:: Dreams and Other Chimera ::

:: 17.6.02 ::

I had a somewhat interesting conversation last night, about the end of the world. Or more to the point, what a friend of mine thinks the 21st century will be like.

He hit all the highlights, such as China invading Russia for space and resources, Someone setting off a neuclear weapon off in the U.S. as part of some terror campaign somewhere, Europe Unifying for its own security, India and Pakistan having a limited exchange of weapons of mass destruction, and the like. I am just not so sure about that, I think that it isn't in human nature to destroy ourselves in that manner. Though it is given that the 21st century will not be anything like we exect it to be, and that the reletive peace that we have seen in north america and europe over the last 50 years will probabally come to a close, I cannot believe that the human spirit that resides in all of the nations and peoples listed above will come that far in any of the cases listed. Sure, somenthing is going to happen, that will change the idea of how we live out lives, and probabally cause mayhem, but all of that? All in the same hundred years? As likely as all those events sound (and some of them do seem pretty reasonable to me) I cannot believe that the rational and sane amongst us will let all of those happen.

Mabey its just my optomism showing through.

:: James [+] ::
...

They always told me that boys would be boys...

Well another night has been sent, ever so skillfully down the tubes. I'm glad that I don't have to live through too many more of thest. It stands to reason that it would happen to be the first day of showin someone new the ropes. Has anyone here ever seen a fight? An honest to god non hollywood, non profesional fight? Don't, is all my advice is. Don't go because it'd be cool, don't romantisize it, don't laugh or smirk at the aftermath.

Cuz it ain't pretty.

I find it amusing how loosley discipline is taken these days. Well perhaps always, but when you think elite soldier you think that one would be restrained in all aspects of his life, the better to excel at one of them But with soldiers traipsing throught the city in the aftermath of the first wave of Afghanistam cycling to R&R and home, it doesn't show. In fact, what happened overnight in many scenes, in many locales, mine in particular, was a complete breakdown in discipline.

I can hardly expect these soldiers to be on wavelegnth as normal citazens, I mean you take people who's entire lifestyle is to perform interesting and demanding physical labour all day, who have been in the field for months and have not really ceen civilization, or modern amenities, or females, in several months and let them loose on an unspecting town, and what do you get? Mayhem, plain and simple. There is no reason for any of it, if you want people to be able to function in society, they need some sort of societal imput or ideal to follow. Once you have ben disillusioned as to the status of their shockingly lacking discipline, IT's like letting a bunch of snarling, fighting dogs, who are great to hunt with, to a farm and setting them loose amongst sheep.

However, I do have somenthing to say in the defence of the soldiers, And that is that these people are trained to KILL! They have had training since their first day in the army to intensify their agression, to hone their physical skills, and to operate in a system of values that is incredably rigid for a simple reason: That is how you can get a huge group of people to be togeather, functional, and coheasive in an environment where they go to the farthest corners of the earth, doing the wirderst things imagineable, and watching people who were their friends and coworkers being shot at, maimed and killed for extended periods of time. Soldiers whose discipline may be vaunted and high on the battlefield will crumble in the unfamilar settings of, say, a modern town.

When this happens you are left with a youngish man, who is trained to kill, high on self comfidence of his physical skills, with hightened anger, and almost nonexistant social skills, having his leash released and put under his own recognizance in the middle of an unsuspecting environment, and expecting him to show the same discipline that gets him not killed.

Well, no one was killed.

But, somewhere, given the scenerio somenthing had to break, and it showed in all sorts of ways, professional solderism has a stigma in todays society, which in many ways is desearved. It has many benifits for society, people who have been in the millitary are, generally more self confident, disciplined in their regular lives, and upstanding, once they have readjusted to society. However, before that happens, some of them will forget that the skills that they use to defeat their enemies, are not the skills that they should use in a social setting to enjoy themselves. This is most of the sourse of the stigma on them for being loud, rude, and non well adjusted.

Its a shame that they are such ladykillers.

To finish my little venting of steam, I like alot of former soldiers, and even some acutal soldiers. Soldering is a profession that I find is more and more needed and desireable in a modern society (I ain't even going to touch this for a while) But more restrain't needs to be given on them, as the people described above who what to live it up to the fullest, as they may not be able to tomorrow, and that may not be what society needs in the short, mid or long term.

