Where are you my other part?

Dove sei l'altra parte mia:
vo cercandoti
la notte
quando mi manca la virtu
la quale non importava
il giorno

magari s'io fossi qualcun d'importanza
cosi che ricorderesti di me
magari se tu fossi impetuosa
saresti anche a caccia nel stesso bosco

ma le nuvole di questa notte
oscurano la luce
nel buio delle sogne

non ci ancora conosciamo
ma spero
presto
di svegliarmi

verro ad indossarmi
la propria virtu
e non importera
s'io fossi un re
perche
e' meglio esser nessuno che pensersi un
granche

prendero le armi
verro nel bosco della luce
a caccia
ricordando che le cose buone temono
la superbia
e odiono gli impauriti

che le dispositzioni vanno alla fine

quello felice
va sempre diritto
e nelle sogne
fra le nuvole scure
non si mai rannuvola
nel momento sbagliato

perche trovare quello che si manca
e' fiorirsi

Ruskii Kong!

Holy Shit, Would you wanna get in the ring with that guy? He's Nikolay Valuev the biggest tallest and heaviest boxer of all time.

Aristotle and Nietzsche

I've been inspired, I just emailed this to a professor to see what his take is and i realized I should preserve it on my blog so I can update it with further ideas for everyone's edification. (I mean my own edification)

what do you think about Aristotle's portrayal of the great souled person in relation to Nietzsche's idea of the noble man who self-posits his own worth?

Aristotle makes the case that the true man of great soul engages in excellence and treats people justly, has moderation, shuns honors that are inappropriate etc. and because of this he is seen as arrogant. N.E>1124a20 "Power and wealth are desirable because of the honor they bring, or at any rate people who have them wish to be the recipient of honor through them; and the person to whom even honor is of small consequence (i.e. the grate souled) will treat the other things like that too. This is why great souled people seem to be arrogant."

Following Aristotle's argument so far, the life of action aiming at happiness, is essentially self-positing; the great souled man enjoys this excellence and thus flourishes ( eudaimon). Whether or not he agrees with Aristotle’s particular definitions of what the means that produce excellence are etc. Nietzsche's critique of value judgments originates in the idea that nobility and goodness are essentially self posited-- "a knightly-aristocratic value judgments presupposed a powerful physicality, a flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health, together with that which serves to preserve it: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games, and in general all that involves vigorous free, joyful activity." (genealogy of morals,7) For Nietzsche "the good" did not originate with those to whom goodness was shown, but in the good themselves in opposition to the common and plebian. In any case, it occurred to me that Aristotle’s comment about the great of soul being considered arrogant, reminded me of the earlier part where he said that those who are rash will always call the moderate deficient.

Summarizing the argument in Genealogy of Morals, I think Aristotle would agree with Nietzsche. The idea that ressentiment is an attempt to devalue that which one really knows to be valuable, In this case excellence, seems to me to correspond to the pitiable herd value judgments which seek to defend their deficiencies and excesses by trying to say that passion is so strong that seeking pleasure is almost involuntary etc..

Again they most likely wouldn't agree about the particulars, but Aristotle does see the plebian and common type bereft of excellence as pitiable. It seems to me that Nietzsche’s main thrust here is that the slave revolt in morality, angry with it's pathologies and lack of excellence, devalues nobility of spirit and creates new values in contradistinction to them. I quote here: "The wellborn felt themselves to be happy; they did not have to establish their happiness artificially by examining their enemies, or to persuade themselves, deceive themselves, that they were happy ( as all men of ressentiment are in the habit of doing); and they likewise knew, as rounded men replete with energy and therefore necessarily active, that happiness should not be sundered from action—being active was with them necessarily a part of happiness (whence euprattein takes its origin)—all very much the opposite of ‘happiness’ at the level of the impotent, the oppressed, and those in whom poisonous and inimical feeling are festering, with whom it appears as essentially narcotic, drug, rest , peace, ‘Sabbath’, slackening of tension and relaxing of limbs, in short passively.” Genealogy, 10

I think that as much as Nietzsche hates socrates and plato, what he’s hitting upon is important because this distincion is the same one that socrates puts in the symposium. The good life, begetting beautiful ideas – the life of the philosopher, is essentially active. While that of the dionysian symposium is passive. In other words, Alcibiades’ criticism of socrates almost edges on ressentiment. Socrates shuns his beauty because of his excellence, and Alcibiades calls him arrogant, deceptive, etc. But shows that he acknowleges the value of his excellence—i.e. Socrates as a satyr statue with figures of the gods inside.
The active life always is at odds with the political situation because the masses, consideing good to be passion and assuagement of it in ephemeral and indulgent ways—hate to be made aware of spiritual superiorty. For them, happiness, and I think aristotle would agree, is a narcotic kind of passive “fill ones self up’ with things to make one’s self feel good.

