Holy Subsistence Agriculture, Batman!

Yes, it's been a long time since my last post.

Like, a year and a half.

I started writing everything on paper. I just didn't see the point of putting random, personal information on the internet. I'm not that into myself.

A few months ago, though, I started a garden. Good for me! Awesome! Hooray! Subsequently, I have found that there is a dearth of information related to my very specific question about whether certain things are going to grow or not, or how crazy I am to plant tomatoes in mid-winter. Most of the good answers came from people's personal gardening blogs, so I'm reconstituting this blog with the intent of tracking my garden's progress; maybe it will help someone else with their little slice of Eden.

Why garden, you might ask? It all started when I when to a simulcast global screening of a global warming movie, "The Age of Stupid." The docu-drama is set in an increasingly plausible future where humans fucked up and pissed the planet off and now it has killed most of us off like a bad roach infection. It looks back and says, "yep, we were pretty dumb not to do anything when we had the chance." The creators of the film achieved their goal of making me want to do something about it, but probably not in the way they expected. I'm sure they were hoping to galvanize people into writing their senators in preparation for the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks. I knew that wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to invest in something more practical: the ability to grow my own food. If a man-made apocalypse is coming, then grocery stores are going to be obsolete. I'm going to learn how to feed myself from the earth. Of course, if temperatures rise, it's going to be pretty hard to grow anything anyway. But in the meantime, it lowers my environmental impact and gives me a skill set that will be way more practical than say, banking or real estate.

Long story short, I found out about intensive gardening, especially a method called Square Foot Gardening. I made a bunch of wooden planters and lined the patio with rail planters. I'm growing flowers in the rail planters and vegetables in the wooden planters. On the lower patio I've got a couple of fruit trees (lemon and orange) as well as the beginning of a potted herb garden. I'll post a summary of my progress so far when I have pictures.

Obama is a traitor. It makes me howl.

That's right people, now that Obama has the democratic nomination in the bag, he's selling out his base faster than you can say "lobbyist." Turns out he's looking to scoop up some potential McCain supporters by backing the FISA legislation, a surveillance bill linked to the warrentless (and illegal) wiretapping of American's cell phones un the Bush administration. Read more here. Of course, Obama had great, seemingly reasonable responses to his critic's suggestion that he was just playing the political game with America's freedoms--available here--but I don't buy it. It's all very well and good to say that a bill such as this one would be carefully monitored and only implemented during times of crisis, but it all too easy for "times of crisis" to be interpreted all too liberally when a president deems it fit. His talk is as wholesome as apple pie, but the fruits he's baking with are more bitter than he lets on. Watch this one--he may just be a great sweet talker.

I read Ginsburg's "Howl" the other day. It was fantastic. Rare are the times poetry is so vivid and profound; I encourage you to read it now:



I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other
skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
scripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat
and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-
stantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-
therapy occupational therapy pingpong &
amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the
East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-
mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-
nished room emptied down to the last piece of
mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that
imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of
hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of
time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
ing plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intel-
ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand
years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about
us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De-
spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Barack the Mic

In a friend's blog, I remeber warning her that although Barack Obama is black, she cannot count on him to represent black interests when he gets into the White House, given that special interest lobbyists don't care what color you are. That said, Barack does appear sincere in the recent speech he gave considering the latest stupid controversy about some scary thing his black pastor said. He wasn't my first choice when the democratic caucus began, but as it becomes increasingly more likely it will be him versus McCain, it's nice to know that besides not continuing the ush legacy, there is some other merit to his name. Watch the video below, and tell me if you agree with me:

Flow of Consciousness 1.0

So I read that some French Surrealists have created a great method for creating subversive, yet beautiful, art, by simply the first thing that comes to mind, by simply typing the first thing that comes to mind. I find this idea very interesting and a good way to explore one's self, to uncover what the logical mind buries below. I also intend to make these kinds of entries while I am at least slightly intoxicated, as I am in the present moment, as alcohol tends to impair judgment, allowing for freedom and creativity in expression instead of my typical monotonous rule of reason, as tends to be dominant in my mind, allowing for later discernment of underlying things I had no awareness of. Without further ado, a stream of consciousness entry:

I won't let this build up inside of me. She isn't real. Even if I wanter her to be, it wouldn't matter, for those I have a sort of platonic, semi-amorous love, even among males, abound, while those that may stir passions of the soul deeper than simple attraction, those to whom I would submit my constant stubbornness of disposition, those to whom I would risk vulnerability for freedom, remain few, if non existent. And those who I--perhaps--may find myself thinking about as I passing from conscious nightly, are the unattainable. My tarot reminds me that this is a time of penance for past sins, but what has my karmic sin been that I deserve a fate in which my passions must be suffocated for a superficial life when the soul yearns for something more? If only there were some other option between ignorant bliss, knowing paralysis of the senses, and frustrated desires! The worst part is looking into self and seeing the void of ego, the superficiality, the insignificance of that which is sought, intra- and externally, and the resulting depression of the blood that pumps through an inconsequential heart, in vain. Perhaps, to escape from this trap, the necessary is be the fool, forget the wise, do that which needs not doing and in so doing, create a needs to be fulfilled, if only individually, and perhaps through the luck that always seems to accompany these intuitions we call coincidence, create some beauty. Why, then, even when taking the risks, when reaching with emotional tentacles to reach someone precious, do we end up, with despair, when in times of arrogance we shrug off the open hearts of others? It seems in this manner that he dream of playing a C-chord, C G E C E G C with dominant and root 7th to lull our child to sleep, will never become reality, because love will always roam, wandering an endless abyss, while the unsolved heart stands alone.

