it hurts my eyes...

i commiserate (2 m 1 s, or 1 m 2s?) with lilho. I have a stupid sinus thing now too. For like a week and half now. It's disgusting. Who knew I could produce a gallon of assorted sputum per day? I think this is the first time for me having one (though my memory is admittedly less than keen in regards to these sorts of details). Empathy abounds. Please take and share.

sidenote: quote from war secretary John Calhoun to president Monroe around 1819, speaking to the Cherokee delegation: "You see the Great Spirit has made our form of society stronger than yours, and you must submit to adopt ours if you wish to be happy by pleasing him." So, haters of GW should realize that he is nothing new, we've been this way all along. Let's all just get with the program, eh?

Once again Israel has used missiles to kill in broad daylight. Yesterday they assassinated Sheik Yassin, leader of the militant Palestinian separatist group Hamas. There are a couple points worth mentioning. Frist off, assassination is a dangerous game to play. It sets a precedent that killing is okay on the battlefield or off, and yes the terrorists make no such discriminations, but is it a good idea for a modern army to sink to these levels? As Robert Fisk points out (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5191), maybe George and Tony have nothing to worry about, but what of all our envoys and ambassadors, has Israel made them potential targets? Second, there is the imagery. A frail old man in a wheelchair is blasted out of existence by Israeli missiles fired from a warplane. To use Steve Weissman's words (http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/032404A.shtml) the David is slain by the massive Goliath. And image matters. Like those against the Iraq war keep saying, the more you kill civilians, the more anger there is, and anger breeds terror. It is also worth noting that Yassin was the spiritual leader of Hamas, he is a Muslim cleric, and his killing will reverberate not just through Hamas members, but through a wide swathe of Muslems in general. Obviously the point is that if you use terrorist methods for your own goals you are only going to escalate the violence, create new terrorist troops, and find no support in the international community (US excluded, of course).

trisha got a new hat
trisha got a new hat
oh come angel band
come and around me stand
trisha got a new hat
trisha got a new hat
oh bear me around on your slowly rings
to my immortal home

I am making yet another hat. The first holly graciously took. I am quite sure she will never be seen in public in it. Yeah, that bad. Well the second was much better. It was cream and scarlet and is now atop trisha's beautious kopf. One of her friends actually liked it so much he asked me to make him one. I should start a business. Unfortuantely I hate capitalism and so will just make it for free. Where is my money-mind? I am making a hat now, and depending on how much I like it, it will become mine or his. Holly deserves a respectable hat sometime too. Though I fear if I make her a nice one she will really never wear the other one. It is colored like a bumblebee. It is however gigantic, perhaps suitable for someone with dreadlocks.

sidenote: Sofar two people have died from watching Christ die. Yes, the profit, Mel Gibson, apparently has the power to strike people dead. The Passion (of the Christ) just gave a Brazilian pastor a heart attack , but the killing was not only levied against third world countries. A Witchitawan (KS) also was poleaxed into heaven by the "climactic crucifixtion scene." I guess they are technically martyrs now and are guaranteed a seat at the right hand of god and so on. Maybe I'll take paul's suggestion and render a scene of Christ's last moments upon the cross with crochet (maybe I'll martyr a few buggers too). Halleluja!

sidenote(squared): so we learn that the final frog is yet alive. There were three who we were convinced were reduced to two as we hadn't seen more than that at once. Today I come home to all three frolicking frogs. They are little water frogs in a tank with the massive queen angel and her two sentry rainbow fish. The pleckos lie in squallor at the bottom, living off the refuse of the court. The newly arrived frogs simply alight on what they will: a stony outcrop, outthrust leaf, plecko's head, whatever. I think they are more flight or fright. They have two responses to new events: swim rapidly away or freeze stiff in apprehension. They will, in midstroke, become absolutely still and float in any random position for minutes at a time. I suppose that, much like dears, in their natural habitat there are large predators whose hunting is motion oriented. So I refine the langauge: fight/flight/fright. So many ights, isn't it wonderful?

