Monday, July 28, 2008

hunger.

how loyal is the hungry dog? how stable is this civilization?

same answer.

moral absolutes are the lowest common denominator of the civilized man. utilitarian calculations partially explain the remainder.

and karma?

there is no karma.

youve been decieved. and youve decieved yourself.

patterns. identity. defenses. justifications. rationalizations. realizations.

who ive become. who i am. i am (not) condemned.

Friday, July 18, 2008

birthday!

so july 24th is my 24th birthday.

but i am far flung. so?

parties all over! anyone that wants to travel with me for any leg will get everything provided for except oatmeal packets. those arent allowed.

(void where prohibited. must be at least 18 or over. certain taxes, fees, and restrictions may apply. im a fucking pilot! god im lonely.)

here are my tour dates...

richmond va - thurs july 24th (dre and brendans house - 123 s colonial ave)
washington dc - friday july 25th (sticky rice dc - h st and 12th st) *come for dinner, stay for drinks
great falls va - friday july 25th (my house - 10409 chelsea manors ct) *afterparty
new york ny - saturday july 26th (hifi - ave a tween 11/12th st)
brooklyn ny - sunday july 27th (mgmt show - mccarren park pool)
san fransisco ca - wendsday july 30th (tba)
los angeles ca - thursday july 31st (cancelled)

each location will probably be me and like 1 or 2 friends crying about the terrible direction this country is headed.

oh and ps... the dragon is coming.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

arbitrary direction.

its been a long time and ive got a new blog! my first entry... started writing in nyc and finished in dc. kind of cool. how do i look? hows the look, the feel, the fabric of our lives? i hope you like it. if you dont, you can always suck it.

ok you want an update.

heres an update... go fuck yourself.

ok that was rude... sorry.

well heres one... when theres nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire... so i did. the crotch of my new jeans now has a cigaretteish burn hole that makes it even easier for me to get my tip wet in emergency situations like the coming apocalypse.

alright let me try to not be stream of conciousness long enough to give you a blog that actually means something in the literal sense.

these past few months are a textbook definition of arbitrary direction in life and small worldedness. lets take a sample few days/nights...

so i get to ny unbeknowest to me the day of the m.i.a. concert. go to bounce and meet up w cindy and get some free drinks from lauren and head to an m.i.a. afterparty in brooklyn to meet up with julia and milena. get crunk.

next day i get a random text from jeff koz back from some intl trade conferences askin if i was in nyc. get dinner w him and lauren and cindy and then hang on laurens rooftop drinkin fuzzy mimosas and pregaming for the night... some baller (chinese coal import/export) lauren and michelle know from high school has a private room with bottle service at the 40/40 club (jayzs club) cuz hes leavin for china the next day. julia comes with friends who are from all over the place, sweden/france/switzerland, and we were kind of the coolest kids there. says me. and im an authority on these things so fuck you. but yea... got crunk and danced my face off. it was kind of a hilarious place to find myself cuz id been listening to lil wayne all day... pay attention to the lyrics and i think youll get why its funny. anyway we get french fries at pomme frites and make a friend from pa with two first names.

next day hang at mike and katies apartment and meet up with mauricio. saw dont mess with the zohann... actually a pretty funny parody on israel/palestine shit. then me and mau get on the subway back to his place and guess who i see on the L train? sebastian and jocelyn, friends from uva. then i hop the subway and some dude is like how do you get to blah? which is like 4 blocks from laurens. so im like oh just walk with me. turns out this dude, ahmed, is from somalia and we proceed to have an awesome 30 minute conversation about somalia. ive got my paradigms, and i hated the islamists there. i still do. i was ecstatic when ethiopia overthrew them. but ahmed told me there has never been order in somalia like that as long as he knows. so pause for thought... what do you do when a failed state repairs itself with islamism? cry? shit if i know... but i still cant accept islamists... i just cant cant cant.

tangent... speaking of somalia, remember the last iraq blog i wrote? well im pretty sure ive been vindicated cuz im pretty sure it was right. so suck it. ok so i dont bore you, more politics tangent in another entry...

