"God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper."

R. Buckminster Fuller

11 days.... how much changes in 11 days. Hard to believe this is really the first time in nearly two weeks I've sat down before the blog. But then, I know I would never have been able to do so, until now, as only now am I finding the confidence to work the words to bring meaning to the fall of my employment. Yes, I have been terminated with unspoken prejudice. I feared if I sat down before now, all I would do is rail against my managers, management in general, and the powers that be. Or I would beat my chest and laud myself for my devout insubordination. But in the end, the company management fired be for that devout insubordination, and my victory is that I am without a means of support as that heinous management is still intently earning a paycheck, one larger than the one I earned. When I was much younger, I would have used such an event as evidence of the peculiar and singular oppression by the Cosmos, meaning would become justification for useless exercises of the ego. Whatever meaning can be gained, whatever attempt to relate to theological predetermination or blind universal randomness, is moot. Where the blame lies, in my willful blindness to the truth of authority, or their irrational practices of that authority, all those seem registered moot too. Any review of the choices made up to this point, and the factors affecting these choices, would be judgemental of me, without purpose. But in fact, purpose has so much to do with this. I feel so much the draw of a faith that I drew myself down this cascade of choices, even if there was a better way to get here, or less brutal and unstable, to follow the gravity of purpose, knowing or even being allowed to know, which path was necessary to have to face the challenge of a simple question.

That question would seem best if it was "Now what do I do with myself?" but that is still an unanswerable question, because I really can't even ask that within the constraints of external convention I keep myself lumbering, so that no matter how I change that question, the answer produced cannot express the full spectrum of the choices facing me, and provide the fulfillment of my purpose, which I for now will keep calling freedom. That question which could lead
to the the still unasked or unseen question I need to ask in a greatly new manner was presented to me by the climax of this employment fiasco. After underestimating the impact of my percieved (and actual) disrepect of my supervisor and his boss, the over-supervisor, and continuing the behavior which would spiral downward to the way I was entrapped, I was finally faced with the blatant and direct question of the oversupervisor: "Will you follow my direct orders unquestioningly?" And in that moment, which would cause me job and remind me laterthat principles still don't buy me groceries, I didn'tt even think about the answer given, since the choice was the inability of choicing anything else without selling out, a null condition. "No." I might have thought much more of my importance as a good officer, and not believed this would cost me my full employment by the company, but I doubt those realizations would have changed the choice made. Who I am is the question asked by the impact of the "Uh, No." answer to that question.
I do have alot more loose ideas of where all this is going to go, but those I need time, and in some cases, experience, to define in a manner that isn't another ego-drenched variance of false nonconformity, following in my father's steps, and priding myself for at least wearing different footwear. It's strange being encouraged by the stark exposure of my falsity and hypocracy in the face of deluding myself in the depth of my progress to this point, andnot worrying so much over a great deal of the expected self-abuse born of my lack of trust in myself and my direction before my God, as old tapes play laden with emotional static. Maybe, even given by the worst possible means, which could do great damage to the material independence I have worked so hard to build here, I couldn't see that I am not letting myself be free without affirming my basic need for heresy. Once again, onward, ever onward. I wonder if this is faith.

