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| Music - no biological imperative? *and* it's kinda useless? Hm. | May 25, 2006, 3:29PM |
 by: sonicdemonic |
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I don't know much about music, other than these few details of its history, which have made the differences all the world round for the way we hear the seventh degree flattened, for instance. Would-be martinets take heed! Nothing can pillage a system quite like those who **pillaged** a system - in the old days, when cutthroat courtesy and the sweep of a ballroom gown, the murky howl from the black-and-white set perched under the lightbulb, cased by peeling paint walls and St. Cecilia's fading portraiture, arranged for our distinct viewing pleasure - (oh, sonique, you ramble, playing at capriccios!) - well, in the old days, when all that would have commanded some respect..!). Well. We owe it to ourselves to strip away all the music that started its life outside the composers' minds, on paper, as a pure abstraction, and ended by degradation in concert hall and drawing room (surely what happened to Schubert's beautiful Fantasia in F minor, for four hands (at one piano) - reduced, in Scriabin's sneering estimate (and sexual snobbery) as "music fit for girls to practice together" (some feminist theorists have - whether rightly or not I know not - claimed this to be Scriabin's unconscious statement of the Fantasy Involving Two Women that allegedly stalks all men. But more on the surface, surely Scriabin's view reflects the degree of disdain repeated hearings, unintelligent, uninspired hearings, made on its audience as well.? Thank god for the anti-sentimentalist wreath that wrapped the world with the rumblings of the Hitlerian menace! It went hard at winning the Second World War and the Cold War after, in the process winning back Schubert from the enemy! Sentimental no longer, now Schubert was the young suffering poet of song, of the Winterreise! Ah, Schubert..! Now we celebrated you too much, you and your death at 31, for all the over-SENTIMENTAL reasons..! Is it true a hundred noble countesses claimed you died in their arms? Nonsense! We'll never learn how to be musical like this. Tally ho, lads! Tip top! All that! Post-war, tempi were clipped, rhythms mechanical, music was ordered to a high degree. Strands of disorder began to occur in the 50s avant-garde with the young Ligeti. (The old Ligeti, now in his 80s, is helping us rediscover sentimentality again, go figure!) Sexually our parents burned in their teenage years but really wanted to go at it to prove their dreary parents and that fucking missionary position wrong once and for all. And now? In European/American Art Music since 1200, we can point to some definite high points: The invention of the Trine. Dissonance. Resolution of dissonance. Metric irregularity. The development of the musical phrase so plastic, so textured that it could be stretched or shrunk without suffering any cogency or aesthetic value? (of course, it helps if such a phrase could please be palindromic, at least numerically if not pitchwise..! But distort one end in the first half of the pd, and distort in an opposite direction the opposite end in the last half of the pd. Now we have a mirror palindrome in which the nature of the reflection itself has been mirrored. If, for instance, the distortion were "turn white", the mirror would show the image turning black. The mirror, as metaphor, can no longer be a mirror. It can only be the unseen hand of the craftsman, changing the scenery from within - not a reflection, but a live, active tableau with an inner life in miniature. This is why I like the Mazurkas of Chopin, but even more so his crystalline Preludes. That is a self reverential construct if ever there were one. "The canon is good because it says it's good". It's frankly in love with itself, isn't it, and mathematically pretty creaky too. So what if it sounds good - and here I agree. Sounding good is not enough. How the lines interact on paper, and the printing style - the look - of the piece lie together, well, now, that's just SUGAR. A canon valuable only because it states its own value is not a cannon after all, but a popgun ;). Let he who has ears to ear... decline. Musica Fichta! O Cecilia, salve musica! Salve me! Salve nos! Inner symmetry begets outer value, or so they wanted us to believe, those older masters. If we composers were expected to work from the inside out, to dine literally within, in the servants' dining-quarters with the commonfolk, how were we to avoid Schopenhauer's conviction? "...you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a sort of a penal colony, or [Greek: ergastaerion] as the earliest philosopher called it." "Amongst the evils of a penal colony is the society of those who form it; and if the reader is worthy of better company, he will need no words from me to remind him of what he has to put up with at present. If he has a soul above the common, or if he is a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself." His point, though, is that acknowledging existence as a sort of purgatory, or penitentiary, is important because: "this view of life will enable us to contemplate the so-called imperfections of the great majority of men, their moral and intellectual deficiencies and the resulting base type of countenance, without any surprise, to say nothing of indignation; for we shall never cease to reflect where we are" Schopenhauer's conviction that we should see ourselves as superior, well, we found that tasteful! But the latter portions almost seem dreary, we long for the upward push of the might Philologist Friedriche, decades ahead. That striving for will..! Alongside the powerful sweep of the historical channel and tide that is the centuries' accumulated swirling force, a new force is emerging, making use of its own tonalities and in Eastern European and certain African cases, exceeding any Western template of the previous 1300 years in complexity. Pop music. But all these things lie ahead. Following will be a brief history and timeline of Western music since 1100 C.E., and 2010 C.E. (I say 2010 because i think the music of 4 years from now might be easier to predict using directly accelerated (by anticipated trends in media technology) formulae. 2010? Nightclubs? As long as they leave off the bum-cleavage glitter-dust - wave of the future! - the world's a safer place. After the history, the work: A double story. A story about the Great Human Experiment in Thinking about Music, and the Great Human Experiment in Making Music, which of course required Instruments - not a third section, so much as an interweaving thread crossing the two broader wings. I have lots of time to do this, as it's to no-one's initiative but me own, so don't be surprised if I end up ranting parts that I wouldn't print here because musical invective is out of place in what is purporting to be (and failing to be, thus far, ahem!) a moderately-paced, fairly serious story of the history of Cecilia's art. Wish me luck. | |
