Posted 11/16/2002 11:50:16 PM

the coital moments of the mind that start the cycle of previously unknown anomalies can become the manacles of a heart given to dream. oddly, these very moments are the subatomic, mimetic substance of the dreams that become ensnared in the briars of new knowledge, new relationship, new suffering.

dreaming is not enough. it takes a courageous naivety to actualize dreams. this is why so many fall to the side and settle for the rote circles of life patterned by society's loudest voices. to engage the passion that brings dissonance with a second naivety; most are not up to the task. whether for sloth--that empty lack of courage that holds us even in our cycles of busyness. or for fear after naivety's rape--that initial vertigo upon first glimpsing the tearing tissues of our credulities. the throng will not be the dreams their most profound identity creates.

for this a second naivety is necessary. one must again become the unsimulated child.

for this courage is necessary. one must awaken to a life they did not create.

these are gifts given and received without precision. these cannot be bought. there is no program of study. there is no marketable brand of winsome naivety; no transferable package of brute courage. there is only you. you are the gift to be received.

it begins as a seed in the days of ovulation.
it begins as a gestation that is carried, but not coerced.
it begins as a pain from deep within.
and when it is time you are pushed out, naked and writhing, like a newborn.

yet you emerge from the womb you carry.
you emerge from the gestation you walk with.
you emerge from your own seeded fertility.
and when it is time you, without intention, push yourself out, helpless and hoping to be caught.

one does not make oneself a child.
though birthed from one's own womb the child is.

this gift is received as the child.

carry the tradition
and, in time,
tear at its very soul

this is all that we are given.
the rest is beyond us.

it is not ours to be born again.
it is ours to be born again.

Posted 11/16/2002 10:06:12 PM
are we all
Raymond K. Hessel
waiting for the one with the courage to initiate human sacrifice?

Posted 11/16/2002 08:02:06 PM

Something for Nothing

Posted 11/16/2002 07:47:57 PM

Conspiracy Theory Alert!
Canadian friends: can we get a discount for a mass emigration?

Posted 11/16/2002 07:16:56 PM

Posted 11/16/2002 07:11:00 PM
is not all poetry mere broken conversation?
is not all conversation simply poetry in disguise?

{ ocean. yes. any ocean. 
  i need water and horizon 
  and wind in my face 
  and the sound of gulls 
  and the smell of salt 
  in the damp twilight 
  of an afternoon away... }

Posted 11/16/2002 04:17:22 PM

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01101111 01110011 01101111 01110010 01101111 01100101 
01101101 00100000 01110101 01100101 00100000
01100101          00100000 00100000
00100000

so you risk and lose it all. big deal. you will lose it all someday. why not lose everything in the name of something? why not risk something in your own voice on the odd chance that whatever it is that is driving you mad with unspoken discontent amidst your comfortably inconsequential life might be consumed in the brief fire of living wholeheartedly? what more is there anyway? what greater gift can be given to your children? what impact is more substantial than that fueled by surrendering to the you of destiny? too long has the you of another time and place ruled in the stead of your absent passion. the you that is to come will not be until the you that once was loses its charm over this moment. come destiny! reign here where once lived a man dead now a fortnight. come, you so familiar yet, to this moment, distant as the amnesiac's mirror.
this is your moment.

Posted 11/16/2002 07:47:21 AM

there was a .gif here until, in the course of the last 24 hours or so,
the darpa.mil site became inaccessible. i wonder if they have been hacked?
maybe someone messed up and opened up some internal content or something?
i am sure that google has a copy of the pic in their cache.
here is the URL in case it ever comes back up:
http://www.darpa.mil/iao/images/TIA_ppt2.gif

a chart from the DARPA website
TIA Systems

what Tyler Durden has to say about DARPA and her plans...
{the first rule of project mayhem is: you do not ask questions}

Posted 11/16/2002 07:43:14 AM

The Ballad of Conor Oberst

Posted 11/16/2002 07:38:12 AM

reading about the special interest legislation that is being tacked onto the civil rights destroying "Homeland Security" bill that is about to be passed i began wondering why something this simple would not work:

make it illegal for new legislation to contain any unrelated language. enforce this by requiring every piece of language in a bill to have a named contributor. anything that smacks of special interest or political pet project legislation that is not inherently and substantially related to the legislation under review would be challenged by other members and require the originator of the language to publicly justify the insertion.

some mechanism would have to be created to determine if the language stays or goes after the originator's attempted justification. why not slow the new law process way down by forcing line item debate and potentially even deadlock? it is better to have slower and fewer laws than the raft of horseshit that our republic staggers under more and more each year. perhaps we the people could even demand that there be criminal charges. that would certainly be harder to achieve and execute, but perhaps that is what it will take to force these lawyer-politicians on both sides of the aisle to get out of their self-indulgent/righteous stupor and serve the nation rather than ideologically, legally, or economically raping her.

