Wednesday, April 29, 2009

What condition is my condition in?

No real writing was done today, or last night after getting off from work. At the moment I have a bit of a mental block about the idea of doing it, which typing this is meant somewhat to address. Also, I have just been reading about this Specter switch thing, which just comes completely out of left field to me and seems weirder and weirder the more I think about it. Also, listening to that Decembrist album, which I was able to exchange for a playable copy. The last song is quite good, though no "The Rake's Song."

Another source of blockage was an occurrence of what could be called "The Crossroads Dilemma," which is when presented with two things that both need to be done, I don't know which one to do, can't make up my mind and end up doing neither. Engorging on blog posts on Specter was probably a mechanism of that. Besides writing, the other path was doing my state taxes. Finally I broke down and did the taxes, just now. It took about 15 minutes. Everything had already been filled out; I just had to do the master copy. Now everything is signed, sealed and ready to be driven to the post office tomorrow. (I really need to stop procrastinating.)

...Today, when walking out of work, I had a strange feeling. I had felt rather all right at work that day, in control and, in a way, unconcerned with my mental state. And as I was walking, out the automatic doors and into the mundane air, I felt as if some switch was switching in my head, and something vaguely, for a split instant, a bit like euphoria, but more like normalcy, slipping through. And then the switch stuck, not fully completing its process. And I walked on, across the parking lot, feeling this odd phantom of gears in my head. It was, I suspected, the depression lifting, the way one of the patients described it in Against Depression (which I never finished). A singular moment when the depression lifted, before the gears stuck.

I think I was what jammed those gears in place. I think a part of me was frightened of the idea of being without it, like, well, it sounds crude to say it, but almost like a battered lover. I was going "No darling, come back, I didn't mean it, I would never leave you. I couldn't live without you. I don't know what I would do without you. Please, hit me again. I want you to."

That sounds gross, but really, this is quite a bit was it was like, I think. My apologies.

I don't feel like I have gone all the way back, though. I am still standing in the doorway. The gears haven't turned back around; they are still jammed in place. The Switch was thrown. It has not been thrown back; it is only that its process has been halted.

I don't know what will happen next. Maybe some vile shit will happen and I will go right back. Maybe I will hold in this pattern a while. Maybe I will pull out the brace, and things will just...change. I don't know.

There is a part in Against Depression where the patient whose depression lifted, like that, talks about how the depression is not her. That it is something else, but not who she is. I always thought that interesting, because of the stance such a statement implies on what is "You." What is the nature of consciousness. I mean, if you aren't the chemicals in your brain, what are you? Are you more you when unaided by chemicals, when on anti-depressants, when drunk, when sober, with raging with hormones or castrated? It seems that each of those is you, or a different shade of you, to me, but I am not that certain. But what defines you? If you strip away all those influences, the external, the innately biological, the pumping of blood and collections of neurons, would there still even be a you (are we more or equal to the sum of you physical parts? Is there a metaphysical level to reality?).

I think part of my reticence is, I have been depressed so long, I have been this unhappy, nervous, anxious, angry person for so long, I have been wearing this weight, this Albatross, for so long, that I don't know what I would be without it. I don't know how it would feel. I don't know if it would feel like me, if I would even be me. Is there anything to me, other then my depression? If I escaped i's temple, would I dash out into endless green fields, or find myself facing a trek through a barren Wasteland? "No Excuses." Would the sun outside of the cave be too bright?

I need to keep doing this...

Monday, April 27, 2009

Go with the flow

The story I am working on is kind of odd, because I don't know where it goes, quite. There is a faint flicker of an idea of an ending, but I don't know if I will use it. I am just writing the story, kind of one sentence in front of the next, trying to keep it along some pathway. A while back I wrote 800 words in a mad, late-night rush, but felt that I hadn't communicated all I wanted, hadn't set the mood as I wanted and pointed where the story was supposed to go. So I started over and have written about halfway through those words at much greater length and detail, and have written over 1100 words about those first four hundred or so words. Hmm, you know, it actually seems way more lopsided in terms of expansion than those numbers suggest. Single sentences have become paragraphs, or short scenes. Hopefully, writing it like this will give me a better idea of where it is going. I just write something, keeping the work in mind, (I have a deadline) and writing the next words whenever they come to me, whenever they do. I don't overthink it, or worry too much about whether I should be sitting there thinking, or taking a break. I just kind of feel my way through it. The real question, is just having the right sentence to put next, and writing that one down. Its a different approach for me, but I enjoy the exercise of it.

