| The Conveniences of Modern Japanese Living |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|10:01 am] |
For some reason, a couple weeks ago i noticed something weird going on with my cell phone. I can receive calls, but I can't send them. I had a hunch though that something was going wrong with my automatic bank withdrawals to pay for the bill though, so i logged onto my bank's website to check on my account for recent transactions. Except Shinsei bank has five layers of security over its internet banking services, and I'd forgotten one of my randomly assigned passwords, so my account was frozen and i was given a notice to call their toll free number to unlock it. Nooooo problem.
So a few days later I went down to my local shinsei branch to fix up the matter, the closest of which in in the mall in Tokyo's financial district, Roppongi, which is one stop from my school. So off I go, only to discover that on that day the entire Roppongi Hills mall, the largest shopping center in arguably the richest neighborhood in the entire world, was closed for what appeared to be a thorough mopping of the floors. |
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| Have Happy, Will Travel |
[Feb. 12th, 2008|12:54 pm] |
An extremely interesting conversation. The minutes 20-30 or so are especially relevant to me, but the whole conversation was one of the most amusing i've heard in a while.
I have an 18-inch tall stack of 11 books currently in my "to-read-next" pile, but as soon as i get back in the states i'm definitely gonna have to check out that book.
When a person receives bad news, or faces an unfortunate situation out of their control, it's normal to rationalize it and convince oneself that one's better off that way after all, and i've been finding myself doing that lately with regard to my necessarily premature departure from japan. But i think there are some objective reasons for me to feel that maybe the grass is actually greener on the other side, and the above exchange shed some more light on my feeling that's been growing lately that, actually, japan kinda sucks.
My main reason i initially started studying japanese and got interested in japan in general was for the purpose of advancing my future career in investing. Japan has the world's second largest economy after America and after a decade of economic slump, a few years ago when i started studying the language most everybody watching the country said it was poised for a recovery and return to bona fide world economic superpower status. Especially relevant to my interests is also the fact that legally, japan's corporate law is the world's most friendly to shareholders, which is particularly attractive to those into private equity like i am. Of course, the desire to understand all the crazy foreign films i was watching and the chance to maybe score a japanese girlfriend weighed in on my considerations, but my primary objective in coming here was getting an edge on its economy.
Well, Japan just slipped into recession again, which means that it's real GDP is barely any higher than it was 20 years ago. If the current rates hold, China will overtake Japan in sheer GDP status in just a handful of years (of course china's a major economic crises just waiting to happen). Japan's still big, but it's going nowhere and it's only a matter of time before it gets left in the dust, barring major economic reform (which won't happen). And as far as Japan's enviable shareholders' rights go, recent events are proving them to be much more theoretical than actual. Recent attempts by foreign investors to buy out inefficient japanese firms so as to liquidate or restructure them (which is exactly what the japanese economy needs) have been rabidly resisted by managements, and sadly the managements typically win.
But even besides the economy, there's something about this country, something that i haven't quite been able to put my finger on, that just doesn't feel right. And the happiness research seems to indicate the same thing; as mentioned in the interview, Japan scores rather poorly in the international happiness surveys. I first read about this last semester in my macroeconomics textbook, which had a table showing average happiness as a function of per capita GDP, and Japan has pretty much the lowest happiness score out of all the major industrial nations. I'm sure a lot of that has a lot to do Japan's persistently lackluster economy, but it can't explain everything; there's something here that's sucking the joy out of these poor japs' lives.
When i introduced Yumiko to people they would often ask her whether she liked America or Japan better, and she always said America. When i asked her why she felt this way she said, "i don't know, it just feels like you can be more free here." I think i then promptly shouted "hell yeah, land and of the free and home of the brave, bitch!" in her face while cranking out a virtuoso guitar solo, my hairy, glistening chest visible beneath my unbuttoned, sleeveless shirt, which, along with my long, golden locks of hair, was softly rippling in the breeze of the wind machine that just so happened to have been strategically placed in front of me, reminiscent of the way our star spangled banner yet waved over our forefathers when they kicked those pansy british off their land. But anyway i think yumiko might have been onto something. For as modern and technologically advanced Japan is, the japanese lifestyle still seems so rigid and predetermined.
The Economist recently had a good article the state of the Japanese salaryman. Since the end of the war, the expected route for young men to take, was after devoting all their youth to getting the highest marks possible in school, to take a job at a company which they would likely hold for life, and be expected to work long hours well beyond full-time for no extra pay, and receive their pay almost entirely based upon their seniority, as opposed to talent or achievement. This system is supposedly on the way out but it is a long, protracted, and well-overdue death. And whenever i think about this sacrifice-yourself-for-the-benefit-of-the-collective mentality and institution i just wanna scream why? why would you choose to do that to yourself? I imagine if you asked any of these salarymen (and they are definitely the rule, not an exception, not a subset of the society) why they put up with working 60+ hours a week for little reward they'd tell you they're doing it for their family, but that's absurd; i'm sure most of these guys' wives and children would really be happier seeing more of their husband/father than the money he brings home. Over the course of my life my family has moved (or rather, my dad has moved us) from bottom-scraping poverty when i was a toddler slowly on up to at or near the top 5% of income earners now. Over the course of that time my fondest memories of my father have been of playing tennis or staying up watching james bond marathons together with him, which i think he did a pretty good job of making sure he made time for. How much money we were making at the time didn't mean much to me, and if was ever an either/or, i would always rather have been playing with my dad at a crummy public park and watching bond on our reagan-era sylvania than playing against the wall at an elite private club and watching the bondathons on a 52-inch flatscreen alone.
The japanese seem to be stuck in this mentality that they have this duty to live up to some sort of idealistic image of what a japanese man or woman is supposed to be, even when they realize that that's not what they really want to be, they just do it cuz that's what's expected. Duty to what? to whom? The japanese certainly aren't doing things in the name of the emperor anymore; they are one of the least religious societies in the world; it's like the japanese are trying to please somebody, but they don't even know who it is. Japan is faced with an existential crisis: they are a nation without a purpose, without a raison d'tat.
Another thing i find pretty repugnant about japanese society is how xenophobic it is. A frequent political rallying point over here is doing something about all these damn foreigners. Keep them from getting in, kick em out if they're doing anything suspicious. Now, as pro-immigration as i am, i can at least understand that sentiment in America, where immigrants make up someteen percent of the population and often come into town in droves, completely changing the makeup of the neighborhood in a few short years. But foreign nationals make up like 1 percent of japan, almost all of whom are chinese or korean: not exactly the most diametrically opposed of cultures. In this increasingly globalized world, japan still wants to isolate itself: don't let the foreigners inside, don't let their exports inside, and definitely don't let them buy our companies or our land. I have a friend yurie who likes to keep me around to use my brain for economics, and we were studying together for our international trade exam, and i told her anecdotally how i'd seen that the japanese tariff rate on imported rice is 490% (!), and i was like, "you and all the japanese taking this class need to get your politicians to open up to trade, it doesn't make any sense for japan to be making its own rice, you can import it all from china for a lot cheaper." and yurie made a face like i suggested she eat poo. "But the quality probably wouldn't be as high." If i can't convince a fellow economics student attending an international school of the benefits of free trade, i can't help but feel a little pessimistic about the willingness of the japanese at large to tolerate the changes they so desperately need.
