Monday, December 22, 2014

When is comes to memories of the past I gotta get Buddhist on your ass.

Every memory is composed of two parts:

- What happened in reality.

- How you felt about what happened in reality.

It happens all too often that we let how we felt about our past memories or how we feel about our future experiences ACTUALLY DEFINE WHAT WE THINK HAPPENED.

When you experience something, you are NEVER experiencing what ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  That is impossible.  Your emotions won't allow for it.  Monks have been trying to do it for generations and look at the extremes they have had to gone in the process.


(despite what you may believe, this an old photo of an ex-Catholic, currently practicing Buddhist monk.  It is NOT a photo I stole from an online costume shop.)


You are only experiencing your emotional interpretation of what happened.  It is that emotional interpretation that lingers in your mind years later when you try to recall that experience.

For example,

I had a past altercation with my wife.

In this altercation, my wife offers me a piece of advice.  I do not accept the piece of advice because I do not see it's relevance.  Months later, my idea about that piece of advice changes and I communicate to my wife how I feel.  Instead of rejoicing in the unity of our minds, my wife is frustrated with me.  Not because I accepted her piece of advice.  Not even because I didn't accept it months ago.  She is frustrated because it reminded her of how she FELT when I didn't accept her piece of advice months ago.  The feeling was the defining aspect of that past experience and therefore became her memory.  My wife is a very open woman.  She loves diversity.  She loves discussion.  She would never turn down an opportunity to fuck shit up with questions, yet in her mind of our past experience there was not a memory of "James disagreed with me" as that memory would bring feelings of joys upon its recollection when I tell her that I finally agree with her because she enjoys discussion.  My wife's emotions defined what actually happened so that something she enjoys (discussion) in so many other circumstances was redefined as something she does not enjoy because she had a negative emotion attached to it....and that memory lingered on in her mind for months.

Now, I fully admit that the way in which I disagreed has a HUGE part to do with the negative emotion she attached to the experience.  I mean there is a huge emotional difference between this type of disagreement and this type.  But once again, the way in which I do things and the way in which she interprets things HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT HAPPENED IN REALITY - a disagreement.

It is letting emotion define our experiences that cause us the occasional confusion of liking something in one context only to hate the exact thing in another context.

It is letting emotion define our experiences that causes the common human to take a couple decades to become fully independent.

It is letting emotions define our experiences that can cause two people who were present for the exact same thing, at the exact same time, to differ so greatly in how they recall the details day/months/years/minutes later.

It is letting emotions define our experiences that causes us to be original.

It is letting emotions define our experiences that causes us to stand out from the crowd.

It is our emotions that define each individual us.

It is the lack of knowing when to let our emotions define our experiences and when not to that will keep us from improving our emotional maturity.

And it is the lack of emotional maturity that keeps humans from becoming more human.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Listen to your Heart - It will give you the most up-to-date truth

"Holding your poop in doesn't give you hemorrhoids, trying to push out the piece of poop that decided to not come out because you held in your poop is what gives you hemorrhoids."

This was the revelation that occurred after my most recent poop that shook me to my childhood.



A little backstory I believe is at hand.

When I was a little cub scout, I was on a mountain retreat with my friend Ben Richards, skipping rocks by at a lake.  I shared with Ben a pickle - I needed to poop but I wanted to continue skipping rocks by the lake.  Ben's advice stuck with me to this day, "James, if you hold your poop in you will get hemorrhoids".  I wasn't scholarly about hemorrhoids as a child, I just knew enough that I didn't want them and this was enough to get me to the latrine in seconds.

Jump cut to a couple hours ago, Tuesday Dec. 9th, 2014, 7am.  I am sitting at the kitchen table writing a different blog post.  Suddenly I feel the pangs to relieve my bowels.  Due to the lapse of 20 years, the words of wise Ben were not fresh in my mind and I continued to ignore my intestine for the sake of my thoughts.  Eventually the body always wins and I find myself on the pot with a cute PLOP!

