A Sad Realization...I am Poo, and not Warm Poo Either.

I don't know what I am doing. That much is very clear. I just want some quiet piece of territory where I can make my own simple life. I don't ask for much. I just want simpler feelings. What is with all the complex problems? Why? I enjoy simple. Simple is fun. It doesn't have you flying all over the place in a million different directions at once. It doesn't have self-destructive elements that force you to suck down the poison pill that's going to kill you.

I know I won't get my wish, and I also know that I probably don't want it to come true either. But that knowledge is no comfort to me. Ignorance is bliss. Bliss sucks of course. It's pretty boring. But right now, I could use a little simple and boring for a while. Just long enough to bring my life back into a harmonious balance, if only for a moment.

I dream of banality. It leaves me feeling stupid and warm in the morning. Right now that sounds like heaven compared to cold and fully cognizant of the pile of dung that is my life.

We'll never know

Cho never should have had a gun. According to this story in the New York Times, Cho should have been barred from purchasing firearms legally by a Federal statute that Virgina apparently did not enforce. Because he was involuntarily committed for mental health treatment, and ruled a "danger to himself," federal law prohibited his buying firearms. That should have shown up on his background check, but because Virgina does not report mental health problems the way the statute requires, it never showed up. The law should have worked to prevent this.

He still could have bought the gun illegally I suppose, but I don't think he had the contacts to pull that off. He could have bought the gun at a gun show, but this still makes you wonder. If this extra road block had been put in place, would he have still be able to go through with it? We'll never know, but hopefully things will be changed so that this doesn't happen again. The fact that the law could have prevented him from buying guns legally gives you hope that legislation could work to prevent this from happening again.

Thoughts on the present and past state of things

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.

- The Communist Manifesto, 1848

What is history? Marx defines it as class struggle, or perhaps conflict more generally. E.H. Carr, an eminent historian, called history an ". . . unending dialogue between the past and the present."

History is fundamentally a story of change over time. The word story is important. History is not some objective set of all facts, or even an objective set of all "important" facts. It is a set of facts that have been interpreted by historians, and the broader public, and molded together into a story. Some facts are excluded from this set either by chance or by choice. For example, though women has always played important roles in society, they were largely excluded from the history books until feminist historians began to come into the academy in the 1960s and 70s.

Thus, the present is as important to history as the past, for it is through the prism of the present that we understand the stories of our past.

But if history is a story of change over time, how does change occur? This gets us back to Marx's point. One method of change is conflict, or struggle. For a time one order existed. It held off all challengers. But eventually, it was defeated by one or more of them, and a new order or orders took its place. What will the new world order of the 21st Century be? Will this continue to be America's century? If not, what will replace us? Will it be good? Will it be bad? There are whispers of China and India. Will they fulfill their promise, or will some other power rise in their stead? Hard to say as yet.

To know where you are going, it is useful sometimes to ask, where did I come from? What direction was I heading in? It is not an objective indicator of what lies ahead. But it is a good place to start.

Tree$

Central Park

This story from the New York Times is pretty interesting. Apparently some economists have come up with a way of measuring the economic value of trees. The measurement is based on 1) how much trees add to property values, and 2) the amount of CO2 they remove from the air. The key number is that for every dollar you invest in trees, you get five in return. Pretty solid investment. Time to get some shrubbery.

Oh My Beloved Country

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole of society; it gives a peculiar direction to public opinion, and peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to the governing authorities, and peculiar habits to the governed.

Alexis De Tocqueville, 1835.

According to the CIA World Fact Book, which publishes general information on all the countries of the world, the long term economic problems facing the U.S. are, ". . . inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups." Stagnation is an understatement. The real incomes of the "lower income groups" have not increased at all in the past three decades!!! This is the richest country in the world, and 20% of its population has seen absolutely no economic growth in 30 years!!! In fact, almost all of the gains in real income have gone to the top 20% of income earners. The vast majority of the population has been shut out of the Dow's inimitable rise.

According to De Tocqueville, it was the "equality of condition" that Americans generally shared, which made this country such a wonderfully unusual place. However, if current trends continue, will this country continue to be peculiarly great? What will inequality of condition bring?