So paulnotpaul is doing this film with translations of some stragne expressions (taken from a novelty calender) in three languages. It started with the French and then an English translation and he asked me to tranlate to German. Most of them were simple enough, but a few idiomatic expressions were not familiar to me. I used the great German online reference dictionary LEO to help me. Here they are:

En) Go jump in a lake !!!!
Fr) va voir dehors si j’y suis--Lit: go look outside and see if I am there!!
Ger) Geh dahin, wo der Pfeffer wächst!--Lit: go where the pepper grows

En) He is going to learn the hard way!
Fr) Il va l’apprendre a rude ecole!--Lit: he is going to learn at rude school!!
Ger) Er muss Lehrgeld bezahlen!--Lit: He must pay with an aprrenticeship premium!!

go to the where the pepper grows and see if i am there and while you're at it jump in an oh-so-spicy lake. and go learn yourself some hard shit at the rude school and pay me an apprentice and shit. yeah!

I've mastered the melancholy smile. I am drunk on my own wistful thoughts. I wist and I wist. How can my lust for melancholy turn the corners of my mouth up. A wistful curl. I am listening to Crazy by Aerosmith. It's a great song, and I remember the video. It was idling through my head earlier. I downloaded it. Now it's reality. It's a wistful kinda song, appropriate for my mood. I am really good at being alive, but not so hot at living. Well sometimes. Who's to define anyways? I am bundling up to go outside. Walks are nice if you're cozy inside. I indulge myself too much on introspect. It gets to be a habit, and it's not unpleasant. It's weird to be lonely inside but happy anyways. We teach ourselves the craziest things. How we twist our inborn feelings, morphing them through thought. Again, my lip curls, a wistful melancholy.

Funny that my last journal says "end the wat." Fucking wats, hate'em! The protest was. My view is that it is just a matter of being there. I am not quite ready to go smashing police car windows and breaking the jail open, which would be something really radical and perhaps worthwhile, but the least I can do is stand in the rain so people watching the 5 o'clock news will remember once again that at least a few people question. So stickboy's right, it was lame. We all milled around. Some people had signs. It was strange at the beginning where everyone was in a ring around the grass, not stepping on it (though we did in pitiful defiance). They were singing give peace a chance, a favorite of mine <ahem>. But as long as none of us is going to do anything really revolutionary...

I am also of the opinion that it's gone too far. That people are just too damn ignorant, too wrapped up in American Idol and McDonalds to ever give a fuck. And I call them the people because they are the majority (and I the screaming nut minority, much less a representation of america). The next big change just might come about due to a meteor or tidal wave. It could be something much more mundane though, a stock market crash, massive unemployment (we're getting close on both of these). Then it wouldn't be a matter of us leftists making things change, but more a matter of us defining in what direction the change goes. Unfortunately the armed Christian militias are way ahead of us in preparing for these times. I wish I were a prophet or a saint. No not really. That's a lot of pressure. I guess to me, I go to the protest because it's the fucking least my lazy cynical ass can do. I don't do anything else besides write on this dumb useless (in a larger sense, though it gives me much personal satisfaction) journal. And if it's only so the fatfucks sitting on the couch in Cheektowaga see a 20 second news blurb then so be it. I didn't have anything better to do.

Tomorrow 3/20/2004, marking the aniversarry of the war with Iraq, a protest is being held worldwide against our unilateral use of force and preventive war. The intent is to have as many, if not more, people on the streets as the massive prewar rally that united millions across the world in defiance of our current administrations agenda.

From WNY Peace Center: Gather at 12 noon at Lafayette Sq., march to FBI, Federal Bldg, INS to defend our Lackawanna neighbors, demand end to war and occupations in Iraq and Palestine, march to Police HQ to protest police brutality, march to Columbus Clinic to call for money for people's needs, not war; more plans to be announced!

I am a weirdo looker. Fuzzy pits too!

