How Do You Guys Do It?

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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby OP ED » Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:15 pm

8bitagent » Mon Jun 10, 2013 11:19 pm wrote:My post wasn't about how do you guys keep within a set mental framework regarding all the shit going on in the world, but just life as a functioning adult. I still feel like a blank slate, as prolific as I've been with creative projects all these years. The positive thing is I don't feel too cynical and actually feel younger than I did even a decade ago.


hah. that's the funniest thing i've read here in ages.
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la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.

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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby Elvis » Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:46 pm

82_28 » Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:18 am wrote:8bit, you better come to Seattle. Drop by PDX, pick up Drew and Mary then roll up here! Me, Willow, Twyla and Elvis will figure out the rest.

Seriously, this is an order, young man.



Yes! :thumbsup
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby blankly » Tue Jun 11, 2013 4:42 pm

I happened on some photos of the 1968 anti war protest march, and didn't recognise it, though I was there. It wasn't a better time, just different.
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby bardobailey » Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:05 pm

One word, ADHD. Been working for me for 60 years!
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby kelley » Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:20 pm

last month i went to italy, just to look at the frescoes, and to visit the giotto chapel in padua specifically. it's one of the most charged places i've ever visited. there wasn't a negative ion in the room, and even after six hundred or so years the message these pictures communicated was clear. it was one of belief, not in god per se, but in the divinity of humanity, which after all was the fundamental message of christianity, and was an absolutely startling thing to encounter at this particular moment when things seem to be speeding towards points beyond reason. this didn't seem a transcendental idea proposed by the artist and his cohort, but rather that of the transmission of spiritual experience as deeply woven into the fabric of daily life, with the intimation of the divine grasped as material fact. i suspect this recognition will help immensely in what i understand to be, if i'm lucky, the last third of my life.
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby NeonLX » Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:36 pm

Wait a sec...we are supposed to be functioning adults here?

Boy, did I ever get on the wrong train.
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby Nordic » Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:43 pm

kelley » Tue Jun 11, 2013 4:20 pm wrote:last month i went to italy, just to look at the frescoes, and to visit the giotto chapel in padua specifically. it's one of the most charged places i've ever visited. there wasn't a negative ion in the room, and even after six hundred or so years the message these pictures communicated was clear. it was one of belief, not in god per se, but in the divinity of humanity, which after all was the fundamental message of christianity, and was an absolutely startling thing to encounter at this particular moment when things seem to be speeding towards points beyond reason. this didn't seem a transcendental idea proposed by the artist and his cohort, but rather that of the transmission of spiritual experience as deeply woven into the fabric of daily life, with the intimation of the divine grasped as material fact. i suspect this recognition will help immensely in what i understand to be, if i'm lucky, the last third of my life.



:thumbsup
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby NeonLX » Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:50 pm

bardobailey » Tue Jun 11, 2013 4:05 pm wrote:One word, ADHD. Been working for me for 60 years!


Ditto. I was the kid who sat out in the hallway during class time in middle school.

Ummm...what was the subject again?
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby The Consul » Tue Jun 11, 2013 6:06 pm

