(present tense) I love hot cross buns. I love heating them up and melting lots of butter on them and eating them. (past tense) Oh how good it would be if I could enjoy these all year round I have often thought. (present tense) Well today I realised that I kinda can. After finishing two slices of extra thick raisin toast I thought to myself how similar in flavour and aftertaste butter soaked raisin bread is to hot cross buns. Yessssss! Extra Thick Raisin bread is so great, so lovely.
In personal theories I thought today about a concept. I think about concepts all the time because I have to. I have problems with a lot of things and it often takes me a while to "get" something. I tend to approach things from a completely different angle to a lot of people at times and so I must always question why it is I think or act the way I do. At first, things confuse me and I have a hard time understanding something I can not clearly see the "why" to. This leads me to form many hypothesis which often leads me to have to look into a topic or it gives me a natural interest in things as a way to understand what my processes will be. Sorta thing. Hard to explain.
Anyway the concept is "Us" versus "Them" thinking. Anything which promotes a frame of mind which makes you see people as wholly different from you; "them" is probably not too good. A healthy way of viewing people no matter what their differences is "us". "Us" thinking in terms of other people is thinking that we are all in some way similar. A few things have led me to this thought. I have thought about this before but tonight when watching this documentary by Louis Theroux (who i really like) called "The most hated family in America" I saw how this fundamental christian family viewed everyone who did not believe what they did as bad, evil doers, and sinful. They preached a message of hate and damnation and consequently received hate from people who came in contact with them. There was a strong "them" view, a separateness invoked by their beliefs which was not healthy and which skewed their perceptions of people making them not able to see people in normal, human terms (he/she is a nice person) but in terms of what they believe (god) or what they do (commit sin). Their whole focus on ungodliness and in this case their disgusting view that homosexuality is evil, "god hates fags" was their exact message, perverted their thoughts to the extent where they constantly thought of "the world" as people who fornicate or have anal sex: in very crude, dis-associated from reality, basic terms. They actually believed that U.S. soldiers deaths was God's punishment on a nation which tolerated homosexuality.
This "them" thinking happens when you perceive yourself to be VERY different from someone else whether caused by perceived differences in beliefs, looks, wealth, social skills, likes/dislikes, intelligence, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. Fear of the unknown, fear of difference; it is perhaps natural to be slightly afraid of the unknown or in differences and serves to protect ourselves from hurt? I guess when the fear or perceived separateness becomes excessive when it can be troublesome? At times when I have felt awkward or really different obviously this has been projected in my body language and has been picked up by people who therefore treat me negatively as i am projecting myself, however this is going into a completely different subject. I sometimes forget how perceptive EVERYONE is and that how you act creates how people act towards you. This is really quite simple. Say you are self-conscious and scared, when someone sees this in you they themselves feel this feeling of self-consciousness in themselves (to varying degrees no doubt). If this person hates the feeling of self-consciousness then they may feel like acting in a way which is hurtful to you to stop these feelings in themselves. Think about how you felt at a time when you were with a nervous, uneasy person; you no doubt felt this nervous, uneasy feeling yourself (perhaps). I hope you get what I mean by this. It is the same with confidence, I think (and once again forget so often). When you act confidently, this is noticed, you are creating these feelings of confidence in the person who is observing you and everyone likes to feel confident. This is especially true with girls I think, girls love confident guys as they love to feel confident and a confident guy will give them these feelings. Shit, got sidetracked, back to the "us" versus "them" idea.
In my personal experiences whenever I have viewed other people as "them" so to speak; as very different from me, I have put up mental barriers between them and me and this has negatively affected my relationship with such a person. Maybe barriers and blocks and "them" thinking can be actually beneficial at times and I am sure that there are many situations when this thinking is necessary and beneficial to the individual?. However, these mental barriers, when you need to get along with someone are not good as it can create resistance to them which is noticed. Instead it is more healthy to view everyone as "us", him, her. I like to think (but often forget) that everyone I meet; no matter how different they are to me is in some way like me and I will try to accentuate this likeness; this is how good relationships can be formed with someone who you might not normally get along with. I will continue to think about this concept further and try to clarify it more with better examples.
Reading Books. I have been reading books more of late and I find that I often get very distracted when reading. My mind wanders to past events, conversations, feelings etc etc. I also get very restless and need to move around a lot or shake my leg or kick myself or something. There is always this pervasive feeling of being in the "now", the moment, the acute awareness of myself and the sense of my own physical space which distracts me from my book. Once again this is hard to explain. I find it hard to escape this and lose myself in a book, especially if the book is tirelessly linear, fact related and not written in a holistic sense where ideas are tied together and where the reader is not taken for granted sorta thing.
