| KHftCEA 2000-04.1 April |
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KHftCEA 2000-04.1 April
I still look at things and think: mortal, transient, likely to be wasting my finite and limited time. Maybe it will pass (well of course it will, that's the bleedin' point, but I mean maybe it's just a phase. Hmm- maybe there is a tie-in with stress at work.) But something new just occured to me: maybe the problem comes from my religous upbringing- I blame the world for being fragile and the universe for being impermanent because I secretly apply the impossible standards of immortality that I learned in my youth. If the Universe as we know it is itself fleeting, than the seeming triviality of the things that make me happy is no crime. "Life can then little else supply / But a few good fucks and then we die" indeed. Doing goofy little pleasurable things is what the universe is all about. 00-4-4 --- Reading "The Age of Spiritual Machines"-- they touched upon the old "is a perfect clone (or teleported version, or cybernetic copy, etc) ever the same person?" conundrum. I guess I've always assumed that the continuum of consciousness, a continual pilot light of self, makes the difference (so the Trek teleporter might be murder and cloning)-- but now I wonder. I sleep, I can be knocked out... could unconciousness mean un-concousness? 00-4-4 --- I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it would not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped got a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the starts and made my peace with the darkness. --Heinz Pagels, physicist and quantum mechanics researcher before his death in a 1988 climbing accident --- "Birds can fly, unless they are penguins and ostriches, or if they happen to be dead, or have broken wings, or are confined to cages, or have their feet stick in cement, or have undergone experiences so dreadful as to render them psychologically incapable of flight." --Marvin Minsky (dealing with the problems knowledge systems face.) --- Enjoyably, [Greg] Critser describes fast food restaurants as the bathhouses of the childhood obesity epidemic, "the places where the high-risk population indulges in high-risk behavior." --Suck, 00-4-5 --- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. --Charlie McCarthy --- What a strange machine man is. You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams. --Nikos Kazantzakis --- A few nights ago I was thinking about the idea of New Love, or maybe more specifically sudden romance with a stranger. I haven't had that since...Jen, really. 00-4-10 --- I Love Event Zero Because... "it's like sleeping on a bed full of money." 00-4-12 --- According to the NRA, the best form of personal protection is to be in possession of a loaded firearm at all times. To ensure your personal safety, stay the hell away from NRA members. --"Personal Safety Tips" from The Onion, 00-4-12 --- "My heart shattered, I am living testament of a cancer-ridden love that I perceived as perfection. She was my all. But now loneliness, uncertainty and confusion contend for my nightly companonship." "If I had any arms, I would most certainly beat you to fucking death." --http://hotendotey.com, 00-4-10 --- "Event Zero: preparing to rule the Internet startup arena with an iron fist! Bow before the might of the blue and orange! We will crush our enemies like so many pecan shells, strewing their remains before us for increased traction on slippery surfaces! We will rip the earth from its foundations and throw the oceans from their beds! Look on our works, ye Mighty, and despair..." 00-4-14 --- |