Communist Google!

"Google Agrees to Censor Results in China (AP)
SHANGHAI, China


Google Inc. launched a search engine in China on Wednesday that censors material about human rights, Tibet and other topics sensitive to Beijing _ defending the move as a trade-off granting Chinese greater access to other information.

Within minutes of the launch of the new site bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," searches for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on Chinese government Web sites.

Searches for other sensitive subjects such as exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" yielded similar results.

In most such cases, only official Chinese government sites or those with a ".cn" suffix were included.

Google, which has as it's motto "Don't Be Evil," says the new site aims to make its search engine more accessible in China, thereby expanding access to information."


OK so let me get this straight...

1) Google has gone communist...

2) more disturbing...

How the FUCK can a country with 1.2 BILLION PEOPLE NOT muster enough hackers to get around the censor servers, to start the great leap foward cultural internet revolution. If a couple of kids in the US can bring down windows servers for 24 hrs and a kid in norway can crack the dvd protection code which hollywood invested millions in, why can't millions of potential chinese hackers fuck the system?


I mean you'd think that they'd at least wanna look at porn, even if they didnt want to bring down the commies. I mean in a pop. of 1.2 billon people there are probably 100 millionn addicitive sex/porn fiends. HOw does the chinese govmnet manage to censor the internet like this. For some reason it doesnt seem to be possible for too much longer. It's searches like google that become large corporations and then whore themselves out to communist and capitalist assholes alike.

Acutually our whole economy whores itself out to china. ANd they're the best and most clever communists too because they cheat! They cheat i.e. they use a capitalist economy and they fix thier currency against market rates. In other words, they reap all the benefits of capitalism because they draw off all the apetitive cravings of the most capitalist countries by making thier fix currency goods wholesaleable. This paradox can only go on for so much longer.

I guess i should make it clear, I like capitalism. There's nothing better, only worse. But fuck the commies and fuck google for sleeping with them, i mean why do they need their shitty yuans anyway?

Away messages of the day als typische Kategorien

Yes, this is dorky-- but I'm analyzing away messages!


Feel free to post particularly ridiculous ones and i'll add them.

Today we have the following not so choice examples--->

"Commandment Breifing, nap, and then signing for my $30,000!"--
this one resides in the classification of away messages that tell you exactly what someone is doing, this person is in the army, needs a nap, and then gets 30 grand. Similar types will state things such as showers, naps, gone to class etc.

"i'm in love with the world, through the eyes of a girl"-

this might be what I would call the abstraction type. This away message is meant to tell the voyeur of awaymessageAIMland that the person has some sort of abstract psychological thing to say, he's in love with someone? he's been listening to too much madonna? I dunno, but he won't be specific.

"i want to be a lion. yeah everyone wants to pass as cats. we all want to be big, big stars, but we've got different reasons for that."-

This person has borrowed lyrics from an Everclear song, maybe father of mine. I spotted it immediately. They don't tell you that they're using song lyrics.

And then there's always the person who quotes from cartoons, like the simpsons. I'm not even gonna transcribe it. It usually goes something like this: "homer: blah blah blah--- punch-line"; "stewie:{english accent} blah blah blah, wahahaha, punchline"

we get the idea.


"has congenital adrenal hyperpasia. that is, a hermaphodite."

Shocking, wow, Im shocked, i mean come on, arn't hermaphodites like... "wow"? fascinating! Arn't you shocked? What is this? Is it like this (below)? No actually we all see that and think WTF is this, but the person who wrote about the hermaphodites thinks its funny, precisly because we all think WTF is that. And so I don't know whether to laugh at them or with them. I mean I could be schizophrenic and do both!

"fuckfuckfuckfuckj!"

this is one of my own away messages, my favorite actually. Away messages with shit, fuck, damnnit, or any combination of explitives are cathartic ways to passively bitch to everyone on your buddy list that things are fucked up. It's a good way of getting people to ask you whats wrong.

then there's always that particular person, ahem, who always calls attention to themselves almost more vainly than they do in real life, or maybe it's just because you know what kind of people they are, that their away messages make you want to puke. yet, you keep them on your buddy list just because you can't deny thier entertainment value-- how seriously they take thier own away messages.
there have been worse, much worse examples but here's one

"holy shit. I was complaining that no one here wants to go to the hob with me tomorrow night, so someone's coming from kansas for the concert. unbelievable."