"A cute PLOP?!?", I wonder to myself, "I know there was much more in there than one plop."

"Oh well, the tummy is a mysterious thing", and I wiped 3 times up and once down before returning to my computer and my prior thoughts.

Jump cut to right before I started writing this blog post.  I have just finished writing and published the blog post from this morning when a similar pang for poop strikes again.  Now, I am quite familiar with my bowel movements so I know when they are abnormal, and 2 movements in one day is incredibly abnormal....unless (as I tip my detective's cap) the contents of the first movement weren't fully removed.....due to (as I grip my bubble producing pipe) my holding it in when it really wanted to come out!!!!!! (Cue childhood shattering revelation)

Thank you childhood Ben for giving me the truth circa 20 years ago, and thank you brain for updating it for me.


Thursday, December 4, 2014

Video Games: I think it is about time for another crash.

My view of video games is similar to my view of humans.  Throughout the life of a typical human, there will be ups and downs.  Food, graduation, marriage, and poop are all typically defined as ups with their counterparts typically defined as downs.  If you looked at typical human life as it would be depicted on a line graph, it might look something like this:

(please excuse me, I don't know how to make a line graph, so I thought I would make a GIF, but then I realized I haven't figured out how to make a GIF yet so this is a video of me trying to be a GIF....being line graph) :



Thursday, November 20, 2014

Artificial Sex

How much of our sexual desire is a result of our natural tendencies and how much is a result of society selling it to us.  If we were able to discern on a chemical level each one of our sexual inclinations, would we be able to see a  difference between desires that stem from our natural sexual disposition and desires that stem from the incessant attempts society uses sex as a stimulus.  If we were able to reach this point of finite chemical differences, could we build upon this to achieve a mental state where we would be able to control ourselves so well to be able to look at a ways society uses sex to sell that previously worked on us and say, "Fake.  Not interested."  Would our sexual activity be 100% based on the biological need from which it stems?  Are various sexual preferences that we think are real like tit size, ass size, kinky level etc. all fake?  Are all just a result of our conscious mind being fucked with by society since our birth?  If we were able to turn off our conscious sexual desires and we acted only on true to the bone natural ones, would humans reach a sexual state similar to other animals with mating seasons, seasons of mass ovulating etc?  Just a little something to chew on.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

There is less disease amongst populations that live in colder environments

Cold prohibits growth
Hot promotes growth.

Bacteria cause disease and need heat to live
Viruses cause disease and heat.........do viruses spread the same rate in cold conditions as warm?

Ok, some viruses have evolved for colder temps and some for warmer, but the ways the ones for colder temperatures evolved was to form a icey coat around it so it can survive longer in the cold temperature, then once it makes itself into someone's body, the coat melts from the heat and it does its job. (check here for more details)

This shows that both need a warm environment to grow.  because they grow from hijacking the DNA of something that does need warm temps to grow.  They cannot be anything more than a slightly better or worse version of whoever they hijack.

That is some crazy sci-fi shit right there!!

Sunday, November 16, 2014

First time I felt good being bad.

I saw two men carrying a bed spring.  It appeared they were carrying it for a long distance as I caught them crouching down as they took a rest. (Well don't pitch your tent there lads, because you are in the middle of the road!!!)

Although they were clearly struggling, I did not react to my desire to help them, and I kept walking.  Normally this is when I start to feel bad for not helping my fellow man, but then I thought, "With a man on each end, what would I do?  Awkwardly touch the middle left or middle right side of the bed as I NOT help these two men carry a big stiff LIGHT bed spring"

Finally my logic defeats my laziness.

How I define "DJ"

I define being a DJ as effectively plagiarizing other people's works and releasing it right at that the point where people are getting bored of the original but would still enjoy a plagiarized one, and then trying to show these people that you also have original work.

Possible correlations with STWO's remix  of 'Wifey' and Next's original:


  • More people sharing the STWO's remix than people sharing Next's original work.



