ihbafflt

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:30:23 GMT

Wondering how efficiently the world's religions could be divided up into "honor thy father and thy mother" religions (Confucianism, Mormonism?) and "leave your wife and become a hermit" religions (early Buddhism and Christianity?). And does any religion ever actually sustain the "leave your wife" philosophy for long?

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:07:44 GMT

So, this is interesting:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel

I'm not done reading it yet. Definitely not putting it out there as my own opinion. But definitely interesting.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:17:46 GMT

Equal and opposite pet peeves:

1) When people delegate things to you in an way that is obviously about escaping the fact that they don't know how to do them. I'm not talking about garden variety division of labor based on ability here...that, obviously, is a good thing. However, if you think you can hand over your disorganized, incoherent project to me and then suddenly it will be my fault that it's disorganized and incoherent while you look like an assertive manager type...there is a special place in hell for you.

2) When people ask you to do things when the mere act of asking you is probably more effort than doing it themselves. I'm not talking about "what's the big deal?!" type stuff...cause I can see how that could snowball and suddenly you're doing it all the time for more than just me and that would suck. But when the job is literally less work than asking someone else to do it....gah!

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:53:41 GMT

The Beatles' "Revolution" always confused me a little bit. Cause really, when you listen to it, it's a pretty conservative song...not revolutionary at all. And then you throw that in with "Tax Man" and you start wondering....were they fucking Republicans? And this upsets my entire sense of world order. And kind of makes me wonder if anybody else is paying attention.

But that's actually not what this post is about. It's about "you say you want a revolution....well you know, we all want to change the world."

That gets stuck in my head a lot. And confuses me even more than the whole Beatles-as-Republicans mind fuck. Cause of course, "Change the world!" is the idealistic anthem of our times...isn't it? But you know what kind of people really change the world? People who strip mine mountains, mostly. The world is a beautiful, magnificent, magical place...when did we get so obsessed with changing it? But then again, not changing the world means that strip mining continues, as well as a lot of other death and destruction and tragedy. These are the thoughts that swirl around in my head sometimes, confusing me until I decide it probably makes more sense to just go get some ice cream.

And it's kind of silly of me to even claim that this is something that I worry about. I gave up on changing the world sometime around six years old when I told my mom that I might want to be president and she told me that I shouldn't be president because presidents don't generally have very good family lives. And calling that giving up is overkill anyways...I kind of suspect it was an impulse I never really had. I was just a little kid and thought that little kids were supposed to want to be president. So I don't really worry about it, I just worry about whether or not I should maybe feel guilty about not worrying about it.

Lately, I've been playing with the idea that maybe instead of idealizing changing the world, we'd be better off idealizing being part of the world. I know lots of people who are just as complex, beautiful, and interesting as any mountain....and people used to think mountains were wastes of space because they weren't "useful" either.

So here I am trying to plot out a life of peaceful harmony, hoping that the striving can be left to others, mostly. And that definitely makes me a hypocrite...but then maybe a world of people trying to live in peaceful harmony is preferable to a world full of strivers, and so I'm just doing my part.

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:55:08 GMT

From Andrew Sullivan (I've added italics to show off the part I'm most focused on):

"My notion of a fallen world is related to the fact of mortality, which embraces almost everything on our planet, and causes terrible suffering to animals as well as humans. The difference is that, so far as we know, only humans experience this suffering as a form of alienation; we feel somehow as if we belong elsewhere, as if this mortal coil is not something we simply accept, as if our home was from somewhere else."

