whatevs

so anyway, if your god loves me, how come he didn't endow me with the ability to play the guitar?

i'd like to but i'm too old to learn. wait, not technically too old to learn, you're never too old, but too fucking old to learn, in the sense that learning is just so painful in every way. but i like new things, new projects, new seas to sail.

a bad thing about living with mrs zen is that she wants stability. that's not a bad thing about her. it's a bad thing about me. i know that a lot of the bad things in my life are about me, but i still don't change.

because you can't teach old dogs new tricks? or you're just too lazy? i've been really struggling to learn poker. some days i feel i've learned some stuff; others i can only feel the gap between here and there, and it seems huge. what is frustrating is that it feels huge so i lose heart, instead of leaping into it and finding out whether it really is huge.

***

so i had some requests, like a deranged dj, and i've fulfilled one and this is sort of fulfilling another. and a third will have to wait, because things are a little better with mrs zen, but not well enough to do what i was asked just yet. i will fulfil another in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, this is what i'm going to have tattooed on my chest:



although in b&w, because i don't like colour tatts. i just don't, don't ask for a reason.

***

i am listening to Atlas Sound: Let the blind lead those who can see but cannot feel. it's about half as good as the reviews make out. if you compare it with Caribou's Andorra, there's no contest. they are aiming for a similar place, but Caribou hits it hard, and this meanders around it. basically, the guy cannot write a tune.

tons of tunes on Hercules and Love Affair. do you like disco? if not, why not? we're not talking the "nu disco" of the egregious Klaxons or the slightly more interesting Hot Chip. we're talking the real deal. it just has piles of brilliant ideas, plus Antony of Antony and the Johnsons diva'ing it up. Moroder magic. get it if you have a booty.

earlier today I was listening to Silver Mt Zion's new album. i already had Sparks fly upward, and didn't like it. the new album is fucking horrible. it's just overindulgent trash, not the revolutionary postrock you might expect from the GYBE camp.

***

this made me laugh a lot. then i thought, how sad is that?

but Garfield always did draw on a well of cynicism, a bitterness that is very unAmerican.

***

if you read French, and i mean read it well, not just get by, you can get yourself a fresh view on current affairs from Le monde diplomatique.

okay, that got rid of our American friends, not one of whom speaks anything bar the bellowing that they try to pass off as English, so i can share with the rest of you that there's also a less expansive English version.

***

the web is a stunning resource for autodidacts. of course, most webtards use Wikipedia and google as their sole points of entry, ignoring that both have very deep and serious flaws. i enjoy and endorse philosophy, and i know where to get it.

i have tons of philosophy links. problem is, they're mixed in with all my other links. i keep trying to systematise my bookmarks, but each time i use a different system, and now it's hopeless. in the process, i find stuff that i had entirely forgotten i'd bookmarked.

here's a selection from my "stuff" folder. that's stuff i haven't or couldn't put in a category:

men and women talk differently
there's a new pokertracker. woot. will cost money. boo. will ultimately lead to making money. woot. maybe.
Indonesia's rise and fall. if you want to know about the world, you have to go a little deeper than Fox News. the viewpoint is probably also a little skewed (Anderson is a leftist) but the detail is not. (the problem is more that one writer will select one set of details, and another another, so you have to read widely to ensure you have gathered enough detail to have an idea.)
a thread from the Zulupad forum on merging files. i have been using Zulupad for making notes, because my method of making notes for writing, if i make them, is to make interlinked pages--like, erm, a wiki--and mindmap-type things sometimes. so this is useful for me. at least it makes me feel a bit like writing, to see my ideas sitting there on my desktop, looking at me accusingly. i do have ideas. i have about six pages of a novel. i think it's fucking good, but what do i know? i'm not all that sure where it's going though, so it's been stalled for a while. again, it's the gap thing: i do not know whether i can write it so i don't even try.
the civfanatics forum. i recently got Civ4. i find computer games a good form of escapism, when i don't want to think but don't want to just vegetate. i only play Championship Manager (or Football Manager) or Civ basically. unfortunately, my laptop has a bizarre disc drive problem, and i haven't found a crack for Civ4 that works, so i haven't been able to play it much. i wasn't horribly impressed though, when i did play it. it seemed not to be a huge stride from 3, but maybe i've just been spoiled because 3 was leap from 2.
the wikipage on the Nicene Creed. talking to someone about it, i needed to know what the differences were between their version of it and the one i know well. i bookmarked it so that i could go back to it some time, and think about what Christians claim to believe.
on that subject, i have this and several other pages from the Catholic Encyclopaedia, basically about the nature of Jesus. Eutyches was, we are told, too ignorant to be a Monophysite. i know, you're thinking what i'm thinking: aren't we all? this was though an incredibly important division in the early church, and played a part in Byzantine politics. briefly, Catholics (and successor sects) believe that Jesus had two natures: divine and human. not that he was some weird melange of the two. not that he was a god in a human body (that's Eutychianism, btw). but that he was both at the same time, united but separate. Monophysites believed that he had a unified nature: that he was a mix of god and man, united by commingling.
a different view on teh Ceiling Cat yu can has at teh Lolcat Bible. i was slightly alarmed to find that there are roolz for writing Lolcat. do not want roolz!
i can has spice. here is an excellent resource, all about spices. you could lose yourself for hours in pages like this, and sometimes i do. i don't feel much wiser for it, but i feel happy just wandering among things i don't know.
also spicy, but in a different way, here are some young ladies putting poles to a use not conceived by Fireman Sam. i was looking for something to use as my avatar at 2p2. in the end i went for this:



which doesn't seem to be moving. it moves at my profile. i have no idea who the woman i'm objectifying is, and i don't care. madeyed feminists, feel free to write to bitch me out.

did i just say "bitch me out"? omgzorz! it's almost as though i was mocking the idea that people inadvertently use sexist language and expect to get away with it.

anyway, i'm now listening to Fluke, and it's not earthshattering, but it's feelgood, and you know, even though i'm suffering from a bad headcold, i'm feeling good right now.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:44 pm