Two girls, one disgusting waste of time.

Back in the day (read: a couple years ago), I had a friend with a very very gross sense of humor. We both had problems sleeping at night, so we would amuse ourselves by calling each other and browsing sites simultaneously, to see what weird and gross stuff we could find. Because of that I thought I had seen it all, that I had achieved a sort of Buddhist indifference to the obscene. Apparently not. Recently my flatmates had been making inside jokes about something called "Two girls, one cup," which, from what I could ascertain, was a gross internet video. I was horribly mistaken in that assumption; it's probably the grossest internet video I have ever seen. Another friend of mine just blogged about it, saying that she had filmed some of her buds watching it. So, in tribute to her and her sick and twisted pleasures, I present to you, my reaction to the video that is taking the internet video by storm, "Two girls, one cup."

In case you were wondering where this video is, or what's in it, don't. It's one of those creations, like the atom bomb or Frankenstein's monster, that just goes against nature and should be buried forever. I want that 60 seconds of my life back.

Triple Axle

So this Winter break, Rachel invited some of her friends from back in Tucson to Madrid, some of which have been staying at my house. Many, many awesome things have transpired as a result, one of which was John, Rachel, Chris, Maeve and I's trip to the free skating rink Madrid set up on account of it being Christmas and everything. Being the type who is always willing to try something new, I decided to test my skating legs. At first we couldn't go out, because they had to smooth out the ice again; since they didn't have Zambonis so they did it by hand using really wide plows like on the front of a dump truck.

Learning to skate consisted of a lot of little baby steps for me. Mainly those steps were very very awkward, as the majority of the time I did my best impressions of Thriller trying to keep my balance, much to everyone's amusement, myself included. Making things more difficult were the constantly falling children, who would sprawl out on the ice and flail their limbs around in an apparently intentional attempt to brings anyone around them down with them, turning the rink into a veritable obstacle course. Still, I managed to not crush any of them, though I did end up grabbing this one dude's girlfriend when I as about to take a dive, for which I earned a dirty look from the boyfriend and shy smiles from her (it was evident she hadn't skated before either).

My roommate John and I have what can best be termed a love-hate relationship, and unbeknown to me, he played Hockey for about six years. So when I went out there with no skating experience, he was waiting pretty much the whole time, like a shark that smells blood in the water, to see if I would bruise my ass or ego. I managed to do the first, with some hilarious spills reminiscent of the Flinstones run or that Russian kicking dance, but by he end of the day I was getting more aggressive, and really didn't want to leave, despite the occasional flurry of skate-by snowballings John and Chris decided to hurl at me. I got my revenge, though, returning fire in slow motion when they weren't paying attention.

The day definitely made me appreciate hockey more, in which people manage to shoot pieces of rubber into nets while gliding along at high speeds while trying not to get brutally clobbered by other mischievous ice-devils.

Below is a video of me skating for the first time. You can't really tell, but I definitely felt more confident on the ice by the end of the day. I really want to go back and try it again!

Subconscious Thesbian Cookery

I just had the wierdest dream from which I have just awoken. It was actually a series of dreams, but I can only remember pieces. One of them featured me being somehow casted simultaneously by Carey Barney to act as both Othello in the play of the same name (which I have played as before in "Goodnight, Desdemona, Goodmorning Juliet") and aleading role from another Shakespeare play, and I remember being flattered that I was being trusted with two lead roles at a time and also intimidated by the sheer amount of line memorization and character development that would be required. I also found this ironic upon awakening because after watching "Twelfth Night" I came to the conclusion that either I didn't do as good of a job acting in this one as I thought I did or I'm just really good at seeing all of the things I could have done better. Anyways both of the plays were interestingly being done during the same semester, echoing the reality of "Twelfth Night" where I had a really short time to figure out my role. I also remember snippets of me hanging around the theater where we have done the plays with some of the people from "Twelfth Night;" I can't say who exactly but I suspect Patrick Benson, George Stoica, Daniel Snow, Cathy Smith, and most of the people from the SLU female apartment near the school were there, given the second half of the dream.

The other half of the dream was at the SLU apartment near school where Sadie, Eleanor, Myriem, Jelena, and Tadz live, but something was wrong with it, because apparently by opening the door from the kitchen, instead of leading out into the hall it just lead into another apartment where other SLUdents lived. I remember something about a lime pie being in this other student's house, or I was making a lime pie, but in either case I got ballsy and went over into their apartment to get something out that I needed, which I guess I wasn't supposed to do, but I didn't get caught. Then I was in the kitchen, which wasn't set up the way it is in real life, and Ealanor and Danielle Lagman were chilling on the couch from the living room which was now at the end of the room in the kitchen, and I was cooking salad and spaghetti for them. For some reason I wanted to grill the tomatoes and some of the salad leaves, for "texture," and then put them back in the salad. I was going to finish the salad later, and I started boiling the spaghetti, which I managed to finish, but then when I went back to finish the salad, which they had already started eating, I got really weak and fainted. They didn't really notice what had happened and it took a supreme amount of effort to sit up and call to them for help, and then Danielle comes over with the spaghetti, but all of a sudden it has lots of olives and spaghetti sauce in it, neither of which I had put in it! Anyways I ate it and felt better, so I could get up again, and as I got up to finish cooking I also got out of the dream and woke up to realize how bizarre it was to dream about cooking for friends. Now I'm really hungry for spaghetti...