Laying Down the Gauntlet

I did a bit of writing last night, and it went a little better than previous recent efforts. Part of the problem I have, I think, it that I just didn't have a solid idea of what the story was that I was working on.

I have decided to commit once and for all, to a project which I have been thinking of, recently, which is that I should write one short story a week. Between Sunday and Saturday, I need to start and finish the rough draft of a story, or a chapter of some larger work. At the same time, I need to do a final edit on a different story, an set it up so it is presentable to other people.

I think I can do this, because I am always thinking up new ideas for stories, but I just never commit to writing them, or I push them off to the future, pledgint to start working on them at some later date. But my disinterest in political news is growing, and this seems like a excellent way to fill up my day.

Besides, in the past, The lack of another analytical approach to writing has allowed me to skirt by on actual output. By making some kind of formal declaration of my intentions in a public forum (to extent this blog is public) I hope to hold my feet to the fire. the the overhanging threat of analysis will force me to act, making have to be writing throughout the day, every day, because, if I am not, then I am sucking at life. There really is no other option.

So a short story a week it is. I figure, if I can keep that pace up, within, say, a year, I should enough actual writing under my belt, enough experience, to have the confidence to apply for a creative writing program again. Or do something else, I don't know. The main problem I have is just my performance anxiety and the preciousness with which I cling to every aspect of this activity, and I just have to jump into it uncaring, just revel in the act of doing it, like I did with drums, if I ever want to get better. This self-analytical tendency can be stifling, so I need to turn it into something constructive.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Mass produced junk

The last track on that Decembrists CD won't play. Straight out of the case, into the computer, it skips like a drug dealer's ten-year-old Metallica album. What the shit is that?

Throwback, Part 2; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sweetness

OK. One thing I notice right off the bat it that it is less harsh. The carbonation doesn't seem to stick in throat as much. Sometimes I liked that.

There something in the taste of it, the tang as it hits the back of the throat and vibrates along the teeth, that brings me back instantly to the cobbled together memories of working with my dad on some outdoors project, then sitting down on the front stoop to share a Pepsi while taking a break. It reminds me of the sweetness of those Pepsi's. How recently did they replace sugar with corn syrup? I mean, I'm thinking back to ages, maybe 7 to 13, so 12 to 18 years ago? I haven't really had Pepsi since then. I remember Pepsi, in general, being very harsh, but in this collective memory*, it isn't.

Past the tang, it tastes about the same, but that difference in sweetener really alters the mixture, so in a sense it's all different. There is no harshness to the drink at all, although it does make my teeth buzz a little bit. It kind of makes me want to brush my teeth. Yet, somehow, the yet of my mouth doesn't feel all puckered up, all stained with chemicals, the way it does usually.

All in all it was more like I was drinking a carbonated beverage, and less like drinking a mixture of flavorful chemicals.

It was much easier to drink the whole can. It was done in minutes. Much smoother. Much more a continuous whole.

*This was kind of a ritual for us.

Throwback, Part 1; or, I can haz sugar?

So, Pepsi has released some new products called Pepsi Throwback, where they use sugar instead of corn syrup as the sweetener, just like back in ye olden tymes. It just came out today, and I bought some of the Mountain Dew version. It's chilling in the fridge as I type, and it will be tried shortly. I am kind of curious to see if the taste is noticeably different.

Also bought the Decembrists The Hazards of Love after listening to "The Rake's Song" over and over again after listening to it at Cogitamus. I just had to possess it. About halfway through it now, most of it is very...relaxing. Not like "The Rake's Song" at all, but still quite good. I think it made my headache go away.

Kristof is awesome sometimes.

Regardless of what I said here, this sounds really good.

Red Stripe

I have become quite the beer connoisseur of late, and having tried it before, and not really remembering it, I bought a six-pack of red stripe, a quite expensive import from Jamaica.

