The Rand Show: blogging

Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Because all futures come to pass given time and space

Including more posts by me - And yet more stuff - but I plan to do more stuff but busy-ness and wierdness and craziness + zombies / doom - and so on

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Rumors of my hiatus have been greatly exaggerated by me

Because I said that earlier, and now I take it back - SPIN MOVE!.

Now before you question my sincerity - who are you to question my sincerity!! (Seriously, who are you? People never comment around here. Comment damn you I command it!), I will say this... why the heck would I take a hiatus?

Well, why do people take hiatuses or hiati as the Romans might say (they wound't say that by the way)?

Usually to go on vacation, to do a reassessment of things without the weight of their work hanging over them...

So I might go on hiatus during a trip to India coming up later this month... INDIA!!! WOOOOO!!!... but to be honest, the whole removal of weight of work thing just doesn't gel when you start mixing it up.

Because writing, despite it's occasional stresses and a frustrating lack of focus, energy and inspiration of late, is ultimately expressive of my soul and more than that enriching of my soul. I become stronger through writing, and though it requires effort that is effort well spent...

And yet, there are many other places where effort must be spent in my life. So why reserve a spot for this one?

Because writing is a part of me, a very core and essential part and to discard it would be to leave a piece of my spirit to rot and that dog won't hunt monsignor.

And thus Rand rambles on...endlessly and awesomely... BECAUSE I AM RAND, the GREAT AND GLORIOUS!!!

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Because even in the Calendar one can turn the page

Unless your on the web, unless you count turning the web page and I don't, but still here's a calendar:

2007

2008

February
Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
					01 Time to go down to the ground where the Buffulo Roam	02
03	04	05	06	07 And what of the Oriental in America?	08 Why plan when you can scheme? The End of Empires and other such tales	09
10	11 Quotes! Boats! And more of the Rand you love!	12 The Man from Tallahasse	13 Time keeps on Schemin' Istanbul once Constantinople	14 Happy St. Valentine's Day Happy St. Valentine's Day!	15 Here's a little sparkle	16
17 MC Esher be mathin' out	18	19	20	21	22 Cause the History don't stop coming	23 History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce
24 India, a Chronology: Part I That's what I get for all that Scheming	25	26	27 India, A Chronology: Prologue	28	29

2009

April
Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
			01	02	03	04 Chasing down infinity
05 Space Oddity	06	07 Let not the sun be proud, lest I strike it from the sky	08	09	10	11 I follow he who has conquered death
12 Christ has Risen!	13 Twittering away the blues	14	15 Don't turn around again A little poetry for the emotionary	16	17	18
19	20	21 Sometimes not knowing is okay, Not this time though	22 Because this is my path	23 Ah, the savage winds of history	24	25 A good old fashioned shootout between me and my brain
26 When I get older... they'll call me freedom	27 Me, Eddy, and that Oriental-Looking Fellow	28 Time to be a sneaky oriental	29	30

June
Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
	01	02	03	04	05	06
07	08	09	10	11 Sooner or later everyone fails	12 Because the Rand Show is Comikier than yo'mama	13 Prithee, have thee heard of the Prism
14	15 What are you waiting for really	16	17	18 The Rand Show Comic : 300% More Comikier than Yo Mamma The Rand Show #1 The Rand Show #2 The Rand Show #3 The Rand Show #4 Even in defeat, one can reap the dividends of peace	19 DOOOOM!!!	20 Just a little lonely
21 Cause all is poetry... even the web	22	23	24	25 Here's to you Michael Jackson, Salute	26	27 Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I the fool
28	29 Scar tissue that I wish you saw	30 Vacation is not quite what I wanted

July
Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
			01	02 Because I'm easy, easy like Sunday morning	03	04
05 Let me sing these songs of freedom... but not right now	06	07 Now to get	08 Unfortunately we need to sleep before Brooklyn	09 So what do you want?	10	11
12	13 Because Doom don't go away It's not just a crappy new Korn song	14	15	16 And when I am freedom will I be a waving flag?	17	18
19	20	21	22 Live and let doom	23 A meditation on Archimedes to satisfy the needy	24 To Africa, I think	25
26	27 I think there is a point here that you are missing	28	29 Waxing and waning before an upcoming storm	30 Character Runner Hex Converter	31

November
Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
01	02 Blaze ye stars, let me not see you whimper	03 Patience	04 Min Date Calendarier

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Live and let doom

I must say Twitter has treated me very well. Although I still have questions about the format and about the ultimate viability of the business, it has been good to me, regularly bringing in far more readers than my actual blog.

But that fills me with a twinge of regret.

Originally the Twitter feed was a way to build views + get out my scattered thoughts, to build views and allow me to concentrate the most of my energies to big power-posts + crazy-zany posts + just general Rand-ish awesomeness.

