Into the forest.

The next Man.

2009-11-17T06:20:58Z

An odd thought struck me today as I watched the squirrels traipse through the forest.

Am I looking at the ancient ancestors of the next (comparably) intelligent life?

The odd thought took a more radical and revolutionary turn as I contemplated the scope of time, and just what may be, as farcical as it may sound.

Am I looking at just a squirrel? Or perhaps the evolutionary herald of an entirely new intelligent species, so many millions of years from now... Of course the chances that it would be the squirrel and not something else entirely different are infinitely small, but the thought requires some traction in a specific model, so I shall think of squirrels.

Whatever it may be, if it may be, represents the joys of natural contemplation. The ability or at least the attempt to transcend all habitual perspective and don a radically different one. Brain-bending, you know.

At the end, at the very least, Nature becomes infinitely more valuable. In Nature, one is surrounded by time. A process so terribly slow that notions of patience don't quite capture its progression. Life is so ephemeral and passing. Tiny little bundles of excited energy, more active than anything, soon passing into nothing. You can almost conceive of every moving thing, from the drift of continents to a passing deer as the same fundamental orchestra of passing matter, though perhaps along different scales.

They say peace is a matter of mental tranquility. I tend to view it as more the mental arrest that occurs when attempting to conceive of it all in a thought. You're not inactive, you're just caught up in a mental embrace and you can only reach so far or stretch so much. It is the height of mental exertion, not its nadir. The moment where you have taken as big and as deep a breath as you can possibly take, and your whole body is caught up in the effort, stalled at the limit, brought up and consumed in that slight pause before the tremendous exhalation.

Well I'm screwed.

2009-11-16T22:45:26Z

So I totally forgot I had class and spoken test today. Well, here goes emergency overdrive protocol Reach Down And Grab Some Nuts.

Today I taught Lucky the equation of trust, and explained to her that since she has trusted me, it is now my turn to trust her. I secured the halter rope and took her for a walk without leading her. She did fantastic, following my path and taking my cues. We walked together and jogged together, all without a rope to tug on her. An interesting thing is that without the rope, she becomes more dependent upon me for direction. It appears that relying on a rope creates a dependence upon a substandard form of communication, as well as giving her the ability to control me. Ropes are two-way forms of communication. Without the rope, she doesn't even try to stop and eat grass. She is too worried about being keyed in on me. I couldn't even get her to eat some grass. She wasn't comfortable. She needed the rope.

It was a good day though. A glass-smooth river and almost complete silence. Cool weather, and a bald eagle gliding gently over the water. I told Lucky that we had to go down about a mile to get to the river, and we'll see the eagle down there. Sure enough, we took our time and made our way down and there was the eagle, 30 minutes later, gliding along as if on cue.

But this is how it will work from now on: she trusts me, and then I trust her. A very good principle I think.

I have a zit right in the fold of my nose and cheek, making it impossible to gouge out. I helped my father install a blower/exhaust fan and hood for the stovetop in their new kitchen yesterday, and my face is still full of sheet-rock and dust.

King David says...

2009-11-16T05:13:29Z

22 Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
23 Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving honoureth Me; and to him that ordereth his way aright will I show the salvation of God.

Mmm... disgusting...

2009-11-14T22:01:43Z

I got some Austrian red wine to explore my alcohol heritage.

Hm... while German and Austrian Riesling is good, it appears that that too much blood from too many wars has soaked into to many fields for Austrian red wine to taste like anything but rich, smoky death.

It even looks like blood mixed with muddy water.

Intriguing, yes.

Revolting? Absolutely.

Yet it still captures me with the same existential angst that death does.

I can see Roman feet sludging through the mud as bodies lie all about and fires burn reluctantly against the gray, misty rains.

Hot vapors of death choke and burn my throat...

This is terrible!

Mmmm... more...

Eh fuck it.

2009-11-14T09:12:23Z

I just spent two hours trying to write up a piece on J.S. Mill's Of the Composition of Causes, but got lost and forgot what I was trying to demonstrate with it. Whatevs. I liked studying it at least. Interesting stuff. I really want to be able to put something together though, since emergentism is a hot topic and I haven't really seen anyone discussion the British empiricist tradition surrounding the topic.

meus_ovatio @ 2009-11-12T19:42:00

2009-11-13T01:43:03Z

Am I the only one left on the internets who received a standard American education?

For the sixth time already people, the tax-exempt status of religious organizations is a direct result of the separation of church and state as understood by our history.

