About the Members 28: Tiassa

Okay, so now I'm catching up ... I think

So I wasn't up to current (JustWonderingJoe):

What kind of toys does your child have?​

She has an iMac, and we play a few video games together on a PS2. Beyond that she's got Legos, books, a decent DVD collection. I've been sort of hedging about dolls and such, since they lead to merch-madness, but one of my cousins got her a Hannah Montana doll set for Christmas, so now I get to hear about that. Of course, that's inevitable. But she's also fascinated by simple things, like strings and sticks. If I can find a place that's not a third-floor flat, I would consider getting her a drum set.

Do you do all the housework or do you hire someone?​

Well, I don't hire someone. The question of whether I do housework, however, remains open.

Do you own mostly shoes with laces or slip-ons?​

I hate shoes that tie. But the majority of the shoes I own at present have laces intended to tie.

Do you think I'm male or female?​

I have no clue. It hadn't occurred to me to wonder.

How old are you?​

Thirty-six.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Did you join the seattle protest/riot downtown in 1999?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Feels like I missed out

Nope. I worked downtown at the time, and cleared out because I wasn't prepared for a riot. And yes, I was expecting one. Just ... not the one we got.

But nobody wanted to go back down to the protest with me, and people were encouraging me to stay clear, so I made a deal: I'll stay out of it until they start killing people.

And that worked fine, I guess. Besides, once it was an open riot, I have no idea what I could have done to help. When violence comes, you make your decisions, but there's no reason to go looking for it.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Catching up ....

Catching up is harder than I would think (Orleander) ....

what colour is your toothbrush?​

White with green. Sonicare, I think.

where is the oddest place you have had sex?​

My ex-girlfriend's vagina.

Oh, wait ... sorry. I get you. Probably ... a treehouse? The Burke-Gilman trail?

I'll go with the latter.

Can you play a musical instrument?​

I learned to play the trumpet once upon a time. It would probably take less than a day to hit notes again, and a couple weeks to condition my face to playing regularly again.

What is the worst food you have ever eaten?​

If it was that bad I didn't eat it. I tried eating an anchovy once. Didn't go so well. Horrible. But I think the worst actual prepared food I've ever actually consumed was this bizarre dinner we did once. Fettuccine alfredo with chicken is one thing. But with teriyaki chicken? Good heavens, that's bad. And preceding that with escargot? If I never eat a gourmet snail again, it will be too many. I'll eat the damn things if I'm otherwise facing starvation, but no. I don't care what culinary glories the French might claim. This thing with snails is just insanity.

Can you fillet a fish?​

Nope. Been almost thirty years since I caught a fish. Never had occasion to learn to fillet.

 

http://www.hugohouse.org/events/

 

Why a tour guide?

What's your day like, typically?

What's your favourite thing to do with friends?

 

Hi Tiassa, I really enjoyed reading your answers, and think you have a very interesting outlook. I enjoyed reading your thoughts and wondered:

What qualities make a good father in your opinion?

Do you think the education system fails people of your disposition/intelligence?

How can people like you make changes in society?

How did you build your own value system?

Do you think science is limited to what it can understand about the complexities of peoples' nature and if so what could be an alternative to understanding people on a less limited structural system? (perhaps they're my own thoughts seeping into my question there, but if you could maybe comment on your thoughts about the limits, if you see any and on the advancement of understanding human behaviour).

What moves you?

 

Did someone just hand me a soap box?

The latest (Liebling) ...

Why a tour guide?​

Because it's a job.

I will pause for a moment to say that this is one of the problems I have with the way things are in our society. In politics sometimes we hear the idea that someone should just move, or change jobs. Anyone can do it, after all.

But the thing is that it's hard to just pack up and move (see #2274594/15 for recent comments on that proposition), and a for most people, changing jobs for personal dissatisfaction is a risky move, anyway. Especially in a troubled economy, you take what job you can get.

So someone I know happens to know an attractions manager at a local tourist site. And he's looking for a tour guide. I haven't had a real, documentable job in eight years, and none of the jobs I've ever had were jobs I actually wanted, so I'll follow this lead faithfully in hope that (A) I get the job, and (B) it isn't intolerably absurd. The job won't support me in this region, not by a long shot. But I might be able to dump the money into a health plan for my kid in order to get her off the state roll.

And, hell, I might even be able to afford basic health care for myself. Beyond that, my family is expecting to dump more money into my existence. They're well aware that no job I get without invoking some fantasy outcome will suffice. I've never been worth enough in the job market to actually support myself.

Rent alone will take up 65% of my projected income for this job. And I'll have to commute into the middle of Seattle for it. If I still lived in the city proper, that wouldn't be a problem. Seattle has a pretty good bus system that I can rely on. But coming in from Snohomish County? It's not a viable option except in emergency circumstances.

What's your day like, typically?​

Depends on where my daughter is. But aside from the question of taking her to school or getting up at a more tolerable hour, it's largely spent reading, writing, or diverting myself with video games or other things that don't require much money. Given my druthers, I prefer to exist at night. Parenthood isn't exactly good for that, but I had my chance to bail early on.

One of the reasons I can write so many long posts at Sciforums is that I'm distracting myself from blogging, which is a distraction from writing stories.

What's your favourite thing to do with friends?​

Smoke pot. Listen to good music. None of my friends share my tastes in music. Few of them are aware of the contents of my favorite books, albums, or movies. So we go to shows, or baseball games. The American football season is good, as it involves a lot of beer, nachos, and good-natured homophobic masculine bonding. (The latter being an amusing phenomenon in and of itself.)

In the world where I actually belong, my friends and I do crazier things, like dabble in the occult, seek out strange phenomena like haunted houses and the like, or hang out with lots of naked women. But I have very few true friends, and we're all just a bit screwy. One of them is paranoid, for instance, and is known to drop off the radar in an alcoholic haze. Another is agoraphobic, and when she's not she'd rather hang out with her abusive couch-potato boyfriend. My longest, most trusted friends are either two hundred miles away or tied up teaching high school. And I have a strange relationship with a friend who I'm actually ashamed to be around. I do have a place in the world, but I long ago grew weary with justifying myself, so I just hide away in my corner of the Universe and alternately dream and mourn. Sometimes both at the same time.

• • •​

... and more so (EmmZ) ....