I'm not gonna call this country a lost cause and give up my language studies just yet, but assuming i can get into the UW, i'm starting to think coming back to the states might be better after all. America does have a lot going for it, most of all this whole freedom thing that yumiko was getting at that most us yankies consider a cliche. I like the idea that in america i can get in my car (for which getting a license is extremely easy) and drive from the pacific to the atlantic and anywhere in between and stay and work anywhere i want. We have a large, pluralistic society that has something to offer to just about everyone. Pretty much no matter what you wanna do with your life, or who you wanna do it with, there's a place for you do have your shot in america. But there are a lot of drawbacks still too. Like a shitload of dumbshit religious nutheads, a great too many intolerant people who wanna tell you what you should do in the name of the morality of the day, and a government that is continually undermining the freedoms it was explicitly founded to protect, and which is also putting us on a course to bankruptcy in a generation or sooner. So there's a lot of other places i'd eventually like to spend some time in and try on for size. Here's the countries that interest me most right now (not yet having read the aforementioned book) in no particular order:
Ireland: According to the Economist, Ireland has the world's #1 quality of life. The happiness surveys also indicate that it's one of the world's happiest countries. Why? They've had some of the world's most impressive economic growth over the last decade or so, fueled by significant economic reforms, low taxes, and a friendly business environment. They have low crime and a high sense of neighborlyness. The area's supposed to be beautiful too. Lots of alcohol. And they even speak english (sorta).
Drawbacks: The climate's no better than Seattle or so, it's a pretty small, and i don't know how much the city life there has to offer.
Australia: A much bigger member of the anglo-saxon family on the other side of the world, i've always wanted to visit australia: everybody i know who's been there says they love it. Like ireland, their economy has been doing great in recent years. Australia supposedly is one of the few countries more individualistic than the US (which isn't nearly individualist enough for me), owing probably to it having been founded entirely by frontiersmen and outlaws. It has a great climate in the urban areas and is unique in that it has major cosmopolitan cities while also having one of the world's lowest population densities due to its vast amounts of uninhabited land, which i would definitely find appealing when in a need-to-get-away-from-it-all mood. Also more or less english speaking.
Drawbacks: relatively high taxes, pretty fucking far from anywhere else on planet earth.
Switzerland: The Swiss come in at number two on the economist's quality of life index. Pretty cosmopolitan place where most everybody speaks like 3 languages, all it takes to go drop by germany, france, or italy is to go find a sled and a hill. It's always the libertarian's favorite european country: relatively low taxes, world famous financial privacy, and just about the only place in the world where you can legally walk around around with a machine gun in your hands. Good skiing, chocolate, and watches.
Drawbacks: way to fucking cold in the winter, i've heard there's actually a lot of hidden taxes that make it about as bad as the rest of europe.
Thailand: This is also one of the places that everybody i know who's been there says they love. Thailand's the wild west of asia: Crazy nightlife, and according to several sources you can buy anything you want there if the price is right, which i consider awesome. Thais are supposedly some of the most laid back people on earth. Good, cheap food. Outside the cities it's a beautiful, tropical paradise.
Drawbacks: Thailand's political stability is definitely questionable, making navigating the legal environment tricky whether i'm buying stocks or hookers. It's a relatively collectivistic culture, though i don't know how much their laid back attitude cancels the negative effects of that out. The language is impossible. I might miss some of the western creature comforts.
Singapore: Another high scorer on happiness surveys. Singapore is widely considered to have the second most open economy on earth, after hong kong. Taxes and business regulations are marginal. An interesting cross cultural mix: virtually everybody speaks both english and mandarin chinese fluently, and has incorporated many elements of the traditional and pop culture of both into their society. More open to foreigners than almost anywhere else (immigrant workers make up like 30something percent of their population).
Drawbacks: They don't fuck around in singapore: they'll throw you in prison for life for possession of marijuana without batting an eye. Too small: you can walk across the entire country in a day.
Chile: I'm keeping my eye on chile, i'm hoping for good things out of them. Policy-wise, they're one of the most libertarian nations on earth, though they could use some improvements in transparency, even-handedness, and efficiency. They report some of the highest happiness for any of the emerging economies, rivaling many 1st world nations, and they're growing pretty steadily. Nice climate, good wine, pretty women, some of the world's most luxurious resorts.
Drawbacks: Definitely still a developing nation, it's without alot of good infrastructure or Western penetration. It's political institutions need to be refined and shit could potentially hit the fan as long as they don't.
Ok, i've been writing for a while; that's good. |
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| Our Grandchildren will Consider Us Monsters |
[Feb. 5th, 2008|09:33 am] |
I'm taking this class on "African American Experiences" for a diversity credit and we're talking about slave society and stuff. Yesterday we were watching a documentary on the legal and moral institutions upholding slavery and how the fundamental reason slavery existed was obviously economic reasons; the countries and colonies that were best at the slave trade got rich fast. At some point there was some reference to the fact that "even the writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves." Also is a fact I actually didn't know, that John Locke, the "original philosopher of liberty" owned a large stake in the Royal African Company, a British monopoly that shipped slaves from the African gold coast out to the various British colonies in the new world.
The inference we're all supposed to make of the fact that e.g. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves of course is that he was a hypocrite, an idea that I've always found a little disturbing, if not just plain silly. I mean, the guy did more for the cause of human liberty than probably any other man in history, give him a break!
We may disagree over the moral virtue of Thomas Jefferson, but we at least can all agree that your average antebellum Southern plantation owner was a morally repugnant man, right? These assholes made their living off the toil of the numerous human beings whom he considered his property, i mean what kinda dick does something like that?
I was thinking about this on the subway ride home and an idea struck me, one in my growing series of beliefs holding that all people pretty much are full of shit in that most our convictions over what is morally right or wrong are no more than self-serving biases used to justify our personal economic self-interest. Were our slave-owning great grandparents immoral hypocrites? Probably, but our grandchildren will think of us the same way.
Slavery had existed since the dawn of civilization in some form or another in virtually every society on Earth, and for one very good reason: it was a very cost-effective way of getting shit done. This was just as true in the heyday of the Roman Empire as it was in 18th century Georgia, and everywhere and everywhen in between. And every place and time that slavery existed on any significant scale there were always people who opposed the institution. 19th century American abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison weren't the first people to have the bright idea that forcing people to work for the benefit of another for their entire natural life wasn't exactly the definition of humanity; these people were all over the place. But their opposition of always on the fringes of public opinion. Why? Cuz the money was on the other side.
So why did slavery end if it was so profitable and so popular? If you answered "The Civil War" you lose. The American civil war had more to do with tariffs than it did slavery, not to mention that the US was the only major nation on Earth that supposedly had to fight a bitter, bloody war in order to end human bondage. In Europe the end of slavery was a lot more fizzle than fiasco; it just kinda went out of fashion. Even in America, the number of people who owned slaves had been quickly and steadily decreasing in the years leading up to the Civil War. So again, why? What happened? The industrial revolution is the correct answer.
Prior to the industrial revolution, all the important work in the economy was extremely labor-intensive and didn't require a lot of skill to perform. Having slaves to do all that work for you made a lot of sense. The select few people who spoke out against forced labor may have been morally upstanding individuals, but they were also trying to bite the hand that feeds. Enter the modern early industrial factory and the beginning of agricultural machinery and suddenly having a bunch of illiterate, unskilled laborers - who, by the way, also hate you and wanna run away - just isn't gonna cut it anymore. It starts to make more sense to just pay somebody who knows what they're doing.
