What to say

I have felt very un-ranty lately. I think my lack of having to interact with the real world is causing it. Things are moving forward well with my winery though and that excites me. Generational communication differences do frustrate me though. When I get E-mails I almost always respond with in a day, two days max. Apparently that is just me or just people of my generation, in dealing with some older people who have been kind enough to share their time and knowledge with me it sometimes gets frustrating. It's not so much that I demand instant response, just I begin to worry if the E-mail really got sent you know. I understand people are busy and can't always send off E-mails, but I get antsy.

Colorado

It is odd how quickly we can fall back into old routines and ways. I am back hanging out around CC and it somehow feels like nothing has changed, no progression or anything, even with the people. It is kind of nice to visit but I think it would be very wierd to live here. Life is supposed to progress as we get older, we can't just be collee students for ever.

No Radio

So the radio in the car I have here in Colorado does not work, it also doesn't work in the Suburban I was using to do yard work hauling in Austin. It kind of sucks, but then again... maybe it doesn't. I read an article on the plain yesterday that was talking about sleep, and how we live in a world so constantly full of stimulus that for a lot of people going to bed is the only time they have to be alone with their thoughts, so their mind goes nuts processing and prevents sleep. I noticed I've been sleeping really well lately, so maybe no cars should have radios. That way, you can drive and your brain gets a chance to process everything so that when bed time comes, you aren't trying to sleep and process at the same time. Sometimes, I guess you just gotta turn it all off.
-Barret

Colorado Bound

I am headed to Colorado today to see friends and well, because I dont have anything better to do. I haven't really had much to rant about lately, yard work is numbing to the brain and therefore helps prevent rants. Hopefully I will feel inspired again soon. Anyways, TA TA for now.
-Barret

From Hysteria to Anxiety and the swinging pendulum

This post comes out of a theory I came up with in NYC a while ago and a discussion my girlfriend and I had about it last weekend. So it seems like I know a lot of people rite now who are taking anti-anxiety meds, and these are college aged people, what do they have to be anxious about? Sure the job market sucks, but its not like we are used to making the big bucks and have nice houses to pay for anyways, yet still, lots of people are on anxiety meds. I've noticed this particularly in girls and it reminded me of cases of hysteria in Freud's time, the treatment of which was the basis of a lot of Freud's work. Is "anxiety" just today's term for hysteria? I think it is. Freud famously found that many of the hysteric young woman he treated were very sexually conflicted or had had unnerving sexual experiences that caused their hysteria. The general population of the time was very sexually repressive, particularly for young women and this lead to conflicted people who did not know what to think about sex and sexuality. Could it be that our current society has some of these same issues going on? Girls are getting conflicting messages about sex and it is leading them to be anxious all the time and need anti-anxiety meds when there really isn't anything for them to have anxiety about. I feel this is true and that social responses to sexuality is like a swinging pendulum. Now I don't know what the era immediately preceding Freud's thoughts on sex and sexuality were, but I know sense that time we have gone through several periods of relatively sexually open and relatively sexually closed society's. The time leading up to the 40s and 50s were relatively progressive sexually, particularly as compared to the Victorian era. However in the 40s and 50s the pendulum swung back the other way and we saw a time of repressed sexuality and emergence and wide spread use of anti-depressants Then came the love generation of the 60s which ushered in a time of relatively free sexuality that lasted through the mid 80s probably and now I think we have swung back the other way. The swinging pendulum takes from hysteria through depression and into to days anxiety. Of course this is an oversimplified interpretation, but I do think the (what appears to me to be) wide spread use of anti-anxiety meds in young women in their 20's today is a sign that something is happening on a societal level. (Thanks go out to my girlfriend for some history help with this one)