What qualities make a good father in your opinion?​

Parenthood in general is about children, not parents. For instance, one of the conflicts I have to face is my general inability to function in the world versus what it allows me to give my daughter. My own father once expressed that he was amazed by how I get along with my kid, and a bit jealous. He wishes that he could have fostered similar trust with my brother and me. But it's not necessarily creating trust. Rather, it's not losing it.

There was this one night when J and I were dissolving, and she decided to ban me from our bedroom because no relationship is complete, apparently, without forcing a man to sleep on the couch. Rather than simply stew on that, I went into my daughter's room and stretched out next to her. She was all of two at the time, and woke up when I lay down. She looked at me in the dim glow of the night light and her eyes glittered as her face broke into one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen. Then her head dropped back to the pillow and she was asleep.

All I really want for my daughter is for her to have the chance to make certain decisions for herself in the world. Some of those decisions are simply unacceptable to just about everyone. My objections to her religious indoctrination fall on deaf ears. The only rational response to this comes from my brother, who points out, "We survived. We're doing okay."

Well, yes, but I do remember tortured nights lying awake scared senseless of this great menace in the sky. When Mark Steel makes his joke about, "O, Lord, even though we are not worthy ...", yes, it's funny. But not just because it's a joke about Christians. I actually remember that kind of belief. We were holiday Lutherans when I grew up, so my mother doesn't understand my aversion to religion. But in the fertile mind of a six year-old, when someone comes to school and tells everyone her sister is dying in the hospital because God struck her down for lying, it's terrifying. And nobody ever bothers to correct these stupid notions. You have to grow out of them on your own. And when you're told that it's illegal to quit your Lutheran confirmation (and in my case, apparently, it was), what the hell are you supposed to think? Your preacher cusses out an entire class, overturns furniture, and hurls Bibles at students, and we are supposed to apologize to him? Holy fucking shit!

I want my daughter to be able to grow up without that kind of warped pressure. But apparently I'm wrong to think so. It's truly frustrating.

But it's not just religion. I don't want her brought up to be a stereotypical woman. I lose on this count, too. She needs to have a toy kitchen to pretend to be a housewife. And she needs dolls to pretend to be a mommy. And she needs to dream about finding a guy and getting married. Needs? Says who? Oh, right. Not teaching her that being a housewife and a mommy is her first purpose in the world is just so horribly cruel.

And Hannah Montana? I'm sorry, but the South Park episode "The Ring" absolutely nailed what's wrong with Disney. And Dan Savage gave a great presentation for This American Life's live tour in 2007 including an indictment of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I know my kid is going to be exposed to these commerce-based zombie products, but I don't see the need to rush her into it. I'm tired of "wholesome" media that portrays propriety as being vapid and soulless. You'd think we had enough of that with '80s family sitcoms, but no ... apparently The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, It's Your Move, Punky Brewster, and the like just weren't enough.

I want my daughter to grow up to make good decisions, and be able to make a few bad ones. And I want her to know that no matter what, she always has a place where she is welcome and loved. I resented my own family for a long time because there was simply no way I was going to live up to their expectations without shooting myself in the head at some point. I couldn't live in Hell for them, and that hurt. So I won't ask my daughter to live in Hell. Indeed, I should insist on something better.

And being a good parent means remembering that. It doesn't mean spoil her. It doesn't mean terrorize her with authority. You know, I've seen this work with dogs, and that's not so extreme as it sounds. Steven Brust's parents, for instance, practiced what he refers to as "benevolent neglect", and swore it worked with the plants. And, frankly, I like Steven Brust. He's smart, friendly and accessible, and writes a hell of a story. But for me, the thing with dogs is that if you treat them like people, they act like it. So tinker with that for kids. I treat my daughter like a person, and she acts like one. It actually makes parenting easier.

Like Friday, she decided she wanted to wander away and play on the toys at the park instead of hang out on the beach with the rest of us. And she defied me in doing so. Instead of making a scene, I got her attention by asking if she wanted to go home, and then explained to her that I would greatly appreciate it if she didn't just ignore me. And we talked about going to play on the toys in a little while, and by that time we were back to our spot on the beach, and she ended up having a great time. People included her in the conversation and generally treated her like she was another human being in the circle. And, yes, she got to play on the toys, but as my brother said, "You can't just let her walk away from you like that." When I was a kid, that sort of behavior earned a spanking, or a serious tongue-lashing. There's no point to it. If I treat her with respect, she emulates. If I control her with assertions of force and authority, she emulates.

So treat kids like they're human beings. Like they're people. And remember that parenthood is not about the parents, but the children. Those two points are all anyone needs. Obviously, there are some practical details to consider, but when was parenthood supposed to be easy?

Do you think the education system fails people of your disposition/intelligence?​

Yes, but I also think it fails everyone. I'm a college dropout, and the smartest people I know ... well, it's enough to say they think I'm one of the smartest people they know. I wish that translated into some sort of socioeconomic viability. Now this is where it starts to sound a bit arrogant: My father, who has a master's degree of his own, thinks I'm the smarter of his two kids. God I hate saying that, because my brother might someday hear, and he graduated from Stanford University. But, for his part, my brother, while extremely intelligent and ultimately pragmatic, reminded me recently that nobody he knows of operates the way I do. In a recent legal matter, he questioned the need for lawyers. "We don't even know where the law stands on this," he pointed out. "And I don't know anyone who can figure that out better than you." I never know what to say to praise like that. When I was younger, that sort of thing didn't matter. By those earlier standards, I'm a freakin' idiot because none of what I do translates to dollars. And a friend of mine with a PhD in theology is known to occasionally defer to my outlook on matters theological. I don't know how that happened.

And all of those things are simplifications, obviously. But if I'm so damn smart, why the hell can't I function in the world?

The education system failed me by failing to provide a safe place to learn where I could concentrate on learning. The Catholic school failed me simply by being snotty about a couple of things. Seriously, from seventh grade (public school) through high school (Jesuit), I never had a term without having to take some form of algebra. Not mathematics, but algebra specifically. At one point, a chemistry teacher at my school went in to the academic vice president's office and literally begged him to transfer me out of an algebra class and into his chemistry class. The AVP refused. Sometimes it seemed like they were inventing algebra courses for me. If I go with sixth grade through the end of high school, we can count two whole semesters without specifically taking a course with "algebra" in the title. I started "pre-algebra" in the second half of my sixth grade year. And I took physics, which was entirely algebraic, although didn't have the word in the title, when I was a junior. My math class that term was "Geometry/Logic", and included the teacher explaining to us how she left her child for dead once as a demonstration of her faith in God and Christ. But, seriously: pre-algebra, algebra, algebra again, algebra II, algebra III, and college algebra. I fucking hate math because of this. Not that I don't find it fascinating, but I will never again sit around doing a hundred freaking algebra problems a night. Not for a year, not even for a week. So even if I somehow manage to ever go back to college, you can bet I won't be a science major.

