crushing air 

my failings

sometimes i get so high that people seem surrounded in light and shrouded in silence, but man when i get proven wrong, wow. on a couple of occassions it's almost broken me. Not the loss of someone or even the loss of the idea of someone, merely the inherent waking to reality that said person never existed and i am a little more broken than before.
lately i feel that way all the time, but with aspects of my mind rather than people. particularly about my level of knowledge. It's daunting, here i am something so different from what or whoever i was but in complete relationship and perhaps retaliation to what i had been. How'd you like to wake up one day and realize everything you'd been taught was a lie and the only thing you retain of use are your experiences and knowledge without opinion or belief. These are the only things that stick with me as i go through my days, and question belief all you shall you can never truly eliminate it. what am i trying to say?
people are beginning to see it and that troubles me to a great extent. It's in my eyes or something, perhaps confidence but there is something sinister there and one's who cross me seem to catch it much quicker than before. in a positive context it might be refered to as power, but the reactions on others faces suggests otherwise. Perhaps my true calling is nothing but crime, deception and self-interest, or perhaps these things have been honned by a culture willing to adopt a bastard son and a child of minimal means or people to turn to. Why should i turn from something that eagerly embraces me in it's unlieing bossom and has shown me some of the little truth i've known? hate is merely a crutch.
but that's not it at all. my undieing love and belief and self-righteousness lead me to easily be wounded, pricked i defend. simple as cave man philosophy: don't kick the nasty one. Or is it? some say the fate of the wicked is predestined, some say wicked is all dependant on where you stand in the first place. Perhaps my whole social theme and outlook thereof is based on pure defence mechanisms, perhaps all of ours are. what a mind-fuck.

intraweb

so my computer is fucking retarded and is making strange noises (coincidentally after i took it to dave's, me thinks dave's female peripherals gave it computer herpes). Nah, it's been bugging out for a while, so i bought a new harddrive but i might not get it for a few days. Also, i may just take off and disappear for a while, so if i am suddenly not on the internet (gasp!) for awhile you now know why.

links

http://www.romanloranc.com/photographs.html
w00t

http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm

mcdonalds new menu

from the guardian

The Bush definition of liberation abroad robs democratic forces of their most potent tools.

Last Tuesday, George Bush delivered a major address on his plan to fight terrorism with democracy in the Arab world. On the same day, McDonald’s launched a massive advertising campaign urging Americans to fight obesity by eating healthily and exercising. Any similarities between McDonald’s “Go Active! American Challenge” and Bush’s “Go Democratic! Arabian Challenge” are purely coincidental.

Sure, there is a certain irony in being urged to get off the couch by the company that popularised the “drive-thru”, helpfully allowing customers to consume a bagged heart attack without having to get out of the car and walk to the counter. And there is a similar irony to Bush urging the people of the Middle East to remove “the mask of fear” because “fear is the foundation of every dictatorial regime”, when that fear is the direct result of US decisions to install and arm the regimes that have systematically terrorised for decades. But since both campaigns are exercises in rebranding, that means facts are besides the point.

The Bush administration has long been enamoured of the idea that it can solve complex policy challenges by borrowing cutting-edge communications tools from its heroes in the corporate world. The Irish rock star Bono has recently been winning unlikely fans in the White House by framing world poverty as an opportunity for US politicians to become better marketers. “Brand USA is in trouble … it’s a problem for business,” Bono warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The solution is “to redescribe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values”.

The Bush administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an Arab world enraged by the US occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the solution is not to change these brutal policies: it is to “change the story”.

Brand USA’s latest story was launched on January 30, the day of the Iraqi elections, complete with a catchy tag line (“purple power”), instantly iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new narrative about America’s role in the world, helpfully told and retold by the White House’s unofficial brand manager, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi ‘insurgents’ trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi ‘stooges’ to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with US help, against the wishes of Iraqi Ba’athist fascists and jihadists.”

This new story is so contagious, we are told, that it has set off a domino effect akin to the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism. (Although in the “Arabian spring” the only wall in sight – Israel’s apartheid wall – pointedly stays up.) As with all branding campaigns, the power is in the repetition, not in the details. Obvious non sequiturs (is Bush taking credit for Arafat’s death?) and screeching hypocrisies (occupiers against occupation!) just mean it’s time to tell the story again, only louder and more slowly, obnoxious-tourist style. Even so, with Bush now claiming that “Iran and other nations have an example in Iraq”, it seems worth focusing on the reality of the Iraqi example.

The state of emergency was just renewed for its fifth month and Human Rights Watch reports that torture is “systematic” in Iraqi jails. The Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena’s double nightmare provides a window into the pincer of terror in which average Iraqis are trapped: daily life is a navigation between the fear of being kidnapped or killed by fellow Iraqis and the fear of being gunned down at a US checkpoint.

Meanwhile, the ongoing wrangling over who will form Iraq’s next government, despite the United Iraqi Alliance being the clear winner, points to an electoral system designed by Washington that is less than democratic. Terrified at the prospect of an Iraq ruled by the majority of Iraqis, the former chief US envoy, Paul Bremer, wrote election rules that gave the US-friendly Kurds 27% of the seats in the national assembly, even though they make up just 15% of the population.

Skewing matters further, the US-authored interim constitution requires that all major decisions have the support of two-thirds or, in some cases, three-quarters of the assembly – an absurdly high figure that gives the Kurds the power to block any call for foreign troop withdrawal, any attempt to roll back Bremer’s economic orders, and any part of a new constitution.

