I come back after a hard night's work to the following three messages:

Katie (10:40:13 PM): Conor lived in Ulster town, he used to smuggle arms
Until the British killed him and cut off his lucky charms
And dear old Father Flanagan, who left the Lord's employ
Drunk on sacramental wine, beneath the altar boy

Samia (1:33:09 AM): i'm going home on tuesday and i can't wait to get there
Samia (1:33:14 AM): i will do 2 things!
Samia (1:33:24 AM): 1. eat
Samia (1:33:25 AM): 2. sleep
Samia (1:33:29 AM): 3. repeat
Samia (1:35:48 AM): i guess thats three things

KSCRLive (11:11:51 PM): TEXAN LISTEN TO SHOW
KSCRLive (11:11:54 PM): STOP SMOKING WEED AND LISTEN SHOW
KSCRLive (11:11:56 PM): WEEEED
KSCRLive (11:12:03 PM): http://www.kscrradio.com
KSCRLive (11:12:05 PM): WEEEED
7:35 AM

Yet another real quick update to say that the best Zen site ever and in fact probably the best website ever is back up. Well, 'best website ever' meaning the one you'll get the most benefit from. Incidentally (damn but that word is spicy), if you click his reviews of books and then click on the period just past the paranthetical aside about koans, you can go to the article that upset him enough to take down the site. I discovered that completely by accident.

There's a Borders right by here, I might well go and see if Hardcore Zen is available after work. Oh, wait, Sunday, no good. Alas, alack.
3:51 AM

Sir, I hate your opinions, but will fight to the death for you to be allowed to say them so hilariously. Ok, it's not actually that hilarious. But it still tickles my funny bone.

It's possible, incidentally, that I like the Pixies more than TMBG. More as this comes. Also, Pitchfork, which normally directs their elitism in ways genial to me, hates everything TMBG has done since Flood. They gave Mink Car a two point eight. Actually they sort of liked No!, and gave incredible marks to their re-release of their old stuff, but nevertheless.
2:30 AM

Ok, I have time to do a real update now. I've been reading the Essential Jung, which is a fascinating collection of Jung's works. At age 68 Jung slipped and broke his hip. For four days he would every night see a Hindu temple which he would walk into and experience the greatest bliss. Towards the end of this period he came to realise that to recover his doctor would die. Sure enough, he recovered, and his doctor died. After this he stopped caring whether his contemporaries viewed him as a scientist or a mystic and stopped hiding his lifelong interest in mythology and the occult.

His views on the matter-religion, mythology, the occult, etc.-are much the same as my own, except much more eloquently put. Before I go into that, though, I'm going to talk about my own childhood experiences with philosophies. I am Yahweh, and you are Job. Now we shall test your faith! (faith is not actually the literal translation of the greek word, 'trustful loyalty' would be more accurate, and so it is here)

The first real philosophical moment I recall was during a long car trip after 2nd grade. My sister was whining. She often does this. I maintained a more Zen view: "but", I said, "we are not really in this car. Reflect upon your own memories. How do they exist but in your own head? They don't. And so it shall be with this car trip. Now is just a memory of now. So simply don't live in this now, and go to the now when this car trip is done". "But that doesn't help me much right now", she replied, and really that tidbit goes a long way in explaining the disfunctionality 'tween my sister and I. Also, it occurs to me that's not really Zen, but that school in Greece. Heraclites, I think, that said that nothing is real except change. And then there was another Greek school that said that nothing is real that changes. Between them they disproved reality.

3rd grade was not a productive year, from an educational stance. The Hawaiian school system is drastically behind the rest of the worlds, so my sister and I were way ahead of the other folks. Her teacher compensated by making her the teacher's assistant (this single-handedly ruined her life), and mine by more or less letting me do what I wanted. Which meant I read a lot. And there were in the collexion of books several books on Greco-Roman and Norse mythology (which being the mythology of proper white folk are the ones that tend to be in bookshelves, despite the rich mythology of Hawaii and Asia, which would've fit in rather more appropriately). I read these over and over, enough that I rather believed them. I came up with the theory that there had in fact been these gods, and they had ruled over men, and then Jesus came and the other gods were destroyed (incidentally the view the Norse took about the matter). However I made the mistake of positing this out loud where my Mother could hear, and she sat me down and said sternly, "God said you shall have no other God before me and that's what you're doing.", which pretty much ended my mythological phase.

The stern rebuke I'd gotten from my mother coupled with entering a Catholic school made me take up Christianity in a rather annoying way, which is the way it's often taken up unless from sincere internal motives. My sister once said in a fit of fury over losing the front seat that she hated me (which sounds harsh now that I write it but that's just something kids say, she didn't mean it or anything), and I said that Jesus said you should never hate anything and that I loved her, or something like that. I also managed to be the only white Protestant male to feel like he was rebelling against the status quo with his Protestantism: I would rebelliously not engage in the Catholic activities, nor memorize the Catholic prayers, etc. etc. I was shocked when I learned that most Christians weren't Catholic. I also planned to read the Bible, though like most plans of these sort I just ended up reading the more exciting stories in the Old Testament (Samson, as I recall), and then stopping. I felt horribly guilty about it, though, and made sure to bring my Bible to bed with me, treating it with the utmost respect, then read something else, then put it carefully away. I also have a rock with a cross on it to this day because someone gave it to me and I felt it would be blasphemous to throw it away.