Ech. What a horrible excuse for an import. I might as well have been drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. If that's the finest beer Jamaica has to offer no wonder everyone there is a stoner.

Stuck Here Again

After all this time not writing the writing is hard again. Which means I must get back to writing to make it easy again. Three days off and I write next to nothing. It's hard and annoying and now I have a slope to climb up all over again. It's very Sisyphean.

But I cleaned! I moved around all the junk, and swept, and then washed the floors. The place smelled like Ammonia all day. Before everything was covered in dust. Now everything is not covered in dust, which is much better. Tomorrow I need to get down to organizing things. The books are all out of order.

Oh. I need to finish my state taxes and send those in. They need the be postmarked by Thusday, and they are about half-done, I think, so no real worries, but I must spend some time working on them after work tomorrow, or I might start panicking about them.

I took all the tape off my drums. I didn't know drums are supposed to sound that good. I didn't know that that was what my ride cymbal really sounded like! It's beautiful.

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Banana Republic of America

So, I haven't really been writing about politics lately, though I have been keeping abreast of it. And it's for a simple reason, I think, which is the torture debate, and my general sense that the people on my side just don't get whats going on.

It's not that I think torture is right, or that things like waterboarding and walling aren't torture. They are. It's not that I think that the last President's men and women are war criminals. They are. And in an ideal world they would stand trial for war crimes. But I don't think that Obama is wrong in wanting to "look forward."

Yes, it's intellectually incoherent. Not upholding the rule of law will have a deleterious effect on our system of justice. And however important Obama's agenda is to me and others, the impediments that prosecutions might place in front of it are no reason not to do the right thing.

It's just that I think that prosecutions might bee even more dangerous than not having them, because of the response that I forsee coming from them.

I remember reading an article years ago that made the basic argument that what happened to Clinton was payback for Nixon. Nixon is the only modern president, really the only president, period, who is unequivocally placed in the historical record as a criminal. And he was a Republican. There is just no correspnding stain to the Democrat's honor to equal what Nixon says about the Republican party, and impeaching Clinton was about trying to even that score. And though it didn't really work, the Republicans were obviously willing to that far, to get that dirty, in the name of settling a score that existed in their own heads.

So, what would happen if Obama tried the last administration for war crimes? What would that do? That has never happened before. Take a moment to think about how big a deal it would be to try a president for crimes. It's never happened before, and we have had some presidents who have done some bad things. Andrew Jackson was pretty much solely responsible for the Trail of Tears, and he's on the fucking twenty. To do so would be unprecedented, in a way, and the Republicans sense of agrievement would know no bounds.

And so there is no doubt in my mind that if Obama brought prosecutions against Bush, Cheney, or any of their underlings—just, righteous prsecutions—that the next Republican president wouldn't turn right around and start trying to find any excuse to bring charges up against Obama and various members of his adminstration. Holder. Clinton. Biden. Dawn Johnsen. Any joke of a reason they can find, they will take. I mean, can you imagine what Sarah Palin, that vindictive freak, would do, if she was our next president, and Obama had brougth charges against Bush officials? And given the precarious state of the economy, and the madness infesting the entire Republican party, that situation isn't as unimaginable as it should be.

And when the whole Banana Republic meme started up, I felt like, "I'm right." Some people think this is an absurd argument, after the Clinton impeachment, after the last eight years. And it is. But it isn't funny. Implicit in that line of (faulty) reasoning is a threat. "You want to play like that, ok, we'll play like that." It doesn't matter whether Obama is turning us into a Banana Republic or not, just that it gives them the excuse to start turning us into a Banana Republic. An excuse is all they need to become completely fascistic.

So while I think the prosecutiongs for the Bush administration is the "right thing to do," I don't know that I think Obama should do it, at least not any time soon. Because if the Democrats lose power in either branch of government anytime soon, America as we know it will quickly cease to exist. We will start to torture again. There will be endless surveillance of citizens and political opponents. People will start disppearing.

Given this argument only makes sense if you think the Republicans are evil. So if you don't think the major polical party that is arguing in favor of war crimes is evil, by all means continue pushing for investigations.

