Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in penprp's LiveJournal:

Monday, August 23rd, 2004
11:10 pm	On reality... Consider the parable of the blind men and the elephant. For those of you who have never sat through a philosophy class, this is one of those old chestnuts about the nature of reality trotted out at regular intervals by someone who wants to prove he knows more about the universe than you. It started life as a Buddhist tale, moved through Islam, hit the West during the Age of Reason, got picked up by hippies migrating west, and is now mutilated by American Goth Teenagers moaning about the establishment. No, wait, that was the beatniks. Sorry. Ain't cultural diffusion grand? Anyway, so the story goes, five blind men in a small town in India, or Saudia Arabia, or Poland, or upper Detroit, get curious about this strange beast people call the elephant. They want to know what it is, so they head off to whatever the nearest place one can get close to an elephant is. The first guy feels the elephant's ear, and says, "Ah, the elephant is like a sail!" The second guy feels the trunk and says "No, the elephant is like a serpent!" The third guy feels the side and says, "The elephant is like a wall." The fourth guy feels the tusk, and says, "No, no, the elephant is clearly like a spear." And the last guy feels the tail and says "You're all wrong. The elephant is obviously like a rope. And it smells really bad, too." So the five of them start arguing about the nature of elephants, while the elephant stands there and wonders who let these jokers into his cage. This is supposed to illustrate how human beings with limited perception can only get bits and pieces of reality, and form entirely erroneous conclusions from them. What the storytellers leave out, though, is the SIXTH blind guy, who listened to the other five and thought... "Well, elephants are supposed to be really BIG, right? Maybe an elephant is like ALL of these things put together!" The other five laughed at him, then told him to shut up before they stoned him/nailed him to a tree/burned him at the stake/made him listen to "My Heart Will Go On" until he started drooling. *Then there was the seventh guy, who said the elephant was like cheese, but he'd been in and out of institutions for a while.* What's the moral of the story? Heck if I know, but if this were a philosophy final, I'd say that even with limited perceptions, you can get good results by keeping an open mind and compiling all the data. Of course, you have to throw out some of the obvious outliers, or you'll wind up believing elephants are a dairy product. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 18th, 2004
10:21 pm	About me... Well, sorta. Some days I wonder if I'm insane. Some days I know I am. And some days... Damn. How can I explain it? Human beings communicate on a certain set of basic concepts, elements of perception, if you will. Atomos, that beyond which there can be no deconstruction. Except of course, there's protons, and electrons, and quarks... I'm digressing again. Sorry. Try to explain to somebody what the color red is. Or what the sky is. Or hell, joy, pain, sorrow, hope... You can't do it, can you? Just like I can't explain the taste of a headache, or the singing of the threads that bind the world, or how the number of paving stones in your front walk connects to the levels of perception that human beings can access. No, I'm not some Goth/Wiccan/Pagan wanna-be who flaunts labels and "universal harmony" without a shred of belief, or some dippy star-child who really believes that the buck-ninety-nine crystal around her neck puts her in touch with the Ancient Atlanteans. I'm not an atheist, either, taking refuge in scientific explanations like "lack of serotonin" or "neural overload," either. I'm not making this up either to look cool or get attention. It's like anything else, it's got its good points and its bad points. Do you know how hard everyday life can be when you are constantly multi-tasking? I have this sneaking suspicion that I don't perceive time linearly, like a lot of other people. I have to be doing six things at once. Makes me hell at movies. Or maybe a sense will trigger a memory, and I'll be six years old again, at the beach, smelling salt and sand and dead jellyfish. I think I go to the future sometimes, but it's so fast, I can't tell. And damn it, my mouth still tastes like a headache... The pain's gone, but that damn copper/blood/adrenaline taste is still lingering. Makes me sick to my stomach. Driving is hell, let me tell you. I have to fight to stay present, and it doesn't always work. Is it any wonder my reaction time sucks? Or I get drawn into the complexities of the recurrence of a druidic belief pattern in cultures around the world, and I really don't have the time or the inclination to explain to some twerp that he was charged thirty bucks for spending money he DIDN'T HAVE. Sometimes it's math. Sometimes it's social sciences. Sometimes it's the pattern of a dumb schmuck's check card purchases, and god help the bastard then, because I'm GOING to explain it to him, whether he likes it or not. See if he ever buys anything off the internet then. Serves him right. There's no regulator on it. No filters. Sometimes it comes crashing in and it's overload. Sometimes it recedes and it's grey. Sometimes my timeline locks onto something, and that's all I care about for an hour, week, month, year... What am I supposed to tell you? I dream. A lot. I see dead people. (yeah, it's overused. It's also the truth. Stuff it.) Frankly, I am almost sick of dead relatives invading my dreams at night, because they're never there just to chat. Usually they're totally twisted versions of themselves, attempting to either make me miserable, or drive me crazy. (Heh, short putt.) Is it bad when you'd rather dream about your overweight, socially disturbed Spanish teacher than your beloved father? (Don't answer that one, it was rhetorical.) And then there's you, the non-existent audience. Well, you probably exist, 'cause I'm gonna show this to somebody... but not you, you. And yet you're there. I can almost see you, like you're on the other side of the one-way glass. It's a big, dark auditorium, and somebody in the back smuggled in popcorn. HEY! SHARE with the lecturer, damn it! So. Why was I ranting again? Probably just to get it out, and because, well, people HAVE expressed interest in the way my sideways mind works on occasion... So. I rant. Maybe this'll be a story about insanity. Maybe about sanity. Maybe about cheese puffs, I dunno. I'll get back to you on that. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
10:12 pm	Welcome! Okay, so this is my first entry into my Live Journal. It'll be a place for my rants, my dreams *If I can remember 'em* and my thoughts in general on life, the universe, and everything. *Forty-two!* I'll have art sometimes, and poetry sometimes, and fan stuff sometimes and... well, you get the point, right? I'll probably be updating this after work a lot, so be prepared for customer ranting, too. :) If anybody's out there, I'll be interested to hear from ya... (Comment on this)