Overthinking

Today I was thinking too much about too many things. I was clicking on links on the Internet and being assaulted by witty comments and interesting news. I decided to go for a walk outside and at first I couldn't take in my surroundings because of my internal monologue overrunning my conversation, telling me what I should write in my blog and on my Time essay and so forth. Finally after walking five or six blocks I stopped and forced myself to look around. I was on a mulched path in the middle of a stream. My ego tried to parse the scene and sat there grumbling. "Why do you need to do this?" it asked me. "Who cares about these trees? What do they mean? What is this all for?!"

The Buddha smiled.

Five minutes later an old couple came walking down the path. They found me building a little lean-to out of twigs I had snapped off of a fallen branch. "What have you found?" they asked me.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm building a house for the tree spirits."

On the way back I was compelled to pick some flowers and then I found a box to put them in. The box was meant for a real estate agent's fliers. I clearly raised it to a higher purpose. Nobody really knows what they are doing here, but you can put things in a divine order if you think the right way.

I uploaded all my high-quality pictures from DC and I'll link them soon.

Coming home

Instead of going directly home I stayed overnight at a friend's house, won a game of Arkham Horror, and went to my second cousin's wedding. I got to see my great-aunt and meet for the first time my cousin once removed. Then I went to the wedding itself, an Episcopal ceremony. I had never taken Communion before and was surprised to learn that the body of Christ has the taste and texture of cardboard. The pastor gave a speech about the sancticity of marriage between one man and one woman, and all that. I then went to the reception where loud music was played. This latter event exhausted me and I wanted to go home around 10PM; we ended up staying at the party for another hour and a half. At some point I said to my dad:

"I know about another place where they blast loud music at people who are trying to sleep."

"Where's that?"

"Guantanamo Bay."

I finally slept around midnight. The next day I rode the train home to a new house. Now it is time to begin preparing for the second leg of my journey.

I'd like to say a few words about objective reality. Perhaps one specific person in all human history was objectively correct about everything. Let's say on a whim that it was Caspar Isenkrahe. Every single word Caspar wrote about the nature of reality and the human mind, and the meaning of life, might have been spot on. However, it's impossible that anybody will ever realize this is true because people have limited perception. His writing can be misinterpreted; we perhaps have seemingly variant experience and we are blind to its concordance with Caspar's theories. Even Caspar could not have recognized his inerrance himself, unless if he was also God.

You might claim to be able to perceive objective truth. But the amount of external input you take in is limited by a number of factors, namely, your senses, your awareness, your openmindedness, and your ability to draw a conclusion. None of these things are in operation all the time, and none of them work correctly all the time. Furthermore, your ability to communicate your own personal reality is limited by language and medium, and the gap between knowledge and information can be great.

Most of the time we operate on the assumption that we are directly experiencing objective reality and respond to it without forethought, and we thus avoid banana peels and carry on physical activity in a satisfactory way. But when you communicate ideas to other people, it is important to keep in mind that neither you nor anyone else has a monopoly on the truth. In order to resolve an ideological difference, you should not attach yourself to your overarching belief, but contribute your own raw observations and look for the convergence of your shared common sense (if you have any; it can seem hopeless sometimes). Sometimes it's fun to pretend that you can divide everything into right and wrong on sight, as I did in my art museum article last week. But when people seriously convince others that their decision making is inerrant, cults and tyrannies arise, and experience shows that these are frequently errant.

Last Day

EXIT MEMO

I could not ask for a better summer than to be working in the office of Barney Frank. I have fielded calls from all around the country in praise of Barney’s legislation and public interviews, and heard testimonies to the same effect from strangers around DC. I was happy to pitch in in the office, get to know Barney’s staff, and learn how we handled the creation, modification, and approval of important legislation on a variety of issues. I did research about various foreign and domestic issues, wrote replies under Barney Frank’s name for our constituents, and heard speeches from Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel, Amy Klobuchar, and Ron Paul. I also got the great opportunity to remodel Barney’s website to make it a little easier to use!

I guess my main interest in volunteering here was to find out the way real change gets done in Washington, who and what make it possible, and how difficult it is. I learned the importance of reading even the powerless foreign affairs resolutions when I helped Markus resolve the H.Con.Res. 362 scuffle. I learned the complexity of the mortgage crisis taking calls about literally dozens of financial and housing issues I had known nothing about. I learned how political theater works watching the Republicans strut around the House during recess demanding energy legislation, and I learned why politics can be difficult when Barney’s hearings were interrupted by GOP leaders attempting to sabotage the Fall River bill.