It's just some weird bizarro world to see people complaining about the tax-exempt status violating the principle of the separation of church and state.

Then again, it is just a phrase, and knowing what the phrase means and entails with a solid historical understanding of it is just "intellectual poppycock" or something.

meus_ovatio @ 2009-11-12T19:32:00

2009-11-13T01:33:17Z

There is an ad on LJ that advertises a "crulity free" technique to stop horse cribbing.

Well, that's nice I guess. I don't much like crulity. At least I think I don't like crulity, considering that the ad establishes it as a thing not to be liked.

On second thought, I'm not going to take horse advice from these people.

meus_ovatio @ 2009-11-12T14:41:00

2009-11-12T20:41:53Z

Lucky and her boyfriend have adopted the new baby colt. On second thought, "new baby colt" is the most horrendously redundant phrase I've used yet.

So now we has a little non-traditional horsey family. It's ok though, they get all the same housing and employment rights.

House of God-Schmod

2009-11-11T16:25:44Z

I'ma go check out the Sikh temple in town. They be all like, "Yo check us out, we just be chillin' here up in our House of God. You don't gotta do nothing. This be for ever-one, yo." Sure they have rules, but it they be all like, "You need a place to worship? We got you covered." The Jews, well, they want you to be Jewish, and the Catholics, well, they want you to be Catholic, and the Lutherans, well, they want you to be Lutheran and the Baptists, well, they're Baptist, and it seems the Sikhs are all about just letting people chill in their God-house. Mad respek.

meus_ovatio @ 2009-11-09T22:33:00

2009-11-10T04:34:07Z

Lemme tell ya a story sonnee... yes I tell you, long ago, 234 years ago... the Cont'nenal Cungress sent out the call fer a few good men.

Where did they go to find them?

To the bar sonneee, they went to the bar.

Why I like the Bible

2009-11-09T05:23:55Z

I was thinking about this after coming across some of the disputes regarding authorship of some parts of the Bible. More and more I realize just how much we are inadvertently recruited into fights without ever stopping to ask if we really care about it. Politics or whatever. Do we really care who wrote the Bible? Do we really care how old the Earth is? I mean, what's the point? Let's say I drink the Kool-Aid and go on believing that the Earth is 6000-some years old... and? Does this better my walk with God? Does it increase my understanding? No, it's just a putative claim that goes nowhere and does nothing.

I don't care who wrote the Bible. Somebody, sometime way back when, in a society far different from my own, from a history that informs my own, wrote something down, and then someone else collected or redacted all of these different things into one compilation. This is all I need. What I am saying is, is that the Bible is not a Christian book or even a Jewish book. It is a book comprised of parts taken from an age long before our modern paradigms.

What frustrates me the most about modern attitudes toward the Bible is this exact prejudice people bring to it. It is a collection of writings from people who have nothing to do with what we are right now. They don't have any of our agendas, ideas, concepts or paradigms. They don't have any of our worldviews, allegiances or cultural upbringing. It is such a vastly alien and fundamentally, radically free piece of literature that it is tantalizing to me. Ultimately, the Bible lets me break free from the determinative tyranny of modern culture. Every other thing I read is steeped in and so full of everything that I am already so intimately familiar with. Everything else is so restrictive. The Bible teaches me and lets me think and see the world as if I were a 4th century BC human being. A world that is unknown. A world that has no end. A world that is endless in its breadth, not tacked down and mapped out and delineated and so gone over. It lets me see the world anew.

Just think of the Bible as you would any other old historical journal, from any other random people, in any other time and place.

The next step after this is realizing that the bigger fight about divine authorship is likewise superfluous. It doesn't add anything. It doesn't teach anything. It doesn't develop in any sense a deeper study or understanding of the text. It is a superfluous and ideological claim that has nothing to do with the material.

All of these "religious" conflicts we spend so much time on... do nothing. They have no fruit. They produce nothing. I'm not going to get lost in sectarian and ideological fights that don't make me wiser or smarter.

This is also in part a reaction to checking in on Joel Osteen to see if he has opened up his Bible yet. There are deep and incredibly involved philosophies from our ancient past coursing through the Bible, and it isn't anything like creeds or systems or doctrines. It is a collection of full-blown treatises, and it is not simply some collection of sayings or good advice. It isn't just stories or histories. The stories themselves are vehicles of underlying philosophies that are easily transmitted by oral tradition. The point of the stories isn't the bare facts of these events. These are just the packages designed for easy transmission.

