I just got reamed in my taxes. Came out $11 in the green. TurboTax cost $64. So yeah. Last year Rios and I got like $400, so I'm really confused.

RAMBLE son

School's coming up again, soon. I'll be back to the grind. I don't feel like I've rested much on this break. There was, however, Friday. Friday was good. Spent a few hours playing PS3 with the Chocolate Bear. Resident Evil 5 is really cool. We killed a lot of zombies and trolls and bat things with giant sac-pussies that spew yellow when you shoot them. Then Rios and we went to see "I Love You, Man." Which was really funny, and when it wasn't funny it had plenty of charismatic actors to watch. I'm listening to Lil' Wayne. Motherfucker I'm ill. Chermaine left his PS3 over here...I'm looking at it and getting tempted. But I won't, not tonight. I have to go sleep. I meant to do it thirty minutes ago, but then I was in the middle of a song by the Knife, and I like to pop my leg up on the computer tower to rest it, and I turned the machine off RIGHT when the song was getting really good. So I had to start it back up and listen to the song again. And by that point I'd gone to the fridge and gotten an applesauce and a water, and now here I am. My book is cool. It's going to be cool.

flash intros

Authors: I am your target audience. I have ADD. My generation has ADD. We can pay attention, if we try, for a couple seconds, and that's it. So if we go to your website and we see a little loading bar, and it pauses at 30%, like it always does, we're moving on. If enough of us do this, that is a major loss of $$!

Just a thought, guys.

stop laughing through your nose, jackass

Walked Kahlua. Beautiful day. Ran into my professor of American Jewry, who is an extremely kind and intelligent guy, at the pond with his wife. She had a British accent, I think. Shook hands and exchanged niceties. Kahlua acted afraid and I laughed at her, only it was through the nose so I blew snot everywhere. This was followed by a couple seconds of awkward silence, then a parting of ways. You'd think the sting would be slightly dull considering the amount of times I've done this, but it's not.

response to the liberal artistry question #1

Forgive me for not really touching on the religious aspect of this question, that's a whole different can of worms, one I'm slightly less equipped to answer, but I'm sure it would cast knowledge and belief in a more "Sylvester and Tweety" kind of light. I'll simply write about belief in a more general way, which makes the couple's relationship more symbiotic, and more fun for the whole family.

Beliefs are meant to be analyzed and tested every once in a while. Your brain is like a car, things need to be opened up and checked and fixed, it'll run smoother and longer.

We've gotta have belief, though, too. I have to sincerely believe that tonight when I go out to walk my dog that I won't float away like a balloon. I have to believe that, writing this, I won't get sucked into my computer, lost in cyberspace for all time.

So, having said those two things, I'd prefer to compare Knowledge and Belief to something less oppositional than two points on a line. Let me get out my metaphor bag. Here we go.

You gotta build buildings out of steel so that people can move fluidly through them without constantly worrying if the shack is going to tip over and kill everyone.

Once you've built the building though, you've got to tear ass through that thing at full speed. Preferably on a scooter. Every day, you've gotta peek in and say "Fuck you" to the boss. You've gotta be at the water cooler fraternizing, you've got to be punching clocks off the wall and zipping around changing everyone's screen saver to an LOLcat, something. Get out a slip and slide and have a party or get to work and figure out how to build a better building. Something with a pool. Indoor pools are the shit.

You are this person, Ambiguity, constantly evolving, thanks to Knowledge, in this building, Belief.

you don't deserve your money

What Should A Billionaire Give?

Peter Singer writes:

"A few years ago, an African-American cabdriver taking me to the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington asked me if I worked at the bank. I told him I did not but was speaking at a conference on development and aid. He then assumed that I was an economist, but when I said no, my training was in philosophy, he asked me if I thought the U.S. should give foreign aid. When I answered affirmatively, he replied that the government shouldn’t tax people in order to give their money to others. That, he thought, was robbery. When I asked if he believed that the rich should voluntarily donate some of what they earn to the poor, he said that if someone had worked for his money, he wasn’t going to tell him what to do with it.

"At that point we reached our destination. Had the journey continued, I might have tried to persuade him that people can earn large amounts only when they live under favorable social circumstances, and that they don’t create those circumstances by themselves. I could have quoted Warren Buffett’s acknowledgment that society is responsible for much of his wealth. “If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru,” he said, “you’ll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil.” The Nobel Prize-winning economist and social scientist Herbert Simon estimated that “social capital” is responsible for at least 90 percent of what people earn in wealthy societies like those of the United States or northwestern Europe. By social capital Simon meant not only natural resources but, more important, the technology and organizational skills in the community, and the presence of good government. These are the foundation on which the rich can begin their work. “On moral grounds,” Simon added, “we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent.” Simon was not, of course, advocating so steep a rate of tax, for he was well aware of disincentive effects. But his estimate does undermine the argument that the rich are entitled to keep their wealth because it is all a result of their hard work. If Simon is right, that is true of at most 10 percent of it."

