Pulling All Stops

Why would you want to let the water run?  Water can be stopped, if you know how.  If you have the tools available at your disposal.  But most of the time, we do not.  I've got a lot of things to do.  Just way too many things to do.  None of them are things I want to be doing.

I've peaked man, and the peak was not all that far from the bottom.  Meep meep meep.  Do you see the sky like I do?  Was it this way billions of years ago?  Will it be this way billions of years in the future?  I hope I don't smell like you do.  It's looking to swallow me whole.  And I think I'll let it. 

I'd like to go away.  Be taken away.  Dragged kicking and screaming. 

Joaquin out.

Mystified By The Alternative

I'm not impressed.  I'm just generally not impressed by anything anymore.  It's sad because I don't know when I became so cynical.  It's sick, isn't it?  I saw a new ad for Myer (which is an upmarket retailer here), where they started off good by saying that life used to be full of wonder and amazement, and they make a lot of good points about growing up and losing our fascination with the world.  Then at the end they make really explicit references to filling the gaps with materialism and capitalism, and it just leaves bad taste in the mouth.  It would have been a good ad without that, it could have been much more obscure. 

Life is just getting away from me at the moment.  But I guess that's ok, I'm in no hurry to catch up.  Maybe I'll just stop and start walking the other way.  I've got so much personal admin to take care of, it's like I need a personal assistant to get it all done.  So I suppose I'd better catch up on all that stuff now.  It's been like 4 days without playing guitar, I have withdrawals.  This isn't good!!

90 minutes to go and still trying to figure it out.

So much work to do.  No, there isn't enough time.  You think there is, and then bam, it's over.  And that's it.  So unfair.  And that's just the way it is.

Joaquin out.

Punch In The Guts

Has age crippled me overnight?  Sorry about the lack of posting yesterday, I actually had to pay attention in class.  Now I'm back at work and I've cleared out my list of things to do, so I can get down to blogging.  University was interesting.  I feel like I haven't learned a goddamn thing, and now I'm expected to just finagle a 6,000 word essay out of nowhere.  I'll be alright, though.  I can get it done.  Just need to make the time and do some research.  One thing work has been good for is just focusing on getting things out of the way.  Procrastination hits sometimes, but not all the time.  But I can now understand why I never read for recreation while I was at university, there was just no time.  All my time was spent reading textbooks and doing tutorial questions.  And that sucks, because at least with uni, when I wasn't studying, I could play guitar or play some computer games.  Now I don't have that opportunity, because the remainder of my time is taken up by work.  So there's no guitar, there's no gaming, it's just either uni or work.  That's not fun at all.

So yeah, my body is letting me down, I can no longer sleep through the night, and I wake up in the morning feeling like I've been socked in the guts.  It's incredibly painful!  What the hell is going on?  I have no idea.  Maybe it's the start of the end.  That's alright.  We can't be delusional about us being here forever.  Hopefully it won't be a long life if it's a slow descent, because I'll be left hanging on forever.  Even if death is nothing, that's still some respite from this.  There's no lessons to be learned.

What I've found interesting is the change in culture between universities.  My undergraduate degree was at a university across town, which is in a semi new campus, and had a reputation for being a party school.  I'd have to agree, there was a focus on residence life and big music festivals (which were just a front for drinking and taking drugs).  As the other lived on campus, I got to see his various 'residence mates' engage in that behaviour while we were just playing guitar and computer games.  But I enjoyed my time there, it seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere, despite being next to a major shopping mall.  There was one side of campus that was entirely empty, and I used to go for walks along there because it was good for clearing my head.  Having the mall close by was also pretty awesome for eating during breaks, or checking out the movies in our extended breaks.  I have returned there a few times since I've graduated, for various things, and it always feels like a party atmosphere

The university where I'm doing further postgrad is the one where I did postgrad before, several years ago.  Regarded as the best university in the country, which is active in social justice and theoretical underpinnings.  Despite that leftist slant, a lot of conservative leaders attended it.  It's more of a relaxed atmosphere, and there are people everywhere!  The campus is the size of 4 suburbs, and very picturesque, but all the buildings are old, and it's some distance away from the city centre.  I don't think I would have been comfortable if I went there for my undergrad degrees.  But pretty much all of my friends went there.  It's a strange vibe.  Maybe it's just my own arrogance.  Or I'm wedded to my old ways.

Things are going to get busy at work soon.  That's ok.  It'll see me through to early next year.  I just need to manage the academic side of things.  Better get back into some sort of routine.  Better get some important work out of the way.

Okay, now to see what I can get done with 2 hours of time.

Is this really happening?  Yeah, I guess it is.

Joaquin out.

Round 1: Fight

I'm back into the swing of things unfortunately. It was one hell of a weekend of procrastination. But somehow I managed to be productive. It'll be weird if I have to go back to that 24/7.

Do I have a lot to say? Have I worn it down to the stub? Maybe the point of it all is that there is no point. That's the only certainty we get. And that's what you have to spend your life trying to reconcile. And then you're dead. For a minute this morning I thought I had escaped my physical boundaries and that I was actually dead. It was insane. Time goes too fast and we are all in the same predicament. Well almost all of us. Some of us are lucky enough to win the genetic lottery or the lottery of life. And you can devote your life to luxury or relaxation.

I don't want to do anything anymore. I just want to stay in bed and not move. Sleep it all away. Into eternity. Maybe I can tell myself it will be ok. But deep down it is telling me that it won't be.

Am I the best bejeweled 2 player in the world? I hope so! I can consistently score over 700k, but my all time best is 1.1 million, and nobody I know has ever come close to that. Surely that's gotta be worth something?

Take me back to easier times! When I could actually appreciate them. That's all. Nothing more. Is that too much to ask? But some people wish to turn the clock back on events which cannot be changed and they are forever different people as a result.

Ah free wifi. Art thou the best? Yes, you are. I wonder if I can get through class today. Then work again on Wednesday. Gosh I am not looking forward to this. I feel sickness coming on. None of this is good.

Let me just sit at the mall, walk around and blog. That's all I want right now.

Outcasts and jackasses. That's all we are. You fall in one category or you're in the other. You don't straddle.

Gosh it's only the middle of the day and I'm licked. Not going to be helped by my needing to have to do an assignment tonight. Yes a one night assignment! 2,000 words, it's insane. But I'll get it done.

So this is it. My last week in my 20s. Farewell, I hardly knew thee. I guess people in my position are generally linked together by common threads. And we all know what it is. Sadly.