The beautiful part of human oral traditions is that even if you have no clue about what it is that is contained within a narrative, you're still passing it on for those who cares to find it. It is such a brilliant and highly effective mode of cultural preservation and transmission that those who do it don't even have to know they are doing it!

Par example: In the Psalms or Wisdom literature, there is a perplexing pattern in some of the passages. For instance, it will say, "Worry not about the affairs of the world..." and immediately thereafter it will lament the affairs of the world. The instructive nature of a given passage is sometimes explicitly announced:

2 Hear this, all ye peoples; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world,3 Both low and high, rich and poor together.4 My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.5 I will incline mine ear to a parable; I will open my dark saying upon the harp.

It literally comes out and says on many occasions that what is being taught is a "dark saying" or a hidden proverb, or a mystery to be unlocked.

The genius of the Bible ultimately lies in its self-teaching nature. For every hidden sign there is a corresponding instruction. Everything is layered up in a pretty straight-forward framework of descending symbology that literally rolls itself out once you key in to it.

I grow stronger!

2009-11-09T05:13:33Z

I gots me an A on my last Frenchie test. This is good, since I was getting a string of 85s and it was getting quite old. Now I can get 95s.

2 points!

2009-11-08T01:33:59Z

Today Lucky started loading on to a trailer without having to be led in, and then we laid her down.

Some people are against laying your horse down, but seeing what it takes to get Lucky to trust you, I will say that there is simply no other way for us to get through to her on this level. It took 75 minutes of hopping around and fighting with Chuck until she finally collapsed like a bag of bricks.

It is weird, but you can literally see the horse's mind blitz-out and go blank. She laid down and slumped over and closed her eyes and everything just changed.

And then of course, we couldn't get her back up.

She was so tired she pretty much hit the ground sleeping.

Lucky could go ten miles on three legs, if she had to.

But everything was cool and we patted her and stroked her and made everything safe, and then gave her some grains and turned her in for the day.

meus_ovatio @ 2009-11-06T14:15:00

2009-11-06T20:17:37Z

Aside from the morality of the issue, how many fucking times do we have to prove to people that racism, bigotry, etc., is really dumb?

Brain and brain, what is brain?

2009-11-05T15:38:13Z

Why is this so entertaining? So fascinating? Why am I so enthralled by these sorts of things?

Presenting!

2009-11-03T21:08:01Z

real_convert_me

Come one, come all, as I have created a place without trouble or trial.

She is a beautiful bitch.

2009-11-02T21:39:36Z

Lucky was very naughty today.

Aside from the momentary frustrations, it is quite amusing to see your horse get that look and stance like who the fuck do you think you are? All taken aback and posturing like an offended Victorian-era courtesan.

She's digging freaking holes now when she's tied up. Not just pawing, but moving large mounds of earth and creating significant terrain features. If I take the time to train her to stand for a few hours, I'm afraid she'll have dug her own grave or something.

And on the trail she was all about crowding my authori-tai. I had to stop a few times and have little five minute fights with her about who goes in front and not walking on my feet.

Must be something in the air, I dunno. Hormones? Nah, not in the beginning of winter. I dunno, whatevs.

My head is splitting.

2009-11-02T10:20:15Z

So in these links, I am told that Christians or Christianity had nothing to do with Nazis, but it is ok that mosques and stuff are under surveillance because dangerous people should be kept under surveillance, the most dangerous being kept in prisons or asylums.

I refuse to believe that such cognitive dissonance exists without creating two fully distinct and independent personalities.

But hey, Jesus didn't say kill people so I guess Christians can't be guilty of killing people. But if this isn't enough, the Jews sure are thankful for not having to slaughter animals anymore. Hey lookit there's that anti-Semitism again!

These things really shouldn't bug me, but this stuff makes me shake. Literally tremble.

Yes efriden, the Jews are so thankful for the ensuing 1500 years of constant persecution.

My pride, alas...

2009-11-02T07:41:06Z

I'm gonna go to a job fair tomorrow.

Dear God what have they made of me...

meus_ovatio @ 2009-11-01T23:37:00

2009-11-02T05:40:51Z

equestrian has the most ridiculous wank in the fucking world. Jesus Christ. Just replace "for the children" whining with "for the horses". I didn't realize the community was for people to spend their time lecturing others about horse care.

I mean shit, they even have anti-Amish wank. Seriously, its like if you're not part of the same bullshit modern consumer world full of luxury and recreational horse ownership, you are a horrible person. They work their horses everyday! They like, almost starve them! The Amish! All of them! Don't trust the Amish!