Yay, heroes episode 19 is finally out!
Another thing which I was thinking whilst trying to read is how lucky we are today to be able to have access to audio books and university lectures etc all for free thanks to the greatest thing in the world, the internet :) Audio books, I love audio books, they are great for listening in the car. On the recommendation of a friend I am currently downloading "literary theory" - 12.38 GB of mp3 lectures given by professors who "know their shit". What a wonderful thing to be able to get an insight from an absolute authority on say the History of Russia or about how to appreciate music or poetry. I can't wait until it has fully downloaded. I find this sooooooooo good that these things are available to anyone with an internet connection and a desire to learn.
I woke up this morning (today 2:30am) with a nose and throat full of green/brown mucus. I can not get back to sleep as I will just get mucusy again. My bones and muscles are sore. Instead of sleeping I have decided to listen to podcasts on my psp and surf the internet. "Surf the internet" do ppl still say that anymore?
I found this really funny video clip, "Cool Dad" on cracked.com and just had to post it on here.
I finally got around to buying "The origin of the species", Charles Darwin's book which explains things like natural selection the other day.
I got it for a bargain price of $12 from Borders thanks to the book already being cheap and a 20% off voucher for subscribing to their online newsletters. I devised a system which I am going to use from now on when reading books. I wrote down a key for this system on the front page of the book. The "system" is: For every word i do not know and need to look up in the book (and there have been a lot) I highlight the word in pink and then dictionary look it up and write the description at the bottom of the page. Then for parts of the book which are important, should be re-read or that I need to look into more I highlight in blue. Notes can be written in pages in black pen. I used to never like to interact with my literature or spoil it with markings because I would always think what If someone wants to borrow this, then it would spoil it for them or any other future reader having to take notice of my notes etc. I decided not to worry about this and just do it. Interacting with a book in this way I think will help me to remember information more and it's a better way to soak up the information rather than just reading a page then going on to the next. Pause to think about the key statements, think about how it relates to other things you know, imagine yourself explaining this to someone, think about how you could learn more about what you have just read etc.
So far, "The origin of the species" is pretty good. I have learned quite a bit about natural selection, variations which occur when animals/plants are domesticated and other things like this often shown with the example of a pigeon being used. In parts of it I find myself drifting off but this is probably just because I am sick at the moment and can't concentrate very well.
I might go make myself a lemsip now to try and stop this endless production of mucus which clogs up my nose, throat and head.
This picture, from here made me really want to do a fake photo shoot full of people fake posing with computers. It's like when a photographer comes into your school and needs to take pictures of a science class so he gets the good looking girl to put on gloves and hold up a test tube full of dry ice. Posed shots. Posed shots rule. So forced. Ok so what I will get you to do is pretend you are typing something on the computer, ok good, I think we got it.
Right now I am in A.D.D. I cannot focus and am in head limbo. That place that describes a scene of zero emotions and 50,000 thoughts. I am the annoying bimbo who rants and answers her own questions out loud. I read on someones myspace the other day that they hate, they hate wiping their ass after a shit. I have thought this many times, I really do hate doing this too. Don't get me wrong, I hate even more NOT having a clean ass but I am just saying that it is an annoying thing to have to do and I thought that on the next internet thingo where I have to put in information about myself I will put that in dislikes.
There is so much to learn. Is it a trait of this generation (Y) to sponge up information? Or has that pretty much been the order of the day for ages? I want all the data, I need it, I need the connections to form, there are so many books I should be reading, books which will act as the wiser older brother. Books to make things clearer, books to inspire ideas, books to make me make the most of each day. I love reference books and books which contain information. I generally tend to hate pretend stories; it is chorish to read them and at the end I usually have not gained a thing from reading it. I don't want to escape into fantasy but make the most of reality and improve my knowledge of how things are.
In a family gathering I really appreciate the dynamics that the older people bring to the gathering. They will always feel responsible for everyone having a good time and for smoothing things over and keeping the mood good. Whereas the youngers in the family have the novelty of sitting back and observing or goofing off. When I am in a situation where I must take charge or need to like make the decisions I often feel inept at this because I have grown up in an environment where all the decisions and responsibilities of group dynamics were handled by the olders. I really appreciate people who are eldest siblings in their particular family because they possess something which I appreciate. It makes me happy. They are good at making things go smoothly and organising plans etc etc.
I have said it before and will say it again, I love satire. www.theonion.com is a daily source of happiness and generates a feeling that not many activities does. Those moments when you lose yourself in happiness. ahhhhhhh.
