Pajama Jeans III: …PJ: TLT: Miami.

I’m sorta worn out, at the moment – keeping up with all my writing, this play, work, and video games (which, I think we can all agree, is the real priority, here) is giving me the business.  So, before I crash tonight, I need to get something else to you guys to keep my continuity.

Thus, I give you the conclusion for the Pajama Jeans series.  We had more, but it’s just downright silly.  So here is the serious stuff.   >.>

INSIDE JOKE by Jon and Wesley Freeland

Sketch #12: Pajama Jeans III: …PJ: TLT: Miami.

Jon Freeland: No, wait…I’m gonna fight the MAN, like Anna Beth, because she kicks serious ass in the very first fight, then proceeds to be technically useless throughout the rest of the movie.

Wes Freeland: Ah, yeah, Clarisse was great. Wait a second, Clarisse wasn’t in this movie? They folded all her important scenes into Anna Beth? But that would create a character discrepency that would be totally see through!

Wes Freeland: Wait a second, how many characters did they cut from this movie and assign as side bits to main characters like some ill-concieved jigsaw puzzle?

Jon Freeland: Well, they’ve got Flabby Arms McHorse’s Ass, the camp comedian. And Hades was the god of war, right? And let’s not forget the shield made of METAL which somehow plays host to what is supposedly the purest source of electricity in the known universe.

Wes Freeland: And the fact that it’s sheer magical nature didn’t tip off every mythical being within 200 light years. Don’t forget that.

Jon Freeland: And Persephone called. She wants to DO you.

Wes Freeland: It totally makes logistical sense that the greatest weapon ever created doesn’t send them calling, despite the fact that a demi-god using a phone puts out the smell of hot steaks to every carnivore within 500 miles…

Jon Freeland: Maybe Luke had terrible body odor. Yeah…that should do the trick. Because everyone knows that Greek gods follow their nose. Maybe they should take up THEIR daddy issues with Toucan Sam.

Jon Freeland: Wait…I may be insulting the book now. Sorry >.>

Wes Freeland: Man, that would explain the noses on some of those jokers, and the fact that it never occurs to them to keep this crap in a place where some half-blood punk can waltz in and take it without even alerting any sort of guard.

Jon Freeland: That’s simple. Luke knew they were koo koo for Cocoa Puffs, so they were easily distracted while he stole their Lucky Charms.

Jon Freeland: …if he’d applied himself, he could have been a cereal killer.

Jon Freeland: <.<

Wes Freeland: Well he is….The Lightning Thief. *queue CSI Miami intro*

Jon Freeland: LOL, PJ: TLT, starring Horatio Caine. THAT’S a movie I would go see and thoroughly enjoy.

Wes Freeland: He could have pulled off Hades. For that matter, he could have made a killer Medusa, if you think about it…

Jon Freeland: As opposed to the non-lethal Medusa they ended up with.

Wes Freeland: Of course. He could have totally dropped the line “Typical highschoolers, always getting *insert glasses here* stoned. YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

Jon Freeland: They could have even kept the intro song! “SO WE DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN!” /airguitar

Wesley Freeland: They totally should have hired us to write this script. I mean, if you’re not going to follow the story of which it’s “based off,” you might as well go all the way with it, right?

The sunglasses are a fig newton of your imagination.

A Staining of the Glass

Lots to do, today – lots to do!  Firstly, more awards and the passing of the torch to a new Thursday Perfect Poet!  I don’t know many people yet, and I know that she’s already gotten it, but I admire Beth and appreciate her so much that I want her to know it in this fashion.  Therefore, the poet who honestly has so little to be doubtful about receives my nomination.

Jing-jing!

She, along with Jingle, gave me a Beautiful Blogger Award, which I treasure greatly – thank you!  Meg, a recent newcomer to our conversation, has also bestowed upon me an Honest Scrap Award, and Jingle graced me with a Best Blog Award…I love all of these and will devote my next post to them in full (I feel bad posting the pictures without fully following them, so I’ll do that in the next post, as well).

