This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.                             the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil

        20031027   

No
Michael considered fate at 11:38   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
No.

        20031023   

Sometimes I want to be a dad.
Michael considered fate at 18:30   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a little girl. Samantha or Gwen or Darcy or Joe. With a kid, it's like having a relationship where all the troubles of a normal relationship just aren't there. I just want one so there is always an adoring no-questions-asked girl in my life. Sure, selfish, but that's the way life goes.

I know, I know. As a dad you can really fuck up. Do drugs, walk out on the fam, drop dead, molest them... Heck, you can even sell them, marry them off for money, or extort them as child stars... And people have done it. People have done some of the most horrid things, and to their very own offspring - It makes gerbils eating their own young seem tame.

But maybe I'm just confident in myself.. Cause I personally don't think avoiding that shit is very hard. I honestly don't think there is a very big moral arguement over sexual involvement with your own offspring.. there isn't, because there just isn't a question about it. It's hardwired to just be wrong. Is that so hard to understand? With a girlfriend, not cheating on her..that's hard sometimes. You get in a big fight, things aren't going great, the single ladies are calling your name and you're a little too drunk to know better...
But molesting your own child? Man, seems like a pretty easy sin to avoid, if you ask me.

Sure, dropping out on the family or maybe doing too many drugs.. That's a more slippery slope. But to get there in the first place is a real bummer, family or not, and I've managed to stay at the top of the hill in that regards, so far, knock on wood, pray to god, all that stuff. I don't think sticking a family into the mix is going to change that. I don't want to be in a drug haze anymore now than if I had kids.

It's all a big no brainer, if you ask me.

But it's like anything in life. Pros and cons abound and right now I'm not ready for a kid. Heck, I'm not even ready for a permenant residence. The idea of having a cell phone gives me responsibility anxiety and every time I'm around a crying kid.. well, snaps me back to reality.

Hullo reality.

Nice to see yah.

It's been a long time...

iMike is such a dumb name.
Michael considered fate at 11:32   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Like i'm some sort of cheap fad, silly imitation program, marketing scheme. I am not a marketing scheme.

Sometimes I think people walk around in life expecting to be sold, like they wait for the salesmen of the earth to come and show them how to live, where to go, what to buy. A salesman, that most slippery of creatures, embodies the desires of the meak, the weak, the desireless masses - salesmen are the fillers of the void that threatens to envelope human kind. Salesmen convince conjole corrupt their prey into thinking they need want desire. Salesmen give life meaning. Get up to work, work for money, money to buy that elixir of life - that life giving thing called product and service. Without product around us to define our lives, what life do we live?

"None," is the resounding reply from the millions strong sales force of the world. They convince us of what we want and how we want it and last but not least of how much we will pay for it. They give us meaning, give us drive and give us character. They sell us our individualism in a yellow or red or blue option. They sell us ourselves.

Even God, as an idea, is a salesmen. A schister selling bad fruit and snake bite oil, a peddler of used products and services.

"Get your hot blonde here! Get your hot blonde here! All sales final! Inventory must go!"

Women, to men, and men to women, are product in the sense that they have characteristics, have sense and style (or lack there of) and costs associated as well. Like owning a pet it's not all love and cuddles. There is the mess to clean up, the mouth to feed.

Love is a service with a property tax. The property is your lover, like a car - be it new and shiny or a rusty old beater - and the tax is damn near usury indeed. But life, the desire for life, is the only thing every woman and man has in common, and so we pay these taxes with the reluctance a bum has as he loses his change to a craps game.

"Aw, well. More where that came from."

And yes, there is, there is always more where that came. Always another salesman around the next corner selling more product and more services to you and you always buying buying buying more.

        20031017   

Aww fuck.
Michael considered fate at 10:18   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
jaime wants to quit.

heck, I want to quit.

The reasons, the impetus, the driving forces.. they're not really there anymore. The masses of adoring fans.. yeah, well.. they were never there in the first place so I think maybe it's time to put the 'ol joyride up for the winter. Take a breather and re-evaluate. Retool, revamp, reinvent. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow or next year or never but I won't be back today.

There aren't a lot of truths in this world besides bambino's curse and the rising of the sun so I'll give you another one to hold onto;

I won't be back today.

Oh, it hurts
Michael considered fate at 10:05   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Yes, yes it does.

Oh well, there's always next year.

