So what does a boy do who doesn't want to become a chubby American? Per Maria's (Paul's mommie) suggestion, I bought myself a pair of $6 clearance rollerblades. I remember really liking skating when I was a kid and have enjoyed my chance excursions upon the ice atop metal blades. Tonight was my second trip. The first time I really just hated them; they seemed like a bother compared to bikes, especially considering the sad state of Buffalo roads. Tonight I decided to give them another run. I saw some girls waft by my house with apparent ease and thought that it must be easier than my first attempt led me to believe. So I go out tonight intent on a beautiful rollertastic evening. I start by going on the street and make my way towards the park. It's much easier than the last time and I get into a sort of rythym. I go to the park and back to the circle on Chapin/Bidwell and decide to make my way back home.
Rollerblading is akin to running in strenuousness, and by this point I am tired. I get to the end of the long street only to realize that I've somehow looped back on myself and am at the park again. "OK," I think, let's really go home now. I am very tired and my feet are dragging a bit, I try to focus on my stroke but can only keep it up for a minute or two at a time. I finally get to the end of St. James and am making my way up Elmwood when a car goes by and I hear faintly, "that dude's on rollerblades, hahaha." I think oh shit someone wants to mess with a dude struggling on rollerblades, and sure enough, I hear the squeal of tires and the car is turning around in my direction again.
I reflect now on my situation, I am very tired and wearing devices which, if I attempted something so foolhardy as defending myself in,would surely result in me landing on the pavement with a sore ass and a menacing attacker to boot. So they pull up in front of me and ask me, "where's the fag on rollerblades going?" I, very politely of course, hastiliy cross the street and strain towards the, now visible, home-base, and hope that they're just guys fucking with the rollerblader and not guys wanting to kill the rollerblader. Needles to say, as I am currently typing and not dying on Elmwood, I made it back, but still the point remains that why in the fuck do you need to fuck with the harmless rollerblader, who is having a hard enough time keeping his own ass upright and has no intentions of hurting anyone besides himself? Yes, I look like a dork with them on, but does that give someone the right to fuck with me? At least I feel a little thinner, running (or rollerblading) from sure-death beats the hell out of Atkins!

but, i think, we are the progenitor. Arundhati Roy has a new post on Common Dreams about the new India-Patriot Act called POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), and the fleeting possibilty that something new may come about through elections. Much like our year here it is an election year in India, and as you may have heard, the Congress (a left-of-center group perhaps comparable to our Democrats) has gained power under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi (daughter of Indira). Unfortunately, like here, the Congress has little new to offer: they have little to say about the unchallenged POTA act which has condemned thousands to toture and death. Would John Kerry repeal the Patriot act? A good question, since he won't say one way or the other. I doubt he would try to implement the next-wave Patriot-act two, but as far as curtailing or ending Patriot itself, I have little hope. Take what you will from the plight of India, what I take is that they are in shit as deep as we are, and I think we all need a dose of new-thinking. About government, society, and whether we need larger organizations running our lives, be they govs, corps, or churches. They all fuck around with all of us. It is time we, the people, take control, or perhaps just lose our control. Taking control implies that we want to control our neighbors, but true freedom only happens when you don't need to. Let's all recognize everyone's right to freedom. ANARCHY!!!

without of course the swimming, it is only may you know! Layed on the rocks, gazed at the birds slowly circling with the thermals above the canyons, watched bugs, ate gross subway (i remember now why I haven't eaten there in a couple years), a bunch of kayakers/boaters docked at the rocky beach we were enjoying. They only stayed a moment, and some were nice to look at, but we didn't say one word to them, or vice-versa. Talked about nature and where we fit into it. How many "higher" organisms such as oursleves also show a total disrespect for the rest of nature. Elephants ripping up entire trees to get the choice tender leafs at the top, big cats scratching furrows into tree bark to show they've been there, locusts swarming entire regions bare of anything remotely edible. Of course, as Paul pointed out, this doesn't give us an excuse to do the same, it just cements us into nature's eternal loop of use or be used. Of course, we are just "high" enough organisms to use ourselves (and everything else) past the point of no return, oh goodie! Staring at the big trees and the rushing water, though, it's hard to imagine how it was all worth it to get to where we are now. Strip malls and cookie-cutter housing developments, what was so wrong with what was there before that we had to go and asphalt it all? Oh humans, what foibles and follies abound in our quest for truth, life, and liberty. Maybe if we stopped asking for answers and just started looking around we would find all that and more right before our eyes.