  • The accumulated amount of views of videos depicting STWO's remix may be more than those of Next's original.


Possible explanations for these correlations:

  • Popularity may be determined more by how many people share your work than by how many clicks you get.  The Click market may be too saturated.
Possible correlations to this correlation:


  • Is a DJ's popularity correlated with the number of Remixes he or she has done?
  • Is there a correlation between the number of Remixes a DJ has done with this DJ's popularity?
  • If there is a negative correlation, is there a correlation between the number of times a DJ changes his name with the time it takes him to gain popularity? 



Monday, October 20, 2014

Tangents: Demistified.

Here is my attempt to solve the mystery of tangents (most likely I am the only one who thinks of them as such) using what limited knowledge I have about the physiology of the brain.

Brain is made up of little nuggets that store all the information we receive via our senses called neurons.  We have a lot of these neurons, though this article is not concerned with the actual number.  This neurons are all interconnected in various and mysterious patterns by another part of the brain called dendrites.  Please refer to the exciting picture below.




Sunday, October 12, 2014

How I Care.


The news representative tried to put the surfer on a guilt trip by saying that the money he was using to buy food came from hard working Americans.  Shouldn't he feel guilty using such money if he himself as an healthy individual with functional arms, legs, and a head could go out, get a job and pay for his own food?  The surfer didn't seem to care.  Even I, as an Ex-hard working American, current hard working global citizen don't care.  I can't care about this.  It simply isn't relevant enough to my life.  I think it boils down to the fact that I don't care about money enough to care about this.  Let me explain.

Money never belongs to anyone (relevant to me).  From the moment it is minted until it is replaced by a new form of paying for goods and services it is constantly moving in and out of peoples hands and bank accounts.  This means the money I receive from a company was never mine and therefore when some of it is taken away from me for taxes before I ever see it - I don't care.  How can I care about something that is taken from me when I never owned it in the first place?  I didn't make the money.  I didn't put my hard work into creating money.  Therefore I can't place value in it.  But I do place value in the service I provided for which I received the money.  I provide a service and am paid money according to how valuable it is considered to be.  I then adjust my lifestyle according to what can be afforded by the amount of money I receive for the services I provide.  If the lifestyle I have under these circumstances is enjoyable then I continue this process with happiness and joy for all mankind.  If it is not, I continue to be happy me but I take my happiness elsewhere.  Some people choose to bite the hand that feeds them...that is good.  We need those kind of people.  They do stuff I don't care to do.  I am sure it is important.  I would rather find a place the already appreciates the service I provide and demonstrates this by providing enough money to allow for me to live comfortably.  If said place does not exist, then I will create it.  A comfortable life is contingent upon what I do, what I create, with whom I create, with whom I do.  Some people like my friend Chris like to do and create big projects with many people so they of course need a lot of money to support it.  Currently I do and create with my fiance Amy, my brothers Jonathan and Joseph, and myself.  That is a total of four people.  The projects we are doing are not huge and therefore we need a minimal amount of money (mostly just time) to support them.  As these projects grow in size, more people may get involved and as such more money will be needed.  This is all part of the growth of the things we do and create.  At no point is the focus more on the money than the lifestyle.  So when I see a news article trying to scare me by showing some stranger taking advantage of a system that takes in money I never owned....I simply don't care.  Here is how I could care.  I put many hours into a project with Jonathan.  We create a wooden bicycle that makes babies dance.  It was very difficult but satisfying to make.  Then suddenly this stranger comes and destroys it.  I would gladly care at that point.  In order for me to care about that surfer taking advantage of the foot stamps system, I would have to care about money to the point where I actually thought it was mine, then I would be concerned that some of it was being used to support this stranger, and then I would care.

I wonder if there is a correlation between how much value people place on money as an object and how much they care about things similar to this news report.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Cats and Kids will NEVER be the Same.

For many people, having a kid is a momentous occasion that requires little planning (since most kids are accidents.)  For me, having a kid is becoming a forced decision - by my job.  Over the course of this article I will explain many things about cats, and I will explain few things about frogs, and I will fail to explain anything about kids.