Posted 11/15/2002 05:37:11 PM

it is not enough for us to battle story against story as in days gone by when the gods were as numerous as the nations and they did vicarious battle through their enfleshed existence in our communities. these were the gods who variously birthed, assimilated and then fought the memory of whatever once was. these stories of battling orthodoxies; these purities of bloodline; these strictures of marginalizing practice all holding out the hope of an ever receding origin, holiness and orthopraxy--these are no longer, glory to the almighty, enough for us.

we are the ones who tell the story of stories being told.

may we never stop.

teach these things to your children.
talk about them while you are traveling.
write them on the door frames of your home.

together may we embody a way that no more
finds contentment in story without the story of story
that demands our self-righteousness melt away.

Posted 11/15/2002 12:17:43 PM
01100011
01101111
01101101
01100101

Posted 11/15/2002 12:12:27 PM

hopkins takes up the face of jesus theme here...

he (hopkins) is certainly not just a teacher.

Posted 11/15/2002 08:53:42 AM
Picture Perfect Jesus

The New York Times said, "...The popularity of Sallman's 'Head of Christ' makes Warhol's Soup Can seem downright obscure."

how about a pic of a short, ugly Palestinian peasant?

Posted 11/14/2002 09:51:44 PM
Jesus, it's a chapati!

"From morning till late in the evening, around 20,000 people come in to catch the glimpse of Lord Jesus on the chapati," said Father Jacob.

The "holy chapati" has been placed at the central shrine for public viewing. The followers who had came distant places to witness the "presence of Jesus" felt that it was a big miracle.

when a big miracle is defined by a flat-bread mediated apparition the adjective employed to emphasize the nature of the event seems an unintentional betrayal. how odd these events are to me. we no longer say rise up and walk, we find Jesus cartoons on burned roti. odd. it does not seem in line with the ancient Palestinian teacher who said that his followers would do even greater things than he. but, i guess, in this case it was not the people, but "G-d" who brought this "miracle" about. if i was an Indian i would be pissed that all G-d had for us was a monochrome pic of an old Jewish guy. AIDS, dissentary, gender oppression... the places where a little miracle might come in handy... nevermind. i guess everyone needs their convenient distraction from the life they live. it just happens to be Jesus wonder bread for these people.

Posted 11/14/2002 09:30:22 PM
current mp3:
counting.crows::rain.king

Posted 11/14/2002 09:07:43 PM
the three ages of Jacques Derrida

...we are by nature messianic. We cannot not be, because we exist in a state of expecting something to happen. Even if we're in a state of hopelessness, a sense of expectation is an integral part of our relationship to time. Hopelessness is possible only because we do hope that some good, loving someone could come.

Posted 11/14/2002 06:04:49 PM

I Am The Libertarian Party: Based on the philosophies of the founding fathers you believe in near total personal liberty, defensive-only military, and economic freedom. Your members vary from those who wish nearly no government to those who want a minimalist government. You are also a popular vote among people who wish to cause the two main parties to think about liberty more often. You rock! Find out what 3rd party you are!

via indigo

Posted 11/14/2002 02:49:18 PM
The Globalist | Global Diplomacy -- Iran as a U.S. Ally?

Amazingly, Iran’s cooperation is going a lot further than allowing British and American warplanes into their airspace.

Building on the cautious links made between U.S. Special Forces and specialized units of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard during the fighting against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, the Iranians are giving far more help than anybody ever expected.

Posted 11/14/2002 02:14:21 PM
Text to Binary Tool - i think some binary ink would be cool.

Posted 11/14/2002 01:56:15 PM

Wired Magazine Issue 10.12

Posted 11/14/2002 01:54:10 PM
i first read Po Bronson in the last 90s.

my favorite book was the hilarious The Nudist on the Late Shift which chronicles some of the happy insanity of the dotCom boom. this month he writes on prayer in Wired 10.12: A Prayer Before Dying

Posted 11/14/2002 01:49:22 PM
10X10

When we’ve all grown up, when we are too old for fairytales, fables, miracles and myths, when the prophet, mystic and dervish no longer speak rhyming riddles in our ears, when the magic show is discredited and we teach ourselves objective, logical, empirical 'truth' . . . where will we find poetry, story, life? Where will we be found? Where will a soul take comfort?