Yet the oft-expected Second Renaissance did not arrive. Well, actually by now I'm on my third or forth Renaissance or so (though to be fair, may consider there to be several Renaissances, usually linked with the different streams of Classical knowledge coming in, ie, Irish monks 9th c., Sicilian/Spanish Muslims 11/12th c., Greek refugees + Italian loot 14th c., and so on.).

Perhaps, this goes back to an old lesson, taught to me time and time again, though most grossly during a period of stomach virus where I could not drink a full glass of water without throwing up.

When in a situation of where your opportunities are scarce, do as much as you can, whenever you can.

Big plans of an integrated social media strategy don't really fit into that space, as it refuses to realize the scarcity of time.

And while I RAND THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS! do refuse reality's dictates, I must on occasion play by its rules to subvert it, and time is often a rule I must bend to... so then...

So then as much as I can whenever I can. Thus Twittering, thus posting up sessions that might just be a paragraph or two. Thus trying to find time to write and draw and submit work to publication, even though I can't make a regular schedule of things just yet.

But one fine day...

Well, no, that isn't the proper sentiment. What I'm speaking of is not an acceptance of a life far less than what I want, and just trying to deal with it. If that were the case, wouldn't altering the life to be more like I want fit into the equation? No, this is an understanding that I am not where I want, but I have found a path that I think will get me there, but in the meantime I'm not inclined to play dead, nor to simply roar in frustration at the lack of steady order to my gains and losses. Rather, if I cannot yet conquer the world, I will conquer this and that, a country or two, and perhaps the city of Worms. And I will do good work while I'm at it, and I will put myself in a better position for grander dreams, or so I hope.

But in the end, all of that is still a bit of a means to an end, the happy note is that in the pursuit of that means, or rather in doing so in the correct way, I am in achievement of that end:

That is striving to be a servant of God, as best I can, whenever I can.

After all, that is the course of a holy fool.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Because I got to keep moving on

My scheme to slowly import my old blogs into the Rand Show as a means of avoiding real posting has ended. Instead I have mass imported them, and left them for the most part at their original dates. Thus I will have to actually work on new posts, instead of relying on the old. Stupid non-laziness.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Time to be a sneaky oriental

I am feeling a bit guilty at the recycled posts dominating lately, on the other hand, they are posts that I am proud of, have rarely been read, and will rarely be read during this publishing. Alack!

It seems a bit unfair that my blogging be so little noticed, but life is not fair... it is a gift from God! Which means even if the distribution does not fit our regards of "fairness", it is still something precious and beautiful, even if it is but a foreshadowing of what to come...

But anyways, I think I can be justified particularly in putting up another recycled post today (and actually well into the future if I continue doing new posts, but I think today I can be justified in making this my main post), because it is a follow up to yesterday's post and is another one I think came out pretty well.

So without further ado:

And what of the Oriental in America?

My deep apologies for my absence for so long, especially given the youthful state of this blog, but matters prompt me to here and there and everywhere.

So I'm not going to be able to make this session as deep as I'd like, so maybe I'll revisit later, but since I mentioned Orientalism in my last session, I thought I might discuss it a little more. To be exact I wanted to discuss Orientalism in light of the fact that I am of Indian heritage and thus, if Orientalism is as prevalent as Said claims, I am looked up by the West as an Oriental.

I am certainly not an Oriental in the same sense Said is. The Arab world, in particular the Palestinian world, is very different than the Indian world, in particular the Malayali world (although there are some claims that Malayalis, including myself have a little Syrian blood in them). But Orientalism, as a perspective, doesn't make such distinctions. So therefore, a country like America, steeped deeply in the European academic traditions, should view me primarily as an Oriental, correct?

I can't say I've ever experienced that. Well, no, I have experienced moments where I've seen Indians and myself treated as generic Orientals. One particular example I like to harp on is the McDonald's Asian Chicken Salad commercial. It basically talked about how the "Asian-ness" of the salad gave you some culinary Nirvana. Obviously the commecial was joking around and I don't pretend otherwise. And while I could see how Buddhists could be offended by the causal throwing around of a sacred concept like Nirvana, Christian concepts like heaven and hell are tossed around in American media with little respect too. What annoyed me though, which might be a little over-reacting, was that it perpetuated the same myth of Asians being inherently mystical, especially in a special "Eastern" way. I find that ridiculous. I know plenty of Asians without a lick of mysticism too them, and while I admit that India has a great spiritual heritage, it is a country and Indians are a people not just some materialization of that spiritual heritage.

Yet such slights always seemed to me minor. Annoying perhaps, offensive perhaps, but not an essentially harmful part of my life. Overall, while my brown-ness was recognized I was not treated any what specially and the label of Oriental did not haunt me.

I am and was, through most of my life, treated as an American.

Perhaps Professor Said had something to do with this, do to the impact of his book. Maybe.

