Rants

It has been awhile. . . For a lot of things it has been awhile. I’ve been reading over my old letters I have probably close to two hundred pages of them all told. But maybe only 3 or so letters to you. Odd I think. We used to be close didn’t we? Maybe that’s just nostalgia talking. I do remember watching blue but you have to realize I had maybe two years of that with gross over and over. Maybe that will explain how close we are. So why are we so far apart? I think its mostly physical distance and as much as you don’t want to hear it a driver’s license dose solve some of those issues. But I think your doing better then you think. If you still think that other people are maturing faster then you know that the grass is always greener. I mean you have a real job and a permanent place to live. That’s more then most people have myself included. But I don’t think you would agree. Your in a good position though if your good with your money you can go to 'real collage' if you want (though if your making good money I’m not sure I see the point( then again I've never been the advocate of education)). Well work your way up the corporate ladder and then you’ll have the money to buy time to work on what ever you want. Well I don’t know what else to say. . . I’ll be around if you need of me. I have infinite patience if only finite wisdom.

Yours in truth,
Jeff Forshée

**After a few extremely optimistic letters to Gross we had a snow fall up here and spring was pushed back. People who would actually read this probably know who is in my dream though maybe not well enough. As a point of interest I’ve almost finished compiling all our correspondence (there are still a few hand written notes and two major hand written pieces missing) if anyone wants a copy let me know.**

Let us be realistic its still February. My false spring explodes into tinny white flakes. Things are slow and lonely, sometimes I still see my self as that fool on the hill. When you become a wise fool like me atop your own mountain you will learn that you only want to come back down. . . Where the people are. But you have been there before we may even have climbed a few of those mountains together. I thought of a false parable to admonish you slightly for not writing but I’ll let it die. I’ve lost the want of little bouts of anger its hard being this level headed. Its Sunday and already I’m waiting for the weekend. Are you coming back for break. In my mind I wont see you for a year or so. Sadly not that much different then what its been in the more present past. I dream recently:

A childhood friend and I prepare for a long journey. We sit on the step near the front door. She is a frozen soft drink. She whispers “Do you want to know me?” from somewhere in her plastic body. I say that there will be time for all that later.

I awake knowing as much as when I fell asleep. I feel hollow after dreams like that as I stumble for my notebook in a painful half strong resolve to record my own hollowness. At least I am actively sleeping. Perhaps that’s all I ever do. I am truly obsessive and tether myself to the past. Only the women haunt my dreams though. You know in a desperate moment I wanted to drink deep from her? I hesitated. I faltered. How do you tell someone you want to drink deep from there being? How do you say “Yes, I want to know you” and have them understand? How do you get them to ask “Do you want to know me?”? It only seems to happen in my dreams. . .

Eternally Thirsty,

Your Brother

**(A note of no importance to no one in particular)**
In the last few years I have almost tried completely to remove myself from my school. And its interesting I’ve found it impossible to be completely unknown even if its just as ‘that guy’. I’ve convinced myself that I’ve learned something in the last few years and it’s lead me to believe that there is more to people then they let on. This however seems to distance me further from what I think they are. All this has just furthered my want to study people and really I’m not sure what good that does. Most people don’t seem to think that being a subject is a superlative. And maybe I’m just mucking up the language to think otherwise. But it seems the deeper and deeper you suppose people to be the less and less of them there seem to be. The resistance to any kind of closeness seems stronger then logic would dictate. And I have always been a slave to logic.
I find myself thinking I’ve hit the bottom, that there is no more to discover here. It’s fairly painful to invest so strongly in something that you discover is not Truth. I am rebounding, trying to figure out at what point I went astray, but my view is muddled. I try to recreate what I found the first time with little luck. I try to be as honest as possible but I don’t think people know quite how to react to it and I never know how much force to apply.
So why all the letters? They calm me to an extent and they show me where I’ve been and how little I’ve changed. I’ve trained myself to talk endlessly at a brick wall and wait patently for an answer. I’d like to actually do something here but I’m really out of ideas as to what that would be. There are a lot of people that I’d like to be closer to but its in my nature to wait for them. But then how many of us are here waiting. .

