Awesome experience, I can't recommend it highly enough. If you are resolute about jumping then everything goes smoothly right up until they open the hatch. That's when the anti-evolutionary nature of your proposed action becomes most evident. However the act of literally tossing caution and prudence to the wind violently, and then the adrenaline rush of accelerating to 120MPH really isn't anti-evolutionary. Insects can be prudent but I don't think they can enjoy freefall. Although the instructor and photog insisted on me looking up for pics, I had a hard time peeling my eyes away from the onrushing ground. Also got some light rafting done out in the Poconos. Overall the weekend was a healthy and necessary dose of of action, and being outside the city.

I'm going skydiving tomorrow. Haven't given it too much thought, other than I expect it will be a blast. It reminds me of this quote from Ghost Dog, which actually comes to me often as I amble through life.

The Way of the Samurai is found in death.
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.
Every day, when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon
being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords,
being carried away by surging waves,
being thrown into the midst of a great fire,
being struck by lightning,
being shaken to death by a great earthquake,
falling from thousand-foot cliffs,
dying of disease
or committing seppuku at the death of one's master.
And every day, without fail, one should consider himself as dead.
This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai.

Yvie never told me she had a day job as a comic book hero...

Via zenicurean, because I liked the result having no extra explanations; just the writer from left field who brings a different perspective.

I am: Ursula K. LeGuin Perhaps the most admired writing talent in the science fiction field.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Recently I posted briefly about my trip through Philip K. Dick's gnostic psychosis. Being a book the insanity on offer there could only do something for the reader if he brings his own dose of insanity to the table (for one, committing to finishing it). Well last weekend I was exposed to something exponentially more irrational (trans-rational?) in the form of a film. Most people are well trained to sit through a movie, making this also more effective.





A friend brought over The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky. I really can't describe it beyond saying it is hyper-surreal, sacrilegious, graphic and fairly repulsive in parts, and on the whole soul disturbing. It's full to brim with symbols from various mystical systems (Christianity, tarot, etc.) in strange scene after strange scene, all loosely tied together by a figure on a spiritual quest. This sort of thing may have been common back in the sixties and seventies, but it's alien and quite fresh to me. I followed up on the auteur behind it and he is as colorful and bizarre as the film. Jodorowsky is a Chilean of Ukrainian descent, was run out of Mexico for heretical film-making, and is now a comic book artist of some renown in France. I ended up ordering some of his graphic novels and the box set of his other films. I'm sure I'll have to post once again after seeing those.



You should see this, if only because someone actually was able to pull it off. But if possible you should do it at some point when you are at least marginally curious and informed about mysticism. And why should you ever be? Well I came across a related quote today via js_africanus's latest post which seems as good a reason as any:

"Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship."

I'd forgotten I put up this request for topics. Here are answers for the two that came up. Pastor Manning I'll have to address in an entry all about him, maybe after I pay his congregation a visit.

Comment about... gardening, please.
I own two small cactii. I never remember to water them, but luckily Yvette does. That's the sad extent of my involvement in gardening.

Your favorite books.
I haven't given thought lately to favorites, however the below set of titles is one I've copy/pasted into various internet profiles for the last few years. Most of these are fiction books from my youth. I've read a lot of informative and even paradigm-shifting material lately. I flirted with listing some of those titles over this old list but realized that, in an appropriately cyclical fashion, a lot of my thinking is already in these titles. Since then I've more or less read in circles, maturing and refining my youthful intuition. I also noticed just now they fall into a few clean couplets and a 'trilogy'.

the epics:
The Foundation Trilogy by Issac Asimov (and all sequels)
Dune by Frank Herbert
Neuromancer by William Gibson

the individual and childhood:
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

the family vs. the nation:
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
Cien Anos de Soledad (One Hundred years of Solitude) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

the tribe vs. the individual:
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

I have put on ~20lbs since last summer. The net effect is worse than it sounds as there has been considerable muscle deterioration. I ascribe this regression into softness to three causes. I will have to pull a jiu-jitsu on these demons of weakness and reverse them into angels of redemption. Listing them below will hopefully lead me to contemplate how to turn these weaknesses around.

