embracing my own agency

For most of my formative years, much of my schedule was controlled by authority figures: schools and parents. When I was first in a position to have much greater control over my own time, I squandered it. Then I got a job for a few years, and my time was controlled, my efforts directed. After quitting it, I again squandered my time. I've had a few more cycles like that. Throughout all of this I tended to think of myself as lazy, and wondered how I could fight my own laziness.

It occurs to me now that years and years of taking orders from authority figures really fucked up my ability to manage my time, and to direct my efforts towards goals of my own choosing. Whenever I had time to myself, I just wanted to do nothing, perhaps because I was accustomed to goal-directed activity being unpleasant. And it was unpleasant partially because I wasn't the one setting the goals. I suppose these repeated periods where I squandered my time were when I rejected being an agent for someone else's goals, but was incompetent at setting my own and executing on them.

Anyway, I think that slowly over the last 2 years of grad school I've started to realize that my time is my own, and that the way I spend it today is a big part of what options I'll have tomorrow. (Perhaps "realize" isn't the right term; "act like someone who understands" might be more accurate.) I'm getting better at identifying what options I want to have tomorrow, and how to direct my energies towards those long-term goals. Maybe that's just behaving like a fucking adult, but it's big progress for me, and I feel pretty good about it.

I'm more productive at work now, allocating time both to short-term (applying for funding next month, teaching responsibilities, various new student administrative things) and long-term projects (developing a plan of study for my PhD work), and doing so far more efficiently than ever before, though with plenty of room for improvement. The same is true for home life. For example, last weekend I canned 23 liters of tomato sauce with some friends, to make some delicious local produce last into the winter. These are the kinds of things I've been saying I wanted to do for years now, and now I'm actually doing them. Items on my list for the near future include homebrewing beer and submitting a paper for publication, both of which will happen in the next couple months.

I'm trying to make similar progress with personal relationships. I've had very few deeply satisfying connections with other people, and the few I've had haven't lasted very long, probably at least in part due to my own failure to maintain them. I suspect I'll be able to apply these newfound abilities in this part of life as well. We'll see how it goes.

Aside from the personal utility I'm deriving from these changes, it occurs to me that the explanation I've hypothesized -- years of taking orders from authority stunting my ability to effectively identify and pursue my own goals -- could have enormous social implications if the same dynamic has been playing out for a large population, which - I - suspect - it - has. I'll have to think more about that.

a few life updates

Not much blogging lately, but here's a few things that are going on in my life:

• I've been spending my work hours writing my thesis, which I'll defend in mid-July. Today I spent the afternoon redoing some statistics that were a bit off, and now I'll have to rethink a section in light of the changes. This section isn't especially important to the thesis as a whole, but it is important to a direction I'd like to take in the future.
• I'll be traveling to my first academic conference and presenting a poster later this month. The poster will focus on the experiment I ran this winter. I've never been to Oregon before.
• I've had all three cats since my ex moved out, but today Hattori goes to live with her. It will be sad to lose him, but we think this is the best possible arrangement for everyone. We'll try it for a few weeks and see how it goes. One potential benefit of his absence is that Horus might be more social once he realizes he doesn't have to hide from Hattori's bullying.
• Softball season is in full, glorious, swing.
• This weekend is the Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair and Dundas Buskerfest!
• I think I'm starting to experience human emotions a few times a week. I kinda like it.

!!!!

girlfriend!

Is there any rhyme or reason to the phenomenon whereby heterosexual women sometimes refer to their same-sex friends as "girlfriends" instead of simply "friends"?

Also, is my question mark at the end of the last sentence supposed to be inside or outside of the quote? [update: outside was right!]

new computer for me

After almost 8 years of faithful service, my Dell desktop is being put out of its misery retired. I finally caved and bought a new computer. Big change for me - I bought a Macbook. So far I like it. If the goal of marketing is to create a blind loyalty to a corporate brand, the Apple people have succeeded. Asking people for advice on whether to get a Mac or a PC is like asking "Jesus or Allah?" But I tried to filter out the religious gunk and get to the substance, so hopefully I made the right choice. If I can make this machine last half as long as the last, I'll be fairly happy.

buzz

Suddenly I'm getting a Google "buzz" icon in my gmail, which I assume is a new social networking thing. It tells me I now have a bunch of "followers," who will get a notification every time I share something in Google Reader, which I do a lot, or post a blog entry, which I do a lot. So I assume they'll get a lot of shit from me for a few days, and then they'll un-follow me, because why would anyone want to get a notification every time I do anything?

dinner party lineup

in a dream last night, i was in a room with:

1) a girl that i (barely) knew about 15 years ago, and haven't seen for at least 10

2) a guy i worked with 5 years ago and haven't seen for 4

3) dick cheney, who brought me to the room

WHAT THE FUCK?

today i sewed a button onto a pair of pants. i haven't tried them on yet to be sure it worked, mostly because i'm too proud of myself right now.

