Further Proof I Waste Too Much Time In The Web

This is for all you laugh-out-loud-cat lovers out there.  And yes, I am one of you, and yes, I refuse to abbreviate laugh-out-loud.

Come See Me. No, For Real, Come See Me.

I will be reading in the esteemed company of Lucy Tobin, Tim Cook, and Laurie Capps at Flood Gallery in Asheville, North Cack this Thursday, June 26 from 7-9pm. Don’t know why I forgot to mention this before. If you’re in the area, stop on by, I hear it’s a great space, and I know the people I’m reading with kick all kinds of ass. The more official looking announcement (with directions and everything) is here, and the address is 109 Roberts Street, Asheville, NC.

George Carlin Is A Dead Man

Here’s to the man who took hippi-dippiness out of the ponytail.

Oh Media, When Will You Learn?

Thought some of you, if you exist, might be interested in this. It’s a form letter from colorofchange.org that you can fill out electronically and they will send to the good people at fox news in an attempt to get them to stop saying racist things about Barack Obama. It probably won’t work, but it’s worth a try. That is, unless you’re a white-supremacist-type terrorist. (He said with tongue deep in cheek.)

What Ogham Thinks About When He’s Staring Off Into Time

As those of you who have read enough of the words I write probably already know, I spend a lot of time thinking about Time. Below is a theory I’ve been thinking about for a while. I do not claim to have scientific backing. I am not a scientist. Quite possibly, I am a science-fiction-ist. And I think a lot of this goes back to the fact that A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite book as a kid. There is an article on the BBC I read a while back, and do not claim to understand, that got me thinking like this again. It’s where I pulled the bit about our universe being born in the belly of another from. Even if you think I’m full of shit, you should check out the article, it’s really interesting. Anyway, here’s the weirdness I’m trying to preamble:

Consider Time as an infinite box with a string running through the center, parallel to the top and bottom of the box. On this string a very small bug moves slowly and exactly steadily-”in time”-in the direction it considers “forward”. The bug considers this direction “forward” because the string insists that this is so.

The string is what we call time, is linear time, and the bug is us and our universe.

The arrow that shot the string through the box and still draws it tight is Entropy, the natural tendency of all natural things towards Decay, Chaos, the movement from an Ordered to an Unordered state. In human terms this is death. It is this movement towards Decay that creates linear time, the slow march towards nothingness that defines our lives. This allows us to consider time as we do, it is a physical time, a time that is steady, constant, and can therefore be measured.

It is our foreknowledge of our own death that forces us to understand time in this way, that keeps us from seeing that there is much more to the box than the string we march on, that makes us believe that all things reflect our own nature, our constant march towards an intangible but certain endgame. Hence the prevalence of Armageddon stories in our religions. This viewpoint is only as true as we make it.

The real Time is not the string, but the box. It does not move, it has no need to, already being infinite, where could it go? Besides, movement is a function of Space, and Space exists inside of Time, not the other way around. Our universe, our Space, grew out of the belly of another, which grew out of the belly of another. Our universe will certainly end, there have been many before, and there will be many after. What will always be is Before and After, which are the same. Time goes nowhere. And if we are to understand our place in all this, if we are to understand ourselves, we must begin to understand it.

Don’t Call It A Comeback

After so long, and considering that the exile was such an important part of his life and work, something seems wrong with Florence’s decision to revoke Dante’s exile.

In Memorium

GaragePunk.com has a really good podcast up right now in memory of Bo Diddley called Radi-BO-blivion that is really worth checking out, as are most of their podcasts.

RIP BO.  We have lost another master.

From Dublin With Mixed Emotions

I’ve been thinking tonight (over several quiet pints in a not-so-quiet place) about the relationship of shame and fear.  At first glance this seems simple: most of the things I’m ashamed of in my life have come from fear, I had opportunities I did not take advantage of, and am now ashamed of that lack of action.  Hence, shame comes from fear, right?  Simple.  My friends, fortunately for us all, nothing in life is that simple.  Consider this, fear also comes from shame: most of my fears have to do with things in myself I am ashamed of, I fear these things will be found out, that I will be exposed for what I truly am, and I have yet to meet the human that is at peace with who they truly are.  So, fear comes from shame.  But wait, can it be both ways?  Or is there a deeper connection?  Are shame and fear different manifestations of a deeper, unnamed problem?  Seems likely.  And then there’s hate.  For some time now, I’ve considered hate and fear to be the same emotion.  Is shame also part of this unholy trinity?  To be sure it is.  To be sure it’s not that simple.  To be sure, nothing that comes from inside of us is purely evil, as these three things would claim to be.  As Murder by Death points out on what is my favorite rock album of the last decade, “I stored my shame in my belly till I needed it to be strong.”  There is a purpose, a positive purpose, behind even those things in oursleves that seem most evil.  Even evil itself is not simply evil, this is the great mistake of most organized religion, certainly the one I was brought up in.  And yet, though I know this (and on some subconscious level have for years) that idea of pure evil reisiding in my heart has handicapped me, has brought me untold amounts of fear, shame, and hatred (admittedly, mainly shame.  I am a weak, weak man).  Did Jesus not deny the Devil and in the same breath sit down with tax collectors?  Surely he did.  Surely there is a leson there that we’ve missed.  Is there not something positive to be gained from the dark side of our souls?  Surely there is, else we would not have been blessed with a dark side.  I certainly have not figured all this out, but felt I needed to speak these thoughts to someone, so I decided to post them here, where anyone who wishes to can read.  And comment.  Perhaps I’ll type more about it later, perhaps not.  For now, this is all I think I have to say on the matter.

 

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And while we’re on the subject, not enough of you have checked out Murder by Death.  Perhaps you already know them, I don’t know.  If not, find the post on this blog titled “The Good Kind of Murder, The Kind With Cello” and follow the link to their myspace page.  I suggest the tracks: “Theme”, “52 Ford”, and “Ash”, in that order.  Give it a chance.  At first they are easy to dismiss as a 90’s sounding rock band whose time has thankfully passed, but my friends, there is much more there.  I assure you, there is much more there. 

The Old Country

I am in Ireland right now getting in touch with my roots (read: drinking Guinness and listening to good acoustic music) so upates will be even more sporadic than usual.  There is no real reason for me to be telling you this other than the fact that I get a big kick out of saying and/or typing the following sentence: I AM IN IRELAND RIGHT NOW AND GODDAMN IT FEELS GOOD!!!!!

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Also, Barack Obama won the NC primary, which, on a personal level, means I have officially voted for the winning side in a presidential election for the first time in my young life.  Now, as long as the superdelegates (read: capitalist pigs) don’t further destroy our illusion of american democracy, we might have hope for the future.  Unless we’ve been duped again.  (If you can’t tell, I don’t trust politicians, not even the ones I like.  I feel this disposition is not only prudent, but also essential to the role any functioning citizen should play in a democratic society.)

My Bad

Ok, after checking the website of the local paper mentioned below, it does not appear that Obama is coming, and comparing the tone of the two articles it seems that the whole idea of him coming was probably drummed up by the paper and not the campaign. A reminder to never trust anybody, least of all the media. Sorry for the confusion, but not the rant. The reason there will be bands is to try to encourage people to come out and take advantage of the new NC early voting system, which I will be doing since I will be out of town on primary day. I still have major problems with the idea that Americans need to be promised entertainment in order to be motivated to vote, especially after the 7 1/2 years we’ve just lived through. No more motivation should be required than that.

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On the lighter side, this made me laugh. I just wish it wasn’t so darn applicable to my own life.