Tohu Bohu

9:10pm: I wouldn't be a Nazi. That's good.

The Expatriate Achtung! You are 23% brainwashworthy, 13% antitolerant, and 23% blindly patriotic

Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country. One bad scenario -- as I hypothetically project you back in time -- is that you just wouldn't have cared one way or the other about Nazism. Maybe politics don't interest you enough. But the fact that you took this test means they probably do. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. Did you know that many of the smartest Germans departed prior to the beginning of World War II, because they knew some evil shit was brewing? Brain Drain. Many of them were scientists. It is very possible you could have been one of them. Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would not have been a Nazi. The Would You Have Been A Nazi? Test - it rules -

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 15% on brainwashworthy You scored higher than 5% on antitolerant You scored higher than 23% on patriotic

Link: The Would You Have Been a Nazi Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

10:55pm: Student who ordered little Red Book big fat liar
Nope, he lied.

4:34am: Happy New Year
Apparently, the secret to an excellent New Years Eve is to plan nothing and expect nothing. Best NYE ever. And moreover, that's also the secret to successful magic, sometimes.

--T. B.

2:31pm: Student visited by gov't agents for library loan
A student who ordered Mao's Little Red Book was visited by federal agents, who took the book with them. Because democracy is dead.

--T.B.

3:26pm: not troo!
This isnt troo! I kan proov it cuz I am a teecher. My stoodents reed all good and rite two!

3:22pm: NSA is spying on us without warrents!
And America would be shocked, except, of course, that it doesn't involve showing a minor celebrity's breast on TV.

Here's the article he said, working the link into a sentence.

I graduated (he said, without a segue) last Sunday. A certain someone who was supposed to perform a certain ritual function involving applying a certain article of clothing to my ceremonial robes did not, in fact, show up, so said ritual function was performed by someone much more important whom I actually like better. Ran into that certain someone at the post office today -- made polite conversation. I'm getting good at this being fake shit. I should have a full time job in no time, now. :)

--T. B.

7:51pm: Not very Christian of them
A professor who made some rather rude comments about fundies and creationism is beaten up by some people for not being Christian enough, I guess. I suppose that puts me in danger, having discussed creationism when it's cropped up in class.

--T. B.

11:45am: Jobs
Applying for a lot of full time jobs -- eventually about a hundred, I think. If I get one, I'll be happy, and possibly relocate if it's not in the area. And maybe even if it is. If I don't get one, another year of poverty for me.

11:39am: Peak experiences
In the last year I've had two peak experiences:

One, teaching a workshop on poetry to high school kids.

Two, giving an excellent poetry reading and being followed by one of the few living Beat poets, whom I didn't even know was there.

Thinking back to all my peak experiences, almost all of them have, in one way or another, involved poetry. Ain't that a corker?

8:59pm: Class
Today in one of my poetry classes, I got excited about verse forms and at one point joked that my excitement over literature might explain why I don't have many friends. Then I said I was just kidding, I actually have lots of friends.

One of my students shot back "are most of your friends fighter or wizard class?"

At which point, I snorted coffee out of my nose.

--T. B.

8:20pm: Samhain
Happy New Year!

I'm holding a deck of tarot cards, and shuffling it. What is my true will? Of the seventy-eight cards, I draw three:

First card: The Magician. He looks down on the array of his tools, finds a pattern in their disaray.

Second card: The Wheel of fortune: It unites higher and lower, Kether and Malkuth, with its spinning, not a linear connection of the Almond Staff, but a wheel within a wheel.

Third card: The Hierophant: He sees what is behind the curtain, describes it for those who cannot see.

None of this pertains to the small desires of my ruakh. It doesn't say "rack up wealth!" It doesn't say "get laid!" It doesn't say "become famous!"

It says "put your tools in order this year, so that you can apply your skills. Follow the circuitous path, not the straight path that seems so tempting -- not the money and easy jobs and comfortable place but the crazy wisdom work. That's why you studied what you studied, instead of something else. Finally, draw aside the curtain, listen and look, connect." It gives me a Word, too: Bakaw, which doesn't mean anything in Hebrew, but adds up to 28, the mystic number of Netzakh, and the value of yikhudh "Unity" and kokh "power." Godwin adds that it also adds up to yadidh, "one beloved." Furthermore, the 28th Path is the path of Samekh, which is the letter Therion used to title his book about the union of the HGA.

2:25pm: Chindogu
I love this: machines designed to solve problems, but create more problems than they solve.