topic: Essays | |
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| The Lonely Path We All Will Lead... HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ARTIC | May 25, 2006, 8:48AM |
 by: brokn_within_secrets |
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I must be the only person who seems to have a life full of deadly thoughts. The thoughts of not believing in fate, god, love, and more sinister and crazed thoughts that I don’t believe anyone will ever understand. You have to see why I don’t believe in these things, there are very many reasons for each of them. No one will ever honestly understand because my thoughts have caused me to be alone in a world I detest with no compatible passion. I sit everyday of my juvenile yet pathetic life and pity myself for not leading a life that I wish I’d have. Everyday I’m feeling numb and empty with no sympathy for any other living thing. If I have no sympathy for my self then why hold sympathy for some one else whose life seems more fulfilled then my own? I’m in a type of helpless denial that nothing can resurrect. My destructive drive is all that seems to keep my heart from slowly coming to a halt. The pain that I constantly feel is what drives me to make every one else’s lives full of the misery that impounds each little speck of my heart. Imagine how much happier and serene your lives would be with out such a twisted soul as my own. I’ve learned what pain and misery is and from it the “normal” people must learn. But as I constantly have to explain to the puny minded morons- there is no such thing as normal. For the simple fact that no matter whose eyes you’re looking through someone else is finding you as weird or creepy, it doesn’t matter what one person thinks. To you, you’re typical, but to others you’re peculiar. There for your not normal and you need to get over that simple concept. If only people would poses the knowledge to understand such simple possibilities. If only peoples minds could conceive anything other then self-doubt, revenge, or reassurance. The human race would over power every last sequence for which we lack in. And we would no longer have to hold back on our true feelings because every one would understand what were going through and how it feels. And for it we wouldn’t be judged or institutionalized. But for now our lives will survive by finding that one individual for whom we can confide all our: doubts, request, love, hate, and pain into. The one person who you can confide every death fulfilled thought into. The one person you will never honestly stop searching for because to some this person doesn’t exist. Whether you think you found that person and they aren’t trust worthy or if the person you believe to be that one person who can help, doesn’t realize the affect they hold on you. Then again maybe its true that such a person never exists to some and never will no matter how much time you spend searching for them. This conflict will remain in the question stage for as long as man kind shall live. It’s odd that some individuals believe that love is the key to survival. In my eyes love is really hate. When you love you put a burden upon yourself. You take down your natural guards and care and constantly confide in the one you love. But then a situation arouses and it ends. Hate fills your heart and darkness over powers your soul, leading to the reasoning of love really being hate. Darkness is a brilliant way to invade souls. Darkness will one day fill every ones soul and heart leading to the end of everything you believe in. The glory of the dark, its name alone is all that some seem to know. Now that shall invade all of your helpless minds. It takes brilliance to understand what kind of helpless acts will one day happen. And to know that wicked minds will one day rule this world. Whether the empty souls are here or not they will still rule because they understand. Empty souls seem to grasp the security needed in order to succeed in this deadly world. To excel in life is one of the things that seem to be the center of others fears. Maybe they fear that there death will come before they even get the chance to go any where in life. But whether they admit it or not, that is most likely the way they feel. How long would some one who has every thing going for them live in a depression stage? If you believe your better than someone who cries from feeling unwelcome or they cry because there afraid of living in one more fucked up day, and being depressed yet again, you deserve to take a dose of that individuals life . You would most definitely rot in there tormented hell. Just to live in such a world that takes every last strength left in your body. Just to live through another misery filled day. Learning of the horrid thoughts of wanting to cut down to your vein, just so you may watch the blood spill out to your death. The retched thoughts that are way too complicated for any other person to understand unless you’re ranked as one of the suicidal. You take so long to realize what type of pain you’re actually going through and you’ll see that you too are ranked as a suicidal individual. The thoughts you only got to experience through holding someone else’s pain are now piercing through out your head. And once again the suicidal humans have eloped their thoughts with some one else’s. And have conquered there own army of the suicidal dead. But if suicide is a constant thought in your head then you must be suffering from something so hard that your mind can’t seem to erase it .And if you keep these extravagant thoughts caged up then maybe you setting the “beast” lose will end your corrupted misery. Maybe I’m just delusional believing that speaking up about your true feelings will conquer your pain until it ends. The agony of defeating the one thing that has for so long felt real to you will disturb your new peaceful life, ending the secure life that you now hold and returning it to your misery packed old ways. Such brilliance shouldn’t go to waste. So minds of others will be corrupted. So I will stay on this retched world just so that I can watch us all burn in our tormented ways. Most of these things hold people in a state of denial. But one day they will admit and love what they now deny. | |
topic: Life | |
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| Reality of Recycling | May 23, 2006, 1:18AM |
 by: Illuminatus |