*Another letter to gross. Nothing even that interesting but thought I’d post something. If anyone wants a letter from me just ask and I’d be happy to write one.

We are equal distances from all things. I only say one thing but I will retool and calculate so that it will come out closer to what I mean. Glory and poetry seem to seep into my being. Slowly petrifying anger and fear. I am calm. I’m ready to start a pop band. We will speak to the public in there language about things that don’t need saying. This is not debasement its just a beat you can dance to. I want to be that guy in the local bar who you think sounds alright. I want to be lots of things. I’m more then fine with where I am. I have direction even if I have no speed. I’m far more curious about how others are moving. I write to waste my time and to mark the peaks and valleys of my oscillations. My mind is working all the time and out side the realm of ‘normal’ thought. I am brilliant in this if nothing else. I dream of electric shoes that will keep a beat for me and brilliant noise summoned by a flick of my wrist and a long chain of steal boxes. I dream so that my failure seems farther off. I can’t play love, or friendship, or sadness, or frozen milk on any number of strings.

It’s been an interesting first few weeks back here. I brought no pedals, only the clean Casio, and the normal dozens of acoustic instruments. I’ve been working on the technical aspects of my playing trying to memorize the fret boards of several different instruments. I’ve been exercising my hands constantly. I think I’m improving little be little but its left me with a lust for noise and a tangle of cables running into everything. And my damn comp keeps crashing so I suppose here is as good a spot to end as any.

The topic this surrounds is genericide, follow the Wikipedia link if you are unfamiliar with the term, get to know it, and realize the freedoms it entitles us all to. Example: the lowly Aspirin.  You may not realize it, but Aspirin is a brand name, and in many other countries it has to be called by its generic name “Acetosal” In America if a trademark becomes part of the culture, it is subject to genericide. 

Adobe is terrified at the prospect of Photoshop becoming genericized.   So much so they actually released this insulting sheet (Thanks for the link, Alek) [link] on how the term “Photoshop” can and cannot be used.   I quote now from this sheet

CORRECT: The new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software are impressive.
INCORRECT: Photoshop's features are impressive.

“Trademarks must never be abbreviated.” Do they honestly expect people to say Adobe every time they refer to Photoshop?  What right do companies have to control how we refer to its products?  Could I make a product whose name took half an hour to pronounce, and then be upset when people don’t bother to use its full name?  This is completely ridiculous. 

As a side note I’ve been meaning to write a post for a while now on how Copyright should be subject to genericide.  Lets look for example at the Birthday Song.  It was copyrighted in 1935 and not set to expire until 2030 (thanks very much Sonny Bono). Anyone who had any legitimate reason to gain from that song will be, and probably already is long dead. You have to admit that the song is part of our culture.  How can someone own and profit from our culture?  That’s just wrong. I argue that when something becomes part of the culture, part of how we live, and so common that a thought is never even given to where it came from, its copyright should be null and void.

Secondly and even more pointedly, it’s a 4-line song, 3 of the lines are identical.  How can that even be copyrightable?  It’s literally a copyright on two sentences, one of which is missing a word i.e.: Insert Name Here.   There should be a minimum length on what is copyrightable. How can you copyright that, it’s a common saying.  If anything has ever been disserving of ridicule, this is it. 

Time Warner, it is your turn to step up to the plate.  Don’t be a dick, let “Happy Birthday To You” go.  Uhoh, I just posted 3/4ths of the song by saying the title, fuck... Its in quotes though, I should be fine.   Thoes of you curious to the full lyrics can find them here: [link] .

One final note, this is the first Oasisband post of 2007. Heres wishing this year be better than last! Godspeed.