I wanted to give something to you all, today, in memory of the glass – the one we all look into and wish we (or someone else) were different, at times.  I once told a friend, when advising him about a particular argument:

“You know yourself by your efforts to look in the mirror, be it through the trials of an adversary or the support of a colleague. Yet life demands that we look through a window, so that we might understand the difference between what is outside and what is in.

Don’t waste your time trying to make every window a mirror, my friend.”

I have stained my mirror…there is something about a stain that denotes negativity, yet we manage to find beauty in the stained glass.  I hope this poem I give to you will bring you the confidence to stain yours, as well, that you might gain the precious ability to see both sides of the pa(i)ne.

~~~~~~

Stained Glass

Were they teardrops, painting perfect ovals on twilight canvas…

or

Perhaps a lake, bidding fond farewell to redeemed pearls…

~

Beauty,

Which, true to itself, can only be patent, never pursuant.

~

Wisdom,

The sign, not of the coveted all-knowing, but the priceless all-respecting.

~

Devotion,

That in which all strength is innate, and all doubt is insignificant.

~

Protecting all that is beloved, they intertwine,

As the scent of the star-sweet dew caresses the sun’s form

Like dying lovers, they embrace,

Revealed,

~

Searing white, then evanescent into tomorrow fantasizing about yesterday…

Seeking out only your desires,

You may find yourself languishing to live about your dreams

In simply gazing through the mirror of Extremes,

~

A mirror is merely a window of which you have not seen both sides.

~

In simply gazing through the mirror of Extremes,

You may find yourself languishing to live about your dreams

Seeking out only your desires,

Searing white, then evanescent into tomorrow fantasizing about yesterday…

~

Revealed,

Like dying lovers, they embrace,

As the scent of the star-sweet dew caresses the sun’s form

Protecting all that is beloved, they intertwine,

~

That in which all strength is innate, and all doubt is insignificant.

Devotion,

~

The sign, not of the coveted all-knowing, but the priceless all-respecting.

Wisdom,

~

Which, true to itself, can only be patent, never pursuant.

Beauty,

~

Perhaps a lake, bidding fond farewell to redeemed pearls…

or

Were they teardrops, painting perfect ovals on twilight canvas…

~~~~~~

Every mirror is a window...

Pajama Jeans: The Longest Thread

Wes and I went to see Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief in the theater today, and…well, this was the series of conversations that ensued.  ^^

Those are some...mighty fine pants you have there.

INSIDE JOKE by Jon and Wesley Freeland

Sketch #10: Pajama Jeans: The Longest Thread

Jon Freeland: So, I’ll be Boromir, and you be Poseidon.

Jon Freeland: “GIVE ME THE RING, DAMMIT!”

Jon Freeland: Wait, that’s not right. Oh well, it makes about as much sense as how PJ: TLT began…and yes, I shall be referring to it by the preceding acronym from now on.

Wes Freeland: Pajama Jeans: The Longest Thread is a heartwarming tale about one boy’s journey from boy to man with the help of his wise-cracking pants. On his way he meets three spirits who….wait, we’re talking about different movies aren’t we?

Jon Freeland: No, no, that’s fine. Yours obviously had more thought put into it.

Wes Freeland: No, no, really, let’s talk about this Percy Jackson thing. My psychiatrist said it might trigger another episode, but you only live one life, right?

Wes Freeland: So, let’s see….Drunk walks in…Boromir blows up a window…hmmm, this is shaping up to be an interesting movie. Thoughts?

Jon Freeland: Another episode? I don’t really know how that works, considering they used elements from the first and second books to make the first episode. Honestly, it’s like Eragon met Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, and the three of them just decided to go get high while listening to a constant stream of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Wes Freeland: Indeed. I’m sure in the writing process, several illegal substances, and at least 7 household cleaners were involved. On the bright side, at least the characters were well-developed and totally not one-dimensional, right?

Jon Freeland: Exactly, and that’s what really got me hooked on the movie, from the very beginning. There was the utter douchebag dad, the ever-enduring mother, the raging tomboy girlfriend, the pimpin best friend…and PJ couldn’t die. You would do whatever you want, too, if you were in his shoes.

Jon Freeland: You know, the ones with the wings?

