Space Ballet

A Space Ballet

STONER MONOLOGUES Ch. 1

THE STONER MONLOGUES

CH. 1

"But there are no missions. Once you realize there are no missions you feel wonderful."
-Tomas, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Life the RPG.

I decided today to add plus 2 cancer points and -.01% total brain processing power loss. Listened to the radio for +12 to Jazz listening, +3 to average Jazz enjoyment level.

CANCER 2194
JAZZ LIK 10489
JAZZ LIS 30823
Brain Speed: 937400 -.01 = 937399.99 neurons/milisecond

Good stuff.

So I had ideas.

Big'uns. And lil'uns.

Mugs.

I won't drink at any Cafe that doesn't offer me a mug that was washed and will be washed again.

Old School solid earth tones ceramic, preferably.

Thank you.

There must be an imprint,

somewhere in my brain,

when I visualize something. Or when

I hold a song,

thats been stuck in my head all day,

paused, at a certain point,

If I am a determinist,

which I am,

then I must believe there is some physical,

and reliably intelligble mental picture

of something seen, or a mental aural note.

You cannot sing a chord.

But you can think one.

Only.

It's kinda cool.

Try to reproduce the sound of a chord in your own voice.

So,

Me and my siblings unionized today.

Under the tyranny of my OCD, overprotective, Jewish parents,

me, my 16 yr old sister and my 8 yr old brother

realized we held majority stake in the family,

and instituted a hostile takeover.

Suspecting our plot,

my father texts the lot of us,

"Are you guys planning a coup."

and we look at each other,

agree on what to say,

and text back, in unison

On two Blackberrys and a Nokia Candy Bar:

"It's too late. We already changed the locks."

Though becca sent "...the lucks." instead. by accident.

All this while we're out to dinner with his money.

And my sis says:

"You know, all we have to do,

is say we're doing something together,

and we can get Dad to pay for it."

OMFG.

OMFG.

My sister! She figured it out.

And make no question about it sometimes I

feel so strongly

trapped between two lives,

and I'm fast forgetting which one is real life,

and which is just all the bullshit.

I can't see how my lfie is gonna end up.

I guess my general life plan is to be so incredibly successful that they won't even be able to hate me for marrying a convert.

Hopefully...

And thats my life.

And I could ditch all that. My whole family,

since, if you have one life,

and only one life,

you HAVE to do what you think is best ALL the time.

Returnability.

Just finished the Unberable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera

"Continental"

was the first review I heard of it,

before reading.

Kind of, yeah.

We are the Luckiest human beings who ever lived.

Really.

I would not rather live in any historical but the teeming tomorrow.

I live now. Now is ideal.

Humans like me have never lived this well.

and thats a fact.

We are in the Upper quartile of the

richest

and most

powerful,

society,

in the history of Man.

MANKIND.

Countries are IN OUR MINDS!

THERE ARE NO LINES ON THE GROUND!

WE MADE THOSE OURSELVES!!!
REALLLLY!!!!

NObody put that there.

Natural boundaries are natural.

That should be all.

Why hate?

~The Twentysomething

**************************************

"I found nature in my own backyard..."

next time,

on THE STONER MONOLOGUE Ch. 2

Spectrum Sublimation

It is the moment SONIC turns into SUPER SONIC.
Time and Space tear and streak,
melt away. It is the moment of transformation,
of realization, the line when
the rules of the game change, and things move very, very fast.
Why''d I make it? Because.

Love in Manhattan

Just saw Manhattan By Woody Allen.
Woke me up.
Saw people just living, trying to make the social thing work in a tough city.

Well, now I believe Manhattan is a liveable city.
So I'm being friendly. And making friends.
And its working.
I can feel my hard cold image of the city thaw all around me.

So my friend drags me to the Blue Note for some jazz. Its some fun stuff. In a good mood I notice the waitress is the same one from New Years. And I mention it and she thinks I'm hitting on her, and I was really just trying to sound like a regular so she would accept my ID. It says I'm 25. Yeah right.

Anyway, she believes Im 25 and hits on me the whole show.
I suspected she did it wth everyone.
But not so. Just me.

So after the show she told me to come back in a half hour for her number.
I did,
and she turned around while just getting off work,
at the end of her shift,
putting her coat on, making for the door,
and she sees me waiting by the entrance,
eye contact, smiles,
very romantic.

After I find out I wont be wisked immediately by her to her apartment,
I admit that I am only 20. She is extremely surprised.
I guess I do look older.

I find out later she, L, is 26 yrs old.
She is black and waitressing while waiting for her big break as
an actress, her true career path.
and from Baltimore.

I am a White Jewish Male who goes to NYU,
Aged 20 years to perfection.
From Long Island.

