One good idea and some other detritus

Inauspicious
My head feels full of cotton and I haven’t slept right in awhile. Midnight and 2am are inauspicious times to consistently wake up. Actually “inauspicious” is really just a fancy word for “it sucks”. Maybe it would be fun to compile a list of euphemisms for “sucks”.

Classy euphemisms for “it sucks”
Inauspicious
Sub-par
Pedestrian
Underwhelming
Development need
[comment with more, my creativity is shot]

Backlash
There are various principles at work in the world, gravity, conservation of mass, karma, etc. Though different in their natures, all have acted to form the world as it is currently. And as a result, they all become imbued with the property of restoring equilibrium. Any attempt to change the world from its current state is a de facto challenge to the principle that established the world as it was before your attempt. To anthropomorphize a bit, whenever you try to do anything constructive in the world, you are basically pissing off the cosmos. Climb a ladder, and you are storing up energy for your eventual fall. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We have to get this principle and prepare for it. The harder you push, the greater the resistance. Plan for it. Dig in, or plan a deflection, or temporarily disappear. But don’t just stand there like a chump admiring your achievement, you will get taken down every time.

“You have to feel it to heal it”
I started going to counseling last week, finally got too worn down from being an imminent headcase. A lot of damage never really got resolved, and the cumulative impacts were running me into the ground. Interestingly, counseling philosophy runs perfectly counter to what I had been saying last week about flushing all personal history. Right now, my task is to write down pretty much every crappy thing that has ever happened, what I felt/feel about it, and how I think it might have impacted my future behavior. I told him, “who wants to relive all those things? Wouldn’t it be better just to live in the present and start life fresh?”. His response was “Answer to the first question is ‘no one’. As for the second, how’s that been working for you?”. Touché.

A really good idea
This is the best idea I’ve had in awhile… I want to start a product review-style site where users can write in with their personal reviews of different philosophies/ideologies/”religious” beliefs that they have experimented with. It is fraught with peril, as there is huge potential (and built in incentive) for people to use it to evangelize rather than just report on their experience. The key would be to keep the entries narrow enough that no one entry represented a full world view. I’m imagining things like “Solipsism – Avg. Rating 1.8 stars, 18 reviews”. “While solipsism is initially very skeptically sexy, I soon got bored after realizing that the whole thing was useless for giving guidance in how to live a good life”. Or “Pre-destination – Gave me great reassurance and courage to live nobly” or “ultimately made me lazy and less interested in reaching out to others”. I really want to make this happen. Letme know if you are interested in contributing; there will be a big need for thinkers/authors to help define the initial list of views to be rated, as well as people on the technical side to get things set up, and huge need for help around promotion, how to get the word out to the proper audience that would be open minded and participate as intended vs. spewing dogmatic crap everywhere.

Sweet Karma
I, for one, welcome this turn of events that finds republicans in the unfamiliar position of staging protest rallies and fearing authoritarian government overreach. I don’t especially agree with the democrats, and purposely avoid thinking too much about the bailouts and overall mismanagement of what is going on in order to avoid getting an ulcer. But I take special delight in seeing the shoe on the other foot finally, and perhaps the “conservatives” will learn from this and actually become conservative again. The idealist in me says “hey at least they are trying to fix things”, but the cynic knows that if you don’t understand the situation and have a clear route to fix it, you might as well save the money and do nothing because you are going to end up at the same place in the end. But does anyone understand what the “tea party” protests were specifically protesting? Tax rates didn’t change, so surely it wasn’t that… if it’s the bailout, well Bush went the same direction. If what we are seeing is truly a break away from BOTH parties, then I am all for it. Anyway, my favorite thing is how people are getting outraged over the report about the possibility of right-wing extremism. Timothy McVeigh anyone? Michigan Militia? Armed Secessionists? Actually I don’t mind secessionists so long as they pursue it as a proper vote among the people. States rights, amirite?