This is pretty much the opposite of what I believe. I mean, I do think it's fairly profound...I think it accurately describes a feeling that lots of people have, and one that can be very uplifting. But personally, to the extent that I do have this feeling, it's something I feel obligated to fight. You don't gloss over the world with the assumption that there's some great fixer of things in the sky. You look at things directly, as they are, and try to understand them and ultimately find a way to embrace them. Especially death. I don't know if it's because there's some instinctive human impulse towards belief in the afterlife, or just thousands of years of cultural conditioning in this particular segment of the human population that I was born into, but I find that thought always hovering, lurking. But it's something I never want to believe in. I want to be able to accept that people die, that nothing lasts forever, and that that's ok. For some reason, I think that's essential.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:22:20 GMT

In college, I took a Philosophy class on Hegel for no particular reason....or more likely, for the reason that I do so many things, because I liked the name. Taking a class on a philosopher I had heard of wouldn't be unique enough. Taking a class on a philosophical concept, like "Existentialism" would be too new age. So Hegel it was, and it worked out quite well for me, because now I have a whole brick of knowledge that I can infuriatingly simplify to accommodate and conveniently label parts of my own world view.

The thing about Hegel is that he felt that the core of most philosophy was the attempt to imagine an ideal world system, and also that he thought that the people who spent their time doing this were idiots. His point was that peoples' time is much better served looking at the way the world actually is, and trying to understand why it is that way. This pretty makes Hegel the conservative's best friend, and according to some people exactly like Hitler,* but honestly, me and Hegel are pretty simpatico here. The world is a incredibly complex, intricate thing. The human brain is slightly less so. Anyone who thinks they can re-imagine everything from scratch, or that they have an obvious way to improve on everything, pretty much is an idiot. Not that everything is already perfect as is, Leibniz style, of course...but the way things are is an important starting point, and anybody who does not pay due attention and respect to the current state of things ultimately isn't very serious.

Somedays, I think I'd like to have a stick that says "HEGEL!" on it (GEGEL!, in Russian) that I could beat people with. I'd keep it right next to my HUME! stick. The HUME! stick is mostly for defense though.

*but then again, who isn't exactly like Hitler according to some people?

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:20:12 GMT

So, I've temporarily moved on from Nixon, Washington DC and the presidency, and now I'm reading up on the development of Southern California. Did you know that the Imperial Valley was marketed to settlers as a second holy land? That the Salton Sea was created by an idiot trying to dig a canal in the wrong place and accidentally bringing the Colorado River reigning down in all it's might? Did you know that such things were even possible? That's kind of awesome. I mean, I shake my head in sorrow at the unrestrained terraforming that went on in the first part of this century as much as the next person...but man vs. river is kind of a spectacular thing to contemplate. Especially since the river very nearly won.

I'm thinking more and more that I may just have to suck it up, go back to school, and get a teaching credential. I love this stuff. And I know that that's only like 2% of what teaching is about...but it's 0% of what administrative assisting is about.

But we'll see. I'm still figuring out my life philosophy, the perfectibility of the world, the important and the unimportant. Also, how are the seniority rules in Congress different for Republicans than for Democrats? Is Matt Yglesias able to write a post that does not connect back to one of his three pet causes? And what the hell was the deal with Nixon?

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:18:53 GMT

Self-conscious is a funny word. Overly self-conscious people annoy me. Attention seeking people in crazy get-ups...not all crazy get-ups are self-conscious and attention seeking, but you can tell when they are. But why don't I do these things? Because I'm self-conscious. I'd much rather wear something that fits in, won't make me stand out (especially much...I'm always up for standing out as attractive, if it doesn't have to be obvious that I tried).

How can self-conscious mean both things?

I went to the Outside Lands concert in SF this last weekend, and while I had a good time, I also wanted to punch a lot of people in the face. I'm reading about Nixon during the Vietnam War and sympathizing with the squares. The Beatles' "Revolution" keeps popping into my head. I watched "My So Called Life" a few weeks ago...and dear god, who spends that much time in the girl's bathroom?

I realized that this isn't very focused. But whatever.

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 05:51:50 GMT

Apparently at least 6 people are coming to my wedding. I'm excited.

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:03:43 GMT

So, some of you know about my ongoing efforts to figure out the 20th century, especially as it relates to the "modern" presidents, over the last year.