How to REALLY make love, not war...

So I was checking out the archives of good 'ol humpjones.com, when I came across this article. Basically, this European couple has found a way to do what I listed as step two in my blog about liberation of the human animal: take something nasty in society, figure out what drives it, and turn it on its head to make it into something awesome: they created a non-profit company called Fuck For Forest, where they sell porn videos of themselves and donate the proceeds to activist lawyers and indigenous peoples in an attempt to preserve the rain forest. Their basic philosophy is, all of nature derives from the drive to create life, in other words, reproduction, in hippie terms, love. In our society, both nature and human sexuality are repressed and disrespected, and through sexual liberation it is possible to liberate the environment. It's a pretty genius system--it removes the potential for gender abuse through voluntary association, elevates porn to a level of art, encourages people to become more sexually liberated, and protects dwindling portions of the earth that remain wild. If only they had thought of this back in the 60's, all those free-lovin' hippies might have actually achieved some of their aims.

Seeing the Dope Show

So I met this girl name Eleanor at the orientation barbecue a year ago, when she leaned back too far in her chair and fell all over the grass. Hilarity and friend-making ensued. I come to find out about two months ago that she's a big fan of Manson (Marilyn, not Charles). She proceeds to persuade me that seeing him live WOULD, in fact, kick ass, and in the middle of November, we show up to the Palacio de Deportes to see the uber-goth mega-artist superfreak scream his guts out. Which he did admirably.


I was surprised to see so many people wearing brightly colored shirts. I guess the Spaniards are a) more casual with their concert attire, b)cross their musical genres more often or c) just don't give a shit about things like that.


For Eleanor, Manson is a god. I've always admired his music, artistry and sense of style, but he never really converted me completely.


That is, of course, until after I saw him live. This concert was the consummation of a life dream for her, and the beginning of new dream-states for me.


During "Heart Shaped Glasses," this animatronic robot came out in a sort of French maid's outfit, but with a corset on (yes!), carrying a tray of stuff, and Marilyn started to sing while playing with her leg and being Mr. Sexy. At the crescendo of the song, he ripped its head off, started singing to it, and made out with it before putting the head back on the tray, at which point it walked back offstage.


Another very memorable moment was when the lights all went dim, and when they came back up for "Fight Song" (one which I was personally hoping he would play), he was wearing a boxing robe and gloves with the microphone suspended in midair, and the ropes all around him. Goofy stunt but still kinda cool.


At another point, he was lifted up on this hydraulic platform about 12 feet above the audience, as multicolored confetti sprayed from the guns on the sides of the stage.

Another time, he started a song with all the lights off; the only thing visible was his mask, which had giant spotlights mounted where the eyes should be, with wires trailing out behind him. Very cool effect.

For "Mobscene" he came out in a suit with the top hat deal. He pretty much changed costume after every song.


I forget what song this was for[edit: this was for Antichrist Superstar}. The lightning thing is his logo. There were a bunch of microphones on the podium but one of them fell down so he broke them all and threw them off. Then he pulled out a bible and held it up in midair and it spontaneously combusted.

I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff out but overall it was a thrilling experience. Oh, did I mention his microphone was a knife? Sweet.

The Ramacastanas Trip

This is waaaay old news by now but I felt compelled to let family and friends *cough*Eric*cough* where I've been going this semester. A Spanish friend, Antonio, invited us up to his house in the country pueblo of Ramacastanas (pronounced: rah-mah-cah-stahn-yahs) in September, and we took him up on his offer. Awesomeness ensued.

The first night was dedicated to drinking, since, after all, it's the country and there is nothing in particular to do. I proved why God doesn't want giants to ride children's bicycles when I crashed into something and banged up my something else. Okay, God, point taken. Then we engaged in storytelling, interpretive dance, acrobatics, and wind tunnel. For those who don't know, wind tunnel is when you shake your head back and forth really quick while relax your face muscles, and then take a picture, with the intention of getting a really bizarre photo. Props to Marisha for showing me this game originally.

The next day was spent at the river. We bought the bare necessities (beer, horribly greasy potato chips) and some actual food and took in more of the gorgeous scenery. I believe Alex decided the correct this to do after eating and drinking was jump in the river. We all agreed that this was excellent advice and followed suit. Some other tourists took our picture, during which time I cursed at them effusively in English to hurry up because my man-parts were shriveling on account of the unexpectedly arctic water temperature. So then we decided to head up a trail and found edible berries along the path. I think they were blackberries. We got to the mouth of the river and climbed up inside, where it looked like a little grotto or a natural day-spa kind of thing, carved out of rock and only a foot or two deep, so we chillaxed there until Alex and Rachel and I think Liz got bored and climbed up one of the rock walls and jumped into the lagoon below. Then on the way home Antonio dropped me and John off near his house and told us to follow this trail, because we could get fresh spring water at the end. Sure enough, a couple hundred meters down the trail it ducked into the foliage, and we crossed a little bridge and there was a couple meter-wide pool of fresh water, creating a little creek to the left. There were water skaters on the surface and the rocks kept floating up and back down in the middle, indicating that fresh water was bubbling up from underground. Very cool and nothing I had ever seen before. We drank our fill then filled the jug and headed towards Antonio's house.

