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vadrice's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 | | 2:51 am |
religion, as told by wine and whiskey.
I somehow ended up thinking about religion this evening. I find it a rich source for consideration, but I deffinatly have something to put forward on the issue at present. everything I like about my spiritual understanding and faith I have my interest in playing texas holdem to thank for. yes. my greatest religious teacher is poker. my sympathies to all the cringing theology students out there. have you ever looked at relixious texts? have you ever heard religious proponents speak? of course you have. religion as a whole is a bloody battlefield of a miasma fought in a field of congealed jello. it's inscrutable and full of wackos and intellectuals and idots and some of the sanest people in the history of mankind, and to muddle the situation even further, just because someone is batshit nuts doesn't mean you shouldn't hear what they say because aparently part of being a messenger of the devine is being completely aweful at forming a coherent sentence. so yeah. i 've read the bible. i've read the tao. i've studied buddhism. I know islamic history. I married a jew. I even gave scientology the college try. i've done my best to go as deep and as broad as possible to study religion. so back to poker. poker teaches you to make judgement calls. it teaches you to look at what is in front of you and make the right call based on the unknown. one of the things that is not unknown are the people around you, but they are invariably hoping you don't know what is in their head and are trying to trick you. so yeah. figure it out from there. the better I get at poker, the more firm of a grasp I feel I have on religion. | | Saturday, June 13th, 2009 | | 4:40 pm |
I would like you to know that james von brunn, the white supremacist holocause denyer who shot a security guard in the national holocaust museum had his life saved and is being cared for at st. mary's hospital. st mary's is one of he most diverse hospitals in the country. also he is being prayed for by nearby church, who's congregation is entirely black. I bet he'll hate that. ;) | | Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | | 1:29 am |
| | Thursday, March 26th, 2009 | | 8:45 pm |
Appology to whomever will read it.
Today I am panicked as I have been for the past week. Life it would appear has pasted to quickly yet again and is in the process of screwing someone I care about deeply... Life as we know is always about screwing; from either side on varying degrees of success and pleasure. This week has not been pleasurable think more of against the wall in a prison bathroom, than candlelight and satin sheets. But I digress. I am sorry my love and light of my life I have been raving this week in panic, it has nothing to do with you. Why if life is what we make of it does it appear that the effort I put in has no particular advantage for me, or anyone else in my line of ducks. In better times (or at least times of less stress) I try to remind people to be a duck. Water slides off a ducks back. Ducks just don't care about minutia, and last week I found a flock of them in a bar parking lot... at midnight... Just hanging around being duck like. I didn't grill them about age or any of that, just fed them and wandered off. They were completely pleased with my small offering of goodwill. So you ask why I tell epople to be ducks, didn't I just answer that? Back to the panic. I am hoping that by putting this down here I can accomplish two goals. One that the pulse of my heart (yes I can go on all night with endearments) will feel as though they have not been living with a lunatic and two that I will feel less panicked by the act of putting it down. It's not a good get things done panic. Its the cold gripping panic that whispers you know there is nothing you can do about this. No way to change it. No good can come of this. I yelled at a government employee today. I felt horrible about it but that's one of the things about panic it make you act irrationally. I can not control this situation. I want to be able to but there is nothing in it for me to do. I'm trying to remain somewhat sane, but I'm pretty sure it's not working. The song remains the same. Sorry heart of my heart. Donarid. | | Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 | | 4:45 am |
I just finished reading Transmetropolitan for the million-bajillionth time. Some of you are now going WTF is Transmetropolitan and some of you are more in the rolling their eyes while being all hip and exhausted from hearing about people gush about Transmetropolitan. I would be much amazed if there is any middle ground, but please. Feel free to try and convince me it exists. And please don't parse that thought with logic. I know it is temporally and logically impossible. This isn't my first rodeo. Anyway. To get back on message. I am fired up and feel like writing about it. Not writing to myself, but to all of you lovely and adorable, or perhaps just passing neat folks out there. I hope those are the only categories that fall into my blog-o-sphere, but these are the risks one takes. I remember the time a good while ago where I was compelled to write. I remember it boiling my brains until I sat down and put words to page. I remember the fire... the addiction to composition. I also remember (and have on hand and have reread a select few far less than Transmetropolitan