I am so strong and fit because of a woman
As with many problems that befall hard men there is a woman involved in my own downfall. I used to brag how committed I was to a fit lifestyle, and how I was doing it for me and not anyone else. There may be some truth to that, but it turned out more truthy that guys work out to look good for girls. Staying trim quickly became less of a priority after Yvette. It also surprisingly escalated the amount of eating out and drinking in my life considerably. There is also frequent cooking together. A lot of days I really just rather come home and sit around with Yvie than anything else, especially going to a smelly gym or grappling. That wasn't the whole cause, however, as I stuck with training for quite some time after I got together with Yvette. It is prob the most legit reason though.

I am so strong and fit because of my nerves of steel
A second cause was the intensity and type of training I took up in the last quarter of 2007. Like most people, in the first few years of weightlifting I followed watered down body-building routines and principles. After I took up grappling I introduced a wider variety of movements and functional training into my regime. Well for the third act I decided I would do pure strength training; low reps, heavy numbers, and compound power lifts. I was very serious and scientific about it. I tracked my progress, adding 3-5% to each lift every session, and power-lifting 3-4 times a week. Deadlifting in particular became almost an addiction, to the point where it was all I did along with bench-presses. The results were great as I really got stronger, but in the end the regime backfired. I overtaxed my nervous system in some way, to the point that the thought of working out would make me tense and tight. This was a reversal from the enthusiasm I'd had for training over the last few years. My form was acceptable enough that I didn't cause any new injuries, but I never gave thought to the pressure I was putting on myself. Strength is neuronal, I'd come to believe; I stuck to the spreadsheets and kept adding weight, but without giving thought to rest and recuperation.



I am so strong and fit because I love truth
I like to think this one is the most causative but then I'm also aware of why my proud ego would like to characterize this as the main cause. Back during 2007 I had already started feeling the old pull of books and knowledge returning. More specifically I felt a drive to seek out philosophical or spiritual knowledge. Previously I'd I cultivated a healthy skepticism to ideas and ideals, metaphysical contemplation, suspicion of truth and claims to truth and especially a suspicion of any claim of a pure will to truth. I have spent hundreds of dollars on books and lectures since January. For the last few months I would find myself rushing home to read, passing up on social outings to read, and even beating myself up for failing to read. I still beat myself up for the shitty state of my notes. Something tells me this intense wave of it is ebbing to something more sustainable… I think soon I'll start posting more about what I am studying, but that would require getting my nose out of the books. It is far from over though, and I'm sad/proud to say this may be the toughest urge to overthrow to get my ass back on the mats and back in the gym.

This one's been going around, so I'll throw it up here. Not much moves me to post these days, so I could use the prodding.

Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it.

#22 I term the Immortal One a plasmate, because it is a form of energy; it is living information. It replicates itself—not through information or in information—but as information.

#23 The plasmate can crossbond with a human, creating what I call a homoplasmate. This annexes the mortal human permanently to the plasmate. We know this as the "birth from above" or "birth from the Spirit." It was initiated by Christ, but the Empire destroyed all the homoplasmates before they could replicate.

#24 In dormant seed form, the plasmate slumbered in the buried library of codices at Chenoboskion until 1945 C.E. This is what Jesus meant when he spoke elliptically of the "mustard seed" which, he said, "would grow into a tree large enough for birds to roost in." He foresaw not only his own death but that of all homoplasmates. He foresaw the codices unearthed, read, and the plasmate seeking out new human hosts to crossbond with; but he foresaw the absence of the plasmate for almost two thousand years.

...

#29 We did not fall because of a moral error; we fell because of an intellectual error: that of taking the phenomenal world as real. Therefore we are morally innocent. It is the Empire in its various disguised polyforms which tells us we have sinned. "The Empire never ended."

#30 The phenomenal world does not exist; it is a hypostasis of the information processed by the Mind.

#31 We hypostatize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of the information; the message has changed. This is a language which we have lost the ability to read. We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outward once more, now in an altered form. We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing.

#32 The changing information which we experience as world is an unfolding narrative. It tells about the death of a woman. This woman, who died long ago, was one of the primordial twins. She was half of the divine syzygy. The purpose of the narrative is the recollection of her and of her death. The Mind does not wish to forget her. Thus the ratiocination of the Brain consists of a permanent record of her existence, and, if read, will be understood this way. All the information processed by the Brain—experienced by us as the arranging and rearranging of physical objects—is an attempt at this preservation of her; stones and rocks and sticks and amoebae are traces of her. The record of her existence and passing is ordered onto the meanest level of reality by the suffering Mind which is now alone.