That night was, for me, the highlight of the trip. We made spaghetti and accompanied it with cheap wine, and then we all grabbed blankets and seeping bags and went and laid out under the stars. It was beautiful. If you have never been out in the middle of nowhere and looked at the stars, please plan to do so soon, because it is amazing. It reminds you how very small you are and how very big everything is, and that sense of being overwhelming beauty is missing a lot in the city life, where you can only catch glimpses of it here and there. We played a game where we each say a song lyric in a row. It was really cool because people chose lyrics that demonstrated their personalities, and thus we expressed who we were by letting other people do the talking. I translated what the English lyrics meant for Antonio. Then we discussed the nature of love and other such nonsense before finally retiring indoors (too bad...sleeping outside might have been nice). Antonio later called the trip "one of the best experiences of his life;" it's definitely up there for me, as well.

There are a million other snapshot moments in my head that I'm equally fond of, but really don't make sense out of context; what I remember most about the trip, though, was the incredible sense of beauty, tranquility, and peace nature ceaselessly offers. It served as a reminder that while I may be irrevocably a city-boy, a part of me is always wild at heart.

Ramacastanas Trip Photos

Photobucket Album

Spiritual Judo: A Response to the Human Crisis

A friend of mine wrote one of her sad but beautiful pondering-the-state-of-humanity blogs recently, and inspired me to write a whole separate blog on my own about it. I hope it still makes sense out of context.

"and maybe people really honestly believe [racism] no longer exists... or maybe we are complacent and after all it is well hidden...under this sort of cloak."

We were talking about immigration between the US and Latin American countries in class a few days ago and I brought up that often this issue is just a smokescreen for racism...people continue to fear and forget we're a planet and everyone deserves a little piece of happiness...

"you are taught to care selectively...care about the sad story of a woman with cancer who you see on oprah...care about your family..but you aren't suppossed to care about random people..."

Oh you care about plenty of random people, as long as it is in your interest to care about them. Since we're one of billions our actual lives become less relevant. What becomes relevant is something else we talked about in class today, something I'm sure you as a tool fan are quite familiar with...the idea of living vicariously...more and more we are passive partiipants in our own lives. We want to be voyeurs, see and feel all of the emotions of knowing someone without actually having to invest the effort to do so. Each generation is sucessively more passive, dissecting other people's lives in reality shows so we don't have to do that to our own, god forbid. And glory factor, how the average person on the street an only give us so much attention but we can almost touch the fame of the nothings on American Idol that have become Somethings...not to mention the "DANGER!" of the masses--even a child can figure out that the more people there are, the higher probability that one of them will be a murderer or a rapist...so why trust strangers?

"but...imagine this world if people just cared.

good and evil...why are there so many people who hate and so few people who love?"

Oh, people do care, and people do love. They just do so selectively, as you pointed out. Don't forget cynic's rule #1: People always act in their own self-interest. It's in the definition of the words. It is perhaps not an ideal world where cynics are the only non-delusional people, but that is simply how people work. You love and care for things which benefit you in some way. The problem is sometimes those who do evil percieve it is in their best interests to do evil instead of good, since it is more profitable and runs you less risk of getting fucked if you reach out to the other guy. Game Theory controls the power dynamics, even on a social level, which inevtably leads to human survival and wealth but leaves the beautiful parts of humanity poor and going extinct.

Proof comes from your own writing.

"that you become NUMB and INDIFFERENT to because they are JUST A PICTURE you wont ever know that person and yah its sad but you know...you arent there witnessing it before your own eyes...what about the people you see everyday though...on the sidewalk sitting so hopelessly...those pictures...those images are real"

In another class earlier today, Tannas told us of her experiences in India, where she stayed for four months, and how incredibly different the culture was there--getting usued t the sights, sounds and smells, which were all mainly horrifying, like the image above. And she talked about how over that period of time a sense of numbness and helplessness set in, and eventually indifference, because she realized there was nothing she could do and it's simply the way things are. Apathy is lethal; first it runs a deficit your soul and eventually the blank check--on the environment, on the poor, on the value of a human being--will bounce, damaging you physically in the form of tidal waves, riots, and emotionally generations emotionally maimed people and pleasure-receptor-trained hiveminders.

"and i know i should stop bitching like a maniac and do something proactive instead of sitting behind an energy consuming cancer causing computer screeen...."

I wish I had a 12-step program for liberating mankind. AA already did that for alcohol but I think some of those steps are useful in removing humans from other forms of bondage as well. So here's my 3-step program for human animal liberation:

1. Admit you are powerless to save the world. Adopt the cynic's attitude. History is a pretty good litmus test for the power of self-incentive. In all probability, we'll continue down this path until something big and nasty makes us reconsider the other fork in the road.

