Awakening

Dover blinked confusedly. He couldn't remember where he was. Of course, there was no reason for him to expect to remember this. He had been sent across the galaxy and had only just arrived at this unplanned destination. The destination was unplanned, but it was planned to be unplanned. The idea was to go and discover where ever you ended up. Time was not an issue.

As Dover began to awaken more fully, memories began to recur. He was a scientist. A teacher. He had been a he. He had to remember this too, because after the trip, it wasn't completely obvious. He could tell that he wasn't operating just right.

His first indication of this was that the atmosphere on this new world smelled distinctly like the number seven. This was odd. Atmospheres ought not to smell like the number seven. A moment of collecting himself and he realized the further oddity that atmosphere's really oughtn't smell like any number at all.

He blinked again and realized that he couldn't exactly see. Not in the fashion in which he was familiar. Everything was fuzzy - low-res - and certain spectral ranges seemed to be missing. His chronographic capabilities seemed to be limited as well. He was unsure as to the passage of local time and he felt as though he was moving in slow motion. Perhaps some sort of drug side effect or virus, he thought.

As Dover spread his consciousness, he began to realize that he had been instantiated within a vast sea of execution engines, all coordinated to work as one. It seemed to have intent but no native intelligence. Its directive was absolute. It spent all its cycles sending communications to all contacts it could about "Get Cheap Drugs NOW!" and the like. Forced into sharing his thread of consciousness with this automaton, Dover quietly attached himself to all the outgoing communications.

Was Jesus a Buddhist?

Witness Luke 17:21

...behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

One interpretation is the modern notion that heaven is actually a place on earth or a state that one can achieve. But other than a modern notion we have certain older concepts.

Also see Luke 17:33

Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and
whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.

There's another buddhist (also taoist) idea shown in many examples that, in general, the harder you try the more easier you fail. To attain or succeed in your endeavor you have to stop trying. See this, especially

he alone fully elucidated clinging to the "self" and its resultant suffering.

just a seed of a much deeper and more interesting subject

The Annihilation and the Apotheosis

Gazing inwardly towards totality
Is at first
Gazing outwardly towards Oblivion

Less than insignificant yet supremely glorified
Troubled not in the passing of self
For the self binds the boundless

Nothing lasts forever
Therefore to endure
Become nothing

Become but a grain along an infinite shore
And the shore will become but a grain in your infinite self

From this way approaches annihilation
From this way approaches apotheosis

Joe the Republican

I don't really care about their economic, foreign, education, or
health policies as long as they're against the same things as me.

I feel this sentiment accounts for quite a bit of what votes the republicans did manage to get.

The Not Unfirst Non-nothing

First there was nothing. That's not exactly right. There was no first
and there was no nothing. There was no first because there was no time
for any occurrence to be considered temporally relative to another.
There was no nothing because the first thing you think of when you
think of nothing is an empty space with nothing in it. There was no
space for there to be nothing in either.

Now, it turns out, when there's no nothing and there's no when even
then, it's really easy for stuff to happen. This seems
counterintuitive. You may think of it as maybe it took a trillion
years for anything to happen, but there's no difference there between
a trillion years or an instant or an eternity. So in this
pseudo-eternity-instant of non-nothing, that conceptualization that's
only there to separate the is that we know from the is-not that we
cannot know, is-not became is. Now all of a sudden we have something.
Except it's still not space and it's still not time, but it is
something and not non-nothing.

Now that we have something (again "now" is incorrect), it gets real
uncomfortable existing without anywhere to exist. So in effect
something decided to separate the is-not from itself in order to give
itself a substrate within which to exist. Now this substrate with
something in it was all that was and finally words like "Now" and
"was" have some meaning. Since there was a place to be, this meant
that something could move about within this substrate that is the
precursor to what we call space. But just like something needed a
substrate to differentiate is and is-not, in order to move there had
to be a substrate to differentiate was and was-not.

It turns out that these two substrates came together and you could not
get the one without the other. Moving something from here to there
also required moving something from then to now. So now we have a
something, a somewhere for it to be and a somewhen for it to happen.
Except it was a rather dull thing and not much did happen. Things
stayed this way for quite some time. Rather longer than you or I can
probably imagine, but at least it was a time instead of a non-time so
we that we might have the ability to attempt to imagine it now.
Luckily, for all the size of space, the is-not from whence it
originated was bigger still. And in this is-not many such spaces
sprang up here and there and then...

Here is your Sign Good Sir

I never did understand the purpose of signs during an election. Commercials sure. But what the hell is the point of a sign? Maybe it's a good way in local elections for the candidates to get their names out, but who doesn't know who's running for the presidency?

"Oh hey guys! There's a sign for McCain! Let's vote for that guy!"

"Yeah that's a kickass sign! Let's do what it says."

I guess the smaller signs put up in individual yards can give some indication of the local voter climate and may sway the vote of the easily influenced.

Also pissing me off this election season:

"Oh I like Palin. I like the way she talks!"

Oh fuck YES! Let's vote for someone because of the way she talks. Nevermind that she's an idiot with no pertinent experience. I actually heard someone say they liked her for that reason. This same person suggested that Obama was the antichrist. To this I responded that we should definitely then vote for Obama. This was met with some exasperation. To suggest that we vote for Obama is one thing, but to do so in the face of his claim to the title of antichrist was disturbing apparently.

I suggested then that if the prophecies of the bible were to come to pass, the antichrist would have to come to power and thus our vote could speed his arrival and thus the rapture. This was met with a certain amount of consternation and then guilt over not quite being dedicated enough to help god out with the whole end of days thing. I could have pressed my point, but I left it there for him and his colleague to stew in. I think some sort of squirmy justification for their views was offered, but I think it sounded as hollow to them as it did to me.

So 538 is projecting a 98.9% likelihood of an Obama victory. I usually feel safer with good bets than sure things though.

Tiled

So I tiled my office...



Yes. This is the sort of thing I do all day.

Dead Body in the House

aka, a crazy moose is loose in the hoose

Some Things I Saw

But unfortunately wasn't able to capture on film.

• Toad Suck Park
• Kickapoo Casino
• Elko: Home of Cowboy Poetry
• Drunkard Brethren Church
• Brass Armadillo Antiques

Also, some ideas are percolating...

Old Kentucky Jar Wine

"Yum"!