Of course, once this process gets off the ground, the entire moral/legal framework supporting slavery starts looking obsolete, and then eventually just plain evil. The abolitionists started getting a lot more vociferous around the time of the civil war because by then it makes perfect economic sense to start believing slavery to be odious, because by that point your clothes were being made by skilled German and Irish immigrants, slaves and the masters that own them mean nothing to you now. Get with the times man! You're holding up progress! Oh, and by the way, the institution your forefathers have perpetuated for generations is an evil abomination and must be extinguished in the name of human rights.
Now, slavery is the most striking and obvious example of this, but I'm sure I could give similar analyses of most all the historic phenomena that we today find immoral, like sexism or other forms of racism, or historically contentious moral issues like abortion or the death penalty. My prediction is that the next institution to receive our moral condemnation at the hands of purely economic forces will be meat eating.
Eating meat has been around for quite some time now, longer than humans have by quite a large margin, in fact. And conversely, there have been whiny vegetarians telling us that meat is murder for over a century at the very least, as far as I'm aware, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there was some ancient Greek philosopher or somebody who condemned meat eating as immoral way back in the day as well. But the great majority of us have found our dietary choices much more heavily influenced by the latest McDonald's jingle than by PETA propaganda. And with good reason: historically, people in societies with ample amounts of meat in their diet lived longer, healthier lives than purely agricultural counterparts. Even today, though fried and greasy meats are overdone on average, most nutritionists will tell you an optimal diet consists of moderate amounts of poultry and fish, eggs and dairy, and even a little red meat occasionally. Not to mention, that shit tastes good. There's hardly a person alive who doesn't naturally enjoy the taste of meat in some form or another. And so we tell ourselves that they're just animals, they don't really think or feel anything, so it's ok to kill them. Whether that assertion is true or not is a matter that most people don't care to consider very carefully, maybe because they think that if they did it might get in the way of them enjoying the big, juicy steak on their plate. Personally, as far as I'm concerned, I think that all the animals that form a significant portion of our collective palate probably aren't conscious to any significant degree, so killing them doesn't seem too inhumane to me. I do believe however that slaughtering should be done in a way that doesn't cause any pain to the animals, which I understand is far from the case. But that still doesn't change the fact that veal parmigiana is one of my favorite meals.
Within 30 years, and likely starting within a decade or so, we will be able to grow synthetic meat in vats, without having to do anything to an animal save maybe plucking a hair or a feather to sample its genetic material. At the beginning the first applications of this will probably be to make cheaper hot dogs out of mass produced, amorphous, unidentifiable, uniform meatstuff. But as the technology improves, we will be able to replicate to arbitrarily accurate levels the exact taste, texture, and moisture of everything from filet minon to peking duck to wild salmon. In fact, we'll probably be able to make them taste even better than the real thing, on top of being more healthy (vitamin fortfied, extra protein, low in saturated and high in omega-3 fats), cheaper, and of course, completely devoid of any animal products.
My prediction is this: when this technology starts taking off, expect animal rights activists to kick into overdrive. Why taint your soul filling your piehole with the products of needless suffering when you can eat something just as good (eventually even better) that was made out of dirt by nice scientists? And they will win. A generation after synthesized meat becomes more cost-effective than the real thing, the general public sentiment will be that killing animals for food is a barbaric practice that the human race allowed to exist for far too long.
A hundred years from now (likely much sooner) if you were to ask somebody if they would like some fried chicken made out of the real thing they'll probably react in the same way as if you asked somebody today if they would like to have a brand new coat made using slave labor.
But as for now, I'm hungry, I think I'm gonna go eat the last of my pepperoni sticks. |
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| Worldview |
[Sep. 11th, 2007|03:33 pm] |
For my "Intellectual Heritage" class we had to write a 4-5 page paper describing our "worldview." Basically, telling the teacher everything we believe in from what is ultimately real to the origins of the universe and the human race, from a description of human nature to live to what happens to us after we die, from the proper way to live to the right role of government. To top it off, he wanted a brief biographical description of what led us to believe whatever we'd just said about all of the above. On my first attempt i accidently wrote a 17 volume anthology that caused windows to crash when i tried saving it into MS Word. Then i trimmed it down to 8 pages. This is the result:
Unlike other animals, which merely react to a given environment, humans have made analyzing and interpreting the world they live in an integral part of their existence; or, perhaps to be a bit more fair to the other animals, we seem to spend a lot more time doing this than any other species, and we spend even more time telling one another what we think as a result. Consequently, the intellectual legacy of the human race contains a rather vast collection of ideas on every subject people have believed to be important over the years. Looking through history and across the world, a few subjects pertaining to our fundamental existence and way of life have continuously popped up and proven themselves to be the most important issues of human understanding. Beliefs on the true nature and the origins of the universe, the meaning of human life and the best way to live it constitute the foundation of a person’s understanding of the world and their place in it. Because humans are beings of volitional consciousness, all people necessarily hold, implicitly or explicitly elucidated and to varying degrees of consistency and completeness, some system of beliefs on these kinds of issues. The sum of all these beliefs about life, the universe, and everything is known as an individual’s world view. In order to act effectively towards the betterment of one’s life I believe it is necessary to consciously think out and refine one’s worldview from time to time. I have striven to do just this throughout my post-adolescent life, and though I am still young and still have much to learn, I have thought about and studied these issues enough that I feel I have a rather solid understanding of the basic workings of the world. My conclusions, which will be detailed below, are that the prevailing worldviews throughout history used epistemological paradigms – religion, mysticism, and morality – which have been proven obsolete by the newer traditions of physics, biology, psychology, economics, and game theory.
For most of human history, most people believed that the universe was created and controlled by intelligent, usually anthropomorphic forces. The particular beliefs about who or what these mystical forces were exactly differed widely across cultures, but a nearly universal aspect of this world view was that intelligence – volitional consciousness – existed in some way primary to the physical world. Since the Renaissance however, scientists have been turning the tables on this doctrine in every case they come across. The seasons do not change with the coming and going of harvest gods; they are the result of the Earth tilting about its axis. The stars are not the immortal legacies of heroes long past; they are giant masses of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion trillions of miles away. Humans were not made from clay in the likeness of their creator; they are the result of billions of years of mutations in a self-replicating code responsible for organizing organic matter. In all these advancements of our scientific understanding of the world we have been able to explain what is happening using the impersonal, cause-and-effect (some quantum mechanical issues notwithstanding) relationship of material existence.
Though there are still a few rather fundamental questions science has yet to answer (What caused cosmic inflation and what was the universe like prior to it, does string theory accurately describe the building blocks of the universe or will the point particle theories have to be refined, what was the source of abiogenesis), these are mostly just finishing touches on a body of knowledge that has taught us more than ancient people ever even thought there was to know. And through it all we find that intelligence has existed for only a very brief time (at least in our neck of the woods), and we’re it. Based on the staggering success of the materialistic scientific approach, and the complete lack of verifiable evidence in favor of any sort of spiritual existence, it seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that material existence is the primary order of the universe, that intelligence and the subjective experience exists dependently upon particular congregations of matter, and that there is no underlying mystical being or essence that created and/or controls the material world.