Wes Freeland: Oh yeah, the Sketchers. Wait a second, I’m having flashbacks from before the movie…weren’t those supposed to not work except to drag him down to serve Kronos or some such?

Wes Freeland: Wait…Sketchers…WTH would Hermes wear Sketchers?!?! IT’S A LIE! THERE IS NO SPOOOOOOOON!!!!!

Jon Freeland: Nah, Hermes totally wore Converse in the original Greek mythology. Don’t believe me? Christopher Columbus said Homer told him so in a dream. Personally, I think he’s been watching too much Simpsons.

On his face…

My friend, Ashley, wrote something significant to me a couple days ago, something I’ve contemplated thoroughly more than once, and I wanted to share it here along with a few thoughts related to it.

“As for watching people’s expressions and body language — that makes for some of the best entertainment and philosphy in the world. Lately I’ve been studying the elderly, for instance. You can almost always tell what kind of life they’ve led, just by glancing at their wrinkles. Smile lines? Permanent scowls? Furrowed brows? Of course, it only helps matters that I work in retail and deal with scads of people daily. It’s given me a lot of material to work with, to say the least.”

~ Ashley Carwile

I think that’s why I’ve always loved adages dealing with the comparison of faces and maps (I.E. 30 Seconds to Mars’ “From Yesterday” – “…on his face was a map of the world….”).

I think it’s the Chinese (or at least some eastern culture) who are attributed with the axiom, “The eyes are the windows of the soul,” but I believe that’s somewhat misguided (it “misses the forest for the trees,” as they say…).   Yes, you can fake everything but the eyes, but expressions are actions that use the face as a resource…when you use it up, there’s nothing more to hide with.

What’s left is what you are, and the finality of that impresses me to the point that I actually think significantly about how my face will be designed, one day.  Will it smile while I frown, or vice versa?  Or will the expressions of my life accentuate and magnify the countenance of my morrowyears?

Enigmata – The Caring Complex

Enigmata

If I asked, would anyone live?

If I lived, would anyone know?

If I knew, would anyone listen?

If I listened, would anyone speak?

If I spoke, would anyone think?

If I thought, would anyone try?

If I tried, would anyone die?

If I died, would anyone care?

If I cared, would anyone dare

to enter my room, and answer me there?

————-

This is an older work of mine, a pattern poem of singular thoughts that occurs to me now for the sharing, based upon the fact that I’m having a very hard time dealing with people I try to help.  Everyone wants to know that their actions amount to something significant, but writers deal with this dilemma twice over.  We’re focused on feedback – it’s how we feed ourselves so that we may come back again and offer ourselves up for the greater good of SOMEONE.  This uncertainty is a stalker with murderous intent; we feel it upon our necks at all times, even when we score one of those necessary small victories, tiny words offered at the leisure of another person who didn’t have to give them.

This is just speculation about a general effort, however.  Most people I know started writing on a casual basis, a side-show supported by their regular life and job.  So why is it that I keep getting pulled into targeted efforts to help certain people, especially when I know that they’re destined to fail?  Their pride runs too deep from their parents and friends (or lack of any real sort thereof).  This recent one has a life that is particularly a labor of self-hatred and misunderstanding…no, refusal to understand.  It makes me burn white hot within clenched fists to entertain the possibilities of his existence, how many times the crisis that he has become could have been averted.  I’m not related to him…in my rational mind, he is merely the brother of one of my friends, but I look at her and I realize that they are the two sides of a dollar bill.  They were both offered practically the same circumstances, all things considered, and they chose oppositely based upon relatively minor differences.  Yet they are both unhappy, successful or not, and angry about it.

I wish I could show them that there is a non-hostile way to go about things; I’ve been where their hatred holds court, have served it myself…hell, even a certain buried part of me wishes I would put fear in them both, simply to force them away from anger.  It’s not constructive, though.  I don’t want to be a man, feared: not by my children, my friends, my wife, my family.  I wish respect was more directly effective…fear is so much more situationally potent, and this quality makes me wonder just a tad whether or not it has its place next to respect.  I can’t justify it, though.  I’ve been afraid, and I’ve been respectful.  Fear simply forces you to find a way to work around what you are afraid of…the only effective application of fear is one that leaves no other option, and I’m not prepared to make the soul-sacrifice that requires.  My only unresolved question is that of precedence: for me, fear paved the way for respect, but does it have to be that way?