But then there's the other side of the coin, my internal impression of myself. That's a little bit more complicated. One factor that has to enter the mix at some point is that I was raised in a middle-class suburban environment which was largely white. Those who weren't white tended to be lower down on the income ladder. So there was a sort of internal tension between my identity as part of this middle-class American group that was mostly white, and my familial and ethnic identity as an Indian. For example, sometimes I would forget that I was brown and start thinking of myself as white because I associated with the American majority and the American majority was always depicted as white.

If this sounds like a deep psychological issue, I suppose it could be. But its not really. I have over time come to think of myself more and more certainly as Indian and Malayali in an ethnic sense, but more and more I have fixed an identity as American. The internal tension has been lessened by clarifying in my mind what my heritage and my nationality really means to me. My heritage is a shaping force through my history and a network of bonds that links me back in time and across space to others of my historic background. My nationality is a matter of affection, it is not exactly rational but it comes down to a feeling of attachment, identity and love. Clarifying these concepts the internal tension between me as brown and me as a middle-class American has lessened. Has it gone away? Not entirely. Since I remember it and occasionally worry about it, it can never fully remove itself from my mind, but it doesn't concern me much. To be truthful it never concerned me a lot, but in the past it would send spikes of confusion into my mind every now and then, and that is less so the case now.

So I know myself as Indian ethnically but American in nationality. No where there is Oriental. Occasionally I have seen sparks of Orientalism in American culture, but my overall treatment has been as an American and I have accepted that place. Perhaps my view point on these matters is shaded by the fact that I am not a racial essentialist, but race, while an important concept, is just one of many concepts that can add to a person's identity to him/herself and to that person's identity to the outside world. And those two identities need not match.

But the question must come up, fine I feel both like an Indian and an American, but am I right to feel that way? Well, that essentially is a moral question. I can say I'm happy generally, and I find satisfaction in my life, but I'll admit I find my life less invested in my ethnicity than some (notably my parents) might like, and I find my mind filled with paradigms foreign to my ancestors. I am less attached to my heritage than I would be say if I identified myself nationally as Indian, or if I felt that the flashes of Orientalism I find occasionally define the way I have been treated growing up. Yet while I'd like to preserve as much of my heritage as I can, I'm not obsessed with it, and I feel in terms of values, customs, etc., my preferences and internal philosophical debate must come first before adhering to my heritage. Has that view been shaped by culture? Yes. Does that make it less true? Well according to that view, no. There's a moral question of whether putting my own personal ideas before my cultures views is right, but that can't be simply a matter of history, science, or cultural analysis. So are my views on national/ethnic identity correct? I'd say yes, but others might legitimately disagree.

This whole matter may seem like a digression from history. It is. More than a matter of history, what I have written here is a matter of personal introspection. But even that is shaped by history, and my personal perspective undoubtedly shapes my historical perspective. So excuse this indulgence. I simply thought given the fame of Said's story, I'd present the life of another who might be called Oriental in America.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Me, Eddy, and that Oriental-Looking Fellow

Here's another import from a now defunct side-blog, but this I feel fits very well at home here, for underneath these many personas is in the end the same man, but what is that man? What is any human being for that matter? We do not know, though we endevor to, just as Mr. Said did many years ago.

Me, Eddie and the Oriental Arts

It has been a little bit more than 30 years since Edward Said published a book called Orientalism and shook up the historical world like a firecracker in a paranoid cat factory. You get it, because cats are notoriously skittish, and if there was a firecracker they'd run and... well I guess they couldn't really shake the walls of a factory very much, but at least the cats themselves would be shaken up. I warn anyone reading this to not look too deeply into this allusion, it is in the end simply a bad joke. Don't take history so seriously, I admit it can be a life or death matter sometimes, but heck, people take life and death too seriously too.

I feel Edward Said took Orientalism a little too seriously. I should not speak too ill of the deceased, and Professor Said died about 4 years ago. Still I doubt he would want that fact to shield him from criticism and besides while I do believe Edward Said took Orientalism a little too seriously, I also think he had reason to. He was a Christian Palestinian who was forced from his home by war, his life was one of wandering, spending much of his adulthood in an America that could look at him as nothing but a foreigner. And a particular type of foreigner in fact, an Oriental.

I say this because Edward Said's book was all about the context in which history, literature, and scholarship is written. And he admits, to fairly assess him one must take an inventory of his context. Said also speaks much of political context and so let me give his political context, he's an advocate for the Palestinian cause, although he admits the legitimacy of the Israeli experience. It would be unfair to judge him as a stereotype political propagandist though, especially since his books about the stereotypes the West brings to the East and its politics. He's a man of great analytical skill, I'll give him that. His writings are still under copyright but there are some articles of his on the web, I point you to an article in Al-Ahram Weekly for starters, although it does not fully encapsulate the man.