On recommendation by a last.fm friend I have been watching this great UK tv show called "SPACED". It is by the creators of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" I THINK and features the main actors in both those movies. It is done pretty well. I keep thinking about this great, great, line in it where the main guy enters and asks how his female housemate is going and she says ........... SHIT I have forgotten what she says, dammit. She says something to the effect of "the usual" and he replies, "That bad huh?". Shit, the brilliance of this does not translate to text well but if you have seen spaced or want to dl it you will see what I mean when you watch it.
If I ever make any more music and have to write lyrics I will make sure that the lyrics evoke a clear scene or emotional/unemotional state in the listeners head. A picture. This is what I value in music. This is what I want to put out there.
Anyway it's time to read some rss feeds and get another cup of tea.
First off for anyone who does not know what server logs are here is a good description I found on this website.
Each time a person views a webpage a request is sent from their computer to the computer where the website is stored (server). These requests are for the individual files that make-up the webpage: for example an HTML file, images and scripts. The web server log is a record of these requests.
I got my hosting company to switch on server logs for my website today so I could check how many people subscribe to my blog using Google Reader. I have 3 subscribers who use Google Reader. I downloaded my server log for today and opened it in notepad. It was pretty hard to read as it did not separate individual items on new lines.
I Googled for a "server log viewer" and found this great free software program called Kiwi Log Viewer.
Kiwi Log Viewer separates each server call onto a new line. You can increase the padding, change the font, colour, insert grid lines and more.
Now that my log was formatted in a way that I could read it I was able to see what files were requested from my server today.
Probably the best feature of Kiwi Log Viewer is that you can highlight server calls based on text that appears in your log. For example to find out how many people have subscribed to my blog with Google Reader I entered the text +subscribers and chose orange for the line background colour (as the rss icon feed bg colour is orange). With the line highlighted I was able to find this information out easily and see that I have 3 subscribers using Google Reader.
P.S. Does anyone know if it is safe to list the above information on here? If it isn't please let me know asap so I can take it down. I also added the text myspace to see where any images located on my server were being used on peoples mypspage pages. The only bummer about the free version of Kiwi Log Viewer is that you can only set two "keywords" to find and highlight.
After I found this out I browsed my log to see what else was requested from my site today. This is so fun. Excuse my switching from past to present tense, I always did this when writing stories at school as I sometimes do today when I am trying to get a lot of information out at once. I found out that lots of people use my longcat image (below) in forums and on myspace.
But even funner than that I found out that a German girl who goes by the name "Bobby Dazzler" on myspace (http://www.myspace.com/boobtown) has this pic that I created of Oprah and her friend Gale which showsOprah saying she endorses Golden Showers.
Very exciting indeed only I could not view this persons myspace as she had hers set to private. I love that someone that I don't know has found this picture on my blog and put it in her myspace pics :)
What came next was even more exciting.
Ooooh someone is posting a jam jar cartoon (Episode 3, page 2) in peoples myspace pages! I feel very honoured that someone enjoys this enough to put in someones myspace page :)
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
I was wondering today if anyone has ever consciously made a decision to give themselves a phobia just to see if they could do it. Like, if someone has ever decided to make themselves really anxious when exposed to certain external stimuli. I think some people would have. I think I could do this. This process, considering you could reverse it could be educational to the person doing it. Finding out what things make their paranoia or phobia worse would show them what to avoid or would show them how a phobia or paranoia is formed in the first place. Repetition of thought until some thought becomes a strongly held subconscious belief would advance a phobia I am thinking. I wonder how much physiological changes like altering how you walk or stand or site would affect thoughts. I have read that how you stand and sit and arrange your body can affect how you think. I am not someone who regulates my posture for maximum results so to speak. If there is a connection, I do not personally understand or have experienced the pay offs or rewards associated with this.
Now onto a different topic which I have not really explored in this blog.
Growing up in a Christian family I was taught to think of "Atheists" as evil when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. If someone still believes this to be truth then they are very misinformed and need to research more.
Here is a definition of an Atheist I found on American Atheists>. To hear this for the first time in a podcast was tremendously exciting, I was all, yes, yes, yes, that's what i think too!
"Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their beliefs as follows. An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.
An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it.
An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.
He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.
He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.
He believes that we are our brother's keepers; and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now."
It has honestly taken me a LONG time to escape from the constricting beliefs which I grew up with. It is not easy to change deeply held beliefs. When I have kids, I will educate them and give them the tools for them to be able to make up their own mind without emotional bias either way. I am not saying I had a horrible childhood, I had a great childhood, I am saying that time spent at church or being afraid of Satan and hell could have been time spent learning about science or how things work. I would be much better off for it now.