Add to that social antagonism: I grew up in a time and place where being a good student only caused you trouble. I gave up in the fourth grade. The solution to antagonism was, according to school officials, to try harder to fit in. So I did. I went from one of the smartest kids in the country according to standardized testing (99th percentile) to graduating high school with a 2.78/4.0 GPA and a 1090/1600 SAT score. I nearly dropped out when I was seventeen, and chose to go to a Jesuit school at fifteen because if I stayed in public school somebody was going to die. Seriously: try harder to fit in, and be like everyone else. There's a reason people think the younger generations are vapid and hollow: it's what we ask of them.

How can people like you make changes in society?​

Hitch our wagons to stars and fly.

Really, you do it through art. I'm not a natural leader because people really don't give a fuck what I have to say. I've actually had post-event discussions with people where I said, "It's not like this was unexpected," and they respond, "Well why didn't you say something?" Um ... I did. And you said I was being silly. But there's no point in telling them that, because they'll say there was something wrong with how you told them. I'm aware that the one way you don't speak to a person is in the same manner and tone that they speak to others. Actually, that's not true. There are plenty of people you can speak to in the same respectful tone and manner they address others, but neither are those people natural leaders, because nobody really gives a fuck what they have to say, either. And it's really weird, too, because whenever I take the advice to be more like other people, everyone is shocked.

I'll never be elected. I'll never be a manager. I'll never be that kind of a boss. I don't join political groups because I'm simply not going to be a telephone solicitor for a political cause, and it's quite clear that all the smart, "alpha" types who lead those sorts of groups have no use for my idea of how to communicate with voters. I mean, really ... to be honest with people? To speak to them as if they're intelligent people capable of understanding issues? Why the hell would anyone ever do that?

My route to "career" success would be to get a job in administrative services and somehow accidentally impress someone in public relations, and end up thrust into a job as a company spokesman. It's not going to happen, and I really don't want to know how much pot it would take to keep me sane if I was paid to shill for some corporation. I mean, yeah, it's marijuana, but even I have my limits to how much I can smoke.

So for people like me, you write a book or movie, or create some sort of art, and hope people understand. It's clear to me that is a futile hope in the immediate context, since the ideas I want to communicate don't necessarily revolve around fucking a hottie or blowing up half the police department while spewing bad puns in the middle of an insane car chase. But in the longer term, there are signs of hope.

My father once went sort of nuts. His entire world started collapsing, so he retreated onto his boat and lived in misery for a few years before re-emerging as a genuinely changed man. We get along now. But he said two things to me while we were preparing for my daughter's arrival in the world that still affect me to this day. One was this weird morning I came stumbling down the stairs to go to breakfast with him, and I was on only a few hours' sleep, and was already stoned out of my mind. And he came in and said, "I owe you an apology." From his tone I thought he was about to tell me he just ran over my cat. But he was referring to a lot of the arguing we did when I was younger. During his transformation, he came to believe he had been unfair, and thought he could see the effects of that still playing out in my life. As to the former, yeah, I would have agreed back then. As to the latter, he's probably right. But, apparently, at some point, I won the argument and hadn't noticed. He woke up one day, or over the course of many days, and came to realize that, at least in his experience, the principles he taught me didn't hold up in the world, and he'd said a lot of things along the way that he came to view as cruel. Really, I hadn't noticed. I thought I had just moved on. But that one affected me profoundly, as it was the last thing I ever would have expected. Perhaps he was twelve-stepping in his own way, and trying to make amends.

The other thing he said was that I should keep on as I was. This was entirely a surprise, since my view of the world was not economically viable. But, during his recovery, he apparently came to admire my—and I hate this word—tenacity. That is, at some point he came to envy my unyielding grasp of principle. One of the reasons I do so little in the world is that most of what I can do contributes to some form of evil. He compromised, and that compromise eventually bit him in the ass. But he sees in my unyielding nature the result of what he taught me.

For instance, here at Sciforums, you can frequently find people decrying my assessment of their argument by saying, "I never said that!" Ah, but you don't have to is the thing. If it is a necessary implication of the position, you cannot escape responsibility. Who here advocates poverty or child abuse directly? Nobody. But these things are necessary outcomes of many of our social principles.

My father once told me, during a '90s child labor scandal (Kathy Lee) that the kids in Nepal "should be thankful to have a chance to support their families". Right. So you work twelve to sixteen hours a day because your parents, in working twelve to sixteen hours a day, can't afford to feed you. You make pennies for your labor while other people buy vacation homes in the tropics with the fruit, and you're supposed to be thankful? Yes, if I had to guess, he would be very embarrassed to recall that. But, literally, he was a Reagan Republican when I was a kid, and now he's actually someone sane.

Most people wouldn't go so far as to say that Nepalese kids working in unsafe conditions for a poverty wage should be thankful for the opportunity. But, to the other, our luxury in the United States depends on growing a massive poverty class around the world. If we paid a fair wage, owning two houses, five cars, four boats, a handful of computers, and the like, would be a lot harder.

I find myself feeling boxed in. The only way out is to hitch my wagon to a star and ride through 'til morning. So stories it is. Stories are my specialty. The story is my primary tool for affecting the world around me. And it's not a bad lot, all things considered. I just wish I could cope with the rest of the world a little better. Then, at least, I could be a mundane novelist. But with idols like Barker, Bradbury, Brust, Cady, Camus, Huxley, and the like, it's really hard to settle in and say, "This is good enough. People will buy this."

A Dean Koontz or Stephen King can sell a story. But my canon revolves around various writers' abilities to create stories that stand the test of time, that are applicable in any remotely common age. Antic Hay (Aldous Huxley), for instance, may be set nearly a hundred years ago, and in England, but I can empathize with and understand those characters much more than a private dick who is the only person standing between religious fanatics and the little boy they want to kill, but has the time to fuck the tantalizing mother senseless in a random scene whose only moment is to offer the reader some titillation because, well, sex sells (e.g., Koontz, Servants of Twilight).

