Category: Entries

Let me begin with a warning. A caveat if you will. Buyer Beware.

This post will have questions. More questions the answers. It will be a mild intellectual foree with the intention of making progress, but i forsee failure.

The cause of this failure? Identity.

The confusing black whole that is identity. Honestly what makes identity so difficult? One word, change. Heraclitus, well known philosopher is quoted as saying, “No man steps over the same river twice.” The point is that our world is in a constant flux, or steady cycle of progression/regression.

Let me stop here for a second. There is a difficulty when you work with philosophy, language gets in the way. Vagueness creeps in with the use of metaphor and similie, while contradictions arise with direct assertions. Language always tends “muck” philosophy up. Without too much mucking about, lets attempt this.

So Identity lets begin by identifying indentity……………… fuck it happened way to soon.
Identity seems to be linked in some way with change.
– Without identity, would there be change? This is a difficult question. This is due to the nature of change itself. One definition of change is the process that occurs between object A in time state 1 and object A in time state 2 where object At2 is different from object At1. I know, I’m getting technical. But it actually illuminates something. It illuminates the necessity of indentity. How can something change, if something cannot be defined or identified? If we are working with nothing, then who is to say it changes?
– If there were no change, would there be identity? This seems plausible. We can have a singularity that simply exists, but never changes. And yet we understand it is a singularity and so identity does exist.

Thought experiment:
So imagine two globuals that make up all of existence. Globual A and globual B. A has only one property, the property of not being B. B has only one property, the property of not being A. Here we have identity at it’s most basic existence. Identity exists simply as the negation of another identity. Doesn’t that seem to beg the question though? I feel a riddle being born, which came first the indentity, or the identity of identity. Can identity truly exist as a self-referential entity?

And so we breach the theory of knowledge. Foundationalist theories abound. So there must be a foundation, if not it is absurd. If something is self-referential then it is self-defeating. No new knowledge can be obtained by explaining something with itself.

So then why do we identify objects in the world so clearly and readily? Why is it i can say, my car, my existence, your child and therefore your problem? These all deal with calculated statments summing up the existence of objects within the world.

Pragmatisim that is why. We need identity to make it around in our world. If i can’t identitify the ground from the sky, what would stop me from attempting to fly? How would i even understand the concept of flying? So we adopt a quick and dirty understanding of identity while wreaking havoc and spurning confusion left and right.

But there is one part of identity that i failed to describe. (actually there are tons, but one big part). That part deals strictly with the thought games.

Thesius’s ship.

see also Identity and Change

Have fun with this… It was simply a mind explosion on the page. I didn’t clean up aftermyself either. Excuse the mess.

I know i haven’t posted much lately, i’ve been kind of working late/tired/brain felt like mush.

My brain still feels like mush.

But, now i’m posting. I had a very interesting weekend. I got together with a friend of mine, and went out exploring the city. I’ll be honest. I haven’t done much in New York since moving here. There has always been more important things to spend money on then going out.

Well surprise there still are more important things to spend money on outside of going out on the town, but I am begining to notice a trend. The more i spend money on things “more important” the more things i find that are more important.

So i decided that i would like to go out one night, and had the impetice to do this exact thing.

The night began at a pool hall where i learned all my skillz have dried up. I’m worthless again. not worth a damn. Worse then i’ve ever been. Pool has fled my skill-set. I need a table so i can practice. The place we went was a little place called Fat Cat Billiards. I can’t wait to show Trey and Dad when they come up here. The place is great. Live jazz music, including an eclectic set of gaming devices. You have pool tables, ping pong tables, chess tables, foosball tables, scrabble tables…. yes scrabble tables… It is a big thing now apparently. Scrabble championships etc. It may be as big as chess one day.

Let me stop here for a second and remind the reader, that i’ve changed. I am very accepting of alcohol at this point. I would not say that i’m an alcoholic yet (one night out of a month can’t be alcoholic yet can it?) and i doubt i’ll ever be, but i’ve succomed the peer pressure of my environment and found it easier to order a drink then to explain why it is i do not drink.

If i had some lofty intitiative or statement and claim about the activity as a whole, then i’d stick to my conclusion re: alcohol. As it has been i have found no real change occur with the consumption of alcohol. As soon as i recognize a change in state i may back off of said consumption. As it is I enjoy the environment and activities involving alcohol.

You see the problem was, i was arguing for a completly sober and concious reality. I have yet to have my conscious altered by alcohol though. I feel anesthetized, but not altered. And So i’ve adopted the cowards commital. Does it make me weak?

So back to the story at hand. So the alocholic consumption begins now. I begin light with hard lemonade. The lemonade was weak, but it was to bypass the fact that my game had been out the window. Movement on the table in all directions, but no balls falling. I sucked. Only thing that made me feel better, was i was winning. Somehow.