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1 Illuminatus “Rinsing out tuna cans and tying up newspapers may make you feel virtuous …” Why does the world recycle? Is it because it saves trees, or because it saves money? Maybe it is because places to bury trash are becoming less available. Saving the environment sounds like a good reason to recycle trash and recycling will create decent jobs, as well. All of these sound like excellent reasons to recycle. Unfortunately, none of these reasons are actually applicable to the recycling movement. “Recycling Mania” was started in the late 1980’s by a man named J. Winston Porter. He published a government issued paper about America’s waste problem. His paper was based on misinformation. However, America bought into the sparkling idea of a trash free future, when everything can be reused and nothing is wasted. The ugly truth behind recycling, although, is it is more costly to recycle than to produce from raw materials. Recycling does not save natural resources. Recycling usually has an adverse effect on the environment. Landfill space is not running out and landfills have become increasingly safer since the late 1980’s. Despite its adverse effects on society, recycling can be seen everywhere; from the huge recycling centers, to the three arrows plastered on everything from toilet paper to pop bottles. Almost everyone believes in recycling, but is it a substantiated belief? Or is it a waste on our economy, our environment, and our lives? 2 Recycling is a waste of money. It is not cost-effective. The United States government has recorded a net loss of over 33,000,000 dollars annually for the past 15 years (Jillete 12:50). That is 495,000,000 dollars wasted. Taxpayers have a collective 8,000,000,000 dollars ripped out of their pockets annually to fund the subsidies placed on recycling (Jillete 17:00). Subsidies may be granted to keep prices low (reference.com) .The government grants subsidies to recycling companies to keep prices low so that consumers will buy the product (Jillete 13:46). These subsidies mask the true cost of recycling. The true cost of recycling is 150 dollars per ton. To just throw away trash in a landfill will cost only 50 dollars a ton (Jillete 12:30). “The simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill” said John Tierney in his article “Recycling is Garbage” in the New York Times (Tierney) and Daniel K. Benjamin, a professor at Clemson University stated “In almost all communities it is more expensive to recycle than it is to landfill.” (Jillete 11:27). Recycling costs more than just throwing away garbage, but can we sell the high-quality products we make from recycling for a profit? The answer is no. One can make better quality, cheaper versions of stuff starting from scratch (Jillete 17:15). Most offices will not buy recycled paper because, in the process, the fibers are shortened and the paper is weaker and more susceptible to damage (Hah 23). Not only do the products not recoup their cost, they are not as marketable as virgin products, which cost significantly less to manufacture. Recycling is 3 expensive enough as it is, but adding in the salaries of the workers who work in the recycling plants, the cost of the energy to fuel these plants, the cost of the extra trucks to pick up the sorted recyclables and cart them off to the plant raises that cast even more. If it all goes as planned it will still cost three times as much to recycle than it will to just throw it away (Jillete 12:30). This does not account for an oversight or an accident. If someone accidentally left the metal ring around the neck of a glass bottle sent off for recycling, that metal ring would put a dark spot in the glass and that piece would have to be cut out and the whole batch re-melted. If two different colors of glass were mixed together, the recycled product would be an ugly mixture of the colors and that would have to be totally thrown out (Hah 13). What will make up the cost of that batch of glass? Losing all this money is justified though, because we are saving the worlds natural resources … or are we? “We are not running out of natural resources.” said Daniel Benjamin. He is right. Today there are more trees than ever since the 1920’s. Oil reserves have not even shown a significant decrease over the past century. In fact the EPA has stated three times in the 20th century that petroleum reserves will run out within 15 years. This has not happened. There has been no real decrease in known oil reserves. We are using oil, but with the widespread use of oil, human ingenuity has enabled us to double our output per unit of energy that we had fifty years ago (Benjamin 19). Oil is not the only resource that people are afraid of being depleted; the loss of forests is a huge fear too. The big problem with the 4 manufacturing of paper is that people seem to think we are running out of trees, but we are not. The amount of new growth in forests each year exceeds the amount of consumed paper twenty fold (Benjamin 18) because using natural resources motivates people to create new ones. (Benjamin, 20) If people use paper, they will grow more trees to make the paper. However, if people start recycling paper, the demand for trees will become nonexistent and we will not need anymore, so people will stop growing trees. Most of the virgin pulp used in the manufacture of paper is grown on tree farms built specifically for the manufacture of paper, if there was no manufacture of paper, tree farms would not exist. (Jillete, 18:17) “If you want more trees, waste more paper” (Jillete 24:34). There could not be more truth to Penn Jillete’s words. The more we use trees the more trees will be grown. If there is a higher demand for paper then there will be more incentive to grow trees for a profit. It is simple economics. “Recycling does not save trees.” – Daniel Benjamin. In reality the manufacture of paper is not the leading cause of depletion of the forested areas of the world. Tree loss can be directly linked to the government’s failure to protect private property, or treating forests as public property, not the manufacture of paper. Recycling does not save money, and it certainly does not save resources, but does it protect our environment? Recycling is amazingly enough, bad for the environment. There are five toxic substances in the manufacture of paper, while, eight are used in recycling. Almost twice as many harmful chemicals are used in recycling than in 5 manufacture. (Benjamin, 22) What is a recycling center to do with all these harmful chemicals? Recycling is a manufacturing process. It uses complicated machinery that belches huge amounts of harmful smoke into the air (Hahn 7). A truck comes and collects your recyclables. Not the same truck that was already in your neighborhood picking up your garbage. The truck, clouding the air with smoke, carts your paper off to a recycling center usually near a forest. Then the paper is put on one of the aforementioned machines which shred the paper up, putting more smoke into the atmosphere and polluting the nearby trees. Then the paper must be de-inked, this produces a sludgy chemical mess with no real way to dispose of it. Then it is bleached and the bleach must be washed out. What can be done with the bleach? Then yet another machine presses the pulp into paper, yet