        20031016   

And They Said I Was Crazy
Michael considered fate at 15:24   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Darkness at Afternoon

Here is a good look by the Mirror (a montreal weekly rag) at the practice of daylight savings. It mainly suggests that Quebec should move to Atlantic time... shit I've been saying for years.

Why don't we switch the clock-changing ways that cost not just your afternoon but also your mind?

I even changed my watch to Atlantic for a good year and a half once.

Maybe not news to you...
Michael considered fate at 10:48   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
But for someone like me who avoids "The News" of any sort on the tele as much as possible, this comes as news to me: China Successfully Completes First Manned Space Flight. That makes China only the third country in the history of the world and man kind to independantly send a man into space.

Are the tides turning?

They wanna go to the moon, yah know. The moon.

Oh and by the way
Michael considered fate at 00:43   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
RED SOX WIN

and the cubs aren't champs
Michael considered fate at 00:42   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
poor guy

that whole thing is ridiculous

sure, he cost them an out, but:

(a) there were 8 other things that went wrong to score 8 runs that inning but big fucking deal. he didn't put them down 8 yah

(b) there's no gaurantee alou would've caught that ball

(c) there were at least 7 other fans leaning in to catch the ball, all esssentially doing the same thing as him, but because the ball landed on him, he's to blame that's our society though.... as soon as there's a possible scapegoat, we hang the bastard

if you think about it rationally, you see that the cubs lost the game, not their fans, besides, you're mark fucking prior, you're SUPPOSED to be the young stud pitcher... and you have to be professional, just like if an umpire makes what you think is a bad call, if a fan keeps you from getting an out, you suck it up and strike the guy out anyway.

that's what champions do.

and the cubs aren't champs.

Nah nah nah nah
Michael considered fate at 00:12   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Nah nah nah nah

Hey hey hey

goodbye

        20031011   

XM Radio
Michael considered fate at 01:42   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Can I take just a moment here, folks, to call bullshit on XM Radio?

Bullshit on XM Radio.

There, I did it. XM Radio is the next bill in a long line of unnecessary and useless bills being perpetrated on the American citizen. Yes, I said perpetrated - like we don't have a choice. And that's because we don't have a choice, folks. Marketing is a force, much like volcanos, tornados, and tsunamis. Marketing is a force that acts upon all human beings, great and small, as uncontrollable as the tides and bowel movements. It's a fact of life. And if marketing is a fact of life than the eventual adoption of XM radio is a fact of life. Maybe not XM radio specifically. Maybe not in it's current incarnation. But someday. We'll pay.

We'll be paying for it because our neighbours will be paying for it and our uncle will be paying for it and our boss will be paying for it and the jones' across the street are already paying for it. We'll sigh and cave in and sign up and get another bill for another service that is already funded by advertising. We'll effectively pay people to deliver advertising to us.

Television, historically, was free. Somehow, bit by bit, they have managed to turn it into a subscription service. They've added commercials, sponsorships, and then they charge you for it. It was slow enough that no one noticed but people are catching on now. Bills are getting really high. People are starting to notice.

I figure the subliminal price point for the american public, on an individual basis, is about $19.99. (The subliminal price point for the american collective, apparently, is about $87 Billion). Anything below that and the average american can spend it without making a conscience note of it. It's like play money. No jackson, no problem. Cable tv, at first a luxury item, has now become a commodity. They sell it to the advertisers, and then they turn around and resell it to us. And we're taking it right up the you-know-what.

Why?

Marketing. The economic forces of marketing.

But now there is direct tv. There are DVDs and Tivo. Things that, as technology advances, compete against eachother for timespace and mindspace. If there is but one product - one cable service - there can only be so much money crammed onto that single bill before the average american consumer says "whoooah! hold it! My ASS hurts, whose been sticking what up where?". Answer? Diversify. Sell two products, effectively the same thing, but with two bills. DVDs, Cinema, Cable. Easier to swallow in smaller bites, even if the meal is bigger in the end. That's why it's always good to have two opposing products. The Beatles would have done well for themselves if they put out a number one country album. You see?

And thus it was so, XM radio.

Bend over America

        20031010   

This is not an option
Michael considered fate at 12:53   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
I think I've decided to change the format here.

I think I'm going to put a moratorium on the bummer-attitude. No more depressive bullshit about human existence. I think I'm going to write more for an audience - more for a general audience - and less for myself or for specific people. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe that's write.