Maybe the problem is that I'm never hungry anymore. There is no wanting, as opposed to needing. Living life lazily.

And as before, I've got work to do.

Joaquin out.

The Fold Itself

Is not a good place to be. Being back at university sucks. The classes are boring, the teaching is dreadful and I remember why this is all just a pointless endeavour.

But how things have changed! When I was in my final year of undergrad, our main lecture halls were just getting wifi. Nobody even had wifi devices back then! But now wifi coverage is all over campus. People are on their laptops or phones 24/7! It's nuts. It's really changed how we all learn. It is also a fantastic tool for procrastination. After all, blogging right in class! Yep teacher is talking and I am here typing away (on silent of course). It's fantastic! If they had this before I would have failed school for sure! Hahaa. I also would have blogged a bit more. My readings have nothing to do with the course and we don't get tested on this stuff since it's just an essay for the class.

Why bother? What's the point? This isn't learning, it's just doing your best to pass the subject. They're not the same thing.

Just let me write stuff from scratch. I can read a few books then turn things in. That's it! Don't need anything else.

Have you ever had a class so abstract that it was unhelpful and irrelevant? I have that now, and still have 2.5 days more to go! Damn it.

Is there such a thing as student rights? Should there be?

Horny, bored, tired and sad is the worst combination of things to be.

But I am grateful I can write this in class, amazing. Love blogger+, it's the best.

Im watching a clock that never ticks. Time has no meaning here. It's a fluid concept, so elusive and undefinable.

Just get me out of here. Will it be a few more hours? I have so much to do when I go home.

Beh. I'm exhausted and I still have a million things to do tonight. Oh joy. Well here's to it.

Joaquin out.

I've Got A New Scent, And It Smells Like Ambivalence

That one hit me this morning just randomly, I like it!  It'd make a good punk lyric.  I get a few good ideas every now and then, even if I'm not actively writing lyrics anymore.  The focus has been on good chords, some good melodies.  No actual words except for writing this blog.  I'm ok with that though.  This blog is good!  It keeps me going, and the ideas are fresh.  I have a crapload of things to get through today, though.  It's my Friday after all, before returning to university.  God help us all. 

At this level of schooling, the tendency is to write 6,000 word essays.  As an undergraduate, it was a struggle to even find 2,000 words to write about any given subject.  At work, sometimes it's not so difficult to reach 4-5,000, but this is a different beast entirely.  I wonder if I can actually do it.  You don't get assignments or anything like that.  So how can you really learn anything?  Then again, you can just read yesterday's post and have a good time.  Didn't get any guitar in last night, time just got away from me, but that's ok.  I better get on with some work today.

I've been crazy productive today!  It's been good.  I love how logical thinking can result in huge efficiencies and time savings.  It's the best feeling!  Now I can devote the rest of my day to blogging and just being lazy. 

Housing in Australia (and I think a fair part of the Western world) is unaffordable.  In large cities, where most people live, and where most of the jobs are, most people are forced to rent for extended periods, at exorbitant prices.  Why is this?  A concept called negative gearing.  You can buy a property, then use the interest and maintenance costs to offset the cost of the rental income.  This becomes beneficial in the long run, as the value of the house increases (hopefully at a larger rate than the offset).  This is how property developers and old white people get rich.  They artificially stack the market as they overstretch and buy property after property, at a loss, and then wait for housing bubbles to create massive profits.  House prices go up, and nobody can afford to buy, unless they want to commute 2 hours to get to work.  But this will never be outlawed.  Why?  Because politicians are using the same tactics.  The people with the deep pockets who 'donate' to these political parties use the same tactics.  And people like money and power, and these things they will never let go of until they are dead (and in which case it will be inherited to their ilk).  Here lies the unfairness of it all.

There was an interesting article in the paper today about the notion of homosexuality and paedophilia.  If you have half a brain, you know the two are not in any way shape or form linked.  But there lies a great argument at the heart of social justice.  In the interest of equality, there should be a provision for gay marriage globally.  Homosexual people are what they are.  It's not a choice, it's how they were born.  Then, let's talk about it in terms of paedophilia.  Horrible, disgusting and abhorrent.  It should go without saying, really.  But what if there is an argument that they are born that way, and they have no control over how they feel attraction (similar to homosexuals).  In that way, does that mean over time, paedophiles will be granted similar rights?  Let's have a thought exercise, paedophilia has been around since humanity's commencement.  We have seen a move to a heavily moralistic society with the spread of religion in a relatively short amount of time (I mean that on a per head basis, there are more religious adherents now, compared to before, as religions tend to grow over time - but maybe not overall in the context of global populations).  The obvious division is that homosexuals are generally consenting adults who should be free to engage in what they choose.  But at the heart of the other issue is that children are involved.  They are young, can't engage in logical behaviour, and can be convinced easily.  This creates a relationship without balance, and that creates issues.  As children grow older now, they tend to realise that if they were abused as children, that the behaviour was wrong and it should not have happened, and this leads to ongoing psychological issues.  In a pre-moralistic society, would that psychological condition still be apparent?  Is moralism causing people to wig out who were subject to this kind of abuse?  If they don't know it's wrong, would they react in the same way?  That's a scary thought.

Okay, thought experiment over.  So am I saying paedophilia should be excused or condoned?  Hell no!  Absolutely not.  As a human, I reserve the right to be inconsistent in my beliefs or thoughts.  But keep in mind, that with the feelings you (rightly) negatively assign to paedophiles, crazed conservatives will (wrongly) feel exactly the same about homosexuals. Would it be easy to change your mind on that subject?  No, and now you can imagine how hard it is to change their mind on that subject.

What's wrong with the world is there are too many issues.  All the important ones get diluted as special interest groups raise more issues, and this makes the general population unfocused, confused and angry, because they don't know what's going on, and they're not used to change.  Overall, people are just as stupid and uninformed as they were in the dark ages.  They refuse to believe facts.  So what are you going to do?  I guess just persevere and see what happens.

I'll keep it there for now.  Unless I can get wifi at uni, I'll probably not be able to blog until the weekend or some time mid next week.  So until then, I'm done!  I'm absolutely wiped!  At least it's just under an hour until I can go home and forget my troubles.  Keep moving.  Roll with the punches.

Joaquin out.