At least no one was killed...

:: James [+] ::
...

I wanted to post somenthing about societal norms and the like here, and start poking fun at society in general, but I'm too awake.
Ta.

:: James [+] ::
...

I had this dream, where I relished the fray, and the screaming filled my head all day.

Or mabey not, mabey that was a song....

On the eve of my last idle night for a while I can't think of anything rottener to do than blog, so blog I shall. I ran across the webpage of Wil Wheaton today, he is AKA Wesley Crusher on the Star Trek: The Next Generation series. It was an interesting site, I must say and it shows that he has devoloped into someone you wouldn't guess.

His site also led me to another gem of the internet, mostly called a gem because it shows off the worst of personal pages on the internet, and as we all know, enough carbon under pressure...

Anyho, that brings me to the end of my ranty goodness. Be back after I sleep some.
www.wilwheaton.net, www.losers.org

:: James [+] ::
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Well, another night wasted contemplating human stupidity. It seems that most people have the capacity within them to be complete asses, and theres nothing that I can do about it. Fortunetly, I usually can take the stance, at least within my own head, of being on the morally superior.

Course, thats when I do my most idiotic acts. I assume that most people just don't think about whatever acts they do that are unkind. Meg has said before that Chivalry seems to be dead, and mabey it is, because no one seems to have much more respect for women in general than men anymore. It seem that equal rights movements have finally soaked in.

However, instead of being more kind to men, and holding life in general in a better esteem, it has caused attitudes to degenerate a certain level. Certainly the equal rights movements have caused some great leaps for women in the workplace and general freedom and quality of life, however it seems to have sapped the general respect and reverence that people have for each other.

I would suppose that it's only natural that with the planets population being over 6 billion its to be expected that people's attitudes towards one another would in general devolve, but it is saddening to see.

Eventually people will become so remote to one another that the words community will not apply, its already happening, the community feeling has devolved into simple neighbors friendships. And the only encouraged forms of social politeness aside from companionship seems to be familial. In such a case people's friends seem to be almost exclsuively co-workers, or people who have been known for years. New friendships are rarer things than in the past, and people have less to get along about than before it seems. In my view this all spawns from globalization and the ability of a person to maintain long distance relationships with ease, it encourages people to be insular in new surrounding. Insular in any but the most familiar of surroundings, and insular in any meeting with another human being who is reletively unknown.

That brings me to my last point of this tirade, because of this need to preserve the self and ones old connections in modern society, people are more often rude to one another, less willing to put any sort of emotional capital into anything that they know that they will not get a result out of. And that leads to the poorer behaviour in today's society.

Can't we all just... Get along?

:: James [+] ::
...

Ive been thinking lately, about how instinct rules mankind, and trying to figure out where the line in myself between instinct and conscious action is. And where it should be. This dilemma of mine comes because I am not sure how changeing either of these things would change my courses of action. In some cases, following instinct is the most accepatble way to pursue a goal, however the more modern the action becomes in source, the more consciousness must dictate the actions. So more modern actions, such as governing finances or somenthing of the sort, becomes a more reasoned actionm. While somenthing more archaic such as say expressing beauty through art, is usually associated with a more subconscious feeling.

The reason I am currently debating this in my head is that I am thinking about "zen" actions and ideals. Would zen be appropriate for blogging say? Probabally not in the conventional sense of blogging, however there is somenthing to be said for the intrinsic value of a writing that comes from the soul, and not from the head. Then again, mabey I should simply practice zen when I drive. Sure, I may not get to where society in the more modern sense wants me to go, but I would go to where I wanted to be. And that way I could ignore everyone else who drives.

(poorly)

:: James [+] ::
...

Fridge Poem I

I shine still
Beauty in irons
Diamond in chains
I storm through bleak winds
And sordid places
All will pass behind

:: The Other Guy [+] ::
...

Yummy beer smells and how they rule my life.

They don't.