This all came to a head when I moved to Colorado and befriended Bob who despite his current affiliations was at that time just converting into an angry angry atheist. Which meant we argued for hours every day. And finally we argued all the car ride home with me taking the position that things like the Grand Canyon and such were evidence of God's art and proof or some such thing and him taking the position that this was utter nonsense, and my Mother took my side, and I he walked out of the car a beaten man. Once he did, however, my mother said casually that she didn't really believe that, but she wanted to take the Christian side. And thus ended my rabid Christian phase.

So now we're about, oh, I don't know, 9th grade or so, and I don't really need to elaborate what I believed then because it's the same thing all high schoolers believe, by and large: I don't really like organised religion, but I do think there's something out there that connects us all, etc. etc. I don't know about ol' JC being God, but he was a wise teacher, etc. etc. Oh, actually, I went through a period of utmost shallowness and Machiavellianess. That was fun. Everything is image, I said. It was all very true but spiritually lacking in depth and eventually I moved on, though the stuff I learned from that has been very useful.

Anyway, the rest is more or less chronicled here and through personal acquaintance. It hasn't been long enough that I can get enough perspective to say, really.

Oh, wait, that was all an interlude during Jung. Ha, hell of an interlude. Well, simply put, Jung saw the same things everywhere in mythology, though sometimes intermeshed. He called them archetypes. Archetype of self, of wise old man, the shadow, and more. All very interesting. And basically it doesn't matter that religion isn't real. Tools invented by man are as useful as tools invented by God. As it were.

He also believed in synchronicity which means he believed that life had a narrative. Symbols really do mean something. Critics miss the point and say it's just coincidence, which is half true: it is coincidence, but it's not just coincidence. That is to say, it's coincidence that it happened, but it's not that you noticed it, and you should act on it as if it is significant and a sign from [the] god[s].
12:50 AM

I'll do a real update sometime, and it'll be thoughtful, perhaps, but I'm at work and just heard someone say, "did you hear about the riots in Miami?". And this branched into a conversation about the FTAA and all (not counting myself, two negative, one neutral). This cheers me no end and I shall cite it endlessly when people ask how I can possibly support property destruction. Folks wouldn't be talking about this trade meeting if there were just a bunch of liberals outside holding hands. As far as I'm concerned, the protests have been successful (and have exposed the cops for being as fascist as they are-from what I hear, Miami is more or less a police state right now, with riot cops everywhere posting checkpoints and checking papers, throwing concussion grenades and shooting rubber bullets at protestors. Free speech unless you exercise it.).
12:56 AM

Today I went to work. Me, at work, imagine. It was much fun, actually. I'm just in training this week, and the stuff ain't that hard. I trained from 9 to 3, with a 45 minute lunch break (I went to Taco Cabana and happily ate my burrito while sitting out on the patio listening to their neat old Mexican music. The register lady was nice. She had a missing tooth, and smiled earnestly. How marvelous, to be able to look at the office workers walking about the city and think: I am one of you, I too must eat my food in the time I have been allotted.) Then from 3 to 5 I shadowed this guy, in theory listening in on his calls, only no one called the whole time, so he showed me some online stuff, then we talked with my Uncle. Well, they talked and I listened; I'm still in the quiet mode I'm always in when in a new place.

I had a happy Halloween. There was an accidental party, then we wandered the streets of West Campus, which was pretty much all in party. I love it when the streets are like that. Honestly, I wish folks would dress up like they do on Halloween every day. You say, oh, you'd get tired of it, but really, I think it'd be much nicer if people would just think outside the box a little on dress. The more people express themselves, the more people can express themselves. Don't dress wildly to rebel, dress wildly so others don't have to.

I read Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, which is a wonderful book by Elaine Pagels, who is a wonderful author. I was discussing this book with a friend, Adam, in the kitchen, and who should walk in but Eve. Eve introduces herself: "hi, I don't think we've met, I'm Eve". "Madam, I'm Adam", said he, and then there was some giggling (collegiate giggling, of course), and then, and I swear this by Alpha and Omega, Eve produced from her pocket an apple and offered it to Adam. I laughed so hard that God threw me from the Garden.

That really is a true story. Well, actually, Adam didn't introduce himself with "Madam, I'm Adam", but everything else was true. Who carries an apple in their pocket? Eve, apparently.

I also read the Sun Also Rises, because I thought it was about the Spanish Civil War and thus presented the best of all of Argy's books for anarchists (Bob says they're drunkards in it). It's not about the Spanish Civil War at all. And there are no anarchists. At one point a character said "direct action beats the hell out of legislation", and with breath bated I continued, only to collapse a sad shell of a man when I realised that that wasn't the prelude to revolucion. Apparently For Whom the Bell Tolls is the Spanish Civil War one. Hemingway, for all his vaunted straight style, has the most obtuse titles. Why can't he title them "The one about the Spanish Civil War, what features the anarchists in a minor role as drunkards", "The sort of fruity one about bull fighting and snobbery, what has no anarchists at all", etc.
6:18 PM