Here's what I have so far:

Hoover:* smart, ideologue
Roosevelt:* megalomaniac
Truman: all around good guy
Eisenhower: kind of a dick, self absorbed, possibly not a big picture person
Kennedy:* rich brat
Johnson: hyper-capable psychopath...a son of a bitch, but (sometimes) our son of a bitch
Nixon: hardworking and sincerely bothered by corruption, big government, and communism. possibly naive.**
Ford: Eisenhower without the self absorption or dickishness.
Carter:* haven't gotten this far
Reagan:* the Jon Stewart of the right...kind of. passionate but also self taught...and it shows.
Bush I: lightweight
Clinton:* I'm not even sure I'm interested in going this far.

*these Presidents have so far only been bit characters in books I've been reading about other Presidents, so I have a lot more to learn about them
**only halfway through Nixon's life. I imagine it gets grittier later on.

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:14:56 GMT

So...imagination.

Someone asked me about it lately, and it's also kind of something that's been coming up in general as children seem to be reentering my life (but from the other direction! I'm not one of them anymore! Instead...people I knew as children are supposedly "parents" now. Very weird). I had to get a birthday present for Ryan's nephew a couple weeks ago, and it was fun going to the toy store and all that...but there was also this creepy feeling that I no longer understood half of those toys. I mean sure, the puppets and toy dinosaurs and such were cool looking...but what are they really good for? I had the same experience last fall spending some time with my cousin's 4 year old. He's a very smart, very serious little boy...who wanted to pretend that his toy bears could talk and have elaborate adventures. I just kind of stood there watching and thinking, "oh yeah....this is what kids do."

So there is a level on which I think that that kind of full scale "make believe" is the province of children...and that maybe that's ok. I'm not sure I would think that the Babysitters Club books were high quality entertainment anymore, either. My brain has changed, and I think I've gained a whole lot more than I've lost. My friendships are a whole lot more meaningful...I'm not sure I ever spent ten minutes in elementary school thinking about what amazing people I knew. They were all just "kinda cool" or "fun." And I think you could take that kind of deeper understanding, greater empathy aspect of adult life and find it in a lot of places....certainly movies, books, and tv shows, probably art in general, maybe even nature.

But coming back around to imagination, it's harder to say. I'm not really willing to say that I'm not imaginative anymore....even though playing house or stranded-people-in-the-wilderness or elves or whatever else has become pretty foreign to me. And I can't really look back over the past few weeks or months and say "there....that day I was imaginative!" I guess the only argument that I have is that imaginative can also mean a general flexibility of brain. Being able to imagine tigers invading your bedroom is pretty spectacular, but being able to imagine a piece of a machine rotated 90 degrees and how it might work then is not nothing. Or being able to imagine moving to Maine even though you've never been there. Or being able to enjoy abstract and theoretical conversations. I might be stretching too much, and drawing correlations that aren't there....but that's the best I can do right now.

Thoughts?

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:47:37 GMT

In high school, I used to joke that I wanted to read more books by old white guys. Hundred Secret Senses and Yellow Raft on Blue Water and all those other "diversity" books they forced us to read just didn't do it for me. Give me Steinbeck (so long as it wasn't Travels with Charlie) or Mark Twain or Sinclair Lewis.

In college, not being forced to take a generalized literature class mostly solved this problem for me. And I started to realize the virtue of maybe throwing someone female in to the guest speaker circuit...especially if the guest speeches were going to be about this is my life and my career and maybe one day you can grow up to be me. So yeah, maybe a little forced effort at diversity is not such a bad thing....even if I still contend that Yellow Raft on Blue Water just wasn't all that great of a book. And yet about a million times better than Animal Dreams.