2. Reprogram yourself using Cycnic's rule #1 as a motivator instead of a hindrance. Remember why it is that this life isn't in your best interest, and most importantly, replace it with one that is, to the maximum extent allowable under the system. Remember why the risk is worth it, why imagination trumps the cliche, why a moment of genuine connection is more fulfilling than lifetimes of instant emotional fallacy. Create systems that emphasize and reward self-improvement and self-expression, and the sharing of these products in community, as an end in itself, not as part of economic commerce. Trade the ignorant bliss for the terrible knowledge, and be content in that choice. Flip the value switch from instant gratification to long-term reward, from personality to character, from destination to journey. Stage a coup on your heart, and dethrone the false god of Pleasure and restore the Trinity of Truth, Virtue, and Beauty. Not because you have to, but because you WANT to.

3. Since you can't save the world, think smaller. Use that motivation to make ripples in the circles you swim in. Lots of individuals united in making ripples in their immediate vicinity, together create a tidal wave of change. That's the secret: lead by example; act, do not speak; play the hand you are dealt the best you can with what you've got. It's beyond your control whether the cards come out right, but it's not beyond you to stack the deck in your favor. Greatness is just consistently doing a lot of little things right.

"but why don't people care...do people really just not realize???? "

The physical precedes the mental with our species. We've got a lot of lag time between the defeaning boom of material development and the deafening silence of our own ignorance. Our species needs to evolve to the next step up--controlling our animal brains with our human ones, instead of the other way around. Short of an act of God or a catastrophic global emergency, the only way to make this happen is YOU. Be better in all the right ways and breed like rabbits. Cause right now, evolution is favoring the stupid.

Quick Update

It's been a few months since I posted. Here's the gist of what's transpired over the course of this semester:

I'm learning arpeggio guitar. My hands hurt from playing. Very fun. When I get a song down (I'm sure you'll recognize it), I'll post a video. But that's probably a month away, at least.

Flamenco dance lessons are going well, though it continues to be difficult. We have a show at the end of this month, so here's hoping I can pull it off with some degree of grace.

Last minute, the director of the play (who knows my love of theater from previous performances) contacted me because one of the cast had to quit. So I'm taking over as Fabian from Twelfth Night. I've got three weeks before the show goes on to have the role down. So far it's been like a boat on water; my co-actors are hilarious and the lines are almost memorized.

I'm teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) as a volunteer at the school, which in turn brought me some English tutoring work. Extra pocket money and my future career is looking good.

Classes are decent. Interestingly, some classes I originally liked are now not as interesting, while other classes I didn't like as much are becoming fascinating. There are, of course, those classes that haven't changed a bit, and are still as uninformative or frustrating as ever. Case in point is my Islam class, where the teacher, who is a native Spaniard, doesn't understand the meaning of tact, and so while encouraging us to state our opinions, he will listen and then tell us we are wrong, or laugh at us if we haven't heard of some obscure Qu'Ranic reference (I thought that was why we were taking a class?). Or my Latin American Politics class, where the teacher speaks as if he is writing an essay, and consequently it is impossible to make sense of the slew of dates, names, and countries that are thrown at us.

I totally shut down my Islam class when the teacher asked if Islam was compatible with democracy. Pretty much everyone minus a couple people had really orientalist answers, and people kind of parroted the teacher's BS idea of a secular society being necessary for democracy. I'm not saying I don't enjoy having a (more or less) secular society, but it isn't a fundamental part of democracy. So I basically railed on the class for being culturally insensitive americans who want to export their "version" of democracy wholesale to a completely different society. Besides relieving my frustration at the apparent lack of critical thinking skills in the class, I think I earned the respect of the Muslim kids in the room, which was cool. Something about cultural understanding, and we humans all have more or less the same values, yadda yadda. It's funny that it is my Islam class where I have consistently been insightful; I think it's because the teacher is so incredibly provocative that I can't help but say something.

I have an idea for a graphic novel (comic). It's kind of a political/philosophical comic influenced by film noir movies, and picaresque literature: everything is pretty grim, and even the hero is more of an antihero; unlike the typical comic, there are no real sharp divides between "good" and "evil." I've got a handful of characters at the moment, and perhaps I'll practice drawing them since I'm not the best artist while I think up a plotline.

Halloweeen was AWESOME. Went to a couple parties dressed as a pijo (Spanish for snob). I found it very amusing. Here half the people in the room are hippies or goths or whatever they really want to be but don't have the balls to, and I'm mocking them to their face by wearing the crap they wear every day of their lives. It's all costumes; you dress up for work and down for your friends. So why not wear a costume YOU enjoy? That's right, because you are afraid of societal repercussions, so you wait until the one day a year when it's socially acceptable to dress like a slutty businesswoman to do it. Lame. Or maybe you're just not into expressing yourself trough your clothes, or couldn't really give a shit. That's cool. But then why did you dress up for Halloween in the first place? Because you felt it was socially required of you? Stop being societal plankton. When it comes to life, it's sink or swim; floating by is a pitiful option.

I'm uploading photos for a couple of trips I have gone on. Once that's done, I'll blog about 'em. You have been warned.

Manson is coming mid-November! I'm going with a group of friends to see him. It's going to kick holy ass.

