Hark Back

"G-Fry...Rock on"

Days drift by and thoughts fall from cognition. I remember G-Fry's rap, and life seems all together novel again. A belated thanks for 1997 G-Fry.

Planters Mixed Nutz

I bought some Planter Mixed Nuts last night, along with some V-8 and Combos. Today while eating these nuts I read this little note on the Planters canister:

"At Planters we are passionate about providing you quality Mixed Nuts. Enjoy our consistently fresh taste, nut after nut after nut!"

I was shocked to discover that the Planters mission statement is the very same as the one that I use as my pick up line! I always tell the ladies, "Schneider is passionate about providing you quality Mixed Nuts. Enjoy my consistently fresh taste, nut after nut after nut."

John Adams:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

A real occupation:

Pop Culture Question:

What is a “boo”?
I heard this word used in not one, but two different song’s choruses. Songs about wishing someone was my “boo” and another about being with my “boo”.

I think “boo” is a term of endearment. If I am right then my question is: Since when?

Two great things:

1) This eagle helicopter is real.
2)This newspaper blurb about Detroit's game last night:
"Rasheed Wallace, known for his surly attitude as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers years ago, laughed after he threw up an air ball early in the fourth quarter and heard jeers from the crowd."

I am superior

I am sure we are all convinced by now that there something essentially false about the idea of a superior race. However, I am convinced that there is truth in the idea of a superior individual. That individual is me.
Everyday I sit and listen to a bunch of people yammering: "Blah blah blah, professor passion is wrong, blah blah, professor passion's paper is late, blah blah, professor passion needs a shower...Blah blah blah"

These people can shut up. There is no reason for them to speak. The professor of passion knows what he is doing. If his statements are unintelligible it is your fault. If his papers are late it is because your deadlines are too early. He doesn't need a shower, water needs to be cleansed by running across his skin.

So next time you say something to me be careful you don't make the same mistake that "these people" make: The mistake of talking.

I want to poop!

I was sitting at home in my room staring at a computer screen whilst working on a fantastic paper. I was tired of my room and took my computer to the coffee shop. There I sat contently staring at my screen whilst drinking coffee. About an hour ago, I realized the coffee had inspired my bowels to defecate. I walked to the coffee shop bathroom with a look of determination plastered upon my face. "Out the way women, I have shit to shit." I said as I pushed through a throng of "male" students on my way to the bathroom. The bathroom was out of order. No problem I thought as returned to my table. I will just go home and make some cake there. I packed up my bag and went to go outside. ITS RAINING! I have my computer with me! I can't ride home. I can't poop. I went back to my table and wrote this blog entry. I want the rain to stop so the shit can start.
I want to poop!

The best taco commerical.

Click on title. Communistic propaganda to sell tacos. It seems like a normal stupid commercial, and then: SHA WOOOSH! Migs start flying in from above. It doesn't get any better then this.

Lustful Stories (click on picture for laffs)

Howdy warriors and princess,
I have been hard at work these past fews days writing a paper. Now however I part from all that. The grad students are having a back-to-school get together at some bar, but I think I am going stay at home and get together with some scotch. I'm gonna drink, listen to some tunes, and stare off wistfully into space.

I am feeling pretty good. There is a cat walking around my house. I don't know it's or it's owners name. This week I threw weights for the first time in months. I am skinny and weak, but I do not worry. My biceps tell me that they will swell large like a hardened cock. My biceps sound a bit gay.

A sittin' and a thinkin'

I've been sitting in a class that I may be a TA for. Its kinda fun watching people have their first exposure to works that I have been struggled with for years now. Today they had to read Descartes first meditation. I remember reading it back in my high school days thinking it held the antidote to all the jackassery going on in the lincoln douglas debates I took part in. I can now only look at it as an influence on Spinoza's thought, a necessary philosophy so that one can evaluate "philosophy" and where to begin. It's interesting how a text grows in significance as you no longer have to figure out what it means, but begin to see what it is intended to mean, the traps the author fell in, and the traps the author lays. What most interests me in Descartes is his initial starting point of doubt. He shows us how we can throw all our knowledge into doubt, and then shows the way back to a new secure knowledge that can't be doubted. He does this by means of a famous tautology- the "I think therefore I am".

