BasketBall Bullshit!

Yeah! The playoffs are back and I could not be more delighted. While my New Orleans Hornets did not make the playoffs, the Pistons continue to dominate. Hooray!

Here is a video of the Honeybees (professional strippers who entertain Hornets fans) dunking some balls. In the video there is a dude in a teal suit called "Super Hugo- the man of teal." I hate this guy. My loyalty goes out to regular Hugo, a dude who dresses like a blue bumble bee:
I will try to find a video of him chasing the Honeybees with his stinger. Oy it makes me laff!

Anyway here is the video of the Honeybees, with all its philosophical implications:

Dog with Horse

Friends! Last night I attended this seminar about social justice. It was a serious talk about inheritance tax, wealth tax, and egalitarian concerns. There were some neat ideas thrown around, but I was pretty bored. My confusions about the nature of man, the social unit, and the "oughts” and “ought nots” derivable from these natures lie at the metaphysical level. These dudes don’t share my confusion, and abide by principles I am none to sure about. But again there were some neat ideas thrown around.

The most remarkable part of the seminar however was not about an idea. It was the repeated use of an expression: “Value for Money.”

People kept saying this and I kept giggling. These were some old school gags.

A New Leaf?

I have been in contact with a few of my friends/readers recently and your calls and emails could not have come at a better time: The master of wolves (both air and lone) has been doing some thinking. The tough kind of thinking. (A New Kind of Thinking?)

A number of recent events have necessitated my engagement in this unpleasant thinking. What events?
Missing a war
The loss of an old friend (Not a loss to due to death)
An inability to write well
An inability to connect with people
Getting my ass kicked in a grappling match.
Receiving negative comments from Professors with no background in passion.
Rejections from programs
Getting sick
A general dislike of my situation

Water off a beautiful swan’s back?
Yeah, sure. I got no problems with the rolling. When sober I’ve always had a knack for shutting down my emotional responses and taking a detached rational stance towards life. Add a few years of fairly intensive study of Spinoza, Stoicism, Nietzsche, plus 1000’s of superhero comics, a brief military stint and… yes, you could say I am a waterproof bird.


My worry though is that the Stoic move (a.k.a. not giving a shit about events in the world) has lead me to simply repeat failures—instead of learning from them.

I have a sense of myself as a badass superhero warrior/genius. The facts of the world contradict this: I am no great shakes as a warrior or athlete. And I have done nothing noteworthy academically. But being stoic about these hard facts has encouraged me to persist in a false self-estimation.

I can’t lay the blame the Stoics or Spinoza for this jackshittery. He warned me.

“The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.”—The S-dog

I have mistakenly used Stoicism to ignore the world and cling to a prideful myth, rather than use Stoicism to confront my weaknesses and understand what I really am: A thirty year old guy who still doesn’t know what the hell he is doing in life. One part me (the part that ain’t nothing but a monster) insists upon doing something worthy of my “greatness.” This part (Captain Arrogance) wants to be Batman, a founder of a movement, a Professor of Passion, a defender of Truth, Jews, and the American Gentile. Anything else is failure. The other part (the part that is myself) wants to figure out an enjoyable way to earn enough money to live with my babe and raise some kids. This part of myself is painfully aware that he has no idea how to pull this “limited” goal off. I don’t have a skill set. I have done nothing in my thirty years that translates into economic viability. I want to be Batman and I don’t even know how to have a career.

There has been a deep inconsistency in my thinking. My recognition of this is not despondency. I certainly don’t feel sad to come face to face with this fact. I still got my telos: I want to improve myself. I want to understand the world. I want the greatest pleasure. And I remain confident that these ends are equivalent. I just need to stop fucking around.