back to story... tiny bit more i promise... ok so next day visit anytime where sams bartending with sebastian, jocelyn, cindy, and mau. that place actually has some pretty ridiculously awesome food. the anytime burger? woah. they deliver too... anyway... get crunk. and cindy and sebastien debate rva vs cville... for the record, im neutral.

next day head to coney island with cindy. betwixt hangings on the beach, i get a call from my parents tellin me i got into the real estate and urban land development post bac i applied for. it was the only thing i applied for... i dont really know why but yea... ate the fastest melting ice cream in the world and rode a rollercoaster to celebrate.

thats the beginning to a whole other tangent so let me just end that by saying it was a terrible few days and my life is boring and uneventful.

so here we go... arbitrary direction anyone? by the way let me explain this whole arbitrary direction thing... so once upon a time, i couldve gone to gw instead of uva. i chose uva. now that lauren hayden is at gw and i hang out in dc often, i keep thinking... what an arbitrary choice. i mean like... my life wouldve been sooo radically different had i chosen gw, but like so much so that i cant even begin to compare because i have no idea what wouldve been different. i mean its like literally EVERYTHING would be different. so much so that i cant possibly begin to make value judgements on what mightve been worse or better or whatever. shit is crazy.

and now its another one of those times. my choices in life are all over the place. lets number them and poop in some background... and a picture...



choice 1... (more?!) school.

originally i wanted an mba... so i was going to get a 2nd bachelors degree at vcu which would give me guaranteed admission. but i got sick of it and applied for the post bac, which is basically half the mba. got accepted for fall. now im thinking i shoulda taken the gmat and applied for mbas all over the place. well woulda coulda shoulda. whatever.

heres my deal now... after this 1 yr post bac thing, i could in theory be done with the vcu mba like 1 semester after that. so an mba in like year and a half from now? could be cool. but heres the problem... well two problems.

problem 1... more school? MORE SCHOOL?! fucking fuck. im so tired of it... i want to quit this game! you know how on the wii its got that little message thats like "why dont you take a break and go outside?" implying youre an idiot and dont know when to quit? well yea.

problem 2... i still havent given up on the international economic development thing. i somehow told myself i would do something cool with like a big financial firm and move into development later in life... but why? what if i can start now? i could at least try and get a job in development and apply to a couple development masters programs and then weigh my options afterwards. makin the big bucks is appealing... but so is toting an ak-47 in somalia. arbitrary decisions! argh!

i havent officially accepted the post bac thing and will probably defer it. if i can do something cool this next year or so, itll still be there, and in the meantime i can apply all over and think for a sec before i commit myself to an mba and vcu/richmond for another like year and a half. fear of commitment? never heard of it. (god im lonely...)

choice 2... afghanistan!

can you tell by the punctuation im pretty excited about this? i could work in afghanistan for a year and get started in development. my cousin is there and could help me find some cool development work. i mean... woah. afghanistan! woah! heres the problem. my parents dont want me to go. like really really really dont want me to go. and im not trying to get my cousin in poopcity with the whole family. this is a shitty situation. because im pretty sure this is what i want to do more than anything else. i mean i could learn so much about the development lifestyle and pretty quickly know if i want to do it forever or not. plus id come back seriously fluent in farsi and always have the translator option.

i mean i definitely have my reservations about it. can i seriously survive without crazy parties and getting crunk all the time? who am i going to hit on... massoud the local kabob guy? and of course theres the whole losing a limb or two to think about. (tutu to think about?) shit. but its so dreamy all at the same time. i mean finally feeling like im making a serious difference instead of writing policy prescriptions and academic analyses. shit shit shit.

ive got to convince my parents. my cousin will be in town aug 12-14 and were going to talk with them. i hope this shit works out. and i hope i dont die. im going to freeze my sperm before i go... if i die, please have my baby? (worst sexual advance ever. offer only valid for those with first names beginning in L, J, or C.) seriously though... my parents will raise it if you dont want to.

choice 3... work somewhere at least a little bit cool.

i want to live and work in ny, but most of the cool development jobs are in dc. maybe i can find something in finance? something about being an abused analyst sort of appeals to me and i have no idea why. if this whole afghanistan thing doesnt work out, ill have to decide between school and a job. im leaning heavily to job. just to give me a year to test at least 1 of my competing interests (finance/development) and some time to think and apply to some other schools and get a few more options.

