Rants

While atimes isn't meant to just percolate news from other sites... this stuns me... all I can say is "WTF, Mate?" I am shocked and appalled by this...

The Pope has recently stirred up a "whirlwind of anger" in the Muslim world because several people have misinterpreted his words regarding Islamic Jihad. While I have nothing but the complete respect for the Muslim Faith, I have nothing but contempt for the attitudes of quite a few of its believers. Islam really is a beautiful religion. It has the capacity to help its followers live a right and honorable life. However, many in the Muslim world refuse to honestly critique their faith and those who follow it. I believe Christianity went down a similar road a few hundred years ago, we call this the crusades, inquisition, take your pick. The point is in the name of God Christians did some really ungodly things. Fast-forward to the present and Christianity has learned the importance of self-critique. After all there is nothing more dangerous than unquestioning devotion to a cause.

Poet and philosopher George Santayana's quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" seems especially applicable to the current state of world affairs.

While the vast majority of Muslim's are logical, understanding, rational people; there exists within Islam (as with every religion around the world) those who refuse to honestly reflect upon their faith. In Christianity those who spew such nonsense and urge blind devotion are kept well outside of the mainstream. However for reasons I do not yet understand, the media and the world at large give those who spew such nonsense their 15 minutes of fame again and again and again. It is about time that the rational majority of Muslim's take their faith back from the radicals who tarnish their faith. Christianity has already walked down the path of blind devotion; I can only hope that it is not to late for Islam to learn from Christianities mistakes.

nested parentheses and other idiosyncrasies

Just one quick letter and then I’ll start. It’s been two weeks and I still haven’t started. . . Its been longer three maybe is more accurate. This place feels better this year the trains don’t weep like I remember they did. I am settling into my own but the change needs to come faster than its coming. I always have a hard time studying I just can’t start. Tomorrow I’ll start. Tonight I have work to do. I’m going to be broke sooner then later but I can see what I want in this place and I am left inspired to no subtle degree. I live on my own I bake my own bread and cook my own food I wake up to a woman I love at least a few nights a week. If not for the damned university I am a farm house and a walnut grove short of . . .(We need a word for this and for some reason Heaven seems to come up short like you said its impossible) ‘The Walnut Farm’ and I’ll readily defend that it is here on earth. Its not so far from where we are now. I am thinking of doing an English paper on The Great Tower and the Debasement of Language. I don’t know if this is a good idea. It’s far to much for what he’s asking but I don’t know what else to do it on. It has to be personal And what’s more personal then how two people interact? Heh. The radio show is actually going to happen. Far less effort then I would have thought. Friday 4-6 AM. I need a name for the show if you have any ideas. Seems like I can see gleaming of something in the distance but the hurtles don’t seem to be any shorter or fewer then they were. How are you? And I mean how goes it? Seems the closer we are the more we (at least I) worry. Everything else is, for the most part, static. I’ve written a few songs in the short time I’ve been here and am finishing up a few more: Weekends(written in all of ten min about Fargo and drinking), Atlas revisited( you heard this one ‘all the good Christians’ (I can’t not say Chris-Tions hope fully its idiomatic(that’s the right word right?)))*Ah nested parentheses*(at least they are idiomatic) Lullaby No. 1 (for an unborn daughter) Lullaby No. 2 (electric) (this one might need your help its. . . Maybe ‘brooding’ is the word like your on the edge of tears). I tried to write a song about the tower didn’t take. But there’s Art in there somewhere I’ll find it sooner or later. Where are you going to grad school (or working when your done)? Too early to think about these things maybe. But I’m in a planning mood. I imagine a porch some where and all things falling in place. . . Magic until science explains it.

May the vast open horizons great you as pleasantly (I like that),
Your Brother.


-------------------

"The ice is near, the solitude tremendous -- but how calmly all things
lie in the light! How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath
oneself!"

"He believes neither in "misfortune" nor in "guilt" : he comes to terms
with himself with others; he knows how to forget -- he is strong enough;
hence everything must turn out for his best."

"It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter are still
more benign, more decent than silence. All who remain silent are
dyspeptic. Rudeness is by far the most humane for of contradiction and,
in the midst of effemincacy, one of our foremost virtues."

"Oh, I found it, my brothers! Here, in the higest spheres the fount of
pleasure wells up for me! And here is a life of which the rabble does
not drink."