Funny development from South America, Hugo Chavez fresh off wining elections in Venezuela plans to rewrite the constitution down there to remove any limitations on the time he can spend as president. Somehow this scares very little of the international community. Looking back on world history, all dictators have been rather quick to make sure there are no limits on how long they could stay in power. Venezuela?s constitution has this pesky clause restricting how long one can stay in power. For Mr. Chavez this is just not gelling with his "revolution," what to do. Ahh of course, lets rewrite the constitution. This has long been a favorite technique of the world's dictators, and Hugo Chavez is a dictator masquerading around as a man of the people. The BBC has quoted him saying that he intends to stay in power till 2021! 2021! You can disagree with the policies of the United States as much as you want, but Mr. Chavez also intends to completely socialize the Venezuelan economy. While Mr. Chavez has decided to ignore history, others like myself will take a second look. Socialism works only when no one has any desire to improve their standing in life beyond the average. Every communist nation, China, North Vietnam, Cuba..., there are those with power who live a better life than those without. Socialism doesn?t work because inevitably a small percentage of the people are able to concentrate power. Mr. Chavez has also decided that he will send his oil to China instead of the US, because he "He does not wish to have his democratic credentials, his style of government and his socialist project scrutinized internationally." (from BBC). Gee if I was a dictator in disguise I sure wouldn't want my government policies scrutinized internationally. Though I guess that?s the benefit of dealing with a Communist Nation (China) who has no regard for the policies of who their dealing with instead of one that does. Turns out for the United States, this whole doing the right thing and caring about the policies of the people your trading with is a really huge pain in the ass, but I guess that?s why we?re so loved.

BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6212430.stm

Here is an excerpt from my Junior Thesis, I submitted this with my resume for an intership in the spring. If you are interested in reading the rest of the 70 pages, I am more than willing to email you the rest of it, when it is done (2 weeks from now). It is sorta political, I guess . . . figured I haven't posted in a LOOONGGG time, so here goes:

The Eternal Recurrence

“Two paths meet here; no one has yet followed either to its end. This long lane stretches back for an eternity. And the long lane out there, that is another eternity. They contradict each other, these paths: they offend each other face to face: and it is here at this gateway that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘Moment.”
“All that is straight lies,” the dwarf murmured contemptuously. “All truth is crooked time itself is a circle.”

This excerpt from Zarathustra is Zarathustra’s first encounter with what he and Nietzsche will later to refer to as the eternal recurrence. What is incredibly interesting about this section is that not even Zarathustra, the one who is great heights from the rest of humanity, is able to understand the message behind what the dwarf, the proclaimer of the recurrence, is trying to say. Zarathustra is unable to hear the eternal recurrence and he tries to dismiss it, he feels that this dwarf is a bad omen, preaching to him something terrible that must be rejected. The Dwarf explains to Zarathustra, that time is not a linear pattern, a history with a beginning and end. But rather time itself, is like the Overhuman, in that it is a process, in which we must both engage in this process as well as accept it. But at the outset, though, we can see that Nietzsche realizes how difficult the eternal recurrence is, and is probably admitting that he himself, although presented with the notion many times, was not at first able to understand it. Thus, the readers must be very careful when trying to understand this philosophy—it is one so delicate, yet intricate, that we can not afford to mishear Nietzsche when he speaks of the eternal recurrence.
The eternal recurrence effectively serves as the opposition to hedonism and nihilism in a world without repressive, dogmatic morality and the absence of God. Richard Avramenko argues that once Nietzsche created the eternal recurrence as an opposition to repressive notions of truth (specifically, Christian notions of truth), there becomes a large void. In Avramenko’s essay he is specifically referring to a void of friendship in that Nietzsche effectively denied any sort of ground in which friendship can form. As Avramenko says, “The whole of Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be understood as Zarathustra’s quest for a type of friendship that can grow out of this groundless ground.” I agree with Avramenko here that Nietzsche both created a void with the eternal recurrence and also tried to fill that void with the recurrence. So, when Nietzsche chooses to deny the conceptual truth of good and evil, it leaves a huge vacancy for what humans should do. Nietzsche fills this void with the eternal recurrence. The idea is that every action, or every way that we live our lives will occur over and over again, eternally. This serves as Nietzsche’s beyond-morality moral system—if we are truly able to joyously say ‘yes’ to every action we take, then we are headed towards the overhuman. Essentially then, the eternal recurrence serves to give a path for humans to try to become the overhuman—to understand the process of subversion and creation, which is the overhuman, without falling into nihilistic despair.
As Avramenko points out in his essay, the eternal recurrence is not exactly something that westerners are easily able, or even willing to accept:
“With the declaration of the eternal recurrence, Nietzsche is introducing uncertainty and unpredictability. It would thus be better to refer to the eternal recurrence as a flavor. It is a flavor for which we must develop a taste. The eternal recurrence, as Nietzsche well knows, is a tough pill to swallow and this is precisely why he calls it ‘the greatest weight.’”