The irresistable gravity of the German tavern. Here I find myself even on a Saturday evening. The Indomitable I just left after a full shared afternoon in the U District. This week hasn't lent itself to blogging, full of the morass of both shared living and odious self-realization, and only after spending a good number of hours from the house do I feel like chronicling some. That and the beer helps, mildly. Honestly, I have wrote so little this week because I found more places my Ego has wormed its way into my process, where I didn't see its presence. The realization has left me with his deep distrust not of what I to say, but in how I say it. Then, with this in mind, there was a hyperdrama crisis, absurd in that way only the willful can make it, in the house, and I attempted to participate in the anti-climatic apex of a midnight "family" meeting, where my fears were amply proven, and why I mistrust my interpersonal perspective was even more proven than else. I managed to say exactly what I believed was right to say in the least productive manner possible. I would acclaim my talent, but I'm trying not to take pride in my abilities to fuck myself over, at the cost of friend and foe alike. But I should be so surprised in a week where a close online friend, for whom my love grows unbounded, told me I was accepting the paradigm of my father, without accepting the philosophy. The sense of my own hypocracy was intolerable, more for being true. There I was facing the fault of invasive ego into my perspective, invading my acceptance of other perspectives, and I was supposed to "help" in a debate I couldn't understand, and found inherently ridiculous. But it wasn't ridiculous, which made my inability to see it from another angle, undermining a skill I have proudly announced was one of my best, all the more starkly exposed.
I think the worst is seeing how much of my faith is simply obstinant conviction that I've raised to some elevated transcendant state. And the level of arrogance born of that was undeniable at last night's powwow. I feel pretty useless right now, no matter how much external affirmation is given. I hate to believe how narrow-minded I have made myself, but if I don't, I really am doomed to my father.
The best gain from this week is that least I know that I should remember always that my Way is not followed in the pursuit of truth, but in the pursuit of freedom.

Zero-sum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain (or loss) is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the other participant(s). It is so named because when you add up the total gains of the participants and subtract the total losses then they will sum to zero. Cutting a cake is zero- or constant-sum because taking a larger piece for yourself reduces the amount of cake available for others. Situations where participants can all gain or suffer together, such as a country with an excess of bananas trading with an other country for their excess of apples where both benefit from the transaction, are referred to as non-zero-sum.

The concept was first developed in game theory and consequently zero-sum situations are often called zero-sum games though this does not imply that the concept, or game theory itself, applies only to what are commonly referred to as games. Optimal strategies for two-player zero-sum games can often be found using minimax strategies.

In 1944 John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any zero-sum game involving n players is in fact a generalised form of a zero-sum game for two persons; and that any non-zero-sum game for n players can be reduced to a zero-sum game for n + 1 players, the (n + 1) th player representing the global profit or loss.

This means that the zero-sum game for two players forms the essential core of mathematical game theory.

(The two paragraphs above are translated from the French article on zero-sum games)

To treat a non-zero-sum situation as a zero-sum situation, or to believe that all situations are zero-sum situations, is called the zero-sum fallacy.

(Italics added by me.))

The Catholic Wonderland story is part this week's commitment to blog something each day. That, and I wonder if I can convert, and score the communion wafer concession... that would be some shekels.. more if I get the holy wine too.