Banks and Bailout
Speaking of Congress et al., I must voice my displeasure at the way everything has been bungled re: the banks. You can find an array of details online if interested, but I focus on the lack of focus from the start. At the beginning, regulators said “here is this money (by the way you HAVE to take it so no one in particular looks bad). Um, we don’t really care what you do with it, you just have to take it”. Then congress comes around later and is outraged(!) at the banks for not being able to give an accounting for exactly how the money was used. Imagine I gave you $100 a couple months ago, and you put it into your checking account. Would you be able to tell me exactly how you spent my $100 today? Second point: a big part of the reason banks were forced to take money was so that their capital ratios would once again fall within “safe” benchmarks, as losses related to bad mortgages and derivatives strained reserves to very low levels. Fair enough. But then Congress gets in a huff because the banks didn’t use the money to make more loans to consumers! YOU CAN’T USE THE SAME MONEY AS BOTH CAPITAL RESERVES AND LOAN IT OUT AT THE SAME TIME!!!! As a final kick, there is outrage that banks (which had been losing money consistently until this quarter) have jacked up various fees… IF YOU ARE UPSET THAT THE BANK IS LOSING MONEY, DO NOT GET PISSED WHEN THEY TAKE STEPS TO RAISE ADDITIONAL REVENUES!! Fucking idiots. This is not sophisticated stuff; if you are going to give out billions of dollars you better have at least a passable understanding of what the money is supposed to be used for. My respect for our representatives as a whole couldn’t get much lower.

Health Care
Since I am already ranting… it seems clear to me that the answer to the problem of health care costs lies along the road of “socialized medicine”. Doubtless the thought sends many into convulsions, but look at the return-on-investment we are getting here vs. the socialized systems in other industrialized countries. Unless you believe health costs can continue to rise indefinitely without undermining our society, something needs to be done. And I haven’t heard a single even slightly compelling thing come from the conservative side on this. As a result, most of the talk on health care reform focuses on the government’s role, and how that power can be leveraged to reduce costs. But now the counter argument I’m hearing is that if the government gets involved, the private insurers won’t be able to compete because the .gov can command lower prices than the privates are able to achieve. But isn’t that EXACTLY the point?!? There is now a movement afoot to require the government to pay higher rates so that the private insurers can continue to make their profit and remain competitive. This is going to help reduce costs how, exactly? If you are going to get in, go all in and reap the benefits along with the costs. Or stay out and leave things to the market, if that is the kind of country we collectively want to live in. But this half-assed stuff is just going to get us all the costs with none of the benefits.

Susan Boyle and the Chocolate Rain
By now everyone has probably seen the video of Susan Boyle, the unlikely heroine of Britain’s Got Talent. If you haven’t, an improbable looking woman comes out to sing, and the audience is snickering and expecting a disastrous novelty act (but she sings really well and blows everyone away). It’s not my intent to take anything away from the woman, but the collective reaction is strangely out of proportion and surely reveals something about our collective character. Are we REALLY that taken with her singing? I will admit she clearly has talent (fitting the show), but her style is not pop-mainstream, and I doubt many of the people who call themselves her “fans” listen to that type of music on a regular basis. So if it isn’t the music itself we enjoy, what explains the fascination? I maintain that it is the contrast. We are fascinated, because THAT sound shouldn’t have come out of THAT woman. When I first saw the video, I thought it was a gag and she was lip syncing. You know when else I had that same reaction? The first time I ever saw “Chocolate Rain” by Tay Zonday. Who will ultimately prove more popular? Why is Tay relegated to meme status while Susan becomes a sensation? Or perhaps the meme will outlive 15 minutes of more conventional fame? I don’t know what to do with this, but I sense it is highly significant.

Miscellaneous
Both the “samurai sword” and machete continue to be disrespected in our media. I now own a machete, but am at a loss as to how to bring more respect to the blade. Fabric band-aids for the ultimate win over plastic; the bands on my heels have stayed on since sunday, through 3 separate showers. The whole “Miss California” thing is idiotic. Perez Hilton is a douche (and I don’t use that word lightly). I don’t eat onions any more. Some days I feel really lonely. Some days I feel like I’m doing pretty damn good, all things considered.

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