So I have hinted, I have suggested, I have been circuitous. Let me now tell you what Orientalism is about. Orientalism is about the context of the East in the mind of the West. More particularly than the West he talks about Europe till WWII and US afterwards, and of the East, Said concentrates on the Middle East, but this is about the East in the mind of the West. The Orient, he explains, is not a matter of geography, it is not just the land past a certain meridian. It is a matter of imaginative construction. The Orient is an amorphous body of assumptions and ideas about the world outside Europe which has colored any thoughts, whether mundane or even abstractly scholarly, about the Middle East, India, China (although I'm not sure how much Said talks about China) and the rest due to its effects. This body of constructs then, often far removed from the reality, is the lens through which the politics of the West are decided, and just as importantly this body of constructs is shaped by politics and has become a justification for the exploitive actions of the West.

Now that's just my basic imagination of what he's saying. This is from his introduction mind you, but he says the rest of the book is just an illustration of his case. His language is thick and confusing though so I might have gotten some of his thoughts wrong. More notably, his language is thick in the manner of the English department, the Poli. Sci. department and the Philosophy Department. What is I think subtly annoying about Said to most historians, and what actually weakens his argument at times, is that he is not a historian but rather as he calls it a "humanities" professor. But then again, his point is that philosophy, politics, literature, and history all interact and in the case of the Eastern world for Europe, they distort the reality.

You can compare my analysis of Said's work with Wikipedia's summary if you so choose.

But since the book is readily available, and summaries of it are a dime a dozen on the web, I'm going to lay off of that. Besides, as I've said, I only read the introduction. But the introduction, in addition to the main point, has a particular few lines that I hope the heirs of Edward Said's estate will not begrudge me to quote.

"My two fears are distortion and inaccuracy, or rather the kind of inaccuracy produced by too dogmatic a generality and too positivistic a localized focus ... I have been discussing, difficulties, that might force one ... into writing a coarse polemic on so unacceptably general a level of description as not to be worth the effort."

I hope you will trust me when I say that I am indeed presenting this quote accurately. Basically he fears he will be too broad and general. He is also afraid of being too specific, and as far as I can tell his solution is to make a broad statement in the introduction and then back it up through specific examples in his book. At least that's my sense of things. But I think in the end, even using specific examples does not stop him from becoming so over-general that he becomes distortive and inaccurate. He is after all condemning an entire discipline and its history, without, as he admits, offering any alternative means for the West to study the East. It is to his credit he tried to resist the urge towards "distortion and inaccuracy" but the ambition to revolutionize the interconnected fields of Western politics, literature, and history in regards to the Eastern world made that impossible.

Edward Said makes some good points. He rightfully points out that the historical and political situation of the individuals writing about the Eastern world inevitably leave their fingerprints. Moreover, he rightfully points out that even those removed from that political and historical situation are informed by the tradition formed from then. Yet Said goes as far to suggest that this makes them fundamentally unreliable, and that the entire tradition of Eastern studies must now be discarded as sullied. There is my disagreement with him. There is our debating ground.

You have to check for biases. You have to look for them even in insidious places like analysis of economies. When Marx in the Communist Manifesto talks about Europeans opening China to commerce as the march of capitalism and industrialization, pause for a moment. Well, it's true in terms of factories and steam power China was behind England and France. But was it behind Germany or Russia? Moreover, in terms of roadwork and administrative sophistication, China was certainly as modern as most of Europe. I mean Britian was certainly more capitalistic than China, but be careful in assuming, as I believe Marx does that Europe as a whole is.

Even in literature this imaginative construct of Orientalism forms a lens over reality. Kipling lived in India. He knew what it was like. Yet in Kim he presents a wandering Tibetan monk who has no knowledge of worldly things. Let's think for a moment. A monk who traveled to India would likely spend some time in Indian spiritual circles, which in the 19th century were filled with ultra-sophisticated intellectuals who were intimately connected with the worlds of science, finance, and European-Indian relations. Sure, it is a story, and a highly unlikely one by that, but just remember that this too is one of those unlikely details.

Fine, fine to all that. I agree with Said that there is this imaginative construct of Orientalism that taints Western accounts. But IT DOES NOT DISCREDIT THE TRADITION. When English translators translated Arabic works they interpreted through their impressions of the Muslim world, but those translations still often convey the core of the meaning of those works especially when one takes them with a grain of salt. The travelers accounts contain their own views but they often contain very valuable historical material. Marco Polo's accounts of Kublai Khan were influenced by the eternal European search for a counterweight to the Muslim world, but the details of his travel are immensely valuable, sometimes recording things that might never have been noted even by the people who lived in those lands.

And then we have the full complexity of Orientalism. It wasn't just the tradition that justified imperialism. It was also the tradition that often protested most vigorously against imperialism. Take late 18th c. England. While the British East Indian company justified their conquests in India by India's primitive non-capitalism, shown by their ancient though opulent unchanging traditions. Yet the myth of eternal perfect luxury of India also convinced many that India was a great beacon of civilization. Adam Smith for example, when hearing of the East India Company's actions was horrified.