Sanity only means “healthy mind”. Many are more than willing to define what that means, and almost all of them have something they are trying to sell. Can you be sane and not fit in a world that you see as insane? Can you honestly call yourself sane if you are so well adjusted that you never experience any anxiety at all? Hmm, what would that be like? The question is what is the health of your habits. Does your routine satisfy the health needs of your mind? Are 9900 posts the right path to winning friends and influencing people? Do you feel good around people, or do you feel better after they leave? Most people are relieved. Shit, I thought they’d never leave. I rarely feel inspired by human contact. Occasionaly someone gives me a buzz, but never in ways I could anticipate. The only interesting people on sight are children under 12. They are free. Though there are exceptions. Like the other day at the store, I was looking at fruit and this old lady (older than me, at least) held up this beauty in front of my face and said “now that’s a fucking grape fruit.”
As soon as someone calls I start writhing for ways to get off the phone, except for two people who I can talk to for hours. We crack each other up, we find out who is sick and whatever happened to so and so and the red head is in ballet and remember that fucking time when….yeah, I know, pathetic. And an ongoing joke about “if the pope played baseball then…” that has lasted more than 20 years and it’s still not funny, godamnit.
But the National Security State – doesn’t it drive you nuts? Yeah, but I have come to see these things as normal. That is not to say right. I grew up thinking that the odds were high I would be incinerated in either a mushroom cloud or some other form of ordinance. But the twenty car crashes I’ve been in, the windshields I’ve gone through, the doors I’ve flown out of, the tractor I rolled on my head – the mentally imbalanced woman I married, the smokes, the whiskey, the nose dives into the wild side – they came a lot closer to killing me. I’ve mentioned it a few times, how I saw Willian O. Douglass years ago and he warned everyone at the auditorium at the time that those who stayed would be on record that could possibly inhibit their career in government or politics. And that was from a guy who just retired from SCOTUS. Thirty some years ago, brother.
So what the fuck. Sometimes you have a healthy mind, sometimes you have a cheeseburger consciousness. The asteroids are going to come back one day, so what does it matter? Speaking of matter, we are lucky if we can actually see 5% of it, let alone understand any of it and we’re all going to fucking die and political subterfuge more than likely won’t have that much to do with it.
The most important thing, as the Polish poet said, is to never give in, not even to yourself. After that it’s never standing in the way of the beauty that is waiting to light up your soul. It’s everywhere, even in the scariest of shite. It is a matter of keeping your glass as spotless as you can.
But you are alive brother and so too, I think, am I and I and all the oder natty boop a doop boops on this hyar boardy. If you let them get on top your head then you are handing them your sanities. De total destruction is de only solution, brother – whether it be by our own hand or nature’s.
So dig that reggae Afred Newman philosphy and git into yar beats, mon.
Time is a waistin, fahr shuyar, waistin’ it all.

So, ahem, based on the above, the short answer is.
obviously I don’t.
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
— B. Traven
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby Sounder » Wed Jun 12, 2013 5:57 am

I'm sorry Consul, but I have to disagree.

And you 'do it' with more style than any ten other people to boot.

(It would seem that the greatest works remembered by history are all produced by folk that were compensating for shortcomings or seeking redemption from fucked up aspects of their life.)

There is an alchemy to turn sows ears into silk purses.
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby The Consul » Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:03 pm

What if we are right? On average. What if Jeff JackJustDrewJoehillshoist (just to jam on a jarfull of “J’s”) are vindicated? What is the best we can imagine? What is the worst?
Speaking of oddballs J’s; J.D. Salinger once said “imagine the best story you would ever want to read and then write it.” Can RI imagine a better world? Or is it still premature? Or too late? Or Are we too into ourselves?
I have talked to twenty somethings and overheard talk of the Snowden event (remember Snowden from Catch-22?). Sadly, many seem to think, “what’s the big deal? They are only going to use that information if you are suspect.” And I say, but you are. They also seem all too willing to throw the messenger under the bus. They hate Snowden because he is smart, educated, makes a lot of money, had a poll dancing girlfriend and did what? Really? They hate him because of his balls. The non scorpion death lock kind of balls. Nothing is more disquieting than moral cajones speaking truth to power. Until. Is the shit about to hit the fan, or did it already happen? So it could all be moot. Is this merely “Wikileaks II” and is he going to be coiffed as Julian Assangoweden?
Does Glen Greenwald have the steel? Does the Guardian? Does RI? Ad 8Bit asks “how do we do it?”
Is there in the Greenwald releases to come a specific example of the power being abused? And will it be against a non Muslim citizen.
The reducto absurdum is such. Convention centers teeming with maniacs clamoring for the freedom to slaughter each other and anyone who disagrees with ever more shinny destructive death toy guns. Where is the outrage? Is there any? Do American really care about free speech any more? Do most of them even know what it is (besides the fight to keep parental warning labels off of grand theft auto and putting Gold Panda in elevators?)
But what do I know. I don’t even know what emo means. I mean I know in a I don’t want to know kind of way. Open eyes, not everyone can live in brooklyn, or cheyenne. All my friends were beyond my grasp and I never knew what I was looking for even when I walked in on them fucking my girlfriends. And so, and so so. Who do you do?
Not in Hong Kong, apparently, he can’t possibly be there. Oh ravishing madness. A revolutionary who walks on on his double jointed poll dancing lover? Without a word. And risks everything.
Nay brothers and sisters, Dr. Gottleib did not experiment with those kinds of drugs. Just because it is not happening the way we wish it would, or can conceive, does not mean it is not happening.
It is.
Absolute amplification is necessary. The vibration has to carry through concrete and steel while remaining delicate enough to illuminate the tissue unburned. It has to travel out past the realm of our own fears and petty wants. We must perfect our paranoia into the no shit sherlock realm of you can’t be serious, they are not doing this for democracy, but against it.
Churchy is the LeFemme who leads us forth and s/he is not outside ourselves, but what we grasp for in every direction, every dream, every tale we would love our children to tell.
This tyranny will not stand. We are crawling under it. Under the mounds of dead villages, under the mountains of stolen fortunes, under the great mass of useless weapons, under the glowing dumps of garbage.
and we are lifting up
and we are over throwing
and we can do it without firing a shot
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
— B. Traven
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:59 pm