I know a lot more now than I did in June about life on the Hill. After seven weeks I can finally match up the titles of legislative assistant, legislative correspondent, chief of staff, scheduler, and system administrator to all the staffers here. It’s a constantly busy and often exasperating job creating laws in such a diverse and raucous environment, and I don’t think I would like to come back to DC for a career. But I have a newfound respect for Barney as well as his staff. It’s tough enough managing the immense amount of paperwork, people, and demands on his schedule. But Barney manages to take it on with a level head and a good sense of humor. I am grateful to everyone in the office for letting me volunteer.

We Get Opinions

We sometimes get printed postcards, a half dozen at a time, from a mysterious, unnamed organization. Most of them tell us to pass "National Language Act" in order to save money and defend American values, or support our troops by allowing PTSD-afflicted veterans to own firearms. But one of them, which only appeared once, used far less vague language. Once I read the first sentence I could not get it out of my head, even weeks later. Tearing into the constituent mail bundle today, I saw a bundle of postcards-- and there it was...

Dear Representative:

If you believe that America should be Balkanized into warring ethnic enclaves, then do not support H.R. 768. But if you believe that America must remain united by our common language, then please cosponsor and work for the swift passage of this bill that repeals E.O. 13166, the edict that forces cities and towns to spend millions in order to provide language services to people who refuse to learn English.

America's strength is our unity and our common language is the glue that binds us and allows the most diverse mixture of races and cultures to live and work in harmony. REPEAL E.O. 13166 NOW!

Sincerely,

---

Actual phone call transcript.

"I was just watching the news and I heard that the government is going to bail out Fannie Mae and what's the other one, Freddie Mac? And those are like private institutions, federally run? What's that mean?"

"They used to be government departments, and they got privatized but they still have government oversight."

"And now we're going to bail them out? Billions of dollars?"

"I'm not sure what the plan is right now."

"Well, that's just big government run amok, now you liberals have taken over the Congress, and Barney Frank is one of the biggest liberals there is, and--"

"That's right."

"What's that?"

"Barney Frank is the biggest liberal in Congress, and he's proud to be one."

"Well, okay, he's a proud liberal. And he's gay, too, is that right?"

"Yes he is."

"Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but..." (guy starts laughing) "Well I hope you get my comments, sir, and thank you very much for your time."

"Thank you."

Nancy Pelosi: I'm here, have a nice vacation!

A new intern in the office today. I showed him the ropes, but he couldn't come to the Capitol because he doesn't have his badge yet. So I dropped him off at the deli and went to the Capitol myself to see what the House Republicans are getting up to.

I'm sure people who haven't yet stopped watching mainstream media are well aware that the Republicans have taken over the vacated House floor. Or maybe not; there's no video allowed in there so maybe the television has dropped the issue. Anyway, the impressive impromptu speeches that began on Friday restarted in earnest on Monday and have carried on today. In a bizarre twist, this minority leader is setting the "schedule" in the Hall of the House, but as I noted in the previous Wikinews article, there is no decorum and no procedure for these speeches. As I entered the galleries, which were considerably emptier today, John Carter (R-TX) had just gotten up to speak. He had a sore throat and was losing his voice, but carried on unscripted about how much we could help the American consumer by starting offshore drilling today. It was somewhere in between watching an impassioned House debate and a campaign rally, and indeed he seemed to have returned to the floor out of a sincere desire to give Republicans something to be proud about, and not just to throw a Big Oil-funded temper tantrum as the Democratic leadership insists. He made several interesting points:

• He ought to be at home right now: his wife and kids haven't seen him during the long Congressional session.
  
• He wished there were some Democrats here to debate. Yes, debate is the lifeblood of all politicians. ("Well, man," thought I, "they're at home with their spouses and kids... you're putting in overtime.")
  
• Since cameras, notebooks, and recording devices are not allowed, C-SPAN is turned off, and the reporters' galleries are closed, he is relying entirely on word of mouth from the folks like me in the visitors' galleries to tell our friends and blog about what they're doing on the floor. It seems like an earnest enough request to me. It's not like if the press is come in and take notes on every word of their five-hour talking sprees; yes, the person sitting next to me was cupping her hand around a pen and scribbling on a scrap of paper from her pocket, but she was clearly an aide. Reporters hate doing that kind of stuff these days.

The actual issue, of offshore drilling, strikes me as faulty but not for any environmental reason. We need to put off offshore drilling for wholly economic reasons. If you think $4/gallon gas is bad, wait until it's $8/gallon. Republicans are our national id, demanding we do everything we can right now, but looking towards the long view, if we can learn how to be thrifty now and cut down on luxuries, then if things get worse (and they inevitably will, at some point) we're good for the long haul.