Since college, the overwhelming bulk of my reading has been blogs. I went off the deep end at first, reading almost exclusively women bloggers....a lot of mommy bloggers...because all of a sudden I was fascinated with women and how women live their lives. With the election, I also got into a lot of political blogs, and now that makes up most of what I read. An interesting thing has happened though. Two of the blogs I subscribe to are actually written by a group of people who take turns posting, rather than being any one person's personal soapbox. And in each case, one person within that group is a woman. Sometimes I take note of who's writing each post and sometimes I don't...but overall, I find myself liking the posts by women a lot more. It could just be the individual authors, but I'm starting to buy into the idea that women writers bring a different and important perspective to a whole range of topics that you're just not going to get from men. And I'm almost kind of surprised by that.

Next I'll be outraged that various legislative branches aren't 51% female.

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:35:48 GMT

When we moved to Morgan Hill, my mom put up an ad in the feed store looking for a place to keep her sheep. We ended up at this place right at the foot of Uvas Dam, on a piece of property that belonged to an ex-cowboy who raised border collies. As a little girl, it was awesome. He had horses, and I think something like a dozen dogs that I could memorize the names of and pick out favorites. Other people would bring their dogs too, to work the sheep.

We ended up getting two of our own dogs from him, Jessie & Bonnie. Most of our sheep were born on his property. One year a ewe lamb broke her leg, and he splinted it and it healed like new...or almost like new. Seventeen years later she started to limp a little on that leg.

I dunno. I'm not sure why I'm writing such a morose post. Just...all of these things are gone now. The dogs, the sheep (that ewe lamb turned old ewe died just a couple weeks ago, and we sent the only other one we had left somewhere where she wouldn't be lonely), and I just found out the ex-cowboy passed away recently too. Things end. All according to nature, and exactly how they're supposed to...as if there's a certain way that these things are supposed to happen...but it's still a loss. I'm getting the first sense that maybe my childhood was actually a long time ago. And I'm still struggling with how to think about genuine loss...or if there is even a right way to think about it. Maybe it's not something our brains can come up with a useful thing to do with. Everything ends up seeming like a platitude, but maybe that's all we get. Honestly, my brain feels about as useful as a magic eight ball. I can reject what comes up first, but deep down I know I am cycling through the same handful of responses, and not actually making progress.

Happy thoughts, right?

Dave Mason was one of the coolest people I have ever been able to claim to even tangentially know.

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:29:41 GMT

You paying attention to this Iran thing?

I am and I'm not. I know it's going on, but I don't really have a response...to the point that I'm kind of dodging people who instant message me with things like "woah...check out Iran."

Andrew Sullivan, one of my favorite* bloggers, is covering all of this with baited breath, chanting to himself "A ba l'ayatollah! A ba l'ayatollah!" giddy with the hope that this might mean a new revolution. I can't quite get there with him. Revolutions are violent things, and turn out badly at least as often as they turn out well. Which is not to say that I don't think the Iranian government should be overthrown...I just don't know. Right now, I'm not doing anything more than watching, and barely even that. More like skimming hoping to get to the end more quickly.

*I like him a lot, and but also disagree with him a lot. Sometimes to the point of thinking he's being stupid.

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:27:44 GMT

As always, hitting post leads to sudden clarity of what I'm really trying to say.

The responses I've read to this murder have included lots of iterations of "I think this is horrible, but I have to admit that I can see how if you really thought abortion was murder, killing this guy would be just as justified as killing a guy who walked into a kindergarten class and started shooting everyone." And I agree with that. But I think that's a symptom of liberal brain vs. conservative brain, empathetic brain vs. closed off brain. Cause shouldn't THEY be able to say "I think this is horrible, but if he really believed that there was no option where both the woman and the baby lived or that the problems with the fetus were so severe that it had no chance at life or that there was no God making all of these things magically ok, then what he was doing was not the same as cold-blooded murder."