It's important, I think, to never forget the circumstances under which we were born. I was born in Springfield, VA, USA, to a brilliant, insanely loving mother (probably about as close to perfect as a person can get) and an equally brilliant father who worked hard to provide for us. Growing up, my mother and father read to me constantly, and worked with me to make sure that I was ready when school rolled around. Add to this mix the support of three grandparents and a gang of aunts and uncles all eager to help, and you could mention a silver spoon, totally.

So, here I am. I have opportunities. I was born in America to loving parents. I was lucky.

Not fair. Life's not fair. I know. But that ain't right.

dawkins

Stood outside for what seemed like forever. Eric, me, Jason, and Scott. I was hungry, all I'd eaten was a Pop Tart. We talked a lot, various subjects. "Infinite Jest" seems to be going well for Eric. Jason and Scott are good.

The auditorium was mostly full. Wooden chairs sprawled out from a podium. We sat in the bleachers, because we figured it'd be easier to see that way. Kind of funny, waiting in line to go to the back of the room. Well, not the very back, but you know. Wedged in behind some old people. I wonder from time to time if our conversations might be offensive. We drop F bombs left and right.

There'll be a Q&A section afterwards and I think of the perfect question: "Mr. Dawkins. How do you feel about DP?" But it goes unasked. This leads to a unanimous decision from the group that DP is okay, as long as it's just one cock per hole.

We sit for a long time. I talk about a lot of things. How I suck at small talk. I'll hear people around campus, like, "Hey man. How are you." "Good." "How's Brian?" "Doing his thing." "You going to Matt's tomorrow?" "Nah, I got lacrosse." And they just go on and on. How? This shit stumps me. I have to be talking about something. But w/e.

Lecture begins. Dawkins gets the standing O. First thing we get is a movie about how Ben Stein sucks. It's a trailer for his movie "Expelled," only it's called "Sexpelled" and some clever dude went in and changed all the references of "intelligent design" to "stork theory", see, Dawkins views the evolution v. ID argument as analogous to: gravity v. "intelligent falling" or birth v. "stork." Anyway, the trailer goes on and on, and finally it gets to the end and it says "Ben Stein is" and the next card's supposed to say "Expelled,", but this same clever dude went in and put a card in that says, big letters, all caps, AN IGNORANT FOOL. Strikes me as petty. Crowd loves it.

Crowd also loves: everything, it seems. They applaud consistently. The crowd becomes divided: the clappers and those who find the clapping to be annoying and those who find those who find the clapping annoying, annoying. Nothing comes of it. Just an interesting thing to watch. The clapping I understand: it's a bottling up effect. If you're an atheist and you live in Oklahoma, you have to keep that shit on the low. This is Bible country, son. When you get a bunch of godless folks in a room together, for the most part, they are ecstatic, like, "My people!"

My back starts to bug me. I'm like, "Alright, guys."

Dawkins is old. Brushed back white hair. He proceeds through his lecture, "The Purpose of Purpose." It's basic biology stuff. We get a lesson in how evolution works. Dawkins says there are two forms of purpose, archaeo- and neo-, which is his "new spin", which I'm sure would've been interesting if it wasn't just a new way of putting old shit. More evolution stuff, and the lecture is over. I'm like, "What the fuck."

Q&A starts, and it's more interesting. At this point the back is killing me. The thighs too, and the ass is numb from the cheek to the lower back. Everyone, everyone kisses this dude's ass. "Thank you so much for coming to Oklahoma." Which I mean, I guess it's a nice thing to do, but I'm like, "Questions, people, where are your questions?"

In the middle of a question I hear, "Shut the fuck up!" really loud and I'm like WHOA. Crowd goes hush. A woman stands up, saying, "Security! This man has been bothering us the whole time..." blah blah. This nut in the crowd had been babbling I guess, and some dude lost his temper, but then crazy guy stood up, wearing denim, thin, carrying a big yellow legal pad, yelling something like, "I RENOUNCE YOU." Security escorted him out, the end.

Afterwards, we ate at Taco Bell. Then went to the bar. Topics included: Indy 4, suicide, drugs, would you fuck X to save Y, etc. I only spent $7.

And now, I sleep. Good night, folks.