I have only two new year’s resolutions: 1) Some amount between $75 and $100 goes into a savings account every month, 2) finish a certificate program at the University of Washington.

I haven’t decided which certificate to try for first, the C++ one or the object-oriented analysis one.

Hey, look… It’s a photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983. That’s about the time Hussein was gassing the Kurds. Smile, Donald!

It’s new year’s eve, as if you didn’t know.

Weird is rubbing up against my ankles. He’s a big ol’ black cat. He’s been really happy to see me this trip. He follows me around, and keeps inviting me to go outside and do cat things. He’s been letting me train him to be OK with being held. I’ll pick him up and pet him for a few minutes and then put him back down before he starts getting fidgety and pissed off. He’s semi-feral, so he gets really pissed off sometimes.

I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table. It’s a big round piece of plywood painted a dark green and placed atop the nicest set of legs you’d find in a junky antique shop. It’s not elegant, but it’s just perfect. My parents are not poor, by any means, and they could buy any fancy table they wanted. They want this table because my mom made it. It’s not much younger than I am. Maybe it’s a sibling.

Speaking of siblings, my brother married into a large family a few years ago. He lives across town, 45 minutes of straight-arrow driving down I-10. He’s done really well for himself. We all went there for Xmas, and he showed me his woodworking shop, which would make Norm Abram jealous. He’s a very meticulous craftsman; his job is fixing the huge diesel engines that power boats and pumps and generators. He was telling me the stories of going to China and Saudi Arabia and assorted other exotic locales, to fix boats. He was all set to go to Saudi just after 9/11, but, ahem, opted out of that trip.

My sister is a speech pathologist. She recommends children for special education programs. She’s been married a long time, and even has a kid who just entered college. She doesn’t have a wood shop, but she has a big house that they built. She’s also made a good life for herself.

I used to think of myself as the youngest, but now I think the table will be the youngest. When the inevitable comparison comes, I think it’ll be the table that hasn’t accomplished much, not me. The table has done a lot, but it hasn’t accomplished anything.

And maybe that’s not so bad. The table will teach me not to strive for comparison.

If you hadn’t guessed, some Heavy Shit is weighing on my shoulders of late. There’s really no one to share it with, not even you, my loyal Xanga readers who put up with my moody crap.

Every time I come to Texas, I end up like this, but staying at home in Seattle would be twice as lonely.

I’m looking at the prospect of doing some dangerous work. Work that’s dangerous to the status quo my nervous system finds comfortable. In most people, that status quo is a healthy barrier between oneself and the world. In my case, it’s a castle wall around a plot of land so tiny as to not provide sustenance. Nothing to sow, nothing to till, nothing to eat. The king has to walk around outside the castle, disguised as a peasant, just to buy food.

…to over-extend the metaphor. But it’s true. I have to relinquish my sovereignty of self to make anything work. That’s why the work is dangerous.

To normal people, this sounds like some kind of self-justification, some kind of cop-out. An example of Homer making excuses for himself. But it’s not, and if you disagree you can piss off.

I see it as a universal struggle. Everyone goes through this. Everyone has to decide where the world ends and they begin. The difference is that most people can’t see this process happening, and if you ask them about it, they’ll find it difficult (at best) to admit that their sense of self comes from their healthy neurology. A neurology that can develop in expected ways given social interaction. That’s one of the parlor games the mind plays on itself; it refuses to believe it’s a bag of neurons. But for people like me, a healthy sense of self has to come from somewhere else. It has to come from where I can find it.

Which further alienates me. It’s dangerous work. I’ve got the medical profession telling me I’m a medical oddity. I’ve got people in my life telling me to just get on with it. I’ve got my own inner criticisms which are tougher than anything the world can throw at me. I’ve got a sense of betrayal. I feel a sense of duty to people it hurts to be around. I’ve got grief bigger than my body. I’m confused about where to start. I’m anxious about a world where it’s OK to start wars to fix gas prices. It just never stops.

People tell me: “There are medications for that.” And in doing so, they imply that it’s my fault that no one understands me. My fault that the world conspires to depress me. My fault that I haven’t compartmentalized my perception into easy categories of ‘matters’ and ‘doesn’t matter.’ It all matters. Ignorance isn’t the answer, and neither is numbing myself.

Economy.

Economy is the science of determining relative value, and understanding the way these values change.

What is of value to you? What matters most? What matters least? Where is the gray area in-between?

There’s an equation I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to evaluate it. Give it value. Make the equal-sign work properly.

The equation is that of the economy of wanting. I want only what I can achieve, or get, or give. The variables are many, but I’m paring them down. So much cancels itself out, when you’re focusing on the equal-sign, and not one side or the other.

Economy of scale. Big desires use big energy. The economy of scale in my life is a small amount of energy to spend. I am finite. I want only a few small things.

The equal-sign makes its own demands. Equilibrium. The balance beam, the pendulum. I have only a small effort to spare.

I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never known. I have to narrow my path, reduce my options, kiss the many desires goodbye. When I find the equilibrium, and I’ve balanced the books, those desires will be dead weight, and now they’re only distractions.

I can’t bring peace to the world. I can’t even bring peace to you. I can’t convince. I have no power. And most frustratingly, I won’t give up.

Book review: Unequal Protection

What is “corporate personhood?” Suppose, to keep Wal-Mart at bay, your county commissioners enact an ordinance prohibiting Wal-Mart from doing business in your county. The subsequent (and immediate) lawsuit would be a slam-dunk for Wal-Mart’s lawyers, because this corporation enjoys—just as you and I do as living, breathing citizens—the Constitutional rights of “due process” and “equal protection.” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is a person, not in fact, not in flesh, not in any tangible form, but in law.

To their everlasting glory, this is not what the Founding Fathers intended, as Mr. Hartmann explains in rich and engaging detail. And for 100 years after the Constitution was ratified, various governmental entities led corporations around on leashes, like obedient puppies, canceling their charters promptly if they compromised the public good in any way. The leashes broke in 1886, the puppies got away, and the public good was increasingly compromised—until it was finally displaced altogether.

Today, the First Amendment protects the right of corporations-as-persons to finance political campaigns and to employ lobbyists, who then specify and redeem the incurred obligations. Democracy has been transformed into a crypto-plutocracy, and public policy is no longer crafted to serve the American people at large. It is shaped instead to maintain, protect, enhance or create opportunities for corporate profit.

Read and enjoy.

I’m tired and cranky. A friend of mine from high school tracked me down here in Houston, and we went and got lunch. I was tired and a bit cranky the whole time. It was nice to see him and his wife and his kid.

You reach a point when everyone else seems to have a two-year-old.

Right after I heard from this friend (and before he came to pick me up), I got another email from another friend saying that he’d be performing on Saturday. He plays Warr guitar, which is a big ol’ monster of a fretboard that you tap. He and some Stick players (Stick is another big ol’ fretboard you tap) will be jamming. I’m glad he sent me an email; I had lost all his contact information and he had moved.

I mentioned Chimera in a previous ‘blog. Here’s a page of hacks and tricks and so forth to use with it.

The Stroop Effect

Have a swell Saturnalia, folks.