To begin with the notion that time is anything but linear is problematic for the Western ear. Avramenko places Nietzsche in a debate with Augustine who argues, referring to cyclical theories of time, “even when it [the soul] has attained wisdom; it must proceed on an unremitting alternation between false bliss and genuine misery. How can there be true bliss, without any certainty of its eternal continuance?” Augustine’s reaction to cyclic notions of time demonstrates a very Christian and western understanding of how time functions, and furthermore, a reality that is dependent upon having God and a heaven to obtain when time has ended for a specific human being. Yet obviously, Nietzsche rejects the Christian morality and God himself. Not only is Nietzsche creating a philosophy to fill his ‘moral hole’, he is also directly responding to and refuting typical Christian understandings of time, existence, and ‘right’ action. The eternal recurrence seeks to dislodge the authority that Christians have assumed and display a direct contradiction of it, both to fulfill his own philosophy and to engage in irony. To argue that Nietzsche believes we need to authoritatively accept his eternal recurrence and abandon the ‘inferior’ Christian notion, is completely outside of Nietzsche’s project. Instead of choosing one over the other, Nietzsche asks us to develop a taste for the eternal recurrence. Whether or not the eternal recurrence is ‘true’ or ‘better’ is of no real consequence, but by developing this taste, or ability to hear the recurrence, we are able to see the ironic nature in all human things and head up the mountain towards the overhuman.
The eternal recurrence serves not only to disrupt a Christian notion of time, but it also serves to disrupt any sort of linear, rational, or higher truth. The eternal recurrence renders it impossible for there to be definitive truth or a values system that transcends time, space, geography or even relativity because the eternal recurrence exemplifies a system with no actual truth, but rather truth as a process, something that must be constantly created and destroyed in order for the elimination of repressive notions of truth, and leave the Dionysian, or the positive, liberated aspects of mankind in their wake. Truth, value, and morals can not be habitual or long-lasting under this system; as the Earth itself does, they must be always changing, engaged in a process of creation and destruction—plate tectonics. In the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche warns us of any words that do not take part in this process of creation and destruction because they will try to lead us to single goals, aims or meanings. “The whole surface of consciousness must be kept clear of all imperatives. Beware even of every great word, ever great prose! The organizing idea that is destined to rule keeps growing deep down . . . it prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove to be indispensable as means toward a whole.”
After looking closely at these words and trying to understand what they mean, we now must ask the same question that Nietzsche asked himself towards the end of his second essay in the Genealogy of Morals, “What are you really doing, erecting an ideal or knocking one down?” And Nietzsche responds to this question:
Have you ever asked yourselves sufficiently how much the erection of every ideal on Earth has cost? How much reality had to be misunderstood and slandered, how many lies have had to be sanctified, how many consciences disturbed, how much “God” sacrificed every time? If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed: that is the law—let anyone who can show me a case in which it is not fulfilled!