Fucking A, I mean, seriously, go blow it out your fuckhole. The irony of all this is eventing is terrible for horses. I mean really, you want to draw lines? You want to get high and mighty about horses? Seriously, it's a ridiculous game that consists entirely of climbing a little higher on the moral pole.

How many people fucking jump their horses till they're beat into the ground and then get on LJ to fuck with other people? Oh no, but not them, they take real good cares of their horses. It's different! I'm good! I do everything right!

RANTYRANTYRANTY!

Civilization is the most ironic misnomer of man.

2009-10-31T19:05:08Z

I've always called myself retro-evolutionary. People usually don't have any idea what that means and look at me weird, but its true. I think part of the reason I identify so strongly with animals is because they've always made sense, I've never thought of them as savage, and have seen everything they do according to a very simple and straight-forward logic. Animals make sense. They make a helluva lot more sense than peoples.

I've never been ashamed or put off by displays of animal aggressiveness, I've never reacted negatively to predation, and stuff like that. My dreams are generally very animalistic.

I'm writing about this because my dream was about getting angry about someone touching my girlfriend. I used to be told that this was jealousy or insecurity or patriarchal dominance or whatever else they came up with the deny any sort of natural grounds to monogamy. The dream even included a bit of that insufferable preaching by the so-called sexually liberated that just grates on my nerves. You know what I'm talking about, that condescending nonsense about how they're some kind of more-advanced than most people because they like, don't have silly little hang-ups about sex or relationships.

It makes sense I suppose, since I consider myself proudly retro-evolutionary and ain't going to take shit for it. No, I don't think my way of sexual existence is the way or the only way. It is just my way, and I'm not going to be lectured by coincidentally fucked-up people about how much more liberated they are about sex. It's all a front anyway- not that they're really monogamous, just that they have all kinds of stupid little weird hangups and problems just like everyone else.

Am I just "male" or am I just an animal (I mean, obviously I'm both)? I don't consider myself superior to women, but damn if I don't want to run off other stallions and whoop their little asses. I didn't actually fight or kick anyone's ass in the dream. We just did a very animal-type confrontation and dominance struggle until someone backed down.

Anyway blah blah blah...

Fuck you I'm buying a house.

2009-10-31T12:26:31Z

Today I am going to wake up Eileen and tell her that we're buying a house. With houses going for 65,000 dollars it makes absolutely no sense to be paying rent when we could have a house for 500 dollars a month. It's the difference between a shitty apartment and a shitty house. I mean, seriously now, I'm an idiot for not getting this sooner. I always said that I won't buy a house until it is a farm with a horsey barn, buuuuuuut these things are so fucking cheap we could buy a house here in Minneapolis with $10,000 down and still be able to buy another property 5 years from now. Make it a 15 year fixed-rate mortgage and that's college money for any kids locked up in real estate. Rent that shit out, that's what I'm sayin'.

10 grand and a VA loan with our income and debt (which is next to none) should get us a cheap-ass house no problemo.

Empathy, Prayer

2009-10-31T06:41:16Z

I find myself having a hard time complying with general prayer requests. Sometimes it makes me feel bad. Like, I can't really pray about something if I don't care. Naturally this makes me work on caring. Personally, I don't really ask for prayer from those who are inclined to pray. I sort-of know it just involves some mumbling and formulaic list of prayer requests and a run-down of the list, and well, it all just seems very empty. What do I need that for?

For instance, my sister-in-law's father recently had the bottom half of his leg chopped off because it just up and died on him. I wasn't really concerned. We were supposed to pray about it but I really couldn't. But then he got bad infections, and I know the severity of bad infections, and then I really started caring, and it was easy to pray about it.

Generally speaking, my private prayer life is embedded throughout my day. I don't really have a "time" or even words. It usually consists of heart-felt sympathy and simple emotional communication. No words really. I don't know, hard to explain.

He's ok now. The infections went away and stuff and they took care of it. This little episode got me thinking about prayer and what it is for. It really has nothing to do with asking for things. Like, I don't append any sort of language with it. I just sort of feel, and direct it at God. In my imagination, I suppose it is like feeling helpless and scared, directing it up to the Divine, and then God gets annoyed by all the helplessness and despairing emotions and addresses it so it stops.

Basically, I feel at God and try to annoy Him into doing something. A divine connection through empathetic channeling.

Holy Shit I just punched my priest in the butthole!

2009-10-31T00:16:52Z

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2009-10-31T00:10:41Z

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