I used to have crazy dreams about demons grabbing me off my bed and flinging me around the room, I used to have severe nightmares every night like this up until I was 12 or so. I used to dread going to sleep and repeat in my head a prayer to God, "God please make me not have a nightmare tonight, please make me not have a nightmare tonight (x100)" It never worked. Did God hate me, what was I doing wrong? I know now that focusing on the nightmare would not have helped at all in preventing it. What I was told by my parents to do was to pray to God and that he will give you peace. I am not blaming them, just saying that this solution did not work and in hindsight seems kind of cold. Most of my worries and thoughts about things got similarly religious based answers. Ask God. Pray to God. At the time I just wanted an honest, well thought out answer based on personal experience from my parents and was extremely annoyed when I got the answer of "Talk to God". I felt like they were not listening or did not even care.
Religion and belief in gods/angels/demons warps peoples minds to the extent that they cannot think rationally about things anymore. This is not a good thing. These nightmares affected the person I am today definately. I also used to be scared of demons in the dark and used to sleep with my light on every night and then mum and dad would complain about "how much electricity I was using". I was freaked out! I still had trouble going to sleep without the light on during early high school years. I was definately stunted as a person because of what I was taught was truth in regards to God/Christianity.
Childrens minds are wired to believe whatever they are told, there is an evolutionary reason for this. If a child did not accept as truth the things their elders/parents tell them, they might die. They might jump in fire, fall out of a tree, get eaten by wild animals etc. It serves a purpose. An important life preserving purpose.
Religious indoctrination, making someone feel guilty and full of "sin", living by ancient unwavering guidelines from some man made book which says that homosexuality is "wrong" is disgusting and no child should be forced into the religion of their parents. It should always be the individuals choice - bringing children up to accept fairy tales as truth is intellectually retarding. Skepticism, critical thinking, reasoning should be taught so that the individual can make up their own mind with the help of these tools.
From the perspective of a religious person from my own experience there are many mantras and ideas which you must always tell yourself so as to reinforce your faith. The very scary idea of hell is simply a way to scare/confuse/frighten people into submission. If you believe in eternal damnation then you will always be fearful about sinning and "sinners", it is incredibly disgusting.
Another thing which I was always skeptical about was how involved people who went to church were. If you are deeply invested in something then you automatically side with it and find reasons to support what you think. Constant church meetings, gatherings, bible study, home groups, youth groups bbq's all of these things which church goers are encouraged to take part in get you in this environment with like minded people. If there are many, many people who believe the same lie as you then you tell yourself there must be something to it. Members of a church are always utilised. Their ego's are stroked by things like "God often chooses the little people to do his work". You're a loser? Does not matter, we accept you in OUR club. All are welcome. God accepts everybody! Except if you are gay of course... oh or if you happen to follow a different God to the God we praise, then be off with you sinner, you shall not taint our congregation with your wickedness. They make sure you come back. People who can play an instrument, right you are going to be in the band! People who are good at talking and who can engage people with enthusiasm are singled out and told that God wants them to be in the "eldership" preaching to the people. Once you are involved and invested then you are personally responsible for spreading the word. It is your job and task. It is disgusting.
I remember being pounded on when going back to church after a couple years off after I turned 18. It was so bad, I felt incredibly uneasy in this environment. It seemed like a cult. Follow the leader behavior. Arms all in the air, you will all sing these lines and smile and cry and fake. Emotional music is played on keyboards to pull at your heart strings, the whole thing is a performance and a manipulation of your weak human emotions. If you have a weak critical faculty or are lazy and take things at face value then it is easy to be sucked into this. When a well meaning lady asked me what I thought of the church service, expecting me to spurt out something about how much I was touched by God or how friendly the people were I told her, "It kinda scared me, it seemed like a cult". She did not know how to respond and quickly found a way to leave. Also, the pastor made sure he involved me. At the end of the service he talked to me and asked what I did, I told him I made websites and he then went on to tell me that, oh our church needs a website, maybe we could get YOU to do it. No thanks. Seriously, alarm bells were going off all throughout the service, it was very uncomfortable.
