Does this mean that Diet Coke is the Diet Coke of diet cokes?
I hate Diet Coke.
23 June 2007
cola challenge(d).
I can't embed this video, so check out the diet pepsi website, click "Watch the TV Ads" and watch the "Politically Correct" commercial.
Does this mean that Diet Coke is the Diet Coke of diet cokes?
I hate Diet Coke.
Does this mean that Diet Coke is the Diet Coke of diet cokes?
I hate Diet Coke.
11 June 2007
change your mind.
"If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities." - Ann Richards
Man has very little choice but to be the center of his own world, no matter how he may delude himself into thinking he is (or is even capable of) putting others first. Or as Jonathan Rhys Meyers puts it, "My whole world revolves around Jonathan Rhys Meyers."
In all fairness, is that really a statement of vanity, or just a harsh, universal truth?
It's at the center of the existential quandary. Do we have to feel guilty that me is all we know, that we are the first we consider in everything, if only for a split second, before accounting for others? No matter how wordly one is, "me" is all they can ever know — there is precisely nothing that one hasn't said, done, seen, and felt through his or her own window on life. Everything you know has been assimilated through your personal filter; every move you make is motivated by your own hierarchy of priorities, which priorities are postcursors of your base needs and desires. You, your, you, your, your.
Even if one of those priorities is taking care of others, you put it on your personal list; generosity and consideration are acts of self-preservation. You can't escape your own biases, your own inner dialogue, the guiding hand of your agendas, your preferences, and that gnawing (very noisily gnawing) awareness of your own needs. Telling yourself that you ever set those parameters aside is kidding yourself, and underestimating the power of your subconscious and base instincts.
I'm forever reminding myself that
1) self-perpetuation is one of the human animal's most primal instincts — second only to (and hand-in-hand with) the instinct to reproduce, which we can't bloody well do if we don't make sure we're here to do it.*
and
2) everyone else is doing it. I fend for myself. You fend for yourself. We share and we cooperate, but we always have one eye on our own asses. I fend only for myself when it's all my resources will allow, and when there's an excess of resources, I fend for myself and help others. The myself sure as shit is never left out of the equation.
Disparity in resources is responsible for the socio-economic inequality which fuels our guilt at fending for ourselves instead of the less fortunate — but everyone, in all echelons, has to be me-first, then others-if-I-have-the-resources-and-energy. You starving, unfulfilled, unsheltered, alone, desperate and ill because you relinquished your every last ounce of resource makes you a fool, not an altruist.
That hubris is a little extreme, but it stands that you have to think of yourself if you're ever going to be in a state to think of others. Whether interested in that or not, the individual can't choose to fully opt out of self-centeredness. Each man's own mind is its own first stop on its way to anything else. Whether you choose to torture yourself by being ashamed of it is, clearly, optional.
*And jesus we do make sure we're here to do it, and while we're here, we do it like bunnies, and when we're not doing it, we pantomime doing it. And you know bunnies aren't feeling any guilt over their selfish priorities: Stay alive, diddle other bunnies, continue to stay alive so I can diddle more bunnies.
Man has very little choice but to be the center of his own world, no matter how he may delude himself into thinking he is (or is even capable of) putting others first. Or as Jonathan Rhys Meyers puts it, "My whole world revolves around Jonathan Rhys Meyers."
In all fairness, is that really a statement of vanity, or just a harsh, universal truth?
It's at the center of the existential quandary. Do we have to feel guilty that me is all we know, that we are the first we consider in everything, if only for a split second, before accounting for others? No matter how wordly one is, "me" is all they can ever know — there is precisely nothing that one hasn't said, done, seen, and felt through his or her own window on life. Everything you know has been assimilated through your personal filter; every move you make is motivated by your own hierarchy of priorities, which priorities are postcursors of your base needs and desires. You, your, you, your, your.
Even if one of those priorities is taking care of others, you put it on your personal list; generosity and consideration are acts of self-preservation. You can't escape your own biases, your own inner dialogue, the guiding hand of your agendas, your preferences, and that gnawing (very noisily gnawing) awareness of your own needs. Telling yourself that you ever set those parameters aside is kidding yourself, and underestimating the power of your subconscious and base instincts.
I'm forever reminding myself that
1) self-perpetuation is one of the human animal's most primal instincts — second only to (and hand-in-hand with) the instinct to reproduce, which we can't bloody well do if we don't make sure we're here to do it.*
and
2) everyone else is doing it. I fend for myself. You fend for yourself. We share and we cooperate, but we always have one eye on our own asses. I fend only for myself when it's all my resources will allow, and when there's an excess of resources, I fend for myself and help others. The myself sure as shit is never left out of the equation.