Cell phone camera plus downshine lamp with upturned face = fun faces for posting. I have a couple I shall interchange for your viewing pleasure. The first is a kinda charcoal rendering, maybe I drew it by hand...maybe. But I could, really. Allen Ginsberg is perhaps intent that I memorize his poems. His sonorous voice drones through my head. I know where they go, to death; though I weep for this antiquity, and herald the millennium... Hmmm... think of charcoal terry head reciting Ginsburg ad infinitum.... AAAAHHHHH

Also! Click on my userpic to the right-it has a fun/very strange thing to listen to. Yay for fun with computer night.

Hit the matinee today. 6 bucks now! Ooohh Lordy! I remember when it was less than 6 bucks to hit the regular times. Anyways, we (that's matthew and I) hit the theaters to see Van Hellsing. It seemed cool, and we had already seen an anime entitled Hellsing which was really really good, so we thought that this would also be appealing. Somehow it just wasn't so. It had really neat special effects and cool monsters and stuff, but they didn't manage to bring it all together. They had too much to work with. They tried to incorporate 5 or 6 various vinatage monster epics into one 2-hour movie. Unfortunately their stitches were all too apparent. There was no overriding theme to make it all mesh. It was as if the "story" was written after they decided to use this, that, and the other monster story. So forgo the theater and wait till it comes out on DVD and rent it. My advice at least.

Thanks stickboy and robin for trying to help me with my precise accuracy. I do feel I have a better grasp now. And a non-dictionary grasp which makes it more real, more down-low if you know what I mean.

this is a test of the picture email system

Read Cold Turkey by Kurt Vonnegut .

some excerpts (but really just read it all, it's purty darn good):

"Dr. Vonnegut <referring to his son Mark, author of Eden Express [inlink]terry,192[/inlink]> said this to his doddering old dad: 'Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.' So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one."

"My government's got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals."

I'm thinking about accuracy and precision. Trying to find the defintions for myself without looking them up and I'm not sure I'm geting it right. Precision is maybe defining your objective to within a very small limit. And accuracy relates to the ability to get it right many times over? I don't know if that's right though. It's the best I can think of. If anyone has a better explanation that would be cool. I'm trying to resist getting it from the dictionary. I don't know why, but sometimes I have an aversion to my words being so accurately (ahem) defined. I like to come up with my own approximations. I think it comes from me learning to read really early. I think I read full novels in like 1st maximum 2nd grade (though Matt says this is very unlikely) and so I became used to reading words that I really didn't know specific definitions for. So I would just decide what they meant after I had read them enough. Sometimes I have been very wrong. Just like last year I had heard the word bellicose many times and my defintion of "something about being good" didn't pan out, and I finally looked it up and it means "warlike". Who wudda thunk it? Usually anything with 'bel' means good, beneficient, etc. I guess the double 'l' really changes things. So maybe I am just egoistic and hate learning things from others and should just read the fucking dictionary. This reading words without hearing and/or looking them up also means I am pretty bad at pronouncing some big words. I remember hearing the word inevitable in 7th grade and never connecting it with the written word which I had (this time correctly defined) read many many times, but always pronounced in-vite-able in my head. Whatever, I still don't like dictionaries too much. Foreign language ones are okay I guess. What the fuck? So anyway, if you wanna help me with accuracy and precision please do so, just don't give me the dictionary definitions. I wanna hear what you think.

i have just played strip poker, maybe for the first time in my life. I have played the game before, but never really to fruition. There are 8 people here. We are all naked, except Soyeon, of course. It is an educational experience. Girls are like boys are like girls are like... It is liberating. To see what people are without their deceptive clothes. And the verdict is that we are all the same. No matter me or you or them or whatever. When the clothes are gone you can't be anything but yourself. We see who is big and who is regular...who has a butt and who not. And the question is...does it matter? People are people and what does it mean? Genitals mean so much less when exposed. They're just parts. What do they matter? And so we grow closer hopefully. The baring of our bodies facilitates the baring of our souls. It's hard to dissemble when you're beared. I love it. Let's all be naked. I hate the pretensions that come when you can hide your body. We are all the same. Let's face it. We can pretend, but really... What does any of it mean? Get naked. You'll enjoy it. And you'll find you're not as different as you think.

Very fucked up indeed. The law is only aimed at women not men, and makes no consideration for consenting adults. It is punishable from 2-20 years.