The place is very laid back, and the crowd is incredibly mixed. Two women in the back playing ping pong, i glance over to see them laugh and begin kissing. Averting my eyes i notice the game is still going shitty. So i decide that this is going to be the last game. But the game lasts long. The female couple move from the ping pong table to an empty pool table. One of them walks up to me and Trey (a friend, not my brother confusing yet? wait for it…) stating that all the pool cues are light. I say yeah took me a bit to find this one, and she takes it from me. I shrug and trey says, “you need to lose the nice guy mentality, you will just get burned. You can’t hold the door open for all the women in this city, you’ll never get anywhere.”

I comment that i was tired of my suck-ass pool skills, it was a disgrace for my past, and bring up the offer to get something to eat. Outside the hall we begin moving along the labertine streets. Bleeker….. I’m lost at this point… No idea where i came from. Trey walks into a room with no discernable label.

“all the good places aren’t labeled on the outside,” The hallway curves to the left and behind a black curtain is the jam packed room with a roaring fireplace. The noise is unreal and constant. We are seated right next to the fireplace. I’m sweltering.

Angel’s Share: After meeting up with the girl we head to this packed little japanese restaurant and head to this unmarked door again. Pushing it open we find a quaint little japanese alcohol bar. Very adult like atmosphere and exceptionally classy clientele. After we are seated, i order the best screwdriver i’ve ever had in my life.

poison of choice btw…. posion? honestly… so dramatic…. I’m actually russian it appears. This joke seems to have been used before i think.

Moving on, we talk about a thousand different topics. I don’t really talk. I offer comments every so often, but i’m not an exceptionally verbose individual. I have topics of interest that are not considered “light” discourse. So the night progresses and the young woman mentions that she knows the voice of Gambit from the X-men cartoon. He prides himself on getting that accent correct. she proceeds to instruct me on how he went about finding the “source” of that accent.

I stopped her and told her that every geek i knew in Louisiana hated the way he butchered the new orleans accent. She laughed. I said but please don’t destroy his dream. Let him believe he is acurately portraying the south louisiana gentlemen.

At this point i realize i’m about as uncomfortable as ever, due to the nature of my seat. Apparently the seats were sized for japanese because i’m way to tall for it. I ask if we could get out of here, and we decide to head to the financial district to meet up with a “party” the girl knew of. As we made our way south we cut through china town. The young woman decides that she should invite her amazon friend out with us. We end up going into her home and see this huge loft style apartment. It is very beautiful, if not barren. We head to the irish pub where i listen to incredibly loud music and incredibly a woman drone on about her sexual exploits.

I came to this conclusion. Some people are so lonely that they have no inhibitions regarding their own private life. She was one of these people. She had to have lived in manhattan for at least 5 years and she reminded me of a firefly in the forests of louisiana. Strange eh? I know bear with me. She just continues to blink on and off, regardless the lack of security she creates for herself. In the end she is doing what she can to be recognized. It was highly annoying, because she kept stating some of the most ludicrous things. I think she also was incredibly “into” trey. I’ll be honest, he was at the center of every woman’s attention that night.

In the end he had a woman to go home to, and i’m sure that kept him straight. I cut out early. I was tired of listening to the woman beg for attention. Cult in wiscosin or some such, apparaently she grew up in it. Yeah…….. ok.

So thats the conclusion of my night. I wound my way through the streets toward the path train to get home at 1:45… Mary was asleep and i was still wide awake. I was also amazed at how I was sober.

love this quote… my next post is going to be philosophical, beware. IT is a philosophical rant about identity…

Hello friend… please come in… have a seat.. Can I get you anything? cookie? water? milk?
I know you must have a thousand questions, but please let me begin.
We here at Arglor Enterprises Inc pride ourselves on being on top of situations like yours.
We are proud of our reputation as problem solvers, your virtual swiss army knife for any possible situation.
We understand exactly what it is that you need, and why it is that you need it now.
So it is with this understanding that I offer my condolences for the past and my visions for the future. The future of you that is.
So what do you say? Are you ready to make the commitment?

———————————————————————————————–
You can fight it. Everyone tries, but when you’re bombarded enough your spine begins to break. The muscles seize up and tighten. Your soul all but vanishes from inside. Something shrivels up inside and begins to reek.

In the beginning I was resolute in untucking my shirt. It was instinct. There was the “they” and there was the “I”. Existential crisis averted. As long as I held on to the “I”, there was nothing that couldn’t happen. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Lines are crossed. Statements are said. Conclusions are drawn.

Now I don’t fight as much. My shirt was tucked in a couple days ago as I walked into the house. It struck me as odd. It didn’t even feel uncomfortable.

Hmm.

Go see this website video. It left me in awe.

Be warned. It is 36 minutes long.