The Brethren Democracy

I am not convinced by our two party political system and our checks and balances, I mean maybe it's the best practicable system but there has to be a better way. I like the Pirate version of democracy, and after all, they were some of the first Democratic visitors to this country (Not sure what all the different native American tribes did they could have been the first). Anyways as anyone who knows about sailing will tell you aboard a sailing ship there is no room for discussion, there really isn't room for anything but sailing. This would only be amplified I'm sure by the life of a pirate, having to chose where to go, making fighting decisions, you can't sit down and talk about that and put it through two different voting bodies. So how then could the Brethren of the Coast, as pirates on the America's called themselves run as a democracy? It was what I call a monarchical democracy, meaning once elected the captain's word was law, you didn't debate the captain, you just did as he said, this is the only way for a ship to function smoothly. However, the captain can be impeached at any time, talk about a lack of job security, so if the crew feels that the captain is making orders not in their own best interest they are free to hold a new vote and elect a new captain and the old captain has to step down. Now perhaps this isn't practicable on the scale of a country, but is just seems more appealing then our current system. I say long live the Brethren and there democracy!

Oh to have people come here

If only people came to my humble little blog here. Then I could get adds on it and make moneys! It would be great... but alas... its not true. Plus I wouldn't want to dilute the shear ranting genius of this sight with trashy adds... what was I thinking. I'm going to become a pirate!
-Barret

Thoughts from I35

Over the weekend I took a jaunt up I35 to visit my girlfriend in Waco, and along the way had some interesting thoughts.
1. Consciousness and the awareness of our own mortality is an interesting and terrifying thing. We won't dwell on this for it only leads to dark dizzying spirals, but you have to wonder...
2. Why don't car radios have a CB setting. They have AM and FM, why not CB. I was stuck in traffic and I couldn't help but feel that all the truckers knew something I didn't, well I want to know damn it!
3. Why is everythining about numbers. Jobs, Schools, life... its not about being a good person, being a smart person or even being a person at all. If a bear had the rite LSAT and GPA he could get into UT Law... but he would just eat all professors, clearly bears shouldn't go to law school, but if he had the rite numbers, he'd get admitted. Or perhaps the real reason we are losing so many jobs is because they are being farmed out to moose in the remote reaches of Canada, turns out they had the rite credentials. But a moose can't do our jobs, he'll he can't even read... but... they have the right credentials. Does it ever make you want to shoot someone? Has our society become so detached that no one can trust their own judgement of a person so they have to rely on arbitrary numbers and credentials? What happened in our society to make go down this infuriating path where thought fullness and intelligence are passed over and ignorance put in its place?
4. I should be KING OF THE WORLD! and not in that gay Titanic way... in the I rule this shit way. Why you might ask should I be kind of the world instead of you... and I cant really tell you. Perhaps you would be a good king of the world too, but someone should be king, I am going to conduct interviews... and no.. I don't want to see your resume... or your credentials for being king of the world, I just want to talk to you. Now the ignorant people are saying... what... no resumes.. no credentials... no test I can take to prove I'm worthy... I... I ... I just have to TALK!?!?! BUT BUT BUT NO FARE! Yes... its true... if you just talk to people you can find out if they are legitimately worthy of being the King of the world or not and have you talked to me lately? I mean come on... I'm a shoe in!

No Longer Door to Door

After a very brief stent with Clean Water Action I am no longer doing door to door canvassing, its just not my thing. I am back in the world of the unemployed, but focussing most of my energy towards getting all the paper in order to seek fundraising for my winery idea. I haven't really been able to remember any of the things that have been setting me off lately, but Micrsoft manage to annoy me. I own a legitimate copy of Office 2003, so I went to install is on my new computer, sadly I was missing one of the install discs. However, I had my cd-key and all the other product verification information so I thought no worries, surely I can go online and get a digital copy from Microsoft's website. No... there is no way to do this, Microsoft instead wanted me to call their tech support, spend forever on the phone with them, then PAY THEM to send me another copy of the CD. FUCK THAT SHIT! I went to Pirate Bay and dled a mountable image of the software. I dont like pirateing software, I try to avoid it, but after spending two hours trying to get Microsoft to let me have a legitimate copy of the program, I decided they deserved it. I have not yet installed said copy, but hopefully my CD key will work with it making no longer a pirated copy.