Dear George Michael webmaster,
After I did did visit your George Michael website at
http://www.uncoolcentral.com/responses.html I wanna ask you if you could
place a link or box to our George Michael e-card service.
If you wanna place our e-card promotion box please place the following
HTML code into your website:
<script
src="http://www.realgreetingcard.com/box/default.asp?categoryid=142&taal=u
s"></script>
If you prefer to place a link to our George Michael e-card service please
point it to the following URL:
http://www.realgreetingcard.com/showcards.asp?CategoryID=142
RealGreetingCard
P.S. let us know if you did place a link to us so we can insert a link
back to your George Michael website!
dear dan,
after over a year of your sporadic mentions of web updates i finally read your uncool page...
though i have often been let down by the titles of various web pages (e.g. freesexpics.com, freesexvids.com) i was glad to see that you maintained a direct correlative relationship between your page's title and its content
bravo, old boy
i was surprised however to find your vaguely misanthropic rant-style-anti-eulogy for humankind stragely bereft of important and evident observations such as emmanuel kant's famous exclamation, "pooh-pooh, rah! rah!" and goethe's oft-celebrated quotation, "the scrote living for the past denies the ball-sweat of his destiny."
though, my friend, you certainly erred on the side of oversight, you did at least include the quote made famous by crackhouse poet, charles williams, "gon' gon' bedefengh."
cheers for that, oh nad-less one.
before concluding this eloctronic post-it note for an unhappining event, i'd like to state that i only read every third word of your web page and even so found it pretty uncool
bravo! again, my tiny-sacked compadre
also, three cheers for opening your heart in spite of the fact that
doomed to being paradoxically confined to understanding (or
mis-understanding) our lives in retrospect.
yours sploodgingly,
ethan israel
It's very real.
I just got back from the Salvia divinorum workshop at Breitenbush in Oregon.
Keep trying.
Take care.
By the way, I checked out your friends Y2K plans...Is he serious?
I couldn't find Slocovica on the State Departments page at
all...
(http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html)
I'll keep looking...
-Herb
Dan,
It really sounds like your pal Desdemona was trying to tell you about
George Michael in his Tub and Pot letter. Looks like you missed that
though eh? Try to be more on the ball.
-Bizneeyatch!
Dan,
I have finally fallen deep enough into boredom to read your wonderful piece of work that you've got posted on your terribly uncool homepage. I have to admit, I didn't read everything in there, but that's got more to do with the thing's style, or lack thereof. I'm a viscious critic of writing style. I'm not so much an evil spelling and grammar checker, but I'm sometimes overly analytical of a person's writing style. This is a harsh thing to do, especially to someone who isn't -- or doesn't at least claim to be -- a writer. So, I'll spare you the details of my thought on that. You're welcome. :)
The stream-of-consciousness bit is interesting. I'm familiar with the idea, and I've read it's implementations time and time again, but alot of it is almost intentionally-streamed, if you know what I mean. Your rambling seems a little more natural, which is especially odd considering that it's the evolution of over a year of writing. I'm quite impressed by that much.