Of course, no politician wants to tell their constituency to suck it up. Instead Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) came on and talked about how real Americans were now panhandling her at gas stations...

National Galleries of Art

I took my mom to the National Gallery of Art, which is divided into two wings. One wing was designed by John Russell Pope, who also did the Jefferson Memorial. This wing houses all the good art. The other wing was designed by Satan and houses the evil art of bad people. Now, I have started to recognize several things about art museums. One of the most important things to realize when you go to an art museum is that the talkative little placards to the side of every artwork were placed there by Satan to deceive you. So, for example, the work below is allegedly called Woman with a Parasol. That's what the little placard said. The placard also reminded me that it's by a famous person so you should take it seriously and pay close attention to the title. But I don't know if the artist ever gave it that title. I don't think it's about the woman, or the parasol. It seems clear to me that the painting is really about the sky, grass, and wind; and when I got home I looked it up on pixiv, and sure enough a Japanese artist who's about my age had not only concurred but actually drawn up his own beautiful vision of it.

left: 1875. right: 2008.

There are many traditional practices of art museums, such as the placards, which are attempts to constrain you and rein you in to the curator's idea of good art. Please keep in mind that museum curators are Fascists. It is nice to be free and recognize your own yearnings and satisfaction without people telling you what to do. For example, here is a simply horrible painting.

I took it from the Museum of Bad Art, right? I must have, with the pea soup-colored garden and the matching face? This is actually van Gogh, and it was displayed in the gallery as if the curator's intent was to show the famous brand names and not the good paintings. I think he was having a bad day when he made this one. He should have painted over it.



The sculpture gallery of the good wing was a wonderful place. My favorite sculpture was an Italian work which showed a woman standing in the wind. It looked like she was about to leap up. When you got really close to her arm, it felt like you were being elbowed out of the way by a real person. Her hand is to her ear because she's listening to something.

How obscene that this was being housed in the same building as this turd of a sculpture (below). Apparently Satan was unsatisfied with owning a whole wing of the National Gallery of Art, and has started to encroach on the good wing as well. What's wrong, there wasn't enough good stuff to go around? That's seriously worrisome...

There was also a ladder hung from the magnificent dark green pillars of the rotunda. "Hey, someone left a ladder up there," I pointed out to my mom. Turns out it was an "installation" by the same artist who excreted the turd. Someone needs to get that ladder down from there. Your tax dollars are paying for this, folks. The military pays $3,000 for a toilet seat, and the NGA pays $3,000 for a ladder. Someone get Banksy in here to take it down. Maybe he can drop it off at a construction site for them to use. No wonder he's so popular-- he's the Robin Hood of the art world.



Rather than showing you the ladder I would like to show you a totally awesome picture. I can't find it on the NGA website anywhere but it belongs there, or on a 19th century pixiv. It shows a bunch of people reading the 19th century version of 4chan and going "holy cow," and all their friends are gathered around to take a look, even the black dude.

Holy cow! I laughed out loud at this one. I know, that's not what you're supposed to do when you look at art. Sorry, curators. You did your best to suppress any sort of emotional response to the art, but you failed your dark overlord.

Bits and pieces

Today a friend took me to a really bad part of town to get lunch from the deli. It was stinky, broken-down, abandoned, gross, and apparently people get mugged and carjacked there all the time. Boys wearing sagging pants, girls with hooker outfits. It was possible to think that the authenticity of the place was cool (I did like those Chinese signs) but it's kind of sad that some of the last ad-hoc places in the U.S. are almost total trash. Here's a picture of the deli, which was wedged in between two shipping companies.

After that adventure I went back to the office and called some mortgage companies. I got the fax numbers of all the CEOs through an obvious process that lends itself to a social engineering scheme. The worst of the lot was Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo does not have a process for members of Congress who need to talk to the CEOs. I ended up going to wellsfargosucks.com or something like that and calling an executive at random. They then put me on hold and played ads at me for 10 minutes, which I swear ran like so:

"Don't wait for someday to get all the things you want! Now they're yours, with Wells Fargo Divestment Loans. Ask your operator about it today."

Wells Fargo is evil. I hope they crash and burn.

Then some cute stuff happened on the House floor which I wrote up on Wikinews. I should have taken a picture of the crowded galleries... oh well.

Since getting my computer I've been back in the habit of collecting interesting links. Here are a few.

• angrybaby.jpg
  
• The Legend of Shambhala
  
• The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a coward’s cult.
  
• Tibet under Chinese rule
  
• mccain.jpg
  
• Great job, Japan. Now you're even better than us at graffiti. Thanks so much.
  
• 2004 RNC report