Randoms

1.

“It might be nice to be the kind of person that other people wouldn’t feel threatened deferring their judgement to. People hate being told they are wrong. Be the kind of person people don’t mind being proven incorrect with.

Of course, this is easier when the person you are deferring your judgement to has some insanely precocious intellectual abilities that set them apart enormously from “regular” folks. Oddly enough, the mere existence of an incredibly huge “innate ability gap” will often make these regular folks feel unthreatened, because they now have a more legitimate excuse for their own failings (that being a lack of equivalent innate ability in some area), rather than having to muster up the self-awareness and ego blow of admitting their ideas are just retarded.”

2.

“If you think about sex a lot when you’re younger, can that trigger an earlier activated pituitary? Anybody?”

3.

“One of the things that is starting to amaze me these days is how utterly similar subjects/topics/areas of interest are. At some level in your growing expertise on a subject, you will begin to develop parallel conceptual relationships between the current subject at hand and the subjects you’ve already mastered. The single, most pervasive and common principle you will notice between these subjects, aside from the fact that they are hard to master, but that they are so insanely complicated that your budding intellect and its realizations will slowly make it apparent that you really don’t know even remotely little about the subject – or anything really.

Even after “mastering” the subject for practical purposes, you would have to essentially become god, with the ability to reach your tentacles of insight and understanding into every facet of existence. Or the universe, or something. And remember that the universe is expanding (last we checked anyway), and so this principle reaches infinity.”

4.

“…there is a dearth of people in power who understand the most basic principles of human freedom and the accompanying accountability. We focus on welfare now, admittedly a good thing, but often at the expense of maintaining economic freedoms and allowing them to raise the overal quality of life over time, which is ironically what helps the poor the most anyway.”

Be Calm, You Might as Well Get Some Perverted Satisfaction Out of Being Miserable for Awhile

I’m getting overwhelmed with things lately. There are so many things to read, to listen to, new strategies to explore, and a million other variables to consider that it’s paralyzing in a way – I’m not sure where to begin, whether I’m ‘proceeding correctly’ in my endeavors, if there is such thing as really ‘proceeding correctly’ in anything, and at times it can feel rather fucking crippling and depression-inducing. I know I’m young, and I know that the amount of knowledge an individual can realistically possess in a lifetime is laughably small. But I still find myself oogling at the accomplishments of others, and then wondering why I didn’t think of ‘doing that’ first or that I haven’t already started ‘doing that.’

Let’s recap:

I just conceive of the possibility that I can and might want to do something, or that it might be interesting to pursue further.

Then I get depressed because I haven’t already thought of it before, or started working on it yet.

What kind of backwards-ass shit is that????

Maybe I’m over-tired and thinking too much. Big fucking surprise.

Its hard to snap out of it and realize that your only responsibility – really – is to keep working and plodding along, and that things, if they are that important, will often take a long time to realize, or for the benefits to begin to accrue. What’s that quote?

“It’s only when we’ve lost all hope that we’re free to do anything.” – some quote in Fight Club.

I’ve added another improvisation to the myspace page – go down to the MUSIC tab on the right side of the blog to listen. Sound quality sucks, I know, it really ruins what could end up being fairly decent. Trust me, this won’t be as much of an issue soon.

Self-denial – that Bitch Below the Surface

I got a nice figurative slap in the face last night. From Dad, of all people.

Our conversation last night went like this:

DAD – “So have you recorded anything yet? I have yet to fucking hear anything.”

BRETT – “…no, see that’s the whole point, I don’t have any meaningful recording equipment to do that.”

DAD – “What about that tape recorder you have?”

BRETT – “That thing sucks and sounds shitty. There is no point on recording on that thing.”

DAD – “No, YOU are missing the point. The whole purpose is to get feedback on your ideas. If they’re good then they will transcend whatever limitations that a piece-of-crap recording device has.”

BRETT – “….Okay, yeah, true.”

DAD – “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be something. Put it on fucking tape.”

I’m hungover and can’t process anything right now, so a post of heady self-analysis isn’t really on my agenda today, but these moments when someone knocks you back and illuminates your idiotic self-denial could be called Fight Club moments. This guy, and this guy both do a really good job of explaining what Fight Club moments are and demonstrating how important they are to actually growing as a person. As I said, I could probably elaborate on the subject, but I really just don’t fucking feel like it right now. Some other time.

In other news, two 40-year old cougars thought I was the most adorable thing they had ever seen last night. According to one of them, I could have hooked up with the other one if I wanted to. Didn’t really know what to do about any of this, so I went home and jerked off.