2012-09-03 – CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Best hyperbole ever!
"tla alahui, tla petzcahui in tlalticpac" - Nahuatl proverb
He aquí los pensamientos aleatorios de un epistemólogo andante.
"Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?"
"The immediate task of philosophy is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy shape." - Karl Marx
"i" before "e" except after "c" - disproved by science!
"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." - Don Marquis
"[M]etaphysics is no different from table manners, in that there are all sorts of ways to set the table, all of which will look “wrong” from the outside, but all of which work just as well as any other for those who adopt them?"
- Justin Smith-Ruiu
"A blog is the height of ego and narcissism, rivaled only by the act of procreation, or the wearing of a man-bun." - Jamie Wahls
"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." - Flannery O’Connor
"Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn't it make sense that death, too, would be wrapped in dream? That, after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called "a dream body"? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, never again return to your physical body." - spoken by a character in the excellent movie Waking Life (2001).
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." - Marcus Aurelius
"If I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had some ice cream."
Sometimes setting yourself on fire sheds light on the situation.
"Tenho o dever de me fechar em casa no meu espírito e trabalhar quanto possa e em tudo quanto possa, para o progresso da civilização e o alargamento da consciência da humanidade." - Fernando Pessoa
피할수 없는 고통이라면 차라리 즐겨라
As of June, 2013, I have assumed a new identity: I am a cancer survivor. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him.
- David Hume, in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1779
A blog, in the end, is really not so different from an inscription on a bone: I was here, it declares to no one in particular. Don't forget that.
- Justin Smith-Ruiu
재미없으면 보상해드립니다!
All things are enchained with one another, bound together by love.
- Nietzsche [really!]
Leviticus 19:33-34
Business is a good game - lots of competition and minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
- Nolan Bushnell
What if we're not conscious, we just think we are?
Donc, si Dieu existait, il n’y aurait pour lui qu’un seul moyen de servir la liberté humaine, ce serait de cesser d’exister.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Solvitur ambulando.
Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Los Angeles is to America what America is to the world.
- someone on the internet
Art is not a projection of self, it is an utterly alternate self.
Loneliness. Did ya know that loneliness will kill you deader than a .357 Magnum? Did ya know that?
- Andrew Sims (Rapper)
"When I was a stranger you gave me razor wire and pushed me in the river." - Matthew 25:35
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to soliloquize. Where was I?
- the villain Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in the cartoon Phineas and Ferb.
Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen.
- Hendrick Hamel
Liberty and justice for all
Offer not available in some areas
Prices subject to change
- internet meme
I will buy a 32 foot ladder at home depot, and I will make America pay for it.
- a Mexican
Psalms 51:17
Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
- Linus Pauling
I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.
여유있는 태도를 잃어서는 안 된다
Blogging online since 1965

My name is Jared Way. I was born in rural Far Northern California, and became an "adoptive" Minnesotan. I have lived in many other places: Mexico City, Philadelphia, Valdivia (Chile), Los Angeles. And for 11 years, I was an expatriate living in South Korea. In the summer of 2018, I made another huge change, and relocated to Southeast Alaska, which is my uncle's home.
I have a background in Linguistics and Spanish Literature. Two decades ago, I was a database programmer. Last decade, in Korea, I worked as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher. Currently I'm a ne'er-do-well retail clerk and freelance website administrator living amid the Alaskan rainforest.
In June, 2013, while I was in Ilsan in South Korea, I was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent successful treatment. That changed my life pretty radically.
Currently, you could say I'm "between jobs," somewhat caretaking my uncle (to the extent he tolerates that) and getting adapted to life in rural Alaska after so many years as an urban dweller.
These bloggings, then, have been my random jottings on the subject of my mostly pleasant life among the Quasi-Confucian Cyber-Industrial Paleolithic Peninsulites of Lower Far Siberia, and my more recent time spent on the Free-range Insane Asylum known as Southeast Alaska.
I started this blog before I even had the idea of going to Korea (first entry: Caveat: And lo...). So this is not meant to be a blog about Korea, by any stretch of the imagination. Life in Korea, and Korean language and culture, inevitably played a central role in this blog's incarnation for many years, and life in the rural, temperate rainforest plays an important role these days.
Basically, this blog is a newsletter for the voices in my head. It keeps everyone on the same page: it has become a sort of aide-mémoire.
For a more detailed reflection on why I'm blogging, you can look at this old post: What this blog is, and isn't.
If you're curious about me, there is a great deal of me here. I believe in what I call "opaque transparency" - you can learn almost everything about me if you want, but it's not immediately easy to find.
A distillation of my personal philosophy (at least on good days):
I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state. It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you. Happiness is something that you do. And like most things that you do, it is volitional. You can choose to do happiness, or not. You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.
"Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation." - Gilles Deleuze (writing about Spinoza).

Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2631 “Ellipsis”
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2633 “The circle of the seasons”
Andrew on Caveat: Tree #1711 “Behind the mushroom”
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2601 “The sky’s arena”
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2549 “The limbs of verisimilitude”

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Caveat: Your Mission On Earth

“Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.” – Richard Bach, in Illusions.

Do you like Mexican aggrotech (electro-industrial) music? Is it odd that I do?

What I’m listening to right now.

[UPDATE 2021-12-19: embedded video above repaired due to link rot.]
Hocico, “Ecos.”

Letra:

Alguna vez te has enamorado, de alguien que no te correspondió,

eso no te impidió dejarlo de amar o ser capas de entenderlo o bien perdonarlo…

Solo era una niña desubicada, era solo un alma perdida….

Era como si pudiera tomar todo el mal y toda la ira del mundo y

con solo una palabra elevarlos al cielo y yo, le ayude, y le prometi que siempre estaria ahi, para protegerla. No es lo que pasa por su mente si no lo que pasa por la mia…

no puedo olvidar mi promesa, es todo lo que me queda

…

Dime, ¿qué es lo crees?
En este mundo de intoxicados
Una voz que te enfurece
hace eco en tus oídos alterdos

Deseos muriendo. ¿Crees en ti?
Estas huyendo de algo vil
Violentos cambios sufres hoy
Brutal ausencia. ¿Crees en ti hoy?

Y simplemente decides encarar
Lo que aborreces y quieres acabar
Y hasta ahora decides despreciar
Lo que te enferma y no puedes curar

Dime, ¿que es lo que crees?
En este mundo de olvidados
Un grito que huye de ti
Hacia lugares ya abandonados

Nada ni nadie podrá llevarse lo que sabes
Nada ni nadie podrá llevarse lo que puedes ver

Unrelatedly, but perhaps similar in overall tone, here’s another very strange quote I found: “I have a question that’s really more of a suicide note.” – some guy named Dave, in a comment on a blog entry about “Bingo in Utopia” – itself very entertaining, as it tries to discover Marx’s view on bingo. But the quote? Pure genius – utterly worth memorializing.

Caveat: I simply existed

2012-09-03, 06:02 2023-03-22 Background Noise / Life is a Dream / My Poetry & Fiction

I wandered through the space station for hours. Then for days. I was isolated, but hardly alone. I didn’t feel compelled to interact with the detritus of 10,000 species around me. I simply existed.
A small cranny beside a crowded corridor, with plants growing out of the wall in the dim simulated sunlight, was my sleeping place. There was a food dispenser nearby. A child not much younger than myself would sometimes stop by the food dispenser and stand and watch me sleeping. I would wake up feeling her eyes on me, and she would run off down a curved stairway, always pausing just as her head disappeared below the stairs’ horizon to look back at me, only to return another time. She had a mark on her forearm – it was a symbol of some kind.
I never spoke to anyone. It never occured to me that I could. Most people ignored me completely. Those who didn’t, I quickly learned to avoid or escape.

Assemblage 23, “Alone Again.”