again more smoke polluting the precious trees. The easiest solution would have been putting the paper in the same can as the garbage (Jillete 19:00) (Hah 7). Recycling is not proven to produce less pollution than manufacture (Benjamin 20). Recycling does not save money or resources and is bad for the environment. But it has been said that we are running out of landfill space and the landfills we do have are very dangerous and that could be a problem. The Mobro 4000 is a boat that tried to make money by buying space in a Louisiana landfill for some New York trash. The boat tried to drop it off in North Carolina but they would not take it, so the Mobro 4000 spent weeks going up and down the East coast looking for someone to buy its trash (Jillete 9:18). The EPA 6 attached to this and put out a paper saying that we were running out of room to put our trash. (Landfills are holes that we compact our trash in and cover it up with dirt.) The problem with that report was that the EPA counted the number of landfills, not the capacity (Benjamin 10). The truth is that we have an abundance of room for our landfills. 10,000 people produce a seven foot tall pile covering an acre in one year (Hah 3). The average landfill is 172 acres in size and around 200 feet deep (Jillete 23:45). The average landfill can hold 48,000,000 people’s trash in one year. There are 295,734,134 people in the United States (census.gov). It would take only seven landfills to hold the trash for one year for everyone in the United States. There are 1,761 landfills in the United States right now (epa.gov). The world has enough space for about 252 years of trash. How much space will this take up? Only .00008% of the United States is currently being used for landfills. We are not running out of room. A 35 by 35 mile landfill only 200 feet deep will be enough room for 1,000 years of trash. No one is actually proposing that we build a huge landfill or not build any more for 250 years, it is just for perspective. Another concern people have about landfills is the dangers they involve. One such danger is leachate a fluid that is made when solids decompose. People are worried that the fluid will get into the groundwater and poison the water table. No such evidence has ever been found (Benjamin 11). Landfills now must meet certain requirements to prevent such dangers from happening. These are, several feet of dense clay must be laid down, a thick plastic liner is placed on top of the clay, and then several feet of gravel or sand, 7 as rubbish is laid down dirt must be used to cover it daily, leachate must be collected by pipes and sent to wastewater treatment plants (Benjamin 13). These measures make modern landfills a considerably less dangerous threat than celery, pears and lettuce (Benjamin 12). Even the EPA has admitted that the threat of landfills is non-existent (Benjamin 11). The dirt covering landfills daily stops toxic materials from migrate inside of the landfill more than a little bit, but they never get out of the landfill (Benjamin 14). Another so-called danger is the methane that forms when active decomposition takes place. (Active decomposition is the process by which organic compounds decompose and are returned to the earth (reference.com)). Methane is an energy fuel and all landfill collect this gas and use it to provide 60,000 homes with electricity for around 30 years (Jillete 27:20). Landfills can make improvements to areas they are in by converting them to parks when they are totally full. Cover them up, plant some trees and there is a park or better yet, a tree farm where you can provide America with more paper (Hah, 49). America is a huge continent with plenty of place to store its trash. There is no need to fear running out of space for another ten thousand years. Wasting money, time, energy, resources, polluting the environment and researching better ways to recycle at the expense of new productive technology. What argument does recycling have left? Recycling creates good jobs, what some may call “The Pot of Gold at the End of the Garbage Rainbow”. What is so great about these jobs? Well you get paid a decent wage sorting through trash perpetuating the wasteful act of 8 recycling. Sorting jobs are just dirty make-work jobs that accomplish nothing but wasting time and money. These good people could be out doing something productive but they are stuck on an assembly line sorting through others’ trash. Aluminum is also a good recycling product. It costs less to make recycled cans than to dig up new bauxite to make new ones. There is real money in aluminum. But only 30 percent of the aluminum in the US has been recycled (Hahn 4). If there is money to be made recycling aluminum why are we only recycling 30 percent? If something works you should do it. But the recycling movement is inefficient and can not use the good idea when it is given to them. Recycling is inefficient and wasteful. Recycling is bad; it does not save money, or energy instead it wastes time and resources. We are not running out of landfill space and recycling actually harms the environment. Recycling is a world-wide movement. But it is harmful to society, to every society. There are better activities we could engage ourselves in, more useful avenues for our time and money. People will do insane things for recycling because they believe it is right. Recycling is not right; America should not waste time sorting through egg-shells and coffee grounds when all your hard work is meaningless in the end. You will be better off throwing your garbage away instead of trying to recycle trash. “… but recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America” – John Tierney, New York Times. 9 Works Cited Benjamin, Daniel K. Eight Great Myths About Recycling. http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps28.pdf. September 2003. March-April 2006 Hahn , James. Recycling: Re-Using Our World's Solid Wastes. London : Franklin Watts, 1973. Jillete, Penn, Teller. Penn and Teller’s Bullshit Showtime. Los Angeles, CA. April 6, 2004 Tierny, John. “Recycling is Garbage.” New York Times, New York NY. June30, 1996. www.census.gov United States of America’s Census Bureau. April 12, 2006. April 13, 2006 www.epa.gov. Environmental Protection Agency of the United States of America. February 22 2006, April 2006. | |
topic: Current Events | |
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| Rumor Has It, The Ringer, and The Family Stone | May 22, 2006, 11:19PM |
 by: XangelXmysticsX |