This upheaval of the historical metaphysical outlook has heavy implications for the traditional ideas about human nature and morality. According to most spiritually oriented world views, every person is endowed with a soul or some essence that continues in some way after this life, that this life in fact is really just a prelude or a small chapter in a much greater, more meaningful existence. Furthermore, by abiding by a particular moral code one can usually reap miraculous or magical benefits in this life or the next. In my estimation, all of this is wishful thinking: speculation left over from days when we didn’t know enough to confirm the uncomfortable truth, that we have one life to live, and this is it, and no gods or ghosts are looking out for us.
Even people who are more inclined to take a materialist outlook of the world often have a hard time facing this existential dilemma. Indeed, whenever I tell people that I’m an atheist usually the next question I hear is, “So what do you think happens to you after you die?” The implication being that if death really is the complete extinguishment of the self, then the entire meaning of life and all our moral conceptions are thrown out the window. The question implies the more fundamental and deeply discomforting question, “So what’s the point?”
I think a lot of people are turned off by atheism (oftentimes instead falling back on calling themselves “agnostic” and trying to ignore this problem) precisely because they don’t feel comfortable trying to answer this question for themselves. But I try to embrace my philosophical foundations and follow them where logic leads. If we truly are mortal beings living briefly in an impersonal universe, then life indeed has no “greater” meaning or purpose in the conventional sense. There is no objective ultimate goal of life, much less a “right” way to get there. Life then, is not a means to some end (i.e. heaven, nirvana, etc.), one’s life is self contained, and so all actions one takes in life must be evaluated upon the basis simply of how they will affect one’s life. Assuming that one believes as I do that life, on net, is a positive experience, I think that the obvious thing to strive for in life then is to live as long and as happily as possible.
This view, I believe, renders the entire subset of philosophy known as “morality” moot. If there is no objective standard by which to judge a person’s actions, basic moral questions like “Is such-and-such the right thing to do?” are completely meaningless. I have little interest in what is right or wrong; I am much more interested in what works. That is, I am not concerned with how my actions stand up against some externally developed moral code, but instead with how effective my actions are in advancing my cause of prolonging and enriching my life. (Some may argue that this position is simply a particular moral stance, not a “post-moral” one or some such thing, but I believe that the inherently personal and inductive stance of my position is so categorically different from the external and deductive approach of conventional morality that so consider them just different branches of the same tree is inaccurate; but enough semantic squabbling.)
One may hear this position and be appalled, asking, “So you should just do whatever you like with no regard for others? Isn’t that horribly selfish/hedonistic/anti-social? Won’t that lead to the law of the jungle?” The simple answer to this is, “No, not really.” For starters, there is a difference between doing what will “advance and enrich my life” and doing “what I like.” Right now I’d “like” to quit writing and go get a hamburger, but I know that writing this paper is essential to receiving a good grade in this class, which in turn is essential to achieving my academic goals, which will likely affect my chances of achieving career/financial success. Generally speaking, patience and thinking long-term are more effective towards achieving happiness than is indulging in every whim that pops into one’s head. Furthermore, this position is not “selfish” in the usual sense of the word (self-interested maybe, but no more semantics). People are social creatures: virtually all of us desire friends who care for us and the general approval and courtesy of the countless people we will meet in life. In order to be successful in fulfilling one’s social desires though one has to reciprocate and be loving, caring, attentive, and polite to the people in one’s life. Naturally people will differ, and one person’s idea of friendship and love won’t be the same as everybody else’s, but showing contempt and criticizing, taking and never giving, lying, breaking promises, and being a hypocrite are all universally effective ways of ending up alone and miserable.
According to my worldview acting amiably with one’s fellow man is pretty much always the best policy, and certainly acts of violence or overtly criminal acts against another person are unadvisable, but what of the greater social picture? If I knew I could steal this school computer I am using and nobody would catch me, should I do it? I can probably dump my spent oil into a sewage drain without anybody seeing me, wouldn’t that be easier for me? If I pass a starving man on the street should I try to help him? My personal answer to each of these is “Maybe, depends on the circumstances.” In each of these cases there is a dilemma in that there’s a conflict between what’s in my narrow personal interest and what is the situation I would like to see in the world. We all wish to be secure in our person and property, to see our neighborhood and our environment kept safe and clean, and to live in a society free of poverty, disease, and despair, yet at the same time when it comes to acting to achieve these ends we all have an incentive to “cheat,” and we often have the opportunity to do so without anybody noticing or caring.
I believe many moral codes were developed as a way to attempt to deal with this problem: get the people to think that they must contribute to society in order to get into heaven or something like that. Having dispensed with morality however I suggest an alternative remedy: because everybody has an incentive to cooperate with their fellow man to achieve their goals, it follows that humans that people will choose to join forces with others and create institutions charged with affecting desirable outcomes in society. The most important of these institutions of course, is government, for it is the principle institution for maintaining the societal order by forcibly preventing and punishing acts of “cheating.”
Because there is no objectively “right” way to live, logically neither then is there a “right” form or role of government, but the government most effective for ensuring that all individuals can themselves effectively work towards their own happiness is one whose one and only broad responsibility is to use its power to minimize the conflict of interest that results when an individual or group’s self-interest is anathema to the interests of the other members of society. It does this by enacting policies which either place heavy costs on cheating, or bestow benefits on acting benevolently. In practice this amounts to establishing an even-handed, strict legal code to prevent criminal invasions of person or property(ideally with all convicted criminals being forced to make restitution for their damages), using tax and subsidy structures to encourage or discourage actions that produce externalities as appropriate, and providing for basic economic infrastructure (monetary, transportation, etc.) that would be overly difficult or expensive for conventional free-market transactions to provide unassisted. Because such a government (ideally) exists only to advance those projects that virtually every individual considers desirable but cannot work towards in isolation, it does not make policies that are invasive to the individual, which is to say, all actions one makes which effect only oneself and one’s property, and all voluntary interpersonal transactions and relationships are legally valid. Further logical conclusions to draw from this understanding of government is that all laws must apply equally to all people, no person shall have any positive obligation towards the government besides those formally contracted into, and all interactions the government has in the economy – particularly the collection of taxes and distributing of subsidies – must be done in a way that minimizes discretionary intervention into the lives of individuals as much as possible.
What precisely a government must do to effectively implement its goals is a question of economics. What particular sub-institutions and constitutional structure would best suit it (or other institutions such as corporations or charities) is largely a matter of game theory. The way to achieve personal happiness and meaning in life is greatly facilitated by an understanding of psychology. To live as long and healthily as possible to enjoy such happiness, it helps to know some things about physiology and biology. Biology can also explain the origins of humankind and the rest of the life we encounter. How the world we live in and the universe we are a part of works is answered by physics and chemistry. All these approaches to understanding life, the universe, and everything are relatively new paradigms in the human intellectual heritage, but their explanatory power has been tremendous and yielded much more useful knowledge than millennia of philosophizing, proselytizing, and moralizing ever accomplished. With a several thousand year head-start, the old worldviews of mysticism and moral obedience still have a firm hold on much of the world, but slowly and surely materialism and the scientific method are gaining ground as the new intellectual paradigms in most of the powerful nations today, and individualism and liberalism are following their lead. I am encouraged by this and consider it a move in the right direction. I mean, I believe it would be effective towards prolonging and enriching my life.