I have realized that to have a proper conversation with nearly 100% of everyone I work with I must have a kid.  I have tried to talk about other topics that I find interesting like frogs, frog soup, and how dragonflies start out as frogs; but every attempt I make is quickly turned into how her child loves frogs, or how his child would never eat a frog, or how their child is currently studying about dragonflies in school.  Unless I can bring "my child" into the conversation, my topic is quickly stolen and turned into something I no longer recognize.

What happened to parents who don't care about their children?

Fast forward a couple minutes.  I am saying goodbye to a bunch of kids as they are being picked up by parents who I never want to know and I see our school's security guard.  Male.  Tall.  Beard.  Possibly no children.  I decide to find out.  Turns out he has 3.  This time I unload my mind onto him with the hopes that maybe if I wear my opinions on my sleeve instead of constantly staring at mouths as globs of child dribbles out waiting for the prime moment to cut in with something intellectually stimulating I might have a chance.  What I got was, "Well, what if you got a dog or a cat?"  Instantly I think, "That doesn't make sense."

Rewind a couple hours.  Its my lunch break, I am driving to the thrift store because I can.  I see this fluffy flat blob on the side of the road.  I knew what it was but I decided to wait until I could see the front of it in my rear view mirror before I believed it.  My hunch was right, it was a dead kitten, and it was cute as hell.  Guess what I did?  You guessed it, I kept on driving.

I would never do that if it was a kid.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I guess I am a philosopher

Please enjoy this conversation I had with one of my coworkers. (names have been changed to protect identity)

Her - "You, why do you do your hair like that?"
Me - "Genetics"
Her - "Genetics?  You are so weird.  Hey other women at the table!!!  I ask this guy why he does his hair this way and he responds with "Genetics"!!!"
(other women were too busy skinning grapefruit to respond)
Me - "Well, how else would I explain why I do things I want to do?"
Her - "Eh!?!  You call that genetics?!?!  Genetics is what you get from your dad and he got his from your grandpa!!!  Does your Dad and grandpa have the same hairstyle?"
Me - "We all know the genome changes from parent to offspring through genetic mutation.  I comb my  hair to the right, my dad combs his to the left, and my gramps combs his straight down."
Her - "Now you getting all philosophical!!"


Tuesday, February 25, 2014

....I got this


Don't worry....



Institutionalized laws are not what keep humans civilized.  More people would still say “I don’t want you to die” than “I want you to die” without the interference of institutionalized law.  Here is why.  More can be done by a creature that is alive than one that is dead, and so, as part of the theory (so popularized by everyone except Darwin himself) of natural selection, in other words, the selected sustenance, by nature, of things that just kick ass at living, a creature that promotes living the most would propagate more than one that promotes killing, simply because it would be alive longer to do so.  Duh.  The natural urge that makes a man kill other people (or himself) that we think will plague us if institutionalized law ceased to exist (an idea we today much like to propagate through various media-induced ideas of what an apocalypse would look like) is not a successful trait to have because, if the majority of us had it, we would kill more of us than they would replace through love and sex.  Follow this route and we would eventually dwindle in numbers until another creature gobbled us up.  As Mr. Darwin so beautifully expressed in his book The Origin of Species, it’s hard to grow if you fucking KILL more than you FUCK(a.k.a. have babies).  Humans didn’t start out with institutionalized laws, yet we remained alive long enough to make them (about 6,999,950,000 years long).  When MAN falls apart; when MAN kills each other; when MAN starts getting into shit that aint theirs; don’t worry, NATURE will just say.....click here

Friday, February 7, 2014

Did you know........amygdala?


Did you know there is a part of the brain called the amygdala that puffs up and flattens down.  And when it is flattened down 100% by your lack of personality, you are doing nothing that challenges you.  When it has been puffed up 100% by your overconfidence, you are too challenging.  There is a balance between the two that when struck, True learning can get through.