I can’t warrant hurting someone to save them, yet.  I refuse to respond to such things as an un-treatable cancer, but “mine eyes dazzle,” bleeding care until I have none left to give.  I hope I can last to find the answer – I suppose, until I see it clearly, Primum non nocere.

Let no more die young.

Avatar

Before I start, I’ll issue a moderate spoiler alert, out of courtesy.

My brother posted this on FB about the political controversy surrounding Avatar:

“It’s bull. Plain and simple. The humans are a PMC or private military company, attached to no country. It even outlines that they’re made up of people who’ve been kicked out of the military. It’s made very obvious from the beginning that these are NOT the good guys, and are never intended to be. They are not representative of anything, from what I can tell. The closest parallel you could draw from our world(other than a random PMC) would be the worse parts of the Pilgrims, and even thats a stretch. It’s funny how people hear ‘Colonel’ and ‘army’ and assume it’s the U.S. military.

The Pantheism issue people keep bringing up is a pretty far stretch as well, simply because when they say that their god is in everything, they mean it literally because they worship what is basically the essence of nature. In short, everything on their planet is quite literally connected, the tree’s roots all sync into each other, and everything is capable of hooking into everything else in a symbiotic relationship. I can see how conclusions could be drawn, but you’d have to miss a few things( which is possible, since the movie is three flippin’ hours long, and bathroom breaks are infrequent.)”

One of his friends commented that he agreed, that people had very much over-thought the movie.  I’m actually beginning to see the inverse of that.

I don’t know that certain people over-thought it as much as they decided from the beginning that there was something in particular they wanted to see. I think these quotes from Drew Zahn at WND particularly illuminates the thoughts representative of people who have political issues with the movie:

“Is there anything that redeems ‘Avatar’? …Answer: Absolutely not.

The basic plot of ‘Avatar’ is that in the future, a giant, heartless corporation has sent out well-armed mercenaries from the ecologically destroyed Earth to distant Pandora to rape its valuable mineral deposits from the ground. Standing in the way are the natives, who are perfectly civilized and in tune with the forces of Mother Nature around them.”

- Drew Zahn http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=119657

Now, I can understand the guilty conscience mindset of people, and I can understand the desire others have to take advantage of such things. However, what escapes me is the ability to have spent money to sit and watch something, then leave out details simply so you can appear like a watchdog. He didn’t mention all the kindness that could be found within the Pandora Expedition, how the movie would not have ended well were it not for the human ability to act humanely and justly, even in the heat of combat. The scientists and the Na’vi survived because what they thought was impossible actually happened: someone who cared about nothing began to care about everything. One of the pilots helped them move so they couldn’t be tracked easily and stopped. There were even moments where the main corporate head honcho seemed to visibly doubt his course of action. To be entirely honest, the only TRULY bad person in the film was the main military general/grunt/scarface-wannabe.

On the Na’vi side, there was jealousy, there was hatred and anger, there was hypocrisy. Practically every character was flawed in some way, presenting a decently reasonable scope of characters, despite their predictable traits and resulting plot lines. The argument COULD be made that it was better for its predictability; such a quality suggests that it is a relatable story. Do I think things could have been a bit less “cowboys and indians?” Absolutely. However, one should realize that, in using a medium to which an audience is already accustomed, Cameron allowed them to fully enjoy the extremely hard work he and his team have put into making the movie absolutely gorgeous. If you’d have thought about new concepts too much, you might have missed the colors, the sights, the sounds, which seem (at least, to me) to be the fruit of the movie.

I suppose, in summary, it wasn’t about a new message at all. It was about one that everyone should already be familiar with. We are told from a very young age that it’s not nice to take someone else’s stuff, and that’s one of the pillars that hold a capitalist structure. That some people can’t seem to see that would suggest that they aren’t familiar with it, which is the real travesty, here.