#33 This loneliness, this anguish of the bereaved Mind, is felt by every constituent of the universe. All its constitutes are alive. Thus the ancient Greek thinkers were hylozoists.

#34 The ancient Greek thinkers understood the nature of this pan-psychism, but they could not read what it was saying. We lost the ability to read the language of the Mind at some primordial time; legends of this fall have come down to us in a carefully-edited form. By "edited" I mean falsified. We suffer the Mind's bereavement and experience it inaccurately as guilt.

#35 The Mind is not talking to us but by means of us. Its narrative passes through us and its sorrow infuses us irrationally. As Plato discerned, there is a streak of the irrational in the World Soul.

#36 In Summary: thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements—change—in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and information-processing which we substantialize. We do not merely see its thoughts as objects, but rather as the movement, or, more precisely, the placement of objects: how they become linked to one another. But we cannot read the patterns of arrangement; we cannot extract the information in it—i.e. it as information, which is what it is. The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself).

#37 We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the word "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness.

#38 From loss and grief the Mind has become deranged. Therefore we, as parts of the universe, the Brain, are partly deranged.

( -PKD )

This was some months back at the MSG box for Roy Jones vs. Tito Trinidad fight. Just throwing it up because I realize it's been a bit since I caught good fighting. I've been spoiled by the last 18 months with so many super fights. Then again it has left quite a hole in the pocket. Anyway, just hoping one of these upcoming Saturdays keeps the streak alive ... Serra vs GSP 2 has potential.

For the handful out there who haven't checked out Senator Obama's speech concerning his ex-pastor please do. It's the best public contemplation of the topic I can recall coming across. In a number of journals I've seen a bit of nitpicking about the speech, but not much substantive disagreement. I agree that with Sen. Obama that racism isn't endemic to the US; it isn't native, exclusive or confined to our shores. If one thinks it is then why bother to agitate for change? Sen. Obama doesn't really have a choice about it if he wants to be President but I'm also pleased he has come down against excessive and bitter US-bashing so common not just amongst the older generation he identifies but also their intellectual descendants. I can understand, I've had those days myself. On the other hand I've done a bit of traveling and can pretty comfortably say when it comes down to it there is no place like home. For that reason I tend not to miss a chance to pull a Homer Simpson and break out into obnoxious USA chants. If you can't be down for your own home, warts and all, then you can "GIT OUT"! A funny anecdote illustrating this attitude; when I first moved in with my roommates they deduced from my clearly annoying-by-design chauvinism that I must be a conservative Republican. It turns out I'm the only registered Democrat in this sorry lot of alleged 'progressives'.

Maybe I'm late to the party but I just found out they are making a movie about Toussaint L'Overture, one of the most overlooked figures in American history. Danny Glover is directing, and according to IMDB the cast will include Don Cheadle, Angela Bassett, Mos Def, and maybe Wesley Snipes. Hugo Chavez is providing funding, which is somewhat worrisome. The Haitian Revolution, like the revolution in France itself, was a bloody and vicious affair. The perspective the producers have will certainly shape the story told. Nonetheless Touissant himself is right up there with George Washington and Simon Bolivar, and arguably faced a much greater foe in Napoleon's battle-hardened French forces, and also the English and Spanish. There is no lack of drama and action to be had, and it is being done outside of Hollywood, so I sincerely hope they don't screw it up.

I'd say it is a sign of sanity and humanity that as much posting on LJ today is about Gary Gygax as yesterday's primaries. I can't help but get the sense that many people allow themselves to get caught up in the manufactured media coverage, stupefying verbiage, and the echo-chamber blogosphere. If there is a problem with this election so far it is the over analysis and immature desire for certitude transmitted by the punditry. Otherwise the process is working just as it should; even those in late primary states will have a say on the Democratic side, and on the Republican side those factions most responsible for Dubya paid the price.

More than that it's funny to see just how many ppl were fellow AD&D geeks at some point in life.