And then we have modern Orientalism. Said is correct that modern Eastern studies inherit a tainted legacy from old Orientalism. But that doesn't discredit the work of modern Eastern studies. Many have tackled highly effectively the biases of their past and been able to remove some. And some they have not been able to remove. And they have added some new biases.

In the end, the reason why Said can't suggest a way to look at people without some imaginative construct blocking them. Our biases are inevitable, and everything we write is infected in it, but we can still strive to get better. And despite the highly developed nature of a construct like Orientalism it is still better to chip away at it through refining the tradition than labeling all the old Eastern studies more about Orientalism the construct than those lands East and South of Europe themselves.

Especially since starting with a blank slate is impossible. Beyond the fact the materials of the past do not lend themselves to remaking from a fresh thought, seeking so hard to erase Orientalism from the Western mind instead creates an Anti-Orientalism which I feel many of Edward Said's disciples, and perhaps the man himself, practice. This sees the Orient as something unknowable by the West and the West as aggressive fools. This sees revolution as the natural course of things to cleanse the burdens of colonialism, but demands an impossible purity to whatever is begotten from the revolution. Well, I could complain more about this. But let me put aside my complaints, because they are more or less just my political opinions.

But the Anti-Orientalist perspective is something very real I think. It tends to taint the vision of the counterculture in its review of the East. It is hard to describe its exact dimensions without going on a political tangent, especially since as a body is amorphous. But it is a knee-jerk revolt against the orthodoxy, it is an idealization of radical anti-colonial intellectuals without a critical perspective. And it is a demonization of any attempt by Western intellectuals outside the Anti-Orientalist circle to claim knowledge to allow them to sympathize with a foreign cause. It is mixed with other anti-traditionalist creeds such as neo-Marxism, primitivism, anarchism. And while I could simply mock it, my political differences withe perspective are not the point. It is a distorting view, often just as much so as Orientalism.

I'd like to draw a parallel. In Said's book, he claims that Orientalism prevents any American intellectual from sympathizing with an Arab cause without being accused of a sinister interest. He points out the State Department Arabists who were then accused of being dishonest due to vague oil connections. Yet what about now? Any intellectual or politician who believes in democracy in the Middle East is usually tarred, at least by certain intellectual circles who subscribe to Anti-Orientalism, as a stooge of big corporations, or secret ultra-nationalist, or just as a buffoon.

So do I say that Said's book is useless? No, it was an important watershed in historical thought. It forced Eastern studies to confront its historic biases. Yet it also had an unfortunate bi-product in the form of Anti-Orientalism which was due to how broad a stroke with which he condemned Western thought on the land once known as the Orient.

But still, I tip my hat off to you, Professor Said, wherever you are. You showed without a doubt the importance of context on human thoughts. And so since these are thoughts, I think in Said's honor, I might, as he did, compile an inventory of significant facts that undoubtedly influences my analysis. I am a young man, only of 21 years. I study at Rutgers University and grew up in the shadow of Princeton. It should be noted that I revolted against the dominant culture of my youth, which was culture of Princeton, which in many ways matched the counter-culture of the rest of the country. I have old bitternesses towards the counter-culture which I have attempted to cleanse, but old bitternesses die hard. I am a devout Catholic and I believe in the importance of tradition. I am a die-hard capitalist and a believer in the essentialness of human rights.

And I, too, bear skin that should mark me as an Oriental. It is a nice shade of Dravidian brown, but it is rather different than most in America. Yet unlike Professor Said, my experiences have not been too harsh in that regard. Instead, my life has given me a great love of the United States, and that is why I call myself an American without question, although I am proud of my Indian heritage. I am not sure what Said would say about that. He wrote an autobiography Out of Place, and I think he meant most especially in America. Yet that has not been my experience, and perhaps that is in some small part due to Professor Said's book Orientalism. There is still shades of Orientalism in America mind you, and there are still biases in its academia, but perhaps the United States has become a little kinder in the 30 years since Said's book. If so, I do thank Professor Said, and hope where he is now, he is finally in a place he feels is home.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

When I get older... they'll call me freedom

Awesome, awesome song. I dunno, but I've been nervous about things. Writing this blog even for instance. And then time disappears and there I go without the time, or as in this case, with perhaps just a bit much on my mind. But so you don't go empty handed, here's a song+lyrics from a very impressive gentleman from Somalia named K'naan:

Waving Flag and here's the lyrics from a newly found most awesome lyric source: lyric-wiki

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Ah, the savage winds of history

I'm musing over quite the session in my head, which may or may not mean it may come to naught. But in the mean while I'm going to start moving over some posts from a few short-lived specialty blogs which may return someday, but till then still deserve their moment in the sun. And with no further ado, here is The History Cometh with "Ah, the savage winds of history":

And so I can't say I'm a master historian. Yet I'd say I'm something more than an amateur. I could probably fit the mold of an expert, I haven't invested my life in history, but I've studied it in a concentrated sort these last four years (ie. I'm a history major), and I have a massive interest in the subject that keeps me up to date. Moreover I like to play around with historical ideas and such and...

