Category: Random

Favorite artists?

October 10th, 2023

Who are your favorite artists?

Wow…. There are so many answers to this… For the record though, the artists that I list below are just some of those that I love/enjoy. The only one that I have an actual favorite for is music, and that is Tool.

Musical – Tool, Otep, Dry Kill Logic, All That Remains, White Zombie, Staind, Straight Line Stitch, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Flaw, Fort Minor, Hatebreed, SOAD, Journey, Korn, NIN, Poe, RATM….. i could go on and on

Drawing/Painting/Photo – Escher, Monet, Giger, Dali, Ansel Adams, Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, there is one other abstract photographer that for the life of me, i can’t remember right now, and I’m too tired to go look for the book!

Other – DaVinci

Poetry/writing – Poe, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Jordan, Lao-Tzu, Emily Dickinson, Marge Piercy, Shel Silverstein

I adore art of any kind because it is emotional expression. It conveys a part of the artist’s soul and is interpreted by the observer’s soul, and it is unique in every single experience. Truly beautiful.
Rude fuckers

October 10th, 2023

Rant time.

I hate rude people. They hereby, if it was not made clear previously, officially qualify for Asshole status. If you’re in a meeting and make a phone call without warning and without excusing yourself, that is rude. If you tolerate intense background noise on a call that makes you difficult to hear, and then expect the other person to just deal with it, you are rude. If you cut someone in a long line for something without good reason and without asking, you are rude. If, in general, you do not consider other people in your day-to-day interactions around other people, and ask, or excuse yourself before doing something that will interrupt, inconvenience, or in some way negatively impact them, then you are rude, and by extension, an asshole.

Have some fucking manners – don’t be an asshole.
Beliefs

October 9th, 2023

Beliefs are interesting things, because there is no fact behind them; there is no objective evidence. And yet, violence – wars, even – happen because of beliefs.

I saw an interesting clip on FB a while back, and there were two dudes talking, and the one said, “Don’t you know that belief is a doubt?” and the other dude says, “How is belief a doubt?” and the original dude says, “Because you cannot believe something and know it.” and he goes on to explain that “you can only believe in what you don’t know.” (here’s a link to the clip on Youtube) It was really intriguing, and certainly pertains to this discussion. If I know something – I know I woke up this morning, or that I had steak and shrimp for dinner last night, I don’t have to believe those things. They happened; I witnessed them. Or, as the dude in the video points out, I know my parents, I don’t believe in them. But, I’ve never met Santa Clause, so as a child, I had to believe in him. It’s a perspective I never considered.

On to more thinking, and brooding that it’s too cloudy to see the meteor shower.

Have a great night!
Lost everything…?

October 8th, 2023

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

Simple. Start over, and focus on what’s actually important, which does not include the material bullshit.
Light has no internal clock

October 7th, 2023

Wow. Came across a video…. here.

I have issues with Neil deGrasse Tyson because he demoted Pluto, but the man is amazing intellectually, without a doubt.

This is… insane. Light has no clock, no age. I just…. I can’t even process this right now, being almost midnight, but I have to get into this more. Einstein was right, and in a way that corresponds to the absolute core of how the universe operates. How does this impact things that I’ve been thinking about? What might this mean for life in general? What are the implications? The faster that you move, the less time exists for you. What!? The existence and impact of time is based on a condition.

My mind is reeling, I can’t write right now, I need to process.

Have a great night!
Evolution of views

October 7th, 2023

What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?

So many things to choose from here. Beer, steak, education, politics, medicine, God. Viewpoints evolve through life experiences, proper research, and intelligent discourse. It’s a natural and necessary thing for growth.

Simple example – I hated steak as a kid. My mother always cooked steak for herself, my sister, and me well done, and it tasted horrible, and was difficult to chew. My father ate his steak rare, and I could not stomach that. The sight of the blood (which isn’t actually blood) on the plate made me nauseous. It didn’t help that he would make a mooing sound when poking it with a fork. lol Now, give me a big, medium rare, properly seasoned steak, and I’m a happy camper!

Complex example – I was raised as a devout Catholic. I had real, almost unquestionable faith in God. For various reasons, I wound up questioning that faith, and began reading all about different religions. I settled at the time on the idea that whatever you believed would be your truth and reality in life and after. I even went so far as to take a comparative theology elective in college. From there, I became an atheist, then an agnostic, and now I am again questioning existence in general, not really sure what to (or not to) believe.