The Fault In Our Education System

It's pretty much a standard thing, no matter where you are in the world.  In the East, you are drilled from an early age to remember facts and figures.  There is no analytical learning of any kind.  If you learn anything that is not in the syllabus, it is not relevant, and it will not help you get a higher mark.  Then you are ranked against each other, in every class, starting from Kindergarten onwards.  Then here in the West, all you do is stick closely to the syllabus, and independent learning is frowned upon.  You get tested on highly subjective things, and your worth is measured in airy fairy ways.  Then you do this so you can be ranked (again), and then go to higher learning, where you occur thousands of dollars in debt just to earn a piece of paper so that you can do a job which has no meaning to society.  It makes no sense.  This is the tyranny of tradition.  School and university holds such an esteemed place in society, that its values and core nature have never been reviewed.  It hasn't undergone a period of criticism or reformation in the same way that other major institutions have.  And thus it will continue to perpetuate its own existence and importance.  Here's the thing - all you do in uni is read stuff.  Then you get tested on whether you have understood the readings.  That's all it is!  Then major, world leading universities apparently have more prestige in carrying out the same standard of insanity as any other university.  It's less than independent learning, because you can read the same books on your own, and hopefully you would be far more motivated to do it that way, with the added bonus of not being tested on it.  So you're basically laying down money for no ascertainable purpose.  So what's the point?  It's a sick system.  We need to do away with these notions of outdated thinking.  We'll be better off as a society without them.

It's going to be a strange day, there's not a whole lot of work to do today.  But at least I can blog, that'll be good.  But it'll be tough after yesterday's good effort.  I'm all about trying though!

We chose, and we chose wrong.

Okay damn, I am out of things to talk about today!  Not good.  But maybe I can keep myself occupied.  Task list is looking empty. 

Obscurism of the highest order?  Why am I trying to convince Evander Holyfield to get back into boxing in my dreams?  It makes zero sense. 

Ahh and now I do have work, blah!  Yeah maybe I am more cynical, I have the right to be.  Oh lord, it's only Tuesday.  It feels like a Monday, and tomorrow will be my Friday, work wise!  I wonder if I can keep up at uni.  I've mentally checked out, I need out.  I'm done, just it, it's over, done.  Can I sleep now?  Well hey, it's only 2 hours to go until I'm done.

I just don't care anymore.  You can't escape this place.  It really is up and down in places.  Funny how karma works sometimes.

Better call it here.

Joaquin out.

Stuff & Stuff Inc.

Oh god, it hit me like a truck the other day.  Exhaustion and fear, all at once.  I slept almost all of Sunday.  I wasn't awake for more than several hours at a time.  And I was still able to sleep at night!  What the hell?  How could that happen?  Maybe life just got to me.  It was good.  Got nothing done, which would have ordinarily been swell, but I have to study, because I have class later this week and early next week.  And there's a lot of readings.  Like more readings than I've ever seen before, for a 4 day intensive class?!  What the hell?  That's not cool.  And they were boring, horrendous readings.  And it hit me, why am I doing this?  Why do I need a Masters degree?  I don't need it for the job I currently have, obviously.  And I realise that this is why I didn't read much recreationally when I was doing undergrad.  I was enjoying reading so much, and now after reading some of the selected stuff for class, I don't even want to touch another book.  And you can begin to understand what's wrong with the education system, and why it harms us as people.  The fun is gone, the motivation is gone.  How the hell am I going to get through class?  I'll get through it.  Somehow.

I know what will do it.  It's going to be a heart attack in my sleep.  Well it will definitely be at night, I'm not sure as to whether it will be while I'm asleep.  I can be hopeful.  That way I can just be lost in my dreams forever.  Maybe it'll be a good one for once?  That's going to be lights out for me. 

Got in a bit of guitar, and was happily able to add a new bit for a piece that has been driving me nuts for the past few weeks.  It's an interesting piece, very understated, and unusual chords that go together very well.  Yes, it helps that I cut my nails.  I'm playing well.  I just want more time for it. 

What really gets me is the ridiculous prices we are paying for data usage in Australia, and for substandard service.  So I'm paying about $45 per month for unlimited calls and texts, but only 2Gb of data, over 3G!  And the coverage is pretty poor.  That's ridiculous!  And they count their data usage in very weird ways, that don't round properly.  It hit me last month when I had to pay $10 extra for a gig more of usage, which just occurs automatically, even though I had 2 days left to run until it rolled over.  How stupid!  They could have just cut the data service, I would have been happier with that.  But there's no flexibility with telecommunications in Australia.  No wonder we are all languishing behind the rest of the world in terms of costs and speed.  I see American and British friends making the most of LTE, with features in snapchat and instagram, and really enjoying it.  And I can never reply, or load videos when I'm out and about, unless I'm on wifi.  And that brings up another problem!  Home internet is also set up in the same way.  It's slow and expensive compared to the rest of the world, and we're getting ripped off.  How can people really enjoy video streaming services like youtube and twitch to their full potential when you're going to go through your entire monthly quota in just a week, and then pay through the nose to access the service after that?  There's no bandwidth to really support better ideas in Australia.

I really dislike bosses and management that panic.  Nothing is ever that crazy to warrant outrageous and instant action.  It's a sign of a bad workplace if you constantly have to stop what you're doing to work on urgent things.  It's been a busy morning, that's for sure.  I've got a fair bit to get done today, so I'll get on to it in a bit.  But I suppose I'd better blog now, because I probably won't get a chance after Wednesday, for at least a whole week.

Some interesting news this morning about MH17, which was shot down in Europe.  Apparently Germany has come out and said they believe the missile in question was Ukrainian in origin, and not Russian, or the Ukrainian rebels.  So that leaves an interesting question in terms of responsibility, and this show of propaganda against Russia immediately after.  They need to be more transparent with their investigations, because the public knows nothing right now.  Where's the black box data, who is being investigated on the ground?  Who is being interrogated?  I guess we'll never know.  Public perceptions are being formed without all the facts in question.  Go figure.

I've been trying to think outside the box for a bit, just keeping the mind relaxed and flexible.  Then the question creeps into mind, how do minorities find a way to create a balance of power?  In a democratic country, I think it would make sense for minorities to band together and create voting blocs.  If they moved to marginal seats and put in their own representatives, they could actually wield real power.  They should monitor elections around the country, and move to areas about to vote and then have a real say.  A minority of a few hundred thousand could become a significant force that way, as all the elected officials start to represent their interest.  This is only magnified once you factor in the idea of minorities having children at a much faster rate than the majority of the population. 

Getting somewhere here.  But I suppose I'd better focus on work now.  Yeah, I'm getting through it.