I value the rule of law. I think we should live in a system that is ruled by the law. But when one of the two major political parties doesn't actually beleive in the rule of law, I am not sure we can acutally have it. Writing that makes me feel ill.

God, I hate them so fucking much.

So maybe Obama is doing the right thing. Maybe he can has a plan. I don't know. And I don't know if following an ideal, in a particular case, is the right thing to do if following that ideal will lead to other's destroying it once and for all. I don't know if insisting on the ideal, no matter how noble, is the right thing to do with it will lead to the death of innocents. I don't know.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

ugh 2

So, another week of work, another week of not writing. My apartment still isn't clean, though I got a bit of it done. The living room, at least, has lots of floor space, and the sink is mostly empty. I did get my federal taxes sent out, so that's good. The state taxes are still sitting around, but I have until the 30th for those, so no worries just yet.

I think this confirms to me that writing really is reliant on momentum. After I let it atrophy for a bit, it just went away, and didn't come back. Even if I don't write much, with this coming week of work I need to just write something everyday, no matter how short or pithy, just to keep the mental faculty working. Knowing that it needs a certain level of practice (and not just knowing it intellectually, but instinctively) is very helpful moving forward. I just need to get the momentum moving again.

Also, I have been reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson recently. For some reason reading fiction seems to crowd out the part of my brain that wants to write. It's like I can read, and I can write, but I can't do both, at least I can't feel a zest for doing both. It's very odd, and a predicament I need to find my way around.

In slightly better news, earlier this week, right before leaving for work the vague outline of the entire first book of SK came to me in a weird jump and I wrote the whole page or so down in a notebook. Which it a major step forwards because it gives me, if not the entirety of my story, the areas that I have to color within, which is very edifying.

Friday, April 10, 2009

ugh

Work seems to suck all the life out of me. I just have had no energy, after getting home form work, or waiting to go to work, to do any writing this week. Yesterday, my day off, I just say around all day, read, felt sorry for myself (for a variety of reasons), and read some more. I have been sleeping past noon lately. I think that's part of it. You just can't feel good and motivated when your circadian rhythms are that thrown off. Last night I read in bed until about three, then set my alarm for 10. I have been up a little over an hour now. Been cleaning my apartment, slowly, taking breaks. Everything is covered in a coarse layer of dust. It's very disgusting. No wonder I have been feeling depressed. It's been like renting the place out from someone who died last summer. Getting this place into a hospitable realm is probably the first step.

My taxes aren't done yet either, but they are getting there. The federal basically just needs to be filled out all officially, and the state? well the state is way more complex, and I am just trying to figure out what all the deductions and everything are.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

update

I woke up this morning and, feeling the need to do writing, as a cross between a duty and a necessity, I sat down and wrote the second half of a story I started several months ago. I just pulled up the document file and finished it off. I drank coffee while working on it. Then I had breakfast in the mid afternoon.

It's not done, by any means. There is a rather longish speech that takes up the center of the piece needs to be drastically reedited, just completely rewritten. I think the phrasing is not nearly precise enough, and it doesn't truly fit the character's personality. It should be a bit more rehearsed, and thus more literary. He has given speeches like this before; he has had practice. Right now, it's just kind of a grab bag of information. I was just trying to get down the facts he would say, so that they would be concrete and not floating around in my brain. Now they need to be beaten into shape.

Still, I feel that happy sense of accomplishment. I am particularly proud of the two epilogues to the story's main event, which I think do quite a nice job of commenting on the the main action without being explicit about it, and actually being quite casual in presentation and seemingly beside the point.