Will Wright is designing that game… He designed The Sims.

Process driven animation.

I met a fellow philosopher at LCBF. He studied philosophy at the university of texas and apparently focused his studies on Immanuel Kant. Kant is a very distinguished philosopher, as i’m sure most of you know. He was also religious. All the same, I’m very pleased that there is someone around here that will laugh when i make sly philosophical jokes about existence and knowledge.

I make a lot of those. No one usually gets them.

It isn’t my fault.

I unfortunately post this.

Jihari Window

Yes i’d like to know what attributes you find are most indicitive of me. This is the me-ness that you all think I am. Summed up in five-six words. make it count.

I know that the outrage over the cartoons has left the media by now, but guess what. I turn over my farside cartoon calender entitled Non-Sequitur and what do i see? A cartoon stating the following:
The boosler Report
A review of stupid events by our news correspondent elayne Boosler.
Today’s lead story, Women join the ranks of suicide bombers.

[Below a picture of Heaven’s gate with people streaming in, and a particular young woman who is covered with what can only be described as soot from an explosion calmly explains,]
“To tell the truth, it was the only way out of the house without a chaperon…”

Not so funny, but politically speaking a bombshell i would assume. No muhammad of course. The danish cartoons seemed fairly weak comparatively.

To the woman i love. She is the reason for this journal by the way. She is the reason for a lot of things.

I try and tell her how much i love her, but I’m not sure she fully understands.

I try and post some form of acknowledgment to her. I’ve been thinking of her all day. We really have been through a lot. How many people can say they survived through a year’s long-distance relationship.

So i guess the most important thing this post should be, is an acknowledge of my Love. The best way i can do that is record our past. The memories of our past recorded in typeface.

Of course, i will not do it online. I am a man who shares a lot with the world, but these memories are for me and Mary only. I recommend doing this yourself. There is a failure with human memory.

Things fade. Even the moments that when at the time felt like they were a pocket of infinity.

I love you Mary.

Cheney accidentally shoots hunting companion

funny stuff…. i can hear jon stuart now… “The robot’s malfunctioning… THE ROBOT’S MALFUNCTIONING! Call the national guard…. OH NO THE NATIONAL GUARD IS IRAQ! we are DOOMED!”

Which is sad really. The truth is that when i attempt to write at work, my mind is constantly focusing on other aspects of the room. Not to mention i work with like six other people in the same office within their own cubicles.

Well, i’m talking about work right now because tonight i just went to a “gathering” of attorney’s at a bar that also happened to have a pool table.

I need to work on my pool game btw. I’ve become embarrasing. The table was embarrasing, but i made way to many rookie mistakes. anyway, back to the night as a whole.

Mary came with me, so it was really kewl. I did in fact drink, to bypass any potential questions that could cause problems. I’ve given in. I have never been confrontational. Evasive would be the best description. I attempt to evade every possible confrontation, it is why i like chess. Evade, then strike. AND i digress again.

I had a drink. The night was very festive and exciting. I’m really wiped out. It is sad that we were celebrating the success of an attorney. That is, his success in getting a better job at a better lawfirm. Strange eh? Yeah and the firm paid for everything. The tab had to be enormous.

Mary did in fact have a good time, I was very pleased. Before i was concerned that she would feel out of place, but by ten minutes into the party she had warmed up very nicely to everyone and was mingling herself with everyone. I forced her to this thing on date night of all nights. I was concerned about ruining date night with it, but i see it did not.

I was a little concerned about being new. I’ve been there for maybe a week, but it made for very entertaining conversation. One of the patners at the lawfirm joked that give me a few more weeks and i’d be paralegal number 1. The funny thing is, he doesn’t know how true he could be. I will just say this, the attorney who is leaving was the favorite attorney of the current number 1 paralegal. Right, so i give him maybe 5-6 weeks of job searching.

Honestly though, I was treated very well. It was nice. After being practically spit upon by so many secretaries, it was nice that the attorney’s treated me with serious respect. Until i scratched on the eight ball.

Did i mention my pool skillz need help. Honestly i was doing well, but then i fucked up. Pisses me off.

All the same, I had fun and i believe Mary had fun. I AM SO WIPED out. need to sleep. I actually feel excited to work on the cases again monday.

I also saw Stacy, one of my bosses smashed. OH my god. she was sooo fucking smashed.

It was hilarious.

Man they had this party setup for tonight in which the whole firm would get together, but they changed venue and time. Instead of meeting tonight they choose to meet tomorrow night. unf that means i cannot attend.

Sad news.

I wasn’t that excited about going to the party anyways. What i am excited about is the fact that i can go to various trials and see my hard work and effort in action. I’m pumped for that. Can you believe it?

Oh well it isn’t for a long time though, ah well.

I’m kind of tired. So i may not be clearly stating myself at this point.