Where were you when you received crazy news?  Let's see if I can do this in order.  When Princess Diana died, I had just woken up and turned on the tv in my room (hahaha I don't even recall how much tv I ever watched in there), and saw she had been involved in an accident, via the mid morning news.  Then later on in the day they announced she had died.  September 11th 2001 was a school day.  I remember the attacks occurred overnight, but I was already in bed.  I think there were reports in the morning when I woke up, so I was aware by the time I went to school and everyone else was talking about it.  The attitude on campus was quite morose, because we thought it may have been the end of the world.  Everything was surreal and dreamlike.  Then with the London Bombings, the other was over and we were playing video games/watching tv/watching movies from his computer, directly on to the television, and we would stop occasionally between these activities to switch the tv on to Live 8 or something.  Then we were getting weird reports of explosions in London, and some CCTV footage of buses with no audio over it.  Everything was eerie, and we only found out more later that day.  Then the other one was Fukushima in 2011.  I was overseas, I think in Malaysia, and the television just had footage of all these homes being swept away by the tsunami that happened after the earthquake.  There was no audio again, everything was just insane, because there was no way to identify where this was, or to explain what was happening.  That's the crazy thing, when it's not being explained, it's all the more ominous.  I only found out more when we had gotten home. 

Nobody is taking risks anymore, not even me.  Though all of mine are calculated, or at least I hope!  Okay, 90 minutes or so to go, better make this count!

Damn, this has been a productive day.  I've been good.  This has been a rest well earned.

Joaquin out.

The Directionless Road

None of us know where we will end up.  There is no certainty in anything we do.  The nerve of some people.  They are not who they say they are.  Now there's a way, I can be heard.  I was yelling at a wall before.  Pointless exercise and cathartic behaviour, but it was not for anything worthwhile.  What is the truth?  Are people so caught up in their own lives that they are completely oblivious to the past?  I was speaking with an old friend the other day, and I don't believe I have a blog nickname for this person, but it turns out that they have completely forgotten a part of our shared history which had devastating impacts on me.  They just simply forgot.  Can you believe that?  It's a vital part of my schema, and they just forgot.  The fickleness of some people.  Not some.  A lot of people.  People want to complain so much about how society is drifting apart and that we are all more isolated than before.  But I blame everyone.  They can't see the frailty of human connections and relationships occur because they cannot hold on to anything.  They can't put in the effort.  They are all scared, they turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble.  Weak, you're all weak.  People are clueless to their own plight, and to the plight of others.  The truth is on my side.

Am now trying to expend some effort in getting out of here, but the more I think about it, I wonder if it's worth it.  Maybe problems will sort themselves out.  One thing can happen one way, and the other may be the outcome you want.  Everything in life comes down to yes or no, everything is binary.  That means with the perfect combination of things, you could technically have a perfect life.  Can everything be reduced to decisions like that?  Because what are our lives, if not the sum of those binary choices?

Haven't gotten much guitar in lately, and my nails are huge which is making a playing a bit tough.  But I will cut them tonight or something and I will get back into it.  Also need to hit up some study.  I'll be back with the program.  Got a fair bit of work to get through today.  I'm being hypnotised outside.  But I'll get to it.  I better get some stuff out of the way!

I'm slowly plugging through.  Nothing is infinite.  All our resources are going to run out someday.  So it strikes me as weird that consumables can be valued with any certainty about the price, or any volatility.  It should just be a flat price, and the free market should not determine any other price.  So just say oil now, it is worth much more than it used to be in the past.  But we all know that oil is going to run out at some point, that's just a fact.  Our rate of consumption is increasing exponentially, and the price is going up as a result.  But we need to look to the bigger picture, the end game.  How can oil have a price if it is a resource that will run out? 

I'm done.  Just done.  I'm burned out, and I didn't even shine brightly.  Thems the breaks.

Joaquin out.

Dawn Is Fleeting

But the day will still come, as will night.  Finally arrive at Thursday and it looks like I now have nothing to say, but I'm okay with that.  It's been a great blogging week.  I'm not talking about a revolution here.  I'm getting somewhat excited.  I'll have 2 short weeks in a row, but things will be broken up by university.  I'm not sure how things are going to go.  I'm fine with intensive classes.  It's good to get things done in a rapid burst.  It's easier to keep up the intensity for that amount of time, rather than have to slug it out week after week.  Though, keep in mind that you're really only doing it for 1-2 hours at a time, and I rarely ever had back to back classes as an undergraduate. 

Looks like a return to normality today, just pointless brain dead tasks.  But it'll keep me going until the clock hits home time.  Just another regular day here.

Shit, looks like things have gotten busy...Damn.

I guess that's it today.  Even I am fleeting!  All in multiples of 90...

Joaquin out.

Blinded With Sight

How is that even possible?  Well your imagination is infinite when you don't know what reality looks like.  Once you see the world for what it is, the magic is gone.  Then you are truly blind.  Reality is shaped by our perceptions.  And our perceptions can easily be manipulated.  What we consider to be reality may not even be the truth of the matter, we could all be way off in how we experience it.  And what if nobody is experiencing it in the same way as anyone else?  Do you proceed based on instinct alone?  Because whatever your senses tell you could be a lie.  What can you possibly do?  Don't believe what you can feel, don't believe what you can taste, don't believe what you can smell, don't believe what you can hear, don't believe what you can see.

Everything is a time saver.  I have a fair bit to do today, but I will get to it.  Probably won't be able to blog as plentifully as I have for the past two days.  But it's nice to get back into a rhythm, it's good for the brain.

I really hate this time of year.  We should be getting into warm weather, but it's raining, cold, windy, and even flooding in places.  What's going on?!  And don't say it's normal, because it's not.  We've done irrepairable damage to the environment, and it's starting to catch up to us.  Whoever denounces climate change is the enemy of humanity.  On top of that, there's all this pollen and dust and debris just flying around everywhere!  I could have sworn yesterday that there was ash just being blown around by the wind, like some post-apocalyptic nightmare or something.  And it all keeps getting into my eyes!  What's going on?!  I'm getting bugs, dust, pollen, and they're all scratching and irritating my eyes, and it hurts!  It's just painful.

I'm not liking this shea butter.  It makes me smell strange and unfamiliar.