I didn't blame anyone for the loss of my legs - some chinaman in Korea took them from me - but I went out and acheived anyway!

I've been exceptionally unflexible my entire life. Touching my toes was unimaginable; I couldn't get more than 2 inches past my knees. About two weeks ago it occurred to me that this wasn't healthy, could lead to injury, etc., and that I should work on improving it.

So I've been stretching haphazardly during the day, and the improvement is pretty impressive. I can reach down to my shins now, about 2 inches above my ankles.

I used to do pilates every once in a while with Kira, and the sensation at the end of a pilates session was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Now I know that feeling is what stretching feels like.

weird sleep

saturday - 9am
friday - 2:30pm
thursday - 6am
wednesday - 11am

those are my last 4 awaking times. each night i went to bed between 12 and 1am. no naps or extraordinary physical exertion or drinking as a noteworthy explanation for the extreme fluctuations.

as the blurg turns

i think one my primary uses of this blog has been to deal with changes. once i come to terms with the change, i lose the urge to write about it. this has happened repeatedly as frequent themes came and went: leaving my first job, poker strategy, poker life, career/grad school, atheism, political awakening, anarchism.

i'm kind of losing the desire to deal with political issues now, as i feel like i've 1) got things figured out and 2) have absorbed that understanding into my day-to-day psychology. the second point is more relevant to blogging because much of my blogging has been driven by outrage, and outrage derives from expectations. i'm still outraged on a moral level by a lot of things that happen in the world, but the outrage that primary drove the blogging was more about how other people respond to travesties, and now i have different expectations there.

anyway i think the kinds of changes i'm dealing with these days are not the kinds of things i'm likely to want to blog about. that's not meant to be ominous or anything; i'm just noting that i expect blog volume to continue to decline.

things people without appendices do?

today has been a good recovery day.  i took a walk outside, and my bowels are getting closer to normal functioning*.  i'm going to eat a hamburger for dinner, and i might have a beer too.  it still hurts though if i do anything that uses ab muscles, which turns out to be just about every movement.

i've watched way too many movies and tv episodes over the last few days.  in the hospital i actually managed to read a lot, and finished chomsky's "Necessary Illusions."  but i've had trouble concentrating on reading here.  that will improve soon.   i've watched:

• entire season 3 of The Office, and the last 5 episodes of whatever this season is
  
• the 2 recent episodes of Prison Break, which apparently started back up again (guilty pleasure)
  
• several episodes of Life of Birds with Attenborough (always awesome)
  
• 3:10 to Yuma (pretty good for a western starring a brit and an aussie)
  
• So Goes the Nation (very limited value, and not in the way they intended)
  
• Bourne Ultimatum (always awesome)
• American Gangster (pretty good, but more boring than i expected)

on my walk i picked up 2 more documentaries from the library that i'll watch soon, and that will probably end the dvd binge:

• the smartest guys in the room (mark cuban's enron movie)
• not yet rated (some expose of the the movie ratings nazis)

i just noticed that i threw in some random capitalization of the movie titles, but not the last two.  i'm weird.

* - every once in a while it occurs to me that everything i write on this stupid blog could conceivably be available to read 50 years from now.  my grandkids could be reading this, seeing how grandpa's bowels were functioning back in 2009.  hopefully just as well as they are in 2059!

conversations

say, adspar, what is that obama fellow up to these days?  you know, that guy who was going to change everything for the better?  the one who gives us hope?

he's been busy.

that's good.  hope and change are hard work.  what a great guy.  so clean and articulate!  so charismatic and intelligent.  so what is he doing?  lots of great and wonderful things i'm sure!

yeah, well he's been changing bush's war on terror by escalating the slaughter of civilians in pakistan.  you didn't even know we were killing pakistanis did you?  

aren't they supposed to be our allies?  