Brother, the sweetness in your verse swells me. You have already seen
with the greatest of solitude and I rejoice that you are able to look
with a gay heart. Don't remeber one or the other but forget both as it
is often hard for us to do. If Heaven is as easily found in the coldest
of days and the darkest of skies as it is in the Sun at self, only then
could I call that porch Heaven. Brother, I have binding myself and then
unravelling myself, I have been making circles but only escaping into
greater ones. I reach clarity everytime that I have completely missed
it. I have despised words and then I make love to them. But I think I
have come to terms with my own happiness, it is the same as my own
defeat, but still I look forward to a day of rest. I wish to drink from
the water that runs from the highest mountains and the from lowliest
caverns, and even I find my stream I don't know if I will find a place
to drink from it - I am sick of creating worlds, thoughts and grammars,
I simply want to dance with the ones that will always be there.

Work hard brother, we are but clay - we can only be molded until we are
too hard to feel.
Andrew.



Every Brick Independent or Answer the Damn Questions

Our letters don’t seem to follow each other I’m going to have a hell of a time trying to put them in order(and I will try). I find it odd that you never answer my questions. I know you must read every line several times. We both must. Your Nietzsche (I assume) has me still worried. His thinking seems flawed to me but I am no expert. It has been my experience that it is not the cave that creates the new ideas but the act of rushing down from the mountain in itself that calls the Muses. Well I must remember to be more artless. Do not forget the people, the real ones I mean. And maybe I mean everyone by that. I will have my first radio show on Friday at 4AM. My attempts to try and reach out have crammed me into a tiny room at 4 in morning with no one else around or even awake. I am enjoying this in the fullest. In the end I think people need to find me. The resistance the other way is almost too much to over come. I think the Catholics have ruined heaven for you. What’s the point of having a word for something no one can have or visit? It is only on cold dark days that your Heaven exists, dear Brother. On warm days we have God’s green earth and no Heaven can compare to that, to what is. . . Hmmm but we argue semantics and definitions. We should start a film or some other grate work. I feel that at least this is coming closer to poetry. I’m tempted to try my hand.

“Every brick Independent” The Mason said.

“How do you mean?” The Brick responds.

“Close proximity is a fault. Mortar makes the wall.”

“But ‘close’ is relative is it not?”

“Symmetry,” He said to the Brick “We both shaped and set that president long ago” as another layer compounds the other.

“So I’m bound to they that I can never touch” The brick said realizing his situation for the first time.

“You sound sad for someone surrounded by bothers” the Mason quipped, grinning and content.

“I guess it is my lot to accept but tell me” the Brick said “what’s the wall for anyway?”

“Every brick Independent” The mason said.


Heh. . . Well what do you think? Crappy little story but it shows my faults quite well. I like the idea but my skills are dull oh well.

Waiting for answers to my damned questions,
. . .



----------------------

I wish I had a sentence to describe how a sentence will never quite
express what I want to say . . . I guess this sentence is the best I can
do.

To answer your questions: I am doing, I do not want to say to much,
because I know that if I write the feeling down that feeling takes on an
appearance to be much more concreted and real that it actually is. But
as the ash falls from my cigarette, I am tired, the only rest I get is
to read Nietzsche, but even doing that is becoming difficult. I am tired
of listing in my mind and on paper all the things that need to be
ACCOMPLISHED, the list perpetuates itself and it wants only more.

I know why you don't get Nietzsche, you read pieces, excerpts, quotes,
or maybe even full books. You need to drive w/ Nietzsche around the Lake
as we do. You need to drive around the Lake with everything that I send
you. It makes no sense, it has no purpose but it is something beyond all
of our descriptions.

My point on Heaven . . . we can use the term Heaven, but why use a term
that has been beaten, molested and torn apart to express
(_____________). Why dont' we call it the porch, that is all I need to
to be anyways.

I like your poem - but I don't have much to say, I have lied to you too
much already today.

I don't know what I will do or where I will be after I graduate Jeff,
but I hope I will never be here again. And if I must stay here, in this
physical spot, I hope that I will have a porch here.