Pizza Magnate Flees the Pagan Hordes

By Bill Berkowitz

OAKLAND, California - They may not become as ubiquitous as the Domino's Pizza outlets that dot the U.S. landscape, but Tom Monaghan, the man who founded that fast food giant, is hoping that the town he is building for orthodox Catholics in Florida will one day replicate itself across the country. In late March, at the first annual Boston Catholic Men's Conference held at Boston College High School, Monaghan, a major conservative philanthropist, triumphantly told the enthusiastic crowd of more than 2,000 men (including over 80 priests) that construction of Ave Maria University -- the first Catholic university built in 40 ¬years -- was moving forward. The 240-million-dollar first phase will be centred around the "Oratory of Ave Maria," a 60,000-square-foot church with aluminium and glass arches, and will include the nation's largest crucifix in stained glass with a 60-foot-high bleeding Jesus. The church would become the largest fixed-seating Catholic Church in the nation, with room for more than 3,000 worshipers. Students enrolled at the new university in southwest Florida would be high quality students, Monaghan said, with higher median SAT test scores than those attending other Catholic institutions. He also pledged that dormitories would be single-sex and that teachers in at least one quarter of the classes will be "wholly orthodox" priests. Grander news, however, awaited the crowd as Monaghan then launched into a description of a new Catholic-centred town that was under construction alongside the university. While there are no plans to name the town Monaghanville, or MonaghanWorld, it is clear that Monaghan's vision is writ large over the new town, called Ave Maria. "We're going to control all the commercial real estate, so there's not going to be any pornography sold. We're controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives," Monaghan told the crowd. At the Ave Maria web site, the university and town are described as "a new community of uncompromising quality and boundless opportunity." The site makes no overt reference to the town's religious mission. The project evidently grew from plans Monaghan began developing in 2002. His Ave Maria Foundation brought the Naples, Florida-based land developer, Barron Collier Companies -- which donated the land for the project -- on board to carry out the construction. The complex, located less than 30 miles from Naples and the beaches of Collier County, "is a visionary community with a strong commitment to preserving the area's significant environmental resources as well as its rural and agricultural heritage," the web site noted. The first phase of the project will be "open" in the spring of 2007, and by 2016, the town and the university is projected to have a population of 30,000. Monaghan's personal story is inspirational. His father died when he was quite young, and much of his youth was spent in foster homes and a Catholic orphanage. By ninth grade he had entered, and was subsequently kicked out of, the seminary. After high school, Monaghan spent a brief time at the University of Michigan, dropped out and enlisted in the Armed Forces, joining the Marines. In 1960, along with his brother James, he bought Dominick's Pizza -- which later became Domino's Pizza when Tom became its sole owner. Over the years, Domino's evolved into a highly successful international pizza delivery franchise and fast-food restaurant, which, according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, "had 7,100 stores in 50 countries [and] it was the second-largest pizza chain in the United States when it went public in 2004." Its 2003 sales totaled over 4 billion dollars. In 1998, Monaghan sold his interests in Domino's to Bain Capital, Inc., for an estimated one billion dollars. In 1983, while still running Domino's, Monaghan founded the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Mater Christi Foundation, which soon became the Ave Maria Foundation. Over the past 20-plus years, Monaghan has supported anti-abortion groups, school choice initiatives, and a number of Catholic charities, especially those emphasising Catholic education. Monaghan has also helped fund the campaigns of ultra-conservative Republican senators like Sam Brownback of Kansas, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. By the end of 2004, Monaghan had given away 450 million dollars of his 950-million-dollar fortune, Business Week reported. Ave Maria's success appears in part to be hinged to Father Joseph Fessio, the new College's provost and top-ranking priest. Fessio enjoys a close relationship with Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. The San Francisco, California-based Ignatius Press, which Fessio founded and still runs, is the primary English-language publisher of Ratzinger's works. After Ratzinger was named Pope, Time magazine acknowledged Fessio as a member of the new pontiff's inner circle. Although Fessio has been among those Catholics urging the Church to censure, and voters to reject, any Catholic politician that in supports abortion in any way, he was more circumspect about the future of the new town. Acknowledging that the developers would have ultimate authority over the town's character, he added, "No matter what Tom's personal desires might be, or anybody else's, this town is going to be open to everybody." But others are not so sure. "The whole idea of setting up a Catholics-only town or any religious town in a pluralistic society is very disturbing," Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington-based independent Catholic organisation committed to women's rights and reproductive health, told IPS by telephone from Germany. "In addition to a myriad of other legal questions, there could be all sorts of problems related to education and health care. Would public tax dollars be used to support private schools? What will happen regarding reproductive health care services? Will pharmacies refuse to dispense birth control? Will people not be able to have advance directives regarding health care choices that might conflict with Catholic teachings at the end of their lives?" she asked. "From a human and a Catholic perspective, I don't think it is a good idea for human beings to isolate themselves from diversity and differences," Kissling added. From a religious perspective, Kissling believes that tolerance and diversity make stronger Catholics: "We have to learn to tolerate the fact that there are other religions -- as well as non-believers -- and the interplay of cultures help make each of us more productive members of society. A Catholic-only town goes totally against that." "If you are a conservative Catholic, aren't your values strong enough to live in a pluralistic society without fear? Interacting with children of other faiths and no faiths can only enrich their Catholicism." © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service

This would be a night where I would be out at the coffeehouses and doing some remote blogging, but my hairless rat, Sigmund, has been very sick, and I finally had to take to him to the vet yesterday. Pneumonia. Hairless Rex are vunerable and usually don't survive pneumonia, but I, and the Woman (Praise Be onto the Woman) have been nursing him. I stayed home to hand feed him, and watch over him. He's doing remarkably well. Hungry and active.

I have a feeling this will be a dry blog week, forewarned. Hopefully I will get something out before Friday.

[Excerpt] (Blog Note: I wish I could transcribe this whole article. This is a very cutting one, that if you can pick up a back-issue, you should read. Hell, you should buy Harper's Magazine every month. I do.)

The Christian Paradox

How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong

Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2005. What it means to be Christian in America. An excerpt. Originally from August 2005. By Bill McKibben.

Sources

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

* * *

Ours is among the most spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth. Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish. It is true that a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place saturated in Christian identity.

But is it Christian? This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads of pins. Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind for his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to the poorest people—as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they’d fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. What would we find then?

In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide fifteen cents a day in official development assistance to poor countries. And it’s not because we were giving to private charities for relief work instead. Such funding increases our average daily donation by just six pennies, to twenty-one cents. It’s also not because Americans were too busy taking care of their own; nearly 18 percent of American children lived in poverty (compared with, say, 8 percent in Sweden). In fact, by pretty much any measure of caring for the least among us you want to propose—childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool—we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin. The point is not just that (as everyone already knows) the American nation trails badly in all these categories; it’s that the overwhelmingly Christian American nation trails badly in all these categories, categories to which Jesus paid particular attention. And it’s not as if the numbers are getting better: the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last year that the number of households that were “food insecure with hunger” had climbed more than 26 percent between 1999 and 2003.

This Christian nation also tends to make personal, as opposed to political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon. Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are, of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations (which at least should give us plenty of opportunity for visiting the prisoners). Having been told to turn the other cheek, we’re the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. Despite Jesus’ strong declarations against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate—just over half—that compares poorly with the European Union’s average of about four in ten. That average may be held down by the fact that Europeans marry less frequently, and by countries, like Italy, where divorce is difficult; still, compare our success with, say, that of the godless Dutch, whose divorce rate is just over 37 percent. Teenage pregnancy? We’re at the top of the charts. Personal self-discipline—like, say, keeping your weight under control? Buying on credit? Running government deficits? Do you need to ask?

* * *

Bill McKibben, a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, is the author of many books, including The End of Nature and Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape. His last article for Harper’s Magazine, “The Cuba Diet,” appeared in the April 2005 issue.

This is The Christian Paradox, a feature, originally from August 2005, published Wednesday, July 27, 2005. It is part of Features, which is part of Harpers.org.

The Affirmations of Humanism:
A Statement of Principles

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.
• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.
• We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
• We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.
• We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
• We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.
• We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.
• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.
• We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
• We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.
• We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.
• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
• We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.
• We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
• We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

- Issued by the Council of Secular Humanism

I lost a really cool post about celebrating sympathy for Jesus as the hapless gnostic hippie rabbi he was. I'm peeved, but I'll repost it sometime soon, new and improved.

I really didn't expect to be posting as it is, even if it is Friday, since I couldn't go to the German tavern, drink my usual liter and a half of beer, and keep off cigarettes. Not least in the first week. I was really serious about that whole thing earlier with the Coke. I'm off the soda, or least down to the barest only-for-special-occassion consumption, as a larger commitment to clearing out thhead from the stomach outward. Then, I'm also being a proper American progressive, where after a day of reading on the sufferings of the poor peoples of the world, I atone for this horror by going out and eating vegan. I'm at this nice little organic basement cafe a block of the Ave. I couldn't imagine going straight home on a Friday night, it feels unnatural. Plus I do have to shake off the day. There is the upswell of commitment to the Way that has been rising this week, with a couple expected backsliding days. I'm beginning to physically feel like I am stradding two states of probability, as my mind refuses to give up one and empowers the other. It's kind of interesting to reflect on this feeling, since I wonder if this shares something that others could mistake for a mystical atmosphere. I can see how this could be seen as a closing of the distance with God, since some quantum philosophers have expressed their higher being as the sentience that lives in the Super-State, the wholeness of all probability states. But this is a really mild feeling compared to some of the stuff I've read and heard about from other seeker's experiences. I really need to plan least a few experiments in the upcoming week.
I feel like I am being repetitive in the blog, because in the end, I keep describing the same difficulty with how little I know, and how little I know about learning more. Just being in this state of expectation, of peripheral reality weaving, is just driving me fucking nuts. I miss being able to blame God for this. It was so much easier. That and I liked seeing the look on people's faces when I would stop suddenly and shake my fist at the heavens. One thing I am not doing is thinking like a Jew, and this is actually a bad thing. A Jew understands how to infuse the holy into everyday, just through the rituals of gratitude and obedience, as one chosen by God. It would be good if I could remove all that God stuff, but retain the means to empower the mundane. I am having so much trouble ridding myself of the notion that the everyday is somehow "lesser" to the "greater" elevated thoughts and experiences of illumination.
I've been calling myself a "gnostic humanist" lately. Beyond the apparent paradox, gnostic humanism could be interpreted more literally, with the two concepts, as the passionate personal pursuit of direct individual experience with realized humanity.

Well enough Friday rambling. I think all the healthy juice is going to my head, and I should head home before I get the sudden urge to wear hemp, bake my own beads, and want to trade Grateful Dead bootlegs. I'm still in my workpants and they are starting to itch.

As always, more to come. I am going to transcribe from several sources, things I've read in the last week, I want to share.

On the the dietary front, I am drinking what is going to be my last Coke for some time.. oh Coca-Cola, who I have whored myself for your carbonic acid fizzy goodness. There was a time I lived on superlarge fountain dispensations of you and cigarettes, which explains the whole gastrointestinal acid reflux thing. But, now is the time for sacrifices.. anyways, I did some casual calculations on how much Coke I have consumed over the years. Averaging out was hard, since I'm down to a mere 40 ounces a week or so, as compared to 40-80 a day for most of my 20s. So for the sake of argument, I made it 35 ounces a day, and converting to gallons, that makes for 65 gallons a year. So I added 5 more to be realistic, and scary as it seems, that is only 20 more gallons than the average American. Not including the first 5 years of my life, although I considered if I started on the baby bottle, that means I have consumed approximately (and this pretty low, really) 1750 gallons of Coke. Note, this doesn't include other sodas. Okay, fine, everyone experiments. So I went through my Big Red and Dr. Pepper phase. Everyone does it. I feel hypocritical for my comments lately about methamphetamine users, and I can't understand them since I'm hyperactive. Meanwhile, I drink liquified sugar in a carbonated battery acid base, along with a plethora of other hyper-sugary drinks and snacks, and I'm not addicted to speed? Like putting super-oxygenated fuel into an already over-used jet engine. How can I confront my mental haze unless I confront the addictions I lovingly indulge in to support the neural bank of fog machines?
This feeling is pervasive overall, lately. If thought indeed influences reality, how will I can clarity of life without lucidity of mind, and my immediate gratification addictions will have to be cleared out for that

It has been an especially hard few days, not just because I lost a day of work Monday, to solar overexposure working on a house project on Sunday. Neither is it the physical nicotine withdrawal, since I haven't smoked since Sunday evening, but it has added to the undesired arguement over my lifestyle. Although I am pleased with the exercise and all that, it still feels like some old emotional appeasement, as if I can get away with doing less by declaring to myself and others how swell I am for just doing this much. I can't escape this feeling that it will take more radical adjustments to my life, and how maintain it, and not done in such a minute incremental measure. Not like I plan to wander off to Arizona, live in an old gold mine, and wear the hair yamulke, but I can barely imagine how much clearer I might be without the other chemical and mental addictions. I'm supposed to be considering roughly a plan for the Fall, and all I do is sweat when I try, since I smack my barrier when I think even three days ahead. My lucidity is in a holding pattern as I keep just above the fog of sugar, nicotine, and fatty foods. Some man of societal freedom I am that immediate gratification is just as interwoven into my psyche as the average American. Here I am fretting about my tightening cash flow, when my idea of basic necessities include so much unnecessary crap, that I do solely as a comfort reliance, subconsciously programmed to consume as absolute requirment for stability maintanence. In other words, I have a really lousy idea of true moderation.