Right, I see... You're so popular and beloved by everyone that it's so surprising that wednesday night at the University of Chicago no one wants to go with you to a concert. Oh yeah and you're even more popular that someone's coming from Kansas!?!? wow! And you're so important that everyone should feel bad for you too?

i don't wanna trivialize aim messages, no one's supposed to think about them too much, they're supposed to be superficial and enigmatic. But I would say that people often use them to propogate social messages etc. They're all stupid and all fun for somebody.

The person whose maway message simply says "away," then, is the person who is either too lazy to personalize, or who likes to make thier away from or at keyboard experience completely shrouded in mystery..

That said, before I keep on ranting, meine Erkundigung muß zur siner Ende kommen.

Wow, the french have balls?

Chirac would nuk'em! ---"The leaders of states who would use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would consider using in one way or another weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part," Chirac said during a visit to a nuclear submarine base in northwestern France.

"This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind."

Cool.

this iz whts up

Hey so whats the difference between a blog and a diary? Why am I doing this? I think it's because some guy emailed me and wanted to use the name of my blog since I never used it. Sorry it's mine.

So yeah life in Chicago is peachy right now.



I spent the last week going out every night and I somehow still managed to write a paper and get all my work done. -->
really kids




I have tons of work, but i quit my job at crerar (wait i just never showed up or talked to the boss) and not being weighed down with hundreds of pages of reading is good for me. I don't feel quite as stressed as a I did before. Fuck stress. I wanna leave hyde park as much as possible, go do shit, take funny pictures, find new bars, meet new people. I still love the reg tho.

Oh yeaah check out this picture of Azure with her loads of booze.

Shopping for parties is fun, it's fun to be the corrupter of minors!~



Yesterday I went downtown to see the magic flute at the lyric opera, it was great. if you look closely you will see that the bald headed man in the center of the blury pictrure is eliot crick. He's everywhere, i bet he was bootleging the performance, sneaky prick.



I think opera might be one of the last things this day and age that can completely galvinize my emotion. I simply cannot control how it makes me feel, unless it's a boring part. Beautiful arias sieze my soul, beautiful voices, the soft rolling hum of the orchestra, one thing was missing last nite....


where are you maria?

I've been listening to to much 80s too much rap, too much bullshit. I should leave the ipod at home or fill it with something else, I might have damaged my hearing already, whatever. I still think there might be something to be said for allan blooms comments about kids and thier music. I agree with Bloom that only classical music "uses the passions and satisfies them while sublimating them and giving them an artistic unity"

Here bloom quotes Plato:

"Rhythm and melody accompanied by dance, are the barbarous expression of the soul... the medium of the human soul in its most ecstatic condition of wonder and terror" (Closing of the American Mind p. 71).

ROck music and rap makes one's mind hostile to reason! music and poetry demand a delicate balance between passion and reason. rock music has as its exclusive aim, "a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire--not love.. ." (Closing of the American mind p. 73). Bloom's view of rock and rap music -- imagining that youth receive from it the undulating rhythm of sexual intercourse makes me immmediately think of MTV and most every damn party ive ever been to. popular music is a sexual feast that "gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later" (Clsoing of the American Mind p. 73).


so yeah, rigoletto is next week, i'm sure it will be orgasmic despite what bloom says. i think it might even be a sexual feast, its all about passion and sex and love, minus the Sycthian drum beating and rythmic vibes of pure intercourse, if you know me you know what i mean. More like that fine italian refinement. THinking about that another thing bloom said somewhere was that tradition is only called tradition once it's dead. Opera is kinda like that, its a dead art, all the stuff that's good is old. Its for "cultured" folks. It's refined! But if people had ipods back when verdi and mozart were pumping out their operas, well The would have sold lots of them.
Just think about hitler with an ipod listening to wagner, he might not have ever felt it was so special, cuz ipods degrade all of our music and make it petty. So if hitler had an ipod, maybe he wouldn't have been such a moron.

Ok now i'm on a lost rant,

so cheers to the first blog entry, so exciting for everyone

Whoever Finds this...

Yeah so I feel like I need a place to vent. The only thing I'm concerned about is that I'll write shit here that might look bad. But on the other hand if I really cared that much I wouldn't write it down. The little desire that someone out there might entertain themselves, breifly, reading this horrible blog with horrible things to say (.... horribile dictu) drives me to finally use this useless website.