reading ranting writing

So, at some point, mankind diverged from chimpanzees, some one and a half to three million years ago, when we were using the first tools we ever had, known as Oldowan. There are artifacts from as long as 2.6 million years ago that have been found. Did we even have thumbs yet? Then we used the same primitive shit for like a million years(literally) before we got innovative. Correction; oldowan or the oldest recognizable tools, just rocks and stick don't count I guess.

The pocket may have been the greatest thing ever invented. So useful. Bong's are pretty impressive too. It seems though that a sharp edge proved invaluable to primitive human kind. For the working of animal carcasses certainly. Eventually woodworking and clothes-making made use of sharps. Ropes and strings certainly came in handy.

It's amazing to think how far we've come from our beginnings. How long was it before we developed a water-skin? Or a jar? So common and so obviously useful. Imagine if you had no way to carry liquids. Craziness. A cup would have been first I imagine, dug out of wood. Then maybe a lid for it, so you could carry it without having to worry about spilling it. Again, pockets, so useful. Bags and a backpack, wow do they make carrying things more efficient. Imagine no bags! If you want to bring something, you'd need to carry it in your arms or balance it on your head or shoulders, or kick it along I suppose.

These early tool-makers were predominantly right-handed. Interesting to note how old lateralization is.

The notion of foraging and saving food for the future and an awareness of time's passing and a preparation for it must have taken quite some time to work out. Save meat for the future, get sick die. Whoops, wrong thing there. Play with fire, cook meat, save some, get sick, but live. Learning.

We watched birds and bugs until we figured out flying.

Imagine the first person to paint a picture. They probably accidentally touched something with dirty hands. Hey, that looks like the food-animal I eat. I'll just touch it here, and there we go, meat-beast portrait. I can imagine someone accidentally drawing the face of a dead loved one, and being terrified. What a strange feeling it would be, having never seen a picture, to draw something yourself. What kind of madness would it have seemed to continue producing this earliest art amidst the chaos of everyday life?

Writing the first song.

Plucking the first string instrument.

Beating the first drum.

Blowing the first horn.

These things happened. People did this.

Look how far we've come. Standardization of language and technology have allowed us to communicate in ways never before possible. We don't even realize the wealth of knowledge we are born upon, our history, how far we've come. We've barely mapped out the last five thousand years, let alone the million before that we were crawling around this rock figuring out how our thumbs work.

Who knows what kinda crazy shit went down back in the day.

Then again, I'm reading wikipedia. Maybe I should go eat a bag of salt.

Really, how much of our knowledge is based on exposure? We've seen wheels and fire and television and electric light and refrigeration, we don't have to invent these. Could we if left to our own devices? If we were placed on another planet like earth but without humans, what would it look like in a hundred years? The Earth of today? Our current projection of the future? Or something entirely different? Would we lose our technology, our understanding, without the artifacts we all take for granted? Roads, garbage, old movies and tv, making ours look new in comparison. We see a progression in our current technology, but not the progression from the wild to domestication. The inventions of society, myth, and culture. Marvellous though they may be, we might be wise to recognize them as inventions. Not to dispel them necessarily, but to expand them, to allow them to grow and evolve, so that we and they might be better equipped to face the future.

I know, I'm getting a little intense here.

"Who is this, doin' this, synthetic type of alpha beta psychedelic fuck it"
Well, at least that's what I think he's saying. Lately I seem to only listen to music when I've been drinking. It's been about a week since I've listened to any music.

It's weird, lately, when I'm drinking, I've been listening to old songs I used to listen to, and finally hearing the lyrics clearly for the first time. It's quite strange. I experienced the same thing last weekend with some Gorillaz song. Oh man, does Elektrobank ever kick in heavy at the end. I forgot about that. So bassy. All my bass are belong to them.

Much reading to be done. May random find you well.

stream of thought

New Call of Duty. Much fun. Even on Wii.

Quiet mind, nice. So far so good.

Saw a few cool music videos the other night. On tv even.
It was sort of nostalgic. It sounds funny to me even, music videos aren't that old.
But I mean, it's been a while since I used to really watch them. I'd follow my favourite bands, I'd watch all their videos, try and go back and find the old ones that never aired anymore. The videos that came out before I had developed a taste for the band. Back before youtube, that was hard to do.