10:08pm: hijacked
I've spent the day battling an unwanted program on my computer, a trojan that seems to be hijacking my computer and taking me to unwanted and really incredibly boring websites. It's in the goddamned windows system folder, and therefore (I guess) McAfee drools on itself from its sippy cup and makes a stinkypoo. I've got the equivalent of the guys from that movie about the bodysnatchers pointing and screaming at me every time this program decides to do its thing, and of course the fixes are incomprehensible for those of us who got our fucking Ph.D.'s in *LITERATURE* rather than computers, thank you. So I randomly messed around and at least at this point McAfee isn't throwing grim warnings on my screen constantly. What I love about the grim warnings is all the choices it gives me -- "Want more information?" Why, yes, I do, thank you ever so . . . uh huh. Right. No information. Okay "clean this file" -- Why, yes, please . . . um, oh, you can't. Okay, well, then . . . "continue what I was doing" -- aha, perfect, at least you're preventing it from sending me somewhere I'll just click this and . . . um, yeah, right, same warning just popped up. Okay, so the only option I *really* have is "trust this program" which I ain't gonna do, so -- It's like socialized healthcare where you can have euthenasia or be killed by your doctor.

When I was still sexually active, a trojan was a *good* thing to have.

--T. B.

P.S., I want to be sexually active again. Before I forget how.

10:13pm: Fuck the man
Wwaaaaaaiiiit a minute . . .

Who writes book for money?

Money's an extrinsic reward.

Fuck extrinsic rewards. And fuck those who give them.

8:33pm: Forget it
It's pretty obvious that I'll never make a living out of being a writer, since my first royalty check for my first book is less than I spend on coffee in a week. Yup -- worked a couple years writing a book, published it and everything, and the first check isn't enough to buy a pizza.

Fuck it. Maybe I'll get a real job, give up, quit. THe world doesn't want it, so why should I give it.

Fuck it all.

6:12pm: Mashups are a sign of the postmodern boredom with music
Overall, a positive sign, I'd say. It means people are so sick of popular music that they want to do something with it themselves, make something new out of it that is at least musically interesting, like this rather peculiar offering:

Holla' in the Holler

--T. B.

8:05pm: Yup, I'm crazy
Had two interesting moments today.

One: I notice a leaf, and in observing it, realize that selecting that leaf to cast my senses upon excludes everything else upon which I might cast my senses. Observing the leaf is an act of existential choice. Yet the leaf also implies the world -- the leaf implies the tree, the tree the world, the world the solar system, the solar system the galaxy, and so on, not by the process of deductive reasoning but by the logic of metaphor.

Two: I'm buying supper from a Chinese restaurant when a slender woman in black polyester and a festive halloween-themes shirt greets two of her friends in a high pitched voice and announced that she was just back from a seminar on breast feeding, and suddenly -- perhaps because to do this she stuck her ass in my face -- I'm overcome by a nauseating image of greeding gnawing mouths slurping at mucusy nipples, and I'm so disgusted by her and her voice and her husband and her friends and their kid and the way they say "family" that I sneer involuntarily and choke down bile.

Yup, I've gone completely insane.

Another interesting thing. I called my mother a couple days ago and mentioned that many of my friends are moving out of the area, and she said "Well, pretty soon you won't have friends anymore. That's what happens when you get older." So I suppose that's something to look forward to. Thanks, mom, for telling your depressive son something like that; that really helps.

--T. B.

9:18pm: Look at this clever fellow!
Pat Robertson has a prayer line, which people can call and pray together. On one email list I'm on but rarely post to, someone suggested that we all call this line and pray for Pat's death by heart attack.

Here's someone who actually called and pray for something absurd -- the death of Chavez. It's hilarious -- because The Beast as he calls himself doesn't realize that the joke's on him, and the 700 Club member did his or her job properly and well, and actually displayed real Christian virtues. It's so hard to point out the hypocrisy of those Christians when they refuse to be hypocrites all the time!

--T. B.

11:52pm: Science makes no claims
Science is devoid of argument, but in America at least we do not recognize that (even many scientists don't recognize that, or realize its implications).

Creationists (or intelligent design advocates, or whatever) think that science is making an argument. Science is not making an argument about the origin of life or its develop: it is storing some observations about those things, and from those observations individual scientists are drawing some conclusions. Those conclusions may or may not be accurate, depending on (a) the quality of the observations and (b) the chain of reasoning leading up to the conclusions and (c) the axioms or assumptions underlying those assumptions.

With some observations, many scientists have drawn and continue to draw and probably will continue to draw the same conclusions. For example, we can observe falling objects and from that observation deduce an equation that describes how bodies attract each other. That's not an argument. We are not "arguing" the existence of gravity -- we are deducing it from the behavior of objects.

