I'm perplexed by the people who drive down to the waterfront along the lake and then sit there in their cars. Half of them leave them turned on and some don't even roll down the windows. It's so strange to have the desire to see the beauty of the lake and then not get out of your car to really enjoy it. My theory is that people are so used to enjoying sights through frames (TV-screens, computer monitors, etc.) that they don't understand that there is more than a purely visual sensation to be had. There's the wind through your hair, the cawing of the gulls, the smell of river mush. Yet as I ride by the people sit there, half not even bothering to look out the window, some just asleep. Get out of the freakin car, at least go sit on a bench. Why not try walking or biking there in the first place? I feel sorry for them. I wanna knock on their windows and tell them to get out of their box and enjoy the air.

Isn't life just amazing. I love it so much, and at the same time I am puzzled, by my love and my life. Why? The eternal question. The answer lies in the question. It's not about why it's about living. It's not about ends but means. The process is the only succes you can have. You can't ever reach the end goal, heck that's what religion is all about, reassurance that though you'll never find the end it's still out there. Science, in that respect, is similar, describing things that we perhaps may never witness but whose very theoretical existence drives us on.

Look. There are no answers. At least none that won't lead to many more questions. What are you looking for anyway. Happiness, love, contentment, adventure? The trick is that every moment is filled with all of these, and more! So maybe the goal isn't finding them, but letting them find their fruition in every possibility. Garbage, you say, you've got to have goals, everything isn't equal, there are such things as good and bad. And yes, opinions do matter. But they're so very fleeting, who can have an opinion for more than a while before it starts changing right beneath their meta-fingertips.

People call me capricious, as if that were a bad thing. As if it was a character flaw that my views are constantly in flux. I tarry on ideas and make them my own, and then before I know it they've morphed, as if with a life of their own, into other concepts. Sometimes I have stored in me completely conflicting ideas that I cling to, knowing that somehow they both make sense but that I haven't quite figured out how they coexist. But I abstain from letting them cancel each other out into some distorted average. The clue will come, that tidbit of knowledge or experience that will allow me to glue the tattered peices into the jigsaw puzzle of reality.

The tapestry is complex and writhes beneath my fingers. Sometimes I lose sight of most of it, intently staring at one singular wonder. Other times the pure vastness of it overwhelms me, I can't see the individual threads. I'm caught up in the overwhelming beauty of the whole. The shining wonder of existence, of being, of scale, pattern, and wholeness. What more is there? We live, we think, we make sense of our environment, that's life (with lots of eating/sleeping/fucking/working in between).

So just relax and break a little wind.

-sidenote: [inlink]robin,205[/inlink] biking is the best (and I really do know tons of cool trails), let's go for a ride.

-sidenote2: [inlink]jill,113[/inlink] Ayn Rand definately has a philosophy. Unfortunately it's kind of twisted and fucked up (yet somehow appealing). Go ahead and read her but make sure you've got lots of questions for her supposed answers.

First off, goodbye Bidgette, moving on to fairer pastures. I wish you godspeed and clear skies, with a dash of sparkling blue ocean! Bon Voyage!

Hey MK! [inlink]mk,97[/inlink]

The DaVinci code is pretty good. I try not to read too many bestsellers, cuz they're usually cheesy, but it was worth it, if only for the neat concept. I borrowed it from Maria (paul and mike's mom) and still have it, so if you wanna ask her I'm sure she'd be happy to lend it to you (I think it's been at my house for half a year or so now, so she obviously doesn't miss it much). Snow Falling on Cedars was good too (I read it in 11th grade so it's a bit foggy now). It is a murder-mystery but also involves the detention of Japanese during WWII and is a pretty powerful reminder of the atrocities even we "civilized" people can commit in the name of national security.

Maidencateyes [inlink]maidencateyes,38[/inlink] is right though, that the libraries have all of these books and you can get them for a month and a half at a time. Support the libraries! They're also really good about requests. You just go to their website search the catalog and hit request and you can pick them up from the nearest library. If you haven't already, you just have to get a PIN number to use the service (also available through the website).

I love to sing!

funny link to a "game" about contracts in Iraq:

First the Lackawanna Six and now Steve Kurtz; Buffalo is getting its share of the headlines. It just goes to show that things that affect the whole country can ultimately have severe local effects. Bush used 9/11 and the War on Terror to codify draconian domestic surveillance programs (through passing of the USAPATRIOT Act). And now we're seeing their effects on our doorstep. One of our own members has been intimidated enough that they removed their journal. Whether that was the right thing to do or not (especially considering that just hitting delete doesn't do all that much in the cyberage [inlink]ajay,43[/inlink]) is debatable, but it still sucks that it has gotten so far that such a reaction is even thought of. Beware what you think and for god's sake don't write it down. You just might be a terrorist and not even know it yet! Julie, if you're reading this, good luck over the next trying days/weeks and I'm thinking of you. Hopefully this will all blow over, and it will be just one more reason to hate Bushco.

We went to the Artvoice street festival thing today. Lots of walking (somehow managing to always end up at an empty stage) back and forth. There were tons of vendors this year which I'm not that hot about (though I guess it matches the magazine's ever-diminishing content/advertisent ratio), do we have to have kitsch-for-sale at every possible social gathering. My next party will hopefully be sponsored by someone and will have little booths throughout to catch you up on the latest useless trends in fashion/lawn decor. Kettle corn is delicious, just don't buy the big bag. The gathering last night was fantastic, or at least the parts I can see clearly. Most of my thoughts are fuzzed over with musical aftershock; at one time there was music playing with altered chipmunk voices (played very aptly by paul and chris) and the casio at full strength in the next room. Best(?) moment must've been walking into blasting technoish music to a room full of riverdancing loonies. I thought the floor was gonna cave. I, of course, decided to join in and was promptly elbowed in the eye for my efforts (thanks Keith: but really no hard feelings, doesn't hurt at all today-and we have no downstairs neighbors!). I took it as a sign to toodle-oo.

-sidenote: this is kinda funny
Republican Survivor
link to full-size .swf file without website