Another thing that I know is popular with Christians is this "Saving Yourself For Marriage" thing. I was told by the church that there were such things as "soul-ties". Soul-Ties came about when you conducted in the act of sexual intercourse with another person. Your soul actually binds to them and you can never get this back once you sleep with them. I was told that the more people you slept with, the more fragmented you became as a person and then was told a story about some guy who slept with a witch whilst in Africa who after sleeping with her, took on her "psychological" defects. He found he was unable to think straight and constantly fought with suicidal thoughts. This is total bullshit. Some people are fucked up. Religious people love to tell stories which promote and which they think supports their views but when thought about critically falls over. It is all about making you "feel" guilty, confused and worthless. Emotion clouds your better judgments. If your sexuality can be controlled by the church, one of the very things which makes you inherently human then they can control you much more. If you are constantly fighting against your natural human desires you will become confused and feel shame and guilt.
Here are some more good quotes I have acquired about god/atheism etc.
"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing,"Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.
- Dan Barker
A believer's faith in the anthropomorphic god has never made "him" real. The only way believers can make God real to any degree is by killing and/or converting others to their egotistical and ethnocentric, racist and sexist interpretation of God. No matter how hard you may believe in your version of the formless, genderless, raceless divinity, this fervor will not make it so. If such a god were real, there would be no need for belief and faith. Belief is irrelevant and neither proves nor serves anything.
In this respect, and because this formless, genderless and raceless truth exists with or without human belief, it is positively useless to believe in God. This life force will have existence everywhere at all times whether or not anyone believes in it. It is like the sun. You do not need to believe in the sun. You can see it and feel it. You are certain that it exists. Even if you did not believe in it, it would still exist. It surely does not care if you don't believe in it.
Indeed, the only "blasphemy" is treating real, living human beings like pathetic, born-in-sin pieces of garbage while exalting an invisible and imaginary giant man in the sky. There is certainly nothing righteous in this behavior. What is righteous is perceiving the entire cosmos as sublime and marvelous.
As it turns out, it is egotism to believe that some god person is on your side and opposes your enemy. Every side or individual in a conflict or debate believes this conceit, and each is wrong.
It is not possible to insult or blaspheme that which does not exist
This topic is so taboo and people with deeply held beliefs I believe are not even open to investigate the facts. A religious person might read this and take offense to this, it makes them "feel" uneasy and become defensive. Defensive? Why? People only get defensive when they are unsure about their position. Being unsure about your position is very commonplace I'd say in regards to religious beliefs and why wouldn't you be unsure. You cannot prove the existence of God, no you must use "faith". Faith is the answer. Whenever a theory is put forward, the burden of proof is on the person to prove the theory correct. Also, just because you cannot "disprove" God is not evidence for his existence. I or you cannot disprove leprechauns, this does not make them real. If you chat with a deeply religious person about even the idea that God is not real this makes them really uneasy and you can see them getting really emotional and defensive. I do not like arguments like this as it may affect the relationship between both arguers and I value people and their feelings above what I think to be true. I would rather engage with someone in a manner which promotes happiness, not creating feelings of uneasiness or defensiveness. I usually stay clear of conversations about this stuff and this is the reason I haven't really written about it in this blog before; because I don't want to "upset" anyone. I am highly empathetic towards people by nature and dislike making people upset or uneasy. I understand that religion certainly meets a large need for a lot of people. Fear of death, ignorance, lack of knowledge, laziness, stupidity, wanting to believe there is someone in the sky who cares for them is comforting.
People often cite the argument that "everything needs a cause". The thing about this is that if you say "God" is the cause of everything, the creator of life, then what or who created God? It's the exact same situation as evolution, the big bang. The big bang and who created God are both the same they both pose the question of what came before them. Science does not know everything, this is not a reason to invoke a "God" figure to explain the origins of things we do not understand.
As with everything my views have been formed with what data I have collected thus far. I am not blaming my parents or my church or anyone for anything. I am simply stating what I currently think and the experiences which formed them. Also, the more data and information I collect and analyse on this subject, the more I side with atheism and humanism. I have a strong bullshit detector and value honesty and truth in everything.
Today I spent some time programming a moblog system for my site. I have been meaning to do this for a while now but only got around to doing it today. It's pretty cool as it makes use of the image's EXIF data to produce the photo Title, Description, Date Taken, Time Taken and Image Size information. It uses PHP's exif_thumbnail function to generate a thumbnail so there is no annoying double handling, simply upload the image to the correct directory and the moblog takes care of the rest.
Taking and uploading moblog photos is a lot of fun and I have felt like I have been missing out ever since TA decided to cancel its free membership and charge $100 p/yr.
I still have a bit to work on; for example automatically updating the rss feed when a new image is uploaded. At the moment I am doing this manually and it is pretty annoying. I would know how to do this if it was database driven, however the images and image information are being displayed from a folder on the server so I'm not too sure how I am going to do it yet. Also need to set up comments unique to every photo and pagination.