His position of doubt hides a rich and obscure body of concepts that he must use before he can get to this tautology. He knows he is doubting. He knows what arguments CAUSE doubt, and what don't--for there must already be an epistemology and a system of indubitable meaning and logic at hand if he thinks he can SHOW, ARGUE, REVEAL, that WHAT we think to be TRUE can in fact be False. My annoying capitalization is to stress the conceptual richness that is implicit in the skeptical position-the supposed position of disbelief. To convince us of the legitimacy of the position of doubting he betrays his cause. The phenomological state of "doubting" is not something that can be understood freely floating disconnected without any other cognitions. No one can just know they are doubting without also knowing, and being sure of, a whole lot more.

Descartes is right then to the extent that he asserts there are things that cannot be doubted. But the significance of this discovery is lost because the preconditions for the cognition of his tautology remain obscure: he needs a system of propositions, facts, grammar, rules of implication and so on. So when he finds out he that he cannot will himself to doubt his own existence, he misses something of the implication: does not the knowledge of an indubitable tautology reveal that something prevents his "self( his "I think", his will) from doubting? Some cause, or existence, mechanism or property or law or being or truth or X must be distinct from his will. He cannot conceive of his proven "I think" as the totality of being- for something else provided the "therefore". Something else forces him to conclude "I am"

Spinoza starts with god (a tautology of being) and explains from this how doubt and certainty are possible. He explains the individuated self by first conceptualizing what it is to be a whole--we aren't a whole, but nature is- or at least that is his assertion. He posits an existence of a different kind than what Descartes unintentionally proved ours to be: the "I think" is finite--it is limited and effected causally by something else. Spinoza first explores how we perceive/concieve the infinite/the unbounded. Spinoza examines what follows from our conception of wholeness and Of totality. Spinoza is great here because he is interested in what follows from OUR CONCEPTION of wholeness--not what wholeness really is in and of itself. And this distinction removes the skeptical problem: for in his philosophy we are using OUR REASON, our language, to organize OUR CONCEPTION (our ideas) in a way that makes things clear, and removes OUR CONFUSION. He doesn't seek to gain knowledge what it is to BE infinite-and NEVER defines "knowledge" as the attainment of that goal. He is modest in the sense that the totality of "knowledge" for him is to clearly understand what is to BE a finite thing that observes and conceptualize the Whole, in otherwords, he seeks to understand what it is to BE a human. It is because he believes this to be possible, that he is mistakenly called arrogant.

Billy Joel: A tasteless hack who is more authentic than most "real" artists

Close To The Borderline
Glass Houses Released: 1980
Blackout, heatwave, .44 caliber homicide
The buns drop dead and dogs go mad
In packs on the West Side
Young girl standing on a ledge looks like another suicide
She wants to hit those bricks
'Cause the news at six gotta stick to a deadline
While the millionaires hide in Beekman Place
The bag ladies throw their bones in my face
I get attacked by a kid with stereo sound
I don't want to hear it but he won't turn it down
Life is tough but it's just enough
To hold back the tears until it's closing time
I survived, I'm still alive
But I'm getting close to the borderline
Close to the borderline

A buck three eighty
Won't buy you much lately on the street these days
And when you can get gas
You know you can't drive fast anymore on the parkways
Rich man, poor man, either way American
Shoved into the lost and found
The no nuke yell we're gonna all go to hell
With the next big meltdown
I got remote control and a color T.V.
I don't change channels so they must change me
I got real close friends that will get me high
They don't know how to talk and they ain't gonna try
I shouldn't bitch, I shouldn't cry
I'd start a revolution but I don't have time
I don't know why I'm still a nice guy
But I'm getting close to the borderline
Close to the borderline

I thought I'd sacrifice so many things
I thought I'd throw them all away
I didn't think I needed anything
But you can't afford to squander what you're not prepared to pay

I need a doctor for my pressure pills
I need a lawyer for my medical bills
I need a banker to finance my home
I need security to back my loan
It isn't new what I'm going through
But everybody knows you got to break sometime
Another night I fought the good fight
But I'm getting closer to the borderline
Closer to the borderline

The endless return

Today marked the end of my break from education. Thats right. The Professor once again sits among the students, hiding the glory of his great wisdom. Like a beautiful swan I shall rise up and defend my sweet knowledge against my unseen enemies, both real and imagined. SQUAAAAK! TWEEEEET! HOOOONK!