Disparity in resources is responsible for the socio-economic inequality which fuels our guilt at fending for ourselves instead of the less fortunate — but everyone, in all echelons, has to be me-first, then others-if-I-have-the-resources-and-energy. You starving, unfulfilled, unsheltered, alone, desperate and ill because you relinquished your every last ounce of resource makes you a fool, not an altruist.
That hubris is a little extreme, but it stands that you have to think of yourself if you're ever going to be in a state to think of others. Whether interested in that or not, the individual can't choose to fully opt out of self-centeredness. Each man's own mind is its own first stop on its way to anything else. Whether you choose to torture yourself by being ashamed of it is, clearly, optional.
*And jesus we do make sure we're here to do it, and while we're here, we do it like bunnies, and when we're not doing it, we pantomime doing it. And you know bunnies aren't feeling any guilt over their selfish priorities: Stay alive, diddle other bunnies, continue to stay alive so I can diddle more bunnies.
30 May 2007
drive.
If I died tomorrow, there would be nothing extraordinary in my obituary. That's how I know I'm wasting my life. Here's to harnessing something that will drive me.
I have so many passions. Where is my direction?
I have so many passions. Where is my direction?
26 May 2007
theory of mind.
Does there exist a person without qualms about their place in society?
Are there really people in the world who never sense that they are somehow alienated?
People who are ostensibly "normal," which is most of us by definition but not in practice, do you also go to bed at night ruminating on how you're somehow the odd man out, but only you know it?
I'll be the first to jump to the assertion that normalcy itself is an illusion, pragmatically, albeit probably a necessary one. But entertaining the idea, is there any individual who doesn't think of "average" people as an abstract, unseen group... as the "Others"?
If the answer is yes, then some of us really are outcast, but we'll never know for sure who we are, because one's place in society hinges entirely on the inaccessible perceptions of others.
If the answer is no, if the exception is the rule, then people afraid of being outcast are torturing themselves needlessly, and those afraid of being normal aren't as special as they think -- then being outcast is as illusory as being normal.
With a few notable exceptions that it would be mean to point out. Hot-dog-hat Wal-Mart guy.
Are there really people in the world who never sense that they are somehow alienated?
People who are ostensibly "normal," which is most of us by definition but not in practice, do you also go to bed at night ruminating on how you're somehow the odd man out, but only you know it?
I'll be the first to jump to the assertion that normalcy itself is an illusion, pragmatically, albeit probably a necessary one. But entertaining the idea, is there any individual who doesn't think of "average" people as an abstract, unseen group... as the "Others"?
If the answer is yes, then some of us really are outcast, but we'll never know for sure who we are, because one's place in society hinges entirely on the inaccessible perceptions of others.
If the answer is no, if the exception is the rule, then people afraid of being outcast are torturing themselves needlessly, and those afraid of being normal aren't as special as they think -- then being outcast is as illusory as being normal.
With a few notable exceptions that it would be mean to point out. Hot-dog-hat Wal-Mart guy.
18 May 2007
RIP Jerry Falwell
Way to found the Moral Majority and the Religious Right, and lobby for a Christian church takeover of the entire public school system.
Way to push for ordinances which discriminate based on sexual orientation, promote the notion that the antichrist must be "Jewish," and call Martin Luther King Jr. a pioneer of "civil wrongs."
Way to blame feminists and the ACLU for the September 11th attacks.
You spent your life shitting on minorities. The rich, white members of your megavangelical church will miss you.
Way to push for ordinances which discriminate based on sexual orientation, promote the notion that the antichrist must be "Jewish," and call Martin Luther King Jr. a pioneer of "civil wrongs."
Way to blame feminists and the ACLU for the September 11th attacks.
You spent your life shitting on minorities. The rich, white members of your megavangelical church will miss you.
The Patient.
A groan of tedium escapes me,
Startling the fearful.
Is this a test? It has to be,
Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience, draining vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire acts a little old.
But I'm still right here
Giving blood, keeping faith
And I'm still right here.
Wait it out,
Gonna wait it out,
Be patient (wait it out).
If there were no reward to reap,
A loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
Gonna wait it out.
If there were no desire to heal
A damaged and broken man along
This tedious path I've chosen here
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may ... [sigh] ... I still may.
Be patient.
I must keep reminding myself of this.
And if there were no reward to reap,
A loving embrace to see me through
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked away by now.
And I still may.
Gonna wait it out.
Tool, The Patient.
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