Overall, I feel like this forcing myself to write, and to write in my own voice, is doing me quite a bit of good. It's becoming part of my arsenal of activities, and I think I am slowly improving at expressing myself in words at will (slowly), giving myself an easier facility at controlling my meaning with language, because I am getting in touch with the process of engaging that speech faculty. There are still bumps along the way, and I am sure if I went back and read this stuff I would notice all kinds of mistakes and grammatical errors, but there's writing and there's editing and right now I am concentrating on the more essential of the two. It's a process. I need to build the foundation before I start worrying about the decorations.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Futurism, Part 5: Technology

The problem with forecasting in where technology where go is that you just never know where the scientific breakthrough of the future will be, or how they will change the game. Marx's theory of history, it seems to me, has been completely demolished because he could not account for the effects that electricity would have upon society, the creation of computer technology. Gibson managed to include a whole lot of possible future tech in Neuromancer, and even guessed correctly that computers would get smaller, but completely missed the boat on the concept with cell phones (whose existence would create a number of plot holes in the opening sequence). And it's possible, depending on what scientific breakthroughs come, on them radically restructuring society.

What are some areas of scientific interest? Well, the three areas of actual scientific concern are biology, chemistry, and physics, three fields that overlap in various ways. These result in various technological fields, like medicine, telecommunications, information technology, agriculture, robotics (nanotechnology?), genetics, energy production.... Biology and chemistry seem to be mostly applicable to medicine, genetic and agriculture. But physics branches out into a number of fields and possibilities.

Hmm. What are some fields of interest at the moment? Well, there is much investigation into the workings of the mind. Drugs for regulating behavior. There is robotics, our increasingly refined attempts at creating self-sufficient machines. Transportation.

It seems to me, as I outlined earlier, that communication and information devices seem to be centralizing with the help of the internet. We will probably see continuedcross-over between devices until the major difference between phones, laptops and televisions are what purpose they are mainly meant for (idle observance, active continuous physical engagement, audio engagement and casual physical engagement). Probably by midcentury we will see all such devices be completely interchangable in terms of ability, in possession of massive amounts of storage space (laptops with numerous terabytes) , capable of nearly instantaneous response to all commands, and with crystal-clear image quality (streaming video on your laptop with have the detail of shrunken-down 70mm film). Oh, broadband will be free and everywhere.

So take that as a given. Now, honestly, I can't see what unexpected advancements we could come up with in this area. Perhaps new forms of interface. gloves that allow you to manipulate screens. Holographic projections, both as screens and as interfaces (fake keyboards, volume knobs. Goggles/glasses that allow you access to information akin like you are a terminator or something. Tiny earpieces. Beyond that, you are talking implants: man/machine interfaces.

Medicine. Well, you have stem cell research. Gene therapy, for genetic diseases, birth defects, reversing cellular deterioration (slowing/halting aging). Organ cloning (including skin; better for burn victims). Cures for cancer. Better, safer vaccines? Genetic treatments seems to be where it will really be at, although keeping up with viruses will probably be an endless struggle.

Robotics. Man, there could be some freaky shit done with robots. But robots have always seemed like a kind of dead end to me. I mean, either we build robots that can perform a variety of complicated tasks, basically androids, or we don't bother, and just have machines that do things. I just wonder if there is any actually need for android robots. Why have one when you can get a human to do it? What's the economic incentive?

Energy production. Seems like it's the things lying around, right now. Solor panels, wind panels, and so on. Maybe a bit of nuclear power. It's just a question of getting the engineering down so the tools are more effective. Or we actually come up with cold fusion, or some completely different source of power.

Of course there's things like man/machine interface, AI, teleportation, time travel: things that are in science, fiction, but might not actually be possible (well, a lot of those other things might not be possible either).

I suppose you could base a science fiction story set in such a projected future world around the next scientific breakthrough that comes out of nowhere. Use that Clerk Maxwell line to Queen Victoria about how someday you will be able to tax it as the epitaph.

Futurism, Part 4: Economics

Here's an idea.

Assume we have widespread, nigh-universal unionization, and companies are still run by executives. But executives still have a tendency to fuck up. So what happens if a company goes under? Or, what happens if a company violently violates the terms of it's labor contracts?

Suppose a bill is passed where in this case, the government takes control of the company, wipes out the shareholders, and takes the company into receivership. It becomes an adjunct of the government. At this point, the government gives the union the option of buying back the company at some fair price (actual price of assets, cost of wiping out shareholders, I don't know) with the offering of a loan to facilitate the transaction. If the union declines, the company simply continues on nationalized, and then the government either runs the business, breaks it up and sells parts or sells it whole as it sees fit. This creates a heavy impetus for the union to buy back the company.

