this entry will combine some of the cynicism and negativity that seeps into my otherwise happy-go-lucky mind simply because I keep my mind open and there's so much cynicism and negativity in the ether of our culture...

yeah, humanity, I mean you...

I'm bored, I'll write you a song another time... isn't that the way of humanity, to care for a moment and many make a little sense for a bit and then drop it in mid stream because it's not getting to the point fast enough, the foreplay is too long in coming, the mind drifts off into more instant gratifications...

if you are an amazingly rich rock star, you might be able to afford a new pair of $600 jeans every few months, but is there really a market for jeans made to fall apart?...

why not... it's called built in obsolescence...

you don't need an MBA to understand the reasoning behind it... people are in business to make money... if you make a product that lasts forever, you'll run out of market eventually, so your business will become obsolete and you'll have to feed yourself some other way... but if you make a product that lasts only a limited amount of time, you'll sell the same product to the same people over and over and be in business forever... or so the theory goes...

the key, I suppose, is balancing the time of obsolesence with the specific product... people accept some products will last only a very short time... new technology, for instance... everyone accepts that a computer will be old and useless after a few years, a decade at most... it's all about consumer expectations, which is largely based on marketing and commericals... cars better last five to ten years before becoming money pits or that particular car model will be passed over by the market and history... homes should last longer, but batteries can need replacing in weeks or less...

ultimately, everything in our culture is made to fall apart...

maybe it's amusing...

while academics debate the ethics of planned obsolescence, businesses continue to milk your wallets by producing inferior products that are made to need replacement in a few years... whether you are buying a home or a car or mutual funds or washing machines (where the illusion is stronger than reality) or iPods or DVDs or even art... or cities... and what ever happened to increasing gas mileage for cars?... are we to believe technology stalled for twenty years in that area?... or how about alternative fuels?... we're too stupid to develop better and healthier ways of living?...

electronics?... computerse been around for thirty years and they inch forward year after year making sure the market is flooded with a product that will be obsolete within a year or less...

and so many of us fit right in because we're addicted to shopping...

and then...

it seems there are idiots everywhere, not just where I work... I'm reading personal stories all over the web about idiot co-workers... and then there are us, the voters, who vote idiots into political office... but the idiots of the week just have to be anyone lining up for an application to for a job as a CIA operative or any undercover police work... step right up, risk your life and the lives of your family to secretly spy on other countries, but beware for you too can become a pawn in a political game played at the White House... and oh well, if the King needs a sacrifice, you are outed and your career and whole life is turned upside down... oh, and do (you and your family and kids) be careful leaving the country because some people out there just might want to retaliate against you... kill you or your family, even... nobody likes to be fooled, after all...

but don't let that stop you from putting your life on the line for your country... just think of the fun and prestige you'll have until they expose you...

but the bigger picture is perhaps the saddest state of affairs in this country of all... the scary thing is look at the dates:

The events that led to the CIA leak case began in February 2002, when CIA officials asked former diplomat Joseph Wilson to investigate a report that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Niger in the late 1990s for the production of nuclear weapons. Wilson concluded that the report was false . The documents related to the alleged sale were ultimately determined to be forgeries.

However, President Bush made reference to a purported uranium deal between Iraq and �Niger in his State of the Union address in January 2003. Six months later, Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence and exaggerating the threat from Iraq to justify going to war, prompting criticism from conservatives and Bush supporters. Six days after a critical op-ed penned by Wilson appeared in The New York Times, conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote that "two senior administration officials" had told him that Wilson�s wife was a CIA operative and had suggested sending him on the trip to Africa � and he identified her as Valerie Plame.

But Novak wasn�t the only reporter who apparently had learned about Plame's identity. Several reporters had had conversations with administration officials about a CIA link to Wilson�s wife. �With the outing, Plame�s career as a covert CIA operative was ended, and the leak of her identity has sparked the question: Who revealed Plame�s identity, and why? Th is question has since dogged the Bush administration as weapons of mass destruction � the initial rationale for the United States attacking Iraq � have never been found.

see the full story

six days... six days to destroy a 20 year career of putting your life on the line for your country... and on the seventh day, they rested...

have we gone mad yet?...

well, when all else fails, we can always read SPAM mail:

In general, Waterhouse isn't good at just winging it, but he's tired and pissed off and horny, and this is a fucking war, and sometimes you have to. He mounts the podium, dives for a round of chalk, and starts hammering equations onto the blackboard like an ack-ack gun. He uses well-tempered tuning as a starting point, takes off from there into the deepest realms of advanced number theory, circles back all of a sudden to the Qwghlmian modal scale, just to keep them on their toes, and then goes screaming straight back into number theory again. In the process, he actually stumbles across some interesting material that he doesn't think has been covered in the literature yet, and so he diverts from strict bullshitting for a few minutes to explore this thing and actually prove something that he thinks could probably be published in a mathematical journal, if he just gets around to typing it up properly. It reminds him that he's not half bad at this stuff when he's recently ejaculated, and that in turn just fuels his resolve to get this Mary-fucking thing worked out. Counterpane Systems Twenty seconds later, a comet sails up out of the flesh cosmos of the Bund and bounces on the wooden deck of the gunboat--a hell of a throw. Goto Dengo is showing off his follow-through. The projectile is a rock with a white streamer wrapped around it. Shaftoe runs over and snatches it. The streamer is one of those thousand-stitch headbands (supposedly; he's taken a few off of unconscious Nips, but he's never bothered to count the stitches) that they tie around their heads as a good-luck charm; it has a meatball in the center and some Nip writing to either side. He unties it from around the rock. In so doing he realizes, suddenly, that it's not a rock after all; it is a hand grenade! But good old Goto Dengo was just joking--he didn't pull the pin. A nice souvenir for Bobby Shaftoe.
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"I hate that word 'unspeakable.' We must speak of it." --END ORDO SIGNATURE BLOCK-- "Shit," Shaftoe says
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Bobby Shaftoe... almost sounds like a medical condition...

you are wise if you are amused by most of this entry... it does not help to stress over the cynicism and stupidity of our self-destructive cuture and personal habits... ultimately, stressing over it is one more self-destructive habit...

that does not mean you should ignore things, however... don't close your eyes to the unhealthy culture we live in... don't close your ears to the lies the leaders of our culture tell us... think about it and figure out thigs you can do (other than stressing) to make a small change in your life...

there are so many choices we make every day...

make some healthy choices today...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
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