My views on issues like those discussed in this paper have been thought out and revised since I was a child using my own personal blend of intellectualism and intuition, the emphasis probably being on the former. I have been a bookworm all my life, and I’ve always divided my reading pretty evenly between literature and nonfiction. Like most boys, I was enthralled by dinosaurs and outer space when I was young, but unlike most boys, I actually spent my allowance on books on paleontology and astronomy to satisfy those interests. In high school I broadened my biblio-horizons and began reading a little bit about everything: philosophy, hard science, psychology, economics, politics, etc., along with everything from great classics of literature to contemporary bestsellers. If there was one book that really changed my worldview, it was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Even though now I disagree with a great many of the details of her belief system, I still find that her in-your-face, unapologetic message of materialism, rational-egoism, and anti-authoritarianism are the foundation that my ideas are rooted in. Nietzsche and the existentialists were also quite influential on me philosophically. Reading Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works, and subsequent studies of evolutionary psychology profoundly altered my understanding of human nature and just what makes us tick. I’ve devoted an especially large amount of reading to the study of economics (I found it interesting enough to make it my major), and the works of the great 20th century economists Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayak, James Buchanan, et. al. have shaped my classical liberal/libertarian view of government and social order. All these books though were not read in a vacuum; the ones that I have agreed with are probably all ones I was always predisposed to being sympathetic to. I have always thought in a scientific, rationalist way. I stopped believing in God right about the same time I stopped believing in Santa Clause, and for the same reason: I didn’t see any evidence for either, and it all just sounded so implausible. I have also always been very skeptical of experts, very suspicious of authorities, and individualistic to a fault, which I am sure my mother could attest to. Being of such a mind has clearly inclined me to agree with the pragmatic, egoistic doctrines espoused above. Above all I have always been extraordinarily curious and craved an explanation for everything, and willing to work my way through difficult and verbose material to find one. Looking at this assignment’s page limit requirement, I now hope that this propensity for verbosity is not looked upon too unfavorably. |
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| Sayonara |
[Aug. 18th, 2007|06:52 am] |
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
I must be travelling on, now,
Cuz there's too many places I've got to see.
If I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
Cuz I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.
Bye, bye, its been a sweet love.
Though this feeling I can't change.
But please don't take it badly,
Cuz Lord knows I'm to blame.
But, if I stayed here with you girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you'll never change.
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.
Lord help me, I can't change. |
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| Family Credit |
[Jul. 23rd, 2007|08:56 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The White Stripes | ] |
A few days ago I called my grandma and asked her for a loan to help with school; she said she'd think about it and get back to me. So yesterday she showed up ten minutes before i had to leave to work and laid down 49 one hundred dollar bills on the kitchen table for me.
"These are from my stash."
Soooo grandma... you been dealing a lot of smack lately?
I had to leave before we could lay down the details of the agreement, but basically I'm paying her back with five percent interest starting after graduation. And i have to maintain a 3.2 and not drop any classes. Or else like, her goons will whack me or something.
So this will definitely help me out with the finances, but it's still gonna be a tight squeeze for a while until i can get set up teaching english.
In other news, my last day of work is this saturday, and i'm looking forward to never taking anybody's order ever again. |
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| 50 Days and Counting |
[Jun. 28th, 2007|11:30 pm] |
I'm most likely leaving on August the 18th, which means that as of today i have 50 days left in america. I haven't updated in forever because there hasn't been very much going on i feel like i can write a whole lot about, some continuing controversies between yumiko and me, what not, but nothing too concrete to put down in words. Furthermore, whenever i have the free time or motivation to write i usually tell myself i should use it to study japanese.
Knowing that my departure is so soon i've been getting some sort of generalized feelings of nostalgia or something, though i don't think that's really the right word. Funny in a way, cuz there's really very little in particular that i'm going to miss very much. I'm already tired of my job, in fact i hope i never have to work in a restaraunt again. I'm definitely not gonna miss living in my parents' house, that's probably what i'm most looking forward to leaving, though i'm ambivilant about the idea of living in a dorm again. Liam and Dale are really my only guy friends left, and i go weeks without seeing them anyway. My only close friends now are yumiko and laura.
Yumiko and i have been teetering back and forth from the edge of breaking up for some time now: ultimately not gonna happen pre-departure it looks like since it would seem that laura has a boyfriend now and won't be needing me for anything other than a friend again. Still, it's going to be hard for me to leave yumiko, though it's going to be a lot harder for her. Her 21st birthday is in a few days, on monday. I'm still not sure what we're going to do besides go get hella shitfaced. I got her a cute ruby pendant that's designed to look like a couple of cherries that i'm sure she'll love (though i was hoping to find one that looks like an apple, her favorite), though i still think i'm gonna get her one or two small other things: just not sure what. I also don't know what i'm gonna do for my birthday. I've thought about having some kind of big birthday/going away party, but (ha) it's not like i'd have a lot of people to invite. I was unrealistically hoping for a threesome for a bit, but that's pretty clearly a pipe dream at this point. Oh well.
This entry kinda sounds depressing, but i'm not depressed. My life at this point i guess sounds pretty boring and uneventful, but that's because i've let it get that way, since i don't feel much attachment here anymore; i don't have time for it. I kinda feel that my life is actually just about to finally begin. Pretty soon i'm going to be out completely on my own in a whole new world. Though i'm naturally a little pensive about leaving everything behind, i am overall very excited about going to japan. I'm sure that once i get there i'll actually have some things worth writing about.
I have an abrasion on my penis. I hope it's not AIDS. |
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| Words of Wisdom |
[Apr. 24th, 2007|09:43 am] |
Excerted from The Economic Way of Thinking, Tenth Edition by Paul Heyne, Peter Boettke, David Prychitko
Which is more valuable, water or diamonds? Most people who are asked that question answer without hesitation: "Water." But follow up with a slightly altered question and they waver: Which is more valuable, a glass of water or a glass of diamonds? If they again answer "water," we can ask which they would take if offered the choice between a glass of water and a glass of diamonds. Diamonds win every time.
How can people say that water is more valuable that diamonds when they would, without a moment's hesitation, take diamonds rather than water if offered the choice? Because, they say, water is a necessity for life; diamonds aren't. True, the water would be more valuable than another diamond if they were in the middle of a desert dying of thirt. But that response confuses the different contexts, and trade-offsf, within which our choices are conducted. Our choices depend upon the situations we face... Just about anything could be more valuable than anything else under appropriate circumstances, because, like our choices, values depend upon the situation, too.
Economists have their own way of saying the same thing. The values that matter are marginal values Economic analysis is basically marginal analysis... Economic theory is marginal analysis because it assumes that people make decisions by weighing expected additional benefits against expected additional costs, all measured from the frontier on which the decision maker currently stands. Nothing matters in economic decision making except marginal benefits and marginal costs.
Suppose that your friend phones you at 9:00 in the evening, while you're studying desperately for tomorrow's physics exam. Your friend wants to come over for a couple of hours. You say you have to study. Your friend pleads. You say no. Your friend asks plaintively, Is physics more important than I am?" And if you've grasped the economic way of thinking, you respond without hesitation: "Only at the margin."