Posted 11/14/2002 01:36:41 PM
Amy Wohl : software, software, software, that should be our mantra.

be a hero. write some software.

Posted 11/14/2002 11:18:56 AM


::read this::

You Are a Suspect

WASHINGTON — If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you — passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" — "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Posted 11/14/2002 11:11:36 AM
the carriage group came over last night. we lit a fire, broke out the candles, opened some wine, cracked a book or two of poetry, recorded our recollections of times past and tried to catalog the vast sea of inside jokes we find ourselves awash in. thanks everyone for coming and for the gifts that were all uniquely you. peace and love.

Posted 11/14/2002 11:08:04 AM
...But when they don't know something, they can't face it. They send you away. Any research in this area? Any new treatment? Any ideas? No. No. And no. We have this drug that should treat the symptom so here you go.

Never mind that the drug is also killing you softly and, most likely, exacerbating the root problem of the illness....

Don't think about the consequences. Just fix the problem. In medicine as in life as in the world. Bomb the bad guys, drug the sick guys, pay the smart guys. Fuck the rest. dm

Posted 11/13/2002 05:28:25 PM
from the message board...
one more sign that axxessites are not your simple candles and coffee church:

Coming to a non-Democracy near you!
Guns, smart bombs, total destruction! Prepare for annihilation... American Style.

While our military crushes your cities and your people, our economists will be working hard to insert the proper icons of Western Domination into your ancient cultures. That's right! For every crater we make in your city, we'll fill it with a McDonald's, a Starbucks, or Sears Retail Store.

Either get on the bus, or get run over by....

AMERIGEDDON!

Coming soon!

Posted 11/13/2002 04:07:14 PM
my sister, who of late lives on the first floor, drove to Waco this afternoon to rendevous for a present hand-off. it seems my parents and maternal grandparents had prepared some gifts that were a bit heavy should one try to deliver them via the postal system. many hours of driving later (thank you, btw, you two) i found myself awash in presents: biscotti, mint milanos, cadbury fruit and nut chocolate, belgian hazelnut coffee, a box of duraflame xtratime logs and a pair of homer slippers. the girls made out too, with some cool winter hats that their dad will perhaps steal periodically.

Posted 11/13/2002 10:38:21 AM

mark your calendars

Sunday, November 17
church signs are stupid

Friday November 29
buy nothing day

Posted 11/13/2002 09:32:08 AM

interestingly, i took this survey (via AKMA) two seperate times and came up with different people... this is especially interesting given the very different people i turned out to be...

"It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is."

You are Desiderius Erasmus! You have great love for others and will do just about anything to show it to them. You are tolerant and avoid confrontations, so people generally are drawn to you. You are more quiet and reserved in front of strangers, but around some people you open up. When things get tough, you like to meditate alone. Unfortunately you often get things like "what a pansy," or "you're such a liberal."

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson

"We reject the false doctrine that the church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day."

You are Karl Barth! You like your freedom, and are pretty stubborn against authority! You don't care much for other people's opinions either. You can come up with your own fun, and often enough you have too much fun. You are pretty popular because you let people have their way, even when you have things figured out better than them.

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson

Posted 11/13/2002 09:22:50 AM
a birthday greeting from far away:

Your birthday is today, right? I have the vague idea of the 13th, and I know youre a scorpio.... Jains believe that first comes humans, then animals, and lastly birds. So they say you should feed the last first, thus the reason for the pigeon temple. Anyway, I will go feed some pigeons for you and pray that you are provided for.

Posted 11/13/2002 08:51:21 AM
my trolling for abandoned buildings in Dallas led me to this D Magazine article (only available in the Google cache). Wick makes some good points about urban projects and dreaming big.

while i think that the green space idea is exceptional i think we also need to consider how these spaces can be used for people who choose patterns of living outside of cycles of debt, centralized identity management, factory-like work schedules and unprecedented expectations of private ownership (e.g. needing a car, address, telephone, wardrobe, etc. to get a job, et al). public space dwellers have been a part of society from the dawn of urbanization and in the nomadic existence of our wandering ancestors. while beautifying is a course we should take there needs to be an ongoing discussion around the inevitability of "homeless" ways of life and how those who choose this can dwell within/beside the city's safety, economic and beautification agendas.