So why not be a historian?

Well, maybe I will someday. I've got enough of a life out there to change my direction three or four times. But for now I am possessing of an active spirit far too restless for the ivory tower or even the back-roads of academia which travel around the world but only in certain circles. My current focus now is becoming a journalist, a profession which I believe will have an activeness to suit me. Moreover, also I have not the taste for the rigidness of academic rules and I think journalism will free me for that. But perhaps times will change me. Who knows?

But for now, I think I will indulge the historical side of me by writing greatly of that subject no other place than right here!

It should be fun, and I think you'll like it.

Stay tuned!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Twittering away the blues

That pun was sooo lame, soooo very, very, very lame. I mean it does draw attention to the fact that I'm now on twitter, but really now, twittering away the blues, I mean REALLY!

But while it might incline me toward various bad puns like this, twitter's mini-posting is a nice way to work out random thoughts and nice turns of phrases without stealing room and attention from my more valuable posts, and so on, and so on.

I'm glad I'm not going to actually use twitter to update my status, because essentially that's what I'm doing here and it is LAME!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Move Along, Move Along, Like I told you too

And so I have through good and bad, but then again, I haven't had things so bad really and so.

But I have to say I have moved to a better place all and all. Not physically, that matter is up to debate. But emotionally (well, not exactly emotionally, more like in the aspect of satisfaction) I feel a good deal better than even yesterday.

It is amazing what a day of blogging can do (as I used to rant about, I never have reconciled myself fully to that word, but...ah, these are My United States of Whatever!), if I wanted though to pin down something particular that triggered my mood, it would probably be that act of resuming my writing in this forum. Yet there are perhaps other reasons for this shift in my sense of feeling.

Now I am one who believes that God gives us the right to refuse Him, but I also believe that He does intervene in this world. As with many apparent contradictions of religion, a little thought can resolve this one and lead to a more complete truth. I believe essentially, though not absolutely, that God, in most cases acts in ways that can be doubted. But then there are also miracles, and among those whose record comes from sources I trust, one cannot say God always acts ambiguously in people's lives. Well, perhaps for some people the choice to accept or reject God is made more direct, although not truly forced, but most of the time, I think, God's work is most obviously His to those who do not need such evidence, the true believers who have not a shred of doubt. That does seem a bit unfair at first glance, but it does preserve our freedom of choice in belief. But let me not over-generalize, I think with everyone, their relationship with God is unique, as suits a most crucial aspect of a unique person.

And so that's my view of things, and on the practical side of that view that leads to an open view of those who cite direct experiences from God, and yet I rarely if ever trust in mystical senses of things. But if that sounds like the best of both worlds, that is a highly debatable assessment, in several senses. What it has meant for me, with what I like to think is a strong faith, but an uncertainty about all experiences and about myself and about my ability believe, is that I constantly must debate how to treat things in the light of God's will. Now I do believe that coincidences are sometimes God's interference, but I also believe that they are sometimes coincidences.

It makes perfect sense to me that God, an infinite being, would have a personal interest in me, since wouldn't an infinite being of infinite love be able to grant an infinite affection for an infinite number of people? If that seems like a high number of infinites to juggle, well, life's like that (and that's the way it is), after all, if the universe can contain the whole of our life, it becomes questionable whether our mind can contain the whole of the workings of the universe. Anywho, I quite a bit often find myself falling upon random things in life and pondering, perhaps far too deeply, about what they mean or if they mean nothing. Is this oddity a message for me, is it a message for someone else, or is it just part of the odds and ends produced by all the different messages and meanings that are flying through the universe, faster than the speed of light.

This all in general leads to an uncertain suggestion of answers, and yet, that does leave me with plausible deny-ability in making my choice about whether or not to follow God's will, giving me a choice despite my fear and/or love for God. While sometimes this causes possible interventions to do little (or on the surface little), to change my pre-determined course, sometimes it gives me a sense of things to do, either in act or in thought.

And to march back through the paragraphs to where I was talking about my renewed mood (although now I'm starting to question my renewed mood, although that's largely because ME SO SLEEPY!!!), these little (and sometimes not so little) coincidences which I debate over did however give me an increasing sense of dissatisfaction. Not exactly dissatisfaction in life, actually more oppositely a dissatisfaction with my attitude on life which in itself was very dissatisfied. While I can't place my finger on what exactly that attitude was, or the change, and hence not exactly on the cause of the change, it possessed a marked negativity overall, that again and again I sensed God disagreed with. And perhaps, bit by bit, this sense of things changed my attitude, shifted my mind and brought me this new mood simply coinciding with my blogging and...

Well, actually, the most probable answer is one which I have the most stock in trusting, is that this dissatisfaction with idle dissatisfaction lead me to push a renewal of writing which in turn renewed my mood and on and on and on and so on.