How did you build your own value system?​

Piecemeal.

Patchwork. My "classic" education is lacking. For instance, I had to be reminded that The Matrix was a restatement of an old philosophical postulation. But I've always been, at least with ideas, a "Jack of all trades, master of none". I can hold my own in conversations with psychologists, historians, theologians, and other specialists of liberal arts and social sciences. And, indeed, I can even affect their outlooks. I know a psychologist right now who is fascinated with my take on the psychologies of politics and religion. Even he thinks I'm smarter than a lot of the PhDs he knows.

But, unlike a lot of people, I have no heritage to rest on. I'm entirely disconnected from both my ethnic communities. So one result is that my values are essentially a mix of theory and practice, with a broader approach to theory than most people I encounter. Any story has value as a fable to me. Indeed, one of the things I've been amused with is watching the transformation of a variation on vignette short fiction from mundane bullshit into a post-pomo testament against substance into a new form of fable. I couldn't stand the old form, which was literally like reading excerpts of life stories in Reader's Digest. I appreciate the post-pomo vapidity, which communicates at secondary valences while leaving the primary line open and empty. And I'm struck by Sedaris' seeming ADHD approach to storytelling. There is a story, for instance, called "The Man In the Hut", included in When You Are Engulfed In Flames, that is striking because it deliberately passes over an opportunity to make a genuine point about human relationships in order to indulge in self-centered superficiality. Yet that superficiality makes a point of its own. It's subtle, yes, and would be missed by the average Da Vinci Code reader, but that's part of ... well, the former section I guess, on making changes in society.

Anyway, you can find fragments of my values in Shel Silverstein, Ray Bradbury, Steven Brust, Clive Barker, Jack Cady, Albert Camus, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien ... the list goes on. Jim Henson, Emma Goldman, and yes, even George Lucas. The fact that something was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away doesn't render it meaningless. Yoda is a wonderful character with much to teach. And there's also poetry and music. Rob Wynia, of Floater, writes the kind of lyrics I flat-out envy, not only for their beauty but also their substance.

And there is history: From Syd Barrett to the Haymarket Martyrs, the triumph of orthodoxy over gnosticism; the lies of our own American historical narrative have their value in being known as lies; history itself is a fable.

On the practical side, most of my principles derive from failure. Macrocosmically, I understand a good deal about why Communism failed, and few of the academic discussions ever delve that deeply because those factors are hard to quantify. Microcosmically, I still burn with the shame of fuckups past, and dread those yet to come. I can't count the number of times I've treated people poorly, and it's an exercise in self-abuse to even try. But those memories persist for a reason, and the best I can do for the ghosts of the past is to listen to what they're telling me. It's not pleasant, but it's a duty. Nobody died, so I can live with it and not wish to have those opportunities back in order to do things differently. Really, I might find better material success, or greater comfort in my own skin, but there's a high probability that I would be someone I don't like. I mean, people tell me I'm smart, but then I look around and see all the dolts who can manage to function in life. They may be idiots, but they can get their ass to work and support themselves. The flip-side, of course, is how many of them are absolute prigs. Would it be better if I was earning a hundred thousand a year, but was a complete asshole to everyone around me? I don't think so, but basic psychological principles suggest I wouldn't think so.

Do you think science is limited to what it can understand about the complexities of peoples' nature and if so what could be an alternative to understanding people on a less limited structural system?​

Science is only limited by the natural boundaries of the human brain. We are finite creatures. To take a theoretical example, let us assume that God exists. Or, to be practical, proving that God exists is the obligation of the so-called "Intelligent Design" crowd. But here's the thing: we are finite creatures, and God, as such, is infinite. It is beyond our capacity to perceive the whole of God. Thus, we might find something that suggests "Intelligent Design", but are gray aliens from Zeta Reticuli really God? Actually proving that what we perceive is, in fact, "God" actually transcends our capabilities specifically because we are finite.

In the context of human behavior, the two things a person needs to understand in the abstract are the factors involved, and the permutations thereof. We are creatures of habit, and understanding those habits demands that we understand what goes into them. It's why I look at a Muslim in, I don't know, say, Pakistan, and see him as no different from me. Sure, we might believe different things, but those differences are explicable if we delve deeply enough, and beyond that we're both human.

But understanding human behavior also raises the dangerous question of manipulating it. To take a contemporary issue: Yes, people torture. Yes, torturers will say anything to justify their cruelty. Nothing that is happening right now actually surprises me, except perhaps by its magnitude and velocity. I've long believed it was only a proverbial hop, skip, and jump from needing people to suffer for the sake of our long-term luxury to going out of our way to cause suffering in order to satiate our immediate lust, but I'm also a bit taken aback by how deeply the cancer has spread and how quickly it has shown itself. Still, the whole mess can be explained. The question is whether we are aware of enough of the contributing factors. Given that history, religion, and psychology—both individual and community—are in play, as well as economics (and all of these factors grotesquely intertwined) it's a difficult foundation to grasp.

And I recently had occasion to reconsider the masculinist movement; my sentiments about it are generally known here, but circumstances suggested strongly that I should reconsider my rejection of some of the movement's basic presuppositions. I didn't flip on anything, since the immediate issue was handled neatly enough, but there still persists an underlying question. In relation to the movement, though, I still feel they're asking the wrong question. And what I would tell them, in the context of the rights of parents, is that it's still not about us as men or fathers or even people. The problem is a confluence of relevant factors. There are plenty of misogynists in the movement, to the point that they seem to define it. But there are also legitimate questions to resolve. In my situation, those questions were due process and equal protection. In the long run, yes, the laws need some tinkering at least, but the prescription I hear coming from that movement is just poisonous.

It's like other movements, though, in a relevant context. There are many who will cling to valid questions because the outcome in some way coincides with their own irrational desires. Separating the psychological strands is an enormous task, to the point that we're a long way off from having laws that are at once equitable and understood as being so.

For instance, I understand why the laws favor mothers. Circumstances are changing, though, and that presumption may not be appropriate anymore. But it is definitively inappropriate to address the question by accusing open sexist conspiracy against men. One must ignore history at least in order to reach that conclusion. But why ignore history? And how do we select what parts of history to ignore? Therein lies the behavioral question.

