and pretending i was finally free

More Foster Wallace is my hero:
He just writes in a way that fits so perfectly with me that it seems specifically aimed at me sometimes.
I read this article he wrote about the Maine Lobster Festival - he was assigned to a regular reviewy piece and he ended up writing an incredibly accessible article about the ethics of eating meat, accessible in that it touches on the more complex arguments but sticks to the most basic one that is do the animals seem to show a preference to avoid pain? undeniably yes, and you can't really just avoid that (he has such a way of trying to look at all the sides of an issue not so it seems tedious or overly scrupulous but vital), which has made me more vegetarian, although this doesn't mean much because I already avoid meat where I can most of the time, but I'm not going to demand my mum only cook me vegetarian meals because that would be war.
DFW=swoon

and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending

Here's a graduation address given by David Foster Wallace. I find it perfect. He is my hero. Here's an excerpt if you don't want to read it all (but excerpts don't really capture it...):

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

I've been listening to Ani DiFranco's song Independence Day. It's not the style of thing I've been into in a while, pretty much all year, but it feels important to me right now for whatever reason.

<3

Here's a ninja poem by Emily Kwickinson:


Flower, Pretty Flower

Flower, pretty flower
I stop to smell you
you take my nose away.
Wait a minute,
why are you so sharp?
You are not a flower.
Now I have no nose,
face, bloody face.


Ask a ninja is the awesomest.

yo sukkafish, i'm falling before you, i'm falling before you

lol
Also, I got my external hard drive today. Measurements: a cd x my hand with all the fingers tight together x the end of a usb cabley thing, and probably the weight of those things. And it cost me $116.99 (including postage). Woo me! I think I might get a lap top. And last week I got firefox and vlc. I am on my way to catching up with all the cool kids

On a clear night if you look close enough you can just make out love and other plaaaaneeets

So I think that politics (i.e. who to support, what policies to support etc.) is too fucking huge so I would have to put so much time into becoming informed about it, time that I would rather spend on other things, that there is definitely no point in forming opinions because if I did they would be hopelessly inadequate. There is so much you'd have to look into to really understand things it's insane - for the first thing there's the actual policies themselves, to understand which you'd have to understand every field evaz (looking into all the theories of psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology etc. [also involving learning all about these as well, meaning further research]); all the different theories of economics; all the different theories of...all this other stuff that I don't know the words for, but in short everything; then you have to take into account that people lie and misrepresent and everything people say is laden with rhetoric and their own point of view which is personally and contextually situated; and then you would have to also understand everything about yourself in order to see how you were interpreting the stuff you were researching. i.e. know everything eva.
But I guess I'm going over the top a little. Probs you can still be informed without knowing everything eva or at least try but I have other things I would prefer to do. Probs this makes me a terrible person.
I thought someone at work backstabbed me pretty bad but apparently she didn't (although you never really know if someone's telling the truth/whole truth or not but you can't just always treat everything as though it's lies it's juts that it's not surprising when things turn out to be so). So that's nice.
And as I was writing this stuff I came across a Wall Street Journal article that talks about this a little. Here's an excerpt:

"...And yet at the debate, when one citizen-questioner invited both candidates to think aloud about the responsibility of our representatives in Washington, they both gently suggested she was cynical.

She was not cynical. She was informed.

Why would anyone trust either candidate to help dig us out of this if they can't speak frankly about what got us into it?

One had the sense this week that our entire political class is playing Frisbee on the edge of a precipice, that no one is being serious enough, honest enough, that it's all too revved, too intense, and yet too shallow. I have grown impatient with the strategists from the campaigns, the little blond monsters who go on cable TV to give us their bouncy, aggressive, tendentious talking points. They are like the men on the plane, the gargoyles with BlackBerrys who think the race is about them and their personal win/loss ratio, who think history is their plaything, who stay up with the press in the bar sipping Perrier and calling it seltzer, and who advise their candidates, in essence, to talk down to the voters, to the American people. They treat every crisis as if it is a political fact to be used for gain or loss, and not as a real crisis, something that deserves a response of gravity and seriousness.

It is asking a lot to ask a political animal to be thoughtful, because they find meaning in action. They are propelled through life by the force of their hunger. But now and then you want to see them think. You want to see them speak the truth. This is one of those times."

It's hard/impossible to know what's real. This information isn't 'getting me down' though anymore, it's just something that needs to be realised. A basic lesson of life I guess. This shirt really appeals to me. I just find it nice and also a little comforting and a little...just kind of perfect. Maybe I will get it.
I'm feeling like I might like to move out, but I'll wait a while and see. I'm not sure if it's really worth having to work more and maintain my life/a house more when home isn't really a problem, I'm just feeling on quite a different wavelength to my parents. We'll see.
Other things: Ummm, I don't know. I got my Who Killed Amanda Palmer cd and my I Killed Amanda Palmer shirt the other day and I purchased a 250G (that's the abbreviation that all the cool kids use right?) hard drive that's only the length of a pen and like 200 grams or something insane like that. I like consuming!
Also, Rishi, if you're out there, here's a website for you!
Love