But this kind of thinking seems to be something that many people never learn. In some ways, I wonder if it's an education thing. I had to spend a quarter really truly trying to understand why the Aztecs would have practiced human sacrifice....and most people will go through life and never have to do that. Or maybe it's a religion thing. If the Aztecs were devil worshippers, then there's no reason to struggle to understand them. If they were normal people with no greater propensity to be psychopaths than anyone else, then you have to accept that somehow sanity and human sacrifice have to be compatible. Or maybe it's something else entirely. Judgemental and accepting people probably exist in every culture and in every class on earth. It may even just be inborn in some people. But in any case, I hope it's not the narrow minded people who win. I can empathize with them, realize how much they just don't see, but ultimately they're dangerous and I have no use for them, and especially not for them having any kind of power.

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:56:33 GMT

I'm really pretty upset about this George Tiller stuff. And I don't really know that I have a solution. Except maybe ending this bullshit where only one guy in the whole country does late-term abortions. In any reasonable world, women should be able to walk into any hospital in the country (or at least, all but the Catholic ones) and not have anyone know whether she's there for an abortion or for indigestion.

But what really pissed me off is what always pisses me off...the sense that there is a whole world of people out there that don't care what the truth is, who aren't even capable of trying to understand it. Did you know that Dr. George Tiller risked his life to perform abortions purely for the sadistic joy he got out of killing babies? He loved it so much he used to just line women up, assembly line style. Who the hell can actually believe that? I think torture is wrong, and the people who did it were very very wrong...but I realize that I can't dismiss all of them as psychopaths and monsters. Dick Cheney thought he was saving civilization. Even if I thought he had been wrong,* I think I would have to admit that George Tiller could very reasonably believe that he was helping women and even indirectly their children. Empathy is a word that's been bounced around a lot lately, and on a fundamental level, I think this is what it means. Not giving out handouts or ceding your values, but allowing for a little flexibility of the brain now and then, and realizing that very few people actually think of themselves as cartoon super villains.

In other words, everyone is stupid except me.

*I've read a little bit about the kinds of abortions he was performing....although I have to admit that I pretty much refuse to read anything I expect to be irrational or downright untrue, so I haven't gotten both sides. I think he and I might have disagreed on some things. I am pretty much very hesitant to say that any amount of life...no matter how short or how painful...is not worth it, and clearly he was supportive of parents who wanted to "save" their children from multiple surgeries and early deaths.

Tue, 26 May 2009 15:30:44 GMT

I wonder if I'm not communitarian enough.

Thu, 14 May 2009 16:19:54 GMT

Is everyone thinking about buying a house these days? Dear lord.

Let's just say I have a little trouble believing that dumbasses I went to high school with are the real solution to the housing bubble.

Grumble.

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:39:49 GMT

Remember how worked up I got about Bristol Palin and her mother's "But they're in love and getting married! So it's fine! And besides, did you hear that I am a dedicated mother of 5?" attitude?

With Levi Johnston making the talk show circuit now, I'm kind of fighting to need to do an "I was right" dance. Two 19 year olds who thought they'd be together forever break up and it's kind of messy? Naw! No one could have predicted that! No wonder Sarah Palin never saw it coming, and instead felt the need to stoke the flames of her daughters delusions and probably those of other teenage girls all across the country.

Now, I will run around the building screaming "PLEASE! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" and then mumble something about role models and setting an example.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:07:59 GMT

because I think I'm profound (also, I haven't posted in 2 months!)

"Wanting alone time is not bitchy. Bitchy is what happens when you want alone time, and don't get it."

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:40:59 GMT

Dear Citibank....

Does your new website have exciting new colors that are very similar to the old ones but slightly different? It does! That's amazing! So glad you found the time for that with so much on your plate lately.

Does your website, you know, work? In a way that I could go and check my bank balance without being endlessly sent back to the homepage by every possible link? I'll just assume that that's next on the list.

Keep it up though!

Thanks,

Kerry

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:29:04 GMT

You know what?

California has some pretty mediocre politicians.

Think of the last couple guys the democrats ran for governor. Gray Davis? Cruz Bustamante? Villagairosa? Does any one of them make you want to stand up and say, "Fuck yeah!" Can you think of anyone, from California, who could run this next time around that would be any better?