Success!...sort of.

So looking back at my goals for the summer, I did to some capacity meet the majority of them. Which really isn't that bad, but when you're a perfectionist like me, as well as extremely hard on yourself, you don't need a dad to tell you that you aren't good enough, since you police yourself much, much better (my dad doesn't do this). Let review, shall we?

1. Get a job and earn $3200: I've made a little more than half of my goal. Perhaps I was overly ambitious, but I still would have liked to have seen myself get closer to this one since it's so crucial. Oh, well, I'll just get loans and put myself deeper into indentured servitude after college. Next!

2. Get a driver's license: I almost did this one...until I decided it was too late in the summer to apply, get the experience, take the actual driving test, and get the license. Plus, I found out that you have to show proof of insurance in order to get a license, and I can't afford insurance, let alone my own vehicle, especially given the previous goal, so this one is out. The goal was mainly symbolic anyhow, more to do with the cutting of the purse-strings and having that much more independence and another skill set under my belt. Not that the lack of a license has slowed me down: I find that, in Monterey anyway, you can get around just fine on a bike, as long as you are in decent shape, which brings me to my next goal:

3. Create and follow a summer exercise regimen: I didn't really do this, but I found that between my job and a weekly bike ride, I haven't had any problems achieving the intention of this goal. I have come home sore almost every day, and my biceps are getting admirably beefy. Stud alert! Ladies beware!

4. Continue cooking for one's self: this was kind of a forced sucess, in that I either had to cook for myself or starve since there are many places for quick, cheap, vegetarian food around Monterey, and I was unwilling to fork out the cash anyway. Most of the stuff I produced was rather canned, though: mexican and italian food are pretty much the staples of my diet. I seem to have lost the cooking bug when I left Spain.

5. Continue playing guitar at least once a week: THIS is where I have grown by leaps and bounds I can play approximately 30 songs now with varying degrees of competence, and I can't help but touch my guitar at least once a day. I've even learned to sing and play at the same time. I have guitar FEVER! And the only cure is to ROCK!

6. Continue writing in my books, as well as writing my books: I have written a few times in the dream journal when I had dreams that seemed to be of some importance; most notably, I had a series of dreams in which my closest family members, a well as the cat, died horrible deaths. Now THAT shit will freak you out. I haven't written in my Spanish journal at all, and for this I feel the most guilty, because I know my abilities will slip. As for my books...I continuallly have more and more ideas for books, poems, etc., and I will write a line or tow of them and then forget them for eternity. Some of the ideas for novels, however, compliment each other, and I'm starting to think thatmaybe my subconscious is putting it all together for me into a cohesive whole, and then one day I will sit down and it will flow out of me onto the page. The problem is, when will "one day" come?

All in all, I did manage to do most of the things I set out to do this summer, but I am still left with a lingering sense that I could have done more...perhaps in the last few weeks here, I will tie up some of those loose ends.

A sudden swelling of pride

Before this semester began I established a list of goals, 5 in total. High on the list was getting over a 3.0 GPA while passing all 6 of my classes. I am proud to announce that this goal was completed! Here are the results:

Environment & Development in Latin America B+
ORIGINS of the MODERN WORLD, 1600 to the PRESENT A
The Spanish Civil War C+
Value, Mind and God B
Latin American Testimony B+
Advanced Spanish Composition Workshop B+

I also met a couple of my other goals, including cooking for myself 4 times a week (I usually did this more than that), playing guitar at least once a week, and some other lovely stuff. I look forward to completing this summer's goals, which include:

-Get a job and earn $3,200.
-Get a driver's license (finally!).
-Create and follow a summer exercise regimen.
-Continue cooking for one's self.
-Continue playing guitar at least once a week.
-Continue writing in my books, as well as writing my books.

To a productive summer!

The Art of Persuasion, Part I

I'm thinking about blogging about how to persuade people. I'll post random tidbits that highlight some psychological principle, and explain how it relates to getting people to do what you want. Finally, I'll give an example of how the government has recently used these techniques to manipulate the American public. The purpose of doing so is not only to highlight the manipulative nature of American society, but also because I believe by bringing these principles to your attention, it allows you to become self-empowered in a responsible way, by allowing you to recognize these techniques when people attempt to apply them to you, as well as allowing you to use them in a good way. With those goals in mind, let's get started.

Tip I: Rapport

What is Rapport?
The textbook definition: "a relationship of mutual understanding or trust and agreement between people." More specifically, rapport is a sense of belonging, a sense of being "in on it," coupled with the belief that the mutual world that two (or more) people are sharing is true and real, usually as well as an expectation that said sense of belonging comes with certain priviledges (and, often overlooked, responsibilities). Ever been on a date that just "flowed," both of you "clicked," and there was a lot of "chemistry?" That's romantic rapport. I can remember dates where the next morning I couldn't remember for the life of me how in the hell I got from point A to point B; that's because I was in rapport, so everything came naturally without having to think about it.