There's a few specific sections of the rambling to which I have comments, and I'll take it upon myself to talk about them now. The first thing is the whole bit about people experiencing things that reinforced their beliefs on a certain matter, whether it be the existence of a god, a specific God, or the lack of an existence of one (or even the existence of alien beings from another planet who come and talk to you sometimes). Having a long history of religious "experiences", supernatural and natural, and the fact that I've been surrounded by religion in my personal life from the time I was born, makes me slightly experienced on the matter, though not as educated on it as yourself, particularly in the non-Christian religions. I've met quite a few people who fancied themselves to be children of God (which God is not really relevant) over the course of my 18 years, and as many religious people are eager to share their experiences and beliefs with everyone, I've heard quite a bit, too. I'm convinced that, when it comes to religious matters, there's essentially only three types of people: People who know that God exists, and a whole lot about Him, people that aren't sure, and go back and forth between thinking that "maybe" god exists, that he doesn't, and that he does; and last, people who are convinced that god absolutely does not, under any circumstances, exist. In technical terms, I believe these people would be classified as, in reverse order, atheists, agnostics, and religious folk of some orientation. During my high school years, I spent a bit of time being all three of those (though not simultaneously). Here's what I've come up with:
(blah blah blah...we've all heard these)
The point here (there really is one. i just like talking) is that in general -- with the christian religion in this country, anyway -- people grow up with the idea that church is the Right Thing To do and that Jesus is The Way. They reject that, get themselves into trouble, and when they can't find any way out, go to Jesus. My personal opinion is that most of the time, when Jesus is helping somebody, it's really nothing more than the person in question believing that Jesus is helping them, and thus gaining a feeling of strength.
People go to religion because it is a means of gaining strength. The world has enough problems to bring anybody, even the most shallow and unemotional people, down to the ground. A belief in something good is a thing that appeals to people. A belief in a god that will help you do things as long as you are following him will give people a reason to be optimistic. Atheists are fond of asking christians why God would allow so much pain and sorrow to come to His creation if He were a loving God. There's obvious Christian answers for that. If you think Jesus is what helps you keep living -- if Jesus gives you a reason to live -- then you'll probably accept "all have sinned" types of answers for that question.
The reason that most of the people that you talked to hadn't changed their lives after what they experienced is, at least to me, fairly simple. THey experienced something, but it wasn't extreme enough. In my case, I was in a car wreck that could have easily split me in half and broken my neck, but I came out of it with one scar and a puffy nose. This was enough to make me think that maybe it wasn't just luck, but it wasn't like I died and came back to earth, and it wasn't the type of thing where my entire life was transformed by it. People don't change their lives after experiencing something. If the experience is really powerful enough, it changes their lives without them thinking about it. You can apply that idea to simpler things, too, that don't have to do with religion. If someone is raped, their entire perception of the world is usually altered. If the woman that you love dies when she is 16, it's often something that just changes your life without any question. Usually, when people make the *decision* to change their lives, it doesn't last long. My uncle, who was a serious alcoholic for years, would, as my mom refers to it as, "get religion" about once every 4 months, and dump it after about two weeks. That's what I'm saying.
Okay. That was long and alot of it was pointless, but wasn't it fun?
Next issue. McCall's bit on deleting stuff.
Okay. Call me crazy for what I'm about to say, but...
When you write something such as your rambling thing, whether you like it or not, you're creating art. Art is something that should never be destroyed, period. Thrown away, put where nobody will ever see it, or entirely forgotten is one thing, but destroyed? You unlinked the inodes of some art because McCall thought it'd make you look like a loony? Bad idea. It would have been better to remove it, paste it somewhere else, and chmod 000 the file after hiding it in a tree of 200 hidden directories. That way it still exists. Art is the most profound thing that really exists. You can argue about whether love exists, whether god exists, or what not, but art just plain IS. Sure, a clever philosophy major can come up with a perfectly logical argument to prove that art doesn't exist, but when we read his paper on it, what are we reading? Proof that it does exist. I'm saying nothing about the artistic *value* of a given work, just the artistic *existence* of the damn thing. Throw your writing in a book that you keep locked in a box thatyou only open to throw more writing in, but
When you write something such as your rambling thing, whether you like it or not, you're creating art. Art is something that should never be destroyed, period. Thrown away, put where nobody will ever see it, or entirely forgotten is one thing, but destroyed? You unlinked the inodes of some art because McCall thought it'd make you look like a loony? Bad idea. It would have been better to remove it, paste it somewhere else, and chmod 000 the file after hiding it in a tree of 200 hidden directories. That way it still exists. Art is the most profound thing that really exists. You can argue about whether love exists, whether god exists, or what not, but art just plain IS. Sure, a clever philosophy major can come up with a perfectly logical argument to prove that art doesn't exist, but when we read his paper on it, what are we reading? Proof that it does exist. I'm saying nothing about the artistic *value* of a given work, just the artistic *existence* of the damn thing. Throw your writing in a book that you keep locked in a box thatyou only open to throw more writing in, but don't destroy it. Hitler burned books. And when you ride alone, you ride with Hitler. You know how it feels to ride alone. Bad, bad thing to be on the same side of something as Hitler. :)
Okay. There was something else, but i think it's entirely slipped my mind now...