plus theres something appealing about finally having a different perspective on life other than as a student... my only serious experience with a 9 to 5 was my little stint with wachovia which was pretty much nothing. but i remember feeling like a yuppie and it was kind of a cool feeling. so yea... i mean ive done some pretty cool things for my parents real estate developments... but i want to be a yuppie for awhile. just to get my tip wet.

alright those are the choices... oh wait... one more...

choice 4... work at magdas international cafe in brooklyn. so one morning i woke up hungover as hell and cindy was like, come get some brunch at magdas! i stumbled over and cindy was inexplicably slammed with customers. so i was like ill just chill til it thins out a little.

some people came in and i was like well ill just help get them some menus. so i was like here ya go, sit wherever. then i did that for a few more people and i was like well maybe ill get them waters. so i started getting waters too. then one table is like hey can i get a coffee? and i was like well i might as well start getting them drinks. so i started getting drinks... and then i saw some mess on the way back and forth and i was like well i can grab this. so i started bussing tables. before i knew it, i had drunkenly stumbled into waiting tables at a mexican restaurant in brooklyn. what the fuck. that was the moment i knew i had to get the fuck out of nyc. i left and immediately got on the china town bus back to dc. oh the things i get myself into... (rolls eyes / poops pants.)

oh also cool... chinatown bus to dc put me right by joc and lizettes house where they were having their housecooling party. so i told everyone that i couldnt come cuz i was in nyc and then bam... surprise! and paul came with devon knudsen! woot! needless to say the party thinned out real fast upon my arrival, but im used to it. its not my fault im too hot to handle.

also the housecooling was cuz they were moving out... whered they go? have you ever heard of the flag house in dc? cuz woah. like seriously, this shits crazy. its a house with like ten futons on the roof but even nuttier, wierd ass trippy like fake robots and stuff all over. and the flag thing? this house has like 10 flagpoles. the front has the u.n. flag front and center, and the highest flag is a crescent with the word "liberty." kind of awesome. its right near adams morgan... who knows, maybe you can see the liberty flag from there.

sooo anyone notice the sudden burst of bike thefts in richmond? cuzzz ouch. mines gone... remember my bike that helped me outrun the cops? all gone... sigh... check out this commemorative tshirt i made though... (ill post it soon.)

oh and hey so apparantly a cat has adopted my family in nova. its kind of hard to visualize the layout of our house but there is this one section of balcony that has windows into our family room that is incredibly hard to get to from the ground. well theres this awesome orange cat that looks a shitload like my friend mikey from beach week that just hangs there alllll the time and gets really happy when i go outside and hang with her. kind of awesome.



alright ive been talking normal long enough. time for artsy fartsy so fuck off.

ill leave you with a picture of mia the cat who lives in the west village apartment cindy was housesitting this weekend...



awesome.

towards a new militancy.

towards a new militancy.

it was never us versus them, but the cancers within us both. seperate entities seeking eachothers destruction. so towards a new kind of militancy. kill the cancer. those individual parts of our society that advocate the seperateness of two entities, and the indivdual parts of the corallary that co opt the projection. so to tear us, once one contiguous civiliation, into two. repeat this process until there is no civilization left to speak of. you will find your freedom there, where each that professes to civilize another has been stripped of all ability to coerce.

but beware... infinite division can easily become cancerous.

self projection.

last night i had a dream that i met nouri al-maliki.

over and over and over. torch my front lawn you fucking fuck.

once upon a time, i fought. i have eyes everywhere. i see lies everywhere. but how many victories secure an empire? faithful governance. and an external scapegoat. and she falls in love with the sound of ships sinking.

compare everything. forgive nothing.

every apartment is vacant. every home for rent!

blood drops in coconuts.

your friends are all cripple, all wither, all wilt.



in the world of men, i reign. in the world of humans, i am no exception.

note to self (not to self)... dont fuck up.

fuck.

secondary mortgage markets. mortgage backed financial derivatives. innovative financial instruments.

interconnectedness. too big to fail. bailouts.