Dreams are getting weird.  But at least I am dreaming?  Some people just leave everything to the imagination.  What concerns me most about adulthood is that there is absolutely no room for a decent amount of sleep.  When you're a kid, you need anywhere between 12-10 hours of sleep, which gradually gets lower as you get older.  But they say the minimum you need these days is 8 hours as an adult.  But I find that laughable.  It's just not possible to get 8 hours of sleep in a standard working day.  Okay, 24 hours in a day.  At best, you have 8 hours of work - if you're extremely lucky.  Then say about 1 hour in total round trip for a commute.  That's 15 hours remaining.  Then let's take daily maintenance and getting ready (gym, showers, bathroom stuff, chores like dishes and what not), and that's 3-4 hours.  So that's 11 hours left.  Let's now subtract 2 hours for dinner and some television.  That's 9 hours to go.  Then you have personal admin and miscellaneous stuff, and that's another 2 hours there.  7 hours left - at best.  And nobody falls asleep straight away.  So basically that's 6-6.5 hours of sleep per night.  That's the best most adults can hope to achieve, and that's not cool.  The workforce would be so much more productive if we were able to sleep just a little bit more each night.  It's not good, because this stuff all leads to premature ageing, increased stress, and a constant feeling of tiredness. 

The idea has been floated around of reducing the working week to 4 days, or even 3 (according to Carlos Slim Helu), and just increasing working hours across those days.  I think it's potentially workable, but the workforce can't stay employed up to 70, it's just not feasible.  You're not the same person you were at 20, or even 50.  As technology progresses and time changes, most blue - and even a lot of white collar jobs are going to be overtaken by outsourcing - not just to developing nations, but a lot of processes can be subsumed by technological processes.  Why would you employ a factory of 100 workers, when you could install 30 robots and 10 technicians?  That's much more productive and cheaper to run.  So what is going to happen to the rest of the workforce as times change?  Will the gap between rich and poor increase, as the poor struggle to find jobs they've all been made redundant for?  It's just the owners of big business who thrive and profit. 

Anything can happen.  Absolutely anything.  Okay, midweek.  I can survive this!  I just want to be in a place where I don't have anything on and I can focus on other stuff.

I didn't know how bad the ebola situation was, but apparently it's killed over 4,000 people.  That is very, very high.  Previous outbreaks tended not to break into the 3 digits, but this is something else entirely.  It's like the opening part of World War Z, where the initial outbreak is being described.  Very disturbing.  I'm still miffed as to how the world is not doing anything as a joint community to combat it.  Instead we get news articles saying everybody has it and that we're all going to die!

I'm calm but I'm overtired.  I could do with some more time off.  But at least I'm leaving early today!  Just 3 hours 10 minutes...erghhhh.  Well time takes everything away, even us, eventually.

Alright, 70 minutes to go!  I can do this!  Isn't it sad that most of my more recent posts have concerned counting down the time until I can get out of here?  Well at least it's to get home and do other stuff, not so much about always waiting for the weekend, so that I'm wasting my life away.  I'm sure I mentioned it before, but the whole notion of a modern life is sick.  You are born, you go to school, learn things that mostly don't interest you, or aren't relevant to the real world, then you get ranked and graded against each other, so that you can achieve a piece of paper that enable you to get a job you don't like, so that you can spend the vast, vast majority of your prime years doing work, and not actually living life and enjoying the time you have, to then meet someone (sorry this is all a bit straight-centric), to spend your savings on a deposit for a house and have kids, forever being in debt to the bank, struggling from paycheck to paycheck, even if you're both working, doing it for the vast majority of your life, then to retire, when you're too old to actually spend your money and enjoy travelling, only to wile away the time until you die.  That's just something that's sick.

And so it is what it is.

Joaquin out.

Cover Of Rain

What are these days even?  It's cold, it's rainy, and I just want to stay in bed.  I'm not sleeping properly.  It's difficult to get to sleep, no matter how tired I am (and I am very tired), and then I am waking up early, unable to get back to sleep.  It's like my mind knows exactly what time it is, and keeps me up early just to prepare.  I'm quite certain that the brain is aware of things such as the exact time, and it can keep track of these things while you're asleep.  If our brains have a cell GPS system (research on this recently won the Nobel Prize), there's quite a lot in there that we can find out more about.  It's strange isn't it?  There's so much going on in there that we just aren't aware of.  Then you take a brain apart and it's just a random glob of weirdness.  It doesn't look like much, but it's the most powerful thing in the Universe.  Why?  Because of it's power to comprehend and create and imagine.  That's why.

So for some stupid reason I decided to go back to University for a Masters degree.  Damn I'm stupid, why would I do something like that?  I'm already not looking forward to going back to class.  Well I enjoyed university, I just need to ignite the fire.  Get myself going for competition.

When I sleep, I'm getting weird, obscure dreams.  Like something bad is about to happen.  Why is there seafood in my shoes?  How random and disturbing! 

Speaking of universities, the major one in this town recently got into a bit of hot water over investments.  So this university holds a $1 billion share portfolio, and noting that one of the companies it holds shares in - Santos (an energy and resources company), has been responsible for some major environmental problems, they decided to divest themselves of that investment, among others who are also lacking in corporate morals.  Since we all know Government is in the pocket of these sorts of major companies, they have come out and said they will seek justification from the university, and if they don't like it, they will look into pulling funding from the University!  What the hell?!  What is this?  We all live in a fascist nation!  We all know conservative governments support big business, even against the interests of the environment, or against the rights of workers, but this is going way too far.  Governments should not be able to question why an institution has chosen to divest.  It's not their right, and they should not be able to punish universities if they don't like the reasoning.

The nature of print journalism is sadly lacking.  You get sites like news.com.au, then smh.com.au, which just review social media for the latest trends and buzz and report on that, without reviewing facts or conducting independent research, and what we're left with is sensationalist journalism.  Don't let me get started on the daily mail and the australian, which are all just gutter journalism.  They say grossly outrageous and disgusting things, and try to whip up fear to generate headlines and sales.  It's truly disgusting.

The only real site I read in detail these days is The Guardian.  While I know there's a left wing bias within that paper, it is generally much more well-researched and presented (and proof-read and edited) than every other news site on the planet.  I miss Mr Greenwald on there, because The Intercept is a horribly set out website, and makes navigation difficult.  Maybe one day I'll work up the courage to tackle it and hopefully learn something new.  But I've been interested in Russell Brand's writings on the guardian.  Despite his reputation as a vagabond lothario, he is at heart, a fat, sensitive and intelligent individual.  He is making excellent statements regarding inequality and the need to start a revolution.  But look to revolutions of the past, they were born out of incredibly difficult situations, where many people were dying, and there was a general consensus that tyranny was the problem.  But the game has changed since the days of American Independence or the French Revolution, now a lot more people have money. Yes, they don't have that much compared to the truly rich, but they have a lot more than they used to. 