I'm back, and I'm ringing a bell

Hey suckah MCs!

I'm back from my voyage beyond the stars. I have seen many things, and experienced many wonders. I am now wise beyond my years.

Although I am full of tales, and recollections of daring do, I think it best to keep my stories of European cities to a minimum so I can move on to the important stuff: Are sandwiches the greatest form of art?

But before delving into this pressing question I must first state wild generalizations vaguely supported by limited evidence. So to start I claim that Paris is over-rated. The “splendor” strikes me as a bit gay, and the city’s “feel” is oppressive. Fashion, little dogs, and high prices--these are the engines of Paris. As far the museums and monuments go, I tired quickly of Catholic angst. Sure, there is something powerful in Christian imagery, but fuckin’ aye, how many goddamn paintings of the crucifixion do I have to look at? After seeing so many allusion to salvation, the trinity, and sin, they just sort of blended into another. “Oh…great. Another 15 century masterpiece depicting god incarnate as man?…The chick with the kid? Mary and baby Jesus aye? No shit? Yawn.” Eventually I grew so tired of all the classic stuff, I was happy to see some modern art. My favorite was a photograph of a guy in a bear outfit building a house with a guy wearing red speedos.

Strassburg, however was great. A beautiful town, good beer, good bread, and the most beautiful church I have ever seen. In this church the Christian Imagery wasn't some limp wristed cry about the failings of man. Here, the Christian Imagery was badass. The church was made of this red stone and had gargoyles, angels with swords and spooky pipe looking robo-shit everywhere. The entire place was terrifying. I kept thinking, “holy shit, back in the day it took some balls to deny the legitimacy of the church.” One the tapestries depicted a special place in hell that is reserved for Jews and soldiers (non-crusader ones I guess). It didn’t look that bad. As a Jew I would get to be boiled in a big pot with my coreligionist. As a soldier I would get to be poked with forks. I just hope who ever runs hell manages to give me little of both. I also drank a lot of hot, spiced wine and enjoyed the city’s Christmas celebration.

Amsterdam is the best. I would love to spend a few years there. Everyone speaks English. The building are so narrow and cuddly you just want to snuggle the shit out of them. The city however ought to be ashamed of their treatment of Spinoza. The house where he was born and lived until he was 24, has been demolished. There is not even a plaque or a marker indicating where it would have been. I was able to locate the place only through a 17th century map indicating Spinoza’s house in relation to Rembrant’s (which of course has been preserved). The only Spinoza stuff in the entire city was at the Jewish Museum. There I saw the original painting of the S-Dog’s portrait, as well as a first edition of his Political Theological Treatise, and a lens that he ground. Despite these meager offerings I almost shit my pants in excitement. Even the Jewish Museum however was somewhat dismissive of Spinoza’s glory. There still remains some confusion as to how the Jewish community there (and everywhere) wants to regard him. He is of course the most brilliant and influential mind the Jewish community of Holland ever produced, but his contemporaries also cursed him for all eternity. Poor Spinoza ended up buried outside a church in the Hague (jewish burial being prohibited from him). I didn’t go the church because with my limited time I thought it better to visit his house outside of Leiden. This was the house he lived in for three years. They have recreated his library and his room, and lens grinding equipment there. I only saw the outside of the house though, because it is only open on Monday and Tuesday (a fact written exclusively in Dutch on the website). I walked around the house and posed next to the Spinoza statue in the backyard (the statue lies right next to a neighbor’s laundry line. Depressing? Sort of. But the entire neighborhood is called Spinozalaan (which sound like Spinoza land). I think Spinoza would prefer the living monument of a small neighborhood to some excessive French type glorification. I make this comparison because after visiting the Partheon in Paris, with it’s tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau, I felt pretty pissed that Spinoza got shafted in terms of immortalization. However upon reflection I think the tiny house serves to capture his philosophy towards life much better than a big faggy monument.

So I have reasons to return to Amsterdam. I never saw Spinoza’s grave. I never got inside his house, and I never saw the Red light district. But what I saw of the city was great.