Up and down the ladder I go, chasing after 'truths' then grounding myself in realities. In that vein I ran into this interesting piece at n + 1 about Ralph Ellison, high art, and black culture. Even if you are unfamiliar with Ellison, as I am, it offers some worthwhile contemplations on the role and value of pursuing universal, humanistic truths and thought systems, particularly as a non-white. It caught my attention with this about one of my fave authors, Jorge Luis Borges. It seems impossible to read widely and deeply without coming across thinkers with beautiful ideas but odious, annoying prejudices so it didn't strike me too negatively (there's also something to be sid about context); anyway what caught my thoughts was the sophisticated excuse for Borges bias and what the article's author, as well as Ellison, have to say about it.

"Some time ago I came across a skinny little book bearing the title With Borges. It is the recollection of a brief stint in a young man’s life spent reading to the Argentine giant of letters, Jorge Luis Borges. Much in the book was familiar – Borges lived with his mother into his sixties, he devoured books with a fiendish voracity, his blindness in old age necessitated that others read aloud to him – but one tiny passage, an aside, was new and striking to me: in it, the memoirist notes that though the great cosmopolitan boasted a taste for everything under the sun, from ancient Nordic folk verse to kabbalistic number games to cheap Westerns and detective stories, Borges nonetheless remarked that there was absolutely nothing he could find of universal importance in American Negro culture. It was simply too provincial. And because, as he saw it, Negroes had failed to produce a “universal culture” – like that of the ancient Greeks, the English, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Jews – because they could offer nothing of equal worth to the rest of the world, they were therefore in a sense inferior. This was Borges’s view and it is something that I have come to think about often. "
- "What Have We Who Are Slaves And Black To Do With Art?”, T.C. Williams, n + 1

Here's a fun quiz I caught via orlandobr and zenicurean. I would have expected to get existentialist judging from my favorites and my reading lately. Phenomenologist seems odd since I haven't even yet made my way to Husserl, though I was once long ago exposed to a powerful chapter by Merleau-Ponty which I would agree has painted my thinking ever since. On the other hand just last night I read an essay on Nietszche by Cornel West which spoke about the partial refutation of realism (materialism) in contemporary American philosophy. I generally agreed with that position, and I'm not sure how my answers added up to a high materialism score. But hell I don't disagree with that either. Labels and -isms aside, here's a good way to burn 5 minutes and some gray matter...

The Phenomenologist You scored 60 Materialism and 100 Phenomenology!

You're up and ready to take in a big breath of epoche, you're the Phenomenologist! While you recognize the importance of the traditional hard sciences, you also realize that the Theory of Special Relativity makes a really lousy sonnet. Life is composed of experiences, and reducing them to simple physical processes, you realize, makes about as much sense as discussing James Joyce as if his books were only paper and ink. So, Phenomenologist, go out today and start bracketing the crap out of your sensory experiences! Thinkers you may agree with: Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler Thinkers that may challenge you: Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida

This test tracked 2 variables. How the score compared to the other people's:

	Higher than 72% on Materialism
	Higher than 93% on Phenomenology

Link: The Metaphysician Test written by Jaylhomme on Ok Cupid View My Profile(Jaylhomme)

I must say I didn't expect Barack Obama to win in Iowa of all places, which speaks something about my own prejudices. Nicely done Senator, even though that speech was pretty vapid, empty, and way too congratulatory for winning a mere caucus. The Republicans, on the other hand, showed they may still be hobbled going forward by the religionists. I doubt that type of candidate can win nationally post-Bush, but that aside I had hoped that kind of candidate wouldn't even find a place in the GOP for this election. If we are stuck with just two parties it would be nice for both to present viable visions. For that reason I was pleased to see Dr. Ron Paul get 10%. That keeps him in the dialogues in that race and hopefully exposes more people on that side of the aisle to something better than hating gays and promoting war.

2008 is about being like water.

In 2008 all words will be action, will be will, will be. Cultural capital will power emotional energy, rituals will be created to enshrine values.

2008 cannot be constrained by short term resolutions, but will exercise freedom within the constraints of the waterfalls or rivers I sail and flow through.

In 2008 I accept the mantle of the dogma of no dogmatism, of the contrarian and synthesizer. A renewal of overcoming by a commitment to the pursuit of truth.

2008 renews the cycle of evaporating into the heaven, so that when I return to my patches of earth and rain there, it is renewed.

2008 cannot be reified, because 2008 is not only a form without form.

2008 is here.