If that doesn't stop the whining, tell your friend to enroll next term in an economics class and go back to your studies. The issue of your friend's value versus the value of physics just doesn't arise in this situation. The question, rather, is whether an addition two hours with your friend on this margin - on this particular evening - is worth more than an additional two hours with your physics text.
Your friend is making a common mistake: thinking in terms of "all or nothing." "Me" versus "physics." But that just isn't the choice when your friend phones on the evening before your exam. In fact, that is rarely the choice we face when we're called upon to make decisions. It's usually more of this and less of that versus more of that and less of this, measured from the position in which we find ourselves when called upon to decide. The economic way of thinking rejects the all-or-nothing approach in favor of attention to marginal benefits and marginal costs. This is true for people who economize on any scarce good, including a basic "necessity" such as water.
(or love)
Bolding mine |
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| Cause for Concern? |
[Apr. 21st, 2007|11:50 pm] |
Last night yumiko spent the night and i make midori/apple martinis that were quite a bit stronger than we'd expected and we both got pretty smashed. When we went (stumbled) to bed we had sex but i didn't cum, at least i don't think i did. We both practically passed out in the middle of it, it's sorta hazy. That didn't concern me: textbook case of liquor dick. But the next morning when we were about to have "just waking up sex" i realized to my horror that i couldn't. I couldn't get it up enough to even get started, despite both of our best efforts.
This is the first time that's ever happened to me when i'm with a girl, and considering my age and health it strikes me as a little disturbing. The only things i can think to explain it are the remnants of the alcohol, which seems unlikely given that i wasn't really hungover, or that maybe i'm more stressed out than i realize. I've been worrying about financial aid for college lately (I've come to realize that yen-denominated low interest loans were a pipe dream) and the back and forthness of the whole love triangle thing can be a little stressing, but i didn't think i was that worked up over things.
Hopefully it was just a totally isolated incident and i'm worrying over absolutely nothing. After posting this i'll probably try masturbating and see how that works out. |
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| Random Childhood Memories |
[Apr. 19th, 2007|05:31 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | On shuffle | ] |
One morning when i was about four i decided i wanted two of the cookies my mother had baked the previous day or two. I took a bite out of one and decided they were too hard, i guess they must have been cold too because i don't think i was old enough to realize that hot cookies are necessarily soft cookies. Whatever my reasoning, i decided that these cookies would be better off if i microwaved them for a while. I didn't know how long was long enough, and my parents were still asleep, so i just pressed the 8 button four times, started it, and hoped that was long enough. I've always been a patient person, and this incident is testament to that because i never stopped the microwave short, too anxious to wait any longer. No, i sat there patiently and waited while the oven slowly counted down from the almost one and a half hours i'd entered. I'm not sure exactly how long i waited there, but it must have been a while because eventually the cookies caught fire. Scared of the fire and also (probably moreso) of getting in trouble from my parents, i panicked and ran into my room and hid in the closet, completely in the dark, cookies still nuking away in the other room. Another indeterminite period of later my dad opened the door and asked if i had put some cookies in the microwave. I don't remember much else except for that i didn't get in any trouble, my parents thought it was pretty funny i guess. If i recall correctly we continued to use that same microwave for several more years after the flaming cookie incident.
I remember my dad used to read to me at night before i went to bed. One of my favorite books was one about a blue elephant that made the letters of the alphabet with his trunk. He'd also read a disney peter pan picture book, and this one book he had from his childhood about a boy who takes a rocket to the moon, and sometimes out of the children's bible, and i'm sure from many others. I don't really remember my mom ever reading to me at night, although i'm sure she did.
My first memory i have of anything is from when i was two and anxiously running up to some twirling helicopter ride at disneyland alongside my mother. The memory is really only an instant, a blurry image with the slightest hint of a time dimension, like a fuzzy dream. In fact i can't even really be sure if i'm remembering the event as it really happened or just remembering a dream or a work of imagination about it from later. A memory of a memory, perhaps. I also vaguely remember getting onto the shuttle that takes you away from the park that night and still wanting to ride the rides, but falling asleep probably just moments after boarding.
I remember playing dizzy dizzy dinosaur with my mother in the back yard in the grass on a sunny day.
One time my old orange cat, puss in boots the second, ate a live bee while i watched up in the attic as my dad did early insurance work on an 80s era monochromatic macintosh. I told my dad, "randy, look! puss in boots ate a bee!" the cat still violently biting down and shaking its head in a way reminescent of a fish caught on a hook. I was amazed and afraid for my cat; i thought that the stinger would cut open all his insides and kill him.
I have only one memory of addressing my parents in the second person by mom and dad, and that's one time i was looking for them, calling out their names to see where they were and not hearing an answer. "Randyyyyy... Janeeeeeen... Randyyyyy... Janeeeeen..." ...... "....Moooom...? daaaaaad...?" I guess i thought it'd sound so strange to them that they'd immedietly look for who just said that. Didn't work though, i think they were both outside or something.
When we first bought the house in tukwila the basement was basically just a structural skeleton. There were no walls separating the rooms, just evenly spaced 2x4s stretching floor to ceiling, waiting for someone to nail up some sheet rock. Something i was fond of doing then was going from one room to another by sqeezing between the 2x4s, through the nonexistent walls. One time while doing this i reached my arm through to grab the other end and inadvertantly stuck a couple fingers into the workings of a still uncovered light switch. For an instant i was sure i saw my own skeleton like you see with cartoon characters when they get electrocuted, but i guess i must have been imagining that part. Luckily i fell loose of the holding after just a split second, releasing me from the electric grip. I started using the doors after that.
One time when i was three my parents went on a bike ride, my mother riding with me riding on some kind of child seat on the back. Somewhere along the line i accidently stuck my leg in the spokes, forcibly bring the bicycle to a rather abrupt halt. The force actually somehow was enough to eject my shoe from my foot, flying through the air a couple dozen feet behind us. I remember my leg being covered in blood and it hurting alot, except my mom later told me there wasn't really any blood so i guess i must have made that part up. My leg was broken but my parents didn't realize it so they didn't take me to the doctor until after my third day of insisting on piggy back rides. After the x-rays confirmed a fracture clear enough even for me to understand, and i was fitted with a cast, my dad went out and bought me the new Dinoriders battery-powered walking t-rex with mechanized armor and attack turrets, adjucted for inflation probably the most expensive gift my parents have to this day ever bought me. It kinda hurt when my penis touched the rough cast.
I only hazily remember this, but in certainly the most quintessentially colby moment of my childhood, one halloween evening, i guess i was five, maybe four, after all the trick or treating was done and i'd gobbled down the first, most delicious seeming candies of the night, my mother ordered me to eat some vegetables for dinner before i have anymore. After a brief protest my mother sternly informed me that if i didn't eat my vegetables i'd have to throw away all my halloween candy. I did not cry, i did not pout or stomp my feet or yell or scream or argue. I looked at my mother with a cold piercing glare, picked up my bag of candy, and walked over to the trash can and unceremoniously dumped it inside. Then probably went to my room and played with my ninja turtles or something. But goddamned if i ate any fucking vegetables that night. Every time i think back to that night i feel a swelling of pride within me.
I wish we could remember more from our childhood, there's so many gems. |
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| About Shrooms |
[Feb. 13th, 2007|10:25 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  full | ] |
So last thursday i finally, after years of unsuccessfully trying to get my hands on some, tried magic mushrooms. Liam got them from a friend of his then brought them over and watched laura and i do them.