It is the role, not of science, but of religion, literature, art, and philosophy to make arguments about these observations. What does gravity *mean* we might ask, if anything? If we evolve from lesser animals, what does that mean? Science cannot answer those questions; if it could, we would not need religion, literature, art, and philosophy.

I suspect that many scientists harbor a secret belief -- or not so secret! -- that eventually we will figure out everything, make all possible observations and all possible deductions, and then have no more need for religion, literature, art, or philosophy. I suspect, similarly, that many religious people believe that eventually we will "prove" science "wrong" (which would require science making an argument, of course, which it is not doing), and therefore abolish it.

They're both jackasses and I should like to see them given a small island to live on together.

7:56pm: violence and punk rock are two things I like. Muffins are a third.
I am amused by this promotional game for the band The Faint. I also kind of like the music.

--T. B.

11:44am: Happy day
It's Friday, and I found this while wasting time online:

A recut "The Shining" preview.

Improves my day considerably.

--T. B.

12:18pm: bugger!
The only classes open to teach at the community college that pays the best are the ones that start at 8:00 AM and require me to drive an hour. Urghhl.

I'll probably take one class with them at 9:00 AM, and three with my other college, which pays much less, so next semester I have a pay cut to look forward to.

Gonna get a haircut today and then maybe hit up some uh that thar chinese food I hear so much about.

10:36pm: quick last thought before bed
If you start from the assumptions of empiricism, you end up with materialism because empiricism relies on the five senses and on consensus. Which would seem to imply that it's revealing some kind of truth -- but if you begin with
a different set of assumptions, like the importance of personal experience and the inner life, you end up with different results. Which are lies?

Could we create a systematic means of inquiry into inner states that provides some of the same certainty that empiricism provides for our extentional reality?

10:08pm: Materialism
I find materialism as a philosophy to be surprisingly seductive. It offers a lot to the devotee. First, it offers a promise of eventual explanation. We may not live to see it, but eventually, materialism says, we will categorize everything, have all the laws of physical behavior figured out, and we will be able to predict anything we like -- including human behavior. Second, it offers a comforting lack of meaning. I know that much of the twentieth century was motivated by materialism's *erosion* of meaning, but we quickly became comfortable in our lack of meaning, so much so that now, to claim a meaning is to automatically measure ourselves against it, and find ourselves wanting. Materialism says not to worry: it's all more or less random and all we need to worry about is what we've got right here. (It's interesting, by the way, that a philosophy that advocates physical laws and cause and effect also is willing to claim randomness and "happenstance" as origins for the universe)

Finally, materialism sets itself against some hellacious bugbears. The materialist can distinguish himself or herself from radical Islam, fundamentalist Christianity, and whatever other stupidities he or she wishes to deride. Moreover, the materialist can feel superior to any system of knowledge that isn't empirical. Not many philosophies come with a built-in superiority to Shakespeare, Rumi, and Goethe!

There is no rational reason to believe that the mind is a priori, or that it does not arise from the brain alone, or that it lives on in some way after death, or that there is another world inside and within this one, or that there is a consciousness underneath existence -- no rational reason to believe this at all. There can be no empirical observation of the truth of those anti-materialist propositions, except for personal experience. They are parts of the intentional world of an individual, and can never be part of an extentional, shared world of systematic knowledge.

But the intentional world matters too -- when the light breaks over me in meditation, it doesn't matter if it is a result of some violence done to my brain by hyperventilation, or the 'en sof that is the 'or and the ruakh elohim. You could hook me up to a CAT scan perhaps and see what is going on in the neurons of my brain, but that doesn't mean that I don't stand up after meditation with my world changed -- both inner and outer.

Let's say I take a drug and experience something, a hallucination of a unicorn. From an empirical perspective, I couldn't have experienced a unicorn -- therefore the experience wasn't real. But what's a real experience? If I saw a unicorn, even if no one else did, why should that experience be discounted merely on the basis of its hallucinatory quality? All a hallucination means is activation of the senses without a sense object -- but how can we ever know whether or not there is a sense object available unless we sense it with our senses? So the judgement "hallucination" must always remain a matter of opinion. Now, granted, if I say that I see a unicorn and everyone else says "no, there's no unicorn there," then clearly I have a minority opinion about reality.

These are all adolescent speculations, or the sorts of things people talk about when smoking pot and watching commercials. But I'm no formal philosopher -- I'm just suspicious of the consensus that empiricism is to be privileged as a means of knowledge.

--T. B.

12:14pm: angry
Last night, I became very, very angry at a pair of dress slacks.

--T. B.