I think that we have to understand that our views on pretty much any topic can, and perhaps should, evolve. I mean, if you held the same views on life that you did when you were 16, how much have you really grown as a person? And is it good to hold beliefs that can’t be challenged, or modified by the introduction of new information? That may be something I have to delve deeper into in a different post… stay tuned!
MK-Ultra

October 6th, 2023

Random memory time!

When I was in college, I had to write a research paper, the subject matter had to be something from the 60s. It was the final paper for the class and would account for a ridiculous portion of the final grade. The professor was extremely conservative, and didn’t appreciate an outspoken, pierced, tattooed chick with a purple mohawk in her very distinguished honors English 101 class. Let’s just say we would butt heads often. So, being the sarcastic, somewhat vindictive rebel that I was, I decided to fuck with her and write a kick ass paper on how the use of LSD became popular in that timeframe and imagined the mental pain it would cause her to have to give me an A on the paper and in the class all because of a paper about illicit drug use.

I started researching. The main topic was going to be Timothy Leary, his impressive education and career, and the fact that he would encourage people to do acid. However, my research took a turn in a whole different direction when I came across something about classified CIA experiments with LSD. (They were declassified in the early 2000s) I dug into it, and oh my, the things I found!

During the project code named MK-Ultra, the goal was to find an effective method of mind control or a type of truth serum. Initial efforts focused on LSD, and included sometimes unwitting subjects from both the US and Canada. The “research” also employed other hallucinogens, as well as shock therapy, and various forms of torture. They expanded to include some crazy shit with barbiturates and amphetamines administered back to back in an effort to produce an uninhibited state where the subject would just answer questions truthfully. They also would tape therapy sessions, give the subject LSD, then put them in a sensory deprivation tank or solitary confinement and play back the most horrible moments from the taped therapy on a loop, just to see how that would impact the person. Seriously sick shit – several people died as a result of this fucking insane quest for mind control.

I wound up writing a killer, scathing research paper about this project. And yes, I got an A, albeit with some disparaging comments from the professor about the opinions insinuated in the paper.
Out of place (prompt)

October 6th, 2023

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

Moving around so much as a kid basically made it so that I was almost always “the new kid” and would feel horribly out of place until I was able to make a couple of friends. Jumping from job to job until my late 20s only served to perpetuate that dynamic.

I got to a point early on where I simply stopped letting feeling out of place bother me so much. Does it suck? Absolutely. It’s incredibly uncomfortable and anxiety inducing. But at the same time, it is just a feeling, and can be overcome by treating people with kindness and respect, trying to get to know them, or simply doing what I was there to do and leaving. The latter is especially easy when it comes to a job or a class or a random errand.

Even still, I have spent most of my life never really feeling that I actually belonged anywhere that I was, except when I am lost in a book or my own thoughts and my surroundings become irrelevant. So, unless I am in that place, I feel out of place and somehow disconnected. I can still build meaningful and strong connections with people, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I don’t feel a strong sense of belonging in many situations. And that’s ok.

Perhaps the lack of “belonging” is from a flawed process in my mind, I don’t know. It’s just something that has always been that way, and I never really questioned it, because I always have that space and those moments to fall back on. I don’t necessarily need to belong somewhere to be happy. I’m content with my ability to float from situation to situation and place to place.
Life without a computer

October 5th, 2023

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

As in, I couldn’t own one? Not much different, because I could still use one for work. I would just have to revert back to pen and paper writing, and would likely draw more, which would be a blessing.

As in, I can’t use one, ever? Well now, that’s a different story. I would have to rethink my profession, for sure. I would also go back to being a bookworm and spending hours on end in the library, happily reading about any number of topics. I would draw more. I think, maybe, I might actually be happier.

Ya know, thinking about this, I have to wonder if that’s not a better way to do things.
What skill? (Prompt)

October 4th, 2023

What skill would you like to learn?

I love learning new things, so this is a bit of a loaded question.

I would love to learn more SQL. I want to be able to cook a perfect steak every time. I would like to learn how to shoot. I want to learn how to do experiments with a particle accelerator. I would love to be fluent in at least three languages, and have one of them not be Latin based.

I could go on and on….

I have said before that I’d be a professional student if someone would pay me to do that…. A girl can dream!