We start talking, and I'm the academic and she's the one whose about feelings
and she brings up religion talk right away
and listen
for a kid my age I have dealt with a tremendous amount of existential philosophy.
And I have seriously thought out most any God question thrown my way.
So I impress. And I can laugh. Thank you Woody.

So she drives me to the station.
I invent a train I need to catch,
my excuse to not spend any more money on this evening
if it wasnt ending at her place.
She offered to drive me to Penn,
but we got there one minute after the imaginary time,
so I had to invent ANOTHER train,
a half hour later,
so for 25 minutes we chatted in her car. And I won her over.
We have a date tomorrow...
Good stuff.

And now I love Rhapsody in Blue.

The World Lately

So I think I may not feel
so damn lonely anymore.

I think I know I can make friends now.
Even in the city.

All your feelings,
your thoughts and perceptions...
everything you are,
is a series of binary neurons with two positions,
on or off. Firing in tandem and in an observable way,
Create a fabric, an OS, a Windows program,
on which you run your body, using your brain's impulses as commands.
Constantly receiving and exchanging information with the body as well.
It is just electricity. Pleasure is just electrical stimulation of the right part of the brain.
We know how to do that.
We can hook you up with a pleasure button directly to your head.
For science. We've done it on monkeys.
They will push the pleasure button,
and ignore food,
until they starve to death.
Brain pleasure center stimulation is what its allllll about for them.

I'm recently coming to terms with the fact,
that I live towards the upper end,
of one of the richest countries
in the history... of.... the... world.

I am one of the luckiest human beings ever to exist,
out of all the homo sapiens to ever walk the Earth!

Just lucky I was born in a year further along
in the development of my species!

Nature has created us.
It is really the Mother,
something sensed by Man since time immemorial.

Evolution shaped us,
and evolution is about adaptations to the environment.
Evolution is about growing into the Earth,
reconnecting, and yet,
it is also about growth.

We have grown out of the Earth,
We are dark haired for hunting reasons.
Our Brains are ye big for survival purposes.
One day a brain was born and realized it could remember and transfer ideas,
using a newly developed communication system,
and our modern society was born.

All products of our society,
our art, our media, our music, our literature,
our time off, the fact that we like swimming,
and hamburgers, and berries and whipped cream,
Its all because the Earth shaped us that way. And so
Sonic the Hedgehog, a lightning fast blue hedgehog (?)
who looks nothing like a hedgehog,
fighting robotic impersonations of nature,
a clear illustration of the uncanny barrier and fear,
built deep into the psychology of modern man.

The Earth also bore a creature like us
who like horror films. Roller Coasters,
skydiving, football, the church,
could the church not just be a gut reaction
to the seemingly perfect cradle
the Earth affords to all life, an attempt to praise nature,
deify it. All religions start with the same problem.
How did I get here.
This is just too perfect.
And it is.
Because we don't have the memories of the 1.7 million years of homo erectus pain and suffering in the name of evolution to give rise to us, modern man. A species all its own.


With Love,
~The Twentysomething

Welcome to my room

So this is basically what my room looks like while I'm looking at my reflection in the mirror/TV.
I spend way too much time here.
And my skin is not really that color. I don't have that many colors.
Oh, and I can't draw.

On The Batman

Until this past semester,
I hadn't read comics since I was 10.
After I DLed a DVD of the Marvel Civil War comics,
I got hooked again. And then I rediscovered Batman.
And he is my hero.

I believe, and have for years,
in the infinite potential of man.
Man's powers of reason, of system building and determination
leave me confident that most individuals greatly underestimate themselves.

Batman is the realization of the human ideal. And yet not because of his actual achievements.
Batman's true genius does not lie in his fighting prowess. When Batman is out there actually kicking asses, the most amazing part of him is only on display in flashes and glimpses.

His genius is in his preparations. His Utility Belt, with every antidote, laser heater, anti-freeze, smoke grenade, batarang, spare grappling hooks, and everything else, is only a part of it. He studied the arts of being a detective. He has read books and books of philosophy and ethics. He knows multiple languages, practiced escaping every conceivable death trap, and can read lips. He studied martial arts for decades and has worked his body into perfect human form.

In a word, it is his will to learn which I find the most inspiring.
We as humans can retain so much information, so many different skills and abilities,
all we need is proper motivation and the information will go in and stay in.
Everything you learn might may be useful someday.

I want to know everything,
and be prepared for everything and anything I may want to do,
physically and mentally. Like the Batman. yeah

On Imposing Newscasters

"In my opinion..."
"It seems to me..."
"I don't quite see how..."

What do these phrases have in common?
NONE of them should be uttered on the air by my
CNN or Fox News anchorman.