It didn't take long for them to kick in; it was surprisingly quick in fact. At first it felt pretty similar to pot, just a little more intense. I was sitting on the couch and i said "this is like weed times some positive integer." Then a few minutes went by and i stood up and sat down several times and walked around in circles and entered an entirely new stage of consciousness.
For maybe the first hour or so it was sort of cool. I started seeing things. It's not like the hallucinations they show on tv or something, it's like you just see the things around you in an entirely new way. Patterns get interpretated as completely different things. That plus your visual inputs get directly distorted. Whenever i closed my eyes i saw those weird moving geometric patterns you see when you're half asleep in the dark, except in my entire field of vision. I even sometimes saw them with my eyes open, like on the tiles of my bathroom floor. Some highlights included my washer and dryer turning into cartoon sailors, the globe on our desk getting angry at me, and seeing numbers shoot out of liam's face.
Then things kinda started to go downhill. There's two crappy things about mushrooms when you're high enough to be hallucinating: the first is that you're not really supposed to hallucinate, and it causes some deep reptilian brain type primal fear feelings, and it's not like you can stop. You can't tell yourself to stop seeing things. Like with alcohol if you start feeling tipsy or nausous you can sit down and stay calm and it'll usually go away before too long. With mushrooms you keep seeing stuff no matter what. You can't even close your eyes to calm down cuz then you just see even more crazy shit. When you factor this in combination with the fact that while high on mushrooms you're in a constant state of confusion due to a complete inability to keep track of your thoughts (laura and i kept saying that we kept losing our train of thought like every few seconds, we would talk about something then forget about what we were talking about before we'd even finished our thought), you've got a recipe for like panic level reactions. The second thing is that in attempting to digest this new and foreign (and essentially toxic) substance, your viscera starts to feel... weird. One of the many things i rambled aimlessly about (liam spent much of the night writing down what we were saying and our reactions and stuff) was that i couldn't tell what bodily function i felt like i needed to do. I felt like i needed to eat something, belch, take a shit, throw up, and pass gas all at once. It was a completely bizarre feeling that wasn't quite pain but certainly wasn't good. At one point i said, "my soul hurts" and laura responded, "something is hurting, that is all i know."
Part of the bad trip was the environment (my dad was upstairs, adding considerably to the paranoia aspect), so we eventually got into liam's car and had him just drive us away. We went in a big circle for a while before we returned to my house and just sort of chilled off outside for the last of the high to fade.
Laura later pinned the species of the shrooms down as amazonian cubansises (sic probably), which apparently are like the most potent magic mushrooms there are, probably not begginner material. They're definitely an outside drug like people say, i feel like it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if we'd been like out on the beach by a bonfire or something. So i guess i might try them again sometime if that were the environment, and i'd also probably want to use some less crazily potent specimens.
Valentine's day is tomorrow. I got yumiko a teddy bear and a plush bathrobe, both things she's quite bluntly made clear she wants. I have to work basically all day so we don't really have any plans though. No candlelit dinners on alki this year. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 8th, 2007|07:29 pm] |
COlby, this you on muchsrooms. I don't even think i can finsh this entry cuz my keyboard is becoming a face that's going to eat me. and the monitor is 3 dimensional and looking at me and this music is a bit more than i can take and i keep mistaking "these" for "this" and some other such things as this. and i guess they really is my text getting eatin by the machine?
there's no off button to being stoned. is there smoke coming out of my closet? |
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| Acme brand acne |
[Jan. 11th, 2007|07:42 pm] |
All my life, i've never really had any problem with acne on my face. Aside from the occasional whitehead a couple times a year throughout post-adolescense (sic (i assume)), it's just never really been an issue. For my face. I have on the other hand, cultivated a number of pimples in rather bizarre places over the years. For starters, though acne on my face is few and far between, it's pretty much a staple on my butt, part of a constantly changing, yet ever-present ass-mosphere, kinda like that red spot on jupitor. Which, though it doesn't thrill me to know that at any given time that i happen to be sitting i am in fact not really sitting in the conventional sense but rather being held up by the numerous convexities on my posterior, i figure it's better down there than up here, i.e. on my face, for the rest of the world to see. Cuz as far as i see it, anybody who ends up seeing my ass-ne is most likely going to be somebody that i've already had sex with anyway, in fact they'll probably first see it as i'm walking out the door immedietly after fucking them, so the need to impress has been rendered moot by that point.
Beyond my acne's stronghold on the surface of my ass though, they have set up numerous outposts in some pretty exotic locations over the years. One recurring place is in my nostrils. I actually don't get visible pimples on my nose nearly as often as i get them up in the dark recesses of my nostrils, where they become an airway obstruction. In a similar vein, i occassionally get them inside my ear, just at the entrance of my ear canal. Every so often i'll start using my finger to remove excess earwax when all the sudden i realize i've unwittingly scratched out some whitehead pus along with it.
I've gotten pimples on surfaces you really wouldn't tend to think of as in any way hospitable to acne development, namely my scalp and my knees and even, most remarkable to me, one on my index finger early last year.
Anyway, i bring this all up because a couple days ago the acne found yet another new location to... locate to: my armpit. I'd never heard of armpit acne before, but any doubts i may have had have been cast away forever now with this new defelopment. There really is no place left on my body now that i would be surprised to find pimples on, save maybe for my eye. I pray it never comes to that. |
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| Thanksgiving Day |
[Nov. 23rd, 2006|11:13 am] |
Yesterday i went to court for my speeding ticket last month. I had a lawyer and a (false) witness (liam), and it still didn't work. The judge seemed pretty unaccepting of the idea that the city could ever possibly fuck anything up, given the way she dealt with the other cases i saw and the way she refused any of my attorny's numerous motions to suppress the officer's statement. $177 down the drain. Oh well.
At work alex georgiadis showed up at one of my tables. He was there with his girlfriend. We chatted a little bit and exchanged numbers. We might go hit some bars this weekend.
I have no plans for today. |
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| Mixed Messages |
[Nov. 23rd, 2006|11:06 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Foo Fighters | ] |
The day before yesterday i was at my dentist's office and getting my teeth checked by the hygenist woman who does most all the actual work and she said suddenly, "You know, you are a very responsible young man, I can just tell." or something to that effect. She spent the entire time telling me how glad she was that there were still people like me today among all the slobbish, lazy, irresponsible youth. This obviously led to her asking what my like, life goals and stuff are, and as i started telling her my plan to go to japan and study economics she was like, "I'm just liking you more and more."
Now, i'm not exactly sure what it was about me that prompted this 15 minute long ego-stroking. I'd said probably a couple dozen words to her before she started exhalting me - half of which were gargled due to the instruments in my mouth. All i was wearing was my standard issue black jeans and shoes with my old blue fleece pullover, and my hair was on the verge of being unkempt. All the same, none of it really came as a surprise. Mostly because i'd heard it all before. I have at numerous times in my life been approached by near total strangers and told about how much they admire my intelligence and responsibility, and respect my opinions and stuff, totally unprovoked. Most of the time they're adults that I would tend to think shouldn't think anything of me other than that i'm some stupid kid.
