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12/06/04
creation theory continued:
inspired by the da vinci code, and directly from genesis, man and women
are created together on the sixth day. it appears to me that the story of the
garden of eden is either modified, or altogether inserted.
continuing the previous installment, on the fifth day, all the beasts are
created. i believe that these beasts are our instincts, and the understanding
of one's instincts.
on the sixth day, mankind is created, and given dominion over everything.
the human will transcends everything. i can see no other meaning in
this. everything we, as a species, have done, has gone against our instinct,
and far beyond our survival / procreational needs, and time and time again
we demonstrate (on an individual level) how incredibly powerful the human
spirit is.
just because we have this power over our instincts, does not in ANY way mean
that we should strive to conquer them always. i believe this is more of a
"manual override", to be used in cases where instinct conflicts
with morality.
28/05/04
right: creation theory
the last couple of days have been a revelation for me. i haven't bothered
to verify whether this theory has already been forwarded, but it is mine,
nonetheless.
there is absolutely no disagreement between the story of creation, and
darwin's theory of evolution. i have two theories: one, in which the story
of creation happens at the dawn of mankind, and two, in which the story
of creation happens for each individual.
until the infusion of "divine light" ("let there be light"),
man is no more than an animal. he sleeps, he eats, he reproduces. he may
construct tools, and use his brain, but he is essentially instinct
driven.
"divine light" is a spiritual awakening, or awareness. it is the
first stage of a process. consistent with my previous writings (below), it
could be seen as the infusion of a soul. in this view, all animals have brains,
and personalities to some degree (such as is noticeable in pets), but none
of this compares to the power of the soul.
in the second phase of creation, there is a separation of heaven and earth.
as an aside, i find it interesting to note that space is referred to as "the
waters above", and ships in space move in the same way as submerged
vessels and animals.
in this phase, man looks up, and wonders about the universe. as far as i know,
humans are the only creatures who do this. we wonder about what's out there,
and we wonder about creation itself.
in short, each of the days of creation is an internal phase. by the sixth day,
man is whole, or complete - spiritually complete. the seventh day is the day of
enlightenment. the soul is at rest, when all stages have been achieved.
the more i've thought about it, the more it is obvious to me that theory one is
absurd. we cannot achieve these spiritual levels as a group. in fact, it is not
even clear to me that this initial "spark" of creation exists in all
of mankind.
i think it is possible for a human being to go through his entire life, using
learned speech and skills, and never experiencing anything spiritual. i also
think that it is possible for this same phenomena to occur with people who
have been brought up in a religious environment - people who go through the
motions, and believe in the words of what they have been taught, but who
do not possess souls.
18/04/03
i just spent the whole night discussing my previous realization, that god is the
othering of one's own internal power.
i have been refining this realization, and am attempting to come up with a
non-contradictory version of it.
for the moment i'm not going to discuss god. i am, however, going to discuss the
soul. we have been told that we are "created in god's image", and i
believe that the only questionable thing in that statement is the word created.
the soul is a part of god. we know this. but it is from this that we control
our bodies (and minds, i suppose), and from this that we draw our power over the
rational, physical world. i refrain from giving examples, there are too many and
there is no concrete proof of any of this.
this soul, is the very same thing that we call our astral body,
our kundalini, our buddha. whether we believe in a god or not,
we all find ourselves in times of need or desperation calling on something,
and in reality all we are doing is willing something to happen (or not happen, as
the case may be).
this is the point where we are activating our own power, our own "bit of god".
17/04/03
Othering: the process of projecting our fantasies upon another
entity.
Realization: The concept of a supreme being could, in fact, be us
"othering" our metaphysical power. Since the dawn of
time man has been unable to successfully explain his non-physical
effects, such as his will to survive being enough to face extreme
odds. In order to rationalize this control over other objects / forces,
we create "god" and attribute our effects to him.
07/05/03
when i moved in with tank-girl (can't think of a better description), i discovered that
she had a playstation.
SxS insisted that we obtain a copy of tekken 3, and once we did, we seriously began to
play.
now toonie and i sucked at the beginning. we tried our best, but playing SxS was a joke.
it went beyond getting our butts kicked. we were humiliated non-stop. so we'd end up
relishing every moment that we could play by ourselves. tank-girl loved the game,
but never really got the hang of it.
for all the girls out there - it's not about pressing buttons randomly. this is what makes
it superior to any other fighting game.
we developed a problem in our apartment. almost every night at least 3 people would come
over with munchies and drugs and become part of the furniture.
and we wouldn't get any sleep. mainly because we'd have to play too.
this went on for months, and i finally started getting the hang of the game. but every
time i learned something new, SxS and his mentors would learn something new, and we'd
basically stay with the same frustration levels.
the funny thing is that we weren't learning character specific moves. of course, you get
to know whole bunches of them, but that's not the focus.
the focus is on basic stuff, like sidestepping and ducking, catching and grabbing, when
to hit high and when to hit low.
now the reason for this piece is simple. we keep running into people who talk crazy, crazy
shit about themselves.