With religion, it is easy enough to identify what's wrong. But as my experience with atheists at Sciforums suggests, it's not easy to find a useful solution. The simplest question, With what do you fill the moral vacuum? seems to confound atheists, and I really don't understand why. They're supposed to be the rational creatures, and I tend to believe this. Or, at least, I believe in that potential. Not that the answer to the question is necessarily simple, but I don't get why people have such a hard time understanding the question.

We are in a transitional era, and while it can be fairly argued that any age is transitional, this is historically unique. When I was a kid, we recorded our favorite songs off the radio onto cassettes. And then we simply copied other people's cassettes. And now we have mp3s and torrent sites. My dad's record collection, on the other hand, was a small group of 45s that fit into a lunch box. What is the psychosocial effect of being able to catalog and retain so much music? I have a friend who wears headphones everywhere he goes. He's a musician, so it's understandable, but he also clearly uses the recorded music to shut out the world in a way unthinkable even into the 1980s. And the "information superhighway" brings us an overdose of strangeness. During the Civil War, it took weeks sometimes for news to reach the periphery, and even longer before the engravings were available to view. World War II saw newsreel footage played in movie houses; on any given Saturday, young boys would go to the cinema for the double feature, and before the movies ran, they would hear that authoritative voice telling them about America's boys abroad, and their noble, valiant work. They would see ruined villages, or cities aglow with fires after the air raids. Vietnam brought grainy images straight to our living rooms before the bodies were cold, and sometimes live. And since our first go in Iraq, warfare became a consumer spectacle, with news outlets competing to get the best explosions or most tears. The Bush Wars come to us in real time.

The economic crisis? Statistics come out every day, and each one is supposed to make us panic. But statistics have come out every day for a long time, and it's only recently that we've started to panic over every last one. What are the psychosocial impacts of being overwhelmed with information?

These questions are all within our capabilities to answer, but we must necessarily choose to make that understanding a high priority. It doesn't bring a good financial return, though, so the questions stay low on the list. We are at a point where our ability to understand human behavior far outstrips our will. And that is our greatest limitation.

What moves you?​

Catharsis.

It's as simple as that. Human beings engaging one another through fundamental, intangible processes. Sure, we can analyze brain activity and behavioral stats, but the purest emotion flourishes under the heaviest of burdens. It is amid disaster that we discover the strongest love. It is necessarily through pain that we find the sweetest relief.

The most rewarding expressions of humanity that I have ever experienced arose from wreckage. Sometimes all people need is to be held, to feel safe, to honestly believe that tomorrow will someday come. And in those moments, there is no drug, no orgasm, no fist in the air and shouting "We're number one!" that can compare.

Together we examine the wound, and together we begin its healing. It is what humanity does. It is a fundamental key to our survival, a necessary component of our perpetuity. It is why the Brave New World is so dystopic: If our only communion is happiness, we will not properly face the hardest challenges, and we will not survive.

 

"Above all, a living being seeks to discharge it's strength"
What's yours ?

 

Thank you so much for your answers Tiassa, they were exactly what I'd hoped for. I just couldn't ask someone like you what your favourite colour is, or your favourite topping on a pizza type question. When the opportunity to explore a mind like yours comes along I only wish I had the abilities to really dig into it and uncover those treasures you so eloquently revealed just there.

You seem like someone who looks at society and does not fit into it neatly, and is left somewhat questioning why. Why such a great mind cannot and does not and for that matter does not want to fit into the mediocrity of life. It's because you're not mediocre. And that stamp that I feel you really want to make on this planet is being left in that daughter you are raising to be a unique and free-thinking individual. I think the problem with people who raise their children to question the norms of society inevitably face conflict because the structures are set up to maintain the status quo. Even if she does play with a toy kitchen or push a doll in a pram you are teaching her something that I think will leave a much deeper impression. I wish more people had parents like you. It's exciting to think a young women will merge from her upbringing with you as a guide, as a role model, and as her student. What a fortunate person she is.

If I may ask another question? Which do you find the most unfortunate, untapped brilliant potential, or a life of mundane existence but able to function like a hamster on a wheel?

 

Goddamn. Does Tiassa have like a 13 inch penis that makes sucking up to him a good idea? If so:

Tiassa, what's it like being the best person ever?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

What's it like packing that iron around all day?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Srsly...

Do you think you'll want another child if you find the right partner?

Where do you stand on the idea of open adoption as an adoptee yourself?

 

Pizza, Burt Ward, and the Unbearable Lightness of Interconnection

My belief in the interconnectedness of all people, and all things in the Universe.

Sorry, I don't have a better, more thorough answer for that. I'll work on it. I have a follow-up post with a few addenda to put together at some point, and it's easy enough to put this on the list.

• • •​

On pizza and other things (EmmZ) ....

I just couldn't ask someone like you what your favourite colour is, or your favourite topping on a pizza type question.​

Pepperoni with extra cheese.

Which do you find the most unfortunate, untapped brilliant potential, or a life of mundane existence but able to function like a hamster on a wheel?​

Depends on who a person is. In my case, I think the latter is probably the worse of the two. I'm conditioned to believe the former applies in some way to me, although I would set aside the adjective "brilliant". And, frankly, I still get to smoke a lot of dope, and I still get to watch this amazing Universe take place, and I still get to seek happiness within the experience of being human. Sure, there are plenty of people who smoke a lot of dope, but few seem to give a damn about the amazing Universe, and fewer still enjoy delving so deeply into the human endeavor. Yet such spectacles and the ability to perceive them are rewards unto themselves.

• • •​

Well, it's definitely not thirteen inches (TalkAndJive) ....

Do you think you'll want another child if you find the right partner?​

I had actually frequently said explicitly that I never planned to reproduce. Well, at least I didn't plan. On the one hand, we deal with what life brings. To the other, it's a hell of a ride, and among the parents I've known through the course of my life, I am lucky as hell. My daughter is a strange phenomenon even among the strange phenomena known as children.

Where do you stand on the idea of open adoption as an adoptee yourself?​

I think it's a little bit greedy on the part of the biological parent(s), but I don't recall actually witnessing one in motion, so ... yeah. Something, something Burt Ward.

But I don't oppose the idea. My brother received contact a couple years ago from his birth mother. He shrugged off the letter. Then she called him directly, so he agreed to head up north to meet her. He's said virtually zero about her to me. But he does have a half brother, and here's the irony: It turns out they go to the same concerts, so it's entirely likely they've crossed paths before. Indeed, it is our intention to rally up together for a show at some time in the future. Depends on who books and where.