Obviously i don't really disagree with these people. I just wonder how the hell it is they can so easily read my character. Yumiko says i have an aura that stands out clearly even in a crowd of people. A couple people have said it's in the way i walk. I'm sure there's something to that.
It's funny, cuz on the other hand most of my life the dominating message i've received is the one from my parents that i'm totally irresponsible and "smart, but do a lot of stupid things." I wonder if these people who admire me would think the same if they knew me better, or if my parents would think the vice versa if they just weren't always being such... my parents. |
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| RIP Milton Friedman |
[Nov. 18th, 2006|02:42 am] |
I finally applied to Temple the other day, as the other day is precisely when i finally got professor droke to get me his letter of recommendation for me, which is full of of beaming, polysyllabic compliments like "extraordinary," "overwhelmingly able," and "demonstratedoutstandingcriticalthinkingskills." I still have to mail in my visa application and transcripts and what not though, and i'm waiting on my highline transcript. The subject of course naturally raises the question: how hard would it be to forge an official transcript so as to acheive an unfair advantage in scholarship considerations? I wonder...
We spent TWO WHOLE DAYS listening to songs (and the teacher's monotonous commontary regarding) by frank zappa in the history of rock class. That's more time than we spent on the beatles or elvis by like a day and a half. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if it weren't for the fact that frank zappa fucking sucks. And the only thing worse about listening to one retarded zappa song after another is listening to ben thomas reiterate every five minutes (at least) that "Frank zappa is a genius because he would take such sophisticated musical melodies and pair them with the most intentionally stupid toilet-humor lyrics he could think of." Seriously I have heard him say some variation of the above sentance several dozen times in the last couple classes. And it's so obvious that he's just a big zappa fan and is forcing us all to listen to it under the pretenses of it being historically significant. He's even having us compare the juxtiposition zappa used with other acts in rock and roll for an assignment. Sigh.
I don't remember being this intolerant of the cold. As it keeps getting colder i just lament having to go outside for anything, even just to go to my car. Coldness fucking blows, especially when it's windy (haha). As far as i'm concerned, if it ain't snowing, there's no excuse for the temperature to be below mid 70s. I look increasingly forward to near-tropic-zone tokyo. |
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| "An Eloquent Paragraph" |
[Oct. 26th, 2006|12:29 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Beck - Emergency Exit | ] |
In asking me for some advice regarding her current relationship, i just told laura, mostly in jest, the following:
colbyduck: um, you should spend six months or so pouring close to every waking hour and every dream you have into trying to make the person you love feel the same way as you, all to absolutely no avail, wrack your mind and drive yourself crazy and curse the sky and try to develop models of reason to describe it all and finally just give up in a climactic black hole of despair and isolation, resigning to never understand what love even is, much less what makes it possible. then, just after your final spasms of suicidal loneliness have subsided into semi-bearable numbness, then you should, completely out of the blue, meet somebody that you instantly, right off the bat, for no explicable reason, click with tremendously and embark on a blissfully pleasant and fun and retardedly simple loving relationship.
colbyduck: it's amazing how much that'll clear up your head
colbyduck: least, ya know, it did for me anyway
onesixtyseven: good
onesixtyseven: O:-)
onesixtyseven: bravo for that eloquently written paragraph, by the way
onesixtyseven: lol
colbyduck: oh, why thank you |
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| Exceedingly overdue obligatory posting |
[Oct. 25th, 2006|11:09 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | 3rd Eye Blind - Semi Charmed Life | ] |
Last night i was talking to my boss aubrey and mentioned to him that i have some money in the stock market and other investments and he was quite interested and said he'd love to get some of his own money in stocks and would seriously consider entrusting me with some of his money to manage for him. Awesome. We didn't get into amounts or any other details yet but this sounds like a great opportunity. It's funny that that he brought that up though because it comes just a couple weeks after i talked to ashley and dale about the subject and am now expecting to be taking some of their funds under management soon. My big plan though still remains that i'm gonna talk to my grandma and try to get her to give me (hopefully) $10k to invest for her. If i can get her to do that it'd mean that i could go through college without having to put away any of my own money if such weren't possible (not that i predict that to be the case) and still be able to get some real world experience with securities.
I've pretty much decided that i'm not gonna take any classes next quarter, not even japanese (which i wouldn't be surprised if that gets dropped anyway for lack of enrollment). Instead, i'm just gonna kinda take over my own japanese education, with the help of yumiko of course. Today we went up to chinatown and i got a japanese study workbook to facilitate that. I'm planning on buying some pimsleur tapes soon too.
I finally wrote my letter of intention or whatever for temple of japan, and grabbed the AA application form from highline. I suppose i should turn those in soon. |
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| Yumiko's Front Yard in Fukushima |
[Sep. 28th, 2006|10:16 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  high | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Prodigy - spitfire | ] |
The girl on the left is fumiko, yumiko's ugly but still japatty cute younger sister - not to be mistaken for kumiko, yumiko's mildly hot older sister, who's the one taking the picture. |
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| "I'm gonna run out of sighs" |
[Sep. 26th, 2006|09:40 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The silence of a retarded computer | ] |
Sometimes at night when i'm in bed i notice planes flying off in the distance, and sometimes their little blinking light on the wings is especially bright; so much so that it casts momentary shadows in my room that slant as the plane traverses the path across my windowpane; so much so that it can even be stinging to my middle-of-the-night-darkness adjusted eyes. I noticed this same thing at my old house in tukwila, so it clearly isn't a local phenomenon. Sometimes i watch these planes at night and wonder how many people in its path are being similarly blasted with these pulsing lights. It must be a lot, and it makes me wonder just how fucking bright are these suckers? We're talking lights that greatly outshine the moon over an entire town or two, beats me what kinda wattage they must have on those things. And i wonder why you never even notice those lights when you're actually on an airplane. Seems as though they would be absolutely eyeball-liquifyingly blinding up that close, but you don't even see anything most the time. These are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, my winamp just completely stopped playing music. It's not frozen or anything, it just won't play any songs no matter how many times i double click them or press play.
First day of fall quarter was yesterday. It was pretty much everything i'd expected it to be. Somehow i managed to buy the wrong book for both human sexuality and rock and roll history, so i had to exchange them. In sex ed there's this deaf-mute girl or something who requires a sign-language translator with her who just signs everything the teacher says to her on the fly; i find myself just starting semi-hypnotized by it. It'd be funny to complain about it, citing it as a class distraction.
History of rock is exactly what liam and i were imagining it as. When the teacher walked in liam just said, "you're kidding me." as he's pretty much exactly the person you'd think of if you were to think of a rock and roll teacher: tats on his arms, pierced ears, jeans and a t-shirt, slightly unshaven, the whole "I have my own band" aura. Predictably, liam is going to be the biggest hater in the class and will probably have people throwing stuff at him before long. The teacher was inviting us to ask him questions, so i asked him, "If you could erase any band from history, who'd it be?" When he couldn't decide on anybody liam - in typical liam fashion - said "Nirvana! just say nirvana." To which a girl behind him said, "I can't believe he just said that!" emphasizing each word with a different intonation to convey the depths of her disgust. Hi-larious.
There's only 9 students in my japanese class, including myself, which makes me wonder if it'll get dropped in one of the upcoming quarters. I'm probably the most adept one in there, for obvious reasons.
I should probably go figure out what i need to do to get my AA. |
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