Who are you, dear newscaster,
that I should care what you have to say about
economics, politics, social welfare, taxes, construction?

What degrees do you have? How can you argue with an economist about whether a new approach will work, or debate a military strategy with a military strategist.

Are you trying to convince me you know what you're talking about? That I should spend even more hours of my day listening to YOUR opinion on current events.

An audience does NOT give you an inherent right to talk...

Philosophy: Are Genes+Experience all I am?

I've been having this discussion a lot lately and I would hate for my readers to miss out.

Mainstream psychology has long ago accepted that the Nature vs. Nurture argument ends in a draw, ie both apply. The Nature argument says however you are raised, your genetics are what matters when discussing who you are and how you will behave. Nurture says it is how you are raised, instead of genetics, that matter. But it's a draw. Accordingly, any idea you have of your identity, personality, attitude, heritage, or "me", can be summed up like this:

You = Your Genetics + All Your Life Experience

But is that all? Are those all the factors that apply to each new decision you make? But what about morality? Isn't there some thing not included in that equation that isn't accounted for?
Some call it the soul, others call it a mind, or just "a me." I don't think it exists.

1. This magical "other thing" cannot be sensed or experienced itself
2. The above equation can account for all variance and randomness in any decisions or thoughts you have...
3. Since nothing is actually affected by this thing, and it is un-sensable so it's existence cannot be proven, the idea itself is meaningless and unimportant.

This raises serious issues with the ideas of morality and punishment, which I won't deal with here.

Yet how can this be? Are my genes and experiences really enough to determine EVERY reaction/action I will take?

What if I am thinking of picking up my bag of potato chips, but just don't, just because I am trying to NOT be predictable. Yet, somehow, you had an urge in you not to be predictable. You also had an urge to be defiant and perhaps you weren't actually that hungry, but if you had been, you wouldnt have been thinking along these lines and would just have eaten it.

Every minute detail about your present physical existence affects your action in a situation.
How cold it is, what you had for breakfast, how many girls said hello to you when you were emotionally vulnerable in the sixth grade, when the last time you smoked pot was, who you've seen that day, what you are wearing...all of it.

You're actions = Genetic Predisposition + All of your experience. Thats it.

If you could know every last detail about a given situation you would be able to predict its outcome. This is not a new idea. But people have issues with it.

Just a thought.

New Years Resolution: First Post

January 02, 2009.
Long Island, NY
I am in my local library. I am twenty years old and change.
I will be leaving for Shanghai in a month and 3 days.

I am on vacation.
Now I can do all the things I never really get the chance to out there at NYU,
like...not much. yay...

That's not really what I think though. I am glad to be home.
During the school term, you're productive by default.
Just living every day, going to classes and doing your work, you are a "Student."
That is my "Occupation" after all.
But college isn't hard, and it leaves me with lots of time to get depressed about how unfulfilling my social life is. Well, not social life. Sex life. Enough with the euphemisms. In any case, I never decide to sit down and actually read, or write. How can you when you're so lonely it hurts?

Sometimes when I get all depressed and introspective, I pause and laugh at myself,
when was the last time you got all hopelessly introspective when everything in life was wonderful,
when you had a girl and when you had your video games and you had good grades and good friends and no parent issues. Ever whine then?

So maybe the whole existential self-examination is silly and unnecessary, and ultimately unproductive. But I'm curious.

I am twenty years old. I know somethings about myself and somethings about the world. But it is obvious to me that I really don't know either as well as I would like to think.

Curiosity is my driving force.
I believe in knowledge.
I believe in reality. I believe I am here and you are here,
to me I am everything
and to you, you are everything,
and that's okay.

Two consciousnesses floating like fireflies through the infinite expanse of cyberspace.

One reason I write here is so I will know how I viewed the world when I was this age, this place.
Another reason is to force my thoughts to materialize into statements, make them lead somewhere and crystallize,
so that the minute after I write a sentence I agree with I can look at it and wonder what I really mean, what I'm really saying.

Most of all though, I write to "You."
"You" are my public, my audience.
The proof that I was here.

My 3rd grade self already began to doubt if there was anybody out there paying attention to my life.
When I know other people have an image of me,
however blurred by my own bias in telling and your own bias in reading,
I can convince myself at 22,
that myself at 20 was really here, once.

I am on vacation now. I have a lot to say and a lot to do. I am starting this blog now as I prepare for my trip to Shanghai, where my vision of the world will re-define itself yet again. You are all invited with me.

I am not this serious all the time. There will be pictures here, recipes, move reviews, quick thoughts, perhaps the occasional video game screenshot. Life is fun and exploding with excitement. In the words of Bill Watterson:

"There's Treasure Everywhere.
Let's Go Exploring."

Thanks for Reading,
~The Twentysomething