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Two chick flicks and a comedy (with a chick flick ending). Rumor Has It: This movie is what happened after "The Graduate" (or if you've never seen the movie but you listen to classic rock- "Mrs. Robinson") If you've never seen or heard either- the "Rumor" is this: Man sleeps with older woman. Man sleeps with woman's daughter (whom he goes to school with)- leaving first woman completely jaded against men. Daughter gets married and has kids. Man sleeps with second woman's daughter (first woman's grand daughter)- who happens to be engaged. Pretty predictable 'chick flick'. Great acting, great actors, hilarious story line. (Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley Maclaine) The Ringer: Only Johnny Knoxville could pull off something like this. The story of a kind hearted man who can't stand up for himself. He gets in a bind and tries to rig the Special Olympics. Other Olympians catch on and talk him into making a better person of himself. If you're one of those politically correct people, you probably wouldn't like this movie. However, if you're a 'Jackass' fan, I think you'd like it. (I'm not a Jackass fan and I loved it.) A great comedy with a 'chick flick' ending. And for my absolute favorite of the bunch- The Family Stone: Much like my own family actually. It's a romantic comedy set at Christmas time. Man brings home woman. Family drives woman over the breaking point. There's a couple of twists and turns, a few cuts, scrapes and a black eye, but everything works out in the end. Claire Danes did so much better in this than in "Shop Girl". Huge cast, highly active movie (you almost have to have ADD to keep up with it), real life plot. | |
topic: Movie Reviews | |
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| Secret War | May 21, 2006, 9:44AM |
 by: Murderous_Breeze |
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The first sign of their presence began in 1097, by this time, they held a very strong and powerful grip on England who at this point in history was united under one crown by William the Conqueror. The priests of christondom promoted a crusade to capture the holy land of Jerusalem, in the name of Jesus Christ. While the knights of christondom battled against the armies of Islam, outside the high gates of Jerusalem, the secret society were pulling the strings on the outcome. This secret society built on shadow and the ultimate lust for power would be the grand masters of almost every war and major turning point in history. They were known as the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or simply, the Templar Knights. They believed in the Kabalah, a form of mysticism, Jewish magic dating back to ancient Egypt. While the Crusades were being fought in the name of God and his Will, The Templar Knights were there for their own selfish reasons. The first ever temple of Solomon was built in Jerusalem and was a place of worship for Solomon, one of the greater prophets. After being captured by the Arabian armies, led by the General of Saracens, Salahadin, they abandoned it. But it was not what was in this temple which concerned the Templar Knights, it was what was under it. A golden treasure and holy items believed to be the cup of life, this was the true purpose of the war. After the 3 year war at Jerusalem ended, and when the French finally siezed the great walls of the city. King Richard, King of England at the time was given evidence of the slaughtering that the Templar Knights did to the Muslims of Jerusalem. He also uncovered their true relegion, and labeled them as Heretics to Christianity. Every Templar knight was to be killed, and their temples to be burnt to the ground. A few fled. The templar knights hid in shadow, for if they ever wished to survive they would have to die, or more precisley their name would have to die. They then master minded a plan that has changed the very pages of history, they migrated to the very place that was in need of dire independance from England. Scottland. The death of William Wallace gave the Scottish people less hope, the Templar Knights made a secret alliance with the king of Scottland, Robert the Bruce. The Bruce accepted their alliance and their skill and years of fighting the mighty armies of Islam would pay of. The Scottish met the English forces and defeated them. After the death of the English king, England was left without any throne, by right of succession the King of Scottland became king of England, making the Templar Knights power even more expandable, England and Scottland were now united. The Templar Knights had changed their name by this time, and in 1307 they announced publicly their new Society. A name that would be heard by millions, but understood by a few, the name of Freemasons. Freemasons began to pull the strings of Kings and Queens, holding ultimate power in their hands, and freely being able to endulge in their ancestral rights, the Kabalah. for the next 350 years they would hold Europe in their grip, believing in the prophets of old, that the day would come when the "Devine Creator" would come, and all non-believers woud burn. The biggest turning point of their Masonic way of thinking was the French Revolution (1789-1799). Spreading as far as the land which they fled 600 years before. France was falling due to absolute Monarchy, the lesser fortunate people were in rebel. A speach that was given by one Louis De`chou and i quote: "Gentlemen, as i am standing here, and recieving the applause from my right, and the applause from my left, i see we all agree that it was Masonry that made the French Revolution" When the first settlers came to the land of America, they not only brang uncultured people, brutal weapons, but also the Masonic way of thinking. The Freemasons after discovering America were now the most well respected, and least known society in the modern world. The world has just witnessed the first ever Masonic country in the world, America. On April 30th, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. Or was it the first Mason-President of the United States. Their presence is everywhere, they are the master engineers of the world, the wars that you and your loved ones fight are in shadow, in their name, you are fighting for what they believe in. They are everywhere, when you turn on your television, they are their, they sit with you when you read your newspaper, they listen to you when you turn on the radio, and they feed you the Masonic way of thinking when you see the Presidents and Governments of the world speek out. They have their own laws, they believe in ultimate power, a one world governments. They are the media, they are Christianity, they are the Jews, and they are the Muslims. No one is safe. They pull the strings of the countries of the world, and their decisions are all for the end. For they believe in the Antichrist, The "Great Architect of the Universe". They are the forebringers of him, waiting his arrival. They poison your mind with their garbage day after day, do your own research, dont take my own word for it, read about the history pages that have been whiped out with white ink and the pages stuck together. They are the Freemasons, and for you who wish to be a free thinking mind, you are their greatest fear, for a person who wishes to think freely, is the greatest threat to their plan for ultimate world power. www.infowars.com its all their. You can make a difference. | |