I have no clue how I would respond to the same situation. Well, that's not true. I'd probably shrug and head off to the reunion at the first invite. In truth, I'm a bit curious about who she is because at one point in my youth, the ethnicities of my parents reversed, and I'll only say that it's coincidental that the change in the tale occurred around the same time it struck me that someone I knew could damn well be my father. So that part intrigues me. I should probably write it as a novel, or something.

But the thought of knowing her the whole time? I don't know. I wasn't a particularly happy youth, so it's entirely possible knowing her would have been problematic. The last thing I really needed at a time when I was angry with my family was something to draw me further away from them. But I can't speak for other people on that.

In the end, whatever gives a child a safe, stable, loving home works for me.

Maybe if I ever write a blockbuster movie or something, and can afford it, I'll do a Mia Farrow. What? I can't possibly do the Woody Allen routine. And I can't imagine saying no to a child simply because the biological parents want in. Certainly, I can imagine conflict, but conflict within family is natural and nearly constant, anyway. Variations on the theme would be entertaining, to say the least. You do what you have to. It's family. Period. Matters of law only pertain to authority. They don't change the fact of blood, and they certainly don't change what that fact means to any given person.

 

Why do you sometimes post completely detailed and fascinating replies to people who already have a preset attitude when they asked the question/posted the thread ?,

 

I'd like to add a follow-up challenge: Why do you have faith in reason?

 

Very interesting answers Tiassa, and here are some more questions:

If you could make one change to the world what would it be?

Do you like living in/near Seattle? If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

If you could live in any period in history, other than now, when would it be and why?

Supposing you were put in charge of the education system, either regionally or nationally, what would be the main changes you would like to make?

 

Something about ... um ... something

Performance art. Sometimes a response isn't really for the member it's directed at, but anyone else who comes along and reads the thread.

For instance, a lot of the discussion propositions we encounter here depend on insupportable presuppositions in lieu of observable reality. Maybe the original poster is set in his or her delusions, but others who approach the topic either need to know that the presuppositions are wrong, or else they already know and will find at least some comfort in knowing that they're not the only ones who think it's obvious.

And, hey, any excuse to make a point, some days.

• • •​

Well, why do you?

And yes, you can treat that as a rhetorical question. I'm of the opinion that reason established in good faith, based on rational presuppositions drawn from what is observable produces fairly consistent results.

And when it fails, it's not the fault of reason. Rather, the error is most likely invested in the reasoner: wrong presuppositions, forget to carry the one ... something like that.

You've been around long enough that you might, at some point, have encountered my assertion that there is a purpose or meaning of life. Doesn't mean we know what it is, but objective morality, such as it is, will be dynamic, as it is invested in the fact of species. Take an easy challenge as an example: nuclear weapons. Great, we have them. But what in the Universe would be worth using them? Yeah, a big-assed comet if it's all we have left. But a war? Come on, is slant-drilling, ideology, or (fill in the blank) really worth risking human extinction?

I adore an example presented in the opening miniseries of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. Adama argues with the president, and she wins the argument. He heads into CIC and gives his orders. His staff wonders at the change of perspective. "We need to start having babies," says Adama, heeding the President's argument. Col. Tigh looks across the room to where Billy and Dualla seem to be having a somewhat intimate or flirtatious conversation, then back at the Commander and asks, "Is that an order?" Adama replies, "Not yet."

I don't believe in forced reproduction. It's immoral. But if humanity is all but wiped out, and fifty thousand of us are left to flee across the stars? Yes, I would very carefully consider it.

In more realistic considerations, what is a society capable of? Universal healthcare would have been something of a joke in feudal Europe, even if people moved past the fact that serfs were, well, serfs. The society simply wasn't able to provide it. But we're at a point that the question becomes viable, because there are times when we can save a life, or a limb, or a faculty, and the primary objection to doing so is profit. This is abusrd: Do the job, and we'll figure out the rest later. Well, it's time to figure out the rest. Nobody should have to choose which finger to save and which to lose because they can't afford to keep them both. Nobody should have to choose to die in order to not accrue debt that will be passed on to their family.

Is food a right? This doesn't play out much in the U.S., but the international community is, more and more, treating hunger as a potential act of violence. Socialists (ISO) in the '90s used to assert that the Earth could sustain something like fifty billion people, but I don't want that quality of life for humanity. But ... if we could allegedly feed that many people, seven billion shouldn't be so tough. The primary challenge to feeding the world is that our distribution network refuses to do so. People go hungry because it's just that important to us that they should. There are times in history when there wasn't enough food to go around, but this is the twenty-first century, and the thought that we have literally mountains of grain going to waste in farm country because nobody's buying it? Fine, let's work something out to ship three quarters of that to places that need it, leaving the rest to account for potential market fluctuations and disasters. Yes, it's going to make a farmer less money than selling that grain through regular channels, but the alternative is zero money as it goes to waste. Given what we're capable of, we have widespread hunger in the world because we choose it. And this, too, is absurd.

And even if that fifty billion number is high? Fine, pick a number. Twenty billion? We should still be able to feed seven billion, then.

The fact of human rights is disputed only by a minority whose perspective is tinted either by cynicism or vested interest. The breadth of human rights, however, is subject to what we are capable of delivering. Yes, I think everyone should have a good home to live in, diverse food in excess of bare subsistence, and a job they like. But I have no freakin' idea how to make that happen. If I figure it out, be assured I'll let people know. It's an idealistic assertion of rights, and two of those three are definitely within our grasp.

This is what reason gets me. And, in my opinion, it's a far better shot, as I see it, than leaving it to some blueblood or redneck or zealot to arbitrarily decide who deserves what.

And, looking back to objective morality, it also seems the best way to ensure the perpetuity of species.

• • •​

And so on (EntropyAlwaysWins) ....

If you could make one change to the world what would it be?​

To make people realize that, while one must presume Sisyphus happy, the reality is that he is not.

The key there is that we must presume Sisyphus happy. Why? Because he doesn't put down the rock. If he already faces the worst punishment the gods can figure, what does he stand to lose by simply walking away? But he convinces himself that just because the gods can't think of anything worse doesn't mean there isn't anything worse. So he decides he's satisfied with his lot. Perhaps it beats oblivion—Ah, the enchantment of being alive.