times) the things I wrote at the time. They were messy and terrible and from time to time something completely irreproducable and beautiful peeked out it's tiny head and ducked back underneith the drivel, as if attempting to extend the winter through superstition and magic. I am in awe of some of the things I wrote back then, as early as thirteen years old. I don't write like that anymore, and I remember the day I stopped. Ask me about it if you like. There might even be some circumstances where I'd answer. These days the compulsion is sublimated. I never find myself writing because I am compelled. I find myself writing as if words were a loaded gun. As if I was putting together a bullet to accomplish some spacific goal. Now granted, I am a drinker, so think of it more in terms of a drunken redneck with a gun than a professional military trained sniper. Yeah, I might be capeable of some sweet shots, but sometimes I get a little ripped, and since I have no kids and thus no need for a gun closet I sometimes wander out into the field and shoot at random shit while laughing. From a literary standpoint, I am the reason you wear flash orange camo. I use to write four/five times a day back when I was under compulsion. EVERY DAY. For no reason other than to write. Now? Sometimes I find that the purpose I put to my writing is sitting down and disciplining myself to do it so it is honed and there when it has a purpose. Or I am writing when I feel it has a purpose, which is actually far more common (as I have never been known as the most traditionally disciplined of creatures). I go back and forth between idolizing the writer I was and wholeheartedly scoffing at it. I seem to be bad at recognizing middle ground tonight. | | Saturday, December 20th, 2008 | | 9:04 pm |
I force upon you my pain for if I am painful than I would like to try and make you feel my pain okay
This undated handout photo provided by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the subject has not received food for giving the paw in the last trials and observing that the partner did receive food, the subject is refusing to give the paw and avoids looking at the experimenter. No fair! What parent hasn't heard that from a child who thinks another youngster got more of something. Well, it turns out dogs can react the same way. Ask them to do a trick and they'll give it a try. For a reward, sausage say, they'll happily keep at it. But if one dog gets no reward, and then sees another get sausage for doing the same trick, just try to get the first one to do it again.(AP Photo/Friederike Range, PNAS) | | Saturday, December 13th, 2008 | | 8:52 pm |
I absolutly adore a well prepared massive grilled blackened prime rib. I'm especially in adoration right now as I am removing bite after mouth watering bite, dipping them in au jus and devouring them. That is all, aside from a big happy birthday to mandamine, though I'll likely tell her in person before she has a chance to read this. | | Friday, December 12th, 2008 | | 3:58 am |
rest in peace, betti page
I will admit, the most I have ever learned about the actual facts of this... well... iconic woman (it is difficult to judge her as a beauty from my persective because she has been opressively influential before and through my lifetime) have been in the last fifteen minutes. one of the things I learned was that she was still alive until yesterday at 85. I suppose I assumed with my squed rock mentality that she died at 27. but wow. a beauty. ms paige... if only you had sang happy birthday t jfk, there is no way his heart would have allowed him to stop living. bullets are pretty much shitty metal trash compaired to your imagry. I could keep going on, but it is odd to find out that someone who was beautiful without discourse noteworthy compare (yeah. there have been other beauties. I married one. but to compare them is to assume that there is an overarching aesthetic that is devined by plato ad insurmountable- a devine form of beauty, if you will. which is simply as rediculous as it should be.) should be something I could have documented through the years from my earliest days. this pleases me because I truly adore bettie in how I remember her representation. I am saddened, however, because this arguably objectivly beautiful woman lived until 85, and because of the sqeue of documentation, I have no idea yet what a paragon of modern marketable gorgiousness looks like at her age. and furthermore! is her advanced image altered by modern plastic surgery? if so it seems hardly less than a desicration, and inquiring minds want to know! | | Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 | | 6:14 pm |
Writer's Block: Hair of the Dog
a saline iv is instantly effective. though usually you only get those if you are adoctor or you have aquired alchohol poisoning. I the latter they pour charcoal down your throat. i've heard tell that is some awkul stuff. | | Thursday, October 30th, 2008 | | 6:12 pm |
oh yeah. I forgot how painful band rehersals can be (especially in the very early stages). very painful. of course I also forgot how very much it is te good kind of pain. anyone out there loving on some music right now? | | Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | | 3:31 am |
| | Monday, September 8th, 2008 | | 5:41 pm |
| | Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | | 10:20 pm |
| | Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | | 5:27 am |
on remembering to post from time to time.