Posted 11/12/2002 10:06:40 PM
student protests continue

history professor condemned by courts and sentenced to eight years in prison, 74 lashes and a ban from teaching for 10 years... and the death penalty?? how does that sentence make any sense? the only way i can see it taking place:

he is to be given 74 lashes, serve 8 years in prison at which time he will be freed, but unable to teach for the remaining 2 years of his official ban from teaching, and then they are going to kill him?

of course, this may be the only logical way to play out this cockamamie sentence, but it will not happen. he will either be killed in the near term or, more than likely, will serve some portion of his sentence with the remainder being commuted.

Posted 11/12/2002 09:43:59 PM

{what i want for my birthday}

cycles of beauty
encounters with passion
thoughts without boundaries
enfolded in madness
smiles on journeys
life in the darkness
loves everlasting
faith's hope amidst blindness

beauty, passion
boundaries... madness
journeys, darkness
everlasting blindness...

Posted 11/12/2002 09:23:30 PM

current mp3:
pearl.jam::i.am.mine

Posted 11/12/2002 04:11:13 PM
NOVA | Galileo's Battle for the Heavens

Posted 11/12/2002 09:31:53 AM

Y(KOBBRYWSF )XWW(Y#W(
Jacob son of Joseph brother of Joshua

...osuary inscription fake?

Posted 11/12/2002 09:12:44 AM
current mp3:
the.used::taste.of.ink

Posted 11/11/2002 03:28:24 PM
JOHO: Grand Theft Auto and Moral Fiction

Posted 11/11/2002 10:09:33 AM

check out this quicktime preview from Derrida (warning, very large).

Posted 11/11/2002 08:02:50 AM
World Population

Posted 11/10/2002 09:58:47 PM
hope after the DOJ/MS settlement?

Posted 11/10/2002 12:39:59 PM

Nearly a Million Europeans Rally Against War on the Streest of Italy

"This is amazing, it's so impressive," said 12-year-old Bianca Ronglia as she watched with her family from the side of the road. "I'm happy and proud that my city is holding this."
...
"I think (Friday's UN vote is) a scandalous resolution," said Sean Murray, 29, a member of Workers' Revolution. "It proves once more that the U.N. is a puppet of America, Britain and France."

Posted 11/10/2002 12:19:41 PM
swirly has been renamed bubblegum.

Posted 11/10/2002 10:21:13 AM

Ayesh made a sign at Sar's basketball game yesterday. she wants me to go with her to our street corner to hold it up. it reads:

PUPPIES WANTED FOR US
CAN WE HAVE MONEY PLEASE

at the basketball game she walked around holding it up. i think suburban parents get a little scared by us.

on a related note, Char and i are as loud as the black parents at the games (black people love us... hehe). that does not help with the anxiety we seem to induce in others. life is great.

later in the day Ayesh and i went to an evening "contemporary" service at the church whose gym Sar's games are played in. the whole experience was rather odd. it felt like i was in a number of concurrent, overlapping time and culture warps. it was as if this should all have taken place in 1990. it was contemporary in a 1988 sense, and churches are always behind a couple years, so white, suburban America ca. 1990 seems like a good era to peg this church service in terms of its cultural milieu.

btw, this service just started a few months back--which made the situation oddly disappointing to me as i suffered through it. i ask myself now what i expected that allowed me to be disappointed. i don't know. i am an optimist i guess. whatever i was expecting it was not the litany of copy-cat, processed sameness delivered 12 years late. these people (many of whom i was acquainted with through basketball and past lives i have lived in Dallas) were caught in programs of worship, service and teaching that allowed for no local flavor, no innovation, no spontaneity, no real life and no thinking. i have known of some of these people for over a decade. they are still the same, mediocre fellows living out patterns of fear and consumption encouraged by the cultural christianity that has come to be their identity prison.

after the five Menudo singers led "worship," that was variously like summer camp or bad late night 70s variety show reruns at 3am on channel 21, a message was given--the same staid, party-line teaching that i heard this guy give a decade ago when i had him in a class he teaches at a local college. here is the formula for teaching in a contemporary, American lifestyle church: plan a topical, Hallmark moment series around some calendar event and when you have no holiday to preach around make sure every message comes around to why the group is right. tonight was the later. no one was moved enough to be saved again, but there is always next week...

one last comment before i lay this one to rest. religious professionals who are paid to live "convinced lives," tow the party line and succeed according to models that privilege attendance and revenue are the very definition of the twice the children of hell masters of which Jesus speaks. how did we get so dangerously close to this being the norm in our day?

well, our ongoing study in the religious practices of the americana human species has another chapter. oh, ayesh disagreed with me, btw. she liked the service. they got to play hide-and-seek. i think we should play more hide-and-seek.