hope that i get old before i die…

unfortunately, this is going to be an emo post. but i’ve come to a realization lately that what i think of as friends are nothing more than close acquaintances in the big picture of things. maybe it’s the digital age or maybe it’s LA itself, but i find that people who are true friends to me will actually call/text me back if i should call/text them first. the ones who don’t even answer and don’t even acknowledge that i sent them a message should be a hint that they don’t value me in their lives at all. i’d like to chalk it up to LA, because i know that the friends i had in austin would at least give me a yes/no answer to a yes/no question. none of this “i’ll answer you if i feel like it because i’m too busy to text a simple yes or no to your message”

anyway, i was hoping to meet some people out tonight for a night of great music but of course nobody can answer me i really don’t care if they can’t make it or don’t want to go out, but if i ask “hey, want to check out this show tonight?” and get *nothing* back? yeah, that really pisses me off. especially when it happens from people who i *have* spent some time with and who i thought i was close enough to that i can at least get a “hey maybe next time” or something similar. the upshot of the whole ordeal is that even when i ran into some girls i knew were going to be there tonight, i didn’t get much more than a couple sentences from them either, despite the fact that we’ve all hung out together and again, i thought we were closer than we apparently are. somehow i always end up as that person who gets interrupted mid-sentence, or find myself suddenly talking to nobody but me when i thought i was having a conversation with someone. maybe i should just take the hint and find someone who does want to talk to me. well, i ended up leaving early, which i *never* do on a normal night. i’m usually the one who is last to leave, or near the end at least. but something about tonight just put me in a foul mood.

thankfully humanity redeemed itself in the form of tommy’s burgers where i had an actual conversation with some people waiting in line. not only that but found that we even had a shared experience from a dodger’s game in the not-so-distant past. i had more fun waiting in line for a chili burger than i did listening to some awesome musicians, and for some reason, that just doesn’t seem right….

– they say noam chomsky is the most quoted intellectual of our time. for anyone who has never seen him speak, the reason he is the most quoted is because nobody can sit through a whole lecture without falling asleep at his monotone delivery. much better to have someone else quote you the good stuff later, trust me on this one.

— speaking of chomsky, i would LOVE to be in line to a speech by him, or someone of his ilk and stature, and have people hoping for classics, similar to the banter overheard at a big name music concert. “oh man, i hope he does the iran/contra speech again tonight” “yeah, i bet he encores with panama and the spread of US hegemony in latin america”

— arizona is reporting tainted melons. does that mean that they have melons with big balls?

— easter is supposed to be celebrating the day that jesus rose from the dead after being crucified. in other words, the church is celebrating the zombification of jesus? i guess that’s why there’s no record of any sermons after the resurrection. can you imagine a zombie jesus roaming the countryside, people come from miles around just to hear him say “braaaiiinnnss…..” of course, with the zealotry of today’s chrisitians, we’d have a veritable zombie army by now….

— i realize they call it faith because you’re supposed to just accept that it actually happened, but i still think that someone arranged to have jesus’ body removed from his tomb, hid the body, then told everyone he rose from the dead and made this whole “son of god” mystique around it. “no seriously, he rose from the dead! well of course there’s no body, he ascended to heaven because he’s the son of god!” “ooooh, that explains it alright”

Jesus was way cool
Everybody liked Jesus
Everybody wanted to hang out with him
Anything he wanted to do, he did
He turned water into wine
And if he wanted to
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines

He walked on the water
And swam on the land
He would tell these stories
And people would listen
He was really cool

If you were blind or lame
You just went to Jesus
And he would put his hands on you
And you would be healed
That’s so cool

He could’ve played guitar better than Hendrix
He could’ve told the future
He could’ve baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could’ve scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could’ve danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

He told people to eat his body and drink his blood
That’s so cool
Jesus was so cool
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heaven
I mean, that’s so cool
Jesus was way cool

No wonder there are so many Christians

i read on another blog a question about time travel. i decided that this would make a great post, since i haven’t written much lately. my take on time travel is like this:

let’s say we have a 3-d coordinate system, much like the one we exist in every day. time is considered the 4th dimension after length, width and height. but what happens is that time is not one more set of axes based at the “center” of this 3d coordinate system, it’s yet another set of axes which moves along the set created by the 3-d universe.