Iraqi Kurds have a legitimate claim to independence, as well as very real fears of being ethnically targeted. But through its alliance with the Kurds, the Bush administration has effectively given itself a veto over Iraq’s democracy – and it appears to be using it to secure a contingency plan should Iraqis demand an end to occupation.

Talks to form a government are stalled over the Kurdish demand for control over Kirkuk. If they get it, Kirkuk’s huge oil fields would fall under Kurdish control. That means that if foreign troops are kicked out of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan can be broken off and Washington will still end up with a dependent, oil-rich regime – even if it’s smaller than the one originally envisioned by the war’s architects.

Meanwhile, Bush’s freedom triumphalism glossed over the fact that, in the two years since the invasion, the power of political Islam has increased exponentially, while Iraq’s deep secular traditions have been greatly eroded. In part, this has to do with the deadly decision to “embed” secularism and women’s rights in the military invasion. Whenever Bremer needed a good-news hit, he had his picture taken at a newly opened women’s centre, handily equating feminism with the hated occupation. (The women’s centres are now mostly closed, and hundreds of Iraqis who worked with the coalition in local councils have been executed.) But the problem for secularism is not just guilt by association. It’s also that the Bush definition of liberation robs democratic forces of their most potent tools.

The only idea that has ever stood up to kings, tyrants and mullahs in the Middle East is the promise of economic justice, brought about through nationalist and socialist policies of agrarian reform and state control over oil. But there is no room for such ideas in the Bush narrative, in which free people are only free to choose so-called free trade. That leaves democrats with little to offer, but empty talk of “human rights” – a weedy weapon against the powerful swords of ethnic glory and eternal salvation.

But we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bush administration, despite telling stories about its commitment to freedom, continues to actively sabotage democracy in the very countries it claims to have liberated. Rumour has it McDonald’s also continues to serve Big Macs.

birdcage

from SFGate.com

Gay and lesbian couples in California have a constitutional right to marry, a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled Monday.

Gay and lesbian couples in California have a constitutional right to marry, a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled Monday.

The ruling by Judge Richard Kramer is just the first step in a case that is headed for the state Supreme Court, probably sometime next year. But it marks the first time that a California judge has declared unconstitutional the state law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

“I never thought I would see it in my lifetime,” a jubilant Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said outside the courthouse. “It’s an amazing day for justice, an amazing day for lesbian and gay families.”

The ruling comes more than a year after about 4,000 same-sex couples exchanged marriage vows at San Francisco City Hall after Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered that the city clerk issue them marriage licenses. The state Supreme Court declared the marriages invalid last August and ruled that Newsom had exceeded his authority in giving the marriages the go-ahead.

Monday’s ruling did not revive those marriages but – if it stands – will allow same-sex couples to marry in the future. Currently, only Massachusetts allows same-sex couples to wed. A trial judge in New York has ruled that state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. That decision is on appeal, and a decision on same-sex marriage is pending in Washington state.

In his 27-page decision, Kramer – an appointee of former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican – said the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violates “the basic human right to marry the person of one’s choice,” and has no rational justification.

Rejecting California Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s argument that California is entitled to maintain the traditional definition of marriage, Kramer said the same explanation was offered for the state’s ban on interracial marriage, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court in 1948.

The judge also rejected arguments by opponents of same-sex marriage that the current law promotes procreation and child-rearing by a husband and wife. “One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to marry,” Kramer said.

vacation all i ever wanted!

so i finally did some work. After 4 sets of hack squats, i just wanted to sleep or go home. but i didn't (yay stimulants!) and on the ninth set my left foot fell asleep. i have no idea why. it temporarily withered my workout intuition, but that was brief. i proceeded with stiff leg deadlifts, which didnt go so well, extensions, and hamstring curls. the rears of my legs cramped and locked insessantly. When i left the gym i must have looked like a calf standing on new-born legs. pushing the pedals in my car to drive home was a challenge, and as i tripped out of it and fell down in the bathroom, my mind started to wonder if this was pain, if i was truly experiencing pain. Just as i was pondering the central nervous system and pain, the answer screamed 'no!' as a sudden and shocking pain ran down my chin and throat. My jaw clenched, i couldn't open it and the sensations were dramatic. Like an idiot, i grabbed at my jaw with my hands trying to pry it open, but thankfully in a few seconds it released itself. Time is relative. I shuffled my way to the couch and for about 20 minutes just tried to balance myself out. a rush of endorphins kicked in, pure bliss. The infinite possibilites of pain seem more beautiful and terrifying than ever. I am merely a student, world; be gentle.

week without widgets.

i've been neglecting teh blogz0r for other internet shannigans and vacation 'do-nothing-at-all' time. please accept in apology this link to hobo slang http://www.hobonickels.org/alpert04.htm anyone who successfully uses said slang in their day to day vernacular is a hero to me.
my chemistry is bad, man! my body is holding my brain at gun point, trying to negotiate deals and make peace. it's cool, i call it's bluff all the time.

you level me, i'll level you!

teh blog trend

this blog seems to have gone one direction without showing any of my roughness or extreme ways. such a pity because all agree i am in true form when destructive and hard. reading through some of these other blogs is just disgusting. i'm not some washed up liberal cynic who offers nothing but social criticisms and links to websites of people being burned and cats being tortured for business. it's merely hard to convey my brutality and dark drive in the form of a public journal, but i'd be lieing to myself if i said i even remotely belong. The best blog i've found on here was something about filing taxes? it used the same boring setup i have, and the prettier they got the less important from there. how like people. this whole thing has been a breeze. i can seperate myself from everything! hah