If the union agrees to buy it back, the corporation is reorganized as a cooperative. Instead of a board made up of chief shareholders or whatever, they are elected by the unions to termed periods (probably without term limits) . The CEO, or president, or what have you is either selected by the board as an employee or is also an elected official. This figure makes all other hiring decisions on down. Or the board does. I don't know quite how they do it up there.

Within this system, every employee down to mail clerk is assigned a certain share or number of shares of the company, which is the degree to which their position grants them ownership of the company. The employees own the company, and the are sole owners. After this point, compensation will probably differ from cooperative to cooperative, but likely each employee with be assigned a base salary adjustable in terms of the relative worth of their work (some jobs are more important than others), or seniority, or other concerns, then a "bonus," which is their share of profits, determined by the percentage their shares constitute within the company. Shares may be added with seniority or importance of position, but they are not allowed to be traded for capital. Different companies will probably come to their own decision about how much of profits will go into bonuses, or advertising or expansion, or if they will even bother with a base salary or just pay everyone from some percentage of income. Different companies and union cultures will dictate different things.

The existence of these cooperatives will lead to the encouragement for the creation of outside cooperatives, where workers or even people creating a start-up, albeit people loyal to socialist principles, will make their new ventures nascent cooperatives. Government loans in starting up new ventures will be more generous to such institutions.

Also, after the next financial crisis, or whichever one comes after Single Payer, we'll just nationalize all the major financial institutions, and run them like cooperatives, as an effective part of the national government. Thus will credit flow without need for a profit margin. It will be like the postal service.

Now, how to account for and continue innovation? One, we will boost funding for public universities, making them capable of shouldering a larger portion of the innovation pool. Systems will be set up to make sure that individuals are rewarded for their contributions to various fields, though with the government, instead of corporations, controlling the patents, it will be easier for useful drugs to inexpensively aid those in need. There will also be a large variety of grants offered to private individuals to encourage the pursuit of possibly idiosyncratic topics not directly covered by the larger university systems.

There will be a full time welfare unemployment wage, set at what is determined as subsistence level. That is, you can eat and afford somewhere to sleep on it, but not much more, so you should probably get a job if you want to live comfortably. And of course to do so would be frowned upon, though many burgeoning artists begin their careers is such a state, arting all day in hovels with the bare essential devices of their trades.

You will still have to get car insurance in order to buy a car, and you will still have to pay for it out of pocket. It's your toy.

By the way, this will all occur in the U.S., where power will, obviously, reside more and more with the Federal government, though decentralized across it's various webs of agencies. Europe will stay quite decentralized, akin to America under the Articles of Confederation. The various countries will either stay much as they are now or undergo widespread nationalization and hence rationing. Or maybe that's just in the eastern bloc. I don't really know the nature of Europe well enough to really think where they will go. A part of we suspects many of them will stay in the social democracies they have now, seeing no need to change, while ironically America will have become more socialistic, while still being more individualistic (personally I don't see these values as in conflict in any way). While Europe focuses on something like redistribution, the system America arrives at will be based on making sure individuals received just compensation for the actual value of their work. America might even have a flat tax, at least for the range of incomes possible within government or cooperative work, based on such reasoning (or it might be better to say, because the system is accurate). Collectivism vs. individual equality. Or something.

The American Cooperative Act will be passed sometime in the last quarter of the twenty-first century.

What do you mean "we," white man?

So I saw this link to a discussion of the political decline of the white male and, truth be told, I felt a little bit of a twinge of loss, then felt guilty about it. I guess no one wants to feel that they are losing something, even if it's something they don't really think they should have. Or maybe I just have issues.

Anyways, I clicked on the link, and read this. After some talk about all the people in power who are either not white or not male, it states:
Missing from their powerful ranks is the benevolent, yet stern retrosexual white guy prototype, someone at home in a country club locker room, but with enough self-confidence to get out and ask for directions in the ‘hood. He enjoys nigiri sushi, but he’s still comfortable with his own chest hair. By day, he feels his way through an Eastern bazaar like Simon LeBon, and by night he takes a nightcap with the ladies like a randy Bruce Campbell.
But I am not that guy. I have never been in a country club, nor it's locker room, nor would I have felt comfortable there. I am not some manly, upperclass badass. When people talk about white men, it seems like they are always talking about some other person, someone I don't know and don't even see. Some phantom.

