Ironic War Quote

I hate quotes... well, not the actual quotes (they are quite fun to use), but mostly the persons that used them as a way of argumenting a point. But, I found the following quote and I got to admit: the irony of it is unbeleivable. It's an excerpt from the Nuremberg Diary, written by Gustave Gilbert, during the trials of various important Nazi figures involved in the World War II and the Holocaust. The following is from an interview with Hermann Wilhelm Göring, a german general:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

It just gives you shivers down your spine, doesn't it?

Freedom

America is a continent (even I, who sucks at geography, know that), and 'United States' is a political concept, not a country's name (actually, the official name of Mexico is the United States of Mexico). Naming a country 'United States' is like naming a dog 'canine': cute, but ultimately illogical. So, yes, for me, that country has no name and shouldn't be called as such, period.

However, just this once, for the sake of honoring Doug Stanhope's beautiful argument, I'm going to let in this post the term 'America' refer to that country north of Mexico and south of Canada.
I've also edited it a little bit, for grammar mistakes (he's ad libbing at a certain point) and foul language: a lot of people, including my parents and supervisor, read this blog, so I got to keep it professional. Well, they actually don't, but just in case...

Enjoy!

America takes credit for giving you freedom that you already had in the first place. You're born free and America takes credit for it. That's like putting your own name tag on somebody else's present on a birthday party and calling it yours.

Think for a second: you're born absolutely free, except for laws of nature: you drink, you get drunk; you get old, you die; you sit on tack, you bleed from the ass. Those are the only laws that you're born with and any government just takes away from those freedoms. If you think that you're free, walk outside to your own car with your own beer in your hands and see how long you last. You're not free. You can't drive down the street without a seatbelt on, you better put on a helmet. This country tells you literally where and when you can cross the street. You got to keep your tray and your seat in the upright and locked position during take off. It's a hack premise and it's a fellony...

'We vote for that!'

We vote for that? No, we don't! When was the last time you saw a measure on a ballot that was this specific: "Do you vote yes on proposition 313: to keep pasties off titty dancers?" No, you vote for a guy who says "I'll lower taxes" and then goes and makes the pasties-off rule behind your back. You don't vote for anything that you care about; you're not free. You get a bounty hunter that can knock down your door without any regulation in this country, yet you need a degree to cut hair.

They say if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish then... he has to get a fishing license, but he doesn't have any money so he has to get a job and get into the social security system and pay taxes, and now you audit the poor bastard because he's not really good at math, he just a wanted to eat a fish! But he can't, because he can't cook the fish because he needs a permit for an open flame, and the health department is asking him all sorts of questions about where is he going to dump the scales, and the bones, and the guts... and kids, guess what? If you get tired of it all at the end of the day, you're not even free to kill yourself in this country!

'America gave you the freedom to stand on that stage and say what you're saying right now.'

No, dimwit, a voice box gave me the freedom to stand on this stage to say what i'm saying! It comes with the product; they don't install that for you after you're born in this magical dirt.

You were born free, you were hacked out of it, and you're waving a flag celebrating it.

Beautiful, isn't it? I got to admit that there are certain topics in which I don't totally agree with Doug (more specifically, his thoughts on abortion), but everytime he's on stage he makes these senseless, gruesome, incredible, blown-out-of-proportion arguments that, first, I laugh incredibly hard at, and then make total sense to me. So, lo and behold: Doug Stanhope... People will leave. I go on stage, it's like I'm leading you into battle -- you're not all going to be here at the end.

Faint

I spent the night at ngo's last saturday, after a long day of paper-macheing (it's that the word?) and rehearsal. Good talk, good chat, good laughs... before we went to sleep (Carlos spent the night too) we also saw Sin City (ngo's fifth time this month). Basically nice good ol' fun.

I woke up to an eggs-n-spinach breakfast, which my tummy welcomed. I felt kind of drowsy, but not to an extent that I haven't felt before. We were supposed to leave to pick up some of my stuff from another friend's flat, so I went upstairs to take a leak. The bathroom smelled nice. While I was doing my business I felt that I wanted to cough, but I held it in because I didn't want to splatter. So I finished, I coughed a bit and then...

I was sitting down, chatting with Julia, telling her about the interesting peculiarities between american football and rugby. I just became a fan (of rugby, the sport, not of any team in particular) and was very interested to let everybdoy know about it. Some guys approached me and offered me to show her what I was talking about (so, apparently, we were in some part of the U.K.). I accepted and they beat the crap out of me, but all in good fun. In one of their tackles, I layed on the ground laughing at the fact that I sucked at the sport, but it felt good to do something like that for a change.