These days, so long as people consider themselves safe, the opportunity cost of fear, and general failure will prevent them from taking out major action.  Those occupy protests?  They were mostly homeless people and hippies and the unemployed - hardly the majority needed to actually instigate a revolution.  The fact is simple - we are unlikely to ever see a major revolution in Western ideology.  The spin doctors have done an amazing job at blaming other people, fellow countrymen, or the economy, and immigrants or refugees for your social problems.  So as long as people have a bit of money, and think they are relatively safe, they will not revolt.  This is how people can turn into slaves without fighting for their freedom.  They want to live, regardless of the cost to liberty.  The term live free or die has no bearing in reality.  Capitalism is the panacea to a revolution.  They can't make things easier for themselves, because they will keep chasing the things which are not important.  Can true happiness be achieved in a capitalist epistemology?  Perhaps.  But you need to reject all criticism and materialism.  People want a revolution for the wrong reasons - they want more money, they want bigger houses, they want more time off work.  This is why I think nothing will ever transpire, and it makes me sad.  Let's talk about a hypothetical situation.  A is worth 1 billion dollars is a tyrant ruler of the nation Traskistan.  One day, the people revolt, and a poverty-stricken nation of 50 million decide to revolt. What happens next?  A can just get the State (or himself) to pay a small force of 10 million (of those same people) to arm them and get them to subdue the other 40 million, or take their lives in the process.  Then he already has the added bonus of the military, who are obliged by oath to serve the Crown.  So no additional payment is needed.  They will sell out and betray their own people for money, even if the overall result is worse off for everyone in Traskistan, except A.

I've got a fair bit of work to do today, so I better get on to that!  I've done stuff this morning, but there's still plenty more for this afternoon.  These early parts of the week are good for getting things done.

Things just change all the time!  I need to think a bit more about what I'm doing.  I'm still over here trying to figure it out.

But I'll get on to it.  You see!  This is what happens, I don't blog for a while, then I come back with some great stuff!  Another great effort, if I do say so myself.  Perhaps I should focus on not blogging every weekday, and instead blog from time to time.  That would be much easier to manage.  And the quality of posts would also improve.  Hmm, something to think about after the 10 year blog review?  We'll see. 

Oh gosh!  It's only Tuesday?!  So much more to go!  And on top of that, there's still 3 hours left of this day?!  Yikes!  What the hell was I going to say?  I don't even remember anymore.  But at least it's just 90 minutes until I'm done!  Can't wait.  Ahh where does the time go when you're procrastinating?

I'm done for now.

Joaquin out.

Too Close, Too Far, Just Leaving Me With Scars

If only it was the other way around.  That would be much more satisfactory.  But I'm working it, maybe there's some practice to be had.  Though it's not exactly the same.  Who knows?  You can't just measure something flat when you need to measure how tall it is.  You're forgetting about the variable of gravity.  That makes all the difference.  Maybe I can compensate for it?  Not everything can be solved, but we can do our best to try.

I didn't think I would be back on those streets, or just that one in particular.  But I was.  The houses I knew, the park I had driven by so many times.  But how time changes, and none of us are the same.  What happened?

So now that I'm back with the program, I can get some good guitaring in, and do my best to sort out my situation.  I'll get there.  Just have to keep at it.  It's fun to play guitar!  I just want to get a new idea down, but I haven't had a new one in some time.  I guess part of that is due to not playing all that much lately, but I have been incredibly busy for some reason.

It's incredibly disconcerting to discover that all the places I have been to in the past have developed problems.  Hong Kong?  Now full of protests and crackdowns in light of the Chinese government exerting their influence.  Malaysia?  Grenade blast the other day, killing one and injuring 12.  Maldives?  Sinking into the ocean.  I really enjoyed these places, and I wish things could be better for the residents of these nations.  But I guess you have to realise that all countries have their problems.

Let's talk about information or data gaps.  So Facebook is a highly valued company, ditto with Google.  With the absence of proper products to sell and market, what do they deal with that is so valuable?  Information.  Everything you do on these platforms, and across platforms is tracked.  Website viewing habits, shopping, emails, who you interact with are all recorded and put on your electronic file in massive data houses with impregnable security.  There are some who mask their habits and personal information by deliberately putting in false information or deliberately withholding information in platforms like google or facebook.  But that's where an information gap can occur.  To verify the accuracy or veracity of something, you don't think the fb application or the messenger application (or a whole host of google applications) aren't monitoring your personal details and interactions and those of your friends?  Let me put it in an example.  A does not provide their address details on facebook or on google.  An information gap is created.  A is friends with B on facebook, and they interact with each other on their phone (texts and calls).  Google and facebook know this, so their applications review B's contacts on his phone to review whether an address is in there and report back to the server.  See, despite A creating an information gap, B has inadvertently filled it in.  How worrying.  It also harks back to things such as face recognition in photography.  On facebook I never tag my face in there, because they have a learning system, yet when pictures of me have been uploaded, the system somehow knows it's me and tries to tag me automatically.  Scary, isn't it?

Haha, and on a completely unrelated note, why is there no proper compatibility between hotmail and the native mail app on iOS?  Gmail syncs fine, so if you view an e-mail on gmail in a browser on a computer, it's automatically counted as read on your iOS device.  Vice versa if you read it on a device first.  But with hotmail?  You have to review the e-mail on the device and on a browser to actually get rid of it!  It's crazy.  You would have thought they could figure that stuff out? 

Why are people distracted by shiny things?  Ladies love big shiny jewellery so they can show off to others as a sign of status, it really has nothing to do with feelings of nostalgia or sentimentality.  Why?  Because if that were true, there would be a lot of antique jewellery out there, and there simply isn't.  I tend to find women are far more distracted by their phones and I'm worried by the trend.  All these mothers out with their kids, focusing on their phones and not paying attention to what is happening in front of them.  Seriously!  Other girls just staring straight down at their phones while walking ahead.  It's nuts!  I'm shocked there haven't been more accidents of this nature.  Do we all need to be plugged in all the time? 

There's a move to review the curriculum at schools and I'd be inclined to agree.  Most of what we learn is not relevant to life or even to history.  But what weirds me out is that there's a call to introduce more judeo-christian values and morals and western history into classes.  What?  That's something I don't agree with!  Education should be secular, because facts are facts.  All we learned about in history was western rose-coloured lenses history.  Aboriginal history was only covered for half a semester in high school.  Politicians just don't get it.