alright. I'm doing well. I'm doing strangely. If by some bizzare chance you are surprised by my putting forth those statements, I recomend examining your reasoning. I recommend this because your reasoning is faulty. I've been paying even more than normal attention to addiction lately. Funnily enough, this isn't referring to any of my own. Since I had my brief discussions with my lifestyle before pennsic, I've noticed that several people of my acquaintance or closer have been closely examining their own habits, and adjusting them dramatically. In some cases, this has been situationally inspired- some tragic event easily linked to the individual's excesses, though in others, it seems to merely have come out of the cognant ether- neither fully explained, nor necessarily even understood by it's prime participant. So it's been a period of readjustment for some folks who live around me. Which in turn changes my environment and forces me to readjust as well. If you find me irritated, that is why. I thought I'd right well done adjusted enough, and now I have to do it again. and probably will be doing so for the rest of my damn life. In that respect, I R curmudgeon. In another respect, though, I am rather elated. I was informed of a certain street corner that will play a vastly HUGE symbolic and joyous role in my life. Also I like books. More on that after the fact, when I can describe it well without spoiling the surprise. | | Monday, July 21st, 2008 | | 7:25 am |
birthdays and funerals
I was born july 21, 1981 at 11:53 pm chicago time. here on the east coast, that makesit july 22. I like to jest that I have two birthdays, my east cast birthday and my west coast birthday. today, my twenty seventh west coast birthday I am going to get on a plane to albany, where I will go to the viewing of j's irish catholic grandmother. after the viewing, I will spend the evening with jenn's father and with luck get to see her brother's new house. I will lend my emotional support where I can. I have a feeling that some significant ammount of support will be necessarily apropriate. tomorrow (my east coast birthday) is the funeral. after that we fly back, and I have a dj gig at 815 king street, alexandria va. I g on at nine until close, unless my flight is delayed. if anyone wishes to come by, i'll more than happily buy you a drink. and maybe it will be my turn to get some support. | | Friday, July 4th, 2008 | | 10:03 pm |
on friendship
More articulate folk than I have written (and likely spoken, though such things have only been meticulously documented since audio recordings have become commonplace) on the subject of friendship. I feel that I have a very firm grasp of the word, of it's textures and (for lack of a word that doesn't make me sound like some new age nincompoop) energies. I will attempt to give only my own views on the word itself, but those views are doubtless to be influenced. Anyone who every says differently is trying to con you. Friendship, to define it as sucinctly as I can, is a positive relationship between two sentient entities. That is all it is, when you boil away all the chaff. However, as with most things involving language and deffinition, the chaff can at times be more powerful than the form it surrounds. It is the chaff that needs explination. Friendship can be altruistic, and it can be selfish. The easiest way for a friendship to exist is when both friends care for the well being of each other. If a person works toward the benefit of another person and sees a positive effect, that creates the necessary positive relationship. If this activity and care goes in both directions, it is difficult to concieve of a friendship ceasing to exist.
