Big Changes

Big changes, big changes, big changes. Well, in the coming months anyways. It always comes in big fat stressful clumps. Crumblings of the earth all stuck together and one piece makes it over the edge and then it all has to go. I wake up stressed out and I don't even know why.

Part of that change is that I'm getting serious about the writing. I don't like getting serious about the writing because using a talent to make money exposes the nerve endings to the commercial world, where it is about different things than just the writing. Image. Connectivity. Exposure. Traffic. All this stuff I don't know a thing about, being the person I am.

The amount of power you hold determines how much of yourself you get to actually show. When you are the bitch, you've got to put on the mask, because the boss might can your ass if he doesn't like your face. It depends.

So I got a new blog. It is going to be about gaming. And I will get paid for it. Decently if it does well. Check it out. I'm still working on it. It might not live up to potential for a month or so. But I hope it will be decent when it gets going.

RIGHT HERE>>>>> !!!

Classroom Writings Pt. 1

I made some notes in a notebook I have for "Kantian Ethics" that have nothing to do with Kantian ethics, they just have to do with things that I thought of that were stimulated by the lecture.

The notebook has a black cover that is heavily scuffed. Turning it into the light yields a sudden materialization of all sorts of clouds and crescents and scrapes. And a subtle dent in the middle. The pages are bound by a spiral wire that runs through perfectly-cut holes in the paper, perfectly-cut holes that are perfectly-spaced to accommodate the spiral loops. The spiral is closed off by the bending of both of its own ends. There are three larger holes cut and spaced perfectly to accommodate larger spiral rings in a larger binder. Protection. It is a perfected design that can be stamped out in seconds by a perfected machine and the whole image is absolutely beautiful. This is the magnificence of humanity. Right in our faces. Bees have their stingers. Roses have their thorns. Rattlers have their venom sacks. We have reason. It categorizes and standardizes and extends out and expands to manifest technology. It probably operates on similar principles as those lower creatures, just in a more complex way.

The notebook contains notes on how to write a short story. It also contains notes on Moral philosophy, and finally, the aforementioned Kantian ethics, which is actually a part of Moral philosophy.

I still haven't gotten to the notes that I made. They are as follows:

• Why can we tell someone we are getting bogged down in a sentence and have it make sense? Isn't a bog a physical object? How does a figure of speech work? In short: abstract concepts. Language is modular and fits around these concepts.
• Sometimes someone bites off more than they can chew in the classroom and argue themselves in a corner, and the professor cuts down their philosophical assertion. I get nervous with these people. It is like watching an inexperienced tight rope walker. They got themselves on the rope and it was their prerogative to get up there but I still don't want to watch them fall.
  
• The professor gave an example of the absurdity of a moral code built on empirical facts. In other words, external states of affairs. She thought it would be a little odd if she based her moral beliefs on what deers do. I thought this was funny. I think anything that can jump really high is a moral creature by necessity. Deers can jump very high. I think deers are pretty moral then, and thus I have no problem with basing my moral beliefs on them.
  
• If everyone was suddenly very intelligent, nothing would get done. Maybe. That's a stupid one.
  
• The problem with modern media is a vicious cycle. Generally, mediocre art and music is easily marketable for some reason. Maybe because it is simple. Easy marketability means cash magnet. Money is generally subsistence. And someone needs to subsist to produce things. The more means of subsistence, the easier it is to produce things. And so the mediocre multiplies and thrives. This might not just be a modern problem. But great works do sometimes punch their way through. But it is tough. Too bad.
  

It is these musings that occupy my head instead of what I'm supposed to be learning. Don't get me wrong, Kant is very interesting. But classrooms are tough these days. It is like walking past a slat fence and catching glimpses of something behind it. The continuity of the glimpses through the slats is enough to provide comprehension of the image beyond, but barely. Well in this case the slats would be all these thoughts that just pop up without asking.

I don't know how I get through these classes. I don't really remember.