im not issuing any credit right now.

just let it die. it all dies in the end anyway... right kitty?



things i rememeber being really special that i lost. a poem. and pictures for a poem. and a friend.

i am a machine. gene machine. moths have a lot in common with me.

moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn't look like an accident. they go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. we could label it 'self-immolation behaviour' and wonder how darwinian natural selection could possibly favour it. my point, again, is that we need to rewrite the question before we can even attempt an intelligent answer. it isn't suicide. apparent suicide emerges as an inadvertent side-effect.

artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. until recently, the only night lights were the moon and the stars. being at optical infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. the insect nervous system is adept at setting up a temporary rule of thumb such as "steer a course such that the light rays hit your eye at an angle of 30 degrees." since insects have compound eyes, this will amount to favouring a particular ommatidium. (individual optical tube radiating out from the centre of the compound eye.)

but the light compass relies critically on the celestial object being at optical infinity. if it isn't, the rays are not parallel but diverge like the spokes of a wheel. a nervous system using a 30 degree rule of thumb to a candle, as though it were the moon, will steer its moth, in a neat logarithmic spiral, into the flame.

it is still, on average, a good rule of thumb. we don't notice the hundreds of moths who are silently and effectively steering by the moon or a bright star, or even the lights of a distant city. we see only moths hurling themselves at our lights, and we ask the wrong question. why are all these moths committing suicide? instead, we should ask why they have nervous systems that steer by maintaining an automatic fixed angle to light rays, a tactic which we only notice on the occasions when it goes wrong. when the question is rephrased, the mystery evaporates. it never was right to call it suicide.

what makes a me, me? (meme?) positive feedback from self projection? cuz i get that. usually the more ridiculously i throw myself out there, the better. except sometimes when i dont get positive feedback. raised eyebrows? look like bridges to other places.

sometimes when im alone, i like to pretend the tree branches are extended hands trying to give me a high five / help with my arbitrary geographical positioning. and the root systems have all blended together so that all the identical manifestations of a maples genes come to represent a single living entity... a whole forest documenting my travels. i took this picture from my bedroom... its a tree that lives outside my bedroom window and watches me while i sleep.



anyway... hows your life? want a sandwich? ill buy you one. because i like you.

the world is the smallest place ever. geospatial distances mean nothing to me. the little neurons that get me to erase the distance between me and my energy have undertaken a cooperative effort to merge cities. these corriders are axons and highways. piled on top of eachother to infinity. pardoxically temporarily. but only temporally... existentially? infinity ad absurdum. so fuck you.

because youre all i need.

gas and politics.

more politics tangent...

things that interest/worry me, the killing of the undp leader in somalia. fuck. hezbollah got veto power in lebanon and a prisoner swap with israel. lame. afghanistan is definitely getting worse, but luckily petraeus is now in charge of both theatres just in time to fuck some shit up. iraq is looking a lot lot lot better. (check this out... by far the best indicator of iraqi development ive found thus far.) i think its about time the us focuses on afghanistan and finishes what they started. 20000 troops in afghanistan? seriously.

so im adding this because a few people have been asking me about the indymac failure. if you want info on that, i like this. basically, no, the economy is not about to collapse. but if youre in total panic mode (like some people i know) and will stop at nothing to know what banks might be at risk, the bove list has the best methodology ive seen so far. ok now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

i hear a lot of silly hippy jibber jabber about the price of gas and some really idiotic schemes for boycotts and protests. obviously, ive kind of been itching to give a little info. basically the important point is this... lotta doomsday talk about running out of oil, but the current crisis, while influenced by emerging markets adding to the demand, is mostly the result of speculation. about what? about this.

the actual consumption versus supply has not shifted as radically as the price. check it... (and thats not even considering that production is increasing over time as well.) let me put it this way. the actual fundamentals of production and consumption changes are pretty stable over time, so these sudden price fluctuations are not based on those fundamentals, but shocks and anticipated shocks that may never even materialize. same shits been happening throughout recent history... so what do i think of oil prices now? its a bubble. beware the burst if obama wins before an attack on iran. sorry if thats not exciting and apocalyptic... but maybe this will cheer you up.

