their wealthier neighbors, where they will not fit into the social culture of the community, where they will be different in a thousand ways unrelated to the color of their skin but very related to the content of their character, and people oppose, this is not an example of racism.

Al Gore nominated for Nobel, supporters eye campaign

A Gore presidency could just be the Communism of the 21st century. No, Gore is not a Communist. Yes, he has some good ideas. But like the Communists in the 20th century who put the State before the people and told everybody what they must do for the greater good of their fellow man, so the Gore environmentalists demand that we give up personal luxuries and make sacrifices for the common good. The environmentalist camp seeks untoward amounts of power to alter the economic structure of the nation and the world in a huge way with unknowable consequences

Random site: check out musicovery.com

Title 18. § 1461. Mailing obscene or crime-inciting matter

Pleasant little passage, section 1461. Makes for some fascinating reading, perhaps poetic, what with its repetitive stanzas beginning with "Every", its mini refrains "where, or how, or by whom" and "drug, or medicine, or thing". Until one realizes that this is U.S. law. I'm not sure what the legal status of this law is, though. I wonder if the Supreme Court has made it a de facto anachronism with decisions such as Roe v. Wade. §1461, as written, says that anything "indecent, immoral, obscene, or filthy" is unmailable and makes the sender and receiver subject to fines or imprisonment. Who decides what "article, matter, thing, device, or substance" will fall into the vague list of adjectives the code provides? Until checked by the courts, that is the job of the Judicial Officer for the United States Postal Service. He decides. Perhaps Boticelli's Birth of Venus should be contraband? Or maybe James Patterson's latest bestseller? If you take delivery of a daily paper via USPS, you could even be arrested with your coffee should anything indecent happen in the news.

We are living in a free country. Go back to worrying about the State Children's Health Insurance Program Bush vetoed because "Poor Kids First". What?! Poor kids first? Why on earth does such a motto make the least bit of sense to anyone? Poor kids first? Poor kids equal, I say! Poor kids are important. Rich kids are important. Middle-income kids are important. They are all, together, going to be the future. We should care for all of them. (I am not pushing a health care program here, just a perspective). Why do poor kids have a right to be put first, ahead of kids born to higher-income families? What crime have middle-income kids committed to make them less worthy than the country's poorest kids? Is having two hard-working parents who struggle to put food on the table, and succeed, struggle to put a roof over their children's' heads, and succeed, struggle to buy clothing for their children, and succeed, but have little left over for health insurance suddenly something to be ashamed of? Are these children to be denied health care because of the sweat and dedication of their parent? Can we in good conscious reward the poor, "Poor Kids First", while we punish middle-income kids by making them "Second Class Middle-Income Kids" who can't get into the Poor Kids program, but also can't afford private health insurance like their more fortunate cousins?


Origin of the dollar sign. A mystery. Rand suggests the sign of the dollar $ is the monogram of our country, the U of United superimposed upon the S of States. That sign on the "fat pig-like creature in all the cartoons" is our sign, debased.

Gabe Nevin in Paranoid Park , one of this week's features at the New York Film Festival.

One Session of Hookah May Yield Equivalent of 100 Cigarettes, Says New York Times Report.

But that's just a World Health Organization figure, those leading propaganda artists of our time, and everybody knows not to trust their fuzzy numbers. (see article)

Additions

New York Comedian Judy Gold and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's daughter are both "suffering from Same Sex Attractions" (not to each other, as far as we know).

Not a Bigoted Bone, or, Christian Nation

Much has been heard in recent days about Republican Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain's comments to a Christian group that he would prefer to see a Christian president and that the United States was created by the Founding Fathers as a "Christian Nation." Repeated calls from Jewish and Muslim leaders for McCain to retract the statement have been met with attempts from the McCain camp to "clarify" his meaning and mollify offended non-Christian groups, but fell short of repudiating his statements outright. All of which led me to believe that he meant his remarks literally, and that he is unable to separate Church and State, and properly respect members of different religions. Then I read that (Jewish) Senator Joe Lieberman said of McCain, "I've known him for years and he doesn't have a bigoted bone in his body." That's a pretty strong statement, especially in light of the fact that Lieberman is a democrat and McCain is a Republican, so he isn't merely sticking up for a compatriot along partisan lines. So if I had to reconcile McCain's statement, it seems he really didn't mean any harm by what he said and perhaps doesn't want to prozelytize the nation for Christianity. Nevertheless, he feels that once said, he can't afford to offend Christian groups by retracting the statement.

Out of Context, Issue 2

"I recall this one kid, I condition to shit on sight of me. Then I wash his ass and screw him. It was real tasty. And he was a lovely fella too. And sometimes a subject will burst into boyish tears because he can't keep from ejaculate when you screw him."

from Benway, Naked Lunch. William Burroughs, 1959.

Out of Context: A New Series

Young Castle called me "Scoop." "Good morning, Scoop. What's new in the word game?"
"I might ask the same of you," I replied.
"I'm thinking of calling a general strike of all writers until mankind finally comes to its senses. Would you support it?"
"Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the policemen or firemen walking out."
"Or the college prfessors."
"Or the college professors," I agreed. I shook my head. "No, I don't think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed."
"I just can't help thinking what a real shaking up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems. . . "
"And how proud would you be when people started dying like flys?" I demanded.
"They'd die like mad dogs, I think--snarling and snapping at each other and biting their own tails."
I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's deprived of the consolations of literature?"
"In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system."
"Neither one very pleasant, I expect," I suggested.
"No," said Castle the elder. "For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing."

from A Medical Opinion on the Effects of a Writer's Strike, Cat's Cradle. Kurt Vonnegut, 1963.