Another rat might be dying.

Oh Well

To hell with privacy. This time I'll expose my neck to the maulers.

Blonde Beauty

She was a creation of several different ideas formed from impressions I have had of women I have come across in my lifetime. Her eyes were a ghostly gray-blue...I remember this much. She wanted me and I wanted her and we met lying on the floor and she whispered something provocative into my ear and I answered: "But I do not want to debase you". Then she cast away my fears. And we were ready for whatever it was we were going to do, and by the time the scene had radically changed and I realized that she was gone it was too late and I couldn't bring her back. I awoke wanting to be put back in that dream.

That Sinking Feeling

I suppose I'm supposed to be writing more.

I've been looking into freelance writing. I even signed up with a freelance writing site. But when I signed up all these weird advertisement messages came up and then someone called me and talked to me for half an hour about what sounded like another of those damn internet pyramid schemes where you have to refer a bunch of suckers and advertise and it has nothing to do with writing and gawd I just want to write and get paid for it. What is with all the sharks coming out of the reef all of a sudden? It is a bad feeling. Like I've stumbled into the feeding grounds and they're grinning their big jagged white shark smiles. Why do all the internet jobs have to feel like a sham? It's just an extension of everything that's already here. But everything seems so sleazy and all that plastic business language has to be plastered all over everything.

Opportunity with a big O. Really? Does that sentence mean anything at all?

I bet the logicians and the linguists would have a field day with that one.

Cheers to writing. And whoring talent to function as a sign post to the nearest place where you can buy stuff.

A Magical Visitor

Ah look down yonder! Something swirls delicately in that there toilet bowl! What can it be?

A seahorse? A baby squid? A blossoming tadpole?

Oh, no, it is just a collection of snot caught in the current.

It's Kinda Your Fault

"I was crossing a crosswalk this afternoon and some dickwad goes way over the line."

"What did he do?"

"He slammed on his brakes and almost hit me, and then leaned out the window and cursed me!"

"What in the world were you doing?"

"Well I walked against a no-walk sign."

"But then you asked for it!"

"Well no, here's the logic: He had to pay for a person in the way so he had to stop and feel the fear of almost hitting a person. I payed for a car coming straight at me so I had to flinch and feel the fear of almost being hit by a car. So in a way, we both received our own mutually incurred punishments, and that was that. He didn't have to curse me. He went above and beyond what was required. So that hurt me."

"But you were breaking the law, and he was just doing exactly what he needed to do. So he kind of earned that extra remark."

"Well, you've got a point."

Getting Things Done

When there are a lot of things to do I often choose to do something other than those things and let those others sort of languish there. The thing I choose to do is usually unproductive as opposed to the others which are all probably considered at least minimally productive. Meanwhile the anxiety builds and deadlines approach sooner and it is an unhealthy and counterproductive habit.

The whole time I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I should do first, or at least what I should write about instead, there has been this thudding going on above the ceiling. I figure it is vents contracting or the wind blowing and tune it out for a bit. It goes on. Background noise. But then I turn off the music and sit and listen to it, and the more I listen the more the possibility that a rat has been caught in a trap and is trying desperately to flap itself free becomes real. And what was once just a droning background noise has suddenly dominated completely my thoughts, and I become transfixed with the idea that there is a rat dying just above my room, a breathing creature with a subjective experience, experiencing what it is to die. Caught in a crushing metal device for no reason at all, just because it gave off the smell of something good to eat. But the creature doesn't know reasons. It only knows that terminal fear. The thudding is beginning to quiet down. The whole thing is like the progression of some sort of morbid song.

Sometimes contemplating certain aspects of reality is unbearable. And that short list of things on my to do list becomes unbearable as well. Everything becomes cast under this unbearable light when you reach a mood like this. It doesn't take any sort of cheering up to cure it. It just takes time for it to pass.

I hope I'm just mistaken and those thuds were nothing but structural groans. Waste of a post.