So, in order to establish rapport, you must give the other party the sense that there is some sort of deep understanding between you two. After this is established, it is possible to very subtly guide the symbiotic nature of te relationship towards your objective. Unless you are extremely perceptive, emotionally detached, and a great actor, it is very difficult to establish rapport with someone without getting into a sense of rapport with them yourself. This is because rapport to a large extent is based on body language, which is outside the conscious control of most people. Those who are extremely perceptive, emotionally detached, and great actors, are usually psychopaths, in the clinical sense of the word. They also make excellent con-men. The charming man who comes into the widow's life like a beam of light, and then makes off with her fortune at sundown, is a master of building rapport--in the other person--while feeling nothing for the other person at the same time.

This leads me to make an important distinction. Rapport can be established on a conscious level by a manipulative mastermind, or it can be established on an unconscious level. The problem is that establishing rapport on an unconscious level is pretty hit-or-miss for most people, because people have to naturally have the same body language, interests, values, etc., for that to occur, and the odds are usually against that. So it appears that in persuading people, we are left with two rather unappealing options: firstly, to be manipulative without becoming attached (great for politicians), or hoping to randomly get the "luck of the draw." There is, however, a third option: if you are open enough, and desire to enter rapport with someone, you can generally do so without being manipulative through "empathy." Figure out what drives another person, what excites them, what makes them happy, how they communicate, how they sit, what their attitude towards life is, etc., and then communicate that to them. This can get very, very, complicated if broken down into detail, which I'll be saving for the advanced class, but the main point is this: develop your sense of empathy and use that to develop that sense of empathy with others by putting yourself in their shoes. I getting along with hard-core conservative mormons, astrology fanatics, crazies on the streets of Santa Cruz, your parents, etc., because I am open to understanding their perspective and respecting it, even if it differs from my own. It's all about compassion.

How to screw up rapport? Break that shared sense of reality; or worse, renig on their expectations; or worse, break that sense of trust. Breaking that shared sense of reality would be, for example, when you and your girl and some friends are hanging out, if you were to ignore her for the most part and chat with your friends all night. You have chose the rapport of your buddies over the rapport of your girl, thus damaging your rapport with your girl; conversely, had you stuck to your girlfriend and ignored your friends all night, you would have damaged your rapport with your friends. Going back on shared expectations would be when a marriend couple starts to fight because the husband isn't cleaning the lawn like it was originally agreed on when they got married. This one's a slow killer. If the expectations don't change, or the completion of the expectations doesn't change for the better, this one will poison rapport. Finally, cheating on someone (in the context of a closed relationship) would be a strong break of trust.

Another way not related to the definition of the word of destroying rapport that is quite common is thinking about it too much. If you overanalyze everything you do and say, you are likely to come off as disjointed, and this will kill any chance you might have had of landing that job at the interview. In fact, it would be better to saying anything, but say it comfortably and confidently, than try and figure out what the right answer would be and stutter over it, because then you just come off as false (you are). People will respond more positively to a person who is calm, comfortable, and confident, than they will to a person who may technically be right, but doesn't have charisma. Since women are social creatures, they tend to have a more highly tuned sense of subtlety, and can play it cool while analyzing a statement on multiple levels to get meaning out of it. This creates a problem with communication between men and women, since often women will overanalyze the crap out of what a guy says, when in reality, the only intended message was the obvious one, since men on the whole are not socially evolved enough to understand, much less pick up on, subtext. So, to review: have empathy, don't think too much, act comfortably, and be socially aware. If you can do this, you are more likely to establish rapport, which will in turn make someone more sympathetic to being persuaded.

That's my analysis of the definition of rapport; even more interesting, however, is the origin of the word: ""reference, relationship," from Fr. rapport, back-formation from rapporter "bring back," from re- "again" + apporter "to bring," from L. apportare "to bring," from ad- "to" + portare "to carry" (see port (1)). Psychological meaning: "intense harmonious accord," as between therapist and patient, is first attested 1894, though the word had been used in a very similar sense with ref. to mesmerism from 1845 (first recorded in E.A. Poe)."
For those unfamiliar with Shannon's model of communication, used widely in pretty much all intro communications courses, go study it here. The example sucks, because it makes it sound like encoder, decoder, and noise are all supposed to be technological, but more often than not, they are human elements. The encoding of information is usually the words chosen, the channel is they way the info is presented: verbally, through IM, mailed letter, etc., and the decoding is the other person's interpretation fo the intended message. Noise is any interference in the transmission of the message. On IM, noise could be a dropped internet signal; during a speech it could be a squeaky fan in the auditorium. So, based on this model, which words you choose to use, how much noise gets in the way, and whether or not the other person interprets your message the way you intended, all affect the level of communication.

To get back to the etymology of the word, it comes from the french meaning "to carry back." This applies to the model of communication, except that this model is missing the "carrying back" phase. Here's the model with this all-important phase: feedback. Look at figure 5 (and 6) on that page. To carry back the message=feedback=basis of rapport. Rapport is only established through, as the textbook definition explains, "a relationship of mutual understanding". So when you give feedback, assuring the other person that you understand what they are saying, you are creating rapport. When rapport works well, it is a fluid, ongoing process of clear communication, leading to feedback, leading to further communication, ad infinitum. This is why people sometimes feel like they are talking to a brick wall: there is no feedback. If you have empathy, and are not thinking to hard, you should be naturally creating positive feedback and continuing the communication stream.
The other fascination part of the definition is the psychological part saying it comes from mesmerism. For those who don't know, mesmerism was an early name for hypnotism. I will be covering hypnotism as a hypnotic technique in another tip, but for now, suffice to say that I can attest from personal experience that the fluid, focused state of communication going on in rapport is very, very much like hypnotism. Remember when I said I couldn't remember how I got from point A to B on some dates, much less remember what exactly we talked about during those dates? That sense of amnesia is very common in deep levels of trance. So if you know a thing or two about hypnotism, you will also know something about rapport, and vice-versa.