Then we get the former Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone on the Guardian saying that criticism of the widening gap between rich and poor is just a case of envying others.  That's absolutely disgusting, and totally typical of conservative politics.  They want to keep everything for themselves, and not share it with others.  It's all about who they know, who they can brown nose, and how they can maximise profits and become the richest, be the greediest and what not.  And to criticise that sort of monopoly and that mentality is apparently just envy?  No, because they work systems to ensure this is the status quo, and there is no hope for others in terrible situations.  This is Australia, and 1 in 7 people live in poverty.  That's a significant figure for a supposedly developed nation.  It's the sort of argument only a rich person could make.

Wow, I'm surprised at how productive I've been today!  Not just on here, but work wise and other stuff, it's good!  Hopefully this week can be a good blogging week.

With a bit more time, I'd like to be able to actually commence the blog intro/retrospective.  I know, time has gotten away from me, but it's something I am aching to do.  There'll be a lot of posts to get through and tag.  I look forward to it, though, this blog is our baby. 

Be still my gentle heart, it's not palpitating is it?  Everything is demure.  Am I getting enough sleep?  It was a crazy weekend.  I'd like to just be able to do nothing for a while.  But looks like I've still got 2.5 hours to go until I can get out of here.

2 hours.  Still working.  Getting there.  Yeah, I'm on instagram.  I don't post much, cause I don't really take pictures of anything.  But I've noticed that everyone is keen on posting selfies.  What is this?  Does everyone need that level of validation?  Are people that insecure?  Does everyone want to be famous?  You can't.  The idea of fame is dependent on more people being less famous than you, so that they can recognise you.  People need to understand that - it's not an equitable relationship.  This big concept of of you posting pictures of yourself is just insane.  It's borderline narcissistic.  Why are people so obsessed with this phenomenon?  I shall never understand.  Then again, there's a lot about the world that I just don't understand.

More needs to be done to promote self learning.  People get force-fed a certain ideology through schooling, but with self learning, people are free to read and decipher whatever information they can come across, and then reach an informed decision themselves, as to the facts in front of them.  It's much more satisfying. 

One hour and 15 minutes, I can do this!  Do I know everything?  No, but I know enough.  Or do I?  There's always that second guessing.  Alright, one hour!  Gotta make this count.  There'll be even more to get through tomorrow.  But I'll be on top of everything. 

Hahaha, 9 minutes!  Time flies when you're busy.

Joaquin out.

Saturday Night Blogger

We know how to do it!

So instead of doing absolutely anything else in the world, I am stuck here and wasting my time. Well things work out as usual.

But not all things end without purpose. I can still use my nuance developed from so long ago to get what I want. It's not all for naught. I can still get things done.

Do you ever look up and just look at the stars and just go wow the universe is so vast and we are so small in the grand scheme of things? And you realise we are just wasting our lives in the grandness of it all, stuck in these trivialities and pointless things.

I guess I can make up for not being able to blog for the majority of the week. I don't know why I haven't been able to get music before! I didn't get anything new in ages because I had stopped listening to new music and then I have been using iTunes to get stuff. So when I didn't have money in my account, I didn't get anything. But then I just rediscovered torrents! How good are they?! You can find almost anything, it's the best!

With every other form of retail exchange you can return the item if it is not satisfactory. But the Hollywood machine is so insidious they give you a trailer or a music clip and expect you to go see a movie or buy a cd or DVD based on hype. What if it's no good? I'm not paying for that! I get stuff for free. If I enjoy it, I will support the artist and buy the item, I have no qualms about that whatsoever.

Can I go home? I'm stuck in the ass end of the city and there is nowhere to go.

Maybe it's all a sign that we can get along and put everything where it should be. But I'm not sure yet. Still gotta stay alert and I'm always learning more than I'm actually using.

But as always this isn't the place and I don't have the time. There can be room to move. I could just fall asleep right here.

There are times when I hate my phone but then there are times like this when I'm consumed by boredom that I'm grateful to have a smart phone where I can pass the time.

I'll call it here for now.

Joaquin out.

Blended Misconceptions Of Us

I'm with the program, you can be sure of that.  I haven't had time to blog this week because things have been incredibly busy.  But I need some productivity and inspiration to just get it going and get some results on the board.  It is hilarious how you notice things.  Not everything is small.  Daylight savings is killing me.  I can't sleep, I can't rest, I can't get anything done at home.  I feel ineffectual.  Maybe Valeria was on to something about the hesitation?  That, and curiosity killed the cat, and you can consider me slain.  You wait, and then it's all done.  It's all over.  You take the opportunity and that's it.  It goes against every fibre of your being, but in the end, that's the right result.  You can only just blame yourself, and that's what I'm doing.

I had a lot to blog about in my absence, but of course I didn't write anything down, so it's all now lost in the ether.  Just letting you know that I'm still here.  But I'll keep this here.

Joaquin out.

Confirmation Of Confirmation Bias

This was just one of those days.  I just did not want to wake up or get out of bed, and my entire body hurt.  And before this day has even begun, I know things are going downhill fast.  But will there be a correction?  It's like trying to watch for the graph and hope it stops going in one direction for so long.  But either way, the Y axis is always variable, but the X axis is constant.  It will move from left to right.  That's a fact.  I've got a fair bit to get through today, in fact for the next full week.  But I've also got stuff to blog about so maybe I'll get to that first.

What's the difference between knowing and not knowing?  If the end game is the same, it's all zero sum.  But some things have been proven, and with educated guesses, I suppose even I could be right.  And how paths may have been crossed!  And things I did not want to know but always suspected have been proved.  It's a weird, weird world.  But I reckon I'm the clueless one.  Now things are making a lot more sense.  Right on the money!  Now there has to be an additional layer included.

I think good instinct must be married to common sense.  It must be rooted in common sense.  An animal that is acting on instinct is only successful if common sense is applied. I know, it's weird applying the concept of common sense to an animal, but I mean from the animals' entire scope of knowledge as a species.  Bad instinct is just random pure chance, because it's not rooted in any form of knowledge.  You would put your hand in the fire because it looks pretty, but you're not aware of the heat until it's too late.

I'm really concerned about exclusivity in retailing.  If you have an inferior product and charge an inflated price for it, it will sometimes outsell comparable items that do the same job, but why?  You'd think in a truly free market, consumer choice would dictate that the inferior product would fail.  But look at high fashion and luxury goods, it's a thriving market.  They release things like bags and really impractical things with hideously expensive price tags, and because of branding it will be valued highly and coveted by the market.  You can get similar or superior products for much cheaper!  It's a pointless exercise.  Some things I will never understand.  And it pertains to all products, not just this sort of stuff!  You can buy luxury phones overseas with jewels, and gold plating, but they have hardly any smartphone functionality!  What good is the phone??  Yikes, some things make no sense.