Anarchy: A Short Deontological Study

This post started out as a response to Jeff’s comment on my last post.  However, I got so involved in it that I decided to make it a separate post, in his honor.  His comment follows, for simplicity’s sake:

“I quite adore letters for some of the same reasons you outline, though I’m sure it is not as completely rational as I would have it be.

As agreements are often more boring than differences, though, I wonder why you write that anarchism does not measure up to Kant’s maxims. It would seem that the ability to fiat everyone acting according to the principal in order to test it would mean that no one breaks the solidarity by attacking another and exploiting the lack of a state. Anarchism may actually find its best home in that theoretical world of mass compliance.”

~ J. William Lockheart

As it would require a theoretical world, it’s hard to tell.  I had admitted before that I’m not strictly a deontologist, but I think that Deontology holds the most effective reasons I’ve found for not choosing to be particularly anarchistic, myself.  The way Deontology would reason about it is that if you make Anarchy your universal maxim, you assume that everyone else is an anarchist, as well.

However, the key element of Anarchy (as I understand it, and I’m admittedly not the most knowledgeable authority on the subject) is the subversion of authority, be it in the form of a government (the most widely identified variation) or even a particular person.   The latter is often how Anarchy plays out, as it is far easier to deny the authority of an individual than a government, in most cases (see George W. Bush).

If this is the case, then the maxim of Anarchy is intrinsically flawed according to the first and second principles of the categorical imperative.   Mind you, I’m certainly not Kantian, but I’ll profess to be fascinated with his basic foundations.   I simply think that he takes it a bit too far in certain areas…you can’t live your life COMPLETELY by rules.   If you do, you set yourself up to be exploited, as any system of rules is in a world so flawed as ours.

I’m sure you’re familiar with such things, but for the sake of thoroughness and the benefit of others who read this and aren’t quite as rhetorically versed, I’ll expound on what I mean about the maxim’s violations.   If one lives by Anarchy (makes it their maxim), then by the first principle one must will it to be a universal law, a maxim that all people should ethically live by.  In other words, one lives by it because one finds it to be the most reasonable decision, and therefore other reasonable people (assuming everyone) should live by it, as well.

Now, when you oppose authority that exists, then your actions are, at the very least, in agreement with logical progression.   However, if you and everyone else decide that it is most reasonable to be anarchistic, then there is no government to oppose.  In that circumstance, you are not allowed to be anarchistic any longer – the actions resulting from your maxim have directly prevented you from living your maxim.

Via this reasoning, the maxim of Anarchy violates the second principle of the categorical imperative because it treats humanity simply as a means, not an end as well.  Again, this is all on paper, as it is impossible to fiat a population in reality.   Honestly, that is the perfect solution to all of our problems, for if we were fiat-ed, we wouldn’t be have to make decisions anymore (see Tyranny).  I don’t think that would be desirable to those of us who enjoy the effects of our will, though…and I’ll be the first to admit that I probably savor my own thoughts a bit too much.  Kant, himself, would also argue against Tyranny not only because of its similar intrinsic nullification, but also because he has stated in his works that a good will is the highest good, the only one that is “good without qualification.”

I relish thinking about such hypotheticals, though.   My delight may be evidenced by the fact that I just spent a collective hour and a half both writing this comment/post and researching related topics.   Speaking of which, on a side note – I simply cannot find “fiat” listed as a verb ANYWHERE…my brother is a big S&D’er and he insists it is one, but Webster says otherwise.

How very distressing…for him! XD

Nietzsche Niche

We live in a world full of people who are constantly trying to prove to other people that they are, in fact, valuably real people (there are obviously too many people in this sentence, much more the world).  I say this not because it’s some great mystery; however, some of the most circumspect concepts of our lives are ones to which we choose to turn a blind mind.  I am guilty of this, as well, but it does amaze me to find out how truly afraid some people are of complete introspection.  There is a very good reason it was the first category I created on this blog, and that’s not because this is supposed to be a “dear diary” effort.