topic: Life | |
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| Who's Who? | May 20, 2006, 5:39PM |
 by: untold truth |
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Some people never let you know who they truly are. They hide behind laughter or sarcasm as a way to deflect you from realizing exactly who they are. They claim that they would never hide anything from you because you know everything about them, but do you? Really? Everyone has at least one dirty little secret that they keep to themselves. Even if it’s not a dirty little secret, there is always something that they don’t tell you. Who they like, what happened when their parents divorced, what happened in the past. There are always those things that are never shared, because we still feel insecure and we don’t feel the need to share, we don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable. Some people hide in that knowledge, they hide because they know that you can’t, and won’t, know everything about them. But the thing is, when secrets are held, you can’t fully trust someone, because they can’t seem to trust you. I know it seems hypocritical but that’s just the way it is. Because everyone does it, everyone keeps secrets. They hide their past as if it were a dirty magazine that they can hide under their beds. Sometimes there are good reasons that the past becomes hidden. I've had a few times in my life that I choose to leave in the past, mostly because it’s too painful to remember. I’ve gone through family issues like everyone else, done things that I'm not proud of, and I’ve swept them under the rug. We are all entitled to keeping our past in the past, but then can we really say that we can trust each other if we don’t know each other for real? The thought of bearing all, showing the world your true self is a scary thought. Everyone could laugh at you and pick on you. You could be hated and beaten. These are just some of the reasons why we are hiding. We don’t let people know about our pasts because it might hinder our future with them. We try to control all the aspects of our lives but the truth is that it cannot happen because we only a small part of a big world, we are only one tiny head amongst the crowd; we are only one person in a room of other people. There are so many different people and cultures in the world that one person cannot control all of the little details in life. You can’t control the people you meet on the street or in your school. You can’t stop the way people think of how you dress or who you hang out with. You have no say in how people will react to who you choose to love or how you choose to live your life. If you can’t control all of that, then why do we try? We are told to live up to our potentials as students, as people, but how does anyone else but us know when we have reached it? What is the whole point of try to reach someone else’s idea of potential? So many questions and no answers. You can try and argue, you can try and reason, but there are no true answers. There is no real right and wrong, only what is put into our heads and what we are told is right and wrong. There is no one God or Higher Being, there are many. What is the point in trying to punish others for what they believe in? What is the point in trying to keep up the walls and not let certain people in? The point is to make us think that all humans are different. The point is to separate us and segregate us and make us fight wars against each other so some person can come and say “we kicked your ass now bow to me cause I’m better then you…so HA!” I mean that’s basically it isn’t it? There is no real point to the whole charade. There is no real purpose to the fighting and arguing. There’s no real point in saying “I’m better then you” other then to boost your ego. I mean get a reality check. The worst part is that when we do those kinds of stunts it only shows the person that we want to project, not who we really are. And when you decide to project an image of yourself that is not who you really are, you can make friends, or not make friends, that only know you for that façade. You can’t make real friends, because you’re not letting yourself go. I think that I know why we keep these secrets hidden. Not only do we not want to be judged, or become vulnerable, but we also don’t want one person to have that kind of power over us. The ability to break us down and destroy us if they want. That kind of power is destructive and can tempt someone in too many ways imaginable. Just thinking of someone having that kind of power is enough to make anyone nervous. I mean even married couples never tell all their dirty little secrets. You may want to, but divorce rates are going up so marriage isn’t necessarily forever nowadays. A marriage can break over those tiny little secrets. Ok some of them are big GIANT secrets, but there are still the little ones that could destroy it just as easily. We want this picture perfect life, like those of the people on tv. We want to have a loving family, a dog or a cat, the perfect house in the perfect neighbourhood. But its not gonna happen. Your husband could be abusive, your kids could have health issues, you could live in the worst part of town, and your dog could get rabies. There’s no way to tell what is going to happen every second of your life. Which leads back to control again. The need to be able to make sure that nothing goes wrong, that everything goes along smoothly. But you know its not. There’s going to be those crazy days where your family will drive you up the wall. There’s going to be the inevitable day when your daughter will come home with a boyfriend with tattoos, or your son will be asking to get his lip pierced. You really have no control over anything but yourself, and even that can sometimes fail. Think of all the stupid things you said when you were angry, things you didn’t necessarily mean, or when you say something lame in front of someone you’ve been crushing on for a long time. You can call it fate or destiny, whatever you want, you’ve got no control. What if there is a master plan? Then everything is already decided right? But what if its up to you to make your life what you want? You’re still gonna screw up more then once along the way so why get so beat up about it when it finally happens? Have you ever met someone who is perfect at everything? One of those kids at school who gets 90’s in everything, their clothes are perfect, makeup flawless, and they never make a mistake? They tend to spazz out when a teacher gives then an 85? That’s when you know something thinks that they have control over life, and life just decided to throw them a curve ball. They get so worked up about a stupid 85 that they seem to miss the point. Its not that you got a lower mark, or that your work was not up to snuff, its just that you’ve had