I think I'm going to write more fiction. I think I'm going to work through stories here, out in the open, so you people can see them happening. I'm going to write more opinion pieces and maybe a little tiny bit about politics.

I think I might do a redesign.

The Wrong Trousers?
Michael considered fate at 12:27   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Or just the wrong Cell phone?

Man's cell phone explodes while in pants pocket

See, I told you all that cell phones were evil. Like penguins.

        20031009   

Noooo, they didn't!
Michael considered fate at 15:13   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

The Answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything
Michael considered fate at 15:11   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
I have but one answer to all questions, says Matt, Quit asking

And his advice, although an opinion and therefore not right nor wrong, is probably about as good as you can get for a dollar and some change. Probably as good as you can expect out of an hours worth of therapy session.

Just stop thinking about it.

The dumb man's curse is the smart man's cure: ignorance is bliss.

Michael considered fate at 14:46   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
She refuses to open her mouth when she kisses. While some may think I'm into one night stands, the truth is a lot of times I start kissing a girl on the first date, and I accidentally swallow her. Then I just act really disappointed when she doesn't call, so no one realizes she's actually inside my stomach.

No Use For Dollars
Michael considered fate at 13:20   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
From Market Watch on NPR this week, some "facts" about money:

The 87 Billion Dollars Bush says he "needs" to continue the stuggle in Iraq is almost exactly enough money to give every man woman and child in the United States of America $300 each. Interestingly, the same amount of money that Bush decided to refund back to everyone a few years back, if you recall (which you don't, because apparently you were too busy watching Terminator).

Also, the money spent in the Iraq debacle thus far, along with the $87 billion proposed, apparently calculates out to approximately $265,000 a minute as this "war" drags on.

I'm not sure of the math they used to figure that but the numbers are staggering nonetheless.

$265,000

A

MINUTE.

That's gotta be about $2 million just while I sit here and type this.

money
Michael considered fate at 12:35   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
Am I the only one that thinks the new $20 is ugly?

So much for the greenback.

Ugh.

It's your birfday
Michael considered fate at 12:32   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
It was someone's birthday yesterday. Yesterday they got up in the morning and wondered, maybe aloud to themselves, if anyone would remember. They got up and wandered into the bathroom, scratching their behind or their head or just sort of stumbling in that half-awake daze and they came to rest in front of the mirror. They looked straight into the depth of themself and asked a lot of questions - a million miles a second - and not one said out loud and not one, not one answered.

It is someone's birthday today and they are wandering around in the city, the country, the halls and tunnels of this society, and they are placing huge weight on this single day in their long long year of life. They are waiting hoping breathlessly thinking that maybe, just maybe, someone will say hi, buy a beer, congrat for making it another year.

Birthdays are validations of human existence. Birthdays are like a human reality check: "still here? still exist?". When someone buys you a cake, when a roomful of restuarant workers sing you happy birthday, when people call you "because it's your birthday", your existence is realized. Without birthdays, we are bodyless souls wandering among the world, like sixth sense, like a deadman interacting with the living world.

Birthdays are affirmations. Birthdays are certificates of existence. Birthdays are like headstones for the living: proof that here, now: I am.

Tomorrow is someone's birthday. They will wake up to a family, friends, music, Good Morning America on the TV. They will smile and bounce off the bed, drink some coffee, have some tea. They'll bask in the glow of the day and the warmth of the people and they'll modestly thank everyone for their well wishes. They'll excuse themselves from work early (and that's okay - it's their birthday) and they'll make their way to a gathering place with people, lots of people. Presents will be opened and new things explored. A shy speech will be made and, when the night is done, kids fast asleep in the back of the wagon and the road rumbling softly underneath, a warm soft glance will be made from one spouse to another. A wordless conversation will ensue:

i exist

yes, you do.

thank you, i had forgot

well that's what i've been trying to say for months now

sorry, i forgot

it's okay, you know now

yes, i do. thank you.

no, thank you.

i exist.

yes, you do.

        20031008   

Frankally I don't like it at all.
Michael considered fate at 17:07   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
did you know that frantically can also be spelled franticly? How weird does that look?

I just saw numerically spelled numericly in some code comments here at work. Just yesterday, in fact, so your discussion rings true. Not that numericly is a technically (technicly?) correct spelling, as franticly apparently (apparentally?) is.

Yes. It looks weird.