speaking of obama... pretty much everyone i know is bonkers for obama and i feel like i owe them an explanation. im going to poop here for two reasons... 1. because time flies when your poopin on stuff (-cindy) and 2. because people keep asking me what i think and i can now point them in this direction...

im undecided.

most people will look at me funny and be like really? not obama? but the answer is no. not yet anyway. need more input. (-johnny 5)

obama has some pretty amazing qualities that dont have anything to do with his presidential competency. just because of who he is, his ascendancy to the presidency (unintentional rhyme) will bring renewed credibility (is that another rhyme?) to americas image in the world. and as much as i dont think america should be making descisions solely for love and attention, (i have already got that covered... see? i do it for my country!) a kid being brainwashed in some waziristan madrasa is going to want an explanation from his bushy bearded mullahs when a minority 1st generation immigrant who went to school in indonesia with a name like barack hussein obama becomes president in a country supposedly controlled by a jewish christian zionist alliance.

i mean dont get me wrong... aipac has a seriously unfortuanate grip on the us government... but we shall overcome! (wait, what? oh sorry i just watched an ambiguosly hopeful obama speech and im feeling inexplicably inspired by an undeniably desirable vision that can apparantly be obtained simply by supporting obama hopefully enough. oh and apparantly through protectionism, universal healthcare, and a hasty withdrawal from iraq.)

in case you cant tell, i already got started on the cons. obama is an awesome dude, dont get me wrong... id fist pound the shit out of him. (why am i turned on?) but despite all the change rhetoric, his policies are really nothing that revolutionary... theyve all been vetted at some point by some politician or another. so why wasnt everyone going nuts for those politicians? like i said... obama is not about his policies or his plans. bonkers for obama is about who obama is, not what he will do.

and unfortuanately, i disagree with a lot of the things he wants to do, the most important of these being his protectionism and his iraq policy. until recently, obama said he wanted to have all combat troops out within 16 months. i mean seriously? could you imagine the disasterous consequences if we stuck with that no matter what happened in the meantime? i think obama will be the next president and so luckily, hes calmed down on that stance, saying he will reevaluate when he takes his iraq trip. +2 obama. i always thought he seemed too intelligent to be serious about that... but that kind of means he just said it to win the primaries. -1 obama. really that should be a -2... but would he have won the primaries without saying that? probably not and obamas no idiot. so only -1. net +1 for moderating stupid stance.

now the protectionist shit. same exact story i think... i just find it hard to believe someone so educated and so eloquent can seriously be against free trade. but alas, do educated eloquent people control the vote in crucial swing states like ohio? nope... joe whitey mcretard does. and since the emerging economies of the world are responsible for our friend's plight, he is fully convinced that we can close our borders, pray a lot more, and pretend theyre not there. so what do i want from obama? more moderation.

when do i expect to have my answer? after a debate or two. mccain is way too intelligent not to confront obama about these clearly populist poopforbrains policies. mccain is an awesome dude... this is definetly not bush v kerry. i have a profound respect for the dude, even if he drools while he sleeps. (my cousin rode next to him on a flight to phoenix.) in fact im pretty sure i agree with mccain much more than obama on policies. actually... let me take a second to get slightly annoyed.

this whole thing about mccain being bush all over again is probably the stupidest thing since bush got reelected. this is a dude with millions who flies economy when hes on public funds. this is a dude who got destroyed by bush in the 2000 primaries because he refused to do the disgusting shit bush and rove did to him. this is a dude whos central platform of campaign finance reform would probably eliminate politicians like bush from the political landscape. just because you support obama, dont slander a dude who tried to stop bush from getting the presidency in 2000. its just ummm... how can i put this... stupid.

ok anyway... obamas answers when mccain confronts him in a debate will be crucial for my vote, and im assuming theres a few people out there like me. if he shows himself to be a moderate... if he drops some hints that he basically just said some of his stupider policies for the primaries... he will probably win me over.

im a fucking libertarian, so no, obviously i wont agree with him on a lot of things. but who he is... his ability to change americas image, his ability to inspire people, and his foreign policy perspective that only someone with foreign parents can understand... those will outweigh our disagreements.

anddd im done.