Of a sort.

Even if you're essentially in Hell.

Do you like living in/near Seattle? If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?​

I adore this region. It used to be Eden, and in many respects still is. I mean, the occasional earthquake and, even more rare, volcanic eruption, are our biggest immediate natural threats. Climate changes have something to say about it, and I would prefer the milder summers of my youth, but given that I don't have to shake scorpions out of my shoes or whatever, and the fog off the river isn't making us bleed to death through our eyes, and considering the degree to which a reasonable population can sustain itself up here, I can't find much to argue with. In fact, it's pretty much the people that are the problem. Life goes on.

I've long said that if I decided I had to leave, I would rather go to the Irish coast and spend my days drinking. I'll even put up with some of their laws I don't like. But it has the benefits of an absolutely charming version of spoken English that pleases my aesthetic sensibilities, and a people renowned for their hospitality and sense of community. Come dance in the holy land of Ireland? Okay, sounds good.

But it's also likely that if I ever achieve my literary dreams, I'll end up spending time in the vipers' nest known as southern California. (I prefer the term "Lower California", which as far as I know comes from a Greg Proops joke. The term contracts to "Lo-Cal", which is charming in a "Be Sharps" kind of way.) But, yes, I would like to write a couple of movies someday, and I could endure the LA set for that.

And if I ever go completely off the end, I won't end up shooting the hell out of a shopping mall, but rather retreating to some Asian backwater and hiding away in a Buddhist commune somewhere.

If you could live in any period in history, other than now, when would it be and why?​

The American nineteenth century, maybe. I mean, the whole gay rights thing is well and fine, and a fight I'm willing to take part in. But abolition would have been a fascinating debate to take part in. Maybe the turn of the century. I adore Emma Goldman's writing, and would have been an Anarchist. Maybe coincide with the sixties. Wars suck and all, but the anti-war movement would have been rewarding on several fronts.

I could have written quite well in those older days, and I can't imagine what I would have done during the sixties with enough acid in me. Ah! Romance!

Supposing you were put in charge of the education system, either regionally or nationally, what would be the main changes you would like to make?​

Restore arts programs, pare down electives, work to re-establish the well-rounded student. Hell, this morning on one of our local public radio stations (we have three in the area) a host was interviewing a guy who was advocating for the re-establishment of shop classes. And he makes a point. Because, well, sure shop was the place the school filed away its malcontents, but, to the other, I can't fix a car, and one of the most rewarding labor experiences I had was fixing a rotted section of floor at my brother's house a couple years ago. All I did was cut away the rotted section and tack some good wood onto the exposed beams. It was rewarding because everyone else was fretting over how big the job was going to get, and this was a simple solution. And yet I was the one who thought of it. One shouldn't be in their mid-thirties before being useful in such a context.

And, hell, you don't want me working on a car. I almost destroyed a Ford 350 once because I failed to realize the seal from the prior oil filter didn't come away with the rest of it. So I put the new filter on over the old seal and caused a massive oil leak that showed itself on the freeway. To the other, my father, who can work on any car built before about 1986, once destroyed a Volkswagen engine because he deemed valve adjustment unnecessary. He once installed an engine in a pickup truck that didn't fit the transmission. Then he realized the injectors were backwards, or upside down, or something. And there was this hilarious occasion he screwed up a tire change and ended up sending the right rear wheel of the same Ford pickup I almost destroyed careening over a half mile off the highway and through farm country. Still, though, you don't want me working on cars. With him, such screwups were occasional. With me, they'd be standard. So, yes, I can see the need to restore practical labor skills to the educational process.

It's all part of a well-rounded education. Knowledge, citizenship, faculty, and even the germinating seeds of wisdom. That sounds much better to me than preparing students to be proper consumers.

 

/eek

i just adore you, buddy

 

All right, now I'm a bit confused. I read the "imagine Sisyphus happy" quote and even the linked paragraph earlier and it seemed that the idea was that, since it is the journey and not the destination that counts; Sisyphus could very well be happy and find satisfaction in his struggles despite the fact that all his efforts are ultimately for naught. The broader point, I thought, was that the same applies to all of us since, ultimately, we're all going to die and everything we ever worked for and cared about will fall apart and be forgotten. Despite all that, we can and should find happiness and meaning in the journey.

And yet, you then undercut the whole thing by saying "the reality is that he is not". So what are you saying? We should struggle and find meaning in life where we can despite the inevitability of death and the ultimate meaningless of it all; but we'll probably fail and be unhappy no matter what we do? Is that the thing you want everyone to understand, or what?

 

The Devil we know

It's a confusing myth. Sisyphus was punished by the gods for some unspecified sin. Some say he was something like Prometheus, having taken something that was the rightful province of the gods and delivered it unto humanity. Another legend suggests he was simply a greedy bastard who, having earned a temporary pass from the afterlife to visit his wife and set his affairs in order, refused to return to death. For the most part, it doesn't matter what he did; there are valid corollaries with humanity in either of those scenarios, at least.

The gods came together and decided on his legendary punishment, to push a rock up a hill that featured an increasing incline until the rock would roll back down to the bottom. As far as the gods could imagine, an eternity of fruitless labor was the worst thing they could possibly inflict on the human spirit.

If this is so, what can they possibly do to Sisyphus that is worse if he simply leaves the rock at the bottom of the hill and sets off to explore eternity? Yet he never does.

If the descent takes place in joy, it is a tendency of the human spirit; even in the face of futility, we will in some way answer the challenge. "His fate belongs to him," writes Camus. "His rock is his thing."

The "Myth of Sisyphus" excerpted is a short essay appended to the larger discussion of the Myth of Sisyphus. The appendix explains the basic myth against which the prior long essay is contrasted, and upon which it is built.

The larger Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical argument against suicide conceived vis á vis World War II, when many of Camus' peers in France were killing themselves in despair over what had taken place, and the enormous damage done to nation, self, and species.

The essential villain is something called the Absurd, which is exactly what it sounds like. We've all witnessed or experienced it to some degree, but some people become acutely aware of its presence and impact, and these tend to lose hope. It is this deadly proposition that Camus considers. Recognition of the Absurd becomes something almost mystical, nearly akin to "The Pearl", or other recognitions of God; to see it in its true state is genuinely maddening. The human mind is not prepared to look directly upon the Absurd; the general responses are madness, suicide, and surrender.