I would assume most people know at least two famous Nietzsche quotes, the first of which being, “that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”  The second is one of my favorite quotes of all time, and it offers me a problem of intentions: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.  And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

Preserving one’s self in progress is the modern day application, here.  However, if you type “Nietzsche quotes” into Google search, your first options will give you distinct aberrations of his words, based upon the reality that either any ridiculous person can put a quote there, or that they have an extremely abridged editing system.  While the answer is most likely a little bit of both, it doesn’t change the fact that “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” and “Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one” are both variations of an original statement that significantly lose power for their loss of form and necessary grace.

In that light, even the quote which I feel retains the most of his original character and message could possibly be an inferior duplicate.  For that matter, from what I have read of him, he may well have been too obsessed with form and lost sight of necessary grace, himself.  The saddest state of matter occurs when a man comes so close to truth so many times, even touches it for a while, but ultimately rejects it because he gains more from the rejection.

Did he become a monster, for all his fighting?  I think his answer would have been “under peaceful conditions, the militant man attacks himself.”

It is a coincidence of almost divine comedy that his name and my topic, today, are so similar.  To dig a niche for yourself is to dig a grave for a part of you – what is it that you bury?  I believe it is solitude, and I would place even money that the sacrifice is similar for just about anyone.  That’s why we try to remind ourselves, every once in a while, to stop and smell the roses, and even then there are a multitude of people who insist that stopping and smelling the roses is all we should do.  These days still see their fair share of Ralph Waldo Emersons; they find their own niche via emotional excess, filling the cups of those who feel half-empty.

As for me, I’ve always been close to the stories centering around duality, like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (but you knew that) and, to a different extent, Shakespeare’s Othello.  They are examples of how easy it is to be destroyed by obsession.  I keep that “two-ness” for a constant reality check, and add a third facet, conscience, to affirm an understanding very similar to that which Robert Frost once demonstrated:

“There’s that to the act of having the thought. There is also the doubleness of it. That doubleness, like the singsong of the meter, has something to do with how we are made as human beings. It is some essential part of how we think and are. There is something in all of us of the matchmaker. Man likes to bring two things together into one. He likes to make things into rhymed couplets. Not only poetic rhymed couplets, but the coupling of all sorts of things that reason rhymes together. Rhymed couplets are the symbols of this tendency in man. He lives by making associations and he is doing well by himself and in himself when he thinks of something in connection with something else that no one ever put with it before. That’s what we call a metaphor.  I couldn’t do without that sense of two-ness. It’s a feeling I’ve had from infancy, a kind of ‘ulteriority complex.’”

I admit to finding some pretty long and drawn-out ways to arrive there, but I think this quality is what allows me to work on being “thoreau,” yet remain vigilant against being “one that loved not wisely, but too well.”

The Information Conundrum

As a part of my new experience in communicating my life through the internet, I’ve decided that I should start reading a few other blogs, where I can find them.  One in particular gave me thought for pause.

A quote from Search Engine Journal - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/yahoo-to-shut-down-mybloglog/

“Until now, ReadWriteWeb reports that Yahoo is finally shutting down MyBlogLog. Although there was no reason cited yet. Yahoo is probably just doing what is right. MyBlogLog’s lost its relevance today.  Does it also show that blogs are becoming obsolete?

Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. Blog as a social networking and communication tool is no longer applicable. There’s Facebook and Twitter for that. Blogs’s uses are now reduced as a source of factual information.”

Perhaps I don’t have quite the proper outlook on the blog, yet, because I haven’t been in the business of total internet communication for very long.  However, it seems to me that the blog isn’t just about factoids.  We have Twitter and FB, but a blog is a personalized space were one person can be shared with many.

It feeds pretty well off the other two, and you can tell this sort of thing by blogging, then posting a link to twitter and FB, then using the trends information you’ve spoken of to gauge the effect.

Personally, I’m continuing to work on mine for a time when people so overload themselves with short, disconnected messages that they desire a slower pace and continuity.  I feel like, eventually, sticking to FB/twitter OR just a blog will either extend negative effects (twitter, especially, is a medium that is somewhat built contrary to patience) or reduce your progress to a snail’s pace because you’re not “networked” well enough.

What do you think?