"no one can beat me".
"i'm the king of tekken".
everyone has so much to say, but when we take them to task and play them, they know and can
do absolutely nothing. it's actually embarrassing to play them.
on the one hand, it's kind of sad that we're so interested in this, but it's a great skill,
and i wish i could apply it when i'm actually fighting, and not just on the screen.
tekken is more than just a game, it really is a way of life.
and if you don't identify with what i've just said, then keep your mouth shut about
tekken.
12/06/03
I'm a pre-matrix cyberpunk fanatic; johnny mnemonic is still one of
my favourite films of all time.
the first time i saw the matrix, in cinema of course, i missed the first ten
minutes. and i didn't know it. so i thought the movie began with neo in his
cubicle.
i then saw the movie three times before finally seeing the beginning... so when i
eventually did i understood why the scenes in the matrix that had shocked me hadn't
shocked anyone else.
now, the first matrix was good. i don't think anyone will argue with that. it
had everything: good story, great effects, new concepts, and brilliant creativity
when it came to things futuristic.
i recently saw the animatrix, which, in my opinion, was brilliant.
even better than the matrix, perhaps.
so it came as a shock to me when some friends of mine told me that they thought
it was crap. they liked the episodes i found boring, and were bored with the
ones i felt were the most important.
it was then that i realized (i'm slow) that there's two classes of matrix lovers:
the geeks and nerds who actually understood the first movie, and everyone else
who thought that the people looked cool and didn't really care about much short of
"this could be a world within a world" thing.
a small offshoot of this class ended up trying to sue the producers of the matrix,
because they'd done illegal things trying to find out if they really were in the
matrix.
americans.
i think it's important that both classes should be able to appreciate the
matrix, and all it's glory. but last night was little more than sheer
disappointment.
last night i went with her to see the matrix reloaded.
now, i must say here that i knew before i went that it wouldn't measure up,
that it would be a crappy story, and loads of things moving in ways that they
really shouldn't.
first things first: the fight scenes SUCKED. every time they
began (the five major ones, at least) all we could think of was "get ON
with it!". they were BORING.
second things second: the story wasn't so bad. the plot was a tad thin, but
having seen the animatrix meant that i knew what was cutting, and there were
things in the movie that were great.
but the good stuff wasn't emphasized. the dancing scene was just plain
pointless, the 'mech/biosuit/body armour thingy that the dude defending the gate was using
was given one silly move (gunslinging?), and the major statements, or questions,
were lost to anyone who wasn't concentrating. there was so much crazy stuff
happening, that not enough attention was paid to the point of the story.
having said all that, i think that the matrix reloaded could have been a great film.
the "twist" made it all worth it, but the question remains: who will watch
the third one?
it would be a shame if people missed it based on their experience with the sequel.
22/06/03
definition: gambler's fallacy - the belief that the more
times a coin comes up heads, for example, the closer it is to
coming up tails.
the idea behind this is that the coin "has no memory",
so that each time it is flipped the probability remains at
50%.
another mistake we learned about (some difficult name, can't recall),
is the belief that a short run of chance is representative of the probability.
eg. the belief that when flipping a coin, let's say 6 times, if
heads come up more than tails we tend to consider the coin to
be unfair.
the reason i'm telling you this is that this is one of the
things we need to understand for our exam tomorrow. but they've
given us this long, really boring analysis of the "hot hand
theory" in basketball, in a rather pitiful attempt at
refuting the claim that basketball players shoot in streaks.
and they provide all this wonderfully entertaining evidence of
player's probability of scoring increasing and decreasing based
on seasonal statistics and so on, and they completely ignore the
fact that in sport, unlike in maths, every shot has a different
probability of going in.
the probability of a shot going in, in my humble opinion, is influenced by the
player's skill, the amount of pressure he's under (physical or
mental), his confidence in the particular shot, and perhaps
other factors.
in my experience, i have had a "hot hand" a few times.
the most memorable occurred while practising my shots, and
lasted quite a long time. i was taking at least 3 shots per minute, and in about half an hour or so i missed 4 or
5 in total. and each time i shot i knew, with absolute
certainty, that it'd go in.
when a player has a "hot hand", the probability of his
shots going in increases dramatically. however, it does not
become 100%. and, according to the laws of probability, there
is still the chance, albeit a small one, that the player will
have said "hot hand", and not make a single shot.
basically what i'm saying is that for the exam we have to, more
or less, quote verbatim from pages and pages of what i can only
think of as true mental masturbation.