Damn these weird days to hell.  It's cold in the morning and then warm in the day.  I can't keep up with this.  The kind of exhaustion I have is one where I could just pass out anywhere and be happy.

Ahh in the old days, we used to play murder in the dark and jumping over the floor (as lava) in darkened rooms.  I miss those days.  They were so much simpler and happier.  Nothing lasts forever.

Things are just getting wildly out of control.  Maybe there will be a change. 

So much to do!

Joaquin out.

Prelude To An Error

It's strange that you can be certain of one thing, only to realise in a horrible moment that you were wrong all along.  It talks about an interesting facet of human belief, reasoning, and understanding.  But it's always important to make sure you learn from them.  Things are coming way back into balance and it's weird.  There are some changes that should not occur to the status quo, or else I'm going to be without a paddle in the proverbial creek.

Been a crazy morning, lots of work to get out of the way, and I still have stuff to get through this afternoon.  But I can find the time to blog!  Interestingly, we're about to pass a major milestone here - 30,000 page views!  That's insane!  I'm very proud!  It doesn't give an accurate reflection of total blog views, because people can just come to our site via the URL and then just navigate from there, without picking a blog title.  So who knows what the actual number is?  It doesn't matter.  I write for myself, not for the views or the links or the references.

Ahh fuck!  Just been dumped with more work!  This may make getting out of here a harder task than originally thought.  But suck it up and just do it.  As I listen to Martin, just do the work.  That's it, just do the work. 

Let's have a thought exercise.  What if I just changed everyone's clocks and watches and all timed devices.  So let's just move the time forward 47 minutes, arbitrarily.  While in reality, time is really 47 minutes in the past, but because of everyone's shared belief or shared delusion, time has just moved ahead 47 minutes and they're none the wiser.  That's the sort of view we hold about so many things, such as religion, currency and pretty much every other major idea.  If we just changed how we thought, things could be so much better.  But people wish to cling to having the clock 47 minutes ahead, just because everyone else has their time set that way.  And that solves nothing, and we are all worse off for it.

Wonderful news!  Australia is now directly involved in the war effort in Syria and Iraq.  Instead of laying back and just taking a support role, or even a humanitarian role, our air fighters are now directly involved in bombing targets in both countries.  Wonderful!  And the public just support this!  We are sheeple.  There's no real opposition in Australian politics, the Labor party is a joke.  They lost the race to the bottom, and now they are just keeping to the same line to remain consistent.  There's nothing Western democracies love more than warfare with people from vastly different cultures.  Some things will never change.

We're seeing an assault on our rights and our privacy at the moment by the government (surprise surprise).  Our government recently passed legislation allowing the entire Internet to be monitored (read: tapped) by our intelligence agencies on the strength of just one warrant.  Great!  So all your metadata and what not is up for grabs anyway, and then there's the added bonus of journalists facing 10 years prison if they report on matters to do with national security!  What?!  We live in a totalitarian state where nobody is accountable?  This is a conservative government's wet dream!  The public is too ignorant or passive to care. 

I might have to just call this one here because I have so much work on.  Gotta get a move on!  90 minutes to go, and now I'm cursing the clock for different reasons entirely.

And there's only more of this to come.

Joaquin out.

Glazing Or Frosting?

I don't actually know what the difference is between the two, I just needed a blog introduction for today.  We are living in times of horrible injustice out there.  One example is our treatment of asylum seekers.  For those of you not playing along at home, Australia is notorious for not wanting to share its resources with those seeking shelter and protection from discrimination and harm overseas.  They tend to regard these people as queue jumpers, and welfare wasters.  Such is our wanton disregard of them, we voted in a comically bad (almost evil) conservative government, because the mainstream Australian public didn't like hearing that people were arriving on boats to the country to seek asylum.  So instead, this new government now intercepts boats in international waters and seeks to return them back to where they came, against international rules, and the agreement on refugee rights that Australia is a party to.  The Navy does all the dirty work under claims of national security, and nothing gets reported to the media.  So the boats are still coming, it's just that nobody can report on it.  What fools the public are.  Instead of treating asylum seekers with humanity onshore, we put them in detention centres in other countries, where guards routinely abuse and mistreat these people who have already suffered great amounts.  So they're left to suffer more, and their mental illnesses pile up and they commit suicide, go on hunger strikes to protest, and harm other prisoners.  That's what they are, they're not being processed.  They become prisoners almost indefinitely, as they're lost in the bureaucracy of a government that does not care about them, and the public is unmoved by their plight either.  A few of them have died in captivity, and we're now hearing stories about the guards forcing female prisoners to shower naked so they can be offered hot water.  This is barbaric, and our government and wider public have the audacity to call these people the ones breaking the law?  Disgusting hypocrisy.

Another example of crazy injustice on a global scale is the new decision from President Obama to relax the rules surrounding drone strikes on civilian populations on Syria and Iraq.  Previously, the order was that drone strikes would never be allowed unless there was an absolute certainty that no civilians would be harmed (even though many still died, but yeah whatever it takes to help you sleep at night), but now they are just allowing drone strikes without that consideration.  So what, they're actively treating civilians as collateral damage now?  That's so sick.  And the public is saying that ISIS or ISIL or whatever the media buzzword acronym of the day is are deliberately using civilian human shields ala Hamas in Palestine and what not.  Even if that is the case, that's no excuse to deliberately target, or even accidentally kill civilians in warfare. If you're a civilian in one of these places, it's most likely that you don't even know you're living next to one of these monsters, and then all of a sudden your entire family gets blown up, while some idiots halfway across the world with no understanding of the planet outside of their narrow viewpoint will justify it by saying it was your choice, or that you must have known.  These are dark times.

And I'm still tired today.  I don't want to wake up.  Not now, not ever.  Things don't seem to be making much sense.  Has humanity as a whole taken a turn for the worse?  Or has this all happened before and it's going to all happen again?  We never seem to learn.  There's too much going on at the moment.  I'm having a tough time focusing.  Maybe people expect too much.  It's time to get a move on.

Next week will be an even shorter week for me, so probably won't get that much time to blog much.  Wow, it's actually October and I have not commenced the blog intro/retrospective, but I will get a move on with that shortly.  It'll be nice to have it out of the way by the end of this year if that's possible. 

Damn, things are getting busy!

Joaquin out.