With this we can now look at the rhetoric of Zarathustra and Ecce Homo and look for the subversive and ironic process in which Nietzsche tries to both create and destroy systems of values, truth, rhetoric, and inquiry. But we must listen closely, and dissect with delicate fingers as to not try to find the new idols and ideals that Nietzsche is creating, but to look to see how he moves outside of the truth-game altogether. Nietzsche’s divergent rhetoric is arguably the most difficult part of Nietzsche’s works to truly understand, but by not understanding this essential quality of Nietzsche, it is not possible to hear Nietzsche.
Before we move away from the fundamentals of Nietzsche’s words and concepts, and move into his rhetoric in general, we must take into account the Overhuman and the Eternal Recurrence and their affects on language in general. For Nietzsche, language can have no transcendent truth, but truth in language is similar to the Overhuman and the Eternal Recurrence in that it is able to obtain some form of human truth through a process of creating and destroying. Essentially then, language is not transcendent, and as Tuska Benes argues, it is only adequate if we forget that we created language and that we created truth. “Accepting the illusion that words referred to things allowed early humans to live in mutual trust. The invention of truth thus had ‘pleasant, life-preserving consequences’ Society, however, had thereby exchanged a set of lies for the truth.” So with a language that humans have created they were able to become social creatures, they could move away from, repress, basic primordial desires. But for Nietzsche, this conversion from the base creature to the social creature brought with it inherently negative, inherently repressive, and inherently forgetful forces. In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche allegorically compared this social change of human-creatures “well adapted to the wilderness, to war, to prowling, to adventure,” who had to repress those instincts to effectively live socially to sea animals coming out of the water who had to “walk on their feet and ‘bear themselves upright’” —the skills that the sea creatures had developed for marine life became unnecessary. This shift from primordial language to a socially ‘meaningful’ language helped humans to adapt to their new surroundings, but it also meant that humans forgot that there was no truth, and instead believed that the truth and language that they had created was somehow transcendent. “Faith in truth depended for Nietzsche on a process of forgetting. People had to deny and repress the actual origins of language in order to believe in the accuracy of its representations.” Society, today as we see it, is fundamentally established on the fact that we have forgotten that we have created truth, language, and god, because “acknowledging the rhetorical foundation of words would have automatically destabilized the edifice of truth built upon them.”

 

 

 

Works Cited

Avramenko, Richard. “Zarathustra and his Asinine Friends: Nietzsche on Post-modern, Post-liberal Friendship.” American Political Science Association. Chicago, Annual Meeting: np., 2004. 1-30.

Benes Tuska. "Language and the Cognitive Subject: Heymann Stienthal and Friedrich Nietzsche." Language & Communication Vol. 26 Issue 3/4 (Jul 2006): 218-230.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, Inc., 1967.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All. Trans. Kaufmann. London: Penguin Books, 1978.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/10374909/detail.html
Jesse,
Instead of taking your news report at face value I went around and have found several differing reports of the shooting.
According to WSB-TV, the local ABC affiliate in Atlanta, not only was there a marked Atlanta PD car in front of the residence but the narcotics officers who worked the warrant case were wearing police vests of the same type as those commonly worn by swat teams. I'm going to assume that this woman was not an idiot and bothered to look out one of the windows in her house facing the street. Seeing the Police car, when someone at the door claims to be police, you have even more of a responsibility to make sure who you're shooting at. I agree that had they just blindly broken the door down without announcing themselves the woman should have shot back no questions. But they did announce themselves and had a marked police presence. This stuff about how the police were wearing street clothes is just a smokescreen.

Woman, 92, dies in shootout with police - CNN.com  I try not to just repost news, but I wanted to add a bit of my spin to this.  Tell me your thoughts on this, as Paul seems to believe the police were completely justified in this. 

• Police arrive at a 92 year old woman’s house, in plain clothes rather than police uniforms.
  • For all I know, Sting may have been out there.
• They yell through the door “Open up, it’s the Police.”
  • I know that I see a bunch of people with guns, who don’t look anything like police outside my door, the last thing I’m going to do is open up, not to mention this woman had people pretending to be police try to break in before.
    