So there I was, on the ground, with a grin on my face. I think I landed on a rock or something because I felt this little pain on my neck. The floor was hard too; unusual for a lawn. It smelled nice too, not outdoorsy nice, but more like, I don't know, like a bathroom.

"Caleb, there's no toilet paper. I'll leave some out in the hallway."
"Ok, thanks!"

So there I was, on the bathroom floor, with my pants a little stained (not that much, I'd already finished). My head landed on a plastic bucket and my right shoulder, whilst I'm writing this, is still hurting. I stood up, looked myself in the mirror (to check if I were still me), zipped up, washed my hands, and wetted my face and hair. Went down and asked Carlos how long was I up there; apparently (which, now, I'm figuring is the word of the post) I was up there for around five minutes, meaning that I may have been 'out' for around ten or twenty seconds.

It's weird now, everything around me feels like a dream. Maybe because I'm expecting to wake up at any minute. Everything is 'apparent' now, not really there. It may be there, but I just may be asleep, so for now it's only apparently there. Philosophy scholars may argue that it actually may be a good thing: an objective point of view of the metaphysicality of things, to doubt the very existence of stuff around us, of even ourselves:

'I think, therefore I exist': crap on stick, your thoughts may not be yours, only an illusion of thoughts that apparently come from within you. Within you may lie another being that is thinking for you and feeding your so-called thoughts, you may only be the flesh-and-bone vehicle/representation of such thoughts, and you may only be here to act them out. Interestingly enough, if that representation would happen to come about, would you exist anyway? Yeah, you may only be the vehicle, but a vehicle needs to exist to act out stuff: even with being only a representation of something else, you still shoud exist, just in a crappier version of what you first thought (ironically).

But from what I've perceiving: it was just too god damn scary... I have something to tell the grandchildren, if they ever do exist.

Inertia

I'm an inertian being...

Whilst I'm working I won't eat, I won't sleep, and I'm pretty sure I won't breathe for extremely long periods of time, because I just can't stop.

When I'm not working, I can't get myself to get up, I may be thinking of doing the job, hell, maybe some ideas actually come up during my hiatus, but to actually getting them done is nearly impossible.

Inertia... sounds alien-like, doesn't it? I bet that a long time ago, some beings from outer space came down and looked at our civilization and how we were prospering. They calculated that in a relatively small amount of time we would get so advanced that we would become a considerable rival in obtaining resources from the galaxy/universe/space/whatchamacollit. So they zapped all of us with this ray gun that somehow slightly changed our nervous system making it slow down when shifting gears from rest to work and viceversa; this way, either we find it very difficult to start working, or, after we actually do stuff, find it hard to stop, resulting in us getting very tired, which itself provoques an even harder situation when we want to start working again. And, because you worked so much, this builds the illusion that you don't need to work that much the next time, but you should, because it's being a long time since you haven't worked, and you haven't done any work at all since then...

Logically, though, all of this should just then result in the extension of the time periods in which you're working or resting: more rest implies that you can withstand more time working, which would imply more rest, etc. And in the end, the active time put into work would come about the same, compared to the situation of a person working and resting in periods with constant lengths of time.
However, in my observations I suspect this is not the case, as only the rest time periods are the ones expanding and the work periods are actually shortening. Maybe the ray gun had another element: a logic reversal, let's say. The problem is that I haven't found an expansion/shortening ratio to the whole thing, so I can't verify this; maybe it isn't linear, damn aliens!

Whatever it is, though, it's the base of their intent, and the root of our demise... SAY NO TO INERTIA! I've fallen into it and can't get out, but you still have a chance. Tell your family, tell your friends, blog about it (copycat), tell the world! SAY NO TO INERTIA and let's kick those little green asses back to wherever they came from!

Birthday, like usual...

I've been garnering this post for a while, not written anywhere, just the idea on my head. To start a writing without really knowing what it is about, only feeling that you need to write something.

Today's my birthday, and at first I thought not to tell anyone: the fact that people will come up to me to congratulate me seems like it's forced upon them because society tells you that it's almost obligatory to say 'Happy Birthday!' to the person, if you don't do it, you're a dick. I didn't like this one bit: people were coming to me, congratulating basically because I'm alive, with their faces of 'oh jesus, I have to hug this freak'. So I thought 'save it, don't worry about it, I won't feel bad about you not congratulating, so don't'; I mean, I felt even worse when people HAD to congratulate me, I felt like a nuisance...

And it's weird though. Obviously I like getting congratulated by the people I love (my parents and friends of mine), but when it comes to a birthday, you are the center of attention, whether you want it or not, and I'm a control freak: I'm the center of attention when I want it to, and I'm very rebellistic too so if somebody puts me up on a little chair on a 'show and tell' kind of a thing, I just want to get down... it's going to be my chair, my 'show and tell', when I say so...