I feel awful.
Michael considered fate at 17:05   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

baseball
Michael considered fate at 10:27   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
You know I'm not much of a baseball fan but when it comes to the post season and when it comes to the Red Sox, I'm in line. It's good to have a little hometown pride and some community spirit and all that jazz..

Except I really have say that tony is on the mark here when he says the sox have played some sloppy baseball. He is right on when he complains about kim and, though he didn't mention it, he would probably (rightfully) complain about Ramirez and his showboating stroll to first after his three-run homer on Monday night.

Red Sox - get your act together. Get your asses in gear. Stop flubbing around and chewing your nails and bumbling around like schoolgirls. Tony is right: The Yanks won't take all your half-assed shit sitting down, and they won't take 8 9th-inning 2-out pitches quite as poorly as the A's did. They won't.

The Yanks will be happy enough to stroll right over the Sox, squash them, and ride on into the World Series.. the ONE HUNDREDTH WORLD SERIES.. without even a second thought.

I don't always agree with Tony's sports politics.. especially when it comes to baseball.. but Tony is right tonight. Stop playing like sallies. Stop acting like petulant little children. Stop running into eachother in the outfield. Stop running through 5 pitchers in the last two innings when the second and third were doing fine.

And Tony is right,

whoever thought of that gay ass "cowboy up" needs some beer thrown at him.

        20031007   

superb
Michael considered fate at 13:33   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
bear with me, Jaime says, I'm having trouble writing today.

Says it like it is so I'll do it to:

I am having trouble writing today. I'm having trouble with random thoughts and unfinished sentences and misaligned ideas. I'm having problems with my wrist and my knee and my head. I'm knocking things down but I'm not picking them up and it's that anxious feeling that at sometime, someday, I'm gonna have to clean it all up.

Someone always has to clean it up.

It's okay though because a good cleaning is theraputic. Taking a solid 3 hours to go through stuff, clean out the closet, sweep the floors, and do the dishes.. it's like a visit to the group session - only it doesn't cost as much.

Alright, I know nothing about group sessions. I know nothing about therapy and overcoming addictions and depressions and I know the last thing about personal loss. I feel terrible.

I'm alive in this world with not the slightest complaint, really - despite what this place might suggest - I'm really quite content with my lotto number in life. Death, dismemberment, personal anguish? Grandfather in his late 60's - I was too young to really know. I cried but I didn't know why. The feelings were there but I wasn't familiar with them. Grandmother, recently, in her late 80's and having lived a long life, survived by 8 children and 20 or so grandchildren. These are normal and insignificant trials. Not insignificant in that they aren't sad, but insignificant as in they are normal and, for the most part, expected.

I feel terrible for being blessed with my lack of sadness - a self-imposed punishment for being me, being blessed, being whole and uncut, still standing, still me. And so I write such depressing things to you, here, and that is why I wrote what I wrote about the darkness of the human condition. I was trying to say that we are, as a society, a perpetuation machine - perpetuating the suffering the loss the hate the fear. I was trying to ask why books and movies and tv and every other form of "entertainment" perpetuate this darkness. I don't know. No answers.

It's a sick obsession we have with Mother Nature. It's Oedipal. It's just the way we are, I suppose. Born from this earth we shall die and return to the earth. Both figuratively and literally. If it wasn't so personal it would almost be poetic.

But instead it hurts. A soreness, an ache, a throbbing pain. A sharp stab a mild twitch. It hurts. This is human. It is human to hurt. It is human, this pain we feel for eachother for ourselves and it's what makes us what we are. Not snail or meerkat or bug or tree. Not sand or stone or rock or sea. Not tiger or sloth or chimpanzee.

Just human.

Always human.

So to cope, we do stuff like this:

www.fortyhands.com

Oh that's rich...
Michael considered fate at 09:48   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
What is it that causes the human heart the brain the innards inside spew forth hate and strife and moralized puzzles that only dead mean can answer?

Yes, folks. Dead Mean.


Whatever.

        20031006   

Speaking of Woe
Michael considered fate at 20:02   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
I have been woefully out of it lately due to a long and unnecessary and completely painful business trip perpetrated upon me by my place of employ to which I can only say: I'm sorry. It wasn't fully my fault and I will try, ernestly and faithfully, not to let it happen again. Mmkay?

MMkay.

Good. Now that we've agreed to that, a few things to be tabled.