And yeah, I realize that part of the problem is that most of us don't pay any attention to the gubernatorial talent pool. Really we barely pay attention to the candidates. So I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing.

But all the same, I'm thinking Al Gore for governor of California in 2010. I'm sure he hangs out here all the time anyways since he's such a Hollywood liberal. Hell, he has more Academy Awards than our last governor (I'm guessing)! And yeah, I'd be very interested to see what he'd do.

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:16:38 GMT

Somehow during the election I ended up reading a lot of libertarian-ish blogs, so now I'm hearing over and over again how FDR didn't really end the great depression. Which, fine. I don't really know that he did. WWII was a big deal too. I'm not really willing to fight that battle.

You know what really really didn't end the Great Depression though? The twelve years before Roosevelt that Republicans were in office, back when the Republican economic philosophy was that in an economic downturn, the government's first priority should be to stay out of debt. (The Republican economic philosophy has changed a lot since then...Reagan believed that debt was fine so long as you were spending money on tax cuts and the military).

I'm not willing to give blanket approval to everything in the economic stimulus package...I don't know all of the details of what's in there, and I'm sure that there's a lot that's just somebody's stupid idea that's been waiting to see the light of day. But I am sure that, with unemployment teetering around "wow, this is really bad" levels, I do not think this is the year for the government to be cutting back or raising taxes. Not the federal government, and not the state governments. We tried that, it didn't work.

Anyways, sigh. At least I know I'll be doing my part to help the economy. No cutting back on spending for me! In case you haven't been paying attention on facebook, I'm getting married this year.* But only because it's good economic stimulus.

*In case this is too subtle. I'm engaged! Ryan proposed! No part of this is imaginary or hypothetical! I promise!

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:09:21 GMT

Alright, I'm a little bit worried about Obama here. It seems like between Daschle and the stimulus, he may be letting high minded ideals get in the way of actual results.

I'm still not sure what I think the actual health care solution is, but it seems pretty clear that the current system reduces labor market flexibility, and fixing that could be huge for the economy. When Obama put one of his top guys in charge of that, it seemed like maybe there was an outside chance of it actually happening. I don't know what to think now. Maybe it's not the priority that I would have hoped...not enough to trump this "lobbyists are bad" bullshit.* Or maybe it's such a priority that it needs someone completely untainted at the helm. I hope it's the second one, but yeah....nervous.

And then the stimulus package. Obama opted to not use some of the minority influence reducing methods that exist...he allowed amendments in the Senate, for example. And that's great! Having faith in the way our system is supposed to work is awesome. Way too much of the complaining you hear about how ugly and sausage-making-esque the legislative process tends to get seems to boil down to the idea that there must be someone out there, a president maybe, who knows the right thing to do and should just be able to do it. A la Bush. But at the same time, legislation is not about all sitting around in a circle and singing kumbaya, either. I dunno. There better be some arms getting twisted behind the scenes. On both the liberal and the conservative sides. Conservatives need to shut up and realize that rich people not having enough money is really, really, really not what caused the economy to tank, and liberals need to come to terms with the fact that keeping public school teachers from getting IOUs instead of paychecks this year is going to have to take higher priority than solving every other problem in the world RIGHT NOW.

Anyways, this is just me reacting to the news I woke up to this morning. Hopefully by tonight Obama will be whipping out a whole new wave of badass, with a special Joe Biden overture. Or maybe this is the beginning of me realizing that even the best president is probably only going to be ok.

*I'm a bad liberal, I really don't get that outraged about lobbying.

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:34:44 GMT

Because I think I'm sooo very clever, here's a poem I just wrote in my web design class....

New Page is fun and awesome and what the fantastic four is this about

And now here I am with a brand new page. Whither thence?

Is thence a word? I know not. I now knot. With string and rope and brambles.

Is it bad that I'm actually rather pleased with this little poem?

Question.