However, it should be pointed out that altruism is not the only cause for friendship. First of all, if one goes into the act of benefiting another person knowing full well it will make them feel good about themselves, that isn't altruism. It's self serving. Also (and more divorced from even the trappings of altruism), friendship can exist even when neither of the two sides works toward the benefit of the other. One can feel fondly toward a thing without ever doing a thing for it's benefit. One can even actively work toward harming another and still feel fondly toward it. that fondness is a positive relationship in and of itself, and is therefore friendship. That is the difference between enimnity (the opposite of friendship) and the desire to harm. Friendship can exist in any mixture of these things, with one (or both) sides being altruistic and the other apathetic or harmful or even exibiting honest to goodness enimnity. However, imbalanced states of friendship rarely last. Those that generally last are those that can find some way of maintaining an equalibrium of state on both sides of the relationship. Sometimes that equalibrium is reached though a frequent change of such states in a dance of compensation, causeing friends to go through cycles of harming, helping, and ignoring each other. I must also note a common differentiation between friendship and romantic relationship. Romance is a whole convoluted discourse of it's own, so I will leave that be in terms of this work. What I can't leave be, however, is the (also common) diferentiation between friendship and a sexual relationship. It has been said both that friendship can not have a sexual element, as it has also been said that friendship is merely a sexual attraction that has not been acted upon. As biological, procreative beings, we always seem to want to look at a feeling through it's relationship to our sex drive.
Well, fair enough. The sex drive is a powerful and difficult to fully encompass force, and will thus likely remain somewhat mysterious for some time to come. Thus it can be applied in almost any circumstance, to any of our actions. Even moreso for our interactions.
Very well then, to examine from the first angle (that friendship can not have a sexual element) one can find fault. People define relationships that have in the past or will in the future contain sexual intercourse, and that deffinition is valid. People also define "casual relationships" or "friends with benefits" as friendship, and are equally valid. which also defeats the other side of the argument, that the act of sex causes friendship to evaporate and replaces it with something else.
Sex is important, it is mystical, it is a sacred act. However, it can also be performed secularly, for the pleasure of it alone. Hell, prostitutes often times don't even perform it for that reason (not that such casual, non-recreational sex is limited to prostitutes, but they make the simplest example).
Defining friendship in relation to sex is worthless and a commonly held mistake. Friendship can exist between any sentient entities. Bodies of people (countries, cities, factions, cultures and subcultures) are included in this. Enough people in a connected group is a sentient creature in and of itself, and thus can be party to relationships such as friendship. It is more difficult for us to define such relationships, however, as such entities are difficult to understand in terms of mindset and temprement by we tiny people who make up their building blocks. | | Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 | | 3:50 pm |
Alright, I haven't had a drink since before I woke up on Friday. I think I've smoked maybe ten cigarettes since then as well. The initial plan was to give up smoking completely, but Jenn pointed out that I was becoming rediculeous and neurotic, so I'm still smoking medicinally. I would get one of those nicotine inhalers that I tried out for kicks that one time, but I think it might be the base minerals that tobacco leaches out of the ground (including the lithium) that I need to wean myself off of more than the more physical addictives. So maybe it's not a word. Go fuck yourself. In case anyone's mind is blown or world is shattered by this news, I have not quit drinking. I'm taking a month off to kick the shackles of practicing alcoholism. This will end on my birthday. I have a fondness for the drink. I do, however, prefer it not be the death of me. I'd like to enjoy the whiskey all the way through until I am 100, if I may. I've decided to be proactive in that regard. Cheers. | | 3:37 am |
we'll miss you, george.
"I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it." George Carlin (thanksfor that one, kegboy) | | Monday, June 16th, 2008 | | 11:22 pm |
Yup. I work in a resturant. Sure as shit. I wish I were allowed to vomit on my coworkers/customers. I think that would be cathartic at this point in time. Also I wish I were paid more. Fuckers. | | Sunday, June 8th, 2008 | | 5:25 am |
starscape ten.
i'm just outside of baltimore at the moment watching the sunrise. this is the firs starscape I have ever been to and I am rather sure it will not be my last. you know that sort of bone wearyness you feel that is both a complete and utter sense of exhaustion but also an experience of being washed clean by your exertion? yeah. it's nice. almost perfect. next time I won't be such a spaz and j won't be at work. I am here with lovely people, however. very lovely. and fuck me if that aint a marvel of a sunset. |
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