Reminds me of a bad joke in the old National Lampoon:

Q:Mommy, how do lesbians 'do it'?

A: Like everyone else, one goes to work and one takes care of the kids. Now go to bed.

Great thread, thanks!
“The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off”
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby bardobailey » Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:08 pm

I forgot to mention (beside the ADHD) I have a new hobby that helps me cope: http://neartermextinction.ning.com
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby NeonLX » Wed Jun 12, 2013 9:15 pm

bardobailey » Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:08 pm wrote:I forgot to mention (beside the ADHD) I have a new hobby that helps me cope: http://neartermextinction.ning.com


Great site! From there, I clicked over to Guy McPherson's site. His most recent essay is riveting, at least for me...

When he was in the Oval Office, I thought Ronald Reagan was the worst president ever. But I still recall thinking, when Reagan was shot, that it could be worse: We could have his vice president, ex-director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) George Herbert Walker Bush, as president. A few day less than eight years later, we did. Then along comes Slick Willy, who slyly managed to outflank his predecessor and the opposing party on several significant issues. In every case, Bill Clinton outflanked the opposition by moving further to the political right. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, George W. Bush was selected. Twice. And then, he was replaced by somebody even worse. In my voting lifetime, each neo-conservative U.S. president has been replaced by a worse version. And lest you believe otherwise, our two-party, one-ideology system of governance is working. It’s not working for us, but that’s never been the plan.

Within my lifetime, Democrats have shifted far to the right, thus coopting the ideas of the Grand Old Party. The latter party is effectively gone, serving only to make the Democrats seem sane by comparison. Obama and the Democrats can get away with every imaginable abuse — and many abuses I could not have imagined until they occurred — simply by using the Republicans as cover. The corporate media are fully engaged in the cover-up, as pointed out in the 21 March 2013 issue of Harper’s magazine: “Barack Obama … never stops serving the ruling class, yet the mainstream media, from right to left, continues to pretend that he’s some sort of reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully committed to the downtrodden and deeply hostile to the privileged and the rich.”

(SNIP)

All of this probably is fine with most Americans. It’s been a long, relatively gradual road to this point. Most American citizens favor being spied upon, according to a poll conducted 6-9 June 2013 by the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post. Most Americans also favor imprisoning terrorist suspects even without evidence to convict, according to a Rasmussen poll conducted in April 2013. And we’re busily looking the other way as the NSA uses a bogus, secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to get away with recording millions of telephone calls and retaining every email message for an indeterminate length of time. Fortunately for them and all of us law-abiding citizens, Obama refuses to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay — yet another in an endless string of broken campaign promises — and instead has approved major upgrades.


http://guymcpherson.com/2013/06/obedience-at-home/
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How Do You Guys Do It?

Postby Project Willow » Wed Jun 12, 2013 9:31 pm

Elvis » 11 Jun 2013 10:46 wrote:
82_28 » Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:18 am wrote:8bit, you better come to Seattle. Drop by PDX, pick up Drew and Mary then roll up here! Me, Willow, Twyla and Elvis will figure out the rest.

Seriously, this is an order, young man.



Yes! :thumbsup


+1

It's long past due for a big RI NW party! Perhaps in springtime, when Psynapz, and others with enough fair warning can join us as well. Maybe I'll plan another art show or something silly like that. :evilgrin
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