I still have some VHS tapes lying around. If I had a video capture card, I'd post up some Deke Wilson, as I looked, and that's not anywhere online that I can find. Maybe that's it though, I can't think of anything else off hand that would be too appealing to anyone but me. Even me.

I remember when KMX came out back in the day, that was the first energy drink I remember seeing. It tasted like orange pop with dirt in it. It was actually not too bad, at least you knew it wasn't just sugar, it would have to taste better. I wonder if that's still around, I bet that'd be good with some whiskey in it. Mixed emotions, on to the next subject.

I sold pixie stix like drugs. Quarter for one, five for a buck. The teachers hated it for some reason, right tried to get me to stop. They eventually succeeded. I made a bit of money doing it for a while, but eventually the strain of staying in supply, trying to get rid of the purple, and not breaking them in my backpack became too much hassle. It all started at Halloween, when I bought a couple two-dollar bags of pixie stix. Well, each bag would make me a good ten to fifteen dollars, not to mention, I got all the pixie stix I wanted, so, I too was hooked. After Halloween, they went on sale, so, I bought the rest the store had, something like ten bags. When they ran out though, the price went up for me too.

Back in these days, I was into various nerdy card and role playing games, but like the old school good ones. Heh heh, ok, maybe I still have a nerd-core. But anyway, the only store in town that supplied these things to the youth was a pretty friendly environment and we could hangout there and shoot the breeze with the owner of the store. He had been following my escapades, and when my supply had run dry, he offered to order in a box of the standard pixie-stix 4-packs, for a price. I don't remember now what it was, something like 20$ for a box of 48 or something, so, if all went well I could just double my money(no more five for a dollar). But, the demand dropped off. I still had hardcore customers that would buy everyday, but it wasn't the feeding frenzy it was when it was new and illicit and in class and the teachers were pissed about it. So I could still sell a fair amount, but if I brought too much, I'd still have some left at the end of the day, most likely mangled by my various books and binders. I made one last good sale, at a school dance. I snuck a whole box in the pockets of my winter jacket. I left the dance with something like 45$(I hadn't been totally broke when I arrived) and I was out of the pixie-stix racket for good.

And yes, I literally mean pixie-stix. This was before drinking and drugs had captured our attention, middle school I believe. Yeah, the introduction to alcohol might have had something to do with my loss of interest as well. Still, fun memories.

Maybe that whole experience is why I never got into selling drugs too heavy. It was enough hassle with a legal product.

They tried to tell me it was because I was making a profit they were mad, not that I was selling them. I cited the cafeteria. They said, well, they have permission from the district, and then I said, how would I go about getting said permission, and they said you can't. Stop. Now.

Trusting can be difficult. Even trusting yourself. If nobody else gives you any credit, how can you have value? Enjoy your self.

Bob Marley man, Bob Marley. He knew some things.

I don't feel empty today. Awesome. I'll try to keep it up.

The future seems limitless. Technology and science doors to other worlds. Incredible possibilities.

I feel a tight-rope now. As if to say; careful now, don't over-do it. If I lose my balance, I can easily fall.





"Get-up stand-up, don't give up the fight"

Laughter is some good medicine. I don't know if it's the best, I never heard of someone laughing off Ebola or polio or anything, but it's pretty good. I hope my strange rantings inspire laughter. They do for me.

You have to be able to laugh at yourself I guess. I might take myself too seriously. But, that's the balance thing again. Life is serious, no doubt, but it's also fun. One has to make room for both I guess.

Well, I'm off to make some room for fun. Serious again tomorrow. May random find you well.
\m/

Be a good robot

In a world gone mad, one must feign insanity to survive.

I'm not saying that this world has gone mad, I'm just saying if it did, be ready to act crazy.

I'm trying not to think about myself too much. Trying to be a good robot. I'm probably as well known by my numeric designations as my alphabetic. Customer number, account number, licence number, phone number, employee number, extension number, pay code, ip address et cetera. Maybe I need to go into the shop for repairs. A few of my systems have been malfunctioning, or at least functioning in a reduced capacity. But what if I did that intentionally, to down regulate my overactive thought processes, like CTRL-ALT-DELETEing my non-responsive thought-windows? It's something I've talked about before.