oh well, no matter.  i'm sure he has very good reasons.  just like he has good reasons to send his troops to shoot pregnant women and destroy farms and crops in afghanistan.  you should have seen how articulately he gave that order!

that sounds kind of bad actually.  but i probably just don't know enough about it.  i'm sure he has access to secret information that makes this more understandable.  we should just trust his judgment on this.  he's not bush after all!  remember all those criticisms of bush he intelligently articulated in his campaign?  surely those criticisms prove his heart is pure and good.  yes, definitely, we should just trust him.

yeah, remember how he criticized bush for kidnapping people off the street and locking them in cages in guantanamo without any ability to challenge their detention?  obama is hoping and changing this by locking them in cages in bagram instead!  that probably sounds like it contradicts his campaign rhetoric, but don't worry, i'm sure you'll figure out some way to excuse him for it.

i don't know... i'll try hard...

i think you owe him that much.  he's working very hard to make sure there are no investigations or prosecutions of the well-documented widespread use of torture by bush's henchman.  he's working hard to make sure he can torture too.  so you better work hard to excuse, rationalize, or ignore anything he does that you don't like.

adspar, you're really such a downer.  i just want to feel good about the world, and have some hope.  times are really tough, so i don't think that's too much to ask for.  but you have to go and ruin it for me.  i don't think i'm going to ask you about politics any more.

dream a little dream

Sometimes you hear a philosophical examination of consciousness or something that argues that maybe you're just dreaming this right now and don't realize it. So how to do you know it is really real? That kind of thing.

Here's what I realized. I'm pretty sure that any time I've ever stopped and thought about whether something I'm experiencing is real, I've gotten the right answer. I've been in dreams and not thought about whether it was real, but whenever I actually stop and think about it, I realize I'm dreaming. (Then I get to start controlling the dream, which is awesome.) And any time in real life I wonder if I'm dreaming, I know I'm not. So I don't get what all the fuss is about.

Maybe I need to do more drugs though. I suppose that could trip me up.

a space in the howling madness

In an essay that is worth reading for many reasons beyond what I'll mention, Chris Floyd says:

What commentary could adequately address such madness? Simply to see it is to know what it is. And if you cannot already see it for what it plainly is -- when the bare, unaccomodated facts shout this evil from the lower depths to the highest heavens -- what amount of commentary will sway you?

Then again, I don't write to sway anybody any more, if I ever did. I write to stay sane, to keep from exploding in rage or going dead with despair, to try to clear a space in the howling madness for myself, and for anyone else who might come this way. I write to bear witness -- mostly to myself, and to what's left of my conscience. I write because somewhere along the line, by drift of circumstance, my mind was shaped in such a way that it is only by writing that I can try to understand the world, and my own thoughts and beliefs. If I could do all that without writing -- or if I could stop looking at reality and caring about it -- then I probably would. But for whatever reason -- those same drifts of circumstance, no doubt -- I can't; so I go on.

A lot of the time that has been the reason why I've kept writing in this stupid blog of mine. Maintaining what's left of my sanity and conscience, maybe helping anyone else do the same, trying to understand the world and myself. That's what it has been about, albeit on a much different level than Chris. (That guy is amazing.)

Increasingly I think I'm finding myself doing this in other ways. I'm too lazy to check the stats but I think I'm posting less frequently and with less volume. At least it feels that way. Of course I've been pretty busy with school, and my computer at home is falling apart so I guess I have a lot less opportunity to write. But I still feel like a lot of the time I consider writing something and just decide it isn't worth it. So, yeah, I think I'm getting whatever it is I used to get out of this some other way now.

end beard. begin mustache.

As promised:

before





after



(Yes, in the first picture there is a woman with a mustache grading papers behind me. That's just how we roll up here.)

on profanity

I'm finally getting around to starting to read Pinker's newest book, which had some introductory remarks on profanity, and then I think he will return to the subject eventually. I don't know how long it will take me to get to that part, so I'll just blurg along on that topic for a while here.

Profanity is an interesting phenomenon. Everybody knows that everybody else knows that these words exist and have meanings that can be useful, and yet we all understand that we're supposed to use various synonyms for them instead. Often there are no polite direct substitutions (for instance you can't sub in any replacement for something like "John fucked his girlfriend last night") and you have to rephrase the entire though into something more polite ("John had sexual intercourse with her"). Other times you're allowed to substitute the anatomically correct term or a less vulgar term, or whatever. And forbidden words are always about sex and excretion and religion. ("Cock! Crap! Jesus titty-fucking Christ!")