"May the vast open Horizons greet you pleasantly" (I like that too)
-From an inscription on my wall

"British historian David Irving has had his conviction for denying the Holocaust upheld by the Austrian Supreme Court... The historian was also on trial for claiming the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, when Nazis attacked and torched thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues, was not the work of Nazis but of others who had dressed up as stormtroopers."(Cite BBC News)

I've talked about this before, but making it illegal to question history is THE MOST fascist thing possible. I don't agree with this mans views, but imprisoning him simply because he doesn't believe something is completely ridiculous.

Every one you know seems to be maturing? Who are these people? If you don’t think your mature enough for a “real collage” you might be surprised. . . You will be surprised. The growth your looking for may just come with a new situation. I really do think that putting your self in the freshmen dorms and just kind of jumping headlong into the whole thing would be a big help to you. (I didn’t really get that chance living in the hotel 75 for my first semester) This is as I’ve said before also selfish on my part (assuming you would come to NDSU) because I want you up here. I don’t think we ever had enough time to really get to know each other which is odd because its been along time. I guess I don’t understand how Brittany and the driver’s license makes us not be peers any more. That just doesn’t make any since to me. As for bleu I don’t remember that moment as clearly as you because I’ve had so many of those moments. That’s really how me and Gross got so close we studied film, probably a few hundred or so. Art has a way of unifying people. Its just a way of saying the unsayable. The people I know are what dives me forward its simpler for me to do things for other people then to do for my self. But do not fear; fear eats the soul. So come up to Fargo you might learn something and the change of scenery might do you good. Well do something anyway your not going to win this race standing still (and you probably already know that).

Yours in ten minuets or less (or your pizza is free),
Jeff Forshée

I had a conversation with Andy Borne a while back where I said something to the extent that the only way to keep America on top was to keep china poor by any means possible.  He called this Malthusian and frankly I have to agree with him, and more so with Malthus.  While his equations may not have been correct, there was no way he could have predicted the advances of the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Don’t give me any of that optimistic “we’ll find a way” bullshit, we are draining the topsoil at a staggering rate, and as if to add insult to injury we are beginning to use food to power our vehicles (think ethanol)?  Do you have any idea how many calories it takes to power a car? By pure food value a gallon of ethanol has 244,939 (cite: http://reddit.com/info/drah/comments) That’s enough to feed 122 people for a day or more… to get you what? 25 miles? Blasphemy. I’ll come back to why I hate ethanol in a later post.  Anyway, back to china.  Simply put they need to be kept poor for the worlds sake.  Think of the energy demands that would be put on the world if 2 billion Chinese suddenly lived the extravagant American lifestyle.  The world simply couldn’t take it.  America needs to stop importing Chinese goods, for import is undeniably dragging down American Business,  and a huge piece of the Chinese import is from Wal-Mart (despite me liking their anti-union policies) and they need to be stopped.  As much as I enjoy the utopian idea of a completely free, self regulating market, we’re not ready for it, theres too much imbalance, and buying things from china puts American companies out of business, or worse yet sold to China.  In example, RCA’s Television Manufacturing Division.  Well that was random, but it’s a post.

Love and Kisses
Jesse Donat

Here I am, 7 am, unable to sleep, so I figured I'd give a go at writing you a letter. It's come to my attention lying here staring at the ceiling, that it bugs me more and more as times go by how everyone I know seems to be maturing while I sit here stagnating, and honestly despite being two years out of high school, I don't believe my self mentally mature enough for a real college. While most everyone I know has been off making new friends, learning social skills, having the times of their lives, I've just been dawdling away my life because of some mistakes I made in high school and the time thereafter…

Another thing that part of me is trying to talk me out of saying is that part of me spites Brittany. She's never done anything to disserve ill feelings, and quite honestly has always come off as downright nice, but the childish part of me see's her as someone taking away a friend. I don't mean any offence by this, its just a… I suppose subconscious reaction. There is a selfish part of me that honestly wants to hold you back, part of me that didn't want you getting your license. Part of me that wants to keep us peers, so I can have someone I can relate to, but I digress.

I've spent this last week moping around, knowing everyone was going off, a couple of them never to return, and with Paul gone likely never seeing a good number of the ones who do return again anyway. I've been unable to sleep most of the week, and that’s led to a lot of reminiscing. For some reason the one moment that keeps coming up in my mind is when we watched Bleu in Gross's basement. You probably hardly remember it, but something about that crystallized in my mind, and is remembered as one of the highpoints of my life.