And in the infinite scheme of things, this might be insignificant, but we have little to control in this life, even as we do the best we can to control our consequences to the good, to do the will of God, but what we do have control over, or what we can control in our best fathoming of who we are and what control is, is our attitude toward life, toward ourselves, and toward God.

In the end we have but a choice, but what a wondrous choice that is. A choice to choose Love.

So take it to your head, take to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Posting, posting, posting, gotta keep on posting

Man week without a post, not good man, not good!

Especially since I do have a number of thoughts percolating in the coffee pot that is my brain (hey, I do drink a lot of caffeine).

However, I was on vacation, and I do have a supremely low readership to lose (hey, gotta look on the bright side), so I'm not going to beat myself up too bad over it (you on the other hand... (punch hand into other hand)).

Ah I would like some readership, and as a long term thing, I should at some point start utilizing search engine optimization techniques, aggressive participation in the blogging community, and other such methods for readership boosting. But those plans are all in the future.

In the short term, my plan is simply to get more regular and better quality. That in itself is quite the task.

Yet, as has been pointed out to me by many, why not just discard it all?

Because there is that glimmer of hope that this blog might turn into something, a glimmer certainly, but a glimmer nonetheless.

More importantly, though, because writing this blog keeps me working, keeps me writing, keeps me thinking, and if anything is helping to keep my brain from falling into the nothingness of utter sloth or the chasm of numbing non-creativity, well, maybe its worth keeping on...

The last part of the justification was rather lazy, but I think, on occasion I produce some nice pieces of prose for this old webpost, and since that's coming out, putting a little effort in don't seem like too much a burden.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Still on the Vacationing

So I established a lot of plans for this blog earlier in the month. And I have followed through with only a little of them. Oh well. I'm still on vacation is still the thing, and between relaxing and taking advantage of San Francisco, I find I only have so much time to concentrate on projects like this without being stressed out, and I do not plan on being stressed out while in vacation mode. So I'm sorry, but posting will be sporadic for the next week or so, and then once I switch into got-to-find-a-job-mode, well posting may or may not be sporadic then, but once I find a job... well, hopefully things should settle down... hopefully...

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Mathimoto's Revamp

As things have suggested Mathimoto is still doing changes of many types. First I have added good old Robo-Bobo as my partner, and now I'm doing some redesign of the layout and such. So prepare yourself, for awesomeness, brought forth through the power of MATH!!!

Check it out now: The History's Your Brother

I've been adding some more features and a new layout. I added some links for my history professors and some history resources, as well as some random stuff and such. Hopefully it's all pumped up in coolness, but there's still extra coolness it can get, because History's just soooo awesome.

Monday, July 7, 2008

So many dreams, so little time

So I have quite a few dreams, far more than I can realize and most likely far more than I ought to realize.

But still, some dreams can live, and some I shall make live.

And here is my plan for the Rand Show that the dream of awesomeness, already realized in this blog, may be expanded into the dream of awesomeness read by the world, not quite realized yet.

My plans for the Rand Show:

More often posting. Given my irregular schedule and focus and the state of limbo my life-style is in without a job, while I will try to post daily I may not end up doing so. Still, giving a frame to my posting plans ought help me to post more often.

So here's the frame:

Monday (well, maybe starting today, but more likely starting next Monday): A rundown of good and great links for the day (a similar daily list oriented toward tv and movies can be found with the good old folks at The House Next Door. This list will be likely oriented to interesting websites, internet essays and good resource sites.

Wednesday: A review or cultural analysis post dealing with the current and past states of tv, books, music, and the internet among other things.

Friday: A news rundown + analysis. This will give some major events, some personal reflections, some larger scale and longer term context, and some links to some other articles.

Now this basic frame hopefully should keep me posting thrice a day. Hopefully I should also be able to do a poetry post on Sunday. And maybe I'll do a music video/lyrics session on Saturdays, maybe, we shall see.

Now to fill out the week I hope to revive the tradition of mini-posts. What defines a mini-post? Either a certain lack of focus or a certain lack of depth, something that touches on some topics but does not give them the fullness of rigorous analysis. In addition to my random thoughts, I am adding to this category my random life posts that sometimes near diary-like, but don't fully analyze the implications of those events of the life of the GREAT AND GLORIOUS RAND!!!

Then there are the mega-posts. The big, essay-like posts which I designed this blog for. I will try to do as many of these as I can, but to be honest these are long and require a lot of thinking, usually that means a lot of time, something I am often short on. Still I should try to do at least one mega-post a week, give or take a couple.

Time is the great limiting factor. I've often thought of what I'd like to do with my life if I was freed of monetary constraints. Perhaps and probably, a lot of writing and at least a good deal of that should be in this blog. But more than just blog writing, I also like drawing, so hopefully in the future I should try to make a Rand gallery of my random art-work and hopefully I will be able to bring back in full flavor, the Rand Show comic. But those plans are uncertain and I make no promises.

Ah so many promises I have made, to myself, to others and to God.