a bad day, and you’re going to make mistakes. So don’t moan and groan about it, it’s only one, mark out of hundreds over your schooling career. You just cant seem to get everything perfect, no matter how hard you try. Its just the way things are done. You have to try to move on and accept what life has dropt on your doorstep. I mean is it really going to matter 10, 15, even 5 years down the road? It may seem like it now, but its not the end of the world! Mistakes happen and you have to be able to handle and learn from them when they occur. To just give upon life and say “to hell with it” is just a way of running chicken shit and not wanting to deal with the issues at hand. If you get in a car accident for instance, you have to learn from what happened and you also have to try and make the best of each day. Giving up and offing yourself means that life has gotten the best of you and you weren’t prepared for it. For you to survive you have to stand up and face the problem head on. You have to just get up, dust yourself off, and move on. One of the biggest things about secrets and not telling anyone about them is that you don’t want to feel like their not going love you after what you’ve done. The issue of self-acceptance plays a strong role in this topic. When you can’t accept what you’ve done in the past then you think that no one else can. If you know that someone is always going to be there for you and you know that they love you, then shouldn’t you be able to tell them that secret without shame and without thinking that they will turn and run away from you? Something like your mother or your sister, or a really close friend that you know you can trust, shouldn’t you be able to tell them? Not necessarily, it’s because you love them that you can have doubts. I mean if you went and told your mother that you were pregnant, could you be sure that she wouldn’t disown you because of it? I know my mother wouldn’t but not everyone has a family like mine. Now if I went off and got a tattoo and she found out, then the trust would be gone. You have to build up that kind of trust over the years and sometimes even then its not enough to make someone understand what you’ve done. This last part of my essay I wrote a while ago before I even knew that I was going to write this, but I think it fits into the topics of this essay almost effortlessly. It doesn’t have a title but its about not being able to like yourself, or trust yourself, or anything else, and then assuming that since you cant, no one else can. Read and enjoy. If I'm not comfortable with myself How can you feel comfortable with me? If I think I’m ugly How can you think I’m pretty? If I think I’m fat How can you think of holding me? If I’m scared of looking in the mirror How can you stand looking at me? If I think I’m horrible How can you say I’m charming? If I say I’m flawed How can you say I’m perfect? If I don’t love myself How can you love me? If I think I’m not worthy How can you hold me in such high regard? If I think I’m untrustworthy How can you trust me so much? If I think I’m alone How can you possibly be there for me? If I think I’m broken How can you say that I’m what you’ve always needed? If I think I’m disgusting How can you think of being with me? If I think I’m problematic How can you think I’m special? If I don’t love myself How can you love me? | |
topic: Essays | |
[reply] [8 comments] |
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May 17, 2006, 10:05PM |
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by: sonicdemonic |
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Drugs kill. C'mon, we've all heard it said. They poison the youth. Fester inside society like a chancre or worse. Reduce music to inchoate screaming and distortion. Cause all sorts of sexual malfeasance, ranging from the baring of one ass cheek to both. Clearly a menace. Remember the stories? "I know a girl who knows a guy whose best friend's second cousin tried such-and-such. Now he thinks he's an orange and he tries to peel himself if they let him out of restraints." Back in the late seventies the PCP scare was at its height. PCP. Remember PCP? Kids thought they were winged? Tried to soar off rooftops? Only one small problem - none of my searching has turned up any verifiable proof of the phenomenon of teens suddenly sprouting ambitions a la Icarus. My websearching did turn up *one* chestnut: a poem on crystal meth, authorship claimed by Amanda Canaday of Barriere, B.C., Canada: (excerpted) My power is awesome Try me and you’ll see But if you do you may never break free Just try me once and I might let you go but Try me twice and I will own your soul But whoops! Canaday claimed authorship at a Meth convention in 2005. Then sixteen, she must have been unaware that the poem had surfaced back in 2003, in an Alabama newspaper. One wonders if even in recovery, any of us who have dabbled can be trusted to cite our sources accurately, or if we're engineered to a lifetime of riding the coat-tails of others. My own experience with drugs has been hellish - but I know many, many others who have been at it longer, harder, and have had even more of a hell of it than I. FAR more. What's the worse horror? To languish under the confines of an addiction, or to come out of it, and like James Frey, claim experiences that are not our own? Is a dishonest testimony, albeit one aimed at the salvaging of other flotsamed-and-jetsamed lifes, ultimately more damaging than to do as Wittgenstein says: "Some things must be passed over in silence"? This is the crux of my rant. Claiming false experience will not be harmful if your target is the tweaky-teens or the kid with one eye on eternity and the other on the throttle. But claim it with an intellectual, someone who is astute, someone who is averse to patronizing pap or condescension, and you may well find your subject veering away from you. That sound you hear, as you pipe-dream yet another story of how you woke up in a puddle of your own vomit (and someone else's piss) in a Rock Machine clubhouse, a Hells membership and oath against the Machine tattooed on your chest, somewhere in Lachine? That sound is the sound of another nail in MY coffin. YOUR coffin. The coffin of anyone who knows the sound of bullshit hitting the wall behind their head, and has enough non-sense (and i don't know about you, but *i* got plenty o' nuthin in the sense dept) to retaliate using the first available target: themselves. So be careful out there. Love each other. Don't claim false experience. If you do dope, do it wisely, or if you can't, admit you aren't, and even using it, maintain ties to the health professionals closest to you. But don't tell me - or yourself - that that flaming collision no-one seems to remember five years ago somewhere in Alberta was caused by you fleeing a botched bank job you would have got down pat if buddy hadn't forgotten to tell you the shotgun was fuckin' loaded, man. Because that just sucks. This rant brought to you courtesy of SonicDemonic. | |