Why the hell is all of this going on? Pinker seems to be saying that it is part of the elaborate system whereby we're all acknowledging social systems and our relative places in society or something. We'll see when I get there. I'll let you know. Until then...

Myself, I'm fairly profane. If you could do a word count on this blog, I'd bet profanity levels are pretty damn high. I think I just don't have any respect for arbitrary taboo, and I derive some enjoyment from flaunting that. I said shit in class the other day, which was fairly enjoyable, and yet its stupid that I should even make a note of such, but I do. Why? Fucking profanity, that's why. Also, I like it that my advisers are loose with profanity. I pretty much like anyone who is loose with profanity. So for me, profanity is a code that gives me cues that you might be cool. For others, profanity is a cue that you're probably a terrible person.

Also, profanity can be really funny sometimes. George Carlin and whatnot. Good for a cheap laugh at least. Tickles you somewhere you're not allowed to be tickled. The Aristocrats.

This post doesn't have a point, just rambling thoughts. No end either.

The book:

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

spatial-temporal coordinates

Baltimore, Maryland: 1980-1983(?)
Charleston, South Carolina: 1983-1986
New Bern, North Carolina: 1986-1990
Bel Air, Maryland: 1990-1998
College Park, Maryland: 1998-2002
Silver Spring, Maryland: 2002-2003
Rockville, Maryland: 2003-2004
Gaithersburg, Maryland: 2004-2007
Ada, Ohio: 2007-2008
Dundas, Ontario: 2008-

So far Dundas in my favorite.

A dozen things

1. Softball is fun. I can't believe I never bothered to play softball before.
2. Beerfest at the grad student pub is fun. I can't believe I never went to beerfest before.
3. No limit hold'em is fun. I can't believe I never played it very much before.
4. This structure is fun. I can't keep it up much longer.
5. I've been meaning to do some kitteh blurghing but I can't find my camera and I feel like any kitteh blurghing must have photographic accompaniment. So I should get around to that eventually.
6. Canada is sweet, yo.
7. I'm going to the theatre this weekend to see Romeo and Juliet, which I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen. That's probably against some rule about being a cultured white person, so I guess this is all part of the deal.
8. Despite being non-plused with the preview, I want to go see Dark Knight, but I don't want to pay $11 (x2 for the wife) cause that seems excessive.
9. Speaking of the wife, she just got a very cute haircut. Very cute. She donated most of her hair to cancer kids or something nice like that, so it is very short, but in a way that really works for her. So now the hair she sheds at German Sheppard pace will be much shorter.
10. I can't wait until Kira experiences the 1-2 punch of a nice compliment about her hair then comparing her to a dog. That should be fun. I ruin everything.
11. Charles Darwin was a nifty fellow, or so I hear.
12. Fresh local produce is the only way to eat. At least in the summer.

Fin.

Priorities

I chimed in a bit on Crispin Sartwell's video commentary on "the new atheism" but overall I've kind of lost interest in writing much about atheism advocacy and the associated criticism of religion and theism. I was writing a lot on that for a while, but with all the other bullshit in the world, it just seems like less of a priority. This is based only on my own attention span; there are too many other things that I'm pissed off about to spend my outrage energy on pious fools.

This isn't to say I don't think atheist crusaders are doing something important. Many religious people are victims of repressive ideology. And it could well be the case that clearing the religious nonsense out of people's heads helps free their minds to then start dealing with other problems in a productive way. Atheism could well be the key to the whole fucking mess. And if it isn't, there's still nobility in fighting for reason, and fighting against lies. I'm just more motivated lately to fight against other lies than the one about the magical sky daddy.

Perhaps this shift is because I've come to terms with all the bullshit that realizing my own atheism caused in my personal life. I'm not talking about a crisis over lost faith; I never really had any to begin with. But various personal relationships were shaken up as a result of publicly announcing my own atheism; some improved, many deteriorated. But all that turmoil has settled down and I know where everything stands now and I assume it is all for the better. But there's new turmoil of course. After opening my eyes to the sham of religion, I then opened my eyes to the sham of politics, government, and popular history. That awakening has also shaken things up in my life, much more severely I think. I'm still working through it, and using this blog as a way to help accomplish that.