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I’m cur­rently suf­fer­ing from putting my insom­nia to good use (so far I’ve installed Tracks), so I’ll take the time to post some ran­dom thoughts:

• I was bit­ten by April Fools twice today. The sec­ond time because I was too exhausted to remem­ber that it was April Fools.
• A life with­out hope is not wasted or a pity any more than a life with­out reli­gion is.
• A good friend of mine once told me that if you lis­ten to what peo­ple say care­fully, they will give them­selves away at some point. Like most wis­dom phrased in an open-ended way, I’ve seen lots of con­fir­ma­tion of this and lit­tle contradiction.
• I think a fair num­ber of peo­ple like to dom­i­nate oth­ers with their words. Being on the receiv­ing end of that kind of thing is really exhaust­ing. I think it’s fairly obvi­ously just peo­ple play­ing out their psy­chodra­mas in an envi­ron­ment where you can’t just club and be clubbed.
• State-granted monop­o­lies on cul­ture, art, and media in gen­eral sti­fle cre­ativ­ity, limit free­dom, and exist to pro­tect one power against another. In this soci­ety it’s almost always used to pro­tect the estab­lished power against the new one. Standard Lessig, now apply it to those orga­ni­za­tions we may oth­er­wise sup­port. That pinched-face dis­com­fort you are feel­ing is cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance between your stated pref­er­ences and your desire to defend your principles.

Irony = Hypocrisy + Self-awareness.

Of course, this only applies to your own irony/hypocrisy, not that ascribed to you from oth­ers — i.e. the irony of a locally famous activist at a hip-hop show nod­ding along with every­one else isn’t actu­ally irony or hypocrisy because he hasn’t staked out a posi­tion either above every­one else or opposed to hip-hop (broadly defined). It’s a dif­fer­ence between oth­ers’ expec­ta­tion and your real­ity, not your words and actions.

The other night I was think­ing about fear (in case you’re won­der­ing, I do that instead of sleep­ing). See, I have these Socratic debates in my head, wherein I deter­mine which side of the debate sounds — on the whole — less mind-fuckingly insane to me, and then I refine it, and blend in the less crazy parts of the (on the whole) more insane side, until I come to a con­clu­sion. On good days, this takes the ambiance of a pair of lefty heads, build­ing on a lazy Saturday after­noon — albeit sans Matrix ref­er­ences. Bad days… not so much.

Anyways, I came to the con­clu­sion that hope and fear are flip sides of the same coin: they are both irra­tional emo­tional invest­ments in the future. Hope, for it’s part, is irra­tional pos­i­tiv­ity applied to your pre­dic­tions. Fear, for it’s part, is irra­tional neg­a­tiv­ity applied to your pre­dic­tions. Ultimately, nei­ther one is really worth it, and both are let-downs. The things you fear are never as bad as you have built them up in your mind. So too, the things you hope for are never as good.

I would not be sur­prised if this is because (to me at least) both are forced. I have to make myself afraid, just as I have to make myself hope­ful, as I don’t feel I am nat­u­rally either at this point. Of course, this makes the fear and hope that much more square-peg-in-round-hole, and wastes a lot of my energy. Which in turn becomes an excuse for not doing any­thing to fix the issues under­ly­ing the emo­tions in the first place.

And that’s nat­u­rally slap-worthy stupid.

Oh yes, and at some point, I must cre­ate and use an IlludiumPu236SpaceModulator abstract base class. Perhaps on Monday.

Nothing is unbreak­able
No sys­tem is per­fect
There is always another way
Given proper inquiry, the way can be found
The future lies in the pos­si­bil­ity
Where any­thing is possible

This is what we for­got on 9/11.