It seems like it is always the case that when people start talking about white men, they immediately think of someone completely different. I am getting tired of being lumped in with people I have nothing in common with.

But then, maybe I shouldn't take it too hard. Maybe, next time someone talks about the downfall of the white male, I should just think, "Good. Fuck that asshole."

Futurism, Part 3

Where was I? So, I was rambling on and on about societal changes, and which way I thought they would go, specifically, the question of whether what seem from the modern perspective to be categorical cases of wrongdoing could be, through future changes in societal assumptions, be considered acceptable, or part of a new civil rights struggle. I kind of want to sidestep that question at the moment and focus on some other issues. I think that any possibility of such changes would have to be predicated on long-term societal shifts. there would probably be, in the near future, some kind of Golden Age, or calm period, where the basic reforms in civil rights and sexual equality are codified before any such issues become the topic of actual societal interest (as opposed to sources of prurient sensationalism).

God, I feel like I am disappearing up my own asshole. It this really the way I talk?

...Anyways, I think I lot of other events unrelated fields will happen before society might reach the point of legalizing pedophilia, so it's probably best to figure out what else might be going on in the meantime. That might determine whether or not we actually get at a point where such things are considered. (Although perhaps it should be assumed that during this cooling-off period there are clandestine pedophile and polygamous subcultures growing up in secret? Maybe that's your point of contention in a story set in the "good" future: that there is no final frontier. Also, I forgot about nudists.) I think we can pin about 2050 to the beginning of such a period, probably at the latest, and such a period will last at least until around 2100, and probably beyond that.

So, let's turn back to economics. I see two planes to this issue; there's national economics and there's global economics. On the global front, I think you are going to see a gradual rise in the standard of living as the local cultures adopt technological and organizational concepts first developed by the West. This will go on onto these countries reach some type of internal equilibrium and are able to start feeding back into the system (contributing scientists, art, academic institutions, technological breakthrough, etc.).

On the local front, like I said earlier, I think that there will come increased unionization, which will lead to higher wages, and in turn a higher level of civic engagement. Health Care will become socialized. These things seem certain, on some level, to me.

But the question is, what comes next?

More Futurism

So one thing i have been thinking about is how no science fiction stories imagine a pleasant future. Well, I have really been giving that much thought, since the reason for that is obvious—pleasant futures don't really lend themselves well to conflict—as to what such a pleasant future might entail. What would be a conceivable future world that we could look forward to living in? That wouldn't just be a sci-fi setting, but that could be an accurate projection of the future, to some degree? Assuming the world will actually get better, which I kind of do, and that there is an actual direction to history, what kind of future society are we looking at? What would be a conceivable endpoint, or at least goal, in terms of a future society.

I don't mean far future either. One of my feelings is that any possible future that could be arrived at, that is, any society, would have encoded in it mechanism to ensure scientific and artistic advancement. We will not get an End of History scenario, where we settle down to one, stable, form of society, and then we never budge from that, ever again. (It's funny, how when you think about it, how conservative Marx's vision really is.) However, it seems to me that there is a certain trajectory in terms of terms of economic and societal reforms, that something like the the "Liberal Agenda" will come about in the end, it's just that the Liberal Agenda keeps mutating, so it's hard to keep track of what it actually might be. Of course, any possible future, in order to be realistic along these lines, would need to be believably based upon a foreseeable trajectory from the present (otherwise you are dealing in Fantasy).

I mean, let's start out with some simple things shall we? I assume that eventually we are just going to have to have some kind single payer healthcare. Medical cost will just be so expensive, that some attempt will be made to eliminate the cost, and cutting out the profit margin seems a good way to do that. And of course, there will be increased, nearly universal unionization, leading to higher wages for all (at least in America). This, in turn, will cut into the profit margin. (God, I wish I knew more about economics.) Kind of hard to figure out what the step it after that.