But nope, friends are friends, and really, a birthday party is more like a wedding: it's not really for the bride and groom, it's really for the family... so, yeah, a birthday party it's not really for the birthday boy, it's really for the birthday boy's friends. It's a good excuse, and us Mexicans (and the Indians too, apparently) for the most part don't need much of an excuse to throw a party, and a birthday is a BIG excuse.

I was going over my Astrological reading (ironically, a birthday present from some website); they're a good read once in a while, and sometimes, just sometimes, they do hit the nail on the head. Apparently I need to be more flexible about the stuff that happens around me and not be such a control freak... fine... I'll go with the flow, and it's not like I don't do that every birthday of mine, and usually I do have a good time.

...

I bought myself a Marshall Amp around two weeks ago. It's my first Marshall, and it sounds beautiful; goes very well with my Epiphone Special Model (the wine red model)... I know it's a bottom of the line guitar, but if you equalize it right at the amplifier end, it sounds amazing, even more so with a Marshall on the front.

There's an acoustic guitar that I borrow from a friend of mine when rehearsing for a folk music event coming up in june... it's also probably bottom of the line, but wow, it feels good, and sounds nice, and it's electroacoustic, which I'm looking for right now. I'll try and persuade him of giving it to me when he leaves England.

What does this have to do with my birthday? Well, first, the Marshall was a birthday present for myself, and second, I think it's a good analogy of my life up until now (I like analysing what I've done and what's going on with my life every birthday, good check). I remember one time that Julia (wow, that name's is getting easier to say every passing day) wrote to me something in that nature:

At first I owned a nylon-string acoustic guitar (Odualli), which represented my start and the fact that I played only for myself. Then she gave me a steel-string electroacoustic guitar (Hallue), which represented my aperture to the world and a transitional stage to live performance. Then I bought this guitar (Joravaillu), which represented my full-fledge emergence as a live performer.

Following that same pattern, I'll follow that by: because of all that stuff happenned between Julia and me, the baggage that it entitled, and, frankly, the fact that Hugo had better hands for it than I did, I gave Hallue up... representing an end, a beginning, an abandon of her and my past (my move to England), even more so considering that I left Odualli at home, which now is more of my dad's then mine, and that I only brought Joravaillu with me, which is part of my thesis right now... so yes, abandon of past and trying to build a future with what I have left.
Then I bought the Marshall amp (Trutweth, kind of an antique, irish, elvian name, in a way), which I think represents adoption of new ideas, considering that there aren't only guitars out there, and the fact that other things can fill my life as well as they do. But at the same time, there's a new electro-acoustic catching my eye... maybe I want to turn back, or just remember the good things of back then, reminisce... not sure what does it mean still, but looks intriguing (yeah, I'm a thing of pondering).

... thing of pondering, thing of mystery, quite an odd fixture am I to the house I bought ... why buy it? why acquire it? it feels strangely well, for one, and it thinks familiarly wrong, for ten (to whoever understands binary) ... weird, confusing, but senseful, unpredictably faithful, soberviously modest, poppy punk, beautiful fly, incongruently informed, flawedly virtued, with a haircut that just doesn't seem right and a look that mostly never sees wrong... me : good birthday present ...

"sperm came under her eye, as she cried the tears of pleasure of her loved one after caressing the sub-creature that had giving her so much happiness: the momentaneous one residing in her sigh, and the eternal one now sleeping in her womb. he carried both of them to the sky, pulling her thighs to his side and kissing the doorway to his bloodline, spreading his tongue on the side, ringing it's doorbell. she grabbed the ceiling as there was nothing else to hold on to, while she felt that so familiar blinding sensation, again, never the same... then, she let go, her right hand found his hair while her left found her left breast, groping both while she forgot the necessity of balance in such an intimate encounter with a small death. he rested her body in his left clavicula using it as a key to her door, moving his shoulder slowly; he laid his ear on her abdomen while she muffled a moan that harmonized with a mild cry from within... he let her down on the bed gently, laid down and whispered: 'she's waking up' while his fingers fondled the bed curtains of their unborn... she then used his neck as concealment of her pleasurable anguish. the more he explored, the faster he wrote, the tighter and more humid it all became... her hand found the sub-creature she had caressed before, and both found themselves moving in the now familiar rhythm that ends up in obscurity followed by clarity, in death followed by life... she finished tasting his blood from the tightness, and him with moist fingertips smelling of her, a scent that only he can draw in, as she is his, he is hers, and both of them are of little hers, waiting for that 18th fortnight to start finding whom she belongs to..."