I love science. I am a fan of the logical processes. I think we should explore the world and find out as much as possible. I do however feel that there are things that we study that are a result of our strange lifestyles. I recently read of two studies with the purpose of saving us from ourselves. In the first, researchers have succesfully altered the genome of mice so that they produce muscle and fat combinations that possess up to 50% more omega3-fatty acids. They did this by splicing genes of a worm into the host genomes. This type of fat is much healthier for humans to consume. The eventual goal of the task is to make cows and pigs and such that are better for us to eat. My question: why do we need to eat them at all or so much, if they're so bad for us? The other study has to do with finding cancer cells using quantum physcis. Again, a good goal, but it seems that we're looking to cure symptoms instead of rooting out the primary cause (anyone feeling shreds of our recent war-syndrome?). Why can't we just learn to eat better and live healthier so that we don't get these maladies? Treating symptoms is good, but erradicating root causes is much more important. Our efforts should focus on making the world a healthier place and not on treating the symptoms solely derived from our current industrial atmoshere.

Paul told me the other day that he works so hard so that one day he can work for himself. Holly just posted about how it's so horrible selling yourself all the time. And I agree. It is horrible. It's strange that we don't even realize it anymore. That everytime you go into work you are trading your life away for some goal not of your own making. We are wasting our life essences on projects whose purposes have little to do with our own lives. With such a restricted timespan (80, 50, 30 years or however long before we kick the proverbial bucket) it is sad that we spend hours upon hours upon hours slaving for someone else. For purposes so far from living. Shouldn't each moment be spent living; phisically, mentally or spiritually. Yet we give it all away. It's gotten to the point where half of us go to school for years and years just to learn how to sell ourselves better, learning "skills" that have value only for others. Of course some of us have more "worthwhile" jobs. Jobs that in some way benefit society. Even so there is always some controlling force, assigning, distibuting, etc. Fucking capital. Paul just told me I don't know what I'm talking about cause I've never had a job I liked. Maybe. I don't think that alters the underlying point. I would for example have a really great time if I immersed myself in language, or physics, or genetics, which I do. I'm just not paid for it, so somehow though I know tons about these subjects I don't sell my knowledge or expertise or whatever. I'm doing it solely for myself. Enriching myself with things that interest me. That's my point. That we spend so much of our time working for others that sometimes we lose track of what really matters: living. The intellectual pursuits, musical matters, riding bikes, learning your own morality. These things are how I guage my success. Not by how much money I make, how fancy my car is, how many big words I know, but by the fact that I enjoy living. The capital market is so intent on buying our services and selling us crap that it distorts what living is about. Now maybe this sounds like I just don't want to work, but that's not it. I am perfectly content making a living, surviving. It's a part of the whole. We're just so disconnected from it all. I make decent money doing some totally abstract (in terms of personal survival) job that gets me by. But it doesn't give me any personal form of satisfaction. That's what I want and I am pretty sure I know what things I can do that give me that feeling. It is just hard to express these urges in our modern world. I guess I want my farm. Give me the goats. I am tired of selling myself.

Sidenote: There is this new reality show on Fox that Paul and Matt saw the other day where women get madeover through the series. It is so fucked up it makes me want to puke. They pick "normal" looking women and give them the chance to "turn there lives around" quote from the website . This sacred once in a lifetime chance to get what all of them have wanted their entire lives: to finally be beautiful. They don't get to look in a mirror the whole time. To see how they're being massacred. So discusting. I always wonder which model the particular surgoen has in mind when he begins sculpting the face. The nose of Naomi? The chin of Jennifer Aniston? Sophia's arching brows? Maybe Angelina Jolie's pouty lips? To me it's all Michael Jackson. Gross gross gross. If we're gonna waste our time on "enhancements" we should at least get double jointed knees for hyper-springing or eagle-eyes for ultra-seeing, not fucking Elle's ears. But, have fun girls, I hope you finally get your dreams fulfilled. And a double-long-enhanced-schlong to boot.