Is Sisyphus mad? We cannot conclude that he is. Nothing about his constant toil suggests he has gone off the deep end. Suicide is out of the question, in part because the mythical Sisyphus is already dead, but also because for we humans who live, it is no answer at all. Has Sisyphus surrendered? Perhaps. "One always finds one's burden again," though. Even if we conquer in our own lives the sense of futility—perhaps we become so wealthy that we have no need of daily labor—we will still find unhappiness. Freedom from the most apparent symptoms of Absurdity do not render us immune.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy for the simple reason that, temporarily freed of his burden as the rock rolls down the hill, he returns to the base and takes up his burden again. Does he expect that someday he might push the rock over the crest? Hardly. But he is human, and as such, "The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart". He will undertake his burden simply because it is his. He will not admit defeat, will not surrender to the punishment of the gods and repent or beg mercy. He accepts that what he has done has led to what he must do, and continues his eternal, futile labor because such is his lot; he concludes that, despite his ordeal, all is well.

Myth is not history, but, rather, contains within it a kernel of reality. Myth is a means for expressing or explaining something that people feel, but cannot understand in literal terms. Thus Apollo drives the horses that pull the sun across the sky, or Eve eats the apple and seals humanity's fate. But unlike Original Sin, the myth of Sisyphus does not blame; rather, it simply observes and postulates. The sense of futility that destroyed the consciences of so many of Camus' friends is not unique to the twentieth century. It has been with us for millennia, perhaps since the conscious recognition of self.

It is a fair conclusion, and I would only contest it because in the modern day, we often invent our own burdens in lieu of addressing those put before us. Sisyphus recognizes a wholly human origin of his situation, and thus accepts it despite the fact of the verdict of the gods. It is as if he accepts that, having violated a natural order, the gods as such had no choice but to punish.

But, strangely, we do not seem to accept this for ourselves. American politics makes for a striking example. For decades, people have decried our government as intrusive, wrongly-steered, violative, greedy, &c. For over twenty years we have heard the chorus of, "Throw the bums out," yet over and over again we send an incumbent packing only to replace him with a virtual clone. One might suggest that our myth of the presidency is simplifying: over and over again, we fashion our will against our wisdom. We believe we know what is right; we even teach our children as such. But we constantly do the exact opposite. Setting aside the vengeance of the Bush Wars for a moment, let us consider the "Christian" nation of the United States in another context: How do we reconcile our "Christian" principles with an economic model that celebrates greed? Self-interest drives our capitalistic aspect, and this in itself seems to conflict with our "Christian" principles. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," the famous motto of socialism and communism, actually reflects the fourth chapter of the Book of Acts, yet Americans invoked their Christianity in the struggle against communism. Those generations might have largely believed they formed a "Christian" nation, but they would be damned before they let that faith be their obligation.

This in itself is a seemingly futile cycle. To teach a growing child the principles of greed as mundane life in America demands is to raise a kind of savage. We are horrified to see children conduct themselves with such disregard for their fellows. But ... why?

We believe we know what is right. We teach our children as such. And we constantly demand the opposite of one another in credible maturity.

And then we turn around and lament the result. And we become consumed by this lamentation. We dream to greater heights, but settle for something less not because we are happy with our lot, but because we are afraid to risk what we have in exchange for something better.

Go to the window, boy.
Become what you would destroy.
Feed yourself on disonance.
Make your belly grow,
And take heed of the cry
Of all the sirens outside.
You know that this will be your inheritence
Up from this plateau.

Where have those days gone—
South with other wings?
I'll just learn to settle on
Slightly lesser things.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Floater, "Settling"​

Individually and culturally we drag ourselves through this hideous cycle of dissatisfaction, and the best wisdom we seem to come up with as a society is to not rock the boat too much, to demand more scraps and crumbs instead of seek genuine satiation. The mythical Sisyphus is happy, we but only because he is not constantly bitching as he goes. We push the rock, certainly. We labor in our own ways but constantly object without ever breaking the cycle.

And if you follow me, know the road will end.
But if you follow me, break but never bend.

(We're all in this together.)
(We must convince the others.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Floater, "Cinema"

The glory of the dawn;
We may be the few who see.
Some know right from wrong,
But not you or me.

Singing, "Take another look now, my friend.
Take another look now, my friend.
You're the one that said to break and not bend.
You're the one that said to break and not bend.
Take another look, take another look now.
Take another look, take another look now."

I know how all of this goes;
The wine and the laughter flows.
You push hand into the flame.
You push hand into the flame, and watch it like a movie.

Burn! Watch it burn!
Can't you feel something's wrong?
Your body and soul are telling you something.
Time heals all wounds,
But it's up to us to make the new ones,
Just like this.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Floater, "I Know"​

It actually looks like a psychological response to trauma. We choose our demons so that we might feel empowered. Better the Devil we know than the Devil we do not. And what can we know better than what is our own intimate creation?

Thus we struggle not against what is actually there, but what we imagine. This deviation does not automatically nullify Sisyphus' happiness, but the stark difference demands at least that we reconsider the proposition.

Were the Sisyphus of our age properly happy, he would struggle against the rock. He would not invent Sirens to lure him from the rock, and then complain about the lie of their temptation.

Sisyphus can be happy. Sisyphus can also leave the rock at the bottom of the hill and walk away. But for the moment, it would look as if Sisyphus has surrendered, and in order to distract himself from the shame, has invented something new to rail against—raised his own Absurd demon to torment him.

And it's only been sixty-seven years
___________________

Notes:

Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus”. The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays. 1942. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage, 1955.

Wynia, Rob, Dave Amador, and Pete Cornett. "Cinema". 1994. Glyph, 2nd ed. Portland: Elemental Records, 1995.

——————. "Settling". Angels In the Flesh and Devils In the Bone. Portland: Elemental Records, 1997.

—————. "I Know". Burning Sosobra. Portland: Elemental Records, 2000.

 

Yea, me too.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

I don't know that T is quite open until I read this thread. It's not something very easy to do..

T,

• what makes you absolutely happy
• what are your expectations for your daughter
• are you close with your family (like parents, brothers, and sisters)? but please keep the private details for yourself to avoid stalkers

  Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

• what do you think about muslims?
• what do you think about theists?
• what do you think about humanity in general?

Teng-Q!