27/08/03
>Message Begins<
how about our project, you DICK? we've spoken to both >lecturer and
tutor<, and both of them deny any knowledge of it - should i be,
in some way, grateful that you've screwed me and >psychotic american< completely,
and ensured that we have to do this course again next semester?
i thank you, from the bottom of my heart. i will think of a suitable
retaliation at a later stage.
have fun, and enjoy your vacation. thanks for ruining mine.
>From: >grootbek<
>To: >me<
>Subject: (no subject)
>Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 11:26:14 EDT
>
>Hey have you ever heard of a punk band named aftertaste or New World Inside
>oh yeah also Tweak, if you have do you know if there is anyway to find out more
>info about them? I think they are from your hood... Hows the vacation?
>
>
>grootbek<
>Message Ends<
28/07/03
this isn't exactly what happened, but i didn't want him to be
able to say that i shouldn't have been looking through his
stuff - he's in the wrong whatever i did.
>Message Begins<
dude - i was waiting for your machine to boot up, when i noticed a drawer
full of cd's behind me. so i thought to myself, "hey! maybe >grootbek< brought
back my metallica cd and forgot to tell me about it."
so i opened the drawer, and began going through the cds. firstly, my cd WAS
there. along with about half of my cd collection - and a few cds that i
don't remember giving to you in the first place.
a lot of stuff that i've been looking for, including a 70's show cd (which
you were ADAMANT that you'd returned), amongst others.
now here's what made me REALLY angry - the fact that all the cds had just
been tossed together, as if cds don't get scratched. so far - and i hope i'm
not proved wrong - it seems that they're more or less okay, ignoring a few
cd's where the scratches don't particularly bother me (like movies i've
watched).
but it pisses me off that you have so little respect for other people's
property, and that you didn't give me the cds back when i asked for it.
that's fucking disgusting.
oh - and feel free to let us know about the project, okay? it would be
really nice if we could pass this course.
>Message Ends<
22/07/03
>Message Begins<
ok, i'm going to try to put this in perspective for you.
on the 17th, >psychotic american< apparently sent you an email regarding the marketing
project.
his computer is fucked, so he doesn't know if he got a reply from you or
not.
i spoke to you on the phone, and you guaranteed me that we would have the
project by the 18th.
it is now the 22nd.
the project is due on the 26th.
we do not have said project.
if the project is not handed in, then we fail. i cannot afford to fail, if i
do i will probably not be able to continue studying, and the army requires
me to have passed all my courses.
i realize this is probably not a great concern of yours.
but it is a great concern of mine.
we REALLY don't want to have to go to >the lecturer< and explain to him the
situation. we would very much like to be handing in a project on the 26th,
without significant loss of sleep, or achieving state of panic, or suffering
from a nervous breakdown.
you must understand that i have been having a really difficult time the last
few weeks, sorting out my shit and working.
and the marketing is really not something i should be worrying about.
please let me know as soon as you get this, what's going on, and how we're
supposed to proceed.
i'm really sick of having things to be upset and worried about. give me a
break.
thanks
>me<
>Message Ends<
i think that's pretty succinct!
A pitiful attempt at prose:
The day was warm, beautiful, filled with the sounds of wheeling,
diving seagulls. A soft breeze carried on its back the smells of
another beach, kelp and sand and seawater.
The low waves languidly kissing the shore - the cool sand soft and
inviting.
The only sounds from the light footfall of the early morning joggers,
the occasional car returning home after a long night.
Musings from a very long flight, in the middle of the night:
Why am I awake?
It's time to sleep, and I have nothing to do. I need the rest, yet I close
my eyes and not even darkness will embrace me.
Alone amidst the sensible sheep, I prey on things that I cannot touch.
Not from here.
"YOU DON'T KNOW THE POWER OF THE DAFT SIDE" - Daft Vader
Ever get the feeling that you're roadkill on the information superhighway?
hmmm - flatmats. interesting idea.
it's like a flat version of a blowup doll. you can put a photo of your
flatmate's head on it, and when you kill him / her you stick the flatmat in
the window, so noone gets suspicious.
until you do actually kill him / her, you can use it to wipe your feet.
i wonder what would happen if kids started putting their virginity up for sale on ebay. i wonder if prostitution can be done on ebay as well.
our first project, for a course in communications and networking, was to
design a website according to specification. we were told to make it fun and
interesting, which annoyed the absolute crap outta me.
like i'm really going to put all my personal information on it.
so i scrambled up a site one morning, in about twenty minutes, with the
intention of producing the ugliest, most annoying site ever.
i think i succeeded.
[My first assignment]
i just got back the results (i'll scan it if i get a chance):
Your Grade: 100 (u r not ugly) :)
anyway - i'm glad that whoever graded my assignment has a sense of humour. at the same time, it is possibly
that they are severely, severely disturbed. and i'm pressing the right buttons...