• The police, not dressed at all like cops, break down the door.  The woman opens fire, and hits 3 of them, before getting shot down.
  • As far as I’m concerned, if the police had no reason to be there, which they didn’t (they didn't find any drugs) , the woman had no reason to believe these were real police.  You break into someone’s house, not at all wth the appearance of police, with your only proof of being the police being claiming to be the police vocally, as far as I’m concerned the owner of the house has every right to defend their property.

I’d also like to add some comments from a digg.com post I found highly insightful.

Comment by anonymoustroll

Yeah... that's pretty funny... she tagged each one of them (and I bet they took a good long pause trying to figure out "what the hell?" before gunning her down)... too bad she wasn't a better shot.

...but here's the thing: this stinks to high heaven; here's why:

> had a legal warrant and "knocked and announced" before they forced open the door

1 - every last one of us knows that "knock and announce" means "knock with the door breacher" and "announce your presence with a flash-bang". Perhaps it need to be "knock, announce and identify yourself to the upstanding citizen that you're prepared to shoot" (and give the citizen time to verify your credentials). Innocent until proven guilty pretty much ends when the warrant is served.

> Kathryn Johnson, was the only person home at the time, and had lived there for about 17 years.

2 - cops need to be less tactical and more strategic. Perhaps if someone had done their intelligence homework and looked at the power/phone/water/gas/cable/etc. bills they'd see *WHO* they were about to take into custody. Seems to me that they just don't know what the fsck is going on and prepare for the worse (and guess what... they get the worse outcome... surprise). You know, those warrants for paper searches aren't as sexy as the "real thing", but maybe there'd be three cops without bullets in them and one grandma who's still alive if they'd taken the time to do their homework.

> Neighbors and relatives said it must have been a case of mistaken identity.

3 - well, you know what they say... hindsight is 20/20. Good thing they had the "right" address. This is what happens when good people live in bad neighborhoods, etc. etc, cliches ad infiniutum.

> I'm sure she panicked when they kicked that door down

Don't discount the possibility that they may have been fed incorrect information (never actually trust anonymous/CI intelligence sources... always verify, cross check and do your due diligence). Obviously they weren't going off any type of reasonable intelligence. So, gun nuts beware, if I want you out of my neighborhood, all I have to do is dime you out for some heinous crime from the anonymous comfort of a payphone and a pseudonym.

Comment by theblooms

don't blame her for shooting back at all. She had been on the receiving end of criminals posing as cops many times in the past. Your home is your castle, and in America (at least in the majority of states that respect the Bill of Rights) you are allowed to defend your castle by any means necessary.

This whole thing with cops executing warrants like this has GOT to stop. Cops are supposed to be civilians. In this day in age, they are not. They are paramilitary with fully automatic weapons and tanks. Yes, tanks. We have all seen them. Police departments in the US have more tanks than most nations. Fucking ridiculous. If a situation is so god-damed dangerous that you need a tank to serve a warrant, you need to call the National Guard in. Seriously.

In even the WORST possible situation, you can always surround a house and wait for the bad guy to come out. He WILL come out eventually.

These 3 cops need to be prosecuted for murder. Mistaken identity is NO excuse for busting down someone's door and shooting them. I GUARANTEE if someone busts down my door, they will be met with a hail of lead. How the hell do I know who they are? People impersonate cops all the time.

May this lady Rest in Peace. I will pray for her and her family.

Am I wrong on this? I'd like to know your thoughts.

Online video game and electronics store extraordinaire Lik-Sang is no more thanks to continuing lawsuits by Sony. Their most recent lawsuit in the UK, over PSP exports threw them over the edge. Sony is quoted as saying: ?ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera;? This is complete, for lack of a better term, bullshit. Lik-Sang provided the same universal power adapter that was sold world wide.

I, as well as many gamers world wide morn the loss of Lik-Sang where savings were king. I my self had meant to purchase Xbox extensions cords for pennies on the dollar, but have been denied this at Sony's hand. This is one gamer who will never purchase a Sony console. Heres a link to Lik-Sangs Out of Business Notice