Number 1:

It seems to me that a wonderful idea for all groups of friends is to collectively figure upon a unique and shared interest among said friends and use that interest to come to a common goal. For example a yacht. This is just an example, mind you, so feel free to brain storm yourself and report back to the group. Now, say you and your friends enjoy spending time on the water, enjoy sailing or motoring or whathave you, and you would enjoy doing it together. Now, let us presume there are a few of you. 5,6, even 10 maybe. Now what, do you suppose, would be the cost of a nice boat on which you can all widdle away your waking hours basking in the sun and downing cheap light beer with sunglasses on and among friends? Now what, do you suppose, would the cost be if you split it among 5,6, even 10 friends, maybe. $5,000? $10,000? Whatever the cost, for sure it is a worthwhile endeavor and worth looking into, no? Can you think of anything better than friends, some beer, a boat, and water? If you can then perhaps you should have listened earlier on when I said this was just an example. Go ahead and dream your own dreams, I got my own.

Number 2:

Business in this country gets entirely too many breaks. We're a country built by the people for the people and of the people but all the people are for corporate control and none of the people are really controlling anything. It's hard to tell someone to stop drinking Coke cause heck, maybe they like it, but when is this country - if ever - going to stop it's roll into the dark deep dungeon of capitalism? At least in a dictatorship someone has control. Allowing corporations control of our country is tantamount to lopping the head off the dragon and letting it wander about with no direction. Bureacracy is a deadly weapon and it is threatening to kill this country with one fell swoop of the sword.

Number 3:

Why can't I talk at my computer yet?

oh woe...woe is me
Michael considered fate at 19:51   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
I sit down, lay on the couch, sigh a sigh of uncontent, a woe is me to the world for my mediocre suffering, at best, and I wonder, I wonder: Why? Why is the human condition lonely when all around is gold? Why do dogs bark at shadows in the night in their safe homes on their safe master's bed on top of their comforters comfortable and warm and shaded from the real harsh reality of nature's world? What is the law that state's the lonely man's heart must flutter and fall and where, pray tell, is the fire that burns that heart black and turns it from gold to straw; to nothing but useless soot?

What is it that causes the human heart the brain the innards inside spew forth hate and strife and moralized puzzles that only dead mean can answer? What, pray tell, is the good of the darkness inside every man to put pen to paper, the need the want the desire to create the pain and suffering of an entire world onto into the minds of others to perpetuate the hate the love the hate the mis-read feelings the confusion the desire the greed the love and back to hate? What is the reason for thought?

How is it that humans can kill and mame and want and lust and kill and create a language to thus describe the killing the wanting the maming the killing so as to not only act but describe, write, record the very hate that fills? How can this be possible, this darkness this darkness this darkness? How can one describe this disgusting fact - the Facts of Life - without a chuckle a grin as if telling a joke, because oh what a good one you've told there. How can one not cry and sob and break down in anger in hopeless despair to even think about it.

Where is the love they like to write about in between the darkened pages. Where is the consolation prize the appetizer the sorbet upon my palet the seaweed snack? Where does anyone think we're going with these acts of hatred this disgusting nature this nature this nature this black and horrid nature we push away as we embrace it with open arms our animal animal animalistic nature this from our mother our mother of nature Mother Nature.

When does it end?

        20031002   

also
Alex considered fate at 18:48   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
call. communicate. conjugate.

earnestly. honestly. nastily.

Alex considered fate at 18:42   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
SAD christmas! I have discovered that part of my own depression had to do with non-productivity, and another may be chemically related such that I can self medicate with herbal supplements. No joke; I feel so good every time I smoke, I wonder if it will not become a lifelong habit. I no longer fear the stoner's laziness. I am lazy NATURALLY! Very lazy. In fact so lazy, that I will show myself right now how I can deny my laziness, and read about hunter gatherers, inspired by my excitement that if I feel really good about myself afterwards, it will make smoking (and dancing, I have a date. kindof. I fucked it up because I called once to many times. but still, it is sure to be fun) all that much better.

Ha.

Eat it, genes. I defy thee! I procure endogenous satisfaction much to the chagrin of your metaphorical desires.

Also, the girl (scared to call her a cousin, lest we sleep together) is coming tomorrow. Shit dude. For two weeks. Shit, dude. Perhaps I will introduce her to the wonderful world of nature's pharmacy. And frisbee. HA!


Powered by Blogger

Check out heroecs, the robotics team competition website of my old supervisor's daughter. Fun stuff!
Page finished loading at: