Reading and writing in Japanese

                      Why Japanese（日本語) omni-sucks

I want to describe to you, as succinctly as possible, the challenges of learning to read/write in Japanese. 

 Japanese uses 4 written languages. All 4 regularly appear, not only within the same page, or on the same package, but within sentences and even words. Here's an example; 書きます. In "romaji" (Japanese in roman characters, one of the 4 languages) this word is "kakimasu". It means "to write" or "writing". Let's say you went to the trouble of learning how to read/write the 3 easiest languages (romaji, katakana, and hiragana), even if you knew the word kakimasu, and those 3 languages, that word above would still look like gibberish. You could read the "...kimasu", but without knowing the kanji character, you're s.o.l. (which makes it a pain to try to learn by reading). Another mixed word you might want to know is アメリカ人. "Amerikajin" or American (person) in English. Kakimasu uses kanji and hiragana, amerikajin uses katakana and kanji. You will also see hiragana after all the languages as Japanese "particles" are written in hiragana. 

 AshbyストリートとCaliforniaストリートの近くに私のアパートがあります。This is a single sentence using all 4 written languages. I should also mention Japanese don't space their words out, ashardasitmightseemtounderstandinEnglish,itisevenharderinJapanese. At least they've recently come to somewhat accept periods, quotation marks, parenthesis, etc. Sentence translated; "My apartment is near Ashby St. and California St. 

Those two little sets of Japanese above are hiragana and katakana (well, most of them. Most kana charts leave out a lot more, but this one is still missing new adoptions like "va"). Just stand back in awe of the numerous methods of redundancy. How many ways can one express “ji” in just hiragana and katakana? It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, it’s just a sound.
ジ　ヂ　じ　ぢ all are “ji”. Of course if you toss in kanji, the sky’s the limit, but a common “ji” is 時　and that is a reference to time, it’s used like “o’clock” in English, ex. 5 o’clock = 五時。It only gets more confusing from here, not only is Japanese redundant with characters within the same language, or across language, in kanji each new character for the same sound is a different word. We have nothing like that in English. In English for example “win” and “wind” are two entirely unrelated words that simply have ‘win’ in common. In Japanese, there may be 100 different ways of expressing the same sound, but unless you could read them all, you wouldn’t know they all sounded the same. It gets even crazier. 

 Since kanji was taken from Chinese it wasn’t a perfect transfer, and it has been applied in two major ways. One of the ways of importation took the meaning of Chinese characters, and used Japanese sounds, for example 今日。It is pronounced “kyou” however those characters aren’t pronounced kyou. The characters mean kyou (today). If you were to pronounce them in their native form, or separately in Japanese, they would be entirely different. In Japanese 今 alone is pronounced “ima” it means “now”. 日 is pronounced "nichi",“hi” or sometimes “bi” it means “day”. So “now” + “day” = “today” however it isn’t pronounced 'imanichi',‘imahi’ or ‘imabi’, it’s ‘kyou’ (the ‘u’ isn’t pronounced u, but reflects the extension of the pronunciation of the ‘o’, which doesn’t exist in English). 

  The other method of kanji into Japanese uses kanji solely by pronunciation, and not by meaning, which is the opposite. And of course it gets even more complicated with further pronunciation variations on the same kanji for different words, and different methods of kanji introduction. The icing on this insanity cake is that even the Chinese gave up on these characters and have since simplified them. The Japanese masochistically have held on to the 6,000+ kanji (the total number is unknown). Imagine that. Having one of your 4 written languages so complicated you will die never learning all of the characters (if even most).

 And yet, I’ve accepted all of this. I know the 3 easy ones. I’m learning more about kanji as I learn new words. What really annoys me, and what inspired me to write all this, is that the Japanese take their own fluency for granted, and commercially they constantly screw around with their characters. It’s hard enough keeping 10 googol characters in my brain. But the Japanese aren’t happy with that. As soon as I became fluent in the kanas I realized I had only just begun my uphill struggle. In Japan, on their labels, in their ads, etc. They frequently use highly stylized characters. This is madness!!!

While I earlier pointed out all the redundancy in characters for the same sounds, this goes to the similarity and repetition of Japanese characters. One of the hardest in Japanese is “shi, so, tsu, no, and n.” in katakana. シソツノン。Just look at that shit. Here, I’ll put them in another order to show you how hard they are to distinguish.  
  シツノソン。You must be dry shaving me bro. For YEARS I’ve had to stare at packages, sentences, etc. and think, “Uuuuuhhhhh was shi with the down to up, or the up to down? Was no with one stroke or 2?” AHHHHHHH. Even now after teaching myself katakana 5 years ago, and re learning it several times since, I still get tripped up. But of course there’s more crap like this.　Mi and mu, very similar (when writing them at least): みむ. Ru and ro: るろ (toss in ra ら and hu/fu ふ which utilize similar strokes). Wa, nu, ne, me, re:わぬねめれ. It just goes on and on like this. So you have ra, ru, and ro all swoopy and then you have so そ which is like ru and ro on top, and the reverse of ra, ru, and ro on the bottom.

And here’s where it all began. 

I was at Berkeley Bowl and saw a package of yakisoba.

Notice the katakana “so” in white, ソ it isn’t too stylized, they did it without a curve, it looks more like an English Y, but at least I could stand there and think about which of the シソツノン　was top down and with two strokes. So I read “so-su” katakana is used mostly for foreign words incorporated into Japanese, in this case it is “source”. Then there was this bullshit...

What in the hell is that? This is why I am unhappy. I learn hiragana, katakana, work on kanji, learn words, learn grammar, lived in Japan 3 years. Eat Asian food, including Japanese my whole life. Go to Japantown more than anywhere else in S.F. over the past 2 years. Fuck me I have no idea what that is. I ASSUME it is “so”. As in そ。As in やきそば。But just look at it. There a line in the top left corner that goes top-down left-right. That’s not in so. So has a flat line. It’s a minor change. But so is THE ENTIRE FREAKING LANGUAGE. Everything in Japanese consists of minor changes and redundancy. They don’t even know their own language, but they have the time and energy to fuck with their characters? It looks like ‘to’ とor ‘te’ て. So there’s me, 9 years after first going to Japan, 10 years after first starting to learn Japanese, in an American store, looking at a package of noodles I’ve been eating my entire life, reading a written language I’ve read and written thousands of times. And I’m just stuck there like “so? Sousu. Sauce? Yaki?ba? Yakiteba? Yakitoba? Is that a variation of yakisoba? Noo, that can’t be a so. So? SO!!” And then I take a picture, because it’s emblematic of my epic failure to get out of the bog of this god forsaken language. You know what, I shoulda fuckin’ stuck with Spanish. Hey look, I’m writing in Spanish’s written language as I write in English, how motherfucking convenient that I wouldn’t need to pick up a package of rice in Mexico after 10 years of studying Spanish and wonder what the fuck a-r-r-o-z means; sounding out each letter as I go, and having to double back when the company gets cutesy. これはくそばか 財閥。




Bonus examples:

 
フリクリ　”FuriKuri" or as it's advertised "Fooly Cooly" I loved this show back in the day. I drove to mo-f-ing Tustin CA just to pick up The Pillows furikuri vol. 2. I had to translate these boxy stylized characters by looking up fu, ri, ku, ri, and retroactively realizing those 4 boxes were the characters. 

 Here's another fine example of suicide inducing stylization. The first line appears to have the kanji for day, and for "sei" which is like the study of something, like a gakusei (student) or sensei (teacher), then Ka-bii" using two stars in the ビ。

Here's my best reading of that bottom line, which is entirely in kana (presumably I should be able to read) urutora su-pa- (means super, yay got a word!) derakkusu or maybe deraffusu aasu? iisu? (I looked it up, the urutora is "ultra", so I got that, but the last part is still unreadable, and really, I shouldn't have to spend 15 minutes breaking this down). 

   
From reading the description on the website I got this from, that title is "famitsu" or ファミツ. I suppose if I went character by character looking at them side by side, I would eventually get fami, but I don't know if what's at the end is kanji, or some kind of alien cartoon. 


Of course we stylize our words in English too. Hardly ever, and never to the extent Japanese do, but in English, there's only 26 letters. That's it. Done. Not hundreds, not thousands. And our letters don't all look the same, except capital "i"s and lower case "l"s in shitty sans serif fonts. 

Here's a tough one as far as English goes. But even when you see nigh on gibberish English, it's never in standard commercial products like noodles. And English, in all its forms follows basic formation rules. Combine that with there being only 26 characters, and no matter how stylized, it can be easily read because for the most part all 26 look different from each other, and have tell-tale characteristics. 

Parking Meters

 For a couple years I've been pondering why parking meters fill me with primal rage. Like a wolf growling at something in the night I sensed something afoul. Deep inside in the instinctual subconscious of my mind parking meters have left a mark. Only recently have I been intellectually capable of expressing this issue linguistically. On the outset they seem rather mundane. Like traffic lights and speed limits they seem to be a means of controlling drivers and cars in cities, as well as grease the wheels of union retirement funds (if you know what I mean). However I came to realize they are insidious to the core. I believe parking meters are designed for evil.

The current official premise of parking meters is that they are intended to expedite. In fact numerous courts have ruled that using meters for revenue would be illegal. However this does immediately make one wonder why, if only meant to expedite, does the meter charge at all? And if there’s no “revenue” in all this money, how exactly can the city afford an army of meter maids to enforce “expedition”? Obviously this is a lie we all conveniently ignore. Parking meters make a hell of a lot of money, that’s why they’re robbed so often. However it isn’t the charge for the meter that really brings in the cash, it’s the exorbitant fees the city gets to charge if you fail to pay the meter.

I believe it is truly one of the sickest ideas a government can have. When punishing the public becomes a financial benefit, it becomes an incentive to further punish the public. Society has just resigned that talking on a cell phone while driving might cost you hundreds of dollars in fines. Politicians meanwhile want a second home for their mistress in Maui, so every year they’re going to propose raising fines. But while there might be some minute inkling in your head that perhaps fines at least discourage potentially dangerous behavior. There’s really no explaining away parking fines.

You violate parking rules, put absolutely no one in danger, perhaps inconvenience no one, maybe even only park for a few minutes, and you can be hit with a world of shit the likes of which you didn’t think possible. The city gets you for parking, they can ruin your life. Hundreds in fines? That is nothing. Wait until they get their mob thugs to come steal your car and hide it in a lot somewhere without informing you. If you play the game of hide-and-go-seek well enough and figure out where your car is being held hostage, you get to find a way to get there, and then pay a shit load of money including extra penalty fees for all the time it took you to find the car and get to the lot without a car. Plus they can steal all your possessions in the car and say “What money? Or if not stolen, imagine going to the beach, leaving your wallet and cell in your car and coming back to find your car gone. What can you do? Didn’t park illegally? Too bad dipshit you can’t fight it if you want your car back. Lose that fight? Now you’re probably out of a job and have racked up hundreds more in storage fees from the kidnappers.

That’s how San Francisco is run. They have private tow truck drivers who can drive around the city and take whatever they want back to their lair and don’t have to inform you of shit. Then they fine you, and if you want your car back, you have to admit your guilt and pay through the nose. Nice system you have there. I’m sure it’s all about keeping cars coming and going.

Speaking of San Francisco I remember New Year’s eve going to SF to work a concert. It was in the civic center, and the streets were completely full for half a mile in every direction. We had to pay quite a fee to park to work 4 hours at minimum wage. While in the meantime of looking for a parking spot we drove along a street with literally dozens of parking spots (all taken of course) however there were also a couple small paper signs up stating that this street was going to be closed for parking on New Year’s Eve. The signs probably hadn’t been obvious to the dozens of most likely tourists who had foolishly believed driving to San Francisco for a party would be a good idea. San Francisco hates you. And every aspect of their government is designed to fuck tourists. Well, as it was, also on this street of dozens of sadly “illegally” parked cars were 4 meter maids and two tow trucks two maids and a truck on each side of the street, writing out dozens of tickets and hauling away dozens of cars. No doubt hundreds more were written up and stolen in the next couple hours. The spiders were getting their feast. I remember mentioning at the time San Francisco was just securing its budget for the new year. San Francisco does this all the time. Particularly during special events. They wait until the streets are full of parked cars , of people who were likely there to spend hundreds helping the economy, and then the city decides coincidentally to cancel parking. Of course they don’t tell the tourists in advance. They don’t even post a notice in advance (except perhaps in some Hitchhiker’s Guide fashion). They wait until day of, then they bring out small paper signs, or road cones, whatever, and after all the spots are full, bring in an armada of meter maids and/or tow trucks and ruin people’s days. It’s literally millions of dollars for the city, and everyone feels good about it. Serves you right asshole. How dare you show up to a concert in the park, park in a legal parking space, and then expect a tow truck and meter maid to not show up and tag team you for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Fuck you.

 Of course not all cities are so blatantly evil. San Francisco truly is the heart of darkness and I could probably write a paper on all the ways San Francisco punishes tourists. But that doesn’t excuse every other city in America, and around the world for just meter fucking people, and certainly other cities are vying for top spot in the darkness competition.

 They claim it’s to expedite parking, however handicapped people are entirely exempt. Not only exempt from paying anything (which alone makes no sense), but exempt from time limits. Handicapped can park all day. Also, they just hand out placards to city employees in San Franc-aaahh OK, back on topic. If expedition is the reason, why do handicapped people have no time limit? I quote the following from the CA DMV website: “There is no time limit with a DP placard, DP license plates, or DV license plates.”

Maybe we’re just that liberal. Fine. Your wrist hurts, you get a placard, you can park anywhere for free forever. Fine. That’s the welfare state for you. But oh if that were the only exception. Of course every city vehicle can park everywhere forever for free. Sometimes there are limits, but they’re never enforced. Fine. City employees are special too. But surely this is still about expedition, and maximizing parking space availability, you know, other than the ones taken up by handicapped and city staff. But I’m sure none of those people have any reason to be parking downtown… no wait that’s pretty much exactly where they all park all day. But surely they don’t take up “too many” spots, and this is puuuublic “property” so there are still plenty of spaces left for the tax payers.

I just have a few more questions. If parking fees are about expedition;

- Why is it illegal for someone to “top off” a meter that isn’t theirs? If the person is away, it won’t mean they return any faster whether or not someone feeds the meter without their knowledge. All it really does is prevent the meter maid from levying a massive fine. I’m sure there’s another reason though. :P

- Why do meter maids ticket vehicles of people who are only going “in and out”? If it’s about speed, why is it really necessary to levy a massive fine for parking for 2 minutes?

-Why do parking meter costs differ place to place in the same city and continually rise at obscure rates and so that would take a mathematician to understand. It’s like tennis scores with these machines. Sometimes 1 quarter is 15 minutes, sometimes it’s 10, sometimes the first quarter is more time than the second and even more than the third. If this is about expedition why does it seem they are gamed to trick you into paying too little, thus enabling that meter maid who’s just rounded her one block of duty to come 5 minutes before you and levy a massive fine?

-Why is it that the city of Santa Monica, just for example, has a new meter that banks all your money if you pull away and immediately sets the timer to zero? It’s your money. What possible reason could they have to bank this money that belongs to you and wipe your meter to zero? How in any way would this make parking more “available”? It’s almost as if it does FUCKING NOTHING TO MAKE PARKING BETTER AND IS JUST ANOTHER WAY, IN A LONG HISTORY OF WAYS OF PULLING OUT EVERY LAST FUCKING PENNY FROM EVERY PERSON THEY CAN GET THEIR GRUBBY FINGERS ON.

One of the first days of visiting Berkeley I drove to Cal and parked a few blocks away in a residential neighborhood just south of campus. There was no meter, no markings on the curb, no sign near the parking spot. I walked north and visited my soon to be school for maybe half an hour and then came back to find a $50 ticket. They did have parking meters, but being Berkeley, they were “collective” meters (yeah it’s a stupid joke, but you’d laugh if you love me). See if I had any fucking idea these things existed, I might have paid. But being NEW. And a few blocks from a university that takes in thousands of new national and international students…blocks away…………………you see where I’m going with this right? Their obscure meters, located maybe one every 5 cars and looking nothing like a parking meter, might just happen to catch hmmm hundreds or thousands of students each year. All paying $50 for their lesson in civics. Of course if they’re like me, maybe they tried to pay online, and maybe it took their payment, and deducted it from their bank account, but some “magical” error occurred and it didn’t remove the ticket. Requiring them to pay again. So I paid $100 dollars to park on PUBLIC PROPERTY 3 blocks from my campus to buy a fucking hat from the Cal store and walk back, having parked a half an hour, in the summer, in a residential neighborhood. WHAT THE FUCK DID THAT $100 HAVE TO DO WITH GOD DAMN EXPEDITION OF POPULAR SPOTS IN BUSY AREAS??!!!!!

But never mind all that, and riddle me this one last question. Let’s say I’m wrong about all of this. That this really is about expedition and not revenue. And that all those fees and fines and meter feedings and ridiculous laws, and corrupt exceptions aside, they all serve to make parking “more available” when it becomes a premium? Well let’s look at Berkeley one last time, and maybe we can extrapolate this to the rest of America, because it’s not a Berkeley exclusive by any means.

-Why is it, if this is all about keeping the line moving, and making spots available, that say, past 5 PM in Berkeley and on weekends (sometimes just weekends in other cities, Just Sundays I believe in San Diego). You know, those times when downtown popular attractions are at their peak usage for precisely the kind of people who want to be “in and out” of parking spaces (as opposed to downtowns during working hours on weekdays, when no one is going “in and out” but are looking to put in 8 hours), these meters all of a sudden become free and parking times become U-N-L-I-M-I-T-E-D?

Now, I have no idea why they make the parking free to begin with. I mean they already have their victims over a barrel. Maybe they just get off on letting citizens think they are somehow civilized in having designated free hours. But what about the unlimited parking time? All of a sudden, when there’s no meter, there’s no meter maid. They evaporate at 5 PM and recede into the ether. These times, when it’s free, and the downtown is actually buzzing with people coming to do a little shopping here and there, not just to work, all of a god damn sudden, all the parking spots are plugged up, and nobody has to move. When demand is at its absolute highest, this monument of bureaucracy, this entire institution of funny little 3 wheeled cars and cops with nothing better to do, and chalk attached to rope, and round and round and round protecting parking spaces more securely than protecting citizens in bad neighborhoods and back alleys, this whole mammoth system disappears the moment when you think they’d be appreciated and desired the most, when everyone is actually looking to only park for a short period, and to go in and out from place to place. It’s almost as if… expedition and keeping spaces available has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH IT.

Meters exist for one purpose, revenue. Not alone, but with an army of people who generate revenue for the city, at a time when police are at a minimum due to budget cuts and a bad economy, and crime is at a maximum. There is no abatement for the meter maid patrol. They are so numerous they can cover every cash producing square inch of the city in less than half an hour, and fuck every single person who dares try to park for five minutes without paying a quarter, or who lingers for a second longer with their friends, thinking they are free citizens in a free society parking on public property they pay taxes to maintain, while supporting the businesses that the streets pass by. This has nothing to do with availability.

They will not ticket someone who spends 2 hours in a space and then moves their vehicle one space and spends another 2 hours there. They will however levy massive fines and bureaucratic bullshit at anyone who for a micro second isn’t paid up. They will bank your money and reset the clock to zero so the next guy has to pay too. They will watch you fumble for change, find none, walk into a store to get some, and ticket your ass before you even get out with the quarters. They will charge you the cost of a car, for parking an inch too far from the curb. They will arbitrarily close streets and tow away dozens of vehicles (after ticketing them) so the mafia that runs the city can jack every one of those people for tens of thousands of dollars in a single haul. This works especially in a tourist city, where people by definition don’t know the lay of the land, and in their ignorant desire to spend money in the city and help the economy, the city will fucking steal their cars and hold them hostage. Only, the tourist doesn’t know the car was towed, maybe they were parking all day, maybe it’ll be after 5pm when they walk to the curb and find no car, and maybe it’ll take them another day they don’t have to figure out it wasn’t stolen, and by then the city will charge even more money, because somehow it makes sense to fine someone for having stolen their car and effectively hide this information from them. And so hope the tourist doesn’t have to go to work the next day, or fuck them this one decision by the city to steal some cash might just ruin someone’s life. But that’s no matter to them. You can’t fight this shit in court.

Your neighbor’s tree might have an apple drop on your grass and you can sue them for millions and the government will put up with your shit and award you the money, but if they steal your car when you were legally parked, and then levy you with thousands of dollars in fees after making you lose your job, the judge will sooner release Charles Manson than even listen to you. We have in this country a system of automatic guilt. And it doesn’t take actual guilt, evidence, or even a government employee for this ruling to come upon you. A contracted private tow truck driver can steal your car, and if you decide you want it back, you are automatically guilty.

 The true danger is obvious. When government is able to derive financial benefit from harming its citizens, or inconveniencing them, or simply punishing them for slights, it creates a terrible incentive. Punishment becomes pleasurable. The incentive is to punish as much as often, in as many ways as possible, and this is precisely why new meters are always coming out.

If you doubt me. Start looking around. The inner wolf inside you might start smelling something funny too, growl at it sirs.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/santa-monica-resets-parking-meter-system.html?_r=0

Thanks to rant lord Adam Carolla for pushing me over the edge on this issue. I thought I was all but crazy for my hatred of meters until Adam brought up the Santa Monica meters and all I could hear was "gotcha" ringing in my head.

Freedom and Equality

I'm trying to chew through this Tocqueville reading assignment and I wish I could read it with others, I know this course has a discussion section but an official class for discussion always seems to screw up the point of discussion, there's some clearly hammered out objective with standardized assignments and the 'discussion' must always be tailored to fit the confines. Not only that you put a guy in the front of the room and thus becomes a presumption that this person is more knowledgeable in the matter, not saying I think I am, I'm saying it makes any discussion off kilter. Discussions are by their design supposed to be among "equals" or at least among people with a common interest in hearing each other's opinions.

Tocqueville in his Democracy in America brings up a number of contentious issues, the first one that's really stuck in my craw is democracy itself. From what I've read he clearly understands its literal and more liberal definitions. Literally democracy is all the people of a state voting on laws. He makes a point that this did occur in America in New England in the 1600s. More broadly his use of democracy is the liberal social (and neither of these words mean what I normally mean them to mean) concept; democracy as a generic concept of rejecting autocratic or aristocratic rule while still maintaining order through law with a great emphasis on individualism. What bothers me about it is really tied in with what I want to rant about here, the concepts of "equality" and "freedom".

Through my life it has come to my understanding that equality and freedom have two different definitions in common usage. At the heart of each of these definitions are two opposing social-political ideologies. The version of equality and freedom that Tocqueville refers to, when he says America is more free and equal than any European state, is the version that props up the individual as the most important factor in state issues. The alternate version is a more communist version (literally communist) that refers to the freedom and equality via the state's control of the people. This is a problem of modern American politics. Communists and those who believe in authoritarianism to a lesser extent use their version of these words to subvert the dialog. Changing the definitions of words, rather than dealing honestly with their intended goals.

Another reason this issue is sparking up with me is that in Tocqueville's intro he argues that this democratization is inevitable, that no action either for it or against it is stopping the inevitable, though he doesn't necessarily judge the goodness of this inevitability. Karl Marx had a similar attitude about Communism, which I was told stems from an older German philosopher Hegel who argued that humans (and pretty much everything else) would reach an ultimate state of existence. And Marx's idea doesn't necessarily conflict with Tocqueville, as Marx saw capitalism and democracy as a step along the way.

What brings this all together are these words freedom and equality. Equality is used much more by Tocqueville, but I've personally seen both used in dual roles and I'm sticking them together, there are other words too but I'm not thinking of them off the top of my head. Tocqueville began his intro writing "Of all the things that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of social conditions." the first thing I thought of (being so well bred and raised by public education in our quasi-socialist America) is 'What about slavery? What about Native Americans? What about women? Not to mention America clearly had super wealthy and powerful elites, as well as dirt poor subsistence farmers and indentured servants.' Well through context and his moving on to specifically condemn slavery and other subjects I realized partially much of my initial contention with his assessment is an unfair look back. He's judging America more equal and free than Europe in the early 1800s at the height of European monarchies. However lopsided American equality was at the time, his fond look back from the 1600s-1800s was revolutionary for individual liberty and equality, despite the numerous continuing issues.

For Tocqueville (and me) freedom and equality are tied in with individual liberty. When he gave examples of equality, he didn't mean that everyone was in a similar social status, he meant that people had a chance to better themselves. His (and my) idea of equality is equality under the law, to treat people equally, to not subjugate people or demand them to be in a social status. His example for Europe illustrates this, "The clergy opened its ranks to all, rich and poor alike, commoner and lord alike; by means of the Church, equality began to permeate the government and the man who might have vegetated in eternal enlsavement as a serf was elevated to the heart of the nobility". Later came social equality through education opportunities, and financial equality through industrial opportunities, but at no time does "equality" = "mandated social status".

This is the realm of the Communist. Equality to a Communist stems from Marx and Engels' argument that people won't be "free" until all people are "equal". Only by "free" he means entirely controlled by law, and by "equal" they meant literally murdering the wealthy class and under threat of death forced the bottom feeders to start working. Thus creating an "equal" society where everyone works and no one takes the profits, which are "equally" distributed. The freedom in this way is actually "freedom from" which is why, as much as an Atheist as I am, it hurts to hear people claim the 1st Amendment is also "Freedom from religion". "Freedom from" to me is a gateway to misinterpretation and ultimate usurpation of the original idea. "Freedom from" is not the same thing as "Freedom of" in fact they can be quite opposing. And this is the opposition of the liberty seeker and the communist. The liberty seeker wants the "of" and the Communist wants the "from".

Simple direct examples of what I'm aruging: Liberty seeker wants "Freedom of social status" the Communist wants "Freedom from social status". How does a liberty seeker get his freedom? It occurs on its own. How does the Communist get his freedom? Kill anyone who doesn't fit. But to be fair, following the Hegel idea of a natural development to a highest point, Marx believed even if you didn't kill your way to Communism, it would natually occur eventually.

And this is what brought me into this discussion. Because both Tocqueville and Marx talk about this natural and unavoidable progression. I don't know if either of them is wrong. Although I am certain that there is no necessary "ultimate" level Hegel believed in, I think evolution disproves this theory completely. I actually wrote my final in a Philosophy course arguing against this eventual final form (which I don't remember if it was Hegel or my teacher who harked back to Plato on this very ancient idea of perfection.) I think that circumstance trumps the notion of perfection every time. A perfect example of what I mean is the frog. Frogs are sometimes (if this were Wikipedia, a little "by whom?" would appear here) said to be "perfectly adapted" to their environment. I could go into great detail with examples of this "perfection" because I love frogs and I've been obsessed with them for a long time. But that's another story. It is because of this "perfection" that frogs are called an "indicator species". That is, when something happens to their environment, because they are so specifically adapted to it, they are greatly effected by very minor changes. All over America frogs species are dying off. In places of pollution, they are making freak babies with too many/too few limbs etc. This is the best argument against an "ultimate form", the very nature of nature is change. I argued then and still believe the opposite is the route nature must take, humans are on this opposite side, our great advantage, our great "adaptation" is that we do not adapt. We are terribly physically under equipped to survive anywhere on Earth. Even if we originally evolved to live in temperate climate with abundance of fruit and stupid slow moving animals, we still suck at adapting. Our greatness is not in adaptation, it is in adapting nature to meet our demands. We don't adapt to the cold, we make clothing. We don't adapt to droughts, we make irrigation. We don't adapt to fast predators, we kill them. We don't adapt to fast prey, we farm. (in the grand scheme of course, the meantime is always "make do").


The Communist idea of humanity is from Hegel's theory, that we are destined for a static and finite existence. This was the crux of Marx's argument. That we need only "so much" technology and wealth, and all the proletariat have to do is wait, and when we've got enough wealth, kill the bourgeoisie and take it all and live happily ever after. However the liberty minded idea is that the wealthy are those who best adapted the world to fit their wants and needs. To kill of the best of us to slightly boost the rest of us is both evil and self defeating. That's what bugs me the most. If we really are unavoidably heading for absolute Communism, then we are unavoidably heading towards a system that promotes its own stagnation, we are heading towards our own self-fulfilling extinction.

If this were to occur, society would be a progression from government mandated status (under autocrats and aristocrats where birth defines status) with a spectrum of "classes". Next is individual mandated status and general equality in opportunity (under the "democratic" government run by the people). The final stage is similar to the first and second, a return to government mandated status, however with a new idea of equality where instead of government mandated social separation, it is a government mandated singular class(Communism). Mathematically and poetically it fits. It's a song that is easily played. 1.2.3. It hits from both directions first rule by a small group, with no freedom, then freedom of the people however they are free to enslave themselves, and third the people have effectively eliminated the separation of government and people, created the ultimate authoritarianism, while simultaneously creating the ultimate democracy.

I just have one problem with it. I reject the entire process. Authoritarianism the common thread among all these things. Only in passing and "yin to yang" does my dream government and society have any sway in these stages. I hope for a government that elevates every individual to that of a king. Instead of an authoritarian progression to make all people government, I want an individualist progression to eliminate authoritarianism completely. Not anarchy, because I am not speaking of an absence of government, but truly self defined governance. Something more honest and more just than a static "social contract" or "best interest of" government.

In the old governments of autocrats and aristocrats (dictators and kings) the average person was afforded many civil liberties that have been wiped out by this so-called "democracy". While a commoner couldn't hold office, he could tell his son to be a better man. He could find a piece of land and work it and make his own way (many people chose to work as serfs, but there had always been the option to just make your own way). A commoner wasn't told how much he could drink, or what drugs he could or couldn't use, or who he talked to, or how he traveled. He was free to build his own home to his own standards and work for whatever rate he demanded. None of these micro-managing laws "democracy" has brought us like permits to operate a taxi, limits on alcohol content in booze, or infinitely long bureaucratic dragons to get permission from the state to build a shed on your own property existed back then because no autocrat or aristocrat has the time or patience to so thoroughly micro-manage every person's life. It was only when we gave "everyone" the reigns to law that "everyone" began leaping at the opportunity to tell everyone else how to live.

However it is in stage 2 that we see the emergence of the concept of individual rights. Presumably these rights are held to be higher than common will of the people. So while a man was generally free most of his life to do what he wanted under the auto and aristocrats, if a nobleman wanted to put your son in his personal army, or have his way with your wife, or use your house as his stables, he could do it. And you had no recourse save violence. In the "democratic" world you have "rights" that prevent the polity from voting away your son's freedom, your wife's body, or your personal property. Although I must applaud these "rights" for going on paper and showing up in official documents. I must also chastise all of humanity and this notion of democracy as a whole because no one ever respects these "rights" and they effectively become place-holder privileges to be removed at the convenience of the state. Our "rights" I could list for you have been removed repeatedly and those violations have throughout America's existence have been thoroughly upheld. Every right in the Constitution has been usurped, some more than others, but at no time has any judge stopped and simply declared "no further may government intercede" despite their original wording demanding such response immediately. Though again to be fair sex has never been forced upon people by the American government, in strong part due to the opposite culturally bound draconian laws to the contrary that cause anyone with a sexuality to suffer at some point, from laws against anything but heterosexuality, to laws forbidding heterosexuality in every way but between a man and a woman who are married and alone and in a secluded place and in the missionary position (and I'm not even far enough, let alone exaggerating, I don't have room to bring up drugs, alcohol, insurance, age, intelligence, mental competency etc.)

Stage 3 again offers a mutually excluding liberty that is merely a backdrop of absolute authoritarianism. That is the liberty of social interaction, the kind of interaction that was forbidden in aristocracy between classes, no social exchange was allowed, no education amongst equals. It is strictly forbidden to a T in many instances within the democracies, disallowing people from interacting based on race, religion, sex, gender, sexuality, age, intelligence, pretty much everything that can divide people has been divided by law in America and other democratic states. Communist influences more than appeals to liberty have changed much of that in America as we drift into Communism. Again there is an underlying hypocrisy in Communism when they extol how the black man and the white woman and the poor ignorant farmer and the homosexual are all equally able to interact as adults, and that's because in these Communist states, as freely as they may interact across what would be social divides elsewhere Communism introduces a monumental set of restrictions that are certainly "colorblind" but happily screw everyone "equally". Great, the poor man and the rich woman "can" interact. The homosexual and the polygamist can have their sexual freedom. However the system destroys notions of individuality, there is no rich woman, there is no homosexual, there is only the state, the 'us', the 'we'and sure you are "free" to try, but you better not, because you should be thinking about 'us' and not yourself.


I see the subversion of the words "freedom" and "equality" all the time in America. From both major political parties who tend to seek authoritarianism in different ways. The Republicans with their efforts of aristocratic and theological authoritarianism, and the Democratics with their efforts at Communist authoritarianism. Both use democracy as their tool and neither necessarily want to go "all the way" in the directions, that is, a Republican may be accused of wanting social ordered laws of old or religious doctrine in the courts, but I doubt many Republicans are absolutist, the same goes for Democratics who attempt to pass Communistic laws while crying that people are crying wolf about Communism, to this point that simply using the term Communism or Socialism seems archaic and out of style. But you can't really define it any other way when you hear a Republican talk about "family values" and putting them into "effect" (i.e. turning social goals into laws, like mandating stores close on Sundays for Christianity's sake) or when a Democratic representative has spent her entire career introducing legislation to regulate or eliminate guns or people being able to possess or carry them, while saying she "supports" the Second Amendment and "responsible gun ownership".

My argument is that for most of our history, and especially today. Government in all its forms relies particularly on wool, and the ability to pull it over as many people's eyes as possible.

I know there are authoritarians. I know many people love and desire authority, in any and all forms. However I believe that if people spoke plainly in their desires, if the subversiveness were eliminated, I think liberty seekers would have a stronger foothold. It is an unfortunate reality that humans are great liars, and authoritarian states rely on lies, while it is the hallmark of liberty and individualism to be as honest and forthcoming as possible. This puts liberty at an inherent disadvantage. However the main advantage this does give to individualists is that humans learn eventually that lying sucks, and it's hard to trust, and perhaps if it could be done, it might be better to have a form of government that punishes liars and demands honesty in the most honest way possible.

If you were presented with the two definitions in their most bold and realistic ways, which would you choose?

Definition A:

Freedom - Each person chooses his or her own life, to act on his or he own accord and make the best decision he or she desires.

Equality - Every person has equal treatment under the law. No person is afforded privilege or prejudice based on any quality they possess other than the exact matter at hand, no amount of wealth, fame, or influence is weighed, only the intrinsic value of human life.

Definition B:

Freedom - The people can pass any law they desire. No old custom or archaic beliefs can block the will of the majority. The state may do what is necessary to secure its continued existence and maintain order among the people.

Equality - No one may be different.

One Date

The way I tally it, I've only ever been on one date in my life, and the girl had asked me out. We were  in junior college. I found her very attractive for reasons I can't remember.  She was in my Economics class. I wanted to know her name. Attendence wasn't taken verbally, and no one had a chance to socialize in class, so I  grabbed the sign-in sheet and counted back the names until I found hers. But being the socio-sexually repressed person I am, I didn't do anything with her name. Leastways talk to her. 

 I turned 19 years old. This would be a long year. After class the day after my birthday I was about to go drive to a bank and cash my birthday money from my grandparents when she stopped me. She asked me to go to lunch with her, and If I hadn't already oddly been interested in her; If it had been any other girl in the world, I would have said no. I've rejected every advance every girl has ever made. It took me a long time to even realize this. 

I will now list for you every one of those times (because Baby, there aren't that many).

In 4th grade a cute girl I really liked and talked with alot dispatched her friend to ask her if I liked her. I said no. Pretty muched killed things there.

 In 5th grade this beautiful girl I'd tease/joke with and talk to all day really obviously liked me and I was completely oblivious, it would be a chapter in itself listing all the ways she tried to get me to show any reciprocity.

In 6th grade another cute girl dispatched a friend to say she had a crush on me. I ignored the information and never talked to her. Until, well, things were much worse socially for me.

In 8th grade a gorgeous and lovely new girl to school asked me if I would go to the school dance with her. I literally laughed in her face while telling her no.

Now at this point you must be thinking A. What the hell is wrong with this guy? and/or B. What a dick.

But the story is a bit more complicated. Certainly my actions were stupid, but I didn't know this at the time. 

Jump to high school and by then I was a social wreck. I made no new good friends. I played water polo, I socialized at lunch, but otherwise I was completely withdrawn. Most teens were becoming social beings, learning their "place" in society. All I knew was that I didn't feel comfortable existing. 

I had crushes of my own. One girl I held a crush from 3rd grade until 8th grade. She was as smart, if not smarter than me (which is unsual in a human, not bragging by any means, this whole story is about how much I suck as a human. But I have a relatively high IQ, a decent memory, and enough wit to weave myself a facade of a genius. However I am often too stubborn to ever be wrong, to my own detriment). Laura was her name. By 5th grade I was infatuated with her. She asked me to "couple's skate" once at a class trip to the skating rink. I held her hand while skating in a circle, and that my friends is the most sexual contact I had with a girl until I was 23. Sexual not even being remotely the right word, more like held hands as classmates, not even friends. I meant to ask Laura to dance with me once in 6th grade, but the opportunity never arose. A couple years later Laura went off to another school and stories trailed back of her turning  into a boozey slut. While this wouldn't be the last time a girl chose liquor and cheap sex over me, the nature of school rumors must temper that claim to be being only "probably true". And I do have to give a bit of leeway in that she technically didn't choose "over me"'rather "beside me" as I was little more than a stump as far as I or she was concerned.

 After Laura left there was a void and I filled it with a couple other smart cute girls as my default "crush". A girl named Allison took top spot eventually and by default held that title throughout high school, as I really was dead inside by then. By sheer coincidence Ally's boyfriend in high school became a friend of mine. He didn't know I knew her; and he'd tell me all about his continually unsuccessful attempts to have sex with her. All he ever got by the end of sophmore year was making out and some breast play. Kind of a hallmark of what a dipshit I was (probably still am) when Ally asked me to sign her yearbook in 8th grade I wrote (this was 15 years ago, and I still remember) "I don't know you, do I?" Two years later when her boyfriend asked me the same thing, on the spot I wrote him a short story about Vikings and Viagra.  

 It wasn't until college that I began to feel some self confidence. First of all I managed to graduate high school, a daunting task considering my fucked up family life that I'll have to get into to tie all this crazy shit together. Secondly I had my own car I paid for from a job I'd been working at since I was 13. Third I was a college student, free to succeed or fail at my choosing. Finally I was pretty good looking, having been on a swim team and then getting on a good diet. I was literally self made from head to toe. Yet all that gave me just about enough confidence to only talk to a few people in the quad, and rail about politics and philosophy which I was increasingly interested in. 

 Back to this girl I liked asking me to lunch. I said ok and we start walking to her car. On the way it comes up that I had just turned 19. She proceeded to punch me in the arm 19 times. This was a ritual I was unfamiliar with, but it was also the most a girl had touched me in my life (except holding hands, which is more like one long touch).

The One Date In My Life

 We go to Chilis. I order a burger, but I was too self conscious of looking gross eating it so I let it sit there and I talked instead. But let me back this up, make it more real, she ordered the burger, I was too self conscious to even read the menu, I looked at it, but I couldn't read it. I just ordered what she did. I have good table manners, or more precisely I am capable of fine etiquitte. My French Canadian grandmother and my hyper-intelligent social butterfly mother both embedded me with the necessities of good table manners and how to not gross out a dinner date. But burgers, American to their messy core, are like a middle finger to good manners. The only proper way to handle a burger is to not. No food in hand, no shoving all my food at my mouth at once, no letting dripping ingredients spill about, no having to put down what I couldn't finish, no food on my face, and oh lord no crunchy squishy chewing sounds of a half dozen ingredients at once.

 She mercifully went to the restroom and I quickly ate most of the burger in a matter of a minute. Of course when she returned she pointed this out, and I was even more embarassed than I could have imagined. Things went only downhill from here. She insightfully pointed out that I never asked her for her name. And like a lamb to the slaughter I told her why I already knew it. Then for the love of God I tried to steer the discussion away from pointing out all the stupid shit I was doing, and proceeded to get into a tirade about gun control.  

 She never talked to me again.

While there have been times in my life that I have gone places and done things with women with which I had romantic interest/sex with/one night stand/deep feelings of love/etc. There were never 'dates' proper, that is that much lauded cultural practice of courting. I hardly think post coital meals, or snacks between girls I just met, or elaborate evenings with women I loved who entirely had no idea I was doing my absolute best to show affection could possibly count as "dates". Dates are something definable, they are in pursuit of getting to know someone, often someone practically or completely a stranger, where each can examine the other. Well borne acquaintances, and cheap meetings with lustful and brief interludes just can't fit the bill.

Every lane but yours is moving

I was listening to the semi-scientific Podcast for howstuffworks.com on "Murphy's Law" and they mentioned the psychological belief that while you are driving, you might find that every other lane around you is moving but yours seems to stand still.

I know people believe this, and some of them are those jerks that have to cut into any lane that is moving. But to claim that all lanes move equally, or that there aren't slower lanes is simply wrong. Having driven up and down California in the the hearts of the worst traffic America has to offer I have gained a great personal understanding of how traffic flows.

The allusion that this idea is on par with "the grass is always greener on the other side." fails to acknowledge that grass is greener on someone's lawn. It's either yours or your neighbors, on average if you have two neighbors there's a 66.66% chance the grass is greener on the other side. With that in mind, I would like to list a few real-world conditions that might elicit this supposed false psychological condition.



Rubbernecking I hate you rubberneckers. Really I do. Combine rubberneckers, with most driver's moronic propensity to tailgate even on the highway, and you get a ripple effect. The ripple appears in the form of a slow-down. And if there are enough cars coming steadily, the slow-down will ripple on for hours long after whatever on the side of the road has left. What annoys me the most is that having a car simply pulled over to the side will cause a slow-down as every person has to look at the car.

How it slows down one lane more than another: Rubbernecking requires actually being able to see what's so interesting. I've found that if a slow-down occurs on the right, then the right lane(s) will slow more than the left lanes, and if an event occurs on the left, the right will less likely be affected. So you might find that you're just driving along, both lanes moving smoothly, then for no damn reason you have to slow down because the car in front of you is slowing down. The other lane(s) might just keep going, after a period of slower driving, sometimes for a few miles, you'll reach some magic point, and be able to speed up again.

How to avoid, solve this problem:
1. STOP RUBBERNECKING!!!
2. If you see a car off to the side of the road in the distance, get in the farthest lane from it.
3. Keep at least two car lengths from the car in front of you while you're at a good speed. If you see the car in front of you starting to slowly brake, don't brake, take your foot off the gas for as long as you safely can. This will create a buffer that will help to ease the slow-down. I have a theory that would require actual science or testing, but I believe if enough cars kept a decent buffer the occasional moron rubbernecker could be negated and a slow-down ripple could be eliminated.

4. While lurking about I found another blog with someone else's funny and rather detailed idea on how to break up a rubbernecking jam. Basically his idea is for a person to slow down even more than the rest of the group, forcing a large gap to form, then speeding up and getting out of the jam, hopefully setting the line of deceleration back far enough that people won't want to slow down to rubberneck. http://www.cockeyed.com/science/rubbernecking/rubbernecking.php




Highway Exits When you're on a highway that has critical exits and high traffic, you will hate this. Basically a lot of drivers want to get off the highway, perhaps in one of a series of important exits, and the traffic starts piling up. The best example of this is coming off the Bay Bridge going into San Francisco. San Francisco has an almost non-existent highway system. And all of downtown encompasses only a few quick exits. If you miss them, you're next exit is going to be literally across the street from Daly City.

How it slows down one lane more than another: All the downtown exits are on the right. Most people coming in to the city know this. So they preemptively get in the right lane. So as more people get into the right lane, the more it slows down. The more it slows down, the more people want to get into the right lane. The other lanes stay at a normal speed, and the right lane comes to a crawl. What's worse is those who want to come into the lane at the last second. They have to stop dead in their lane, causing cars to quickly stop and back up, and they require the already slow lane to come to a complete stop to let them in. If you're in right lane, and you don't have any plans of exiting any time soon, you are in hell, the only thing you're thinking about is getting out. The problem for you is, now you're going 5 miles per hour, and the lane next to you is doing 65. You have to risk life and limb flooring the vehicle to just change lanes.

How to avoid, solve this problem: The best thing you can do is time your entrance into the exit lane. Maybe 1 or 2 exits before your exit you should start trying to get in. This way you won't be that asshole blocking two lanes at your exit, nor will you spend 30 extra minutes sitting in the slow lane. I believe if most people followed this, then the exit lane wouldn't be as plugged up as it gets, but there's no social intelligence on the road except perhaps most red lights being followed and people usually driving in the right direction. You have to act on your own best interest.



Slow Drivers Whether it's a big rig, or an old lady, slow drivers have created an entire subculture in the long empty roads of this country. They serve to ensure every poor bastard who's ever driven on a highway has been forced to slow to some arbitrary speed like 59 in a 65 making each person question their choices in life as some asshole 50 feet in front of them has managed to take hours of their life.

How it slows down one lane more than another: Big rigs tend to stay in the slow lane. They are professionals, they don't hope to ruin your day, but if you let them they will. Slow drivers tend to be bad drivers. One has to be fairly oblivious as a human to drive too slow on the highway, and thus more often than not, you will find these morons sticking to the fast lane. I can tell you on a number of occasions I've had to stay in the slow lane going 80 passing up a row of them doing 50 in the fast lane. The concurrence of douchebag slow driver in the fast lane, big rig in the slow lane does occur regularly. Basically if you're on a highway with two or fewer lanes you will get screwed every so often, it isn't so much that they only effect one lane, but they only affect a small region of a highway. They create a pack of cars that is led and trailed by open road.


How to avoid, solve this problem: I mentioned that a subculture has spawned from slow drivers. It's really fascinating actually, because I've never heard anyone else talk about it, and I didn't realize it existed until I had driven a route across California nearly 500 miles about 5 or 6 times. In general when slow cars hover around big rigs, or you get that convoy of big rigs where they take turns passing each other, you end up with a pack of cars all going 54 miles an hour in the 65. The slow drivers don't care, they'll do this their entire life. The average driver doesn't enjoy this, but they'll wait it out. The speeder really hates this, he'll either be speeding up and then dropping back repeatedly, cutting people off trying to find the better lane, or just tailgating the hell out of people like that's going to convince the entire pack to speed up.

Then there are the lane changers. These are the true professionals. They don't get mad or complacent in a pack, they get good. The lane changer doesn't speed, they don't have to. The lane changer doesn't cut people off, nor will the lane changer willingly slow anyone down. The lane changer is the alpha driver on the highway. You must become one if you ever want to get out of these packs. To be a lane changer is very simple. Whenever you find yourself slowed down by a car, you get in another lane. If there's a car slowing you down there too, get in the next lane, repeat. If there are cars blocking all the lanes, look to the one that is going slightly faster, get behind that car and continue. Soon enough you'll be able to work your way through an entire pack of cars until you get in front of them. You will find it was just two assholes staying about the same slow speed, and everyone else unwilling to pass them up. While in the pack it may appear like the highway is just bumper to bumper full of traffic, as soon as you get out, you'll realize it's open for miles. Of course the longer you drive the more of these packs you'll run into. And that's how you'll realize you're part of a community of special drivers. As you work your way from pack to pack, you'll notice a few other cars are doing the same thing you are. You'll end up cutting about 1/6 off your drive or about 10 minutes per hour, this really adds up on long drives, it also helps you keep focused, as you have to actually think while driving where your next move in changing lanes is going to be. Another benefit is that you'll be spending most of the time in open roads, rather than being cramped in a pack of cars, subsequently you'll statistically less likely to be in a car accident.

Now it's important to make a fine point on the speeding. I find a hard speed limit to be a bullshit number. Whether it be 65 or 80. The DMV and the law is enough of a bureaucratic smartass system that they acknowledge road conditions determine actual safe speed. And while driving 50 in heavy fog and rain in the night is a stupid idea, the speed limit doesn't magically dictate the "safe" speed during sunny clear days with no one else around or any road hazards whatsoever. If you're in the middle of a valley with visual range 100 miles in every direction and there's no car for 10 miles around you and it's perfectly sunny and clear and the road is in great condition and you have a good safe car, you should be able to drive 250 miles per hour without the police giving you shit. Obviously that's not how it works out though. They're so logical when implementing max speeds during poor conditions, but when the conditions are good, all of a sudden we have to adhere to an inflexible number hammered out by lobbyists and politicians. Despite popular belief, if the speed limit says 65, then 66 is speeding. By that logic we're all criminals; almost every driver speeds every time they drive. I don't even know how no one has put a check on that. The number on the sign should not be the mathematical dividing line between "safe" and being pulled over and paying hundreds of dollars. If they want people going no higher than 65, the sign should say "Speed Range 55" and say you can manipulate your way up or down 10 mph based on conditions. But no, that would be A. assuming people have any self responsibility, and B. it would cut into ticket revenue, which is the real reason all vehicle and driving infractions exist at this point.

So when I say a lane changer doesn't speed, I'm not talking about the state's police version of speeding, I mean the lane changer isn't doing 90 around cars doing 60. It's not safe. Lane changers are decidedly safe. And that I want to hammer in. Because you probably never notice the Lane Changer proper, most people notice the shitty driver who has to do no less than 90 like their life is the movie Speed 3. Those psychos will kill someone, they speed too damn fast for the cars around them, they are forced to make rapid and dangerous lane changes simply to prevent from colliding with other vehicles, and they don't give a crap about cutting you off. I'm also not talking about those dipshit overly aggressive drivers who feel that if they aren't cutting in front of you, you're somehow wronging them, those are the people who will flip you off while nearly smashing into you getting in front of you. I've seen them when they get in front of everyone, they don't go any faster, they just wait for more cars to screw with. Those aren't lane changers, those are assholes, and I wish they would be sent to jail or fined their car for that.

When I first started changing lanes, when I'd get out of a pack I'd speed up to about 90 in the open road, and have to come back down to 60 when I'd reach the next group. After going through several packs, I noticed I wasn't shaking the other lane changers who were doing about 70 in the open road. There I realized speeding does very little for cutting down the hours. It does help somewhat, but as a practical matter there's no point risking the ticket when the guys not topping off 20 mph slower than me are sticking with me because by the time I reach 90 I have to slow down again for another pack. Of course I did drive fast as hell a couple times getting lucky with the traffic and managed to make a good 8 hour drive (with no traffic, no stops) become a 6 hour drive literally averaging 80 mph even after making a couple stops. I was about to beat the 6 hour on the return making about a 5 1/2 hour run (averaging 87 MPH over 480 miles) but a cop car came up beside me flashed its light, and the guy gestured for me to slow down, so I slowed to 65 the rest of the way and still did it in 6 hours. When I get up to this speed, it becomes increasingly harder to shave off hours. 8 to 6 is great, and I'm moving the average from 60mph to 80mph which is pushing it like a beast, but to go from 6 to 5 hours I'd have to jump up to average 96 mph which simply isn't happening. Even If I floored it across the entire state of California going 110 whenever I could, the traffic would force me back down to 60 or 55 every few miles and there's no way to make that up. So I have learned from thousands of miles of driving across thousands of miles of California through the biggest cities and the emptiest valleys that the most efficient long distance driving is to just ride that safe comfortable high speed limit, occasionally taking advantage of opportunities to go maybe 5 to 10 over, and popping out of every pack trying to get me to go 60 or less.

That's my wisdom for those who don't want to always be the guy in the slowest lane. One final point, if you're in a real traffic jam. Not like the false ones I've listed, but one like where the only highway to the Bay Area is literally backed up two valleys inland about 70 miles from the actual shorline, there's no trick. At least not one that I've seen. You can try lane changing, but you're never getting out of the pack. And ultimately if you keep lane changing in bumper to bumper, you're going to piss yourself and others off needlessly as you come to realize the futility of your efforts. The best thing to do is just take the opportunity to relax. Don't be that one crazy asshole who snaps and drives on the shoulder at about 80 trying to weave into traffic 100 cars per bound. Of course if you're late for something that won't forgive you, meh I can't deride you unless you're unsafe. The worst I had it was one time I had a job in San Francisco working a Fleet Foxes concert, I left extra early just so I might get a chance to enjoy the city for a little while, and lo a jam backed me up on the Bay Bridge for 40 minutes. 40 MINUTES ON THE BRIDGE! If you've ever crossed it you know it takes 5 minutes even in heavy traffic. And what would have been the worst traffic jam I've ever seen took place in San Diego after the Warped Tour. I was at the Coor's Amphitheater which is located in the middle of the desert, the parking area has ONE EXIT for thousands of cars. We left before the concert was over, in fact the biggest band of the night, the Dead Kennedys had just got on stage when we left. But even then with only ONE FREAKING EXIT FOR THE PARKING LOT OF THE BIGGEST THEATER AREA ANYWHERE NEAR SAN DIEGO it was a pure roadblock. Long story short my friend was driving, we waited nearly an hour just to be able to back out of our parking spot, no exaggeration, and then he just said fuck it, moved some traffic cones, and floored it, cut in front of a thousand cars by plowing through the center cone area and popped out in seconds. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do. But come on man, really? You're in the fucking desert, there's literally nothing else out there, the parking lot is surrounded by 4 roads, and there's only 1 god damn exit, which actually faces the road with all the loading/unloading traffic right in front of the amphitheater. They bring this on themselves. That's what you have to realize. Be safe, try not to get ticketed and fund their idiocy, but otherwise take every opportunity to get out of the pack. They might say the idea of thinking you're always in the slowest lane is a psychological fallacy, but that's because those sons of bitches are always in the slowest lane, and they have no clue there's a way out.

Pineapple on Pizza

So I'm trying out new Podcasts, and I decide to listen to an episode of "Fresh Air" an NPR show hosted by Terry Gross. The guest is an American author named John Marianai, plugging his newest book How Italian Food Conquered the World . Immediately I'm annoyed by this asshole. He has this Peggy Hill way of over exerting himself pronouncing Italian words. In general trying to pronounce words correctly doesn't annoy me, what was annoying is that he'd stress the hell out the words, like each "parmigiano" was like climbing a mountain. To make it worse he kept saying Naples. Naples. Naples. THE CITY IS CALLED NAPOLI. If you want to insist on calling it "par-May-giiiiiiii-Aaaaa-nooooo" like you were just dragged out of a fucking vineyard in Sicily, you might want to call the Italian cities by their god damn actual Italian names. What made things even stranger, to the point I knew I had to tell someone, was that every so often during the interview he would break into Italian accent on completely English words. Now this guy is not Italian, his parents are not Italian, he's clearly not fluent, why the hell is he breaking into an accent he doesn't have?

What's got me in a huff is what this interview culminated into. Marianai admitted that Italian food proper didn't conquer the world, real Italian food hasn't even conquered Italy, each region has its own dishes. It was Italian-American food that has spread globally. The very nature of Italian-American food is a modification on the original. Particularly bigger portions, with more and new ingredients. Not one damn item called "Italian" in America is pure to its Italian origins. And let's not begin to get into how tomatoes, an Italian staple, are originally from the Americas. So this guy has acknowledged that the food has evolved, and has continued to evolve. He specifically praises Wolfgang Puck for his innovative pizzas, like a "Jewish style" with caviar, salmon, and sour cream. Then this New York liberal host Terry Gross asks him "like I don't understand pineapple on pizza and things like that, um could you explain that?" (really, you don't "like um" understand pineapples? are you living in a fucking pineapple? it tastes good that's the long and short of most food, and when it doesn't taste good there's 2 other options 1. only choice, 2. Need the vitamins, I've solved all your inane food questions till kingdom come).

This fauxtalian dipshit's response is incredibly more snooty than the bitch's question "Well that is very typically American...corporate" and proceeds to rip into California Pizza Kitchen. Again, fucking tomatoes are American, you're cool with that. Puck puts fish eggs on a pizza, that's art. But pineapple goes too far!!!! In fact pineapple can't simply be an odd divergence, no it's a corporate America concoction. And we all know from being Americans that there's nothing more evil, disingenuous, and deplorable as that which is developed by American corporations. I would contend that even if he were right, what difference does it make who married pineapples with pizza? But there's a problem, he's dead fucking wrong, not only were Hawaiian pizzas not invented in America, they're NOT FUCKING CORPORATE you socialist self hating American wannabe Italian moron!

Hawaiian pizza was created in 1962 in Ontario Canada by a regular restaurant owner loooong before your precious Puck came along and started really making shit up.

He continues "let's as you say call it a Hawaiian pizza and put on pineapple, and I think at a certain point a pizza stops being a pizza, or at least stops being a good pizza, or anything like a good pizza." (emphasis mine)

Wow. 30 seconds later this "purist" says to use canned tomatoes to make marinara.


So altogether I don't think this would have set me off except it's at least the third time in the last couple weeks where I've heard somone say Hawaiian pizza isn't real pizza. I heard Adam Carolla going off about it too. Pizza, in America is a dough base, usually roundish, usually a tomato based sauce on it, often pesto or a cheese mix, cheese is usually a main ingredient, then you put on top WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT. Certainly if you broach a new level like putting entire sandwiches or lasagna on top it might gain a "hybrid" status based on bulk weight, but otherwise it's all fucking pizza. You want "pure"? It doesn't fucking exist! At this point people usually chime in with the Margherita style pizza, it's often called a "classic" "true" Italian pizza. While yes it was created in Italy, it was created as a GIMMICK!! A publicity stunt! Pizzas were already well established, the margherita was made just as a gift to the Queen of Italy, intentionally only using 3 toppings that matched the colors of the new flag of Italy. That's about as fake an origin as one can get! The Hawaiian has a more natural and honest origin than the hailed Margherita.

Time travel's only course

People continually dismiss or outright argue with me when I tell them about the nature of time. Simultaneously my knowledge of time isn't represented in any big theories as far as I know, and Wikipedia certainly doesn't have anything about it. So I'm going to post here something I figured out when I was 12 years old. The nature of time and its application to time travel. If there's something wrong with what I say, please point it out, if you have a question, please ask. If it makes sense to you, ponder about why this information is wholly unavailable to the public. Is this novel information, have I put together something new for the world?

First I want to dispel the "common" views of time and time travel. I just read what Wikipedia had to say about theories of time travel (back in time) and they were put together in a couple general categories.

=Alternate Dimensions=

These are touted as "paradox proof" theories because they completely ignore "time travel" and propose the ability to enter an alternate "dimension" that may coincidentally look exactly like the past. Essentially these theories rely on an unknown and entirely imaginary view of the universe. Similar to Russell's Teapot and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the design is based on the lack of evidence, not actual evidence, thereby ensuring the theory can't be proven wrong. There may be alternate dimensions, but there's literally no evidence of it. However this is irrelevant and basically a cop-out to the question "Is it possible to move back in time?" with the customized add-on "In the same dimension".

=Paradoxes prevent certain events from occuring=

Admitting that certain actions taken by travelling back in time would be paradoxical (like killing your grandfather before he gets your grandma pregnant) these theories suggest you can still go back in time, but somehow those paradoxes won't happen. Theories along this line don't entirely dodge the theoretical paradoxes of time travel (like the dimension theories), they try to contain them. Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder simply and inexplicably declares since you are one person, you can't go back and meet yourself, so if you do go back to some distant past, you'll pass yourself returning. This fit in the narrow confines of the short story but didn't even begin to address what would happen if you went back to your own childhood. Interesting to note that this short story is where the term "butterfly effect" originates. In the story, the main character accidentally steps on a butterfly during the age of dinosaurs, comes back to his time and finds there's a different president, words are spelled different, etc. The movie Time Cop suggested you could see your past self, but not touch. Again, this is really a limited explanation, saying the same matter can't occupy the same space, but no person is ever "the same" all people are at all times in motion and changing, and in Time Cop there's like a 20 year age difference, certainly by then their skin wouldn't even be of the same cells. The latest big budget adaptation of The Time Machine delt with the paradox of taking actions in the past that would prevent the time machine from being invented. The guy builds a time machine to save his love, but if he saves her, he won't build the machine, so when he does save her, something else just kills her. Kinda like that inexplicable series of films "Final Destination", there's no explanation for "who" is making people die, and even if people are meant to die, isn't extending their life for even a fraction of a second already a negation of necessity? I mean, if you were going to die by mugger, instead get hit by a car, won't there be implicit unavoidable side effects, like a good driver feeling bad for the rest of his life, and an evil mugger just killing someone else? Basically all these variations imply that you can change some things but not others, but the very ability to change anything, makes everything possible. If you can save someone's life for a minute, you've saved them nonetheless. Do it a thousand, or a hundred thousand times, and you'll have bought your time paradox. Or to put it in another way, these theories give a moralisitc quality to time. As if time gives a shit if someone dies, but also doesn't care if someone from the wrong time is just walking around. If there were a force that could force events to occur, why would it let you do anything at all? This is elemental theism, like in old Greek myths where mortals "fight" universal forces.

=There's no going forward=

I'm using movie references, because the theories aren't any more complicated, and at least films try to hammer out the kinks. A good one is the idea that you can only go back, not forward. Because forward doesn't exist yet. I love this kernal of conception because if you build on it, it reveals the flaws in all these theories. But I won't get ahead of myself. Time Cop sort of followed this, but the movie opens with guys from the future killing Van Damme's wife. So the question would be, if people can come from your future, then if you hop into their time machine and go to their present, then haven't you just gone into the future? The "Terminator" films try to cover up this flaw by saying only human tissue can go through, and that their machine only goes back in time. But again, it doesn't really solve anything. Because if at any time anyone can come from any future, then at all times, the future is just an open door.

Overall these theories create as many paradoxes as they try to negate. Who was the father of the first John Connor (infinite time loop paradox, although I came up with a smart-ass answer to this, the first John Connor, the one we see as an adult in the first movie had no idea that his buddy would nail his mom, in his time line his dad is just some random guy. Sending back his buddy broke his continuum, and he stopped existing, however his buddy got Sarah Connor pregnant, and 50/50 chance it was a boy, she wrongly assumed this was THE John Connor, and so names this boy, essentially the real Connor's half brother, John Connor, and this kid has to live up to the real Connor's legacy, paradox averted. But I've really digressed here).

=The Intentional Paradox=

I flat out don't like time travel stories with this attitude. The Terminator is one of these, trying to claim that John Connor could only exist after his adult friend from the future bangs his mom. That's probably why I came up with that alternate possibility. Another one of these is Professor Peabody and his Wayback Machine, I don't know where the hell that cartoon came from but when I was younger it was attached to episodes of Underdog. Anyway so Peabody is a dog, and there's a stupid boy who's is assistant or something and they keep going back in time to make things that already turned out fine, turn out fine. The way it's presented is that if they hadn't gone back, things would have been different than what we know them to be, as if the past was waiting for Peabody and the idiot to fix it. The television series Heroes pulled this shit too, a time-travelling "Hiro" goes back to the age of Samurai, and finds out his hero from history is an immortal douchebag alcoholic Limey. Seeing that the drunk couldn't pull off the legendary acts he was known for, Hiro fills in for him...but then how could Hiro ever hear the story in the first place? Intentional Paradox, that's how. Bullshit. The newest time travel movie, Hot Tub Time Machine, among other insane, impossible, and absurd ideas about time travel, did its own intentional paradox, when a kid goes into the past, and is then reborn as the same person but with a different dad, right after said different dad altered the time line to destroy the kid. Jesus that was stupidity at its finest. Still a funny movie, on DVD or BluRay now.


=Misc=

The fun of time travel stories is that they pretty much just make up rules without any factual reasoning to fit the plot. Back to the Future had a ball with the idea that if you change the past, you can view its effects while it's happening, like seeing photographs or people disappear, or words in newspapers change, equally speculatory are films that suggest you won't see the changes until you get back, like Time Cop, and The Butterfly Effect, however even between those two films there's a huge difference, when Time Cop Van Damme went back to the future, he was surprised to see how things were changed and had no memory of the alternate timeline (this is a common assumption) in The Butterfly, when Ashton goes back to the future, he immediately acquires all the memories. Another common one in many stories, even if not overty acknowledged is that even after someone goes to the past, the present continues. Sometimes this is an extremely important plot point, as it was in Star Trek: TNG's series finale, 3 ships from 3 times had to go to the same place in space at the same time, yeah, how could it be the same "time" if they're definitively separate times? Most of the other examples I can't think of off the top of my head but they are all tv/cartoon interpretations, where the "ticking clock" somehow keeps ticking even with the ability to travel through time. By the way, I hate that so many entire series' of cartoons rely solely on the "ticking clock" for plot drive.

=Why time travel theories are created=

People imagine a past that doesn't exist, but because it did exist at one point they conceive of a way to return to it. The time machine, is really just a manifestation of memories. It is a projection in narrative, that is a recreation of the human mind. The cultural perception of a time machine allows one to revisit the past, as a present self (this is memory incarnate) this machine also allows a person to see the future (our mortality and daily grind suck the fun out of our regular path to the future), or change a past event (desire and regret). The best proof I can offer that the common portrayal of time travel is purely self-serving wish fulfillment is that in all stories of time travel, the method of travel is accessible to only a very small number of people. If time travel were possible in the way it's portrayed in all science and stories, why wouldn't there be millions of time travellers? Why wouldn't there be a total collapse of society and functional reality? A while back I addressed this by writing a short story that takes place in a world where anyone can travel through time, so "reality" becomes as fleeting as a flicker from a match.

I love time travel stories, not for their science fiction, but the underlying goal of the story, to seek answers that can never be had in our real lives (what will the distant future be like or what if a different choice had been made) and to allow people a second chance at something that burns inside them, an everlasting regret. The "Back to the Future" films deal with this, amidst all the bitching about affecting past/present/future, by the end every character's life has been completely altered to their satisfaction. So it is the narrative, and journey of imagination, that I love in time travel stories, but they are all wrong. And now I will tell you how.


=Joshua's epiphany in 7th grade=

So I was at my house and the brother of my friend comes to the door. I see him through the screen door, and I walk towards it. Bam! The nature of time hits me. Almost a "Eureka" moment, but to this day I don't know what the trigger was exactly. I didn't shout eureka, I calmy said aloud "This is it, there is only now".

I had realized that our common perception of time is that it is a place. That there is a now, and a then. That we actually "pass through" time. Whether it's conceptially continuous or fragmented, it doesn't matter. The common portrayal is that there is a past just waiting for someone to visit.

But time is not space. Time is a measurement and a function of motion. That is, if there were no motion in this universe, even if it were full of matter, then time would not exist. Time is effectively the acknowledgement that the arrangement of the universe alters. And this is what most time travel theories get wrong.

To put it bluntly, you can't build a machine to "go" into the past, because there is no past. This world IS the past. There is no duel 1985/1955 this is 1985 and 1955, and all other time, past present and future. What most humans regard as "the past" is psychologically another world. But in terms of true functionality, there is only one time, now. It has always been now, and it will always be now. Time is a measurement of objects just rearranging themselves. Every atom of your childhood puppy is still in this world. Every atom of your future grandchildren is in this world right now, maybe some of it is in a tree, much of it is in the soil, in the sun, in the air. There is only now, but your childhood puppy suffered the effects of mechanical breakdown, and lost the ability to manipulate existing matter in its image. Eventually, things you are stepping on, mowing, breathing, drinking, will be pieces of your great great grandchildren. They are here now, as is your dog, but not in the forms of your paychological conception. Human minds create a chronology to make thinking easier. Imagine seeing a cup of tea, as both plants and mud, a satisfying drink, and broken glass, urine, and a breath of energy in a person. Past, present, and future. I know I'm teetering on Buddhism at this point, but Buddha was right in this regard. The nature of existence is motion, yet our minds tend to create stagnant perceptions.


Reality is quite different. There is no 1257 that can just be dialed up in a phonebooth, no 1985 that can be "returned" to in a car. There is always now, and now is always.

But, alas, this does allow for one way to "time travel" provided the technology existed, if you had the power, however that may be, to rearrange all energy in the universe, AND, if you had some blueprint, or tracing method of the arrangement of all energy, matter, etc. from a fixed point, and providing for the matter necessary to both create this world, and put yourself in it (thus requiring some compromise) you could effectively travel "back in time". But it is in this requirement that you might realize a few things, 1. All those paradoxes about time travel are bullshit. If you could recreate the past with yourself in it, then it is, by definition not really the past, so if you happened to kill your grandfather, there is no paradox, your real grandfather was destroyed the moment you manipulated the entire universe, and this recreation of your grandfather might have produced a child like your father, and that man might have produced a child like you, but it isn't you, because the only way to "go back" in the past, and "be" in the past requires keeping yourself with you, essentially stealing those atoms and molecules from the wind and trees and shit, so it can never be "your" past, as time is always now, and this recreation can't be 100% accurate if you're not dismantled in the process. Those aren't your atoms, you're borrowing them, and some of what you call you, was a part of your mother and father and other parts were in other arrangements, so that to ever truly recreate the past, no one, and no thing could "visit" or observe or "travel" there. Well, as long as we assume energy can neither be created nor destroyed, otherwise that would be one of those teapot unanswerables.

I beg anyone to tell me why I'm wrong. Although I'm not looking for theories. Because, you know, teapot again, I don't care what the teapot has to say. What I have written is just a blunt observation of how energy transfers get labelled as eras.



=Random=

I mentioned Time Cop a lot, probably because there aren't a lot of stories that take as many liberties with time travel, most films use time travel as a pretext to create a "fish out of water" or redemption story, Time Cop didn't play that noise, the time travel was the story. It was Van Damme's most successful film earning over $100 million globally in '94. The movie takes place with the "present" set in 1994 and 2004.

I alluded to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, making a total of 2 written stories, 1 tv show, and 6 films not counting sequels. I'm sure I could have pulled out many more, every incarnation of Star Trek, and many of the films use time travel in various ways. I didn't even want to get into Bill and Ted's version, where it's more like the anti-butterfly effect, and was it Bogus Journey where they just keep dropping time travel cages on each other? That was ridiculous. But Bogus Journey was all fucked up, instead of just time travel, it had aliens, God, heaven, hell, the Grimm Reaper, mother fucking evil robots, Jesus, oh and excessive yet mundane time travel.