Then there is social issues. The problem I have is that I feel like you can always fail to take something into account. Part of me thinks that We have almost reached the endpoint in terms of civil rights causes. Just where is there to go from here? But I bet the Romans thought the same thing, right. But if there is still some social just causes unturned, which ones? Who is there really left out there being oppressed? What additional dimensions of human experience have not been noticed? There's race, gender, religion, and sexual proclivities, right? Race, or nationalism, will probably be a continuing source of discord until everyone is brown, but I think in many countries it will soon fade to non-importance in day to day interaction. The President of the United States is a black guy. Talking about post-racialism is bullshit, but that doesn't mean our conception of our relationship with the concept of race isn't going to go under an overhaul over the next 4-8 years. Religion, who fucking cares. sexual proclivities? I just doubt that furies are going to be the next GLBT. Fetishes in general be become kind of humdrum and not important. Lot of taboos and peoples' interest in caring about or stigmatizing certain taboos will just go away. Once gay relationships are normalized, that shit will open like floodgates, and no one will care about fetishes, whether we're talking Furries or S&M. It will be like caring about a person's favorite ice cream flavor (mine is vanilla, natch). By 2050, no one gives a fuck what you do in bed. Probably the only sexual habits I see keeping a stigmatization are things like pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy. Basically anything that could be read as an imposition onasnother conciousness that is unable to give valid consent. Though I wonder how long such things could hold on, especially if concepts such as gender start to fall apart and sex comes to be less loaded with meaning or value. Bestiality will always be a somewhat nasty violation of animals, but polgamy? Just a way to ratify polyamorous relationships, the way we are now ratifying same-sex ones. Pedophilia is a bit more fucked up, but, the ancient Greeks did it, right? Could we concievably return to a state so sexually lax that it became acceptable. Is NAMBLA the next gay rights movement? Allen Ginsburg seemed to think so. On the other hand, that might actually be a moral aberration that has actually been corrected for by Western Individual Liberty, not something harmless that has been supressed by intolerant mores. Still, if Socrates fucked Plato... (did he? could people confirm that, or am I just imagining that shit from stuff I read and heard? Man the Greeks sure were odd.)

More later.

Blah

Yeah, well work took a lot out of me this week. Everyday I got home and didn't feel like thinking or creating or anything. I just sat around and zoned out, drank a whiskey or a beer, or both, or several of both. Wednesday night I had a borderline psychotic episode after being in a freezer for over half an hour. I still wasn't really over the bad vibes from that for the rest of the next day, and then I sleep schedule got extra special messed up. Which, in general, I sleep schedule has been of late. maybe I need to get on a schedule. A set time to go to bed and wake up might be me some good.

Today I tuned my drums for the first time in ages. I even put the heads back on the bottom of the toms. They sound much better now. The resonances are in tune with one another, each tom tightened 360 degrees past finger tight. I left the back off the bass drum, since I keep having to take pieces off the back to use on the front back the front tighteners get jammed. I wonder why that keeps happening. Perhaps I have to loosen the drumheads peicemeal, instead of completel detuning one before the next? Actually, all my top drum heads are getting hard to turn. I wonder if I can order some more down at the local music shop. Maybe tomorrow I will go down to the music shop, then go sit in the library and read books. It is unfortunate that there are no big comfy chairs at the library.

I also need to buy garbage bag tags.

Another thing I did today. I cooked fish. I got out the broiler, which I have never used before, and mixed lemon salt in olive oil and slathered in on the fish, then cooked it at 315 for about 14 minutes. I also made about a pound of mash potatoes, which I will be eating all week. I put so much butter and pepper into those bad boys that you don't even need gravy or bean juice with them, they are so delicious on their own.

I have been making a lot of sandwiches lately. They are surprisingly easy to make, tasty, and filling. Now I know why mom was always pushing them. I get Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread, which is just the most flavorful stuff you could imagine, just incredibly hearty. You feel like are are really eating a loave. I use organic lettuce. I need to start buying freshly sliced meat, though. The recent On-Sale packaged stuff I bought is terrible.

...There is now gay marriage in the state I live in. That is just so fucking weird to me.