But when it comes down to it, most of the promises I have made to others are not those that I will be held to if they are broken. And God forgives and provides and needs nothing and gives everything. My promises to myself therefore are the ones that curse me the most when broken, because I find it very hard to forgive myself, and there is a worry that my plans for the Rand Show will be such promises to myself.

So let me step back and say firstly, so what! To avoid any danger is to avoid any life and so I press forward. Secondly, while college has taught me humility (though high school taught me a nice degree of pride), I still find myself caught up in the idea that my efforts are destined to save the world and every moment I delay not in work, I risk dooming us all. But while I am great and glorious, that is a wrong assumption.

The world will get on without me, and God certainly will allow me some allowance. After all, am I not his child, and is He not pleased in my happiness? That does not remove my mission to do His will, but this is not a do or die this moment mission, it is a life mission, and it allows me, and perhaps even obliges me to have a life.

And maybe I shall, and maybe I shall have even more, if I can cleanse my spirit of doubts and fears, maybe I can have the life eternal, but that too is a mission for a lifetime.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

lots of change = good, net-wise at least

So good old Mathimoto has been going through some changes, and with these changes has come much busy-ness, but do not fret! The math continues, and indeed will improve...

For example, soon this blog will utilize the very useful technology of math markup languages. Which exactly, I'm not sure at the moment, but it will be done! And then you'll have nice little graphics here with all the equations and such.

But perhaps most dramatically, joining the crew will be segments by Mathimoto's good friend, a robot-man whose name escapes me at the moment (if he was a kill-bot I would be much scared by this development but fortunately he is not).

Now this blog was initially envisioned as a math blog above and beyond CS, but this is also a blog on the internet so it is natural that CS developments be of some concern. Yet do not fear, the math will not be enveloped, and to protect the math, Mathimoto's posts and his robot friend's will be kept separate. The math will go on!

Because Math rules!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Poets or mullets, or can you have both

Yes you can. It's actually getting harder and harder for me to think of good post titles, but I'm pretty good with that one, even if it has only highly tangential relation to my actual post.

Anywho, for a while I've debated back and forth between putting poems up on my site. Ultimately I think it's a good thing. If a poetry magazine what's exclusive publishing, I can take it down, but honestly, I'm not spending that much time (if any) sending work out to magazines, so might as well put it up on the web. Hopefully that will keep me writing.

Because honestly, I haven't been writing that much. Now I've been doing some posting, and some decent posts have come out, but even though I insist that blogging is a creative work, and sometimes I get a nice thunderstrike and make something totally awesome for my blog, fiction and poetry... now they too often come from reality, but still need more work for the ideas to be teased out to something concrete. Taking away my distress at not spending that much time writing (even the posts are in between stuff and without that much discipline), I've also got a good deal of distress that my creativity's leaking a little. Now that might just be stress, that might just be overreaction, that might just be busy-ness, but there might be a gem of truth there, even if it just means I have writer's block. And that's, that's a bit scary for me.

I actually have a poem for that, but I have another poem that I'm pretty damn proud of. I always think of my writing as working for the Lord through making something high-quality. But this is more direct. However, let me withdraw the pretty damn proud, at least tentatively, because I'm a little unsure of the quality here. I've worked on this, but I can never be sure of quality immediately after something's written. And yet... and yet this is something important to me, and ah, aren't you here to understand the inner-workings of the Rand-ish mind?

Or something like that.

Anyways, I'm going to post up a nice little poem I call, "The Lord remains"

Monday, May 26, 2008

Cause you can't spell Rand Show without Rand

So I've been away. The first week or two I can excuse through finals and graduation (Wooo! Graduated! Thank you Lord!), but there's still a week or so which I can only say I chose not to post anything. Why such a thing?

Well, like I've said before, writing these posts, even if no one reads them, is something productive for me, and I have been ambivalent about being productive. With college and all over with, I no longer have a definite pressing obligation toward working (other than the fact I'm sucking up my parents money), and so I can drift a little bit, a bit detached from it all. There's something terribly peaceful about being detached from everything.

(Quick reference: watch the Fountainhead movie (you can read the book, but even if you're not a fan of Ayn Rand, the movie's pretty cool), there's a scene where the female lead drops a beautiful Greek sculpture down a garbage shoot, when asked why, she says because I loved it. Ties of love are ties that bind)

Well, as I noted in my reference above, ties of love are ties that bind. When you engage in anything productive you take on responsibilities to maintain such things or have the pain of watching them fade. As CS Lewis once noted, the only place the heart is at peace outside of heaven is in hell.

So there is that peace of utter lack of care in detachment. But screw peace.

So bit by bit I'm trying to shake off this feeling of, and a certain visceral desire for, detachment so I can start living again. And this is one step, and I have taken others, and I will take others.

And step by step, onto the silver sea.

Until the last step must be taken by us all.

And then if we're lucky, the steps will be a staircase to the kingdom in the sky.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

The Rand Show