The problem is education. Blue collar work, and the middle class earnings it used to bring, will never be plentiful in this country again. The jobs that are going to be there tomorrow require a good education. Some people in this country are going to be prepared for tomorrow's jobs, but those already at the bottom are not likely to be among them. The education system in this country does not work for them for reasons too numerous to name. It needs to be fixed though. It will take one hell of an effort to do it, and many people will not be willing to make the sacrifices to ensure our continued excellence. But if the education system is not fixed, De Tocqueville's words of awe and wonder at the odd glory of our nation will be but a faint reminder of what we once were and failed to be again.

Some Serious Spring

What jumping 8.9 meters looks like. For those of you who are not familiar with the metric system, that's 29 ft 2 in, or just 10 inches shy of a first down . . . through the air!!!!! Bobby Beamon could flat out fly. He did this at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. No one has ever jumped farther in competition.

Air Artistry by 23

Some jumped higher, but no one was as smooth in the air as Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

Newsradio - The Cane

This is what I am all about.

FUN!!!

Fun is my primary motivation. I look for fun everywhere. Everywhere. I literally circle the globe for fun (hahahaha). Did you know that paying taxes is incredibly fun? I'll bet you thought paying taxes sucks. I'll bet you're one of those sorry fools who miserbaly sorts through your receipts from the past year, itemizing deductions, ready to blow your brains out from the sheer banality of the process, and the emptiness you are left with after turning over a third of your income to the faceless bureaucracy. Well, you're missing out. Taxes are fun. FUN funnnnnn FUn fun FuN!!!!!!! I make a game out of it. I have a little cheer I say to myself as I fill out the forms, and add up my totals. Yay for fun taxes, taxes fun! Just saying those words makes it more bearable, and somehow I no longer feel empty when I turn over my money to those Washington fat cats. I feel fun. mmm mmmm mmm. Life is sweet.

I'll bet you think I was being sarcastic just now. Keep thinking that, and just see where you end up. I can guarantee that you won't be having fun there.

Try not to smile

I like this photo. It makes me happy.

What is it about April?

T.S. Eliot called April the "cruelest month." It was certainly cruel to students at Virginia Tech today. It was also cruel to Columbine students 8 years ago. I don't know that there is a connection, but this is a weird month. Hitler was born in April. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln were both assassinated in April. Who knows. All I know is that I hate seeing what happened at Virginia Tech today. That's a pretty obvious statement, but there just seems to be so much violence in this country some of the time, and of such a senseless nature. Other countries have school murders, but nothing like this. 33 people shot and killed! By one person! This has got to stop. At some point people in this country are going to get tired of the NRA's answer to this kind of thing, and they are going to demand tighter gun control to protect our youth.

As an aside, I never understood why the Brady Bill was controversial. Oh no, a mandatory 3 day waiting period and a background check before I can buy a hand gun. The way some people responded to that you would think Bill Clinton has just ceremoniously defecated on the U.S. Constitution. The second amendment doesn't say that government can't regulate arms. It just says that people have a right to bear them. Well, guess what, every single right in the Bill of Rights is limited by government to some degree or another, and has been since the founding of the Republic. Why, because it would be stupid to uphold rights to the detriment of society. One's right to buy a hand gun whenever one wants to should not be upheld to the point where it allows crazy people to buy guns and kill lots of people. Most Americans would agree to that, but the NRA is so powerful that it never seems like they do.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut died this week. So it goes.

He will be missed. So it goes.

yeah, it's one of those days

You know, I try everything. It is impossible to escape you. I found this note you wrote me 2 years ago today. It was stuck in one of my books. I loved that note. It had made me so happy, and I wanted to save it. But when I found it today I lost it and couldn't stop crying. I tore it up. There is nothing in that note that is true now, so why hang on to a painful memory? You got me. You got me good. I can never really get rid of you. That's kind of ironic because I never did want to get rid of you. Now that I do, it's impossible. It's almost like the harder I try, the more you stick. I hate you. I love you. It's too much.