That being said, here's what brought them up. At work, we work by a brewery, well, within 6 blocks of anyway. And brewerys make beer, as they are wont to do. Part of the beer creation process is the fermentation of hops, or other grain like products, (but not honey, that makes sweet precious mead) And this smell is very odd. Cloying is the word that I would have to use to describe it. A very cloying smell. And they tend to vent said smell at night, when I am working. so all night long, I sit at my chair and froth at the mouth about this smell, that I can do nothing about, but cannot stand either.

:: James [+] ::
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Ok. I got it figured. Comments work, It just means I have to be extra careful about editing the storage file, I can't alter certain properties therein.

:: James [+] ::
...

hmmm....

Well, my comments thingie wasn't posting, sorry to the two of you who tried, it seems to have been a permissions issue on one crucial file. I have reset it to what it should have been, but will just have to wait and see what happens. I hope my ISP isn't resetting the permissions, that would suck because I am not going to go and change them back every fifteen seconds. What this means to anyone who reads this is that the comments should be back up working, hopefully they stay that way. If you feel the urge to repost whatever it was you wanted to say, please do. Onto not so yummy beer smells and how they rule my life.

Back in a bit.

:: James [+] ::
...

Haha!

The end of some more work, most of it boring and seemingly pointless, the comment system thingie is in to stay, All the references to my pointy haired boss have been deleated, and now I just have to figure out what content I want there, aside from the blog content, that is. Once I figure that out, I can move onto other projects to take up my spare time. I have always wanted to do a webcomic based on my experiences working in a hotel. Hmmmm....

Anyway, happy surfing till I post again.

:: James [+] ::
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Never doubt the power of rant. I ranted, and then it fixed itsself. I don't pretend to understand but I posted the rant, and with that update to the site, suddenly there are all these pretty little "no comments" links. Wonder how that happened. Anyway, happy commenting. And on another note, I have to go remove all the time indexes now, I will leave the date ones in, but it's not like it matters too much anyway, I won't be getting enough comments to justify the time indexes for quite a while. Aside from that, I think that I need to find a way to get people to look at this. If you have any ideas, comments are welcome.

:: James [+] ::
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Well another chunk of hours has been spent doing lotsa things. Learning permissions, reading policys, learning php (not recommended for the faint of heart) and trying to get my comments system off the ground. So far as I can tell I have it set up right, but it refuses to work it does.

If my comments system were the autopilot in a over ocean air liner, it would be state of the art, customised to the aircraft, knowing of its date of birth, what factory it was born in, serial number, number of miles flown, and what meal was being served in the back (Can I get you a wet nap?). Unfortunetly, when it actually came to the auto piloting part of its job (You know, the part you bought it for), you would chart in the points and press the engage button and nothing would happen. So much nothing would happen that until you were a thousand miles off course you would never notice that it was functioning improperly.

By then, of course, you would be lost in oblivion, wondering when the auto pilot had taken you, and not being there. Then, in a sudden epiphaney of light and noise, you would realise that it had taken you exactly where you had been headed.

So that is the status of comments on the blog. They tell me they work, but do not, and so the net result of adding in the code and such for them is exactically nothing. Not even a pretty little error message to look at and obsess on.

:: James [+] ::
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After a couple hours of semi solid work on it, the page seems to be shaping up. That'll have to do until I can play around with the colors and layout some. I just need to figure out what links I want in here, and other related stuffs, decide what rants and other nicities to begin posting and how to get the comment system up and working. Lets hope that is not too hard, I'd hate to have to leard sql databases or some other such nonsense just to get that to work.


I am continually amazed at the my ability to learn somenthing. I am not sure how I did it when I was younger, but these days I sit down and play for a while. I work off of my preconceptions, and figure out what of my ideas are misconceptions and which are valid gems of knowledge. I do this all in context, just sit down and play. This may have something to do with the perception others have of me that I always think differently from them. There is a simple reason for this perception, I learn almost everything through hard won experience and not through just being told or book learned somenthing. Well everything except for school that is.... Anyway, as I was saying, I do think a little different, I make different connections to words and events, I have unusual reactions to circumstance, and, well thats how I feel most comfortable being. It doesn't mean I am unwilling to learn a different, more usual way. Just that experience is the way I will choose to learn unless circumstances dictate differently.

:: James [+] ::
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Bah! Must post again to verify site changes!!!

:: James [+] ::
...