Post-Weekend Wanderings

Went out again. Couldn't help it. I didn't go for sex. Was just lonely. Wanted to hang out with someone. I wish it would be just as simple as ringing my boyfriend, or any friend, and taking in a movie together, or just shooting the breeze. But I don't seem to have that, and it's just lonely.

Toured the sunday night scene. There's the famous big party in the packed ballroom with a bit older grungier crowd than the college scene. More committed perhaps. Than there's the somewhat alternative party with the myriad drag queens. The only cute guy there was the promoter's boyfriend who had to tag along though it wasn't his crowd. Was more chilled than the big one. Passed by the location of an old party that had died. R.I.P. And another cool venue whose Sunday nights are dead. Was so empty a quick peek told me not to bother paying the cover. (They are planning a revival in the coming weeks - a new promoter, some gimmicks, but most anyone who's a catch has work or school or something that makes him get up Monday mornings, so Sunday partying is bound to be - different.)

Got home by about 2:30, but started reading and by the time I looked up it was 5:00am and I knew I need to do something about this ridiculous schedule.

Unfinished and Unpromising, Dare I Hope?

Rot. Left to rot, on a bed, in a red brick house
On Lefferts Place where the pigeons fly and dive
And crap. And I got up and saw my heart
Lying in the corner of the room amidst the bird poop,
Moist, with a faint musty smell as of mushrooms stored
A bit too long in the cellar

And lifting my heart from the filth,
I brushed off several multicolored crumbs
Of fruity pebbles and washed it under the fountain
That flowed out from my eyes, and saw

Then picked up my right foot and
Squished it firmly upon my heart, listened
To the splat and pop of the red oozy mush
Spilling out between my toes.

Nashira Lichvodah

My mother came in with tears in her eyes. Why didn't I tell her I wouldn't be home for the night? She was so worried about me. My brothers wondered where I was. What should she tell them? "Next time just call and say you're staying over by a friend's house and you're okay. I won't scream at you, 'Stop doing something that I can't stand.' I just want to know you're okay."

They went on a family outing, visited historic sights with the cousins. I missed it. Sigh. Sorry to have let them down. My mother worries I don't want to be part of the family. That's not it, Ma, I just had stuff to do. I just feel awkward telling them I'm going when I know they hate it. But I guess not knowing is worse and I shouldn't cause additional worry.

I feel empty and hate life and yet, as long as there are cute guys to sleep with and I'm getting action, it is possible to forget and feel okay, if for a short time only. While it may add to the emptiness, it at least fends off encroaching depression.

Of Prurient Ballistics Experts

Gave in and set up email blogging so I could write from home but the service is down temporarily, so here I sit at the local internet caf. Let me tell you about the latest nothings from my nonlife. I was pretty down recently, regretting everything I do and do not do, am and am not. Mostly feeling lonely. I got a couple of phone calls just before, which helped. This will be an exercise in nonlinear stroytelling (a pretty intense concept, I must say - demonstration of social evolution). The two callers couldn't have been more different. The first called as I was getting dressed and I just left my pants around my ankles and answered it; the second called while I was brushing my teeth and I left the toothbrush in my mouth and finished brushing as I answered it. But more about that later.

Broke the guy's no-sex-on-the-first-night-rule. Was kind of afraid that meant it was over. Wondered if it was a bad sign - meant he didn't want to pursue anything long-term or a good sign - he was so overcome with passion that such niceties fell by the wayside. Probably was neither. Just the alcohol.

But before that happened, we were ready to leave the club, and he says he needs to go say goodbye to his friend. He walked back in and I waited a couple of minutes, while some elderly gentleman ogled me. Finally I went back in and waited by the door, when I noticed a really cute boy looking at me. We started talking and were soon on dance floor. Here's the dilemma part. Could I just ditch the first guy like that? Could I give up this chance with the ubercutie? In retrospect, this probs could have been better handled, but I guess the alcohol was clouding my reason.

Then I started getting mixed vibes. He excused himself to the restroom, which is club-slang for giving the slip. Anyhow, I needed a bathroom break myself, so I went with. But instead of heading toward the johns, he goes over to talk to a friend. I played dumb when he walked away from the guy and pointed him toward the bathrooms. We sat down and were chatting (not my forte) when the first guy shows up. When he comes over to me, the second boy gets up and slips away. So I leave with the first, haunted by what could have been, but looking forward to what will be. He is annoyed that I didn't wait for him outside, but pleased that he ended up finding me, so all's well. We picked up a couple of beers at the kwikimart and walked the few blocks to his apartment.

Sukkot of the Mind

I spent all yom tov reading. Finished a vapid little book Boy Girl Boy, and read a few hundred more pages of Atlas Shrugged, a couple of chapters in Naked Lunch, and the daily Sun. Didn't read the Chem or Psych texts I should have.

Went out to a new party in the city. There was actually a line at the door and the crowd looked good. . . session ending in 2 minutes. gotta wrap up.