Finally, I said I woould give an example of rapport being used in the real world. Immediately after September 11th, the nation experieced feelings of rapport with the victims, as well as with the national community. How did this feeling of rapport make persuasion of the populace easier? Bush used the tragedy to justify a never-ending war on terror, which under normal circumstances would have been met with much more skepticism. But in their post-9/11 state, people were in a sense of rapport with the victims, and Bush used the technique of the next tip, Association, in order to channel those feelings of rapport into support for a never-ending war on a concept, an end which, in the eyes of the majority of a still-hurting american public, still justifies its terrible means of violence and bloodshed. I leave you with this to think about: do you think this so-called rapport between the current administration and the populace is based on true empathy, or cold manipulation?

This is HILARIOUS

Enough said. Watch and enjoy.

For more ridiculously nerdy hilarity, go google Chad Vader. No, really. DO IT!

State of the Universe

Why this world is fucked. Hint: we're animals too.
Also, why I'm a vegetarian.
Caution: clip is extremely depressing.

The Hobo Rebellion, or, What I Would Do In the US of A With Too Much Time on My Hands

If I had lots of free time, and was living in the US, I would establish a secret underground society of hobos. After all, there's a lot of them, they're all pretty much crazy and will believe whatever you say, and working together they would eat better and be safer, plus get a feeling of belonging, so assuming they aren't too loony, they'll probably join. Anyways, I would convince them all that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' baby is the anti-christ. By this point the organization would be nationwide and would have organized a covert intelligence operation. I would use this to find out where tommy boy is birthing his spawn. Then I would organize a giant hobo revolt. They would bum rush the hospital, and start yelling all sorts of strange obscenities, take the baby, and yell strange things at it, like "Vaginas will bite your dick off," or, "Satan enjoys a refreshing game of badminton" (Of course, I would tell the hobos that these were secret code-phrases that would exorcise the anti-christ from the child). Then, I would have the hobos draw a pentagram on the ground and put the baby in the center with candles all around. Then we would scatter into the darkness (like ninjas)!!!
What's the point you may ask? Well, I'm about to tell you, stupid, so shut up while I reveal the meaning of my master plan. Tom Cruise's idiot "religion" told him that you have to be COMPLETELY silent while giving birth and in the first few minutes of birth, or else the baby will remember whatever is said and associate it with childbirth, and that will somehow allow evil spirits to get in...riiiight. SO, if the Hobo Resistance Army says a bunch of wierd shit to the baby as soon as it gets out, and then he grows up normal (albiet a spoiled little shit, since he's the son of Tom Cruise), maybe THEN Tom Cruise will realize Scientology is for MORONS.

P.S. Hobo-ninjas would be AWESOME. Remind me to do that too.

Relax, Impatient Bitches.

People need to chill out. I am tired of everyone getting up in my space and making me uncomfortable in their endless quest to rush around and use up every second of every day doing nothing of importance. Mostly I don´t really care what other people do with their time, it´s when their shitty attitude affects me that I get pissed.

Case in point: I was walking towards the side entrance to the computer lab on my campus, past this big set of metal doors that swings open--very slowly--to let cars into the private parking lot. Well, as I went to walk by there, a car showed up and the doors started to open. I shuffled past, and the damn car revved its engine to go in, only to stop a second later because the door still hadn´t opened enough to let the guy´s car in. This guy is a moronic unthinking idiot. He is so used to pushing his way past other people to "get ahead" in life, that he now does it instinctually . Essentially the message he is conveying here is: "You should not have crossed in front of me in my big, powerful car. You stood in my way, and the .3 seconds you cost me to wait for you isn´t justified, because I am much more important than you. My day would have been better had you not existed." This subtle act conveys the whole of human self-centeredness and lack of concern for others.

Here´s another example: you are waiting on the bus, and your stop is coming up. You get up to go towards the exit door, but some guy who is also leaving pushes past you to get to the door. Even though it is obvious to any idiot with any IQ of 90 that you´re both going to get to the bus station at the same time, apparently this guy is desparate to get off the bus first. You see it all the time here in Spain. This country is fully of pushy old people who don´t say excuse me as they shove you over so they can wait by the door for a minute or two before they actually get to their stop, creating traffic jams and blocking you in. It´s really quite pathetic that people are so wired to "come first" in life that they will make an effort to be rude to you so they can get off a second earlier than you, because if they are the first one in line, then that means they win at life.

Honestly, people need to stop being mindless cattle, slow down, and start enjoying life and thinking about what it all means, and stop worrying about the petty details. I see people get so preoccupied with the pettiest little things all day long, or do nothing but preoccupy themselves with achieving more and more with their career all the time, that they ignore thinking about what it all means and never appreciate the miracle that it all is. Who, then, is really wasting whose time?