topic: Rants | |
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| Shop Girl | May 11, 2006, 1:45AM |
by: XangelXmysticsX |
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Well, I'm a huge Steve Martin fan, and quasi huge Claire Danes fan. This movie is typical for her (especially after watching 'My So Called Life')... But this movie is nothing like what I was used to seeing from Martin. After watching movies such as "Three Amigos" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels", you'd expect Martin to write a novella with some actual comedy in it. "Shop Girl" is.... amusing. Amusing only because it's one of those things that when it happens to someone else it's funny, but if it were to happen to you... Like falling down the stairs. This movie was so real, that is was unreal. It had potential to be a very good 'chick flick'. But in my opinion, it fell short (on the very good part- it's still a chick flick). There were a lot of holes in the film. In one scene, a person would do something and, even though we the audience know WHY they did it, it wasn't ever brought out again. | |
topic: Movie Reviews | |
[reply] [2 comments] |
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| King Kong | May 10, 2006, 2:03AM |
by: XangelXmysticsX |
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I was a little let down by the movie. Though my only reasoning: Jack Black plays a bad guy. I sat through the whole movie waiting for at least one joke, one trademark smirk. Nothing. All in all it was a good movie; Very well put together. I have never seen the original, so I can't make some witty comparison. I do know, however, that Jack Black's character will have you talking to your television screen. After being type cast as an air head comedy fellow, it was quite a suprise to see how well he played the serious dramatic role. He makes you despise his character with such a passion that, well, quite frankly, I found myself hoping that Kong or some other monstrosity would eliminate him. | |
topic: Movie Reviews | |
[reply] [2 comments] |
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| Aesthetically Overdosed | May 5, 2006, 8:09AM |
 by: Neurotoxic |
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Elongated necks, bound feet, impossibly puny corsets, piercing in unsavoury places, applying white lead-paint to the face, plucking hair and plastic surgery. All this suffering is committed beneath the banner of trying to be beautiful. Or should I say “beautiful”? After all, one’s perception of what is lovely is purely subjective, influenced by your genetic makeup and your society. Different cultures have different expectations of beauty, though one thing I’ve noticed is the “impossible” factor. I concluded that what popular culture considers “beautiful” is what is unachievable for the working common masses… Someone asked me “why” today… If one can look into history, you can see how social/cultural values evolve, alter and modernise. Before, food was scarce… obese were considered to be representatives of power and wealth because they could afford food and luxuries, and as history dictates, power and wealth usually go hand in hand with the trendsetters who dictate what beauty is and isn’t. Well that’s the way it worked until post-modernism kicked in and the sub-cultures of punk and outbranches, burst forth with their safety pins and anarchy rants. But still; to look or belong in a clique, you need enough money to do it. So, anyway, as you can notice from ancient/pre-modernism artworks, obese women were considered beautiful. It was symbolic of rich living and fertility. Look at Botticelli and Michelangelo’s frescoes and paintings. Obese were the charming ones. Obese were desirable. Obese were sex goddesses. Obese were what men want. Being obese was probably impossible considering food was scarce. Therefore since it was hard to achieve, and due to the idiocy and boredom of the upper class, it was deemed beautiful. Don’t believe me? Go look at those Artemis paintings – the Goddess of the Wild Things [she has many titles, I know]. Fast forward into the 17th century or so, and in the Victorian era, you see women squeezing themselves into corsets in an attempt to be slim waisted and flat chested. Why? Because childbearing gave you wide hips and large breasts. Most women in this era bore many children so, in order to stand out, you had to look like as if you had never given birth. Suck in your stomachs, wear big dresses so you look like as if you’re floating when you walk. That’s what was beautiful. Fast forward again to the present. Food is no longer scarce in the big bad world of America, Australia and any other country that has drowned itself in capitalism. You can eat to your heart’s content. Due to the introduction of fast-food chains and a large number of packaged and convenience foods [etc], obesity has spread like a plague. Suddenly, becoming obese wasn’t such an unachievable goal. In fact, if you have money to spill and time to blow, becoming obese is suddenly easier than being thin. And thus…the hordes of being ‘skinny’ has impeded upon us as waif-thin celebrities and models which trot out their skeletal frames. Stick-thin is the new fat. In fact, big breasts are back ‘in fashion’. Women don’t exactly need to breastfeed anymore, with the introduction of baby formula. Contraception [that actually works] got invented; women have more control. Abortion is legal in some places now so big breasts are now on the unachievable list for the average female, which is therefore desirable. Perfect porcelain skin, bones that jut out... These are mainstream ideas of what’s beautiful and pretty much no one has these attributes. So I ask you, what is beautiful? Beautiful is: The phenomenon of the experience of pleasure, through the perception of balance and proportion of stimulus. It involves the cognition of a balanced form and structure that elicits attraction and appeal towards a person, animal, inanimate object, scene, music, idea, etc. Or more simply, beautiful is what a person feels towards that which arouses their senses. This all depends on upbringing, society and social values. Programmed into everyone’s simple minds is the sense of proportion, that a female or male must have a certain proportion to appeal to them. Men find women with proportionate bodies [breasts, hips etc.] more attractive then someone say who was extremely skinny with very large hips. This is consistent with females, who may be physically attracted to males with a nice chest and abs, to someone who had a muscly chest and a flabby stomach. So in conclusion, I leave you with a question: What do you find beautiful? Neurotoxic. www.google.com http://goldennumber.net/beauty.htm Thanks to Jack. | |
topic: Various | |
[reply] [14 comments] |
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