I just want you to know, never let me or anyone else for that matter hold you back, as if I could. I hope no offence was taken to this latter, none was meant. This ended up being a lot more honest than usual, perhaps more honest than I want to be, but oh well.

Wishing you the best,
Jesse Donat

As many of you are aware, the British Intelligence Service and Scotland Yard disrupted a major plot within the last few days to blow up ten commercial airliners traveling between London and the United States. President Bush is right to indicate that this plot is proof that we are a nation at war. The Democrats on the other hand have crawled back into their little ball of nonsense. The right honorable gentlemen Sen. Edward Kennedy was quoted by the BBC saying: "It is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win" (link). The left actually believes we are fighting an enemy that would just leave us alone if we "played nice." Instead of acknowledging that we face an enemy more determined than any we have ever faced, the Democrats care little about the truth and more about bashing the President. Al-Qaeda has been determined for the better part of two-decades to bring America to its' knees. I'm highly skeptical that they're just going to stop because we leave them alone.

As long as there are terrorists who desire the US?s demise and countries that harbor and promote terrorism against the United States, we are a nation at war. Diplomacy must always be the first recourse when dealing with a dangerous regime but the 1990's were proof of Iraq and Afghanistan's refusal to deal the US and the UN in good faith. Approximately 10 different Security Council resolutions (I have an earlier post documenting this) were passed during that decade that called for negotiations and then military action should Iraq defy the resolutions. Each time Iraq violated a resolution, instead of taking the promised action, the Security Council simply passed another resolution telling them they had been "bad." In the case of Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they simply refused to negotiate in good faith all together. Diplomacy was given 10 years and nothing in the way of progress was made. The world simply has a weak stomach for leaders who follow through on their promises. This is why the world hates President Bush, and why I have no regrets about voting for him.

I started a letter in my head. It began: “You know the sound that a pulley makes banging against a flag pole? That is how I feel right now.” It will not have a middle. It will not have an end. Sad dreams of distant happy tomorrows. I find myself arguing with the clock instead of working on art and the New Language. Car ride home with Tina and Michelle. Said blissfully too much. Contented. Just failed my driver’s test. Always calm about these things. I will have no problems next time. (Though that won’t be for three weeks so if I do me and the clock will come to a head.) Next year spreads out wide in front of me. The summer will have been a good one. I have been called a nice guy and a poet both by people who would know. Some one needs to yell at me to get music and comics up. Though it seems there really aren’t any fans of my music. Just called nick asked him what the deal was. . . He said who is this. . . I told him all else remains a mystery. Said he was at work told him to call me back. I found my self laughing through the whole conversation. Very Buda I think. Nick seems cornered I think, says “now is not the best time I‘m at work” is there anything more then yeah haven’t talked to you in a year. With the new language we build houses (aedificare) and bridges it seems. Could this turn out the same as our rift? Seems to good. But I am in high sprits now. I have a woman and a guitar there is love to make and songs to write. May the vast open horizons great you as pleasantly.

Yours in truth,
The eternally waiting, Jeff Forshée

Kafka died a few days ago. The fear that I would slip away with him was overwhelming. Couldn’t sleep. Thought I wouldn’t wake up. Instilling a perfect fear of death. Unable to operate under those conditions. So the fear lays dormant. The fishing is good here; It sustains me. I am half looking forward to and half dreading next year. Maybe the system will give me the forward motion I need and have needed for a long time. I miss people. . . I don’t know weather that is specific beings or just in general. What is our deal? Most friends are “there for each other” and that really doesn’t apply to us. . . At least in the conventional since. We have to much hesitation. Far to much. I realized the other day that when I die (or before hand) that people will be able to understand me at least in some since. I will have left behind letters and diaries and music for anyone willing to look for it. This makes me content. I had a dream the other night Shatner was a room mate of mine we were close but didn’t talk much he died and I had to take care of his dog. . . Felt more emotion then I have in awhile. I won’t have enough money for everything next year. I will run out of food money near the end of the year que sera sera. I should update the medium page I have more then a few songs. I want to mix the failure with something half good and that may take awhile. I am afraid of what you said before. That were done talking. I don’t really know what to do about that. I know there are things you don’t know but I’m afraid you will have to ask for them. As any one can and no one does. People seem to have a fear of these public forums for things like this but we know the truth is. If we have transcended anything it should be lies.