now, being that time is always flowing forward according to our perception, to me that means that our consciousness filters out the extraneous time caused by existing in a 3d system within a 3-d universe. the way we travel through the time dimension is very similar to the way a function is plotted on a graph. we make smooth transitions from one time frame to the next, but our traversal of time doesn’t necessarily follow a linear path, we just think it does because of our built-in filters.

this means that time travel *is* technically possible, if we can only figure out how to go back to a previous set of (x,y,z) coordinates in our life “function”. this is where it gets a little tricky, because we can’t guarantee that we will set down in the EXACT time coordinate that our perception originally recorded. to give an example that i just pulled out of my ass, we can travel back to (3,4,5) but if we perceived ourselves to have existed at (1,2,3) in time, and we suddenly find ourselves not back at (1,2,3) but (1,2,3.1) then we may find ourselves in a *similar* time frame, but not quite right. or we may find ourselves totally out of place from where we thought we would be, even though we came back to “the same time” that we left.

so yes, i think that time travellers from the future have been coming through for quite some time, but we may not even perceive their presence because our relative coordinates may not have lined up, even if we existed in the same (x,y,z) space as each other. because even if the majority of our time coordinates were the same, they would still be different enough that we may not even see each other. coincidentally, this also gives some basis for the concept of alternate realities, because each moment in time that we exist also exists as an infinite number of other moments, none of which are exactly alike. by making the choices that we make in our lives, it changes the direction we follow through the time dimension and also creates new branches in the future that we may or may not ever catch up to again.

typing this post has made me want to go to grad school just to study enough math to prove this. but unless someone out there is willing to fund my “research”, i don’t think this is going to happen….

i was listening to the radio on the way home from work today and they said the title of this post on the air. of course, they were referencing “attacks across iraq today” but it definitely got me to thinking about the peculiarity that is the english language. what other language exists that has so many words that sound alike but have completely different meanings? for that matter, what other language has so many words that are *spelled* the same but have different meanings? i haven’t studied all languages ever in the history of the world, but i have yet to find any which have these problems the same way english does. i’ve heard stories about japanese being similar in this regard but if someone who knows japanese can set me straight on this issue i’d love to know more. still, it’s a wonder that those of us who speak english can understand each other at all considering how these words stack up against each other.

and in other news, i found this story online while waiting for my work email to load. apparently there are a lot of registered sex offenders taking correspondence courses by applying for financial aid which is set aside for those needy students who can’t normally afford a college education. also apparently, there are a lot of lawmakers in this country who think that these ex-criminals don’t deserve to be using this money to actually pay for an education. now, i will completely agree that they should not be spending the leftover money on things that are not related to their education, but this is true for ALL students who receive pell grants and college financial aid.

when i used to get pell grants for college, i sure as hell didn’t spend the leftover on books and school supplies. unless by “books” you mean pizza, and by “school supplies” you mean beer. every college student does this, this is nothing new whatsoever. there are even students who sign up, get their financial aid check, and then drop classes for a full refund of the money. this is also nothing new whatsoever. where the outrage is coming from is the fact that these are sexual predators, registered as such with the various state agencies that deal with such crimes. and in our “tough on crime” society, we have politicians who would rather lock these people up and literally throw away the key than spend one single dime on educating them so that they can one day possibly be released into society again.

we already have laws which decide where these people can live, whether or not they can drive their own vehicle to and from work (assuming they can even *find* a job), how much time they can spend on the internet (if at all), and other limitations on their lives. but now that some of them want to get themselves an education using the law as it is already written, suddenly there is an outrage. yes it’s true that there are some registered sex offenders who have committed truly horrendous crimes against humanity. and some of them definitely deserve to be locked up for most of the rest of their lives. but the ones who are able to finish their sentences and get released back into society should not be held back if they want to better themselves.

as i have always said, it used to be a badge of honor to work yourself up from the bottom and make something of yourself. not only that, but supposedly with a little hard work you *can* make something of yourself in america. but more and more our society is closing its doors to all but the ones who can pay to play. if you don’t already have money, you are not as likely to have a chance to lift yourself up out of your situation. and god help you if you should be convicted of a sex crime, or a drug offense, because that means that you will never be allowed to go to school if you can’t afford to pay for it yourself. but if you were convicted of a sex crime or drug offense, good luck finding a place to hire you that will let you make enough money to afford to pay for college yourself, even a community college or correspondence course….