It sounds ridiculous I realize; why would anyone want to reduce their thoughts? Knowledge is power though, and power corrupts. I just seem to be constantly fighting myself for control of my emotions. My actions are my own, but how I feel about them is out of my control apparently. See, right now, I'm thinking about going to buy some bourbon. I know I want to, and I'll enjoy it at least for a while, but I'll feel guilty and I'll be broke well before payday if I get it. So I try not getting it. I'm still thinking about it, still wanting a drink, still unhappy, but at least I have the money I would have spent otherwise? Is that really a good reason not to go buy a bottle, fear of guilt? So I'll just stay home feeling pathetic and ashamed and weak, but I'll still have that thirty bucks. I'll be able to maintain my nicotine addiction and maybe buy myself a few coffees. I could even eat some greasy fast food. Surely all better choices.

Then why am I still thinking about the sauce?
I'm not convinced. I don't have enough money to really live comfortably, so I might as well steal a bit of comfort from a bottle until I can. Trouble is, I don't see a time when that will happen. I never finished my degree, I still have a student loan to pay off, my parents can't afford to send me to school and I can't afford it myself. I'd be looking at a mortgage-sized debt load by the time I finished. Then the fun begins; interest at the bank, job search, housing market, car insurance, life insurance, health insurance, latest fashion, techno-trends, vacation destination, time management, a rat-race life.

*sigh*

I probably over analyze things, which is why I mentioned down regulating my thoughts. Too worried about the future, not enough enjoying the now. Maybe I should cut back on the caffeine.

The liquor store is almost closed now, soon it will be too late to drink even if I want too. I should probably spend that money soon though, that way I won't be able to buy booze. If I dry out for a week or so, I should be able to avoid 'getting wet'. I don't deal with stress well, and I don't like telling people to quit bothering me. I rather make myself unappealing to be around, and hopefully they leave of their own accord. It's sad, I know. Drinking also makes it easier for me to be around others, sometimes I even enjoy myself, so that presents a difficulty. It reminds me that I was once a social animal. I used to say things like 'trust in random' and 'random will provide'. I was so optimistic. I even thought communism sounded like a good idea.

Now though, I have less faith in my fellow man. I have seen our shortcomings, and they frighten me. Our ability to overlook and deny and tolerate evil is astounding. But we do use it to define ourselves as separate from it. But if we try and understand the evil, well, sometimes we find it to be not so separate after all. So what do you do?

Politeness, diplomacy, debate, tolerate, don't rock the boat though, that's not tolerated. Try and control yourself as best you can, don't leave yourself too vulnerable or exposed. Controlled out bursts to 'blow off steam', indulging in temporary escapes. Do what I do, try to be more like a robot. You are a passive observer in your environment, occasionally called upon to contribute when you can. It is your duty to try and maintain the environment if you can. A better environment for the humans around you means there should be someone there to fix you if you break down, so it is a logical course of action as well. Occasionally your programming may be overridden and you may have to do things that do not interest you, but you are a robot, a machine used to safely navigate, maintain, and explore the environment for which you were created. That doesn't sound too bad actually.

I've been thinking of humans as analogous to computers lately. We have our hardware, our software, our peripherals, our operating systems and acquired data, the user to direct our actions, all that fun stuff. The big difference as I see it, is the Internet. Is that, like, equivalent to our world? The environment in which virtual entities exist and move about? Or is it the collective unconscious? A means of passively sharing data amongst inter-connected 'life forms' for the mutual benefit of all involved? If that is the case, it is apparently far more developed than our own collective unconscious. Perhaps we could take a lesson from our creation here, and shift to a more hive-mind oriented existence. I have no idea how this might be accomplished of course, and I hope it would be similar to the Internet in that you could disconnect at will. Our computers maintain their own hard drives despite their connection to larger servers. Is the Internet like our dreams perhaps? A pool of data who's sources may not necessarily be trustworthy, but may still nonetheless provide very valuable and useful insights for our waking life. That rings true for my simile.

Tim Leary thought computers and the Internet were the next big thing after acid, the next evolution in consciousness. That, life extension and space travel. All good things really.

There, the liquor store is closed. My thirst too, has passed. I am even pleased with what I have written, and the thoughts between the words make me hopeful for the future.

That's one thing I say a lot now; 'I'll see you in the future'. I act cynical, but obviously I believe there will be a future, and I'll be there to see it. Also, I'm a smart ass, and time seems to only go one way, and if I ever see someone again, it'll always be in the future.

So let's all be good polite robots, help the humans out, and hopefully we'll get to see some cool stuff. See you in the future. \m/