The happiness of Nigeria has made me decidedly less political and more, more mystical, maybe. I mean, if Nigeria is the happiest country in the world, then politics are pretty damn irrelevent, eh? This is a country no one would describe as ideal-and yet apparently it is. It's overcrowded, there's no religious, ethnic or cultural cohesion, it's about one step from a military dictatorship, and the people of Nigeria are still the happiest in the world.

So this has drilled into my head the message that happiness really is internal. There have been plenty of studies that have shown that someone to whom Something Significant-winning the lottery, becoming a quadruple paraplegic, etc.-is a year later at more or less the same happiness level that they were before.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still an anarchist and all, and I'll probably still join an anarchist organisation to do my little bit to Smash the State (my goal: to attend one of the big protests within the next few years, maybe the RNC or DNC conventions next year). However, I think that my spiritual side, which had long been channeled into politics, has started to blossom on its own.

For instance, zen. I'd never even looked into Zen before, because it seemed to me a sort of feel-good pop philosophy sort of thing. And, for 90% of Western Buddhism I think it is, but real Zen is cool. The best thing I've found on Zen is this fellow, who's a former punk rocker, now working at a Japanese monster movie studio, and who is an official Zen Master. Though he rejects the term, of course. In his words, "So if there is such a thing as a Zen Master (and there isn't), I am one (and I'm not)."

The essays on that site are really amazing, I read every one, and they goaded me into wanting to do zazen for myself. So I downloaded an instruction manual that turned out to be written by his master, and set off. I meditated for half an hour in what turned out to be the full lotus position, and it was both painful and boring. It was several minutes before I could walk without limping.

However, I could catch maybe a small glimpse of what could with much practice be a rich and rewarding thing, so I'm going to try to do it daily. It's not like I'm doing a lot else, except reading all this stuff. At first I thought that all these beliefs had the same basic wisdom because I saw it in all of them. I mean, books on psychology, on myths, on religion, everywhere I read the same things. Then I realised (when I read these messages in a rather interesting book on Norse Runes) that the wisdom was inside me, and that these books were just sort of mirrors for my thoughts.

I really want to write but I can't quite bring myself to. I suspect I have inhalation and exhalation, in terms of words, and right now I'm inhaling. It's been quite a breath. Hopefully I'll exhale onto paper.

Anyway, let's see, in other news, Elliott Smith is dead. That's a damn shame. Though I never met him, I enjoyed his music, it was some of the first music to get me into music, and I'm sorry he's dead, especially by his own hand. In personal news, I'm now confirmed to get trained November 3rd. True, I'll now get in about one month of work, but oh well. As long as I don't spend that, that's more than enough for me to stay in Austin, assuming I work while I'm there.

Oh, and the folks came down from Austin and slept over Friday, and that was great fun indeed. The Men watched Kill Bill while The Women stayed home and watched Royal Tenenbaums with my grandmother, then went to sleep before midnight. Honestly, who goes to sleep before midnight? On a friday? At someone else's house? Lame. Actually Samia may wear a badge of semi-non-lameness, as she joined us for some rousing Tick and Father Ted watching.

Then Saturday we went to the Renaissance Fair, which was just great. The best time I've ever had at a Renaissance Fair, I think. Eve bought some 300 dollar boots (half off!). But they were very cool.

Anyway, I'm going to go read my book (Animal Liberation, quite good, only I skipped the bits talking about current animal abuse, as I know it occurs, and am more interested in the What To Do and philosophical bits). Oh, that reminds me, the book Everything is Illuminated is good, but not happy. I have to qualify my recommendation now. It's very good, and often very funny, but distinctly unhappy.

Actually when getting links for those I looked at the comments for Animal Liberation, and have to address the comments. Oh, Eminem just came on. I like him. I got my real computer back the other day, and have since dled over 100 songs. Heehee. Note for parents: I haven't dled any songs at all. Anyway, I've gotten songs from Eminem, Outkast, Dead Prez, A Tribe Called Quest, Geto Boys, then suddenly my mood changed, and I got songs by Cream, Beck, Leadbelly, and Eric Clapton. I really don't like Beck, and I don't know why. But I've tried.

Anyway, the point, my refutation to the points made on Amazon, well, they make a good point: this is not a work of philosophy. I was a bit disappointed, frankly, on that count (though the What To Do bits were an unexpected treat, so that's alright). But as much as it is philosophical, the fact that it makes reference to utilitarianism will no doubt draw a sour taste to some folks' mouths. But its basic premise: that animals feel pain, and thus shouldn't be tortured for our pleasure-seems to me undebatable. Animals do feel pain, they are tortured for our food, I don't see where the argument (other than, but I really like bacon!) lies.

Ok, now I'll go read.
12:58 AM

I really should go to bed and I plan on doing a real update later, but I want to post these.

One, the Progressive Conservatives Party of Canada went from being the majority party to losing all but two seats in one election. Two seats. That's not even enough for official parliamentary recognition. May it happen here (hint: it won't).