Let me try to bring it back...
I think it's gone.
Okay. I'm much too tired to continue on this trip. I must sleep soon, for tomorrow is another day, and that means I have to get up in the morning, which really kinda sucks.
Yees. I am a flake.
Dave
In your Ramble, you asserted that no one changes their lives from drug induced revelations. To an extent I have.
Two drugs did a lot to change me. One forcefully (prozac). The other through revelation (lysergic acid diethylmide). Prozac was my fathers idea, and it took a very intense, burning, melancholy, young man and turned him into a mollified wastrel.
Fortunately i had been reading a lot of Carlos Castenada before I took the LSD. And I'll tell you all the cliches were true for me. it really opened up the doors of perception. I've since forgotten all the revelations I had, but I remember the tone of the experience. Consequently, due to the revelatory nature of the LSD I constantly search for the underlying motives in everyone I meet. And I look at every man made and natural object as something of a wonder.
Before I forget, quit wasting space on The Magus! man! You must have really hated that book! I did too! I was enraptured at first, but when the veil of the ethereal was lifted, it just became another mundane love story about fucking.
So. I've never really had an experience with Deja Vu, which is what you seemed to be hinting at. But I did feel a deep empathy with holistic Native American philosophies. Thats why i had to can that last girl, even though she put out. She didn't have The Sight Beyond Sight. To your ruminations about the plausibilty self guided destiny: I think we are only in control of so much. I don't believe we can make anything out of ourselves that we want. Everyone has a different set of built in limits.
Please correct me if i have made any incorrect assumptions about your thoughts.
--John Q. Person
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 10:58:18 -0500
To: uncoolcentral
To give an answer to your question at the unbarebly long rant, it is a matter of free will vs. destiny. Which is truley the answer? Well according to some experts free will would allow the absence of learning from memory and experiences, I'd compare it to an electic, almost barnaby the schribner type philosophy. In meening that memory would be unimportant because experience would only exist at the present time without regard for the littlest amount of lapsed time after the previous second. Therfore, experience, is conversly tied to existence, and life would in a sense be spotaneus and new, every second. On the other hand Destiny theory bases it's eventual "end" that all experience from the moment of conception is, and will lead to an almost pre-destined end at the time of Death. New experiences, including tragic occourences, eventual mishaps, and that women in the sack, were already created from the previous xperiences, based on the future end thats creating the life that you live presently. If at any one time you looked where you were, you would be able to understand that logically flowing events create a natural discharge of energy based on Karmic law that moves space and time so that the individual will follow the path set upon them by the communial energy of the universe. With that understood, ones life can be predicted by looking at the energy times of great fluctation, and being trained to learn to feel for inexplicable yet destined feeling would lead to marking device for expectent change that would occur when it was supposed to. Frewill counters this by predicting no future, nor caring to, and protophysically not even knowing of a past because there can't be one out side of the sensory xperience. So I think to answer your question is just a basis of figuring out the cosmic question and belief that you feel...However, you could be wrong
Steve
From: Yaweh
Re: Freewill etc.
Dan, Well, you've pretty much got it so far. However, no man can see me and live, but hide as I pass by, and you may see my back, but never my face! It's kind of like one of those "you can't see the wind, but you CAN see the trees swaying" deals... get it? Rest assured that freewill is the same. Also, try to stop complaining so much.