Two, I read this story, which might well be true, wherein this young punk was mowalking down the street (mowalking: walking while mohawking), when a limo drove by, and who should this limo contain but The Spice Girls. One of the Spice Girls pooted her Spice Girl head out and shouted, "I like your hair!". Now an ordinary individual would've, at the most, shouted back, 'thanks', or, more likely, blushed to have been addressed by a Spice Girl. However, a punk-as-fuck individual merely shouts back 'Fuck off!'. Punk as fuck indeed.

and third, there have been a number of Michael Moore attacks (everything in Bowling for Columbine!, etc.) since he rose to national celebrity, and he finally refutes some of the lies out there. I'd believed many of these, so it's cool to see that Mr Moore (who I was much impressed by when he visited our school, and again today when I saw him on the Daily Show) is responding.
4:12 AM

Heehee...I swear I didn't mean to make a right-write pun in that post two down, it was completely unintentional.

Heehee.

Today, in my therapy thing, which as I've said before really isn't psychology (Brittany cynically tells me that it is, he's just biding his time, but I really don't think he is, and he has told me that it really isn't, and besides, there's just nothing wrong with me, I am perfect, I am Yahweh, Giver of Life), today he did this cool demonstration. Well to make sense of how this would apply at all (it was a pretty tenuous link, frankly, but cool nevertheless), I should give the background of our disucussions.

Basically my problem was a bit of a lack of motivation. And I felt guilty about not being motivated because I knew that was a Middle Class Luxury (tm), and that only made it worse. I mean, I had ADD too and all, but that's not curable, at least, not by talking. Anyway, so we've been talking about how to work in the system but not for the system, how to be in this world but not of it, to speak to the ever-increasing Christian readership of this blog. He obviously has had to grapple with this himself, having gone from leading marches and sit-ins in the 60s to sitting in the office. And it's his own office, and he gets to decorate it himself, but nevertheless, he Rents From The Man.

To tell you the truth, it's nothing I haven't heard from before. You have to work with the system to be able to change anything. You can do your own thing but you have to show you can play the game first. etc. It's where it's coming from that makes it effective, I really respect this guy, even if he occasionally borders on New Agey. He's led a cool life and is distinguished in any number of things.

For instance, today he informed me he's a Judo master. He started with Karate and Ju-jitsiu and so on, but didn't like the emphasis on fighting, so he took up Judo, and to make it less competitive, didn't compete for ranks. This didn't, however, stop him from becoming the head of his University Judo Club. So he showed me this Judo thing, where basically you stand with your legs apart, and relax and gather yourself together, then imagine a steel rod going through you 4 ft. up and 4 ft. down, then it grows to 20 and 20, and you have to adjust accordingly. Then a steel rod through you 4 ft. left and 4 ft. right, then 20 and 20, and adjust accordingly. Then he tried to push me over, and he had to use both hands and brace against the floor to do so (and I felt that if I'd really wanted to, I could've stayed up longer).

It took one hand and one second to push me over when we tried again without the relaxing, gathering, rods and rods.

So the lesson we could draw from this, besides hey isn't that cool, is Strength vs. Power. I may have really well developed muscles, but if they're not working in coordination I'm easy to push over. But when all my muscles work together, as they did when I had the rods going through me, it becomes very difficult, I become very powerful. And to relate this to actual life and the topic at hand: I may be very intelligent, but if my brain ain't working in concert with anything, if I'm trying to do everything by myself, I'm easy to knock over. But if I have used the college oppurtunity to coordinate myself and the world as much as I can, I will be impossible to knock over. Viva la revolution.

He also suggested I not teach right after I get my undergraduate degree, but stick in and get a Masters or even a PHD. While it's true this would give me respectability, and probably true that Grad degrees are easier than Undergrad (that's what he said, at any rate), I already sort of feel like I'm ditching out on real life in college, I'm not sure I could do the extra time. Not to mention finances, once I finish my undergrad. I'm determined to go solo, so it'd be tricky going. Also I'll have to get stellar grades the rest of my college career, which I really want to do, but I don't know how feasible it is. Still, I've heard (lots of) stories about people doing poorly their first year and then coming back and doing magnificently (this in fact describes my therapist, who did poor every year of school up through his freshman year of college, and then turned around and kicked ass).

Well, I'm going to get to sleep, or try, at any rate. Oh, if I didn't share the story of my Financial Luck here, long story short some mechanics had to give me $650, which my Dad then took half of, and then I've already spent $120 of the remaining, but still, a free $200 will be mine tomorrow. Whee. That's three more trips to Austin and the Renaissance Fair, hopefully.
1:44 AM

Will you lie to your kids about Santa Claus?
12:53 AM

Phillip Pullman has an interesting article on the Guardian today, regarding writing. Damn but he's write. There were a few times I got into writing in school, but this was generally when we had a pretty free-form time of it-most of the time ("write about a deep personal experience") I gave schlock answers to schlock questions. There are no rules to good writing. Some people don't need grammar, some people don't need to outline, some people don't need to "spend 15 minutes preparing and 45 minutes writing", but everyone needs to develop their own style. I can think of no surer way to make a generation hostile to writing than to enforce stupid rules that don't help writing anyway.

It was a bit interesting that they called Pullman a children's author. Recently the trend has been to call him a 'young adult' writer, but frankly His Dark Materials (in which Lyra, a young child, joins with the Devil to kill God) is rather dark, and not in a pleasant children's way like Brothers Grimm, nor in an angsty way like "Avi", but in a thoughtful adult way.

Backdated a bit to keep that Santa Claus thing up top, I want to hear what ya'll think.
12:00 AM